Adi-buddhi (Sanskrit) Ādi-buddhi [from ādi first, original + buddhi from the verbal root budh to know, perceive, awaken] Original or primordial buddhi; the cosmic essence of divine intelligence imbodied in adi-buddha, the divine-spiritual head of the cosmic hierarchy of compassion, “the spiritual, omniscient and omnipotent root of divine intelligence” (SD 1:572). Adi-buddhi or dharmakaya is “the mystic, universally diffused essence . . . the all-pervading supreme and absolute intelligence with its periodically manifesting Divinity — ‘Avalokiteshvara’ . . . the aggregate intelligence of the universal intelligences including that of the Dhyan Chohans even of the highest order” (ML 90).
"All intuitive knowledge comes more or less directly from the light of the self-aware spirit entering into the mind, the spirit concealed behind mind and conscious of all in itself and in all its selves, omniscient and capable of illumining the ignorant or the self-forgetful mind whether by rare or constant flashes or by a steady instreaming light, out of its omniscience.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
“All intuitive knowledge comes more or less directly from the light of the self-aware spirit entering into the mind, the spirit concealed behind mind and conscious of all in itself and in all its selves, omniscient and capable of illumining the ignorant or the self-forgetful mind whether by rare or constant flashes or by a steady instreaming light, out of its omniscience.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Allured by the omniscient Ecstasy,
ESSENTIAL CONSCIOUSNESS,
46-CONSCIOUSNESS The consciousness of the essential envelope is that of unity. The individual knows that he is his own self having a self-identity that will never be lost, but also a larger self together with all the monads in the five natural kingdoms and, when he so desires, he can experience others' consciousness as his own. &
SIXTH NATURAL KINGDOM Also called first divine kingdom. The lowest divine kingdom is made up of those individuals who have acquired envelopes and consciousness in the two highest systemic worlds (43 and 44).
They have at their disposal the two highest collective consciousnesses of the solar system. They are omniscient in the solar system, independently of space in that globe and its past time. One realizes that they have complete mastery of the aspects of matter and motion and of the Law within the worlds 43-49. K 1.36
Anu (Sanskrit) Aṇu As a noun, an atom of matter; as an adjective, atomic, fine, minute. A title of Brahma, conceived as both infinitesimal and universal, thus pointing to the pantheistic character of divinity. Hence, every anu is “a centre of potential vitality, with latent intelligence in it” (SD 1:567; cf FSO 273-5, 431). In the Bhagavad-Gita (8:9) Arjuna is enjoined to meditate on the “seer,” i.e., the enlightened, omniscient One, who is “more atomic than the atom” (anor aniyamsam) and yet “the supporter of all” (cf VP 1:2, 5:1; ChU 3:14, 3-4, Katha 2:20, MU 3:1, 7).
**"Aware of his occult omnipotent source,Allured by the omniscient Ecstasy,He felt the invasion and the nameless joy.”
"Behind this petty instrumental action of the human will there is something vast and powerful and eternal that oversees the trend of the inclination and presses on the turn of the will. There is a total Truth in Nature greater than our individual choice. And in this total Truth, or even beyond and behind it, there is something that determines all results; its presence and secret knowledge keep up steadily in the process of Nature a dynamic, almost automatic perception of the right relations, the varying or persistent necessities, the inevitable steps of the movement. There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
“Behind this petty instrumental action of the human will there is something vast and powerful and eternal that oversees the trend of the inclination and presses on the turn of the will. There is a total Truth in Nature greater than our individual choice. And in this total Truth, or even beyond and behind it, there is something that determines all results; its presence and secret knowledge keep up steadily in the process of Nature a dynamic, almost automatic perception of the right relations, the varying or persistent necessities, the inevitable steps of the movement. There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.” The Synthesis of Yoga
omniscient ::: 1. Having total knowledge; knowing everything. 2. One having total knowledge. 3. Omniscient God. Used with the. Omniscient.
omniscient ::: a. --> Having universal knowledge; knowing all things; infinitely knowing or wise; as, the omniscient God.
omniscient narrator: This is a narrator who is ‘all knowing’. The omniscient narrator, often found in third person narratives, has a detailed and full knowledge of the story's events and characters, from every perspective.
omniscient ::: “The omniscient is not born, nor dies, nor has he come into being from anywhere, nor is he anyone. He is unborn, he is constant and eternal, he is the Ancient of Days who is not slain in the slaying of the body….” The Upanishads
::: "By self-realisation of Brahman as our self we find the force, the divine energy which lifts us beyond the limitation, weakness, darkness, sorrow, all-pervading death of our mortal existence; by the knowledge of the one Brahman in all beings and in all the various movement of the cosmos we attain beyond these things to the infinity, the omnipotent being, the omniscient light, the pure beatitude of that divine existence.” The Upanishads
“By self-realisation of Brahman as our self we find the force, the divine energy which lifts us beyond the limitation, weakness, darkness, sorrow, all-pervading death of our mortal existence; by the knowledge of the one Brahman in all beings and in all the various movement of the cosmos we attain beyond these things to the infinity, the omnipotent being, the omniscient light, the pure beatitude of that divine existence.” The Upanishads
classical theism ::: Traditional ideas of the monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Classical theism holds that God is an absolute, eternal, all-knowing (omniscient), all-powerful (omnipotent), and perfect being. God is related to the world as its cause, but is unaffected by the world (immutable). He is transcendent over the world, which exists relative to him as a temporal effect.
dbu ma chen po. (uma chenpo) [alt. dbu ma pa chen po]. In Tibetan, "great MADHYAMAKA"; a term central to the "self empty, other empty" (RANG STONG GZHAN STONG) debate in Tibetan Buddhism, on the question of which Indian masters are the true representatives of the Madhyamaka. According to the DGE LUGS view, among the three turnings of the wheel of the dharma as described in the SAMDHINIRMOCANASuTRA, the second wheel, generally identified with the view of emptiness as set forth in the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ sutras and propounded by the Madhyamaka, is definitive (NĪTĀRTHA), while the third wheel, generally identified with YOGĀCĀRA and TATHĀGATHAGARBHA teachings, is provisional (NEYĀRTHA). Other sects, most notably the JO NANG PA, as well as certain BKA' BRGYUD and RNYING MA thinkers, especially of the so-called RIS MED movement, disagreed, asserting that the third wheel is the definitive teaching while the second wheel is provisional. (Both agree that the first wheel, setting forth the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS to sRĀVAKAs, is provisional.) For the Dge lugs pas, the highest of all Buddhist doctrines is that all phenomena in the universe are empty of an intrinsic nature (SVABHĀVA); emptiness is the lack of any substantial existence. The Dge lugs pas are therefore proponents of "self-emptiness" (rang stong), arguing that that each object of experience is devoid of intrinsic nature; the unenlightened wrongly believe that such a nature is intrinsic to the object itself. In reality, everything, from physical forms to the omniscient mind of a buddha, is equally empty, and this emptiness is a nonaffirming negation (PRASAJYAPRATIsEDHA), an absence with nothing else implied in its place. Furthermore, this emptiness of intrinsic nature is the ultimate truth (PARAMĀRTHASATYA). The Jo nang pa's look to the third wheel, especially to those statements that describe the nonduality of subject and object to be the consummate nature (PARINIsPANNA) and the understanding of that nonduality as the highest wisdom, described as eternal, self-arisen, and truly established. This wisdom exists autonomously and is thus not empty in the way that emptiness is understood by the Dge lugs. Instead, this wisdom consciousness is empty in the sense that it is devoid of all defilements and conventional factors, which are extraneous to its true nature. Hence, the Jo nang pas speak of "other emptiness" (gzhan stong) the absence of extrinsic and extraneous qualities. For the Dge lugs pas, the supreme interpreter of the doctrine of emptiness (as they understand it) is CANDRAKĪRTI. The Jo nang pas do not dispute the Dge lugs reading of Candrakīrti but they deny Candrakīrti the rank of premier expositor of NĀGĀRJUNA's thought. For them, Candrakīrti teaches an emptiness that is a mere negation of intrinsic existence, which they equate with nihilism. They also do not deny that such an exposition is found in Nāgārjuna's philosophical treatises (YUKTIKĀYA). However, they claim that those works do not represent Nāgārjuna's final view, which is expressed instead in his devotional corpus (STAVAKĀYA), notably the DHARMADHĀTUSTAVA, and, according to some, in the works of VASUBANDHU, the author of two defenses of the prajNāpāramitā sutras. Those who would deny the ultimate existence of wisdom, such as Candrakīrti, are classed as "one-sided Madhyamakas" (phyogs gcig pa'i dbu ma pa) as opposed to the great Madhyamakas among whom they would include the Nāgārjuna of the hymns and ĀRYADEVA as well as thinkers whom the Dge lugs classify as Yogācāra or SVĀTANTRIKA MADHYAMAKA: ASAnGA, Vasubandhu, MAITREYANĀTHA, and sĀNTARAKsITA.
dharmakāya. (T. chos sku; C. fashen; J. hosshin; K. popsin 法身). In Sanskrit, often translated as "truth body," one of the two (along with the RuPAKĀYA) or three (along with the SAMBHOGAKĀYA and NIRMĀnAKĀYA) bodies of a buddha. In early discussions of the true nature of the Buddha, especially regarding the person of the Buddha to whom one goes for refuge (sARAnA), the term dharmakāya seems to have been coined to refer to the corpus or collection (KĀYA) of the auspicious qualities (DHARMA) of the Buddha, including his wisdom, his compassion, his various powers, etc.; it also referred to the entire corpus (kāya) of the Buddha's teachings (dharma). In the MAHĀYĀNA, the term evolved into a kind of cosmic principle that was regarded as the true nature of the Buddha and the source from which his various other forms derived. In the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ) commentarial tradition, a dispute arose over the interpretation of the eighth chapter of the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA, with VIMUKTISENA arguing that the SVĀBHĀVAKĀYA is the ultimate nature of a buddha and HARIBHADRA arguing that there are two aspects of the dharmakāya: a JNĀNADHARMAKĀYA (knowledge truth body), i.e., the nondual omniscient knowledge of a buddha, and a svābhāvakāya. Later commentators in India and Tibet explored the ramifications of this distinction at length. See also TRIKĀYA.
DIVINE KINGDOMS The seven higher of the twelve natural kingdoms of the cosmos are called divine kingdoms. The first, or lowest, divine kingdom is made up of monads that have envelopes and are omniscient and omnipotent in the two highest worlds of the solar system (43,44); the six higher divine kingdoms are made up of monads that are omniscient and omnipotent in worlds 36- 42, 29- 35, 22- 28, 15-
21, 8- 14, 1- 7. (K 1.37, 4.5.3)
Dol po pa Shes rab rgyal mtshan. (Dolpopa Sherap Gyaltsen) (1292-1361). An innovative and controversial Tibetan Buddhist scholar, who is regarded as an early master of the JO NANG lineage. He is best known for promulgating the view of extrinsic emptiness (GZHAN STONG), for his writings on the KĀLACAKRATANTRA, and for constructing a massive multiroom STuPA temple (SKU 'BUM) above JO NANG PHUN TSHOGS GLING monastery. He was born in the region of Dol po in present-day northwestern Nepal, from which his toponym (literally "the man from Dol po") is derived. Although his family was affiliated with the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism, he formed an early connection with the SA SKYA teacher Skyi ston 'Jam dbyangs grags pa rgyal mtshan (Gyidon Jamyang Drakpa Gyaltsen, d.u.). As a seventeen-year-old novice monk, Dol po pa fled his home, against the wishes of his parents and without their knowledge, in order to study with this master. He arrived first in the nearby region of Mustang and in 1312 continued on to the Tibetan monastery of SA SKYA itself. He was a gifted student, mastering a broad range of MAHĀYĀNA subjects in a short period of time. His erudition was so great that while still in his early twenties he earned the title "omniscient" (kun mkhyen), an epithet by which he was known for the rest of his life. He was ordained as a BHIKsU in 1314, going on to study with leadings masters from various sects, including the third KARMA PA. He spent several years in strict meditation retreat, during which time he began to formulate his understanding of extrinsic emptiness. In 1326 he formally ascended the abbatial throne at Jo nang, dividing his time between meditative retreats and teaching the monastic community. In 1333, Dol po pa completed construction of the sku 'bum chen po stupa, one of the largest in Tibet. Dol po pa developed a rich new vocabulary for discussing his controversial notion of extrinsic emptiness. Public reaction was mixed, and many Sa skya scholars in particular appear to have felt betrayed by this new doctrine, which seemed to contradict their own. Among his major works written at this time was the Ri chos nges don rgya mtsho ("The Ocean of Definitive Meaning: A Mountain Dharma"). Another of Dol po pa's major projects was a revised translation and reinterpretation of the Kālacakratantra and VIMALAPRABHĀ, both important sources for his major doctrinal theories. In 1338, Dol po pa retired from his position at Jo nang, after which he remained in isolated retreat, in part to discreetly avoid an invitation to the court of the Mongol ruler Toghon Temür (r. 1333-1370). By the end of his life, Dol po pa ranked as one of the leading masters of his time. During a 1358 trip to LHA SA toward the end of his life, the halls in which he taught literally collapsed from the enormous size of the crowds in attendance. On his return to Jo nang, he visited the monastery of ZHWA LU, home of another leading scholar and Kālacakra expert of the day, BU STON RIN CHEN GRUB. According to several accounts, Bu ston declined the opportunity to debate, but Dol po pa uttered the opening exclamation for debate as he departed, which cracked the walls of Bu ston's residence. While Dol po pa's views were considered unorthodox, even heterodox, particularly in the DGE LUGS sect, his works made a lasting impression on the landscape of Buddhism in Tibet.
ESSENTIAL SELF, 46-SELF Monad having envelope and self-consciousness in the essential world of the planet (46). The essential self has centred itself in the second triad essential atom and is a member of the fifth natural kingdom.
The 46-self is omniscient in the worlds 46-49.
As an essential self, the individual has to acquire by himself through his own research complete knowledge of everything of importance in the human worlds (47-49).
Essential monads form a collective being of their own having a common total consciousness.
The essential self does not need to incarnate further, since he has no more to learn in the kingdom of man. He often does incarnate, however, in order by all means and by personal contact to help those preparing for their entrance into this higher kingdom. K 1.35.8, 10ff
god ::: a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions. gods, gods", God"s, Gods, God-bliss, God-born, god-chant, God-child, god-children, God-ecstasy, God-face, God-frame, God-Force, God-given, god-haunts, God-instinct"s, God-joy, God-Light, god-kind, God-knowledge, God-language, God-light, god-mind, god-phase, God-spark, god-speech, God-state, god-touch, God-vision"s, god-wings, child-god, dream-god"s, half-god, Sun-god"s.
God: In metaphysical thinking a name for the highest, ultimate being, assumed by theology on the basis of authority, revelation, or the evidence of faith as absolutely necessary, but demonstrated as such by a number of philosophical systems, notably idealistic, monistic and dualistic ones. Proofs of the existence of God fall apart into those that are based on facts of experience (desire or need for perfection, dependence, love, salvation, etc.), facts of religious history (consensus gentium, etc.)), postulates of morality (belief in ultimate justice, instinct for an absolute good, conscience, the categorical imperative, sense of duty, need of an objective foundation of morality, etc.)), postulates of reason (cosmological, physico-theological, teleological, and ontological arguments), and the inconceivableness of the opposite. As to the nature of God, the great variety of opinions are best characterized by their several conceptions of the attributes of God which are either of a non-personal (pantheistic, etc.) or personal (theistic, etc.) kind, representing concepts known from experience raised to a superlative degree ("omniscient", "eternal", etc.). The reality, God, may be conceived as absolute or as relative to human values, as being an all-inclusive one, a duality, or a plurality. Concepts of God calling for unquestioning faith, belief in miracles, and worship or representing biographical and descriptive sketches of God and his creation, are rather theological than metaphysical, philosophers, on the whole, utilizing the idea of God or its linguistic equivalents in other languages, despite popular and church implications, in order not to lose the feeling-contact with the rather abstract world-ground. See Religion, Philosophy of. -- K.F.L.
GODS Individuals that are omniscient and omnipotent in their respective worlds. They are members of someone of the seven divine kingdoms; the first kingdom in the solar systemic worlds 43 and 44; the second to the seventh kingdom, in the cosmic worlds 1- 42.
In their contacts with men, the gods assume human ideal shapes, permanent envelopes of physical atomic matter, also to anchor their physical consciousness, envelopes which can easily be made visible to all. (K 1.39.3)
The gods themselves are subject to the Law. Omnipotence is possible only through absolutely faultless application of the laws in their entirety. K 1.41.3
No supreme power can reach that omnipotence of dynamis which is required to produce primordial atoms in primordial matter. This work can only be done by the dynamic energy of primordial matter. P 2.52.6
gsang ba'i rnam thar. (sang we nam tar). In Tibetan, "secret autobiography," one of the three types of RNAM THAR (sacred biography or autobiography), focusing on a subject's religious experiences, visions, and past-life experiences, with the author often writing from the perspective of an omniscient subject. They are called secret not because they are hidden away from general readership, but because of the esoteric tantric practices that form part of the subject matter. A well-known example of secret autobiography is 'JIGS MED GLING PA's Gsang ba chen po nyams snang gi rtogs brjod chu zla'i gar mkhan (translated as "Dancing Moon"), at least one purpose of which was demonstrating the authenticity of the KLONG CHEN SNYING THIG, a GTER MA (treasure text) that he revealed.
“He was a natural clairvoyant of most wonderful powers. With no education or acquaintance with science he wrote works which are now proved to be full of scientific truths; but then, as he says himself, what he wrote upon, he ‘saw it as in a great Deep in the Eternal.’ He had ‘a thorough view of the universe, as in a chaos,’ which yet ‘opened itself in him, from time to time, as in a young plant.’ He was a thorough born Mystic, and evidently of a constitution which is most rare; one of those fine natures whose material envelope impedes in no way the direct, even if only occasional, intercommunion between the intellectual and the spiritual Ego. It is this Ego which Jacob Boehme, like so many other untrained mystics, mistook for God; ‘Man must acknowledge,’ he writes, ‘that his knowledge is not his own, but from God, who manifests the Ideas of Wisdom to the Soul of Man, in what measure he pleases.’ Had this great Theosophist mastered Eastern Occultism he might have expressed it otherwise. He would have known then that the ‘god’ who spoke through his poor uncultured and untrained brain, was his own divine Ego, the omniscient Deity within himself, and that what that Deity gave out was not in ‘what measure he pleased,’ but in the measure of the capacities of the mortal and temporary dwelling IT informed” (TG 60).
"Human speech is only a secondary expression and at its highest a shadow of the divine Word, of the seed-sounds, the satisfying rhythms, the revealing forms of sound that are the omniscient and omnipotent speech of the eternal Thinker, Harmonist, Creator. The highest inspired speech to which the human mind can attain, the word most unanalysably expressive of supreme truth, the most puissant syllable or mantra can only be its far-off representation.” The Upanishads
“Human speech is only a secondary expression and at its highest a shadow of the divine Word, of the seed-sounds, the satisfying rhythms, the revealing forms of sound that are the omniscient and omnipotent speech of the eternal Thinker, Harmonist, Creator. The highest inspired speech to which the human mind can attain, the word most unanalysably expressive of supreme truth, the most puissant syllable or mantra can only be its far-off representation.” The Upanishads
**"I certainly won"t have ‘attracted" [in place of ‘allured"] — there is an enormous difference between the force of the two words and merely ‘attracted by the Ecstasy" would take away all my ecstasy in the line — nothing so tepid can be admitted. Neither do I want ‘thrill" [in place of ‘joy"] which gives a false colour — precisely it would mean that the ecstasy was already touching him with its intensity which is far from my intention.Your statement that ‘joy" is just another word for ‘ecstasy" is surprising. ‘Comfort", ‘pleasure", ‘joy", ‘bliss", ‘rapture", ‘ecstasy" would then be all equal and exactly synonymous terms and all distinction of shades and colours of words would disappear from literature. As well say that ‘flashlight" is just another word for ‘lightning" — or that glow, gleam, glitter, sheen, blaze are all equivalents which can be employed indifferently in the same place. One can feel allured to the supreme omniscient Ecstasy and feel a nameless joy touching one without that Joy becoming itself the supreme Ecstasy. I see no loss of expressiveness by the joy coming in as a vague nameless hint of the immeasurable superior Ecstasy.” Letters on Savitri*
intuitive knowledge ::: Sri Aurobindo: " For the highest intuitive Knowledge sees things in the whole, in the large and details only as sides of the indivisible whole; its tendency is towards immediate synthesis and the unity of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"The intuitive knowledge on the contrary, however limited it may be in its field or application, is within that scope sure with an immediate, a durable and especially a self-existent certitude.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"All intuitive knowledge comes more or less directly from the light of the self-aware spirit entering into the mind, the spirit concealed behind mind and conscious of all in itself and in all its selves, omniscient and capable of illumining the ignorant or the self-forgetful mind whether by rare or constant flashes or by a steady instreaming light, out of its omniscience.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
isvara (ishwara; iswara) ::: lord; the supreme Being (purus.ottama) isvara as the Lord, "the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler" who by his conscious Power (sakti) "manifests himself in Time and governs the universe", ruling his self-creation with "an all-consciousness in which he is aware of the truth of all things and aware of his own all-wisdom working them out according to the truth that is in them"; identified with Kr.s.n.a; the individual soul (purus.a or jiva) as the master of its own nature.
“It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the spirit conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.” The Supramental Manifestation
It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truthconsciousness, and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truthconsciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the spirit to conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must to that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 536-37
jNānadharmakāya. (T. ye shes chos sku). In Sanskrit, "knowledge truth body," one of the two divisions (along with the SVABHĀVAKĀYA) of the DHARMAKĀYA of a buddha. With the development of MAHĀYĀNA thought, the dharmakāya became a kind of transcendent principle in which all buddhas partake, and it is in this sense that the term is translated as "truth body." In the later Mahāyāna scholastic tradition, the dharmakāya was said to have two aspects. The first is the svabhāvakāya (alt. svābhāvikakāya), or "nature body," which is the ultimate nature of a buddha's mind; the second is the jNānakāya or "knowledge body," a buddha's omniscient gnosis. The final chapter of the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA sets forth an elliptic presentation of the svabhāvakāya that led to a number of different later interpretations. According to Ārya VIMUKTISENA's interpretation, the svabhāvakāya is not a separate buddha body, but rather the ultimate nature underpinning the other three bodies (the dharmakāya, SAMBHOGAKĀYA, and NIRMĀnAKĀYA). HARIBHADRA, influenced by YOGĀCĀRA scholastic positions, privileges the dharmakāya and says it has two parts: a knowledge body (jNānadharmakāya) and a svabhāvakāya, its ultimate nature. This controversy was widely debated in Tibet in the commentarial tradition. See also TRIKĀYA.
Materialistic psychology calls this hidden part the Inconscient, although practically admitting that it is far greater, more power- ful and profound than the surface coasclous self, — very much as the Upanishads called the superconsclent in us the Sleep-self, although this Sleep-self is said to be an iniuiitely greater Intelli- gence, omniscient, omnipotent, Prajna, the Ishwara. Psychic science calls this hidden consciousness the subliminal self, and here loo it is seen that this subliminal self has more powers, more knowledge, a freer field of movement than the smaller self that is on the surface. But the truth is that all this that is behind, this sea of which our waking consciousness is only a wave or series of waves, cannot be described by any one term, for it is very complex. Part of it is subconscient, lower than our waking consciousness, part of it is on a level with it but behind and much larger than it ; part is above and superconscient to us.
omnipotent ::: “One seated in the sleep of Superconscience, a massed Intelligence, blissful and the enjoyer of Bliss…. This is the omnipotent, this is the omniscient, this is the inner control, this is the source of all.” The Upanishads
omniscience ::: 1. The state of being omniscient; having infinite knowledge. 2. Universal or infinite knowledge. Omniscience. 3. God.
Omniscience: In philosophy and theology it means the complete and perfect knowledge of God, of Himself and of all other beings, past, present, and future, or merely possible, as well as all their activities, real or possible, including the future free actions of human beings. (The adjective is: omniscient.)
omniscience ::: n. --> The quality or state of being omniscient; -- an attribute peculiar to God.
OMNISCIENCE &
**Omniscient"s.**
Padma dkar po. (Pema Karpo) (1527-1592). A Tibetan Buddhist master and lineage holder of the 'BRUG PA BKA' BRGYUD tradition, renowned for his extensive and wide-ranging scholarship. Born in the Kong po region of southern Tibet, as a child he was already recognized as the fourth member in the line of 'BRUG CHEN INCARNATIONS. He became a fully ordained monk and studied widely in the Tibetan traditions of logic and TANTRA. Although famed for his experience in yogic practice and meditation, he also served as a skillful politician and religious administrator. He is perhaps most widely celebrated for his scholarly writings, which include extensive commentaries on traditional doctrinal topics as well as comprehensive historical works on the spread of Buddhism in Tibet, particularly his own 'Brug pa bka' brgyud sect. His followers referred to him by the title kun mkhyen, "the omniscient," a testament to his great learning. Padma dkar po was active at the monasteries of previous 'Brug chen incarnations, including the famed twelfth-century institution at RWA LUNG in Gtsang, but he also founded his own monastery Gsang sngags chos gling in 1574 at Rta dbang near the border with Bhutan. Following Padma dkar po's death, two candidates were pitted against one another as the master's authentic rebirth and the legitimate successor to the 'Brug chen throne. The outcome of the rivalry was eventually decided by the ruler of central Tibet, the Gtsang pa sde srid; the losing candidate, who had already been installed as the throne holder of Rwa lung Monastery, fled to Bhutan in 1616, where he established himself as the important Bhutanese religious figure ZHABS DRUNG NGAG DBANG RNAM RGYAL.
Persian “omniscient lord of heaven and earth.”
PRAYER. ::: The life of man is a life of wants and needs and therefore of desires, not only in his physical and vital, but in his mental and spiritual being. When he becomes conscious of a greater Power governing the world, he approaches it through prayer for the fulfilment of his needs, for help in his rough journey, for protection and aid in his struggle. Whatever crudi- ties there may be in the ordinary religious approach to God by prayer, and there are many, especially that attitude which ima- gines the Divine as if capable of being propitiated, bribed, flat- tered into acquiescence or indulgence by praise, entreaty and gifts and has often little te^td to the spirit in which he is approached, still this way of turning to the Divine is an essen- tial movement of our religious being and reposes on a universal truth.
The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that, being omniscient, his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the individual's desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least, human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least important. Prayer is only a particular form given to that will, aspiration and faith. Its forms are very often crude and not only childlike, which is in itself no defect, but childish; but still it has a real power and significance. Its power and sense is to put the will, aspiration and faith of man into touch with the divine Will as that of a conscious Being with whom we can enter into conscious and living relations. For our will and aspiration can act either by our own strength and endeavour, which can no doubt be made a thing great and effective whether for lower or higher purposes, -and there are plenty of disciplines which put it forward as the one force to be used, -- or it can act in dependence upon and with subordination to the divine or the universal Will. And this latter way, again, may either look upon that Will as responsive indeed to our aspiration, but almost mechanically, by a sort of law of energy, or at any rate quite impersonally, or else it may look upon it as responding consciously to the divine aspiration and faith of the human soul and consciously bringing to it the help, the guidance, the protection and fruition demanded, yogaksemam vahamyaham. ~ TSOY, SYN
Prayer helps to prepare this relation for us at first on the lower plane even while it is (here consistent with much that is mere egoism and self-delusion; but afterwards we can draw towards the spiritual truth which is behind it. It is not then the givinc of the thing asked for that matters, but the relation itself, the contact of man’s life with God, the conscious interchange.
In spiritual matters and in the seeking of spiritual gains, this conscious relation is a great power; it is a much greater power than our own entirely self-reliant struggle and effort and it brings a fuller spiritual growth and experience. Necessarily, in the end prayer either ceases in the greater thing for which it prepared us, -- in fact the form we call prayer is not itself essential so long as the faith, the will, the aspiration are there, -- or remains only for the joy of the relation. Also its objects, the artha or interest it seeks to realise, become higher and higher until we reach the highest motiveless devotion, which is that of divine love pure and simple without any other demand or longing.
Prayer for others ::: The fact of praying and the attitude it brings, especially unselfish prayer for others, itself opens you to the higher Power, even if there is no corresponding result in the person prayed for. 'Nothing can be positively said about that, for the result must necessarily depend on the persons, whe- ther they arc open or receptive or something in them can res- pond to any Force the prayer brings down.
Prayer must well up from the heart on a crest of emotion or aspiration.
Prayer {Ideal)'. Not prayer insisting on immediate fulfilment, but prayer that is itself a communion of the mind and heart with the Divine*and can have the joy and satisfaction of itself, trusting for fulfilment by the Divine in his own time.
Prayer ::: The life of man is a life of wants and needs and th
refore of desires, not only in his physical and vital, but in his mental and spiritual being. When he becomes conscious of a greater Power governing the world, he approaches it through prayer for the fulfilment of his needs, for help in his rough journey, for protection and aid in his struggle. Whatever crudities there may be in the ordinary religious approach to God by prayer, and there are many, especially that attitude which imagines the Divine as if capable of being propitiated, bribed, flattered into acquiescence or indulgence by praise, entreaty and gifts and has often little regard to the spirit in which he is approached, still this way of turning to the Divine is an essential movement of our religious being and reposes on a universal truth. The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that being omniscient his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the individual’s desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least important. Prayer is only a particular form given to that will, aspiration and faith. Its forms are very often crude and not only childlike, which is in itself no defect, but childish; but still it has a real power and significance. Its power and sense is to put the will, aspiration and faith of man into touch with the divine Will as that of a conscious Being with whom we can enter into conscious and living relations. For our will and aspiration can act either by our own strength and endeavour, which can no doubt be made a thing great and effective whether for lower or higher purposes,—and there are plenty of disciplines which put it forward as the one force to be used,—or it can act in dependence upon and with subordination to the divine or the universal Will. And this latter way again may either look upon thatWill as responsive indeed to our aspiration, but almost mechanically, by a sort of law of energy, or at any rate quite impersonally, or else it may look upon it as responding consciously to the divine aspiration and faith of the human soul and consciously bringing to it the help, the guidance, the protection and fruition demanded. Prayer helps to prepare this relation for us at first on the lower plane even while it is there consistent with much that is mere egoism and self-delusion; but afterwards we can draw towards the spiritual truth which is behind it. It is not then the giving of the thing asked for that matters, but the relation itself, the contact of man’s life with God, the conscious interchange. In spiritual matters and in the seeking of spiritual gains, this conscious relation is a great power; it is a much greater power than our own entirely self-reliant struggle and effort and it brings a fuller spiritual growth and experience. Necessarily in the end prayer either ceases in the greater thing for which it prepared us, —in fact the form we call prayer is not itself essential so long as the faith, the will, the aspiration are there,—or remains only for the joy of the relation. Also its objects, the artha or interest it seeks to realise, become higher and higher until we reach the highest motiveless devotion, which is that of divine love pure and simple without any other demand or longing.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 566-67-68
prayoga. (T. sbyor ba; C. jiaxing; J. kegyo; K. kahaeng 加行). In Sanskrit, "application," "preparation," "joining together," "exertion." The term is widely used in soteriological, tantric, and astrological literature. It also functions as a technical term in logic, where it is often translated as "syllogism" and refers to a statement that contains a subject, a predicate, and a reason. A correct syllogism is composed of three parts, the subject (dharmin), the property being proved (SĀDHYADHARMA), and the reason (HETU or LInGA). For example, in the syllogism "Sound is impermanent because of being produced," the subject is sound, the property being proved is impermanence, and the reason is being produced. In order for the syllogism to be correct, three relations must exist among the three components of the syllogism: (1) the reason must be a property (DHARMA) of the subject, also called the "position" (PAKsA), (2) there must be a relationship of pervasion (VYĀPTI) between the reason and the property being proved (SĀDHYADHARMA), such that whatever is the reason is necessarily the property being proved, and (3) there must be a relationship of "exclusion" or reverse pervasion (vyatirekavyāpti) between the property being proved and the reason, such that whatever is not the property being proved is necessarily not the reason. ¶ In the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ exegetical tradition based on the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA, prayoga is the word used for the fourth to seventh of the eight ABHISAMAYAs ("clear realizations"). According to Ārya VIMUKTISENA's commentary (Vṛtti), the first three chapters set forth the three knowledges (JNĀNA) as topics to be studied and reflected upon (see sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNĀ, CINTĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ); the next four chapters set forth the practice of those knowledges, viz. the practice of the knowledge of a buddha. This practice is called prayoga. It is primarily at the level of meditation (BHĀVANĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ), and it leads to the SARVĀKĀRAJNATĀ, a buddha's omniscient knowledge of all aspects. The first prayoga is habituation to the perfect realization of all aspects (sarvākārābhisambodha); the second is learning to remain at the summit of the realization (murdhābhisamaya; cf. MuRDHAN); the third is a further habituation to each aspect, one by one (anupurvābhisamaya); and the fourth is the realization of all aspects in one single instant (ekaksanābhisamaya). This is the moment prior to omniscience. This prayoga is first detailed in twenty subtopics beginning with the cryptic statement that the practice is no practice at all; the 173 aspects (ĀKĀRA) that together cover the entire range of a bodhisattva's practice are set forth at all the stages of development, through the paths of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA) and cultivation (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA) up through the bodhisattva stages (BHuMI) to the purification of the buddha-field (BUDDHAKsETRA) and final instants of the path. Through the first of the four prayogas, the bodhisattva gains mastery over all the aspects; through the second, he abides in the mastery of them; with the third, he goes through each and makes the practice special; and with the fourth, he enters into the state of a buddha. See also PRAYOGAMĀRGA.
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.
rang stong gzhan stong. (rang dong shen dong). In Tibetan, lit. "self-emptiness, other-emptiness," an important and persistent philosophical debate in Tibetan Buddhism, dating to the fifteenth century. The opposing factions are the DGE LUGS sect on one side and the JO NANG sect on the other, with support from certain BKA' BRGYUD and RNYING MA authors. The debate concerns issues fundamental to their understanding of what constituted enlightenment and the path to its achievement. For the Dge lugs, the most profound of all Buddhist doctrines is that all phenomena in the universe are empty of an intrinsic nature (SVABHĀVA), that the constituents of experience are not naturally endowed with a defining characteristic. Emptiness (suNYATĀ) for the Dge lugs is the fact that phenomena do not exist in and of themselves; emptiness is instead the lack of intrinsic existence. The Dge lugs then, are proponents of "self-emptiness," and argue that the hypostatized factor that an object in reality lacks (i.e., is empty of) is wrongly believed by the unenlightened to be intrinsic to the object itself. Everything, from physical forms to the omniscient mind of the Buddha, is thus equally empty. This emptiness is described by the Dge lugs as a non-affirming or simple negation (PRASAJYAPRATIsEDHA), an absence with nothing else implied in its place. From this perspective, the Dge lugs judge the sutras of the second of the three turnings of the wheel of the dharma as described in the SAMDHINIRMOCANASuTRA, "the dharma wheel of signlessness" (ALAKsAnADHARMACAKRA), to contain the definitive expression of the Buddha's most profound intention. By contrast, the Jo nang look for inspiration to the third turning of the wheel, "the dharma wheel for ascertaining the ultimate" (PARAMĀRTHAVINIsCAYADHARMACAKRA; see also *SUVIBHAKTADHARMACAKRA), especially to those statements that describe the nonduality of subject and object to be the consummate nature (PARINIsPANNA) and the understanding of that nonduality to be the highest wisdom. They describe this wisdom in substantialist terms, calling it eternal, self-arisen, and truly established. This wisdom consciousness exists autonomously and is thus not empty in the way that emptiness is understood by the Dge lugs. Instead, this wisdom consciousness is empty in the sense that it is devoid of all afflictions and conventional factors, which are extraneous to its true nature. Hence, the Jo nang speak of the "emptiness of the other," the absence of extrinsic and extraneous qualities. The Dge lugs cannot deny the presence of statements in the MAHĀYĀNA canon that speak of the TATHĀGATAGARBHA as permanent, pure, blissful, and endowed with self. But they argue that such statements are provisional, another example of the Buddha's expedient means of attracting to the faith those who find such a description appealing. The true tathāgatagarbha, they claim, is the emptiness of the mind; it is this factor, present in all sentient beings, that offers the possibility of transformation into an enlightened buddha. This is the view of CANDRAKĪRTI, they say, whom they regard as the supreme interpreter of the doctrine of emptiness. The Jo nang do not deny that this is Candrakīrti's view, but they deny Candrakīrti the rank of premier expositor of NĀGĀRJUNA's thought. For them, Candrakīrti teaches an emptiness which is a mere negation of true existence, which they equate with nihilism, or else a preliminary stage of negation that precedes an understanding of the highest wisdom. Nor do they deny that such an exposition is also to be found in Nāgārjuna's philosophical corpus (YUKTIKĀYA). But those texts, they claim, do not represent Nāgārjuna's final view, which is expressed instead in his devotional corpus (STAVAKĀYA), notably the DHARMADHĀTUSTAVA ("Praise of the Sphere of Reality"), with its more positive exposition of the nature of reality. Those who would deny its ultimate existence, such as Candrakīrti, they classify as "one-sided Madhyamakas" (phyogs gcig pa'i dbu ma pa) as opposed to the "great Madhyamakas" (DBU MA PA CHEN PO), among whom they would include the Nāgārjuna of the four hymns and ĀRYADEVA, as well as thinkers whom the Dge lugs classify as YOGĀCĀRA or SVĀTANTRIKA-MADHYAMAKA: e.g., ASAnGA, VASUBANDHU, MAITREYANĀTHA, and sĀNTARAKsITA. The Dge lugs attempt to demonstrate that the nature of reality praised by Nāgārjuna in his hymns is the same emptiness that he describes in his philosophical writings.
Rgyal tshab Dar ma rin chen. (Gyaltsap Darma Rinchen) (1364-1432). One of the two principal disciples (together with MKHAS GRUB DGE LEGS DPAL BZANG) of the Tibetan Buddhist master TSONG KHA PA. Ordained and educated in the SA SKYA sect, Rgyal tshab (a name he would only receive later in life) studied with some of the great teachers of the day, including Red mda' ba gzhon nu blo gros. Rgyal tshab was already an established scholar, known especially for his expertise in PRAMĀnA, when he first met Tsong kha pa at Rab drong around 1400. According to a well-known story, Rgyal tshab sought to debate Tsong kha pa and asked a nun, "Where is Big Nose?" (impertinently referring to Tsong kha pa's prominent proboscis). The nun rinsed out her mouth and lit a stick of incense before saying that the omniscient master Tsong kha pa was teaching in the temple. Rgyal tshab entered the temple and announced his presence, at which point Tsong kha pa interrupted his teaching and invited the great scholar to join him on the teaching throne. Rgyal tshab arrogantly accepted but as he listened to Tsong kha pa's teaching, he became convinced of his great learning and edged away from the master, eventually descending from the throne and prostrating before Tsong kha pa and taking his place in the assembly. From that point, he would become Tsong kha pa's closest disciple, credited with hearing and remembering everything that Tsong kha pa taught. He assisted Tsong kha pa in the founding of DGA' LDAN monastery and upon Tsong kha pa's death in 1419, Rgyal tshab assumed the golden throne of Dga' ldan, becoming the first DGA' LDAN KHRI PA or "Holder of the Throne of Dga' ldan," a position that would evolve into the head of the DGE LUGS sect. He was also called the "regent" (rgyal tshab) of Tsong kha pa, which became the name by which he is best known. He was a prolific author, known especially for his detailed commentaries on the works of DHARMAKĪRTI, as well as such important Indian texts as the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA, BODHICARYĀVATĀRA, RATNĀVALĪ, CATUḤsATAKA, and RATNAGOTRAVIBHĀGA. Rgyal tshab figures in the most common image in Dge lugs iconography, the rje yab sras gsum, or "the triumvirate, the lord father, and the sons," showing Tsong kha pa flanked by Rgyal tshab and Mkhas grub (with Rgyal tshab often shown with white hair). The collected works of these three scholars form something of a canon for the Dge lugs sect and are often printed together as the rje yab sras gsung 'bum or the "collected works of the lord father and the [two] sons."
Samadhi(Sanskrit) ::: A compound word formed of sam, meaning "with" or "together"; a, meaning "towards"; andthe verbal root dha, signifying "to place," or "to bring"; hence samadhi, meaning "to direct towards,"generally signifies to combine the faculties of the mind with a direction towards an object. Hence, intensecontemplation or profound meditation, with the consciousness directed to the spiritual. It is the highestform of self-possession, in the sense of collecting all the faculties of the constitution towards reachingunion or quasi-union, long or short in time as the case may be, with the divine-spiritual. One whopossesses and is accustomed to use this power has complete, absolute control over all his faculties, andis, therefore, said to be "completely self- possessed." It is the highest state of yoga or "union."Samadhi, therefore, is a word of exceedingly mystical and profound significance implying the completeabstraction of the percipient consciousness from all worldly or exterior or even mental concerns orattributes, and its absorption into or, perhaps better, its becoming the pure unadulterate, undilutesuperconsciousness of the god within. In other words, samadhi is self-conscious union with the spiritualmonad of the human constitution. Samadhi is the eighth or final stage of genuine occult yoga, and can beattained at any time by the initiate without conscious recourse to the other phases or practices of yogaenumerated in Oriental works, and which other and inferior practices are often misleading, in some casesdistinctly injurious, and at the best mere props or aids in the attaining of complete mental abstractionfrom worldly concerns.The eight stages of yoga usually enumerated are the following: (1) yama, signifying "restraint" or"forbearance"; (2) niyama, religious observances of various kinds, such as watchings or fastings,prayings, penances, etc.; (3) asana (q.v.), postures of various kinds; (4) pranayama, various methods ofregulating the breath; (5) pratyahara, a word signifying "withdrawal," but technically and esoterically the"withdrawal" of the consciousness from sensual or sensuous concerns, or from external objects; (6)dharana (q.v.), firmness or steadiness or resolution in holding the mind set or concentrated on a topic orobject of thought, mental concentration; (7) dhyana (q.v.), abstract contemplation or meditation whenfreed from exterior distractions; and finally, (8) samadhi, complete collection of the consciousness and ofits faculties into oneness or union with the monadic essence.It may be observed, and should be carefully taken note of by the student, that when the initiate hasattained samadhi he becomes practically omniscient for the solar universe in which he dwells, becausehis consciousness is functioning at the time in the spiritual-causal worlds. All knowledge is then to himlike an open page because he is self-consciously conscious, to use a rather awkward phrase, of nature'sinner and spiritual realms, the reason being that his consciousness has become kosmic in its reaches.
Samadhi (Sanskrit) Samādhi [from sam with, together + ā towards + the verbal root dhā to place, bring] To direct towards; to combine the mental faculties towards an object. Self-consciousness union with the spiritual monad by intense and profound spiritual contemplation or meditation. It implies “the complete abstraction of the percipient consciousness from all worldly, or exterior, or even mental concerns or attributes, and its . . . becoming the pure unadulterate, undilute super-consciousness of the god within. . . . Samadhi is the eighth or final stage of genuine occult Yoga, and can be attained at any time by the initiate without conscious recourse to the other phases or practices of Yoga enumerated in Oriental works, and which other and inferior practices are often misleading, in some cases distinctly injurious, and at the best mere props or aids in the attaining of complete mental abstraction from worldly concerns” (OG 150-1). The seeker on attaining samadhi becomes practically omniscient for his solar universe because his consciousness is functioning in the cosmic spiritual and causal worlds.
Sarvajna: Omniscient; knowing everything.
sarvajNatājNāna. (P. sabbaNNutāNāna; T. thams cad mkhyen pa'i ye shes; C. yiqiezhi zhi; J. issaichichi; K. ilch'eji chi 一切智智). In Sanskrit, "omniscient knowledge"; a buddha's knowledge of all the grounds (vastu) of the knowledge of defiled (SAMKLIstA) and purified (visuddha, see VIsUDDHI) dharmas systematized in the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. In the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA and its commentarial tradition, sarvajNatājNāna also refers to the knowledge of the four noble truths in the mental continuum of a bodhisattva or buddha. See SARVAJNATĀ.
sortilege ::: (on page 44) divination by the random selection of playingcards; (elsewhere) a method of receiving guidance and predictions from texts found seemingly by chance (as by opening a book at random) and interpreted by the faculties of jñana; also, a text found in this way and subjected to this kind of interpretation. Sri Aurobindo listed sortileges among the "external means" that can provide "data for a past and future knowledge" (see trikaladr.s.t.i); although some sortileges required "a very figurative & even fanciful interpretation", he took the results he obtained by this method to be signs of "an intelligent, omniscient & all-combining Mind at work which uses everything in the world as its instrument & is superior to the system of relations & connections already fixed in this world".
*Sri Aurobindo: "One seated in the sleep of Superconscience, a massed Intelligence, blissful and the enjoyer of Bliss…. This is the omnipotent, this is the omniscient, this is the inner control, this is the source of all.” The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: "The omniscient is not born, nor dies, nor has he come into being from anywhere, nor is he anyone. He is unborn, he is constant and eternal, he is the Ancient of Days who is not slain in the slaying of the body. . . .” *The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: "Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient. For the Supreme who transcends the universe, is yet here too, however veiled, in us and in the world and in its happenings; he is there as the omniscient Witness and Receiver of all our works and their secret Master.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
svabhāvakāya. (T. ngo bo nyid sku; C. zixing shen; J. jishoshin; K. chasong sin 自性身). In Sanskrit, lit. "self-nature body," the buddha-body in its most elemental nature (also seen written as svābhāvikakāya); one of the four types of buddha bodies (BUDDHAKĀYA) discussed in the BUDDHABHuMIsĀSTRA (Fodijing lun), the MAHĀYĀNASAMGRAHA (She dasheng lun), and the CHENG WEISHI LUN (*VijNaptimātratāsiddhisāstra), along with the "body intended for personal enjoyment" (SVASAMBHOGAKĀYA), the "body intended for others' enjoyment" (PARASAMBHOGAKĀYA), and the "transformation body" (NIRMĀnAKĀYA). This type of buddha-body is functionally equivalent to the DHARMAKĀYA in the two or "three bodies" (TRIKĀYA) schema of buddha-bodies. ¶ A different understanding of the svabhāvakāya derives from the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ literature. The final chapter of the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA sets forth an elliptic presentation of the svabhāvakāya that led to a number of different later interpretations. According to Ārya VIMUKTISENA's interpretation, the svabhāvakāya is not a separate buddha-body, but rather the ultimate nature (in essence, the emptiness or suNYATĀ) that locates or underpins the other three bodies (the dharmakāya, SAMBHOGAKĀYA, and nirmānakāya). He proposes just three bodies. HARIBHADRA disagrees with this interpretation and proposes four bodies. Strongly influenced by YOGĀCĀRA thought, he privileges the dharmakāya and says it has two parts: a knowledge body (JNĀNADHARMAKĀYA), which is a buddha's omniscient mind, and a svabhāvakāya, which is the ultimate nature of that mind. This controversy was widely debated in Tibet in the commentarial tradition.
tattva. (T. de nyid/de kho na nyid; C. shixiang; J. jisso; K. silsang 實相). In Sanskrit, lit., "thatness"; a term with two important denotations. First, it can mean "ultimate reality," a synonym of PARAMĀRTHA, the reality, free from all conceptual elaboration, that must be understood in order to be liberated from rebirth as well as the inexpressible reality that is the object of the Buddha's omniscient consciousness. Second, more prosaically, the term may be translated as "principle" and refer to the central doctrine of a particular philosophical school, as in the title of the works TATTVASAMGRAHA or TATTVASIDDHI. When contrasted with TATHATĀ, tattva is the essential identity of a particular dharma, while tathatā is the common essential reality in which all dharmas partake.
::: "The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that being omniscient his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the individual"s desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least important.
“The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that being omniscient his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the individual’s desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least important. The Synthesis of Yoga
“The Formless (‘Arupa’) Radiations, existing in the harmony of Universal Will, and being what we term the collective or the aggregate of Cosmic Will on the plane of the subjective Universe, unite together an infinitude of monads — each the mirror of its own Universe — and thus individualize for the time being an independent mind, omniscient and universal; and by the same process of magnetic aggregation they create for themselves objective, visible bodies, out of the interstellar atoms” (SD 1:632-3). See also DHATU; LOKA; RUPA
::: "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 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, 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.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 338-339
Theodice, Theodicy [coined from Greek theos god + dike justice] A vindication of divine justice; a system or method of intellectual theorizing about the nature of so-called divine justice, having in view vindication of the justice and holiness of God, in connection with evil. Ancient philosophers all taught that the heart of things was divine harmony and that whatever evil, distortion, and obliquity might exist in the world is ultimately traceable back to the imperfect intelligence of evolving beings, who by their manifold conflicts of thought and will thus produce disharmony, relative confusion, and hence evil, in the scheme of things. This view was replaced during Christian ages by the attempt of many writers to rescue the reputation of the Christian God, who on the one hand is said to be the creator of everything and who yet is supposed to be the fountain of love, mercy, harmony, and goodness. In view of the evils and suffering in the world, such Christian attempts have been futile, for it is obvious that if God is the creator of all that is, He must have been either directly or indirectly the creator of all the disharmony, wickedness, and misery in the world, as was indeed alleged by many Jewish rabbis, following statements in the Hebrew scriptures. But this thought has been denied by Christians who refuse to accept their God of love and justice as the creator of evil, and thus they had recourse to the Devil, who himself must have been created by their omniscient God.
“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
::: "This is the omniscient who knows the law of our being and is sufficient to his works; let us build the song of his truth by our thought and make it as if a chariot on which he shall mount. When he dwells with us, then a happy wisdom becomes ours. With him for friend we cannot come to harm.” The Secret of the Veda
“This is the omniscient who knows the law of our being and is sufficient to his works; let us build the song of his truth by our thought and make it as if a chariot on which he shall mount. When he dwells with us, then a happy wisdom becomes ours. With him for friend we cannot come to harm.” The Secret of the Veda
"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
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.**
transformation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Transformation means that the higher consciousness or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. There is a higher consciousness of the true self, which is spiritual, but it is above; if one rises above into it, then one is free as long as one remains there, but if one comes down into or uses mind, vital or body — and if one keeps any connection with life, one has to do so, either to come down and act from the ordinary consciousness or else to be in the self but use mind, life and body, then the imperfections of these instruments have to be faced and mended — they can only be mended by transformation.” *Letters on Yoga
"‘Transformation" is a word that I have brought in myself (like ‘supermind") to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral yoga. People are now taking them up and using them in senses which have nothing to do with the significance which I put into them. Purification of the nature by the ‘influence" of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change — the word besides has many senses and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose.” *Letters on Yoga
"It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the spirit conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.” The Supramental Manifestation
The Mother: "Transformation. The change by which all the elements and all the movements of the being become ready to manifest the supramental Truth.”
"One thing you must know and never forget: in the work of transformation all that is true and sincere will always be kept; only what is false and insincere will disappear.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
trikāya. (T. sku gsum; C. sanshen; J. sanshin; K. samsin 三身). In Sanskrit, lit. "three bodies"; one of the central doctrines of MAHĀYĀNA buddhology. The three bodies refer specifically to three distinct bodies or aspects of a buddha: DHARMAKĀYA, the "dharma body" or "truth body"; SAMBHOGAKĀYA, the "enjoyment body" or "reward body"; and NIRMĀnAKĀYA, "emanation body" or "transformation body." The issue of what actually constituted the Buddha's body arose among the MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS over such questions as the body he used on miraculous journeys, such as the one that he took to TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven to teach his mother MĀYĀ; the conclusion was that he had used a "mind-made body" (MANOMAYAKĀYA), also called a nirmānakāya, to make the trip. The notion of different buddha bodies was also deployed to respond to the question of the nature of the Buddha jewel (buddharatna), one of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA) or three refuges (TRIsARAnA) of Buddhism. Since the physical body of the Buddha was subject to decay and death, was it a suitable object of refuge? In response to this question, it was concluded that the Buddha jewel was in fact a body or group (kāya) of qualities (dharma), such as the eighteen unique qualities of a buddha (ĀVEnIKA[BUDDHA]DHARMA). This "body of qualities," the original meaning of dharmakāya, was sometimes contrasted with the physical body of the Buddha, called the RuPAKĀYA ("material body") or the vipākakāya, the "fruition body," which was the result of past action (KARMAN). With the development of Mahāyāna thought, the notion of dharmakāya evolved into a kind of transcendent principle in which all buddhas partook, and it is in this sense that the term is translated as "truth body." In the later Mahāyāna scholastic tradition, the dharmakāya was said to have two aspects. The first is the SVABHĀVIKAKĀYA, or "nature body," which is the ultimate nature of a buddha's mind that is free from all adventitious defilements (āgantukamala). The second is the jNānakāya, or "wisdom body," a buddha's omniscient consciousness. The dharmakāya was the source of the two other bodies, both varieties of the rupakāya: the saMbhogakāya and the nirmānakāya. The former, traditionally glossed as "the body for the enjoyment of others," is a resplendent form of the Buddha adorned with the thirty-two major and eighty minor marks (MAHĀPURUsALAKsAnA), which appears only in buddha fields (BUDDHAKsETRA) to teach the Mahāyāna to advanced bodhisattvas. Some sāstras, such as the BUDDHABHuMIsĀSTRA (Fodijing lun) and CHENG WEISHI LUN, distinguish between a "body intended for others' enjoyment" (PARASAMBHOGAKĀYA) and a "body intended for personal enjoyment" (SVASAMBHOGAKĀYA). In the trikāya system, the nirmānakāya is no longer a special body conjured up for magical travel, but the body of the Buddha that manifests itself variously in the world of sentient beings in order to teach the dharma to them. It also has different varieties: the form that manifests in the mundane world as the Buddha adorned with the major and minor marks is called the UTTAMANIRMĀnAKĀYA, or "supreme emanation body"; the nonhuman or inanimate forms a buddha assumes in order to help others overcome their afflictions are called the JANMANIRMĀnAKĀYA, or "created emanation body."
Visvavedas (Sanskrit) Viśvavedas [from viśva all + veda knowledge] The all-knowing or omniscient one; a name given to the supreme hierarch of any cosmic hierarchy.
“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
“Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient. For the Supreme who transcends the universe, is yet here too, however veiled, in us and in the world and in its happenings; he is there as the omniscient Witness and Receiver of all our works and their secret Master.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Your statement that ‘joy’ is just another word for ‘ecstasy’ is surprising. ‘Comfort’, ‘pleasure’, ‘joy’, ‘bliss’, ‘rapture’, ‘ecstasy’ would then be all equal and exactly synonymous terms and all distinction of shades and colours of words would disappear from literature. As well say that ‘flashlight’ is just another word for ‘lightning’—or that glow, gleam, glitter, sheen, blaze are all equivalents which can be employed indifferently in the same place. One can feel allured to the supreme omniscient Ecstasy and feel a nameless joy touching one without that Joy becoming itself the supreme Ecstasy. I see no loss of expressiveness by the joy coming in as a vague nameless hint of the immeasurable superior Ecstasy.” Letters on Savitri
KEYS (10k)
17 Sri Aurobindo
1 Robert Heinlein
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1 Ramakrishna
1 Prasna Upanishad
1 Mundaka Upanishad
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1 Beethoven
1 Sri Ramakrishna
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
20 Sri Aurobindo
7 Swami Vivekananda
6 Sam Harris
6 Richard Dawkins
5 Anonymous
4 Sherrilyn Kenyon
4 Carl Sagan
3 Stasi Eldredge
3 Penn Jillette
3 Kathryn Schulz
3 J I Packer
3 Jean Webster
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3 Eben Alexander
3 A W Tozer
2 Umberto Eco
2 Sylvia Plath
2 Sri Ramakrishna
2 Scot McKnight
2 Robert A Heinlein
1:He who is the Omniscient, the all-wise, He whose energy is all made of knowledge, from Him is born this that is Brahman here, this Name and Form and Matter. ~ Mundaka Upanishad, #KEYS
2:Our human ignorance moves towards the Truth
That Nescience may become omniscient, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life,#KEYS
3:As with the figure of a symbol dance
The screened Omniscient plays at Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Dual Being,#KEYS
4:The omniscient Ray is shut behind his lids:
He is the Wisdom that comes not by thought, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
5:God is immaterial, and for this reason transcends every conception. Since He is invisible He can have no form. But from what we observe in His work we may conclude that He is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. ~ Beethoven, #KEYS
6:That man, O beloved, who knows this imperishable Spirit, in which the Self is gathered with all its powers, lives and creatures, penetrates into all things and becomes omniscient. ~ Prasna Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
7:Ambassadress twixt eternity and change,
The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths
That wrap the fated journeyings of the stars
And saw the spaces ready for her feet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
8:Though a dress of blind and devious chance
Is laid upon the work of all-wise Fate,
Our acts interpret an omniscient Force
That dwells in the compelling stuff of things, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Destined Meeting-place,#KEYS
9:now I listen to a greater Word
Born from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:
The Voice that only Silence' ear has heard
Leaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Word of the Silence,#KEYS
10:A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes;
Its smallest parts are here philosophies
Challenging with their detailed immensity,
Each figuring an omniscient scheme of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
11:The ordinary man says in his ignorance "My religion is the sole religion, my religion is the best." But when his heart is illumined by the true knowledge, he knows that beyond all the battles of sects and of sectaries presides the one, indivisible, eternal and omniscient Benediction. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
12:God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.
~ Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love (1973).,#KEYS
13:The ordinary man says in his ignorance "My religion is the sole religion, my religion is the best." But when his heart is illumined by the true knowledge, he knows that beyond all the battles of sects and of sectaries presides the one, indivisible, eternal and omniscient Benediction. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
14:On every plane the hieratic Power,
Initiate of unspoken verities,
Dreams to transcribe and make a part of life
In its own native style and living tongue
Some trait of the perfection of the Unborn,
Some vision seen in the omniscient Light,
Some ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter,#KEYS
15:BUT NOW the destined spot and hour were close;
Unknowing she had neared her nameless goal.
For though a dress of blind and devious chance
Is laid upon the work of all-wise Fate,
Our acts interpret an omniscient Force
That dwells in the compelling stuff of things,
And nothing happens in the cosmic play
But at its time and in its foreseen place.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Destined Meeting-Place,#KEYS
16: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. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, #KEYS
17:At her will the inscrutable Supermind leans down
To guide her force that feels but cannot know,
Its breath of power controls her restless seas
And life obeys the governing Idea.
At her will, led by a luminous Immanence
The hazardous experimenting Mind
Pushes its way through obscure possibles
Mid chance formations of an unknowing world.
Our human ignorance moves towards the Truth
That Nescience may become omniscient,
Transmuted instincts shape to divine thoughts,
Thoughts house infallible immortal sight
And Nature climb towards God's identity.
The Master of the worlds self-made her slave
Is the executor of her fantasies:
She has canalised the seas of omnipotence;
She has limited by her laws the Illimitable.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#KEYS
18:Last, there is to be considered the recipient of the sacrifice and the manner of the sacrifice. The sacrifice may be offered to others or it may be offered to divine Powers; it may be offered to the cosmic All or it may be offered to the transcendent Supreme. The worship given may take any shape from the dedication of a leaf or flower, a cup of water, a handful of rice, a loaf of bread, to consecration of all that we possess and the submission of all that we are. Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient. For the Supreme who transcends the universe, is yet here too, however veiled, in us and in the world and in its happenings; he is there as the omniscient Witness and Receiver of all our works and their secret Master. All our actions, all our efforts, even our sins and stumblings and sufferings and struggles are obscurely or consciously, known to us and seen or else unknown and in a disguise, governed in their last result by the One. All is turned towards him in his numberless forms and offered through them to the single Omnipresence. In whatever form and with whatever spirit we approach him, in that form and with that spirit he receives the sacrifice.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [109-110],#KEYS
19:There must be accepted and progressively accomplished a surrender of our capacities of working into the hands of a greater Power behind us and our sense of being the doer and worker must disappear. All must be given for a more direct use into the hands of the divine Will which is hidden by these frontal appearances; for by that permitting Will alone is our action possible. A hidden Power is the true Lord and overruling Observer of our acts and only he knows through all the ignorance and perversion and deformation brought in by the ego their entire sense and ultimate purpose. There must be effected a complete transformation of our limited and distorted egoistic life and works into the large and direct outpouring of a greater divine Life, Will and Energy that now secretly supports us. This greater Will and Energy must be made conscious in us and master; no longer must it remain, as now, only a superconscious, upholding and permitting Force. There must be achieved an undistorted transmission through us of the all-wise purpose and process of a now hidden omniscient Power and omnipotent Knowledge which will turn into its pure, unobstructed, happily consenting and participating channel all our transmuted nature. This total consecration and surrender and this resultant entire transformation and free transmission make up the whole fundamental means and the ultimate aim of an integral Karmayoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [92],#KEYS
20:What is that work and result, if not a self-involution of Consciousness in form and a self-evolution out of form so as to actualise some mighty possibility in the universe which it has created? And what is its will in Man if not a will to unending Life, to unbounded Knowledge, to unfettered Power? Science itself begins to dream of the physical conquest of death, expresses an insatiable thirst for knowledge, is working out something like a terrestrial omnipotence for humanity. Space and Time are contracting to the vanishing-point in its works, and it strives in a hundred ways to make man the master of circumstance and so lighten the fetters of causality. The idea of limit, of the impossible begins to grow a little shadowy and it appears instead that whatever man constantly wills, he must in the end be able to do; for the consciousness in the race eventually finds the means. It is not in the individual that this omnipotence expresses itself, but the collective Will of mankind that works out with the individual as a means. And yet when we look more deeply, it is not any conscious Will of the collectivity, but a superconscious Might that uses the individual as a centre and means, the collectivity as a condition and field. What is this but the God in man, the infinite Identity, the multitudinous Unity, the Omniscient, the Omnipotent, who having made man in His own image, with the ego as a centre of working, with the race, the collective Narayana, the visvamanava as the mould and circumscription, seeks to express in them some image of the unity, omniscience, omnipotence which are the self-conception of the Divine?
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
21:But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when thePurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceedingfrom an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, 'whatever is a man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 43,#KEYS
22:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother. Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda.
But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
23:The Mother once described the characteristics of the unity-body, of the future supramental body, to a young Ashramite: 'You know, if there is something on that window-sill and if I [in a supramental body] want to take it, I stretch out my hand and it becomes - wow! - long, and I have the thing in my hand without even having to get up from my chair ... Physically, I shall be able to be here and there at the same time. I shall be able to communicate with many people at the same time. To have something in my hand, I'll just have to wish for it. I think about something and I want it and it is already in my hand. With this transformed body I shall be free of the fetters of ignorance, pain, of mortality and unconsciousness. I shall be able to do many things at the same time. The transparent, luminous, strong, light, elastic body won't need any material things to subsist on ... The body can even be lengthened if one wants it to become tall, or shrunk when one wants it to be small, in any circumstances ... There will be all kinds of changes and there will be powers without limit. And it won't be something funny. Of course, I am giving you somewhat childish examples to tease you and to show the difference. 'It will be a true being, perfect in proportion, very, very beautiful and strong, light, luminous or else transparent. It will have a supple and malleable body endowed with extraordinary capacities and able to do everything; a body without age, a creation of the New Consciousness or else a transformed body such as none has ever imagined ... All that is above man will be within its reach. It will be guided by the Truth alone and nothing less. That is what it is and more even than has ever been conceived.'895 This the Mother told in French to Mona Sarkar, who noted it down as faithfully as possible and read it out to her for verification. The supramental body will not only be omnipotent and omniscient, but also omnipresent. And immortal. Not condemned to a never ending monotonous immortality - which, again, is one of our human interpretations of immortality - but for ever existing in an ecstasy of inexhaustible delight in 'the Joy that surpasses all understanding.' Moment after moment, eternity after eternity. For in that state each moment is an eternity and eternity an ever present moment. If gross matter is not capable of being used as a permanent coating of the soul in the present phase of its evolution, then it certainly is not capable of being the covering of the supramental consciousness, to form the body that has, to some extent, been described above. This means that the crux of the process of supramental transformation lies in matter; the supramental world has to become possible in matter, which at present still is gross matter. - Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were supramentalized in their mental and vital, but their enormous problem was the supramentalization of the physical body, consisting of the gross matter of the Earth. As the Mother said: 'It is matter itself that must change so that the Supramental may manifest. A new kind of matter no longer corresponding with Mendeleyev's periodic table of the elements? Is that possible?
~ Georges Van Vrekhem,#KEYS
24:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. 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. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],#KEYS
25: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
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Common sense is almost as omniscient as God. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 2:But the jiva [living being] is endowed with ego and his knowledge is limited, whereas Ishwar is without ego and is omniscient. ~ adi-shankara, @wisdomtrove 3:The sum total or Ishwara may be said to be All-good, Almighty, and Omniscient. These are obvious qualities, and need no argument to prove, from the very fact of totality. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 4:The thing I love about Dickens is the omniscient, omnipotent narrator, and the great confidence of the narrator, which marks 19th-century novelists in general and Dickens in particular. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 5:God is self-evident, impersonal, omniscient, the Knower and the Master of nature, the Lord of all. He is behind all worship and it is being done according to Him, whether we know it or not. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 6:The censorship method ... is that of handing the job over to some frail and erring mortal man and making him omnipotent on the assumption that his official status will make him infallible and omniscient. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 7:To preserve yourself as the center of the world, to stay your own best authority on everything, your own expert on all topics, infallible, omniscient. Always, every time of the month, forever: Use birth control. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 8:If God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good, whence evil? If God wills to prevent evil but cannot, then He is not omnipotent. If He can prevent evil but does not, then he is not good. In either case he is not God. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 9:Our World of Experience, then, is but the mind’s symbolic representation of the “something outside”— of that Universe as it is “in itself,” and as an Omniscient Mind does, or would, know it to be in its ultimate verity. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 10:The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it, by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 11:even if the Ultimate Principle be conceived as being or having an Omniscient Mind, even then it could not explain its own Causeless Being, for there would be nothing to explain— even such an Omniscient Mind could only assert “I AM THAT I AM.” ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 12:We have Christians against Muslims against Jews. They're making incompatible claims on real estate in the Middle East as though God were some kind of omniscient real estate broker parsing out parcels of land to his chosen flock. People are literally dying over ancient literature. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 13:We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind, that we cannot right every wrong or reverse every adversity, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 14:You are strong, omnipotent, and omniscient. No matter that you have not expressed it yet, it is in you. All knowledge is in you, all power, all purity, and all freedom-why cannot you express this knowledge? Because you do not believe in it... Believe in it, and it must and will come out. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 15:About 120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer. If our polls are to be trusted, nearly 230 million Americans believe that a book showing neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent deity. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 16:If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business, if there was any competition. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 17:I believe God himself will someday debate with and answer every objection arrogant men can come up with against him; I believe he will humble us and humor himself. Know-it-alls, pseudo-intellectuals, militant anti-theists, for Christ's sake, or rather their own sake, best beware of getting roasted by their own medicine. Ah! Our delusions of trying to argue against an omniscient Creator. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 18:It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Hurricane Katrina struck shared your belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while Katrina laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 19:In every man and in every animal, however weak or wicked, great or small, resides the same omnipresent, omniscient soul. The difference is not in the soul, but in the manifestation. Between me and the smallest animal, the difference is only in manifestation, but as a principle he is the same as I am, he is my brother, he has the same soul as I have. This is the greatest principle that India has preached. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 20:Keats mourned that the rainbow, which as a boy had been for him a magic thing, had lost its glory because the physicists had found it resulted merely from the refraction of the sunlight by the raindrops. Yet knowledge of its causation could not spoil the rainbow for me. I am sure that it is not given to man to be omniscient. There will always be something left to know, something to excite the imagination of the poet and those attuned to the great world in which they live. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 21:There cannot be two almighty beings in this world. [Imagine having] two or three Gods; one will create the world, another says, "I will destroy the world." It [can] never happen. There must be one God. The soul attains to perfection; [it becomes] almost omnipotent [and] omniscient. This is the worshipper. Who is the worshipped? He, the Lord God Himself, the Omnipresent, the Omniscient, and so on. And above all, He is Love. How is [the soul] to attain this perfection? By worship. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 22:Omniscient means all— knowing, all wise. It means that The Absolute is possessed of all knowledge; that it knows everything; that there is nothing that it does not know; that it is the sum total of all the knowledge there is, ever has been or ever will be. If we admit that there is the slightest thing that is not known, or cannot be known, to The Absolute, then we admit that the word is meaningless. And if The Absolute is possessed of all the knowledge there is, then it can make no mistakes; does not find it necessary to change its mind; cannot think or act except wisely, and therefore, justly. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Common sense is almost as omniscient as God. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
2:I am not omniscient, but I know a lot. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
3:Being all of thirteen, of course you should be omniscient, ~ Tamora Pierce, #NFDB
4:It's easy to be omniscient when you've done it all before. ~ Audrey Niffenegger, #NFDB
5:Omniscient, omnipotent, personal—and loving us without conditions. ~ Eben Alexander, #NFDB
6:How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails. ~ Vernor Vinge, #NFDB
7:Even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time. ~ Fred Brooks, #NFDB
8:Omnipotent not omniscient. We are frequently blinded by how much we see. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
9:You are omniscient as ever, Dumbledore." "Oh, no, merely friendly with the local barmen. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
10:You are omniscient as ever, Dumbledore."
"Oh, no, merely friendly with the local barmen. ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
11:Can omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The omnipotence to Change His future mind? ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
12:I was then a young and omniscient student (alas, I was soon to lose both these virtues). ~ Leszek Ko akowski, #NFDB
13:Mystery is but another name for ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain! ~ Tryon Edwards, #NFDB
14:our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient. ~ Kathryn Schulz, #NFDB
15:Impudent dog! God knows why I bear with you!’ Harding grinned. ‘Probably, sir. Omniscient, isn’t He? ~ Elizabeth Rolls, #NFDB
16:we who seek to indwell the Bible’s Story are indwelling the omniscient perspective of the divine’s narration. ~ Scot McKnight, #NFDB
17:FAUST You seem to like eavesdropping.
MEPHISTOPHELES I am not
omniscient, but I know a lot. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,#NFDB
18:We are not omniscient or all-powerful. Even enhanced by technology, our physical and mental powers are limited. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
19:As with the figure of a symbol dance
The screened Omniscient plays at Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Dual Being,#NFDB
20:Let's stop pretending that we have all the answers, because when it comes to gender, none of us is fucking omniscient. ~ Kate Bornstein, #NFDB
21:You have to ask it something it knew when it was alive. People don't become omniscient just because they have keeled over. ~ Lish McBride, #NFDB
22:Our human ignorance moves towards the Truth
That Nescience may become omniscient, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life,#NFDB
23:But the jiva [living being] is endowed with ego and his knowledge is limited, whereas Ishwar is without ego and is omniscient. ~ Adi Shankara, #NFDB
24:And you cannot have a socialist revolution commandeered from the top, ordered around by some omniscient leader or group of leaders ~ Ernest Mandel, #NFDB
25:An omniscient being could not be ignorant of anything, so an omniscient being would not know something. He could not know ignorance. ~ John W Loftus, #NFDB
26:Our Higher Self is perfect, Omniscient and Almighty. A fragment of God himself. A pure, transparent, luminous, Quintessence. ~ Omraam Mikha l A vanhov, #NFDB
27:Don't you think it would be interesting if you could read the story of your life - written perfectly truthfully by an omniscient author? ~ Jean Webster, #NFDB
28:I can't reasonably pretend to be a transparent and omniscient narrator who brings no personal perspective. That person doesn't exist. ~ Molly Crabapple, #NFDB
29:they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
30:the joy of having an omniscient superpower. It had no sympathy for anyone who didn’t speak Ancient Egyptian, whale, or Alpha Centaurian. Mom ~ Richard Roberts, #NFDB
31:Nobody ever inferred from the multiple infirmities of Windows that Bill Gates was infinitely benevolent, omniscient, and able to fix everything. ~ Simon Blackburn, #NFDB
32:Living becomes an awesome business when you realize that you spend every moment of your life in the sight and company of an omniscient, omnipresent Creator. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
33:We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realized at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing. ~ Robert Wilson Lynd, #NFDB
34:And in this beautiful, heartbreaking world, God—the eternal, omniscient, amazing One—loves human beings. Including you. Especially you. You are amazing. ~ Stasi Eldredge, #NFDB
35:The Bible does not profess to make men omniscient, but simply to tell them enough to make them happy and good, if they will believe it and live up to it. ~ Henry Van Dyke, #NFDB
36:The wonderful arrangement and harmony of the cosmos would only originate in the plan of an almighty omniscient being. This is and remains my greatest comprehension. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
37:You must first enter into the understanding that God, omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, is the source and that you can draw on this source without limit. ~ Charles Fillmore, #NFDB
38:The omniscient Ray is shut behind his lids:
He is the Wisdom that comes not by thought, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#NFDB
39:Can omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The Omnipotence to Change His future mind? ~ Karen Owens in: The God Delusion, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Jan 16, 2008, p. 101., #NFDB
40:Karen Owens has captured this witty little paradox in equally engaging verse: Can omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The omnipotence to Change His future mind? ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
41:The dream is so pleasant: to extend a limited sub-portion of yourself into a simulated world and pretend for a while that you are blissfully less. Less than an omniscient being. ~ David Brin, #NFDB
42:The sum total or Ishwara may be said to be All-good, Almighty, and Omniscient. These are obvious qualities, and need no argument to prove, from the very fact of totality. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
43:If I had to imagine omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent power in the universe that chose to make my mother suffer, I don't know how I would make that make sense in the universe. ~ Penn Jillette, #NFDB
44:It is the omnipresence of Being that is responsible for hiding Being behind the scenes and giving It the status of the omniscient, omnipotent supreme lord of the universe. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
45:To say that God is omniscient is to say that He possesses perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn. But it is more: it is to say that God has never learned and cannot learn. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
46:If you're the leader, you've got to give up your omniscient and omnipotent fantasies - that you know and must do everything. Learn how to abandon your ego to the talents of others. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
47:In emphasizing God's love over his holiness--his set-apartness as a sovereign, omniscient authority--we end up believing that his central concern is our individual happiness. ~ Leslie Leyland Fields, #NFDB
48:That man, O beloved, who knows this imperishable Spirit, in which the Self is gathered with all its powers, lives and creatures, penetrates into all things and becomes omniscient. ~ Prasna Upanishad, #NFDB
49:The thing I love about Dickens is the omniscient, omnipotent narrator, and the great confidence of the narrator, which marks 19th-century novelists in general and Dickens in particular. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
50:Pascal’s Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he’d see through the deception. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
51:God is self-evident, impersonal, omniscient, the Knower and the Master of nature, the Lord of all. He is behind all worship and it is being done according to Him, whether we know it or not. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
52:Entrepreneurs constantly confuse what they do with who they are. We're all certainly responsible for what we do, but failing doesn't make us bad people and succeeding doesn't make us omniscient. ~ Howard A Tullman, #NFDB
53:To choose the ideal voice for a character is to give a character an ardent and vivid life, to allow him or her to speak, rather than speaking for them, in an older style of omniscient narration. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
54:Why pray if we cannot change God? ...is that why we pray? To change omniscient Love? Isn't it rather to learn what it is and to fulfill it? Not to change it by our acts, but to change our acts by it. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
55:In ancient times, determinism rested on a belief in an omniscient God. Today, it is not old-time religion but, rather, our culture’s newfound faith—science—that challenges the belief in free will. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
56:I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents. ~ Edward Snowden, #NFDB
57:It’s just… a possibility, like it’s a possibility that I could turn to dust in the next instant and be disseminated throughout the universe as an omniscient consciousness. It’s not a very likely possibility. ~ Ned Vizzini, #NFDB
58:In ancient times, determinism rested on a belief in an omniscient God. Today, it is not old-time religion, but, rather, our culture's newfound faith - science - that challenges the belief in free will. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
59:Ambassadress twixt eternity and change,
The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths
That wrap the fated journeyings of the stars
And saw the spaces ready for her feet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#NFDB
60:The censorship method ... is that of handing the job over to some frail and erring mortal man, and making him omnipotent on the assumption that his official status will make him infallible and omniscient. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
61:Harold knew things. It was good that he did, but it was also rather spooky, as if they had a fifth-rate god traveling with them—more or less omniscient, but emotionally unstable and likely to fragment at any time. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
62:...You're omniscient, right?" "For the most part, yes." "Then you have to tell me this ‘cause I have to know. What's at the end of everything?" He shrugged. "That's easy enough." "Then tell me." "The letter G. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
63:now I listen to a greater Word
Born from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:
The Voice that only Silence’ ear has heard
Leaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Word of the Silence,#NFDB
64:To preserve yourself as the center of the world, to stay your own best authority on everything, your own expert on all topics, infallible, omniscient. Always, every time of the month, forever: Use birth control. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
65:If God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good, whence evil? If God wills to prevent evil but cannot, then He is not omnipotent. If He can prevent evil but does not, then he is not good. In either case he is not God. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
66:Though a dress of blind and devious chance
Is laid upon the work of all-wise Fate,
Our acts interpret an omniscient Force
That dwells in the compelling stuff of things, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Destined Meeting-place,#NFDB
67:The subject had reference to secret sin and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, #NFDB
68:If you look at most definitions, a god is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. In particular, god knows when you are doing something that you shouldn't be doing and whether you are playing according to god's rules. ~ Julian Assange, #NFDB
69:When we are unduly impatient with an omniscient God's timing, we really are suggesting that we know what's best. Strange isn't it-we who wear wrist watches seek to counsel Him who oversees cosmic clocks and calendars. ~ Neal A Maxwell, #NFDB
70:The vocabulary of an omniscient man would embrace words and images excluded from polite conversation. What would be base, or even obscene, to the obscene, becomes illustrious, spoken in a new connexion of thought. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
71:God is immaterial, and for this reason transcends every conception. Since He is invisible He can have no form. But from what we observe in His work we may conclude that He is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. ~ Beethoven, #NFDB
72:If God were omnipresent and omniscient in any literal sense, he wouldn't have bothered to make the universe at all. There is no success where there is no possibility of failure, no art without the resistance of the medium. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
73:We are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Are there ever any correct answers in this world? The only thing we can do is keep walking, even as we afflict the soles of our feet with woe and remorse. -You too must keep walking. ~ Kugane Maruyama, #NFDB
74:A startling thought this, that a woman could handle business matters as well or better than a man, a revolutionary thought to Scarlett who had been reared in the tradition that men were omniscient and women none too bright. ~ Margaret Mitchell, #NFDB
75:Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
76:...You're omniscient, right?"
"For the most part, yes."
"Then you have to tell me this ‘cause I have to know. What's at the end of everything?"
He shrugged. "That's easy enough."
"Then tell me."
"The letter G. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
77:The age looks steadily to the redressing of wrong, to the righting of every form of error and injustice; and a tireless and prying philanthropy, which is almost omniscient, is one of the most hopeful characteristics of the time. ~ Mary Baker Eddy, #NFDB
78:And the priest will say, ‘This is a matter of the Devil and not of God,’ and I will reply, ‘Did God not make the Devil? Is He not omniscient? How can I be blamed for what He knew would occur from the very commencement of time? ~ Louis de Berni res, #NFDB
79:The sadistic narcissist perceives himself as Godlike, ruthless and devoid of scruples, capricious and unfathomable, emotion-less and non-sexual, omniscient, omnipotent and omni-present, a plague, a devastation, an inescapable verdict. ~ Sam Vaknin, #NFDB
80:A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes;
Its smallest parts are here philosophies
Challenging with their detailed immensity,
Each figuring an omniscient scheme of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#NFDB
81:American presidential politics is entirely based on the myth that a perfect, omniscient, virtuous and incorruptible saviour will emerge from the New Hampshire primary every four years, and proceed to lead his people to the promised land. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
82:I want, I think, to be omniscient. I think I would like to call myself "the girl who wanted to be God." Yet if I were not in this body where would I be-perhaps I am destined to be classified and qualified. But, oh, I cry out against it. ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
83:the Christianity of the peasants Farmer talked to had a different flavor: “the shared conviction that the rest of the world was wrong for screwing them over, and that someone, someone just and perhaps even omniscient, was keeping score. ~ Tracy Kidder, #NFDB
84:How is it that we attribute to God feelings such as sadness and joy and pleasure, and even want for our love, when one would expect an omnipotent and omniscient being to be far removed from the qualities that signify the frailty of humans? ~ Shulem Deen, #NFDB
85:(On George Eliot's narrative strategy)
It also forfeits the great game of the omniscient narrator, which is to know secrets which none of the characters involved will ever learn, ironically taking their unhappy ignorance to the grave. ~ Fredric Jameson,#NFDB
86:The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it, by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
87:For every sentient being is God—omnipotent, omniscient, infinite, and eternal—pretending with the utmost sincerity and determination to be otherwise, to be a mere creature subject to failure, pain, death, temptation, hellfire, and ultimate tragedy. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
88:God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
89:If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn’t he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why’s he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there’s one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
90:God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent – it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
91:One of two things causes a man to change his mind and reverse his plans: want of foresight to anticipate everything, or lack of foresight to execute them. But as God is both omniscient and omnipotent there is never any need for him to revise his decrees” (A. W. Pink). ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
92:H.P. Owen’s book “Concepts of Deity” provides a good standard version: “Theism may be defined as belief in one God, the Creator, who is infinite, self-existent, incorporeal, eternal, immutable, impassible, simple, perfect, omniscient and omnipotent” (Owen 1971, p. 1). ~ John Michael Greer, #NFDB
93:Financial stability cannot depend on omniscient supervisors identifying and preemptively defusing any potential source of crisis; it requires safeguards that can help the system withstand the force of a severe storm, and tools the government can use to limit the damage. ~ Timothy F Geithner, #NFDB
94:We have Christians against Muslims against Jews. They're making incompatible claims on real estate in the Middle East as though God were some kind of omniscient real estate broker parsing out parcels of land to his chosen flock. People are literally dying over ancient literature. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
95:Science has proved there's nothing to the talk of ghosts and spirits, no proof anything like the soul exists. And to my mind that's an argument against the existence of an omniscient force. I think people believe whatever makes living easiest, and who am I to deny someone comfort? ~ Ann Aguirre, #NFDB
96:In the Buddhist texts, some of them say, when you die, basically that wild horse gets cut loose, and the mind is incredibly powerful and expansive, omniscient and can go anywhere and see anything, but - and this is the catch - it's colored by the habits of thought we made in life. ~ George Saunders, #NFDB
97:If the public homage of a people can ever be worthy of the favorable regard of the Holy and Omniscient Being to Whom it is addressed, it must be that in which those who join in it are guided only be their free choice-by the impulse of their hearts and the dictates of their consciences. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
98:The ordinary man says in his ignorance “My religion is the sole religion, my religion is the best.” But when his heart is illumined by the true knowledge, he knows that beyond all the battles of sects and of sectaries presides the one, indivisible, eternal and omniscient Benediction. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
99:The ordinary man says in his ignorance "My religion is the sole religion, my religion is the best." But when his heart is illumined by the true knowledge, he knows that beyond all the battles of sects and of sectaries presides the one, indivisible, eternal and omniscient Benediction. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
100:There would never be enough milk. One titty is too many and a thousand are never enough. What I really sought was a cosmic titty. I sought a titty so omniscient it could sate all my holes. The world was already not enough, and I, of course, was not enough either. They gave me a bottle. ~ Melissa Broder, #NFDB
101:I am afraid of getting older … I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day—spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free…. I want, I want to think, to be omniscient…. I think I would like to call myself ‘The girl who wanted to be God. ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
102:You are strong, omnipotent, and omniscient. No matter that you have not expressed it yet, it is in you. All knowledge is in you, all power, all purity, and all freedom-why cannot you express this knowledge? Because you do not believe in it... Believe in it, and it must and will come out. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
103:We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind, that we cannot right every wrong or reverse every adversity, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
104:Communicating with God is the most extraordinary experience imaginable, yet at the same time it's the most natural one of all, because God is present in us at all times. Omniscient, omnipotent, personal-and loving us without conditions. We are connected as One through our divine link with God. ~ Eben Alexander, #NFDB
105:Early in my career I was much more confident in the almost omniscient powers of a reporter, because you could find anything out and then write the definitive piece about it. And as I got older, I got much more humble about trying to learn everything, with what eludes you, especially with history. ~ David Grann, #NFDB
106:What helps most is remembering that such a cry or attack or sly blow is a reflection of that other person’s inner state; it is not an omniscient summary of you. Your reaction reflects your own inner state, and that can tell you which aspects of your own inner world are needy of attention. p.291 ~ Stephanie Dowrick, #NFDB
107:Don't you think it would be interesting if you really could read the story of your life - written perfectly and truthfully by an omniscient author? ... how many could suppress their curiosity sufficiently to escape from reading it, even at the price of having to live without hope and without surprise? ~ Jean Webster, #NFDB
108:On every plane the hieratic Power,
Initiate of unspoken verities,
Dreams to transcribe and make a part of life
In its own native style and living tongue
Some trait of the perfection of the Unborn,
Some vision seen in the omniscient Light,
Some ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter,#NFDB
109:The Lord has said, ‘I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.’ (Isaiah 48:10, 1 Nephi 20:10). He knows, being omniscient, how we will cope with affliction beforehand. But we do not know this. We need, therefore, the refining that God gives to us, though we do not seek or crave such tribulation. ~ Neal A Maxwell, #NFDB
110:God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent — it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills. ~ Robert A. Heinlein, in Time Enough for Love (1973), p. 264, #NFDB
111:I was writing a story, 'The Artistic Career of Corky,' about two young men, Bertie Wooster and his friend Corky, getting into a lot of trouble, and neither of them had brains enough to get out of the trouble. I thought: Well, how can I get them out? And I thought: Suppose one of them had an omniscient valet? ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
112:About 120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer. If our polls are to be trusted, nearly 230 million Americans believe that a book showing neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent deity. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
113:Do you remember when you were 10 or 11 years old and you really thought your folks were the best? They were completely omniscient and you took their word for everything. And then you got older and you went through this hideous age when suddenly they were the devil, they were bullies, and they didn't know anything. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
114:God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.
~ Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love (1973).,#NFDB
115:All believers, by definition, must be agnostics. The moment you declare that you believe in God or the law of karma, you are acknowledging that you do not know whether they exist or not. For if you did know, you would have no need to believe. Only fools, fanatics, and omniscient beings would claim to know such things. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
116:But why doesn't the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed?" I asked, for no good reason. "Is Jorge right?" "Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn't interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. . . . ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
117:We are loved. Born out of love, into love, to know love, and to be loved. Yes, we were born into a fallen, sorry world, which is at the same time more lovely than any fairy tale. It is both. And in this beautiful, heartbreaking world, God—the eternal, omniscient, amazing One—loves human beings. Including you. Especially you. ~ Stasi Eldredge, #NFDB
118:it has not escaped the notice of logicians that omniscience and omnipotence are mutually incompatible. If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can’t change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
119:You can think of the Carrion Spike as just a ship, but she’s more than that. She’s an expression of who Tarkin is; a small-scale example of the lengths he’s willing to go. Stealth, speed, power…That’s Tarkin, the omniscient, ubiquitous Imperial enforcer. And that’s why we’re turning her into a symbol of something else: of resistance. ~ John Jackson Miller, #NFDB
120:Praise causes the presence of the Lord to come into our midst. Even though God is omniscient, He manifests His authority and rule in our environment when we praise Him. When we praise, God comes in and leads us forth... He does not just visit us, but He abides and aligns Himself with us to walk with us into the path that He has chosen for us. ~ Chuck Pierce, #NFDB
121:We are loved. Born out of love, into love, to know love, and to be loved. Yes, we were born into a fallen, sorry world, which is at the same time more lovely than any fairy tale. It is both. And in this beautiful, heartbreaking world, God—the eternal, omniscient, amazing One—loves human beings. Including you. Especially you. You are amazing. ~ Stasi Eldredge, #NFDB
122:the God of the Bible is so immense, omnipotent, and omniscient that for God, knowing each of us in the depths of our beings is an afternoon walk in Sydney’s botanical garden. The God of Jesus knows us by name, knows our minds and hearts and emotions, loves us (anyway), and summons us, as it were, into the divine presence to lay out our requests. ~ Scot McKnight, #NFDB
123:Open Theists unequivocally affirm that God is omniscient—that is, God perfectly knows everything there is to know! The disagreement is not about the scope or perfection of God’s knowledge but rather about the content of reality that God perfectly knows. Open Theists simply believe that possibilities are real and that God knows them as such. Some ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
124:Television wasn't getting rid of animals, but they were no longer cast as creatures that were omniscient and heroic. They were talking horses like Mr Ed or an absurdist pig like Arnold Ziffle...Just like the heroic animals in silent films became comedians in talkies, animals on television were becoming jesters, something Rin Tin Tin had never been. ~ Susan Orlean, #NFDB
125:God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent — it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills. ~ Robert A. Heinlein (1973). Time Enough for Love. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. p. 264. ISBN 9780399111518., #NFDB
126:Go back to bed', said the omniscient interior voice, because you don't need to know the final answer right now, at three o'clock in the morning on the Thursday in November. 'Go back to bed', because I love you. 'Go back to bed', beacause the only thing you need to do for now is get some rest and take good care of yourself until you do know the answer. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
127:Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family and indeed all the suffering in the world isn't caused by any omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future. ~ Penn Jillette, #NFDB
128:Double-knotted to a bedpost, not that it’s any of your business. That boy was always too trusting for his own good. You’d think by now he’d know better. But no. He’s got to be stupid. Personally, I’d tie the bitch up, muzzle her, and ride her around the room with spurs on, but no one ever asks my opinion, do they? No. What do I know? I’m only omniscient. (Savitar) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
129:a woman raised her hand and said that her minister had told the congregation that they should never read novels with omniscient narrators, because the writer was trying to imitate God. “Really?” I said. “No Tolstoy? No Dickens?” The woman shook her head. I have to say it thrilled me to think that narrative structure was dangerous enough to rate its own Sunday sermon.) ~ Ann Patchett, #NFDB
130:Paradiso imagines a society in which it falls to each individual to protect herself from the omniscient ubiquitous sensate computational systems of the new apparatus. Rather than paradise, it seems a recipe for a new breed of madness. Yet this is precisely the world that is now under construction around us, and this madness appears to be a happy feature of the plan. ~ Shoshana Zuboff, #NFDB
131:If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business, if there was any competition. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
132:And from true lordship it follows that the true God is living, intelligent, and powerful; from the other perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, he endures from eternity to eternity; and he is present from infinity to infinity; he rules all things, and he knows all things that happen or can happen. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
133:In affirming God to be supreme in all things, the classical theist describes him in a number of ways. He is perfect, loving, good, infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, timeless, transcendent, personal, immutable and immanent. But how can this be? Is it really possible to be both eternal and timeless? Immutable and immanent? Personal and at the same time transcendent? ~ Alexander Waugh, #NFDB
134:I believe God himself will someday debate with and answer every objection arrogant men can come up with against him; I believe he will humble us and humor himself. Know-it-alls, pseudo-intellectuals, militant anti-theists, for Christ's sake, or rather their own sake, best beware of getting roasted by their own medicine. Ah! Our delusions of trying to argue against an omniscient Creator. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
135:It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Hurricane Katrina struck shared your belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while Katrina laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
136:Early on, I settled on the first-person strategy as a way to deal with exposition and world-description issues. As long as the book is, it could have been far longer had I gone with an omniscient third-person narrator, or multiple point-of-view characters, since either of those would have enabled me to impart much more detailed information about the history and geography of the world. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
137:Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the unity of the Deity as these purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science which have been by slow degrees vouchsafed to man, and are still granted in these latter times by the Differential Calculus, now superseded by the Higher Algebra, all of which must have existed in that sublimely omniscient Mind from eternity. ~ Mary Somerville, #NFDB
138:Church is missing transcendence. My generation was raised on a religion of moral control. Do this. Don't do that. And a lot of self-help religion. Feel better. Get out of debt. Six ways to overcome your fears. Seven ways not to lust. Ultimately that message didn't work. It was empty. There was no transcendence. The omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful God of the universe wasn't the focus. ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
139:Brüks had never been entirely clear on what an omniscient being would need a computer for. Computation, after all, implied a problem not yet solved, insights not yet achieved. There was really only one sort of program for which foreknowledge of the outcome didn’t diminish the point of the exercise, and Brüks had never been able to find any religious orders that described God as a porn addict.) ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB
140:If, as you believe there is an Almighty, Omnipresent, Omniscient God, who created the earth or universe, please let me know, first of all, as to why he created this world. This world which is full of woe and grief, and countless miseries, where not even one person lives in peace....Where is God? What is He doing? Is He getting a diseased pleasure out of it? A Nero! A Genghis Khan! Down with Him! ~ Bhagat Singh, #NFDB
141:BUT NOW the destined spot and hour were close;
Unknowing she had neared her nameless goal.
For though a dress of blind and devious chance
Is laid upon the work of all-wise Fate,
Our acts interpret an omniscient Force
That dwells in the compelling stuff of things,
And nothing happens in the cosmic play
But at its time and in its foreseen place.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Destined Meeting-Place,#NFDB
142:Sanskrita, “polished, complete.” Sanskrit is the elder sister of all Indo-European tongues. Its alphabetical script is called Devanagari; literally, “divine abode.” “Who knows my grammar knows God!” Panini, great philologist of ancient India, paid that tribute to the mathematical and psychological perfection of Sanskrit. He who would track language to its lair must indeed end as omniscient. 2 ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
143:The NSA’s original mission was to collect foreign intelligence. But it appears to have drifted away from its original goal, like a vast supertanker floating away from its anchor. It is now sucking in a lot of domestic communications. In this new era of Big Data, the agency moved from the specific to the general; from foreign targeting to what Snowden called ‘omniscient, automatic, mass surveillance’. The ~ Luke Harding, #NFDB
144:...and the chaplain was ready now to capitulate to despair entirely but was restrained by the memory of his wife, whom he loved and missed so pathetically with such sensual and exalted ardor, and by the lifelong trust he had placed in the wisdom and justice of an immortal, omnipotent, omniscient, humane, universal, anthropomorphic, English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon, pro-American God, which had begun to waver. ~ Joseph Heller, #NFDB
145:In every man and in every animal, however weak or wicked, great or small, resides the same omnipresent, omniscient soul. The difference is not in the soul, but in the manifestation. Between me and the smallest animal, the difference is only in manifestation, but as a principle he is the same as I am, he is my brother, he has the same soul as I have. This is the greatest principle that India has preached. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
146:I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bibles that I believe every word inside them. But none of that can make me actually believe it if I don’t. Pascal’s Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he’d see through the deception. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
147:And first, it seems not at all probable, That if the Omniscient Author of Nature knew that the study of his Works did really tend to make Men disbelieve his Being or Attributes, he would have given Men so many Invitations, and almost Necessities, to study and contemplate the Nature of his Creatures: Of these Invitations divers have been mention'd already, and more might be added to them, if we thought it requisite. ~ Robert Boyle, #NFDB
148:I had depressing thoughts that the theme, even though I had thought of it, was better than I was as a writer. Henry James or Thomas Mann could easily write it, but not I. 'I'm thinking of writing it from the point of view of someone at the hotel who observes her,' I said, but this did not fill me with much hope. Then my friend, who is not a writer, suggested I try it from the omniscient author's point of view. ~ Patricia Highsmith, #NFDB
149:If I could believe in myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt? I accepted the idea that an omniscient God had cast me in his own image and that he watched over me and guided me from one place to the next. The virgin birth, the resurrection, and the countless miracles -my heart expanded to encompass all the wonders and possibilities of the universe.
A bell, though, that's fucked up. ~ David Sedaris,#NFDB
150:Today we are still in thrall to Great Man history, if only because we like reading biography. American presidential politics is entirely based on the myth that a perfect, omniscient, virtuous and incorruptible saviour will emerge from the New Hampshire primary every four years, and proceed to lead his people to the promised land. Never was this messianic mood more extreme than on the day Barack Obama won the presidency. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
151:A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessment of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient. ~ Kathryn Schulz, #NFDB
152:A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessments of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient. ~ Kathryn Schulz, #NFDB
153:Even if an omniscient deity was sitting on a cloud watching Arena Mode, I doubt he would have intervened. He wasn’t going to divinely bestow any of the competitors with the strength and ability to win the tournament just because they asked – no more than he decided the outcome of the Superbowl based on the quarterback’s faith, or granted a music award to the rapper who wore the most impressive gold cross on their necklace. ~ Blake Northcott, #NFDB
154:In that process of coming to know that which we name as divine, the God who is love is slowly transformed into the love that is God. Let me repeat that...We breathe love in, and we breathe love out. It is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. It is never exhausted, always expanding. When I try to describe this reality, words fail me; so I simply utter the name God. That name, however, is no longer for me the name of a being. ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
155:… an Emperor says, "I will kill you if you do not come", and the man bursts into a laugh and says, "You never told such a falsehood in your life, as you tell just now. Who can kill me? Me you kill, Emperor of the material world! Never! For I am Spirit unborn and undecaying; never was I born and never do I die; I am the Infinite, the Omnipresent, the Omniscient; and you kill me, child that you are!" That is strength, that is strength! ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
156:We are compelled by the theory of God's already achieved perfection to make Him a devil as well as a god, because of the existenceof evil. The god of love, if omnipotent and omniscient, must be the god of cancer and epilepsy as well.... Whoever admits that anything living is evil must either believe that God is malignantly capable of creating evil, or else believe that God has made many mistakes in His attempts to make a perfect being. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
157: It’s just one of those things people talk about. Like, if you could have a superpower, what would it be?”
“I’d like to be able to fly,” Cletus responded as though her question had been asked in earnest.
“Not be invisible? Or read minds? Or be omniscient?” Roscoe suggested.
Cletus shook his head. “Certainly not. That’d be redundant because I’m already all of those things.”
“Then make it rain blueberries,” Roscoe teased. ~ Penny Reid,#NFDB
158:From a philosophical perspective, Linde’s little story underscores the danger of assuming that the creative force behind our universe, if there is one, must correspond to the traditional image of God: omnipotent, omniscient, infinitely benevolent, and so on. Even if the cause of our universe is an intelligent being, it could well be a painfully incompetent and fallible one, the kind that might flub the cosmogenic task by producing a thoroughly mediocre creation. ~ Jim Holt, #NFDB
159:The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil (this is traditionally called the problem of theodicy) is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it, by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics. Surely there must come a time when we will acknowledge the obvious: theology is not little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
160:Dawkins, as I have said, tells us that there is “absolutely no reason” to think that the Unmoved Mover, First Cause, etc. is omnipotent, omniscient, good, and so forth. Perhaps what he meant to say was “absolutely no reason, apart from the many thousands of pages of detailed philosophical argumentation for this conclusion that have been produced over the centuries by thinkers of genius, and which I am not going to bother trying to answer.” So, a slip of the pen, perhaps. ~ Edward Feser, #NFDB
161:Keats mourned that the rainbow, which as a boy had been for him a magic thing, had lost its glory because the physicists had found it resulted merely from the refraction of the sunlight by the raindrops. Yet knowledge of its causation could not spoil the rainbow for me. I am sure that it is not given to man to be omniscient. There will always be something left to know, something to excite the imagination of the poet and those attuned to the great world in which they live (p. 64) ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
162:Dualism is on a collision course with Christianity. The Christian faith has no stock in dualism. Satan may be opposed to God, but he is by no means equal to God. Satan is a creature; God is the Creator. Satan is potent; God is omnipotent. Satan is knowledgeable and crafty; God is omniscient. Satan is localized in his presence; God is omnipresent. Satan is finite; God is infinite.
The list could go on. But it is clear from Scripture that Satan is not an ultimate force in any sense. ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
163:There cannot be two almighty beings in this world. [Imagine having] two or three Gods; one will create the world, another says, "I will destroy the world." It [can] never happen. There must be one God. The soul attains to perfection; [it becomes] almost omnipotent [and] omniscient. This is the worshipper. Who is the worshipped? He, the Lord God Himself, the Omnipresent, the Omniscient, and so on. And above all, He is Love. How is [the soul] to attain this perfection? By worship. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
164:those who claim to be prophets today must submit to the biblical standard of prophecy: infallible truth. However, few today would be bold enough to claim that their prophecies never fail. Those who do so are soon enough proven wrong and must adjust their predictions or lose their followers. Prophecy proclaims the Word of the omniscient God who cannot lie. If it is true prophecy, then it shares the same divine authority as the Bible. This gives us strong justification for cessationism, ~ Joel R Beeke, #NFDB
165:Our submission to general principles is necessary because we cannot be guided in our practical action by full knowledge and evaluation of the consequences. So long as men are not omniscient, the only way in which freedom can be given to the individual is by such general rules to delimit the sphere in which the decision is his. There can be no freedom if the government is not limited to particular kinds of action but can use its powers in any ways which serve particular ends. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB
166:The aim of this chapter has been to recognize, within a Christian framework, certain truths in postmodernity, without getting snookered by the entire package. The Scylla of modernity and the Charybdis of postmodernity are equally uninviting to those who want to follow another Way, who are convinced that in a universe made by and for a personal/transcendent and omniscient God who talks, the only reasonable stance is that of the apostle Paul: “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Rom. 3:4). ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
167:Go back to bed, said this omniscient interior voice, because you don’t need to know the final answer right now, at three o’clock in the morning on a Thursday in November. Go back to bed, because I love you. Go back to bed, because the only thing you need to do for now is get some rest and take good care of yourself until you do know the answer. Go back to bed so that, when the tempest comes, you’ll be strong enough to deal with it. And the tempest is coming, dear one. Very soon. But not tonight ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
168:Do not praise your own faith exclusively so that you disbelieve all the rest. If you do this you will miss much good. Nay, you will miss the whole truth of the matter. God, the Omniscient and the Omnipresent, cannot be confined to any one creed, for He says in the Quran, wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah. Everybody praises what he knows. His God is his own creature, and in praising it, he praises himself. Which he would not do if he were just, for his dislike is based on ignorance. ~ Ibn Arabi, #NFDB
169:It's not arrogant to say that you can't figure out the answers to the universe with your internal faith. It's not arrogant to know that there's no omniscient, omnipotent prime mover in the universe who loves you personally. It's not sad to feel that life and the love of your real friends and family is more than enough to make life worth living. Isn't it much sadder to feel that there is a more important love required than the love of the people who have chosen to spend their limited time with you? ~ Penn Jillette, #NFDB
170:What would induce God to change His mind? Perhaps new information, some knowledge He lacks until we communicate it to Him for His consideration. However, the Bible tells us that when we come to our King in prayer, He already knows what we are going to ask for and He knows what we need better than we do. We have to remember that this One we're talking to is omniscient. He doesn't learn anything new. So if you're going to change His mind by your prayers, it won't be because you give Him new information. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
171:Why do I keep doing this? Making her out to be more than what she was, grander, omniscient even, lovely and unreal. She could be such a bitch. She could sense what you hated about yourself, and is you pissed her off she'd throw it back in your face, she'd make sure you knew she thought it, too. Sometimes I feel like she is my invention. Like the more I say, the further from the truth of her I get. I'm trying to hold palmfuls of sand, but I squeeze harder, tighten my fists, and the quicker it all escapes. ~ Julie Buntin, #NFDB
172:Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience-that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible-that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
173:I'm a strong believer in telling stories through a limited but very tight third person point of view. I have used other techniques during my career, like the first person or the omniscient view point, but I actually hate the omniscient viewpoint. None of us have an omniscient viewpoint; we are alone in the universe. We hear what we can hear... we are very limited. If a plane crashes behind you I would see it but you wouldn't. That's the way we perceive the world and I want to put my readers in the head of my characters. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
174:If our polls are to be trusted, nearly 230 million Americans believe that a book showing neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity. A survey of Hindus, Muslims, and Jews around the world would surely yield similar results, revealing that we, as a species, have grown almost perfectly intoxicated by our myths. How is it that, in this one area of our lives, we have convinced ourselves that our beliefs about the world can float entirely free of reason and evidence? ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
175:A letter is not a dialogue or even an omniscient exposition. It is a fabric of surfaces, a mask, a form as well suited to affectations as to the affections. The letter is, by its natural shape, self-justifying; it is one's own evidence, deposition, a self-serving testimony. In a letter the writer holds all the cards, controls everything about himself and about those assertions he wishes to make concerning events or the worth of others. For completely self-centered characters, the letter form is a complex and rewarding activity. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick, #NFDB
176:Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
177:By nature God is omniscient, or all-knowing. He is not limited by the dimension of time—He knows the past, present, and future. He created all things, so nothing is outside of His knowledge. Whenever God expresses Himself to you, therefore, His directions are always right. When God gives you a directive, you can be sure He has already considered every factor. You will never do God's bidding only to discover that God was somehow mistaken. You can have absolute confidence that when God tells you to do something, it is the right course of action. ~ Henry T Blackaby, #NFDB
178:he never meant to be a murderer. I was fighting for democracy. And I just wasn’t strong enough to fight all those bastards who made the war is what. I didn’t even know who they were. I couldn’t put my hand on them or single them out. They were omnipotent and omnipresent and omniscient and a whole lot of other omni-things, and I should have told them to go to hell and should’ve taken off for some faraway place at the other end of nowhere. But I wanted to fight for my country and for freedom. I was tricked, St. Peter, but the point is, I meant well. ~ John Oliver Killens, #NFDB
179:Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words. ~ Jimmy Carter, Living Faith (2001), p. 222, #NFDB
180:Do you know where Acheron is?” Savitar answered without hesitation. “Yes.” He waited for Savitar to continue. When he didn’t, Ravyn prompted him, “And where would that be?” “He’s tied up at the moment.” “Tied up how?” “Double-knotted to a bedpost, not that it’s any of your business. That boy was always too trusting for his own good. You’d think by now he’d know better. But no. He’s got to be stupid. Personally, I’d tie the bitch up, muzzle her, and ride her around the room with spurs on, but no one ever asks my opinion, do they? No. What do I know? I’m only omniscient. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
181:But when we look beyond human affairs and the properties of the surrounding bodies: When we carry our speculations into the two eternities, before and after the present state of things; into the creation and formation of the universe; the existence and properties of spirits; the powers and operations of one universal spirit, existing without beginning and without end; omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, infinite, and incomprehensible: We must be far removed from the smallest tendency to scepticism not to be apprehensive, that we have here got quite beyond the reach of our faculties. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
182:One of the reasons people might be fallible, why we might fail to do what we try to do isignorance, that we have a limited understanding of the laws of the world - the physical laws that govern the world and of all the particulars of the world upon which those laws work. And then there's ineptitude, meaning that the knowledge is available, but individuals fail to apply it correctly. The third source is "necessary fallibility." That is, we're never going to be omniscient, there is some knowledge that we will simply never achieve, and there are limits to what we will be able to do. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
183:There’s a category of prayer in which god is begged to intervene in human history or just to right some real or imagined injustice or calamity—for example, when a bishop from the American West prays for god to intervene and end a devastating dry spell. Why is the prayer needed? Didn’t god know of the drought? Was he unaware that it threatened the bishop’s parishioners? What is implied here about the limitations of a supposedly omnipotent and omniscient deity? The bishop asked his followers to pray as well. Is god more likely to intervene when many pray for mercy than when only a few do? ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
184:True, my boy. Only Hashem is omniscient, and until He decides we’re worthy of His communication via prophets or the Messiah, we mortals are forced to live in a state of ignorance. I’ve spent my whole life learning, Detective, acquiring knowledge not only from the scriptures of my belief, but from countless other sources—American law, philosophy, psychology, economics, political science: I have studied them all at great length. Yet, a madman can slip under my nose, and I realize I know nothing. I am still a meaningless speck of dust in the scheme of things. A most humbling experience. ~ Faye Kellerman, #NFDB
185:most religions adhere to some form of determinism and predestination. Since God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, He knows the future, and hence the future is determined ahead of time. He knows even before you are born whether you will go to Heaven or Hell. The Catholic Church split in half on this precise question during the Protestant revolution. According to Catholic doctrine at that time, one could change one’s ultimate fate with an indulgence, usually by making generous financial donations to the Church. In other words, determinism could be altered by the size of your wallet. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
186:Charles Hartshorne... informed me that my theological standpoint is Socinian. ...The main tenet of the Socinian heresy is that God is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. He learns and grows as the universe unfolds. ...I ...find it congenial, and consistent with scientific common sense. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. ...We are the chief inlets of God on this planet at the present stage... We may later grow with him as he grows, or we may be left behind. ...If we are left behind, it is an end. If we keep on growing, it is a beginning. ~ Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions (1988), #NFDB
187:Penance is in my bones. So's a desire to confess, even when it isn't technically necessary. I think it stems from seeds of superstition left over from a childhood belief in an omniscient creator. I imagine this creator, this observer, as a sort of annoying sibling in the sky, forever calling me on my bullshit. When I lie or cheat, I actually feel like that annoying sibling in the sky calls down, "Bullshit, Suzie, BULLSHIT!" and that anyone nearby, if they're at all sensitive to the catcalls of the gods, can hear him. And so I behave accordingly, and try to make amends for what I have done. ~ Suzanne Morrison, #NFDB
188:It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. Comment Stylistically, this is clearly Chandler’s voice. It’s Omniscient narration, setting a mood for the story to come. This is a legitimate fiction move, by the way. You can start a novel or story with a sort of “wide angle establishing shot.” Then pull in closer to the POV character. ~ James Scott Bell, #NFDB
189:There is something distinctly odd about the argument, however. Believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something I can decide to do as an act of will. I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bibles that I believe every word inside them. But none of that can make me actually believe it if I don't. Pascal's Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he'd see through the deception. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
190:So I was communicating directly with God? Absolutely. Expressed that way, it sounds grandiose. But when it was happening, it didn't feel that way. Instead, I felt like I was doing what every soul is able to do when they leave their bodies, and what we can all do right now through various methods of prayer or deep meditation. Communicating with God is the most extraordinary experience imaginable, yet at the same time it's the most natural one of all, because God is present in us at all times. Omniscient, omnipotent, personal--and loving us without conditions. We are connected as One through our divine link with God. ~ Eben Alexander, #NFDB
191:And yet viewing several depictions of even an imaginary city, is enlightening in a way," Leibniz said. "Each painter can view the city from only one standpoint at a time, so he will move about the place, and paint it from a hilltop on one side, then a tower on the other, then from a grand intersection in the middle--all in the same canvas. When we look at the canvas, then, we glimpse in a small way how God understands the universe--for he sees it from every point of view at once. By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
192:God gave the requirement for the death penalty in Genesis 9:6 at the beginning of human society after the flood, when methods of collecting evidence and the certainty of proof were far less reliable than they are today. Yet God still gave the command to fallible human beings, not requiring that they be omniscient to carry it out, but only expecting that they act responsibly and seek to avoid further injustice as they carried it out. Among the people of Israel, a failure to carry out the death penalty when God had commanded it was to “pollute the land” and “defile” it before God, for justice had not been done (see Num. 35:32–34). ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
193:The retaining membrane that held Dutch culture together for more than a century was a marvel of elasticity. Responding to appropriate external stimuli, it could expand or contract as the conditions of its survival altered. Under pressure, it could tighten to compress the Dutch into a sense of their indissoluble unity. In more expansive times it could relax and swell, allowing for internal differentiation and the absorption of a whole gamut of beliefs, faiths and even tongues. An omniscient kind of social filter swallowed up those foreign bodies and spat them out again as burghers: civically salubrious and residentially reliable. ~ Simon Schama, #NFDB
194:I’m not better, you know. The weight hasn’t left my head. I feel how easily I could fall back into it, lie down and not eat, waste my time and curse wasting my time, look at my homework and freak out and go and chill at Aaron’s, look at Nia and be jealous again, take the subway home and hope that it has an accident, go and get my bike and head to the Brooklyn Bridge. All of that is still there. The only thing is, it’s not an option now. It’s just… a possibility, like it’s a possibility that I could turn to dust in the next instant and be disseminated throughout the universe as an omniscient consciousness. It’s not a very likely possibility. ~ Ned Vizzini, #NFDB
195:We reject the idea of a personal, or an extra-cosmic and anthropomorphic God, who is but the gigantic shadow of man, and not of man at his best, either. The God of theology, we say—and prove it—is a bundle of contradictions and a logical impossibility... Our DEITY is neither in a paradise, nor in a particular tree, building, or mountain; it is everywhere, in every atom of the visible as of the invisible Cosmos, in, over, and around every invisible atom and divisible molecule; for IT is the mysterious power of evolution and involution, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and even omniscient creative potentiality. ~ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky,The Key to Theosophy (1889), #NFDB
196:As an atheist, I see nothing “wrong” in believing in a God. I don’t think there is a God, but belief in him does no harm. If it helps you in any way, then that’s fine with me. It’s when belief starts infringing on other people’s rights when it worries me. I would never deny your right to believe in a God. I would just rather you didn’t kill people who believe in a different God, say. Or stone someone to death because your rulebook says their sexuality is immoral. It’s strange that anyone who believes that an all-powerful all-knowing, omniscient power responsible for everything that happens, would also want to judge and punish people for what they are. ~ Ricky Gervais, #NFDB
197:God knew man would evolve. People think some of the Old Testament laws are absurd now because we live in a very different culture, a different time period. They had their problems and we have ours. God is constant but man is not, and he foreknew the ever-changing world his people would have to deal with; therefore, and if there is indeed an omniscient God, a Christ-like figure would be our only rational, possible connection to a constant, holy God throughout the evolution of culture and social law. The only answer that makes sense when it comes to relevance regarding religions and time periods is Christ, and the chances are slim that men could have invented it. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
198:I can hide my heart, and my past, and my future plans, from those around me, but I cannot hide anything from God. I can talk in a way that deceives my fellow creatures as to what I really am, but nothing I say or do can deceive God. He sees through all my reserve and pretense; he knows me as I really am, better indeed than I know myself. A God whose presence and scrutiny I could evade would be a small and trivial deity. But the true God is great and terrible, just because he is always with me and his eye is always upon me. Living becomes an awesome business when you realize that you spend every moment of your life in the sight and company of an omniscient, omnipresent Creator. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
199:Living things, like our planet itself, are able to use energy in an organized way and counteract the tendency toward disorganization. This simple fact convinced one Russian physicist that there must be a God controlling everything! As I thought about all of that, it suddenly dawned on me that there must be a very powerful organizing force counteracting this disorganizing tendency within nature, keeping the universe controlled and in order. This force must not be material; otherwise, it too would become disordered. I concluded that this power must be both omnipotent (all-powerful) and omniscient (all-wise and all-knowing). There must be a God—one God— controlling everything!3 ~ Lawrence O Richards, #NFDB
200: The Stone Goddess
In a town of gods, housed in a little shrine,
From sculptured limbs the Godhead looked at me, -
A living Presence deathless and divine,
A Form that harboured all infinity.
The great World-Mother and her mighty will
Inhabited the earth's abysmal sleep,
Voiceless, omnipotent, inscrutable,
Mute in the desert and the sky and deep.
Now veiled with mind she dwells and speaks no word,
Voiceless, inscrutable, omniscient,
Hiding until our soul has seen, has heard
The secret of her strange embodiment,
One in the worshipper and the immobile shape,
A beauty and mystery flesh or stone can drape.
~ Sri Aurobindo, - The Stone Goddess
,#NFDB
201:As she sits in a booth, it never occurs to her to observe herself, and thus she is spared the image of a girl sitting alone in a bar on Saturday night. A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps within her, waiting to be stirred. .... She keeps working to make connections, but the pile of near misses is starting to overwhelm her. What Mirabelle needs is some omniscient voice to illuminate and spotlight her, and to inform everyone that this one has value, this one over here, the one sitting in the bar by herself, and then to find her counterpart and bring him to her. ~ Steve Martin, #NFDB
202:It therefore requires a certain effort not to believe in a personal God: “No one disbelieves the existence of God except the person to whom God’s existence is not convenient.” There are no atheists so thoroughly sure of their unbelief as to be willing to die a martyr’s death for it. Since atheism is abnormal and unnatural, based not on intuitions but on inferential proofs and fallible reasoning, it is never sure of its causes. The arguments for the existence of God may be weak, but in any case they are stronger than those advanced for its denial. It is even impossible to prove that there is no God. To accomplish that feat a person would have to be omniscient and omnipresent, that is, to be God! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
203:There’s nothing “grown-up” about wanting the State to punish people without evidence of guilt so that you can feel safe. It’s actually a deeply childish need at the heart of all authoritarianism - the desire for a big daddy figure to keep you safe from the Bad People even it means there are no legal constraints, due process, or transparency.
Children growing up learn that their Daddy is omnipotent and omniscient and exercises his unchecked power for benevolent ends - it’s a nice, safe feeling, and many continue to cling to it in adulthood, hoping the Security State will provide that. Many adjectives can and should be used to describe that need - “grown-up” definitely is not among them. ~ Glenn Greenwald,#NFDB
204:Its invisibility, and the mystery which was attached to it, made this organization doubly terrible. It appeared to be omniscient and omnipotent, and yet was neither seen nor heard. The man who held out against the Church vanished away, and none knew whither he had gone or what
had befallen him. His wife and his children awaited him at home, but no father ever returned to tell them how he had fared at the hands of his secret judges. A rash word or a hasty act was followed by annihilation, and yet none knew what the nature might be of this terrible power which was suspended over them. No wonder that men went about in fear and trembling, and that even in the heart of the wilderness they dared not whisper the doubts which oppressed them. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,#NFDB
205:He is ETERNAL, which means that He antedates time and is wholly independent of it. Time began in Him and will end in Him. To it He pays no tribute and from it He suffers no change.
He is IMMUTABLE, which means that He has never changed and can never change in any smallest measure. To change He would need to go from better to worse or from worse to better. He cannot do either, for being perfect He cannot become more perfect, and if He were to become less perfect He would be less than God.
He is OMNISCIENT, which means that He knows in one free and effortless act all matter, all spirit, all relationships, all events. He has no past and He has no future.
He IS, and none of the limiting and qualifying terms used of creatures can apply to Him. ~ A W Tozer,#NFDB
206:Don't you think it would be interesting if you could read the story of your life- written perfectly truthfully by an omniscient author? And suppose you could only read it on this condition: that you would never forget it, but would have to go through life knowing ahead of time exactly how everything you did would turn out, and forseeing to the exact hour the time you would die. How many people do you suppose you have the courage to read it then? Or how many could suppress their curiosity sufficiently to escape from reading it, even at the price of having to live without hope, without surprise? Life is monotonous enough at best; you have to eat and sleep about so often. But imagine how deadly monotonous it would be if nothing unexpected could happen between meals? ~ Jean Webster, #NFDB
207: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. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, #NFDB
208:The typical undergraduate microeconomics textbook describes cases where markets are unlikely to produce efficient outcomes. These textbooks often claim that, in principle, government intervention could solve the market failure. However, these textbooks also assume that government both (1) has full information about how to solve the problem and (2) has the good faith to use its power to solve the problem. It is as if the textbooks say omniscient angels can intervene to solve market failures. Thus, when undergraduate textbooks recommend government intervention, they mean intervention by idealized governments, not necessarily by real governments. In the real world, libertarians believe, sometimes the best response to serious market failure is just to suck it up and live with it. ~ Jason Brennan, #NFDB
209:God was all powerful and omniscient, and he alone defined truth and indeed was truth. But he did not assert that power in a way that ever smacked of power in the worldly sense. He had always and ever shown himself in weakness. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Jesus died on the cross for those who had mocked and rejected him. God did not crush us but showed us mercy, and Luther could see that the church had not adopted this view, but had itself become wed to worldly power. It took money that was not its own and burned those who disagreed with what it taught. Luther was trying to call the church back to its true roots, to a biblical idea of a merciful God who did not demand that we obey but who first loved us and first made us righteous before he expected us to live righteously. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
210:At her will the inscrutable Supermind leans down
To guide her force that feels but cannot know,
Its breath of power controls her restless seas
And life obeys the governing Idea.
At her will, led by a luminous Immanence
The hazardous experimenting Mind
Pushes its way through obscure possibles
Mid chance formations of an unknowing world.
Our human ignorance moves towards the Truth
That Nescience may become omniscient,
Transmuted instincts shape to divine thoughts,
Thoughts house infallible immortal sight
And Nature climb towards God's identity.
The Master of the worlds self-made her slave
Is the executor of her fantasies:
She has canalised the seas of omnipotence;
She has limited by her laws the Illimitable.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#NFDB
211:We aspire to omniscience, but should we ever actually become omniscient what would be the point in continuing to exist? The game would be over and done. No mystery would be left to lend our lives a mystique, and without this mystique everything we do would be reduced to numbers we could look up in a computer file and have no need to puzzle over. We would be victorious . . . and bored to death. Everything having to do with humanity and nonhumanity would hit a wall and come to a stop. We seem to have set out on an expedition whose success would be our ruin. The only way out, perhaps, would be to fashion creatures less knowing than ourselves and exist through them. What humiliation, what pathos that we should ever end up as gods. Is there nothing that can bring us into reconciliation with the cancer of existence? ~ Thomas Ligotti, #NFDB
212:What's this? here's velvet shark-skin," intently gazing at Ahab's hand, and feeling it. "Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this, perhaps he had ne'er been lost! This seems to me, sir as a man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the white, for I will not let this go."
"Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors than are here. Come, then to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come! I feel prouder leading thee by they black hand, than though I grasped an Emperor's! ~ Herman Melville,#NFDB
213:HS is supposedly a story that is also a game. In games, the characters die all the time. How many times did you let Mario fall in the pit before he saved the princess? Who weeps for these Marios. In games your characters die, but you keep trying and trying and rebooting and resetting until finally they make it. When you play a game this process is all very impersonal. Once you finally win, when all is said and done those deaths didn’t “count”, only the linear path of the final victorious version of the character is considered “real”. Mario never actually died, did he? Except the omniscient player knows better. HS seems to combine all the meaningless deaths of a trial-and-error game journey with the way death is treated dramatically in other media, where unlike our oblivious Mario, the characters are aware and afraid of the many deaths they must experience before finally winning the game. ~ Andrew Hussie, #NFDB
214:What is the result of constant practice of this higher concentration? All old tendencies of restlessness and dullness will be destroyed, as well as the tendencies of goodness too. The case is similar to that of the chemicals used to take the dirt and alloy off gold. When the ore is smelted down, the dross is burnt along with the chemicals. So this constant controlling power will stop the previous bad tendencies, and eventually, the good ones also. Those good and evil tendencies will suppress each other, leaving alone the Soul, in its own splendour untrammelled by either good or bad, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Then the man will know that he had neither birth nor death, nor need for heaven or earth. He will know that he neither came nor went, it was nature which was moving, and that movement was reflected upon the soul. The form of the light reflected by the glass upon the wall moves, and the wall foolishly thinks it is moving. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
215:A startling thought this, that a woman could handle business
matters as well as or better than a man, a revolutionary thought to
Scarlett who had been reared in the tradition that men were
omniscient and women none too bright. Of course, she had
discovered that this was not altogether true but the pleasant
fiction still stuck in her mind. Never before had she put this
remarkable idea into words. She sat quite still, with the heavy
book across her lap, her mouth a little open with surprise,
thinking that during the lean months at Tara she had done a man's
work and done it well. She had been brought up to believe that a
woman alone could accomplish nothing, yet she had managed the
plantation without men to help her until Will came. Why, why, her
mind stuttered, I believe women could manage everything in the
world without men's help--except having babies, and God knows, no
woman in her right mind would have babies if she could help it. ~ Margaret Mitchell,#NFDB
216:We know from Scripture that Satan is a liar (John 8:44). We know, too, that he prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). But what if he tailors his attacks to fit us, the daughters of the King? What if his demons launch their assaults at the very places where we have shown the most vulnerability? What if he looks over our shoulders on all the negative confessions we've made to hone an all-out assault on our hearts? It is not beyond his deviousness to tune into our pain and turn it into a weapon to use against us.
Even as we speak out about our fear and insecurity, do we give vital information to our enemy? Satan is not omniscient. He is a created, fallen angel and does not know all things, as God does. Through the centuries have we spoken about our brokenness to such an extent that the enemy now has weapons so expertly trained that they can hit their targets, time after time? Have these become 'smart weapons,' like laser-guided missiles striking from a silent drone? ~ Sheila Walsh,#NFDB
217:One simple and basic fact of life is that no individual – or group of individuals – can ever be wise or knowledgeable enough to run society. Our core fantasy of “government” is that in some remote and sunlit chamber, with lacquered mahogany tables, deep leather chairs and sleepless men and women, there exists a group who are so wise, so benevolent, so omniscient and so incorruptible that we should turn over to them the education of our children, the preservation of our elderly, the salvation of the poor, the provision of vital services, the healing of the sick, the defense of the realm and of property, the administration of justice, the punishment of criminals, and the regulation of virtually every aspect of a massive, infinitely complex and ever-changing social and economic system. These living man-gods have such perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom that we should hand them weapons of mass destruction, and the endless power to tax, imprison and print money – and nothing but good, plenty and virtue will result. ~ Stefan Molyneux, #NFDB
218:To Charles Lloyd
A stranger, and alone, I past those scenes
We past so late together; and my heart
Felt something like desertion, when I look'd
Around me, and the well-known voice of friend
Was absent, and the cordial look was there
No more to smile on me. I thought on Lloyd;
All he had been to me. And now I go
Again to mingle with a world impure,
With men who make a mock of holy things,
Mistaken, and of man's best hope think scorn.
The world does much to warp the heart of man,
And I may sometimes join its ideot laugh.
Of this I now complain not. Deal with me,
Omniscient Father! as thou judgest best,
And in thy season tender thou my heart.
I pray not for myself; I pray for him,
Whose soul is sore perplex'd: shine thou on him,
Father of Lights! and in the difficult paths
Make plain his way before him. His own thoughts
May he not think, his own ends not pursue;
So shall he best perform thy will on earth.
Greatest and Best, thy will be ever ours!
August 1797
~ Charles Lamb,#NFDB
219:Well, he was a bit intimidating." "A bit?" Juliet laughed. "We're talking about a man who conceals a rapier in his walking stick, who appears to be as omniscient as God, who faithfully practices his dueling skills every week, and who loves nothing more than to move and manipulate those around him as he might the pieces in a game of chess. Add to that the fact he is one of the most powerful — and dangerous — men in England, and I fear that intimidating doesn't even begin to describe him! But he loves and is very protective of his family, I'll give him that. If you could have seen him when he found out that Gareth had taken up pugilism for a living . . ." Humming to herald her imminent arrival, Nerissa reappeared, all smiles. "Well, well, I see that you two Yankee Doodles have found something to talk about!" "Yes, your infamous brother," Juliet said wryly. "Lucien? He wasn't unkind to you, was he, Amy?" Amy nearly laughed. "I don't understand why everyone thinks he's such a monster!" The other two exchanged knowing glances. "You will," they chorused. ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
220:You see, the religious people — most of them — really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would've listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
221:That may be true,’ Sidney replied. ‘If God is aware of the human condition then how can he be content? But perhaps we have to think about the divine presence in a different way; not as what he is, but what he is not. In other words, not human, and not liable to emotion. The concept of happiness perhaps has no subject. It exists outside ourselves, unrelated to any specific human being.’ ‘Then why do we all want to have it?’ ‘Because we are human.’ ‘And therefore we suffer.’ ‘Yes, Geordie.’ ‘So what you are saying is that God does not know happiness; even though he is supposed to be omniscient? I don’t understand how that works.’ ‘John Stuart Mill argued that happiness is not something that can be achieved by striving for it. You have to pursue some other goal and “if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe.”’ ‘So happiness is an accident?’ ‘Possibly. Schopenhauer defined it as the temporary absence of pain.’ ‘And that is the best we can hope for?’ ‘Perhaps, but not necessarily.’ ‘Oh, Sidney, this is all too deep for me.’ ‘And ~ James Runcie, #NFDB
222:Gender isn’t simply some faucet that we can turn on and off in order to appease other people, whether they be heterosexist bigots or queerer-than-thou hipsters. How about this: Let’s stop pretending that we have all the answers, because when it comes to gender, none of us is fucking omniscient.
Instead of trying to fictionalize gender, let’s talk about the moments in life when gender feels all too real. Because gender doesn’t feel like drag when you’re a young trans child begging your parents not to cut your hair or not to force you to wear that dress. And gender doesn’t feel like a performance when, for the first time in your life, you feel safe and empowered enough to express yourself in ways that resonate with you, rather than remaining closeted for the benefit of others. And gender doesn’t feel like a construct when you finally find that special person whose body, personality, identity, and energy feels like a perfect fit with yours. Let’s stop trying to deconstruct gender into nonexistence, and instead start celebrating it as inexplicable, varied, profound, and intricate. ~ Julia Serano,#NFDB
223:1. The nature of freedom. How can we be free and morally responsible for what we do if our future has been settled in God’s mind from all eternity, as both Arminians and Calvinists teach? No one holds that we are morally responsible for events that occurred before we were born, for we have no power to influence the past, and we can’t be morally responsible for events we cannot influence. If God has known from all eternity everything I shall choose to do in the future, however, then the fact that I shall choose something in the future has been settled in God’s mind at every moment in the past. Hence, it seems I have no more power to alter the past-settled fact of what I shall choose than I have to alter any past fact. And it therefore seems I cannot be free to make, or morally responsible for, choices God has eternally known I shall make. For me to be free and morally responsible, the possibility of my choosing otherwise must be real. And since God is omniscient and knows reality exactly as it is, God must know my free future choice as a possibility, not as an eternally settled fact. 2. ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
224:In a rational state it would be more appropriate to ensure that a cobbler passed an examination than an executive civil servant; because shoe-making is a craft in the absence of which it is still possible to be a good citizen and a man in society. But the necessary 'knowledge of the state' is a precondition in the absence of which one lives outside the state, cut off from the air one breathes and from oneself. Thus the 'examination' is nothing but a Masonic initiation, the legal recognition of the knowledge of citizenship, the acknowledgement of a privilege.
This 'link' between the 'individual' and his 'office', this objective bond between the knowledge of civil society and the knowledge of the state, namely the examination, is nothing but the bureaucratic baptism of knowledge, the official recognition of the transubstantiation of profane knowledge into sacred knowledge (it is plain that in every examination the examiner is omniscient).
It is not recorded that Greek and Roman statesmen ever took examinations. But then what is a Roman statesman compared to a Prussian civil servant! ~ Karl Marx,#NFDB
225:Ode To Fear
Variation on a Theme by Collins
Let the day glare: O memory, your tread
Beats to the pulse of suffocating nightNight peering from his dark but fire-lit head
Burns on the day his tense and secret light.
Now they dare not to gloss your savage dream,
O beast of the heart, those saints who cursed your name;
You are the current of the frozen stream,
Shadow invisible, ambushed and vigilant flame.
My eldest companion present in solitude,
Watch-dog of Thebes when the blind hero strove:
You, omniscient, at the cross-roads stood
When Laius, the slain dotard, drenched the grove.
Now to the eye of prophecy immune,
Fading and harried, you stalk us in the street
From the recesses of the August noon,
Alert world over, crouched on the air's feet.
You are our surety to immortal life,
God's hatred of the universal stainThe heritage, O Fear, of ancient strife
Compounded with the tissue of the vein.
And I when all is said have seen your form
Most agile and most treacherous to the world
When, on a child's long day, a dry storm
Burst on the cedars, lit by the sun and hurled!
~ Allen Tate,#NFDB
226:Every person’s life is of importance to himself, of course: … But in the universe of infinite space and time, it is insignificant. … Perhaps Carl Becker, the historian, and one of the most civilized men I ever knew, grasped best our piddling place in the infinite.
Man [he wrote] is but a foundling in the cosmos, abandoned by the forces that created him. Unparented, unassisted and undirected by omniscient or benevolent authority, he must fend for himself, and with the aid of his own limited intelligence find his way about in an indifferent universe.
And in a rather savage world! The longer I lived and the more I observed, the clearer it became to me that man had progressed very little beyond his earlier savage state. After twenty million years or so of human life on this Earth, the lot of most men and women is, as Hobbes said, “nasty, brutish, and short.” Civilization is a thin veneer. It is so easily and continually eroded or cracked, leaving human beings exposed for what they are: savages.
What good three thousand years of so-called civilization, of religion, philosophy, and education, when … men go on torturing, killing and repressing their fellowmen? ~ William L Shirer,#NFDB
227:There was no good name for this spot. Evie, who had shot like an arrow from school into life, who had never wavered, who had seen clear right from the start where she wanted to get to, had lately found herself more and more in the brambles. Somehow, here she was, no longer certain where she was going. Or even if she wanted to get there.
The jobs had been won, the beds made, the dishes washed, the children sprouted. The wheel had stopped, and now what? Where, for instance, was the story of a middle-aged orphan with the gray streak in her hair, the historian who had rustled thirteenth-century women's lives out of fugitive pages, who believed more than most that there was no such thing as the certainty of a plot in the story of a life, in fact who taught this to students year in and year our, and yet who found herself lately longing, above all else for just that? Longing, against reason, for some kind of clear direction, for the promise of a pattern. For this relief--she pulled against the shoulder strap of her satchel--the unbearable relief of an omniscient narrator.
Adolescence, she reflected, pushing open the classroom door with a kind of savage glee, had nothing on this. ~ Sarah Blake,#NFDB
228:I tell you your Heaven is full of the kingdom of the earth's most crass- headed idiots and poverty-stricken in spirit! I tell you, you have filled your Heaven with the grossest and most cherished harlots from here below, who have bent their knees piteously before you at their hour of death! I tell you, you have used force against me, and you know not, you omniscient nullity, that I never bend in opposition! I tell you, all my life, every cell in my body, every power of my soul, gasps to mock you--you Gracious Monster on High. I tell you, I would, if I could, breathe it into every human soul, every flower, every leaf, every dewdrop in the garden! I tell you, I would scoff you on the day of doom, and curse the teeth out of my mouth for the sake of your Deity's boundless miserableness! I tell you from this hour I renounce all thy works and all thy pomps! I will execrate my thought if it dwell on you again, and tear out my lips if they ever utter your name! I tell you, if you exist, my last word in life or in death--I bid you farewell, for all time and eternity--I bid you farewell with heart and reins. I bid you the last irrevocable farewell, and I am silent, and turn my back on you and go my way.... Quiet. ~ Knut Hamsun, #NFDB
229:...[A]ll the elements which belong to the notion of happiness are altogether empirical, that is, they must be borrowed from experience, and nevertheless the idea of happiness requires an absolute whole, a maximum of welfare in my present and all future circumstances. Now it is impossible that the most clear-sighted and at the same time most powerful being (supposed finite) should frame to himself a definite conception of what he really wills in this. Does he will riches, how much anxiety, envy, and snares might he not thereby draw upon his shoulders? Does he will knowledge and discernment, perhaps it might prove to be only an eye so much the sharper to show him so much the more fearfully the evils that are now concealed from him and that cannot be avoided, or to impose more wants on his desires, which already give him concern enough. Would he have long life? Who guarantees to him that it would not be a long misery? Would he at least have health? How often has uneasiness of the body restrained from excesses into which perfect health would have allowed one to fall, and so on? In short, he is unable, on any principle, to determine with certainty what would make him truly happy; because to do so he would need to be omniscient. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
230:In any long fiction, Henry James remarked, use of the first-person point of view is barbaric. James may go too far, but his point is worth considering. First person locks us in one character's mind, locks us to one kind of diction throughout, locks out possibilities of going deeply into various characters' minds and so forth. ....Vulgar diction in the telling of the Helen story would clearly create a white-hot irony, probably all but unmanageable. Colloquial diction and relatively short sentences would have the instant effect of humanizing once elevated characters and events. Highly formal diction and all that goes along with the traditional omniscient narrator might seem immediately appropriate for the seriousness of the story, but it can easily backfire, providing not suitable pomp but mere pompousness. And some choices in p.o.v. as well as in other stylistic elements, may have more direct bearing on the theme than would others. For instance, the "town" point of view, in which the voice in the story is some unnamed spokesman for all the community--among the most famous examples is Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"--might have the immediate effect of foregrounding the story's controlling idea, conflicting community values versus personal values. ~ John Gardner, #NFDB
231:He is eternal, which means that He antedates time and is wholly independent of it. Time began in Him and will end in Him. To it He pays no tribute and from it He suffers no change. He is immutable, which means that He has never changed and can never change in any smallest measure. To change He would need to go from better to worse or from worse to better. He cannot do either, for being perfect He cannot become more perfect, and if He were to become less perfect He would be less than God. He is omniscient, which means that He knows in one free and effortless act all matter, all spirit, all relationships, all events. He has no past and He has no future. He is, and none of the limiting and qualifying terms used of creatures can apply to Him. Love and mercy and righteousness are His, and holiness so ineffable that no comparisons or figures will avail to express it. Only fire can give even a remote conception of it. In fire He appeared at the burning bush; in the pillar of fire He dwelt through all the long wilderness journey. The fire that glowed between the wings of the cherubim in the holy place was called the "shekinah," the Presence, through the years of Israel's glory, and when the Old had given place to the New, He came at Pentecost as a fiery flame and rested upon each disciple. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
232:Sloth (I) & (Ii)
Sloth (I)
Too many a Samsan lip your teeth indent:
Too many a Sybil girl you lure to make
The Great Refusal for a fireside sake:
And glamoured poet many a look has sent
Into those eyeballs bear-brown, somnolent,
Nor dreamed that devils in each muddy lake
Were sucking his devotion in to slake
The furrowed belly of your fanged content!
Religion's bane and Freedom's subtlest foe!
Behold the poppied freight your barges bring
The dim-lit souls that crave the prophet's gleam,
Or fettered people's writhing 'neath their woe-Gossamer clips and thriftless harvesting
Of phantom flocks and shadowy tilth of dream!
Sloth (II)
My dreams dissolve the day's illusive net:
While crested Action's billows blinding beat,
Omniscient Eyes in troughs of Faith I meet:
I wait with ancient stars until they set
Lest forward progress should their runes forget:
I am the rest that makes the bar complete:
And, in the shackled body of Defeat,
The womb of Baby Triumph living yet!
I am the blende of sleeping radiance:
The Siding where belated Industry
Draws from a Silent Tank tomorrow's zest:
Prophetic Art's preparatory Trance:
Dilating Force's Sabbath systole:
The Night of Brahm when worn Creators rest!
~ Bernard O'Dowd,#NFDB
233:Habit 1 says “You’re the programmer” and Habit 2 says “Write the program,” then Habit 3 says “Run the program,” “Live the program.” And living it is primarily a function of our independent will, our self-discipline, our integrity, and commitment—not to short-term goals and schedules or to the impulse of the moment, but to the correct principles and our own deepest values, which give meaning and context to our goals, our schedules, and our lives. As you go through your week, there will undoubtedly be times when your integrity will be placed on the line. The popularity of reacting to the urgent but unimportant priorities of other people in Quadrant III or the pleasure of escaping to Quadrant IV will threaten to overpower the important Quadrant II activities you have planned. Your principle center, your self-awareness, and your conscience can provide a high degree of intrinsic security, guidance, and wisdom to empower you to use your independent will and maintain integrity to the truly important. But because you aren’t omniscient, you can’t always know in advance what is truly important. As carefully as you organize the week, there will be times when, as a principle-centered person, you will need to subordinate your schedule to a higher value. Because you are principle-centered, you can do that with an inner sense of peace. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
234:Last, there is to be considered the recipient of the sacrifice and the manner of the sacrifice. The sacrifice may be offered to others or it may be offered to divine Powers; it may be offered to the cosmic All or it may be offered to the transcendent Supreme. The worship given may take any shape from the dedication of a leaf or flower, a cup of water, a handful of rice, a loaf of bread, to consecration of all that we possess and the submission of all that we are. Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient. For the Supreme who transcends the universe, is yet here too, however veiled, in us and in the world and in its happenings; he is there as the omniscient Witness and Receiver of all our works and their secret Master. All our actions, all our efforts, even our sins and stumblings and sufferings and struggles are obscurely or consciously, known to us and seen or else unknown and in a disguise, governed in their last result by the One. All is turned towards him in his numberless forms and offered through them to the single Omnipresence. In whatever form and with whatever spirit we approach him, in that form and with that spirit he receives the sacrifice.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [109-110],#NFDB
235:Is it the Eternal Triune, is it He
Who dares arrest the wheels of destiny
And plunge me in the lowest Hell of Hells?
Will not the lightning's blast destroy my frame?
Will not steel drink the blood-life where it swells?
Nolet me hie where dark Destruction dwells,
To rouse her from her deeply caverned lair,
And, taunting her cursed sluggishness to ire,
Light long Oblivion's death-torch at its flame
And calmly mount Annihilation's pyre.
Tyrant of Earth! pale Misery's jackal Thou!
Are there no stores of vengeful violent fate
Within the magazines of Thy fierce hate?
No poison in the clouds to bathe a brow
That lowers on Thee with desperate contempt?
Where is the noonday Pestilence that slew
The myriad sons of Israel's favoured nation?
Where the destroying Minister that flew
Pouring the fiery tide of desolation
Upon the leagued Assyrian's attempt?
Where the dark Earthquake-daemon who engorged
At the dread word Korah's unconscious crew?
Or the Angel's two-edged sword of fire that urged
Our primal parents from their bower of bliss
(Reared by Thine hand) for errors not their own
By Thine omniscient mind foredoomed, foreknown?
Yes! I would court a ruin such as this,
Almighty Tyrant! and give thanks to Thee--
Drink deeplydrain the cup of hate; remit this--I may die.
Published (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Bertram Dobell, 1887.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Wandering Jews Soliloquy
,#NFDB
236:I have not yet been able to stereotype my theological views, and have ceased to expect ever to do so. The idea is preposterous. None but an omniscient mind can continue to maintain a precise identity of views and opinions. Finite minds, unless they are asleep or stultified by prejudice, must advance in knowledge. The discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world. True Christian consistency does not consist in stereotyping our opinions and views, and in refusing to make any improvement lest we should be guilty of change, but it consists in holding our minds open to receive the rays of truth from every quarter and in changing our views and language and practice as often and as fast, as we can obtain further information. I call this Christian consistency, because this course alone accords with a Christian profession. A Christian profession implies the profession of candour and of a disposition to know and obey all truth. It must follow, that Christian consistency implies continued investigation and change of views and practice corresponding with increasing knowledge. No Christian, therefore, and no theologian should be afraid to change his views, his language, or his practices in conformity with increasing light. The prevalence of such a fear would keep the world, at best, at a perpetual stand-still, on all subjects of science, and consequently all improvements would be precluded. ~ Charles Grandison Finney, #NFDB
237:There must be accepted and progressively accomplished a surrender of our capacities of working into the hands of a greater Power behind us and our sense of being the doer and worker must disappear. All must be given for a more direct use into the hands of the divine Will which is hidden by these frontal appearances; for by that permitting Will alone is our action possible. A hidden Power is the true Lord and overruling Observer of our acts and only he knows through all the ignorance and perversion and deformation brought in by the ego their entire sense and ultimate purpose. There must be effected a complete transformation of our limited and distorted egoistic life and works into the large and direct outpouring of a greater divine Life, Will and Energy that now secretly supports us. This greater Will and Energy must be made conscious in us and master; no longer must it remain, as now, only a superconscious, upholding and permitting Force. There must be achieved an undistorted transmission through us of the all-wise purpose and process of a now hidden omniscient Power and omnipotent Knowledge which will turn into its pure, unobstructed, happily consenting and participating channel all our transmuted nature. This total consecration and surrender and this resultant entire transformation and free transmission make up the whole fundamental means and the ultimate aim of an integral Karmayoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [92],#NFDB
238:You rest on the circle of Sri's breast, Wearing your earrings, Fondling wanton forest garlands. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! The sun's jewel light encircles you As you break through the bond of existence -- A wild Himalayan goose on lakes in minds of holy men. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! You defeat the venomous serpent Kaliya, Exciting your Yadu kinsmen Like sunlight inciting lotuses to bloom. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! You ride your fierce eagle Garuda To battle demons Madhu and Mura and Naraka, Leaving the other goods free to play. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! Watching with long omniscient lotus-petal eyes, You free us from bonds of existence, Preserving life in the world's three realms. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! Janaka's daughter Sita adorns you. You conquer demon Dusana. You kill ten-headed Ravana in battle. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! Your beauty is fresh as rain clouds. You hold the mountain to churn elixir from the sea. Your eyes are night birds drinking from Sri's moon face. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! Poet Jayadeva joyously sings This song of invocation In an auspicious prayer. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! As he rests in Sri's embrace, On the soft slope of her breast, The saffroned chest of Madhu's killer Is stained with red marks of passion And sweat from fatigue of tumultuous loving. May his broad chest bring you pleasure too! [1994.jpg] -- from Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva's Gitagovinda, Translated by Barbara Stoler Miller
~ Jayadeva, You rest on the circle of Sris breast (from The Gitagovinda)
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239:What is that work and result, if not a self-involution of Consciousness in form and a self-evolution out of form so as to actualise some mighty possibility in the universe which it has created? And what is its will in Man if not a will to unending Life, to unbounded Knowledge, to unfettered Power? Science itself begins to dream of the physical conquest of death, expresses an insatiable thirst for knowledge, is working out something like a terrestrial omnipotence for humanity. Space and Time are contracting to the vanishing-point in its works, and it strives in a hundred ways to make man the master of circumstance and so lighten the fetters of causality. The idea of limit, of the impossible begins to grow a little shadowy and it appears instead that whatever man constantly wills, he must in the end be able to do; for the consciousness in the race eventually finds the means. It is not in the individual that this omnipotence expresses itself, but the collective Will of mankind that works out with the individual as a means. And yet when we look more deeply, it is not any conscious Will of the collectivity, but a superconscious Might that uses the individual as a centre and means, the collectivity as a condition and field. What is this but the God in man, the infinite Identity, the multitudinous Unity, the Omniscient, the Omnipotent, who having made man in His own image, with the ego as a centre of working, with the race, the collective Narayana, the visvamanava as the mould and circumscription, seeks to express in them some image of the unity, omniscience, omnipotence which are the self-conception of the Divine?
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#NFDB
240:But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when thePurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceedingfrom an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, 'whatever is a man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 43,#NFDB
241:If a Christian were to accost him and endeavor to put the fear of God into him, and if our visitor, being from Mars, already knew that of the world's population, only about 27 per cent are Christians, and the other 73 per cent are Non-Christians, is it logical to suppose that he would ever be convinced that an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent, Supreme Being would select only one quarter of his children whom he had created for redemption, with the infallible knowledge that nearly three-quarters of them would be confined to Hell for not believing what He could have made them believe if He were truly omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent? Would he not rather reply that on his planet such a "Father" who would select some of his children for rewards, and maliciously torture his other children, would not be designated as a God but a Devil? Were the Martian to be further informed that each one of God's children was represented in actual figures by hundreds of millions and that these have been living on the planet Earth for hundreds of thousands of years, and were the visitor to contemplate the vast incomprehensible number of souls that have been confined to Hell by such a father, might he not cut his visit short? He would be apt to repeat with James Mill, "Think of a being who would make a Hell, who would create the human race with the infallible foreknowledge and therefore with the intention that the great majority of them should be consigned to horrible and everlasting torment." I believe that our guest would assert that if such a Being actually existed and demanded worship, he would certainly have revealed his true belief to the first man Adam, and therefore saved his children an inestimable amount of suffering. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
242:Where do you search me
Moko Kahan Dhundhere Bande
Mein To Tere Paas Mein
Na Teerath Mein, Na Moorat Mein
Na Ekant Niwas Mein
Na Mandir Mein, Na Masjid Mein
Na Kabe Kailas Mein
Mein To Tere Paas Mein Bande
Mein To Tere Paas Mein
Na Mein Jap Mein, Na Mein Tap Mein
Na Mein Barat Upaas Mein
Na Mein Kiriya Karm Mein Rehta
Nahin Jog Sanyas Mein
Nahin Pran Mein Nahin Pind Mein
Na Brahmand Akas Mein
Na Mein Prakuti Prawar Gufa Mein
Nahin Swasan Ki Swans Mein
Khoji Hoye Turat Mil Jaoon
Ik Pal Ki Talas Mein
Kahet Kabir Suno Bhai Sadho
Mein To Hun Viswas Mein
English Translation:
Where do you search me?
I am with you
Not in pilgrimage, nor in icons
Neither in solitudes
Not in temples, nor in mosques
Neither in Kaba nor in Kailash
I am with you O man
I am with you
Not in prayers, nor in meditation
Neither in fasting
Not in yogic exercises
Neither in renunciation
Neither in the vital force nor in the body
Not even in the ethereal space
Neither in the womb of Nature
Not in the breath of the breath
Seek earnestly and discover
In but a moment of search
Says Kabir, Listen with care
Where your faith is, I am there.
Kabir reveals in this verse the various search patterns adopted by mankind. And each one seems to be justifying his chosen method. Some say God will be realized through pilgrimages while some justify the idol worship. Some say He is up in the mountains while some believe that He is in places of worship. Some proclaim prayers and meditation the path, others believe realization through fasting. Many talk about yogic exercises (activity) and renunciation. When Kabir says that God is not in any of these things it does not mean that God is not in any of these but that to find God what one needs is but to believe and have faith, and when one will have faith he will find God in a moments search, for God is with him all the time. In this poem Kabir emphasises the all-pervading, omniscient, omnipresent qualities of God.
~ Kabir, Where do you search me
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243:The purpose of consciousness—any consciousness—was to achieve infinite comprehension. It was as simple as that. If a God existed, humanity must strive to discover this God and help this deity become omniscient, not just in one infinity, but in an infinity of infinities. This was one possible purpose for her species. But her alter ego, using symbolic logic, had arrived at a possibility she considered much more likely: that humanity’s purpose, together with all life across all universes, was not to discover God—it was to become God. If a single human egg could possess consciousness at the instant of fertilization, how would it view itself? It couldn’t possibly predict or comprehend the multi-trillion-celled being it would ultimately become. The entirety of humanity could well be that single, fertilized cell, unaware that it would grow a trillion-fold more complex and eventually become God, perhaps had already become God, in a universe in which all pasts, presents, and futures existed side by side. Humanity was composed of separate individuals now, but an embryo at early stages was also nothing more than a ball of separate cells. But these separate cells would ultimately become connected in wondrous ways to create something unimaginably greater than themselves. And seen in this light, altruism and sociopathy were far from straightforward concepts, beyond even the complexities that Abraham Lincoln had revealed. Absolute altruism on one level could be absolute selfishness in disguise on another, and vice-versa. The cells making up the human body were selfless; gladly sacrificing themselves when necessary for the good of the organism. On the microscopic level they were being foolishly altruistic, foolishly suicidal, but on the macroscopic level they were being purely selfish—ensuring the survival of the body. And what happened when an individual cell became selfish and exhibited Nietzsche’s will to power? It became a cancer. The cell would break free of the restraints on its own division and become immortal—for a while—until its very immortality choked the entire organism to death, killing the selfish cell in the process. ~ Douglas E Richards, #NFDB
244:I remember that as I sat there, my initial reaction was: flummoxed. Pray to God to heal a baby’s defective heart? Really? But doesn’t God, being omniscient, already know that this baby’s heart is defective? And doesn’t God, being omnipotent, already have the ability to heal the baby’s heart if he wants to? Isn’t the defective heart thus part of God’s plan? What good is prayer, then? Do these people really think that God will alter his will if they only pray hard enough? And if they don’t pray hard enough, he’ll let the baby die? What kind of a God is that? Such coldly skeptical thoughts percolated through my fifteen-year-old brain. But they soon fizzled out. As I sat there looking at the crying couple, listening to the murmur of prayers all around me, my initial skepticism was soon supplanted by a sober appreciation and empathetic recognition of what I was witnessing and experiencing. Here was an entire body of people all expressing their love and sympathy for a young couple with a dying baby. Here were hundreds of people caringly, genuinely, warmly pouring out their hearts to this poor unfortunate man, woman, and child. The love and sadness in the gathering were palpable, and I “got” it. I could see the intangible benefit of such a communal act. There was that poor couple at the front of the church, crying, while everyone around them was showering them with support and hope. While I didn’t buy the literal words of the pastor, I surely understood their deeper significance: they were making these suffering people feel a bit better. And while I didn’t think the congregation’s prayers would realistically count for a hill of beans toward actually curing that baby, I was still able to see that it was a serenely beneficial act nonetheless, for it offered hope and solace to these unlucky parents, as well as to everyone else present there in that church who was feeling sadness for them, or for themselves and their own personal misfortunes. So while I sat there, absolutely convinced that there exists no God who heals defective baby hearts, I also sat there equally convinced that this mass prayer session was a deeply good thing. Or if not a deeply good thing, then at least a deeply understandable thing. I felt so sad for that young couple that day. I could not, and still cannot, fathom the pain of having a new baby who, after only a few months of life, begins to die. ~ Phil Zuckerman, #NFDB
245:91 THE HONESTY OF GOD. An omniscient and omnipotent God who does not even take care that His intentions shall be understood by His creatures could He be a God of goodness ? A God, who, for thousands of years, has permitted innumerable doubts and scruples to continue unchecked as if they were of no importance in the salvation of mankind, and who, nevertheless, announces the most dreadful consequences for anyone who mistakes his truth ? Would he not be a cruel god if, being himself in possession of the truth, he could calmly contemplate mankind, in a state of miserable torment, worrying its mind as to what was truth ? Perhaps, however, he really is a God of goodness, and was unable to express Himself more clearly ? Perhaps he lacked intelligence enough for this? Or eloquence ? All the worse ! For in such a cas6 he may have been deceived himself in regard to what he calls his " truth," and may not be far from being another " poor, deceived devil ! " Must he not therefore experience all the torments of hell at seeing His creatures suffering so much here below and even more, suffering through all eternity when he himself can neither advise nor help them, except as a deaf and dumb person, who makes all kinds of equivocal signs when his child or his dog is threatened with the most fearful danger ? A distressed believer who argues thus might be pardoned if his pity for the suffering God were greater than his pity for his "neighbours"; for they are his neighbours no longer if that most solitary and primeval being is also the greatest sufferer and stands most in need of consolation. Every religion shows some traits of the fact that it owes its origin to a state of human intellectuality which was as yet too young and immature : they all make light of the necessity for speaking the truth : as yet they know nothing of the duty of God, the duty of being clear and truthful in His communications with men. No one was more eloquent than Pascal in speaking of the " hidden God " and the reasons why He had to keep Himself hidden, all of which indicates clearly enough that Pascal himself could never make his mind easy on this point : but he speaks with such confidence that one is led to imagine that he must have been let into the secret at some time or other. He seemed to have some idea that the deus absconditus bore a few slight traces of immorality ; and he felt too much ashamed and afraid of acknowledging this to himself: consequently, like a man who is afraid, he spoke as loudly as he could. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
246: Ascent
(1)
The Silence
Into the Silence, into the Silence,
Arise, O Spirit immortal,
Away from the turning Wheel, breaking the magical Circle.
Ascend, single and deathless:
Care no more for the whispers and the shoutings in the darkness,
Pass from the sphere of the grey and the little,
Leaving the cry and the struggle,
Into the Silence for ever.
Vast and immobile, formless and marvellous,
Higher than Heaven, wider than the universe,
In a pure glory of being,
In a bright stillness of self-seeing,
Communing with a boundlessness voiceless and intimate,
Make thy knowledge too high for thought, thy joy too deep for emotion;
At rest in the unchanging Light, mute with the wordless self-vision,
Spirit, pass out of thyself; Soul, escape from the clutch of Nature.
All thou hast seen cast from thee, O Witness.
Turn to the Alone and the Absolute, turn to the Eternal:
Be only eternity, peace and silence,
O world-transcending nameless Oneness,
Spirit immortal.
(2)
Beyond the Silence
Out from the Silence, out from the Silence,
Carrying with thee the ineffable Substance,
Carrying with thee the splendour and wideness,
582
Pondicherry, c. 1927 - 1947
Ascend, O Spirit immortal.
Assigning to Time its endless meaning,
Blissful enter into the clasp of the Timeless.
Awake in the living Eternal, taken to the bosom of love of the Infinite,
Live self-found in his endless completeness,
Drowned in his joy and his sweetness,
Thy heart close to the heart of the Godhead for ever.
Vast, God-possessing, embraced by the Wonderful,
Lifted by the All-Beautiful into his infinite beauty,
Love shall envelop thee endless and fathomless,
Joy unimaginable, ecstasy illimitable,
Knowledge omnipotent, Might omniscient,
Light without darkness, Truth that is dateless.
One with the Transcendent, calm, universal,
Single and free, yet innumerably living,
All in thyself and thyself in all dwelling,
Act in the world with thy being beyond it.
Soul, exceed life's boundaries; Spirit, surpass the universe.
Outclimbing the summits of Nature,
Transcending and uplifting the soul of the finite,
Rise with the world in thy bosom,
O Word gathered into the heart of the Ineffable.
One with the Eternal, live in his infinity,
Drowned in the Absolute, found in the Godhead,
Swan of the supreme and spaceless ether wandering winged through the universe,
Spirit immortal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, - Ascent
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247:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother. Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda.
But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#NFDB
248:Speaking of gendered differences in reaction and action—you’ve talked of a certain “bullying reception” to your book here in New Zealand by a certain set of older male critics. The omniscient narrator, the idea that you “had to be everywhere,” seems to have affronted some male readers, as has the length of the book. Have you experienced this reaction in the UK, too, or in Canada? Has it been a peculiarly New Zealand response, perhaps because of the necessarily small pool of literary competition here? This is a point that has been perhaps overstated. There’s been a lot written about what I said, and in fact the way I think and feel about the reviewing culture we have in New Zealand has changed a lot through reading the responses and objections of others. Initially I used the word “bullying” only to remark that, as we all learn at school, more often than not someone’s objections are more to do with their own shortcomings or failures than with yours, and that’s something that you have to remember when you’re seeing your artistic efforts devalued or dismissed in print. I don’t feel bullied when I receive a negative review, but I do think that some of the early reviewers refused to engage with the book on its own terms, and that refusal seemed to me to have a lot to do with my gender and my age. To even things out, I called attention to the gender and age of those reviewers, which at the time seemed only fair. I feel that it’s very important to say that sexism is a hegemonic problem, written in to all kinds of cultural attitudes that are held by men and women alike. As a culture we are much more comfortable with the idea of the male thinker than the female thinker, simply because there are so many more examples, throughout history, of male thinkers; as an image and as an idea, the male thinker is familiar to us, and acts in most cases as a default. Consequently female thinkers are often unacknowledged and discouraged, sometimes tacitly, sometimes explicitly, sometimes by men, and sometimes by women. I am lucky, following the Man Booker announcement, that my work is now being read very seriously indeed; but that is a privilege conferred for the most part by the status of the prize, and I know that I am the exception rather than the rule. I’d like to see a paradigm shift, and I’m confident that one is on the way, but the first thing that needs to happen is a collective acknowledgment that reviewing culture is gendered—that everything is gendered—and that until each of us makes a conscious effort to address inequality, we will each remain a part of the problem, rather than a part of the solution. Protesting the fact of inequality is like protesting global warming or evolution: it’s a conservative blindness, born out of cowardice and hostility. ~ Eleanor Catton, #NFDB
249:The Mother once described the characteristics of the unity-body, of the future supramental body, to a young Ashramite: 'You know, if there is something on that window-sill and if I [in a supramental body] want to take it, I stretch out my hand and it becomes - wow! - long, and I have the thing in my hand without even having to get up from my chair ... Physically, I shall be able to be here and there at the same time. I shall be able to communicate with many people at the same time. To have something in my hand, I'll just have to wish for it. I think about something and I want it and it is already in my hand. With this transformed body I shall be free of the fetters of ignorance, pain, of mortality and unconsciousness. I shall be able to do many things at the same time. The transparent, luminous, strong, light, elastic body won't need any material things to subsist on ... The body can even be lengthened if one wants it to become tall, or shrunk when one wants it to be small, in any circumstances ... There will be all kinds of changes and there will be powers without limit. And it won't be something funny. Of course, I am giving you somewhat childish examples to tease you and to show the difference. 'It will be a true being, perfect in proportion, very, very beautiful and strong, light, luminous or else transparent. It will have a supple and malleable body endowed with extraordinary capacities and able to do everything; a body without age, a creation of the New Consciousness or else a transformed body such as none has ever imagined ... All that is above man will be within its reach. It will be guided by the Truth alone and nothing less. That is what it is and more even than has ever been conceived.'895 This the Mother told in French to Mona Sarkar, who noted it down as faithfully as possible and read it out to her for verification. The supramental body will not only be omnipotent and omniscient, but also omnipresent. And immortal. Not condemned to a never ending monotonous immortality - which, again, is one of our human interpretations of immortality - but for ever existing in an ecstasy of inexhaustible delight in 'the Joy that surpasses all understanding.' Moment after moment, eternity after eternity. For in that state each moment is an eternity and eternity an ever present moment. If gross matter is not capable of being used as a permanent coating of the soul in the present phase of its evolution, then it certainly is not capable of being the covering of the supramental consciousness, to form the body that has, to some extent, been described above. This means that the crux of the process of supramental transformation lies in matter; the supramental world has to become possible in matter, which at present still is gross matter. - Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were supramentalized in their mental and vital, but their enormous problem was the supramentalization of the physical body, consisting of the gross matter of the Earth. As the Mother said: 'It is matter itself that must change so that the Supramental may manifest. A new kind of matter no longer corresponding with Mendeleyev's periodic table of the elements? Is that possible?
~ Georges Van Vrekhem,#NFDB
250:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. 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. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],#NFDB
251:Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a time when Jupiter was the king of the gods, and any man who doubted his puissance was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter today? And who of Huitzilopochtli? In one year - and it is no more than five hundred years ago - 50,000 youths and maidens were slain in sacrifice to him. Today, if he is remembered at all, it is only by some vagrant savage in the depths of the Mexican forest. Huitzilopochtli, like many other gods, had no human father; his mother was a virtuous widow; he was born of an apparently innocent flirtation that she carried out with the sun.
When he frowned, his father, the sun, stood still. When he roared with rage, earthquakes engulfed whole cities. When he thirsted he was watered with 10,000 gallons of human blood. But today Huitzilopochtli is as magnificently forgotten as Allen G. Thurman. Once the peer of Allah, Buddha and Wotan, he is now the peer of Richmond P. Hobson, Alton B. Parker, Adelina Patti, General Weyler and Tom Sharkey.
Speaking of Huitzilopochtli recalls his brother Tezcatlipoca. Tezcatlipoca was almost as powerful; he consumed 25,000 virgins a year.
Lead me to his tomb: I would weep, and hang a couronne des perles. But who knows where it is? Or where the grave of Quetzalcoatl is? Or Xiuhtecuhtli? Or Centeotl, that sweet one? Or Tlazolteotl, the goddess of love? Of Mictlan? Or Xipe? Or all the host of Tzitzimitl? Where are their bones? Where is the willow on which they hung their harps? In what forlorn and unheard-of Hell do they await their resurrection morn? Who enjoys their residuary estates? Or that of Dis, whom Caesar found to be the chief god of the Celts? Of that of Tarves, the bull? Or that of Moccos, the pig? Or that of Epona, the mare? Or that of Mullo, the celestial jackass? There was a time when the Irish revered all these gods, but today even the drunkest Irishman laughs at them.
But they have company in oblivion: the Hell of dead gods is as crowded
as the Presbyterian Hell for babies. Damona is there, and Esus, and
Drunemeton, and Silvana, and Dervones, and Adsullata, and Deva, and
Bellisima, and Uxellimus, and Borvo, and Grannos, and Mogons. All mighty gods in their day, worshipped by millions, full of demands and impositions, able to bind and loose - all gods of the first class. Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them - temples with stones as large as hay-wagons.
The business of interpreting their whims occupied thousands of priests,
bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at the stake.
Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels; villages were burned, women and children butchered, cattle were driven off. Yet in the end they all withered and died, and today there is none so poor to do them reverence.
What has become of Sutekh, once the high god of the whole Nile Valley? What has become of:
Resheph
Anath
Ashtoreth
El
Nergal
Nebo
Ninib
Melek
Ahijah
Isis
Ptah
Anubis
Baal
Astarte
Hadad
Addu
Shalem
Dagon
Sharaab
Yau
Amon-Re
Osiris
Sebek
Molech?
All there were gods of the highest eminence. Many of them are mentioned with fear and trembling in the Old Testament. They ranked, five or six thousand years ago, with Yahweh Himself; the worst of them stood far higher than Thor. Yet they have all gone down the chute, and with them the following:
Bilé
Ler
Arianrhod
Morrigu
Govannon
Gunfled
Sokk-mimi
Nemetona
Dagda
Robigus
Pluto
Ops
Meditrina
Vesta
You may think I spoof. That I invent the names. I do not. Ask the rector to lend you any good treatise on comparative religion: You will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest standing and dignity-gods of civilized peoples-worshiped and believed in by millions. All were omnipotent, omniscient and immortal.
And all are dead. ~ H L Mencken,#NFDB
252:Dominions Of The Boundary
The Survival Of The Gods
1 Twilight
The gods of Nature abdicate
When man intrudes too far:
The Dryad leaves her woodland state,
And Jove his thunder-car:
No more Apollo reins the sun
Or Neptune rides the sea,
The race of Oread is run,
And Pan has ceased to be:
The formless Winds are roaming through
Druidic grove and vale:
Deserted Asgard and Meru
For Thor and Indra wail:
Majestic Forms oblivion 'scape
As kelpie, sylph, and gnome,
Astarte hides in gentler shape,
And Vestals hearthless roam:
Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers,
Fall from Their Mystic Tree,
And sacrilegious Time devours
Each Principality.
2 Sceptic:
Whatever dramas of the Vast
About our drama play,
Or necromancies from the past
Project their gloom to-day,
We seem to hear the Uncreate
Slowly let this be knownThat man has fashioned all his fate
And stands, on earth, alone:
17
That all he needs was in him stored,
Material and plan;
That ne'er was deity adored
But first was made by man.
3 The Abiding Gods:
But tho' we mumble sceptic saw,
Or sweet old prayers forget;
And tho' we dream of Higher Law,
The gods are living yet:
For they who will no Monitor,
Save One Unnamed, allow,
Allegiance deep to Love or War,
Or Chance or Wind avow:
Avow by no mere cult of names,
No pattering of creeds,
But by the sacrificial flames
Of lifelong thoughts and deeds.
When mediaeval hurricane
The gods in exile drove,
'Thrice-greatest' Hermes and his train
Usurped the seats of Jove:
Where still their Wisdom rules the spheres
Of yet uncharted Law,
By building in our nerves the fears
Our sires in Nature saw:
In other garments everywhere,
Behold, the prophetess,
Clairaudient interpreter,
Clairvoyant Pythoness!
Suburban Delphis for the rich,
The Gnosis for the staid!
Perennial by the road, the witch
Of Endor plies her trade!
18
4 Mystic:
All is not daylight in the day,
Or knowledge in the known;
The life we are, the prayer we pray,
From deep, to deep, is blown.
Though Reason claim omniscient worth
And lush her dogmas thrive:
Our present home is more than earth,
Our senses more than five.
And the mystic who sees the star-folk throng,
Where we but the noonday blue,
Knows no religion yet was wrong
And never a myth untrue.
The wrong road now was the old high way
Of young Truth's caravan;
To-morrow is not to-day, to-day,
Or the baby yet a man.
Though mountain watchmen daily see
Horizons widen far,
Dominions of the Boundary
Have ever ruled, and are.
5 Heracleitic:
The lines of godhood all converge
At last to unity:
And the images of all emerge
From every god we see.
So Hermes here and Venus there
Are Memory, are Fate;
And all are Winds; and the Sirens fair
Mute in the Wisdoms wait.
All life is a stream and mortals stand
On a heaving and passing earth:
And the land of gods is a changing land
As the land that gave it birth.
19
Life is a stream: through a gorge we go
'Tween a deep and a living deep:
Form is the gorge, and change is the flow,
And the source and the mouth are sleep.
6 Historic:
Torrential barbarisms need
Charioteers of Pain:
And wise gods sleep when men recede
To callow youth again.
But in that age-long sleep have waned
A myriad gods, or fled:
Olympic altars are disdained
And Gnostic Wisdom dead.
For what to Vandals or to Huns,
When Rome's red lips were ripe,
Were calm Hellenic Shining Ones,
Or Gnostic Archetype?
Yet Time matured to mellow wine
The Roman-Gothic must,
For Mercy and a Maid Divine
Subdued the hate and lust:
Till Hedonist and Stoic hold
Antique debates anew:
And hither return the virtues old
(Alas! and old vice too!).
Marooned no more, we sail the sea,
Ere sad gods were, we knew:
And from Platonic prows decree'The gods are Me, are You!'
7 Omni-Benevolence:
Yet, shaping slowly through the storm
And bidding darkness fade,
Evolving eyes discern a Form
No clay-creator made:
20
A Symbol Form that mirrors ours,
That is, yet is not, we,
That seems to hint of Higher Powers
Than Fate or Memory:
That takes the image as we gaze
Of the Holiest Ones that were:
For here It looks from Jesus' face,
And from Mohammed's, there:
'Tis Moses, yea, 'tis Krishna's form;
'Tis fire, 'tis star, 'tis sun:
A myriad now Its faces swarm,
Now, All and It are One:
The Chinese 'Way' one watcher sees,
And one a Brooding Dove,
One Baldur, Buddh or SocratesBut always It is Love.
~ Bernard O'Dowd,#NFDB
253: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,#NFDB
254:Many a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of Misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on -
Day and night, and night and day,
Drifting on his dreary way,
With the solid darkness black
Closing round his vessel's track:
Whilst above the sunless sky,
Big with clouds, hangs heavily,
And behind the tempest fleet
Hurries on with lightning feet,
He is ever drifted on
O'er the unreposing wave
To the haven of the grave.
What, if there no friends will greet;
What, if there no heart will meet
His with love's impatient beat;
Wander wheresoe'er he may,
Can he dream before that day
To find refuge from distress
In friendship's smile, in love's caress?
Then 'twill wreak him little woe
Whether such there be or no:
Senseless is the breast, and cold,
Which relenting love would fold;
Bloodless are the veins and chill
Which the pulse of pain did fill;
Every little living nerve
That from bitter words did swerve
Round the tortured lips and brow,
Are like sapless leaflets now
Frozen upon December's bough.
On the beach of a northern sea
Which tempests shake eternally,
As once the wretch there lay to sleep,
Lies a solitary heap,
One white skull and seven dry bones,
On the margin of the stones,
Where a few grey rushes stand,
Boundaries of the sea and land:
Nor is heard one voice of wail
But the sea-mews, as they sail
O'er the billows of the gale;
Or the whirlwind up and down
Howling, like a slaughtered town,
When a king in glory rides
Through the pomp and fratricides:
Those unburied bones around
There is many a mournful sound;
There is no lament for him,
Like a sunless vapour, dim,
Who once clothed with life and thought
What now moves nor murmurs not.
Ay, many flowering islands lie
In the waters of wide Agony:
To such a one this morn was led,
My bark by soft winds piloted:
'Mid the mountains Euganean
I stood listening to the paean
With which the legioned rooks did hail
The sun's uprise majestical;
Gathering round with wings all hoar,
Through the dewy mist they soar
Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven
Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,
Flecked with fire and azure, lie
In the unfathomable sky,
So their plumes of purple grain,
Starred with drops of golden rain,
Gleam above the sunlight woods,
As in silent multitudes
On the morning's fitful gale
Through the broken mist they sail,
And the vapours cloven and gleaming
Follow, down the dark steep streaming,
Till all is bright, and clear, and still,
Round the solitary hill.
Beneath is spread like a green sea
The waveless plain of Lombardy,
Bounded by the vaporous air,
Islanded by cities fair;
Underneath Day's azure eyes
Ocean's nursling, Venice, lies,
A peopled labyrinth of walls,
Amphitrite's destined halls,
Which her hoary sire now paves
With his blue and beaming waves.
Lo! the sun upsprings behind,
Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined
On the level quivering line
Of the waters crystalline;
And before that chasm of light,
As within a furnace bright,
Column, tower, and dome, and spire,
Shine like obelisks of fire,
Pointing with inconstant motion
From the altar of dark ocean
To the sapphire-tinted skies;
As the flames of sacrifice
From the marble shrines did rise,
As to pierce the dome of gold
Where Apollo spoke of old.
Sea-girt City, thou hast been
Ocean's child, and then his queen;
Now is come a darker day,
And thou soon must be his prey,
If the power that raised thee here
Hallow so thy watery bier.
A less drear ruin then than now,
With thy conquest-branded brow
Stooping to the slave of slaves
From thy throne, among the waves
Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew
Flies, as once before it flew,
O'er thine isles depopulate,
And all is in its ancient state,
Save where many a palace gate
With green sea-flowers overgrown
Like a rock of Ocean's own,
Topples o'er the abandoned sea
As the tides change sullenly.
The fisher on his watery way,
Wandering at the close of day,
Will spread his sail and seize his oar
Till he pass the gloomy shore,
Lest thy dead should, from their sleep
Bursting o'er the starlight deep,
Lead a rapid masque of death
O'er the waters of his path.
Those who alone thy towers behold
Quivering through aereal gold,
As I now behold them here,
Would imagine not they were
Sepulchres, where human forms,
Like pollution-nourished worms,
To the corpse of greatness cling,
Murdered, and now mouldering:
But if Freedom should awake
In her omnipotence and shake
From the Celtic Anarch's hold
All the keys of dungeons cold,
Where a hundred cities lie
Chained like thee, ingloriously,
Thou and all thy sister band
Might adorn this sunny land,
Twining memories of old time
With new virtues more sublime;
If not, perish thou ldering:
But if Freedom should awake
In her omnipotence and shake
From the Celtic Anarch's hold
All the keys of dungeons cold,
Where a hundred cities lie
Chained like thee, ingloriously,
Thou and all thy sister band
Might adorn this sunny land,
Twining memories of old time
With new virtues more sublime;
If not, perish thou and they! -
Clouds which stain truth's rising day
By her sun consumed away -
Earth can spare ye; while like flowers,
In the waste of years and hours,
From your dust new nations spring
With more kindly blossoming.
Perish -let there only be
Floating o'er thy heartless sea
As the garment of thy sky
Clothes the world immortally,
One remembrance, more sublime
Than the tattered pall of time,
Which scarce hides thy visage wan; -
That a tempest-cleaving Swan
Of the sons of Albion,
Driven from his ancestral streams
By the might of evil dreams,
Found a nest in thee; and Ocean
Welcomed him with such emotion
That its joy grew his, and sprung
From his lips like music flung
O'er a mighty thunder-fit,
Chastening terror: -what though yet
Poesy's unfailing River,
Which through Albion winds forever
Lashing with melodious wave
Many a sacred Poet's grave,
Mourn its latest nursling fled?
What though thou with all thy dead
Scarce can for this fame repay
Aught thine own? oh, rather say
Though thy sins and slaveries foul
Overcloud a sunlike soul?
As the ghost of Homer clings
Round Scamander's wasting springs;
As divinest Shakespeare's might
Fills Avon and the world with light
Like omniscient power which he
Imaged 'mid mortality;
As the love from Petrarch's urn,
Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
A quenchless lamp by which the heart
Sees things unearthly; -so thou art,
Mighty spirit -so shall be
The City that did refuge thee.
Lo, the sun floats up the sky
Like thought-winged Liberty,
Till the universal light
Seems to level plain and height;
From the sea a mist has spread,
And the beams of morn lie dead
On the towers of Venice now,
Like its glory long ago.
By the skirts of that gray cloud
Many-domed Padua proud
Stands, a peopled solitude,
'Mid the harvest-shining plain,
Where the peasant heaps his grain
In the garner of his foe,
And the milk-white oxen slow
With the purple vintage strain,
Heaped upon the creaking wain,
That the brutal Celt may swill
Drunken sleep with savage will;
And the sickle to the sword
Lies unchanged, though many a lord,
Like a weed whose shade is poison,
Overgrows this region's foison,
Sheaves of whom are ripe to come
To destruction's harvest-home:
Men must reap the things they sow,
Force from force must ever flow,
Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe
That love or reason cannot change
The despot's rage, the slave's revenge.
Padua, thou within whose walls
Those mute guests at festivals,
Son and Mother, Death and Sin,
Played at dice for Ezzelin,
Till Death cried, "I win, I win!"
And Sin cursed to lose the wager,
But Death promised, to assuage her,
That he would petition for
Her to be made Vice-Emperor,
When the destined years were o'er,
Over all between the Po
And the eastern Alpine snow,
Under the mighty Austrian.
She smiled so as Sin only can,
And since that time, ay, long before,
Both have ruled from shore to shore, -
That incestuous pair, who follow
Tyrants as the sun the swallow,
As Repentance follows Crime,
And as changes follow Time.
In thine halls the lamp of learning,
Padua, now no more is burning;
Like a meteor, whose wild way
Is lost over the grave of day,
It gleams betrayed and to betray:
Once remotest nations came
To adore that sacred flame,
When it lit not many a hearth
On this cold and gloomy earth:
Now new fires from antique light
Spring beneath the wide world's might;
But their spark lies dead in thee,
Trampled out by Tyranny.
As the Norway woodman quells,
In the depth of piny dells,
One light flame among the brakes,
While the boundless forest shakes,
And its mighty trunks are torn
By the fire thus lowly born:
The spark beneath his feet is dead,
He starts to see the flames it fed
Howling through the darkened sky
With a myriad tongues victoriously,
And sinks down in fear: so thou,
O Tyranny, beholdest now
Light around thee, and thou hearest
The loud flames ascend, and fearest:
Grovel on the earth; ay, hide
In the dust thy purple pride!
Noon descends around me now:
'Tis the noon of autumn's glow,
When a soft and purple mist
Like a vapourous amethyst,
Or an air-dissolved star
Mingling light and fragrance, far
From the curved horizon's bound
To the point of Heaven's profound,
Fills the overflowing sky;
And the plains that silent lie
Underneath the leaves unsodden
Where the infant Frost has trodden
With his morning-winged feet,
Whose bright print is gleaming yet;
And the red and golden vines,
Piercing with their trellised lines
The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;
The dun and bladed grass no less,
Pointing from this hoary tower
In the windless air; the flower
Glimmering at my feet; the line
Of the olive-sandalled Apennine
In the south dimly islanded;
And the Alps, whose snows are spread
High between the clouds and sun;
And of living things each one;
And my spirit which so long
Darkened this swift stream of song, -
Interpenetrated lie
By the glory of the sky:
Be it love, light, harmony,
Odour, or the soul of all
Which from Heaven like dew doth fall,
Or the mind which feeds this verse
Peopling the lone universe.
Noon descends, and after noon
Autumn's evening meets me soon,
Leading the infantine moon,
And that one star, which to her
Almost seems to minister
Half the crimson light she brings
From the sunset's radiant springs:
And the soft dreams of the morn
(Which like winged winds had borne
To that silent isle, which lies
Mid remembered agonies,
The frail bark of this lone being)
Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,
And its ancient pilot, Pain,
Sits beside the helm again.
Other flowering isles must be
In the sea of Life and Agony:
Other spirits float and flee
O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps,
On some rock the wild wave wraps,
With folded wings they waiting sit
For my bark, to pilot it
To some calm and blooming cove,
Where for me, and those I love,
May a windless bower be built,
Far from passion, pain, and guilt,
In a dell mid lawny hills,
Which the wild sea-murmur fills,
And soft sunshine, and the sound
Of old forests echoing round,
And the light and smell divine
Of all flowers that breathe and shine:
We may live so happy there,
That the Spirits of the Air,
Envying us, may even entice
To our healing Paradise
The polluting multitude;
But their rage would be subdued
By that clime divine and calm,
And the winds whose wings rain balm
On the uplifted soul, and leaves
Under which the bright sea heaves;
While each breathless interval
In their whisperings musical
The inspired soul supplies
With its own deep melodies;
And the love which heals all strife
Circling, like the breath of life,
All things in that sweet abode
With its own mild brotherhood:
They, not it, would change; and soon
Every sprite beneath the moon
Would repent its envy vain,
And the earth grow young again.
Composed at Este, October, 1818. Published with Rosalind and Helen, 1819. Amongst the late Mr. Fredk. Locker-Lampsons collections at Rowfant there is a manuscript of the lines (167-205) on Byron, interpolated after the completion of the poem.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills
,#NFDB
255:The Kalevala - Rune Xi
LEMMINKAINEN'S LAMENT.
This the time to sing of Ahti,
Son of Lempo, Kaukomieli,
Also known as Lemminkainen.
Ahti was the king of islands,
Grew amid the island-dwellings,
At the site of his dear mother,
On the borders of the ocean,
On the points of promontories.
Ahti fed upon the salmon,
Fed upon the ocean whiting,
Thus became a mighty hero,
In his veins the blood of ages,
Read erect and form commanding,
Growth of mind and body perfect
But alas! he had his failings,
Bad indeed his heart and morals,
Roaming in unworthy places,
Staying days and nights in sequences
At the homes of merry maidens,
At the dances of the virgins,
With the maids of braided tresses.
Up in Sahri lived a maiden,
Lived the fair and winsome Kulli,
Lovely as a summer-flower,
From a kingly house descended,
Grew to perfect form and beauty,
Living in her father's cottage,
Home of many ancient heroes,
Beautiful was she and queenly,
Praised throughout the whole of Ehstland;
From afar men came to woo her,
To the birthplace of the virgin,
To the household of her mother.
For his son the Day-star wooes her,
But she will not go to Sun-land,
Will not shine beside the Day-star,
128
In his haste to bring the summer.
For her son, the bright Moon wooes her,
But she will not go to Moon-land,
By the bright Moon will not glimmer,
Will not run through boundless ether.
For his son the Night-star wooes her,
But she will not go to Star-land,
Will not twinkle in the starlight,
Through the dreary nights in winter.
Lovers come from distant Ehstlaud,
Others come from far-off Ingern,
But they cannot win the maiden,
This the answer that she gives them
'Vainly are your praises lavished
Vainly is your silver offered,
Wealth and praise are no temptation;
Never shall I go to Ehstland,
Never shall I go a-rowing
On the waters of the Ingern,
Shall not cross the Sahri-waters,
Never eat the fish of Ehstland,
Never taste the Ehstland viands.
Ingerland shall never see me,
Will not row upon her rivers,
Will not step within her borders;
Hunger there, and fell starvation,
Wood is absent, fuel wanting,
Neither water, wheat, nor barley,
Even rye is not abundant.'
Lemminkainen of the islands,
Warlike hero, Kaukomieli,
Undertakes to win the maiden,
Woo and win the Sahri-flower,
Win a bride so highly honored,
Win the maid with golden tresses,
Win the Sahri maid of beauty;
But his mother gives him warning:
'Nay,' replies his gray-haired mother,
'Do not woo, my son beloved,
Maiden of a higher station;
She will never make thee happy
With her lineage of Sahri.'
129
Spake the hero, Lemminkainen,
These the words of Kaukomieli:
'Should I come from lowly station,
Though my tribe is not the highest,
I shall woo to please my fancy,
Woo the maiden fair and lovely,
Choose a wife for worth and beauty.'
This the anxious mother's answer:
'Lemminkainen, son beloved,
Listen to advice maternal:
Do not go to distant Sahri,
To her tribe of many branches;
All the maidens there will taunt thee,
All the women will deride thee.'
Lemminkainen, little hearing,
Answers thus his mother's pleading:
'I will still the sneers of women,
Silence all the taunts of maidens,
I will crush their haughty bosoms,
Smite the hands and cheeks of infants;
Surely this will check their insults,
Fitting ending to derision!'
This the answer of' the mother:
'Woe is me, my son beloved!
Woe is me, my life hard-fated!
Shouldst thou taunt the Sahri daughters.
Or insult the maids of virtue,
Shouldst thou laugh them to derision,
There will rise a great contention,
Fierce the battle that will follow.
All the hosts of Sahri-suitors,
Armed in thousands will attack thee,
And will slay thee for thy folly.'
Nothing listing, Lemminkainen,
Heeding not his mother's warning,
Led his war-horse from the stables,
Quickly hitched the fiery charger,
Fleetly drove upon his journey,
To the distant Sahri-village,
There to woo the Sahri-flower,
There to win the Bride of Beauty.
All the aged Sahri-women,
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All the young and lovely maidens
Laughed to scorn the coming stranger
Driving careless through the alleys,
Wildly driving through the court-yard,
Now upsetting in the gate-way,
Breaking shaft, and hame, and runner.
Then the fearless Lemminkainen,
Mouth awry and visage wrinkled,
Shook his sable locks and answered:
'Never in my recollection
Have I heard or seen such treatment,
Never have I been derided,
Never suffered sneers of women,
Never suffered scorn of virgins,
Not in my immortal life-time.
Is there any place befitting
On the Sahri-plains and pastures,
Where to join in songs and dances?
Is there here a hall for pleasure,
Where the Sahri-maidens linger,
Merry maids with braided tresses?'
Thereupon the Sahri-maidens
Answered from their promontory.,
'Room enough is there in Sahri,
Room upon the Sahri-pastures,
Room for pleasure-halls and dances;
Sing and dance upon our meadows,
Be a shepherd on the mountains,
Shepherd-boys have room for dancing;
Indolent the Sahri-children,
But the colts are fat and frisky.'
Little caring, Lemminkainen
Entered service there as shepherd,
In the daytime on the pastures,
In the evening, making merry
At the games of lively maidens,
At the dances with the virgins,
With the maids with braided tresses.
Thus it was that Lemminkainen,
Thus the shepherd, Kaukomieli,
Quickly hushed the women's laughter,
Quickly quenched the taunts of maidens,
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Quickly silenced their derision.
All the dames and Sahri-daughters
Soon were feasting Lemminkainen,
At his side they danced and lingered.
Only was there one among them,
One among the Sahri-virgins,
Harbored neither love nor wooers,
Favored neither gods nor heroes,
This the lovely maid Kyllikki,
This the Sahri's fairest flower.
Lemminkainen, full of pleasure,
Handsome hero, Kaukomieli,
Rowed a hundred boats in pieces,
Pulled a thousand oars to fragments,
While he wooed the Maid of Beauty,
Tried to win the fair Kyllikki.
Finally the lovely maiden,
Fairest daughter of the Northland,
Thus addresses Lemminkainen:
'Why dost linger here, thou weak one,
Why dost murmur on these borders,
Why come wooing at my fireside,
Wooing me in belt of copper?
Have no time to waste upon thee,
Rather give this stone its polish,
Rather would I turn the pestle
In the heavy sandstone mortar;
Rather sit beside my mother
In the dwellings of my father.
Never shall I heed thy wooing,
Neither wights nor whisks I care for,
Sooner have a slender husband
Since I have a slender body;
Wish to have him fine of figure,
Since perchance I am well-shapen;
Wish to have him tall and stately,
Since my form perchance is queenly;
Never waste thy time in wooing
Saliri's maid and favored flower.'
Time had gone but little distance,
Scarcely had a month passed over,
When upon a merry evening,
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Where the maidens meet for dancing,
In the glen beyond the meadow,
On a level patch of verdure,
Came too soon the maid Kyllikki,
Sahri's pride, the Maid of Beauty;
Quickly followed Lemminkainen,
With his stallion proudly prancing,
Fleetest racer of the Northland,
Fleetly drives beyond the meadow,
Where the maidens meet for dancing,
Snatches quick the maid Kyllikki,
On the settle seats the maiden,
Quickly draws the leathern cover,
And adjusts the brichen cross-bar,
Whips his courser to a gallop.
With a rush, and roar, and rattle,
Speeds he homeward like the storm-wind,
Speaks these words to those that listen:
'Never, never, anxious maidens,
Must ye give the information,
That I carried off Kyllikki
To my distant home and kindred.
If ye do not heed this order,
Ye shall badly fare as maidens;
I shall sing to war your suitors,
Sing them under spear and broadsword,
That for months, and years, and ages,
Never ye will see their faces,
Never hear their merry voices,
Never will they tread these uplands,
Never will they join these dances,
Never will they drive these highways.'
Sad the wailing of Kyllikki,
Sad the weeping flower of Sahri!
Listen to her tearful pleading:
'Give, O give me back my freedom,
Free me from the throes of thralldom,
Let this maiden wander homeward,
By some foot-path let me wander
To my father who is grieving,
To my mother who is weeping;
Let me go or I will curse thee!
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If thou wilt not give me freedom,
Wilt not let me wander homeward,
Where my loved ones wait my coming,
I have seven stalwart brothers,
Seven sons of father's brother,
Seven sons of mother's sister,
Who pursue the tracks of red-deer,
Hunt the hare upon the heather;
They will follow thee and slay thee,
Thus I'll gain my wished-for freedom.'
Lemminkainen, little heeding,
Would not grant the maiden's wishes,
Would not heed her plea for mercy.
Spake again the waiting virgin,
Pride and beauty of the Northland:
'Joyful was I with my kindred,
Joyful born and softly nurtured
Merrily I spent my childhood,
Happy I, in virgin-freedom,
In the dwelling of my father,
By the bedside of my mother,
With my lineage in Sahri;
But alas! all joy has vanished,
All my happiness departed,
All my maiden beauty waneth
Since I met thine evil spirit,
Shameless hero of dishonor,
Cruel fighter of the islands,
Merciless in civil combat.'
Spake the hero, Lemminkainen,
These the words of Kaukomieli:
'Dearest maiden, fair Kyllikki,
My sweet strawberry of Pohya,
Still thine anguish, cease thy weeping,
Be thou free from care and sorrow,
Never shall I do thee evil,
Never will my hands maltreat thee,
Never will mine arms abuse thee,
Never will my tongue revile thee,
Never will my heart deceive thee.
'Tell me why thou hast this anguish,
Why thou hast this bitter sorrow,
134
Why this sighing and lamenting,
Tell me why this wail of sadness?
Banish all thy cares and sorrows,
Dry thy tears and still thine anguish,
I have cattle, food, and shelter,
I have home, and friends, and kindred,
Kine upon the plains and uplands,
In the marshes berries plenty,
Strawberries upon the mountains
I have kine that need no milking,
Handsome kine that need no feeding,
Beautiful if not well-tended;
Need not tie them up at evening,
Need not free them in the morning,
Need not hunt them, need not feed them,
Need not give them salt nor water.
'Thinkest thou my race is lowly,
Dost thou think me born ignoble,
Does my lineage agrieve thee?
Was not born in lofty station,
From a tribe of noble heroes,
From a worthy race descended;
But I have a sword of fervor,
And a spear yet filled with courage,
Surely these are well descended,
These were born from hero-races,
Sharpened by the mighty Hisi,
By the gods were forged and burnished;
Therefore will I give thee greatness,
Greatness of my race and nation,
With my broadsword filled with fervor,
With my spear still filled with courage.'
Anxiously the sighing maiden
Thus addresses Lemminkainen:
'O thou Ahti, son of Lempo,
Wilt thou take this trusting virgin,
As thy faithful life-companion,
Take me under thy protection,
Be to me a faithful husband,
Swear to me an oath of honor,
That thou wilt not go to battle,
When for gold thou hast a longing,
135
When thou wishest gold and silver?'
This is Lemminkainen's answer:
I will swear an oath of honor,
That I'll never go to battle,
When for gold I feel a longing,
When I wish for gold and silver.
Swear thou also on thine honor,
Thou wilt go not to the village,
When desire for dance impels thee,
Wilt not visit village-dances.'
Thus the two made oath together,
Registered their vows in heaven,
Vowed before omniscient Ukko,
Ne'er to go to war vowed Ahti,
Never to the dance, Kyllikki.
Lemminkainen, full of joyance,
Snapped his whip above his courser,
Whipped his racer to a gallop,
And these words the hero uttered:
'Fare ye well, ye Sahri-meadows,
Roots of firs, and stumps of birch-trees.
That I wandered through in summer,
That I travelled o'er in winter,
Where ofttimes in rainy seasons,
At the evening hour I lingered,
When I sought to win the virgin,
Sought to win the Maid of Beauty,
Fairest of the Sahri-flowers.
Fare ye well, ye Sahri-woodlands,
Seas and oceans, lakes and rivers,
Vales and mountains, isles and inlets,
Once the home of fair Kyllikki!'
Quick the racer galloped homeward,
Galloped on along the highway,
Toward the meadows of Wainola,
To the plains of Kalevala.
As they neared the Ahti-dwellings,
Thus Kyllikki spake in sorrow:
'Cold and drear is thy cottage,
Seeming like a place deserted;
Who may own this dismal cabin,
Who the one so little honored?'
136
Spake the hero, Lemminkainen,
These the words that Ahti uttered:
'Do not grieve about my cottage,
Have no care about my chambers;
I shall build thee other dwellings,
I shall fashion them much better,
Beams, and posts, and sills, and rafters,
Fashioned from the sacred birch-wood.'
Now they reach the home of Ahti,
Lemminkainen's home and birthplace,
Enter they his mother's cottage;
There they meet his aged mother,
These the words the mother uses:
'Long indeed hast thou been absent,
Long in foreign lands hast wandered,
Long in Sahri thou hast lingered!'
This is Lemminkainen's answer:
'All the host of Sahri-women,
All the chaste and lovely maidens,
All the maids with braided tresses,
Well have paid for their derision,
For their scorn and for their laughter,
That they basely heaped upon me.
I have brought the best among them
In my sledge to this thy cottage;
Well I wrapped her in my fur-robes,
Kept her warm enwrapped in bear-skin,
Brought her to my mother's dwelling,
As my faithful life-companion;
Thus I paid the scornful maidens,
Paid them well for their derision.
'Cherished mother of my being,
I have found the long-sought jewel,
I have won the Maid of Beauty.
Spread our couch with finest linen,
For our heads the softest pillows,
On our table rarest viands,
So that I may dwell in pleasure
With my spouse, the bride of honor,
With the pride of distant Sahri.'
This the answer of the mother:
'Be thou praised, O gracious Ukko,
137
Loudly praised, O thou Creator,
Since thou givest me a daughter,
Ahti's bride, my second daughter,
Who can stir the fire at evening,
Who can weave me finest fabrics,
Who can twirl the useful spindle,
Who can rinse my silken ribbons,
Who can full the richest garments.
'Son beloved, praise thy Maker,
For the winning of this virgin,
Pride and joy of distant Sahri
Kind indeed is thy Creator,
Wise the ever-knowing Ukko!
Pure the snow upon the mountains,
Purer still thy Bride of Beauty;
White the foam upon the ocean,
Whiter still her virgin-spirit;
Graceful on the lakes, the white-swan,
Still more graceful, thy companion:
Beautiful the stars in heaven,
Still more beautiful, Kyllikki.
Larger make our humble cottage,
Wider build the doors and windows,
Fashion thou the ceilings higher,
Decorate the walls in beauty,
Now that thou a bride hast taken
From a tribe of higher station,
Purest maiden of creation,
From the meadow-lands of Sahri,
From the upper shores of Northland.'
~ Elias Lönnrot,#NFDB
256:The Kalevala - Rune Xix
ILMARINEN'S WOOING.
ILMARINEN, hero-blacksmith,
The eternal metal-worker,
Hastens forward to the court-room
Of the hostess of Pohyola,
Of the master of the Northland,
Hastens through the open portals
Into Louhi's home and presence.
Servants come with silver pitchers,
Filled with Northland's richest brewing;
Honey-drink is brought and offered
To the blacksmith of Wainola,
Ilmarinen thus replying:
'I shall not in all my life-time
Taste the drink that thou hast brought me,
Till I see the Maid of Beauty,
Fairy Maiden of the Rainbow;
I will drink with her in gladness,
For whose hand I journey hither.'
Spake the hostess of Pohyola:
'Trouble does the one selected
Give to him that wooes and watches;
Not yet are her feet in sandals,
Thine affianced is not ready.
Only canst thou woo my daughter,
Only canst thou win the maiden,
When thou hast by aid of magic
Plowed the serpent-field of Hisi,
Plowed the field of hissing vipers,
Touching neither beam nor handles.
Once this field was plowed by Piru,
Lempo furrowed it with horses,
With a plowshare made of copper,
With a beam of flaming iron;
Never since has any hero
Brought this field to cultivation.'
Ilmarinen of Wainola
172
Straightway hastens to the chamber
Of the Maiden of the Rainbow,
Speaks these words in hesitation:
'Thou of Night and Dawn the daughter,
Tell me, dost thou not remember
When for thee I forged the Sampo,
Hammered thee the lid in colors?
Thou didst swear by oath the strougest,
By the forge and by the anvil,
By the tongs and by the hammer,
In the ears of the Almighty,
And before omniscient Ukko,
Thou wouldst follow me hereafter,
Be my bride, my life-companion,
Be my honored wife forever.
Now thy mother is exacting,
Will not give to me her daughter,
Till by means of magic only,
I have plowed the field of serpents,
Plowed the hissing soil of Hisi.'
The affianced Bride of Beauty
Gives this answer to the suitor:
'O, thou blacksmith, Ilmarinen,
The eternal wonder-forger,
Forge thyself a golden plowshare,
Forge the beam of shining silver,
And of copper forge the handles;
Then with ease, by aid of magic,
Thou canst plow the field of serpents,
Plow the hissing soil of Hisi.'
Ilmarinen, welcome suitor,
Straightway builds a forge and smithy,
Places gold within the furnace,
In the forge he lays the silver,
Forges then a golden plowshare,
Forges, too, a beam of silver,
Forges handles out of copper,
Forges boots and gloves of iron,
Forges him a mail of metal,
For his limbs a safe protection,
Safe protection for his body.
Then a horse of fire selecting,
173
Harnesses the flaming stallion,
Goes to plow the field of serpents,
Plow the viper-lands of Hisi.
In the field were countless vipers,
Serpents there of every species,
Crawling, writhing, hissing, stinging,
Harmless all against the hero,
Thus he stills the snakes of Lempo:
'Vipers, ye by God created,
Neither best nor worst of creatures,
Ye whose wisdom comes from Ukko,
And whose venom comes from Hisi,
Ukko is your greater Master,
By His will your heads are lifted;
Get ye hence before my plowing,
Writ-he ye through the grass and stubble,
Crawl ye to the nearest thicket,
Keep your heads beneath the heather,
Hunt our holes to Mana's kingdom
If your poison-heads be lifted,
Then will mighty Ukko smite them
'With his iron-pointed arrows,
With the lightning of his anger.'
Thus the blacksmith, Ilmarinen,
Safely plows the field of serpents,
Lifts the vipers in his plowing,
Buries them beneath the furrow,
Harmless all against his magic.
When the task had been completed,
Ilmarinen, quick returning,
Thus addressed Pohyola's hostess:
'I have plowed the field of Hisi,
Plowed the field of hissing serpents,
Stilled and banished all the vipers;
Give me, ancient dame, thy daughter,
Fairest maiden of the Northland.
Spake the hostess of Pohyola:
'Shall not grant to thee my daughter,
Shall not give my lovely virgin,
Till Tuoni's bear is muzzled,
Till Manala's wolf is conquered,
In the forests of the Death-land,
174
In the boundaries of Mana.
Hundreds have been sent to hunt him,
So one yet has been successful,
All have perished in Manala.'
Thereupon young Ilmarinen
To the maiden's chamber hastens,
Thus addresses his affianced:
'Still another test demanded,
I must go to Tuonela,
Bridle there the bear of Mana,
Bring him from the Death-land forests,
From Tuoni's grove and empire!
This advice the maiden gives him:
'O thou artist, Ilmarinen,
The eternal metal-worker,
Forge of steel a magic bridle,
On a rock beneath the water,
In the foaming triple currents;
Make the straps of steel and copper,
Bridle then the bear of Mana,
Lead him from Tuoni's forests.'
Then the blacksmith, Ilmarinen,
Forged of steel a magic bridle,
On a rock beneath the water,
In the foam of triple currents;
Made the straps of steel and copper,
Straightway went the bear to muzzle,
In the forests of the Death-land,
Spake these words in supplication:
'Terhenetar, ether-maiden,
Daughter of the fog and snow-flake,
Sift the fog and let it settle
O'er the bills and lowland thickets,
Where the wild-bear feeds and lingers,
That he may not see my coming,
May not hear my stealthy footsteps!'
Terhenetar hears his praying,
Makes the fog and snow-flake settle
On the coverts of the wild-beasts;
Thus the bear he safely bridles,
Fetters him in chains of magic,
In the forests of Tuoni,
175
In the blue groves of Manala.
When this task had been completed,
Ilmarinen, quick returning,
Thus addressed the ancient Louhi:
'Give me, worthy dame, thy daughter,
Give me now my bride affianced,
I have brought the bear of Mana
From Tuoni's fields and forests.'
Spake the hostess of Pohyola
To the blacksmith, Ilmarinen:
'I will only give my daughter,
Give to thee the Maid of Beauty,
When the monster-pike thou catchest
In the river of Tuoni,
In Manala's fatal waters,
Using neither hooks, nor fish-nets,
Neither boat, nor fishing-tackle;
Hundreds have been sent to catch him,
No one yet has been successful,
All have perished in Manala.'
Much disheartened, Ilmarinen
Hastened to the maiden's chamber,
Thus addressed the rainbow-maiden:
'Now a third test is demanded,
Much more difficult than ever;
I must catch the pike of Mana,
In the river of Tuoni,
And without my fishing-tackle,
Hard the third test of the hero!
This advice the maiden gives him:
'O thou hero, Ilmarinen,
Never, never be discouraged:
In thy furnace, forge an eagle,
From the fire of ancient magic;
He will catch the pike of Mana,
Catch the monster-fish in safety,
From the death-stream of Tuoni,
From Manala's fatal waters.'
Then the suitor, Ilmarinen,
The eternal artist-forgeman,
In the furnace forged an eagle
From the fire of ancient wisdom;
176
For this giant bird of magic
Forged he talons out of iron,
And his beak of steel and copper;
Seats himself upon the eagle,
On his back between the wing-bones,
Thus addresses he his creature,
Gives the bird of fire, this order:
'Mighty eagle, bird of beauty,
Fly thou whither I direct thee,
To Tuoni's coal-black river,
To the blue deeps of the Death-stream,
Seize the mighty fish of Mana,
Catch for me this water-monster.'
Swiftly flies the magic eagle,
Giant-bird of worth and wonder,
To the river of Tuoni,
There to catch the pike of Mana;
One wing brushes on the waters,
While the other sweeps the heavens;
In the ocean dips his talons,
Whets his beak on mountain-ledges.
Safely landing, Ilmarinen,
The immortal artist-forger,
Hunts the monster of the Death-stream,
While the eagle hunts and fishes
In the waters of Manala.
From the river rose a monster,
Grasped the blacksmith, Ilmarinen,
Tried to drag him to his sea-cave;
Quick the eagle pounced upon him,
With his metal-beak he seized him,
Wrenched his head, and rent his body,
Hurled him back upon the bottom
Of the deep and fatal river,
Freed his master, Ilmarinen.
Then arose the pike of Mana,
Came the water-dog in silence,
Of the pikes was not the largest,
Nor belonged he to the smallest;
Tongue the length of double hatchets,
Teeth as long as fen-rake handles,
Mouth as broad as triple streamlets,
177
Back as wide as seven sea-boats,
Tried to snap the magic blacksmith,
Tried to swallow Ilmarinen.
Swiftly swoops the mighty eagle,
Of the birds was not the largest,
Nor belonged he to the smallest;
Mouth as wide as seven streamlets,
Tongue as long as seven javelins,
Like five crooked scythes his talons;
Swoops upon the pike of Mana.
Quick the giant fish endangered,
Darts and flounders in the river,
Dragging down the mighty eagle,
Lashing up the very bottom
To the surface of the river;
When the mighty bird uprising
Leaves the wounded pike in water,
Soars aloft on worsted pinions
To his home in upper ether;
Soars awhile, and sails, and circles,
Circles o'er the reddened waters,
Swoops again on lightning-pinions,
Strikes with mighty force his talons
Into the shoulder of his victim;
Strikes the second of his talons
On the flinty mountain-ledges,
On the rocks with iron hardened;
From the cliffs rebound his talons,
Slip the flinty rocks o'erhanging,
And the monster-pike resisting
Dives again beneath the surface
To the bottom of the river,
From the talons of the eagle;
Deep, the wounds upon the body
Of the monster of Tuoni.
Still a third time soars the eagle,
Soars, and sails, and quickly circles,
Swoops again upon the monster,
Fire out-shooting from his pinoins,
Both his eyeballs flashing lightning;
With his beak of steel and copper
Grasps again the pike of Mana
178
Firmly planted are his talons
In the rocks and in his victim,
Drags the monster from the river,
Lifts the pike above the waters,
From Tuoni's coal-black river,
From the blue-back of Manala.
Thus the third time does the eagle
Bring success from former failures;
Thus at last the eagle catches
Mana's pike, the worst of fishes,
Swiftest swimmer of the waters,
From the river of Tuoni;
None could see Manala's river,
For the myriad of fish-scales;
Hardly could one see through ether,
For the feathers of the eagle,
Relicts of the mighty contest.
Then the bird of copper talons
Took the pike, with scales of silver,
To the pine-tree's topmost branches,
To the fir-tree plumed with needles,
Tore the monster-fish in pieces,
Ate the body of his victim,
Left the head for Ilmarinen.
Spake the blacksmith to the eagle:
'O thou bird of evil nature,
What thy thought and what thy motive?
Thou hast eaten what I needed,
Evidence of my successes;
Thoughtless eagle, witless instinct,
Thus to mar the spoils of conquest!'
But the bird of metal talons
Hastened onward, soaring upward,
Rising higher into ether,
Rising, flying, soaring, sailing,
To the borders of the long-clouds,
Made the vault of ether tremble,
Split apart the dome of heaven,
Broke the colored bow of Ukko,
Tore the Moon-horns from their sockets,
Disappeared beyond the Sun-land,
To the home of the triumphant.
179
Then the blacksmith, Ilmarinen,
Took the pike-head to the hostess
Of the ever-dismal Northland,
Thus addressed the ancient Louhi:
'Let this head forever serve thee
As a guest-bench for thy dwelling,
Evidence of hero-triumphs;
I have caught the pike of Mana,
I have done as thou demandest,
Three my victories in Death-land,
Three the tests of magic heroes;
Wilt thou give me now thy daughter,
Give to me the Maid of Beauty?'
Spake the hostess of Pohyola:
'Badly is the test accomplished,
Thou has torn the pike in pieces,
From his neck the head is severed,
Of his body thou hast eaten,
Brought to me this worthless relic!
These the words of Ilmarinen:
'When the victory is greatest,
Do we suffer greatest losses!
From the river of Tuoni,
From the kingdom of Manala,
I have brought to thee this trophy,
Thus the third task is completed.
Tell me is the maiden ready,
Wilt thou give the bride affianced?
Spake the hostess of Pohyola:
'I will give to thee my daughter,
Will prepare my snow-white virgin,
For the suitor, Ilmarinen;
Thou hast won the Maid of Beauty,
Bride is she of thine hereafter,
Fit companion of thy fireside,
Help and joy of all thy lifetime.'
On the floor a child was sitting,
And the babe this tale related.
'There appeared within this dwelling,
Came a bird within the castle,
From the East came flying hither,
From the East, a monstrous eagle,
180
One wing touched the vault of heaven,
While the other swept the ocean;
With his tail upon the waters,
Reached his beak beyond the cloudlets,
Looked about, and eager watching,
Flew around, and sailing, soaring,
Flew away to hero-castle,
Knocked three times with beak of copper
On the castle-roof of iron;
But the eagle could not enter.
'Then the eagle, looking round him,
Flew again, and sailed, and circled,
Flew then to the mothers' castle,
Loudly rapped with heavy knocking
On the mothers' roof of copper;
But the eagle could not enter.
'Then the eagle, looking round him,
Flew a third time, sailing, soaring,
Flew then to the virgins' castle,
Knocked again with beak of copper,
On the virgins' roof of linen,
Easy for him there to enter;
Flew upon the castle-chimney,
Quick descending to the chamber,
Pulled the clapboards from the studding,
Tore the linen from the rafters,
Perched upon the chamber-window,
Near the walls of many colors,
On the cross-bars gaily-feathered,
Looked upon the curly-beaded,
Looked upon their golden ringlets,
Looked upon the snow-white virgins,
On the purest of the maidens,
On the fairest of the daughters,
On the maid with pearly necklace,
On the maiden wreathed in flowers;
Perched awhile, and looked, admiring,
Swooped upon the Maid of Beauty,
On the purest of the virgins,
On the whitest, on the fairest,
On the stateliest and grandest,
Swooped upon the rainbow-daughter
181
Of the dismal Sariola;
Grasped her in his mighty talons,
Bore away the Maid of Beauty,
Maid of fairest form and feature,
Maid adorned with pearly necklace,
Decked in feathers iridescent,
Fragrant flowers upon her bosom,
Scarlet band around her forehead,
Golden rings upon her fingers,
Fairest maiden of the Northland.'
Spake the hostess of Pohyola,
When the babe his tale had ended:
'Tell me bow, my child beloved,
Thou hast learned about the maiden,
Hast obtained the information,
How her flaxen ringlets nestled,
How the maiden's silver glistened,
How the virgin's gold was lauded.
Shone the silver Sun upon thee,
Did the moonbeams bring this knowledge?'
From the floor the child made answer:
'Thus I gained the information,
Moles of good-luck led me hither,
To the home, of the distinguished,
To the guest-room of the maiden,
Good-name bore her worthy father,
He that sailed the magic vessel;
Better-name enjoyed the mother,
She that baked the bread of barley,
She that kneaded wheaten biscuits,
Fed her many guests in Northland.
'Thus the information reached me,
Thus the distant stranger heard it,
Heard the virgin had arisen:
Once I walked within the court-yard,
Stepping near the virgin's chamber,
At an early hour of morning,
Ere the Sun had broken slumber
Whirling rose the soot in cloudlets,
Blackened wreaths of smoke came rising
From the chamber of the maiden,
From thy daughter's lofty chimney;
182
There the maid was busy grinding,
Moved the handles of the millstone
Making voices like the cuckoo,
Like the ducks the side-holes sounded,
And the sifter like the goldfinch,
Like the sea-pearls sang the grindstones.
'Then a second time I wandered
To the border of the meadow
In the forest was the maiden
Rocking on a fragrant hillock,
Dyeing red in iron vessels,
And in copper kettles, yellow.
'Then a third time did I wander
To the lovely maiden's window;
There I saw thy daughter weaving,
Heard the flying of her shuttle,
Heard the beating of her loom-lathe,
Heard the rattling of her treddles,
Heard the whirring of her yarn-reel.'
Spake the hostess of Pohyola:
'Now alas! beloved daughter,
I have often taught this lesson:
'Do not sing among the pine-trees,
Do not call adown the valleys,
Do not hang thy head in walking,
Do not bare thine arms, nor shoulders,
Keep the secrets of thy bosom,
Hide thy beauty and thy power.'
'This I told thee in the autumn,
Taught thee in the summer season,
Sang thee in the budding spring-time,
Sang thee when the snows were falling:
'Let us build a place for hiding,
Let us build the smallest windows,
Where may weave my fairest daughter,
Where my maid may ply her shuttle,
Where my joy may work unnoticed
By the heroes of the Northland,
By the suitors of Wainola.''
From the floor the child made answer,
Fourteen days the young child numbered;
'Easy 'tis to hide a war-horse
183
In the Northland fields and stables;
Hard indeed to hide a maiden,
Having lovely form and features!
Build of stone a distant castle
In the middle of the ocean,
Keep within thy lovely maiden,
Train thou there thy winsome daughter,
Not long hidden canst thou keep her.
Maidens will not grow and flourish,
Kept apart from men and heroes,
Will not live without their suitors,
Will not thrive without their wooers;
Thou canst never hide a maiden,
Neither on the land nor water.'
Now the ancient Wainamoinen,
Head down-bent and heavy-hearted,
Wanders to his native country,
To Wainola's peaceful meadows,
To the plains of Kalevala,
Chanting as he journeys homeward:
'I have passed the age for wooing,
Woe is me, rejected suitor,
Woe is me, a witless minstrel,
That I did not woo and marry,
When my face was young and winsome,
When my hand was warm and welcome!
Youth dethrones my age and station,
Wealth is nothing, wisdom worthless,
When a hero goes a-wooing
With a poor but younger brother.
Fatal error that a hero
Does not wed in early manhood,
In his youth does not be master
Of a worthy wife and household.'
Thus the ancient Wainamoinen
Sends the edict to his people:
'Old men must not go a-wooing,
Must not swim the sea of anger,
Must not row upon a wager,
Must not run a race for glory,
With the younger sons of Northland.'
184
~ Elias Lönnrot,#NFDB
257:The Kalevala - Rune Xlvi
OTSO THE HONEY-EATER.
Came the tidings to Pohyola,
To the village of the Northland,
That Wainola had recovered
From her troubles and misfortunes,
From her sicknesses and sorrows.
Louhi, hostess of the Northland,
Toothless dame of Sariola,
Envy-laden, spake these measures:
'Know I other means of trouble,
I have many more resources;
I will drive the bear before me,
From the heather and the mountain,
Drive him from the fen and forest,
Drive great Otso from the glen-wood
On the cattle of Wainola,
On the flocks of Kalevala.'
Thereupon the Northland hostess
Drove the hungry bear of Pohya
From his cavern to the meadows,
To Wainola's plains and pastures.
Wainamoinen, ancient minstrel,
To his brother spake as follows:
'O thou blacksmith, Ilmarinen,
Forge a spear from magic metals,
Forge a lancet triple-pointed,
Forge the handle out of copper,
That I may destroy great Otso,
Slay the mighty bear of Northland,
That he may not eat my horses,
Nor destroy my herds of cattle,
Nor the flocks upon my pastures.'
Thereupon the skillful blacksmith
Forged a spear from magic metals,
Forged a lancet triple-pointed,
Not the longest, nor the shortest,
Forged the spear in wondrous beauty.
242
On one side a bear was sitting,
Sat a wolf upon the other,
On the blade an elk lay sleeping,
On the shaft a colt was running,
Near the hilt a roebuck bounding.
Snows had fallen from the heavens,
Made the flocks as white as ermine
Or the hare, in days of winter,
And the minstrel sang these measures:
'My desire impels me onward
To the Metsola-dominions,
To the homes of forest-maidens,
To the courts of the white virgins;
I will hasten to the forest,
Labor with the woodland-forces.
'Ruler of the Tapio-forests,
Make of me a conquering hero,
Help me clear these boundless woodlands.
O Mielikki, forest-hostess,
Tapio's wife, thou fair Tellervo,
Call thy dogs and well enchain them,
Set in readiness thy hunters,
Let them wait within their kennels.
'Otso, thou O Forest-apple,
Bear of honey-paws and fur-robes,
Learn that Wainamoinen follows,
That the singer comes to meet thee;
Hide thy claws within thy mittens,
Let thy teeth remain in darkness,
That they may not harm the minstrel,
May be powerless in battle.
Mighty Otso, much beloved,
Honey-eater of the mountains,
Settle on the rocks in slumber,
On the turf and in thy caverns;
Let the aspen wave above thee,
Let the merry birch-tree rustle
O'er thy head for thy protection.
Rest in peace, thou much-loved Otso,
Turn about within thy thickets,
Like the partridge at her brooding,
In the spring-time like the wild-goose.'
243
When the ancient Wainamoinen
Heard his dog bark in the forest,
Heard his hunter's call and echo,
He addressed the words that follow:
'Thought it was the cuckoo calling,
Thought the pretty bird was singing;
It was not the sacred cuckoo,
Not the liquid notes of songsters,
'Twas my dog that called and murmured,
'Twas the echo of my hunter
At the cavern-doors of Otso,
On the border of the woodlands.'
Wainamoinen, old and trusty,
Finds the mighty bear in waiting,
Lifts in joy the golden covers,
Well inspects his shining fur-robes;
Lifts his honey-paws in wonder,
Then addresses his Creator:
'Be thou praised, O mighty Ukko,
As thou givest me great Otso,
Givest me the Forest-apple,
Thanks be paid to thee unending.'
To the bear he spake these measures:
'Otso, thou my well beloved,
Honey-eater of the woodlands,
Let not anger swell thy bosom;
I have not the force to slay thee,
Willingly thy life thou givest
As a sacrifice to Northland.
Thou hast from the tree descended,
Glided from the aspen branches,
Slippery the trunks in autumn,
In the fog-days, smooth the branches.
Golden friend of fen and forest,
In thy fur-robes rich and beauteous,
Pride of woodlands, famous Light-foot,
Leave thy cold and cheerless dwelling,
Leave thy home within the alders,
Leave thy couch among the willows,
Hasten in thy purple stockings,
Hasten from thy walks restricted,
Come among the haunts of heroes,
244
Join thy friends in Kalevala.
We shall never treat thee evil,
Thou shalt dwell in peace and plenty,
Thou shalt feed on milk and honey,
Honey is the food of strangers.
Haste away from this thy covert,
From the couch of the unworthy,
To a couch beneath the rafters
Of Wainola's ancient dwellings.
Haste thee onward o'er the snow-plain,
As a leaflet in the autumn;
Skip beneath these birchen branches,
As a squirrel in the summer,
As a cuckoo in the spring-time.'
Wainamoinen, the magician,
The eternal wisdom-singer,
O'er the snow-fields hastened homeward,
Singing o'er the hills and mountains,
With his guest, the ancient Otso,
With his friend, the, famous Light-foot,
With the Honey-paw of Northland.
Far away was heard the singing,
Heard the playing of the hunter,
Heard the songs of Wainamoinen;
All the people heard and wondered,
Men and maidens, young and aged,
From their cabins spake as follows:
'Hear the echoes from the woodlands,
Hear the bugle from the forest,
Hear the flute-notes of the songsters,
Hear the pipes of forest-maidens!'
Wainamoinen, old and trusty,
Soon appears within the court-yard.
Rush the people from their cabins,
And the heroes ask these questions:
'Has a mine of gold been opened,
Hast thou found a vein of silver,
Precious jewels in thy pathway?
Does the forest yield her treasures,
Give to thee the Honey-eater?
Does the hostess of the woodlands,
Give to thee the lynx and adder,
245
Since thou comest home rejoicing,
Playing, singing, on thy snow-shoes?'
Wainamoinen, ancient minstrel,
Gave this answer to his people:
'For his songs I caught the adder,
Caught the serpent for his wisdom;
Therefore do I come rejoicing,
Singing, playing, on my snow-shoes.
Not the mountain lynx, nor serpent,
Comes, however, to our dwellings;
The Illustrious is coming,
Pride and beauty of the forest,
'Tis the Master comes among us,
Covered with his friendly fur-robe.
Welcome, Otso, welcome, Light-foot,
Welcome, Loved-one from the glenwood!
If the mountain guest is welcome,
Open wide the gates of entry;
If the bear is thought unworthy,
Bar the doors against the stranger.'
This the answer of the tribe-folk:
'We salute thee, mighty Otso,
Honey-paw, we bid thee welcome,
Welcome to our courts and cabins,
Welcome, Light-foot, to our tables
Decorated for thy coming!
We have wished for thee for ages,
Waiting since the days of childhood,
For the notes of Tapio's bugle,
For the singing of the wood-nymphs,
For the coming of dear Otso,
For the forest gold and silver,
Waiting for the year of plenty,
Longing for it as for summer,
As the shoe waits for the snow-fields,
As the sledge for beaten highways,
As the, maiden for her suitor,
And the wife her husband's coming;
Sat at evening by the windows,
At the gates have, sat at morning,
Sat for ages at the portals,
Near the granaries in winter, Vanished,
246
Till the snow-fields warmed and
Till the sails unfurled in joyance,
Till the earth grew green and blossomed,
Thinking all the while as follows:
'Where is our beloved Otso,
Why delays our forest-treasure?
Has he gone to distant Ehstland,
To the upper glens of Suomi?'
Spake the ancient Wainamoinen:
'Whither shall I lead the stranger,
Whither take the golden Light-foot?
Shall I lead him to the garner,
To the house of straw conduct him?'
This the answer of his tribe-folk:
'To the dining-hall lead Otso,
Greatest hero of the Northland.
Famous Light-foot, Forest-apple,
Pride and glory of the woodlands,
Have no fear before these maidens,
Fear not curly-headed virgins,
Clad in silver-tinselled raiment
Maidens hasten to their chambers
When dear Otso joins their number,
When the hero comes among them.'
This the prayer of Wainamoinen:
'Grant, O Ukko, peace and plenty
Underneath these painted rafters,
In this ornamented dweling;
Thanks be paid to gracious Ukko!'
Spake again the ancient minstrel:
'Whither shall we lead dear Otso,
'Whither take the fur-clad stranger?
This the answer of his people:
'Hither let the fur-robed Light-foot
Be saluted on his coming;
Let the Honey-paw be welcomed
To the hearth-stone of the penthouse,
Welcomed to the boiling caldrons,
That we may admire his fur-robe,
May behold his cloak with joyance.
Have no care, thou much-loved Otso,
Let not anger swell thy bosom
247
As thy coat we view with pleasure;
We thy fur shall never injure,
Shall not make it into garments
To protect unworthy people.'
Thereupon wise Wainamoinen
Pulled the sacred robe from Otso,
Spread it in the open court-yard,
Cut the, members into fragments,
Laid them in the heating caldrons,
In the copper-bottomed vesselsO'er the fire the crane was hanging,
On the crane were hooks of copper,
On the hooks the broiling-vessels
Filled with bear-steak for the feasting,
Seasoned with the salt of Dwina,
From the Saxon-land imported,
From the distant Dwina-waters,
From the salt-sea brought in shallops.
Ready is the feast of Otso;
From the fire are swung the kettles
On the crane of polished iron;
In the centers of the tables
Is the bear displayed in dishes,
Golden dishes, decorated;
Of the fir-tree and the linden
Were the tables newly fashioned;
Drinking cups were forged from copper,
Knives of gold and spoons of silver;
Filled the vessels to their borders
With the choicest bits of Light-foot,
Fragments of the Forest-apple.
Spake the ancient Wainamoinen
'Ancient one with bosom golden,
Potent voice in Tapio's councils
Metsola's most lovely hostess,
Hostess of the glen and forest,
Hero-son of Tapiola,
Stalwart youth in cap of scarlet,
Tapio's most beauteous virgin,
Fair Tellervo of the woodlands,
Metsola with all her people,
Come, and welcome, to the feasting,
248
To the marriage-feast of Otso!
All sufficient, the provisions,
Food to eat and drink abundant,
Plenty for the hosts assembled,
Plenty more to give the village.'
This the question of the people:
'Tell us of the birth of Otso!
Was be born within a manger,
Was he nurtured in the bath-room
Was his origin ignoble?'
This is Wainamoinen's answer:
'Otso was not born a beggar,
Was not born among the rushes,
Was not cradled in a manger;
Honey-paw was born in ether,
In the regions of the Moon-land,
On the shoulders of Otava,
With the daughters of creation.
'Through the ether walked a maiden,
On the red rims of the cloudlets,
On the border of the heavens,
In her stockings purple-tinted,
In her golden-colored sandals.
In her hand she held a wool-box,
With a hair-box on her shoulder;
Threw the wool upon the ocean,
And the hair upon the rivers;
These are rocked by winds and waters,
Water-currents bear them onward,
Bear them to the sandy sea-shore,
Land them near the Woods of honey,
On an island forest-covered.
'Fair Mielikki, woodland hostess,
Tapio's most cunning daughter,
Took the fragments from the sea-side,
Took the white wool from the waters,
Sewed the hair and wool together,
Laid the bundle in her basket,
Basket made from bark of birch-wood,
Bound with cords the magic bundle;
With the chains of gold she bound it
To the pine-tree's topmost branches.
249
There she rocked the thing of magic,
Rocked to life the tender baby,
Mid the blossoms of the pine-tree,
On the fir-top set with needles;
Thus the young bear well was nurtured,
Thus was sacred Otso cradled
On the honey-tree of Northland,
In the middle of the forest.
'Sacred Otso grew and flourished,
Quickly grew with graceful movements,
Short of feet, with crooked ankles,
Wide of mouth and broad of forehead,
Short his nose, his fur-robe velvet;
But his claws were not well fashioned,
Neither were his teeth implanted.
Fair Mielikki, forest hostess,
Spake these words in meditation:
'Claws I should be pleased to give him,
And with teeth endow the wonder,
Would be not abuse the favor.'
'Swore the bear a promise sacred,
On his knees before Mielikki,
Hostess of the glen and forest,
And before omniscient Ukko,
First and last of all creators,
That he would not harm the worthy,
Never do a deed of evil.
Then Mielikki, woodland hostess,
Wisest maid of Tapiola,
Sought for teeth and claws to give him,
From the stoutest mountain-ashes,
From the juniper and oak tree,
From the dry knots of the alder.
Teeth and claws of these were worthless,
Would not render goodly service.
'Grew a fir-tree on the mountain,
Grew a stately pine in Northland,
And the fir had silver branches,
Bearing golden cones abundant;
These the sylvan maiden gathered,
Teeth and claws of these she fashioned
In the jaws and feet of Otso,
250
Set them for the best of uses.
Then she freed her new-made creature,
Let the Light-foot walk and wander,
Let him lumber through the marshes,
Let him amble through the forest,
Roll upon the plains and pastures;
Taught him how to walk a hero,
How to move with graceful motion,
How to live in ease and pleasure,
How to rest in full contentment,
In the moors and in the marshes,
On the borders of the woodlands;
How unshod to walk in summer,
Stockingless to run in autumn;
How to rest and sleep in winter
In the clumps of alder-bushes
Underneath the sheltering fir-tree,
Underneath the pine's protection,
Wrapped securely in his fur-robes,
With the juniper and willow.
This the origin of Otso,
Honey-eater of the Northlands,
Whence the sacred booty cometh.
Thus again the people questioned:
Why became the woods so gracious,
Why so generous and friendly?
Why is Tapio so humored,
That he gave his dearest treasure,
Gave to thee his Forest-apple,
Honey-eater of his kingdom?
Was he startled with thine arrows,
Frightened with the spear and broadsword?'
Wainamoinen, the magician,
Gave this answer to the question:
'Filled with kindness was the forest,
Glen and woodland full of greetings,
Tapio showing greatest favor.
Fair Mielikki, forest hostess,
Metsola's bewitching daughter,
Beauteous woodland maid, Tellervo,
Gladly led me on my journey,
Smoothed my pathway through the glen-wood.
251
Marked the trees upon the, mountains,
Pointing me to Otso's caverns,
To the Great Bear's golden island.
'When my journeyings had ended,
When the bear had been discovered,
Had no need to launch my javelins,
Did not need to aim the arrow;
Otso tumbled in his vaulting,
Lost his balance in his cradle,
In the fir-tree where he slumbered;
Tore his breast upon the branches,
Freely gave his life to others.
'Mighty Otso, my beloved,
Thou my golden friend and hero,
Take thy fur-cap from thy forehead,
Lay aside thy teeth forever,
Hide thy fingers in the darkness,
Close thy mouth and still thine anger,
While thy sacred skull is breaking.
'Now I take the eyes of Otso,
Lest he lose the sense of seeing,
Lest their former powers shall weaken;
Though I take not all his members,
Not alone must these be taken.
'Now I take the ears of Otso,
Lest he lose the sense of 'hearing,
Lest their former powers shall weaken;
Though I take not all his members,
Not alone must these be taken.
'Now I take the nose of Otso,
Lest he lose the sense of smelling,
Lest its former powers shall weaken;
Though I take not all his members,
Not alone must this be taken.
'Now I take the tongue of Otso,
Lest he lose the sense of tasting
Lest its former powers shall weaken;
Though I take not all his members,
Not alone must this be taken.
'Now I take the brain of Otso,
Lest he lose the means of thinking,
Lest his consciousness should fail him,
252
Lest his former instincts weaken;
Though I take not all his members,
Not alone must this be taken.
'I will reckon him a hero,
That will count the teeth of Light-foot,
That will loosen Otso's fingers
From their settings firmly fastened.'
None he finds with strength sufficient
To perform the task demanded.
Therefore ancient Wainamoinen
Counts the teeth of sacred Otso;
Loosens all the claws of Light-foot,
With his fingers strong as copper,
Slips them from their firm foundations,
Speaking to the bear these measures:
'Otso, thou my Honey-eater,
Thou my Fur-ball of the woodlands,
Onward, onward, must thou journey
From thy low and lonely dwelling,
To the court-rooms of the village.
Go, my treasure, through the pathway
Near the herds of swine and cattle,
To the hill-tops forest covered,
To the high and rising mountains,
To the spruce-trees filled with needles,
To the branches of the pine-tree;
There remain, my Forest-apple,
Linger there in lasting slumber,
Where the silver bells are ringing,
To the pleasure of the shepherd.'
Thus beginning, and thus ending,
Wainamoinen, old and truthful,
Hastened from his emptied tables,
And the children thus addressed him:
'Whither hast thou led thy booty,
Where hast left thy Forest-apple,
Sacred Otso of the woodlands?
Hast thou left him on the iceberg,
Buried him upon the snow-field?
Hast thou sunk him in the quicksand,
Laid him low beneath the heather?'
Wainamoinen spake in answer:
253
'Have not left him on the iceberg,
Have not buried him in snow-fields;
There the dogs would soon devour him,
Birds of prey would feast upon him;
Have not hidden him in Swamp-land,
Have not buried him in heather;
There the worms would live upon him,
Insects feed upon his body.
Thither I have taken Otso,
To the summit of the Gold-hill,
To the copper-bearing mountain,
Laid him in his silken cradle
In the summit of a pine-tree,
Where the winds and sacred branches
Rock him to his lasting slumber,
To the pleasure of the hunter,
To the joy of man and hero.
To the east his lips are pointing,
While his eyes are northward looking;
But dear Otso looks not upward,
For the fierceness of the storm-winds
Would destroy his sense of vision.'
Wainamoinen, ancient minstrel,
Touched again his harp of joyance,
Sang again his songs enchanting,
To the pleasure of the evening,
To the joy of morn arising.
Spake the singer of Wainola:
'Light for me a torch of pine-wood,
For the darkness is appearing,
That my playing may be joyous
And my wisdom-songs find welcome.'
Then the ancient sage and singer,
Wise and worthy Wainamoinen,
Sweetly sang and played, and chanted,
Through the long and dreary evening,
Ending thus his incantation:
'Grant, O Ukko, my Creator,
That the people of Wainola
May enjoy another banquet
In the company of Light-foot;
Grant that we may long remember
254
Kalevala's feast with Otso!
'Grant, O Ukko, my Creator,
That the signs may guide our footsteps,
That the notches in the pine-tree
May direct my faithful people
To the bear-dens of the woodlands;
That great Tapio's sacred bugle
May resound through glen and forest;
That the wood-nymph's call may echo,
May be heard in field and hamlet,
To the joy of all that listen!
Let great Tapio's horn for ages
Ring throughout the fen and forest,
Through the hills and dales of Northland
O'er the meadows and the mountains,
To awaken song and gladness
In the forests of Wainola,
On the snowy plains of Suomi,
On the meads of Kalevala,
For the coming generations.'
~ Elias Lönnrot,#NFDB
258:The Emigrants: Book Ii
Scene, on an Eminence on one of those Downs, which afford to the South a
view of the Sea; to the North of the Weald of Sussex. Time, an Afternoon in
April, 1793.
Long wintry months are past; the Moon that now
Lights her pale crescent even at noon, has made
Four times her revolution; since with step,
Mournful and slow, along the wave-worn cliff,
Pensive I took my solitary way,
Lost in despondence, while contemplating
Not my own wayward destiny alone,
(Hard as it is, and difficult to bear!)
But in beholding the unhappy lot
Of the lorn Exiles; who, amid the storms
Of wild disastrous Anarchy, are thrown,
Like shipwreck'd sufferers, on England's coast,
To see, perhaps, no more their native land,
Where Desolation riots: They, like me,
From fairer hopes and happier prospects driven,
Shrink from the future, and regret the past.
But on this Upland scene, while April comes,
With fragrant airs, to fan my throbbing breast,
Fain would I snatch an interval from Care,
That weighs my wearied spirit down to earth;
Courting, once more, the influence of Hope
(For "Hope" still waits upon the flowery prime)
As here I mark Spring's humid hand unfold
The early leaves that fear capricious winds,
While, even on shelter'd banks, the timid flowers
Give, half reluctantly, their warmer hues
To mingle with the primroses' pale stars.
No shade the leafless copses yet afford,
Nor hide the mossy labours of the Thrush,
That, startled, darts across the narrow path;
But quickly re-assur'd, resumes his talk,
Or adds his louder notes to those that rise
From yonder tufted brake; where the white buds
Of the first thorn are mingled with the leaves
164
Of that which blossoms on the brow of May.
Ah! 'twill not be:---- So many years have pass'd,
Since, on my native hills, I learn'd to gaze
On these delightful landscapes; and those years
Have taught me so much sorrow, that my soul
Feels not the joy reviving Nature brings;
But, in dark retrospect, dejected dwells
On human follies, and on human woes.---What is the promise of the infant year,
The lively verdure, or the bursting blooms,
To those, who shrink from horrors such as War
Spreads o'er the affrighted world? With swimming eye,
Back on the past they throw their mournful looks,
And see the Temple, which they fondly hop'd
Reason would raise to Liberty, destroy'd
By ruffian hands; while, on the ruin'd mass,
Flush'd with hot blood, the Fiend of Discord sits
In savage triumph; mocking every plea
Of policy and justice, as she shews
The headless corse of one, whose only crime
Was being born a Monarch--Mercy turns,
From spectacle so dire, her swol'n eyes;
And Liberty, with calm, unruffled brow
Magnanimous, as conscious of her strength
In Reason's panoply, scorns to distain
Her righteous cause with carnage, and resigns
To Fraud and Anarchy the infuriate crowd.---What is the promise of the infant year
To those, who (while the poor but peaceful hind
Pens, unmolested, the encreasing flock
Of his rich master in this sea-fenc'd isle)
Survey, in neighbouring countries, scenes that make
The sick heart shudder; and the Man, who thinks,
Blush for his species? There the trumpet's voice
Drowns the soft warbling of the woodland choir;
And violets, lurking in their turfy beds
Beneath the flow'ring thorn, are stain'd with blood.
There fall, at once, the spoiler and the spoil'd;
While War, wide-ravaging, annihilates
The hope of cultivation; gives to Fiends,
The meagre, ghastly Fiends of Want and Woe,
The blasted land--There, taunting in the van
165
Of vengeance-breathing armies, Insult stalks;
And, in the ranks, "1 Famine, and Sword, and Fire,
"Crouch for employment."--Lo! the suffering world,
Torn by the fearful conflict, shrinks, amaz'd,
From Freedom's name, usurp'd and misapplied,
And, cow'ring to the purple Tyrant's rod,
Deems that the lesser ill--Deluded Men!
Ere ye prophane her ever-glorious name,
Or catalogue the thousands that have bled
Resisting her; or those, who greatly died
Martyrs to Liberty --revert awhile
To the black scroll, that tells of regal crimes
Committed to destroy her; rather count
The hecatombs of victims, who have fallen
Beneath a single despot; or who gave
Their wasted lives for some disputed claim
Between anointed robbers: 2 Monsters both!
"3 Oh! Polish'd perturbation--golden care!"
So strangely coveted by feeble Man
To lift him o'er his fellows;--Toy, for which
Such showers of blood have drench'd th' affrighted earth-Unfortunate his lot, whose luckless head
Thy jewel'd circlet, lin'd with thorns, has bound;
And who, by custom's laws, obtains from thee
Hereditary right to rule, uncheck'd,
Submissive myriads: for untemper'd power,
Like steel ill form'd, injures the hand
It promis'd to protect--Unhappy France!
If e'er thy lilies, trampled now in dust,
And blood-bespotted, shall again revive
In silver splendour, may the wreath be wov'n
By voluntary hands; and Freemen, such
As England's self might boast, unite to place
The guarded diadem on his fair brow,
Where Loyalty may join with Liberty
To fix it firmly.--In the rugged school
Of stern Adversity so early train'd,
His future life, perchance, may emulate
That of the brave Bernois 4 , so justly call'd
The darling of his people; who rever'd
The Warrior less, than they ador'd the Man!
But ne'er may Party Rage, perverse and blind,
166
And base Venality, prevail to raise
To public trust, a wretch, whose private vice
Makes even the wildest profligate recoil;
And who, with hireling ruffians leagu'd, has burst
The laws of Nature and Humanity!
Wading, beneath the Patriot's specious mask,
And in Equality's illusive name,
To empire thro' a stream of kindred blood-Innocent prisoner!--most unhappy heir
Of fatal greatness, who art suffering now
For all the crimes and follies of thy race;
Better for thee, if o'er thy baby brow
The regal mischief never had been held:
Then, in an humble sphere, perhaps content,
Thou hadst been free and joyous on the heights
Of Pyrennean mountains, shagg'd with woods
Of chesnut, pine, and oak: as on these hills
Is yonder little thoughtless shepherd lad,
Who, on the slope abrupt of downy turf
Reclin'd in playful indolence, sends off
The chalky ball, quick bounding far below;
While, half forgetful of his simple task,
Hardly his length'ning shadow, or the bells'
Slow tinkling of his flock, that supping tend
To the brown fallows in the vale beneath,
Where nightly it is folded, from his sport
Recal the happy idler.--While I gaze
On his gay vacant countenance, my thoughts
Compare with his obscure, laborious lot,
Thine, most unfortunate, imperial Boy!
Who round thy sullen prison daily hear'st
The savage howl of Murder, as it seeks
Thy unoffending life: while sad within
Thy wretched Mother, petrified with grief,
Views thee with stony eyes, and cannot weep!-Ah! much I mourn thy sorrows, hapless Queen!
And deem thy expiation made to Heaven
For every fault, to which Prosperity
Betray'd thee, when it plac'd thee on a throne
Where boundless power was thine, and thou wert rais'd
High (as it seem'd) above the envious reach
Of destiny! Whate'er thy errors were,
167
Be they no more remember'd; tho' the rage
Of Party swell'd them to such crimes, as bade
Compassion stifle every sigh that rose
For thy disastrous lot--More than enough
Thou hast endur'd; and every English heart,
Ev'n those, that highest beat in Freedom's cause,
Disclaim as base, and of that cause unworthy,
The Vengeance, or the Fear, that makes thee still
A miserable prisoner!--Ah! who knows,
From sad experience, more than I, to feel
For thy desponding spirit, as it sinks
Beneath procrastinated fears for those
More dear to thee than life! But eminence
Of misery is thine, as once of joy;
And, as we view the strange vicissitude,
We ask anew, where happiness is found?-----Alas! in rural life, where youthful dreams
See the Arcadia that Romance describes,
Not even Content resides!--In yon low hut
Of clay and thatch, where rises the grey smoke
Of smold'ring turf, cut from the adjoining moor,
The labourer, its inhabitant, who toils
From the first dawn of twilight, till the Sun
Sinks in the rosy waters of the West,
Finds that with poverty it cannot dwell;
For bread, and scanty bread, is all he earns
For him and for his household--Should Disease,
Born of chill wintry rains, arrest his arm,
Then, thro' his patch'd and straw-stuff'd casement, peeps
The squalid figure of extremest Want;
And from the Parish the reluctant dole,
Dealt by th' unfeeling farmer, hardly saves
The ling'ring spark of life from cold extinction:
Then the bright Sun of Spring, that smiling bids
All other animals rejoice, beholds,
Crept from his pallet, the emaciate wretch
Attempt, with feeble effort, to resume
Some heavy task, above his wasted strength,
Turning his wistful looks (how much in vain!)
To the deserted mansion, where no more
The owner (gone to gayer scenes) resides,
Who made even luxury, Virtue; while he gave
168
The scatter'd crumbs to honest Poverty.-But, tho' the landscape be too oft deform'd
By figures such as these, yet Peace is here,
And o'er our vallies, cloath'd with springing corn,
No hostile hoof shall trample, nor fierce flames
Wither the wood's young verdure, ere it form
Gradual the laughing May's luxuriant shade;
For, by the rude sea guarded, we are safe,
And feel not evils such as with deep sighs
The Emigrants deplore, as, they recal
The Summer past, when Nature seem'd to lose
Her course in wild distemperature, and aid,
With seasons all revers'd, destructive War.
Shuddering, I view the pictures they have drawn
Of desolated countries, where the ground,
Stripp'd of its unripe produce, was thick strewn
With various Death--the war-horse falling there
By famine, and his rider by the sword.
The moping clouds sail'd heavy charg'd with rain,
And bursting o'er the mountains misty brow,
Deluged, as with an inland sea, the vales 5 ;
Where, thro' the sullen evening's lurid gloom,
Rising, like columns of volcanic fire,
The flames of burning villages illum'd
The waste of water; and the wind, that howl'd
Along its troubled surface, brought the groans
Of plunder'd peasants, and the frantic shrieks
Of mothers for their children; while the brave,
To pity still alive, listen'd aghast
To these dire echoes, hopeless to prevent
The evils they beheld, or check the rage,
Which ever, as the people of one land
Meet in contention, fires the human heart
With savage thirst of kindred blood, and makes
Man lose his nature; rendering him more fierce
Than the gaunt monsters of the howling waste.
Oft have I heard the melancholy tale,
Which, all their native gaiety forgot,
These Exiles tell--How Hope impell'd them on,
Reckless of tempest, hunger, or the sword,
Till order'd to retreat, they knew not why,
From all their flattering prospects, they became
169
The prey of dark suspicion and regret 6 :
Then, in despondence, sunk the unnerv'd arm
Of gallant Loyalty--At every turn
Shame and disgrace appear'd, and seem'd to mock
Their scatter'd squadrons; which the warlike youth,
Unable to endure, often implor'd,
As the last act of friendship, from the hand
Of some brave comrade, to receive the blow
That freed the indignant spirit from its pain.
To a wild mountain, whose bare summit hides
Its broken eminence in clouds; whose steeps
Are dark with woods; where the receding rocks
Are worn by torrents of dissolving snow,
A wretched Woman, pale and breathless, flies!
And, gazing round her, listens to the sound
Of hostile footsteps---- No! it dies away:
Nor noise remains, but of the cataract,
Or surly breeze of night, that mutters low
Among the thickets, where she trembling seeks
A temporary shelter--clasping close
To her hard-heaving heart, her sleeping child,
All she could rescue of the innocent groupe
That yesterday surrounded her--Escap'd
Almost by miracle! Fear, frantic Fear,
Wing'd her weak feet: yet, half repentant now
Her headlong haste, she wishes she had staid
To die with those affrighted Fancy paints
The lawless soldier's victims--Hark! again
The driving tempest bears the cry of Death,
And, with deep sudden thunder, the dread sound
Of cannon vibrates on the tremulous earth;
While, bursting in the air, the murderous bomb
Glares o'er her mansion. Where the splinters fall,
Like scatter'd comets, its destructive path
Is mark'd by wreaths of flame!--Then, overwhelm'd
Beneath accumulated horror, sinks
The desolate mourner; yet, in Death itself,
True to maternal tenderness, she tries
To save the unconscious infant from the storm
In which she perishes; and to protect
This last dear object of her ruin'd hopes
From prowling monsters, that from other hills,
170
More inaccessible, and wilder wastes,
Lur'd by the scent of slaughter, follow fierce
Contending hosts, and to polluted fields
Add dire increase of horrors--But alas!
The Mother and the Infant perish both!-The feudal Chief, whose Gothic battlements
Frown on the plain beneath, returning home
From distant lands, alone and in disguise,
Gains at the fall of night his Castle walls,
But, at the vacant gate, no Porter sits
To wait his Lord's admittance!--In the courts
All is drear silence!--Guessing but too well
The fatal truth, he shudders as he goes
Thro' the mute hall; where, by the blunted light
That the dim moon thro' painted casements lends,
He sees that devastation has been there:
Then, while each hideous image to his mind
Rises terrific, o'er a bleeding corse
Stumbling he falls; another interrupts
His staggering feet--all, all who us'd to rush
With joy to meet him--all his family
Lie murder'd in his way!--And the day dawns
On a wild raving Maniac, whom a fate
So sudden and calamitous has robb'd
Of reason; and who round his vacant walls
Screams unregarded, and reproaches Heaven!-Such are thy dreadful trophies, savage War!
And evils such as these, or yet more dire,
Which the pain'd mind recoils from, all are thine-The purple Pestilence, that to the grave
Sends whom the sword has spar'd, is thine; and thine
The Widow's anguish and the Orphan's tears!-Woes such as these does Man inflict on Man;
And by the closet murderers, whom we style
Wise Politicians; are the schemes prepar'd,
Which, to keep Europe's wavering balance even,
Depopulate her kingdoms, and consign
To tears and anguish half a bleeding world!-Oh! could the time return, when thoughts like these
Spoil'd not that gay delight, which vernal Suns,
Illuminating hills, and woods, and fields,
Gave to my infant spirits--Memory come!
171
And from distracting cares, that now deprive
Such scenes of all their beauty, kindly bear
My fancy to those hours of simple joy,
When, on the banks of Arun, which I see
Make its irriguous course thro' yonder meads,
I play'd; unconscious then of future ill!
There (where, from hollows fring'd with yellow broom,
The birch with silver rind, and fairy leaf,
Aslant the low stream trembles) I have stood,
And meditated how to venture best
Into the shallow current, to procure
The willow herb of glowing purple spikes,
Or flags, whose sword-like leaves conceal'd the tide,
Startling the timid reed-bird from her nest,
As with aquatic flowers I wove the wreath,
Such as, collected by the shepherd girls,
Deck in the villages the turfy shrine,
And mark the arrival of propitious May.-How little dream'd I then the time would come,
When the bright Sun of that delicious month
Should, from disturb'd and artificial sleep,
Awaken me to never-ending toil,
To terror and to tears!--Attempting still,
With feeble hands and cold desponding heart,
To save my children from the o'erwhelming wrongs,
That have for ten long years been heap'd on me!-The fearful spectres of chicane and fraud
Have, Proteus like, still chang'd their hideous forms
(As the Law lent its plausible disguise),
Pursuing my faint steps; and I have seen
Friendship's sweet bonds (which were so early form'd,)
And once I fondly thought of amaranth
Inwove with silver seven times tried) give way,
And fail; as these green fan-like leaves of fern
Will wither at the touch of Autumn's frost.
Yet there are those , whose patient pity still
Hears my long murmurs; who, unwearied, try
With lenient hands to bind up every wound
My wearied spirit feels, and bid me go
"Right onward 7 "--a calm votary of the Nymph,
Who, from her adamantine rock, points out
To conscious rectitude the rugged path,
172
That leads at length to Peace!--Ah! yes, my friends
Peace will at last be mine; for in the Grave
Is Peace--and pass a few short years, perchance
A few short months, and all the various pain
I now endure shall be forgotten there,
And no memorial shall remain of me,
Save in your bosoms; while even your regret
Shall lose its poignancy, as ye reflect
What complicated woes that grave conceals!
But, if the little praise, that may await
The Mother's efforts, should provoke the spleen
Of Priest or Levite; and they then arraign
The dust that cannot hear them; be it yours
To vindicate my humble fame; to say,
That, not in selfish sufferings absorb'd,
"I gave to misery all I had, my tears 8 ."
And if, where regulated sanctity
Pours her long orisons to Heaven, my voice
Was seldom heard, that yet my prayer was made
To him who hears even silence; not in domes
Of human architecture, fill'd with crowds,
But on these hills, where boundless, yet distinct,
Even as a map, beneath are spread the fields
His bounty cloaths; divided here by woods,
And there by commons rude, or winding brooks,
While I might breathe the air perfum'd with flowers,
Or the fresh odours of the mountain turf;
And gaze on clouds above me, as they sail'd
Majestic: or remark the reddening north,
When bickering arrows of electric fire
Flash on the evening sky--I made my prayer
In unison with murmuring waves that now
Swell with dark tempests, now are mild and blue,
As the bright arch above; for all to me
Declare omniscient goodness; nor need I
Declamatory essays to incite
My wonder or my praise, when every leaf
That Spring unfolds, and every simple bud,
More forcibly impresses on my heart
His power and wisdom--Ah! while I adore
That goodness, which design'd to all that lives
Some taste of happiness, my soul is pain'd
173
By the variety of woes that Man
For Man creates--his blessings often turn'd
To plagues and curses: Saint-like Piety,
Misled by Superstition, has destroy'd
More than Ambition; and the sacred flame
Of Liberty becomes a raging fire,
When Licence and Confusion bid it blaze.
From thy high throne, above yon radiant stars,
O Power Omnipotent! with mercy view
This suffering globe, and cause thy creatures cease,
With savage fangs, to tear her bleeding breast:
Refrain that rage for power, that bids a Man,
Himself a worm, desire unbounded rule
O'er beings like himself: Teach the hard hearts
Of rulers, that the poorest hind, who dies
For their unrighteous quarrels, in thy sight
Is equal to the imperious Lord, that leads
His disciplin'd destroyers to the field.---May lovely Freedom, in her genuine charms,
Aided by stern but equal Justice, drive
From the ensanguin'd earth the hell-born fiends
Of Pride, Oppression, Avarice, and Revenge,
That ruin what thy mercy made so fair!
Then shall these ill-starr'd wanderers, whose sad fate
These desultory lines lament, regain
Their native country; private vengeance then
To public virtue yield; and the fierce feuds,
That long have torn their desolated land,
May (even as storms, that agitate the air,
Drive noxious vapours from the blighted earth)
Serve, all tremendous as they are, to fix
The reign of Reason, Liberty, and Peace!
~ Charlotte Smith,#NFDB
259:The Kalevala - Rune Ix
ORIGIN OF IRON.
Wainamoinen, thus encouraged,
Quickly rises in his snow-sledge,
Asking no one for assistance,
Straightway hastens to the cottage,
Takes a seat within the dwelling.
Come two maids with silver pitchers,
Bringing also golden goblets;
Dip they up a very little,
But the very smallest measure
Of the blood of the magician,
From the wounds of Wainamoinen.
From the fire-place calls the old man,
Thus the gray-beard asks the minstrel:
'Tell me who thou art of heroes,
Who of all the great magicians?
Lo! thy blood fills seven sea-boats,
Eight of largest birchen vessels,
Flowing from some hero's veinlets,
From the wounds of some magician.
Other matters I would ask thee;
Sing the cause of this thy trouble,
Sing to me the source of metals,
Sing the origin of iron,
How at first it was created.'
Then the ancient Wainamoinen
Made this answer to the gray-beard:
'Know I well the source of metals,
Know the origin of iron;
f can tell bow steel is fashioned.
Of the mothers air is oldest,
Water is the oldest brother,
And the fire is second brother,
And the youngest brother, iron;
Ukko is the first creator.
Ukko, maker of the heavens,
Cut apart the air and water,
54
Ere was born the metal, iron.
Ukko, maker of the heavens,
Firmly rubbed his hands together,
Firmly pressed them on his knee-cap,
Then arose three lovely maidens,
Three most beautiful of daughters;
These were mothers of the iron,
And of steel of bright-blue color.
Tremblingly they walked the heavens,
Walked the clouds with silver linings,
With their bosoms overflowing
With the milk of future iron,
Flowing on and flowing ever,
From the bright rims of the cloudlets
To the earth, the valleys filling,
To the slumber-calling waters.
'Ukko's eldest daughter sprinkled
Black milk over river channels
And the second daughter sprinkled
White milk over hills and mountains,
While the youngest daughter sprinkled
Red milk over seas and oceans.
Whero the black milk had been sprinked,
Grew the dark and ductile iron;
Where the white milk had been sprinkled.
Grew the iron, lighter-colored;
Where the red milk had been sprinkled,
Grew the red and brittle iron.
'After Time had gone a distance,
Iron hastened Fire to visit,
His beloved elder brother,
Thus to know his brother better.
Straightway Fire began his roarings,
Labored to consume his brother,
His beloved younger brother.
Straightway Iron sees his danger,
Saves himself by fleetly fleeing,
From the fiery flame's advances,
Fleeing hither, fleeing thither,
Fleeing still and taking shelter
In the swamps and in the valleys,
In the springs that loudly bubble,
55
By the rivers winding seaward,
On the broad backs of the marshes,
Where the swans their nests have builded,
Where the wild geese hatch their goslings.
'Thus is iron in the swamp-lands,
Stretching by the water-courses,
Hidden well for many ages,
Hidden in the birchen forests,
But he could not hide forever
From the searchings of his brother;
Here and there the fire has caught him,
Caught and brought him to his furnace,
That the spears, and swords, and axes,
Might be forged and duly hammered.
In the swamps ran blackened waters,
From the heath the bears came ambling,
And the wolves ran through the marshes.
Iron then made his appearance,
Where the feet of wolves had trodden,
Where the paws of bears had trampled.
'Then the blacksmith, Ilmarinen,
Came to earth to work the metal;
He was born upon the Coal-mount,
Skilled and nurtured in the coal-fields;
In one hand, a copper hammer,
In the other, tongs of iron;
In the night was born the blacksmith,
In the morn he built his smithy,
Sought with care a favored hillock,
Where the winds might fill his bellows;
Found a hillock in the swamp-lands,
Where the iron hid abundant;
There he built his smelting furnace,
There he laid his leathern bellows,
Hastened where the wolves had travelled,
Followed where the bears had trampled,
Found the iron's young formations,
In the wolf-tracks of the marshes,
In the foot-prints of the gray-bear.
'Then the blacksmith, Ilmarinen,
'Thus addressed the sleeping iron:
Thou most useful of the metals,
56
Thou art sleeping in the marshes,
Thou art hid in low conditions,
Where the wolf treads in the swamp-lands,
Where the bear sleeps in the thickets.
Hast thou thought and well considered,
What would be thy future station,
Should I place thee in the furnace,
Thus to make thee free and useful?'
'Then was Iron sorely frightened,
Much distressed and filled with horror,
When of Fire he heard the mention,
Mention of his fell destroyer.
'Then again speaks Ilmarinen,
Thus the smith addresses Iron:
'Be not frightened, useful metal,
Surely Fire will not consume thee,
Will not burn his youngest brother,
Will not harm his nearest kindred.
Come thou to my room and furnace,
Where the fire is freely burning,
Thou wilt live, and grow, and prosper,
Wilt become the swords of heroes,
Buckles for the belts of women.'
'Ere arose the star of evening,
Iron ore had left the marshes,
From the water-beds had risen,
Had been carried to the furnace,
In the fire the smith had laid it,
Laid it in his smelting furnace.
Ilmarinen starts the bellows,
Gives three motions of the handle,
And the iron flows in streamlets
From the forge of the magician,
Soon becomes like baker's leaven,
Soft as dough for bread of barley.
Then out-screamed the metal, Iron:
'Wondrous blacksmith, Ilmarinen,
Take, O take me from thy furnace,
From this fire and cruel torture.'
'Ilmarinen thus made answer:
'I will take thee from my furnace,
'Thou art but a little frightened,
57
Thou shalt be a mighty power,
Thou shalt slay the best of heroes,
Thou shalt wound thy dearest brother.'
'Straightway Iron made this promise,
Vowed and swore in strongest accents,
By the furnace, by the anvil,
By the tongs, and by the hammer,
These the words he vowed and uttered:
'Many trees that I shall injure,
Shall devour the hearts of mountains,
Shall not slay my nearest kindred,
Shall not kill the best of heroes,
Shall not wound my dearest brother;
Better live in civil freedom,
Happier would be my life-time,
Should I serve my fellow-beings,
Serve as tools for their convenience,
Than as implements of warfare,
Slay my friends and nearest. kindred,
Wound the children of my mother.'
'Now the master, Ilmarinen,
The renowned and skilful blacksmith,
From the fire removes the iron,
Places it upon the anvil,
Hammers well until it softens,
Hammers many fine utensils,
Hammers spears, and swords, and axes,
Hammers knives, and forks, and hatchets,
Hammers tools of all descriptions.
'Many things the blacksmith needed,
Many things he could not fashion,
Could not make the tongue of iron,
Could not hammer steel from iron,
Could not make the iron harden.
Well considered Ilmarinen,
Deeply thought and long reflected.
Then he gathered birchen ashes,
Steeped the ashes in the water,
Made a lye to harden iron,
Thus to form the steel most needful.
With his tongue he tests the mixture,
Weighs it long and well considers,
58
And the blacksmith speaks as follows:
'All this labor is for nothing,
Will not fashion steel from iron,
Will not make the soft ore harden.'
'Now a bee flies from the meadow,
Blue-wing coming from the flowers,
Flies about, then safely settles
Near the furnace of the smithy.
''Thus the smith the bee addresses,
These the words of Ilmarinen:
'Little bee, thou tiny birdling,
Bring me honey on thy winglets,
On thy tongue, I pray thee, bring me
Sweetness from the fragrant meadows,
From the little cups of flowers,
From the tips of seven petals,
That we thus may aid the water
To produce the steel from iron.'
'Evil Hisi's bird, the hornet,
Heard these words of Ilmarinen,
Looking from the cottage gable,
Flying to the bark of birch-trees,
While the iron bars were heating
While the steel was being tempered;
Swiftly flew the stinging hornet,
Scattered all the Hisi horrors,
Brought the blessing of the serpent,
Brought the venom of the adder,
Brought the poison of the spider,
Brought the stings of all the insects,
Mixed them with the ore and water,
While the steel was being, tempered.
'Ilmarinen, skilful blacksmith,
First of all the iron-workers,
Thought the bee had surely brought him
Honey from the fragrant meadows,
From the little cups of flowers,
From the tips of seven petals,
And he spake the words that follow:
'Welcome, welcome, is thy coming,
Honeyed sweetness from the flowers
Thou hast brought to aid the water,
59
Thus to form the steel from iron!'
'Ilmarinen, ancient blacksmith,
Dipped the iron into water,
Water mixed with many poisons,
Thought it but the wild bee's honey;
Thus he formed the steel from iron.
When he plunged it into water,
Water mixed with many poisons,
When be placed it in the furnace,
Angry grew the hardened iron,
Broke the vow that he had taken,
Ate his words like dogs and devils,
Mercilessly cut his brother,
Madly raged against his kindred,
Caused the blood to flow in streamlets
From the wounds of man and hero.
This, the origin of iron,
And of steel of light blue color.'
From the hearth arose the gray-beard,
Shook his heavy looks and answered:
'Now I know the source of iron,
Whence the steel and whence its evils;
Curses on thee, cruel iron,
Curses on the steel thou givest,
Curses on thee, tongue of evil,
Cursed be thy life forever!
Once thou wert of little value,
Having neither form nor beauty,
Neither strength nor great importance,
When in form of milk thou rested,
When for ages thou wert hidden
In the breasts of God's three daughters,
Hidden in their heaving bosoms,
On the borders of the cloudlets,
In the blue vault of the heavens.
'Thou wert once of little value,
Having neither form nor beauty,
Neither strength nor great importance,
When like water thou wert resting
On the broad back of the marshes,
On the steep declines of mountains,
When thou wert but formless matter,
60
Only dust of rusty color.
'Surely thou wert void of greatness,
Having neither strength nor beauty,
When the moose was trampling on thee,
When the roebuck trod upon thee,
When the tracks of wolves were in thee,
And the bear-paws scratched thy body.
Surely thou hadst little value
When the skilful Ilmarinen,
First of all the iron-workers,
Brought thee from the blackened swamp-lands,
Took thee to his ancient smithy,
Placed thee in his fiery furnace.
Truly thou hadst little vigor,
Little strength, and little danger,
When thou in the fire wert hissing,
Rolling forth like seething water,
From the furnace of the smithy,
When thou gavest oath the strongest,
By the furnace, by the anvil,
By the tongs, and by the hammer,
By the dwelling of the blacksmith,
By the fire within the furnace.
'Now forsooth thou hast grown mighty,
Thou canst rage in wildest fury;
Thou hast broken all thy pledges,
All thy solemn vows hast broken,
Like the dogs thou shamest honor,
Shamest both thyself and kindred,
Tainted all with breath of evil.
Tell who drove thee to this mischief,
Tell who taught thee all thy malice,
Tell who gavest thee thine evil!
Did thy father, or thy mother,
Did the eldest of thy brothers,
Did the youngest of thy sisters,
Did the worst of all thy kindred
Give to thee thine evil nature?
Not thy father, nor thy mother,
Not the eldest of thy brothers,
Not the youngest of thy sisters,
Not the worst of all thy kindred,
61
But thyself hast done this mischief,
Thou the cause of all our trouble.
Come and view thine evil doings,
And amend this flood of damage,
Ere I tell thy gray-haired mother,
Ere I tell thine aged father.
Great indeed a mother's anguish,
Great indeed a father's sorrow,
When a son does something evil,
When a child runs wild and lawless.
'Crimson streamlet, cease thy flowing
From the wounds of Wainamoinen;
Blood of ages, stop thy coursing
From the veins of the magician;
Stand like heaven's crystal pillars,
Stand like columns in the ocean,
Stand like birch-trees in the forest,
Like the tall reeds in the marshes,
Like the high-rocks on the sea-coast,
Stand by power of mighty magic!
'Should perforce thy will impel thee,
Flow thou on thine endless circuit,
Through the veins of Wainamoinen,
Through the bones, and through the muscles,
Through the lungs, and heart, and liver,
Of the mighty sage and singer;
Better be the food of heroes,
Than to waste thy strength and virtue
On the meadows and the woodlands,
And be lost in dust and ashes.
Flow forever in thy circle;
Thou must cease this crimson out-flow;
Stain no more the grass and flowers,
Stain no more these golden hill-tops,
Pride and beauty of our heroes.
In the veins of the magician,
In the heart of Wainamoinen,
Is thy rightful home and storehouse.
Thither now withdraw thy forces,
Thither hasten, swiftly flowing;
Flow no more as crimson currents,
Fill no longer crimson lakelets,
62
Must not rush like brooks in spring-tide,
Nor meander like the rivers.
'Cease thy flow, by word of magic,
Cease as did the falls of Tyrya,
As the rivers of Tuoni,
When the sky withheld her rain-drops,
When the sea gave up her waters,
In the famine of the seasons,
In the years of fire and torture.
If thou heedest not this order,
I shall offer other measures,
Know I well of other forces;
I shall call the Hisi irons,
In them I shall boil and roast thee,
Thus to check thy crimson flowing,
Thus to save the wounded hero.
'If these means be inefficient,
Should these measures prove unworthy,
I shall call omniscient Ukko,
Mightiest of the creators,
Stronger than all ancient heroes,
Wiser than the world-magicians;
He will check the crimson out-flow,
He will heal this wound of hatchet.
'Ukko, God of love and mercy,
God and Master Of the heavens,
Come thou hither, thou art needed,
Come thou quickly I beseech thee,
Lend thy hand to aid thy children,
Touch this wound with healing fingers,
Stop this hero's streaming life-blood,
Bind this wound with tender leaflets,
Mingle with them healing flowers,
Thus to check this crimson current,
Thus to save this great magician,
Save the life of Wainamoinen.'
Thus at last the blood-stream ended,
As the magic words were spoken.
Then the gray-beard, much rejoicing,
Sent his young son to the smithy,
There to make a healing balsam,
From the herbs of tender fibre,
63
From the healing plants and flowers,
From the stalks secreting honey,
From the roots, and leaves, and blossoms.
On the way he meets an oak-tree,
And the oak the son addresses:
'Hast thou honey in thy branches,
Does thy sap run full of sweetness?'
Thus the oak-tree wisely answers:
'Yea, but last night dripped the honey
Down upon my spreading branches,
And the clouds their fragrance sifted,
Sifted honey on my leaflets,
From their home within the heavens.'
Then the son takes oak-wood splinters,
Takes the youngest oak-tree branches,
Gathers many healing grasses,
Gathers many herbs and flowers,
Rarest herbs that grow in Northland,
Places them within the furnace
In a kettle made of copper;
Lets them steep and boil together,
Bits of bark chipped from the oak-tree,
Many herbs of healing virtues;
Steeps them one day, then a second,
Three long days of summer weather,
Days and nights in quick succession;
Then he tries his magic balsam,
Looks to see if it is ready,
If his remedy is finished;
But the balsam is unworthy.
Then he added other grasses,
Herbs of every healing virtue,
That were brought from distant nations,
Many hundred leagues from Northland,
Gathered by the wisest minstrels,
Thither brought by nine enchanters.
Three days more be steeped the balsam,
Three nights more the fire be tended,
Nine the days and nights be watched it,
Then again be tried the ointment,
Viewed it carefully and tested,
Found at last that it was ready,
64
Found the magic balm was finished.
Near by stood a branching birch-tree.
On the border of the meadow,
Wickedly it had been broken,
Broken down by evil Hisi;
Quick he takes his balm of healing,
And anoints the broken branches,
Rubs the balsam in the fractures,
Thus addresses then the birch-tree:
'With this balsam I anoint thee,
With this salve thy wounds I cover,
Cover well thine injured places;
Now the birch-tree shall recover,
Grow more beautiful than ever.'
True, the birch-tree soon recovered,
Grew more beautiful than ever,
Grew more uniform its branches,
And its bole more strong and stately.
Thus it was be tried the balsam,
Thus the magic salve he tested,
Touched with it the splintered sandstone,
Touched the broken blocks of granite,
Touched the fissures in the mountains,
And the broken parts united,
All the fragments grew together.
Then the young boy quick returning
With the balsam he had finished,
To the gray-beard gave the ointment,
And the boy these measures uttered
'Here I bring the balm of healing,
Wonderful the salve I bring thee;
It will join the broken granite,
Make the fragments grow together,
Heat the fissures in the mountains,
And restore the injured birch-tree.'
With his tongue the old man tested,
Tested thus the magic balsam,
Found the remedy effective,
Found the balm had magic virtues;
Then anointed he the minstrel,
Touched the wounds of Wainamoinen,
Touched them with his magic balsam,
65
With the balm of many virtues;
Speaking words of ancient wisdom,
These the words the gray-beard uttered:
'Do not walk in thine own virtue,
Do not work in thine own power,
Walk in strength of thy Creator;
Do not speak in thine own wisdom,
Speak with tongue of mighty Ukko.
In my mouth, if there be sweetness,
It has come from my Creator;
If my bands are filled with beauty,
All the beauty comes from Ukko.'
When the wounds had been anointed,
When the magic salve had touched them,
Straightway ancient Wainamoinen
Suffered fearful pain and anguish,
Sank upon the floor in torment,
Turning one way, then another,
Sought for rest and found it nowhere,
Till his pain the gray-beard banished,
Banished by the aid of magic,
Drove away his killing torment
To the court of all our trouble,
To the highest hill of torture,
To the distant rocks and ledges,
To the evil-bearing mountains,
To the realm of wicked Hisi.
Then be took some silken fabric,
Quick he tore the silk asunder,
Making equal strips for wrapping,
Tied the ends with silken ribbons,
Making thus a healing bandage;
Then he wrapped with skilful fingers
Wainamoinen's knee and ankle,
Wrapped the wounds of the magician,
And this prayer the gray-beard uttered
'Ukko's fabric is the bandage,
Ukko's science is the surgeon,
These have served the wounded hero,
Wrapped the wounds of the magician.
Look upon us, God of mercy,
Come and guard us, kind Creator,
66
And protect us from all evil!
Guide our feet lest they may stumble,
Guard our lives from every danger,
From the wicked wilds of Hisi.'
Wainamoinen, old and truthful,
Felt the mighty aid of magic,
Felt the help of gracious Ukko,
Straightway stronger grew in body,
Straightway were the wounds united,
Quick the fearful pain departed.
Strong and hardy grew the hero,
Straightway walked in perfect freedom,
Turned his knee in all directions,
Knowing neither pain nor trouble.
Then the ancient Wainamoinen
Raised his eyes to high Jumala,
Looked with gratitude to heaven,
Looked on high, in joy and gladness,
Then addressed omniscient Ukko,
This the prayer the minstrel uttered:
'O be praised, thou God of mercy,
Let me praise thee, my Creator,
Since thou gavest me assistance,
And vouchsafed me thy protection,
Healed my wounds and stilled mine anguish,
Banished all my pain and trouble,
Caused by Iron and by Hisi.
O, ye people of Wainola,
People of this generation,
And the folk of future ages,
Fashion not in emulation,
River boat, nor ocean shallop,
Boasting of its fine appearance,
God alone can work completion,
Give to cause its perfect ending,
Never hand of man can find it,
Never can the hero give it,
Ukko is the only Master.'
~ Elias Lönnrot,#NFDB
260:IV - THE STUDY
FAUST MEPHISTOPHELES
FAUST
A knock? Come in! Again my quiet broken?
MEPHISTOPHELES
'Tis I!
FAUST
Come in!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Thrice must the words be spoken.
FAUST
Come in, then!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Thus thou pleasest me.
I hope we'll suit each other well;
For now, thy vapors to dispel,
I come, a squire of high degree,
In scarlet coat, with golden trimming,
A cloak in silken lustre swimming,
A tall cock's-feather in my hat,
A long, sharp sword for show or quarrel,
And I advise thee, brief and flat,
To don the self-same gay apparel,
That, from this den released, and free,
Life be at last revealed to thee!
FAUST
This life of earth, whatever my attire,
Would pain me in its wonted fashion.
Too old am I to play with passion;
Too young, to be without desire.
What from the world have I to gain?
Thou shalt abstainrenouncerefrain!
Such is the everlasting song
That in the ears of all men rings,
That unrelieved, our whole life long,
Each hour, in passing, hoarsely sings.
In very terror I at morn awake,
Upon the verge of bitter weeping,
To see the day of disappointment break,
To no one hope of minenot oneits promise keeping:
That even each joy's presentiment
With wilful cavil would diminish,
With grinning masks of life prevent
My mind its fairest work to finish!
Then, too, when night descends, how anxiously
Upon my couch of sleep I lay me:
There, also, comes no rest to me,
But some wild dream is sent to fray me.
The God that in my breast is owned
Can deeply stir the inner sources;
The God, above my powers enthroned,
He cannot change external forces.
So, by the burden of my days oppressed,
Death is desired, and Life a thing unblest!
MEPHISTOPHELES
And yet is never Death a wholly welcome guest.
FAUST
O fortunate, for whom, when victory glances,
The bloody laurels on the brow he bindeth!
Whom, after rapid, maddening dances,
In clasping maiden-arms he findeth!
O would that I, before that spirit-power,
Ravished and rapt from life, had sunken!
MEPHISTOPHELES
And yet, by some one, in that nightly hour,
A certain liquid was not drunken.
FAUST
Eavesdropping, ha! thy pleasure seems to be.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Omniscient am I not; yet much is known to me.
FAUST
Though some familiar tone, retrieving
My thoughts from torment, led me on,
And sweet, clear echoes came, deceiving
A faith bequea thed from Childhood's dawn,
Yet now I curse whate'er entices
And snares the soul with visions vain;
With dazzling cheats and dear devices
Confines it in this cave of pain!
Cursed be, at once, the high ambition
Wherewith the mind itself deludes!
Cursed be the glare of apparition
That on the finer sense intrudes!
Cursed be the lying dream's impression
Of name, and fame, and laurelled brow!
Cursed, all that flatters as possession,
As wife and child, as knave and plow!
Cursed Mammon be, when he with treasures
To restless action spurs our fate!
Cursed when, for soft, indulgent leisures,
He lays for us the pillows straight!
Cursed be the vine's transcendent nectar,
The highest favor Love lets fall!
Cursed, also, Hope!cursed Faith, the spectre!
And cursed be Patience most of all!
CHORUS OF SPIRITS (invisible)
Woe! woe!
Thou hast it destroyed,
The beautiful world,
With powerful fist:
In ruin 'tis hurled,
By the blow of a demigod shattered!
The scattered
Fragments into the Void we carry,
Deploring
The beauty perished beyond restoring.
Mightier
For the children of men,
Brightlier
Build it again,
In thine own bosom build it anew!
Bid the new career
Commence,
With clearer sense,
And the new songs of cheer
Be sung thereto!
MEPHISTOPHELES
These are the small dependants
Who give me attendance.
Hear them, to deeds and passion
Counsel in shrewd old-fashion!
Into the world of strife,
Out of this lonely life
That of senses and sap has betrayed thee,
They would persuade thee.
This nursing of the pain forego thee,
That, like a vulture, feeds upon thy breast!
The worst society thou find'st will show thee
Thou art a man among the rest.
But 'tis not meant to thrust
Thee into the mob thou hatest!
I am not one of the greatest,
Yet, wilt thou to me entrust
Thy steps through life, I'll guide thee,
Will willingly walk beside thee,
Will serve thee at once and forever
With best endeavor,
And, if thou art satisfied,
Will as servant, slave, with thee abide.
FAUST
And what shall be my counter-service therefor?
MEPHISTOPHELES
The time is long: thou need'st not now insist.
FAUST
Nono! The Devil is an egotist,
And is not apt, without a why or wherefore,
"For God's sake," others to assist.
Speak thy conditions plain and clear!
With such a servant danger comes, I fear.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Here, an unwearied slave, I'll wear thy tether,
And to thine every nod obedient be:
When There again we come together,
Then shalt thou do the same for me.
FAUST
The There my scruples naught increases.
When thou hast dashed this world to pieces,
The other, then, its place may fill.
Here, on this earth, my pleasures have their sources;
Yon sun beholds my sorrows in his courses;
And when from these my life itself divorces,
Let happen all that can or will!
I'll hear no more: 'tis vain to ponder
If there we cherish love or hate,
Or, in the spheres we dream of yonder,
A High and Low our souls await.
MEPHISTOPHELES
In this sense, even, canst thou venture.
Come, bind thyself by prompt indenture,
And thou mine arts with joy shalt see:
What no man ever saw, I'll give to thee.
FAUST
Canst thou, poor Devil, give me whatsoever?
When was a human soul, in its supreme endeavor,
E'er understood by such as thou?
Yet, hast thou food which never satiates, now,
The restless, ruddy gold hast thou,
That runs, quicksilver-like, one's fingers through,
A game whose winnings no man ever knew,
A maid that, even from my breast,
Beckons my neighbor with her wanton glances,
And Honor's godlike zest,
The meteor that a moment dances,
Show me the fruits that, ere they're gathered, rot,
And trees that daily with new leafage clo the them!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Such a demand alarms me not:
Such treasures have I, and can show them.
But still the time may reach us, good my friend.
When peace we crave and more luxurious diet.
FAUST
When on an idler's bed I stretch myself in quiet.
There let, at once, my record end!
Canst thou with lying flattery rule me,
Until, self-pleased, myself I see,
Canst thou with rich enjoyment fool me,
Let that day be the last for me!
The bet I offer.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Done!
FAUST
And heartily!
When thus I hail the Moment flying:
"Ah, still delaythou art so fair!"
Then bind me in thy bonds undying,
My final ruin then declare!
Then let the death-bell chime the token.
Then art thou from thy service free!
The clock may stop, the hand be broken,
Then Time be finished unto me!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Consider well: my memory good is rated.
FAUST
Thou hast a perfect right thereto.
My powers I have not rashly estimated:
A slave am I, whate'er I do
If thine, or whose? 'tis needless to debate it.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Then at the Doctors'-banquet I, to-day,
Will as a servant wait behind thee.
But one thing more! Beyond all risk to bind thee,
Give me a line or two, I pray.
FAUST
Demand'st thou, Pedant, too, a document?
Hast never known a man, nor proved his word's intent?
Is't not enough, that what I speak to-day
Shall stand, with all my future days agreeing?
In all its tides sweeps not the world away,
And shall a promise bind my being?
Yet this delusion in our hearts we bear:
Who would himself therefrom deliver?
Blest he, whose bosom Truth makes pure and fair!
No sacrifice shall he repent of ever.
Nathless a parchment, writ and stamped with care,
A spectre is, which all to shun endeavor.
The word, alas! dies even in the pen,
And wax and leather keep the lordship then.
What wilt from me, Base Spirit, say?
Brass, marble, parchment, paper, clay?
The terms with graver, quill, or chisel, stated?
I freely leave the choice to thee.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Why heat thyself, thus instantly,
With eloquence exaggerated?
Each leaf for such a pact is good;
And to subscribe thy name thou'lt take a drop of blood.
FAUST
If thou therewith art fully satisfied,
So let us by the farce abide.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Blood is a juice of rarest quality.
FAUST
Fear not that I this pact shall seek to sever?
The promise that I make to thee
Is just the sum of my endeavor.
I have myself inflated all too high;
My proper place is thy estate:
The Mighty Spirit deigns me no reply,
And Nature shuts on me her gate.
The thread of Thought at last is broken,
And knowledge brings disgust unspoken.
Let us the sensual deeps explore,
To quench the fervors of glowing passion!
Let every marvel take form and fashion
Through the impervious veil it wore!
Plunge we in Time's tumultuous dance,
In the rush and roll of Circumstance!
Then may delight and distress,
And worry and success,
Alternately follow, as best they can:
Restless activity proves the man!
MEPHISTOPHELES
For you no bound, no term is set.
Whether you everywhere be trying,
Or snatch a rapid bliss in flying,
May it agree with you, what you get!
Only fall to, and show no timid balking.
FAUST
But thou hast heard, 'tis not of joy we're talking.
I take the wildering whirl, enjoyment's keenest pain,
Enamored hate, exhilarant disdain.
My bosom, of its thirst for knowledge sated,
Shall not, henceforth, from any pang be wrested,
And all of life for all mankind created
Shall be within mine inmost being tested:
The highest, lowest forms my soul shall borrow,
Shall heap upon itself their bliss and sorrow,
And thus, my own sole self to all their selves expanded,
I too, at last, shall with them all be stranded!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Believe me, who for many a thousand year
The same tough meat have chewed and tested,
That from the cradle to the bier
No man the ancient leaven has digested!
Trust one of us, this Whole supernal
Is made but for a God's delight!
He dwells in splendor single and eternal,
But us he thrusts in darkness, out of sight,
And you he dowers with Day and Night.
FAUST
Nay, but I will!
MEPHISTOPHELES
A good reply!
One only fear still needs repeating:
The art is long, the time is fleeting.
Then let thyself be taught, say I!
Go, league thyself with a poet,
Give the rein to his imagination,
Then wear the crown, and show it,
Of the qualities of his creation,
The courage of the lion's breed,
The wild stag's speed,
The Italian's fiery blood,
The North's firm fortitude!
Let him find for thee the secret tether
That binds the Noble and Mean together.
And teach thy pulses of youth and pleasure
To love by rule, and hate by measure!
I'd like, myself, such a one to see:
Sir Microcosm his name should be.
FAUST
What am I, then, if 'tis denied my part
The crown of all humanity to win me,
Whereto yearns every sense within me?
MEPHISTOPHELES
Why, on the whole, thou'rtwhat thou art.
Set wigs of million curls upon thy head, to raise thee,
Wear shoes an ell in height,the truth betrays thee,
And thou remainestwhat thou art.
FAUST
I feel, indeed, that I have made the treasure
Of human thought and knowledge mine, in vain;
And if I now sit down in restful leisure,
No fount of newer strength is in my brain:
I am no hair's-breadth more in height,
Nor nearer, to the Infinite,
MEPHISTOPHELES
Good Sir, you see the facts precisely
As they are seen by each and all.
We must arrange them now, more wisely,
Before the joys of life shall pall.
Why, Zounds! Both hands and feet are, truly
And head and virile forcesthine:
Yet all that I indulge in newly,
Is't thence less wholly mine?
If I've six stallions in my stall,
Are not their forces also lent me?
I speed along, completest man of all,
As though my legs were four-and-twenty.
Take hold, then! let reflection rest,
And plunge into the world with zest!
I say to thee, a speculative wight
Is like a beast on moorlands lean,
That round and round some fiend misleads to evil plight,
While all about lie pastures fresh and green.
FAUST
Then how shall we begin?
MEPHISTOPHELES
We'll try a wider sphere.
What place of martyrdom is here!
Is't life, I ask, is't even prudence,
To bore thyself and bore the students?
Let Neighbor Paunch to that attend!
Why plague thyself with threshing straw forever?
The best thou learnest, in the end
Thou dar'st not tell the youngstersnever!
I hear one's footsteps, hither steering.
FAUST
To see him now I have no heart.
MEPHISTOPHELES
So long the poor boy waits a hearing,
He must not unconsoled depart.
Thy cap and mantle straightway lend me!
I'll play the comedy with art.
(He disguises himself.)
My wits, be certain, will befriend me.
But fifteen minutes' time is all I need;
For our fine trip, meanwhile, prepare thyself with speed!
[Exit FAUST.
MEPHISTOPHELES
(In FAUST'S long mantle.)
Reason and Knowledge only thou despise,
The highest strength in man that lies!
Let but the Lying Spirit bind thee
With magic works and shows that blind thee,
And I shall have thee fast and sure!
Fate such a bold, untrammelled spirit gave him,
As forwards, onwards, ever must endure;
Whose over-hasty impulse drave him
Past earthly joys he might secure.
Dragged through the wildest life, will I enslave him,
Through flat and stale indifference;
With struggling, chilling, checking, so deprave him
That, to his hot, insatiate sense,
The dream of drink shall mock, but never lave him:
Refreshment shall his lips in vain implore
Had he not made himself the Devil's, naught could save him,
Still were he lost forevermore!
(A STUDENT enters.)
STUDENT
A short time, only, am I here,
And come, devoted and sincere,
To greet and know the man of fame,
Whom men to me with reverence name.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Your courtesy doth flatter me:
You see a man, as others be.
Have you, perchance, elsewhere begun?
STUDENT
Receive me now, I pray, as one
Who comes to you with courage good,
Somewhat of cash, and healthy blood:
My mother was hardly willing to let me;
But knowledge worth having I fain would get me.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Then you have reached the right place now.
STUDENT
I'd like to leave it, I must avow;
I find these walls, these vaulted spaces
Are anything but pleasant places.
Tis all so cramped and close and mean;
One sees no tree, no glimpse of green,
And when the lecture-halls receive me,
Seeing, hearing, and thinking leave me.
MEPHISTOPHELES
All that depends on habitude.
So from its mother's breasts a child
At first, reluctant, takes its food,
But soon to seek them is beguiled.
Thus, at the breasts of Wisdom clinging,
Thou'lt find each day a greater rapture bringing.
STUDENT
I'll hang thereon with joy, and freely drain them;
But tell me, pray, the proper means to gain them.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Explain, before you further speak,
The special faculty you seek.
STUDENT
I crave the highest erudition;
And fain would make my acquisition
All that there is in Earth and Heaven,
In Nature and in Science too.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Here is the genuine path for you;
Yet strict attention must be given.
STUDENT
Body and soul thereon I'll wreak;
Yet, truly, I've some inclination
On summer holidays to seek
A little freedom and recreation.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Use well your time! It flies so swiftly from us;
But time through order may be won, I promise.
So, Friend (my views to briefly sum),
First, the collegium logicum.
There will your mind be drilled and braced,
As if in Spanish boots 'twere laced,
And thus, to graver paces brought,
'Twill plod along the path of thought,
Instead of shooting here and there,
A will-o'-the-wisp in murky air.
Days will be spent to bid you know,
What once you did at a single blow,
Like eating and drinking, free and strong,
That one, two, three! thereto belong.
Truly the fabric of mental fleece
Resembles a weaver's masterpiece,
Where a thousand threads one treadle throws,
Where fly the shuttles hither and thither.
Unseen the threads are knit together.
And an infinite combination grows.
Then, the philosopher steps in
And shows, no otherwise it could have been:
The first was so, the second so,
Therefore the third and fourth are so;
Were not the first and second, then
The third and fourth had never been.
The scholars are everywhere believers,
But never succeed in being weavers.
He who would study organic existence,
First drives out the soul with rigid persistence;
Then the parts in his hand he may hold and class,
But the spiritual link is lost, alas!
Encheiresin natures, this Chemistry names,
Nor knows how herself she banters and blames!
STUDENT
I cannot understand you quite.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Your mind will shortly be set aright,
When you have learned, all things reducing,
To classify them for your using.
STUDENT
I feel as stupid, from all you've said,
As if a mill-wheel whirled in my head!
MEPHISTOPHELES
And afterfirst and foremost dutyOf
Metaphysics learn the use and beauty!
See that you most profoundly gain
What does not suit the human brain!
A splendid word to serve, you'll find
For what goes inor won't go inyour mind.
But first, at least this half a year,
To order rigidly adhere;
Five hours a day, you understand,
And when the clock strikes, be on hand!
Prepare beforeh and for your part
With paragraphs all got by heart,
So you can better watch, and look
That naught is said but what is in the book:
Yet in thy writing as unwearied be,
As did the Holy Ghost dictate to thee!
STUDENT
No need to tell me twice to do it!
I think, how useful 'tis to write;
For what one has, in black and white,
One carries home and then goes through it.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Yet choose thyself a faculty!
STUDENT
I cannot reconcile myself to Jurisprudence.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Nor can I therefore greatly blame you students:
I know what science this has come to be.
All rights and laws are still transmitted
Like an eternal sickness of the race,
From generation unto generation fitted,
And shifted round from place to place.
Reason becomes a sham, Beneficence a worry:
Thou art a grandchild, therefore woe to thee!
The right born with us, ours in verity,
This to consider, there's, alas! no hurry.
STUDENT
My own disgust is streng thened by your speech:
O lucky he, whom you shall teach!
I've almost for Theology decided.
MEPHISTOPHELES
I should not wish to see you here misguided:
For, as regards this science, let me hint
'Tis very hard to shun the false direction;
There's so much secret poison lurking in 't,
So like the medicine, it baffles your detection.
Hear, therefore, one alone, for that is best, in sooth,
And simply take your master's words for truth.
On words let your attention centre!
Then through the safest gate you'll enter
The temple-halls of Certainty.
STUDENT
Yet in the word must some idea be.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Of course! But only shun too over-sharp a tension,
For just where fails the comprehension,
A word steps promptly in as deputy.
With words 'tis excellent disputing;
Systems to words 'tis easy suiting;
On words 'tis excellent believing;
No word can ever lose a jot from thieving.
STUDENT
Pardon! With many questions I detain you.
Yet must I trouble you again.
Of Medicine I still would fain
Hear one strong word that might explain you.
Three years is but a little space.
And, God! who can the field embrace?
If one some index could be shown,
'Twere easier groping forward, truly.
MEPHISTOPHELES (aside)
I'm tired enough of this dry tone,
Must play the Devil again, and fully.
(Aloud)
To grasp the spirit of Medicine is easy:
Learn of the great and little world your fill,
To let it go at last, so please ye,
Just as God will!
In vain that through the realms of science you may drift;
Each one learns onlyjust what learn he can:
Yet he who grasps the Moment's gift,
He is the proper man.
Well-made you are, 'tis not to be denied,
The rest a bold address will win you;
If you but in yourself confide,
At once confide all others in you.
To lead the women, learn the special feeling!
Their everlasting aches and groans,
In thousand tones,
Have all one source, one mode of healing;
And if your acts are half discreet,
You'll always have them at your feet.
A title first must draw and interest them,
And show that yours all other arts exceeds;
Then, as a greeting, you are free to touch and test them,
While, thus to do, for years another pleads.
You press and count the pulse's dances,
And then, with burning sidelong glances,
You clasp the swelling hips, to see
If tightly laced her corsets be.
STUDENT
That's better, now! The How and Where, one sees.
MEPHISTOPHELES
My worthy friend, gray are all theories,
And green alone Life's golden tree.
STUDENT
I swear to you, 'tis like a dream to me.
Might I again presume, with trust unbounded,
To hear your wisdom thoroughly expounded?
MEPHISTOPHELES
Most willingly, to what extent I may.
STUDENT
I cannot really go away:
Allow me that my album first I reach you,
Grant me this favor, I beseech you!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Assuredly.
(He writes, and returns the book.)
STUDENT (reads)
Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum.
(Closes the book with reverence, and withdraws)
MEPHISTOPHELES
Follow the ancient text, and the snake thou wast ordered to trample!
With all thy likeness to God, thou'lt yet be a sorry example!
(FAUST enters.)
FAUST
Now, whither shall we go?
MEPHISTOPHELES
As best it pleases thee.
The little world, and then the great, we'll see.
With what delight, what profit winning,
Shalt thou sponge through the term beginning!
FAUST
Yet with the flowing beard I wear,
Both ease and grace will fail me there.
The attempt, indeed, were a futile strife;
I never could learn the ways of life.
I feel so small before others, and thence
Should always find embarrassments.
MEPHISTOPHELES
My friend, thou soon shalt lose all such misgiving:
Be thou but self-possessed, thou hast the art of living!
FAUST
How shall we leave the house, and start?
Where hast thou servant, coach and horses?
MEPHISTOPHELES
We'll spread this cloak with proper art,
Then through the air direct our courses.
But only, on so bold a flight,
Be sure to have thy luggage light.
A little burning air, which I shall soon prepare us,
Above the earth will nimbly bear us,
And, if we're light, we'll travel swift and clear:
I gratulate thee on thy new career!
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, THE STUDY (The Compact)
,#NFDB
261:The Kalevala - Rune Xv
LEMMINKAINEN'S RESTORATION.
Lemminkainen's aged mother
Anxious roams about the islands,
Anxious wonders in her chambers,
What the fate of Lemminkainen,
Why her son so long has tarried;
Thinks that something ill has happened
To her hero in Pohyola.
Sad, indeed, the mother's anguish,
As in vain she waits his coming,
As in vain she asks the question,
Where her daring son is roaming,
Whether to the fir-tree mountain,
Whether to the distant heath-land,
Or upon the broad-sea's ridges,
On the floods and rolling waters,
To the war's contending armies,
To the heat and din of battle,
Steeped in blood of valiant heroes,
Evidence of fatal warfare.
Daily does the wife Kyllikki
Look about her vacant chamber,
In the home of Lemminkainen,
At the court of Kaukomieli;
Looks at evening, looks at morning,
Looks, perchance, upon his hair-brush,
Sees alas! the blood-drops oozing,
Oozing from the golden bristles,
And the blood-drops, scarlet-colored.
Then the beauteous wife, Kyllikki,
Spake these words in deeps of anguish:
'Dead or wounded is my husband,
Or at best is filled with trouble,
Lost perhaps in Northland forests,
In some glen unknown to heroes,
Since alas! the blood is flowing
From the brush of Lemminkainen,
273
Red drops oozing from the bristles.'
Thereupon the anxious mother
Looks upon the bleeding hair-brush
And begins this wail of anguish:
'Woe is me, my life hard-fated,
Woe is me, all joy departed!
For alas! my son and hero,
Valiant hero of the islands,
Son of trouble and misfortune!
Some sad fate has overtaken
My ill-fated Lemminkainen!
Blood is flowing from his hair-brush,
Oozing from its golden bristles,
And the drops are scarlet-colored.'
Quick her garment's hem she clutches,
On her arm she throws her long-robes,
Fleetly flies upon her journey;
With her might she hastens northward,
Mountains tremble from her footsteps,
Valleys rise and heights are lowered,
Highlands soon become as lowlands,
All the hills and valleys levelled.
Soon she gains the Northland village,
Quickly asks about her hero,
These the words the mother utters:
'O thou hostess of Pohyola,
Where hast thou my Lemminkainen?
Tell me of my son and hero!'
Louhi, hostess of the Northland,
Gives this answer to the mother:
'Nothing know I of thy hero,
Of the hero of the islands;
Where thy son may be I know not,
Cannot lend the information;
Once I gave thy son a courser,
Hitched the racer to his snow-sledge,
This the last of Lemminkainen;
May perchance be drowned in Wuhne,
Frozen In the icy ocean,
Fallen prey to wolves in hunger,
In a bear's den may have perished.'
Lemminkainen's mother answers:
274
'Thou art only speaking falsehoods,
Northland wolves cannot devour us,
Nor the bears kill Kaukomieli;
He can slay the wolves of Pohya
With the fingers of his left hand;
Bears of Northland he would silence
With the magic of his singing.
'Hostess of Pohyola, tell me
Whither thou hast sent my hero;
I shall burst thy many garners,
Shall destroy the magic Sampo,
If thou dost not tell me truly
Where to find my Lemminkainen.'
Spake the hostess of Pohyola:
'I have well thy hero treated,
Well my court has entertained him,
Gave him of my rarest viands,
Fed him at my well-filled tables,
Placed him in a boat of copper,
Thus to float adown the current,
This the last of Lemminkainen;
Cannot tell where he has wandered.
Whether in the foam of waters,
Whether in the boiling torrent,
Whether in the drowning whirlpool.'
Lemminkainen's mother answers:
Thou again art speaking falsely;
Tell me now the truth I pray thee,
Make an end of thy deception,
Where is now my Lemminkainen,
Whither hast thou sent my hero,
Young and daring son of Kalew?
If a third time thou deceivest,
I will send thee plagues, unnumbered,
I will send thee fell destruction,
Certain death will overtake thee.'
Spake the hostess of Pohyola:
'This the third time that I answer,
This the truth that I shall tell thee:
I have sent the Kalew-hero
To the Hisi-fields and forests,
There to hunt the moose of Lempo;
275
Sent him then to catch the fire-horse,
Catch the fire-expiring stallion,
On the distant plains of Juutas,
In the realm of cruel Hisi.
Then I sent him to the Death-stream,
In the kingdom of Tuoni,
With his bow and but one arrow,
There to shoot the swan as dowry
For my best and fairest daughter;
Have not heard about thy hero
Since he left for Tuonela;
May in misery have fallen,
May have perished in Manala;
Has not come to ask my daughter,
Has not come to woo the maiden,
Since he left to hunt the death-swan.'
Now the mother seeks her lost one,
For her son she weeps and trembles,
Like the wolf she bounds through fenlands,
Like the bear, through forest thickets,
Like the wild-boar, through the marshes,
Like the hare, along the sea-coast,
To the sea-point, like the hedgehog
Like the wild-duck swims the waters,
Casts the rubbish from her pathway,
Tramples down opposing brush-wood,
Stops at nothing in her journey
Seeks a long time for her hero,
Seeks, and seeks, and does not find him.
Now she asks the trees the question,
And the forest gives this answer:
'We have care enough already,
Cannot think about thy matters;
Cruel fates have we to battle,
Pitiful our own misfortunes!
We are felled and chopped in pieces,
Cut in blocks for hero-fancy,
We are burned to death as fuel,
No one cares how much we suffer.'
Now again the mother wanders,
Seeks again her long-lost hero,
Seeks, and seeks, and does not find him.
276
Paths arise and come to meet her,
And she questions thus the pathways:
'Paths of hope that God has fashioned,
Have ye seen my Lemminkainen,
Has my son and golden hero
Travelled through thy many kingdoms?'
Sad, the many pathways answer:
'We ourselves have cares sufficient,
Cannot watch thy son and hero,
Wretched are the lives of pathways,
Deep indeed our own misfortunes;
We are trodden by, the red-deer,
By the wolves, and bears, and roebucks,
Driven o'er by heavy cart-wheels,
By the feet of dogs are trodden,
Trodden under foot of heroes,
Foot-paths for contending armies.'
Seeks again the frantic mother,
Seeks her long-lost son and hero,
Seeks, and seeks, and does not find him;
Finds the Moon within her orbit,
Asks the Moon in pleading measures:
'Golden Moon, whom God has stationed
In the heavens, the Sun's companion,
Hast thou seen my Kaukomieli,
Hast thou seen my silver apple,
Anywhere in thy dominions? '
Thus the golden Moon makes answer:
'I have trouble all-sufficient,
Cannot watch thy daring hero;
Long the journey I must travel,
Sad the fate to me befallen,
Pitiful mine own misfortunes,
All alone the nights to wander,
Shine alone without a respite,
In the winter ever watching,
In the summer sink and perish.'
Still the mother seeks, and wanders,
Seeks, and does not find her hero,
Sees the Sun in the horizon,
And the mother thus entreats him:
Silver Sun, whom God has fashioned,
277
Thou that giveth warmth and comfort,
Hast thou lately seen my hero,
Hast thou seen my Lemminkainen,
Wandering in thy dominions?'
Thus the Sun in kindness answers:
'Surely has thy hero perished,
To ingratitude a victim;
Lemminkainen died and vanished
In Tuoni's fatal river,
In the waters of Manala,
In the sacred stream and whirlpool,
In the cataract and rapids,
Sank within the drowning current
To the realm of Tuonela,
To Manala's lower regions.'
Lemminkainen's mother weeping,
Wailing in the deeps of anguish,
Mourns the fate of Kaukomieli,
Hastens to the Northland smithy,
To the forge of Ilmarinen,
These the words the mother utters:
'Ilmarinen, metal-artist,
Thou that long ago wert forging,
Forging earth a concave cover,
Yesterday wert forging wonders,
Forge thou now, immortal blacksmith,
Forge a rake with shaft of copper,
Forge the teeth of strongest metal,
Teeth in length a hundred fathoms,
And five hundred long the handle.'
Ilmarinen does as bidden,
Makes the rake in full perfection.
Lemminkainen's anxious mother
Takes the magic rake and hastens
To the river of Tuoni,
Praying to the Sun as follows:
'Thou, O Sun, by God created,
Thou that shinest on thy Maker,
Shine for me in heat of magic,
Give me warmth, and strength, and courage,
Shine a third time full of power,
Lull to sleep the wicked people,
278
Still the people of Manala,
Quiet all Tuoni's empire.'
Thereupon the sun of Ukko,
Dearest child of the Creator,
Flying through the groves of Northland,
Sitting on a curving birch-tree,
Shines a little while in ardor,
Shines again in greater fervor,
Shines a third time full of power,
Lulls to sleep the wicked people
In the Manala home and kingdom,
Still the heroes with their broadswords,
Makes the lancers halt and totter,
Stills the stoutest of the spearmen,
Quiets Tuoni's ghastly empire.
Now the Sun retires in magic,
Hovers here and there a moment
Over Tuoni's hapless sleepers,
Hastens upward to his station,
To his Jumala home and kingdom.
Lemminkainen's faithful mother
Takes the rake of magic metals,
Rakes the Tuoni river bottoms,
Rakes the cataract and whirlpool,
Rakes the swift and boiling current
Of the sacred stream of death-land,
In the Manala home and kingdom.
Searching for her long-lost hero,
Rakes a long time, finding nothing;
Now she wades the river deeper,
To her belt in mud and water,
Deeper, deeper, rakes the death-stream,
Rakes the river's deepest caverns,
Raking up and down the current,
Till at last she finds his tunic,
Heavy-hearted, finds his jacket;
Rakes again and rakes unceasing,
Finds the hero's shoes and stockings,
Sorely troubled, finds these relies;
Now she wades the river deeper,
Rakes the Manala shoals and shallows,
Rakes the deeps at every angle;
279
As she draws the rake the third time
From the Tuoni shores and waters,
In the rake she finds the body
Of her long-lost Lemminkainen,
In the metal teeth entangled,
In the rake with copper handle.
Thus the reckless Lemminkainen,
Thus the son of Kalevala,
Was recovered from the bottom
Of the Manala lake and river.
There were wanting many fragments,
Half the head, a hand, a fore-arm,
Many other smaller portions,
Life, above all else, was missing.
Then the mother, well reflecting,
Spake these words in bitter weeping:
'From these fragments, with my magic,
I will bring to life my hero.'
Hearing this, the raven answered,
Spake these measures to the mother:
'There is not in these a hero,
Thou canst not revive these fragments;
Eels have fed upon his body,
On his eyes have fed the whiting;
Cast the dead upon the waters,
On the streams of Tuonela,
Let him there become a walrus,
Or a seal, or whale, or porpoise.'
Lemminkainen's mother does not
Cast the dead upon the waters,
On the streams of Tuonela,
She again with hope and courage,
Rakes the river lengthwise, crosswise,
Through the Manala pools and caverns,
Rakes up half the head, a fore-arm,
Finds a hand and half the back-bone,
Many other smaller portions;
Shapes her son from all the fragments,
Shapes anew her Lemminkainen,
Flesh to flesh with skill she places,
Gives the bones their proper stations,
Binds one member to the other,
280
Joins the ends of severed vessels,
Counts the threads of all the venules,
Knits the parts in apposition;
Then this prayer the mother offers:
'Suonetar, thou slender virgin,
Goddess of the veins of heroes,
Skilful spinner of the vessels,
With thy slender, silver spindle,
With thy spinning-wheel of copper,
Set in frame of molten silver,
Come thou hither, thou art needed;
Bring the instruments for mending,
Firmly knit the veins together,
At the end join well the venules,
In the wounds that still are open,
In the members that are injured.
'Should this aid be inefficient;
There is living in the ether,
In a boat enriched with silver,
In a copper boat, a maiden,
That can bring to thee assistance.
Come, O maiden, from the ether,
Virgin from the belt of heaven,
Row throughout these veins, O maiden,
Row through all these lifeless members,
Through the channels of the long-bones,
Row through every form of tissue.
Set the vessels in their places,
Lay the heart in right position,
Make the pulses beat together,
Join the smallest of the veinlets,
And unite with skill the sinews.
Take thou now a slender needle,
Silken thread within its eyelet,
Ply the silver needle gently,
Sew with care the wounds together.
'Should this aid be inefficient,
Thou, O God, that knowest all things,
Come and give us thine assistance,
Harness thou thy fleetest racer
Call to aid thy strongest courser,
In thy scarlet sledge come swiftly,
281
Drive through all the bones and channels,
Drive throughout these lifeless tissues,
Drive thy courser through each vessel,
Bind the flesh and bones securely,
In the joints put finest silver,
Purest gold in all the fissures.
'Where the skin is broken open,
Where the veins are torn asunder,
Mend these injuries with magic;
Where the blood has left the body,
There make new blood flow abundant;
Where the bones are rudely broken,
Set the parts in full perfection;
Where the flesh is bruised and loosened,
Touch the wounds with magic balsam,
Do not leave a part imperfect;
Bone, and vein, and nerve, and sinew,
Heart, and brain, and gland, and vessel,
Heal as Thou alone canst heal them.'
These the means the mother uses,
Thus she joins the lifeless members,
Thus she heals the death-like tissues,
Thus restores her son and hero
To his former life and likeness;
All his veins are knit together,
All their ends are firmly fastened,
All the parts in apposition,
Life returns, but speech is wanting,
Deaf and dumb, and blind, and senseless.
Now the mother speaks as follows:
'Where may I procure the balsam,
Where the drops of magic honey,
To anoint my son and hero,
Thus to heal my Lemminkainen,
That again his month may open,
May again begin his singing,
Speak again in words of wonder,
Sing again his incantations?
'Tiny bee, thou honey-birdling,
Lord of all the forest flowers,
Fly away and gather honey,
Bring to me the forest-sweetness,
282
Found in Metsola's rich gardens,
And in Tapio's fragrant meadows,
From the petals of the flowers,
From the blooming herbs and grasses,
Thus to heal my hero's anguish,
Thus to heal his wounds of evil.'
Thereupon the honey-birdling
Flies away on wings of swiftness,
Into Metsola's rich gardens,
Into Tapio's flowery meadows,
Gathers sweetness from the meadows,
With the tongue distills the honey
From the cups of seven flowers,
From the bloom of countless grasses;
Quick from Metsola returning,
Flying, humming darting onward,
With his winglets honey-laden,
With the store of sweetest odors,
To the mother brings the balsam.
Lemminkainen's anxious mother
Takes the balm of magic virtues,
And anoints the injured hero,
Heals his wounds and stills his anguish;
But the balm is inefficient,
For her son is deaf and speechless.
Then again out-speaks the mother:
Lemminkainen's Restoration.
'Little bee, my honey-birdling,
Fly away in one direction,
Fly across the seven oceans,
In the eighth, a magic island,
Where the honey is enchanted,
To the distant Turi-castles,
To the chambers of Palwoinen;
There the honey is effective,
There, the wonder-working balsam,
This may heal the wounded hero;
Bring me of this magic ointment,
That I may anoint his eyelids,
May restore his injured senses.'
Thereupon the honey-birdling
Flew away o'er seven oceans,
283
To the old enchanted island;
Flies one day, and then a second,
On the verdure does not settle,
Does not rest upon the flowers;
Flies a third day, fleetly onward,
Till a third day evening brings him
To the island in the ocean,
To the meadows rich in honey,
To the cataract and fire-flow,
To the sacred stream and whirlpool.
There the honey was preparing,
There the magic balm distilling
In the tiny earthen vessels,
In the burnished copper kettles,
Smaller than a maiden's thimble,
Smaller than the tips of fingers.
Faithfully the busy insect
Gathers the enchanted honey
From the magic Turi-cuplets
In the chambers of Palwoinen.
Time had gone but little distance,
Ere the bee came loudly humming
Flying fleetly, honey-laden;
In his arms were seven vessels,
Seven, the vessels on each shoulder;
All were filled with honey-balsam,
With the balm of magic virtues.
Lemminkainen's tireless mother
Quick anoints her speechless hero,
With the magic Turi-balsam,
With the balm of seven virtues;
Nine the times that she anoints him
With the honey of Palwoinen,
With the wonder-working balsam;
But the balm is inefficient,
For the hero still is speechless.
Then again out-speaks the mother:
'Honey-bee, thou ether birdling,
Fly a third time on thy journey,
Fly away to high Jumala,
Fly thou to the seventh heaven,
Honey there thou'lt find abundant,
284
Balsam of the highest virtue,
Only used by the Creator,
Only made from the breath of Ukko.
God anoints his faithful children,
With the honey of his wisdom,
When they feel the pangs of sorrow,
When they meet the powers of evil.
Dip thy winglets in this honey,
Steep thy plumage in His sweetness,
Hither bring the all-sufficient
Balsam of the great Creator;
This will still my hero's anguish,
This will heal his wounded tissues,
This restore his long-lost vision,
Make the Northland hills re-echo
With the magic of his singing,
With his wonderful enchantment.'
Thus the honey-bee made answer:
'I can never fly to heaven,
To the seventh of the heavens,
To the distant home of Ukko,
With these wings of little virtue.'
Lemminkainen's mother answered:
'Thou canst surely fly to heaven,
To the seventh of the heavens,
O'er the Moon, beneath the sunshine,
Through the dim and distant starlight.
On the first day, flying upward,
Thou wilt near the Moon in heaven,
Fan the brow of Kootamoinen;
On the second thou canst rest thee
On the shoulders of Otava;
On the third day, flying higher,
Rest upon the seven starlets,
On the heads of Hetewanè;
Short the journey that is left thee,
Inconsiderable the distance
To the home of mighty Ukko,
To the dwellings of the blessed.'
Thereupon the bee arising,
From the earth flies swiftly upward,
Hastens on with graceful motion,
285
By his tiny wings borne heavenward,
In the paths of golden moonbeams,
Touches on the Moon's bright borders,
Fans the brow of Kootamoinen,
Rests upon Otava's shoulders,
Hastens to the seven starlets.,
To the heads of Hetewanè,
Flies to the Creator's castle,
To the home of generous Ukko,
Finds the remedy preparing,
Finds the balm of life distilling,
In the silver-tinted caldrons,
In the purest golden kettles;
On one side, heart-easing honey,
On a second, balm of joyance,
On the third, life-giving balsam.
Here the magic bee, selecting,
Culls the sweet, life-giving balsam,
Gathers too, heart-easing honey,
Heavy-laden hastens homeward.
Time had traveled little distance,
Ere the busy bee came humming
To the anxious mother waiting,
In his arms a hundred cuplets,
And a thousand other vessels,
Filled with honey, filled with balsam,
Filled with the balm of the Creator.
Lemminkainen's mother quickly
Takes them on her, tongue and tests them,
Finds a balsam all-sufficient.
Then the mother spake as follows:
'I have found the long-sought balsam,
Found the remedy of Ukko,
Where-with God anoints his people,
Gives them life, and faith, and wisdom,
Heals their wounds and stills their anguish,
Makes them strong against temptation,
Guards them from the evil-doers.'
Now the mother well anointing,
Heals her son, the magic singer,
Eyes, and ears, and tongue, and temples,
Breaks, and cuts, and seams, anointing,
286
Touching well the life-blood centres,
Speaks these words of magic import
To the sleeping Lemminkainen:
'Wake, arise from out thy slumber,
From the worst of low conditions,
From thy state of dire misfortune!'
Slowly wakes the son and hero,
Rises from the depths of slumber,
Speaks again in magic accents,
These the first words of the singer:
'Long, indeed, have I been sleeping,
Long unconscious of existence,
But my sleep was full of sweetness,
Sweet the sleep in Tuonela,
Knowing neither joy nor sorrow!'
This the answer of his mother:
'Longer still thou wouldst have slumbered,
Were it not for me, thy, mother;
Tell me now, my son beloved,
Tell me that I well may hear thee,
Who enticed thee to Manala,
To the river of Tuoni,
To the fatal stream and whirlpool?'
Then the hero, Lemminkainen,
Gave this answer to his mother:
'Nasshut, the decrepit shepherd
Of the flocks of Sariola,
Blind, and halt, and poor, and wretched,
And to whom I did a favor;
From the slumber-land of envy
Nasshut sent me to Manala,
To the river of Tuoni;
Sent a serpent from the waters,
Sent an adder from the death-stream,
Through the heart of Lemminkainen;
Did not recognize the serpent,
Could not speak the serpent-language,
Did not know the sting of adders.'
Spake again the ancient mother:
'O thou son of little insight,
Senseless hero, fool-magician,
Thou didst boast betimes thy magic
287
To enchant the wise enchanters,
On the dismal shores of Lapland,
Thou didst think to banish heroes,
From the borders of Pohyola;
Didst not know the sting of serpents,
Didst not know the reed of waters,
Nor the magic word-protector!
Learn the origin of serpents,
Whence the poison of the adder.
'In the floods was born the serpent,
From the marrow of the gray-duck,
From the brain of ocean-swallows;
Suoyatar had made saliva,
Cast it on the waves of ocean,
Currents drove it outward, onward,
Softly shone the sun upon it,
By the winds 'twas gently cradled,
Gently nursed by winds and waters,
By the waves was driven shoreward,
Landed by the surging billows.
Thus the serpent, thing of evil,
Filling all the world with trouble,
Was created in the waters
Born from Suoyatar, its maker.'
Then the mother of the hero
Rocked her son to rest and comfort,
Rocked him to his former being,
To his former life and spirit,
Into greater magic powers;
Wiser, handsomer than ever
Grew the hero of the islands;
But his heart was full of trouble,
And his mother, ever watchful,
Asked the cause of his dejection.
This is Lemminkainen's answer:
'This the cause of all my sorrow;
Far away my heart is roaming,
All my thoughts forever wander
To the Northland's blooming virgins,
To the maids of braided tresses.
Northland's ugly hostess, Louhi,
Will not give to me her daughter,
288
Fairest maiden of Pohyola,
Till I kill the swan of Mana,
With my bow and but one arrow,
In the river of Tuoni.
Lemminkainen's mother answers,
In the sacred stream and whirlpool.
'Let the swan swim on in safety,
Give the water-bird his freedom,
In the river of Manala,
In the whirlpool of Tuoni;
Leave the maiden in the Northland.,
With her charms and fading beauty;
With thy fond and faithful mother,
Go at once to Kalevala,
To thy native fields and fallows.
Praise thy fortune, all sufficient,
Praise, above all else, thy Maker.
Ukko gave thee aid when needed,
Thou wert saved by thy Creator,
From thy long and hopeless slumber,
In the waters of Tuoni,
In the chambers of Manala.
I unaided could not save thee,
Could not give the least assistance;
God alone, omniscient Ukko,
First and last of the creators,
Can revive the dead and dying,
Can protect his worthy people
From the waters of Manala, .
From the fatal stream and whirlpool,
In the kingdom of Tuoni.'
Lemminkainen, filled with wisdom,
With his fond and faithful mother,
Hastened straightway on his journey
To his distant home and kindred,
To the Wainola fields and meadows,
To the plains of Kalevala.
*****
Here I leave my Kaukomieli,
Leave my hero Lemminkainen,
Long I leave him from my singing,
Turn my song to other heroes,
289
Send it forth on other pathways,
Sing some other golden legend.
~ Elias Lönnrot,#NFDB
262:No more wine? then we'll push back chairs and talk.
A final glass for me, though: cool, i' faith!
We ought to have our Abbey back, you see.
It's different, preaching in basilicas,
And doing duty in some masterpiece
Like this of brother Pugin's, bless his heart!
I doubt if they're half baked, those chalk rosettes,
Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere;
It's just like breathing in a lime-kiln: eh?
These hot long ceremonies of our church
Cost us a littleoh, they pay the price,
You take meamply pay it! Now, we'll talk.
So, you despise me, Mr. Gigadibs.
No deprecation,nay, I beg you, sir!
Beside 't is our engagement: don't you know,
I promised, if you'd watch a dinner out,
We'd see truth dawn together?truth that peeps
Over the glasses' edge when dinners done.
And body gets its sop and holds its noise
And leaves soul free a little. Now's the time:
'T is break of day! You do despise me then.
And if I say, "despise me,"never fear!
I know you do not in a certain sense
Not in my arm-chair, for example: here,
I well imagine you respect my place
( Status, entourage , worldly circumstance)
Quite to its valuevery much indeed:
Are up to the protesting eyes of you
In pride at being seated here for once
You'll turn it to such capital account!
When somebody, through years and years to come,
Hints of the bishop,names methat's enough:
"Blougram? I knew him"(into it you slide)
"Dined with him once, a Corpus Christi Day,
"All alone, we two; he's a clever man:
"And after dinner,why, the wine you know,
"Oh, there was wine, and good!what with the wine . .
"'Faith, we began upon all sorts of talk!
"He's no bad fellow, Blougram; he had seen
"Something of mine he relished, some review:
"He's quite above their humbug in his heart,
"Half-said as much, indeedthe thing's his trade.
"I warrant, Blougram's sceptical at times:
"How otherwise? I liked him, I confess!"
Che che , my dear sir, as we say at Rome,
Don't you protest now! It's fair give and take;
You have had your turn and spoken your home-truths:
The hand's mine now, and here you follow suit.
Thus much conceded, still the first fact stays
You do despise me; your ideal of life
Is not the bishop's: you would not be I.
You would like better to be Goethe, now,
Or Buonaparte, or, bless me, lower still,
Count D'Orsay,so you did what you preferred,
Spoke as you thought, and, as you cannot help,
Believed or disbelieved, no matter what,
So long as on that point, whate'er it was,
You loosed your mind, were whole and sole yourself.
That, my ideal never can include,
Upon that element of truth and worth
Never be based! for say they make me Pope
(They can'tsuppose it for our argument!)
Why, there I'm at my tether's end, I've reached
My height, and not a height which pleases you:
An unbelieving Pope won't do, you say.
It's like those eerie stories nurses tell,
Of how some actor on a stage played Death,
With pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled dart,
And called himself the monarch of the world;
Then, going in the tire-room afterward,
Because the play was done, to shift himself,
Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly,
The moment he had shut the closet door,
By Death himself. Thus God might touch a Pope
At unawares, ask what his baubles mean,
And whose part he presumed to play just now?
Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true!
So, drawing comfortable breath again,
You weigh and find, whatever more or less
I boast of my ideal realized,
Is nothing in the balance when opposed
To your ideal, your grand simple life,
Of which you will not realize one jot.
I am much, you are nothing; you would be all,
I would be merely much: you beat me there.
No, friend, you do not beat me: hearken why!
The common problem, yours, mine, every one's,
Isnot to fancy what were fair in life
Provided it could be,but, finding first
What may be, then find how to make it fair
Up to our means: a very different thing!
No abstract intellectual plan of life
Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws,
But one, a man, who is man and nothing more,
May lead within a world which (by your leave)
Is Rome or London, not Fool's-paradise.
Embellish Rome, idealize away,
Make paradise of London if you can,
You're welcome, nay, you're wise.
A simile!
We mortals cross the ocean of this world
Each in his average cabin of a life;
The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room.
Now for our six months' voyagehow prepare?
You come on shipboard with a landsman's list
Of things he calls convenient: so they are!
An India screen is pretty furniture,
A piano-forte is a fine resource,
All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf,
The new edition fifty volumes long;
And little Greek books, with the funny type
They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next:
Go on! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes!
And Parma's pride, the Jerome, let us add!
'T were pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glow
Hang full in face of one where'er one roams,
Since he more than the others brings with him
Italy's self,the marvellous Modenese!
Yet was not on your list before, perhaps.
Alas, friend, here's the agent . . . is't the name?
The captain, or whoever's master here
You see him screw his face up; what's his cry
Ere you set foot on shipboard? "Six feet square!"
If you won't understand what six feet mean,
Compute and purchase stores accordingly
And if, in pique because he overhauls
Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board
Barewhy, you cut a figure at the first
While sympathetic landsmen see you off;
Not afterward, when long ere half seas over,
You peep up from your utterly naked boards
Into some snug and well-appointed berth,
Like mine for instance (try the cooler jug
Put back the other, but don't jog the ice!)
And mortified you mutter "Well and good;
"He sits enjoying his sea-furniture;
"'T is stout and proper, and there's store of it:
"Though I've the better notion, all agree,
"Of fitting rooms up. Hang the carpenter,
"Neat ship-shape fixings and contrivances
"I would have brought my Jerome, frame and all!"
And meantime you bring nothing: never mind
You've proved your artist-nature: what you don't
You might bring, so despise me, as I say.
Now come, let's backward to the starting-place.
See my way: we're two college friends, suppose.
Prepare together for our voyage, then;
Each note and check the other in his work,
Here's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticize!
What's wrong? why won't you be a bishop too?
Why first, you don't believe, you don't and can't,
(Not statedly, that is, and fixedly
And absolutely and exclusively)
In any revelation called divine.
No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains
But say so, like the honest man you are?
First, therefore, overhaul theology!
Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think,
Must find believing every whit as hard:
And if I do not frankly say as much,
The ugly consequence is clear enough.
Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe
If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed,
Absolute and exclusive, as you say.
You're wrongI mean to prove it in due time.
Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie
I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall,
So give up hope accordingly to solve
(To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then
With both of us, though in unlike degree,
Missing full credenceoverboard with them!
I mean to meet you on your own premise:
Good, there go mine in company with yours!
And now what are we? unbelievers both,
Calm and complete, determinately fixed
To-day, to-morrow and for ever, pray?
You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think!
In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief,
As unbelief before, shakes us by fits,
Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's
The gain? how can we guard our unbelief,
Make it bear fruit to us?the problem here.
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides,
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
Round the ancient idol, on his base again,
The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.
There the old misgivings, crooked questions are
This good God,what he could do, if he would,
Would, if he couldthen must have done long since:
If so, when, where and how? some way must be,
Once feel about, and soon or late you hit
Some sense, in which it might be, after all.
Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"
That way
Over the mountain, which who stands upon
Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road;
While, if he views it from the waste itself,
Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow,
Not vague, mistakeable! what's a break or two
Seen from the unbroken desert either side?
And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)
What if the breaks themselves should prove at last
The most consummate of contrivances
To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith?
And so we stumble at truth's very test!
All we have gained then by our unbelief
Is a life of doubt diversified by faith,
For one of faith diversified by doubt:
We called the chess-board white,we call it black.
"Well," you rejoin, "the end's no worse, at least;
"We've reason for both colours on the board:
"Why not confess then, where I drop the faith
"And you the doubt, that I'm as right as you?"
Because, friend, in the next place, this being so,
And both things even,faith and unbelief
Left to a man's choice,we'll proceed a step,
Returning to our image, which I like.
A man's choice, yesbut a cabin-passenger's
The man made for the special life o' the world
Do you forget him? I remember though!
Consult our ship's conditions and you find
One and but one choice suitable to all;
The choice, that you unluckily prefer,
Turning things topsy-turvythey or it
Going to the ground. Belief or unbelief
Bears upon life, determines its whole course,
Begins at its beginning. See the world
Such as it is,you made it not, nor I;
I mean to take it as it is,and you,
Not so you'll take it,though you get nought else.
I know the special kind of life I like,
What suits the most my idiosyncrasy,
Brings out the best of me and bears me fruit
In power, peace, pleasantness and length of days.
I find that positive belief does this
For me, and unbelief, no whit of this.
For you, it does, however?that, we'll try!
'T is clear, I cannot lead my life, at least,
Induce the world to let me peaceably,
Without declaring at the outset, "Friends,
"I absolutely and peremptorily
"Believe!"I say, faith is my waking life:
One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals,
We know, but waking's the main point with us
And my provision's for life's waking part.
Accordingly, I use heart, head and hand
All day, I build, scheme, study, and make friends;
And when night overtakes me, down I lie,
Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it,
The sooner the better, to begin afresh.
What's midnight doubt before the dayspring's faith?
You, the philosopher, that disbelieve,
That recognize the night, give dreams their weight
To be consistent you should keep your bed,
Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man,
For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares!
And certainly at night you'll sleep and dream,
Live through the day and bustle as you please.
And so you live to sleep as I to wake,
To unbelieve as I to still believe?
Well, and the common sense o' the world calls you
Bed-ridden,and its good things come to me.
Its estimation, which is half the fight,
That's the first-cabin comfort I secure:
The next . . . but you perceive with half an eye!
Come, come, it's best believing, if we may;
You can't but own that!
Next, concede again,
If once we choose belief, on all accounts
We can't be too decisive in our faith,
Conclusive and exclusive in its terms,
To suit the world which gives us the good things.
In every man's career are certain points
Whereon he dares not be indifferent;
The world detects him clearly, if he dare,
As baffled at the game, and losing life.
He may care little or he may care much
For riches, honour, pleasure, work, repose,
Since various theories of life and life's
Success are extant which might easily
Comport with either estimate of these;
And whoso chooses wealth or poverty,
Labour or quiet, is not judged a fool
Because his fellow would choose otherwise:
We let him choose upon his own account
So long as he's consistent with his choice.
But certain points, left wholly to himself,
When once a man has arbitrated on,
We say he must succeed there or go hang.
Thus, he should wed the woman he loves most
Or needs most, whatsoe'er the love or need
For he can't wed twice. Then, he must avouch,
Or follow, at the least, sufficiently,
The form of faith his conscience holds the best,
Whate'er the process of conviction was:
For nothing can compensate his mistake
On such a point, the man himself being judge:
He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul.
Well now, there's one great form of Christian faith
I happened to be born inwhich to teach
Was given me as I grew up, on all hands,
As best and readiest means of living by;
The same on examination being proved
The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise
And absolute form of faith in the whole world
Accordingly, most potent of all forms
For working on the world. Observe, my friend!
Such as you know me, I am free to say,
In these hard latter days which hamper one,
Myselfby no immoderate exercise
Of intellect and learning, but the tact
To let external forces work for me,
Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread;
Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's,
Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world
And make my life an ease and joy and pride;
It does so,which for me's a great point gained,
Who have a soul and body that exact
A comfortable care in many ways.
There's power in me and will to dominate
Which I must exercise, they hurt me else:
In many ways I need mankind's respect,
Obedience, and the love that's born of fear:
While at the same time, there's a taste I have,
A toy of soul, a titillating thing,
Refuses to digest these dainties crude.
The naked life is gross till clothed upon:
I must take what men offer, with a grace
As though I would not, could I help it, take!
An uniform I wear though over-rich
Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;
No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake
And despicable therefore! now folk kneel
And kiss my handof course the Church's hand.
Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,
And thus that it should be I have procured;
And thus it could not be another way,
I venture to imagine.
You'll reply,
So far my choice, no doubt, is a success;
But were I made of better elements,
With nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you,
I hardly would account the thing success
Though it did all for me I say.
But, friend,
We speak of what is; not of what might be,
And how't were better if't were otherwise.
I am the man you see here plain enough:
Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives!
Suppose I own at once to tail and claws;
The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed
I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes
To dock their stump and dress their haunches up.
My business is not to remake myself,
But make the absolute best of what God made.
Orour first similethough you prove me doomed
To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole,
The sheep-pen or the pig-stye, I should strive
To make what use of each were possible;
And as this cabin gets upholstery,
That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw.
But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast
I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes
Enumerated so complacently,
On the mere ground that you forsooth can find
In this particular life I choose to lead
No fit provision for them. Can you not?
Say you, my fault is I address myself
To grosser estimators than should judge?
And that's no way of holding up the soul,
Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows
One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'
Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that.
I pine among my million imbeciles
(You think) aware some dozen men of sense
Eye me and know me, whether I believe
In the last winking Virgin, as I vow,
And am a fool, or disbelieve in her
And am a knave,approve in neither case,
Withhold their voices though I look their way:
Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end
(The thing they gave at Florence,what's its name?)
While the mad houseful's plaudits near out-bang
His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones,
He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths
Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.
Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here
That even your prime men who appraise their kind
Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,
See more in a truth than the truth's simple self,
Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street
Sixty the minute; what's to note in that?
You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack;
Him you must watchhe's sure to fall, yet stands!
Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist, demirep
That loves and saves her soul in new French books
We watch while these in equilibrium keep
The giddy line midway: one step aside,
They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line
Before your sages,just the men to shrink
From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad
You offer their refinement. Fool or knave?
Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave
When there's a thousand diamond weights between?
So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find,
Profess themselves indignant, scandalized
At thus being held unable to explain
How a superior man who disbelieves
May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way!
It's through my coming in the tail of time,
Nicking the minute with a happy tact.
Had I been born three hundred years ago
They'd say, "What's strange? Blougram of course believes;"
And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course."
But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet
"How can he?" All eyes turn with interest.
Whereas, step off the line on either side
You, for example, clever to a fault,
The rough and ready man who write apace,
Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less
You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares?
Lord So-and-sohis coat bedropped with wax,
All Peter's chains about his waist, his back
Brave with the needlework of Noodledom
Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares?
But I, the man of sense and learning too,
The able to think yet act, the this, the that,
I, to believe at this late time of day!
Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.
Except it's yours! Admire me as these may,
You don't. But whom at least do you admire?
Present your own perfection, your ideal,
Your pattern man for a minuteoh, make haste
Is it Napoleon you would have us grow?
Concede the means; allow his head and hand,
(A large concession, clever as you are)
Good! In our common primal element
Of unbelief (we can't believe, you know
We're still at that admission, recollect!)
Where do you findapart from, towering o'er
The secondary temporary aims
Which satisfy the gross taste you despise
Where do you find his star?his crazy trust
God knows through what or in what? it's alive
And shines and leads him, and that's all we want.
Have we aught in our sober night shall point
Such ends as his were, and direct the means
Of working out our purpose straight as his,
Nor bring a moment's trouble on success
With after-care to justify the same?
Be a Napoleon, and yet disbelieve
Why, the man's mad, friend, take his light away!
What's the vague good o' the world, for which you dare
With comfort to yourself blow millions up?
We neither of us see it! we do see
The blown-up millionsspatter of their brains
And writhing of their bowels and so forth,
In that bewildering entanglement
Of horrible eventualities
Past calculation to the end of time!
Can I mistake for some clear word of God
(Which were my ample warrant for it all)
His puff of hazy instinct, idle talk,
"The State, that's I," quack-nonsense about crowns,
And (when one beats the man to his last hold)
A vague idea of setting things to rights,
Policing people efficaciously,
More to their profit, most of all to his own;
The whole to end that dismallest of ends
By an Austrian marriage, cant to us the Church,
And resurrection of the old rgime ?
Would I, who hope to live a dozen years,
Fight Austerlitz for reasons such and such?
No: for, concede me but the merest chance
Doubt may be wrongthere's judgment, life to come!
With just that chance, I dare not. Doubt proves right?
This present life is all?you offer me
Its dozen noisy years, without a chance
That wedding an archduchess, wearing lace,
And getting called by divers new-coined names,
Will drive off ugly thoughts and let me dine,
Sleep, read and chat in quiet as I like!
Therefore I will not.
Take another case;
Fit up the cabin yet another way.
What say you to the poets? shall we write
Hamlet, Othellomake the world our own,
Without a risk to run of either sort?
I can'tto put the strongest reason first.
"But try," you urge, "the trying shall suffice;
"The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life:
"Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!"
Spare my self-knowledgethere's no fooling me!
If I prefer remaining my poor self,
I say so not in self-dispraise but praise.
If I'm a Shakespeare, let the well alone;
Why should I try to be what now I am?
If I'm no Shakespeare, as too probable,
His power and consciousness and self-delight
And all we want in common, shall I find
Trying for ever? while on points of taste
Wherewith, to speak it humbly, he and I
Are dowered alikeI'll ask you, I or he,
Which in our two lives realizes most?
Much, he imaginedsomewhat, I possess.
He had the imagination; stick to that!
Let him say, "In the face of my soul's works
"Your world is worthless and I touch it not
"Lest I should wrong them"I'll withdraw my plea.
But does he say so? look upon his life!
Himself, who only can, gives judgment there.
He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces
To build the trimmest house in Stratford town;
Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of things,
Giulio Romano's pictures, Dowland's lute;
Enjoys a show, respects the puppets, too,
And none more, had he seen its entry once,
Than "Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal."
Why then should I who play that personage,
The very Pandulph Shakespeare's fancy made,
Be told that had the poet chanced to start
From where I stand now (some degree like mine
Being just the goal he ran his race to reach)
He would have run the whole race back, forsooth,
And left being Pandulph, to begin write plays?
Ah, the earth's best can be but the earth's best!
Did Shakespeare live, he could but sit at home
And get himself in dreams the Vatican,
Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls,
And English books, none equal to his own,
Which I read, bound in gold (he never did).
Terni's fall, Naples' bay and Gothard's top
Eh, friend? I could not fancy one of these;
But, as I pour this claret, there they are:
I've gained themcrossed St. Gothard last July
With ten mules to the carriage and a bed
Slung inside; is my hap the worse for that?
We want the same things, Shakespeare and myself,
And what I want, I have: he, gifted more,
Could fancy he too had them when he liked,
But not so thoroughly that, if fate allowed,
He would not have them also in my sense.
We play one game; I send the ball aloft
No less adroitly that of fifty strokes
Scarce five go o'er the wall so wide and high
Which sends them back to me: I wish and get
He struck balls higher and with better skill,
But at a poor fence level with his head,
And hithis Stratford house, a coat of arms,
Successful dealings in his grain and wool,
While I receive heaven's incense in my nose
And style myself the cousin of Queen Bess.
Ask him, if this life's all, who wins the game?
Believeand our whole argument breaks up.
Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat;
Only, we can't command it; fire and life
Are all, dead matter's nothing, we agree:
And be it a mad dream or God's very breath,
The fact's the same,belief's fire, once in us,
Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself:
We penetrate our life with such a glow
As fire lends wood and ironthis turns steel,
That burns to ashall's one, fire proves its power
For good or ill, since men call flare success.
But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn.
Light one in me, I'll find it food enough!
Why, to be Lutherthat's a life to lead,
Incomparably better than my own.
He comes, reclaims God's earth for God, he says,
Sets up God's rule again by simple means,
Re-opens a shut book, and all is done.
He flared out in the flaring of mankind;
Such Luther's luck was: how shall such be mine?
If he succeeded, nothing's left to do:
And if he did not altogetherwell,
Strauss is the next advance. All Strauss should be
I might be also. But to what result?
He looks upon no future: Luther did.
What can I gain on the denying side?
Ice makes no conflagration. State the facts,
Read the text right, emancipate the world
The emancipated world enjoys itself
With scarce a thank-you: Blougram told it first
It could not owe a farthing,not to him
More than Saint Paul! 't would press its pay, you think?
Then add there's still that plaguy hundredth chance
Strauss may be wrong. And so a risk is run
For what gain? not for Luther's, who secured
A real heaven in his heart throughout his life,
Supposing death a little altered things.
"Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry,
"You run the same risk really on all sides,
"In cool indifference as bold unbelief.
"As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him.
"It's not worth having, such imperfect faith,
"No more available to do faith's work
"Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!"
Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point
Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith.
We're back on Christian ground. You call for faith:
I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.
The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,
If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does?
By life and man's free will, God gave for that!
To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice:
That's our one act, the previous work's his own.
You criticize the soul? it reared this tree
This broad life and whatever fruit it bears!
What matter though I doubt at every pore,
Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my fingers' ends,
Doubts in the trivial work of every day,
Doubts at the very bases of my soul
In the grand moments when she probes herself
If finally I have a life to show,
The thing I did, brought out in evidence
Against the thing done to me underground
By hell and all its brood, for aught I know?
I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt?
All's doubt in me; where's break of faith in this?
It is the idea, the feeling and the love,
God means mankind should strive for and show forth
Whatever be the process to that end,
And not historic knowledge, logic sound,
And metaphysical acumen, sure!
"What think ye of Christ," friend? when all's done and said,
Like you this Christianity or not?
It may be false, but will you wish it true?
Has it your vote to be so if it can?
Trust you an instinct silenced long ago
That will break silence and enjoin you love
What mortified philosophy is hoarse,
And all in vain, with bidding you despise?
If you desire faiththen you've faith enough:
What else seeks Godnay, what else seek ourselves?
You form a notion of me, we'll suppose,
On hearsay; it's a favourable one:
"But still" (you add), "there was no such good man,
"Because of contradiction in the facts.
"One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome,
"This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him
"I see he figures as an Englishman."
Well, the two things are reconcileable.
But would I rather you discovered that,
Subjoining"Still, what matter though they be?
"Blougram concerns me nought, born here or there."
Pure faith indeedyou know not what you ask!
Naked belief in God the Omnipotent,
Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much
The sense of conscious creatures to be borne.
It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare
Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth:
I say it's meant to hide him all it can,
And that's what all the blessed evil's for.
Its use in Time is to environ us,
Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough
Against that sight till we can bear its stress.
Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain
And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart
Less certainly would wither up at once
Than mind, confronted with the truth of him.
But time and earth case-harden us to live;
The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child
Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place,
Plays on and grows to be a man like us.
With me, faith means perpetual unbelief
Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot
Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.
Or, if that's too ambitious,here's my box
I need the excitation of a pinch
Threatening the torpor of the inside-nose
Nigh on the imminent sneeze that never comes.
"Leave it in peace" advise the simple folk:
Make it aware of peace by itching-fits,
Say Ilet doubt occasion still more faith!
You'll say, once all believed, man, woman, child,
In that dear middle-age these noodles praise.
How you'd exult if I could put you back
Six hundred years, blot out cosmogony,
Geology, ethnology, what not
(Greek endings, each the little passing-bell
That signifies some faith's about to die),
And set you square with Genesis again,
When such a traveller told you his last news,
He saw the ark a-top of Ararat
But did not climb there since 't was getting dusk
And robber-bands infest the mountain's foot!
How should you feel, I ask, in such an age,
How act? As other people felt and did;
With soul more blank than this decanter's knob,
Believeand yet lie, kill, rob, fornicate
Full in belief's face, like the beast you'd be!
No, when the fight begins within himself,
A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,
Satan looks up between his feetboth tug
He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul wakes
And grows. Prolong that battle through his life!
Never leave growing till the life to come!
Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winks
That used to puzzle people wholesomely:
Men have outgrown the shame of being fools.
What are the laws of nature, not to bend
If the Church bid them?brother Newman asks.
Up with the Immaculate Conception, then
On to the rack with faith!is my advice.
Will not that hurry us upon our knees,
Knocking our breasts, "It can't beyet it shall!
"Who am I, the worm, to argue with my Pope?
"Low things confound the high things!" and so forth.
That's better than acquitting God with grace
As some folk do. He's triedno case is proved,
Philosophy is lenienthe may go!
You'll say, the old system's not so obsolete
But men believe still: ay, but who and where?
King Bomba's lazzaroni foster yet
The sacred flame, so Antonelli writes;
But even of these, what ragamuffin-saint
Believes God watches him continually,
As he believes in fire that it will burn,
Or rain that it will drench him? Break fire's law,
Sin against rain, although the penalty
Be just a singe or soaking? "No," he smiles;
"Those laws are laws that can enforce themselves."
The sum of all isyes, my doubt is great,
My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough.
I have read much, thought much, experienced much,
Yet would die rather than avow my fear
The Naples' liquefaction may be false,
When set to happen by the palace-clock
According to the clouds or dinner-time.
I hear you recommend, I might at least
Eliminate, decrassify my faith
Since I adopt it; keeping what I must
And leaving what I cansuch points as this.
I won'tthat is, I can't throw one away.
Supposing there's no truth in what I hold
About the need of trial to man's faith,
Still, when you bid me purify the same,
To such a process I discern no end.
Clearing off one excrescence to see two,
There's ever a next in size, now grown as big,
That meets the knife: I cut and cut again!
First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last
But Fichte's clever cut at God himself?
Experimentalize on sacred things!
I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain
To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike.
The first step, I am master not to take.
You'd find the cutting-process to your taste
As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned,
Nor see more danger in it,you retort.
Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise
When we consider that the steadfast hold
On the extreme end of the chain of faith
Gives all the advantage, makes the difference
With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule:
We are their lords, or they are free of us,
Just as we tighten or relax our hold.
So, others matters equal, we'll revert
To the first problemwhich, if solved my way
And thrown into the balance, turns the scale
How we may lead a comfortable life,
How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.
Of course you are remarking all this time
How narrowly and grossly I view life,
Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule
The masses, and regard complacently
"The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do.
I act for, talk for, live for this world now,
As this world prizes action, life and talk:
No prejudice to what next world may prove,
Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge
To observe then, is that I observe these now,
Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile.
Let us concede (gratuitously though)
Next life relieves the soul of body, yields
Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend,
Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use
May be to make the next life more intense?
Do you know, I have often had a dream
(Work it up in your next month's article)
Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still
Losing true life for ever and a day
Through ever trying to be and ever being
In the evolution of successive spheres
Before its actual sphere and place of life,
Halfway into the next, which having reached,
It shoots with corresponding foolery
Halfway into the next still, on and off!
As when a traveller, bound from North to South,
Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?
In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?
In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!
Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,
A superfluity at Timbuctoo.
When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?
I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,
I take and like its way of life; I think
My brothers, who administer the means,
Live better for my comfortthat's good too;
And God, if he pronounce upon such life,
Approves my service, which is better still.
If he keep silence,why, for you or me
Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times,"
What odds is't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?
You meet me at this issue: you declare,
All special-pleading done withtruth is truth,
And justifies itself by undreamed ways.
You don't fear but it's better, if we doubt,
To say so, act up to our truth perceived
However feebly. Do then,act away!
'T is there I'm on the watch for you. How one acts
Is, both of us agree, our chief concern:
And how you'll act is what I fain would see
If, like the candid person you appear,
You dare to make the most of your life's scheme
As I of mine, live up to its full law
Since there's no higher law that counterchecks.
Put natural religion to the test
You've just demolished the revealed withquick,
Down to the root of all that checks your will,
All prohibition to lie, kill and thieve,
Or even to be an atheistic priest!
Suppose a pricking to incontinence
Philosophers deduce you chastity
Or shame, from just the fact that at the first
Whoso embraced a woman in the field,
Threw club down and forewent his brains beside,
So, stood a ready victim in the reach
Of any brother savage, club in hand;
Hence saw the use of going out of sight
In wood or cave to prosecute his loves:
I read this in a French book t' other day.
Does law so analysed coerce you much?
Oh, men spin clouds of fuzz where matters end,
But you who reach where the first thread begins,
You'll soon cut that!which means you can, but won't,
Through certain instincts, blind, unreasoned-out,
You dare not set aside, you can't tell why,
But there they are, and so you let them rule.
Then, friend, you seem as much a slave as I,
A liar, conscious coward and hypocrite,
Without the good the slave expects to get,
In case he has a master after all!
You own your instincts? why, what else do I,
Who want, am made for, and must have a God
Ere I can be aught, do aught?no mere name
Want, but the true thing with what proves its truth,
To wit, a relation from that thing to me,
Touching from head to footwhich touch I feel,
And with it take the rest, this life of ours!
I live my life here; yours you dare not live.
Not as I state it, who (you please subjoin)
Disfigure such a life and call it names,
While, to your mind, remains another way
For simple men: knowledge and power have rights,
But ignorance and weakness have rights too.
There needs no crucial effort to find truth
If here or there or anywhere about:
We ought to turn each side, try hard and see,
And if we can't, be glad we've earned at least
The right, by one laborious proof the more,
To graze in peace earth's pleasant pasturage.
Men are not angels, neither are they brutes:
Something we may see, all we cannot see.
What need of lying? I say, I see all,
And swear to each detail the most minute
In what I think a Pan's faceyou, mere cloud:
I swear I hear him speak and see him wink,
For fear, if once I drop the emphasis,
Mankind may doubt there's any cloud at all.
You take the simple lifeready to see,
Willing to see (for no cloud's worth a face)
And leaving quiet what no strength can move,
And which, who bids you move? who has the right?
I bid you; but you are God's sheep, not mine:
" Pastor est tui Dominus ." You find
In this the pleasant pasture of our life
Much you may eat without the least offence,
Much you don't eat because your maw objects,
Much you would eat but that your fellow-flock
Open great eyes at you and even butt,
And thereupon you like your mates so well
You cannot please yourself, offending them;
Though when they seem exorbitantly sheep,
You weigh your pleasure with their butts and bleats
And strike the balance. Sometimes certain fears
Restrain you, real checks since you find them so;
Sometimes you please yourself and nothing checks:
And thus you graze through life with not one lie,
And like it best.
But do you, in truth's name?
If so, you beatwhich means you are not I
Who needs must make earth mine and feed my fill
Not simply unbutted at, unbickered with,
But motioned to the velvet of the sward
By those obsequious wethers' very selves.
Look at me, sir; my age is double yours:
At yours, I knew beforehand, so enjoyed,
What now I should beas, permit the word,
I pretty well imagine your whole range
And stretch of tether twenty years to come.
We both have minds and bodies much alike:
In truth's name, don't you want my bishopric,
My daily bread, my influence and my state?
You're young. I'm old; you must be old one day;
Will you find then, as I do hour by hour,
Women their lovers kneel to, who cut curls
From your fat lap-dog's ear to grace a brooch
Dukes, who petition just to kiss your ring
With much beside you know or may conceive?
Suppose we die to-night: well, here am I,
Such were my gains, life bore this fruit to me,
While writing all the same my articles
On music, poetry, the fictile vase
Found at Albano, chess, Anacreon's Greek.
But youthe highest honour in your life,
The thing you'll crown yourself with, all your days,
Isdining here and drinking this last glass
I pour you out in sign of amity
Before we part for ever. Of your power
And social influence, worldly worth in short,
Judge what's my estimation by the fact,
I do not condescend to enjoin, beseech,
Hint secrecy on one of all these words!
You're shrewd and know that should you publish one
The world would brand the liemy enemies first,
Who'd sneer"the bishop's an arch-hypocrite
"And knave perhaps, but not so frank a fool."
Whereas I should not dare for both my ears
Breathe one such syllable, smile one such smile,
Before the chaplain who reflects myself
My shade's so much more potent than your flesh.
What's your reward, self-abnegating friend?
Stood you confessed of those exceptional
And privileged great natures that dwarf mine
A zealot with a mad ideal in reach,
A poet just about to print his ode,
A statesman with a scheme to stop this war,
An artist whose religion is his art
~ Robert Browning, Bishop Blougram's Apology
,#NFDB
19 Integral Yoga
12 Yoga
8 Poetry
5 Occultism
3 Sufism
3 Psychology
3 Hinduism
3 Fiction
3 Baha i Faith
2 Philosophy
1 Theosophy
1 Mysticism
1 Christianity
77 Sri Aurobindo
6 Swami Vivekananda
4 Sri Ramakrishna
4 Baha u llah
3 Swami Krishnananda
3 Nolini Kanta Gupta
3 Aleister Crowley
2 Thubten Chodron
2 The Mother
2 Percy Bysshe Shelley
2 Patanjali
2 Jordan Peterson
2 Al-Ghazali
18 The Synthesis Of Yoga
16 The Life Divine
15 Savitri
4 Kena and Other Upanishads
4 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
3 The Study and Practice of Yoga
3 The Secret Doctrine
3 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
3 Raja-Yoga
3 Essays On The Gita
3 Essays Divine And Human
2 Vedic and Philological Studies
2 The Alchemy of Happiness
2 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
2 Shelley - Poems
2 Record of Yoga
2 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
2 Maps of Meaning
2 Magick Without Tears
2 Isha Upanishad
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
2 Collected Poems
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The Europeanized Kristodas Pal did not approve of the Master's emphasis on renunciation and said; "Sir, this cant of renunciation has almost ruined the country. It is for this reason that the Indians are a subject nation today. Doing good to others, bringing education to the door of the ignorant, and above all, improving the material conditions of the country — these should be our duty now. The cry of religion and renunciation would, on the contrary, only weaken us. You should advise the young men of Bengal to resort only to such acts as will uplift the country." Sri Ramakrishna gave him a searching look and found no divine light within, "You man of poor understanding!" Sri Ramakrishna said sharply. "You dare to slight in these terms renunciation and piety, which our scriptures describe as the greatest of all virtues! After reading two pages of English you think you have come to know the world! You appear to think you are omniscient. Well, have you seen those tiny crabs that are born in the Ganges just when the rains set in? In this big universe you are even less significant than one of those small creatures. How dare you talk of helping the world? The Lord will look to that. You haven't the power in you to do it." After a pause the Master continued: "Can you explain to me how you can work for others? I know what you mean by helping them. To feed a number of persons, to treat them when they are sick, to construct a road or dig a well — isn't that all? These, are good deeds, no doubt, but how trifling in comparison with the vastness of the universe! How far can a man advance in this line? How many people can you save from famine? Malaria has ruined a whole province; what could you do to stop its onslaught? God alone looks after the world. Let a man first realize Him. Let a man get the authority from God and be endowed with His power; then, and then alone, may he think of doing good to others. A man should first be purged of all egotism. Then alone will the Blissful Mother ask him to work for the world." Sri Ramakrishna mistrusted philanthropy that presumed to pose as charity. He warned people against it. He saw in most acts of philanthropy nothing but egotism, vanity, a desire for glory, a barren excitement to kill the boredom of life, or an attempt to soothe a guilty conscience. True charity, he taught, is the result of love of God — service to man in a spirit of worship.
--- MONASTIC DISCIPLES
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2 The Unified, in whom conscious thought is concentrated, who is all delight and enjoyer of delight, the Wise. . . . He is the Lord of all, the omniscient, the inner Guide.
Mandukya Upanishad 5, 6.
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Purusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceeding from an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all
Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths
That wrap the fated journeyings of the stars
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is not easy, however, nor is it necessary for the moment to envisage in detail what this divinised man would be like, externallyhis mode of outward being and living, kimsita vrajeta kim, as Arjuna queriedor how the collective life of the new humanity would function or what would be the composition of its social fabric. For what is happening is a living process, an organic growth; it is being elaborated through the actions and reactions of multitudinous forces and conditions, known and unknown; the precise configuration of the final outcome cannot be predicted with exactitude. But the Power that is at work is omniscient; it is selecting, rejecting, correcting, fashioning, creating, co-ordinating elements in accordance with and by the drive of the inviolable law of Truth and Harmony that reigns in Light's own homeswe dame the Supermind.
It is also to be noted that as mind is not the last limit of the march of evolution, even so the progress of evolution will not stop with the manifestation and embodiment of the Supermind. There are other still higher principles beyond and they too presumably await manifestation and embodiment on earth. Creation has no beginning in time (andi) nor has it an end (ananta). It is an eternal process of the unravelling of the mysteries of the Infinite. Only, it may be said that with the Supermind the creation here enters into a different order of existence. Before it there was the domain of Ignorance, after it will come the reign of Light and Knowledge. Mortality has been the governing principle of life on earth till now; it will be replaced by the consciousness of immortality. Evolution has proceeded through struggle and pain; hereafter it will be a spontaneous, harmonious and happy flowering.
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Only mid an omniscient silence heard,
Held by intuitive heart and secret sense.
--
The omniscient hush, womb of the immortal Word,
And of the Timeless the still brooding face,
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Our minds hush to a bright omniscient;
A Voice calls from the chambers of the soul;
--
A prophet-speech in Thought's omniscient trance.
Above the illusion of the hopes that pass,
--
Our dwarf-search mind to meet the omniscient's light,
Our helpless hearts to enshrine the Omnipotent's force.
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Allured by the omniscient Ecstasy,
A living centre of the Illimitable
--
An omniscient knowing without sight or thought,
An indecipherable Omnipotence,
--
Call in the omniscient and Omnipotent,
Awake a forgotten Almightiness within.
--
Retold in light by an omniscient Scribe
Travelled through difference towards unity,
02.02 - The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Some vision seen in the omniscient Light,
Some far tone of the immortal rhapsodist Voice,
02.03 - The Glory and the Fall of Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
That Nescience may become omniscient,
Transmuted instincts shape to divine thoughts,
02.11 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Exposed to omniscient immensities,
It casts on our world its great crowned influences,
--
Mind's knowledge overtopped the omniscient's power:
The Eternal's winging eagle puissances
03.02 - The Adoration of the Divine Mother, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The mighty shadow of the omniscient Lord;
But who has lifted up the veil of light
03.03 - The House of the Spirit and the New Creation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Voiceless within us in omniscient sleep.
Above the imperfect reach of word and thought,
--
And its omniscient and omnipotent peace.
Thought clashes not with thought and truth with truth,
03.04 - The Vision and the Boon, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For the slow-paced omniscient purpose live.
The Enigma's knot is tied in humankind.
05.01 - The Destined Meeting-Place, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Our acts interpret an omniscient Force
That dwells in the compelling stuff of things,
05.07 - The Observer and the Observed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the other case the world exists here below in its own reality, outside all apprehending subject; even the universal subject is in a sense part of it, immanent in itit embraces the subject in its comprehending consciousness and posits it as part of itself or a function of its apprehension. The many Purushas (conscious beings or subjects) are imbedded in the universal Nature, say the Sankhyas. Kali, Divine Nature, is the manifest Omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent reality holding within her the transcendent divine Purusha who supports, sanctions and inspires secretly, yet is dependent on the Mahashakti and without her is nothing, unyam. That is how the Tantriks put it. We may mention here, among European philosophers, the rather interesting conclusion of Leibnitz (to which Russell draws our attention): space is subjective to the view of each monad (subject unit) separately, it is objective when it consists of the assemblage of the view-points of all the monads.
The scientific outlook was a protest against the extreme subjective view: it started with the extreme objective standpoint and that remained the fundamental note till the other day, till the fissure of the nucleus opened new horizons to our somewhat bewildered mentality. We seem to have entered into a region where we still hold to the objective, no doubt, but not absolutely free from an insistent presence of the subjective. It is the second of the intermediate positions we have tried to describe. Science has yet to decide the implications of that position; whether it will try to entrench itself as much as possible on this side of the subjective or whether it can yield further and go over to or link itself with the deeper subjective position.
07.02 - The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He caught up fragments of the omniscient's thought,
He scattered formulas of omnipotence.
10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
She lulled the omniscient into nescient sleep,
Omnipotence on Inertia's back she drove,
10.04 - The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Thou mightst have been like them omniscient, calm.
But the violent and passionate heart forbids.
--
Each figuring an omniscient scheme of things.
But higher still can climb the ascending light;
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Omnipotent, omniscient and alone,
In a golden country keeps her measureless house;
--
Her forehead's span vaulted the omniscient's gaze,
Her eyes were two stars that watched the universe.
1.00f - DIVISION F - THE LAW OF ECONOMY, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
When the sense of hearing on all planes is perfected (which is brought about by the Law of Economy rightly understood) these three great Words or phrases will be known. The Knower will utter them in his own true key, thus blending his own sound with the entire volume of vibration, and thereby achieving sudden realisation of his essential identity with Those Who utter the words. As the sound of matter or of Brahma peals forth in his ears on all the planes, he will see all forms as illusion and will be freed, knowing himself as omnipresent. As the sound of Vishnu reverberates within himself, he knows himself as perfected wisdom, and distinguishes [219] the note of his being (or that of the Heavenly Man in whose Body he finds place) from the group notes, and knows himself as omniscient. As the note of the first or Mahadeva aspect, follows upon the other two, he realises himself as pure Spirit and on the consummation of the chord is merged in the Self, or the source from which he came. Mind is not, matter is not, and nought is left but the Self merged in the ocean of the Self. At each stage of relative attainment, one of the laws comes into sway,first the law of matter, then the law of groups, to be succeeded by the law of Spirit and of liberation.
II. THE SUBSIDIARY LAWS
1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
We have enjoined obligatory prayer upon you, with nine rak'ahs, to be offered at noon and in the morning and the evening unto God, the Revealer of Verses. We have relieved you of a greater number, as a comm and in the Book of God. He, verily, is the Ordainer, the Omnipotent, the Unrestrained. When ye desire to perform this prayer, turn ye towards the Court of My Most Holy Presence, this Hallowed Spot that God hath made the Centre round which circle the Concourse on High, and which He hath decreed to be the Point of Adoration for the denizens of the Cities of Eternity, and the Source of Command unto all that are in heaven and on earth; and when the Sun of Truth and Utterance shall set, turn your faces towards the Spot that We have ordained for you. He, verily, is Almighty and omniscient.
Everything that is hath come to be through His irresistible decree. Whenever My laws appear like the sun in the heaven of Mine utterance, they must be faithfully obeyed by all, though My decree be such as to cause the heaven of every religion to be cleft asunder. He doeth what He pleaseth. He chooseth, and none may question His choice. Whatsoever He, the Well-Beloved, ordaineth, the same is, verily, beloved. To this He Who is the Lord of all creation beareth Me witness. Whoso hath inhaled the sweet fragrance of the All-Merciful, and recognized the Source of this utterance, will welcome with his own eyes the shafts of the enemy, that he may establish the truth of the laws of God amongst men. Well is it with him that hath turned thereunto, and apprehended the meaning of His decisive decree.
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Lament not in your hours of trial, neither rejoice therein; seek ye the Middle Way which is the remembrance of Me in your afflictions and reflection over that which may befall you in future. Thus informeth you He Who is the omniscient, He Who is aware.
44
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If ye should hunt with beasts or birds of prey, invoke ye the Name of God when ye send them to pursue their quarry; for then whatever they catch shall be lawful unto you, even should ye find it to have died. He, verily, is the omniscient, the All-Informed. Take heed, however, that ye hunt not to excess. Tread ye the path of justice and equity in all things. Thus biddeth you He Who is the Dawning-place of Revelation, would that ye might comprehend.
61
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Should anyone acquire one hundred mithqals of gold, nineteen mithqals thereof are God's and to be rendered unto Him, the Fashioner of earth and heaven. Take heed, O people, lest ye deprive yourselves of so great a bounty. This We have commanded you, though We are well able to dispense with you and with all who are in the heavens and on earth; in it there are benefits and wisdoms beyond the ken of anyone but God, the omniscient, the All-Informed. Say: By this means He hath desired to purify what ye possess and to enable you to draw nigh unto such stations as none can comprehend save those whom God hath willed. He, in truth, is the Beneficent, the Gracious, the Bountiful. O people! Deal not faithlessly with the Right of God, nor, without His leave, make free with its disposal. Thus hath His commandment been established in the holy Tablets, and in this exalted Book. He who dealeth faithlessly with God shall in justice meet with faithlessness himself; he, however, who acteth in accordance with God's bidding shall receive a blessing from the heaven of the bounty of his Lord, the Gracious, the Bestower, the Generous, the Ancient of Days. He, verily, hath willed for you that which is yet beyond your knowledge, but which shall be known to you when, after this fleeting life, your souls soar heavenwards and the trappings of your earthly joys are folded up. Thus admonisheth you He in Whose possession is the Guarded Tablet.
98
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Thus hath it been decreed by Him Who is the Ordainer, the omniscient.
111
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O peoples of the world! Give ear unto the call of Him Who is the Lord of Names, Who proclaimeth unto you from His habitation in the Most Great Prison: "Verily, no God is there but Me, the Powerful, the Mighty, the All-Subduing, the Most Exalted, the omniscient, the All-Wise." In truth, there is no God but Him, the Omnipotent Ruler of the worlds. Were it His Will, He would, through but a single word proceeding from His presence, lay hold on all mankind. Beware lest ye hesitate in your acceptance of this Cause-a Cause before which the Concourse on high and the dwellers of the Cities of Names have bowed down. Fear God, and be not of those who are shut out as by a veil. Burn ye away the veils with the fire of My love, and dispel ye the mists of vain imaginings by the power of this Name through which We have subdued the entire creation.
133
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Let none, in this Day, hold fast to aught save that which hath been manifested in this Revelation. Such is the decree of God, aforetime and hereafter-a decree wherewith the Scriptures of the Messengers of old have been adorned. Such is the admonition of the Lord, aforetime and hereafter-an admonition wherewith the preamble to the Book of Life hath been embellished, did ye but perceive it. Such is the commandment of the Lord, aforetime and hereafter; beware lest ye choose instead the part of ignominy and abasement. Naught shall avail you in this Day but God, nor is there any refuge to flee to save Him, the omniscient, the All-Wise. Whoso hath known Me hath known the Goal of all desire, and whoso hath turned unto Me hath turned unto the Object of all adoration. Thus hath it been set forth in the Book, and thus hath it been decreed by God, the Lord of all worlds. To read but one of the verses of My Revelation is better than to peruse the Scriptures of both the former and latter generations. This is the Utterance of the All-Merciful, would that ye had ears to hear! Say: This is the essence of knowledge, did ye but understand.
139
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'Verily, there is none other God besides Me, the One, the Incomparable, the omniscient, the All-Informed.'" This is a station which God hath assigned exclusively to this sublime, this unique and wondrous Revelation. This is a token of His bounteous favour, if ye be of them who comprehend, and a sign of His irresistible decree. This is His Most Great Name, His Most Exalted Word, and the Dayspring of His Most Excellent Titles, if ye could understand. Nay more, through Him every Fountainhead, every Dawning-place of Divine guidance is made manifest. Reflect, O people, on that which hath been sent down in truth; ponder thereon, and be not of the transgressors.
144
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We shall, if it be God's will and purpose, set forth erelong the measure of its assessment. He, verily, expoundeth whatsoever He desireth by virtue of His own knowledge, and He, of a truth, is omniscient and All-Wise.
147
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Ye have been enjoined to renew the furnishings of your homes after the passing of each nineteen years; thus hath it been ordained by One Who is omniscient and All-Perceiving. He, verily, is desirous of refinement, both for you yourselves and for all that ye possess; lay not aside the fear of God and be not of the negligent. Whoso findeth that his means are insufficient to this purpose hath been excused by God, the Ever-Forgiving, the Most Bounteous.
152
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It hath been forbidden you to carry arms unless essential, and permitted you to attire yourselves in silk. The Lord hath relieved you, as a bounty on His part, of the restrictions that formerly applied to clothing and to the trim of the beard. He, verily, is the Ordainer, the omniscient. Let there be naught in your demeanour of which sound and upright minds would disapprove, and make not yourselves the playthings of the ignorant. Well is it with him who hath adorned himself with the vesture of seemly conduct and a praiseworthy character. He is assuredly reckoned with those who aid their Lord through distinctive and outstanding deeds.
160
Promote ye the development of the cities of God and His countries, and glorify Him therein in the joyous accents of His well-favoured ones. In truth, the hearts of men are edified through the power of the tongue, even as houses and cities are built up by the hand and other means. We have assigned to every end a means for its accomplishment; avail yourselves thereof, and place your trust and confidence in God, the omniscient, the All-Wise.
161
--
O Land of Kaf and Ra!+F1 We, verily, behold thee in a state displeasing unto God, and see proceeding from thee that which is inscrutable to anyone save Him, the omniscient, the All-Informed; and We perceive that which secretly and stealthily diffuseth from thee. With Us is the knowledge of all things, inscribed in a lucid Tablet. Sorrow not for that which hath befallen thee. Erelong will God raise up within thee men endued with mighty valour, who will magnify My Name with such constancy that neither will they be deterred by the evil suggestions of the divines, nor will they be kept back by the insinuations of the sowers of doubt. With their own eyes will they behold God, and with their own lives will they render Him victorious. These, truly, are of those who are steadfast.
165
--
O Pen of the Most High! Move Thou upon the Tablet at the bidding of Thy Lord, the Creator of the Heavens, and tell of the time when He Who is the Dayspring of Divine Unity purposed to direct His steps towards the School of Transcendent Oneness; haply the pure in heart may gain thereby a glimpse, be it as small as a needle's eye, of the mysteries of Thy Lord, the Almighty, the omniscient, that lie concealed behind the veils. Say: We, indeed, set foot within the School of inner meaning and explanation when all created things were unaware. We saw the words sent down by Him Who is the All-Merciful, and We accepted the verses of God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting, which He+F1 presented unto Us, and hearkened unto that which He had solemnly affirmed in the Tablet. This we assuredly did behold. And We assented to His wish through Our behest, for truly We are potent to command.
176
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Beware lest aught that hath been revealed in the Bayan should keep you from your Lord, the Most Compassionate. God is My witness that the Bayan was sent down for no other purpose than to celebrate My praise, did ye but know! In it the pure in heart will find only the fragrance of My love, only My Name that overshadoweth all that seeth and is seen. Say: Turn ye, O people, unto that which hath proceeded from My Most Exalted Pen. Should ye inhale therefrom the fragrance of God, set not yourselves against Him, nor deny yourselves a portion of His gracious favour and His manifold bestowals. Thus doth your Lord admonish you; He, verily, is the Counsellor, the omniscient.
180
1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
because he sees knowledge in himself; he is the omniscient
One. These, for instance, are the authors of the Sacred
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omnipotent, and omniscient. By giving up all powers it has
become omnipotent, by giving up all life it is beyond
1.01 - The First Steps, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
A god and a demon went to learn about the Self from a great sage. They studied with him for a long time. At last the sage told them, "You yourselves are the Being you are seeking." Both of them thought that their bodies were the Self. They went back to their people quite satisfied and said, "We have learned everything that was to be learned; eat, drink, and be merry; we are the Self; there is nothing beyond us." The nature of the demon was ignorant, clouded; so he never inquired any further, but was perfectly contented with the idea that he was God, that by the Self was meant the body. The god had a purer nature. He at first committed the mistake of thinking: I, this body, am Brahman: so keep it strong and in health, and well dressed, and give it all sorts of enjoyments. But, in a few days, he found out that that could not be the meaning of the sage, their master; there must be something higher. So he came back and said, "Sir, did you teach me that this body was the Self? If so, I see all bodies die; the Self cannot die." The sage said, "Find it out; thou art That." Then the god thought that the vital forces which work the body were what the sage meant. But after a time, he found that if he ate, these vital forces remained strong, but, if he starved, they became weak. The god then went back to the sage and said, "Sir, do you mean that the vital forces are the Self?" The sage said, "Find out for yourself; thou art That." The god returned home once more, thinking that it was the mind, perhaps, that was the Self. But in a short while he saw that thoughts were so various, now good, again bad; the mind was too changeable to be the Self. He went back to the sage and said, "Sir, I do not think that the mind is the Self; did you mean that?" "No," replied the sage, "thou art That; find out for yourself." The god went home, and at last found that he was the Self, beyond all thought, one without birth or death, whom the sword cannot pierce or the fire burn, whom the air cannot dry or the water melt, the beginningless and endless, the immovable, the intangible, the omniscient, the omnipotent Being; that It was neither the body nor the mind, but beyond them all. So he was satisfied; but the poor demon did not get the truth, owing to his fondness for the body.
This world has a good many of these demoniac natures, but there are some gods too. If one proposes to teach any science to increase the power of sense-enjoyment, one finds multitudes ready for it. If one undertakes to show the supreme goal, one finds few to listen to him. Very few have the power to grasp the higher, fewer still the patience to attain to it. But there are a few also who know that even if the body can be made to live for a thousand years, the result in the end will be the same. When the forces that hold it together go away, the body must fall. No man was ever born who could stop his body one moment from changing. Body is the name of a series of changes. "As in a river the masses of water are changing before you every moment, and new masses are coming, yet taking similar form, so is it with this body." Yet the body must be kept strong and healthy. It is the best instrument we have.
1.01 - The Four Aids, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5:Ordinarily, the Word from without, representative of the Divine, is needed as an aid ill the work of self-unfolding; and it may be either a word from the past or the more powerful word of the living Guru. In some cases this representative word is only taken as a sort of excuse for the inner power to awaken and manifest; it is, as it were, a concession of the omnipotent and omniscient Divine to the generality of a law that governs Nature. Thus it is said in the Upanishads of Krishna, son of Devaki, that he received a word of the Rishi Ghora and had the knowledge. So Ramakrishna, having attained by his own internal effort the central illumination, accepted several teachers in the different paths of Yoga, but always showed in the manner and swiftness of his realisation that this acceptance was a concession to the general rule by which effective knowledge must be received as by a disciple from a Guru.
6:But usually the representative influence occupies a much larger place in the life of the Sadhaka. If the Yoga is guided by a received written Shastra, -- some Word from the past which embodies the experience of former Yogins, -- it may be practised either by personal effort alone or with the aid of a Guru. The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master. This is a narrower practice, but safe and effective within its limits, because it follows a well-beaten track to a long familiar goal.
1.01 - Who is Tara, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
Buddhashas an omniscient mind. The qualities of all these enlightened
ones are the same. Buddhas have eliminated all delements, both afictive
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rupakaya or form body. Here, body doesnt mean physical body but a collection of qualities. The omniscient mind the fully enlightened mind that
has eliminated all delements and realized all good qualitiesis the dharmakaya. The rupakaya or form body allows a Buddha to communicate with
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directly know the Buddhas omniscient mind, and so the Buddhas appear in
various forms out of compassion in order to benet us. All of the different
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Green Taras color symbolizes activity and success. Although she possesses the same qualities as other manifestations of the omniscient ones, she
specically embodies the enlightening inuence by which the Buddhas act to
10.24 - Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
For the slow-paced omniscient purpose live. .||89.22||
All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour.||89.69||
1.028 - Bringing About Whole-Souled Dedication, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
It is impossible to do anything wholly good on account of it being impossible for us to wholly understand the total pattern involved in the movement of any successful action. No human being can wholly succeed in life, because a wholly correct action cannot be performed. The reason is that all the contri butory factors tending towards the success of an action cannot become the object of knowledge of any individual, because that would call for omniscience, almost, and no one can be omniscient; therefore, no one can be wholly successful. Entire success is possible only when there is omniscience, and not before. So, we have to swallow the bitter pill and then try to be satisfied with whatever we get. Nevertheless, it is up to us to see that we put forth the best of our abilities, commensurate with the extent of knowledge with which we are endowed in our life.
Practice, or abhyasa, is always streng thened, and has to be streng thened, by a corresponding practice that goes on simultaneously with abhyasa, and that parallel practice is the automatic withdrawal of the mind from all distracting factors. If we are pulled in two directions with equal force, we will not be able to move even a little bit. We have had occasion to contemplate to some extent on the details of what renunciation is, and what are the various stages of vairagya which Patanjali regards as indispensable to the practice of yoga. He tells us that the practice consists in an insistent attempt on our part to fix ourselves in a single or given attitude. Tatra sthitau yatna abhysa (I.13): Abhyasa or practice is the effort to fix one's own self in a given attitude. What is this given attitude? We have to choose a particular attitude in which to fix ourselves for a protracted period; this is called practice. The attitude in which we have to fix ourselves should be such that we would tend to greater and greater stages of freedom of the soul, and a lessening and decreasing of the intensity of bondage.
1.02 - Karmayoga, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yoga is communion with God for knowledge, for love or for work. The Yogin puts himself into direct relation with that which is omniscient and omnipotent within man and without him. He is in tune with the infinite, he becomes a channel for the strength of God to pour itself out upon the world whether through calm benevolence or active beneficence. When a man rises by putting from him the slough of self and lives for others and in the joys and sorrows of others; - when he works perfectly and with love and zeal, but casts away the anxiety for results and is neither eager for victory nor afraid of defeat; - when he devotes all his works to God and lays every thought, word and deed as an offering on the divine altar; - when he gets rid of fear and hatred, repulsion and disgust and attachment, and works like the forces of Nature, unhasting, unresting, inevitably, perfectly; - when he rises above the thought that he is the body or the heart or the mind or the sum of these and finds his own and true self; - when he becomes aware of his immortality and the unreality of death; - when he experiences the advent of knowledge and feels himself passive and the divine force working unresisted through his mind, his speech, his senses and all his organs; - when having thus abandoned whatever he is, does or has to the Lord of all, the Lover and Helper of mankind, he dwells permanently in
Him and becomes incapable of grief, disquiet or false excitement,
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
within the all-encompassing embrace of an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and altogether mysterious
God. This paradisal precondition, lacking nothing, characterized by absolute completion, exists in
1.02 - On the Knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
It has been shown that man from his own existence, knows the existence of his creator, that from his analysis of the materials of which his body is composed and of its distinctive characters he understands the almighty power of God, that from the uses, the arrangement and the combination of his organs, he knows the omniscient wisdom of God, and that his clemency and compassion extend to [45] all. He knows, also, that these many mercies and bounties are bestowed upon him without his seeking or care, from God's rich and overflowing grace. Now in this way it is possible that the knowledge of the soul should become the key to the knowledge of God. For just as from a survey of your own being and attributes, you have in a contracted form learned the being and attributes of God, it is also possible to understand how the freedom and the holiness of God, bear a resemblance to the freedom of your soul.
Know, that God exists exempt from and independent of the notions that enter the mind, and the forms that are produced in the imagination, that he is not subjected to reasoning, and time and place cannot be ascribed to him. Still his exercise of power and the manifestation of his glory are not independent of place. But in the same manner, this independence and freedom is possible in your soul. The spirit, for example, which we call heart is exempt from the entrance of fancies and imaginations, and also from size and divisibility. Nor has it form or color, for if it had, it could be seen by the eye, and would enter into the sphere of fancy and imagination, and its beauty or ugliness, its greatness or littleness would be known. If any one ask you about your soul, you may answer, "It exists by the will of God: it has neither quantity or physical quality; it is exempt from being known." Beloved, since you are incapable of knowing the spirit which is in your body, how should it be possible for you to know God, who created spirits, bodies and all things, who is himself foreign to all of them, and who is not of their class and kind ? It is one of the most important things, yea, a most necessary duty, to treat of God as holy, independent and free.
1.02 - SADHANA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
nature, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent.
82
1.02 - The Two Negations 1 - The Materialist Denial, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
19:What is that work and result, if not a self-involution of Consciousness in form and a self-evolution out of form so as to actualise some mighty possibility in the universe which it has created? And what is its will in Man if not a will to unending Life, to unbounded Knowledge, to unfettered Power? Science itself begins to dream of the physical conquest of death, expresses an insatiable thirst for knowledge, is working out something like a terrestrial omnipotence for humanity. Space and Time are contracting to the vanishing-point in its works, and it strives in a hundred ways to make man the master of circumstance and so lighten the fetters of causality. The idea of limit, of the impossible begins to grow a little shadowy and it appears instead that whatever man constantly wills, he must in the end be able to do; for the consciousness in the race eventually finds the means. It is not in the individual that this omnipotence expresses itself, but the collective Will of mankind that works out with the individual as a means. And yet when we look more deeply, it is not any conscious Will of the collectivity, but a superconscious Might that uses the individual as a centre and means, the collectivity as a condition and field. What is this but the God in man, the infinite Identity, the multitudinous Unity, the omniscient, the Omnipotent, who having made man in His own image, with the ego as a centre of working, with the race, the collective Narayana,7 the visvamanava8 as the mould and circumscription, seeks to express in them some image of the unity, omniscience, omnipotence which are the self-conception of the Divine? "That which is immortal in mortals is a God and established inwardly as an energy working out in our divine powers."9 It is this vast cosmic impulse which the modern world, without quite knowing its own aim, yet serves in all its activities and labours subconsciously to fulfil.
20:But there is always a limit and an encumbrance, - the limit of the material field in the Knowledge, the encumbrance of the material machinery in the Power. But here also the latest trend is highly significant of a freer future. As the outposts of scientific Knowledge come more and more to be set on the borders that divide the material from the immaterial, so also the highest achievements of practical Science are those which tend to simplify and reduce to the vanishing-point the machinery by which the greatest effects are produced. Wireless telegraphy is Nature's exterior sign and pretext for a new orientation. The sensible physical means for the intermediate transmission of the physical force is removed; it is only preserved at the points of impulsion and reception. Eventually even these must disappear; for when the laws and forces of the supraphysical are studied with the right starting-point, the means will infallibly be found for Mind directly to seize on the physical energy and speed it accurately upon its errand. There, once we bring ourselves to recognise it, lie the gates that open upon the enormous vistas of the future.
1.03 - A Parable, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
Those beings who accept the Dharma of the Buddha Bhagavat, who are diligent and persevere in seeking the wisdom of the omniscient One, the wisdom of the Buddha, the wisdom of the Self-generated One, the wisdom acquired without a teacher, the wisdom and insight, powers, and fearlessness of the Tathgata; who are compassionate, put immeasurable sentient beings at ease, benet devas and humans, and save all beings, are all practicing the Mahayana. Bodhisattvas are called mahsattvas (great beings) because they seek this vehicle. They are just like those children who left the burning house seeking the cart yoked to an ox.
O riputra! That afuent man saw his children leave the burning house safely and arrive at a safe place. Knowing that he had immeasurable wealth, he gave a large cart equally to each child. The Tathgata is exactly like this.
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Seek the omniscient One,
To whom they joyfully press their palms together,
1.03 - Questions and Answers, #Book of Certitude, #unset, #Integral Yoga
ANSWER: Regarding the written question on the exchange of property held in trust to guard against depreciation and loss, such exchange is permissible on condition that the substitute will be equivalent in value. Thy Lord, verily, is the Expounder, the omniscient, and He, truly, is the Ordainer, the Ancient of Days.
97. QUESTION: Concerning the washing of the feet in winter and summer.
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ANSWER: Should a treasure be found, one third thereof is the right of the discoverer, and the other two thirds should be expended by the men of the House of Justice for the welfare of all people. This shall be done after the establishment of the House of Justice, and until that time it shall be committed to the keeping of trustworthy persons in each locality and territory. He, in truth, is the Ruler, the Ordainer, the omniscient, the All-Informed.
102. QUESTION: Concerning Huquq on real estate which yieldeth no profit.
1.03 - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of The Gita, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But if this total conversion is to be done, there must be a consecration of our actions and outer movements as much as of our mind and heart to the Divine. There must be accepted and progressively accomplished a surrender of our capacities of working into the hands of a greater Power behind us and our sense of being the doer and worker must disappear. All must be given for a more direct use into the hands of the divine Will which is hidden by these frontal appearances; for by that permitting Will alone is our action possible. A hidden Power is the true Lord and overruling Observer of our acts and only he knows through all the ignorance and perversion and deformation brought in by the ego their entire sense and ultimate purpose. There must be effected a complete transformation of our limited and distorted egoistic life and works into the large and direct outpouring of a greater divine Life, Will and Energy that now secretly supports us. This greater Will and Energy must be made conscious in us and master; no longer must it remain, as now, only a superconscious, upholding and permitting Force. There must be achieved an undistorted transmission through us of the all-wise purpose and process of a now hidden omniscient Power and omnipotent Knowledge which will turn into its pure, unobstructed, happily consenting and participating channel all our transmuted nature.
This total consecration and surrender and this resultant entire transformation and free transmission make up the whole fundamental means and the ultimate aim of an integral Karmayoga.
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The mind rides on a swirl of natural forces, balances on a poise between several possibilities, inclines to one side or another, settles and has the sense of choosing: but it does not see, it is not even dimly aware of the Force behind that has determined its choice. It cannot see it, because that Force is something total and to our eyes indeterminate. At most mind can only distinguish with an approach to clarity and precision some out of the complex variety of particular determinations by which this Force works out her incalculable purposes. Partial itself, the mind rides on a part of the machine, unaware of nine-tenths of its motor agencies in Time and environment, unaware of its past preparation and future drift; but because it rides, it thinks that it is directing the machine. In a sense it counts: for that clear inclination of the mind which we call our will, that firm settling of the inclination which presents itself to us as a deliberate choice, is one of Nature's most powerful determinants; but it is never independent and sole. Behind this petty instrumental action of the human will there is something vast and powerful and eternal that oversees the trend of the inclination and presses on the turn of the will. There is a total Truth in Nature greater than our individual choice. And in this total Truth, or even beyond and behind it, there is something that determines all results; its presence and secret knowledge keep up steadily in the process of Nature a dynamic, almost automatic perception of the right relations, the varying or persistent necessities, the inevitable steps of the movement. There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.
This divine Will is not an alien Power or Presence; it is intimate to us and we ourselves are part of it: for it is our own highest Self that possesses and supports it. Only, it is not our conscious mental will; it rejects often enough what our conscious will accepts and accepts what our conscious will rejects.
1.04 - On Knowledge of the Future World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
Every man ought to take as the subject of his thoughts, the things which concern the future state,- the pains of its torments, the joys of its felicity, the delight and ecstasy of the vision of the beauty of the Lord, and finally the fact that these states are eternal. Now, is it not strange folly and sottishness to be proud of the transitory pleasures of the world in a life which lasts but for one or two days, and to turn our backs upon future eternal joys ? If you are wise you will acknowledge the frailly and errors of your soul, and with an understanding of the purpose for which it was created, you will meditate upon your soul, and upon [104] the almighty power and greatness of God as far as the human mind can comprehend them. Recognizing that God's design in creating you was, that you should know him and love him, you should never cease for one moment to walk with humility and prayer in the path of obedience. Regard this world as the place to sow seed for eternity, and after taking such a portion from this world as may give you strength to take the journey to the other world, turn away from whatever is more than this. Realize that the future world is the place for enjoyment and happiness which is eternal, and the land to behold the excellence and beauty of the Lord; and make it your purpose, divine and omniscient grace assisting you, never to cease from the pursuit of them, but to secure as your prey, the phoenix of felicity and happiness.
1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Last, there is to be considered the recipient of the sacrifice and the manner of the sacrifice. The sacrifice may be offered to others or it may be offered to divine Powers; it may be offered to the cosmic All or it may be offered to the transcendent Supreme. The worship given may take any shape from the dedication of a leaf or flower, a cup of water, a handful of rice, a loaf of bread, to consecration of all that we possess and the submission of all that we are. Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient. For the Supreme who transcends the universe, is yet here too, however veiled, in us and in the world and in its happenings; he is there as the omniscient Witness and Receiver of all our works and their secret Master. All our actions, all our efforts, even our sins and stumblings and sufferings and struggles are obscurely or consciously, known to us and seen or else unknown and in a disguise, governed in their last result by the One. All is turned towards him in his numberless forms and offered through them to the single Omnipresence. In whatever form and with whatever spirit we approach him, in that form and with that spirit he receives the sacrifice.
And the fruit also of the sacrifice of works varies according to the work, according to the intention in the work and according to the spirit that is behind the intention. But all other sacrifices are partial, egoistic, mixed, temporal, incomplete,even those offered to the highest Powers and Principles keep this character: the result too is partial, limited, temporal, mixed in its reactions, effective only for a minor or intermediate purpose. The one entirely acceptable sacrifice is a last and highest and uttermost self-giving,it is that surrender made face to face, with devotion and knowledge, freely and without any reserve to One who is at once our immanent Self, the environing constituent All, the Supreme Reality beyond this or any manifestation and, secretly, all these together, concealed everywhere, the immanent Transcendence. For to the soul that wholly gives itself to him, God also gives himself altogether. Only the one who offers his whole nature, finds the Self. Only the one who can give everything, enjoys the Divine All everywhere. Only a supreme self-abandonment attains to the Supreme. Only the sublimation by sacrifice of all that we are, can enable us to embody the Highest and live here in the immanent consciousness of the transcendent Spirit.
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This is the beginning of a growing spiritual experience which reveals to him more and more that what seemed to him dark incomprehensible Maya was all the time no other than the Consciousness-Puissance of the Eternal, timeless and illimitable beyond the universe, but spread out here under a mask of bright and dark opposites for the miracle of the slow manifestation of the Divine in Mind and Life and Matter. All the Timeless presses towards the play in Time; all in Time turns upon and around the timeless Spirit. If the separate experience was liberative, this unitive experience is dynamic and effective. For he now not only feels himself to be in his soul-substance part of the Eternal, in his essential self and spirit entirely one with the Eternal, but in his active nature an instrumentation of its omniscient and omnipotent Consciousness-Puissance. However bounded and relative its present play in him, he can open to a greater and greater consciousness and power of it and to that expansion there seems to be no assignable limit. A level spiritual and supramental of that Consciousness-Puissance seems even to reveal itself above him and lean to enter into contact, where there are not these trammels and limits, and its powers too are pressing upon the play in Time with the promise of a greater descent and a less disguised or no longer disguised manifestation of the Eternal. The once conflicting but now biune duality of Brahman-Maya stands revealed to him as the first great dynamic aspect of the Self of all selves, the Master of existence, the Lord of the world-sacrifice and of his sacrifice.
On another line of approach another Duality presents itself to the experience of the seeker. On one side he becomes aware of a witness recipient observing experiencing Consciousness which does not appear to act but for which all these activities inside and outside us seem to be undertaken and continue. On the other side he is aware at the same time of an executive Force or an energy of Process which is seen to constitute, drive and guide all conceivable activities and to create a myriad forms visible to us and invisible and use them as stable supports for its incessant flux of action and creation. Entering exclusively into the witness consciousness he becomes silent, untouched, immobile; he sees that he has till now passively reflected and appropriated to himself the movements of Nature and it is by this reflection that they acquired from the witness soul within him what seemed a spiritual value and significance. But now he has withdrawn that ascription or mirroring identification; he is conscious only of his silent self and aloof from all that is in motion around it; all activities are outside him and at once they cease to be intimately real; they appear now mechanical, detachable, endable. Entering exclusively into the kinetic movement, he has an opposite self-awareness; he seems to his own perception a mass of activities, a formation and result of forces; if there is an active consciousness, even some kind of kinetic being in the midst of it all, yet there is no longer a free soul in it anywhere. These two different and opposite states of being alternate in him or else stand simultaneously over against each other; one silent in the inner being observes but is unmoved and does not participate; the other active in some outer or surface self pursues its habitual movements. He has entered into an intense separative perception of the great duality, Soul-Nature, Purusha-Prakriti.
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
performed every job, if all men were omniscient and immortal then everything would be the same, the
same all-powerful thing, God, and creation would never exist. It is the differences between things which
1.06 - The Four Powers of the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
4:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda. But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
5:The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there above the Gods and all her Powers and Personalities are put out in front of her for the action and she sends down emanations of them into these lower worlds to intervene, to govern, to battle and conquer, to lead and turn their cycles, to direct the total and the individual lines of their forces. These Emanations are the many divine forms and personalities in which men have worshipped her under different names throughout the ages. But also she prepares and shapes through these Powers and their emanations the minds and bodies of her Vibhutis, even as she prepares and shapes minds and bodies for the Vibhutis of the Ishwara, that she may manifest in the physical world and in the disguise of the human consciousness some ray of her power and quality and presence. All the scenes of the earth-play have been like a drama arranged and planned and staged by her with the cosmic Gods for her assistants and herself as a veiled actor.
1.075 - Self-Control, Study and Devotion to God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Samdhisiddhi varapraidhnt (II.45): The mind gets inclined to samadhi by the love of God. There is an inclination of our entire being to self-absorption, due to the daily adoration of God. Inasmuch as God is universal omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent a surrender of oneself to God, a daily adoration of God, a worship of God, and a daily thought and feeling and will directed to God will naturally compel the mind to adopt characters which are of the nature of this ideal. There will be, therefore, a mood generated in the mind to sink into itself, rather than move out of itself. Distractions will cease. The contemplation on the nature of the All-pervading Being is supposed to be the best form of meditation, inclusive of every other means. All objects of meditation are comprehended here, included here. This is the ocean of all things.
If only we can direct the mind to All-Being, the supreme nature of the Almighty, there would be no need of searching for objects of meditation. Everything is here. The result that follows is a resting of the mind in itself, inasmuch as the omnipresence of God prevents the mind from going to objects of sense. That is the first stroke which the contemplation of universality deals to the cravings of sense. The deep feeling for God, Who is everywhere, is an antidote to the restlessness of the senses which ask for things outside. A daily hammering into the mind of the idea of all-existence, omnipresence, will not only withdraw the senses from their objects, energise them and bring joy to them, but will also turn the mind inward and make it visualise the cause of its activities, the purpose of its movements, and its ultimate intentions. Thus, the yoga sutra tells us that Isvara pranidhana, or surrender of oneself to God, is an ultimate method and, finally, it must be regarded as the best of all methods of concentration, meditation and Self-absorption.
1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
that besides the blissful omniscient mind that manifests in the form of Tara,
there are no other objects of refuge. In the West, when we are miserable, we
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about the Buddhas omniscient minds that they know everything going on
with us and still look at us with kindness then from whom are we trying to
1.07 - Note on the word Go, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Now that we have thus substantially fixed the meaning of go and gomat, we can go back to a passage already to some extent discussed, the third verse of the seventh hymn. Indro dirghaya chakshasa a suryam rohayad divi, vi gobhir adrim airayat; Indra for far vision ascended to the sun in heaven; he sent him abroad over all the mountain with his rays. This is so plainly the meaning of the verse that I cannot understand, once it is perceived & understood, how we can accept any other rendering. I have already discussed the relations of Indra, Surya & the Mountain of our graded ascent in beingSri Ramakrishnas staircase to the Sad Brahman. The far vision is the unlimited knowledge acquired in Mahas, in the wide supra-rational movement of our consciousness as opposed to the contracted rational or infrarational vision which works only on details or from & by details, the alpam; for that Mind has to ascend to the Sun in Heaven, the principle of Mahas on the higher levels of mind itself, not on the supra-rational level, not swe dame. Because it is not swe dame, the full illumination is not possible, we cannot become practically omniscient; all Indra can do is to send down the sun, not in itself, but in its rays to various parts of the mountain of being, all over it, it is true, but still revealing only the higher truth in its parts, not in its full sum of knowledge. The language is so precise, once we understand the Vedic terminology, that I do not think we can be mistaken in this interpretation, which, moreover, agrees perfectly with Yogic experience and the constant theme of Madhuchchhandas. He is describing the first dawn & development of the higher knowledge in the mind, still liable to attack & obstruction, (yujam vritreshu vajrinam), still uncertain in quantity (Indram vayam mahadhane indram arbhe havamahe). Irayat is naturally transitive, bears the meaning it has in prerana, prerita, and can have no object but Surya, unless we suppose, which is less natural, that it is Surya who sends Indra to the mountain accompanied by his rays.
There is only one other passage we have now left for examination but it is of considerable importance & interest. It is in the hymn ascribed to the son of Madhuchchhanda, though very probably it isMadhuchchhandas own, the eleventh hymn and the fifth verse. Twam Valasya gomato apavar adrivo bilam, Twam deva abibhyushas tujyamanasa avishuh. Thou, O dweller on the mountain, didst uncover the lair of Vala the luminous, Thee the gods entered unfearing & protected. Indra, the dweller on the mountain of being, he who established in Swarga looks ever upward, has, to assist the strivings of man, uncovered the lair of Vala the luminous. Who is Vala the luminous? Does gomat mean the fellow who has the cows & is Vala a demon of cloud or darkness afflicted with the cow-stealing propensities, the Titanic bovi-kleptomania attri buted by tradition to the Panis? He is, I suggest, one of the Titans who deny a higher ascent to man, a Titan who possesses but withholds & hides the luminous realms of ideal truth from man,interposing the hiranmayam patram of the Isha Upanishad, the golden cover or lid, by which the face of truth is concealed, satyasyapihitam mukham. Tat twam Pushan apavrinu, cries the Vedantic sage, using the same word apavri, but he calls to Surya, not to Indra, because he seeks the possession of the Vedanta, the sight of the rupam kalyanatamam which belongs to those who can meet Surya in his own home. The Vedic seer, at an earlier stage of the struggle, is satisfied with the minor conquests of Indra. He does not yet rise to those heights where Indra working in the mind is no longer a supreme helper, but may even be, as the Puranas tell us, an obstacle and an opponentbecause activity of mind even the highest, so long as it is not abandoned and overpassed, interferes with a yet higher attainment. It is only by rejecting Indra that we can dwell with Surya in his luminous halls, Tena tyaktena bhunjithah. Nevertheless the conquest over Bala is for humanity in its present stage a great conquest, and when & because it is accomplished the other gods can enter safely into the mental force & work in it, fearless because protected by Indras victorious might. For he is now Balabhid; he has pierced Bala & is no longer liable to that fear which overtook him when Vritra only had been overthrowna fear due to his perceiving the immensity of the task that still remained & the more formidable enemies beyond. We shall come again to Bala & the Titans & the meaning of these divine battles,viryani yani chakara prathamani vajri.
1.08 - Attendants, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Manilal: You don't know? We consider you omniscient.
Sri Aurobindo: You don't expect me, surely, to know how many fishes the fishermen of Pondicherry have caught....
1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
What is the result of constant practice of this higher concentration? All old tendencies of restlessness and dullness will be destroyed, as well as the tendencies of goodness too. The case is similar to that of the chemicals used to take the dirt and alloy off gold. When the ore is smelted down, the dross is burnt along with the chemicals. So this constant controlling power will stop the previous bad tendencies, and eventually, the good ones also. Those good and evil tendencies will suppress each other, leaving alone the Soul, in its own splendour untrammelled by either good or bad, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Then the man will know that he had neither birth nor death, nor need for heaven or earth. He will know that he neither came nor went, it was nature which was moving, and that movement was reflected upon the soul. The form of the light reflected by the glass upon the wall moves, and the wall foolishly thinks it is moving. So with all of us; it is the Chitta constantly moving making itself into various forms, and we think that we are these various forms. All these delusions will vanish. When that free Soul will comm and not pray or beg, but comm and then whatever It desires will be immediately fulfilled; whatever It wants It will be able to do. According to the Sankhya philosophy, there is no God. It says that there can be no God of this universe, because if there were one, He must be a soul, and a soul must be either bound or free. How can the soul that is bound by nature, or controlled by nature, create? It is itself a slave. On the other hand, why should the Soul that is free create and manipulate all these things? It has no desires, so it cannot have any need to create. Secondly, it says the theory of God is an unnecessary one; nature explains all. What is the use of any God? But Kapila teaches that there are many souls, who, though nearly attaining perfection, fall short because they cannot perfectly renounce all powers. Their minds for a time merge in nature, to re-emerge as its masters. Such gods there are. We shall all become such gods, and, according to the Sankhyas, the God spoken of in the Vedas really means one of these free souls. Beyond them there is not an eternally free and blessed Creator of the universe. On the other hand, the Yogis say, "Not so, there is a God; there is one Soul separate from all other souls, and He is the eternal Master of all creation, the ever free, the Teacher of all teachers." The Yogis admit that those whom the Sankhyas call "the merged in nature" also exist. They are Yogis who have fallen short of perfection, and though, for a time, debarred from attaining the goal, remain as rulers of parts of the universe.
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1.09 - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
15:Thus are made possible the final steps when the veil of Nature is withdrawn and the seeker is face to face with the Master of all existence and his activities are merged in the action of a supreme Energy which is pure, true, perfect and blissful for ever. Thus can he utterly renounce to the supramental Shakti his works as well as the fruits of his works and act only as the conscious instrument of the eternal Worker. No longer giving the sanction, he will rather receive in his instruments and follow in her hands a divine mandate. No longer doing works, he will accept their execution through him by her unsleeping Force. No longer willing the fulfilment of his own mental constructions and the satisfaction of his own emotional desires, he will obey and participate in an omnipotent Will that is also an omniscient Knowledge and a myterious, magical and unfathomable Love and a vast bottomless sea of the eternal Bliss of Existence.
11.01 - The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The omniscient Ray is shut behind his lids:
He is the Wisdom that comes not by thought,
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Its omniscient and omnipotent repose,
Its immobile silence absolute and alone.
--
How shall he see with the omniscient's eyes,
How shall he will with the Omnipotent's force?
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Some beam of the omniscient Mystery.
704
1.107 - The Bestowal of a Divine Gift, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This is something which cannot be avoided, because no man is omniscient; no man is omnipotent; no man can be called God. And so, it is impossible to avoid these encounters entirely. One day or the other they have to come, and they may come in various forms, various degrees, at different times in ones life. When such a thing happens, what is to be done? When we face the enemy in front of us, what do we do? That is the very same thing that we have to do with these vrittis. Hnam e kleavat uktam (IV.28) is the recipe for this problem. Just as we deal with the klesas which were described in the earlier sutra, so we deal with these encounters. How do we deal with them?
The process of recession of the effect into the cause is one of the methods prescribed in the earlier sutras. It is a discriminative analysis of the causes of the activity of these vrittis which have come to the surface of consciousness at the present moment, and is a very difficult thing to practice because we cannot find out the causes when they are actually operating. Nevertheless, this is one of the methods prescribed in the sutra. When we are overwhelmed from all sides by the vrittis, we will not be allowed even to think of the causes which have given rise to this circumstance. But this overwhelming will not continue for a long time. There is an ebb and a flow of these vrittis; they are not always in the same condition. The force of the samskaras, the impressions of past experience which have been held in check for a long time by the practice of yoga, gains entry into the realm of consciousness and acts in respect of its own desired object.
1.10 - Concentration - Its Practice, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
This is the real goal of practice discrimination between the real and the unreal, knowing that the Purusha is not nature, that it is neither matter nor mind, and that because it is not nature, it cannot possibly change. It is only nature which changes, combining and re-combining, dissolving continually. When through constant practice we begin to discriminate, ignorance will vanish, and the Purusha will begin to shine in its real nature omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent.
1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
one in essence with God the Father, therefore omniscient
and omnipotent, capable of doing anything also while in
--
We consider you omniscient, he answered with a touch
of irony: You do not expect me, surely, to know how many
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
well as omniscient; for it exists between two poles, one of eternal stillness and pure identity, the other of eternal energy and
identity of All with itself, the stillness eternally supporting the
--
This superconscient Existence, one, conscious of itself, conscious both of its eternal peace and its omniscient and omnipotent force, is also conscious of our cosmic existence which it
holds in itself, inspires secretly and omnipotently governs. It is
--
the omniscient light, the pure beatitude of that divine existence.
This great achievement must be done here in this mortal
--
senses, the omniscient cannot be known by the mentality.
But Indra does not turn back from the quest like Agni
1.12 - THE FESTIVAL AT PNIHTI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to M.): "The husb and of Mani Mallick's granddaughter was here. He read in a book that God could not be said to be quite wise and omniscient; otherwise, why should there be so much misery in the world? As regards death, it would be much better to kill a man all at once, instead of putting him through slow torture. Further, the author writes that if he himself were the Creator, he would have created a better world."
M. listened to these words in surprise and made no comment.
1.13 - The Divine Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
14:But if we suppose an infinite Mind which would be free from our limitations, that at least might well be the creator of the universe? But such a Mind would be something quite different from the definition of mind as we know it: it would be something beyond mentality; it would be the supramental Truth. An infinite Mind constituted in the terms of mentality as we know it could only create an infinite chaos, a vast clash of chance, accident, vicissitude wandering towards an indeterminate end after which it would be always tentatively groping and aspiring. An infinite, omniscient, omnipotent Mind would not be mind at all, but supramental knowledge.
15:Mind, as we know it, is a reflective mirror which receives presentations or images of a pre-existent Truth or Fact, either external to or at least vaster than itself. It represents to itself from moment to moment the phenomenon that is or has been. It possesses also the faculty of constructing in itself possible images other than those of the actual fact presented to it; that is to say, it represents to itself not only phenomenon that has been but also phenomenon that may be: it cannot, be it noted, represent to itself phenomenon that assuredly will be, except when it is an assured repetition of what is or has been. It has, finally, the faculty of forecasting new modifications which it seeks to construct out of the meeting of what has been and what may be, out of the fulfilled possibility and the unfulfilled, something that it sometimes succeeds in constructing more or less exactly, sometimes fails to realise, but usually finds cast into other forms than it forecasted and turned to other ends than it desired or intended.
1.15 - The Supreme Truth-Consciousness, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
0:One seated in the sleep of Superconscience, a massed Intelligence, blissful and the enjoyer of Bliss. . . . This is the omnipotent, this is the omniscient, this is the inner control, this is the source of all. Mandukya Upanishad.1
1:WE HAVE to regard therefore this all-containing, alloriginating, all-consummating Supermind as the nature of the Divine Being, not indeed in its absolute self-existence, but in its action as the Lord and Creator of its own worlds. This is the truth of that which we call God. Obviously this is not the too personal and limited Deity, the magnified and supernatural Man of the ordinary occidental conception; for that conception erects a too human Eidolon of a certain relation between the creative Supermind and the ego. We must not indeed exclude the personal aspect of the Deity, for the impersonal is only one face of existence; the Divine is All-existence, but it is also the one Existent, - it is the sole Conscious-Being, but still a Being. Nevertheless, with this aspect we are not concerned at present; it is the impersonal psychological truth of the divine Consciousness that we are seeking to fathom: it is this that we have to fix in a large and clarified conception.
1.16 - The Triple Status of Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
6:This, then, is the nature of the Divine Consciousness which creates in itself all things by a movement of its conscious-force and governs their development through a self-evolution by inherent knowledge-will of the truth of existence or real-idea which has formed them. The Being that is thus conscient is what we call God; and He must obviously be omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. Omnipresent, for all forms are forms of His conscious being created by its force of movement in its own extension as Space and Time; omniscient, for all things exist in His consciousbeing, are formed by it and possessed by it; omnipotent, for this all-possessing consciousness is also an all-possessing Force and all-informing Will. And this Will and Knowledge are not at war with each other as our will and knowledge are capable of being at war with each other, because they are not different but are one movement of the same being. Nor can they be contradicted by any other will, force or consciousness from outside or within; for there is no consciousness or force external to the One, and all energies and formations of knowledge within are not other than it, but are merely play of the one all-determining Will and the one all-harmonising Knowledge. What we see as a clash of wills and forces, because we dwell in the particular and divided and cannot see the whole, the Supermind envisages as the conspiring elements of a predetermined harmony which is always present to it because the totality of things is eternally subject to its gaze.
7:Whatever be the poise or form its action takes, this will always be the nature of the divine Consciousness. But, its existence being absolute in itself, its power of existence is also absolute in its extension, and it is not therefore limited to one poise or one form of action. We, human beings, are phenomenally a particular form of consciousness, subject to Time and Space, and can only be, in our surface consciousness which is all we know of ourselves, one thing at a time, one formation, one poise of being, one aggregate of experience; and that one thing is for us the truth of ourselves which we acknowledge; all the rest is either not true or no longer true, because it has disappeared into the past out of our ken, or not yet true, because it is waiting in the future and not yet in our ken. But the Divine Consciousness is not so particularised, nor so limited; it can be many things at a time and take more than one enduring poise even for all time. We find that in the principle of Supermind itself it has three such general poises or sessions of its world-founding consciousness. The first founds the inalienable unity of things, the second modifies that unity so as to support the manifestation of the Many in One and One in Many; the third further modifies it so as to support the evolution of a diversified individuality which, by the action of Ignorance, becomes in us at a lower level the illusion of the separate ego.
1.20 - Death, Desire and Incapacity, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
13:If the individualised force were the energy of a mind free from ignorance, no such limitation, no such necessity of desire would intervene. For a mind not separated from supermind, a mind of divine knowledge would know the intention, scope and inevitable result of its every act and would not crave or struggle but put forth an assured force self-limited to the immediate object in view. It would, even in stretching beyond the present, even in undertaking movements not intended to succeed immediately, yet not be subject to desire or limitation. For the failures also of the Divine are acts of its omniscient omnipotence which knows the right time and circumstance for the incipience, the vicissitudes, the immediate and the final results of all its cosmic undertakings. The mind of knowledge, being in unison with the divine Supermind, would participate in this science and this all-determining power. But, as we have seen, individualised life-force here is an energy of individualising and ignorant Mind, Mind that has fallen from the knowledge of its own Supermind. Therefore incapacity is necessary to its relations in Life and inevitable in the nature of things; for the practical omnipotence of an ignorant force even in a limited sphere is unthinkable, since in that sphere such a force would set itself against the working of the divine and omniscient omnipotence and unfix the fixed purpose of things, - an impossible cosmic situation. The struggle of limited forces increasing their capacity by that struggle under the driving impetus of instinctive or conscious desire is therefore the first law of Life. As with desire, so with this strife; it must rise into a mutually helpful trial of strength, a conscious wrestling of brother forces in which the victor and vanquished or rather that which influences by action from above and that which influences by retort of action from below must equally gain and increase. And this again has eventually to become the happy shock of divine interchange, the strenuous clasp of Love replacing the convulsive clasp of strife. Still, strife is the necessary and salutary beginning. Death, Desire and Strife are the trinity of divided living, the triple mask of the divine Life-principle in its first essay of cosmic self-affirmation.
1.20 - Equality and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
God, but, eventually at least, of such a complete renunciation both of the consciousness and the works to him that our being becomes one with his being and the impersonalised nature only an instrument and nothing else. All result good or bad, pleasing or unpleasing, fortunate or unfortunate, is accepted as belonging to the Master of our actions, so that finally not only are grief and suffering borne, but they are banished: a perfect equality of the emotional mind is established. There is no assumption of personal will in the instrument; it is seen that all is already worked out in the omniscient prescience and omnipotent effective power of the universal Divine and that the egoism of men cannot alter the workings of that Will. Therefore, the final attitude is that enjoined on Arjuna in a later chapter, "All has been already done by Me in my divine will and foresight; become only the occasion, O Arjuna," nimitta-matram bhava savyasacin. This attitude must lead finally to an absolute union of the personal with the Divine Will and, with the growth of knowledge, bring about a faultless response of the instrument to the divine Power and Knowledge. A perfect, an absolute equality of self-surrender, the mentality a passive channel of the divine Light and Power, the active being a mightily effective instrument for its work in the world, will be the poise of this supreme union of the
Transcendent, the universal and the individual.
1.22 - The Problem of Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
8:This is what the old wisdom meant when it said that man imagines himself to be the doer of the work by his free will, but in reality Nature determines all his works and even the wise are compelled to follow their own Nature. But since Nature is the creative force of consciousness of the Being within us who is masked by His own inverse movement and apparent denial of Himself, they called that inverse creative movement of His consciousness the Maya or Illusion-Power of the Lord and said that all existences are turned as upon a machine through His Maya by the Lord seated within the heart of all existences. It is evident then that only by man so far exceeding mind as to become one in self-awareness with the Lord can he become master of his own being. And since this is not possible in the inconscience or in the subconscient itself, since profit cannot come by plunging down into our depths back towards the Inconscient, it can only be by going inward where the Lord is seated and by ascending into that which is still superconscient to us, into the Supermind, that this unity can be wholly established. For there in the higher and divine Maya is the conscious knowledge, in its law and truth, of that which works in the subconscient by the lower Maya under the conditions of the Denial which seeks to become the Affirmation. For this lower Nature works out what is willed and known in that higher Nature. The Illusion-Power of the divine knowledge in the world which creates appearances is governed by the Truth-Power of the same knowledge which knows the truth behind the appearances and keeps ready for us the Affirmation towards which they are working. The partial and apparent Man here will find there the perfect and real Man capable of an entirely self-aware being by his full unity with that Self-existent who is the omniscient lord of His own cosmic evolution and procession.
9:The second difficulty is that man is separated in his mind, his life, his body from the universal and therefore, even as he does not know himself, is equally and even more incapable of knowing his fellow-creatures. He forms by inferences, theories, observations and a certain imperfect capacity of sympathy a rough mental construction about them; but this is not knowledge. Knowledge can only come by conscious identity, for that is the only true knowledge, - existence aware of itself. We know what we are so far as we are consciously aware of ourself, the rest is hidden; so also we can come really to know that with which we become one in our consciousness, but only so far as we can become one with it. If the means of knowledge are indirect and imperfect, the knowledge attained will also be indirect and imperfect. It will enable us to work out with a certain precarious clumsiness but still perfectly enough from our mental standpoint certain limited practical aims, necessities, conveniences, a certain imperfect and insecure harmony of our relations with that which we know; but only by a conscious unity with it can we arrive at a perfect relation. Therefore we must arrive at a conscious unity with our fellow-beings and not merely at the sympathy created by love or the understanding created by mental knowledge, which will always be the knowledge of their superficial existence and therefore imperfect in itself and subject to denial and frustration by the uprush of the unknown and unmastered from the subconscient or the subliminal in them and us. But this conscious oneness can only be established by entering into that in which we are one with them, the universal; and the fullness of the universal exists consciently only in that which is superconscient to us, in the Supermind: for here in our normal being the greater part of it is subconscient and therefore in this normal poise of mind, life and body it cannot be possessed. The lower conscious nature is bound down to ego in all its activities, chained triply to the stake of differentiated individuality. The Supermind alone commands unity in diversity.
1.27 - The Sevenfold Chord of Being, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1:WE HAVE now, by our scrutiny of the seven great terms of existence which the ancient seers fixed on as the foundation and sevenfold mode of all cosmic existence, discerned the gradations of evolution and involution and arrived at the basis of knowledge towards which we were striving. We have laid down that the origin, the continent, the initial and the ultimate reality of all that is in the cosmos is the triune principle of transcendent and infinite Existence, Consciousness and Bliss which is the nature of divine being. Consciousness has two aspects, illuminating and effective, state and power of self-awareness and state and power of self-force, by which Being possesses itself whether in its static condition or in its dynamic movement; for in its creative action it knows by omnipotent self-consciousness all that is latent within it and produces and governs the universe of its potentialities by an omniscient self-energy. This creative action of the Allexistent has its nodus in the fourth, the intermediate principle of Supermind or Real-Idea, in which a divine Knowledge one with self-existence and self-awareness and a substantial Will which is in perfect unison with that knowledge, because it is itself in its substance and nature that self-conscious self-existence dynamic in illumined action, develop infallibly the movement and form and law of things in right accordance with their self-existent Truth and in harmony with the significances of its manifestation.
2:The creation depends on and moves between the biune principle of unity and multiplicity; it is a manifoldness of idea and force and form which is the expression of an original unity, and it is an eternal oneness which is the foundation and reality of the multiple worlds and makes their play possible. Supermind therefore proceeds by a double faculty of comprehensive and apprehensive knowledge; proceeding from the essential oneness to the resultant multiplicity, it comprehends all things in itself as itself the One in its manifold aspects and it apprehends separately all things in itself as objects of its will and knowledge. While to its original self-awareness all things are one being, one consciousness, one will, one self-delight and the whole movement of things a movement one and indivisible, it proceeds in its action from the unity to the multiplicity and from multiplicity to unity, creating an ordered relation between them and an appearance but not a binding reality of division, a subtle unseparating division, or rather a demarcation and determination within the indivisible. The Supermind is the divine Gnosis which creates, governs and upholds the worlds: it is the secret Wisdom which upholds both our Knowledge and our Ignorance.
--
8:Finally, Consciousness being thus omniscient and omnipotent, in entire luminous possession of itself, and such entire luminous possession being necessarily and in its very nature Bliss, for it cannot be anything else, a vast universal self-delight must be the cause, essence and object of cosmic existence. "If there were not" says the ancient seer "this all-encompassing ether of Delight of existence in which we dwell, if that delight were not our ether, then none could breathe, none could live." This self-bliss may become subconscient, seemingly lost on the surface, but not only must it be there at our roots, all existence must be essentially a seeking and reaching out to discover and possess it, and in proportion as the creature in the cosmos finds himself, whether in will and power or in light and knowledge or in being and wideness or in love and joy itself, he must awaken to something of the secret ecstasy. Joy of being, delight of realisation by knowledge, rapture of possession by will and power or creative force, ecstasy of union in love and joy are the highest terms of expanding life because they are the essence of existence itself in its hidden roots as on its yet unseen heights. Wherever, then, cosmic existence manifests itself, these three must be behind and within it.
9:But infinite Existence, Consciousness and Bliss need not throw themselves out into apparent being at all or, doing so, it would not be cosmic being, but simply an infinity of figures without fixed order or relation, if they did not hold or develop and bring out from themselves this fourth term of Supermind, of the divine Gnosis. There must be in every cosmos a power of Knowledge and Will which out of infinite potentiality fixes determined relations, develops the result out of the seed, rolls out the mighty rhythms of cosmic Law and views and governs the worlds as their immortal and infinite Seer and Ruler.4 This power indeed is nothing else than Sachchidananda Himself; it creates nothing which is not in its own self-existence, and for that reason all cosmic and real Law is a thing not imposed from outside, but from within, all development is self-development, all seed and result are seed of a Truth of things and result of that seed determined out of its potentialities. For the same reason no Law is absolute, because only the infinite is absolute, and everything contains within itself endless potentialities quite beyond its determined form and course, which are only determined through a self-limitation by Idea proceeding from an infinite liberty within. This power of self-limitation is necessarily inherent in the boundless All-Existent. The Infinite would not be the Infinite if it could not assume a manifold finiteness; the Absolute would not be the Absolute if it were denied in knowledge and power and will and manifestation of being a boundless capacity of self-determination. This Supermind then is the Truth or Real-Idea, inherent in all cosmic force and existence, which is necessary, itself remaining infinite, to determine and combine and uphold relation and order and the great lines of the manifestation. In the language of the Vedic Rishis, as infinite Existence, Consciousness and Bliss are the three highest and hidden Names of the Nameless, so this Supermind is the fourth Name5 - fourth to That in its descent, fourth to us in our ascension.
1.2 - Katha Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
9. He who is the omniscient, the all-wise, He whose energy
is all made of knowledge, from Him is born this that is
1.30 - Do you Believe in God?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
He must be omniscient (Mercury) omnipotent, (Sulphur) and omnipresent (Salt);[59] yet to such a Being no purpose would be possible; so that all the apologies for the existence of "evil" crash. If there be opposites of any kind, there can be no consistency. He cannot be Two; He must be One; yet, as is obvious, he isn't.
How do the Hindu philosophers try to get out of this quag? "Evil" is "illusion;" has no "real" existence. Then what is the point of it?
1.3.1.02 - The Object of Our Yoga, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Vedic meaning of Maya is not illusion, it is wisdom, knowledge, capacity, wide extension in consciousness. Prajna prasrita purani. Omnipotent Wisdom created the world, it is not the organised blunder of some Infinite Dreamer; omniscient Power manifests or conceals it in Itself or Its own delight, it is not a bondage imposed by His own ignorance on the free and absolute
Brahman.
1.3.5.04 - The Evolution of Consciousness, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
That which all is, That which we call God, Brahman, Spirit, has here shut itself up in its own self-created opposite. The omniscient has plunged itself into Nescience, the All-Conscious into
Inconscience, the All-Wise into perpetual Ignorance. The Omnipotent has formulated itself in a vast cosmic self-driven Inertia that by disintegration creates; the Infinite is self-expressed here in a boundless fragmentation; the All-Blissful has put on a huge insensibility out of which it struggles by pain and hunger and desire and sorrow. Elsewhere the Divine is; here in physical life, in this obscure material world, it would seem almost as if the Divine
1.3 - Mundaka Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7. The omniscient, the All-wise, whose is this might and
majesty upon the earth, is this self enthroned in the divine
1.75 - The AA and the Planet, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
But then (you will object, if an objection it be) people like Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, the Mikado, et hoc genus omne, are loyal emissaries of the Masters, or the gods! Well, why not? An analogy, once more. In the Christian legend we find God (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent) employing Judas, Pilate and Herod, no less than Jesus, as actors in the Drama which replaced Isis by Osiris in the Great Formula. Perfectly true; but this fact does not in any way exculpate the criminals. It is no excuse for the Commandants of Belsen and Buchenwald that they were acting under orders. The Drama is not mere play-acting, in which the most virtuous man may play the vilest of parts.
Your further objection, doubtless, will be that this theory makes the Masters responsible for the agony of the planet. I refer you to The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent, Cp I, v. 33-40.
1914 03 18p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thou art perfect knowledge, absolute consciousness. He who unites with Thee is omniscientwhile the union lasts. But even before attaining this stage, he who has given himself to Thee in all the sincerity of his being, with all his conscious will, he who has resolved to make every effort to help in the manifestation and triumph of Thy divine law of Love in himself and the whole field of his influence, sees all things in his life change, and all circumstances begin to express Thy law and assist his consecration; for him it is the best, the very best that always happens; and if in his intelligence there is still some obscurity, some ignorant desire which at times prevents him from becoming aware of it immediately, he recognises sooner or later that a beneficent power seemed to protect him even from himself and secure for him conditions most favourable to his blossoming and transfiguration, his integral conversion and utilisation.
As soon as one becomes conscious and convinced of this, one can no longer worry about future circumstances or the turn events take; it is with perfect serenity that one does at every moment what one thinks best, convinced that the best too is sure to come from it, even if it is not the result which we, with our limited reasoning, expected from it.
1960 04 20, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Will, as it is usually conceived, is the elaboration of a thought, to which is added a force, a power of fulfilment accompanied by an impulse to carry it out. That is the description of human will. Divine will is quite another thing. It is a vision united with a power of realisation. Divine will is omniscient and omnipotent, it is irresistible and immediate in its execution.
Human will is uncertain, often wavering, always in conflict with opposing wills. It is effective only when for some reason or other it is in accord with the will of Natureitself a transcription of the divine willor with the divine will itself, as a result of Grace or Yoga.
1f.lovecraft - The Shadow out of Time, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And meanwhile the Great Race itself waxed well-nigh omniscient, and
turned to the task of setting up exchanges with the minds of other
--
the Great Race. At moments I fancied I saw those omniscient conical
horrors moving about at their accustomed tasks, and I feared to look
1.jda - You rest on the circle of Sris breast (from The Gitagovinda), #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
English version by Barbara Stoler Miller Original Language Sanskrit You rest on the circle of Sri's breast, Wearing your earrings, Fondling wanton forest garlands. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! The sun's jewel light encircles you As you break through the bond of existence -- A wild Himalayan goose on lakes in minds of holy men. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! You defeat the venomous serpent Kaliya, Exciting your Yadu kinsmen Like sunlight inciting lotuses to bloom. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! You ride your fierce eagle Garuda To battle demons Madhu and Mura and Naraka, Leaving the other goods free to play. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! Watching with long omniscient lotus-petal eyes, You free us from bonds of existence, Preserving life in the world's three realms. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! Janaka's daughter Sita adorns you. You conquer demon Dusana. You kill ten-headed Ravana in battle. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! Your beauty is fresh as rain clouds. You hold the mountain to churn elixir from the sea. Your eyes are night birds drinking from Sri's moon face. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! Poet Jayadeva joyously sings This song of invocation In an auspicious prayer. Triumph, God of Triumph, Hari! As he rests in Sri's embrace, On the soft slope of her breast, The saffroned chest of Madhu's killer Is stained with red marks of passion And sweat from fatigue of tumultuous loving. May his broad chest bring you pleasure too! [1994.jpg] -- from Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva's Gitagovinda, Translated by Barbara Stoler Miller <
1.kbr - Where do you search me, #Songs of Kabir, #Kabir, #Sufism
Kabir reveals in this verse the various search patterns adopted by mankind. And each one seems to be justifying his chosen method. Some say God will be realized through pilgrimages while some justify the idol worship. Some say He is up in the mountains while some believe that He is in places of worship. Some proclaim prayers and meditation the path, others believe realization through fasting. Many talk about yogic exercises (activity) and renunciation. When Kabir says that God is not in any of these things it does not mean that God is not in any of these but that to find God what one needs is but to believe and have faith, and when one will have faith he will find God in a moments search, for God is with him all the time. In this poem Kabir emphasises the all-pervading, omniscient, omnipresent qualities of God.
1.pbs - Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
Like omniscient power which he
Imaged 'mid mortality;
1.pbs - The Wandering Jews Soliloquy, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
By Thine omniscient mind foredoomed, foreknown?
Yes! I would court a ruin such as this,
1.poe - Eureka - A Prose Poem, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Integral Yoga
For my part, I have no patience with fantasies at once so timorous, so idle, and so awkward. They belong to the veriest Cowardice of thought. That Nature and the God of Nature are distinct, no thinking being can long doubt. By the former we imply merely the laws of the latter. But with the very idea of God, omnipotent, omniscient, we entertain, also, the idea of the infallibility of his laws. With Him there being neither Past nor Future -with Him all being Now -do we not insult him in supposing his laws so contrived as not to provide for every possible contingency? -or, rather, what idea can we have of any possible contingency, except that it is at once a result and a manifestation of his laws? He who, divesting himself of prejudice, shall have the rare courage to think absolutely for himself, cannot fail to arrive, in the end, at the condensation of LA0 into LA0 -cannot fail of reaching the conclusion that each law of Nature is dependent at all points upon all other laws, and that all are but consequences of one primary exercise of the Divine Volition. Such is the principle of the Cosmogony which, with all necessary deference, I here venture to suggest and to maintain.
In this view, it will be seen that, dismissing as frivolous, and even impious, the fancy of the tangential force having been imparted to the planets immediately, by "the finger of God," I consider this force as originating in the rotation of the stars: -this rotation as brought about by the in-rushing of the primary atoms, towards their respective centres of aggregation: -this in-rushing as the consequence of the law of Gravity: -this law as but the mode in which is necessarily manifested the tendency of the atoms to return into imparticularity: -this tendency to return as but the inevitable reaction of the first and most sublime of Acts -that act by which a God, self-existing and alone existing, became all things at once, through dint of his volition, while all things were thus constituted a portion of God.
1.ww - The Excursion- X- Book Ninth- Discourse of the Wanderer, and an Evening Visit to the Lake, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Audible praise, to thee, omniscient Mind,
From whom all gifts descend, all blessings flow!"
2.01 - Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This opens the way for other explanations which make Consciousness the creator of this world out of an apparent original Inconscience. A Mind, a Will seems to have imagined and organised the universe, but it has veiled itself behind its creation; its first erection has been this screen of an inconscient Energy and a material form of substance, at once a disguise of its presence and a plastic creative basis on which it could work as an artisan uses for his production of forms and patterns a dumb and obedient material. All these things we see around us are then the thoughts of an extra-cosmic Divinity, a Being with an omnipotent and omniscient Mind and Will, who is responsible for the mathematical law of the physical universe, for its artistry of beauty, for its strange play of samenesses and variations, of concordances and discords, of combining and intermingling opposites, for the drama of consciousness struggling to exist and seeking to affirm itself in an inconscient universal order. The fact that this Divinity is invisible to us, undiscoverable by our mind and senses, offers no difficulty, since self-evidence or direct sign of an extra-cosmic Creator could not be expected in a cosmos which is void of his presence: the patent signals everywhere of the works of an Intelligence, of law, design, formula, adaptation of means to end, constant and inexhaustible invention, fantasy even but restrained by an ordering Reason might be considered sufficient proof of this origin of things. Or if this Creator is not entirely supracosmic, but is also immanent in his works, even then there need be no other sign of him, - except indeed to some consciousness evolving in this inconscient world, but only when its evolution reached a point at which it could become aware of the indwelling Presence. The intervention of this evolving consciousness would not be a difficulty, since there would be no contradiction of the basic nature of things in its appearance; an omnipotent Mind could easily infuse something of itself into its creatures. One difficulty remains; it is the arbitrary nature of the creation, the incomprehensibility of its purpose, the crude meaninglessness of its law of unnecessary ignorance, strife and suffering, its ending without a denouement or issue. A play? But why this stamp of so many undivine elements and characters in the play of One whose nature must be supposed to be divine?
To the suggestion that what we see worked out in the world is the thoughts of God, the retort can be made that God could well have had better thoughts and the best thought of all would have been to refrain from the creation of an unhappy and unintelligible universe. All theistic explanations of existence starting from an extra-cosmic Deity stumble over this difficulty and can only evade it; it would disappear only if the Creator were, even though exceeding the creation, yet immanent in it, himself in some sort both the player and the play, an Infinite casting infinite possibilities into the form of an evolutionary cosmic order.
2.01 - Mandala One, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
(8) Wise of mind they roar aloud like lions, omniscient and like good moulders who knead all into forms, gladdeners of the nights with dappled mares and lances, when beset and stayed, python-passioned in their might.
(9) In the beauty of your hosts you speak to earth and heaven. You cleave to men, heroes python-passioned in your might. A force stands in the bodies of your chariots, O Maruts, that is like lightning and like a might that has vision.
(10) omniscient are the Strong Ones and dwellers with the riches, inseparably joined to strengths and overflowing in might, shooters who hold the javelin in their two hands of light, infinite strengths with daggers of puissance.
(11) Increasing the waters the Maruts with their blazing lances grind in their ascent the mountains with their golden wheels like travellers breasting their path, fighters and marchers moving in their own motion, who make havoc and disturb all firm established things.
2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. The Upanishads affirm that all this is the Brahman; Mind is Brahman, Life is Brahman, Matter is Brahman; addressing Vayu, the Lord of Air, of Life, it is said "O Vayu, thou art manifest Brahman"; and, pointing to man and beast and bird and insect, each separately is identified with the One, "O Brahman, thou art this old man and boy and girl, this bird, this insect." Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the Force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could brea the or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. 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 ForceNature. 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. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
An absolute, eternal and infinite Self-existence, Self-awareness, Self-delight of being that secretly supports and pervades the universe even while it is also beyond it, is, then, the first truth of spiritual experience. But this truth of being has at once an impersonal and a personal aspect; it is not only Existence, it is the one Being absolute, eternal and infinite. As there are three fundamental aspects in which we meet this Reality, Self, Conscious Being or Spirit and God, the Divine Being, or to use the Indian terms, the absolute and omnipresent Reality, Brahman, manifest to us as Atman, Purusha, Ishwara, - so too its power of Consciousness appears to us in three aspects: it is the self-force of that consciousness conceptively creative of all things, Maya; it is Prakriti, Nature or Force made dynamically executive, working out all things under the witnessing eye of the Conscious Being, the Self or Spirit; it is the conscious Power of the Divine Being, Shakti, which is both conceptively creative and dynamically executive of all the divine workings. These three aspects and their powers base and comprise the whole of existence and all Nature and, taken together as a single whole, they reconcile the apparent disparateness and incompatibility of the supracosmic Transcendence, the cosmic universality and the separativeness of our individual existence; the Absolute, cosmic Nature and ourselves are linked in oneness by this triune aspect of the one Reality. For taken by itself the existence of the Absolute, the Supreme Brahman, would be a contradiction of the relative universe and our own real existence would be incompatible with its sole incommunicable Reality. But the Brahman is at the same time omnipresent in all relativities; it is the Absolute independent of all relatives, the Absolute basing all relatives, the Absolute governing, pervading, constituting all relatives; there is nothing that is not the omnipresent Reality. In observing the triple aspect and the triple power we come to see how this is possible.
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But it is evident that whatever the posture taken or relation formed in any individual nodus of Purusha-Prakriti, the Being is in a fundamental cosmic relation lord or ruler of its nature: for even when it allows Nature to have its own way with it, its consent is necessary to support her workings. This comes out in its fullest revelation in the third aspect of the Reality, the Divine Being who is the master and creator of the universe. Here the supreme Person, the Being in its transcendental and cosmic consciousness and force, comes to the front, omnipotent, omniscient, the controller of all energies, the Conscious in all that is conscient or inconscient, the Inhabitant of all souls and minds and hearts and bodies, the Ruler or Overruler of all works, the Enjoyer of all delight, the Creator who has built all things in his own being, the All-Person of whom all beings are personalities, the Power from whom are all powers, the Self, the Spirit in all, by his being the Father of all that is, in his Consciousness-Force the Divine Mother the Friend of all creatures, the All-blissful and All-beautiful of whom beauty and joy are the revelation, the All-Beloved and All-Lover. In a certain sense, so seen and understood, this becomes the most comprehensive of the aspects of the Reality, since here all are united in a single formulation; for the Ishwara is supracosmic as well as intracosmic; He is that which exceeds and inhabits and supports all individuality; He is the supreme and universal Brahman, the Absolute, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha.8 But, very clearly, this is not the personal God of popular religions, a being limited by his qualities, individual and separate from all others; for all such personal gods are only limited representations or names and divine personalities of the one Ishwara. Neither is this the Saguna Brahman active and possessed of qualities, for that is only one side of the being of the Ishwara; the Nirguna immobile and without qualities is another aspect of His existence. Ishwara is Brahman the Reality, Self, Spirit, revealed as possessor, enjoyer of his own self-existence, creator of the universe and one with it, Pantheos, and yet superior to it, the Eternal, the Infinite, the Ineffable, the Divine Transcendence.
8 Gita.
2.02 - Habit 2 Begin with the End in Mind, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
Admittedly, we're not omniscient. Our knowledge and understanding of correct principles is limited by our own lack of awareness of our true nature and the world around us and by the flood of trendy philosophies and theories that are not in harmony with correct principles. These ideas will have their season of acceptance, but, like many before them, they won't endure because they're built on false foundations.
We are limited, but we can push back the borders of our limitations. An understanding of the principle of our own growth enables us to search out correct principles with the confidence that the more we learn, the more clearly we can focus the lens through which we see the world. The principles don't change; our understanding of them does.
2.02 - THE SCINTILLA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[46] The Egyptians held that the eye is the seat of the soul; for example, Osiris is hidden in the eye of Horus.91 In alchemy the eye is the coelum (heaven): It is like an eye and a seeing of the soul, whereby the state of the soul and her intentions are ofttimes made known to us, and through the rays and the glance [of heaven] all things take form.92 In Steebs view, which agrees with that of Marsilius Ficinus,93 the coelum is a virtus, indeed a certain perfect, living being.94 Hence the alchemists called their quinta essentia coelum. The idea of a virtus is borne out by the description of the Holy Ghost as an eye,95 a parallel to the invocation to Hermes: Hermes . . . the eye of heaven.96 The eye of God emits power and light,97 likewise the fishes eyes are tiny soul-sparks from which the shining figure of the filius is put together. They correspond to the particles of light imprisoned in the dark Physis, whose reconstitution was one of the chief aims of Gnosticism and Manichaeism. There is a similar nexus of ideas in the siddhaila of Jainism: The loka [world] is held in the middle of the aloka [void], in the form of the trunk of a man, with siddhaila at the top, the place where the head should be. This siddhaila is the abode of the omniscient souls, and may be called the spiritual eye of the universe.98
[47] The eye, like the sun, is a symbol as well as an allegory of consciousness.99 In alchemy the scintillulae are put together to form the gold (Sol), in the Gnostic systems the atoms of light are reintegrated. Psychologically, this doctrine testifies to the personality- or ego-character of psychic complexes: just as the distinguishing mark of the ego-complex is consciousness, so it is possible that other, unconscious complexes may possess, as splinter psyches, a certain luminosity of their own.100 From these atoms is produced the Monad (and the lapis in its various significations), in agreement with the teachings of Epicurus, who held that the concourse of atoms even produced God.101
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Integral Yoga
of Will, omnipotent and omniscient, are such that the Mind,
Sight, Hearing, all the senses together cannot comprehend their
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too are Brahman. Spiritually near and far; for the omniscient
and Omnipotent Cause and Ruler who creates universes with
2.03 - The Eternal and the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral 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 power of the individual to possess in his consciousness by self-knowledge his unity with the Transcendent and the universal, with the One Being and all beings and to live in that knowledge and transform his life by it, is that which makes the working out of the divine self-manifestation through the individual possible; and the arrival of the individual - not in one but in all - at the divine life is the sole conceivable object of the movement. The existence of the individual is not an error in some self of the Absolute which that self afterwards discovers; for it is impossible that the absolute self-awareness or anything that is one with it should be ignorant of its own truth and its own capacities and betrayed by that ignorance either into a false idea of itself which it has to correct or an impracticable venture which it has to renounce. Neither is the individual existence a subordinate circumstance in a divine play or Lila, a play which consists in a continual revolution through unending cycles of pleasure and suffering without any higher hope in the Lila itself or any issue from it except the occasional escape of a few from time to time out of their bondage to this ignorance. We might be compelled to hold that ruthless and disastrous view of God's workings if man had no power of self-transcendence or no power of transforming by self-knowledge the conditions of the play nearer and nearer to the truth of the divine Delight.
2.04 - Concentration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1:Along with purity and as a help to bring it about, concentration. Purity and concentration are indeed two aspects, feminine and masculine, passive and active, of the same status of being; purity is the condition in which concentration becomes entire, rightly effective, omnipotent; by concentration purity does its works and without it would only lead to a state of peaceful quiescence and eternal repose. Their opposites are also closely connected; for we have seen that impurity is a confusion of Dharmas, a lax, mixed and mutually entangled action of the different parts of the being; and this confusion proceeds from an absence of right concentration of its knowledge on its energies in the embodied Soul. The fault of our nature is first an inert subjection to the impacts of things303 as they come in upon the mind pell-mell without order or control and then a haphazard imperfect concentration managed fitfully, irregularly with a more or less chance emphasis on this or on that object according as they happen to interest, not the higher soul or the judging and discerning intellect, but the restless, leaping, fickle, easily tired, easily distracted lower mind which is the chief enemy of our progress. In such a condition purity, the right working of the functions, the clear, unstained and luminous order of the being is an impossibility; the various workings, given over to the chances of the environment and external influences, must necessarily run into each other and clog, divert, distract, pervert. Equally, without purity the complete, equal, flexible concentration of the being in right thought, right will, right feeling or secure status of spiritual experience is not possible. Therefore the two must proceed together, each helping the victory of the other, until we arrive at that eternal calm from which may proceed some partial image in the human being of the eternal, omnipotent and omniscient activity.
2:But in the path of knowledge as it is practised in India concentration is used in a special and more limited sense. It means that removal of the thought from all distracting activities of the mind and that concentration of it on the idea of the One by which the soul rises out of the phenomenal into the one Reality. It is by the thought that we dissipate ourselves in the phenomenal; it is by the gathering back of the thought into itself that we must draw ourselves back into the real. Concentration has three powers by which this aim can be effected. 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, buttheone 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 fear, 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 attri butes, 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.
2.04 - The Divine and the Undivine, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All-Knowledge but held behind a veil, not known by the instrumental form of existence, yet perfectly operative within the instinct or the impetus. We may say then that this action of the ignorance or nescience is no real ignorance, but a power, a sign, a proof of an omniscient self-knowledge and all-knowledge. If we need any personal and inner witness to this indivisible allconsciousness 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.
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Divine in his self-workings the aspect of a just limitation of an omniscient power by the free will of that Power itself so that the surface energy shall be in exact correspondence with the work that it has to do, with its attempt, its allotted success or its destined because necessary failure, with the balance of the sum of forces in which it is a part and with the larger result of which its own results are an indivisible portion. Behind this limitation of power is the All-Power and in the limitation that All-Power is at work; but it is through the sum of many limited workings that the indivisible Omnipotence executes infallibly and sovereignly its purposes. This power to limit its force and to work through that self-limitation, by what we call labour, struggle, difficulty, by what seems to us a series of failures or half-baulked successes and through them to achieve its secret intention, is not therefore a sign, proof or reality of weakness, but a sign, proof, reality - the greatest possible - of an absolute omnipotence.
As to suffering, which is so great a stumbling-block to our understanding of the universe, it is evidently a consequence of the limitation of consciousness, the restriction of force which prevents us from mastering or assimilating the touch of what is to us other-force: the result of this incapacity and disharmony is that the delight of the touch cannot be seized and it affects our sense with a reaction of discomfort or pain, a defect or excess, a discord resultant in inner or outer injury, born of division between our power of being and the power of being that meets us. Behind in our self and spirit is the All-Delight of the universal being which takes its account of the contact, a delight first in the enduring and then in the conquest of the suffering and finally in its transmutation that shall come hereafter; for pain and suffering are a perverse and contrary term of the delight of existence and they can turn into their opposite, even into the original AllDelight, Ananda. This All-Delight is not present in the universal alone, but it is here secret in ourselves, as we discover when we go back from our outward consciousness into the Self within us; the psychic being in us takes its account even of its most perverse or contrary as well as its more benign experiences and grows by the
2.05 - Habit 3 Put First Things First, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
But because you aren't omniscient, you can't always know in advance what is truly important. As carefully as you organize the week, these will be times when, as a principle-centered person, you will need to subordinate your schedule to a higher value. Because you are principle-centered, you can do that with an inner sense of peace.
At one point, one of my sons was deeply into scheduling and efficiency. One day he had a very tight schedule, which included down-to-the-minute time allocations for every activity, including picking up some books, washing his car, and "dropping" Carol, his girlfriend, among other things.
2.05 - The Cosmic Illusion; Mind, Dream and Hallucination, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But it has not the omniscience of an infinite Consciousness; it is limited in knowledge and has to supplement its restricted knowledge by imagination and discovery. It does not, like the infinite Consciousness, manifest the known, it has to discover the unknown; it seizes the possibilities of the Infinite, not as results or variations of forms of a latent Truth, but as constructions or creations, figments of its own boundless imagination. It has not the omnipotence of an infinite conscious Energy; it can only realise or actualise what the cosmic Energy will accept from it or what it has the strength to impose or introduce into the sum of things because the secret Divinity, superconscient or subliminal, which uses it intends that that should be expressed in Nature. Its limitation of Knowledge constitutes by incompleteness, but also by openness to error, an Ignorance. In dealing with actualities it may misobserve, misuse, miscreate; in dealing with possibilities it may miscompose, miscombine, misapply, misplace; in its dealings with truths revealed to it it may deform, misrepresent, disharmonise. It may also make constructions of its own which have no correspondence with the things of actual existence, no potentiality of realisation, no support from the truth behind them; but still these constructions start from an illegitimate extension of actualities, catch at unpermitted possibilities, or turn truths to an application which is not applicable. Mind creates, but it is not an original creator, not omniscient or omnipotent, not even an always efficient demiurge. Maya, the Illusive Power, on the contrary, must be an original creator, for it creates all things out of nothing - unless we suppose that it creates out of the substance of the Reality, but then the things it creates must be in some way real; it has a perfect knowledge of what it wishes to create, a perfect power to create whatever it chooses, omniscient and omnipotent though only over its own illusions, harmonising them and linking them together with a magical sureness and sovereign energy, absolutely effective in imposing its own formations or figments passed off as truths, possibilities, actualities on the creature intelligence.
Our mind works best and with a firm confidence when it
2.06 - Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
On the contrary, the Power that creates must be the force of an omnipotent and omniscient Consciousness; the creations of the absolutely Real should be real and not illusions, and since it is the One Existence, they must be self-creations, forms of a manifestation of the Eternal, not forms of Nothing erected out of the original Void - whether a void being or a void consciousness
- by Maya.
2.07 - The Supreme Word of the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But there is another supreme reality of the Infinite that must also be recognised as an indispensable element of the liberating knowledge. This reality is that of the transcendent downlook as well as the close immanent presence of the divine government of the universe. The Supreme who becomes all creation, yet infinitely transcends it, is not a will-less cause aloof from his creation. He is not an involuntary originator who disowns all responsibility for these results of his universal Power or casts them upon an illusive consciousness entirely different from his own or leaves them to a mechanical Law or to a Demiurge or to a Manichean conflict of Principles. He is not an aloof and indifferent Witness who waits impassively for all to abolish itself or return to its unmoved original principle. He is the mighty lord of the worlds and peoples, loka-mahesvara, and governs all not only from within but from above, from his supreme transcendence. Cosmos cannot be governed by a Power that does not transcend cosmos. A divine government implies the free mastery of an omnipotent Ruler and not an automatic force or mechanical law of determinative becoming limited by the apparent nature of the cosmos. This is the theistic seeing of the universe, but it is no shrinking and gingerly theism afraid of the world's contradictions, but one which sees God as the omniscient and omnipotent, the sole original Being who manifests in himself all, whatever it may be, good and evil, pain and pleasure, light and darkness as stuff of his own existence and governs himself what in himself he has manifested. Unaffected by its oppositions, unbound by his creation, exceeding, yet intimately related to this Nature and closely one with her creatures, their
The Supreme Word of the Gita
2.07 - The Upanishad in Aphorism, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The soul in Tapas is pure force of divine will & knowledge and possesses universe omnisciently and omnipotently as its extended self.
The soul in Ananda is pure delight and multiplies itself in universal self-creation and unmixed joy of being.
2.08 - The God of Love is his own proof, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
What is the ideal of the lover who has quite passed beyond beyond the idea of selfishness, of bartering and bargaining, and who knows no fear? Even to the great God such a man will say, I will give You my all, and I do not want anything from You; indeed there is nothing that I can call my own. When a man has acquired this conviction, his ideal becomes one of perfect love, one of perfect fearlessness of love. The highest ideal of such a person has no narrowness of particularity about it; it is love universal, love without limits and bonds, love itself, absolute love. This grand ideal of the religion of love is worshipped and loved absolutely as such without the aid of any symbols or suggestions. This is the highest form of Para-Bhakti, the worship of such an all-comprehending ideal as the ideal; all the other forms of Bhakti are only stages on the way to reach it. All our failures and all our successes in following the religion of love are on the road to the reallsatlon of that one ideal. Object after object is taken up, and the inner ideal is successively projected on them all; and all such external objects are found inadequate as exponents of the everexpanding inner ideal, and are naturally rejected one after another. At last the aspirant begins to think that it is vain to try to realise the ideal in external objects, that all external objects are as nothing when compared with the ideal itself; and, in course of time, he acquires the power of realising the highest and the most generalised abstract ideal entirely as an abstraction that is to him quite alive and real. When the devotee has reached this point, he is no more impelled to ask whether God can be demonstrated or not, whether He is omnipotent and omniscient or not. To him He is only the God of Love: He is the highest ideal of love, and that is sufficient for all his purposes; He, as love, is self-evident; it requires no proofs to demonstrate the existence of the beloved to the lover. The magistrate-Gods of other forms of religion may require a good deal of proof to prove Them; but the Bhakta does pot and cannot think of such Gods at all. To him God exists entirely as love. None, O beloved, loves the husb and for the husbands sake, but it is for the sake of the Self who is in the husb and that the husb and is loved; none, O beloved, loves the wife for the wifes sake, but it is for the sake of the Self who is in the wife that the wife is loved. It is said by some that selfishness is the only motive power in regard to all human activities. That also is love lowered by being particularised. When I think of myself as comprehending the Universal, there can surely be no selfishness in me; but when I, by mistake, think that I am a little something, my love becomes particularised and narrowed.
The mistake consists in making the sphere of love narrow and contracted. All things in the universe are of divine origin and deserve to be loved; it has, however, to be borne in mind that the love of the whole includes the love of the parts. This whole is the God of the Bhaktas and all the other Gods, Fathers in Heaven, or Rulers, or Creators, and all theories and doctrines and books have no purpose and no meaning for them, seeing that they have, through their supreme love and devotion, risen above those things altogether. When the heart is purified and cleansed and filled to the brim with the divine nectar of love, all other ideas of God become simply puerile, and are rejected as being inadequate or unworthy. Such is indeed the power of Para-Bhakti or Supreme Love; and the perfected Bhakta no more goes to see God in temples and churches; he knows no place where he will not find Him. He finds Him in the temple as well as out of the temple; he finds Him in the saints saintliness as well as in the wicked mans wickedness, because he has Him already seated in glory in his own heart, as the one Almighty, inextinguishable Light of Love, which is ever shining and eternally present.
2.1.03 - Man and Superman, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There are two states of being, two levels or limits between which all existence stands or moves, a highest limit of supreme consciousness, an omniscient Superconscience, a nethermost limit of supreme unconsciousness, an omnipotent Inconscience.
The secret of consciousness reveals itself only when we perceive these two limits and the movement between them which we call the universe.
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The Self is an immortal and unseizable essence and substance of all things, it is a pure omnipresent omniscient omnipotent existence. It appears to our experience when we emerge from the subconscient as a mysterious Void or Nihil, indeterminable yet from it all things and forms are, inconscient yet flowering into consciousness, inert yet manifesting enormous energies, lifeless yet the parent of life, insensible yet a fountain of pain and pleasure. This impossibility, this universal contradiction is unreal and born of our ignorance; yet that ignorance is not ours, but a result of the inconscience which was imposed on itself as a veil by the involved Self and Spirit. For if that
Inconscience were not there, the evolutionary emergence of the
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The Self, the Spirit is a pure existence, a spiritual substance that is self-aware and therefore all-aware. It is in its nature an absolute and omniscient consciousness, eternally comprehending all itself, all in itself and would naturally manifest as an absolute, unwalled, indivisible knowledge. It becomes an inconscience out of which consciousness struggles brokenly into light, seeking and groping for itself, groping after signs and intimations of its substance, but finding at first only fragmentary signs and separated forms and objects which seem not itself. The consciousness in the individualised form becomes aware of itself by the shock of things outside that are or seem to be not itself. It becomes aware of itself as a separated form and only when it grows more and more deeply self-conscious slowly becomes aware of all outside
240
--
It is omnisciently omnipotent and creates out of itself what it wills under whatever conditions it wills - for its will is that of an infinite and infinitely variable self-aware oneness whose steps, no matter what they are, are by necessity the movement of a perfect
Truth and Knowledge. But it is by an equal necessity the very opposite when the manifestation of the Substance of things becomes the working of a void Inconscience. For even if that Inconscience be only apparent because an all-knowledge and its force are hidden there, yet this error, this phenomenon of Inconscience is and was intended to be dynamic and operative. In other words, all had to look and appear as the gropings of an Inconscience whose results in their upshot were yet those of an ordered and imperative Intelligence. An inert Soul guiding with a strange and blind sureness the steps of a somnambulist Nature would be no inadequate image of the apparent Spirit of this material universe.
2.10 - THE MASTER AND NARENDRA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
O Lord of hosts! omniscient One, who art the sole Indweller in every heart! O Lord!
Rescue me, helpless as I am, from the trackless forest of this miserable world.
2.11 - The Boundaries of the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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
2.1.7.08 - Comments on Specific Lines and Passages of the Poem, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Allured by the omniscient Ecstasy,
He felt the invasion and the nameless joy. [p. 79]
I certainly wont have attracted [in place of allured]there is an enormous difference between the force of the two words and merely attracted by the Ecstasy would take away all my ecstasy in the linenothing so tepid can be admitted. Neither do I want thrill [in place of joy] which gives a false colourprecisely it would mean that the ecstasy was already touching him with its intensity which is far from my intention. Your statement that joy is just another word for ecstasy is surprising. Comfort, pleasure, joy, bliss, rapture, ecstasy would then be all equal and exactly synonymous terms and all distinction of shades and colours of words would disappear from literature. As well say that flashlight is just another word for lightningor that glow, gleam, glitter, sheen, blaze are all equivalents which can be employed indifferently in the same place. One can feel allured to the supreme omniscient ecstasy and feel a nameless joy touching one without that joy becoming itself the supreme Ecstasy. I see no loss of expressiveness by the joy coming in as a vague nameless hint of the immeasurable superior Ecstasy.
22 May 1937
2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Disciple: You don't know? We consider you omniscient.
Sri Aurobindo: You don't expect me to know how many fish the fishermen here have caught, how much they have made out of it? People from Bombay used to ask me if the price of cotton would go up, about racehorses and about their lost children. What is the use of knowing all that? You know Ramakrishna's comment on a sannyasi crossing a river by occult power! He said it was a Siddhi worth half an anna!
2.21 - The Order of the Worlds, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There are, no doubt, several possible originations of cosmic existence by which such an extreme and rigid world-balancement could have conceivably come into being. There could have been a conception of this kind and a fiat in an All-Will, or an idea, a movement of the soul towards an egoistic material life of the Ignorance. The eternal individual soul urged by some inexplicable desire arising within it can be supposed to have sought the adventure of the darkness and taken a plunge from its native Light into the depths of a Nescience out of which arose this world of Ignorance; or a collectivity of souls may have been so moved, the Many: for an individual being cannot constitute a cosmos; a cosmos must be either impersonal or multipersonal or the creation or self-expression of a universal or infinite Being. This desire may have drawn down an All-Soul with it to build a world based upon the power of the Inconscient. If not that, then the eternally omniscient All-Soul itself may have abruptly plunged its self-knowledge into this darkness of the Inconscience, carrying the individual souls within it to begin their upward evolution through an ascending scale of life and consciousness. Or, if the individual is not pre-existent, if we are only a creation of the All-consciousness or a fiction of the phenomenal Ignorance, either creatrix may have conceived all these myriads of individual beings by the evolution of names and forms out of an original indiscriminate Prakriti; the soul would be a temporary product of the indiscriminate stuff of inconscient force-substance which is the first appearance of things in the material universe.
On that supposition, or on any of them, there could be only two planes of existence: on one side there is the material universe created out of the Inconscient by the blind nescience of Force or Nature obedient perhaps to some inner unfelt Self which governs its somnambulist activities; on the other side there is the superconscient One to which we return out of the Inconscience and Ignorance. Or else we may imagine that there is one plane only, the material existence; there is no superconscient apart from the Soul of the material universe. If we find that there are other planes of conscious being and that there already exist other worlds than the material universe, these ideas might become difficult to substantiate; but we can escape from that annulment if we suppose that these worlds have been subsequently created by or for the evolving Soul in the course of its ascent out of the Inconscience. In any of these views the whole cosmos would be an evolution out of the Inconscient, either with the material universe as its sole and sufficient stage and scene or else with an ascending scale of worlds, one evolving out of the other, helping to grade our return to the original Reality. Our own view has been that the cosmos is a self-graded devolution out of the superconscient Sachchidananda; but in this idea it would be nothing but an evolution of the Inconscience towards some kind of knowledge sufficient to allow, by the annihilation of some primal ignorance or some originating desire, the extinction of a misbegotten soul or an escape out of a mistaken world-adventure.
2.2.2 - The Mandoukya Upanishad, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
6. This is the Almighty, this is the omniscient, this is the Inner
Soul, this is the Womb of the Universe, this is the Birth and
2.22 - The Supreme Secret, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All must be given as material of that transmutation. An omniscient consciousness will take up our knowledge and our ignorance, our truth and our error, cast away their forms of insufficiency, sarva-dharman parityajya, and transform all into its infinite light. An almighty Power will take up our virtue and sin, our right and wrong, our strength and our weakness, cast away their tangled figures, sarva-dharman parityajya, and transform all into its transcendent purity and universal good and infallible force. An ineffable Ananda will take up our petty joy and sorrow, our struggling pleasure and pain, cast away their discordances and imperfect rhythms, sarva-dharman parityajya, and transform all into its transcendent and universal unimaginable delight. All that all the Yogas can do will be done and more; but it will be done in a greater seeing way, with a greater wisdom and truth than any human teacher, saint or sage can give us. The inner spiritual state to which this supreme Yoga will take us, will be above all that is here and yet comprehensive of all things in this and other worlds, but with a spiritual transformation of all, without limitation, without bondage, sarva-dharman parityajya.
The infinite existence, consciousness and delight of the Godhead in its calm silence and bright boundless activity will be there, will be its essential, fundamental, universal stuff, mould and character. And in that mould of infinity the Divine made manifest
2.26 - The Ascent towards Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For the action of a new power of being in a higher range of consciousness might, even in its control on outer Nature, be extraordinarily effective, but only because of its light of vision and a consequent harmony or identification with the cosmic and transcendent Will; for it is when it becomes an instrumentation of a higher instead of a lower Power that the will of the being becomes free from a mechanical determinism by action and process of cosmic Mind-Energy, Life-Energy, Matter-Energy and an ignorant subjection to the drive of this inferior Nature. A power of initiation, even of an individual overseeing of world-forces could be there; but it would be an instrumental initiation, a delegated overseeing: the choice of the individual would receive the sanction of the Infinite because it was itself an expression of some truth of the Infinite. Thus the individuality would become more and more powerful and effective in proportion as it realised itself as a centre and formation of the universal and transcendent Being and Nature. For as the progression of the change proceeded, the energy of the liberated individual would be no longer the limited energy of mind, life and body, with which it started; the being would emerge into and put on - even as there would emerge in him and descend into him, assuming him into it - a greater light of Consciousness and a greater action of Force: his natural existence would be the instrumentation of a superior Power, an overmental and supramental Consciousness-Force, the power of the original Divine Shakti. All the processes of the evolution would be felt as the action of a supreme and universal Consciousness, a supreme and universal Force working in whatever way it chose, on whatever level, within whatever self-determined limits, a conscious working of the transcendent and cosmic Being, the action of the omnipotent and omniscient World-Mother raising the being into herself, into her supernature. In place of the Nature of Ignorance with the individual as its closed field and unconscious or half-conscious instrument, there would be a Super-Nature of the divine Gnosis and the individual soul would be its conscious, open and free field and instrument, a participant in its action, aware of its purpose and process, aware too of its own greater Self, the universal, the transcendent Reality, and of its own Person as illimitably one with that and yet an individual being of Its being, an instrument and a spiritual centre.
A first opening towards this participation in an action of Supernature is a condition of the turn towards the last, the supramental transformation: for this transformation is the completion of a passage from the obscure harmony of a blind automatism with which Nature sets out to the luminous au thentic spontaneity, the infallible motion of the self-existent truth of the Spirit.
2.3.08 - The Physical Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Modern psychology and psychic science have begun to perceive this truth just a little. Materialistic psychology calls this hidden part the Inconscient, although practically admitting that it is far greater, more powerful and profound than the surface conscious self, - very much as the Upanishads called the superconscient in us the Sleep self, although this Sleep self is said to be an infinitely greater Intelligence, omniscient, omnipotent, Prajna, the Ishwara. Psychic science calls this hidden consciousness the subliminal self, and, here too, it is seen that this subliminal self
204
2 - Other Hymns to Agni, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1. This is the omniscient who knows the law of our being and is sufficient to his works; let us build the song of his truth by our thought and make it as if a chariot on which he shall mount. When he dwells with us, then a happy wisdom becomes ours. With him for friend we cannot come to harm.
2 Or "enter into the words and the thinking".
--
the seer, the omniscient, free from ignorance: he shall do
worship for us strong for sacrifice, in the formation of the
--
the omniscient; may he carry one who hymns him with the
word beyond all the difficulty and stumbling.
--
the conscious knower, even the omniscient. Sacrifice to each
god in turn, O thou who knowest.
--
the life-gods, omniscient, pouring the Vast, inviolable.
204
--
carrier of the offerings, the one to be prayed, the omniscient.
Mandala Three
--
13. Thy guardian powers, O Fire, which protected the son of Mamata from evil, for they saw and he was blind, the omniscient guarded them in their good work; the foe who would have hurt him could not hurt.
14. By thee as thy companions, guarded by thee, by thy leading, may we win the plenitudes; impel to their way both annunciations, O builder of Truth: straightway, confident, create.
--
offerings, most strong to sacrifice, the omniscient, the Immortal.
s Eh v
--
3. The seer, the master of men, lord of the human peoples, Fire, pure and purifying with its back of light set within you as the omniscient priest of the call; he shall win our desirable things in the godheads.
4. Of one mind with the goddess of revelation take pleasure in us, O Fire, labouring with the rays of the sun; accept with pleasure our fuel, O knower of all things born, and bring the gods to us to partake of our sacrifice.
--
workings of will, O Fire, an omniscient seer in thy seerwisdoms; a possessor of riches thou rulest sole over all the
riches nourished by earth and by heaven.
3.03 - The Godward Emotions, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that, being omniscient, his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the individual's desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least, human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least important. Prayer is only a particular form given to that will, aspiration and faith. Its forms are very often crude and not only childlike, which is in itself no defect, but childish; but still it has a real power and significance. Its power and sense is to put the will, aspiration and faith of man into touch with the divine Will as that of a conscious Being with whom we can enter into conscious and living relations. For our will and aspiration can act either by our own strength and endeavour, which can no doubt be made a thing great and effective whether for lower or higher purposes, -and there are plenty of disciplines which put it forward as the one force to be used, -- or it can act in dependence upon and with subordination to the divine or the universal Will. And this latter way, again, may either look upon that Will as responsive indeed to our aspiration, but almost mechanically, by a sort of law of energy, or at any rate quite impersonally, or else it may look upon it as responding consciously to the divine aspiration and faith of the human soul and consciously bringing to it the help, the guidance, the protection and fruition demanded, yogaksemam vahamyaham.
Prayer helps to prepare this relation for us at first on the lower plane even while it is there consistent with much that is mere egoism and self-delusion; but afterwards we can draw towards the spiritual truth which is behind it. It is not then the giving of the thing asked for that matters, but the relation itself, the contact of man's life with God, the conscious interchange. In spiritual matters and in the seeking of spiritual gains, this conscious relation is a great power; it is a much greater power than our own entirely self-reliant struggle and effort and it brings a fuller spiritual growth and experience. Necessarily, in the end prayer either ceases in the greater thing for which it prepared us, -- in fact the form we call prayer is not itself essential so long as the faith, the will, the aspiration are there, -- or remains only for the joy of the relation. Also its objects, the artha or interest it seeks to realise, become higher and higher until we reach the highest motiveless devotion, which is that of divine love pure and simple without any other demand or longing.
3.18 - Of Clairvoyance and the Body of Light, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
is omniscient. By the nature of the case, on the contrary, it is the
utterance of a being whose powers are partial and limited, though
3.4.02 - The Inconscient, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Conscient therefore and not the Inconscient was the Truth at which the ancient psychology arrived; and it distinguished three strata of the conscient self, the waking, the dream and the sleep selves of Man,in other words the superficial existence, the subconscient or subliminal and the superconscient which to us seems the inconscient because its state of consciousness is the reverse of ours: for ours is limited and based on division and multiplicity, but this is that which becomes a unity; ours is dispersed in knowledge, but in this other self conscious knowledge is self-collected and concentrated; ours is balanced between dual experiences, but this is all delight, it is that which in the very heart of our being fronts everything with a pure all-possessing consciousness and enjoys the delight of existence.1 Therefore, although its seat is that stratum of consciousness which to us is a deep sleep,for the mind there cannot maintain its accustomed functioning and becomes inconscient,yet its name is He who knows, the Wise One, Prajna. This says the Mandukya Upanishad, is omniscient, omnipotent, the inner control, the womb of all and that from which creatures are born and into which they depart. It answers, therefore, closely enough to the modern idea of the Inconscient corrected by the other modern idea of the subliminal self; for it is inconscient only to the waking mind precisely because it is superconscient to it and the mind is therefore only able to seize it in its results and not in itself. And what better proof can there be of the depth and truth of the ancient psychology than the fact that when modern thought in all its pride of exact and careful knowledge begins to cast its fathom into these depths, it is obliged to repeat in other language what had already been written nearly three thousand years ago?
We find the same idea of this inner control repeated in the Gita; for it is the Lord who sits in the hearts of all creatures and turns all creatures mounted on an engine by his Maya. At times the Upanishad seems to describe this Self as the mental being leader of the life and the body, which is really the subliminal mind of the psychical investigators; but this is only a relative description. The Vedantic psychology was aware of other depths that take us beyond this formula and in relation to which the mental being becomes in its turn as superficial as is our waking to our subliminal mind. And now once more in the revolutions of human thought these depths have to be sounded; modern psychology will be led perforce, by the compulsion of the truth that it is seeking, on to the path that was followed by the ancient. The new dawns, treading the eternal path of the Truth, follow it to the goal of the dawns that have gone before,how many, who shall say?
3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
either knowledge or possession. The exoteric sense may be "having all wealth"; the esoteric is omniscient.
5t;, See I.1 under kEv5t;,. Sayana s;kmAZ\ s;.\ vA. Rather
--
The right-willed or rightly working omniscient Fire is evidently
the inner Flame of power and aspiration, the divine Will-Force
--
thinker. Perhaps S. is unwilling to attri bute omniscient seerhood
to men. But why should there be a difference of meaning between
--
Thy protecting powers, O Agni, which guarded the son of Mamata from stumbling; the omniscient guardeth them in their
Mandala Four
4.19 - The Nature of the supermind, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It must be remembered that there is always a difference between the supreme supermind of the omniscient and omnipotent Ishwara and that which can be attained by the Jiva. The human being is climbing out of the ignorance and when he ascends into the supramental nature, he will find in it grades of its ascension, and he must first form the lower grades and limited steps before he rises to higher summits. He will enjoy there the full essential light, power, Ananda of the infinite self by oneness with the Spirit, but in the dynamical expression it must determine and individualise itself according to the nature of the self-expression which the transcendent and universal Spirit seeks in tile Jiva. It is God-realisation and God-expression which is the object of our Yoga and more especially of its dynamic side; it is a divine self-expression in us of the Ishwara, but under the conditions of humanity and through the divinised human nature.
author class:Sri Aurobindo
4.25 - Towards the supramental Time Vision, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All intuitive knowledge comes more or less directly from the light of the self-aware spirit entering into the mind, the spirit concealed behind mind and conscious of all in itself and in all its selves, omniscient and capable of illumining the ignorant or the self-forgetful mind whether by rare or constant flashes or by a steady instreaming light, out of its omniscience. This all includes all that was, is or will be in time and this omniscience is not limited, impeded or baffled by our mental division of the three times and the idea and experience of a dead and no longer existent and ill-remembered or forgotten past and a not yet existent and therefore Unknowable future which is so imperative for the mind in the ignorance. Accordingly the growth of the intuitive mind can bring with it the capacity of a time knowledge which comes to it not from outside indices, but from within the universal soul of things, its eternal memory of the past, its unlimited holding of things present and its prevision or, as it has been paradoxically but suggestively called, its memory of the future. But this capacity works at first sporadically and uncertainly and not in an organised manner. As the force of intuitive knowledge grows, it becomes more possible to comm and the use of the capacity and to regularise to a certain degree its functioning and various movements. An acquired power can be established of commanding the materials and the main or the detailed knowledge of things in the triple time, but this usually forms itself as a special or abnormal power and the normal action of the mentality or a large part of it remains still that of the mind of ignorance. This is obviously an imperfection and limitation and it is only when the power takes its place as a normal and natural action of the wholly intuitivised mind that there can be said to be a perfection of the capacity of the triple time knowledge so far as that is possible in the mental being.
It is by the progressive extrusion of the ordinary action of the intelligence, the acquiring of a complete and total reliance on the Intuitive self and a consequent intuitivising of all the parts of the mental being that the mind of ignorance can be, more successfully, if not as yet wholly, replaced by the mind of self-contained knowledge. But, -- and especially for this kind of knowledge, -- what is needed is the cessation of mental constructions built on the foundation of the mind of ignorance. The difference between the ordinary mind and the intuitive is that the former, seeking in the darkness or at most by its own unsteady torchlight, first, sees things only as they are presented in that light and, secondly, where it does not know, constructs by imagination, by uncertain inference, by others of its aids and makeshifts things which it readily takes for truth, shadow projections, cloud edifices, unreal prolongations, deceptive anticipations, possibilities and probabilities which do duty for certitudes. The intuitive mind constructs nothing in this artificial fashion, but makes itself a receiver of the light and allows the truth to manifest in it and organise its own constructions. But so long as there is a mixed action and the mental constructions and imaginations are allowed to operate, this passivity of the intuitive mind to the higher light, the truth light, cannot be complete or securely dominate and there cannot therefore be a firm organisation of the triple time knowledge. It is because of this obstruction and mixture that that power of time vision, of back-sight and around-sight and foresight, which sometimes marks the illumined mind, is not only an abnormal power among others rather than part of the very texture of the mental action, but also occasional, very partial and marred often by an undetected intermixture or a self-substituting intervention of error.
5.03 - The Divine Body, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness, and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the spirit to conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must to that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.
It might be that a psychological change, a mastery of the nature by the soul, a transformation of the mind into a principle of light, of the life-force into power and purity would be the first approach, the first attempt to solve the problem, to escape beyond the merely human formula and establish something that could be called a divine life upon earth, a first sketch of supermanhood, of a supramental living in the circumstances of the earth-nature. But this could not be the complete and radical change needed; it would not be the total transformation, the fullness of a divine life in a divine body. There would be a body still human and indeed animal in its origin and fundamental character and this would impose its own inevitable limitations on the higher parts of the embodied being. As limitation by ignorance and error is the fundamental defect of an untransformed mind, as limitation by the imperfect impulses and strainings and wants of desire are the defects of an untransformed life-force, so also imperfection of the potentialities of the physical action, an imperfection, a limitation in the response of its half-consciousness to the demands made upon it and the grossness and stains of its original animality would be the defects of an untransformed or an imperfectly transformed body. These could not but hamper and even pull down towards themselves the action of the higher parts of the nature. A transformation of the body must be the condition for a total transformation of the nature.
5.08 - Supermind and Mind of Light, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Truth-consciousness is not only a power of knowledge; it is a being of consciousness and knowledge, a luminous manysided dynamis and play of the omniscient Spirit; in it there can be a spiritual feeling, a spiritual sensation, a spiritual essentiality of
Supermind and Mind of Light
7.3.13 - Ascent, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Knowledge omnipotent, Might omniscient,
Light without darkness, Truth that is dateless.
7.5.31 - The Stone Goddess, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Voiceless, inscrutable, omniscient,
Hiding until our soul has seen, has heard
Appendix 4 - Priest Spells, #Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E, #unset, #Integral Yoga
By use of a commune spell, the priest is able to contact his deity--or agents thereof-and request information in the form of questions that can be answered by a simple "yes" or "no." The priest is allowed one such question for every experience level he has attained. The answers given are correct within the limits of the entity's knowledge. "I don't know" is a legitimate answer, as powerful outer planar beings ar not necessarily omniscient. Optionally, the DM may give a single short answer of five words or less. The spell will, at best, provide information to aid character decisions. Entities communed with structure their answers to further their own purposes. It is probable that the DM will limit the use of commune spells to one per adventure, one per week, or even one per month, for the greater powers dislike frequent interruptions. Likewise, if the caster lags, discusses the answers, or goes off to do anything else, the spell immediately ends.
The material components necessary for a commune spell are the priest's religious symbol, holy (unholy) water, and incense. If a particularly potent commune is needed, a sacrifice proportionate with the difficulty of obtaining the information is required. If the offering is insufficient, no information or only partial information is gained.
BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
neither omnipotent nor omniscient in the absolute sense of the term. They are simply Builders, or
Masons, working under the impulse given them by the ever-to-be-unknown (on our plane) Master
BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
Mahat in Hindu philosophies) the spiritual, omniscient and omnipotent root of divine intelligence, the
highest anima mundi or the Logos. This descends "like a flame spreading from the eternal Fire,
--
for the time being an independent mind, omniscient and universal; and by the same process of
magnetic aggregation they create for themselves objective, visible bodies, out of the interstellar atoms.
BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
synthesis of the whole Universe, as Omnipresent and omniscient and Infinite, and then divorce him
from evil. As there is far more evil than good in the world, it follows on logical grounds that either
ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
Intuition, omniscient, supersedes memory and reasonings, iv. 4.12 (28-457).
Intuitionally, the soul can reason, iv. 3.18 (27-417).
--
Memory and reasoning suspended by omniscient intuition, iv. 4.12 (28-457).
Memory and sensation iv. 6 (41-829).
Liber 111 - The Book of Wisdom - LIBER ALEPH VEL CXI, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
concerning Fate and Freewill, that it is thine own Self, omniscient and
omnipotent, sublime in eternity, that first didst order the Course of
Prayers and Meditations by Baha u llah text, #Prayers and Meditations by Baha u llah, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Thou art the God of power, of glory and bounty. No God is there beside Thee, the Supreme Ruler, the All-Glorious, the omniscient.
--
Now that Thou hast guided them unto the door of Thy grace, O my Lord, cast them not away, by Thy bounty; and now that Thou hast summoned them unto the horizon of Thy Cause, keep them not back from Thee, by Thy graciousness and favor. Powerful art Thou to do as Thou pleasest. No God is there but Thee, the omniscient, the All-Informed.
LXIX
--
I implore Thee to supply whosoever hath sought Thee with the living waters of Thy bounty, that they may rid him of all attachment to any one but Thee. Thou art, verily, the omniscient, the All-Glorious, the Almighty.
XCI
--
Help them through Thy strengthening grace, I beseech Thee, O my God, to suffer patiently in their love for Thee, and unveil to their eyes what Thou hast decreed for them behind the Tabernacle of Thine unfailing protection, so that they may rush forward to meet what is preordained for them in Thy path, and may vie in hasting after tribulation in their love towards Thee. And if not, do Thou, then, reveal the standards of Thine ascendancy, and make them to be victorious over Thine adversaries, that Thy sovereignty may be manifested unto all the dwellers of Thy realm, and the power of Thy might demonstrated amidst Thy creatures. Powerful art Thou to do what Thou willest. No God is there but Thee, the omniscient, the All-Wise.
159
--
Powerful art Thou to do what Thou pleasest. No God is there beside Thee, the All-Powerful, the omniscient, the Supreme Ruler, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.
CIV
--
Lauded be Thy name, O Lord my God! Thou beholdest how my gaze is fixed toward Thy tender mercies, and how mine eyes are bent upon the horizon of Thy grace, and Thy loving-kindness, and how my hands are stretched out unto the heaven of Thy bestowals. Thy might beareth me witness! Every limb of my body crieth out to Thee and saith: "O Thou Who art the Well-Beloved of the worlds, and the Lord of all that are in heaven and on earth, and the one Desire of the hearts which are devoted to Thee! I implore Thee, by Thine Ocean unto which Thou didst summon all the inmates of heaven and all the dwellers of the earth, to help Thy servants who have been kept back from turning unto it and from approaching its shores. Make them, then, O my God, to be detached from all else but Thee, and enable them to speak forth Thy praise and extol Thy virtues. Supply them, moreover, O my God, with the choice Wine of Thy mercy, that it may cause them to be forgetful of any one except Thee, and to arise to serve Thy Cause, and to be steadfast in their love for Thee. Thou art, verily, the Lord of their lives and the Object of their adoration. If they be driven away by Thee, who will then look upon them; and if they be removed far from Thee, who is there that can help them to approach Thy Presence? I swear by Thy might! No refuge is there to flee to except Thee, and no shelter to seek except Thy shelter, and no protection except Thy protection. Woe betide him who hath taken as Lord any one beside Thee, and blessed are the ones who have rid themselves of all attachment to all the dwellers of Thine earth, and clung to the hem of Thy bounteousness. These! the people of Bahá, before all that are in heaven and all that are on earth. No God is there but Thee, the omniscient, the All-Wise."
183
--
Thy glory beareth me witness! Were all that are in the heavens and all that are on earth to unite and seek to hinder me from remembering Thee and from celebrating Thy praise, they would assuredly have no power over me, and would fail in their purpose. And were the infidels to slay me, my blood would, at Thy command, lift up its voice and proclaim: "There is no God but Thee, O Thou Who art all my heart's Desire!" And were my flesh to be boiled in the cauldron of hate, the smell which it would send forth would rise towards Thee and cry out: "Where art Thou, O Lord of the worlds, Thou One Desire of them that have known Thee!" And were I to be cast into fire, my ashes would--I swear by Thy glory--declare: "The Youth hath, verily, attained that for which he had besought his Lord, the All-Glorious, the omniscient."
How, then, can such a man be fearful of the combination of the kings to injure him in Thy Cause? No, no, I swear by Thyself, O Thou Who art the King of kings! Such is my love for Thee that I can fear no one, though the powers of all the worlds be arrayed against me. Alone and unaided I have, by the power of Thy might, arisen to proclaim Thy Cause, unafraid of the host of my oppressors.
r1914 03 26, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This is a very remarkable instance of the sortilege; for there is no connection between the Kathakopanishad & the Story of Trusts, yet a sortilege immediately taken from the latter after the interpretation of one from the former completes it & supplies precisely the thought needed for rounding off its unfinished suggestion. All the words are the exact words needed All mere representatives agents Standard[]. It is so, that all things in the world are now to be regarded in relation to the standard Being, the Sarva Ananta Jnana Ananda Krishna. Note that before taking the second sortilege, the book was pointed out & the indication given that the second sortilege would supply something still needed. All this shows an intelligent, omniscient & all-combining Mind at work which uses everything in the world as its instrument & is superior to the system of relations & connections already fixed in this world. It can use the most incoherent things harmoniously for one purpose. Nor is this an isolated instance & therefore classable as a mere coincidence,instances & proofs are now crowding on the mind.
Lipi is now again developing kaushalya; instances of tejomaya, jyotirmaya, varnamaya have suddenly come & are or tend to be, unlike the former rare instances, at once clear & stable.
r1914 07 21, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
(the Brahman is already demonstrated & the gods. The omnipotent & omniscient God, not limited by laws, has yet to be practically proved).
5) finality of the subjectivity in objectivity
--
The affirmation of the Ishwara means the affirmation of an omniscient & omnipotent Mind & Power. It includes, therefore, these three affirmations
(1) The fulfilment of the Kriti involving the use of a divine power & knowledge divinely displayed in human affairs, is possible to the Master of the Yoga, Yogeshwara Hari.
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
none equaled him in love and devotion to his Lord and friend. ; The omniscient Lord, Sri Krishna, reading
the heart of His friend, took him one day for a walk. They had not proceeded far when Arjuna saw a
Sophist, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
Hegel would have insisted that his philosophy should be accepted as a whole or not at all. He would have urged that the parts derived their meaning from one another and from the whole. He thought that he had supplied an outline large enough to contain all future knowledge, and a method to which all future philosophies must conform. His metaphysical genius is especially shown in the construction of the categoriesa work which was only begun by Kant, and elaborated to the utmost by himself. But is it really true that the part has no meaning when separated from the whole, or that knowledge to be knowledge at all must be universal? Do all abstractions shine only by the reflected light of other abstractions? May they not also find a nearer explanation in their relation to phenomena? If many of them are correlatives they are not all so, and the relations which subsist between them vary from a mere association up to a necessary connexion. Nor is it easy to determine how far the unknown element affects the known, whether, for example, new discoveries may not one day supersede our most elementary notions about nature. To a certain extent all our knowledge is conditional upon what may be known in future ages of the world. We must admit this hypothetical element, which we cannot get rid of by an assumption that we have already discovered the method to which all philosophy must conform. Hegel is right in preferring the concrete to the abstract, in setting actuality before possibility, in excluding from the philosopher's vocabulary the word 'inconceivable.' But he is too well satisfied with his own system ever to consider the effect of what is unknown on the element which is known. To the Hegelian all things are plain and clear, while he who is outside the charmed circle is in the mire of ignorance and 'logical impurity': he who is within is omniscient, or at least has all the elements of knowledge under his hand.
Hegelianism may be said to be a transcendental defence of the world as it is. There is no room for aspiration and no need of any: 'What is actual is rational, what is rational is actual.' But a good man will not readily acquiesce in this aphorism. He knows of course that all things proceed according to law whether for good or evil. But when he sees the misery and ignorance of mankind he is convinced that without any interruption of the uniformity of nature the condition of the world may be indefinitely improved by human effort. There is also an adaptation of persons to times and countries, but this is very far from being the fulfilment of their higher natures. The man of the seventeenth century is unfitted for the eighteenth, and the man of the eighteenth for the nineteenth, and most of us would be out of place in the world of a hundred years hence. But all higher minds are much more akin than they are different: genius is of all ages, and there is perhaps more uniformity in excellence than in mediocrity. The sublimer intelligences of mankindPlato, Dante, Sir Thomas Moremeet in a higher sphere above the ordinary ways of men; they understand one another from afar, notwithstanding the interval which separates them. They are 'the spectators of all time and of all existence;' their works live for ever; and there is nothing to prevent the force of their individuality breaking through the uniformity which surrounds them. But such disturbers of the order of thought Hegel is reluctant to acknowledge.
Tablets of Baha u llah text, #Tablets of Baha u llah, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
of the Most Exalted Paradise is this: Above all else, the greatest gift and the most wondrous blessing hath ever been and will continue to be Wisdom. It is man's unfailing Protector. It aideth him and strengtheneth him. Wisdom is God's Emissary and the Revealer of His Name the omniscient. Through it the loftiness of man's station is made manifest and evident. It is all-knowing and the foremost Teacher in the school of existence. It is the Guide and is invested with high distinction. Thanks to its educating influence earthly beings have become imbued with a gem-like spirit which outshineth the heavens. In the city of justice it is the unrivalled Speaker Who, in the year nine, illumined the world with the joyful tidings of this Revelation. And it was this peerless Source of wisdom that at the beginning of the foundation of the world ascended the stair of inner meaning and when enthroned upon the pulpit of utterance, through the operation of the divine Will, proclaimed two words. The first heralded the promise of reward, while the second voiced the ominous warning of punishment. The promise gave rise to hope and the warning begat fear. Thus the basis of world order hath been firmly established upon these twin principles. Exalted is the Lord of Wisdom, the Possessor of Great Bounty.
--
It is incumbent upon the Trustees of the House of Justice to take counsel together regarding those things which have not outwardly been revealed in the Book, and to enforce that which is agreeable to them. God will verily inspire them with whatsoever He willeth, and He, verily, is the Provider, the omniscient.
We have formerly ordained that people should converse in two languages, yet efforts must be made to reduce them to one, likewise the scripts of the world, that men's lives may not be dissipated and wasted in learning diverse languages. Thus the whole earth would come to be regarded as one city and one land.
--
O Muhammad! Hearken unto the Voice proceeding out of the Realm of Glory, calling aloud from the celestial Tree which hath risen above the land of Za'farán 1 : Verily, no God is there but Me, the omniscient, the Wise. Be thou as the breezes of the All-Merciful for the trees of the realm of existence and foster their growth through the potency of the Name of thy Lord, the Just, the All-Informed. We desire to acquaint thee with that which will serve as a reminder unto the people, that they may put away the things current amongst them and set their faces towards God, the Lord of the sincere. 1. In a Tablet Bahá'u'lláh states, 'The Holy Tree [Sadrat] is, in a sense, the Manifestation of the One True God, exalted be He. The Blessed Tree in the land of Za'farán referreth to the land which is flourishing, blessed, holy and all-perfumed, where that Tree hath been planted.'
We exhort mankind in these days when the countenance of Justice is soiled with dust, when the flames of unbelief are burning high and the robe of wisdom rent asunder, when tranquility and faithfulness have ebbed away and trials and tribulations have waxed severe, when covenants are broken and ties are severed, when no man knoweth how to discern light and darkness or to distinguish guidance from error. The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, vol. 4 p. 34
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
DR. MANILAL: You don't know? We consider you omniscient.
SRI AUROBINDO: You don't expect me, surely, to know how many fishes the
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 2, #Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
DR. MANILAL: What are the meanings of the English words omniscient,
omnipotent, etc.?
the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
23) The ordinary man says in his ignorance "My religion is the sole religion, my religion is the best." But when his heart is illumined by the true knowledge, he knows that beyond all the battles of sects and of sectaries presides the one, indivisible, eternal and omniscient Benediction. ~ Ramakrishna
The Song of Wisdom View Similar The Soul of a Plant
--
26) That man, O beloved, who knows this imperishable Spirit, in which the Self is gathered with all its powers, lives and creatures, penetrates into all things and becomes omniscient. ~ Prasna Upanishad
27) Equal in heart, equal in thought thou hast won for thyself omniscience. ~ Lalita Vistara
The Shadow Out Of Time, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
And, meanwhile, the Great Race itself waxed well-nigh omniscient, and turned to the task
of setting up exchanges with the minds of other planets, and of exploring their pasts and
--
At moments I fancied I saw those omniscient, conical horrors moving about at their
accustomed tasks, and I feared to look down lest I find myself one with them in aspect.
Verses of Vemana, #is Book, #unset, #Integral Yoga
He is like to a meditator, like a dumb man, like to an enjoyer, like a diseased one. He who knows every state shall become omniscient and be like the prince of yogees.
61
--
If we kill, sin is contracted; by not slaying virtue attaches But to the omniscient, whether he slay or save, neither attaches. How can that death be slain that thus slay Siva? (a very difficult grammatical construction to translate).
p. 264
--- Overview of adj omniscient
The adj omniscient has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (1) all-knowing, omniscient ::: (infinitely wise)
--- Similarity of adj omniscient
1 sense of omniscient
Sense 1
all-knowing, omniscient
=> wise (vs. foolish)
--- Antonyms of adj omniscient
1 sense of omniscient
Sense 1
all-knowing, omniscient
INDIRECT (VIA wise) -> foolish
--- Pertainyms of adj omniscient
1 sense of omniscient
Sense 1
all-knowing, omniscient
--- Derived Forms of adj omniscient
1 sense of omniscient
Sense 1
all-knowing, omniscient
RELATED TO->(noun) omniscience#1
=> omniscience
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Wikipedia - Omniscient
selforum - very idea of omniscient beings could be
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Gugure! Kokkuri-san -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 12 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Comedy Supernatural Shounen -- Gugure! Kokkuri-san Gugure! Kokkuri-san -- Gugure! Kokkuri-san is an eccentric comedy centered around the self-proclaimed doll, Kohina Ichimatsu. Her uneventful life goes from plain to absurd when she summons a fox spirit by the name of Kokkuri-san. But contrary to popular belief, he is not the omniscient, answer-granting spirit from the legend anymore. The loss of believers in modern society has rendered him powerless. -- -- Upon meeting the bizarre girl who summoned him, Kokkuri-san is shocked to discover that Kohina not only lives alone, but survives on just cup ramen! Filled with concern for the young girl, he takes it upon himself to ensure that Kohina has proper meals and lives a decent life. Thus begin Kokkuri-san's less-than-hopeful endeavors and their peculiar life together. -- -- 155,975 7.58
Ziltoid the Omniscient
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