1. Accompanying in a circumstantial relation; going with as a concomitant; closely consequent. 2. Following closely. 3. Waiting for, awaiting, expecting (a future time, event, result, decision, etc.)
1. A distinctive and pervasive quality or character; air; atmosphere. 2. A subtle emanation from and enveloping living persons and things, viewed by mystics as consisting of the essence of the individual.
1. Hammered or struck repeatedly. 2. Defeated, vanquished, baffled, overcome.
1. Spirited and original; daring; bold. 2. Fearlessly, often recklessly daring; bold; defiant; insolent; brazen; unrestrained by convention or propriety.
1. The active opposition or mutual hostility of two opposing forces, physical or mental. 2. An opposing force, principle, or tendency.
1. The act, power or property of appealing, alluring, enticing or inviting. 2. A thing or feature which draws by appealing to desires, tastes, etc. 3. The action of a body or substance in drawing to itself, by some physical force, another to which it is not materially attached; the force thus exercised. attractions.
1. ‘The beginning and the end," originally of the divine Being. 2. The first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.
1. To bring into musical accord or harmony; to tune. 2. To bring into accord, harmony, or sympathetic relationship; adjust. attuned, attuning.
1. Touchstone; a very smooth, fine-grained, black or dark-coloured variety of quartz or jasper (also called basanite), used for testing the quality of gold and silver alloys by the colour of the streak produced by rubbing them upon it; a piece of such stone used for this purpose. 2. *fig.* That which serves to test or try the genuineness or value of anything; a test, criterion.
1. Where something originated or was nurtured in its early existence. 2. The place where something begins, where it springs into being.
abandon ::: 1. To give oneself up, devote oneself to (a person or thing); to yield oneself without restraint. 2. To withdraw one"s support or help from, especially in spite of duty, allegiance, or responsibility; desert: leave behind. 3. To give up; discontinue; withdraw from. abandons, abandoned, abandoning.
abandoned ::: 1. Given up, deserted, forsaken, cast off. 2. Left completely and finally, without help or support. 3. adj. Deserted.
abortive ::: terminated before completion.
abdicate ::: to renounce (a throne, power, responsibility, rights, etc.), esp. formally.
aberrations ::: 1. Deviations or divergences from a direct, prescribed, or ordinary course or mode of action, esp. moral or proper.
abhorred ::: regarded with extreme repugnance, aversion or disgust; detested; loathed. abhorring.
abide ::: 1. To wait, stay, remain. 2. To remain in residence; to sojourn, reside, dwell. 3. To remain with; to stand firm by, to hold to, remain true to. 4. To continue in existence, endure, stand firm or sure. abides, abode, abiding.
abject ::: utterly hopeless, miserable, humiliating, or wretched.
able to be heard; heard or perceptible by the ear; loud enough to be heard.
abnegation ::: denial, negation; refusal, formal rejection (of a doctrine, etc.).
abode ::: a dwelling-place, place of ordinary habitation; house or home. (Also pt. of abide.) abodes.
abolish ::: to put an end to, to do away with; to annul or make void; to demolish, destroy or annihilate. abolished, abolishing.
abroad ::: 1. Broadly, widely, at large, over a broad or wide surface; widely apart, with the parts or limbs wide spread. 2. At large; freely moving about.
abrupt ::: 1. Characterized by sudden interruption or change; unannounced and unexpected; sudden, hasty. 2. Precipitous, steep. 3. Of strata: Suddenly cropping out and presenting their edges.
absorbed ::: 1. Engrossed or entirely occupied; preoccupied. 2. Swallowed up, or comprised, so as no longer to exist apart.
absence ::: the state of being away (from any place) or not being present; also the time of duration of such state.
absent ::: 1. Being away, withdrawn from, or not present (at a place). 2. Of time: Not present, distant, far off.
absolute ::: adj. 1. Free from all imperfection or deficiency; complete, finished; perfect, consummate. 2. Of degree: Complete, entire; in the fullest sense. 3. Having ultimate power, governing totally; unlimited by a constitution or the concurrent authority of a parliament; arbitrary, despotic. 4. Existing without relation to any other being; self-existent; self-sufficing. 5. Capable of being thought or conceived by itself alone; unconditioned. 6. Considered independently of its being subjective or objective. n. 7. Something that is not dependent upon external conditions for existence or for its specific nature, size, etc. (opposed to relative). Absolute, Absolute"s, absolutes, absoluteness.
absolute reality ::: Sri Aurobindo: "I would myself say that bliss and oneness are the essential condition of the absolute reality, and love as the most characteristic dynamic power of bliss and oneness must support fundamentally and colour their activities; . . . .” Letters on Yoga
absolutism ::: an absolute standard or principle.
absolve ::: 1. To free from guilt, blame or their consequences; discharge (from obligations, liabilities, etc.). 2. To set free, release. 3. To clear off, discharge, acquit oneself of (a task, etc.); to perform completely, accomplish, finish. absolves, absolved.
abstract ::: adj. 1. Withdrawn or separated from matter, from material embodiment, from practice, or from particular examples; theoretical. 2. In the fine arts, characterized by lack of or freedom from representational qualities. n. 3. Something that concentrates in itself the essential qualities of anything more extensive or more general, or of several things; essence.
abusing ::: using improperly, misusing; perverting, or misemploying; taking a bad advantage of.
abysmal ::: 1. Of, pertaining to, or resembling an abyss; fathomless; deep-sunken. 2. Extremely or hopelessly bad or severe.
abyss ::: 1. The great deep, the primal chaos; the ‘bowels of the earth", the supposed cavity of the lower world; the ‘infernal pit". 2. A bottomless gulf; any unfathomable or apparently unfathomable cavity or void space; a profound gulf, chasm, or void extending beneath. Abyss, abyss"s, abysses.
accord ::: agreement or harmonious correspondence of things or their properties, as of colours or tints. Of sounds: Agreement in pitch and tone; harmony.
accent ::: 1. The way in which anything is said; pronunciation, tone, voice; sound, modulation or modification of the voice expressing feeling. 2. A mark indicating stress or some other distinction in pronunciation or value. accents.
accept ::: 1. To take or receive (a thing offered) willingly, or with consenting mind; to receive (a thing or person) with favour or approval. 2. To take formally (what is offered) with contemplation of its consequences and obligations; to take upon oneself, to undertake as a responsibility. 3. To agree or consent to. 4. To regard as true or sound; believe. accepts, accepted, accepting.
access ::: 1. The ability, right, or permission to approach, enter, speak with, or use; admittance. 2. A way or means of approach; an entrance, channel, passage, or doorway.
accident ::: 1. Any event that happens unexpectedly, without a deliberate plan or cause. 2. A fortuitous circumstance, quality, or characteristic. 3. An unfortunate event, a disaster, a mishap. accidents.
acclaimed ::: laid claim to, claimed; demanded as one"s own or one"s due; sought or asked for on the ground of right.
accompany ::: 1. To go in company with, to go along with. 2. To add as companion; to associate; to add or conjoin to. accompanied.
accomplice ::: an associate in guilt, a partner in crime, often as a subordinate. accomplices.
accountable ::: subject to the obligation to report, explain, or justify something; answerable, responsible.
account ::: n. 1. A record of debts and credits, applied to other things than money or trade. 2. A particular statement or narrative of an event or thing; a relation, report, or description. v. 3. To render an account or reckoning of; to give a satisfactory reason for, to give an explanation.
accurate ::: 1. Exact, precise, correct, as the result of care. 2. Free from error or defect; consistent with a standard, rule, or model; precise, exact.
accursed ::: lying under a curse or anathema; ill fated; doomed to perdition or misery.
ache ::: a continuous or abiding pain, in contrast to a sudden or sharp one. Used of both physical and mental sensations.
achieve ::: 1. To bring to a successful end, to carry out successfully (an enterprise); to accomplish, perform. 2. To succeed in gaining, to acquire by effort, to obtain, win. achieves, achieved, achieving.
achievement ::: something accomplished, esp. by superior ability, special effort, great courage, etc. achievements.
aching ::: 1. Having the sensation of continuous or ever-recurring pain, throbbing painfully. 2. Full of or precipitating nostalgia, grief, loneliness, etc.
acknowledged ::: recognized the existence, truth or fact of; admitted as true, valid, or authoritative.
acolyte ::: an attendant or junior assistant in any ceremony or operation; a novice; follower. acolytes.
"A conscious being, no larger than a man"s thumb, stands in the centre of our self; he is master of the past and the present . . . he is today and he is tomorrow. — Katha Upanishad. (6)” The Life Divine - See *conscious being.
acquaint ::: to furnish with knowledge; inform; to make cognizant or aware.
acquiescing ::: assenting tacitly; submitting or complying silently or without protest; agreeing; consenting. acquiescence.
acquired ::: gained for oneself through one"s actions or efforts.
acquittance ::: release from a debt or obligation; discharge.
acrid ::: bitterly irritating to the feelings; of bitter and irritating temper or manner; sharp, biting, caustic.
action ::: 1. The process or condition of acting or doing (in the widest sense), the exertion of energy, influence, power or force. 2. A way or manner of moving. 3. A thing done, a deed**. action"s, actions, self-action.
"Action is a resultant of the energy of the being, but this energy is not of one sole kind; the Consciousness-Force of the Spirit manifests itself in many kinds of energies: there are inner activities of mind, activities of life, of desire, passion, impulse, character, activities of the senses and the body, a pursuit of truth and knowledge, a pursuit of beauty, a pursuit of ethical good or evil, a pursuit of power, love, joy, happiness, fortune, success, pleasure, life-satisfactions of all kinds, life-enlargement, a pursuit of individual or collective objects, a pursuit of the health, strength, capacity, satisfaction of the body.” The Life Divine*
active ::: originating or communicating action, exerting action upon others; acting of its own accord, spontaneous.
actual ::: in action or existence at the time; present, current, real. Actual"s.
adamantine ::: utterly unyielding or firm in attitude or opinion.
adamant ::: n. 1. Any impenetrably or unyieldingly hard substance. 2. A legendary stone of impenetrable hardness, formerly sometimes identified with the diamond. adj. **3. Unshakeable, inflexible, utterly unyielding. 4. Incapable of being broken, dissolved, or penetrated; immovable, impregnable. adamantine.**
adorable ::: worthy of worship or divine honour. Adorable.
adoration ::: 1. The act of paying honour, as to a divine being; worship. 2. Reverent homage. 3. Fervent and devoted love. **adoration"s.*Sri Aurobindo: "Especially in love for the Divine or for one whom one feels to be divine, the Bhakta feels an intense reverence for the Loved, a sense of something of immense greatness, beauty or value and for himself a strong impression of his own comparative unworthiness and a passionate desire to grow into likeness with that which one adores.” Letters on Yoga*
adore ::: 1. To worship as a deity, to pay divine honours to. 2. To reverence or honour very highly; to regard with the utmost respect and affection. adores, adored, adoring, adorer, adorer"s.
adored ::: the One who is worshipped, (referring here to Krishna).
adorer ::: the One who worships, (referring here to Radha).
adorn ::: to beautify as an ornament does; decorate; to add beauty or lustre to. adorned.
addict ::: one who is attached by one"s own inclination to an activity, habit or substance; devoted, given up to.
adept ::: one who is completely versed (in something); thoroughly proficient; well-skilled; expert. adepts.
A Dictionary of Words and Terms in Sri Aurobindo"s SavitriLexicon of an Infinite MindNarad (Richard Eggenberger)
adj. 1. Rousing (something) or being aroused, as if from sleep. n. awakenings. 2. Recognitions, realizations, or coming into awareness of things.
adjoining ::: 1. Adding, annexing, attaching, or appending. 2. Lying next, contiguous, adjacent; neighbouring.
adjunct ::: joined or added (to anything); connected, annexed; subordinate in position, function, character, or essence. adjuncts.
admirable ::: worthy of admiration; inspiring approval or respect; excellent.
admires ::: 1. Regards with pleased surprise, or with wonder mingled with esteem, approbation, or affection; and in modern usage, gazed on with pleasure. admired, admiring. adj. 2. Regarded with admiration; wondered at; contemplated with wonder mingled with esteem, etc.
admit ::: 1. To allow to enter, let in, receive (a person or thing). 2. Fig. To allow a matter to enter into any relation to action or thought. 3. To accept as true, or as a fact, to acknowledge, concede. 4. To allow, permit, grant. admits, admitted, admitting.
admonishing ::: 1. Reproving or scolding, especially in a mild or good-willed manner. 2. Urging to a duty; reminding.
adopted ::: taken voluntarily or admitted into any new relationship; esp. that of a child.
adopt ::: to choose or take as one"s own; make one"s own by election or assent. adopts.
advance ::: n. **1. Fig. Onward movement in any process or course of action; progress. v. 2. To move or go forward; to proceed. 3. Fig. To go forward or make progress in life, or in any course. 3. To move, put, or push (a thing) forward. Also fig. advances, advanced, advancing.**
advent ::: any important or epoch-making arrival. In modern usage applied poetically or grandiloquently to any arrival. advent"s, advents.
adventure ::: n. 1. Any novel or unexpected event in which one shares; an exciting or remarkable incident befalling any one. 2. The encountering of risks or participation in novel and exciting events; bold or daring activity, enterprise. adventure"s, world-adventure, world-adventure"s. *v. 3. To take the chance of; to commit to fortune; to undertake a thing of doubtful issue; to try, to chance, to venture into or upon. 4. To risk or hazard; stake. *adventuring.
adventurer ::: one who seeks adventures, or who engages in daring enterprises. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) adventurers, Adventurers.
adversary ::: a person, group or force that opposes or attacks, or acts in a hostile manner; an opponent, antagonist; an enemy, foe. adversary"s.
adverse ::: acting against or in opposition to, opposing, contrary; antagonistic in purpose or effect; actively hostile.
adversity ::: the condition of adverse fortune or fate; a state opposed to well-being or prosperity; misfortune, distress, trial, or affliction.
adytum ::: the innermost part of a temple; the secret shrine whence oracles were delivered; a most sacred or reserved part of any place of worship; hence, fig. a private or inner chamber, a sanctum.
aegis ::: originally the shield or breastplate of Zeus, or Athena. Currently, protection; support; sponsorship; auspices.
aeons ::: ages of the universe, immeasurable periods of time; the whole duration of the world, or of the universe; eternity. aeons", aeoned, million-aeoned, (employed as an adj. by Sri Aurobindo), aeon-rings.
aesthesis ::: the perception of the external world by the senses.
"Aesthesis therefore is of the very essence of poetry, as it is of all art. But it is not the sole element and aesthesis too is not confined to a reception of poetry and art; it extends to everything in the world: there is nothing we can sense, think or in any way experience to which there cannot be an aesthetic reaction of our conscious being. Ordinarily, we suppose that aesthesis is concerned with beauty, and that indeed is its most prominent concern: but it is concerned with many other things also. It is the universal Ananda that is the parent of aesthesis and the universal Ananda takes three major and original forms, beauty, love and delight, the delight of all existence, the delight in things, in all things.” Letters on Savitri
aesthete ::: a person who has or professes to have refined sensitivity toward the beauties of art or nature.
aesthetic ::: pertaining to a sense of the beautiful or pleasing; characterized by a love of beauty; tasteful, of refined taste.
afar ::: far, far away, at or to a distance; fig. remotely.from afar. From a long way off.
affiliated ::: being in close formal or informal association; related.
affinity ::: 1. Causal relationship or connexion (as flowing the one from the other, or having a common source). 2. A psychical or spiritual attraction believed by some sects to exist between persons.
affirmed ::: maintained as true; positively asserted; upheld, supported. affirming.
affixed ::: fastened, fixed, joined, or attached , put or added on; appended to.
afflatus ::: the miraculous communication of supernatural knowledge; hence also, the imparting of an over-mastering impulse, poetic or otherwise; inspiration. A creative inspiration, as that of a poet; a divine imparting of knowledge, thus it is often called divine afflatus.
afflicted ::: distressed with mental or bodily pain; troubled greatly; grievously depressed, oppressed, cast down; tormented.
afflicting ::: 1. Grievously painful, distressing. 2. Distressing with bodily or mental suffering; troubling grievously, tormenting. self-afflicting.
affranchised ::: freed from a state of dependence, servitude or obligation;
affright ::: sudden fear or great terror, fright.
afloat ::: 1. Floating or borne on the water; in a floating condition. 2. From the state of a ship or other body floating on the sea, having liberty of motion and buoyancy.
ageless ::: lasting forever; eternal; undying.
age ::: n. **1. A great period or stage of the history of the Earth. 2. Hist. Any great period or portion of human history distinguished by certain characters real or mythical, as the Golden Age, the Patriarchal Age, the Bronze Age, the Age of the Reformation, the Middle Ages, the Prehistoric Age. 3. A generation or a series of generations. 4. Advanced years; old age. age"s, ages, ages". v. 5.** To grow old; to become aged.
agencies ::: active powers or causes which have the power to produce an effect.
agent ::: n. **1. One who does the actual work of anything, as distinguished from the instigator or employer; hence, one who acts for another, a deputy, steward, factor, substitute, representative, or emissary. adj. 2. That which acts or exerts power. agents.**
aging ::: the process of growing old or maturing; showing signs of advancing age.
agonised ::: suffered extreme pain or anguish; tortured.
agony ::: 1. Anguish of mind, sore trouble or distress, a paroxysm of grief. 2. The convulsive throes, or pangs of death; the death struggle. 3. Extreme bodily suffering, such as to produce writhing or throes of the body. agonies.
agree ::: 1. To be in harmony or unison in opinions, feelings, conduct, etc.; to be in sympathy; to live or act together harmoniously; to have no causes of variance. 2. To give consent; assent (often followed by to). agreed.
agreement ::: a contract or other document delineating an arrangement that is accepted by all parties to a transaction. (Sri Aurobindo capitalizes the word.)
aide ::: an assistant or helper. aides.
aid ::: n. 1. Help, assistance, support, succour, relief. v. 2. To give help, support, or assistance to; to help, assist, succour. aids.
aim ::: n. Fig. 1. A thing intended or desired to be effected; an object, purpose. Aim, aims. *v. 2. To point or direct a gun, arrow, etc. toward. *aimed.
air ::: 1. The transparent, invisible, inodorous, and tasteless gaseous substance which envelopes the earth. 2. *Fig. With reference to its unsubstantial or impalpable nature. 3. Outward appearance, apparent character, manner, look, style: esp. in phrases like ‘an air of absurdity"; less commonly of a thing tangible, as ‘the air of a mansion". 4. Mien or gesture (expressive of a personal quality or emotion). *air"s.
aisle ::: a longitudinal division of an interior area, as in a church, separated from the main area by an arcade or divided by a row of pillars. aisles.
ajar ::: neither entirely open nor entirely shut; partly open.
akin ::: allied by nature; having the same properties; near in nature or character.
alacananda ::: "One of the four head streams of the river Ganga in the Himalayas. According to the Vaishnavas it is the terrestrial Ganga which Shiva received upon his head as it fell from heaven. The famous shrine of Badrinath is situated on the banks of this stream. (Dow.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
alarm ::: n. 1. A warning sound of any kind to give notice of danger, or to arouse or attract attention; esp. a loud and hurried peal rung out by a tocsin or alarm bell. v. 2. To arouse to a sense of danger, to excite the attention or suspicion of, to put on the alert; warn. 3. To strike with fear or apprehension of danger; to agitate or excite with sudden fear. alarmed, alarming.
alas ::: an exclamation expressive of unhappiness, grief, sorrow, pity, or concern.
alchemy ::: any magical or miraculous power or process of transmuting a common substance, usually of little value, into a substance of great value. alchemies.
alcoves ::: recessed spaces, as bowers in a garden; arched recesses or niches in the wall of any structure.
algebra ::: the branch of mathematics that deals with general statements of relations, utilizing letters and other symbols to represent specific sets of numbers, values, vectors, etc., in the description of such relations. 2. Any special system of notation adapted to the study of a special system of relationship.
alien ::: 1. Unlike one"s own; strange; not belonging to one; belonging to another person, place, or family. 2. Adverse; hostile. aliens.
"All birds of that region are relatives. But this is the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to mentalise too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of spiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.” ::: "The question was: ‘In the mystical region, is the dragon bird any relation of your Bird of Fire with ‘gold-white wings" or your Hippogriff with ‘face lustred, pale-blue-lined"? And why do you write: ‘What to say about him? One can only see"?” Letters on Savitri
::: "All conscious being is one and indivisible in itself, but in manifestation it becomes a complex rhythm, a scale of harmonies, a hierarchy of states or movements.” The Upanishads
allegiance ::: loyalty or devotion to some person, group, cause, or the like.
alley ::: a passage between buildings; hence, a narrow street, a lane; usually only wide enough for foot-passengers. blind alley*: one that is closed at the end, so as to be no thoroughfare; a cul de sac*.
allied ::: related; connected by nature, properties, or similitude; kindred.
allotted ::: 1. Divided or distributed by share or portion; apportioned. 2. Assigned as a portion, set apart, dedicated.
allowed ::: 1. Permitted the occurrence or existence of. 2. Allotted, assigned, bestowed. allows.
alloy ::: 1. A substance composed of two or more metals, or of a metal or metals with a nonmetal, intimately mixed, as by fusion or electrodeposition; a less costly metal mixed with a more valuable one, such as that which is added to gold and silver coinage. 2. Admixture, as with good with evil.
all- ::: prefix: Wholly, altogether, infinitely. Since 1600, the number of these [combinations] has been enormously extended, all-** having become a possible prefix, in poetry at least, to almost any adjective of quality. all-affirming, All-Beautiful, All-Beautiful"s, All-Bliss, All-Blissful, All-causing, all-concealing, all-conquering, All-Conscient, All-Conscious, all-containing, All-containing, all-creating, all-defeating, All-Delight, all-discovering, all-embracing, all-fulfilling, all-harbouring, all-inhabiting, all-knowing, All-knowing, All-Knowledge, all-levelling, All-Life, All-love, All-Love, all-negating, all-powerful, all-revealing, All-ruler, all-ruling, all-seeing, All-seeing, all-seeking, all-shaping, all-supporting, all-sustaining, all-swallowing, All-Truth, All-vision, All-Wisdom, all-wise, All-Wise, all-witnessing, All-Wonderful, All-Wonderful"s.**
allured ::: 1. Attracted as to a lure; drawn or enticed to a place or to a course of action. 2. Attracted or tempted by something flattering or desirable; fascinated, charmed. alluring, **alluringly, allurement.
almighty ::: 1. *Orig. and in the strict sense used as an attribute of the Deity, and joined to God or other title. 2. Absol. The Almighty; a title of God. 3. All-powerful (in a general sense); omnipotent. Almighty"s, Almightiness, almightiness.
already ::: 1. Core Meaning: an adverb indicating that something has happened before now. 2. Happened in the past before a particular time, or will have happened by or before a particular time in the future. 3. Unexpectedly early.
altar ::: 1. A block, pile, table, stand, mound, platform, or other elevated structure on which to place or sacrifice offerings to a deity. 2. With reference to the uses, customs, dedication, or peculiar sanctity of the altar. 3. A place consecrated to devotional observances. altar"s, altars, altar-burnings, mountain-altars.
alter ::: to make otherwise or different in some respect; to make some change in character, shape, condition, position, quantity, value, etc. without changing the thing itself for another; to modify, to change the appearance of. alters, altered, altering.
altitudes ::: high places or regions; elevated regions; great heights.
altruism ::: the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others (opposed to egoism ).
amateur ::: a person who engages in a study, sport, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons.
ambassadors ::: 1. Diplomatic officials of the highest rank. 2. Authorized messengers or representatives.
ambassadress ::: a feminine ambassador or messenger.
amber ::: a pale yellow, sometimes reddish or brownish, fossil resin of vegetable origin, translucent, brittle, and capable of gaining a negative electrical charge by friction and of being an excellent insulator. 2. The yellowish-brown colour of resin.
ambience ::: 1. The mood, character, quality, tone, atmosphere, etc., particularly of an environment or milieu. 2. That which surrounds or encompasses.
ambiguities ::: uncertainties of meaning or intentions.
ambiguous ::: 1. Open to or having several possible meanings or interpretations; equivocal; questionable; indistinct, obscure, not clearly defined. 2. Of doubtful or uncertain nature; difficult to comprehend, distinguish, or classify; admitting more than one interpretation, or explanation; of double meaning. 3. Of oracles, people, using words of double meaning. ambiguously.
ambit ::: a sphere of operation or influence; range, scope.
ambition ::: an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honour, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its attainment. ambitions.
amorous ::: inclined or disposed to love; in love, enamoured, fond. 2. Showing or expressing love. 3. Being in love; enamoured.
ambrosia ("s) ::: something especially delicious or delightful to taste or smell, divinely sweet; in Classical Mythology, the food of the gods.
ambush ::: 1. An act or instance of lying concealed so as to attack by surprise. 2. The concealed position itself. ambushes.
ambushed ::: concealed so as suddenly to burst forth, come in view, or take by surprise.
amethyst ::: a purple or violet quartz; having the clear colour as of the precious stone. Sri Aurobindo uses the word as an adj."for Amethyst (the Mother)she has revealed that it has a power of protection” Huta
amicable ::: characterized by or showing goodwill; friendly; done in a friendly manner; peaceable.
amid ::: in the middle of or centre of; surrounded by; among.
amidst ::: in the middle of; surrounded by; among; amidst is often used of things scattered about, or in the midst of others.
amour ::: love or affection; a love-affair, courtship. amour"s, amour-song.
ample ::: fully sufficient or more than adequate for the purpose or need; plentiful; of adequate or more than adequate extent, size, or amount; large; spacious. ampler.
amusements ::: pleasurable pastimes of the mind or attention; mental diversions and enjoyments in lieu of more serious matters.
amuse ::: to hold the attention of (someone) pleasantly; entertain or divert in an enjoyable or cheerful manner. amused, amusing.
analyse ::: to examine carefully and in detail so as to identify causes, key factors, possible results; examine minutely and critically to determine the elements or essential features of. analysed.
ananke ::: "In Greek mythology, personification of compelling necessity or ultimate fate to which even the gods must yield.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
anarch ::: a. Lawless, rebellious; n. An adherent of anarchy or a leader practicing it.
anarchy ::: a state of society without government or law ; lawlessness, confusion, chaos, disorder.
". . . an Avatar is not at all bound to be a spiritual prophet — he is never in fact merely a prophet, he is a realiser, an establisher — not of outward things only, though he does realise something in the outward also, but, as I have said, of something essential and radical needed for the terrestrial evolution which is the evolution of the embodied spirit through successive stages towards the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
"An Avatar, roughly speaking, is one who is conscious of the presence and power of the Divine born in him or descended into him and governing from within his will and life and action; he feels identified inwardly with this divine power and presence.” Letters on Yoga
ancestors ::: forebears; descendants. progenitors.
anchor ::: 1. Any of various devices dropped by a chain, cable, or rope to the bottom of a body of water for preventing or restricting the motion of a vessel or other floating object, typically having broad, hooklike arms that bury themselves in the bottom to provide a firm hold. 2. A person or thing that can be relied on for support, stability, or security; mainstay.
anchored ::: fixed or fasten firmly so as to be at rest.
anchorites ::: those who have retired to a solitary place for a life of religious seclusion; hermits, recluses.
anchorite ::: withdrawn from the world; secluded.
ancient ::: 1. Of or in time long past or early in the world"s history. 2. Dating from a remote period; of great age; of early origin. 3. Being old in wisdom and experience; venerable. Ancient.
anew ::: 1. Over again; again; once more. 2. In a new form or manner different from the previous.
angel ::: 1. One of a class of spiritual beings; a celestial attendant of the Deity; a divine messenger of an order of spiritual beings superior to man in power. 2. A fallen or rebellious spirit once a spiritual attendant of the Divine. angel, Angels, **angels.
**Angel of the Way *Sri Aurobindo: "Love fulfilled does not exclude knowledge, but itself brings knowledge; and the completer the knowledge, the richer the possibility of love. ‘By Bhakti" says the Lord in the Gita ‘shall a man know Me in all my extent and greatness and as I am in the principles of my being, and when he has known Me in the principles of my being, then he enters into Me." Love without knowledge is a passionate and intense, but blind, crude, often dangerous thing, a great power, but also a stumbling-block; love, limited in knowledge, condemns itself in its fervour and often by its very fervour to narrowness; but love leading to perfect knowledge brings the infinite and absolute union. Such love is not inconsistent with, but rather throws itself with joy into divine works; for it loves God and is one with him in all his being, and therefore in all beings, and to work for the world is then to feel and fulfil multitudinously one"s love for God. This is the trinity of our powers, [work, knowledge, love] the union of all three in God to which we arrive when we start on our journey by the path of devotion with Love for the Angel of the Way to find in the ecstasy of the divine delight of the All-Lover"s being the fulfilment of ours, its secure home and blissful abiding-place and the centre of its universal radiation.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
anguish ::: excruciating or acute distress, suffering, or pain. anguished.
animal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman, the god. Or shall we not say, rather, to manifest God?” *The Life Divine
animates ::: 1. Gives life to; makes alive; breathes life into. 2. To move or stir to action; motivate.
anklet ::: an ornamental circlet worn around the ankle; an ankle-ring. anklet-bells.
annexed ::: attached appended, or added.
annihilate ::: to reduce to utter ruin or non-existence, destroy utterly. annihilation, annihilation"s.
anniversary ::: the yearly recurrence of the date of a past event, esp. the celebration or commemoration of such a date.
announced ::: made known to the mind or senses. announcing.
announcers ::: those who present, give notice and/or tell news.
annul ::: 1. To reduce to nothing; obliterate; annihilate. To put out of existence, extinguish. 2. To put an end or stop to (an action or state of things); to abolish, cancel, do away with. 3. To make void or null; abolish; cancel; invalidate; declare invalid. annuls, annulled, annulling, annulment.
anomalies ::: deviations from the common rule, type, arrangement, order, or form.
anomalous ::: deviating from or inconsistent with the common order, form, or rule; irregular; abnormal.
another ::: adj. 1. Being one more or more of the same; further; additional. 2. Very similar to; of the same kind or category as. 3. Different; distinct; of a different period, place, or kind. pron. **4. A person other than oneself or the one specified. 5. One more; an additional one. another"s**.
antagonist ::: one who is opposed to, struggles against, or competes with another; opponent, adversary. antagonists.
antechambers ::: 1. Chambers or rooms that serve as waiting rooms and entrances to larger rooms or apartments; anterooms. 2. Any areas that are entrances to other areas.
anthem ::: a song, as of praise, devotion, patriotism or gladness.
anticipated ::: expected; looked forward to.
anticipations ::: 1. Expectations or hopes. 2. Intuitions, foreknowledge, or prescience.
antique ::: 1. Of or belonging to the past. 2. Dating from a period long ago; ancient.
anxious ::: full of mental distress or uneasiness because of fear of danger or misfortune; greatly worried.
apathy ::: indifference; insensibility to passion or feeling.
ape ::: 1. Any of a group of anthropoid primates characterized by long arms, a broad chest, and the absence of a tail; an animal of the monkey tribe. 2. An imitator, a mimic. apelike.
apex ::: 1. The tip, point, or vertex; summit. 2. Climax; peak; acme.
apocalypse ::: 1. Any revelation or prophecy. 2. A prophetic revelation, esp. concerning a cataclysm in which the forces of good permanently triumph over the forces of evil.
apotheosised ::: glorified; exalted; immortalized; deified.
appalled ::: filled or overcome with horror, consternation, or fear, resulting in the loss of courage in the face of something dreadful.
appalling ::: causing dismay or horror; shocking.
apparelled ::: adorned; covered; decorated; clothed. apparels.
apparent ::: readily seen; exposed to sight; open to view. 2. Capable of being easily perceived or understood; plain or clear; obvious; visible.
appeal ::: 1. An earnest request for aid, support, sympathy, mercy, etc.; entreaty; petition; plea. 2. An application or proceeding for review by a higher tribunal. 3. The power or ability to attract, interest; attraction. appealed, appealing, sense-appeal.
appear ::: 1. To come into sight; become visible; come into view, as from a place or state of concealment, or from a distance; esp. of angels, spirits, visions. 2. To come into existence; be created. 3. To be clear to the understanding. 4. To seem or look to be. appears, appeared, appearing.
appearance ::: 1. The act or fact of coming forward into view ; becoming visible. 2. The state, condition, manner, or style in which a person or object appears; outward look or aspect. 3. Outward show or seeming; semblance. appearances.
appease ::: 1. To bring to a state of peace, quiet, ease, calm, or contentment; pacify; soothe. 2. To satisfy, allay, or relieve.
appointed ::: 1. Predetermined; arranged; set. 2. Fixed by, through or as a result of authority; ordained; chosen; designated; selected.
approach ::: v. 1. To come near or nearer to; draw near. 2. To come near to a person: i.e. into personal relations; into his presence or audience; or fig. within the range of his notice or attention. 3. To come near in quality, character, time, or condition; to be nearly equal. approaches, approached, approaching.* *n. 4. Any means of access or way of passage, avenue. 5. The act of drawing near. approaches.**
approve ::: 1. To confirm or sanction formally; ratify. 2. To speak or think favourably of; pronounce or consider agreeable or good; judge favourably. approves, approved.
apsaras ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Apsaras are the most beautiful and romantic conception on the lesser plane of Hindu mythology. From the moment that they arose out of the waters of the milky Ocean, robed in ethereal raiment and heavenly adornment, waking melody from a million lyres, the beauty and light of them has transformed the world. They crowd in the sunbeams, they flash and gleam over heaven in the lightnings, they make the azure beauty of the sky; they are the light of sunrise and sunset and the haunting voices of forest and field. They dwell too in the life of the soul; for they are the ideal pursued by the poet through his lines, by the artist shaping his soul on his canvas, by the sculptor seeking a form in the marble; for the joy of their embrace the hero flings his life into the rushing torrent of battle; the sage, musing upon God, sees the shining of their limbs and falls from his white ideal. The delight of life, the beauty of things, the attraction of sensuous beauty, this is what the mystic and romantic side of the Hindu temperament strove to express in the Apsara. The original meaning is everywhere felt as a shining background, but most in the older allegories, especially the strange and romantic legend of Pururavas as we first have it in the Brahmanas and the Vishnoupurana.
apse ::: a usually semicircular or polygonal, often vaulted recess, especially the termination of the sanctuary end of a church.
arabesques ::: 1. Any ornaments or ornamental objects such as rugs or mosaics, in which flowers, foliage, fruits, vases, animals, and figures are represented in a fancifully combined pattern. 2. *Fine Arts.* A sinuous, spiraling, undulating, or serpentine line or linear motif.
arbiter ::: 1. One empowered to decide matters at issue; judge. 2. Having the sole or absolute power of judging or determining. arbiters.
arbitrary ::: 1. Based on or subject to individual will, judgment or preference: judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one"s discretion. 2. Capricious; unreasonable; unsupported. 3. Derived from mere opinion or preference; capricious; uncertain. 4. Having unlimited power; uncontrolled or unrestricted by law; despotic; tyrannical.
arc ::: 1. Any unbroken part of the circumference of a circle or other curved line. 2. A luminous bridge formed in a gap between two electrodes. arcs.
arcanes ::: of things known or understood by very few; mysterious; secret; obscure; esoteric. (Employed by Sri Aurobindo as a noun.)
arch ::: 1. An upwardly curved construction, for spanning an opening, consisting of a number of wedgelike stones, bricks, or the like, set with the narrower side toward the opening in such a way that forces on the arch are transmitted as vertical or oblique stresses on either side of the opening, either capable of bearing weight or merely ornamental; 2. Something bowed or curved; any bowlike part: the arch of the foot. 3. An arched roof, door; gateway; vault; fig. the heavens. arches.
arch- ::: a combining form that represents the outcome of archi- in words borrowed through Latin from Greek in the Old English period; it subsequently became a productive form added to nouns of any origin, which thus denote individuals or institutions directing or having authority over others of their class (archbishop; archdiocese; archpriest): principal. More recently, arch-1 has developed the senses "principal” (archenemy; archrival) or "prototypical” and thus exemplary or extreme (archconservative); nouns so formed are almost always pejorative. Arch-intelligence.
archangel ::: a chief or principal angel, the highest angel in rank. Archangel, Archangel"s.
archipelago ::: 1. Any sea, or body of water, in which there are numerous islands. 2. A large group or chain of islands.
architect ::: the deviser, maker, or creator of anything; one who builds up something, as, men are the architects of their own fortunes. Architect, architects.
architecture ::: 1. The profession of designing buildings and other artificial constructions and environments, usually with some regard to aesthetic effect. 2. The character or style of building. 3. Construction or structure generally. architectures.
archives ::: preserved historical records or documents, also the place where they are kept.
archivist ::: a person responsible for preserving, organizing, or servicing archival material.
arc-lamps ::: general term for a class of lamps in which light is produced by a voltaic arc, a luminous arc between two electrodes typically made of tungsten or carbon and barely separated.
arcturus ::: a giant star in the constellation Boötes. It is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere and the fourth brightest star in the sky, with an apparent magnitude of 0.00; sometimes referring to the Great Bear itself.
ardent ::: 1. Having, expressive of, or characterized by intense feeling; glowing with passion, animated by keen desire; intensely eager, zealous, fervent, fervid. 2. Burning, fiery, or hot. ardent-hued.
ardour ::: great warmth of feeling, passion or desire; zeal, fervour, eagerness, enthusiasm.
arduous ::: hard to accomplish or achieve; requiring strong effort; difficult, laborious, severe.
a religious official among the Romans, whose duty it was to predict future events and advise upon the course of public business, in accordance with omens derived from the flight, singing, and feeding of birds. Hence extended to: A soothsayer, diviner, or prophet, generally; one that foresees and foretells the future. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective.) augured.
arenas ::: central stages, rings, areas, or the like, used for sports or other forms of entertainment, surrounded by seats for spectators.
argument ::: 1. A fact or statement put forth as proof or evidence; a reason; persuasive discourse, debate. 2. A process of reasoning; series of reasons.
arise ::: 1. To get up from sleep or rest; to awaken; wake up. 2. To go up, come up, ascend on high, mount. Now only poet. **3. To come into being, action, or notice; originate; appear; spring up. 4. Of circumstances viewed as results: To spring, originate, or result from. 5. To rise from inaction, from the peaceful, quiet, or ordinary course of life. 6. To rise in violence or agitation, as the sea, the wind; to boil up as a fermenting fluid, the blood; so of the heart, wrath, etc. Now poet. 7. Of sounds: To come up aloud, or so as to be audible, to be heard aloud. arises, arising, arose, arisen. *(Sri Aurobindo also employs arisen as an adj.*)
aristocracy ::: the class to which a ruling body belongs, a patrician order; the collective body of those who form a privileged class; also used fig. of those who are superior.
arming ::: providing with whatever will add strength, force, or security; support; fortify.
armour ::: 1. Any covering worn as a defense against weapons, especially a metallic sheathing, suit of armour, mail. 2. Any quality, characteristic, situation, or thing that serves as protection. armours, armoured.* n. 1. Weapons. v. 2. Provides with weapons or whatever will add strength, force or security; supports; fortifies. *armed, arming.
arms ::: n. 1. Weapons. v. 2. Provides with weapons or whatever will add strength, force or security; supports; fortifies. armed, arming.
arouse ::: 1. To awaken from or as if from sleep or inactivity. 2. To stir up; excite 3. To stir to action or strong response; excite. aroused, arousing.
arraigned ::: called (an accused person) before a court to answer the charge made against him or her by indictment, information, or complaint, or brought before a court to answer to an indictment; accused, charged with fault.
arrange ::: 1. To put into a specific order or relation; dispose. 2. To settle the order, manner, and circumstantial relations of (a thing to be done); to prepare or plan beforehand. arranged, arranging, self-arranged.
array ::: an orderly, often imposing arrangement or series of things displayed; an imposing series.
arrogant ::: 1. Having or displaying a sense of overbearing self-worth or self-importance. 2. Marked by or arising from a feeling or assumption of one"s superiority toward others.
artifice ::: 1. An artful or crafty expedient; a stratagem. 2. Cleverness or skill; ingenuity; inventiveness.
artificer ::: 1. One who is skilful or clever in devising ways of making things; inventor. 2. A skilful or artistic worker; craftsperson. artificers.
artist ::: 1. One who practises the creative arts; one who seeks to express the beautiful in visible form. 2. A follower of a manual art; an artificer, mechanic, craftsman, artisan. artists. (Sri Aurobindo often employs the word as an adj.)
artistry ::: artistic workmanship, effect, or quality.
art ::: v. archaic** A second person singular present indicative of be, now only poet., not in modern usage. All other references are to art as the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. Also, the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria. art"s, arts, art-parades.
ascend ::: to move, climb, or go upward; mount; rise. ascends, ascended, ascending.
ascension ::: the act or process of ascending; upward movement. flame-ascensions.
ascent ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ascent or the upward movement takes place when there is a sufficient aspiration from the being, i.e., from the various mental, vital and physical planes.” *Letters on Yoga
ascetic ::: one who dedicates his or her life to a pursuit of contemplative ideals, whether by seclusion or by abstinence from creature comforts, and practices extreme self-denial, rigorous self-discipline or self-mortification. ascetic"s, ascetics.
ashamed ::: feeling shame; distressed or embarrassed by feeling of guilt, foolishness, or disgrace.
ashes ::: 1. Bodily remains, especially after cremation or decay. 2. Fig. Ruins; esp. the residue of something destroyed; remains.
aside ::: 1. On or to one"s side; to or at a short distance apart; away from some position or direction. 2. To or toward the side. 3. Out of one"s thoughts or mind. 4. In reserve; in a separate place, as for safekeeping; apart; away.
as it would be if; as though. (Introducing a supposition, or way of conceiving some entity or situation, that is not to be taken literally, but yields some insight or convenience in metaphysics.)
asoca ::: bot.: Saraca indica , Asoka, Sorrowless tree. A small flowering tree native to India with glowing clusters of orange and yellow flowers. asocas.
aspect ::: 1. Appearance to the eye or mind; look. 2. Nature; quality, character. 3. A way in which a thing may be viewed or regarded; interpretation; view. 4. Part; feature; phase. aspects.
asphodel ::: a genus of liliaceous plants with very attractive white, pink or yellow flowers, mostly natives of the south of Europe; by the poets made an immortal flower, and said to cover the Elysian (heavenly, paradisal) fields.
aspirant ::: n. **1. One who seeks with eagerness and steady purpose. adj. 2. Aspiring, striving for a higher position; mounting up, ascending. aspirants.**
aspiration ::: 1. A strong desire for high achievement. 2. A steadfast longing for something above oneself. **aspiration"s.
"Aspiration, call, prayer are forms of one and the same thing and are all effective; you can take the form that comes to you or is easiest to you.” Letters on Yoga
::: "Aspiration is to call the forces. When the forces have answered, there is a natural state of quiet receptivity concentrated but spontaneous.” Letters on Yoga
"Aspiration should be not a form of desire, but the feeling of an inner soul"s need, and a quiet settled will to turn towards the Divine and seek the Divine. It is certainly not easy to get rid of this mixture of desire entirely — not easy for anyone; but when one has the will to do it, this also can be effected by the help of the sustaining Force.” Letters on Yoga
aspire ::: to have a fixed desire, longing, or ambition for something at present above one; to seek to attain, yearn. aspires, aspired, aspiring.
assail ::: 1. To attack vigorously or violently; assault. 2. To impinge upon; make an impact on; beset. 3. To take upon oneself a difficult challenge with the intention of mastering it. assailed, assailing.
assemblage ::: a number of persons gathered together; a gathering, concourse. (Less formal than assembly.)
assembly ::: a group of people gathered together usually for a particular purpose. assemblies.
assessed ::: evaluated (a person or thing); estimated (the quality, value, or extent of), gauged or judged.
assists ::: gives support or aid to; helps. assisting.
assuage ::: to mitigate, alleviate, soothe, relieve (physical or mental pain).
assume ::: 1. To take upon oneself, to adopt an aspect, form, or attribute. 2. To take on titles, offices, duties, responsibilities. 3. To take on as one"s own, to adopt. assumes, assumed, assuming.
assured ::: 1. Made certain; guaranteed. 2. Certified, verified. 3. Made secure or certain; confirmed. 4. Confident, characterized by certainty or security; satisfied as to the truth of something. assuring.
astir ::: moving or stirring, esp. with much activity or excitement.
astonished ::: 1. Amazed, filled with sudden and overpowering surprise or wonder. 2. Filled with consternation; dismayed. astonishing.
astral ::: 1. Of, relating to, emanating from, or resembling the stars. 2. Of the spirit world [Greek astron star].
astray ::: 1. Away from the correct path or direction. 2. Away from the right or good, as in thought or behaviour; straying to or into wrong or evil ways.
astuce ::: astuteness, i.e. of keen penetration or discernment, sagacious.
aswapati ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Aswapati, the Lord of the Horse, her [Savitri"s] human father, is the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal planes; . . . .” (From a letter written by Sri Aurobindo) Aswapati"s.
aswarm ::: filled, as by objects, organisms, etc. esp. in motion; teeming, swarming.
atavism ::: 1. The reappearance in an individual of characteristics of some remote ancestor that have been absent in intervening generations. 2. Reversion to an earlier type.
atheist ::: adj. Disbelieving or denying the existence of a supreme God.
athlete ::: Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj. in the sense of athletic: Of the nature of, or befitting, one who is physically active, powerful, muscular, robust, agile.
athwart ::: 1. Across from side to side; crosswise or transversely; contrary to the proper or expected course; against; crosswise. 2. Of motion; from side to side.
atmosphere ::: 1. A surrounding or pervading mood, environment, or influence. 2. The air.
atom ::: 1. A unit of matter, the smallest unit of an element, having all the characteristics of that element and consisting of a dense, central, positively charged nucleus surrounded by a system of electrons. 2. The smallest component of an element having the chemical properties of the element. 3. An extremely small part, quantity, or amount. The smallest conceivable unit of an element or of anything. atom"s, atoms, atomic.
atoned ::: expiated, made amends for.
attack ::: the act of setting upon with violent force.; launching a physical assault (against) attacks.
attain ::: 1. To gain as an objective; achieve; reach, arrive at; accomplish. 2. To arrive at, as by virtue of persistence or the passage of time; To reach in the course of development. attained.
attaint ::: disgrace, corruption; taint; stain .
attempt ::: n. 1. An effort made to accomplish something. 2. The thing attempted, object aimed at, aim. attempts, half-attempts. v. 3. To make an effort at; try; undertake; seek. attempted, attempting.
aureate ::: golden or gilded; brilliant or splendid.
aureole ::: the radiant circle of light depicted around the head; a glorifying halo.
auspice-hour ::: an auspice is any divine or prophetic token; a favourable sign or propitious circumstance, esp. an indication of a happy future. Sri Aurobindo combines the word ‘hour" with auspice to emphasize a special moment.
austere ::: 1. Severe in manner or appearance; uncompromising; strict; forbidding; stark. 2. Rigorously self-disciplined and severely moral; ascetic; abstinent. 3. Grave; sober; solemn; serious. 4. Without excess, luxury, or ease; severely simple; without ornament. austerity.
autarchy ::: absolute rule or power; despotism; absolute sovereignty.
author ::: 1. An originator or creator, one who originates or gives existence to anything. 2. He who gives rise to or causes an action, event, circumstance, state, or condition of things. 3. The composer or writer of a treatise, play, poem, book, etc. authors.
authorises ::: gives permission for, formal approval to; sanctions or approves.
authority ::: the power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge.
authors or advocates of anarchy; leaders of revolt.
authentic ::: not false or copied; genuine; real, original. authenticity.
autocracy ::: unlimited authority, power or influence; absolute government. autocracies.
automaton ::: one whose actions are purely involuntary or mechanical; a robot.
autonomy ::: 1. Independence or freedom, as of the will or one"s actions. 2. Self-government. autonomies.
autumnal ::: of, belonging to or suggestive of, autumn.
autumn ::: the season of the year between summer and winter, lasting from the autumnal equinox to the winter solstice and from September to December in the Northern Hemisphere; fall.
availed ::: to be of use, value, or advantage; to have the necessary force to accomplishment something.
avatars ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word Avatar means a descent; it is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.” *Essays on the Gita
avenge ::: to inflict a punishment or penalty in return for; take vengeance on behalf of. avenges.
avenues ::: lines or means of approach or access; paths of entrance or exit; often fig.
average ::: n. 1. A typical amount, rate, degree, etc.; norm. adj. 2. Typical; common; ordinary.
avid ::: having an ardent desire or unbounded craving; desirous of.
await ::: to wait for; expect; look for. awaited, awaiting, awaits
awakened ::: 1. Aroused from sleep, sloth, or inaction. 2. Made aware; cognizant; conscious. half-awakened.
awake ::: v. 1. To arouse from sleep or inactivity. 2. Fig. To rise from a state resembling sleep, such as death, indifference, inaction; to become active or vigilant. 3. To come or bring to an awareness, to become cognizant, to be fully conscious, to appreciate fully (often followed by to). awakes, awoke, awaking. *adj.* 4. Not asleep; conscious; vigilant, alert. half-awake.
awe ::: an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like.
awed ::: 1. inspired or influenced by a feeling of fearful wonderment or reverence; 2. Inspired with reverential wonder combined with an element of latent fear.
awful ::: 1. Inspiring fear; terrible, dreadful, appalling, awe-inspiring. 2. Extremely impressive. 3. Profoundly inspired by a feeling of fearful wonderment or reverence.
awhile ::: for a short time or period.
axis ::: 1. The pivot on which any matter turns. 2. A straight line about which a body or geometric object rotates or may be conceived to rotate.
babble ::: 1. v. To utter sounds or words imperfectly, indistinctly, or without meaning. 2.* **n. *A murmuring sound or a confusion of sounds.
babe ::: a baby; child or infant.
babel ::: "The reference is to the mythological story of the construction of the Tower of Babel, which appears to be an attempt to explain the diversity of human languages. According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and tower ‘with its top in the heavens". God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. The tower was never completed and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica) Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works Sri Aurobindo: "The legend of the Tower of Babel speaks of the diversity of tongues as a curse laid on the race; but whatever its disadvantages, and they tend more and more to be minimised by the growth of civilisation and increasing intercourse, it has been rather a blessing than a curse, a gift to mankind rather than a disability laid upon it. The purposeless exaggeration of anything is always an evil, and an excessive pullulation of varying tongues that serve no purpose in the expression of a real diversity of spirit and culture is certainly a stumbling-block rather than a help: but this excess, though it existed in the past, is hardly a possibility of the future. The tendency is rather in the opposite direction. In former times diversity of language helped to create a barrier to knowledge and sympathy, was often made the pretext even of an actual antipathy and tended to a too rigid division. The lack of sufficient interpenetration kept up both a passive want of understanding and a fruitful crop of active misunderstandings. But this was an inevitable evil of a particular stage of growth, an exaggeration of the necessity that then existed for the vigorous development of strongly individualised group-souls in the human race. These disadvantages have not yet been abolished, but with closer intercourse and the growing desire of men and nations for the knowledge of each other"s thought and spirit and personality, they have diminished and tend to diminish more and more and there is no reason why in the end they should not become inoperative.” The Human Cycle
bacchant ::: n. **1. A priest or votary of Bacchus (the god of wine). 2. A drunken reveller. adj. 3. Inclined to revelry. Bacchant.**
bacchic ::: of or relating to Bacchus; drunken and carousing; riotously intoxicated.
background ::: n.** 1. The general scene or surface against which designs, patterns, or figures are represented or viewed. 2. Fig. The complex of physical, cultural, and psychological factors that serves as the environment of an event or experience; the set of conditions against which an occurrence is perceived. backgrounds. adj. 3.** Of, pertaining to, or serving as a background.
backward ::: 1. To, toward or into the past. 2. In or toward a past time. 3. Late in developing, behind; slow, esp. relating to time or progress. far-backward.
baffled ::: 1. Confused, bewildered, or perplexed. 2. Frustrated or confounded; thwarted. baffles, baffling.
balance ::: n. **1. A state of equilibrium or equipoise; mental, psychological or emotional. 2. A weighing device, especially one consisting of a rigid beam horizontally suspended by a low-friction support at its center, with identical weighing pans hung at either end, one of which holds an unknown weight while the effective weight in the other is increased by known amounts until the beam is level and motionless. 3. An undecided or uncertain state in which issues are unresolved. v. 4. To have an equality or equivalence in weight, parts, etc.; be in equilibrium. adj. 5. Being in harmonious or proper arrangement or adjustment, proportion. 6. Mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behaviour, judgement. balanced, balancing.**
balcony ::: a platform that projects from the wall of a building and is surrounded by a railing, balustrade, or parapet.
bald ::: lacking natural growth or covering as bare trees, landscape, etc.
bales ::: large bundles of hay or goods (often compressed) bound by ropes or wires for storage or transportation.
balustrade ::: a rail and the row of balusters or posts that support it, as along the front of a gallery.
bank ::: 1. The slope of land adjoining a body of water, especially adjoining a river, lake, or channel. 2. A slope, as of a hill. 3. A long raised mass, esp. of earth. 4. A piled-up mass, as of snow or clouds. banks, cloud-bank.
bank ::: a business establishment in which money is kept for saving or commercial purposes or is invested, supplied for loans, or exchanged.
bankruptcy ::: 1. A state of complete lack of some abstract property; "spiritual bankruptcy”; "moral bankruptcy”; "intellectual bankruptcy”. 2. Depleted of valuable qualities or characteristics.
banner ::: 1. A piece of cloth bearing a motto or legend. 2. A placard carried in a demonstration.
baptism ::: a ceremony, trial, or experience by which one is initiated, purified, or given a name.
bards ::: an ancient Celtic order of minstrel poets who composed and recited verses celebrating the legendary exploits of chieftains and heroes. 2. Poets, especially lyric poets.
bare ::: v. 1. To make bare; uncover or reveal. 2. Fig. To expose. bared, baring. adj. 3. Lacking clothing or covering; naked 4. Fig. Exposed to view; undisguised. 5. Just sufficient; mere. 6. Lacking embellishment or ornamentation; unembellished; simple; plain. 7. Unprotected; without defence. 8. Devoid of covering, a leafless trees. 9. Sheer, as bare cliffs. heaven-bare, bareness.
barge ::: a large, open pleasure boat used for parties, pageants, or formal ceremonies.
bar ::: n. **1. Anything that obstructs or prevents; a barrier. v. 2. To obstruct, prevent, hinder, impede. bars, barred, barring.**
barns ::: a large farm building used for storing farm products and sheltering livestock.
barrage ::: an overwhelming quantity or explosion as of artillery fire, words, blows, or criticisms.
barren ::: 1. Unproductive of results or gains; unprofitable. 2. Lacking vegetation, especially useful vegetation. 3. Devoid of something specified.
barrier ::: 1. Anything built or serving to bar passage. 2. Anything that restrains or obstructs progress, access. 3. A limit or boundary of any kind. barriers, barrier-breakers.
barter ::: to trade goods or services without the exchange of money. bartered.
based ::: 1. Formed or established as a base. 2. Supported as a base. 3. Conceived as the fundamental principle or underlying concept.
basement ::: the substructure or foundation of a building usually below ground level.
base ::: n. 1. The fundamental principle or underlying concept of a system or theory; a basis, foundation. 2. A fundamental ingredient; a chief constituent. adj. 3. Having or showing a contemptible, mean-spirited, or selfish lack of human decency; morally low. base"s. baser.
basilicas ::: public buildings in ancient Rome having a central nave with an apse at one or both ends and two side aisles formed by rows of columns, which was used as an assembly hall – also Christian churches with a similar design.
basks ::: lies in or is exposed (to pleasant warmth or sunshine) basked.
bastioned ::: 1. Anything seen as preserving or protecting some quality, condition, etc. 2. A well-fortified position, a defensive stronghold.
bathe ::: 1. To become immersed in or as if in liquid, as a bath or in other substances or elements. 2. To wash or pour over; suffuse or envelope, like sunshine. bathed, bathing.
battalion ::: 1. An army unit typically consisting of a headquarters and two or more companies, batteries, or similar subunits. 2. A large body of organized troops in battle gear. 3. A large indefinite number of persons or things.
battered ::: damaged especially by blows or hard usage.
battlefield ::: 1. The field or ground on which a battle is fought. 2. An area of contention, conflict, or hostile opposition. battlefields.
battle ::: n. 1. An encounter between opposing forces; armed fighting; combat. v. 3. To fight against. Also fig. 4. To contend, struggle against. 5. To work very hard or struggle; strive. battled.
battling ::: engaging in or as if in battle or conflict.
baying ::: 1. Uttering a deep and prolonged bark as a dog in pursuit. 2. The chorus of barking raised by hounds in immediate conflict with a hunted animal. bayings
bays ::: bodies of water partially enclosed by land but with a wide mouth, affording access to the sea.
bay ::: the position or stand of an animal or fugitive that is forced to turn and resist pursuers because it is no longer possible to flee. (preceded by at).
bazaar ::: a market consisting of a street lined with shops and stalls, especially one in the Orient.
beacon ::: 1. A source of guidance or inspiration. 2. A signalling or guiding device or warning signal as a light or signal fire.
beam ::: 1. A ray of light. 2. A ray or collection of parallel rays. 3. A column of light, a gleam, emanation. Also fig. **beams.**
bear ::: 1. To carry. Also fig. 2. To hold up, support. Also fig. 3. To have a tolerance for; endure something with tolerance and patience. 5. To possess, as a quality or characteristic; have in or on. 6. To tend in a course or direction; move; go. 7. To render; afford; give. 8. To produce by natural growth. bears, bore, borne bearing.
bearer ::: one who carries, supports, holds up or brings. torch-bearer, torch-bearers.
bearing witness to, affirming the truth or genuineness of; testifying to, certifying, vouching for. attests.
bear up ::: carry; hold up; support.
beast ::: 1. An animal other than a human, especially a large four-footed mammal. 2. Fig. Animal nature as opposed to intellect or spirit. 3. A large wild animal. 4. A domesticated animal used by man. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) beast"s, Beast"s, beasts, wild-beast. ::: —the Beast. Applied to the devil and evil spirits.
beasthood ::: the state or nature of a beast.
beatific ::: showing, producing, or experiencing exalted joy or blessedness.
beating ::: n. 1. A throbbing or pulsation, as of the heart. beatings. adj. 2. Throbbings, pulsations.
beatitude ::: supreme blessedness or happiness. beatitude"s, beatitudes.
beat ::: n. 1. A stroke or blow. 2. A regular sound or stroke. 3. The rhythmic contraction and expansion of the arteries with each beat of the heart. 4. A pulsating sound. 5. A forceful flapping of wings. beats, nerve-beat, hammer-beats, heart-beats, heart-beats", moment-beats, rhyme-beats. v. 6. To strike or pound with repeated blows. 7. To shape or break by repeated blows, as metal. 8. To sound in pulsations. 9. To throb rhythmically; pulsate, as the heart. 10. To flap, especially wings. 11. To strike with or as if with a series of violent blows, dash or pound repeatedly against, as waves, wind, etc. beats, beaten, beating. *adj. *sun-beat.
"Beauty is Ananda taking form — but the form need not be a physical shape. One speaks of a beautiful thought, a beautiful act, a beautiful soul. What we speak of as beauty is Ananda in manifestation; beyond manifestation beauty loses itself in Ananda or, you may say, beauty and Ananda become indistinguishably one.” The Future Poetry
"Beauty is not the same as Delight, but like love it is an expression, a form of Ananda, created by Ananda and composed of Ananda.” The Future Poetry
"Beauty is the way in which the physical expresses the Divine – but the principle and law of Beauty is something inward and spiritual and expresses itself through the form.” *The Future Poetry
beauty ::: the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, colour, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else, (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest). Beauty, beauty"s, Beauty"s, beauty-drenched, earth-beauty"s.
beck ::: a summons or gesture of summoning or directing someone.
beckoned ::: invited or enticed; lured. beckons.
bed ::: 1. A piece or part forming a foundation or base; a stratum. 2. The grave. 3. A sleeping-place generally; any extemporized resting place. 4. A piece or area of ground in a garden or lawn in which plants are grown. beds.
bed-fellows ::: those who are closely associated or allied with one another.
beganst ::: a native English form of the verb, to begin, now only in formal and poetic usage.
beginningless ::: without a beginning; without origin; uncreated.
begot ::: pt. of beget. 1. Caused to exist or occur; created. 2. Called into being, gave rise to; produced. begotten.
behaviour ::: 1. Manner of behaving or conducting oneself. 2. The aggregate of the responses or reactions or movements made by an organism in any situation, or the manner in which a thing acts under such circumstances. behaviour"s.
behest ::: an authoritative command or directive.
being ::: 1. The state or quality of having existence. 2. The totality of all things that exist. 3. One"s basic or essential nature; self. 4. All the qualities constituting one that exists; the essence. 5. A person; human being. 6. The Divine, the Supreme; God. Being, being"s, Being"s, beings, Beings, beings", earth-being"s, earth-beings, fragment-being, non-being, non-being"s, Non-Being, Non-Being"s, world-being"s.
Sri Aurobindo: "Pure Being is the affirmation by the Unknowable of Itself as the free base of all cosmic existence.” *The Life Divine :::
"The Absolute manifests itself in two terms, a Being and a Becoming. The Being is the fundamental reality; the Becoming is an effectual reality: it is a dynamic power and result, a creative energy and working out of the Being, a constantly persistent yet mutable form, process, outcome of its immutable formless essence.” *The Life Divine
"What is original and eternal for ever in the Divine is the Being, what is developed in consciousness, conditions, forces, forms, etc., by the Divine Power is the Becoming. The eternal Divine is the Being; the universe in Time and all that is apparent in it is a Becoming.” Letters on Yoga
"Being and Becoming, One and Many are both true and are both the same thing: Being is one, Becomings are many; but this simply means that all Becomings are one Being who places Himself variously in the phenomenal movement of His consciousness.” The Upanishads :::
"Our whole apparent life has only a symbolic value & is good & necessary as a becoming; but all becoming has being for its goal & fulfilment & God is the only being.” *Essays Divine and Human
"Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
being, Master of ::: Sri Aurobindo: " Vamadeva goes on to say, "Let us give expression to this secret name of the clarity, — that is to say, let us bring out this Soma wine, this hidden delight of existence; let us hold it in this world-sacrifice by our surrenderings or submissions to Agni, the divine Will or Conscious-Power which is the Master of being.” The Secret of the Veda
beings ::: things or entities that exist, esp. things or entities that cannot be assigned to any category.
belched ::: 1. Erupted or exploded. 2. Expelled gas noisily from the stomach through the mouth.
belief ::: 1. Confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof. 2. Trust or confidence, faith. 3. Something believed; an opinion or conviction. beliefs.
Question: "Sweet Mother, l don"t understand very clearly the difference between faith, belief and confidence.”
Mother: "But Sri Aurobindo has given the full explanation here. If you don"t understand, then. . . He has written ‘Faith is a feeling in the whole being." The whole being, yes. Faith, that"s the whole being at once. He says that belief is something that occurs in the head, that is purely mental; and confidence is quite different. Confidence, one can have confidence in life, trust in the Divine, trust in others, trust in one"s own destiny, that is, one has the feeling that everything is going to help him, to do what he wants to do. Faith is a certitude without any proof. Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 6.
believed in ::: was persuaded of the truth or existence of; had faith in the reliability, honesty, benevolence, etc. of.
believes ::: accepts as true or real. believed.
bellowed ::: emitted a hollow, loud, animal cry, as a bull or cow; roared.
belly ::: 1. The stomach. 2. The inside or interior cavity of something.
belong ::: 1. To be a part of or adjunct. 2. To be the property, attribute, or possession of. belongs.
belongings ::: possessions; things owned, either tangible or intangible.
belt ::: 1. Any encircling or transverse band, strip, or stripe characteristically distinguished from the surface it crosses. 2. An elongated region having distinctive properties or characteristics and long in proportion to its breadth. 3. A zone or district.
bench ::: 1. A long seat usually made of wood, for two or more persons. 2. A seat occupied by a person in an official capacity, esp. a judge. 3. Such a seat as a symbol of the office and dignity of an individual judge or the judiciary.
bend ::: 1. To assume a curved, crooked, or angular form or direction, esp. to bend the body; stoop. 2. Fig. To bow, esp. in reverence. 3. To turn or incline in a particular direction; be directed. bends.
bending ::: pulling back the string of (a bow or the like) in preparation for shooting.
bent ::: personal inclination, propensity, tendency or aptitude.
benumbed ::: made (any part of the body) insensible, torpid, or powerless; made numb, deprived of sensation; stupefied or stunned, as by a blow or shock; now mostly used for the effects of cold.
bereft ::: deprived of or lacking something needed or expected.
besetter ::: one who or that which besets.
besiege ::: 1. To surround with hostile forces. 2. To crowd around; hem in; crowd in upon; surround. besieged.
bestrides ::: towers over, dominates, as a victor over the fallen.
betimes ::: in good time; in a short time, soon.
betray ::: 1. To be false or disloyal to. 2. To lead astray; deceive. 3. To divulge, disclose in a breach of confidence, a secret. 4. To show signs of; reveal; indicate. betrays, betrayed, betraying, moon-betrayed.
betrayed ::: 1. Corrupted, falsified. 2. Exposed. 3. Revealed
beyond ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The language of the Upanishad makes it strikingly clear that it is no metaphysical abstraction, no void Silence, no indeterminate Absolute which is offered to the soul that aspires, but rather the absolute of all that is possessed by it here in the relative world of its sojourning. All here in the mental is a growing light, consciousness and life; all there in the supramental is an infinite life, light and consciousness. That which is here shadowed, is there found; the incomplete here is there the fulfilled. The Beyond is not an annullation, but a transfiguration of all that we are here in our world of forms; it is sovran Mind of this mind, secret Life of this life, the absolute Sense which supports and justifies our limited senses.” The Upanishads *
bidding ::: an order; command.
bind ::: 1. To restrain or confine with or as if with ties. 2. To place (someone) under obligation; oblige. 3. To fasten together. Also fig. **binds, bound, binding.**
binding ::: n. **1. The covering within which the pages of a book are abound. adj. 2.* Fig.* Commanding adherence to a commitment, obligatory.
binding posts ::: stakes, stout poles, columns, or the like, that are set upright in or on the ground; (with prefixed word indicating special purpose).
bindst ::: a native English form of the verb, to bind, now only in formal and poetic usage.
biography ::: an account of a person"s life written, composed, or produced by another.
bird ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Bird in the Veda is the symbol, very frequently, of the soul liberated and upsoaring, at other times of energies so liberated and upsoaring, winging upwards towards the heights of our being, winging widely with a free flight, no longer involved in the ordinary limited movement or labouring gallop of the Life-energy, the Horse, Ashwa.” *The Secret of the Veda
birth ::: 1. The act or fact of being born. 2. Fig. The coming into existence of something; origin. Birth, birth"s, births.
"Birth is an assumption of a body by the spirit, death is the casting off [of] the body; there is nothing original in this birth, nothing final in this death. Before birth we were; after death we shall be. Nor are our birth and death a single episode without continuous meaning or sequel; it is one episode out of many, scenes of our drama of existence with its denouement far away in time.” Essays Divine and Human*
birthright ::: a right, possession, or privilege that is one"s due by birth.
bit ::: cut into with or as with a sharp instrument or weapon. Also fig.
biting ::: wounding or lacerating with the teeth.
bits ::: small portions, pieces or amounts produced by cutting, or breaking; fragments.
bitter ::: 1. Having or being a taste that is sharp, acrid, and unpleasant. 2. Difficult or distasteful to accept, admit; bear or endure. 3. Proceeding from or exhibiting strong animosity. 4. Causing a sharply unpleasant, painful, or stinging sensation; harsh; severe. bitterness.
bivouac ("s) ::: a temporary camp with shelters such as tents, as used by soldiers or mountaineers, often unprotected from an enemy.
bizarre ::: conspicuously or grossly unconventional or unusual in style or appearance; strange.
bizarrerie ::: strangeness or grotesqueness, especially strange or unconventional behaviour.
blade ::: the flat cutting part of a sharpened weapon or tool. blade"s.
blank ::: n. 1. Fig. Any void space. blanks. adj. 2. Empty, without contents, void, bare. 3. Devoid of activity, interest, or distinctive character; empty. 4. Mere, bare, simple. 5. Lacking expression; expressionless, showing no interest or emotion, vacant. 6. Absolute; complete. blankness.
blaspheme ::: to speak in an irreverent, contemptuous or disrespectful manner; curse; (esp. God, a divine being or sacred things).
blazon ::: the description or representation of a coat of arms or banner bearing the symbol of a coat of arms.
boldness or daring without regard for conventional thought or other restrictions.
"But great art is not satisfied with representing the intellectual truth of things, which is always their superficial or exterior truth; it seeks for a deeper and original truth which escapes the eye of the mere sense or the mere reason, the soul in them, the unseen reality which is not that of their form and process but of their spirit.” The Human Cycle etc.
clauses, items, points, or particulars in a contract, treaty, or other formal agreement; conditions or stipulations in a contract.
"For each birth is a new start; it develops indeed from the past, but is not its mechanical continuation: rebirth is not a constant reiteration but a progression, it is the machinery of an evolutionary process.” The Life Divine
"First, we affirm an Absolute as the origin and support and secret Reality of all things. The Absolute Reality is indefinable and ineffable by mental thought and mental language; it is self-existent and self-evident to itself, as all absolutes are self-evident, but our mental affirmatives and negatives, whether taken separatively or together, cannot limit or define it.” The Life Divine
"Here we live in an organisation of mortal consciousness which takes the form of a transient world; there we are liberated into the harmonies of an infinite self-seeing which knows all world in the light of the eternal and immortal. The Beyond is our reality; that is our plenitude; that is the absolute satisfaction of our self-existence. It is immortality and it is ‘That Delight".” The Upanishads *beyond
**"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*
"I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness —. . . .” Letters on Yoga
"I may say that the opening upwards, the ascent into the Light and the subsequent descent into the ordinary consciousness and normal human life is very common as the first decisive experience in the practice of yoga and may very well happen even without the practice of yoga in those who are destined for the spiritual change, especially if there is a dissatisfaction somewhere with the ordinary life and a seeking for something more, greater or better.” Letters on Yoga*
"In every particle, atom, molecule, cell of Matter there lives hidden and works unknown all the omniscience of the Eternal and all the omnipotence of the Infinite.” Essays Divine and Human*
" . . . insincerity is always an open door for the adversary. That means there is some secret sympathy with what is perverse. And that is what is serious.” Questions and Answers 1957-58, MCW Vol. 9.
inspiring mingled reverence and admiration; impressing the emotions or imagination as magnificent; majestic, stately, sublime, solemnly grand; venerable, revered; of supreme dignity.
". . . in the Avatar there is the special manifestation, the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a form of individual humanity, âtmânam srjâmi, and conscious not only behind the veil but in the outward nature.” Essays on the Gita
"In the subconscient knowledge or consciousness is involved in action, for action is the essence of Life.” The Life Divine
"It is a call of the being for higher things — for the Divine, for all that belongs to the higher or Divine Consciousness.” Guidance
". . . [man"s] nature calls for a human intermediary so that he may feel the Divine in something entirely close to his own humanity and sensible in a human influence and example. This call is satisfied by the Divine manifest in a human appearance, the Incarnation, the Avatar. . . .” The Synthesis of Yoga
one who is versed in or practices alchemy. Pertaining to one who studies or practises alchemy. alchemist (employed as an adj. by Sri Aurobindo).
positions or postures of the body appropriate to or expressive of an action, emotion.
"Pulling comes usually from a desire to get things for oneself — in aspiration there is a self-giving for the higher consciousness to descend and take possession — the more intense the call the greater the self-giving.” Letters on Yoga
regards as resulting from a specified cause; considers as caused by something or someone. attributing.
*Sri Aurobindo: "Action is the first power of life. Nature begins with force and its works which, once conscious in man, become will and its achievements; therefore it is that by turning his action Godwards the life of man best and most surely begins to become divine.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Atheism is the shadow or dark side of the highest perception of God.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "Birth is the first spiritual mystery of the physical universe, death is the second which gives its double point of perplexity to the mystery of birth; for life, which would otherwise be a self-evident fact of existence, becomes itself a mystery by virtue of these two which seem to be its beginning and its end and yet in a thousand ways betray themselves as neither of these things, but rather intermediate stages in an occult processus of life.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "By aesthesis is meant a reaction of the consciousness, mental and vital and even bodily, which receives a certain element in things, something that can be called their taste, Rasa, which, passing through the mind or sense or both, awakes a vital enjoyment of the taste, Bhoga, and this can again awaken us, awaken even the soul in us to something yet deeper and more fundamental than mere pleasure and enjoyment, to some form of the spirit"s delight of existence, Ananda.” *Letters on Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . for each individual is in himself the Eternal who has assumed name and form and supports through him the experiences of life turning on an ever-circling wheel of birth in the manifestation. The wheel is kept in motion by the desire of the individual, which becomes the effective cause of rebirth and by the mind"s turning away from the knowledge of the eternal self to the preoccupations of the temporal becoming.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "In the very atom there is a subconscious will and desire which must also be present in all atomic aggregates because they are present in the Force which constitutes the atom.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "It might be said again that, even so, in Sachchidananda itself at least, above all worlds of manifestation, there could be nothing but the self-awareness of pure existence and consciousness and a pure delight of existence. Or, indeed, this triune being itself might well be only a trinity of original spiritual self-determinations of the Infinite; these too, like all determinations, would cease to exist in the ineffable Absolute. But our position is that these must be inherent truths of the supreme being; their utmost reality must be pre-existent in the Absolute even if they are ineffably other there than what they are in the spiritual mind"s highest possible experience. The Absolute is not a mystery of infinite blankness nor a supreme sum of negations; nothing can manifest that is not justified by some self-power of the original and omnipresent Reality.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ” See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret & violent ecstasy. If thou believest firmly & unweariedly, in the end thou wilt see & experience the All-true, Almighty & All-blissful.” Essays Divine and Human*
*Sri Aurobindo: "The highest aim of the aesthetic being is to find the Divine through beauty; the highest Art is that which by an inspired use of significant and interpretative form unseals the doors of the spirit.” The Human Cycle etc.*
Sri Aurobindo: "This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West too the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and mostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy, — that was a notion of the Greeks, — a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga *Ananke"s.
Sri Aurobindo: "Very usually, altruism is only the sublimest form of selfishness.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "We mean by the Absolute something greater than ourselves, greater than the cosmos which we live in, the supreme reality of that transcendent Being which we call God, something without which all that we see or are conscious of as existing, could not have been, could not for a moment remain in existence. Indian thought calls it Brahman, European thought the Absolute because it is a self-existent which is absolved of all bondage to relativities . . . The Absolute is for us the Ineffable.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "What the "void" feels as a clutch is felt by the Mother only as a reminding finger laid on her cheek. It is one advantage of the expression ‘as if" that it leaves the field open for such variation. It is intended to suggest without saying it that behind the sombre void is the face of a mother. The two other ‘as if"s have the same motive and I do not find them jarring upon me. The second is at a sufficient distance from the first and it is not obtrusive enough to prejudice the third which more nearly follows. . . .” Letters on Savitri
*Sri Aurobindo: "When there is some lowering or diminution of the consciousness or some impairing of it at one place or another, the Adversary — or the Censor — who is always on the watch presses with all his might wherever there is a weak point lying covered from your own view, and suddenly a wrong movement leaps up with unexpected force. Become conscious and cast out the possibility of its renewal, that is all that is to be done.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it. He is aware only of thoughts, feelings, etc., that rise to the surface and these he takes for his own. Really they come from outside in mind waves, vital waves, waves of feeling and sensation, etc., which take particular form in him and rise to the surface after they have got inside. But they do not get into his body at once. He carries about with him an environmental consciousness (called by the Theosophists the Aura) into which they first enter. If you can become conscious of this environmental self of yours, then you can catch the thought, passion, suggestion or force of illness and prevent it from entering into you. If things in you are thrown out, they often do not go altogether but take refuge in this environmental atmosphere and from there they try to get in again. Or they go to a distance outside but linger on the outskirts or even perhaps far off, waiting till they get an opportunity to attempt entrance.” *Letters on Yoga
Strength is all right for the strong — but aspiration and the Grace answering to it are not altogether myths; they are great realities of the spiritual life.” Letters on Yoga*
". . . the Absolute is not a void or negation. It is all that is here in Time and beyond Time.” The Upanishads*
the act of hearing or attending; the state of hearing, or of being able to hear.
"The Adversary will disappear only when he is no longer necessary in the world. And we know very well that he is necessary, as the touch-stone for gold: to know if it is pure. But if one is really sincere, the Adversary can"t even approach him any longer; and he doesn"t try it, because that would be courting his own destruction.” Questions and Answers 1955, MCW Vol. 7.
The Apsaras then are the divine Hetairae of Paradise, beautiful singers and actresses whose beauty and art relieve the arduous and world-long struggle of the Gods against the forces that tend towards disruption by the Titans who would restore Matter to its original atomic condition or of dissolution by the sages and hermits who would make phenomena dissolve prematurely into the One who is above phenomena. They rose from the Ocean, says Valmiki, seeking who should choose them as brides, but neither the Gods nor the Titans accepted them, therefore are they said to be common or universal. The Harmony of Virtue
"The Avatar comes as the manifestation of the divine nature in the human nature, the apocalypse of its Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood, in order that the human nature may by moulding its principle, thought, feeling, action, being on the lines of that Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood transfigure itself into the divine. The law, the Dharma which the Avatar establishes is given for that purpose chiefly; the Christ, Krishna, Buddha stands in its centre as the gate, he makes through himself the way men shall follow.” Essays on the Gita
"The Avatar does not come as a thaumaturgic magician, but as the divine leader of humanity and the exemplar of a divine humanity. Even human sorrow and physical suffering he must assume and use so as to show, first, how that suffering may be a means of redemption, — as did Christ, — secondly, to show how, having been assumed by the divine soul in the human nature, it can also be overcome in the same nature, — as did Buddha. The rationalist who would have cried to Christ, ‘If thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross," or points out sagely that the Avatar was not divine because he died and died too by disease, — as a dog dieth, — knows not what he is saying: for he has missed the root of the whole matter. Even, the Avatar of sorrow and suffering must come before there can be the Avatar of divine joy; the human limitation must be assumed in order to show how it can be overcome; and the way and the extent of the overcoming, whether internal only or external also, depends upon the stage of the human advance; it must not be done by a non-human miracle.” Essays on the Gita
::: "The Conscious Being, Purusha, is the Self as originator, witness, support and lord and enjoyer of the forms and works of Nature.” *The Life Divine
the Divine, the Creator.
"The inner Divinity is the eternal Avatar in man; the human manifestation is its sign and development in the external world.” Essays on the Gita
The Mother : "An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth.” Works of the Mother, "On Thoughts and Aphorisms” Vol.10
The Mother: "In the physical world, of all things it is beauty that expresses best the Divine. the physical world is the world of form and the perfection of form is beauty. Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through harmony and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher. On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
The Mother: "The Avatar: the supreme Divine manifested in an earthly form — generally a human form — for a definite purpose.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.*
*The Mother: "To conquer the Adversary is not a small thing. One must have a greater power than his to vanquish him. But one can liberate oneself totally from his influence. And from the minute one is completely free from his influence, one"s self-giving can be total. And with the self-giving comes joy, long before the Adversary is truly vanquished and disappears.”
::: The Mother: "True art means the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life.” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
the power or faculty of hearing or listening.
"There is no need of words in aspiration. It can be expressed or unexpressed in words.” Letters on Yoga
the strings on an apron, used for securing it around one"s person.tie to someone"s apron strings. To make or be dependent on or dominated by someone.
"This universal aesthesis of beauty and delight does not ignore or fail to understand the differences and oppositions, the gradations, the harmony and disharmony obvious to the ordinary consciousness; but, first of all, it draws a Rasa from them and with that comes the enjoyment, Bhoga. and the touch or the mass of the Ananda. It sees that all things have their meaning, their value, their deeper or total significance which the mind does not see, for the mind is only concerned with a surface vision, surface contacts and its own surface reactions. When something expresses perfectly what it was meant to express, the completeness brings with it a sense of harmony, a sense of artistic perfection; it gives even to what is discordant a place in a system of cosmic concordances and the discords become part of a vast harmony, and wherever there is harmony, there is a sense of beauty. ” Letters on Savitri*
those who assist, guide, wait upon, accompany, give service or follow another to contribute to the fulfilment of a need or furtherance of an effort or purpose; subordinate companions.
to draw by appealing by the emotions or senses, by stimulating interest, or by exciting admiration; allure; invite. attracts, attracted, attracting.
"We arrive then necessarily at this conclusion that human birth is a term at which the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths and that it has had for its previous and preparatory terms in the succession the lower forms of life upon earth; it has passed through the whole chain that life has strung in the physical universe on the basis of the body, the physical principle.” The Life Divine
KEYS (10k)
400 Sri Aurobindo
76 Sri Ramakrishna
55 Sri Ramana Maharshi
47 Saint Thomas Aquinas
34 The Mother
22 Sri Ramana Maharshi
20 Swami Vivekananda
13 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
11 Anonymous
11 Saint Augustine of Hippo
8 Saint Ambrose
8 Peter J Carroll
8 Jalaluddin Rumi
8 Chamtrul Rinpoche
7 Swami Turiyananda
7 Carl Jung
7 Bodhidharma
6 Thomas Keating
6 Ramakrishna
6 Miyamoto Musashi
6 Marcus Aurelius
5 SWAMI VIRAJANANDA
5 Swami Adbhutananda
5 Rupert Spira
5 Robert Adams
5 Joseph Campbell
5 Howard Gardner
5 Jorge Luis Borges
5 Aleister Crowley
5 ?
4 Tolstoi
4 Thomas A Kempis
4 Swami Vijnanananda
4 Swami Ramakrishnananda
4 Sri Sarada Devi
4 Shunryu Suzuki
4 Saint Maximus the Confessor
4 Robert Anton Wilson
4 Ramesh Balsekar
4 Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 Ken Wilber
4 Friedrich Nietzsche
4 Dhammapada
4 C S Lewis
4 Carl Sagan
4 Bhagavad Gita
4 Plato
4 Nichiren
4 Matsuo Basho
4 Adyashanti
3 Zhuang Zhou
3 Wikipedia
3 Vivekananda
3 Vernon Howard
3 SWAMI TRIGUNATITANANDA
3 SWAMI SUBODHANANDA
3 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
3 SWAMI PREMANANDA
3 SWAMI ABHEDANANDA
3 Sri Aurobindo
3 Saint Thomas Aquinas
3 Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
3 Saint John of the Cross
3 Pablo Neruda
3 Neville Goddard
3 Manly P Hall
3 Jean Gebser
3 Ignatius of Antioch
3 id
3 Huang Po
3 Hermes
3 Giordano Bruno
3 Georg C Lichtenberg
3 Edgar Allan Poe
3 Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
3 Baruch Spinoza
3 Attar of Nishapur
3 Albert Einstein
3 Jalaluddin Rumi
3 Epictetus
3 Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
2 Zen proverb
2 Yamamoto Tsunetomo
2 Voltaire
2 The Mother
2 Taigu Ryokan
2 Swami Saradananda
2 SWAMI BRAHMANANDA
2 Swami Akhandananda
2 Simone Weil
2 Saint Leo the Great
2 Saint Justin Martyr
2 Saint John Chrysostom
2 Saint Ignatius of Antioch
2 Saint Gregory of Nyssa
2 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
2 Saint Augustine
2 Rodney Collin
2 Robert Burton
2 Philokalia
2 Phil Hine
2 Oscar Wilde
2 Neil Gaiman
2 Metta Sutta
2 Maximus the Confessor
2 MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI
2 Mahabharata
2 Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 Leo Tolstoy
2 ken-wilber
2 Keiji Nishitani
2 Jorge Luis Borge
2 Jon Kabat-Zinn
2 John F. Kennedy
2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2 Huineng
2 H P Lovecraft
2 H P Blavatsky
2 Horace
2 "Hermes Trismegistus
2 Henry David Thoreau
2 Guru Rinpoche
2 Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
2 Emerson
2 Eckhart Tolle
2 Def
2 Charles Darwin
2 Buddhist Texts
2 Buddhist Text
2 Buddha
2 Brian Weiss
2 Blaise Pascal
2 Bhartrihari
2 Bertrand Russell
2 Basil the Great
2 Angelus Silesius
2 Albert Camus
2 Walt Whitman
2 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
2 Paracelsus
2 Meister Eckhart
2 Ibn Arabi
2 Heraclitus
2 Aristotle
1 Yangthang Rinpoche
1 write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope
1 William Strunk
1 William James
1 William Gibson
1 William Desmond
1 William Blake
1 which is to say
1 When you see the storm coming
1 V.S. Apte (1965)
1 Vishnu Purana
1 Virginia Woolf
1 Viktor Frankl
1 Vicktor Hugo
1 Valmiki Jayanti
1 Tusidas
1 to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears
1 Tolstoy
1 Thomas Merton
1 Thomas a Kempis
1 Thich Nhat Hanh
1 Thich Nhat Hanh
1 there is a tingling in the spine
1 Theophylact of Ohrid
1 The Monk of Premol
1 The Epistle of Barnabas
1 The Didache
1 "The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi
1 The Buddha
1 The Bhagavad Gita
1 Thayumanavar
1 Thaddeus Golas
1 Terence James Stannus Gray
1 Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
1 Ted Hughes
1 Tecumseh
1 Talmud
1 Taizan Maezumi
1 Taisen Deshimaru
1 Tagore
1 Swami Vivekananda?
1 Swami Vivekananda
1 Swami Rama
1 SWAMI RAMA
1 Swami Premananda
1 SWAMI PARAMANANDA
1 Susan Sontag
1 Sunyata
1 Steven Moffat
1 Stephen King
1 Stephanie Klein
1 Stephanie Kaza
1 S T Coleridge
1 Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
1 Sri Ramakrishna: One has to realize the Supreme Self. One has to attain Self-knowledge. After that the body may remain or go. Till then the body has to be taken care of.
1 Sri Ramakrishna?
1 Sri Ramakrishna
1 SRI NISARAGADATTA MAHARAJ
1 SRI CHAITANYA MAHAPRABHU
1 Spock
1 Sokal and Bricmont
1 Sogyal Rinpoche
1 Siva Mahimnah-stotra verse 7
1 Simone de Beauvoir
1 Sidney Jourard
1 Sheng yen
1 Shaykh Mehmet Adil al-Haqqani Al-Naqshabandi
1 Shaykh Abdul Qadir Jilani
1 Sharon Salzberg
1 Šhareefa Åbdullah ÄlHashemy
1 Shannon L. Alder
1 Shankaracharya
1 Sergius Bulgakov
1 Sebastian Dabovich
1 Saul Ader
1 SATM?
1 Sanyutta Nikaya
1 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1 Samuel Becket
1 Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyeltsen
1 Saint Vincent Pallotti
1 Saint Therese of Lisieux
1 Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
1 Saint Robert Bellarmine
1 Saint Pope John Paul II
1 Saint Philip Neri
1 Saint Peter Chrysologus
1 Saint John Vianney
1 Saint Ignatius of Loyola
1 Saint Gregory of Nazianzen
1 Saint Francis of Assisi
1 Saint Francis de Sales
1 Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity
1 Saint Dominic Savio
1 Saint Dominic
1 Saint Cyril of Jerusalem
1 Saint Coleridge
1 Saint Catherine of Siena
1 Saint Cajetan
1 Saint Bonaventure
1 Saint Basil
1 - Said Nursi
1 Said Nursi
1 Sai Baba
1 Rurkthist Text
1 Rupert Spria "Being Aware of Being Aware"
1 Rosa Parks
1 Ron Smotherman
1 Robert M. Pirsig
1 Robert Heinlein
1 Robert Greene
1 Robert Burns
1 Robert Browning
1 Rig Veda
1 Richard Stallman
1 Richard P Feynman
1 Revelation 7:2-3
1 Revelation 21:22
1 Rene Guenon
1 Remember two inevitable tendencies in history: one
1 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
1 Red Hawk
1 R. Buckminster Fuller
1 R Buckminster Fuller
1 Ray Brassier
1 Randy M.
1 Ramana
1 Ramakrishss
1 Ramakrisha
1 R. Adams
1 Psalms
1 Porphyry
1 Pope Leo the Great
1 Plutarch
1 Pico de la Mirandola
1 Phoenix Desmond
1 Philip K Dick
1 Philip Greenspun
1 Peter Ouspensky
1 Peter Hodgson
1 Paul of Tursus
1 Patrul Rinpoche
1 Patanjali : Aphroisms.III. 9
1 Pascal
1 Parmenides
1 Paramahansa Yogananda
1 Ovid
1 Osho
1 Orison Swett Marden
1 Origen of Alexandria
1 Origen
1 or
1 Olivier Clément
1 Og Mandino
1 Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche
1 N Postman
1 not because of exploratory or romantic zeal
1 Norman Vincent Peale
1 No matter how many teachings you have heard
1 Nolini Kanta Gupta
1 Nikos Kazantzakis
1 Nikola Tesla
1 Nicolas of Cusa
1 Nicolas Chamfort
1 Nicholas of Cusa
1 Neville Goddard. Mystic.
1 NARADA BHAKTI SUTRAS
1 "Naishkarmya Siddhi" treatise on Advaita Vedanta
1 Mufti Ismail Menk
1 Mother Mirra
1 MOTHER MIRA
1 Ming Dao Deng
1 Michael Talbot
1 Meng-Tse
1 Max Scheler
1 Mawlana Sheikh Mehmet Adil al-Haqqani Al-Naqshabandi
1 Matthew XV. 19
1 Matthew. VI. 24
1 Masaaki Hatsumi
1 Martin Heidegger
1 Mark Twain
1 Mark Manson
1 Marcel Proust
1 Mansoor al- Hallaj
1 Magghima Nikaya
1 Madeline Delbrêl
1 Lyndon B. Johnson
1 Louise Hay
1 Louis Bertrand Geiger
1 Lewis Mumford
1 Lerab Lingpa
1 Leo the Great
1 Leo Buscaglia
1 Leibniz
1 Lee Lozowick
1 Layman Pang
1 Latita Vistara
1 Lakshmana Sarma
1 Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
1 Koran
1 Kodo Sawaki
1 Kilroy J. Oldster "Dead Toad Scrolls
1 Katha Upanishad II.24
1 Katha Upanishad
1 Karl Popper
1 Kamo no Chōmei
1 Kamal Ravikant
1 Julio Cortazar
1 J. R. R. Tolkien
1 J R R Tolkien
1 Joseph Weizenbaum
1 Joseph Goodman
1 Joko Beck
1 John of Salisbury
1 John Myrdhin
1 John Milton
1 John Henry Newman
1 John Dos Passos
1 John Donne
1 John Dee
1 John Cleese
1 Joe DiMaggio
1 J. Krishnamurti
1 Jim Rohn
1 Jiddu Krishnamurti
1 Jeffrey J Kripal
1 Jean Piaget
1 Jean-Paul Sartre
1 Jean Danielou
1 Japanese Proverb
1 Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye
1 James Allen
1 Jack Kornfield
1 It is not sufficient just to remain calm in the event of catastrophe or emergency. When challenged by adversity
1 Israel Regardie
1 Isha Upanishad
1 Isaac Newton
1 Inayat Khan
1 in at about the same time every day
1 Imitation of Christ I. 11.7
1 Imitation of Christ
1 Imam Abu Hanifa
1 IbnArabi
1 Ibn al-Arabi
1 Iamblichus "Book on the Mysteries 1"
1 H. P. Lovecraft
1 HOLY MOTHER SRI SARADA DEVI
1 Hindu Saying
1 Hermes Trismegistus
1 Hermes "On the Rebirth"
1 Henry Ford
1 Henri de Lubac
1 Helen Keller
1 Hazrat Inayat Khan
1 Haruki Murakami
1 Hans Urs von Balthasar
1 Hannah Arendt
1 HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMURAI
1 Hafez
1 Hadith
1 Hadewijch
1 Gujduvani
1 Gregory the Great
1 Goethe
1 Gerald G. May
1 Gerald G. Jampolsky
1 George MacDonald
1 George Gurdjieff -
1 George Grant
1 George Foreman
1 Gary Zukav
1 Gary Gygax
1 Gabriel Marcel
1 Fyodor Dostoevsky
1 From the "Ashtavakra Gita."
1 Frederick Lenz
1 Frederick Dodson
1 François de La Rochefoucauld
1 Francis of Assisi
1 Foshu-hing-tsan-king
1 For surely no man knows his time: Like fish caught in a evil net or birds trapped in a snare
1 For source & explanation see:
1 Evagrius
1 Espen J Aarseth
1 Ernest Holmes
1 Ernest Hemingway
1 Eriugena
1 Eric Micha'el Leventhal
1 Eric Maisel
1 Erich Przywara
1 Epictetus: Manual. 13
1 Empedocles
1 Emmet Fox
1 Emanuel Swedenborg
1 Elon Musk
1 Eliphas Levi
1 Elbert Hubbard
1 Ekai
1 Edward Schon
1 Dudjom Rinpoche
1 D.T. Suzuki
1 Dr. Seuss
1 Dion Fortune
1 Diogenes
1 Digha Nikaya
1 Didache of the Twelve Apostles
1 Diane Lane
1 Descartes
1 Denis Waitley
1 Dee Dee M. Scott
1 Dawna Markova. See: https://bit.ly/3iZwmrI
1 David Viscott
1 David Bohm
1 David A. Bhodan. See:
1 Dante Alighieri
1 Dante
1 Daniel Goleman
1 Dalai Lama XIV
1 Czeslaw Milosz
1 Cyril of Jerusalem
1 Cyril of Alexandria
1 CS Lewis
1 C.S. Lewis
1 Council of Ancyra (AD 314).
1 Corinthians
1 Confucius "Ta-hio" I
1 Cleverness is useless without innocence.
1 C J Lewis
1 Cicero
1 Chuang Tzu.
1 Chogyam Trungpa
1 Chinese Proverb
1 Cheryl Strayed
1 Charles Williams
1 Charles Taylor
1 Charles F Haanel
1 Charles Eisenstein
1 Charles Dickens
1 Charles Bukowski
1 Catherine Pickstock
1 Carlyle
1 Carl Rogers
1 Carlos Colón
1 Carlos Castaneda
1 But because the inheritance which He promises us is such as many may possess
1 But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.
1 Buddhist Scripture
1 Buddhist Maxims
1 Buckminster Fuller
1 Bruce Lee
1 Booker T. Washington
1 Bill Hicks
1 Bhagwad Gita
1 Bhagavad Gita 18.23
1 Bernard Lonergan
1 be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work. And if you build a good name
1 because you have to
1 Baltasar Gracian
1 Bahu-ullah
1 Augustus De Morgan
1 Asanga
1 Aquinas
1 A person feels anguish and emptiness at the death of a spouse or child; if one has that kind of longing for God for twenty-four hours continuously
1 Antoine de Saint Exupery
1 Anon.
1 Annamalai Swami
1 Angattara Nikaya
1 Andrew Davison
1 Anamander
1 Anaïs Nin
1 A Midsummer Night's Dream
1 Allen Klein
1 Al-Jilani
1 Alfred Korzybski
1 Aldous Huxley
1 Alberto Villoldo
1 Alan Watts
1 Alan Moor
1 Ogawa
1 Leonardo da Vinci
1 Kabir
1 Hafiz
1 Dogen Zenji
1 Confucius
1 AD 314)
1 Abraham Maslow
1 Abraham Joshua Heschel
1 4: 7
1 1904-1995)
1
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
61 Rick Riordan
47 Anonymous
44 Horace
19 Victor Hugo
11 Augosto dos Anjos
10 J K Rowling
9 Gayle Forman
9 Emil Aarestrup
9 Doris Kearns Goodwin
7 Stephen King
7 Orson Scott Card
7 Nora Sakavic
7 Laini Taylor
7 Casimiro de Abreu
6 Victoria Aveyard
6 George W Bush
6 George Eliot
6 George Carlin
6 Emile Verhaeren
6 Émile Nelligan
1:Let go, or be dragged. ~ Zen proverb, #KEYS
2:Let go, or be dragged." ~ Zen proverb, #KEYS
3:Called or not, God is always there. ~ Carl Jung, #KEYS
4:Summoned or not, the god will come. ~ Carl Jung, #KEYS
5:Awake, arise, or be forever fallen! ~ John Milton, #KEYS
6:Whether I live or die, I am always ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
7:I will be Chateaubriand or nothing.
~ Vicktor Hugo,#KEYS
8:Before you think good or evil, who are you? ~ Huineng, #KEYS
9:Know or listen to those who know.
~ Baltasar Gracian,#KEYS
10:Either you run the day, or the day runs you." ~ Jim Rohn, #KEYS
11:Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail. ~ John Donne, #KEYS
12:You can never be overdressed or overeducated. ~ Oscar Wilde, #KEYS
13:Reality is not always probable, or likely. ~ Jorge Luis Borge, #KEYS
14:Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
~ Helen Keller,#KEYS
15:The new idea either finds a champion or dies.
~ Edward Schon,#KEYS
16:Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?
~ Albert Camus,#KEYS
17:To leave the figure or disfigure it. ~ A Midsummer Night's Dream, #KEYS
18:Every day passes whether you participate or not." ~ Ming Dao Deng, #KEYS
19:Invoked or not invoked, God will be present. ~ Carl Jung, Epitaph, #KEYS
20:cloudless sky
for a second or two
world peace ~ Carlos Colón,#KEYS
21:Tell the truth, or someone will tell it for you. ~ Stephanie Klein, #KEYS
22:In a 50-50 life or death crisis, choose death. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo, #KEYS
23:Who does not understand should either learn, or be silent ~ John Dee, #KEYS
24:determination or your dedication to the spiritual life. ~ Bhagavad Gita, #KEYS
25:With words, music, dance, and every sign. ~ Czeslaw Milosz, "Either-Or", #KEYS
26:Where there is no longer word or silence Tao is apprehended. ~ Chuang Tzu. , #KEYS
27:Whether you think you can, or you think you can't; you're right. ~ Henry Ford, #KEYS
28:what we have been, or now are, we shall not be tomorrow" ~ Ovid, Metamorphoses, #KEYS
29:You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. ~ C S Lewis, #KEYS
30:Man believes either in a God or in an idol. ~ Max Scheler, On the Eternal in Man, #KEYS
31:Whether planned or not, humor takes our mind off of our troubles." ~ Allen Klein, #KEYS
32:You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." ~ C.S. Lewis, #KEYS
33:Do not laugh much or often or unrestrainedly. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
34:Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. ~ John F. Kennedy, #KEYS
35:We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.
~ Japanese Proverb,#KEYS
36:Do not waste time idling or thinking after you have set your goals ~ Miyamoto Musashi, #KEYS
37:By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. ~ Bill Hicks, #KEYS
38:The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.
~ Albert Camus,#KEYS
39:„Anger is a momentary madness so control your passion or it will control you." ~ Horace, #KEYS
40:Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. ~ Mark Twain, #KEYS
41:Reality has no inside, outside, or middle part. ~ Bodhidharma, #KEYS
42:Still round the corner there may wait, a new road or a secret gate." ~ J. R. R. Tolkien, #KEYS
43:Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. ~ Walt Whitman, #KEYS
44:Reality has no inside, outside, or middle part." ~ Bodhidharma, #KEYS
45:Cynicism, sadness or laughter is the magicians privilege.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
46:Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate. ~ J R R Tolkien, [T5], #KEYS
47:There is no leaving or returning. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
48:There is no road to Heaven but that of Innocence or Penance. ~ Saint Cajetan, (1480-1547), #KEYS
49:The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party. ~ William James, #KEYS
50:God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #KEYS
51:If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two. ~ Marcel Proust, #KEYS
52:It is all mind or maya [illusion]. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
53:The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory but progress.
~ Karl Popper,#KEYS
54:Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose." ~ Lyndon B. Johnson, #KEYS
55:In working for life, a man works for death, or rather, for immortality." ~ George Gurdjieff -, #KEYS
56:A lily or a rose never pretends, and its beauty is that it is what it is." ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #KEYS
57:Tomorrow or your next existence,
Who knows which will come first? ~ Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche,#KEYS
58:I do not allow others to influence my thinking unless it is positive or uplifting." ~ Louise Hay, #KEYS
59:The ultimate truth of who you are is not 'I am this' or 'I am that', but 'I am'. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #KEYS
60:A person always doing his or her best becomes a natural leader - just by example." ~ Joe DiMaggio, #KEYS
61:If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or objects.
~ Albert Einstein,#KEYS
62:I don't hold on to anything, don't reject anything; nowhere an obstacle or conflict." ~ Layman Pang, #KEYS
63:Sit immovably in the place where being superior or inferior to others doesn't matter. ~ Kodo Sawaki, #KEYS
64:Real practice has no purpose or direction, so it can include everything that comes. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #KEYS
65:True ideas do not change or develop, but remain as they are in the timeless 'present'. ~ Rene Guenon, #KEYS
66:A man needs a little madness, or else... he never dares cut the rope and be free. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #KEYS
67:A word or a smile is often enough to put fresh life in a despondent soul." ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, #KEYS
68:There is nothing the devil fears so much, or so much tries to hinder, as prayer." ~ Saint Philip Neri, #KEYS
69:Anyone who seeks truth seeks God, whether or not he realizes it. ~ Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, #KEYS
70:The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained. ~ David Bohm, #KEYS
71:Existence or Consciousness is the only reality. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
72:Whoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
~ Aristotle,#KEYS
73:Your duty is to Be, and not to be this or that. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
74:We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
75:Whether one has wealth or not, no treasure exceeds the one called life. ~ Nichiren, #KEYS
76:Which of the saints was without a cross or trial on this earth? ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
77:[Heraclitus] concluded that coming-to-be itself could not be anything evil or unjust. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #KEYS
78:Most sensitiveness is the result or sign of ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, (CWSA 31:211), #KEYS
79:Whatever a man does, good or evil, comes back to him someday. And he pays for everything. ~ Valmiki Jayanti, #KEYS
80:Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism. ~ Carl Jung, #KEYS
81:The oneness of all wisdom may be found, or not, under the name of God. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
82:Whether we like it or not, change comes, and the greater the resistance, the greater the pain." ~ Alan Watts, #KEYS
83:You are not human. You are far more than that. You are more than God or Consciousness itself. ~ Robert Adams, #KEYS
84:For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Matthew, 18:20, #KEYS
85:I know from experience that you should never give up on yourself or others, no matter what." ~ George Foreman, #KEYS
86:Prayers should be full of confidence without sorrow or lamenting. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
87:All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #KEYS
88:Anything done against faith or conscience is sinful. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
89:Maintain equanimity whether in happiness or suffering. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
90:Disgust appears to be triggered by objects or people who possess attributes that signify disease.
~ Wikipedia,#KEYS
91:Do not forget the covenant. Struggle with your lower self. Either you ride it, or it will ride you. ~ Al-Jilani, #KEYS
92:or out of the heart proceed evil thoughts. ~ Matthew XV. 19, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
93:There are two ways: ask yourself 'Who am I?' or submit. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
94:He who goes about to reform the world must begin with himself, or he loses his labor. ~ Saint Ignatius of Loyola, #KEYS
95:No one who does good work will ever come to a bad end, either here or in the world to come
~ The Bhagavad Gita,#KEYS
96:There is no right or wrong behavior. The only meaningful choice is between fear and love." ~ Gerald G. Jampolsky, #KEYS
97:Don't think that some tomorrow you'll see God's Light. You see it now or err in darkest night. ~ Angelus Silesius, #KEYS
98:For anyone, man or woman, who has faith in me, I have never departed. I sleep on their threshold. ~ Guru Rinpoche, #KEYS
99:You should realize that everything you see is like a dream or illusion.
~ Bodhidharma,#KEYS
100:Call it by any name, God, Self, the Heart, or the Seat of Consciousness, it is all the same. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
101:Let Mother's will be done. Never mind sunshine or rain, we must not forget Mother at any time. ~ Swami Turiyananda, #KEYS
102:I have laboured carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate human actions, but to understand them. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #KEYS
103:I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world. ~ Charles Dickens, #KEYS
104:The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #KEYS
105:Be a true representative of the goodness in your heart, and don't expect it to be easy or even noticed. ~ Adyashanti, #KEYS
106:It is not fitting, when one is in God's service, to have a gloomy face or a chilling look. ~ Saint Francis of Assisi, #KEYS
107:Empty your mind. Now, without thinking of good or bad, what was your original face before your parents met? ~ Huineng, #KEYS
108:I look upon Christ as an incarnation of God like our Rama or Krishna. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
109:It is the duty of the priest or the cleric to be of use if possible to all and to be harmful to none. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
110:Mukti or Liberation is our Nature. It is another name for us. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
111:So... all of time and space, everything that ever happened or ever will ~ where do you want to start? ~ Steven Moffat, #KEYS
112:There are no stages in Realization, or degrees of Liberation. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
113:Restore your attention or bring it to a new level by dramatically slowing down whatever you're doing. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #KEYS
114:When weak or injured always continue training as you should always be able to adapt in any condition. ~ Masaaki Hatsumi, #KEYS
115:A mind full of preconceived ideas, subjective intentions, or habits is not open to things as they are." ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #KEYS
116:Do you pay regular visits to yourself? Don't argue or answer rationally. Let us die, and dying, reply. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
117:Faith can achieve miracles, while vanity or egotism is the death of man. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
118:Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #KEYS
119:Often the idea creates the need. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Oligarchy or Democracy?, #KEYS
120:When you see yourself as a witness, separate from ego, then no person or situation can shake you." ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #KEYS
121:You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics. ~ Charles Bukowski, #KEYS
122:One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.
~ Leonardo da Vinci,#KEYS
123:Simply meditating or repeating God's names, without any effort at rooting out the desires, will not do. ~ SWAMI PREMANANDA, #KEYS
124:The "I" or "Mine" of the individual comes of Ajnana -- ignorance of truth. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
125:Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place. ~ Tecumseh, #KEYS
126:Pure Consciousness, the Self or the heart is the final Realization. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
127:Spiritually there is nothing big or small. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Work and Yoga, #KEYS
128:Stand for something or you will fall for anything. Today's mighty oak is yesterday's nut that held its ground. ~ Rosa Parks, #KEYS
129:Discover your difference-the asynchrony with which you have been blessed or cursed-and make the most of it. ~ Howard Gardner, #KEYS
130:This dark autumn old age settles down on me like heavy clouds or birds. ~ Matsuo Basho, 1644-1694, #KEYS
131:Do not read to satisfy curiosity or to pass the time, but study such things as move your heart to devotion. ~ Thomas a Kempis, #KEYS
132:The gnosis does not seek, it possesses. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
133:You can either be the victim of your circumstances or be victorious over your circumstances. The choice is yours." ~ Randy M., #KEYS
134:Never let life's hardships disturb you. No one can avoid problems, not even saints or sages. ~ Nichiren, #KEYS
135:All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.
~ Baruch Spinoza,#KEYS
136:In all our actions, God considers the intention: whether we act for Him or for some other motive. ~ Saint Maximus the Confessor, #KEYS
137:Soar ever higher, ever farther, without fear or hesitation! The hopes of today are the realizations of tomorrow. ~ Mother Mirra, #KEYS
138:To remain as you are, without question or doubt, is your natural State. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
139:Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie.
~ Miyamoto Musashi, [T5],#KEYS
140:You are rewarded not according to your work or your time but according to the measure of your love." ~ Saint Catherine of Siena, #KEYS
141:The pure intellect cannot create poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?, #KEYS
142:Whenever anything disagreeable or displeasing happens to you, remember Christ crucified and be silent. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #KEYS
143:Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Psalms, 88:12, #KEYS
144:One cannot demand or compel grace. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Bhakti Yoga and Vaishnavism, #KEYS
145:There is only one state, that of consciousness or awareness or existence. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
146:Thinking that happiness comes from some object or other, you go after it. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
147:To every declarative sentence you hear, read, think or utter, add "or not' to it and you'll never encounter a falsehood." ~ Anon., #KEYS
148:You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.
~ Haruki Murakami,#KEYS
149:God or Guru never forsakes the devotee who has surrendered him [her] self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
150:Mind is born from that which is beyond mind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
151:O God! Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
~ Edgar Allan Poe,#KEYS
152:So long as you say "I know" or "I do not know" you look upon yourself as a person. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
153:There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it. ~ Shannon L. Alder #KEYS
154:I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being.
~ Hafiz,#KEYS
155:Poetry like everything else in man evolves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?, #KEYS
156:The knowers of God sometimes live and appear like lunatics, drunkards, or children. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
157:A Sadhu or a God should never be visited empty-handed, however trifling the present. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
158:God or the Good, what is it but the existence of that which yet is not? ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
159:God seems willing to act as the most sublime psychologist, psychotherapist, or even psychiatrist if we are willing. ~ Thomas Keating, #KEYS
160:They say, "God told me", or "God replied to me". And yet most of the time they are talking to themselves." ~ Saint John of the Cross, #KEYS
161:You can follow the meanderings of innumerable reincarnations or choose the steep and rapid path of intensive "sadhana". ~ The Mother, #KEYS
162:You will advance in whatever way you may meditate upon God or recite His holy names. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
163:A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Proverbs, 22:1, #KEYS
164:Bhakti, Jnana, Yoga are names for Self Realization or mukti which is our real nature. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Day by day with Bhagavan, #KEYS
165:Do not damage the land or the sea or the trees until we put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God." ~ Revelation 7:2-3, #KEYS
166:Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different. Or a little bit different ~ which is to say, completely different., #KEYS
167:There is a potential function in man which is ordinarily inactive for lack of nervous energy or sufficient intensity. ~ Rodney Collin, #KEYS
168:The saints were so completely dead to themselves they cared very little whether others agreed with then or not!" ~ Saint John Vianney, #KEYS
169:I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's, I will not reason and compare, my business is to create. ~ William Blake, [T5], #KEYS
170:I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi,#KEYS
171:Or do ye think that ye shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed away before you? ~ Koran, 2:214, #KEYS
172:Whether one has surrendered or not, one has never been separate from the Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
173:It is not sufficient just to remain calm in the event of catastrophe or emergency. When challenged by adversity, charge onwards with co, #KEYS
174:Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours." ~ Orison Swett Marden, #KEYS
175:The mantra-siddha is one who attains perfection by means of some sacred text or mantra. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
176:Through the practice of meditation or invocation, the mind becomes one-pointed. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
177:We are always living in the final days. What have you got? A hundred years or much, much less until the end of your world. ~ Neil Gaiman, #KEYS
178:A heretic is one who devises or follows false or new opinions ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.11.1sc)., #KEYS
179:Let Him choose for thee a king's palace or the bowl of the beggar.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,#KEYS
180:All life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Life and Yoga, #KEYS
181:As a bee gathering nectar does not harm or disturb the color and fragrance of the flower; so do the wise move through the world." ~ Buddha, #KEYS
182:Await with calm the moment of extinction or perhaps of displacement. ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
183:Live within, in the depth of your heart, and nobody or nothing will have the power to disturb you.
~ The Mother,#KEYS
184:Study cannot take the same or a greater importance than sadhana.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, [T2],#KEYS
185:The Avatara or Savior is the messenger of God. He is like the viceroy of a mighty monarch. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
186:The realization of God is not the same as the acquirement of the Siddis or psychic powers. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
187:To give a person an opinion one must first judge well whether that person is of the disposition to receive it or not. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo, #KEYS
188:You need seek God neither below or above.He is no farther away than the door of the heart. ~ Meister Eckhart, #KEYS
189:There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them." ~ Denis Waitley, #KEYS
190:two or three
red leaves
autumn frost
~ Ogawa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
191:Whether the mind becomes steady or not, practice Japa. It will be nice if you can perform a certain number of Japa daily. ~ Sri Sarada Devi, #KEYS
192:The Yogi knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces.~ The Mother, #KEYS
193:At play with him as with her child or slave, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
194:Realization is eternal. There is no question of instantaneous or gradual realization. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
195:Realizing one's true nature requires no phenomenal efforts. Enlightenment cannot be attained or forced; it can only happen. ~ Ramesh Balsekar, #KEYS
196:Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with A Thousand Faces, #KEYS
197:Ignorance is the night of the spirit, but a night without stars or moon. ~ Chinese Proverb, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
198:Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #KEYS
199:Bhakti Yoga and not Jnana Yoga or Karma Yoga is the Yuga-Dharma, the adequate path of this age. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
200:Every human act, whether it is an active knowledge or an act of the will, rests secretly upon God…. ~ Henri de Lubac, The Discovery of God (40), #KEYS
201:I have no news of coming or passing away: it happened much faster than one breath." ~ Attar of Nishapur, (1145 - 1221) Persian poet, Wikipedia., #KEYS
202:In the realized man [woman], the mind may be active or inactive; the Self alone exists. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
203:It takes a great talent and skill to conceal one's talent and skill. ~ François de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Mixims, #KEYS
204:Many often err and accomplish little or nothing because they try to become learned rather than to live well. ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, [T5], #KEYS
205:You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear. ~ Oscar Wilde, #KEYS
206:Listen not if anyone criticizes or censures your Guru. Leave the presence of such a one at once. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
207:Pure Consciousness, which is the Heart, includes all, and nothing is outside or apart from it. That is the ultimate Truth. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
208:Sadhana can go on in the dream or sleep state as well as in the waking. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Sleep, #KEYS
209:The final demand of the Bhakta is simply that his bhakti may never cease or diminish. ~ Sri Aurobindo, cwsa, 24, 569, #KEYS
210:The law of the body arises from the subconscient or inconscient. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #KEYS
211:The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #KEYS
212:Without indomitable Faith or inspired Wisdom no great cause can conquer. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, In Either Case, #KEYS
213:Existence, or better, existentiality... is participation insofar as participation cannot be objectified. ~ Gabriel Marcel, Creative Fidelity p 18, #KEYS
214:In the Bhagavata it is said that the Incarnations of Vishnu or the Supreme Being are innumerable. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
215:It is futile to seek human reason, purpose or meaning in the events of life, which are in fact impersonal and not human at all. ~ Ramesh Balsekar, #KEYS
216:Knowledge is to see everything as a form of truth or as Brahman, the One and Indivisible. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
217:All the time - when you drop off to sleep or wake up, when you eat or drink, or talk with someone - keep your heart at work secretly. ~ Philokalia, #KEYS
218:Do not blame nature, God, or others. Ninety-nine percent of your problems are self-created. You know it, though you do not accept it. ~ SWAMI RAMA, #KEYS
219:Existence or consciousness is the only reality. Consciousness plus waking, we call waking. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
220:In the Bhagavata, it is said that the Incarnations of Vishnu or the Supreme Being are innumerable. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
221:Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS
222:We really are one with Master or Bhagavan. The Master is God; one discovers it in the end. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
223:Bhakti Yoga reduces karma or work to a minimum. It teaches the necessity of prayer without ceasing. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
224:or it is not at all. Faith is as real as life; as actual as force ; as effectual as volition. It is the physics of the moral being. ~ S T Coleridge, #KEYS
225:The mind forms or accepts the theories that support the turn of the being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Faith, #KEYS
226:There is no before or after: what will come tomorrow, is in fact in eternity ~ Angelus Silesius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
227:When an institution, organization, or nation loses its capacity to inspire high individual performance, its great days are over.
~ Howard Gardner,#KEYS
228:All objects whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, are mere appearances to the mind just like things experienced in a dream ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, #KEYS
229:Call it by any name, God, Self, the Heart, or the Seat of Consciousness, it is all the same. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
230:If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do... How would I be? What would I do? ~ Buckminster Fuller, #KEYS
231:Our chains are either a play or an illusion or both play & illusion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
232:The intellect or mind of man is, as it were, a light lit up by the light of the Divine Word. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III q5 a4 ad 2, #KEYS
233:And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, because the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its lamp.…" ~ Revelation 21:22, #KEYS
234:Never get excited, nervous or agitated. Remain perfectly calm in the face of all circumstances.
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
235:One should not think too much of food either to indulge or unduly to repress. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Food, #KEYS
236:Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book. No book is worth reading that isn't worth re-reading.
~ Susan Sontag,#KEYS
237:The imagination is like a knife which may be used for good or evil purposes.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
238:There is a higher ideal, a higher stage of spirituality, the love of God as our own father or mother. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
239:The supreme Brahman without beginning cannot be called either Being or Non-being. ~ Bhagavad Gita, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
240:To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.
~ Aleister Crowley,#KEYS
241:Whatever being shows wide powers, or majesty or vigour, be sure that in every case that is sprung from a fraction of my glory. ~ Bhagavad Gita, 10, 41 #KEYS
242:All choices can be broken down to two choices: The choice for fear or the choice for love." ~ Frederick Dodson, "Parallel Universes of Self,", (2006)., #KEYS
243:Give up the sense of doership. Karma will go on automatically or Karma will drop away from you ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
244:Only one or two look for its owner. People enjoy the beauty of the world; they do not seek it's owner. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
245:The difficulties you cannot overcome today will be overcome tomorrow or later on.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T5],#KEYS
246:There is nothing like 'within' or 'without.' Both mean either the same thing or nothing. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, [T5], #KEYS
247:All end and beginning presuppose something beyond the end or beginning. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Pure Existent, #KEYS
248:As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.
~ Diogenes,#KEYS
249:If surrender is complete, all sense of self is lost, and then there can be no misery or sorrow. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
250:The conception that there is a goal and a path to it is wrong. We are the goal or peace always. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
251:The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one... I have been... and always shall be... your friend. Live long... and prosper. ~ Spock, #KEYS
252:There may be happiness or misery. Be equally indifferent to both and abide in the faith of God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
253:The undifferentiated consciousness of Pure Being is the heart or hridayam which you really are. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
254:Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions--not outside.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Book 9 Verse 13,#KEYS
255:When something bad happens you have three choices. You can either let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you." ~ Dr. Seuss, #KEYS
256:Whether you continue in the household or renounce it and go to the forest your mind haunts you. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
257:According to the status of the soul is the status of the Prakriti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
258:A writer, or any artist, can't expect to be embraced by the people [but] you just keep doing your work ~ because you have to, because it's your calling., #KEYS
259:He who looks on the forms of existence as a form or a mirage, shall not see death. ~ Sanyutta Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
260:The Mother is our guide and whatever happens or will happen is under Her ordination. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VI. 417), #KEYS
261:Your friends either go through this inner transformation with you or drift out of your life. Some relationships dissolve, others deepen. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #KEYS
262:According to some estimates, almost half the scientists and high technologists on Earth are employed full- or part-time on military matters. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
263:After visiting a holy spot or place, you must take hold of the holy thoughts that rise in the mind there. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
264:Everything that befalls us, even illness and death, should seem as familiar to you as the sight of roses in spring or fruits in autumn. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #KEYS
265:Nature must flower into art
And science, or else wherefore are we men? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
266:The mind is removed from God and becomes unbalanced when the pressure of wealth or sex is placed upon it. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
267:Even if the egotism of the servant or the worshiper should remain, one who has attained God can hurt none. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
268:None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #KEYS
269:Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen. ~ Bodhidharma, #KEYS
270:Pure creation issues from my form of absolute knowledge, which resembles a cloudless sky or a still ocean. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
271:The only calibration that count is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated." ~ Ted Hughes, #KEYS
272:The things I carry are my thoughts. That's it. They are the only weight. My thoughts determine whether I am free and light, or burdened." ~ Kamal Ravikant, #KEYS
273:Those who come with the Avatars are either souls who are eternally free or who are born for the last time. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
274:When we have the eyes to see, the ears to hear, or an open heart to witness, Great Beauty will reveal itself in all living and created things ~ Ken Wilber, #KEYS
275:Knowingly or unknowingly, in whatever state we utter God's name, we acquire the merit of such an utterance. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
276:Love, joy and happiness come from the psychic. The Self gives peace or a universal Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, #KEYS
277:...One must not go into the vital world without a special purpose or command and a special protection.
~ The Mother, White Roses,#KEYS
278:Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
279:The reason deals with the finite and is helpless before the infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
280:After the attainment of samadhi, some retain the ego as the ego of the servant, or the ego of the worshiper. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
281:All knowledge comes from the stars. Men do not invent or create ideas; the ideas exist and men are able to grasp them. ~ Paracelsus, #KEYS
282:Consciously or unconsciously, in whatever way, one falls into the trough of nectar and one becomes immortal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
283:Do not listen if one criticises or blames thy Master, leave his presence that very moment. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
284:May the life I live speak for me, not my religion or denomination title." ~ Dee Dee M. Scott, (c. 1978), author, playwright, film producer and entrepreneur., #KEYS
285:The state we call Realization is simply being one's self, not knowing anything or becoming anything. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
286:To be FALSE, to say of what is not, that it is, or of what is, that it is not ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (In I PH lect. 11)., #KEYS
287:To these four can be reduced whatever is scientifically inquirable or knowable ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (In 2 PA lect. 1)., #KEYS
288:Each of us must examine his THOUGHTS, WORDS, and DEEDS, to see whether they are directed towards Christ or are turned away from him. ~ Saint Gregory of Nyssa, #KEYS
289:If you are not prepared to resign or be fired for what you believe in, then you are not a worker, let alone a professional. You are a slave. ~ Howard Gardner, #KEYS
290:Lust is the perversion or degradation which prevents love from establishing its reign. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Sex, #KEYS
291:Soul, mind or ego are mere words. There are no entities of the kind. Consciousness is the only truth. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
292:The mind can hardly conceive unity except as an abstraction, a sum or a void. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Worlds - Surya, #KEYS
293:those who rely on the Divine will arrive in spite of all difficulties, stumbles or falls.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
294:You may talk of the vision of God or of meditation, but remember, the mind is everything. One gets everything when the mind becomes steady. ~ Sri Sarada Devi, #KEYS
295:All that we internally are is not ego, but consciousness, soul or spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, #KEYS
296:A sincere heart is worth all the extraordinary powers in the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Powers or Siddhis, #KEYS
297:Your duty as a married man is to live with your wife as brother and sister after one or two children are born. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
298:A dry and strong or even austere logic is not a key to Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Poetry and Art, Russell, Eddington, Jeans, #KEYS
299:Every lover of God should regard women, whether chaste or otherwise, as the manifestation of the Divine Mother. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
300:I pick my favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence. ~ Robert Burns, #KEYS
301:Mind cannot possess the infinite, it can only suffer it or be possessed by it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Mind and Supermind, #KEYS
302:Moral evil is in reality a form of mental disease or ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Delight of Existence, The Problem, #KEYS
303:A mistake or SIN ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (peccatum) is contrary to virtue insofar as a virtue is productive of what is good; , #KEYS
304:Behind all seen things lies something vaster; everything is but a path, a portal or a window opening on something other than iteself. ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery, #KEYS
305:five or six
drinking tea
around a fireplace
~ Matsuo Basho, @BashoSociety#KEYS
306:Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything. ~ Nicolas Chamfort, #KEYS
307:Not seeking what is other than the Self is detachment or desirelessness; not leaving the Self is wisdom. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
308:The doubt arises in you. Know who the doubter is, and then you may consider if the world is real or not. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
309:The purpose of one's birth will be fulfilled whether you will it or not. Let the purpose fulfill itself. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
310:There is no such thing as a bad mind. There is only a mind that is untrained, or trained. Every being has the same potential, including you. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche, #KEYS
311:The undifferentiated consciousness of pure being is the Heart or hridayam, which is what you really are. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
312:We are the goal or peace always. To get rid of the notion that we are not peace is all that is required. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
313:Acceptance is observation of life and suspension of judgment about whether what is happening is good or bad, right or wrong." ~ Ron Smotherman, M.D., author, see, #KEYS
314:Knowest thou not that thy life, whether long or brief, consists only of a few breathings? ~ Attar of Nishapur, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
315:There is no quality higher than forbearance. With a firm determination, endure all that is said or done by others ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
316:There is nothing in the world that man's intelligence cannot attain, annihilate or accomplish. ~ Hindu Saying, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
317:The Will is mightier than any law, fate or force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Ishavasyopanishad with a Commentary in English, #KEYS
318:Yoga means 'yoke', 'to join', that is, to join the soul of man with the supreme Soul or God. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VIII. 36), #KEYS
319:Your duty as a married man is to live with your wife as brother and sister after one or two children born to you. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
320:All experience lies within us as passive or potential memory. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, A System of National Education, #KEYS
321:All world is expression or manifestation, creation by the Word. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, Brihaspati, Power of the Soul, #KEYS
322:Attachment is bondage; yet again, attachment opens the door to liberation to one who becomes attached to God or the Guru or to illumined souls. ~ SWAMI PREMANANDA, #KEYS
323:He who regards the body as a milage or as a flake of foam on the waves, shall no longer see death ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
324:In existence there is no similarity or dissimilarity, for there is but One Reality, and a thing is not the opposite of itself. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
325:In its essentiality all is divine even if the form baffles or repels us. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine and the Undivine, #KEYS
326:One who is always stationed in the Atman will not be disturbed, even in the midst of a crowd. Such a one has no need or desire for solitude. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
327:You shall not withdraw your hand from your son, or from your daughter, but from their infancy you shall teach them the fear of the Lord. ~ The Epistle of Barnabas, #KEYS
328:All force is power or means of a secret spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - V, #KEYS
329:Always be calm, go on working without any fatigue. This is the test; whether the mind is working properly or not, can be understood from this. ~ Swami Akhandananda, #KEYS
330:One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life and dedicate ourselves to that. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
331:Where you stand, where you are, that's what your life is right there, regardless of how painful it is, or how enjoyable it is. That's what it is." ~ Taizan Maezumi, #KEYS
332:All the time—when you drop off to sleep or wake up, when you eat or drink, or talk with someone—keep your heart at work secretly. ~ Philokalia, Theophan the Recluse, #KEYS
333:However evil-minded other people may appear to you, it is not proper to hate or depise them. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Words of Grace, #KEYS
334:It is forces that effect great political changes, not moral sentiments or vague generosities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Elections, #KEYS
335:Love does not grow on trees or brought in the market, but if one wants to be "loved" one must first know how to give unconditional love. ~ Kabir, #KEYS
336:No one understands the passion of Christ so thoroughly or heartily as the man whose lot it is to suffer the like himself. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
337:Nothing seems tiresome or painful when you are working for a Master who pays well, who rewards even a cup of cold water given for love of him. ~ Saint Dominic Savio, #KEYS
338:Poetry is a highly charged power of aesthetic expression of the soul of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?, #KEYS
339:Poetry too is an interpreter of truth, but in the forms of an innate beauty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?, #KEYS
340:The unity or community of human nature, however, is not a thing, but only a consideration ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.39.4ad3)., #KEYS
341:To dye oneself with paints in order to have a rosier or a paler complexion is a lying counterfeit. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
342:You can be here or there or anywhere. Fixed in silence, established in the inner 'I', you can be as you are. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
343:alone
drinking wine
without flowers or the moon
~ Matsuo Basho, @BashoSociety#KEYS
344:Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, "Is India Civilised?" - I, #KEYS
345:Every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of a universal Power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Master of the Work, #KEYS
346:In all pursuits, intellectual or active, your one motto should be, Remember and Offer.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, [T5],#KEYS
347:It is the spirit within and not the mind without that is the fount of poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?, #KEYS
348:No matter how many teachings you have heard, to be motivated by ordinary concerns-such as a desire for greatness, fame or whatever-is not the way of the true Dharma., #KEYS
349:Remember that it is not feeling of guilt that constitutes sin but the consent to sin. Only the free will is capable of good or evil. ~ Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, #KEYS
350:Renunciation is always in the mind, not in going to the forest or solitary places, or giving up one's duties. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
351:What way is there except to draw in the mind as often as it strays or goes outward and to fix it in the Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
352:Whether you can meditate properly or not, never give up the practice. Japa leads one to a state of meditation and meditation results in samadhi. ~ Swami Vijnanananda, #KEYS
353:A man who governs his passions is master of the world. We must either command them, or be enslaved by them. It is better to be a hammer than an anvil. ~ Saint Dominic, #KEYS
354:Dont fight , or else.. There is no way for you to reach your purpose of existence ~ Šhareefa Åbdullah ÄlHashemy, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
355:I walk everyday
five or six miles
in search of you
~ Matsuo Basho, @BashoSociety#KEYS
356:Some are already awake.They have certain marks. They do not care to hear or speak of anything but what relates to God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
357:There never was a struggle or a battle that required greater valor than that in which a man forgets or denies himself. ~ Meister Eckhart, #KEYS
358:According to Aldous Huxley, some of the books on his shelves glowed with a special energy or living power. They were alive, and they were beautiful. ~ Jeffrey J Kripal, #KEYS
359:As water does not enter into a stone, so religious advice produces no impression on the imprisoned soul or Baddha Jiva. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
360:Face the war and be a warrior like a lion or you'll end up like a pet tucked away in a stable- ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
361:If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Brahma, #KEYS
362:Meditate on the Eternal either in an unknown nook or in the solitude of the forests or in the solitude of thy own mind. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
363:No man is simply good or simply bad; every man is a mixture of contraries. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #KEYS
364:That which others hear or read of, I felt and practised myself; they get their knowledge by books, I mine by melancholizing. ~ Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, #KEYS
365:The Great spiritual geniuses, whether it was Moses, Buddha, Plato, Socrates, Jesus, or Emerson... have taught man to look within himself to find God.
~ Ernest Holmes,#KEYS
366:The true knowledge is truth of existence, satyam, not mere truth of form or appearance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Worlds - Surya, #KEYS
367:The 'work,' whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have created it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, #KEYS
368:To the natural unredeemed economic man beauty is a thing otiose or a nuisance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Civilisation and Barbarism, #KEYS
369:265. Care not for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
370:Democracy is impossible without a demos, a people politically awake and active. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Oligarchy or Democracy?, #KEYS
371:God alone could produce either a man from the slime of the earth, or a woman from the rib of man ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.92.4)., #KEYS
372:If one loves a human being one has to endure grief and sorrow. If one can love God, one is indeed blessed, one has no more grief or sorrow. ~ HOLY MOTHER SRI SARADA DEVI #KEYS
373:It doesnt matter if the water is cold or warm if youre going to have to wade through it anyway.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,#KEYS
374:Only through sadhana can we avoid being enslaved by circumstances. We should free ourselves and worship God, without any desires or expectations. ~ MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI, #KEYS
375:We are so engrossed with the objects or appearances revealed by the light that we pay no attention to the light. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
376:When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
377:Yon mountain-peak or some base valley clod,
'Tis one to the heaven-sailing star above ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
378:At the top of the head or above it is the right place for yogic concentration in reading or thinking.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
379:It is in the silence of the mind that it is easiest for knowledge to come from within or above, or from higher consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
380:Man as a whole is always a complex being, even man savage or degenerate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Infrarational Age of the Cycle, #KEYS
381:Such is Savitri' s mission. This mission has two sessions or periods. The first, that of preparation; the second, that of fulfilment. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, On Savitri, 6, #KEYS
382:The soul can grow against or even by a material destiny that is adverse. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Fate, Free Will and Prediction, #KEYS
383:The vulgar say : "This is one of ours or a stranger." The noble regard the whole earth as their family. ~ Bhartrihari, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
384:You can entertain thoughts or relinquish them.
The former is bondage and the latter is release. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 524,#KEYS
385:But within there is a soul and above there is Grace. 'This is all you know or need to know'
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Poetry And Art, [T5],#KEYS
386:In the conviction that I am God's servant or I am His worshiper, there is no harm. On the other hand, it brings us to God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
387:I think the secret to happiness is having a Teflon soul. Whatever comes your way you either let it slide or you cook with it." ~ Diane Lane, (b.1965), an American actress, #KEYS
388:Three fundamental aspects of the Divine - the Individual or Immanent, the Cosmic and the Transcendent
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
389:All is Narayana, man or animal, the wise and the wicked, the whole world is Narayana, the Supreme Spirit. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
390:It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness,#KEYS
391:Let the world bother about its reality or falsehood. Find out about your own reality. Then all things become clear. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
392:Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own
~ Anonymous, The Bible, 1 Corinthians, 6:19 ESV,#KEYS
393:There can be no guilt except in that which the soul wills, or, not having willed it, approves it and does not make an effort to remove it. ~ Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, #KEYS
394:The words is and is not, which imply the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, must exist, explicitly or implicitly, in every assertion. (354) ~ Augustus De Morgan, [T5], #KEYS
395:Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
396:Liberty, Mukti, is all my religion, and everything that tries to curb it, I will avoid by fight or flight. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. V. 72), #KEYS
397:Mankind will never see an end of trouble until lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power become lovers of wisdom.
~ Plato,#KEYS
398:Repentance even helps provided it does not bring discouragement or depression. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Depression and Despondency, #KEYS
399:The psychic sorrow which does not disturb or depress but rather liberates the vital. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Jainism and Buddhism, #KEYS
400:There is nothing which is exclusively spirit or exclusively matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, #KEYS
401:Thought is only a scout and pioneer; it can guide but not command or effectuate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, #KEYS
402:Alike 'tis heaven,
Rule or obedience to the one heart given. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Khaled of the Sea,#KEYS
403:All human imaginations indeed correspond to some reality or real possibility. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Planes of Our Existence, #KEYS
404:How can I know anything about the past or the future, when the light of the Beloved shines only Now? ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
405:I am timeless being. I am free of desire or fear, because I do not remember the past or imagine the future. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
406:In the subconscient knowledge or consciousness is involved in action, for action is the essence of Life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.08-9, #KEYS
407:Nothing is mine, whatever I see, feel, or hear, even this body itself is not mine. I am always eternal, free and all-knowing. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
408:To the material man the living progressive thinker is an ideologue, dreamer or madman. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Threefold Life, #KEYS
409:What I really wanted was to fall in love with God. It's amazing what obstacles there are within us, or at least in me, that seem to slow this process. ~ Thomas Keating, [T5], #KEYS
410:Believe in your self! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble, but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy." ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #KEYS
411:Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky." ~ Tagore, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
412:God exists in Himself and not by virtue of the cosmos or of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature, #KEYS
413:I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way. ~ Pablo Neruda, #KEYS
414:Mental man has not been Nature's last effort or highest reach. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolutionary Process - Ascent and Integration, #KEYS
415:Oh lord, I do not want riches, fame, health, happiness or anything else. Grant that I may have pure Bhakti for thy lotus feet! ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
416:Prakriti does not act for itself or by its own motion, but with the Self as lord. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from the Ego, #KEYS
417:There must be either an emptiness of the gunas or a superiority to the gunas. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Liberation of the Nature, #KEYS
418:After realization, should one dance with joy or take up his former work? Go on with your work, leaving the issue with the Lord. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
419:A perfected human world cannot be created by men or composed of men who are themselves imperfect. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
420:He whose thought is always fixed on the Eternal has no need of any devotional practice or spiritual exercise. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
421:It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.
~ Buddha,#KEYS
422:Nothing in God's workings in this world is done by an abrupt action without procedure or basis. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Deva and Asura, #KEYS
423:Nothing we think or do is void or vain;
Each is an energy loosed and holds its course. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Quest,#KEYS
424:or the Christian faith is resisted after it has been accepted ... and such is the unbelief of heretics ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.10.5), #KEYS
425:The form is the manifestation or appearance, the idea is the truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Stress of the Hidden Spirit, #KEYS
426:The reason of man struggling with life becomes either an empiric or a doctrinaire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Reason as Governor of Life, #KEYS
427:When the 'I' is kept up as the 'I' only, it is the Self. When it flies off at a tangent and says, 'I am this or that. I am such and such', it is the ego. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
428:When the supreme being is inactive, he is styled as God the absolute. When creating, he is styled as Sakti or the personal God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
429:At the site of Narendra, I am drunken with joy. Never have I asked him, "Who is your father?" or "How many houses have you got?" ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
430:Instead of looking for reasons to be offended or hurt, always be looking for ways to love and be loved. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
431:Man ordinarily offers his sacrifice openly or under a disguise to his own ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Fullness of Spiritual Action, #KEYS
432:The self or spirit has the joy of its own existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Vedanta and Other Paths of Self-Realisation, #KEYS
433:A nation, race or people which loses its language cannot live its whole life or its real life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Diversity in Oneness, #KEYS
434:It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
435:@judysix ~ When you see the storm coming, if you seek safety in that firm refuge which is Mary, there will be no danger of your wavering or going down. ~ Saint Josemaria Escriva, #KEYS
436:Men and women live in the world without yet having any idea either of the visible world or the invisible. ~ Attar of Nishapur, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
437:The individual as spirit or being is not confined within his humanity; he has been less than human. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
438:The widest spirituality does not exclude or discourage any essential human activity or faculty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Reason and Religion, #KEYS
439:Union does not mean that a creature is absorbed or swallowed up: God is the ultimate *destiny* of creatures, not their *destruction*. ~ Andrew Davison, Participation in God 116 , #KEYS
440:Evil forces can always attack in moments of unconsciousness or half-consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Dealing with Hostile Attacks, #KEYS
441:I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before, Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep. ~ Walt Whitman, #KEYS
442:Have You Forgotten Me:::
have you forgotten me
or lost the path here?
i wait for you
all day, every day
but you do not appear.
~ Taigu Ryokan,#KEYS
443:Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner.
~ Baruch Spinoza,#KEYS
444:It is immaterial whether one believes or not that Radha and Krishna were incarnations of God. But let all have a yearning for God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
445:Karma, or destiny, is an expression of a beneficial law: the universal trend towards balance, harmony and unity. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
446:Listen and learn how you are to awaken Christ. Your soul says: I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem, awaken or reawaken the love of my heart. Christ is that love. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
447:Our humanity is not the whole of the Reality or its best possible self-formation or self-expression. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
448:Pure Consciousness, which is the Heart, includes all, and nothing is outside or apart from it. That is the ultimate Truth. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
449:The Divine is a Being and not an abstract existence or a status of pure timeless infinity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Mystery of Love, #KEYS
450:The need for calling help diminishes as one gets higher and higher or rather fuller and fuller, being replaced more and more by the automatic action of the Force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
451:The Truth-Consciousness that can only manifest when ego and desire are overcome. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III: The Universal or Cosmic Forces #KEYS
452:With weakness and selfishness, however spiritual in their guise or trend, he can have no dealing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
453:A real prayer will never contain any suggestions, instructions or demands. In real prayer you bow down, surrender and declare your helplessness to the Lord. ~ MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI, #KEYS
454:Either let us fear the wrath which is to come or else let us love the grace we have—one or the other, so long as we are found in Jesus Christ unto true life. ~ Ignatius of Antioch, #KEYS
455:God indeed is in all things; only his power is more or less manifest in them. God incarnate is divinity most manifest in the flesh. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
456:God is one, but many are God's aspects. Just as the master of the house appears as father, brother, or husband to those around him. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
457:To live in the world or to leave it, depends upon the Will of God. Therefore work, leaving everything to Him. What else can you do? ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
458:A point she had reached where life must be in vain
Or, in her unborn element awake,
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue, [T5],#KEYS
459:Having no egotism or will of their own, the emancipated may be compared to dry leaves blown about here and there by the strong wind. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
460:If, indeed, there were anything better or more useful for man's salvation than suffering, Christ would have shown it by word and example. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
461:In devotion, One becomes mad with emotion, constantly and fiercely repeating: "Jai Kali" or dancing like a maniac in praise of Hari. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
462:The other one of a complementary pair the opposite sex; the two chess kings are set up on squares of opposite colours; Altogether different in nature, quality or significance
~ ?,#KEYS
463:The too developed intellect cannot often keep or recover life's first fine careless rapture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Form and the Spirit, #KEYS
464:What availeth book-learning or delivery of lectures, if there is no Viveka within -- the discrimination of the Real from the unreal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
465:What He ( Allah) has decreed will come to pass, whether the servant is dissatisfied or satisfied. ~ Shaykh Abdul Qadir Jilani, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
466:Accept what is good even from the babbling of an idiot or the prattle of a child as they extract gold from a stone. ~ Mahabharata, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
467:Electric power is everywhere present in unlimited quantities and can drive the world's machinery without the need of coal, oil, gas, or any other of the common fuels. ~ Nikola Tesla, #KEYS
468:Having no egotism or will of their own, the emancipated may be compared to dry leaves blown about here and there, by the strong wind. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
469:I am never far from those with faith, or even from those without it, though they do not see me. My children will always, always, be protected by my compassion. ~ Guru Rinpoche, [T5], #KEYS
470:I am not really impressed by someone who can turn the floor into the ceiling, or fire into water. A real miracle is if someone can liberate just one negative emotion. ~ Lerab Lingpa, #KEYS
471:If you desire to live in the world unattached you should first practice devotion in solitude for a year, a month or at least 12 days. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
472:Imagine a family unbound by numbers or appearance with no 'I' left to suffer, it finds eternal nourishment in We." ~ Phoenix Desmond, author of "Make Love to the Universe,", (2011)., #KEYS
473:My brothers, when you accost each other, two things alone are fitting, instructive words or a grave silence. ~ Buddhist Scripture, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
474:My solitude doesn't depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #KEYS
475:Siddhas or miraculous powers are to be avoided like filth. He who sets his mind on the Siddhis, remains stuck and cannot rise higher. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
476:The Gita is the essence of all scriptures. A sannyasi may or may not keep with him another book, but he always carries a pocket Gita. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
477:The highest heights of mind or of overmind come still within the belt of a mitigated ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
478:The separation of the body from the soul is called death. But thi - cannot be said to be either good or bad; it is neutral ~ Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 6.6.5)., #KEYS
479:This day foreshadows the state which is to follow the present age: a day without sunset, nightfall, or successor, an age which does not grow old or come to an end. ~ Basil the Great, #KEYS
480:To present a whole world that doesn't exist and make it seem real, we have to more or less pretend we're polymaths. That's just the act of all good writing.
~ William Gibson, [T5],#KEYS
481:We have not come to this world either for fault-finding or for correcting others, we have come simply to learn. We must always ask ourselves, what we have learnt. ~ SWAMI PREMANANDA, #KEYS
482:We have not come to this world either for fault-finding or for correcting others, we have come simply to learn. We must always ask ourselves, what we have learnt. ~ Swami Premananda, #KEYS
483:Whether it seem good or evil to men's eyes,
Only for good the secret Will can work.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
484:Whether the God-realized dwells in the bustle of the world, or in the solitude of the forest, nothing can ever contaminate him again. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
485:A perfected human world cannot be created by men or composed of men who are themselves imperfect. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.28 - The Divine Life, #KEYS
486:Bhakti-Yoga is communion with God by means of devotion or love and self-surrender. It is specially adapted to this age, the Kali-Yuga. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
487:If you desire to live in the world unattached you should first practice devotion in solitude for a year, a month, or at least 12 days. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
488:It does not really rest with a man whether he goes to this place or that or whether he gives up his duties or not. All these events happen according to destiny. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
489:Let the world bother about its reality or falsehood. Find out first about your own reality. Then all things will become clear. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
490:One must exploit the asynchronies that have befallen one, link them to a promising issue or domain, reframe frustrations as opportunities, and, above all, persevere. ~ Howard Gardner, #KEYS
491:The determinism of Nature or Force is not all; the soul has a word to say in the matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Three Modes of Nature, #KEYS
492:Unity is an idea which is not at all arbitrary or unreal; for unity is the very basis of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Diversity in Oneness, #KEYS
493:A person feels anguish and emptiness at the death of a spouse or child; if one has that kind of longing for God for twenty-four hours continuously, God will definitely reveal Himself." #KEYS
494:Evolution means a bringing out of new powers which lay concealed in the seed or the first form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?, #KEYS
495:Friends or foes, they are all instruments in Her hands to help us work out our own Karma, through pleasure or pain. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VI. 435), #KEYS
496:The one satchitananda, absolute being-Intelligence-bliss is invoked by some as God, by some as Allah, and by others as Hari or Brahman. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
497:Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, James, 1:17, #KEYS
498:He was no fool or Utopian who wished to be the maker of songs for his country rather than its law giver. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Work and Ideal, #KEYS
499:I give order to those who are perfectly and totally surrendered, as these orders cannot be discussed or disobeyed.
~ The Mother, More Answers From The Mother,#KEYS
500:Our blind or erring government of life;
A loose republic once of wants and needs. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#KEYS
501:To have a restful or peaceful life in God is good; to bear a life of pain in patience is better; but to have peace in the midst of pain is the best of all. ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, #KEYS
502:Be fearless! Courage! Courage! Do not allow even the thought of defeat to enter your mind. Realization of the Goal, or let the body fall ! - let this be your Mantra. ~ SWAMI VIRAJANANDA, #KEYS
503:Do I wish that the Christian would become Hindu? God forbid. Do I wish that the Hindu or Buddhist would become Christian? God forbid. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
504:Make your choice, adventurous Stranger, Strike the bell and bide the danger, Or wonder, till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had.
~ C S Lewis, The Magician's Nephew,#KEYS
505:Meditate on the Eternal either in an unknown nook or in the solitude of the forests or in the solitude of thy own mind. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
506:Mere reading will not bring about knowledge or salvation, so long as one is attached to the world -- so long as one loves woman and gold. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
507:No machinery invented by the reason can perfect either the individual or the collective man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The End of the Curve of Reason, #KEYS
508:The death of a man or animal results from the separation of the soul, which completes the nature of animal or man ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.50.4)., #KEYS
509:The Hathat-siddhas attains perfection suddenly, as a poor man may suddenly become rich by finding hidden treasure or marrying into money. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
510:The servant "I" of a devotee, or the "I" of a child, each of these is like a line drawn with a stick on the water. It does not last long. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
511:This is the Nemesis of men who rise
Too suddenly by fraud or violence
That they suspect all hearts. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
512:Those who start their practice by uniting with their Guru and chosen deity, fear no reverses or difficulties ... progress will be smooth. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
513:When we or other men commit sin, only then is it salutary to give in to sadness. But when we meet with misfortune in human affairs, then sadness has no efficacy. ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #KEYS
514:If one lives in the midst of sense pleasures after having attained the highest knowledge, nothing in the world can daunt or unbalance one. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
515:It can come early or it can come late, but come it will if one is faithful in one's call. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Grace and Guidance, #KEYS
516:It seemed incredible that this day, a day without warnings or omens, might be that of my implacable death.~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #KEYS
517:Liberation is attained only by one who has forgotten the self. Even when losing all ego, God may or may not come to take the place of ego. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
518:So the mind may be unattached and fixed upon God, you should often retire into solitude -- a place which is away from either men or women. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
519:Stop deluding yourself that you're not ready, or that you need something before you start. You have everything you need: a brain, a desire, and a lack of shame. Go get it." ~ Mark Manson, #KEYS
520:The Absolute is not a void or negation. It is all that is here in Time and beyond Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: Brahman, Oneness of God and the World, #KEYS
521:When you awaken, you will not react any longer to the television, to the newspaper, to the people, what they say or think. When you awaken, you will know that all is well. ~ Robert Adams, #KEYS
522:As long as you identify with a 'you' who either is or is not awake, you are still dreaming. Awakening is awakening from the dream of a separate you to simply Being Awakeness. ~ Adyashanti, #KEYS
523:Of luxury, the Sattvic devotee has none, either in food or dress, no show in his house of furniture and never seeking to rise in this world ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
524:You talk about heaven and hell, this Mahatma or that one, but how about you? Who are you? ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Consciousness and the Absolute, #KEYS
525:Nothing divides men so much as pride, whether it be the pride of the individual, of the family, of the class or of the nation. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
526:Our lives are useful only in proportion as they help others by example or action or tend to fulfil God in man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Opinion and Comments, #KEYS
527:The perfect faith is an assent of the whole being to the truth seen by it or offered to its acceptance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
528:There was no second, it had no partner or peer;
Only itself was real to itself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Pursuit of the Unknowable,#KEYS
529:The Sattvic devotee performs his devotions in secret. Of luxury he has none, either in food or dress, and no show in his house of furniture. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
530:The separate self must melt or be reborn
Into a Truth beyond the mind's appeal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Pursuit of the Unknowable,#KEYS
531:Use your body and your thought and turn away from anybody who asks you to believe blindly, whatever be his good will or his virtue. ~ id, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
532:Without stick or sword, filled with sympathy and benevolence, let the disciple show to all beings love and compassion. ~ Magghima Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
533:animal, or human being. Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, We vow to not abuse the great truth of the Three Treasures." ~ Stephanie Kaza, Professor, practicing Soto Zen Buddhist, Wik., #KEYS
534:However or from wheresoever it came, the only thing to do with a depression is to throw it out. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Depression and Despondency, #KEYS
535:The chatuskoti, or the Fourfold Negation, (NOT THIS: NOT THAT: NOT BOTH: NOT NEITHER) is a principal tool in Buddhist contemplation and analytic meditation." ~ For source & explanation see:, #KEYS
536:A Force may be in action or in quiescence, but when it rests, it is as much a Force as when it acts. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, The Sankhya-Yoga System, #KEYS
537:Before the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be shattered at the fountain, or the wheel be broken at the cistern. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ecclesiastes, 12:6, #KEYS
538:And through the opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections. For a moment you might even touch eternity. ~ ken-wilber, #KEYS
539:Egoistic desire is not a law for the soul that seeks liberation or aspires to its own original god-nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, #KEYS
540:I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess. ~ H P Lovecraft, #KEYS
541:Ministers, doctors and spiritual teachers - if these three speak pleasantly because of fear or desire for profit then the state, body and religion - these three are soon destroyed. ~ Tusidas, #KEYS
542:Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers.
~ William Strunk,#KEYS
543:To believe blindly is bad. Reason, judge for yourselves, experiment, verify whether what you have been told is true or false. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
544:A Word is spoken or a Light is shown,
A moment sees, the ages toil to express. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother,#KEYS
545:Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#KEYS
546:I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself.
~ Simone de Beauvoir,#KEYS
547:If you are never parted from the aspiring resolve to attain awak- ening, wherever you are born-whether above, below, or on the same level-you will not forget the thought of awakening. ~ Asanga, #KEYS
548:Love and devotion to the Divine is the central feeling of the psychic nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, The Emergence or Coming Forward of the Psychic, #KEYS
549:Man may help or man may resist, but the Zeitgeist works, shapes, overbears, insists. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #KEYS
550:Only in a hut built for the moment can one live without fear." ~ Kamo no Chōmei, (1153 or 1155-1216), a Japanese author, poet, and essayist. Became a Buddhist and lived as a hermit, Wikipedia., #KEYS
551:The unity or community of human nature, however, is not a thing, but only a consideration ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.39.4ad3). twitter.com/DalaiLama/stat…, #KEYS
552:Even a nation of strong men led by the weak, blind or selfish, becomes easily infected with the vices of its leaders. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Facts and Opinions, #KEYS
553:O Lower self, which is better, the Garden of eternity or a glimpse of this world's unlawful bounty and its wretched, fleeting rubbish? ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #KEYS
554:Well-known or unknown has absolutely no importance from the spiritual point of view. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, No Propaganda or Proselytism, #KEYS
555:Develop a mind that is vast like space, where experiences both pleasant and unpleasant can appear and disappear without conflict, struggle or harm. Rest in a mind like vast sky. ~ Jack Kornfield, #KEYS
556:Know that you will not be at all tormented by mental unrest if you, without being sentimental, dedicate the good or bad results of your actions to the lotus feet of the Lord. ~ SWAMI ABHEDANANDA, #KEYS
557:Life's contraries were lovers or natural friends
And her extremes keen edges of harmony: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life,#KEYS
558:On the day we call the day of the sun, all who dwell in the city or country gather in the same place. The memoirs of the apostles and the writings of the prophets are read. ~ Saint Justin Martyr, #KEYS
559:Practice is the act of rehearsing a behavior over and over, or engaging in an activity again and again, for the purpose of improving or mastering it, as in the phrase practice makes perfect.
~,#KEYS
560:A touch of realisation is enough to set the higher mind knowledge or the illumined mind knowledge flowing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Thought and Knowledge, #KEYS
561:He wades through mud to reach the Wonderful,
And does what Matter must or Spirit can. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man the Enigma,#KEYS
562:It is possible to offer fervent prayer even while walking in public or strolling alone, or seated in your shop, . . . while buying or selling, . . . or even while cooking. ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #KEYS
563:Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #KEYS
564:My child, austerities or worship, practice all these things right now. Will these things be possible later on? Whatever you want to achieve, achieve now; this is the right time. ~ Sri Sarada Devi, #KEYS
565:There is an obscure mind and life even in the cells of the body, the stones or in molecules and atoms. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, The Physical Consciousness, #KEYS
566:The transition from the mind-self to the knowledge-self is the great and the decisive transition in the Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
567:What is not real or vital to thought, imagination and feeling cannot be powerfully creative. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Movement of Modern Literature - II, #KEYS
568:When you walk along the way, speak to yourself, speak to Christ. Hear him say to you: I desire that in every place men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
569:You must obey God, above the public and all other masters, or lose your souls for the responsibility which rests upon you for the present and future welfare of your children. ~ Sebastian Dabovich, #KEYS
570:If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
~ Henry David Thoreau,#KEYS
571:Just as a screen is never agitated by the drama in a movie, so being aware or awareness itself is never disturbed by the content of experience." ~ Rupert Spria "Being Aware of Being Aware", (2017), #KEYS
572:My child, do not give way to evil desire, for it leads to fornication. And do not use obscene language, or let your eye wander, for from all these come adulteries. ~ Didache of the Twelve Apostles, #KEYS
573:One man who earnestly pursues the Yoga is of more value than a thousand well-known men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, No Propaganda or Proselytism, #KEYS
574:The mind is a light which sees only the surfaces of things or at most a little below the surface. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human, The Problem of Consciousness, #KEYS
575:All life for the achieved spiritual or gnostic consciousness must be the manifestation of the realised truth of spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
576:...the German language associates "origin" with suddenness and discontinuity with respect to primordial events, whereas temporal inceptions are designated as "starts" or "beginnings". ~ Jean Gebser, #KEYS
577:Verily, Allah has revealed to me that you must be humble towards one another, so that no one oppresses another or boasts to another." ~ Hadith, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
578:Attitude can take away your beauty no matter how good looking you are or it could enhance your beauty, making you adorable. ~ Mufti Ismail Menk, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
579:Be very meditative. Do not lose your time and energy. Live well; prove your life well. Behave yourself most spiritually. Life is short. Now or never. Don't lose opportunity. ~ SWAMI TRIGUNATITANANDA, #KEYS
580:God could make other things, or add something to the present creation, and then there would be an other and better universe ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.25.6ad3)., #KEYS
581:If you use your mind to study reality, you won't understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both. ~ Bodhidharma, #KEYS
582:You must be holy in the way that God asks you to be holy. God does not ask you to be a Trappist monk or a hermit. He wills that you sanctify the world in your everyday life. ~ Saint Vincent Pallotti, #KEYS
583:Because you are with other thoughts, you call the continuity of a single thought meditation or dhyana. If that dhyana becomes effortless it will be found to be your real nature. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
584:Do not be proud of wealth, people, relations and friends, or youth. All these are snatched by time in the blink of an eye. Giving up this illusory world, know and attain the Supreme. ~ Shankaracharya, #KEYS
585:Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
586:He was here before the elements could emerge,
Before there was light of mind or life could breathe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
587:He who busies himself with the sins of others, or judges his brother on suspicion, has not yet even begun to repent or to examine himself so as to discover his own sins. ~ Saint Maximus the Confessor, #KEYS
588:If you use your mind to study reality, you won't understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both." ~ Bodhidharma, #KEYS
589:No man or nation need be weak unless he chooses, no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Bhawani Mandir, #KEYS
590:One ought not to settle down into a fixed idea of one's own incapacity or allow it to become an obsession. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #KEYS
591:The covering of delusion and suffering, that has come over our original state of unicity, is nothing other than volition or desire - the wanting of something to be other than it IS. ~ Ramesh Balsekar, #KEYS
592:There is no one who is without faults, and who is not in some way a burden to others, whether he is a superior or a subject, an old man or a young one, a scholar or a dunce. ~ Saint Robert Bellarmine, #KEYS
593:The sense of personal doership gives rise to a feeling of guilt or pride and effectively blocks the spiritual understanding that everything happens according to the will of God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
594:The three elements of creativity are thus: loving, knowing, and doing - or heart, mind, and hands - or, as Zen Buddhist teaching has it; great faith, great question, and great courage." ~ Eric Maisel, #KEYS
595:A man might sit still and motionless for ever and yet be as much bound to the Ignorance as the animal or the insect. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Work, #KEYS
596:No way is short or long, but some people are more in earnest and some are less. You may choose any way that suits you; your earnestness will determine the rate of progress. ~ SRI NISARAGADATTA MAHARAJ, #KEYS
597:...peace and joy can be there permanently, but the condition of this permanence is that one should have the constant contact or indwelling of the Divine..
~ The Mother, [T5],#KEYS
598:Renunciation is always in the mind, not in going to forests or solitary places or giving up one's duties. The main thing is to see that the mind does not turn outward but inward. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
599:The main factor in meditation is to keep the mind active in its own pursuit without taking in external impressions or thinking of other matters. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
600:The state we call realization is simply being oneself, not knowing anything or becoming anything. If one has realized, he is that which alone is, and which alone has always been. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
601:Whoever, therefore, wants to be free, let him neither wish for anything, nor avoid anything, that is under the control of others, or else he is necessarily a slave. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
602:All the sacred Scriptures of the world have become corrupted, but the Ineffable or Absolute has never been corrupted, because no one has ever been able to express It in human speech. ~ Sri Ramakrishna?, #KEYS
603:Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
604:His first coming was to fulfill his plan of love, to teach men by gentle persuasion. This time, whether men like it or not, they will be subjects of his kingdom by necessity. ~ Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, #KEYS
605:However man's mind may tire or fail his flesh,
A will prevails cancelling his conscious choice .
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
606:Nothing can spiritually justify individual violence done in anger or passion or from any vital motive. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Essays on the Gita, #KEYS
607:The consciousness of collective humanity is only a larger comprehensive edition or a sum of individual egos. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from the Ego, #KEYS
608:To know, be and possess the Divine is the one thing needful and it includes or leads up to all the rest. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Synthesis of the Systems, #KEYS
609:When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, "What do I need to get to be happy?" The question becomes, "What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?" ~ D.T. Suzuki, #KEYS
610:A fruit is something that proceeds from a source as from a seed or root ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.70.3). https://twitter.com/lazyraran/status/1382480995321004034, #KEYS
611:
Ultimately, the only way the universe can be understood is not by thought or by deed, but in the experience of oneness.
~ Ekai, @BashoSociety#KEYS
612:In the philosophy of Bertrand Russell, genius entails that an individual possesses unique qualities and talents that make the genius especially valuable to the society in which he or she operates.
~ ?,#KEYS
613:The object of life is the growth of the soul, not outward success of the hour or even of the near future. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Fate, Free Will and Prediction, #KEYS
614:Work (or life either) without discipline would soon become a confusion and an anarchic failure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, The Place of Rules in Work, #KEYS
615:All human beings have a spiritual destiny which is near or far depending on each one's determination. One must will in all sincerity.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, [T5],#KEYS
616:At the Guru's death, either the Body awakens or His Work in the world is forsaken and His light grows dim. In every breath, remember Him." ~ Red Hawk, (b. 1943) "Mother Guru: Savitri Love Poems,", (2014), #KEYS
617:Before the baptism, let him who baptizeth and him who is baptized fast previously, and any others who may be able. And thou shalt command him who is baptized to fast one or two days before. ~ The Didache, #KEYS
618:Life only is, or death is life disguised,—
Life a short death until by life we are surprised. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Life and Death,#KEYS
619:Mary, a proper name is taken to mean star of the sea or enlightener and lady; hence in Rev ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (12:1) she is described with the moon under her feet., #KEYS
620:Thus if every intellectual activity [διάνοια] is either practical or productive or speculative (θεωρητική), physics (φυσικὴ) will be a speculative [θεωρητική] science. ~ Aristotle, #KEYS
621:To perish is better for man or for nation
Nobly in battle, nor end disgraced by disease or subjection. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
622:We regard the world not as an invention of the devil or a self-delusion of the soul, but as a manifestation of the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
623:Feb 6 "I had learned in my college days that one cannot imagine anything so strange or so little believable that it had not been said by one of the philosophers." ~ Descartes, Discourse on Method, part 2., #KEYS
624:It is the vital passion for the Divine that creates the spiritual heroes, conquerors or martyrs. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Divine Love, Psychic Love and Human Love, #KEYS
625:Saying the truth does not bully anyone into accepting it. Rather, anyone is free either to accept or not to accept, as he wills ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.60.6ad1)., #KEYS
626:Sin poisons with its vivid flowers of joy
Or leaves a red scar burnt across the soul; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
627:The soul in the body is not limited in space by the body or in experience by the mind; the whole universe is its habitation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
628:Tiredness shows lack of will for progress. When you feel tired or fatigued that is lack of will for progress. Fire is always burning in you.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
629:Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. ~ Saint Ignatius of Antioch, #KEYS
630:Night a path to unknown dawns
Or a dark clue to some diviner state. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.04#KEYS
631:Nothing has ever existed except this moment. That's all there is. That's all we are. Yet most human beings spend 50 to 90 percent or more of their time in their imagination, living in fantasy." ~ Joko Beck, #KEYS
632:The created intellect knows the Divine essence more or less perfectly in proportion as it receives a greater or lesser light of glory ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.12.7)., #KEYS
633:The gnosis is not only light, it is force; it is creative knowledge, it is the self-effective truth of the divine Idea. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
634:The man in whose vision all things are becomings of the Self and who sees in all things oneness, whence shall he have grief or delusion? ~ Isha Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
635:The word ἐκένωσεν (ekénōsen) is used in Philippians 2:7, [Jesus] made himself nothing ...[Phil. 2:7] (NIV) or ...[he] emptied himself...[Phil. 2:7] (NRSV), using the verb form κενόω (kenóō) to empty. ~ Def, #KEYS
636:What we see as error is very frequently the symbol or a disguise or a corruption or malformation of a truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #KEYS
637:All change must come from within with the felt or the secret support of the Divine Power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga, #KEYS
638:Destruction is always a simultaneous or alternate element which keeps pace with creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
639:If the Truth has to spread itself, it will do it of its own motion; these things are unnecessary. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, No Propaganda or Proselytism, #KEYS
640:Know that that which is referred to as other-than-Allah, or the universe, is related to Allah as the shadow is related to the person. The universe is the shadow of Allah. ~ Ibn Arabi, #KEYS
641:Recite the Lord's name with all your heart, throughout the day and night, whether you are in the midst of work or not. While outwardly you are engaged in work, repeat His name inwardly. ~ Swami Vijnanananda, #KEYS
642:The Divine Truth is greater than any religion or creed or scripture or idea or philosophy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Passages from The Synthesis of Yoga, #KEYS
643:The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, "bread-bread-fame" or "fame-fame-bread." ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #KEYS
644:The nature of the energy put forth must determine the nature of the result or outcome. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
645:The supreme duty of man is to remember the Lord always, whether one is engaged in consciously repeating His name or not. Every breath of ours should be associated with Him, in our mind. ~ Swami Vijnanananda, #KEYS
646:A magnanimity as of sea or sky
Enveloped with its greatness all that came
And gave a sense as of a greatened world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,#KEYS
647:Behold, there is the goal of beatitude and there the long road of suffering. Thou canst choose the one or the other across the cycles to come. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
648:Everything good or true that the angels inspire in us is God's, so God is constantly talking to us. He talks very differently, though, to one person than to another.
~ Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven,#KEYS
649:Men want to help each other with a motive behind or a feeling which proceeds from the ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga, #KEYS
650:Whether you are standing or walking, whether you are seated or lying down, consecrate yourselves wholly to love : it is the best way of life. ~ Metta Sutta, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
651:You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #KEYS
652:A calm, equal and detached mind can alone reflect the peace or base the action of the liberated spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Purification - Intelligence and Will, #KEYS
653:A heretic who disbelieves a single article of the Faith does not have either the habit of formed faith or the habit of unformed faith ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.5.3sc)., #KEYS
654:Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects.
~ SATM?,#KEYS
655:Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven
Or Heaven descend into earth's mortal state. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,#KEYS
656:If the egoism of the worker disappears, the egoism of the instrument may replace it or else prolong it in a disguise. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Master of the Work, #KEYS
657:There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself. ~ Miyamoto Musashi, #KEYS
658:The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things. ~ Jorge Luis Borge, #KEYS
659:If you spent one-tenth of the time you devoted to distractions like chasing women or making money to spiritual practice, you would be enlightened in a few years. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
660:Not that the One is two, but that these two are one. ~ "Hermes Trismegistus , (the 2nd or 3rd cent. AD)?, a series of sacred texts that are the basis of Hermeticism, Wikipedia. Also see: https://bit.ly/3atyenG, #KEYS
661:All life is Nature fulfilling itself and not Nature destroying or denying itself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Nature's Law in Our Progress - Unity in Diversity, Law and Liberty, #KEYS
662:Behind the appearance of these opposites are their truths and the truths of the Eternal are not in conflict with each other. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
663:Don't let anything from outside approach and disturb you. What people think, do or say is of little importance. The only thing that counts is your relation with the Divine. ~ The Mother, #KEYS
664:Every day should be regarded as a day when a descent may take place or a contact established with the higher consciousness.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Himself And The Ashram, [T5],#KEYS
665:We cannot afford to take ourselves or other persons so seriously. It is wise to realize that we are not actually qualified to sit in judgment on each other. ~ Manly P Hall, The Mystic Maze of Thought 1970, p.8), #KEYS
666:When desire or anger arise, the weakest practitioners immediately blame the outside world, and never practice. While the strongest practitioners immediately look inside, and always practice. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche, #KEYS
667:Whether on earth or in the abodes of the gods, all beings are upon three evil paths; they are in thepower of existence, desire and ignorance. ~ Latita Vistara, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
668:A certain moderation is needed even in the eagerness for progress—moderation, not indifference or indolence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Difficulties of the Physical Nature, #KEYS
669:Imagined scenes or great eternal worlds,
Dream-caught or sensed, they touch our hearts with their depths; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life,#KEYS
670:Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible. ~ Carl Jung, #KEYS
671:Man is not and cannot be wholly governed either in his thought or his action by the reason alone. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Instruments - Thought-Process, #KEYS
672:Our real being is not the intellect, not the aesthetic, ethical or thinking mind, but the divinity within. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, Indian Spirituality and Life - II, #KEYS
673:That is one of the many reasons why I avoid speaking as much as possible. For I always say either too much or too little, which is a terrible thing for a man with a passion for truth like mine... ~ Samuel Becket, #KEYS
674:The breath of divine Power blows where it lists and fills today one and tomorrow another with the word or the puissance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Master of the Work, #KEYS
675:The principal work of life is love. And one cannot love in the past or in the future: one can only love in the present, at this hour, at this minute. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
676:Whether for Nirvana or for this Yoga, calm and peace in the whole being are the necessary foundation of all siddhi. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Wrong Movements of the Vital, #KEYS
677:Even the smallest meanest work became
A sweet or glad and glorious sacrament
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS
678:Everyone who is intent upon surviving with worth and dignity, and living rather than passively accepting life, must sooner or later pass through the agonies of emergent consciousness ~ Jean Gebser, #KEYS
679:Moral purity and spiritual aspiration are the first steps in the seeker's path. Without a strong conviction in moral values, there can surely be no spiritual life, or even a good life. ~ Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #KEYS
680:Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around." ~ Leo Buscaglia, #KEYS
681:Whatever is desirable in whatsoever beatitude, whether true or false, pre-exists wholly and in a more eminent degree in the divine beatitude ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.26.4)., #KEYS
682:Yoga does not either in its path or in its attainment exclude and throw away the forms of the lower knowledge ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge, #KEYS
683:You are priests, not social or political leaders. Let us not be under the illusion that we are serving the Gospel through an exaggerated interest in the wide field of temporal problems." ~ Saint Pope John Paul II, #KEYS
684:1FOR GOD alone my soul waits in silence; From Him comes my salvation. 2He alone is my rock and my salvation, My defense and my strong tower; I will not be shaken or disheartened. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Psalms, 62, #KEYS
685:A bee-croon honey-drunk in summer isles
Ardent with ecstasy in a slumbrous noon,
Or the far anthem of a pilgrim sea. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Soul,#KEYS
686:A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life. ~ Lewis Mumford, #KEYS
687:Aspiration, call, prayer are forms of one and the same thing and are all effective; you can take the form that comes to you or is easiest to you.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
688:Disquietude and depression create an unhelpful atmosphere for one who is ill or in difficulties. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga, #KEYS
689:Divinity is the end of all wisdom. What can there be greater than Divine wisdom, what higher, what nobler, and what truer? That Divine wisdom is the end. We must reach that end sooner or later. ~ SWAMI ABHEDANANDA, #KEYS
690:Gesture (Mudra)
I have drunk the Infinite like a giant's wine.
Time is my drama or my pageant dream. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Transformation,#KEYS
691:If we are treading the path of light, and if by chance, by mistake, by ignorance, or even by bad habit, we commit mistakes, we will return to the path again, because of the guidance from the unknown. ~ Swami Rama, #KEYS
692:It is at some one point or a few points that the fire is lit and spreads from hearth to hearth, from altar to altar. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #KEYS
693:No form can exhaust or fully express the potentialities of the idea or force that gave it birth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - VI, #KEYS
694:The act done under right rule, with detachment, without liking or dislike, by the man who grasps not at the fruit, that is a work of light. ~ Bhagavad Gita 18.23, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
695:The man who has conquered himself and is tranquillised, remains fixed in his highest self, whether in pleasure or pain, in honour or in disgrace. ~ Bhagavad Gita, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
696:This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious. ~ John Cleese, #KEYS
697:All things yield to a man and Zeus is himself his accomplice
When like a god he wills without remorse or longing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
698:Prudence or political science is the servant of Wisdom, for it leads to wisdom, preparing the way for her, as the doorkeeper for the king ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.66.5ad1)., #KEYS
699:The whole effort of Jesus or a Buddha or a Bodhidharma is nothing but how to undo that which society has done to you." ~ Osho, (1931 - 1990), Indian godman, Wikipedia. Quote from "ZEN the Path of Paradox,", (2001)., #KEYS
700:Although we may wish for more or strive to do better than we have, in these times it is enough to keep your soul." ~ Eric Micha'el Leventhal, literary consultant and holistic educator on the island of Maui, Hawai'i., #KEYS
701:Count not life nor death, defeat nor triumph, Pyrrhus.
Only thy soul regard and the gods in thy joy or thy labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
702:Happiness only comes when you let go of who you think you are. If you think you're wealthy and powerful and noble and truthful or horrible and demonic, whatever it may be, it's all a waste of time." ~ Frederick Lenz, #KEYS
703:I strive to attain the happiness which does not pass away nor perish and which has not its source in riches or beauty nor depends upon them. ~ Foshu-hing-tsan-king, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
704:Maintain a state of simplicity. If you encounter happiness, success, prosperity, or other favorable conditions, consider them as dreams or illusions, and do not get attached to any of them. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, #KEYS
705:Personality, force, temperament can do unusual miracles, but the miracle cannot always be turned into a method or a standard. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Recent English Poetry - I, #KEYS
706:The notion of GOOD is that which calms the desire, while the notion of the BEAUTIFUL is that which calms the desire by being seen or known ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.27.1ad3)., #KEYS
707:The tinkling pace of a long caravan
It seemed at times, or a vast forest's hymn,
The solemn reminder of a temple gong, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Soul,#KEYS
708:The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #KEYS
709:From lust are generated blindness of mind, inconsiderateness, inconstancy, precipitation, self-love, hatred of God, affection for this present world, but dread or despair of that which is to come. ~ Gregory the Great, #KEYS
710:I cannot lament the loss of a love or a friendship without meditating that one loses only what one really never had.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
711:Our intellect may be compared to a tablet on which nothing has been written, but that of an angel, to a painted tablet or to a mirror in which the intelligible characters of things shine forth. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
712:Reason... is a direct Aspect of Truth, an inward Beholding, having a similar relation to the Intelligible or Spiritual, as SENSE has to the Material or Phenomenal. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, 223-4, #KEYS
713:The State is not an organism; it is a machinery, and it works like a machine, without tact, taste, delicacy or intuition. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Inadequacy of the State Idea, #KEYS
714:Thought-worlds
A thousand roads leaped into Eternity
Or singing ran to meet God's veilless face. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge,#KEYS
715:Weak desires can be removed by introspection and meditation, but strong, deep-rooted ones must be fulfilled and their fruits, sweet or bitter, tasted. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
716:When I return upon myself and find the heart upright, although my adversaries may be a thousand or ten thousand, I would march without fear on the enemy. ~ Meng-Tse, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
717:Are we forming children who are only capable of learning what is already known? Or should we try to develop creative and innovative minds, capable of discovery from the preschool age on, throughout life? ~ Jean Piaget, #KEYS
718:Do not sleep under a roof. Carry no money or food. Go alone to places frightening to the common brand of men. Become a criminal of purpose. Be put in jail, and extricate yourself by your own wisdom. ~ Miyamoto Musashi, #KEYS
719:In our unseen subtle body thought is born
Or there it enters from the cosmic field. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS
720:One more efficaciously calls upon Christ in quiet or in private: "In quietness and in trust shall be your strength" ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Is 30:15)(Commentary on Jn. 11, lect. 5)., #KEYS
721:Personal identity and enlightenment cannot go together. Indeed, there is actually no such thing as either personal identity or enlightenment and the apperception of this fact is itself enlightenment. ~ Ramesh Balsekar, #KEYS
722:That is true symbolism, where the more particular represents the more general, not as a dream or shade, but as a vivid, instantaneous revelation of the Inscrutable. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, #KEYS
723:They propose false dogmas about Christ by subtracting something from his divinity or humanity, yet "every spirit that denies Christ is not from God" ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (1Jn4:3)., #KEYS
724:To enter into a deeper or higher consciousness or for that deeper or higher consciousness to descend into you-that is the true success of meditation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
725:Trying to give an idea of the Ineffable by the help of philosophical learning is like trying to give an idea of Benares by the aid of a map or pictures. ~ Ramakrisha, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
726:He who practises wisdom without anger or covetousness, who fulfils with fidelity his vows and lives master of himself, he is indeed a man of religion. ~ Buddhist Text, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
727:It is when you feel the universal or divine beauty or presence in things that the senses are open to the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, The Universal or Cosmic Consciousness, #KEYS
728:There is nothing which is beyond the reach of the God-lover or denied to him; for he is the favorite of the Divine Lover and the self of the Beloved.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
729:The world is an eternal present, and the present is now; what was is no more and who can say whatwill come or whether tomorrow morning the dawnwill arise. ~ Anamander, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
730:Things are said to be distant from God by the unlikeness to Him in NATURE or GRACE. And God is also above all by the EXCELLENCE of His own nature ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.81ad1)., #KEYS
731:What should we do to remain always in contact with the Divine, so that no person or event can draw us away from this contact?
Aspiration. Sincerity.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
732:All intuitive knowledge comes more or less directly from the light of the self-aware spirit entering into the mind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Towards the Supramental Time Vision, #KEYS
733:It is not easy to confer upon the young a strength or vision which we do not possess, but sometime, these young people will be the leaders and supporters of world affairs. ~ Manly P Hall, (PRS Journal Autumn 1961, p.11), #KEYS
734:Nature takes us as we are and to some extent suits her movements to our need or our demands on her. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
735:Tell the night that it cannot claim our day. No religion claims love's holy faith. Love's an ocean, vast and without shores. When lovers drown, they don't cry out or pray. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
736:The individual is not a mere cell of the collective existence; he would not cease to exist if separated or expelled from the collective mass. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
737:To do anything through ignorance or through passion takes away from the nature of injury, and to a certain extent calls for mercy and forgiveness ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.47.2)., #KEYS
738:All birth entails a constant death or dissolution of that which becomes, in order that it may change into a new becoming. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: Brahman, Oneness of God and the World, #KEYS
739:Can you not see the numerous designs made by God as signs, similitudes, or analogies of resurrection? He has placed them in every era, the alteration of day and night, even in the coming and going of clouds. ~ Said Nursi, #KEYS
740:Often men take for their conscience not the manifestation of the spiritual being but simply what is considered good or bad by the people in their environment. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
741:The noun lila means anything from sport, dalliance, play to any languid or amorous gesture in a woman. ~ V.S. Apte (1965), quoted in in Sri Aurobindo's Lila - The Nature of Divine Play According to Integral Advaita, p. 68 #KEYS
742:To get the universal Ananda all our instruments must learn to take not any partial or perverse, but the essential joy of all things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Way of Equality, #KEYS
743:To live in the Supreme Truth, if only for a minute, is worth more than writing or reading hundreds of books on the methods or processes by which to find it.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
744:Material existence and earthly activities are not the whole scope of our personal becoming or the whole formula of the cosmos. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Works, Devotion and Knowledge, #KEYS
745:The universe swings again into orbit around us.
Am I looking for you or you for me?
The question is wrong.
As long as I keep using two pronouns,
I am this in-between, two-headed thing.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi#KEYS
746:We have the choice; it depends on us to choose the good or the evil by our own will. The choice of evil draws us to our physical nature and subjects us to fate. ~ Horace, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
747:Words are not cubicles for truth telling. Words do not allow us to touch the face of God or define the contours of the soul." ~ Kilroy J. Oldster "Dead Toad Scrolls,", (2016). A series of meditative essays [Worth a read.], #KEYS
748:You yourself impose limitations on your true nature of infinite Being and then weep that you are but a finite creature. Then you take up this or that sadhana to transcend the nonexistent limitations. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
749:After realizing God, one rightly feels that God is our Father or Mother. As long as we have not realized God, we feel that we are far away from Him, children of someone else. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
750:And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 1 Corinthians,. XII. 25, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
751:Hunger in the vital parts becomes craving of Desire in the mentalised life, straining of Will in the intellectual or thinking life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Death, Desire and Incapacity, #KEYS
752:In all forms in the world there is a force at work, unconsciously active or oppressed by inertia in its lower formulations. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
753:It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbors, or even our relations. ~ Bertrand Russell, #KEYS
754:Make your meditation a continuous state of mind. A great worship is going on all the time, so nothing should be neglected or excluded from your constant meditative awareness. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
755:Man is a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements; and so he is their quintessence. ~ Paracelsus, #KEYS
756:Since the beginning of earth history, Sri Aurobindo has always presided over the great earthly transformations, under one form or another, one name or another.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#KEYS
757:The difference between suppression and an inward essential rejection is the difference between mental or moral control and a spiritual purification. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Desire, #KEYS
758:The more you think about your grievances or the injustices you have suffered, the more such trials you will receive. The more you think of the good fortune you have had, the more good fortune will come to you." ~ Emmet Fox, #KEYS
759:All things are by Time and the Will eternal that moves us,
And for each birth its hour is set in the night or the dawning. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
760:It seeks the highest truth for the highest practical utility, not for intellectual or even for spiritual satisfaction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Synthesis of Devotion and Knowledge, #KEYS
761:Something watches behind, Spirit or Self or Soul,
Viewing Space and its toil, waiting the end of Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Witness and the Wheel,#KEYS
762:The virtuous cannot but take care for their body, the temple of the soul in which the Eternal, manifests Himself or which has been consecrated by His coming. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
763:The weakness of the human heart wants only fair and comforting truths or in their absence pleasant fables. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
764:When it comes to obeying the commandments or enduring adversity, the words uttered by the Father should always echo in our ears: 'This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him.' ~ Saint Leo the Great, #KEYS
765:You must have learned principles so firmly that when your desires, your appetites or your fears awaken like barking dogs, the logos will speak with the voice of a master who silences the dogs by a single command. ~ Plutarch, #KEYS
766:Even as death shall gather us all for memory's clusters,
All in their day who were great or were little, heroes or cowards. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
767:First detach yourselves completely from all worldly things. A piece of gold remains gold, whether it lies in mud or anywhere else. Similarly, once you have realized God, it does not matter where you live. ~ Swami Turiyananda, #KEYS
768:If you put on the belt of service
and serve hearts
like a slave or servant,
the roads to all the secrets
will open before your eyes.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path#KEYS
769:Led or misled we are mortals and walk by a light that is given;
Most they err who deem themselves most from error excluded. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
770:Q.: Sir, why does one take so much care of his body? ~ Sri Ramakrishna: One has to realize the Supreme Self. One has to attain Self-knowledge. After that the body may remain or go. Till then the body has to be taken care of., #KEYS
771:The object or matter of generosity ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (liberalitatis) is money and whatever has a money value ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.117.3)., #KEYS
772:The psychic and spiritual attitude is also not dependent on the good and bad in beings, but is self-existent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, The Emergence or Coming Forward of the Psychic, #KEYS
773:When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect - they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul - not of intellect, or of heart. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #KEYS
774:You should do japa irrespective of the state of your mind. Consider yourself as one detached from the mind. Whether the mind registers a feeling of joy or sorrow should not be a matter of concern to you. ~ Swami Vijnanananda, #KEYS
775:All harmony proceeds upon seen or given lines and carries with it a constant pulsation and rhythmic recurrence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Instruments - Thought-Process, #KEYS
776:Evil cannot possibly be intended by anyone for its own sake, but it can be intended for the sake of avoiding another evil, or obtaining another good ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.78.1ad2)., #KEYS
777:He who busies himself with the sins of others, or judges his brother on suspicion, has not yet even begun to repent or to examine himself so as to discover his own sins... ~ Maximus the Confessor, Third Century on Love no. 55, #KEYS
778:Sin consists not at all in the outward deed, but in an impure reaction of the personal will, mind and heart which accompanies it or causes it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Divine Worker, #KEYS
779:Struggle with all alien thoughts, be always mindful of what you are doing and thinking whether outwardly or inwardly. So that you may put the imprint of your immortality on every passing moment of your daily life. ~ Gujduvani, #KEYS
780:The fault of our nature is first an inert subjection to the impacts of things as they come in upon the mind pell-mell without order or control. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #KEYS
781:The integral liberation comes when this passion for release, mumukṣutva, founded on distaste or vairāgya, is itself transcended. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Liberation of the Nature, #KEYS
782:Then by a touch, a presence or a voice
The world is turned into a temple ground
And all discloses the unknown Beloved. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Heavens of the Ideal,#KEYS
783:When you stop searching and you calm down and you put your books away, and you confront yourself and see what you are all about, that will bring about bliss faster than anything you can ever imagine or ever do. ~ Robert Adams, #KEYS
784:Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion . . . we have ordained that they fulfill ten years of penance. ~ Council of Ancyra (AD 314)., #KEYS
785:Do not seek any rules or method of worship. Say whatever your pained heart chooses." ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, (1207 - 1273), Persian poet, faqih, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic, Wikipedia., #KEYS
786:This observe, thy task in thy destiny noble or fallen;
Time and result are the gods'; with these things be not thou troubled. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
787:[A] competent magician should have the ability to stand still at a bus stop with closed eyes and have the entire universe disappear apart from a single blazing visualised sigil or muttered spell.
~ Peter J Carroll, The Octavo,#KEYS
788:If I want to understand something, I must observe, I must not criticize, I must not condemn, I must not pursue it as pleasure or avoid it as non-pleasure. There must merely be the silent observation of a fact. ~ J. Krishnamurti, #KEYS
789:Ratio, scientific or theoretical reason, emerges from the ruins of the sophic; it becomes the lantern with which we seek the Logos in the nocturnal darkness. ~ Sergius Bulgakov, The Philosophy of Economy: The World as Household, #KEYS
790:The light of glory, whereby God is seen, is in God perfectly and naturally; whereas in any creature, it is imperfectly and by likeness or participation ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.5.6ad2)., #KEYS
791:We must be on our guard against giving interpretations which are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
792:I am the owner of my actions (kamma), inheritor of my actions, born of my actions, created by my actions, and have my own actions as my judge! Whatever I do, good or evil, I will feel the resulting effects of that … ~ The Buddha, #KEYS
793:Thou art the sun, the stars, the planets, the entire world, all that is without form or endowed with form, all that is visible or invisible, Thou art all these. ~ Vishnu Purana, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
794:We don’t need wine to get drunk,
or instruments and singing to feel ecstatic.
No poets, no leaders, no songs,
yet we jump around totally wild.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path#KEYS
795:I pledge myself from this day forward not to entertain any feeling of irritation, anger or ill humour and to allow to arise within me neither violence nor hate. ~ Rurkthist Text, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
796:Some sadness is praiseworthy, as Augustine proves, namely when it flows from holy love, as, for instance, when a man is saddened over his own or others' sins ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.46.6)., #KEYS
797:The real truth of things lies not in their process, but behind it, in whatever determines, effects or governs the process. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance, #KEYS
798:There is an internal freedom permitted to every mental being called man to assent or not to assent to the Divine leading. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother, Surrender to the Mother, #KEYS
799:There is no nature to which God is visible: he is not a being who is visible by nature, but escaped or baffled the view of a frailer creature; by the nature of his being it is impossible for him to be seen. ~ Origen of Alexandria, #KEYS
800:The resolution of every duality is nameless… For no non-duality can be a thing or an object." ~ Terence James Stannus Gray, (1895 - 1986), under the pen name "Wei Wu Wei", he published eight books on Taoist philosophy, Wikipedia., #KEYS
801:The truth which poetry expresses takes two forms, the truth of life and the truth of that which works in life, the truth of the inner spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?, #KEYS
802:We cannot affirm our being rightly without sacrifice or without self-giving to something larger than our ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil, #KEYS
803:You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #KEYS
804:An abstract logic must always arrive, as the old systems arrived, at an infinite empty Negation or an infinite equally vacant Affirmation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, #KEYS
805:Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
~ Plato,#KEYS
806:It is not by mental activity that you can quiet your miind, it is from a higher or deeper level that you can receive the help you need. And both can be reached in silence only.
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
807:Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate." ~ Huang Po, #KEYS
808:The will of man works in the ignorance by a partial light or more often flickerings of light which mislead as much as they illuminate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Nature of the Supermind, #KEYS
809:According to the nature of the action, it brings you near to the Divine or takes you away from Him, and that is the supreme consequence.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Ways of Working with the Lord,#KEYS
810:Know that which is referred to as other-than-Allah, or the universe, is related to Allah as the shadow is related to the person. The universe is the shadow of Allah. ~ IbnArabi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
811:Reason that scans and breaks, but cannot build
Or builds in vain because she doubts her work. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness,#KEYS
812:Remember two inevitable tendencies in history: one, that no system, however perfect, however glorious, however far reaching, can go on for 2000 years (or 200 for that matter) without enormous changes being made in it simply by time; #KEYS
813:There is nothing, whether in its totality or its parts, which is not living:...how can that be corrupted which is a part of the incorruptible or something of God perish ? ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
814:To a mind that is still, the entire universe surrenders." ~ Zhuang Zhou, an influential Chinese Taoist, lived around the 4th century BC. credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name, the "Zhuangzi," Wikipedia., #KEYS
815:When some things happen, people want to make decisions right away. They keep asking what is right, or wrong. You shouldn't hurry. ~ Shaykh Mehmet Adil al-Haqqani Al-Naqshabandi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
816:Whither shall I go from Thy spirit or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there. ~ Psalms, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
817:You asked me what linguistics I find most pernicious. I started with "is". The "either/or" habit is very pernicious. It seems very pernicious to me, I mean. Two-valued situations are relatively rare, actually. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #KEYS
818:A 'tulpa' is a consciously-projected thought-form or servitor, which may perform a particular task for a magician or act as a general 'helper'. They are of a similar nature to Spirit Desire-Forms.
~ Phil Hine, Aspects of Evocation,#KEYS
819:Even with skills that are primarily mental, such as computer programming or speaking a foreign language, it remains the case that we learn best through practice and repetition-the natural learning process.
~ Robert Greene, Mastery,#KEYS
820:Most people who have not knowledge are apt to be opinionated—they have their ideas and don't want them to be changed or their fixity disturbed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Thought and Knowledge, #KEYS
821:The end of the path of knowledge (jnana) or Vedanta is to know the truth that the 'I' is not different from the Lord (Isvara) and to be free from the feeling of being the doer. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
822:This is our present Festival; it is this which we are celebrating today, the Coming of God to Man, that we might go forth, or rather (for this is the more proper expression) that we might go back to God. ~ Saint Gregory of Nazianzen, #KEYS
823:Until you perfect the view, do not count your practice in years or months. But instead decide to dedicate the whole remainder of your life to Dharma practice. This is the approach of the very best practitioners. ~ Yangthang Rinpoche, #KEYS
824:When you truly feel equal love for all beings, when your heart has expanded so much that it embraces the whole of creation, you will certainly not feel like giving up this or that. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi #KEYS
825:Attachment to pleasure-seeking never give one peace or happiness. As much as the mind is withdrawn from sense enjoyment , that much joy will it derive. Apart from this, there is no other means of attaining peace. ~ Swami Adbhutananda, #KEYS
826:Do not be misled by what you see around you, or be influenced by what you see. You live in a world which is a playground of illusion, full of false paths, false values, and false ideals. But you are not part of that world. ~ Sai Baba, #KEYS
827:If India becomes an intellectual province of Europe, she will never attain to her natural greatness or fulfil the possibilities within her. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Indian Resurgence and Europe, #KEYS
828:Imps with wry limbs and carved beast visages,
Sprite-prompters goblin-wizened or faery-small, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,#KEYS
829:Kindness is twice blessed. It blesses the one who gives it with a sense of his or her own capacity to love, and the person who receives it with a sense of the beneficence of the universe." ~ Dawna Markova. See: https://bit.ly/3iZwmrI, #KEYS
830:One who wants his Yoga to be a path of peace or joy, must be prepared to dwell in his soul rather than in his outer mental and emotional nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Lower Vital Being, #KEYS
831:The birthday of the Lord is the birthday of peace: for thus says the Apostle, "He is our peace, who made both one"; because whether we are Jew or Gentile, "through Him we have access in one Spirit to the Father." ~ Pope Leo the Great, #KEYS
832:The individual soul lives here by the All-Soul and depends upon it; the All-Soul very evidently does not exist by the individual or depend upon it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Order of the Worlds, #KEYS
833:The knowing with which a feeling of loneliness or sorrow is known is the same knowing with which the thought of a friend, the sight of a sunset or the taste of ice cream is known." ~ Rupert Spira, "The Nature of Consciousness, (2017), #KEYS
834:The physical body is therefore a basis of action, pratiṣṭhā, which cannot be despised, neglected or excluded from the spiritual evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Elements of Perfection, #KEYS
835:The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching divine Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, #KEYS
836:373. Shall I accept death or shall I turn and wrestle with him and conquer? That shall be as God in me chooses. For whether I live or die, I am always.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, 473,#KEYS
837:A vacant Absolute is no Absolute,—our conception of a Void or Zero is only a conceptual sign of our mental inability to know or grasp it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
838:Detect first what is false or obscure in you and persistently reject it, then alone can you rightly call for the divine Power to transform you.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [T5],#KEYS
839:Even when we fail to look into our souls
Or lie embedded in earthly consciousness,
Still have we parts that grow towards the light, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
840:For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many and lords many,) but to us there is but one God, of whom are all things. ~ Corinthians, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
841:He who aspires to the true and eternal glory cares nothing for the glory of the age. He who is indifferent to praise or blame enjoys a great serenity of spirit. ~ Imitation of Christ, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
842:No matter how sophisticated or powerful our thinking machines become, there still will be two kinds of people : those who let the machines do their thinking, for them, and those who tell the machines what to think about.
~ C J Lewis,#KEYS
843:On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human,#KEYS
844:Whatever name he gives to this Power or whether he gives it a name or not, it is Isha, the Lord, whose presence he must feel around every object and movement in the Universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
845:When the heart is right, 'for' and 'against' are forgotten." ~ Zhuang Zhou, an influential Chinese Taoist, lived around the 4th century BC. credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name, the "Zhuangzi," Wikipedia., #KEYS
846:Catch the thoughts by becoming aware of the thinker, that's how you do it. Or, just look at the thoughts; ignore them; that stops thoughts. You cause the thoughts to cease by doing absolutely nothing; by being your self. ~ Robert Adams, #KEYS
847:Meditate, then, at all times on the things of God, and speak the things of God, when you sit in your house. By house we can understand the Church, or the secret place within us, so that we are to speak within ourselves. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
848:The mind is the ignorance attempting to know or it is the ignorance receiving a derivative knowledge: it is the action of Avidya. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Thought and Knowledge, #KEYS
849:There is nothing on earth more important than the love which conscious beings feel towards each other, whether or not it is every expressed." ~ Thaddeus Golas, (1924 - 1997) "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, ", (2010), Wikipedia., #KEYS
850:To live in the presence of God on a continuous basis can become a kind of fourth dimension to our three-dimensional world, forming an invisible but real background to everything that we do or that happens in our lives. ~ Thomas Keating, #KEYS
851:We can take birth-pangs as meaning anxiety felt over them, that they should be born in Christ; or again, that he is suffering because he sees them surrounded by dangers. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
852:When contemplating nature, whether in great things or small, I have constantly asked myself the question: is it the object which is here declaring itself, or is it you yourself? ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections §593, #KEYS
853:How should you practice these instructions? Be like a hungry yak, browsing on one tuft of grass with its eyes already fixed on the next. Practice with joy and enthusiasm, and never fall into laziness or apathy. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, #KEYS
854:It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people. ~ Giordano Bruno, #KEYS
855:Let us give up all this foolish talk of doing good to the world. It is not waiting for your or my help; yet we must work and constantly do good, because it is a blessings to ourselves. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
856:Rude, hardy stocks
Transplant themselves, expand, outlast the storms
And heat and cold, not slips too gently nurtured
Or lapped in hothouse warmth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
857:The superior man does not set his mind either for or against anything." ~ Confucius, (551-479) a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history, Wikipedia., #KEYS
858:Time's works
The giant's and the Titan's furious march
Climbs to usurp the kingdom of the gods
Or skirts the demon magnitudes of Hell; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
859:Cherish in your hearts a love without any limit for the whole world and make your love to radiate over the world in all directions without any shadow of animosity or hate. ~ Metta Sutta, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
860:Each is a greatness growing towards the heights
Or from his inner centre oceans out; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,#KEYS
861:I have never counted as real possessions either treasures or palaces or the places which give us credit and put authority in our hands or the pleasures of which men are slaves. ~ Cicero, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
862:Intense philosophies pointed earth to heaven
Or on foundations broad as cosmic Space
Upraised the earth-mind to superhuman heights. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Growth of the Flame,#KEYS
863:It is not possible, O my son, to be attached at once to perishable things and to things divine; the one or the other one must choose, one cannot cling to both at once. ~ Matthew. VI. 24, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
864:Man cannot seize or hold at once all that the illumination brings to him; it has to be repeated constantly so that he may grow in the light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, The Ashwins, Lords of Bliss, #KEYS
865:Or there repose and action are the same
In the deep breast of God's supreme delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,#KEYS
866:Though man is infinitely greater than the plant or the animal, he is not perfect in his own nature like the plant and the animal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Necessity of the Spiritual Transformation, #KEYS
867:Truth of being must govern truth of life; it cannot be that the two have no relation or interdependence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
868:Watch whether you are stationary in the spiritual path, retrogressing, or advancing. If your Japa, meditation or Vedantic Vichara thickens your veil and fattens your egoism, it is not then a spiritual Sadhana. ~ Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #KEYS
869:When you are maligned by someone or disregarded by someone, then keep yourself from thoughts of anger, lest they set you in the region of hatred and separate you from love through grief. ~ Maximus the Confessor, Centuries on Charity 1.29, #KEYS
870:All ideas of union or separation, of friend or foe, of high and low, of 'I and mine', are non-existent in the play of yours with the Divine Mother. There is only-inexhaustible Bliss, boundless Love, and infinite Peace. ~ SWAMI VIRAJANANDA, #KEYS
871:All knowledge failed and the Idea's forms
And Wisdom screened in awe her lowly head
Feeling a Truth too great for thought or speech. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#KEYS
872:A puritan God made pleasure a poisonous fruit,
Or red drug in the market-place of Death,
And sin the child of Nature's ecstasy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
873:Even in the most purely mental activities the fitness, readiness or perfect training of the bodily instrument is a condition indispensable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
874:Music, that is the science or the sense of proper modulation, is likewise given by God's generosity to mortals having rational souls in order to lead them to higher things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
875:Reason and intelligence and mind and sense and life and body, all that we vaunt or take for our own, are Nature's instruments and creations. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Fullness of Spiritual Action, #KEYS
876:The intellect moves naturally between two limits, the abstractions or solving analyses of the reason and the domain of positive and practical reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?, #KEYS
877:There is nothing which is beyond the reach of the God-lover or denied to him; for he is the favourite of the divine Lover and the self of the Beloved. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Mystery of Love, #KEYS
878:We are part of his fruit, which grew out of his most blessed Passion. And thus, by his resurrection, he raised a standard to rally his saints and faithful forever, whether Jews or Gentiles, in one body of his Church. ~ Ignatius of Antioch, #KEYS
879:Your duty is to be; and not to be this or that." ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, (1879-1950), Hindu sage, recommended self-enquiry as the principal means to remove ignorance and abide in Self-awareness, Wikipedia., #KEYS
880:All the sacred Scriptures of the world have become corrupted, but the Ineffable or Absolute has never been corrupted, because no one has ever been able to express It in human speech. ~ id, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
881:Hold on to God even in gloom. Never miss meditation or forget to repeat the name of the Lord. Meditation is the anchorage of the soul. Meditation will purify your mind. Continue japa and meditation without losing heart. ~ Swami Saradananda, #KEYS
882:It is only by hundreds or thousands, perhaps even millions of human lives that man can grow into his divine self-existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - V, #KEYS
883:O Govinda, feeling Your separation, I am considering a moment to be like twelve years or more. Tears are flowing from my eyes like torrents of rain, and I am feeling all vacant in the world in the absence of You. ~ SRI CHAITANYA MAHAPRABHU, #KEYS
884:See that there is nothing you must do or attain in order to be what you already are. And then, upon SEEING THIS, if you feel compelled be a light unto another, and point the way. But first be a light unto yourself." ~ David A. Bhodan. See:, #KEYS
885:The most powerful programming language is Lisp. If you don't know Lisp (or its variant, Scheme), you don't appreciate what a powerful language is. Once you learn Lisp you will see what is missing in most other languages. ~ Richard Stallman, #KEYS
886:There is a fundamental psychic feeling which is the same for all; but there can also be a special psychic feeling for one or another. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Human Relations and the Spiritual Life, #KEYS
887:There is war everywhere. Individuals and nations rise against each other. Wars! Wars! Civil wars, foreign wars! ... Everything is dead or in mourning; and famine stalks the earth. "The general revolution has followed." ~ The Monk of Premol, #KEYS
888:You may fill your heads with knowledge or skillfully train your hands, but unless it is based upon high, upright character, upon a true heart, it will amount to nothing. You will be no better than the most ignorant." ~ Booker T. Washington, #KEYS
889:Be like a solid tower whose brave height remains unmoved by all the winds that blow; the man who lets his thoughts be turned aside by one thing or another, will lose sight of his true goal, his mind sapped of its strength. ~ Dante Alighieri, #KEYS
890:But when I call for a hero, out comes my lazy old self; so I never know who I am, nor how many I am or will be. I'd love to be able to touch a bell and summon the real me, because if I really need myself, I mustn't disappear. ~ Pablo Neruda, #KEYS
891:By means we slight as small, obscure or base,
A greatness founded upon little things,
He has built a world in the unknowing Void. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
892:How can he belong in peace who troubles himself with foreign cares, who seeks to diffuse himself into the outward and withdraws little or rarely into himself? ~ Imitation of Christ I. 11.7, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
893:If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H-2-O, or even mineral water, or saki. Meditation is Drinking it! ~ Taisen Deshimaru, #KEYS
894:Let men blame him or praise, let fortune enter his house or go forth from it, let death come to him today or late, the man of firm mind never deviates from the straight path. ~ Bhartrihari, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
895:Not all can attain to the perfection of wisdom as Solomon or Daniel did, but the spirit of wisdom is poured out on all according to their capacity, that is, on all the faithful. If you believe, you have the spirit of wisdom. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
896:On a certain level all knowledge presents itself as a remembering, because all is latent or inherent in the self of supermind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Instruments - Thought-Process, #KEYS
897:Psychotherapy is what God has been secretly doing for centuries by other names; that is, he searches through our personal history and heals what needs to be healed - the wounds of childhood or our own self-inflicted wounds. ~ Thomas Keating, #KEYS
898:The Grace is something that pushes you towards the goal to be attained. Do not try to judge it by your mind, you will not get anywhere, because it is something formidable which is not explained through human words or feelings. ~ MOTHER MIRA, #KEYS
899:The human mind has not yet reached that illumination or that sure science by which it can forecast securely even its morrow. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Small Free Unit and the Larger Concentrated Unity, #KEYS
900:The Mother's sleep is not sleep but an inner consciousness, in which she is in communication with people or working everywhere. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother, Other Dreams and Experiences, #KEYS
901:Whence this creation came into being, whether He established it or did not establish it, He who regards it from above in the supreme ether, He knows,-or perhaps He knows it not. ~ Rig Veda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
902:Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, #KEYS
903:All ideas of union or separation, of friend or foe, of high and low, of 'I and mine', are non-existent in that play of yours with the Divine Mother. There is only - inexhaustible Bliss, boundless Love, and infinite Peace. ~ SWAMI VIRAJANANDA, #KEYS
904:If there is any perjured person or a thief among you, let him cease to be so; if any adulterer, let him repent; then he has kept the sweet and true sabbaths of God. If any one has impure hands, let him wash and be pure. ~ Saint Justin Martyr, #KEYS
905:If thou wouldst make progress, be resigned to passing for an idiot or an imbecile in external things; consent to pass for one who understands nothing of them at all. ~ Epictetus: Manual. 13, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
906:The law of the grand study or practical philosophy consists in developing and bringing into light the luminous principle of reason which we have received from heaven. ~ Confucius "Ta-hio" I, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
907:When you are exposed to any trial, be it physical or moral, bodily or spiritual, the best remedy is the thought of him who is our life, and not think of the one without joining to it the thought of the other. ~ Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, #KEYS
908:You cannot fathom a wise man's depth until you question or debate him. Until you beat a drum, What distinguishes it from other objects." ~ Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyeltsen, (1182-1251), a Tibetan spiritual leader and Buddhist scholar, Wikipedia., #KEYS
909:It is always the individual who receives the intuitions of Nature and takes the step forward dragging or drawing the rest of humanity behind him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #KEYS
910:Knowing all vain, yet we strive; for our nature seizing us always
Drives like the flock that is herded and urged towards shambles or pasture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
911:The body is given us as one instrument necessary to the totality of our works and it is to be used, not neglected, hurt, suppressed or abolished. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Power of the Instruments, #KEYS
912:The physical is an obstinate obstacle, but it must be enlightened, persuaded, pressed even to change, but not oppressed or violently driven. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Transformation of the Physical, #KEYS
913:These revolutions, demon or drunken god,
Convulsing the wounded body of mankind
Only to paint in new colours an old face; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
914:The ultimate felicity of man lies in speculation. So it clearly does not lie in the act of any moral virtue, nor of prudence or craft, though these are intellectual virtues ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.44), #KEYS
915:The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images. ~ Albert Einstein, #KEYS
916:Things will disappear [or appear] only as man changes in consciousness. Deny it if you will, it still remains a fact that consciousness is the only reality and things but mirror that which you are in consciousness." ~ Neville Goddard. Mystic., #KEYS
917:Young Monk: "Are we human beings having a spiritual experience or are we spiritual beings having a human experience?" Old Monk: "What's the difference?" ~ Saul Ader, "Gifts From Stillness,", (2001). Known as " ~ the Socrates of Provincetown.", #KEYS
918:At hazard he read by arrow-leaps of Thought
That hit the mark by guess or luminous chance, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,#KEYS
919:Either God or nothing, because all that is not of God is worse than nothing! Remain united with God and love him with all your heart, always remembering that we cannot love him too much nor can we ever love him enough. ~ Saint Francis de Sales, #KEYS
920:The higher mentality cannot be complete or secure so long as the inferior intelligence is able to deform it or even to bring in any of its own intermixture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Intuitive Mind, #KEYS
921:A gift of priceless value from Time's gods
Lost or mislaid in an uncaring world,
Life is a marvel missed, an art gone wry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
922:Grace is always present... It is really inside you, in your Heart, and the moment you effect subsidence or merger of the mind into its Source, grace rushes forth, sprouting as from a spring within you. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi #KEYS
923:It is astonishing how much the word infinitely is misused: everything is infinitely more beautiful, infinitely better, etc. The concept must have something pleasing about it, or its misuse could not have become so general. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #KEYS
924:One who has not ceased from evil living or is without peace or without concentration or whose mind has not been tranquillised, cannot attain to Him by the intelligence. ~ Katha Upanishad II.24, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
925:Ours is still a world in which ideals can only be imposed if they have a preponderating vital and physical force in their hands or at their backs. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Principle of Free Confederation, #KEYS
926:There is no culture, no civilisation ancient or modern which in its system has been entirely satisfactory to the need of perfection in man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, Indian Spirituality and Life - IV, #KEYS
927:There is no help in changing your environment. The obstacle is the mind, which must be overcome, whether at home or in the forest. If you can do it in the forest, why not in the home? Therefore, why change the environment? ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
928:Actualization of self cannot be sought as a goal in its own right. . . . Rather, it seems to be a by-product of active commitment of one's talents to some cause, outside the self, such as the quest for beauty, truth, or justice. ~ Sidney Jourard, #KEYS
929:Do not cling to conventional thoughts, religion, concepts and so on. Let go! Drop all artificial conceptions of Life, for it is only then that it can be taken into you, or you into it, in consciousness Self-awareness." ~ Sunyata, Danish mystic. , #KEYS
930:Do not keep putting off practice, thinking that another location or another time would be more suitable.
Nothing is better than the present moment. Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, bring your life to the path. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche,#KEYS
931:It was a plane of undetermined spirit
That could be a zero or round sum of things,
A state in which all ceased and all began. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge,#KEYS
932:such as I am, belong not to myself. ..A man should think thus, "All earth is mine," or thus, "All this belongs to others just as well as to myself;" such a man is never afflicted. ~ Mahabharata, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
933:This hidden foe lodged in the human breast
Man must overcome or miss his higher fate.
This is the inner war without escape. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
934:When intellectual dishonesty (or gross incompetence) is discovered in one part-even a marginal part-of someone's writings, it is natural to want to examine more critically the rest of his or her work.
~ Sokal and Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense,#KEYS
935:You should analyze your mind and see whether you have been able to cover every bit of work with the spirit of God and judge whether the duties you are performing are for His sake or for the propitiation of your spurious self. ~ Swami Saradananda, #KEYS
936:A novel is a commodity that fulfills a certain need; people need to buy daydreams like they need to buy ice cream or aspirin or gin. They even need to buy a pinch of intellectual catnip now and then to liven up their thoughts... ~ John Dos Passos, #KEYS
937:If you go into solitude with a silent tongue, the silence of mute beings will share with you their rest. But if you go into solitude with a silent heart, the silence of creation will speak louder than the tongues of men or angels. ~ Thomas Merton, #KEYS
938:In his revelation, God performs a symphony, and it is impossible to say which is richer: the seamless genius of his composition or the polyphonous orchestra of Creation that he has prepared to play it. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, Truth is Symphonic, #KEYS
939:I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman. ~ Anaïs Nin, #KEYS
940:Let that be considered a valid Eucharist, which is under the bishop or one whom he has delegated. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, just as wherever Christ Jesus may be, there is the Catholic Church. ~ Ignatius of Antioch, #KEYS
941:To live in the presence of God on a continuous basis can become a kind of fourth dimension to our three-dimensional world, forming an invisible but real background to everything that we do or that happens in our lives. ~ Thomas Keating, On Prayer, #KEYS
942:Truth, as for the Platonic Kierkegaard, is subjectivity. The extremity or optimum pitch of subjective life is witness to truth, which is a witness unto death. The road to truth is the Stations of the Cross. ~ Catherine Pickstock, Aspects of Truth, #KEYS
943:We are the Self. All we have to do is to remember that. We keep on forgetting it and thus think we are this body, or this ego. If the will and desire to remember Self are strong enough, they will eventually overcome vasanas. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
944:Wherefore, O my brothers, if men blame you, condemn you, persecute or attack you, you shall not be indignant, you shall not be discouraged and your spirit shall not be cast down. ~ Buddhist Text, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
945:A Nirmita (sprul-pa) is an emanation or a manifestation. A Buddha or other realized being is able to project many such Nirmitas simultaneously in an infinite variety of forms. ~ John Myrdhin, The Golden Letters: The Three Statements of Garab Dorje, #KEYS
946:Do not think yourself big or small, very important or very unimportant; for we are nothing in ourselves. We must only live to become what the Divine wills of us.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Humility and Modesty,#KEYS
947:He insisted on the cleverness of the snake so that deadly wounds might be avoided, and he insisted on the innocence of the dove so that revenge might not be taken on those who injure or lay traps for you. ~ Cleverness is useless without innocence., #KEYS
948:In whatever centre the concentration takes place the Yoga force generated extends to the others and produces concentration or workings there. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Descent and Other Kinds of Experience, #KEYS
949:Madmen are they, and counselled by an imprisoned mind and by narrow thoughts, who think that what was not before can be born or what is be utterly abolished in death and dissolution. ~ Empedocles, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
950:If you understand clearly that the Lord is the highest, then nothing will frighten or discourage you, but all your senses will run in the direction of the Supreme, and both your mind and your senses will help you reach Him. ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda, #KEYS
951:In essence, humans need more knowledge than eating and drinking because in a day a person only needs to eat once or twice, while knowledge is needed in every breath he takes." ~ Imam Abu Hanifa, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
952:Night was a chrysoprase on velvet cloth,
A nestling darkness or a moonlit deep; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart's Grief and Pain,#KEYS
953:Perhaps we are lacking the recognition that a response to the whole world should not most deeply be that of doing, nor even that of terror and anguish, but that of wondering or marveling at what is, being amazed or astonished by it…. ~ George Grant, #KEYS
954:The worlds are built by its unconscious Breath
And Matter and Mind are its figures or its powers,
Our waking thoughts the output of its dreams. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#KEYS
955:Whoever wishes to be truly a man, must abandon all preoccupation by the wish to please the world. There is nothing more sacred or more fecund than the curiosity of an independent spirit. ~ Emerson, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
956:'As oil poured from one vessel to another falls in an unbroken line, so, when the mind in an unbroken stream thinks of the Lord, we have what is called Para-Bhakti or supreme love.' ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. III. 85), #KEYS
957:Have confidence in yourself! The mind must be made steady. Analyze it and find out if it wants what is right or if it is only trying to deceive you. As you continue to analyze in this manner, you will gain confidence in yourself. ~ Swami Turiyananda, #KEYS
958:He stood compelled to a tremendous choice.
All he had been and all towards which he grew
Must now be left behind or else transform
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Pursuit of the Unknowable, [T5],#KEYS
959:He whose thought spills not itself to this side or' that, whose mind is not tormented, who is not anxious any more about good than about evil, for him there is no fear, for he watches. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
960:Leave out of your mind the quality of him who speaks to you whether great or small, and consider with an open mind whether the words spoken are true or false. ~ Iamblichus "Book on the Mysteries 1", the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
961:The staple or dry straw of Reason's tilth,
Its heaped fodder of innumerable facts,
Plebeian fare on which today we thrive. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS
962:The Truth of truths men fear and deny,
The Light of lights they refuse;
To ignorant gods they lift their cry
Or a demon altar choose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God's Labour,#KEYS
963:The world, for a Christian, is a Trinitarian text, or better it is a woven cloth: the fixed threads of the warp symbolize the Logos, the moving threads of the woof the dynamism of the Pneuma. ~ Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism (214), #KEYS
964:Awareness is colored by experience but is never tarnished or sullied by anything that takes place within it. Pure knowing, being aware of awareness itself is always in the same pristine condition." ~ Rupert Spira,"Being Aware of Being Aware,", (2017), #KEYS
965:Concerning women who commit fornication and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. ~ Council of Ancyra ~ AD 314), #KEYS
966:Grace may sometimes bring undeserved or apparently undeserved fruits, but one can't demand Grace as a right and privilege—for then it would not be Grace. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Grace and Guidance, #KEYS
967:I ask of my readers to pardon me, where they may perceive me to have had the desire rather than the power to speak, what they either understand better themselves, or fail to understand through the obscurity of my language. ~ Saint Augustine, (DT 5.1), #KEYS
968:If nothing matters, then even the thought that nothing matters doesn't matter. And if it doesn't matter whether anything matters or not, then there's no real difference between believing nothing matters and believing something matters. ~ Ray Brassier, #KEYS
969:It is rare that somebody can surrender entirely to the Divine's Will without having to face one or another of the difficulties.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Elements of Yoga, Surrender to the Divine Will, Surrender,#KEYS
970:Why is intuition superior to reason?
- Because it does not depend upon experience or memory and frequently brings about the solution to our problems by methods concerning which we are in entire ignorance.
~ Charles F Haanel, The Master Key System,#KEYS
971:You can control a mad elephant; You can shut the mouth of a bear or a tiger; You can ride a lion; You can play with the cobra; You can be ever youthful; You can walk on water and live in fire; But control of the mind is more difficult. ~ Thayumanavar, #KEYS
972:Cosmic being is not a meaningless freak or phantasy or a chance error; there is a divine significance and truth in it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
973:For whatever good work we may do, let us not claim any praise or benefit. It belongs to God. Give up the fruits to God. Let us stand aside and think that we are only servants obeying God, our Master. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
974:He did not hide Himself in a corner of the Temple, as if afraid, or take shelter behind a wall or pillar; but by His heavenly power making Himself invisible to those who were threatening Him, He passed through the midst of them. ~ Theophylact of Ohrid, #KEYS
975:If you can practice the dharma with as much energy that you have been giving to your samsaric existence, sooner or later you will definitely become a buddha. It is your choice. You have been shown the way. Nobody can do it for you. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche, #KEYS
976:O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me forget myself entirely so to establish myself in you, unmovable and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity. May nothing be able to trouble my peace or make me leave you. ~ Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, #KEYS
977:Tantra is only valuable in so far as it enables us to give effect to Vedanta & in itself it has no value or necessity at all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, To Motilal Roy, #KEYS
978:All our wisest and most divine doctors concur that visible things are truly images of invisible things and that from creatures the creator can be seen in a recognizable way as if in a mirror or in an enigma. ~ Nicolas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance I.11, #KEYS
979:Each person has his own freedom of choice up to a certain point—unless he makes the full surrender—and as he uses the freedom, has to take the spiritual or other consequences. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Surrender, #KEYS
980:If the chamber's door is even a little ajar,
What then can hinder God from stealing in
Or who forbid his kiss on the sleeping soul? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
981:It is not a matter of refuting the opinions of others, but of presenting one's own; not a matter of contesting some aspect of the teaching or behavior of others that seems not to be good, but of writing on behalf of truth. ~ Saint Maximus the Confessor, #KEYS
982:Knowing or being aware is not itself an objective experience, but without it there could be no experience. It is that which makes experience possible and yet it is not itself 'an experience'." ~ Rupert Spira, from "Being Aware of Being Aware,", (2017)., #KEYS
983:Let that be considered a valid Eucharist, which is under the bishop or one whom he has delegated. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, just as wherever Christ Jesus may be, there is the Catholic Church. ~ Saint Ignatius of Antioch, #KEYS
984:That being known which is without sound, touch or form, inexhaustible, eternal, without beginning or end, greater than the great self, immutable, man escapes from the month of death. ~ Katha Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
985:The objective level is not words, and cannot be reached by words alone. We must point our finger and be silent, or we will never reach this level. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, #KEYS
986:When the presence of God emerges from our inmost being into our faculties, whether we walk down the street or drink a cup of soup, divine life is pouring into the world. ~ Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel, #KEYS
987:As soon as there is a little light in the sky early in the morning, we can understand that the sun is in the sky. Similarly, since there is some consciousness in all bodies-whether man or animal-we can understand the presence of the soul. ~ Bhagwad Gita, #KEYS
988:Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
989:Sadhana should be done in private—the more secluded, the better. It should not be done before others, as that can stimulate one's ego. The Master used to say: 'Sadhana is to be done mentally, in some corner, or some secluded place.' ~ Swami Adbhutananda, #KEYS
990:The biggest intellects can make errors of the worst kind and confuse Truth and falsehood, if they have not the contact with Truth or the direct experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Intellect and the Intellectual, #KEYS
991:Tiredness shows lack of will for progress. When you feel tired or fatigued that is lack of will for progress.
Fire is always burning in you.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Weakness, Laziness, Tiredness, Fatigue, Tamas,#KEYS
992:You must never cease from calling on the Lord, and know this for certain that the Lord's name cuts through all obstacles. However it may be - be it perfectly or imperfectly - keep on repeating His name, which has a power of its own. ~ SWAMI SUBODHANANDA, #KEYS
993:Creation is not a making of something out of nothing or of one thing out of another, but a self-projection of Brahman into the conditions of Space and Time ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: Brahman, Oneness of God and the World, #KEYS
994:He is a stranger to the magical arts and divination and necromancy, to exorcisms and other analogous practices. He takes no part in the accomplishment of any prayer or religious ceremony. ~ Digha Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
995:I do not suffer any experience, pleasant or unpleasant; it is only a 'you' or a 'me' who suffers an experience. This is a very important pronouncement and you should ponder over it deeply. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
996:Is it not true that even most of the seekers after God cannot call it down? And yet they can receive it if someone, a guru or avatar, has once called it down within him. Is it so?
Yes.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
997:Lord Naoshige said, The Way of the Samurai is in desperateness. Ten men or more cannot kill such a man. Common sense will not accomplish such things. Simply become insane and desperate.
~ HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMURAI, YAMAMOTO TSUNETOMO, 1650 1720,#KEYS
998:Trivial or sombre, disillusion comes,
Life's harsh reality stares at the soul:
Heaven's hour adjourned flees into bodiless Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal,#KEYS
999:266. There are three forms in which the command may come, the will and faith in thy nature, thy ideal on which heart and brain are agreed and the voice of Himself or His angels.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
1000:In place of the explosive unity of the absolute identity of the self and God or the absolute contradiction between the self and God a unity of tension enters, one of a relative similarity and a relative dissimilarity between God and self. ~ Erich Przywara, #KEYS
1001:Serve your parents. Never let them suffer the pangs of starvation or the lack of clothing. God becomes angry with the person who fails to provide one's parents with food and clothing or causes them anguish by speaking harshly to them. ~ Swami Adbhutananda, #KEYS
1002:The beasts are mortal, but they do not know or fully understand that fact; the gods are immortal, and they know it - but poor man, up from beasts and not yet a god, was that unhappy mixture: he was mortal, and he knew it. ~ Ken Wilber, Up From Eden, p. x., #KEYS
1003:An emanation or a part of her being and consciousness comes out of the Mother to each sadhak and as her image and representative remains with him to help him. In fact, it is the Mother who comes out in that form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
1004:As one can go up to the top of a house by means of a ladder, a bamboo or a flight of stairs, so are there various means for approaching the Eternal and each religion in the world shows only one of such means. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
1005:Each portion of matter may be conceived as like a garden full of plants and like a pond full of fishes. But each branch of every plant, each member of every animal, each drop of its liquid parts is also some rich garden or pond. ~ Leibniz, Monadology 65-66, #KEYS
1006:Everywhere something hinders me from meeting God in my brother because he has shut the doors of his inmost temple and recites the fables of his brother's god or the god of his brother's brother. ~ Emerson, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1007:If we wanted to lift our mind up towards God, we must have to bring it back from all external things and concentrate it at one point. But how to concentrate the scattered mind? This can be effected by faith in God or in one's own Guru. ~ SWAMI SUBODHANANDA, #KEYS
1008:I have chosen the term collective because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals. ~ Carl Jung, #KEYS
1009:In whatever state I find myself, I have learned to be content." ~ Paul of Tursus, (c. 5 - c. 64 or 67), commonly known as Saint Paul, an apostle, (though not one of the Twelve Apostles) who taught the gospel of Christ to the first century world, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1010:Life does not care whether you call yourself rich or poor; strong or weak. It will eternally reward you with that which you claim as true of yourself." ~ Neville Goddard, (1905-1972), mystic teacher. From "The Complete Reader,", (2013), edited David Allen., #KEYS
1011:... they are structures that we build every time we engage in a thought that's just a little bit higher than a thought we had a moment before, or an activity that's just a little bit more noble than the activity we engaged in a moment before. ~ ken-wilber, #KEYS
1012:You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing. It does not mean that you must be brainless and foolhardy, improvident or indifferent; only the basic anxiety for oneself must go. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
1013:A greater Personality sometimes
Possesses us which yet we know is ours:
Or we adore the Master of our souls.
Then the small bodily ego thins and falls; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
1014:If deep down you continue to believe a tiny corner of samsara could be useful, or that it might even offer the ultimate solution to all your worldly problems, it will be extremely difficult to become a genuine spiritual seeker. ~ Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye, #KEYS
1015:They enter the valley of the wandering Gleam
Whence, captives or victims of the specious Ray,
Souls trapped in that region never can escape. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#KEYS
1016:Today you're vigorous in body, fattened by luxury, and in the prime of life, with complexion fair like the flowers, strong and powerful and of irresistible energy; tomorrow you'll be an object of pity, withered by age or exhausted by sickness. ~ Saint Basil, #KEYS
1017:Christ does not want you to have hatred—or grief, or wrath, or grudge-bearing—toward a man, in any way whatsoever or because of any sort of temporal reality. All four gospels cry aloud this very thing. ~ Saint Maximus the Confessor, Centuries on Charity 4.84, #KEYS
1018:Crafts minute in subtle lines
Eternised a swift moment's memory
Or showed in a carving's sweep, a cup's design
The underlying patterns of the unseen: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Growth of the Flame,#KEYS
1019:If one concentrates on a thought or a word, one has to dwell on the essential idea contained in the word with the aspiration to feel the thing which it expresses. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Concentration and Meditation, #KEYS
1020:If we could speak of God only in the very terms themselves of Scripture, it would follow that no one could speak about God in any but the original language of the Old or New Testament ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.29.3ad1)., #KEYS
1021:It is customary, even in Sacred Scripture, to say that God hardens someone or blinds someone in the sense that God does not bestow the grace on him by which he may be softened and see ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (On Job ch. 7)., #KEYS
1022:Many are unable to make progress in the study of science, either through dullness of mind, or through having a number of occupations, and temporal needs, or even through laziness in learning, ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, 2-2.2.4, #KEYS
1023:Sometimes a malignant (not fair or well-intentioned) criticism can be helpful by some aspect of it, if one can look at it without being affected by the unfairness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Problems in Human Relations, #KEYS
1024:To it nothing is impossible, neither to place the soul above destiny nor to submit it to destiny by rendering it indifferent to circumstances. Nothing is more divine or more powerful than Intelligence. ~ id, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1025:When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots, but just paint Spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots — it is not yet painting Spring. ~ Dogen Zenji, #KEYS
1026:All the activities that the body is to go through are determined when it first comes into existence. It does not rest with you to accept or reject them. The only freedom you have is to turn your mind inward and renounce activities there. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
1027:A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
1028:Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil. It is as if there were a God who said to us, I set before you two ways: You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It's up to you. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
1029:Meditation is not something we do; it is something we cease to do. Thus, it could be called self-remembering or self-resting." ~ Rupert Spira, (b.1960) international teacher of the Advaita Vedanta. From his book "Being Aware of Being Aware, (2017), Wikipedia., #KEYS
1030:Real rebirth is dying from the ego into the spirit. Whenever identification with the body exists, a body is always available, whether this or any other one, till the body-sense disappears by merging into the source - the spirit, or Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
1031:Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring ~ not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive., #KEYS
1032:Yogic or occult powers are no more supernatural or incredible than is supernatural or incredible the power to write a great poem or compose great music. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Education, Belief and Yoga, #KEYS
1033:A warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he's clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything.
~ Carlos Castaneda,#KEYS
1034:Before we can discern the new, we must know the old. It is true that everything has always been there, but in another way, in another light, with a different value attached to it, in another realization or manifestation." ~ Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin, #KEYS
1035:But in the end he must take his station, or better still, if he can, always and from the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond the limitations of the word that he uses.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids,#KEYS
1036:Do good under all circumstances, but with no care for any profit, or any blessedness, or any damnation, or any salvation, or any martyrdom; but all you do or omit should be for the honor of Love." ~ Hadewijch, (13 cnt.) 13th-century poet and mystic, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1037:Man is obliged by a Power within him to be the labourer of a more or less conscious self-evolution that shall lead him to self-mastery and self-knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Thought and Knowledge, #KEYS
1038:Men are always more able to criticise sharply the work of others and tell them how to do things or what not to do than skilful to avoid the same mistakes themselves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Problems in Human Relations, #KEYS
1039:Our dead past round our future's ankles clings
And drags back the new nature's glorious stride,
Or from its buried corpse old ghosts arise, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,#KEYS
1040:Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug." ~ Og Mandino, #KEYS
1041:The artificiality of much in human life is the cause of its most deep-seated maladies; it is not faithful to itself or sincere with Nature and therefore it stumbles and suffers. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Diversity in Oneness, #KEYS
1042:The body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all inner action. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Power of the Instruments, #KEYS
1043:When a man is intoxicated with ecstatic love of God, then who is his father or mother or wife? His love of God is so intense that he becomes mad with it. Then he has no duty to perform. He is free from all debts. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
1044:God has to work in the soul in secret and in darkness because if we fully knew what was happening, and what Mystery, transformation, God and Grace will eventually ask of us, we would either try to take charge or stop the whole process. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #KEYS
1045:Now get thou this, and then you shall be happy....The fact is, desire is a bottomless pit which can never fill up, or like the all-consuming fire which burns the fiercer, the more we feed it..." ~ Lakshmana Sarma, (1879-1965) Indian sage. https://bit.ly/33R3bTr, #KEYS
1046:Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible." ~ Francis of Assisi, (1181 or 1182 - 1226), venerated as Saint Francis of Assisi, Italian Catholic friar, deacon, philosopher, mystic, and preacher, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1047:t is a horrible thing to feel continually passing away everything which one possesses or to which one can attach oneself and yet to have no desire to seek out whether there is not something permanent. ~ Pascal, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1048:God disguised as myriad things, and playing a game of tag has kissed you and said, You're it. I mean you're really it. Now it does not matter what you believe or feel. For something wonderful, something major-league wonderful, is someday going to happen. ~ Hafez, #KEYS
1049:Īśvara is the Atman as seen or grasped by mind. His highest name is ॐ; so repeat it, meditate on it, and think of all its wonderful nature and attributes. Repeating ॐ continually is the only true worship. It is not a word, it is God Himself. ~ Swami Vivekananda? #KEYS
1050:When a thought of anger or cruelty or a bad and unwholesome inclination awakes in a man, let him immediately throw it from him. let him dispel it, destroy it, prevent it from staying with him. ~ Buddhist Maxims, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1051:A mighty victory or a mighty fall,
A throne in heaven or a pit in hell,
The dual Energy they have justified ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,#KEYS
1052:Many are unable to make progress in the study of science, either through dullness of mind, or through having a number of occupations, and temporal needs, or even through laziness in learning ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.2.4)., #KEYS
1053:Only religion in this bankruptcy
Presents its dubious riches to our hearts
Or signs unprovisioned cheques on the Beyond: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,#KEYS
1054:Pure devotion is gained through the grace of great souls, or through a little of the divine grace. To come in contact with a great soul is indeed extremely difficult. It is impossible to know them fully. Yet, it is infallible in its effect. ~ NARADA BHAKTI SUTRAS, #KEYS
1055:Surrender is the decision to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. This is done either through the mind or the emotion or the life-impulse or through all of them together.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
1056:There is no need for the younger clergy to go to the houses of widows or virgins, except for the sake of a definite visit, and in that case only with the elder clergy, that is, with the bishop. . . . Why should we give room to the world to revile? ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
1057:The Self is neither within or without." ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, (1879-1950), a Hindu sage. Since the 1930s his teachings have been popularized in the West, resulting in his worldwide recognition as an enlightened being, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1058:To suffer as a Christian is not only to suffer in confession of the faith, which is done by words, but also to suffer for doing any good work, or for avoiding any sin, for Christ's sake ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.124.5ad1)., #KEYS
1059:We are not conscious. If we are not conscious we cannot have unity, cannot have individuality, cannot have an Ego or 'I'. All these things are invented by man to keep the illusion of consciousness. Man can be conscious, but at present he is not. ~ Peter Ouspensky, #KEYS
1060:Who enjoys the show? The actor or the spectator? Learn to be witness. Stand aside and watch the play. Don't get involved. Don't talk much. Speech is silver, silence is golden. Look and listen attentively. Many want to talk. Few care to listen. ~ Swami Turiyananda, #KEYS
1061:Without continence nothing great can be achieved. Without absolute continence, you can neither have perfect health, nor be able to do good to others, or attain realization. Continence is such a great power, so noble, so necessary for all. ~ SWAMI TRIGUNATITANANDA, #KEYS
1062:God is the Being in Whom being anything means being everything." ~ Parmenides, (late sixth or early fifth century BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek, considered the founder of metaphysics or ontology and has influenced the whole history of Western philosophy, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1063:I don't tell you or advise you to despise God's works, or to think there is anything against your faith in what the good God has made good. But use every kind of creature, and everything this world is equipped with, reasonably and moderately. ~ Saint Leo the Great, #KEYS
1064:If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed. ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, #KEYS
1065:Mind cannot arrive at identity with the Absolute even when by a stretch of the intellect it conceives the idea, but can only disappear into it in a swoon or extinction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Nature of the Supermind, #KEYS
1066:The most vital issue of the age is whether the future progress of humanity is to be governed by the modern economic and materialistic mind of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided, uplifted and enlightened by spiritual culture and knowledge.... ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
1067:To the meek and gentle, to the lowly and unassuming, to all who are prepared to endure injury - to these the earth is promised. This is not a small or unimportant inheritance, as if "the earth" were somehow distinct from a dwelling-place in heaven. ~ Leo the Great, #KEYS
1068:We are bidden to 'put on Christ', to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little. ~ C S Lewis, #KEYS
1069:Do not indulge in idle curiosity—no asking "what the city has done," or the ward, or the Emperor, or the Bishop, or the priest. Lift up your eyes: now, as your hour strikes, you need Him who is above ~ Cyril of Jerusalem, Prologue to the Catechetical Lectures, 13)., #KEYS
1070:Every philosophical interpretation of participation is us at bottom a presentiment or expression of the problem of the transcendentals, of the absolutely universal givens of reality. ~ Louis Bertrand Geiger, La Participation dans la Philosophie de S. Thomas d'Aquin, #KEYS
1071:Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy. ~ Saint Peter Chrysologus, #KEYS
1072:How to concentrate the scattered mind? the mind which has been distributed to wife and children, to the attainment of name and fame and to the pursuit of all sorts of sensual pleasures? This can be effected by faith in God or in one's own Guru. ~ SWAMI SUBODHANANDA, #KEYS
1073:If our composition has not had Truth from its beginning, how can it either have or speak the Truth? Nay, it can only have a notion of it. All things, accordingly, that are on earth, are not the Truth, they're copies of the True." ~ "Hermes Trismegistus," Wikipedia., #KEYS
1074:In a chance happening, fate's whims and the blind workings or dead drive of a brute Nature,
In her dire Titan caprice, strength that to death drifts and to doom, hidden a Will labours. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Lost Boat,#KEYS
1075:To an Earthkeeper, love is not a feeling or something your barter with. Love is the essence of who you are, and it radiates from you as a brilliant aura: You become love, practice fearlessness, and attain enlightenment." ~ Alberto Villoldo, Cuban-born psychologist., #KEYS
1076:We can easily lift a heavy stone under water, but as soon as we take it out we find how heavy it is, and in the same way, we don't feel the weight of the body as long as a Chaitanya or Life-force permeates it. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
1077:A few can climb to an unperishing sun,
Or live on the edges of the mystic moon
And channel to earth-mind the wizard ray. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
1078:On days upon which many of God's benefits have to be recalled or requested, several masses are celebrated on one day, as for example, one for the feast, and another for a fast or for the dead ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.83.2ad2)., #KEYS
1079:The being of the universe is one and equally present in each individual, part or member of the universe, in such sort that the totality and each part make from the view-point of substance only one. ~ Giordano Bruno, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1080:When we render natural and easy to us perfect concentration (or the operation which consists in fixing attention, contemplation and meditation), a power of exact discernment develops. ~ Patanjali : Aphroisms.III. 9, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1081:A light not born of sun or moon nor fire,
A light that dwelt within and saw within
Shedding an intimate visibility,
Made secrecy more revealing than the word: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#KEYS
1082:Ask yourself: Do I want to continue being a great practitioner of ignorance, anger, and desire? Or do I want to become a great practitioner of wisdom and compassion instead?
Do not waste your precious human rebirth by making the wrong decision. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche,#KEYS
1083:ho is the Wise man? Whosoever is constantly learning something from one man or another. Who is the rich man? Whosoever is contented with his lot. Who is the strong man? Whosoever is capable of self-mastery. ~ Talmud, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1084:I am far from denying the real force of the arguments in proof of a God… but these do not warm me or enlighten me; they do not take away the winter of my desolation, or make the buds unfold in the leaves grow within me, and my moral being rejoice. ~ John Henry Newman, #KEYS
1085:Mind is a mediator divinity:
Its powers can undo all Nature's work:
Mind can suspend or change earth's concrete law. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness,#KEYS
1086:Q: Are our prayers granted?
M:Yes, they are granted.
No thought will go in vain.
Every thought will produce its effect some time or other.
Thought-force will never go in vain. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day, 28-6-46,#KEYS
1087:The Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti,-that is Prakriti.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
1088:Whatever kind of thought arises, have the same reaction: 'Not me, not my business'. It can be a good thought or a bad thought. Treat them the same way. To whom are these thoughts arising? To you. That means you are not the thought. You are the Self. ~ Annamalai Swami, #KEYS
1089:Children are nowhere taught, in any systematic way, to distinguish true from false, or meaningful from meaningless, statements. Why is this so? Because their elders, even in the democratic countries, do not want them to be given this kind of education. ~ Aldous Huxley, #KEYS
1090:Idols of an oblique divinity,
They wore the heads of animal or troll,
Assumed ears of the faun, the satyr's hoof,
Or harboured the demoniac in their gaze. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
1091:I never dreamed that islands, about fifty or sixty miles apart, and most of them in sight of each other, formed of precisely the same rocks, placed under a quite similar climate, rising to a nearly equal height, would have been differently tenanted.
~ Charles Darwin,#KEYS
1092:That Brahman, of the nature of Reality, is eternal. It exists in past, present, & future. It is without beginning or end. It cannot be described in words. The utmost that can be said of Brahman is that It is of the very nature of Intelligence & Bliss. ~ Sri Ramakrishna #KEYS
1093:You must give up the idea that you are something. That you do or do not do, both must be given up. Give up taking the credit for anything; root out this idea, then you will become unselfish. Root out all selfish desires and you will reach the goal. ~ SWAMI PARAMANANDA, #KEYS
1094:All here is dreamed or doubtfully exists,
But who the dreamer is and whence he looks
Is still unknown or only a shadowy guess. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,#KEYS
1095:God can be realized through all paths, it is like your coming to Dakshineswar by carriage, by boat, by steamer, or on foot. You have chosen the way according to your convenience and taste; but the destination is the same. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
1096:If you can leave a relationship with love, empathy, and compassion, without any thoughts of revenge, hatred, or fear, that is how you let go." ~ Brian Weiss, (b. 1944) American psychiatrist, hypnotherapist, and author who specializes in past life regression, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1097:It is only a lazy and worldly person or one who is ignorant or uneducated who will rest content with the literal and superficial sense and refuse to penetrate the deeper meaning ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, 20.21)., #KEYS
1098:Magnitude: A mathematical notation indicating the number of times a quantity is multiplied by itself; Electricity supply; Possession of controlling influence; Possession of the qualities (especially mental qualities) required to do something or get something done ~ Def, #KEYS
1099:No knowledge can be true knowledge which subjects itself to the senses or uses them otherwise than as first indices whose data have constantly to be corrected and overpassed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Purified Understanding, #KEYS
1100:One of two things must be done, either surrender because you admit your inability and require a higher power to help you, or investigate the cause of misery by going to the source and merging into the Self. Either way you will be free from misery. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
1101:You, therefore, who are undertaking the study of this book, if you persevere to the end and understand it, you will be either a monarch or a madman. Do what you will with this volume, you will be unable to despise or to forget it.
~ Eliphas Levi, Transcendental Magic,#KEYS
1102:A page of Addison or of Irving will teach more of style than a whole manual of rules, whilst a story of Poe's will impress upon the mind a more vivid notion of powerful and correct description and narration than will ten dry chapters of a bulky textbook. ~ H P Lovecraft, #KEYS
1103:It is ridiculous to say either 'I have not realized the Self'; or 'I have realized the Self'; are there two selves, for one to be the object of the other's realization?" ~ "The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi,", (1972, 1997). An Indian sage, (1879 - 1950), Wikipedia., #KEYS
1104:Once the masterpiece has emerged, the lesser works surrounding it fall into place; and it then gives the impression of having been led up to and foreseeable, though actually it is inconceivable ~ or, rather, it can only be conceived of once it is there for us to see it., #KEYS
1105:The Buddha taught for forty-five years. He is said to have said that all of his teachings could be encapsulated in one sentence… "Nothing is to be clung to as 'I,' 'me,' or 'mine.'" ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn, (b. 1944), Wikipedia. Quote from "Mindfulness for Beginners,", (2016)., #KEYS
1106:You come to see that everything you think you know about yourself, everything you think you know about the world, is based on assumptions, beliefs, and opinions - things you believe because you were taught or told that they were true. ~ Adyashanti, The End of Your World, #KEYS
1107:5. That which thinks not by the mind,^1 that by which the mind is thought, know That to be the Brahman and not this which men follow after here. ^1 Or "that which one thinks not with the mind" ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena And Other Upanishads, page 6, #KEYS
1108:Divine grace is essential for realization. It leads on to God-realization. But such grace is vouchsafed only to him who is a true devotee or a yogin, who has striven hard and ceaselessly on the path towards freedom. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
1109:Perhaps ultimately, spiritual simply means experiencing wholeness and interconnectedness directly, a seeing that individuality and the totality are interwoven, that nothing is separate or extraneous." ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn, (b. 1944) American professor of medicine, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1110:Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare men call God infinite, and yet try to compress Him within the covers of a little book! ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
1111:Wise are the gods in their silence,
Wise when they speak; but their speech is other than ours and their wisdom
Hard for a mortal mind to hold and not madden or wander. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
1112:A dull indifference replaces fire
Or an endearing habit imitates love:
An outward and uneasy union lasts
Or the routine of a life's compromise: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal,#KEYS
1113:The intuitive mind is not yet the wide sunlight of truth, but a constant play of flashes of it keeping lighted up a basic state of ignorance or of half-knowledge and indirect knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Intuitive Mind, #KEYS
1114:He who has made the Buddha his refuge
Cannot be killed by ten million demons;
Though he transgress his vows or be tormented in mind,
It is certain that he will go beyond rebirth.
~ Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of My Perfect Teacher, Sutra of the Heart of the Sun,#KEYS
1115:Just as a pot dissolves into clay, a wave into water, or a bracelt into gold, so also the phenomenal universe which has arisen in me will also dissolve into Me." ~ From the "Ashtavakra Gita.", ((c. 500-400 BC), dialogue between the sage Ashtavakra & King Janaka, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1116:One way you verify Influence C is that too many things will happen that cannot be ascribed to accident. However, you don't want to be too eager to accept Influence C, or reject them. Just be open and neutral. Influence C moves fast. Be responsive and ready. ~ Robert Burton, #KEYS
1117:When the heart is right 'for' and 'against' are forgotten." ~ Zhuang Zhou, influential Chinese philosopher, lived around the 4th century BC, credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name, the Zhuangzi, one of the foundational texts of Taoism, Wikipedia, #KEYS
1118:As one can go up to the top of a house by means of a ladder, a bamboo or a flight of stairs, so are there various means for approaching the Eternal and each religion in the world shows only one of such means. ~ Ramakrishss, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1119:Being aware of being aware is the essence of meditation. It is the only form of meditation that does not require the directing, focusing or controlling of the mind." ~ Rupert Spira, (b.1960) international teacher of Advaita Vedanta. From "Being Aware of Being Aware, (2017)., #KEYS
1120:Consistency is usually a rigid or narrow-minded inability to see more than one side of the truth or more than their own narrow personal view or experience of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, On His Philosophy in General, #KEYS
1121:Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." ~ Bruce Lee, #KEYS
1122:God is, or He is not. But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? ~ Blaise Pascal, #KEYS
1123:God is prior to the world by priority of duration. But the word "prior" signifies priority not of time, but of eternity. Or we may say that it signifies the eternity of imaginary time, and not of time really existing. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I q 46 a 1 ad 2, #KEYS
1124:He sang the Inconscient and its secret self,
Its power omnipotent knowing not what it does,
All-shaping without will or thought or sense,
Its blind unerring occult mystery. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
1125:Self-Observation is an act of watching everything that goes on, both within yourself, and outside. You do nothing but watch, just as if it were happening to someone else. You do not personalize. You do not react or form an opinion about anything you observe. ~ Vernon Howard, #KEYS
1126:Simple or complicated, small or large, the passage from non-existence to existence is the most radical of all steps... the passage from non-being to being is the greatest possible transition. We are talking about creation itself. ~ Peter Hodgson, Theology and Modern Physics, #KEYS
1127:Whatever you do, see, or hear, think that to be God. It is all play, a game with Him. Know life to be a game, in which Mother Herself is the Player and you are Her playmate. The world will be quite different when you know that Mother is playing with you. ~ SWAMI VIRAJANANDA, #KEYS
1128:Before you decide to have an argument, think about what you really want to accomplish. Do you just want to let your feelings out, or is there a point you are trying to make? What is it? " ~ David Viscott, (1938 - 1996) American psychiatrist, author and businessman, Wikipedia, #KEYS
1129:Call upon God by whatever name or form you like. But should anyone ask you about your Chosen Ideal, stop talking to him that instant. There is a great possibility of harm to the aspirant if such private subjects of spiritual life are disclosed to others. ~ Swami Adbhutananda, #KEYS
1130:It is a very great thing indeed to be able to live without either divine or human comforting and for the honor of God willingly to endure this exile of heart, not to seek oneself in anything, and to think nothing of one's own merit. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
1131:It wore the guise of an indiscernible Vast,
Or was a subtle kernel in the soul:
A distant greatness left it huge and dim,
A mystic closeness shut it sweetly in: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Pursuit of the Unknowable,#KEYS
1132:Love cannot be a means to any end. Love does not promise success, power, achievement, health, recovery, satisfaction, peace of mind, fulfillment, or any other prizes. Love is an end in itself, a beginning in itself. Love exists only for love." ~ Gerald G. May, (1940 - 2005)., #KEYS
1133:Religion has to do with life itself. Whether the life we are living will end up in extinction or in the attainment of eternal life is a matter of the utmost importance for life itself. In no sense is religion to be called a luxury. ~ Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, #KEYS
1134:Summoning up the courage to take action is always the same regardless of how seemingly big or small the challenge. What may look like a small act of courage is courage nonetheless. The important thing is to be willing to take a step forward. ~ Nichiren, #KEYS
1135:There is no such thing as absolute void or real nullity and what we call by that name is simply something beyond the grasp of our sense, our mind or our most subtle consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Ascending Series of Substance, #KEYS
1136:What we call the Inconscient is an appearance, a dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
1137:"As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee." ~ Siva Mahimnah-stotra verse 7 #KEYS
1138:A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole books, or ideas for learned discussions, in some corner of a chapter so that one should think he can afford to throw them away by the thousand. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #KEYS
1139:If anyone - superior or inferior - comes to hinder your practice, you should be unshakable, like an iron boulder pulled by a silk scarf. It won't do to be a weak character whose head bends in whichever direction the wind blows, like grass on a mountain pass. ~ Dudjom Rinpoche, #KEYS
1140:If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give." ~ George MacDonald, (1824 - 1905) Scottish author, poet Christian minister, figure in modern fantasy literature, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1141:Love that ends, is the shadow of love; true love is without beginning or end." ~ Inayat Khan, (1882 - 1927) founder of the Sufi Order in the West in 1914, (London) & teacher of Universal Sufism, Wikipedia. From "The Complete Sayings of Hazrat Inayat Khan,", (1978, 2005, 2010), #KEYS
1142:Real enlightenment is always with you, so there is no need for you to stick to it or even think about it. Because it is always with you, difficulty itself is enlightenment. Your busy life itself is enlightened activity. ." ~ Shunryu Suzuki, (1904-1971), Zen master, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1143:The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Funes the Memorious,#KEYS
1144:Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.
~ Blaise Pascal,#KEYS
1145:While seeing or hearing, touching or smelling; eating, moving about, or sleeping; breathing or speaking, letting go or holding on, even opening or closing the eyes, they understand that these are only the movements of the senses among sense objects. ~ Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, #KEYS
1146:Why do we exist at all?…If there is a meaning or significance to it all [i.e human life], where do we find it? When we come to doubt the meaning of our existence in this way, when we have become a question to ourselves, the religious quest awakens within us. ~ Keiji Nishitani, #KEYS
1147:But now, if every one to whom we ought to show, or who ought to show to us, the offices of mercy is by right called a neighbor, it is manifest that the command to love our neighbor embraces the holy angels also. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
1148:Either miracles were performed, and then I have made my point. Or if not, then that is the greatest miracle of all, for the entire world was converted through twelve worthless fishermen ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Mt. 10, lect. 1)., #KEYS
1149:Fools or hypocrites! Meanest falsehood is this among mortals,
Veils of purity weaving, names misplacing ideal
When our desires we disguise and paint the lusts of our nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
1150:If you would spend all your time - walking, standing, sitting or lying down - learning to halt the concept-forming activities of your own mind, you could be sure of ultimately attaining your goal." ~ Huang Po, (d. 850), an influential Chinese master of Zen Buddhism, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1151:One of our problems is that we are not well acquainted with the literature of the spirit. We're interested in the news of the day ...When you get to be older and you turn to the inner life -- well, if you don't know where it is or what it is, you'll be sorry. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
1152:We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully, nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody." ~ R. Buckminster Fuller, (1895 - 1983) American architect, systems theorist, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1153:When the mind has put off the old self & put on the one born of grace, it will see its own state in the time of prayer resembling sapphire or the color of heaven; this state scripture calls the place of God that was seen by the elders on Mount Sinai. ~ Evagrius, On Thoughts 39, #KEYS
1154:And that reminded me--as everything in the universe does--of Finnegans Wake. Now, I'm sure in an educated audience like this, you're all thoroughly familiar with Finnegans Wake, and I don't have to explain its deep structure or its polylinguistic meanings. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #KEYS
1155:A self-willed man cannot be grateful—because when he gets what he wants he gives all the credit for it to his own will, and when he gets what he does not want he resents it badly and throws all the blame on whomever he considers responsible, God, man or Nature. ~ The Mother, WTM #KEYS
1156:Every spirit that is either rational or intellectual is by itself formless, but if it turns towards it Cause, that is, to the Word, by Whom all things are made, then it takes on form. Therefore the one Form of all rational and intellectual spirits is the Word of God. ~ Eriugena, #KEYS
1157:How rare is selflessness! Selfishness and self-advertisement are rampant everywhere! How little of the mind is given to God and how much of it to the world and its objects! Unless you have dispassion toward the world, you cannot attain knowledge or devotion. ~ Swami Turiyananda, #KEYS
1158:In this whirl and sprawl through infinite vacancy
The Spirit became Matter and lay in the whirl,
A body sleeping without sense or soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,#KEYS
1159:Karma leads to that result alone which can produce, reach, evolve or modify; liberation is not brought about in any of these ways; hence Karma cannot be the means of liberation." ~ "Naishkarmya Siddhi" treatise on Advaita Vedanta, 8th Cent. CE., comprises 423 verses, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1160:Sometimes, soul mates may meet, stay together until a task or life lesson is completed, and then move on. This is not a tragedy, only a matter of learning." ~ Brian Weiss, (b. 1944) American psychiatrist, hypnotherapist, author who specializes in past life regression, Wikipedia, #KEYS
1161:Surrender is giving oneself to the Divine - to give everything one is or has to the Divine and regard nothing as one's own, to obey only the Divine will and no other, to live for the Divine and not for the ego.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
1162:Take everyone where he or she stands, without blaming them for their worldly or spiritual poverty & ignorance, & help them on until each one realizes the highest Jnana, Bhakti, eternal freedom & bliss - in fact, until each one realizes the supreme goal. ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda, #KEYS
1163:[The human being] only escapes from the laws of this world in lightning flashes. Instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure intuition.... It is through such instants that he [or she] is capable of the supernatural. ~ Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, #KEYS
1164:The measurements of right and wrong belong to man along. To life there is nothing right or wrong… Stop asking whether you are worthy or unworthy to receive that which you desire." ~ Neville Goddard, (1905-1972), mystic teacher. From "The Complete Reader,", (2013), ed. D. Allen., #KEYS
1165:The vital is indispensable for the divine or spiritual action—without it there can be no complete expression, no realisation in life—hardly even any realisation in sadhana. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Human Relations and the Spiritual Life, #KEYS
1166:When you lie down, speak so that the sleep of death may not steal upon you. Listen and learn how you are to speak as you lie down; I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
1167:Witnessing is the ego watching whatever is going on [especially in the mind and body] without judgment…. Don't value or judge what you're observing. Just see it completely impersonally." ~ Lee Lozowick, (1943-2010) American spiritual teacher, author, poet, and singer, Wikipedia, #KEYS
1168:As one has to learn to read, or to practice a trade, so one must learn to feel in all things, first and almost solely, the obedience of the universe to God… As soon as we feel this obedience with our whole being, we see God. ~ Simone Weil, On Science, Necessity & the Love of God, #KEYS
1169:Being is given to us... we do not first produce being, or make it be as for us; originally it is given as an excess of otherness which arouses our astonishment that it is at all… The metaphysician keeps alive this elemental astonishment. ~ William Desmond, Intimate Strangeness 5, #KEYS
1170:Every essence or quiddity can be understood without knowing anything about its being. I can know, e.g., what a man or a phoenix is and still be ignorant whether it has being in reality. From this it is clear that being is other than essence for quiddity. ~ Aquinas, De Ente cap 4, #KEYS
1171:It was necessary first to establish the awful difference btn God and the world before we could be permitted to see the awful likeness. It will always remain necessary to remember the difference in the likeness. Neither of these two Ways is or can be exclusive. ~ Charles Williams, #KEYS
1172:Jnani sees the infinite Self in all and all in the infinite Self, which is his being. He is infinite, imperishable, Self-luminous, Self-existent, without beginning or end, birthless, deathless, without change or decay. Jnani permeate and interpenetrate all things. ~ Robert Adams, #KEYS
1173:The common good of many is more divine than the good of an individual. So it is virtuous for a man to endanger even his own life, either for the spiritual or for the temporal common good of the republic ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.31.3ad2)., #KEYS
1174:To learn thoroughly is a vast undertaking that calls for relentless perseverance. To strike out on a new line & become more than a weekend celebrity calls for years in which one's living is more or less constantly absorbed in the effort to understand… ~ Bernard Lonergan, Insight, #KEYS
1175:What many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream. But things that many see may have no taste or moment in them at all, & things that are shown only to one may be spears & water-spouts of truth from the very depth of truth. ~ CS Lewis, Till We Have Faces, #KEYS
1176:When a Nietzsche, a Dostoyevsky, a Kierkegaard uncovers a human universe for us, when the material universe displays [before us] the depths of the history of the earth or spaces between the stars, theological thought is obliged to broaden itself to their measure. ~ Jean Danielou, #KEYS
1177:Whining or self-pity is of no use at all. "I am too wretched, worthless, vile & weak; I cannot do anything by myself." These are the words of the namby-pamby, the do-nothing imbeciles. Can anything be done by such people? Strive hard, be wide awake & push on. ~ SWAMI VIRAJANANDA, #KEYS
1178:As long as you are clinging to the idea of self and trying to improve your practice or find something out, trying to create an improved, better self, then your practice has gone astray." ~ Shunryu Suzuki, (1904-1971), Japanesse Zen master. Came to the U.S. in 1954. See Wikipedia., #KEYS
1179:Because we find that love is work enough for us, we don't take the time to categorize what we are doing as either "contemplation" or "action." We find that prayer is action and that action is prayer. It seems to us that truly loving action is filled with light. ~ Madeline Delbrêl, #KEYS
1180:Don't react or form an opinion about anything you observe, a newspaper headline or an inner feeling. Judge nothing as good or bad, pleasurable or painful, favorable or unfavorable. Simply watch, just as if you have no personal connection with whatever you observe. ~ Vernon Howard, #KEYS
1181:Love of God is not something that can be taught. We did not learn from someone else how to rejoice in light or want to live, or to love our parents or guardians. It is the same, perhaps even more so, with our love for God: it does not come by another's teaching. ~ Basil the Great, #KEYS
1182:Our soul is a universal discriminating power for discerning. It is one and simple and is present as a whole in the whole [body]...The eye is not the soul that sees or discerns; yet, the whole of what discerns in the eye is the gift of the soul. ~ Nicholas of Cusa, De Dato 2 (101), #KEYS
1183:Parents sometimes when they have gotten one, or two, or three children, fear to give birth to any more, lest they reduce the rest to beggary. ~ But because the inheritance which He promises us is such as many may possess, He called into His brotherhood the peoples of the nations., #KEYS
1184:Philosophy is simply friendship with wisdom... thus in a certain sense we can call everyone a philosopher in accordance with the natural love that generates in everyone the desire to know. W/o love or without devotion one cannot be called a philosopher. ~ Dante, Convivio III.xi.6, #KEYS
1185:Something they forge there sitting unknown in the silence eternal,
Whether of evil or good it is they who shall choose who are masters
Calm, unopposed; they are gods and they work out their iron caprices. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,#KEYS
1186:The Church is not a special little group, isolated, apart, remaining untouched amidst the changes of the world. The Church is the world as believing in Christ, or, what comes to the same thing, it is Christ dwelling in and saving the world by our faith. ~ Yves Congar ~ 1904-1995), #KEYS
1187:The harp of God falls mute, its call to bliss
Discouraged fails mid earth's unhappy sounds;
The strings of the siren Ecstasy cry not here
Or soon are silenced in the human heart. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
1188:The movement toward standardization of scientific discourse resulted in uniform mathematical symbols....Galileo's reference to mathematics as the language or alphabet of nature could be made with assurance that other scientists could speak and understand that language ~ N Postman, #KEYS
1189:The ocean is full of precious pearls,but you may not get them at the first dive. My boys, once again I enjoin you, have firm faith in the words of your Guru, & try to get absorbed in deep meditation. Be sure, sooner or later you will have a vision of the Lord. ~ SWAMI BRAHMANANDA, #KEYS
1190:There are many spiritual people who think they have a mission. They have come to save the world. They can't even save themselves, and they're looking to save the world. The world will go on the way it's going on without your help, for or against. Leave the world alone. ~ R. Adams, #KEYS
1191:The Self is the one reality that always exists and it is by its light all other things are seen. We forget it and concentrate on the appearances. We are so engrossed with the objects or appearances revealed by the light that we pay no attention to the light. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
1192:These two events [the binding of Isaac & the crucifixion] were linked through their immediate contiguous places in the divine plan. They are drawn close to identity in eternity, even though they are centuries (that is, 'aeons' or 'saecula') apart. ~ Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, #KEYS
1193:Think of you standing on a riverbank, watching passing ships. Some ships are bright with lights & color, others dark & dreary; but what has either to do with you? You have no connection with either brightness or dreariness - you are merely watching them come & go. ~ Vernon Howard, #KEYS
1194:Friendship can be had only with rational creatures, who are able to return love and to share in the works of life, and for whom things may fare well or ill, according to the changes of fortune and happiness ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.20.2ad3)., #KEYS
1195:How can we seek freedom when we do not know that we are bound. First of all, we shall have to examine our own nature whether we are free or bound then we can search for liberation. Very few indeed in this world can realize that we are living the life of a slave ~ SWAMI ABHEDANANDA, #KEYS
1196:It was their vocation to call sinners to repentance, to heal those who were sick whether in body or spirit, to seek in all their dealings never to do their own will but the will of him who sent them, and as far as possible to save the world by their teaching. ~ Cyril of Alexandria, #KEYS
1197:I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool~and I'm not any of those~to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues. ~ Maya Angelou, #KEYS
1198:Man has the possibility of re-creating himself, or more correctly, the human being has the possibility of making itself into a man... what distinguishes man from animals is his possibility of becoming conscious of his own existence and of his place in the universe. ~ Rodney Collin, #KEYS
1199:Only a god can save us. The only possibility available to us is that by thinking and poeticizing we prepare a readiness for the appearance of a god, or for the absence of a god in [our] decline, insofar as in view of the absent god we are in a state of decline
~ Martin Heidegger,#KEYS
1200:Renunciation and realization are the same. They are different aspects of the same state. Giving up the non-self is renunciation. Inhering in the Self is Jnana or Self Realization. One is the negative and the other the positive aspect of the same single truth. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
1201:Stillness means 'Destroy yourself'; every name & form is the cause of trouble. 'I-I' is the Self. 'I am this' is the ego. When the 'I' is kept up as the 'I' only, it is the Self. When it flies off at a tangent & says 'I am this or that. I am such and such', it is the ego. ~ Ramana, #KEYS
1202:the recipient of the sacrifice :::
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.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
1203:Whatever name is called the Power that answers is the Mother. Each name indicates a certain aspect of the Divine and is limited by that aspect; the Mother's Power is universal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Namajapa or Repetition of the Name, #KEYS
1204:Ignorance can be compared to a dark room in which you sleep. No matter how long the room has been dark, an hour or a million years, the moment the lamp of awareness is lit the entire room becomes luminous. You are that luminosity. You are that clear light. ~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, #KEYS
1205:Imagination… reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference;... the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects. ~ Saint Coleridge, #KEYS
1206:Our DEEDS or our THOUGHTS or our WORDS are not in harmony with Christ if they issue from passion. They then bear the mark of the enemy who smears the pearl of the heart with the slime of passion, dimming and even destroying the luster of the precious stone. ~ Saint Gregory of Nyssa, #KEYS
1207:You must feel that the person who blames you is yourself & the person who praises you is also yourself. You won't lose your good qualities just because somebody speaks ill of you. So let them criticize. I shall remain undisturbed by the praise or blame of others ~ Swami Turiyananda, #KEYS
1208:He must stride on conquering all,
Threatening and clamouring, brutal, invincible,
Until he meets upon his storm-swept road
A greater devil—or thunderstroke of God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Dwarf Napoleon,#KEYS
1209:If a man chooses a certain Way and seems to have no particular talent for this Way, he can still become a master if he so chooses. By keeping at a particular form of study a man can attain perfection either in this life or the next (if a next life is believed in). ~ Miyamoto Musashi, #KEYS
1210:In the smothering stress of this stupendous Nought
Mind could not think, breath could not breathe, the soul
Could not remember or feel itself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness,#KEYS
1211:5. High-uplifted be, piercing through reveal in us the things divine, O Fire; lay low what the demon forces42 have established: companion or single, crush the foe.
42 Or, demon impulsions ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns To The Mystic Fire, 2 - Other Hymns,#KEYS
1212:All we attempt in this imperfect world,
Looks forward or looks back beyond Time's gloss
To its pure idea and firm inviolate type
In an absolute creation's flawless skill. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter,#KEYS
1213:In the waking state or dream state, in which things appear, and in the sleep state, in which we see nothing, there is always the light of consciousness or Self. Concentrate on the Seer and not on the seen, not on the objects, but on the Light which reveals them. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
1214:We shall mutually pardon one another more easily, if we know or firmly believe and hold that whatever is said of a nature, unchangeable, invisible and having life absolutely and sufficient to itself, must not be measured after the custom of things visible. ~ Saint Augustine, (DT 5.1), #KEYS
1215:When you get up or rise again, speak of Christ, so as to fulfil what you are commanded. Listen and learn how Christ is to awaken you from sleep. Your soul says: I hear my brother knocking at the door. Then Christ says to you: Open the door to me, my sister, my spouse. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
1216:Aspiration is a turning upward of the inner being with a call, yearning, prayer for the Divine, for the Truth, for the Consciousness, Peace, Ananda, Knowledge, descent of Divine Force or whatever else is the aim of one's endeavour.
~ The Mother, [T2],#KEYS
1217:It is certainly much better to remain silent and collected for a time after the meditation. It is a mistake to take the meditation lightly - by doing that one fails to receive or spills what is received or most of it.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
1218:One has no reason to regret when one dies, when one has lost money, property or house; all that does not belong to the man. One should have regret when man loses his real good, his greatest happiness: the faculty of loving. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1219:The Wu Li Masters know that science and religion are only dances, and that those who follow them are only dancers. The dancers may claim to follow 'truth' or claim to seek 'reality' but the Wu Li Masters know better. They know that the true love of all dancers is dancing. ~ Gary Zukav, #KEYS
1220:They who have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, 'You shall not kill.' ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
1221:When there is contact of a desirable sort or memory thereof, and when there is freedom from undesirable contacts or memory thereof, we say there is happiness. Such happiness is relative and is better called pleasure. But men want absolute and permanent happiness. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
1222:I am with you because I am you or you are me.
I am with you, that signifies a world of things, because I am with you on all levels, on all planes, from the supreme consciousness down to my most physical consciousness. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T4],#KEYS
1223:Life is a perpetual choice between truth and falsehood, light and darkness, progress and regression, the ascent towards the heights or a fall into the abyss. It is for each one to choose freely.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The Path of Yoga, The Path,#KEYS
1224:Prayer does not demand high intelligence or eloquence. God wants your heart when you pray. Even a few words from a pure, humble soul, though illiterate, appeals to God more than the eloquent, flowing words of an orator. Pray to God freely like a little child ~ Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #KEYS
1225:She turned to the face of a veiled voiceless Truth
Hid in the dumb recesses of the heart
Or waiting beyond the last peak climbed by Thought. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness,#KEYS
1226:The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people, experiencing everything totally without mental reservations and blockages, so that one never withdraws or centralizes into oneself. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, #KEYS
1227:Who is worthy or unworthy in front of the Divine Grace?
All are children of the one and the same Mother. Her love is equally spread over all of them. But to each one She gives according to his nature and receptivity.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
1228:The magnificent cosmos is a palace that has the sun and the moon as its lamps and the stars as its candles; time is like a rope or ribbon hung within it, on to which the Glorious Creator each year threads a new world. ~ - Said Nursi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
1229:To lead the Divine Life does not depend on any exterior activity or circumstances. Whatever you do from the highest work to the most ordinary, you can lead the Divine Life if you are in the true consciousness and the right attitude. ~ The Mother, White Roses - I, #KEYS
1230:His spirit by spiritual ego sink,
Or his soul dream shut in sainthood's brilliant cell
Where only a bright shadow of God can come. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
1231:Numerous are the names of the Ineffable and infinite the forms which lead towards Him. Under whatever name or in whatever form you desire to enter into relation with him, it is in that form and under that name that you will see Him. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
1232:One on another we prey and one by another are mighty.
This is the world and we have not made it; if it is evil,
Blame first the gods; but for us, we must live by its laws or we perish. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
1233:Stick to God ! Who cares what comes to the body or to anything else. Through the terrors of evil, say -- my God, my love ! Through the pangs of death, say -- my God, my love ! Through all the evils under the sun, say -- my God, my love. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
1234:The mind of ignorance relies on a certain foundation or element of relative or moral certainties, but for the rest a dealing with probabilities and possibilities is its chief resource. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Towards the Supramental Time Vision, #KEYS
1235:Each activity is important in its own place—an electron or a molecule or a grain may be small things in themselves, but in their place they are indispensable to the building up of a world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Resistances, Sufferings and Falls, #KEYS
1236:How shall the mighty Mother her calm delight
Keep fragrant in this narrow fragile vase,
Or lodge her sweet unbroken ecstasy
In hearts which earthly sorrow can assail ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
1237:Is not the whole of human life turned upside down; and are we not doing, as would appear, in everything the opposite of what we ought to be doing?" ~ Plato, (428/427 or 424/423 - 348/347 BC) Athenian philosopher during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1238:It [the effectiveness of namajapa] depends on the person and how he does it. The Name of the Divine is in itself a power, if it is taken with the right faith and in the right attitude. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Namajapa or Repetition of the Name, #KEYS
1239:Steadiness in devotion means that though you may be busy with many things, still your mind is always turned towards God. It should be like the needle of the compass; the needle may swing a little to this side or that, but always has tendency to point back to north ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda, #KEYS
1240:There is no allegiance possible where there is no character in the leader, and perfect purity ensures the most lasting allegiance and confidence. There must not be a hade of jealousy or selfishness, then you are a leader. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VI. 284), #KEYS
1241:We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours. ~ John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, #KEYS
1242:What business had anybody to direct and dictate to anyone what he should worship and through what? How could any other man know through what he would grow, whether his spiritual growth would be by worshiping an image, by worshiping fire, or by worshiping even a pillar? ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
1243:Wherever they may be, upright men remain what they are in themselves. The desire of enjoyment can draw no word from the virtuous. In possession of happiness or in prey to misfortune the wise show neither pride nor dejection. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1244:Whether for Heaven or Hell they must wage war:
Warriors of Good, they serve a shining cause
Or are Evil's soldiers in the pay of Sin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,#KEYS
1245:Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don't make compromises, don't worry about making a bunch of money or being successful ~ be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work. And if you build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency., #KEYS
1246:But what is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which repeat themselves like the verbs and adjectives in a speech, sneaking in behind the thing itself,into the pure present, making us sad or teaching us vicariously... ~ Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch, #KEYS
1247:How then is the will to be trained? All these wishes, whims, caprices, inclinations, tendencies, appetites, must be detected, examined, judged by the standard of whether they help or hinder the main purpose, and treated accordingly.
~ Aleister Crowley, [T5],#KEYS
1248:Then suddenly a luminous finger fell
On all things seen or touched or heard or felt
And showed his mind that nothing could be known;
That must be reached from which all knowledge comes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, In the Self of Mind,#KEYS
1249:You are no longer aliens or foreign visitors: you are citizens like all the saints, and part of God's household. You are part of a building that has the apostles and prophets for its foundations, and Christ Jesus himself for its main cornerstone ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ephesians, 2:19-20)., #KEYS
1250:Drugs cure the body when they do not merely trouble or poison it, but only if their physical attack on the disease is supported by the force of the spirit; if that force can be made to work freely, drugs are superfluous.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,#KEYS
1251:patience or resoluteness? :::
The power needed in yoga is the power to go through effort, difficulty or trouble without getting fatigued, depressed, discouraged or impatient and without breaking off the effort or giving up one's aim or resolution. ~ ?, Collaboration Journal, Vol 41 No 2,#KEYS
1252:The stars merely record a destiny that has been already formed, they are a hieroglyph, not a Force,—or if their action constitutes a force, it is a transmitting energy, not an originating Power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Fate, Free Will and Prediction, #KEYS
1253:You make yourself mortal by taking yourself to be the body. You may die a hundred deaths without a break in the mental turmoil. Or you may keep your body and die only in the mind. The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
1254:Men are guided by their own nature, whether good or bad; there is no gainsaying that. But in the world, there are always some who get intoxicated when they hear of God, and shed tears of joy when they read of God. Such men are true Bhaktas. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
1255:One cannot become a bhakta just by uttering a few devotional words or shedding a few tears. Only one in whom genuine devotion has blossomed is a true bhakta. When one attains such devotion, one becomes God-like; no hatred, jealousy, or egotism can remain in such a person ~ Swami Adbhutananda, #KEYS
1256:The present issues from the past, and the future from the present. Everything is made one by this continuity. Time is like a circle, where all the points are so linked that one cannot say where it begins or ends, for all points precede and follow one another for ever.
~ Hermes Trismegistus,#KEYS
1257:There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you're involved in, whether it's a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agents or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things. ~ Gary Gygax, #KEYS
1258:The Vedantins say that the Atman is completely unattached. Sin or virtue, pain or pleasure, cannot affect it; but they can inflict sufferings on those who have attachment to the body. The smoke can soil the walls, but can do nothing to the sky. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
1259:Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos. ~ Abraham Maslow, 1971, p269, #KEYS
1260:You are already the Self. Therefore realization is common to everyone. Realization knows no difference in the aspirants. This very doubt, "Can I realize?" or the feeling, "I have not realized" are the obstacles. Be free from these also. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
1261:For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition. ~ C S Lewis, "Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare", Rehabilitations and Other Essays (1939), #KEYS
1262:If u have the power to go inside urself, then u have conquered the whole Universe. To go inside oneself means to go away from earthly attachments that hold u down like a captive balloon. Though it is very difficult it is possible thro either discrimination or devotion ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda, #KEYS
1263:Our cravings alone keep us separated from God. Root out all desires and call on Him! If He wills that the body should die, let it die while chanting His name! By worldly standards a man may be great. But he too in some life or other will have to renounce everything for God.~ Swami Turiyananda, #KEYS
1264:The magicians most important invocation is that of his Genius, Daemon, True Will, or Augoeides. This operation is traditionally known as attaining the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. It is sometimes known as the Magnum Opus or Great Work.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
1265:Why don't you give your power of attorney to God? Rest all your responsibilities on Him. If you entrust an honest man with your responsibilities, will he misuse his power over you? God alone knows whether or not He will punish you for your sins. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
1266:From a magicial point of view, it is axiomatic that we have create the world in which we exist. Looking about himself, the magician can say 'thus have I will,' or 'thus do I perceive,' or more accurately, 'thus does my Kia manifest.'
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null, Liber LUX, Enchantment [55],#KEYS
1267:If thou hast seen an amputated hand or foot or a severed head lying separated from the rest of the body, even such he makes himself, as far as it is in him, who isolates himself from the All and acts against the common good. ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1268:If you can remember that all beings have buddha nature, it will help you cultivate equanimity, because it will feel like everybody is your family. The greater your equanimity, the greater your love and compassion towards them, no matter who they are, or what they have done. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche, #KEYS
1269:It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a 'higher standard of living than any have ever known.' It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival.
~ R Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path, 1981, page xxv),#KEYS
1270:The best means to find or create the Superman is always to put yourself to a test, to go into your own solitude, to strengthen yourself, in order to find out whether you are by chance the Superman. That is what people do who want to become holy or saints. ~ Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminars, 844, #KEYS
1271:When the will and energy are concentrated and used to control the mind, vital and physical and change them or to bring down the higher consciousness or for any other Yogic purpose or high purpose, that is called Tapasya.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, 102?,#KEYS
1272:If you practice spiritual disciplines for some time in a solitary place u will find that your mind has gained in strength, & then you can live in any place or in the company of anyone without being in the least affected by it. Spiritual practice in a solitary place is essentia ~ Sri Sarada Devi, #KEYS
1273:We have to conquer the world. That we have to! India must conquer the world, and nothing less than that is my ideal. It may be very big, it may astonish many of you, but it is so. We must conquer the world or die. There is no other alternative. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
1274:A natural hierarchy is simply an order of increasing wholeness, such as: particles to atoms to cells to organisms, or letters to words to sentences to paragraphs. The whole of one level becomes part of the whole of the next. In other words, natural hierarchies are composed of holons. ~ Ken Wilber, #KEYS
1275:Even if you have mountains of jewels and as many servants as there are grains of sand along the Ganges, you see them when your eyes are open. But what about when your eyes are shut?You should realize then that everything you see is like a dream or illusion. ~ Bodhidharma, #KEYS
1276:If part of the being surrenders, but another part reserves itself, follows its own way or makes its own conditions, then each time that that happens, you are yourself pushing the divine Grace away from you.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [T6],#KEYS
1277:Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest." ~ Plato, (428/427 or 424/423 - 348/347) Greek philosopher, Wikipedia., #KEYS
1278:We die for the reason that we are subject to death by a necessary law of nature, or in consequence of some violence done to us. But Christ did not die because of any necessity. He gave up His life by His power and His own will ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (CT 1.230)., #KEYS
1279:We must lie before the Divine always like a page perfectly blank, so that the Divine's will may be inscribed in us without any difficulty or mixture. 20 November 1954
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Surrender to the Divine Will, TO WILL WHAT THE DIVINE WILLS [108],#KEYS
1280:All life, all thought, all energising of the faculties, all experiences passive or active, become thenceforward so many shocks which disintegrate the teguments of the soul and remove the obstacles to the inevitable efflorescence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
1281:Ascetic voices called of lonely seers
On mountain summits or by river banks
Or from the desolate heart of forest glades
Seeking heaven's rest or the spirit's worldless peace, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
1282:Numerous are the names of the Ineffable and infinite the forms which lead towards Him. Under whatever name or in whatever form you desire to enter into relation with him, it is in that form and under that name that you will see Him. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1283:On the other hand, every energy or activity that we can convert from its allegiance to the lower and dedicate to the service of the higher is so much gained on our road, so much taken from the powers that oppose our progress. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T5], #KEYS
1284:Russell commented that the development of such gifted individuals (referring to polymaths) required a childhood period in which there was little or no pressure for conformity, a time in which the child could develop and pursue his or her own interests no matter how unusual or bizarre. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
1285:The rough handling and careless breaking or waste and misuse of physical things is a denial of the Yogic Consciousness and a great hindrance to the bringing down of the Divine Truth to the material plane. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Practical Concerns in Work, #KEYS
1286:To cease to be identified with the body, to separate oneself from the body-consciousness, is a recognised and necessary step whether towards spiritual liberation or towards spiritual perfection and mastery over Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #KEYS
1287:You do not pass
through imagination
or else we'll know
where You are.
You are He who
is everywhere
Yet You are nowhere.
Where are You?
In my annihilation
is my annihilation's
.... annihilation
And You are found
.... in my annihilation. ~ Mansoor al- Hallaj,#KEYS
1288:Be earnest & be impatient. Not that you have to repeat His name so many hundreds of times, or that you have to do so much penance. But you have to cry aloud earnestly and piteously, 'Appear before me, appear You must. Show Yourself to me.' Cry to Him with heart full of yearning ~ Swami Akhandananda, #KEYS
1289:Blessed be you, universal matter, immeasurable time, boundless ether, triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations: you who by overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards or measurement reveal to us the dimensions of God. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS
1290:It is the light from within that you have to make room for; the light of the outer mind is quite insufficient for the discovery of the inner values or to judge the truth of spiritual experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Steps towards Overcoming Difficulties, #KEYS
1291:Our mind is an observer of actuals, an inventor or discoverer of possibilities, but not a seer of the occult imperatives that necessitate the movements and forms of a creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable, #KEYS
1292:The superman shall wake in mortal man
And manifest the hidden demigod
Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force
Revealing the secret deity in the cave. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
1293:Those who come under the guidance of a Guru need have no anxiety about their spiritual progress. They have been put on the right way. Their only task is to follow it. If they meet with any trouble or make any mistake, the Lord is sure to protect them & show them the right course ~ SWAMI BRAHMANANDA, #KEYS
1294:A revolution is coming ~ a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough ~ But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability. ~ Robert F. Kennedy, #KEYS
1295:Greenspun's tenth rule of programming is an aphorism in computer programming and especially programming language circles that states: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. ~ Philip Greenspun, #KEYS
1296:I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
~ Isaac Newton,#KEYS
1297:That life which has passed thro spiritual regeneration will last for ever. It is of the spirit, & not subject to destruction or decay. The law of physical regeneration is the law of physical change, but the law of spiritual regeneration brings about thor change of human life ~ SWAMI TRIGUNATITANANDA, #KEYS
1298:Even the smallest meanest work became
A sweet or glad and glorious sacrament,
An offering to the self of the great world
Or a service to the One in each and all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS
1299:If we fail in our immediate aim, it is because he has intended the failure; often our failure or ill-result is the right road to a truer issue than an immediate and complete success would have put in our reach. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Master of the Work, #KEYS
1300:The psychic has its own more personal love, bhakti, surrender. Love in the higher or spiritual mind is more universal and impersonal. The two must join together to make the highest divine love. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Divine Love, Psychic Love and Human Love, #KEYS
1301:..yet it is with the old treasure as our initial capital or so much of it as we can recover that we shall most advantageously proceed to accumulate the largest gains in our new commerce with the ever-changeless and ever-changing Infinite.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
1302:If all things were demonstrable, then, since a thing is not demonstrated through itself but through something else, demonstrations would either be circular . . . or they would have to proceed to infinity ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Metaphysics 4, lect. 6)., #KEYS
1303:Over all earthly things the soul that is fearless is master,
Only on death he can reckon not whether it comes in the midnight
Treading the couch of Kings in their pride or speeds in the spear-shaft. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
1304:Scared for their pathetic little lives, they would agree to be injected with literally anything. ~ For surely no man knows his time: Like fish caught in a evil net or birds trapped in a snare, so men are ensnared in an evil time that suddenly falls upon them. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ecclesiastes, 9:12, #KEYS
1305:The Book of Spells or of Conjurations is the Record of every thought, word and deed of the Magician; for everything that he has willed is willed to a purpose. It is the same as if he had taken an oath or perform some achievement.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, The Book,#KEYS
1306:The thing is somehow to unite the mind with God. You must not forget Him, not even once. Your thought of Him should be like the flow of oil, without any interruption. If u worship with love even a brick or stone as God, then thro His grace u can see Him. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
1307:All the rest is either auxiliary and subordinate or accidental and otiose; that only matters which sustains and helps the evolution of his nature and the growth or rather the progressive unfolding and discovery of his self and spirit.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
1308:It is not that Christ is superior to Allah, not that Allah is everything and Brahma is nothing, but it is the same one whom you call either Brahma or Allah, or Almighty, or by a hundred other names. The names are different but God is one and the same. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
1309:He listens for Inspiration's postman knock
And takes delivery of the priceless gift
A little spoilt by the receiver mind
Or mixed with the manufacture of his brain; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS
1310:What will one gain by merely quoting or hearing the scriptures? One must assimilate them. The almanac makes a forecast of the rainfall for the year, but you won't get a drop by squeezing its pages. To understand these things one needs to live with holy men ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
1311:Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 1 Peter, 3:3-4, #KEYS
1312:DAWN
I have returned to my native village after twenty years;
No sign of old friends or relatives-they have all died or gone away.
My dreams are shattered by the sound of the temple bell struck at sunrise.
An empty floor, no shadows; the light has long been extinguished. ~ Taigu Ryokan,#KEYS
1313:Self-Giving
Hateful I hold him who sworn to a cause that is holy and common
Broods upon private wrongs or serving his lonely ambition
Studies to reap his gain from the labour and woe of his fellows. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
1314:Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
1315:Cosmic existence is not a vast administrative system of universal justice with a cosmic Law of recompense and retribution as its machinery or a divine Legislator and Judge at its centre. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
1316:He who has plunged himself into a pure knowledge of the profoundest secrets of the Spirit, is no longer either a terrestrial or a celestial being. He is the supreme Spirit enveloped in perishable flesh, the sublime divinity itself. ~ Pico de la Mirandola, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1317:A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how'.
~ Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning,#KEYS
1318:God is one the paths to reach him (religions) are many - just as different rivers, originating in different mountains, traverse different paths, flowing straight or crooked, and at last join the ocean. He is the one Lord of all, the one Soul of all souls. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
1319:Such is God, superior to His name, invisible and apparent, who reveals Himself to the spirit, who reveals Himself to the eyes, who has no body and who has many bodies or rather all bodies; for there is nothing which is not He and all is He alone. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1320:Beyond mind is a supramental or gnostic power of consciousness that is in eternal possession of Truth; all its motion and feeling and sense and outcome are instinct and luminous with the inmost reality of things and express nothing else.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,#KEYS
1321:What right has a man to say he has a soul if he has not felt it or that there is a God, if he has not seen Him? If we have a soul, we must penetrate to it; otherwise it is better not to believe, to be frankly an atheist rather than hypocrite. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1322:In God, there is no sorrow or suffering or affliction. If you want to be free of all affliction and suffering, hold fast to God, and turn wholly to Him, and to no one else. Indeed, all your suffering comes from this: that you do not turn towards God. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #KEYS
1323:Psychic love can have a warmth and a flame as intense and more intense than the vital, only it is a pure fire, not dependent on the satisfaction of ego-desire or on the eating up of the fuel it embraces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Human Relations and the Spiritual Life, #KEYS
1324:You can remember at the beginning and offer your reading to the Divine and at the end again. There is a state of consciousness in which only a part of it is reading or doing the work and behind there is the consciousness of the Divine always.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
1325:The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us ~ there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
1326:What we are you cannot realise and it is a waste of time to try and do so but you can imagine (italics mine) us on the astral plane and we can contact you through your imagination, and though your mental picture is not real or actual, the results of it are real and actual.
~ Dion Fortune, The Cosmic Doctrine,#KEYS
1327:Perhaps the world is an error of our sight,
A trick repeated in each flash of sense,
An unreal mind hallucinates the soul
With a stress-vision of false reality,
Or a dance of Maya veils the void Unborn. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces#KEYS
1328:The Divine accepts whatever symbol, form or conception of himself is present to the mind of the worshipper, yāṁ yāṁ tanuṁ śraddhayā arcati, as it is said elsewhere, and meets him according to the faith that is in him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Works, Devotion and Knowledge, #KEYS
1329:We call it the Supermind or the Truth-Consciousness, because it is a principle superior to mentality and exists, acts and proceeds in the fundamental truth and unity of things and not like the mind in their appearances and phenomenal divisions.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 153,#KEYS
1330:Never to cause pain by thought, word or act to any living being is what is meant by innocence. Than this there is no higher virtue. There is no greater happiness than that of the man who has reached this attitude of good will towards all creation. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1331:There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God. ~ Aleister Crowley, #KEYS
1332:The thirst for affection and love is a human need, but it can be quenched only if it turns towards the Divine. As long as it seeks satisfaction in human beings, it will always be disappointed or wounded.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Elements of Yoga, Divine Love and Human Love,#KEYS
1333:Guardianship over the whole human race belongs to the order of Principalities or, perhaps better, to the order of Archangels, who are called 'angel princes'—thus Michael, whom we call an Archangel, is called one of the princes in Daniel 10:13 ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.113.3)., #KEYS
1334:We must find the Self, the Divine, then only can we know what is the work the Self or the Divine demands from us. Until then our life and action can only be a help or means towards finding the Divine and it ought not to have any other purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T5], #KEYS
1335:I told you, knowledge is our Holy Grail, and I daresay the wisdom possessed by the vampire would boggle your imagination. You see, we don't have political allegiances to worry about, or religion, or differing mores. We all work together for one purpose: to further our achievements and our learning. ~ Michael Talbot, #KEYS
1336:But at bottom, no matter how it may be disguised by technological jardon, the question is whether or not every aspect of human thought is reducible to a logical formalism, or, to put it into the modern, idiom, whether or not human thought is entirely computable.
~ Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason,#KEYS
1337:May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art ~ write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. ~ Neil Gaiman, #KEYS
1338:The world is not prepared yet to understand the philosophy of Occult Sciences - let them assure themselves first of all that there are beings in an invisible world, whether 'Spirits' of the dead or Elementals; and that there are hidden powers in man, which are capable of making a God of him on earth. ~ H P Blavatsky, #KEYS
1339:Because the Son receives from the Father that the Holy Spirit proceeds from Him, it can be said that the Father spirates the Holy Spirit through the Son, or that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, which has the same meaning ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.36.3)., #KEYS
1340:Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. ~ Stephen King, #KEYS
1341:It is natural to all men to love each other. The mark of this is the fact that, by some natural prompting, a man comes to the aid of another in need, even a stranger. For example, he may call him back from a wrong road, or help him up from a fall. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.117)., #KEYS
1342:May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art - write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
~ Neil Gaiman,#KEYS
1343:To understand any one sacred book completely it is necessary to understand all other sacred books. In spite of human prejudice to the contrary, there is but one religion and one truth and all the great faiths of the world are parts or fragments of the Anscient Wisdom.
~ Manly P Hall, The Students Monthly Letter 1973,#KEYS
1344:One who first founds on a large scale and rapidly, needs always as his successor a man with the talent or the genius for organisation rather than an impetus for expansion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Ancient Cycle of Prenational Empire-Building - The Modern Cycle of Nation-Building, #KEYS
1345:The real rest is in the inner life founded in peace and silence and absence of desire. There is no other rest—for without that the machine goes on whether one is interested in it or not. The inner mukti is the only remedy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Difficulties of the Path - VII, #KEYS
1346:You have either to train the memory by practising to remember - or if you cannot do that, try only to understand, read much and let the memory remember what it can. There are people who have a bad memory but they succeed in their studies in spite of it.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
1347:Always remember that how we react to every moment of our life will reinforce either our negative habits or positive habits. No matter how challenging life may be, each moment can be seen as either a problem or an opportunity. If we can understand this, we can start to bring our entire life to the path. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche, #KEYS
1348:Let him who finds fault with my discourse, see whether he can understand other men who have handled similar subjects and questions, when he does not understand me: and if he can, let him put down my book, or even, if he pleases, throw it away. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, #KEYS
1349:Among the people also, a sailor with a rudder or oars or a farmer with a spade and a hoe each in his way succeeds in accustoming himself to his action. You too can acquire strength through regular exercise. Nonetheless, it is appropriate for each person to choose a sword that corresponds to his strength. ~ Miyamoto Musashi, #KEYS
1350:Augoeides is an obscure term meaning luminous body and thought to refer to the planets. Aleister Crowley considered the term to refer to the Holy Guardian Angel of Abramelin; the Atman of Hinduism the Daemon of the ancient Greeks. Robert Lomas associates the term with the Higher Self or soul of the individual
~ Wikipedia,#KEYS
1351:Each man, before he is Austrian, Serb, Turk or Chinese, is first of all a man, that is to say a thinking and loving being whose one mission is to fulfil his destiny during the short lapse of time that he is to live in this world. That mission is to love all men. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1352:Is it necessary to write out the geography and history lessons? I can study them by reading.
One learns things better if one writes them.
My hand often gets tired while writing.
You can simply rest a minute or two and then continue.
18 October 1936 ~ The Mother, More Answers From The Mother,#KEYS
1353:Knowledge of the way is not enough - one must tread it, or if one cannot do that, allow oneself to be carried along it. The human vital and physical external nature resist to the very end, but if the soul has once heard the call, it arrives, sooner or later. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, #KEYS
1354:The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist. ~ Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, #KEYS
1355:Aug 6 The Divine Mother is the power of all causation. She energizes every cause unmistakably to produce the effect. Her will is the only law, and as She cannot make a mistake, nature's laws--Her will--can never be changed. She is the life of the law of karma, or causation.~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
1356:The Sruti tells us that it is no use taking refuge in suicide or the shortening of your life, because those who kill themselves instead of finding freedom, plunge by death into a worse prison of darkness - the Asuric worlds enveloped in blind gloom.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, [121 or 122],#KEYS
1357:Transient, we made not ourselves, but at birth from the first we were fashioned
Valiant or fearful and as was our birth by the gods and their thinkings
Formed, so already enacted and fixed by their wills are our fortunes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
1358:If you can't as yet remember the Divine all the time you are working, it does not greatly matter. To remember and dedicate at the beginning and give thanks at the end ought to be enough for the present. Or at the most to remember too when there is a pause...
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
1359:Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.
~ Robert Anton Wilson,#KEYS
1360:Oct 23 It is not Bhakti if we worship God with the desire for a son; if we worship with the desire to be rich; it is not Bhakti even if we have a desire for heaven; and with the desire of being saved from the tortures of hell. Bhakti is not the outcome of fear or greediness.~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
1361:Some people say that they cannot read Qur'an, or that they read with mistakes. Allahﷻ has special angels for this. These angels correct the mistakes in your reading of Qur'an & then take it to the presence of Allahﷻ. ~ Mawlana Sheikh Mehmet Adil al-Haqqani Al-Naqshabandi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
1362:Abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such, so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
1363:One cannot realize Truth by futile arguments and reasoning. I am asking you not to indulge in futile reasoning. But reason, by all means, about the Real and the unreal, about what is permanent and what is transitory. You must reason when you are overcome by lust, anger, or grief ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
1364:What is the way of making the consciousness of human unity grow in man?
Spiritual education, that is to say an education which gives more importance to the growth of the spirit than to any religious or moral teaching or to the material so-called knowledge.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS
1365:Dawn in her journey eternal compelling the labour of mortals,
Dawn the beginner of things with the night for their rest or their ending,
Pallid and bright-lipped arrived from the mists and the chill of the Euxine.
Earth in the dawn-fire delivered fr ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,#KEYS
1366:There is something exceptional, unique, about the present event, which the previous or the coming do not have. There is a livingness about it, an actuality; it stands out as if illuminated. There is 'stamp of reality' on actual which past and future do not have. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
1367:when it arrives at an intellectual perception or conclusion, to attach no final value to it, but rather look upward, refer all to the divine principle and wait as in complete silence as it can command for the light from above.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Purified Understanding, 316,#KEYS
1368:as it were, then the possibilities are practically limitless. Given the correct techniques one can invoke or evoke anything, even things which did not exist before one thought of calling them. This may sound like complete Chaos, and I have to report that my own researches confirm that it is!
~ Peter J Carroll, Excerpts Part 1,#KEYS
1369:It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. ~ Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, #KEYS
1370:It is not the 'I am' that is false, but what you take yourself to be. I can see, beyond the least shadow of doubt, that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Logic or no logic, I cannot deny the obvious. You are nothing that you are conscious of. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That, #KEYS
1371:Stay without ambition, without the least desire, exposed, vulnerable, unprotected, uncertain and alone, completely open to and welcoming life as it happens, without the selfish conviction that all must yield you pleasure or profit, material or so-called spiritual. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
1372:We see that some things lacking cognition, namely, natural bodies, act for the sake of an end. This is apparent in that they always or very frequently act in the same way in order to bring about what is best, and from this it is clear that it is not by chance ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.2.3)., #KEYS
1373:God is love personified. He is apparent in everything. Everybody is being drawn to Him whether he knows it or not. The God of Love is to be worshiped & when we think Him to be Love Incarnate, seeing Him in all things & all things in Him, it is then that supreme Bhakti is attaine ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
1374:You have been changing every moment of your life. You were a child & thought in one way, now you are a man & think another way, again you will be an old man & think differently. Everybody is changing. If so,where is your individuality? Certainly not in the body,mind,or in thought~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
1375:You have to remain in that beingness or consciousness with firm faith while having no identification with the body or personality or with name and form. Always identify yourself with consciousness. It will take a while for this conviction to take root, but persist. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
1376:A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words-or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols-spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
1377:Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. ~ Albert Einstein, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, #KEYS
1378:God can be realized through all paths. All religions are true. The important thing is to reach the roof. You can reach it by stone stairs or by wooden stairs or by bamboo steps or by a rope. You can also climb up by a bamboo pole. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, [Gupta, Mahendranath], #KEYS
1379:I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close. ~ Pablo Neruda, #KEYS
1380:You are not the personality or the individual. This body is the food-body on which consciousness appears. The vital breath does all the work and consciousness witnesses it all. This body is only the food-body for the consumption and the sustenance of the 'I Amness'. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
1381:Behold, my son, the plenitude of the good which follows the appearance of the Truth, for envy removes far from us and by the truth the good arrives with life and light and there no longer remain in us any executioners or darkness; all withdraw vanquished. ~ Hermes "On the Rebirth", the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1382:Those who seek the truth by means of intellect and learning only get further and further away from it. Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate." ~ Huang Po, #KEYS
1383:The Holy Spirit is given in measure, not in respect to his ESSENCE or POWER, according to which he is infinite, but in respect to his GIFTS, which are given in a measured way: "Grace has been given to each of us according to measure" ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Eph 4:7)(Commentary on John 3, lect. 6)., #KEYS
1384:The sex-vampire eats up the other's vital and gives nothing or very little. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga
Sec-Vampire
In myself is the seed of all my creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma,#KEYS
1385:We should understand God, if we can and as far as we can, to be good w/o quality, great w/o quantity, creative w/o need or necessity, presiding w/o position, holding all things together w/o possession, wholly everywhere w/o place, everlasting w/o time. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Trin V prol, #KEYS
1386:This web of time - the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries - embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not.~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #KEYS
1387:From what is left by parents and those nearest related, there is a share for men and a share for women, whether the property be small or large,a legal share. If at the time of division of the relatives are present,give them out from the property,and speak to them kindly. ~ 4: 7,8], @Sufi_Path #KEYS
1388:[...]The Divine is Anandamaya and one can seek him for the Ananda he gives; but he has also in him many other things and one may seek him for any of them, for peace, for liberation, for knowledge, for power, for anything else of which one may feel the pull or impulse.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
1389:Philosophy hasn't made any progress? - If somebody scratches the spot where he has an itch, do we have to see some progress? Isn't genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching itching? And can't this reaction to an irritation continue in the same way for a long time before a cure for the itching is discovered? ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #KEYS
1390:For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 't was gone; gray plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on; nought else remain'd to do.
~ Robert Browning, from Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,#KEYS
1391:he action of man made of desire, dislike and illusion starts from his own being, in himself it has its source and, wherever it is found, must come to ripeness, and wherever his action comes to ripeness, man gathers its fruits whether in this or some other form of life. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1392:Men hail in my coming the Almighty's force
Or praise with thankful tears his saviour Grace.
I smite the Titan who bestrides the world
And slay the ogre in his blood-stained den.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
1393:Thus said Ramakrishna and thus said Vivekananda. Yes, but let me know also the truths which the Avatar cast not forth into speech and the prophet has omitted from his teachings. There will always be more in God than the thought of man has ever conceived or the tongue of man has ever uttered.
~ Sri Aurobindo,#KEYS
1394:Anyone who masters these techniques fully has achieved a tremendous power over himself more valuable than health, love, fame, or riches. He has set himself free from the effects of the world; nothing can touch him unless he wills it. As it has been said, the sage who knows how can live comfortably in hell.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
1395:In the work of Transformation, who is the slowest to do his part, man or God?
I replied, - Man finds that God is too slow to answer his prayers. God finds that man is too slow to receive His influence. But for the Truth-Consciousness all is going on as it ought to go.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS
1396:We should note that this word "amen" is a Hebrew word frequently employed by Christ. So out of reverence for him no Greek or Latin translator wished to translate it. Sometimes it means the same as "true" or "truly" and sometimes the same as "so be it" ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Jn 3 lect 1)., #KEYS
1397:A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. ~ James Allen, As a Man Thinketh, #KEYS
1398:Priding oneself on the strengths or accomplishments of one's practice as well as lamenting one's inability to measure up to the practice are both egotistical attitudes. They are riddled with self-centeredness. The proper way to practice Buddha-mindfulness is to try to nourish the spiritual qualities that the Buddha represents. ~ Sheng yen, #KEYS
1399:The sacred dimension is not something that you can know through words and ideas any more than you can learn what an apple pie tastes like by eating the recipe. The modern age has forgotten that facts and information, for all their usefulness, are not the same as truth or wisdom, and certainly not the same as direct experience. ~ Adyashanti, #KEYS
1400:To be "integrally developed" does not mean that you have to excel in all the known intelligences, or that all of your lines have to be at level 3. But it does mean that you develop a very good sense of what your own psychograph is actually like, so that with a much more Integral self-image you can plan your future development. ~ Ken Wilber, #KEYS
1401:Young women... you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays by Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse? ~ Virginia Woolf, #KEYS
1402:As for myself, I look upon all women as my Mother. This is a very pure attitude of mind. There is no risk or danger in it. To look upon a woman as one's sister is also not bad. But the other attitudes are very difficult and dangerous. It is almost impossible to keep to the purity of the ideal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
1403:He is, and there is with him no before or after, nor above nor below, nor far nor near, no union nor division, nor how nor where nor place. He is now as he was. He is the One without oneness and the Single without Singleness... whithersoever you turn, there is the Face of God. ~ Ibn al-Arabi, Kitab al-Ajwiba, 98, trans. Margaret Smith (1950) #KEYS
1404:Magic is but a science, a profound knowledge of the Occult forces in Nature, and of the laws governing the visible or the invisible world. Spiritualism in the hands of an adept becomes Magic, for he is learned in the art of blending together the laws of the Universe, without breaking any of them and thereby violating Nature. ~ H P Blavatsky, #KEYS
1405:The desire for the Divine or for bhakti for the Divine is the one desire which can free one from all the others—at the core it is not a desire, but an aspiration; a soul need, the breath of existence of the inmost being, and as such it cannot be counted among desires, kāmanār madhye nay. ~ Sri Aurobindo, to Dilip, #KEYS
1406:Sciences omnipotent in vain
By which men learn of what the suns are made,
Transform all forms to serve their outward needs,
Ride through the sky and sail beneath the sea,
But learn not what they are or why they came; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
1407:There are so many ways of making the approach to meditation as joyful as possible. You can find the music that most exalts you and use it to open your heart and mind. You can collect pieces of poetry, or quotations of lines of teachings that over the years have moved you, and keep them always at hand to elevate your spirit. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, #KEYS
1408:Because it carries this creative force of the divine Idea, the Sun, the lord and symbol of the gnosis, is described in the Veda as the Light which is the father of all things, Surya Savitri, the Wisdom-Luminous who is the bringer-out into manifest existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
1409:The Supreme demands your surrender to her, but does not impose it: you are free at every moment, till the irrevocable transformation comes, to deny and to reject the Divine or to recall your self-giving, if you are willing to suffer the spiritual consequence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
1410:The dharma, whether it is sutra, tantra, mahamudra, or dzogchen, is like pure gold. No matter how many other metals that mix with it, pure gold can always be extracted. Likewise, any culture can easily absorb the dharma, whether it is in ancient Tibet or the modern day West, as the dharma is beyond culture, time, and place. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche, #KEYS
1411:The power of Love supramentalised can take hold of all living relations without hestitation or danger and turn them Godwards delivered from their crude, mixed and petty human settings and sublimated into the happy material of a divine life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 169, #KEYS
1412:Till Nature is ready, the supramental Force has to act indirectly; it puts the intermediary powers of overmind or intuition in front, or it works through a modification of itself to which the already half-transformed being can be wholly or partially respo ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Ascent towards Supermind, #KEYS
1413:Now intelligence seemed quantifiable. You could measure someone's actual or potential height, and now, it seemed, you could also measure someone's actual or potential intelligence. We had one dimension of mental ability along which we could array everyone... The whole concept has to be challenged; in fact, it has to be replaced. ~ Howard Gardner, #KEYS
1414:Greater it seems to my mind to be king over men than their slayer,
Nobler to build and to govern than what the ages have laboured
Putting their godhead forth to create or the high gods have fashioned,
That to destroy in our wrath of a moment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
1415:Ignorance of oneself is then an evil in all respects, whether ignoring the greatness and dignity of the inner man one lowers one's divine principle or ignoring the natural baseness of the external man one commits the fault of glorifying oneself. ~ Porphyry, "Treatise on the Precept, Know Thyself", the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1416:Its touch can turn difficulties into opportunities, failure into success and weakness into unfaultering strength. For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme and now or tomorrow its effect is sure, a thing decreed, inevitable and irresistible.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
1417:The mind can reflect the Infinite, it can dissolve itself into it, it can live in it by a large passivity, it can take its suggestions and act them out in its own way, a way always fragmentary, derivative and subject to a greater or less deformation, but ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Nature of the Supermind, #KEYS
1418:247. Men in the world have two lights, duty and principle; but he who has passed over to God, has done with both and replaced them by God's will. If men abuse thee for this, care not, O divine instrument, but go on thy way like the wind or the sun fostering and destroying.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
1419:The universe was not now this senseless whirl
Borne round inert on an immense machine;
It cast away its grandiose lifeless front,
A mechanism no more or work of Chance,
But a living movement of the body of God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Soul's Release,#KEYS
1420:Kriya Yoga is a simple, psychophysiological method by which human blood is decarbonated and recharged with oxygen. The atoms of this extra oxygen are transmuted into life current to rejuvenate the brain and spinal centres. By stopping the accumulation of venous blood, the yogi is able to lessen or prevent the decay of tissues. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #KEYS
1421:Then all grew tranquil in her being's space,
Only sometimes small thoughts arose and fell
Like quiet waves upon a silent sea
Or ripples passing over a lonely pool
When a stray stone disturbs its dreaming rest. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS
1422:What do I advise? Forget it all. Don't be afraid. Do what you get the most pleasure from. Is it to build a cloud chamber? Then go on doing things like that. Develop your talents wherever they may lead. Damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead!
If you have any talent, or any occupation that delights you, do it, and do it to the hilt ~ Richard P Feynman,#KEYS
1423:As a student who has no idea of dharma and no mind training, you decide to commit to the path and to train yourself. As you train your mind, you begin to see all kinds of things. What you see is not so much the inspiration of a glimpse of enlightenment, or buddha nature. Instead, the first thing you see is what is wrong with samsara. ~ Chogyam Trungpa, #KEYS
1424:When He calls me I start a self-inspection: 'Am I fair or will my looks earn rejection? If a fine beauty leads a beast along, She's only mocking what does not belong! To see my own face can there be a way? Is my complexion now like night or day?' I searched for my soul's form in everyone, But it did not reflect in anyone. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, The Masnavi, #KEYS
1425:That is the inconvenience of going away from a difficulty,—it runs after one,—or rather one carries it with oneself, for the difficulty is truly inside, not outside. Outside circumstances only give it the occasion to manifest itself and so long as the inn ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Difficulties of the Path - VII, #KEYS
1426:The knowledge of mortals is bound unto blindness.
Either only they walk mid the coloured dreams of the senses
Treading the greenness of earth and deeming the touch of things real,
Or if they see, by the curse of the gods their sight into falsehood ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
1427:It may be necessary to regain one's original sexuality from the mass of fantasy and association into which it mostly sinks. This is achieved by judicious use of abstention and by arousing lust without any form of mental prop or fantasy. This exercise is also therapeutic. Be ye ever virgin unto Kia.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null, Liber LUX, Gnosis [33],#KEYS
1428:A magical diary is the magicians most essential and powerful tool. It should be large enough to allow a full page for each day. Students should record the time, duration and degree of success of any practice undertaken. They should make notes about environmental factors conducive (or otherwise) to the work.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null, Liber MMM [13],#KEYS
1429:Since this name "God" ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Deus), is apparently derived from the Greek name Theos, which comes from theasthai, meaning to see or to consider, the very name of God makes it clear that He is intelligent and consequently that He wills ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (CT 1.35)., #KEYS
1430:The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself. ~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, #KEYS
1431:The tendency to take what I lay down for one and apply it without discrimination to another is responsible for much misunderstanding. A general statement, too, true in itself, cannot be applied to everyone alike or applied now and immediately without consideration of condition or circumstance or person or time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
1432:What can man suffer direr or worse than enslaved from a victor
Boons to accept, to take safety and ease from the foe and the stranger,
Fallen from the virtue stern that heaven permits to a mortal?
Death is not keener than this nor the slaughter of f ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
1433:All exists here, no doubt, for the delight of existence, all is a game or Lila; but a game too carries within itself an object to be accomplished and without the fulfillment of that object would have no completeness of significance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, "Sri Aurobindo's Lila - The Nature of Divine Play According to Integral Advaita" #KEYS
1434:He who a god for his kindred,
Lives for the rest without bowels of pity or fellowship, lone-souled,
Scorning the world that he rules, who untamed by the weight of an empire
Holds allies as subjects, subjects as slaves and drives to the battle
Care ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
1435:Dream-caught or sensed, they touch our hearts with their depths;
Unreal-seeming, yet more real than life,
Happier than happiness, truer than things true,
If dreams these were or captured images,
Dream's truth made false earth's vain realities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life,#KEYS
1436:It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
~ Robert Heinlein, Postscript to Revolt in 2100.,#KEYS
1437:Only what seemed was prized as real there:
The ideal was a cynic ridicule's butt;
Hooted by the crowd, mocked by enlightened wits,
Spiritual seeking wandered outcasted,—
A dreamer's self-deceiving web of thought
Or mad chimaera deemed or hypocri ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#KEYS
1438:In a staggering display of power, the caster causes all portals within 1 mile to blast open in a violent burst. [...] Moreover, normal fasteners and stoppers are loosened or dislodged, such that wine corks fizz open, lids fall off dinner pots, shoelaces unlace, snaps loosen, belts unbuckle, and so on. ~ Joseph Goodman, Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, #KEYS
1439:362. Limit not sacrifice to the giving up of earthly goods or the denial of some desires and yearnings, but let every thought and every work and every enjoyment be an offering to God within thee. Let thy steps walk in thy Lord, let thy sleep and waking be a sacrifice to Krishna.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, [T1],#KEYS
1440:People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child ~ our own two eyes. All is a miracle. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #KEYS
1441:The highest inspiration brings the intrinsic word, the spiritual mantra; but even where the inspiration is less than that, has a certain vagueness or fluidity of outline, you cannot say of such mystic poetry that it has no inspiration, not the inspired word at all. Where there is no inspiration, there can be no poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
1442:It is more important to find out the truth about oneself than to find out the truth about heaven and hell, or about many other things which are of less importance and are apart from oneself. However, every man's pursuit is according to his state of evolution, and so each soul is in pursuit of something-but he does not know where it leads him. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #KEYS
1443:Why is there this dark and idiotic personality in me? Does it lie hidden in everyone or am I an especially difficult case?
Certainly you are not the only one. Many are like this. Only those who have centered their whole being around the conscious control of the psychic can cure themselves of it.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
1444:Doubt, sorrow, dejection, wrath, despair, all these demons lie in wait for a man and as soon as he leads an idle life, they attack; the surest protection against them is assiduous physical labour. As soon as a man sets himself to this task, no demon can approach him or do more than growl from a distance. ~ Carlyle, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1445:Remind yourself always that the Divine Force is there, that you have felt it and that, even if you seem to lose consciousness of it for a time or it seems something distant, still it is there and is sure to prevail For those whom the Force has touched and taken up, belong thenceforth to the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
1446:To me, it doesn't matter if your scapegoats are the Jews, the homosexuals, the male sex, the Masons, the Jesuits, the Welfare Parasites, the Power Elite, the female sex, the vegetarians, or the Communist Party. To the extent that you need a scapegoat, you simply have not got your brain programmed to work as an efficient problem-solving machine. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #KEYS
1447:For example, people in polar environments or space may experience increased fortitude, perseverance, independence, self-reliance, ingenuity, comradeship. ... Some astronauts and cosmonauts in space have reported transcendental experiences, religious insights, or a better sense of the unity of mankind as a result of viewing the Earth below and the cosmos beyond.
~ ?,#KEYS
1448:God said unto Jesus, "O Jesus! When I see in My servants' hearts pure love for Myself unmixed with any selfish desire concerning this world or the next, I act as guardian over that love." Again, when people asked Jesus "What is the highest work of all?" he answered, "To love God and to be resigned to His will. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #KEYS
1449:Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Works, #KEYS
1450:But the actual touch of her lingered, inside his heart. That remained. In all the years of his life ahead, the long years without her, with never seeing her or hearing from her or knowing anything about her, if she was alive or happy or dead or what, that touch stayed locked within him, sealed in himself, and never went away. That one touch of her hand. ~ Philip K Dick, #KEYS
1451:Servitors can be created to perform a wide range of tasks, from the specific to the general, and may be considered as expert systems which are able to modify themselves to take into account new factors that are likely to arise whilst they are performing their tasks. They can be programmed to work within specific circumstances, or to be operating continually. ~ Phil Hine, #KEYS
1452:Time is nothing else than the uninterrupted succession of the acts of divine Energy, one of the attri butes or one of the workings of the Deity. Space is the extension of His soul; it is His unfolding in length, breadth and height; it is the simultaneous existence of His productions and manifestations. ~ Giordano Bruno, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1453:When the imagination is not controlled and the attention not steadied on the feeling of the wish fulfilled, then no amount of prayer or piety or invocation will produce the desired effect. When you can call up at will whatsoever image you please, when the forms of your imagination are as vivid to you as the forms of nature, you are master of your fate. ~ Neville Goddard, #KEYS
1454:Concentration, for our Yoga, means when the consciousness is fixed in a particular state (e.g. peace) or movement (e.g. aspiration, will, coming into contact with the Mother, taking the Mother's name); meditation is when the inner mind is looking at things to get the right knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [concentration is:],#KEYS
1455:Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action. ~ Daniel Goleman, #KEYS
1456:Through its fiery swoon or clotted knot
Rain-tide burst in upon torn wings of heat,
Startled with lightnings air's unquiet drowse,
Lashed with life-giving streams the torpid soil,
Overcast with flare and sound and storm-winged dark
The star-defe ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Birth and Childhood of the Flame,#KEYS
1457:One of two things must be done. Either surrender because you admit your inability and require a higher power to help you, or investigate the cause of misery by going to the source and merging into the Self. Either way you will be free from misery. God never forsakes one who has surrendered. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Surpassing Love and Grace, #KEYS
1458:Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. ~ John F. Kennedy, #KEYS
1459:It is not sufficient to worship Krishna, Christ or Buddha without, if there is not the revealing and the formation of the Buddha, the Christ or Krishna in ourselves. And all other aids equally have no other purpose; each is a bridge between mans unconverted state and the revelation of the Divine within him.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
1460:Nor does he achieve his destiny as the individual Man for the sake of the individual soul alone,—a lonely salvation is not his complete ideal,—but for the world also or rather for God in the world, for God in all as well as above all and not for God solely and separately in one. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Ideal Law of Social Development, #KEYS
1461:(1) Offer yourself more and more - all the consciousness, all that happens in it, all your work and action.
(2) If you have faults and weaknesses, hold them up before the Divine to be changed or abolished.
(3) Try to do what I told you, concentrate in the heart till you constantly feel the Presence there. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
1462:The descent of the supramental is an inevitable necessity in the logic of things and is therefore sure. It is because people do not understand what the Supermind is or realise the significance of the emergence of consciousness in a world of inconscient matter that they are unable to realise this inevitability.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I,#KEYS
1463:We need way more intimacy than nearly anyone considers normal. Always hungry for it, we seek solace and sustenance in the closest available substitutes: television, shopping, pornography, conspicuous consumption - anything to ease the hurt, to feel connected, or to project an image by which we might be seen and known, or at least see and know ourselves.
~ Charles Eisenstein,#KEYS
1464:When the vital joins in the love for the Divine, it brings into it heroism, enthusiasm, intensity, absoluteness, exclusiveness, the spirit of self-sacrifice, the total and passionate self-giving of all the nature. It is the vital passion for the Divine that creates the spiritual heroes, conquerors or martyrs.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
1465:Her lips endlessly clung to his,
Unwilling ever to separate again
Or lose that honeyed drain of lingering joy,
Unwilling to loose his body from her breast,
The warm inadequate signs that love must use. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart's Grief and Pain,#KEYS
1466:I was a terrible believer in things,but I was also a terrible nonbeliever in things. I was as searching as I was skeptical. I didn't know where to put my faith,or if there was such a place,or even what the word faith meant, in all of it's complexity. Everything seemed to be possibly potent and possibly fake. ~ Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, #KEYS
1467:True strength of will is calm; in calmness it is persevering so that it does not become discouraged by momentary lack of success or by any wounds received. No one is conquered until he has given up the struggle. And he who works for the Lord puts his confidence in God and not in himself. ~ Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life: Prelude of Eternal Life, #KEYS
1468:If we want to cook food we need to leave the stove on continuously and not keep turning it on and off. If the heat is continuous, no matter whether it is high or low our food will eventually be cooked. Similarly, if we continuously apply effort, even if it is only a small effort, it is certain that we shall eventually experience the fruits of our practice. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, #KEYS
1469:In order to live a happy life, man should understand what life is and what he can or cannot do. The best and wisest men in all nations have taught it to us from all times. All the doctrines of the sages meet in their foundation and it is this general sum of their doctrines, revealing the aim of human life and the conduct to be pursued, that constitutes real religion. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #KEYS
1470:It is nothing, O my brothers, the loss of relatives, riches or honours; but the loss of understanding is a heavy loss. It is nothing, O my brothers, the gain of relatives, riches or honours; but the gain of understanding is the supreme gain. Therefore we wish to gain in understanding; let that be our aspiration. ~ Angattara Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1471:The mainspring of creativity appears to be the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy, man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities. By this I mean the organic and human life, the urge to expand, extend, develop, mature - the tendency to express and activate all the capacities of the organism, or the self. ~ Carl Rogers, #KEYS
1472:Become conscious of being conscious. Say or think "I am", and add nothing to it. Be aware of the stillness that follows the "I am". Sense your presence, the naked unveiled, unclothed beingness. It is untouched by young or old, rich or poor, good or bad, or any other attributes. It is the spacious womb of all creation, all form. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
1473:Kata is a term used by some programmers in the Software Craftsmanship[9] movement. Computer programmers who call themselves Software Craftsmen[10] will write Kata[11]
- small snippets of code that they write in one sitting, sometimes repeatedly,[12] often daily, in order to build muscle memory and practise their craft, much like a soldier, a musician, a doctor or a dancer.[13] ~ ?,#KEYS
1474:I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths ... and then reason up from there. ~ Elon Musk, #KEYS
1475:It really makes little difference in the long run whether The Book of the Law was dictated to [Crowley] by preterhuman intelligence named Aiwass or whether it stemmed from the creative deeps of Aleister Crowley. The book was written. And he became the mouthpiece for the Zeitgeist, accurately expressing the intrinsic nature of our time as no one else has done to date. ~ Israel Regardie, #KEYS
1476:The incarnate dual Power shall open God's door,
Eternal supermind touch earthly Time.
The superman shall wake in mortal man
And manifest the hidden demigod
Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force
Revealing the secret deity in the cave.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
1477:I have found the atoms from which he built the worlds:
The first tremendous cosmic energy
Missioned shall leap to slay my enemy kin,
Expunge a nation or abolish a race,
Death's silence leave where there was laughter and joy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
1478:D.: In the practice of meditation are there any signs of the nature of subjective experience or otherwise, which will indicate the aspirant's progress towards Self-Realisation
M.: The degree of freedom from unwanted thoughts and the degree of concentration on a single thought are the measure to gauge the progress.
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 427,#KEYS
1479:... In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. ...
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Sacrifice and the Lord of the Sacrifice [112] [T1],#KEYS
1480:As the servant and disciple of the Master has no business with pride or egoism because all is done for him from above, so also he has no right to despond because of his personal deficiencies or the stumblings of his nature. For the Force that works in him is impersonal -- or superpersonal-and infinite.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 61,#KEYS
1481:Sometimes I think that the Agni You have kindled in me is going to burn up everything that separates me from You. What should I do to contribute to its fulfilment?
Each time that you discover in yourself something that denies or resists, throw it into the flame of Agni, which is the fire of aspiration. 19 May 1967
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother,#KEYS
1482:Suffer what there is to suffer, enjoy what there is to enjoy. Regard both suffering and joy as facts of life, and continue chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo(1), no matter what happens. How could this be anything other than the boundless joy of the Law?
(1) Devotion to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra or Glory to the Sutra of the Lotus of the Supreme Law ~ Nichiren,#KEYS
1483:The passage from the lower to the higher is the aim of Yoga; and this passage may effect itself by the rejection of the lower and escape into the higher, - the ordinary view-point, - or by the transformation of the lower and its elevation to the higher Nature. It is this, rather, that must be the aim of an integral Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
1484:He should sanctify his soul, for it is there that there sits the eternal Beloved; he should deliver his mind from all that is the water and mire of things without reality, vain shadows, so as to keep in himself no trace of love or hatred; for love may lead into the evil way and hatred prevents us from following the good path. ~ Bahu-ullah, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1485:Man surprised me most about humanity. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #KEYS
1486:Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse. ~ H. P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature, #KEYS
1487:The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless." ~ Alan Moor, #KEYS
1488:Let us not believe that it is enough to read without unction, to speculate without devotion, to investigate without wonder, to observe without joy, to act without godly zeal, to know without love, to understand without humility, to strive without divine grace, or to reflect as a mirror without divinely inspired wisdom. ~ Saint Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind into God / Feast Day July 15th, #KEYS
1489:Like your bedroom, your writing room should be private, a place where you go to dream. Your schedule ~ in at about the same time every day, out when your thousand words are on paper or disk ~ exists in order to habituate yourself, to make yourself ready to dream just as you make yourself ready to sleep by going to bed at roughly the same time each night and following the same ritual as you go., #KEYS
1490:Meditation here is not reflection or any other kind of discursive thinking. It is pure concentration: training the mind to dwell on an interior focus without wandering, until it becomes absorbed in the object of its contemplation. But absorption does not mean unconsciousness. The outside world may be forgotten, but meditation is a state of intense inner wakefulness. ~ Anonymous, The Upanishads, #KEYS
1491:In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text. If ergodic literature is to make sense as a concept, there must also be nonergodic literature, where the effort to traverse the text is trivial, with no extranoematic responsibilities placed on the reader except (for example) eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages ~ Espen J Aarseth, #KEYS
1492:The name of the Divine is usually called in for protection, for adoration, for increase of bhakti, for the opening up of the inner consciousness, for the realisation of the Divine in that aspect. As far as it is necessary to work in the subconscious for that, the Name must be effective there. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Namajapa or Repetition of the Name, #KEYS
1493:As individual egos we dwell in the Ignorance and judge everything by a broken, partial and personal standard of knowledge; we experience everything according to the capacity of a limited consciousness and force and are therefore unable to give a divine response or set the true value upon any part of cosmic experience.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 396, [T3],#KEYS
1494:To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honorable to which a man can be called? ~ Aleister Crowley, #KEYS
1495:A superintelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds. Superintelligence may also refer to a property of problem-solving systems (e.g., superintelligent language translators or engineering assistants) whether or not these high-level intellectual competencies are embodied in agents that act in the world.
~ Wikipedia,#KEYS
1496:Sincerity means more than mere honesty. It means that you mean what you say, feel what you profess, are earnest in your will. As the sadhak aspires to be an instrument of the Divine and one with the Divine, sincerity in him means that he is really in earnest in his aspiration and refuses all other will or impulse except the Divine's. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, #KEYS
1497:Who cares for your bhakti and mukti? Who cares what your scriptures say? I will go into a thousand hells cheerfully if I can rouse my countrymen, immersed in tamas, to stand on their own feet and be men inspired with the spirit of karma-yoga. I am a follower only of he or she who serves and helps others without caring for his own bhakti and mukti! ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
1498:There is an internal war in man between reason and the passions. He could get some peace if he had only reason without passions or only passions without reason, but because he has both, he must be at war, since he cannot have peace with one without being at war with the other. Thus he is always divided and in opposition to himself. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1499:What desolates my heart, is this sort of continual destruction throughout Nature; she has created nothing which does not destroy its neighbour or destroy itself. Thus, staggering and bewildered in the midst of these oscillating forces of earth and heaven, I move forward seeing nothing but a world in which all devours and ruminates eternally. ~ Goethe, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
1500:Here even the highest rapture Time can give
Is a mimicry of ungrasped beatitudes,
A mutilated statue of ecstasy,
A wounded happiness that cannot live,
A brief felicity of mind or sense
Thrown by the World-Power to her body-slave,
Or a simulacr ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Don’t explain or justify. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 2:Gold will be slave or master. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 3:Am I lost or just less found? ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 4:Either attempt it not, or succeed. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 5:History is more or less bunk. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 6:Either push your limits or die. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 7:Poets wish to profit or to please. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 8:I can't live without you or with you. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 9:I had amnesia once or twice. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 10:Neither blame or praise yourself. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 11:Rule your mind or it will rule you. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 12:We must love or we grow ill. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 13:Freedom is now or never. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 14:Kill me, or you are a murderer. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 15:Time can be an ally or an enemy. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 16:Belief traps or frees us. ~ rachel-naomi-remen, @wisdomtrove 17:Let a man nobly live or nobly die. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 18:One either meets or one works. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 19:Called or not, God is always there. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 20:Let' em learn or let' em die ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 21:Life is an adventure or nothing ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 22:Perspective - Use It or Lose It. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 23:All this happened, more or less. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 24:Come back with your shield - or on it ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 25:Here, or nowhere, is the thing we seek. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 26:It is either easy or impossible. ~ salvador-dali, @wisdomtrove 27:Pain or pleasure? I say pleasure. ~ epictetus, @wisdomtrove 28:Enough or not... it will have to do ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 29:So, I can hurt now, or hurt later. ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 30:The fellow is either a madman or a poet. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 31:The man is either crazy or he is a poet. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 32:Tis you, alone, can save, or give my doom. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 33:Either give me more wine or leave me alone. ~ rumi, @wisdomtrove 34:Get busy living, or get busy dying. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 35:Its either Christ or the other god. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 36:I will be rich or I will die trying. ~ t-harv-eker, @wisdomtrove 37:We must scrunch or be scrunched. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 38:Which is worse, hell or nothing? ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 39:Faith is a state of openness or trust. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 40:Fate cannot be sidestepped or outrun. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 41:Is virtue raised by culture, or self-sown? ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 42:It is God's giving if we laugh or weep. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 43:Subdue your passion or it will subdue you. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 44:Truth cannot be structured or confined. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 45:In the motive lies the good or ill. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 46:Money amassed either serves us or rules us. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 47:Oh, how fine it is to know a thing or two. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 48:Resolved to ruin or to rule the state. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 49:Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 50:Don't suffer fools or you'll become one. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 51:Don't whine, complain, or make excuses. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 52:Either be wholly slaves or wholly free. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 53:Love either finds equality or makes it. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 54:Nothing is more powerful than custom or habit. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 55:Riches either serve or govern the possessor. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 56:A fixed idea ends in madness or heroism. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 57:Bad times can make you bitter or better. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 58:Either you run the day or the day runs you. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 59:Is it weird in here, or is it just me? ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 60:Life is a daring adventure or nothing. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 61:Now is now. Are you going to be here or not? ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 62:We're either nothing or a God's regret. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 63:Beauty should be edible, or not at all. ~ salvador-dali, @wisdomtrove 64:I intend to live forever, or die trying. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 65:Intention, good or bad, is not enough. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 66:I wanted the whole world or nothing. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 67:Jesus was either a Liar, a Lunatic, or Lord ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 68:Plan ahead or find trouble on the doorstep. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 69:Sooner or later, I'll be punctual. ~ ashleigh-brilliant, @wisdomtrove 70:The man is either mad, or he is making verses. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 71:The man is either mad or his is making verses. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 72:All men seek one goal: success or happiness. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 73:Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 74:Learned or unlearned we all must be scribbling. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 75:Let's begin by taking a smallish nap or two. ~ a-a-milne, @wisdomtrove 76:People don't live or die, people just float. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 77:We are either kings or pawns of men ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 78:A spiritual life means: It is now or never. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 79:Christ was either liar, lunatic, or Lord! ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 80:Do you hear, or does some fond illusion mock me? ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 81:Every one is more or less master of his own fate. ~ aesop, @wisdomtrove 82:I must forgive without noise or fuss. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 83:I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out. ~ walt-whitman, @wisdomtrove 84:Much is wanting to those who seek or covet much. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 85:Remember my mantra: distinct... or extinct. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 86:There's no next time. It's now or never. ~ celestine-chua, @wisdomtrove 87:When cheated, wife or husband feels the same. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 88:Battles are lost or won in 15 minutes ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 89:Christ was either liar, lunatic, or Lord! ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 90:Either do not attempt at all or go through with it. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 91:Learn to write well, or not to write at all. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 92:Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 93:You can't know, you can only believe - or not. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 94:Each one of us has to be what he or she is. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 95:Either one fails in one's art or in one's life. ~ anais-nin, @wisdomtrove 96:Or hast thou known the world so long in vain? ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 97:Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 98:Race has no place in American life or law. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 99:She's so thin she's either dying or rich. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 100:There is nothing good or evil save in the will. ~ epictetus, @wisdomtrove 101:What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 102:You can risk being wrong or you can be boring. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 103:Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 104:.. is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 105:It is neither holy, Roman or an empire. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 106:I want the wonder back again, or I shall die. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 107:Life is either a great adventure or nothing. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 108:Whatever you have, you must either use or lose. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 109:You better play together as a team or you sit. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 110:You can either buy clothes or buy pictures. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 111:You change the rules or you are going under. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove 112:be it peace or happiness let it enfold you ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 113:Do it or don't do it but get on with it. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 114:Drive thy business or it will drive thee. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 115:Hear reason, or she'll make you feel her. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 116:I really didn't consider myself happy or unhappy. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 117:Money is like an arm or leg - use it or lose it. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 118:Nothing is created or destroyed in nature. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 119:Reality has no inside, outside, or middle part. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 120:Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? ~ albert-camus, @wisdomtrove 121:to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 122:What is genius or courage without a heart? ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 123:Whether we think we can or cannot, we are right. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 124:Do any men grow up or do they only come of age? ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 125:Don't Let them fool you or even try to school you ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 126:Either I'm too sensitive, or else I'm gettin' soft ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 127:I didn't know whether to duck or to run, so I ran. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 128:It isn't by the size that you win or you fail- ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 129:Love isn't an emotion or an instinct - it's an art. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 130:Negative feedback can make us bitter or better. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 131:No man ever did or can do a great work alone. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 132:Reality is not always probable, or likely. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 133:Whether you believe you can or not, you're right. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 134:All wars are won or lost before they are ever fought. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 135:Be not proud of race, face, place, or grace. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 136:God is near whether you sense His presence or not. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 137:Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 138:Men who not religious or artists are fools. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 139:Nothing that is can pause or stay. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 140:The Absolute does not change, or re-evolve. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 141:What are we? Young or new? We must be something. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 142:Who after wine, talks of wars hardships or of poverty. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 143:A good front is half the battle in love or war. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 144:All men do not, in fine, admire or love the same thing. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 145:Do it or don't do it - you will regret both. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 146:God only acts and is, in existing beings or men. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 147:There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove 148:Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 149:To be, or not to be, that is the question. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 150:Un-dish-cover the fish, or dishcover the riddle. ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove 151:You either control your mind or it controls you. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 152:Betray not a secret even though racked by wine or wrath. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 153:Either you understand or you don't, and that is that. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 154:Everything is as good or bad as our opinion makes it. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 155:If by my life or death I can protect you, I will. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 156:Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 157:Whether you say you can't or you can, you're right. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 158:Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 159:Without imperfection, you or I would not exist. ~ stephen-hawking, @wisdomtrove 160:Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 161:Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin. ~ aesop, @wisdomtrove 162:Everyone has to contribute, or they become laborers. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 163:Face your fears or they will climb over your back. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 164:Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 165:Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 166:The mind is the leader or forerunner of all actions. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 167:Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 168:Where soil is, men grow, Whether to weeds or flowers. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 169:Zen has nothing to do with letters, words, or sutras. ~ d-t-suzuki, @wisdomtrove 170:All wholesome food is caught without a net or trap. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 171:a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 172:Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 173:He who has a why can deal with any what or how. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 174:I found light in the darkness ... or it found me. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 175:In life, you need either inspiration or desperation. ~ tony-robbins, @wisdomtrove 176:Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. ~ anais-nin, @wisdomtrove 177:Make your own rules or be a slave to another man's. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 178:Nobly to live, or else nobly to die,Befits proud birth. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 179:The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 180:The pilot cannot mitigate the billows or calm the winds. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 181:Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That's voting. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 182:To be an artist means not to compute or count. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 183:You change the rules or you are going under. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 184:You're either living your dreams, or living your fears. ~ les-brown, @wisdomtrove 185:You were not meant for a mundane or mediocre life! ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 186:All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 187:Always fight for quality, whether giving or receiving. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 188:Anything done against faith or conscience is sinful. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 189:As long as I am this or that, I am not all things. ~ meister-eckhart, @wisdomtrove 190:For good or ill, your habits will make or break you. ~ steve-pavlina, @wisdomtrove 191:He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 192:I like Kit-Kat, unless I'm with four or more people. ~ mitch-hedberg, @wisdomtrove 193:I must do something or I shall wear my heart away. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 194:I never wanted to be a prophet or a saviour. Elvis maybe ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 195:It makes a great difference whether Davus or a hero speaks. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 196:It's not about winning or losing, but love and respect. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 197:no matter whether the beloved suffers weal or woe. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 198:On or about December 1910, human character changed. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 199:Talent is never static. It's always growing or dying. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 200:Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That is voting. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 201:Three wishes - no substitutes, exchanges or refunds ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove 202:What you don’t know, you can’t tell. Or made to tell. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 203:You can give the Devil too much or too little attention. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 204:You must either modify your dreams or magnify your skills ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 205:All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 206:Am not IA fly like thee?Or art not thouA man like me? ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 207:Anything done against faith or conscience is sinful. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 208:Do you respond to life or are you merely reacting to it? ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 209:Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 210:Everything you want to be, do or have comes from love. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 211:If you have a choice between right or kind, choose kind. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 212:I live to succeed, not to please you or anyone else. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 213:People ought to be one of two things, young or dead. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 214:There is no effort without error or shortcoming. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 215:The United States never lost a war or won a conference. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 216:Thinking isn't agreeing or disagreeing. That's voting. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 217:A church is a soul-saving company or it is nothing. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 218:A culture is made‚ or destroyed ‚ by its articulate voices. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 219:A leader’s most powerful ally is his or her own example. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 220:Dating means two things; disillusionment or a racing heart. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 221:Don’t blow your own horn, or you might just miss the music. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 222:Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 223:It is the place of feeling that binds us or frees us. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 224:Men work together, whether they work together or apart. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 225:Next to dressing for a rout or ball, undressing is a woe. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 226:Nothing is or can be accidental with God. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 227:To be original, or different, is felt to be "dangerous." ~ carl-rogers, @wisdomtrove 228:What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 229:Whether you think you will succeed or not, you are right. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 230:A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 231:A man of faith does not bargain or stipulate with God. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 232:Different is better when it is more effective or more fun. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 233:Every patient carries her or his own doctor inside. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 234:Every patient carries his or her own doctor inside. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 235:Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned or worn. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove 236:Hope has as many lives as a cat or a king. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 237:Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 238:I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 239:If I paid $3 or $4 for a cigar, first I'd sleep with it. ~ george-burns, @wisdomtrove 240:I'm determined to stand whether God will deliver me or not. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 241:I'm looking for Miss Right, or at least Miss Right Now ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove 242:Life is as easy or as hard as you think it is. ~ jonathan-lockwood-huie, @wisdomtrove 243:Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or men. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 244:No need to feel brave or confident; just behave that way. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 245:No two persons have the same mind or the same body. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 246:One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 247:People are not heterosexual or homosexual, just sexual. ~ quentin-crisp, @wisdomtrove 248:Success is hastened or delayed by one's habits. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 249:There is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 250:Till it has loved, no man or woman can become itself. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 251:We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 252:All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 253:Do you decide to observe? Or do you merely observe? ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 254:Either Man will abolish war, or war will abolish Man. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 255:Either you defend the status quo, or you invent the future. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 256:I may be accused or rashness, but not sluggishness. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 257:I must create a system, or be enslav'd by another man's. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 258:Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 259:No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 260:There is no such thing as a good war or a bad peace. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 261:The Truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 262:Very less to say, I can make one Catholic or Protestant. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 263:Which is the more believable of the two, Moses or China? ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 264:Which is worse? Killing with hate or killing without hate? ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 265:You can make excuses or you can make progress. You choose. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 266:You can't really conduct your life by one or two phrases. ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 267:All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove 268:All you may know of heaven or hell is within your own self. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 269:Be happy now, without reason - or you never will be at all. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 270:Don't be misled by History, or any other unreliable source. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 271:Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 272:First be sure a thing is wanted or needed, then go ahead. ~ thomas-edison, @wisdomtrove 273:I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality. ~ frida-kahlo, @wisdomtrove 274:Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 275:It's not love or anything, but I think I like you, too. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 276:Man will ultimately be governed by God or by tyrants. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 277:My life is a creative act& 278:Nobody knows why they were born or where they come from. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 279:We never choose anything at all. Things happen. Or not. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 280:You can be right or you can have empathy. You can't do both. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 281:You can be right or you can have empathy. You can’t do both. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 282:Aim not to win or succeed, but for excellence in the moment. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 283:All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and naught. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 284:Attention to a thought or emotion creates space around it. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 285:Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her. ~ lao-tzu, @wisdomtrove 286:Clarity moves much more efficiently than violence or stress. ~ byron-katie, @wisdomtrove 287:Everyone has influence, for good or bad, upon others. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 288:Genius is a steed too fiery for the plow or the cart. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 289:I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 290:No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove 291:Opinions are made to be changed or how is truth to be got at? ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 292:The Heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 293:Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 294:We must abolish nuclear weapons, or they will abolish us. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 295:Whether they yield or refuse, it delights women to have been asked. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 296:Do you think my mind is maturing late, or simply rotted early? ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove 297:I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 298:Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 299:Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit. ~ kahlil-gibran, @wisdomtrove 300:Never get bored or cynical. Yesterday is a thing of the past. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 301:One does not fall "in" or "out" of love. One grows in love. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove 302:Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle. ~ epictetus, @wisdomtrove 303:they say that nothing is wasted: either that or it al is ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 304:Trying to be witty leads to lying, more or less. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 305:When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 306:With enough effort, or hard work, I can accomplish anything. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 307:You gain or lose power according to the choices that you make. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 308:Are you doing work worth doing, or are you just doing your job? ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 309:But this wealth of information produced little or no insight. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 310:If two or three agree on a common purpose, nothing is impossible. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 311:I'm not leading them to some false God or something like that. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 312:Is it you and I who are crazy, or is it everybody else? ~ ashleigh-brilliant, @wisdomtrove 313:It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 314:No one is any more or any less important than you are. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 315:No religion knows the truth. Only he or she who lives it knows. ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove 316:Nothing good or great can be done in the absence of enthusiasm. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 317:One can steal ideas, but no one can steal execution or passion. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 318:Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 319:The man who is content to live alone is either a beast or a god. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 320:The universal cosmic process was not created by any god or man. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 321:We are but the instruments or assistants, by whom God works. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 322:Which is better, truth that is a lie or the lie that is truth? ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 323:Which is heavier: a soldier's pack or a slave's chains? ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 324:Be fired with enthusiasm or you'll be fired with enthusiasm. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 325:Governments arise either out of the people or over the people. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 326:I'm sure this Jesus will not do Either for Englishman or Jew. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 327:Keep your money in your pocket. Or bet it on a good horse. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 328:No one else can think or feel for you .. it's YOU .. ONLY YOU. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 329:No one person in the world is necessary to you or to me. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 330:No poems can please long or live that are written by water drinkers. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 331:Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 332:one can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 333:Please everyone without becoming a hypocrite or a coward. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 334:Remember, either you control your money or it will control you. ~ t-harv-eker, @wisdomtrove 335:so it's always a process of letting go, one way or another ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 336:The self is the conscious endeavor to be or not to be. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 337:Two sure ways to fail- Think and never do or do and never think. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 338:Consciousness is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 339:Every leader is telling a story... about what he or she values. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 340:Free will is located in or near the anterior cingulate sulcus. ~ francis-crick, @wisdomtrove 341:Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 342:It was not for societies or states, that Christ died, but for men. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 343:Life is to be lived as a magnificent adventure, or not at all. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 344:No matter how bad it is, or how bad it gets; I'm going to make it. ~ les-brown, @wisdomtrove 345:Nothing dies so hard, or rallies so often as intolerance. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 346:NOW is the only reality – all else is either memory or imagination. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 347:One must never be either content with, or impatient with, oneself. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 348:One must think with the body and the soul or not think at all. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 349:Rash oaths, whether kept or broken, frequently produce guilt. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 350:Simply be in the moment, don’t think about the past or the future. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 351:The big win is when you refuse to settle for average or mediocre. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 352:The flesh, or human nature, is generally lazy and self-centered. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 353:The great mass of humanity should never learn to read or write. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 354:The Sphinx-riddle. Solve it, or be torn to bits, is the decree. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 355:To Tom Carlson or his dog-depending on whose taste it best suits. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove 356:We should not be too familiar with the lower orders or with women. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 357:What is it that they should or shouldn’t do, be, think, or feel? ~ byron-katie, @wisdomtrove 358:Why be a governor or senator when you can be king of Disneyland? ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 359:Without the ego, there would be no enlightenment or awakening. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 360:You've got to rise from the floor alone or fall back alone. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 361:& 362:Almost everybody can be imagined as either a cat or a dog. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 363:A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 364:Don't give up on your dreams, or your dreams will give up on you. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 365:Do you always want to be right or do you want to be happy? ~ h-jackson-brown-jr, @wisdomtrove 366:Emotions will either serve or master, depending on who is in charge. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 367:Freedom is one thing. You have it all or you are not free. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 368:Happiness is a dry martini and a good woman ... or a bad woman. ~ george-burns, @wisdomtrove 369:If either wealth or poverty are come by honesty, there is no shame. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 370:Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 371:Love means each person is free to follow his or her own heart. ~ melody-beattie, @wisdomtrove 372:Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 373:Popular is not the same important, or often, not the same as good. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 374:The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 375:The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or "no fuss." ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 376:U can feed ur ego or u can feed ur family. U can’t feed them both. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 377:Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the kingdom ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 378:Whether you accept or reject it, God's Love for you is permanent. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 379:You can be pitiful, or you can be powerful, but you can't be both ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 380:Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 381:Drifting, without aim or purpose, is the first cause of failure. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 382:Either belief in God is unconditional or it is no belief at all. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 383:Everyone and everything is in some degree or other our teacher. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 384:I am totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 385:In doing something, do it with love or never do it at all. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 386:Integrity may be about little things as much or more than big ones. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 387:In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 388:Is a hippopotamus a hippopotamus or just a really cool opotamus? ~ mitch-hedberg, @wisdomtrove 389:Money is worth what it will help you to produce or buy and no more. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 390:Most people are not ready for death, theirs or anybody elses. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 391:No adult can bear a child‚Äôs burden or grow up in his stead. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 392:Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 393:Patterns cannot be weighed or measured. Patterns must be mapped. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove 394:So here I am. This is as good as it gets. Take it or leave it. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 395:Sooner or later even the fastest runners have to stand and fight. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 396:Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 397:The farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn't still be a farmer. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 398:The modern choice is between non-violence or non-existence. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 399:The truth dazzles gradually, or else the world would be blind. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 400:They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 401:To live with glory, or with glory die, This is the brave man's part. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 402:We want five thousand dollars or you'll see your kid again. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 403:You can leave in a huff. Or you can leave in a minute and a huff. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 404:You cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behaviors. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 405:You must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can't give. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 406:Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove 407:Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 408:Every athletic career, no matter how modest or lofty, is a journey. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 409:Every-time we use a product or service, someone is serving us. ~ earl-nightingale, @wisdomtrove 410:Example, whether it be good or bad, has a powerful influence. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 411:Goals achieved with little effort are seldom worthwhile or lasting. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 412:Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or star. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 413:I must have physical exercise, or my temper'll certainly be ruined. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 414:Jesus will never qualify or compromise anything he has said. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 415:No amount of prayer or meditation can do what helping others can do. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove 416:No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 417:No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 418:One can either work or meet. One cannot do both at the same time. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 419:There is nothing in itself which is wrong or evil not even murder. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 420:The sign said "eight items or less". So I changed my name to Les. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 421:They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 422:We all take a beating every day, you know, one way or another. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 423:We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 424:Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 425:Wherever it lies, under earth or over earth, the body will always rot. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 426:Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 427:You have two choices: You can make a living, or you can design a life. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 428:Action or inaction are both forms of leadership and standard setting. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 429:A day of minor profit or prophet led to a night of drunkenness. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 430:And here it will end, one way or the other," she whispered again ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 431:But I may be one who does not care Ever to have tree bloom or bear. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 432:Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 433:Circumstances do not make the man or woman, they merely reveal them. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 434:Does trust have to be earned. Or is it simply a matter of faith? ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 435:Each of us creates his or her own life largely by our attitude. ~ earl-nightingale, @wisdomtrove 436:Eternity is not future or past. Eternity is a dimension of now. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 437:Everything we do is either an act of love or a cry for help. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 438:Experience of actual fact either teaches fools or abolishes them. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 439:Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 440:I may be a burglar... but I'm an honest one, I hope, more or less. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 441:Is man an ape or an angel? Now I am on the side of the angels. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 442:I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 443:Memory is like fiction; or else it's fiction that's like memory. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 444:No matter how bad it is... or how bad it gets... I'm going to make it. ~ les-brown, @wisdomtrove 445:Nothing can be fairer, or more noble, than the holy fervor of true zeal. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 446:One man may as easily destroy, as govern: be King or Anti-King. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 447:Poets aren't very useful Because they aren't consumeful or produceful ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove 448:Poets arent very usefulBecause they aren't consumeful or produceful.. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove 449:Scepticism is a barren coast, without a harbor or lighthouse. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 450:Take care of your dreams. Or your fears will care for them for you. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 451:The best game plan in the world never blocked or tackled anybody. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 452:To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 453:“We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove 454:We can have courage or we can have comfort, but we cannot have both. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 455:What is done is done for the love of it- or not really done at all. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 456:What is man? Ally of God or simply his toy? His triumph or his fall? ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 457:You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 458:A culture is made - or destroyed - by its articulate voices. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 459:All women are good - good for nothing, or good for something. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove 460:A woman has to have something on or there's nothing to take off. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 461:A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 462:A woman knows by intuition, or instinct, what is best for herself. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 463:Beauty is . . . a valuable asset if you're poor or haven't any sense. ~ kin-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 464:Don't know which one is worse, doing your own thing or just being cool. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 465:Each reader needs to bring his or her own mind and heart to the text. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 466:Every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. ~ w-clement-stone, @wisdomtrove 467:Happiness is a state of mind. You can be happy or you can be unhappy. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 468:He who is or has been deeply hurt has a RIGHT to be sure he is LOVED. ~ jean-vanier, @wisdomtrove 469:If it does not glorify Christ, let it not console or please you. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 470:If you can neither accept it or change it, try to laugh at it. ~ ashleigh-brilliant, @wisdomtrove 471:I love being backstage, or doing littler things like Blame Canada. ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove 472:I no longer know If I wish to drown myself in love, vodka or the sea. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 473:Is there aliveness in you or have your eyes glazed over in thought? ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 474:I want to sing like birds sing, not worrying who listens or what they think. ~ rumi, @wisdomtrove 475:Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove 476:Love wills the good of all and never wills harm or evil to any ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 477:Never delay kissing a pretty girl or opening a bottle of whiskey ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 478:Our beliefs can move us forward in life – or they can hold us back. ~ oprah-winfrey, @wisdomtrove 479:Space-time-causation, or name-and-form, is what is called Maya. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 480:Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 481:That's why breakups take two or three times- to build up immunity. ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 482:The form [of literature] matters little to me, classical or not. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 483:There is no escape - man drags man down, or man lifts man up. ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove 484:There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 485:We know what we got, and we don't care whether you know it or not. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 486:What impropriety or limit can there be in our grief for a man so beloved?. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 487:Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. ~ francis-bacon, @wisdomtrove 488:You can't just go on being a good egg. You must either hatch or go bad! ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 489:You must either give up your sins or give up all hope of heaven. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 490:Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is great matter. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 491:Determination can be a battle or a thrill. Choose to be thrilled. ~ danielle-laporte, @wisdomtrove 492:Don't get angry. Try not to speak roughly or use harsh words. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 493:Either you will make your life work, or your life will not work. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 494:Everything you do is triggered by an emotion of either desire or fear. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 495:Hope is not an emotion; it's a way of thinking or a cognitive process. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 496:I am whatever was, or is, or will be; and my veil no mortal ever took up. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 497:If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 498:I have never known a greater miracle, or monster, than myself. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 499:I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 500:Neath tile or thatch That man is rich Who has a scratch For every itch. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:away. Or ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
2:Be great or be gone. ~ Neil Young, #NFDB
3:Get rich or die tryin'. ~ 50 Cent, #NFDB
4:I am all or nothing ~ Jude Morgan, #NFDB
5:James Lee Burke or ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
6:Live free or die. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
7:one way or another. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
8:One way or another ~ Pandora Pine, #NFDB
9:Silenus or Nymphs and ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
10:Will ye, ay or nay? ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
11:Freedom or death. ~ Laura Thalassa, #NFDB
12:Go, send, or disobey. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
13:Kneel or bleed. ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
14:La Toison D'Or
~ Albert Samain,#NFDB
15:Lauricia or Aurelia? ~ Alyson Noel, #NFDB
16:or especially fragile. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
17:or farting weasels. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
18:retire-or-expire ~ Robert J Sawyer, #NFDB
19:Sooner or later, ~ Barry Commoner, #NFDB
20:Be groovy or leave, man ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
21:Do good or die trying. ~ Kim Holden, #NFDB
22:Go big or go home. ~ Sloane Kennedy, #NFDB
23:Live free or die. I ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
24:Real or not real? ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
25:without sense or reason ~ Shaun Tan, #NFDB
26:Andrew or courage. ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
27:Bread now, or cake later ~ Ira Levin, #NFDB
28:Either a beast or a god. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
29:Enough! Or too much. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
30:Gain or loss, what is worse? ~ Laozi, #NFDB
31:Or we can make out. ~ Jennifer Niven, #NFDB
32:Subsidize... or lend. ~ Susan George, #NFDB
33:Who or what is an Ipod? ~ Alex Flinn, #NFDB
34:You comin' or what? ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
35:Be ignited, or be gone. ~ Mary Oliver, #NFDB
36:Be quick or be hungry. ~ Jill Shalvis, #NFDB
37:Cake and tea or death? ~ Eddie Izzard, #NFDB
38:Either move or be moved. ~ Ezra Pound, #NFDB
39:Go big or stay home! ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
40:Let go, or be dragged. ~ Zen proverb, #NFDB
41:Le Vaisseau D'Or
~ Émile Nelligan,#NFDB
42:Love each other or die. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
43:Love each other or perish ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
44:or even an ax-murderer ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
45:seem to bear flowers or ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
46:Take adultery or theft. ~ Anne Sexton, #NFDB
47:We hope or we falter. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
48:ACT OR BE ACTED UPON ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
49:Coffee or I'll cut you! ~ Alanea Alder, #NFDB
50:Find a way or make one. ~ Robert Peary, #NFDB
51:God [1] 21:3 Or tabernacle ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
52:Gold will be slave or master. ~ Horace, #NFDB
53:I can't sing or dance. ~ Joel Edgerton, #NFDB
54:Jump or stay in the boat ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
55:"Let go, or be dragged." ~ Zen proverb, #NFDB
56:Love each other or perish. ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
57:Love it or leave it ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
58:Manna today or I starve. ~ Ann Voskamp, #NFDB
59:Maybe it's just lost or… ~ Layla Hagen, #NFDB
60:attending USC or Occidental. ~ Lisa See, #NFDB
61:Bidden or not, God is here. ~ Ami McKay, #NFDB
62:Emigrate or Degenerate. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
63:Get on your feet or die. ~ Paul Hoffman, #NFDB
64:He wants all or nothing. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
65:I’m not Rising or Society ~ Ally Condie, #NFDB
66:It's not Beirut or Bosnia. ~ Carl Froch, #NFDB
67:Jump or stay in the boat. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
68:Live mean or die trying. ~ Cameron Jace, #NFDB
69:Love each other or perish ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
70:Never trust a woman or ~ John Dillinger, #NFDB
71:ahimsa, or nonviolence, ~ Mark Kurlansky, #NFDB
72:Compete or Die ~ Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, #NFDB
73:Fight or die in the arena. ~ Helen Hardt, #NFDB
74:Get rich or die tryin'. ~ Curtis Jackson, #NFDB
75:GOOD OR ILL DEPENDS ON WILL. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
76:I hope, or I could not live. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
77:It's a sink or swim world ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB
78:Love each other or perish! ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
79:Love each other or perish. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
80:Specialize or fail ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
81:Understand or die. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
82:Was that you or the duck? ~ Groucho Marx, #NFDB
83:With me or without me? ~ Barbara Elsborg, #NFDB
84:Am I lost or just less found? ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
85:Are we savages or what? ~ William Golding, #NFDB
86:Come hell or high water. ~ Heather Graham, #NFDB
87:Conquer or be conquered. ~ David Farragut, #NFDB
88:Do it or don't do it. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
89:Either attempt it not, or succeed. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
90:Evolve...or Die... ~ Kipjo Kenyatta Ewers, #NFDB
91:Good guys are either taken or gay ~ CLAMP, #NFDB
92:I am not Pele or Maradona ~ Robbie Savage, #NFDB
93:I bit a pillow. Or two. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
94:I'm never shaken or stirred. ~ Idris Elba, #NFDB
95:lovey dovey or fucky wucky ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
96:One day or day one. You decide. ~ Unknown, #NFDB
97:To be or not to be. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
98:To tell or not to tell? ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
99:Well, either that or high. ~ Elle Kennedy, #NFDB
100:work in process’ or ‘inventory ~ Gene Kim, #NFDB
101:You could love me or hate me ~ Lil Wayne, #NFDB
102:Advertise, or go under. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
103:Are you a man or a mouse? ~ Kate DiCamillo, #NFDB
104:Be good or don't get caught. ~ Traci Lords, #NFDB
105:History is more or less bunk. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
106:I knew it was all or nothing. ~ Carl Froch, #NFDB
107:In high tide or in low tide, ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
108:I shall gain glory or die. ~ Seamus Heaney, #NFDB
109:It opens Wednesday or Friday. ~ Chris Pine, #NFDB
110:It's an either/or world now. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
111:It’s an either/or world now. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
112:Jump or stay in the boat. ~ Margaret Stohl, #NFDB
113:Let go or be dragged. ~ Kimberly McCreight, #NFDB
114:Love is the new denim or black ~ Lady Gaga, #NFDB
115:No acts are random or wasted. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
116:or show any disrespect for male ~ Lisa See, #NFDB
117:Step up or step aside. ~ Christopher Titus, #NFDB
118:The only hope, or else despair ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
119:The wife, or bitter half. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
120:To be, or not to be. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
121:Whether we are rich or poor, ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
122:You must hurt, or be hurt. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
123:An angel; or, if not, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
124:Buck up or stay in the truck. ~ Sarah Palin, #NFDB
125:Choice or no, my heart is his. ~ Beth Revis, #NFDB
126:Do or die but don’t give up. ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
127:Do you run away or toward? ~ Richard Powers, #NFDB
128:Either push your limits or die. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
129:Invited or not, God is present. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
130:Is it better to speak or die? ~ Andr Aciman, #NFDB
131:I swim more or less every day. ~ Jane Asher, #NFDB
132:Men were fools, whole or not. ~ Alec Hutson, #NFDB
133:No bal maidens or spallers ~ Winston Graham, #NFDB
134:Nothing is black or white. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
135:Now or never!" said the prince. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
136:One day or day one. You decide. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
137:Or so the slide deck said. ~ John Carreyrou, #NFDB
138:Poets wish to profit or to please. ~ Horace, #NFDB
139:Respect me, or put me to death. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
140:Still, vicious or virtuous, ~ Philip Larkin, #NFDB
141:today to find whether or not ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
142:True Hunger or Toxic Hunger? ~ Joel Fuhrman, #NFDB
143:We must love one another or die ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
144:You are either free or not free ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
145:Am I, or the others crazy? ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
146:Are we going to flirt or fuck? ~ Avery Flynn, #NFDB
147:Are you a Tigger or an Eyore? ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
148:awkward tears or nodding silent ~ Jojo Moyes, #NFDB
149:BE CAREFUL, OR BE ROADKILL! ~ Bill Watterson, #NFDB
150:Be phenomenal or be forgotten. ~ Eric Thomas, #NFDB
151:Control or block?” Piper asked. ~ Sean Platt, #NFDB
152:Cut the sarcasm or I'll cut you ~ Maya Banks, #NFDB
153:Define yourself or be defined. ~ Antero Alli, #NFDB
154:East or West Home is best. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
155:Either invest or withdraw. ~ Donna Lynn Hope, #NFDB
156:God is love. Yes or no? No. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
157:H. G. Wells, “Adapt or perish. ~ Alec J Ross, #NFDB
158:I can’t live with or without you ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
159:I can't live without you or with you. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
160:I had amnesia once or twice. ~ Steven Wright, #NFDB
161:Indoors or out, no one relaxes ~ Ogden Nash, #NFDB
162:Is revenge a science, or an art? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
163:L'Âge D'Or De L'Avenir
~ Alfred de Vigny,#NFDB
164:Let us be elegant or die ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
165:Lord, give me Scotland or I die! ~ John Knox, #NFDB
166:Love must risk all or perish. ~ Anthony Ryan, #NFDB
167:Neither blame or praise yourself. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
168:No man can outrun Logic or Time. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
169:Now or never was the time. ~ Laurence Sterne, #NFDB
170:Or click here to visit the ~ Paul Pilkington, #NFDB
171:Rule your mind or it will rule you. ~ Horace, #NFDB
172:She wasn’t the smart one or ~ Catherine Mann, #NFDB
173:silence in OR #21 as Mannerheim ~ Robin Cook, #NFDB
174:Steel is prince or pauper. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
175:Time to shit or get off the pot. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
176:- To be, or not to be. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
177:Tomorrow let us do or die! ~ Thomas Campbell, #NFDB
178:We can live in fear, or not. ~ Nathan Lowell, #NFDB
179:We must love or we grow ill. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
180:Win with me or watch me win. ~ Keshia Chante, #NFDB
181:A turn or two I'll walk ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
182:Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
183:Bidden or unbidden, God is present. ~ Erasmus, #NFDB
184:Big or small, sin is sin! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
185:Chess isn't football or hockey. ~ Mikhail Tal, #NFDB
186:CIA case officers, or COs, ~ Mitchell Zuckoff, #NFDB
187:Cold or not, God is Present ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
188:Do it with passion or not at all. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
189:Do or do not, there is no try. ~ George Lucas, #NFDB
190:Eight or nine men were present ~ John Brunner, #NFDB
191:Find a path or make one. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
192:Freedom is now or never. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
193:Hope or fear overcomes reason. ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB
194:I'm an all-or-nothing person. ~ Taylor Kitsch, #NFDB
195:Is Your Time Fast or Slow? ~ Benjamin P Hardy, #NFDB
196:It was the symphony or silence. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
197:Kill me, or you are a murderer. ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB
198:Let her in or let her go. Neither ~ J Daniels, #NFDB
199:Let us be elegant or die! ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
200:Like it or not, life is a game. ~ Phil Knight, #NFDB
201:Look, ten or two hundred and ~ Dakota Cassidy, #NFDB
202:Love or hate me, I stay hate free ~ Lil Wayne, #NFDB
203:Love what you do or don't do it. ~ Mark Cuban, #NFDB
204:Never work with kids or animals. ~ Cat Deeley, #NFDB
205:Pain or pleasure? I say pleasure. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
206:Shut up or I'll kill you. ~ Masashi Kishimoto, #NFDB
207:Stay humble or get humbled. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
208:unpack, polish, or sell. There are ~ Lisa See, #NFDB
209:War is never cheap or easy. ~ George H W Bush, #NFDB
210:When we hew or delve: ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, #NFDB
211:Your money or your life! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
212:Am I acting on faith or feelings? ~ Lara Casey, #NFDB
213:Am I eating chicken or tuna? ~ Jessica Simpson, #NFDB
214:A mountain walked or stumbled. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
215:a pill or a syringe. I mean real ~ Diane Capri, #NFDB
216:Appear as you are, or be as you appear. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
217:Are women beautiful or aren't we? ~ Naomi Wolf, #NFDB
218:Are you lazy or just incompetent? ~ Jeff Bezos, #NFDB
219:Be humble, or you'll stumble. ~ Dwight L Moody, #NFDB
220:Belief traps or frees us. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen, #NFDB
221:call nine-one-one, or something. ~ Sandra Hill, #NFDB
222:congratulated or “saved”? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
223:Dally not with mony or women. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
224:Death to life is crown or shame. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
225:Do for yourself or do without. ~ Gaylord Perry, #NFDB
226:Do it today or later you’ll pay! ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
227:Don’t judge yourself or others. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
228:Either you're a hater or a lover. ~ India Arie, #NFDB
229:Gaea or one of her minions. But ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
230:Hold, or cut bowstrings. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
231:I don't throw things or yell. ~ John Malkovich, #NFDB
232:If the guardian or the mother ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
233:Is love freedom or is it bondage? ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
234:Is the labyrinth living or dying? ~ John Green, #NFDB
235:items, or browse the Kindle Store. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
236:it was like ’65 or ’68 again, ~ Michael Bunker, #NFDB
237:Let a man nobly live or nobly die. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
238:Life is an adventure or nothing ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
239:Listen. Don't explain or justify. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
240:Mr. McIntyre, friend or enemy? ~ Gordon Korman, #NFDB
241:One either meets or one works. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
242:Or is it that I think too much? ~ Steve Martin, #NFDB
243:or speculation about Evangeline. ~ Helen Bryan, #NFDB
244:Return with the shield or on it ~ Frank Miller, #NFDB
245:Still, it was sulk or sail. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
246:Synchronicity? Or bullshit? ~ Megan McCafferty, #NFDB
247:To me marriage is for five or ten years ~ Cher, #NFDB
248:True or true? Yes or yes? ~ Mark Victor Hansen, #NFDB
249:without noise of drums or ~ Henryk Sienkiewicz, #NFDB
250:you either are or aren't ~ Michael Thomas Ford, #NFDB
251:2. Greed, or acquisitive desire. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
252:Are you asking me or telling me? ~ Irvine Welsh, #NFDB
253:Are you in a library or what?! ~ Stuart Pearce, #NFDB
254:Called or not, God is always there. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
255:Careful, or you'll end up in novel. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
256:Did one learn or was one shaped? ~ Paul Russell, #NFDB
257:Do I want to be right or be happy? ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
258:Do this or you’ll burn in hell. ~ Ricky Gervais, #NFDB
259:Flying or falling, it's up to us. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
260:I am not a madman or a nut. ~ Abdul Qadeer Khan, #NFDB
261:I am too pure for you or anyone. ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
262:Is that a question or an answer? ~ Andrea Smith, #NFDB
263:It’s the whole or it’s nothing. ~ Gavin Schmidt, #NFDB
264:I will either be famous or infamous. ~ Otto Dix, #NFDB
265:kill an animal or plant. Yet ~ Vincent Bugliosi, #NFDB
266:Learn to fail or fail to learn ~ Tal Ben Shahar, #NFDB
267:Let' em learn or let' em die ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
268:Literacy: Blessing? Or curse? ~ Charles Frazier, #NFDB
269:Nae man can tether time or tide. ~ Robert Burns, #NFDB
270:NeXT computer or Pixar movie, ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
271:Nobody is all good or all bad. ~ Ashley Madekwe, #NFDB
272:no enemy too smart or too strong ~ John Marsden, #NFDB
273:No one knows the day or the hour. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
274:Or maybe it wasn’t a man at all. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
275:Perspective - Use It or Lose It. ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
276:rape or seduction, he'd take either ~ Shana Abe, #NFDB
277:relief or welcome familiarity. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
278:Seconds later, or so it seemed to ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
279:Should I stay or should I go? ~ Demelza Carlton, #NFDB
280:Summoned or not, the god will come. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
281:There is life or death in words. ~ Iimani David, #NFDB
282:This is called mutual life or seki. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
283:Truth or dare, you little shit. ~ Alice Clayton, #NFDB
284:Would he love her or kill her? ~ Christian M rk, #NFDB
285:Yoga, unlike dance or mime, ~ T K V Desikachar, #NFDB
286:You either care or you don’t. ~ Stanley Kubrick, #NFDB
287:Above the wrist? Or below the wrist? ~ Dan Chaon, #NFDB
288:A bowler can make or break a chap. ~ John Newton, #NFDB
289:All this happened. More or less. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
290:All this happened, more or less. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
291:Called or not, God is always there. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
292:Come back with your shield - or on it ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
293:dick or tit I could give a fuck. ~ Jordan Silver, #NFDB
294:Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. ~ Charles Lamb, #NFDB
295:don’t seek praise or run from it. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
296:Either war is finished, or we are. ~ Herman Wouk, #NFDB
297:Either you work or you rot! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
298:Enough or not...it will have to do ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
299:Feeling up to it or not doesn’t ~ Caroline Fyffe, #NFDB
300:finger-, hand-, or shoe prints, ~ William Landay, #NFDB
301:furtiveness maybe, or shame. “May I? ~ John Hart, #NFDB
302:Get busy living or get busy dying ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
303:Here, or nowhere, is the thing we seek. ~ Horace, #NFDB
304:I don’t his name or we he lived. ~ Susan Gillard, #NFDB
305:I don't like crowds or attention. ~ Gina Bellman, #NFDB
306:I do or die, but I never cancel out. ~ Pat Nixon, #NFDB
307:Is it Obama's nation or an abomination? ~ Lowkey, #NFDB
308:It is either easy or impossible. ~ Salvador Dali, #NFDB
309:I will either find a way or make one. ~ Hannibal, #NFDB
310:I will not leave you or forsake you. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
311:learn whether to pivot or persevere. ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
312:Life is your master, or death is. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
313:Mindfulness is not just a word or a ~ Ayya Khema, #NFDB
314:Now breathe or I'll do it for you. ~ Shana Galen, #NFDB
315:One is a writer, or one is not. ~ Monique Wittig, #NFDB
316:Pain is not a conduit to art or joy ~ Jay Maisel, #NFDB
317:Play hard or don't play at all. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
318:Separation isnt time or distance ~ Naz m Hikmet, #NFDB
319:Shut up... or I'll kill you. ~ Masashi Kishimoto, #NFDB
320:Sing the song or keep it inside. ~ Scott Weiland, #NFDB
321:Tell me you want me or get out ~ Sylvain Reynard, #NFDB
322:The truth I do not stretch or shove ~ Ogden Nash, #NFDB
323:To be or not to be what exactly? ~ Chloe Thurlow, #NFDB
324:Uncork the cider...Sabbath or no! ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
325:Wee know not who lives or dies. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
326:We work it out, or live it out. ~ Melody Beattie, #NFDB
327:What have we here—jinn or human? ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
328:Witch-heart, are you gold or black? ~ Amy Lowell, #NFDB
329:Would you rather be hungry or dead? ~ M J Carter, #NFDB
330:Would you rather be right or free? ~ Byron Katie, #NFDB
331:You can either give up or give more ~ Kim Chance, #NFDB
332:You're either living or you're dead. ~ Lil Wayne, #NFDB
333:Your street, rich street or poor ~ Van Morrison, #NFDB
334:Abortion is either OK or it's not. ~ Peggy Noonan, #NFDB
335:A man is either free or he is not. ~ Amiri Baraka, #NFDB
336:Am I trying to prove or improve? ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
337:Any awards show or party I get fly for it ~ Drake, #NFDB
338:Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
339:Can rules or tutors educate ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
340:capcom, or capsule communicator. ~ Chris Hadfield, #NFDB
341:Chin up princess. Or the crown slips. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
342:Don't think, or judge. Just listen ~ Sarah Dessen, #NFDB
343:Don't think or judge, just listen. ~ Sarah Dessen, #NFDB
344:Do something about it, or shut up. ~ Nikki Grimes, #NFDB
345:Get bust living or get busy dying. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
346:Get busy living or get busy dying. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
347:Get busy living, or get busy dying ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
348:Get the Snitch or die trying,’ what ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
349:Give into love or live in fear. ~ Jonathan Larson, #NFDB
350:Give me B movies or give me death! ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
351:Give me liberty or give me death. ~ Patrick Henry, #NFDB
352:Give me liberty, or give me death. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
353:God is either cruel or incompetent. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
354:Great for good, or great for evil. ~ Robert Burns, #NFDB
355:Hate hates what it mirrors or envies. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
356:Have you ever tried sugar or PCP? ~ Mitch Hedberg, #NFDB
357:He wasn’t that spoiled or selfish. ~ Stuart Gibbs, #NFDB
358:... I am old now, or oldening ... ~ John Banville, #NFDB
359:If you're smart or rich or lucky ~ Joni Mitchell, #NFDB
360:I live or die by how well I act. ~ Tobias Menzies, #NFDB
361:Into the sky to win or die. ~ Christopher Paolini, #NFDB
362:Is he dancing or having a seizure? ~ Jerry Lawler, #NFDB
363:Is he under the influence or something? ~ CM Punk, #NFDB
364:I will be Chateaubriand or nothing. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
365:I will find a way out or make one. ~ Robert Peary, #NFDB
366:Les Barques D'Or Du Bel Été
~ Emile Verhaeren,#NFDB
367:Moses: God or crowd control?!? ~ Mary Ann Shaffer, #NFDB
368:Never work with animals or children. ~ W C Fields, #NFDB
369:no one, not my mother or father or ~ Anne Griffin, #NFDB
370:Old, Middle, and New or Modern English. ~ Various, #NFDB
371:Or are we just winging it now? ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
372:Or does not knowing make him free? ~ David Malouf, #NFDB
373:or was he really asleep? Her first ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
374:Real or not real? I am on fire. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
375:So, I can hurt now, or hurt later. ~ Steve Martin, #NFDB
376:The fellow is either a madman or a poet. ~ Horace, #NFDB
377:The land is everywhere or nowhere. ~ Tommy Orange, #NFDB
378:The man is either crazy or he is a poet. ~ Horace, #NFDB
379:There are two options: adapt or die. ~ Andy Grove, #NFDB
380:There is no balance, all or nothing. ~ David Choe, #NFDB
381:They who in folly or mere greed ~ Cecil Day Lewis, #NFDB
382:Tis you, alone, can save, or give my doom. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
383:To swing or not to swing? Swing. ~ Brendan Fraser, #NFDB
384:Truth shrilled in prison or cemetary. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
385:well, perhaps Malfoy or Snape . . . ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
386:What is stronger, fear or hope? ~ Lance Armstrong, #NFDB
387:You are either Now Here or Nowhere. ~ Lisa Genova, #NFDB
388:a dash to liberty or to death." The ~ L Frank Baum, #NFDB
389:a push up or two . . . or twenty. ~ Karen Cantwell, #NFDB
390:As I am. As I am. All or not at all. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
391:Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
392:Be not cheap or mediocre in desiring. ~ Ezra Pound, #NFDB
393:...but ready or not,life goes on. ~ Sidney Sheldon, #NFDB
394:custody or contact with her daughter? ~ David Bell, #NFDB
395:Dear Pope, send me some hope or a rope. ~ Lou Reed, #NFDB
396:Do or do not. There is no try. Only do. ~ Frank Oz, #NFDB
397:Do you love me, or the idea of me? ~ Tarryn Fisher, #NFDB
398:Dream big or die in your sleep. ~ Christopher Rice, #NFDB
399:Either give me more wine or leave me alone. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
400:Either they're still naive, or stupid. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
401:Everyone is a son or daughter of god. ~ David Icke, #NFDB
402:Everyone's broken, one way or another. ~ Max Barry, #NFDB
403:Evil is, good or truth misplaced. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
404:Far or forgot to me is near; ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
405:Gay or straight, love is the same. ~ Keira Andrews, #NFDB
406:Get busy living, or get busy dying. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
407:Give in to love, or live in fear ~ Jonathan Larson, #NFDB
408:Grief is a sword, or it is nothing. ~ Paul Monette, #NFDB
409:I don't hide or play stupid games. ~ Demian Bichir, #NFDB
410:I know when things are good or bad. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
411:I like to go to the movies or read. ~ Adriana Lima, #NFDB
412:I'll be free, or I'll die. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe, #NFDB
413:intern that Lizzy didn’t need or want, ~ T R Ragan, #NFDB
414:Is this a great country, or what? ~ Michael Keaton, #NFDB
415:Is this chicken or is this fish? ~ Jessica Simpson, #NFDB
416:It is either Christ or chaos. ~ David Lloyd George, #NFDB
417:It’s all or nothing with Chris. ~ Lisa Renee Jones, #NFDB
418:Its either Christ or the other god. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
419:It's my life and it's now or never. ~ Jon Bon Jovi, #NFDB
420:I want to run or die or get fucked up ~ James Frey, #NFDB
421:I was a hired gun, more or less. ~ Garry Winogrand, #NFDB
422:I will be rich or I will die trying. ~ T Harv Eker, #NFDB
423:knock yourself out...Or rather don't ~ Eoin Colfer, #NFDB
424:Life goes on... with or without you. ~ Faraaz Kazi, #NFDB
425:Life is growth, You grow or you die. ~ Phil Knight, #NFDB
426:Life is growth. You grow or you die. ~ Phil Knight, #NFDB
427:Live the beauty or your own reality. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
428:Lord, bend me, or I shall rot. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
429:Men would bless you or curse you; ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
430:Never argue with a drunk or a fool. ~ Aaron Sorkin, #NFDB
431:Nick Cannon or Will never did it this ill. ~ Drake, #NFDB
432:No blood or murder belongs in my house ~ V F Mason, #NFDB
433:or even generally a disadvantage. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
434:Or you, Papa,” she said. “Or you. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
435:PARENTHOOD: ROLE OR FUNCTION? Many ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
436:Pique or policy. We would never know. ~ Roger Kahn, #NFDB
437:Songs are life in 80 words or less. ~ Neil Diamond, #NFDB
438:veteran—or so she claimed—of ~ Diane Mott Davidson, #NFDB
439:We find truth inside, or not at all. ~ Tim O Brien, #NFDB
440:We must scrunch or be scrunched. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
441:We will find a way or we shall make one ~ Hannibal, #NFDB
442:Which is worse: Hell or nothing? ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
443:Which is worse, hell or nothing? ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
444:Who prates of war or want after his wine? ~ Horace, #NFDB
445:You either believe what you think or ~ Byron Katie, #NFDB
446:You gonna fucking kiss me, or what? ~ Nikki Sloane, #NFDB
447:You must go or send a substitute. ~ Oswald J Smith, #NFDB
448:Advise none to marry or go to war. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
449:A life has to move or it stagnates. ~ Beryl Markham, #NFDB
450:All books are either dreams or swords. ~ Amy Lowell, #NFDB
451:Are you high, or did you get some sleep? ~ Nely Cab, #NFDB
452:A simple right or left can mean life or death, ~ Ka, #NFDB
453:Boredom makes me sleepy or restless. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
454:Buy health insurance, or go to jail. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
455:Come in peace or leave in pieces ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
456:Control your destiny or somebody will. ~ Jack Welch, #NFDB
457:Do or do not, there is no try. -Yoda ~ George Lucas, #NFDB
458:Double suicide or it wasn't love. ~ Sean Kilpatrick, #NFDB
459:Earth is heaven. Or hell. Your choice. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
460:Enjoy the fall, or nothing at all. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
461:Faith is a state of openness or trust. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
462:Fate cannot be sidestepped or outrun. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
463:Fortune is either with you or it's not. ~ Tom Araya, #NFDB
464:Get busy living or get busy dying... ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
465:Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'. ~ Morgan Freeman, #NFDB
466:Give me knowledge or give me death. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
467:godfather or godmother to an individual. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
468:Hardships make or break people. ~ Margaret Mitchell, #NFDB
469:Heath Slater, or the chick from Wendy's ~ John Cena, #NFDB
470:I have no peace, in this world or any other. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
471:I must have true love or nothing. ~ Juliette Drouet, #NFDB
472:In 1957, I decided: write or perish. ~ James Salter, #NFDB
473:"Is God a Man or a Woman ?" ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
474:Is virtue raised by culture, or self-sown? ~ Horace, #NFDB
475:It is God's giving if we laugh or weep. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
476:I will either find a way or make one ~ Kendall Ryan, #NFDB
477:I will get my respect or I will die. ~ Ken Shamrock, #NFDB
478:Kill or be killed little warriors. ~ Koushun Takami, #NFDB
479:Lead, follow, or get out of the way. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
480:Let us be elegant or die! --Amy ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
481:Lok’tar ogar!” Victory, or death. ~ Christie Golden, #NFDB
482:Love her fully, or let her go. ~ Brittainy C Cherry, #NFDB
483:Love makes saints or sinners out of men. ~ J D Robb, #NFDB
484:model boss or human being, tidily ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
485:No one acts or experiences in a vacuum. ~ R D Laing, #NFDB
486:Nothing worth having is easy or free ~ Ronie Kendig, #NFDB
487:One cannot live on love or cutlery. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
488:Or, like Rockefeller, choose not to. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
489:or two. When women went missing, or ~ Susan McBride, #NFDB
490:Pain or damage don't end the world. ~ Al Swearengen, #NFDB
491:Poetry drives out or suspends lust. ~ Javier Mar as, #NFDB
492:Power is neither male or female. ~ Michael Crichton, #NFDB
493:Risk means 'shit happens' or 'good luck ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
494:Some say an army of horsemen, or infantry, ~ Sappho, #NFDB
495:Speake fitly, or be silent wisely. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
496:Subdue your passion or it will subdue you. ~ Horace, #NFDB
497:Suffer you will, one way or another ~ Nilesh Rathod, #NFDB
498:This is me. Take it or leave it. ~ Melanie Chisholm, #NFDB
499:To be or not to be is not the question. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
500:To be or not to be, that is the choice ~ Daniel Lee, #NFDB
501:To lead is neither to push or pull. ~ Robert Jordan, #NFDB
502:To live with glory, or with glory die, ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
503:Truth cannot be structured or confined. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
504:Was he a doper or was he just a loser? ~ Neil Young, #NFDB
505:Who am I? this or the other? ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
506:woman who had not told him or anybody ~ Colm T ib n, #NFDB
507:Would you rather be deaf or blind? ~ Michael Atiyah, #NFDB
508:You can't rewind life or undo things. ~ Susan Wiggs, #NFDB
509:You either are or you're not. ~ Harrison Birtwistle, #NFDB
510:You get the job done or you don't. ~ Bill Belichick, #NFDB
511:You save yourself or you remain unsaved. ~ Amy Reed, #NFDB
512:11,340 miles, or 5,250 French leagues, ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
513:All I ever think about is food or sex. ~ Rachel Cohn, #NFDB
514:Aloysius, you mad or sane today? ~ Anthony C Winkler, #NFDB
515:A wave can kill you. Or you can ride it. ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
516:Balance isn't either/or; it's 'and'. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
517:Be less stupid or I’ll fucking kill you, ~ S M Reine, #NFDB
518:Believe it or not, everybody is selfish. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
519:Be my brother or I will kill you. ~ Nicolas Chamfort, #NFDB
520:Call it crazy, or just chicken salad. ~ Sarah Dessen, #NFDB
521:Death may whiten in sun or out of it. ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
522:Does prayer change God or change me? ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
523:Do it right or don't do it at all. ~ Catherine Bybee, #NFDB
524:don’t believe in love. Or marriage. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
525:Don’t criticise, condemn or complain ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
526:do or do not, there is no try. - Yoda ~ George Lucas, #NFDB
527:enemies, obstacles, puzzles, or traps. ~ Nathan Hill, #NFDB
528:Everybody counts or nobody counts ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
529:Follow the rules or follow the fools. ~ Tupac Shakur, #NFDB
530:Genocide is as human as art or prayer. ~ John N Gray, #NFDB
531:Give me victory or give me death! ~ William B Travis, #NFDB
532:God is either everything, or He is nothing. ~ Bill W, #NFDB
533:Here or nowhere is our heaven. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
534:I can only connect deeply or not at all. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
535:I don't duck or dodge anybody. ~ Floyd Mayweather Jr, #NFDB
536:I like people too much or not at all. ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
537:I'm good. Or maybe people just like me. ~ Rick James, #NFDB
538:I might wear a tux on Monday. Or a kimono! ~ CM Punk, #NFDB
539:I'm usually alone or asleep, at home. ~ Richard Hell, #NFDB
540:In life you have to laugh or you'll cry ~ Joan Bauer, #NFDB
541:In the motive lies the good or ill. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
542:it is so scary to develop skin cancer or ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
543:It's coexistence or no existence. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
544:Know or listen to those who know. ~ Baltasar Gracian, #NFDB
545:Mistress; please: are you divine, or mortal? ~ Homer, #NFDB
546:Money amassed either serves us or rules us. ~ Horace, #NFDB
547:Nothing good is ever easy. Or worth it. ~ Maya Banks, #NFDB
548:Oh, how fine it is to know a thing or two. ~ Moliere, #NFDB
549:Or a Moonie festival or something. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
550:or— and this was a thought she hated ~ Michele Scott, #NFDB
551:or not they plan to keep the baby. They ~ Ben Carson, #NFDB
552:or possibly thriving because of—them. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
553:Our freedom of speech is freedom or death, ~ Chuck D, #NFDB
554:Palestinians have no wealth or power. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
555:People are either charming or tedious. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
556:People either see me or they don't. ~ Jennifer Niven, #NFDB
557:Perm in your hair or even a curly weave, ~ LL Cool J, #NFDB
558:Remember. Or, failing that, invent. ~ Monique Wittig, #NFDB
559:Resolved to ruin or to rule the state. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
560:Rule your mind or it will rule you. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
561:See you either in hell or in communism ~ Slavoj i ek, #NFDB
562:Simon or the attribute of hearing. ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
563:So are you lonely, or just a loner? ~ Charlie Lovett, #NFDB
564:Sorrow makes us very good or very bad. ~ George Sand, #NFDB
565:Succumbing is for a loser or strategist. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
566:Support your libraries... or else! ~ Margaret Atwood, #NFDB
567:The old die softly or the old die hard, ~ Donna Leon, #NFDB
568:There is no way out or round or through. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
569:There's a joy without canker or cark, ~ Andrew Lang, #NFDB
570:There was a world ... or was it all a dream? ~ Homer, #NFDB
571:TRUTH OR DEMON with Kathy Love’s latest, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
572:Would it be an ideologue or a lover? ~ John Sandford, #NFDB
573:You either know fashion or you don't. ~ Anna Wintour, #NFDB
574:You’re either good, or you’re clever. ~ Mackenzi Lee, #NFDB
575:You're either on the bus or off the bus. ~ Ken Kesey, #NFDB
576:You're either on the bus or off the bus. ~ Tom Wolfe, #NFDB
577:You want to poof it or ride back with me? ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
578:Alone or not, you gotta walk forward. ~ Cecelia Ahern, #NFDB
579:Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
580:Are thy fighting or having a bookclub? ~ Mia Sheridan, #NFDB
581:Are you a dim bulb or high-wattage? ~ Neal Shusterman, #NFDB
582:ARE YOU A SETTLER, DRIVER, OR REBEL? ~ Darrin Patrick, #NFDB
583:Are you moving forward, or just moving? ~ Ron Kaufman, #NFDB
584:Art is either revolution or plagiarism ~ Paul Gauguin, #NFDB
585:Artist awake or be forever fallen. ~ Frederick Varley, #NFDB
586:be a military lawyer or something. ~ Lynn Raye Harris, #NFDB
587:Before you think good or evil, who are you? ~ Huineng, #NFDB
588:Be killing sin or it will be killing you. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
589:be killing sin or it will be killing you. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
590:Co-existence or no existence. ~ Piet Pieterszoon Hein, #NFDB
591:Come back with your shield or on it. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
592:Death is usually an all-or-nothing thing! ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
593:doesn’t have a computer. Do you or your ~ Diane Capri, #NFDB
594:Do not practice divination or seek omens. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
595:Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
596:Earth is heaven. Or hell. Your choice. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
597:Either be wholly slaves or wholly free. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
598:Either the law exists, or it does not. ~ Andre Norton, #NFDB
599:Everybody counts or nobody counts. ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
600:Everyone is either happy or dead. ~ Brandon Sanderson, #NFDB
601:God is in me or else is not at all. ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
602:Harm no person, animal, plant or mineral. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
603:House Music isn't black or white. ~ Frankie Knuckles, #NFDB
604:If you were a blade of grass or a tiny flower ~ Rumi, #NFDB
605:I'm either up or on my way up. Never down ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
606:I started working when I was 9 or 10. ~ Harry Shum Jr, #NFDB
607:is this carnival, or ... reality? ~ August Strindberg, #NFDB
608:Is your work finished or is it just due? ~ Laura Ruby, #NFDB
609:It is beyond words or thoughts. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
610:I Twitter (or Facebook) therefore I am ~ Jayce O Neal, #NFDB
611:I want answers now or I want them eventually! ~ Homer, #NFDB
612:I will be Chateaubriand or nothing.
~ Vicktor Hugo,#NFDB
613:I will either find a way, or make one. ~ Kate Elliott, #NFDB
614:Just don't let go or you may drown. ~ Jonathan Larson, #NFDB
615:Knock yourself out... Or rather, don't. ~ Eoin Colfer, #NFDB
616:Le Soir Tombe, La Lune Est D'Or
~ Emile Verhaeren,#NFDB
617:Life is a daring adventure or nothing. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
618:Love either finds equality or makes it. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
619:Love me or I will kick you very hard. ~ Russell Hoban, #NFDB
620:More than … ‘eyesight, space, or liberty. ~ E L James, #NFDB
621:Never paint your wife or your mother. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
622:Nothing is more powerful than custom or habit. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
623:Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child! ~ John Milton, #NFDB
624:(...) or there will be a reckoning! ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
625:or there will be wigs on the green. ~ Patrick O Brian, #NFDB
626:Real fairytales end in blood or tears. ~ Luna Lindsey, #NFDB
627:Religion does not censure or exclude ~ William Cowper, #NFDB
628:Riches either serve or govern the possessor. ~ Horace, #NFDB
629:Run and hide or rise and shine ... ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
630:seeing Darija or doing anything but my ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
631:Shame greatly hurts or greatly helps mankind. ~ Homer, #NFDB
632:She either trusted me or wanted to fall. ~ John Green, #NFDB
633:She had no idea what life was, or death. ~ Magda Szab, #NFDB
634:Someone was high or brilliant or both. ~ Colum McCann, #NFDB
635:The choice is: the Universe...or nothing. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
636:The mind is a friend or it is a foe. ~ Baron Baptiste, #NFDB
637:The wisdom of men is worth little or nothing. ~ Plato, #NFDB
638:The world is sphere, has no East or West. ~ Ai Weiwei, #NFDB
639:they might last another year or two, ~ Larry McMurtry, #NFDB
640:to be a hypocrite or a liar? Jim wasn’t ~ Emma Straub, #NFDB
641:To be or to do? Which way will you go? ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
642:To whomever gives a kiss or a blow ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
643:Tramp stamp or get the fuck out. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
644:We are broken open, or we willfully shed. ~ Mark Nepo, #NFDB
645:What is he, a porter or something? ~ Robert Muchamore, #NFDB
646:Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
647:You actually can be too rich or too thin ~ Steve Krug, #NFDB
648:You adapt, evolve, compete or die. ~ Paul Tudor Jones, #NFDB
649:You can call me gay or a tutti-frutti ~ Erick Sermon, #NFDB
650:You can't learn pathos or profundity. ~ Nigel Kennedy, #NFDB
651:You do what you love, or you get arrested. ~ Lou Reed, #NFDB
652:You're either competing or you're not. ~ Pete Carroll, #NFDB
653:You've either got it or you haven't. ~ Liam Gallagher, #NFDB
654:A day may sink or save a realm. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
655:A fixed idea ends in madness or heroism. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
656:A heart is a heart in a child or a man. ~ Shannon Hale, #NFDB
657:All human rules are more or less idiotic. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
658:And I knew, nothing I could say or do ~ Lorrie Morgan, #NFDB
659:Art is either plagiarism or revolution. ~ Paul Gauguin, #NFDB
660:Beauty should be edible, or not at all. ~ Salvador Dal, #NFDB
661:Beauty will be convulsive or not at all. ~ Andr Breton, #NFDB
662:Before you think good or evil, who are you? ~ Huineng, #NFDB
663:Be it sin or no, I hate the man! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, #NFDB
664:But is it what we love, or how we love, ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
665:dear me, let us be elegant or die. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
666:Did we step into some lame video game or what? ~ CLAMP, #NFDB
667:Doeg, though without knowing how or why, ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
668:Don't Criticize, Condemn, Or Complain. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
669:Don't suffer fools or you'll become one. ~ Tim Ferriss, #NFDB
670:either lived in, or recently had lived ~ John Sandford, #NFDB
671:Either you run the day or the day runs you. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
672:empty, what was to stop vagrants, or even ~ Pam Jenoff, #NFDB
673:Everybody counts, or nobody counts. ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
674:fashioned of flowing silk or jersey, ~ Anderson Cooper, #NFDB
675:Good or bad is a matter of perspective ~ Michael Scott, #NFDB
676:I fear no man, no beast or evil, brother. ~ Hulk Hogan, #NFDB
677:I'm gonna live forever, or die trying. ~ Joseph Heller, #NFDB
678:In man or woman, but far most in man, ~ William Cowper, #NFDB
679:Iris from sea brings wind or mighty rain. ~ Empedocles, #NFDB
680:I saw A Hard Day's Night 12 or 13 times. ~ Pat Metheny, #NFDB
681:I shall never surrender or retreat. ~ William B Travis, #NFDB
682:Is it true; is it kind, or is it necessary? ~ Socrates, #NFDB
683:I sound like an evangelist or something. ~ David Plotz, #NFDB
684:Is that cancer curable or just treatable. ~ Tom Brokaw, #NFDB
685:Is this a mild winter or a harsh winter? ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
686:I will either find a way or make one. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
687:I wish you were with me, or I with you. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
688:Jakie, is it my birthday or am I dying ? ~ Nancy Astor, #NFDB
689:Live or die but don't poison everything. ~ Saul Bellow, #NFDB
690:Love can be a noun or a verb," she said. ~ Eoin Colfer, #NFDB
691:Love is language that cannot be said, or heard. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
692:Mothers are generally starvers or feeders ~ Fiona Wood, #NFDB
693:Never believe in mirrors or newspapers. ~ Tom Stoppard, #NFDB
694:old habits died hard—or not at all. ~ Sharon Hannaford, #NFDB
695:Or a hug from someone who loved them. ~ Robert J Crane, #NFDB
696:perception and power, or something more—we ~ S M Reine, #NFDB
697:pictures of pictures, or of other ~ Arianna Huffington, #NFDB
698:Sooner or later even bookworms get laid. ~ Lola St Vil, #NFDB
699:sooner or later I do what I want to do. ~ Muriel Spark, #NFDB
700:The only tactics I admire are do-or-die ~ Herb Elliott, #NFDB
701:The usual question... GOOD or WICKED? ~ Danielle Paige, #NFDB
702:Think positive girl, or the world ends. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
703:To fly or not to fly, that's the question. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
704:Was he leaving home, or going home? ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
705:We can influence people for bad or good. ~ Johnny Hunt, #NFDB
706:We can live in fear or act out of hope. ~ Bonnie Raitt, #NFDB
707:We need hope, or else we cannot endure. ~ Sarah J Maas, #NFDB
708:We’re all one form of addict or another. ~ Cole McCade, #NFDB
709:We're all whores, sooner or later. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
710:We're either nothing or a God's regret. ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
711:Words can either build you or break you. ~ Ellie Messe, #NFDB
712:Would you be maker, mischief, or muse? ~ Nick Harkaway, #NFDB
713:Would you rather die, or be unwound? ~ Neal Shusterman, #NFDB
714:You don't pass or fail at being a person ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
715:You save yourself or you remain unsaved ~ Alice Sebold, #NFDB
716:You've got two options: Tap or SNAP !!! ~ Daniel Bryan, #NFDB
717:A happy fly
If I live
Or if I die ~ William Blake,#NFDB
718:All men are mad in some way or the other; ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
719:A man only has a soul to be won or lost. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
720:Am I a boy or a lady, I don't know which? ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
721:A real friend or mentor isn't on your payroll. ~ Prince, #NFDB
722:Are your thoughts empowering or limiting? ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
723:A world I dream where black or white, ~ Langston Hughes, #NFDB
724:Beauty should be edible, or not at all. ~ Salvador Dali, #NFDB
725:Choose, Lina. Cunt, clit, or asshole. ~ Charmaine Pauls, #NFDB
726:Come on, is your heart a sponge or a fist? ~ T a Obreht, #NFDB
727:Did you skip your medication or something? ~ H D Gordon, #NFDB
728:Did you write the words, or the lyrics? ~ Bruce Forsyth, #NFDB
729:Does imagination or joy come with limits? ~ Janny Wurts, #NFDB
730:Don't buy on tips or for a quick move. ~ Walter Schloss, #NFDB
731:Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody! ~ James McBride, #NFDB
732:Either all days are holy or none are. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
733:Either the camera will dance, or I will. ~ Fred Astaire, #NFDB
734:Either you run the day or the day runs you.. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
735:Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
736:Everyone marched as fast or slow as he liked. ~ Ken Liu, #NFDB
737:Give death a better name or die trying. ~ Timothy Leary, #NFDB
738:Heavier or not, the truth is yours now. ~ Sue Monk Kidd, #NFDB
739:Here Comes the Bride and/or the Assassin ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
740:I can be a good friend, or a bad enemy. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
741:I can't talk, or I will throw up! ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
742:I didn’t know if I was brave or reckless. ~ Aspen Matis, #NFDB
743:I did two or three plays every summer. ~ Dabney Coleman, #NFDB
744:I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account. ~ Dev Patel, #NFDB
745:I envy no man's nightingale or spring; ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
746:If you can't be smart or funny, be brief. ~ J A Konrath, #NFDB
747:I hate when a guy brags... or he sweats. ~ Paris Hilton, #NFDB
748:I intend to live forever, or die trying. ~ Groucho Marx, #NFDB
749:Im not this tortured soul or anything. ~ Edward Furlong, #NFDB
750:Intention, good or bad, is not enough. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
751:In war is it who's right, or who's left? ~ Kenneth Cole, #NFDB
752:Islam is politics or it is nothing. ~ Ruhollah Khomeini, #NFDB
753:It's now or never, come hold me tight. ~ Steve Chandler, #NFDB
754:I've always wanted all or nothing! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
755:I've never sold my company or products. ~ Jeffrey Combs, #NFDB
756:I wanted the whole world or nothing. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
757:I work with my dreams or nightmares. ~ David Cronenberg, #NFDB
758:Jesus was either a Liar, a Lunatic, or Lord ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
759:Know or listen to those who know.
~ Baltasar Gracian,#NFDB
760:Legends simply don't live or die like men ~ Paul Levitz, #NFDB
761:Live or die, but don't poison everything. ~ Anne Sexton, #NFDB
762:Live or die, but don't poison everything. ~ Saul Bellow, #NFDB
763:Living Untroubled by Good or Bad Fortune ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
764:Mind and body were well or ill together. ~ Pearl S Buck, #NFDB
765:models or Bond girls he had collected. ~ Kristin Newman, #NFDB
766:Money or no money, acting is my calling. ~ Claire Danes, #NFDB
767:My duration's infinite, money-wise or physiology. ~ Nas, #NFDB
768:Never judge a book by its cover or a movie. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
769:No Gods Or Kings. Only Man. -Andrew Ryan ~ John Shirley, #NFDB
770:Now is now. Are you going to be here or not? ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
771:One way or another, all our houses are glass ~ M M Kaye, #NFDB
772:or they died by some other means. ~ Yrsa Sigur ard ttir, #NFDB
773:Perhaps I'm too saucy or provoking? ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
774:Plan ahead or find trouble on the doorstep. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
775:Save a horse. Ride a cowboy... or two! ~ Scarlett Avery, #NFDB
776:She must have a voodoo pussy or something. ~ K Bromberg, #NFDB
777:She was not his sun or moon, but his galaxy. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
778:Sooner or later Cleofes is gonna get it. ~ John Nichols, #NFDB
779:Swelling in anger or sparkling in glee. ~ Bayard Taylor, #NFDB
780:Tell the truth or trump-but get the trick. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
781:The man is either mad or his is making verses. ~ Horace, #NFDB
782:There is no leaving or returning. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
783:There is no success or failure in Nature. ~ John Searle, #NFDB
784:There is nothing like the love or a child. ~ A J McLean, #NFDB
785:this stay or go?” Chloe asked, pointing ~ Bethany Lopez, #NFDB
786:tikkun olam, or “repairing the world. ~ Gary Shteyngart, #NFDB
787:To be, or not to be: what a question! ~ E A Bucchianeri, #NFDB
788:To take estrogen or not to take estrogen: ~ Sonya Sones, #NFDB
789:Whatever you know, or don’t - only Love is real. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
790:Which is scarier-- lust or temptation? ~ Craig Thompson, #NFDB
791:Who ne'er knew salt, or heard the billows roar. ~ Homer, #NFDB
792:Who owns your body? You or the state? ~ Martha Plimpton, #NFDB
793:Words can be used as a bomb or balm. ~ Megan McCafferty, #NFDB
794:You can have, be or do, anything you want. ~ Joe Vitale, #NFDB
795:You can have, do, or be anything you want. ~ Joe Vitale, #NFDB
796:You can never be too rich or too thin. ~ Wallis Simpson, #NFDB
797:You love me Real or not real
-Real ~ Suzanne Collins,#NFDB
798:You save yourself or you remain unsaved. ~ Alice Sebold, #NFDB
799:A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
800:All men seek one goal: success or happiness. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
801:A moving or movement away from a station ~ Jim Morrison, #NFDB
802:…and either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation. ~ Derek Walcott, #NFDB
803:Are you a believer or just playing safe? ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
804:Art is either a complaint or appeasement. ~ Jasper Johns, #NFDB
805:believe it or not, we're the good guys. ~ Karpov Kinrade, #NFDB
806:Bidden or unbidden, God is present. ~ Desiderius Erasmus, #NFDB
807:Bound by custom or unique by choice. ~ Margaret McHeyzer, #NFDB
808:But you grab a moment, or you let it pass. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
809:But you have to choose: live or tell. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
810:Conform, go crazy, or become an artist. ~ Nancy Springer, #NFDB
811:Dedicated Practitioners of Evil,” or DPEs. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
812:Dev-"Come in peace or leave in pieces ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
813:Develop your pawns or Hulk will smash. ~ Jonathan Lethem, #NFDB
814:diversity in no way implies chaos or error. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
815:Do it from the heart or not at all. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
816:do it from the heart or not at all. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
817:Don’t look at me in that tone of voice or ~ Tim Marquitz, #NFDB
818:Do we choose love, or does it seek us out? ~ Mary Morgan, #NFDB
819:Do you wanna be right, or do you wanna be happy? ~ Jason, #NFDB
820:Either he's dead or my watch has stopped. ~ Groucho Marx, #NFDB
821:Either things grow and change or they die. ~ Kim Edwards, #NFDB
822:Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
823:Give me a treat, or leave me alone. It's Monday. ~ Paige, #NFDB
824:hadn’t seen or experienced for themselves ~ Susan Stoker, #NFDB
825:I don't join or leave things lightly. ~ Margaret Beckett, #NFDB
826:I don't really care if they like me or not. ~ Heidi Klum, #NFDB
827:I don't want to be famous, or recognizable. ~ Sia Furler, #NFDB
828:I'm not posh or common, I'm in between. ~ Martin Freeman, #NFDB
829:Indecision may or may not be my problem. ~ Jimmy Buffett, #NFDB
830:I never force myself to dance or sing. ~ Brigitte Bardot, #NFDB
831:interruption or a keep-behind-a-closed-door ~ Nancy Star, #NFDB
832:Is it better to be loved or feared? ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
833:Is it guilty in here or is it just me? ~ Miranda Lambert, #NFDB
834:It is all mind or maya [illusion]. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
835:It’s always either flooding or a drought. ~ Susannah Nix, #NFDB
836:I've got no more tears or explanations. ~ Anna Akhmatova, #NFDB
837:I've never been high or drunk in my life. ~ Gene Simmons, #NFDB
838:Jest not with the eye or with Religion. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
839:Ku'shalah aiyah to nei."- Bid me yes or no. ~ C L Wilson, #NFDB
840:Learned or unlearned we all must be scribbling. ~ Horace, #NFDB
841:Let's begin by taking a smallish nap or two. ~ A A Milne, #NFDB
842:Live or die. Fight or quite. Be or Stop. ~ Elaine Levine, #NFDB
843:Love does not want or fear anything. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz, #NFDB
844:Love is not jealous, angry or afraid. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
845:Love me or hate me, Scary Spice is back. ~ Melanie Brown, #NFDB
846:Make time for life, or life won’t make time. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
847:Memory is what makes us young or old. ~ Alfred de Musset, #NFDB
848:Mend it, fix it, make do, or do without. ~ Brigham Young, #NFDB
849:Metaphors convince at once or not at all. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
850:Most authors steal their works, or buy. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
851:Never base motivation or fear, entirely. ~ Peter Heather, #NFDB
852:Nothing is big or small for the Universe. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
853:Our pure awareness is not male or female. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
854:Pack or clan, they took care of each other. ~ Katie Reus, #NFDB
855:People don't live or die, people just float. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
856:Remember my mantra: distinct... or extinct. ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
857:Sex—the to have or not to have question— ~ Julie Buxbaum, #NFDB
858:So, before you are tempted to give up or get ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
859:Sooner or later, all games become serious. ~ J G Ballard, #NFDB
860:Sooner or later, everybody pays the Piper! ~ Roddy Piper, #NFDB
861:Stillness or peace is Realization. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
862:That you are fair or wise is vain, ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
863:The Diviners must stand, or all shall fall. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
864:The village is coming back, like it or not. ~ David Brin, #NFDB
865:The wife, where danger or dishonour lurks, ~ John Milton, #NFDB
866:Things that go wrong can shape us or scar us. ~ Bob Goff, #NFDB
867:We are either kings or pawns of men ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
868:We can all put weight on or lose weight. ~ Keith Emerson, #NFDB
869:Weird: of strange or extraordinary character ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
870:We're all hookers in one way or another. ~ Kelly Cutrone, #NFDB
871:We tire differently if we love or love not. ~ Jesse Ball, #NFDB
872:Who gets the bird, the hunter or the dog? ~ John L Lewis, #NFDB
873:Who says “orb” instead of “ball” or “sphere? ~ Jay Asher, #NFDB
874:Why not the Bahamas? Or the Corn Palace? ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
875:Win or lose, at least I'm doing something. ~ Mel Robbins, #NFDB
876:You can choose love or hate…I choose love. ~ Johnny Cash, #NFDB
877:You can't know, you can only believe or not. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
878:You don’t have a choice. Adapt or perish. ~ Sam Sisavath, #NFDB
879:You have to be different, great or first. ~ Loretta Lynn, #NFDB
880:young, old, British or foreign, the entire ~ Julia Baird, #NFDB
881:A joke is a joke or the image of a truth. ~ Storm Jameson, #NFDB
882:All that could run or leap or swim ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
883:Always celebrate your wins. Big or small. ~ Leigh Shulman, #NFDB
884:...and either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation ~ Derek Walcott, #NFDB
885:Anyone who likes cats or dogs is a fool. ~ Gilles Deleuze, #NFDB
886:Are we in love with God or just His stuff? ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
887:Are you a consumer or producer? ~ Richard North Patterson, #NFDB
888:Are you a weapon or a target? Choose! ~ Lesley Livingston, #NFDB
889:Are you better off with him or without him? ~ Ann Landers, #NFDB
890:Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting? ~ Ray Kroc, #NFDB
891:A spiritual life means: It is now or never. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
892:Berlin, “Try, Try Again, or Maybe Not,” New ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
893:Be simply yourself and don't compare or compete ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
894:Better to be called a cult—or even a mafia. ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
895:But time heals. Or at least it forms scabs. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
896:Change or stagnate. Keep moving or die. ~ Mercedes Lackey, #NFDB
897:Cowgirl...or Belle. Just not Cow Belle. ~ Belinda McBride, #NFDB
898:Do I need this? Or is it really about ego? ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
899:Do it, delegate it, delay it, or dump it. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
900:Do not laugh much or often or unrestrainedly. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
901:Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel? ~ K b Abe, #NFDB
902:Drop that or I'll blow ya straight to Jesus. ~ John Wayne, #NFDB
903:Either war is obsolete or men are. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
904:Everyone has a dharma or purpose in life. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
905:Every one is more or less master of his own fate. ~ Aesop, #NFDB
906:Food is not your best friend or enemy. ~ Bethenny Frankel, #NFDB
907:Forget Regret, or life is yours to miss ~ Jonathan Larson, #NFDB
908:Get her to safety or I will kill you for it. ~ Kailin Gow, #NFDB
909:Harken to reason or shee will bee heard. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
910:I always overpay or overtip when I'm upset. ~ Sue Kaufman, #NFDB
911:I command, or I keep quiet." Napoleon ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
912:If cattle and horses, or lions, had hands... ~ Xenophanes, #NFDB
913:I know it's not a one man team win or lose. ~ Brett Favre, #NFDB
914:I'm either going to be a writer or a bum. ~ Carl Sandburg, #NFDB
915:I'm no Jason Beeber or Beyonce Stephens. ~ Thomas Siddell, #NFDB
916:I'm not a clotheshorse or a big shoes guy. ~ Jon Bon Jovi, #NFDB
917:improve, appreciate, connect, or protect. ~ Steven Stosny, #NFDB
918:I'm selling evolution. You grow or you die. ~ Eddie Bravo, #NFDB
919:I must forgive without noise or fuss. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
920:I never have kids in movies or in TV shows. ~ David Spade, #NFDB
921:I never trashed a hotel room or did drugs. ~ Sean Connery, #NFDB
922:In his perversity, or his genius, or both, ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
923:Is it better to be loved or feared? ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
924:Is jazz a rhythm, or is it a vibration? ~ Anthony Braxton, #NFDB
925:Is this more or less boring than Monopoly? ~ Jenn Bennett, #NFDB
926:It was time for a pivot or persevere meeting. ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
927:I've been singing since I was nine or ten. ~ Kelli O Hara, #NFDB
928:I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out. ~ Walt Whitman, #NFDB
929:I wish I could sing or play an instrument. ~ Sigrid Agren, #NFDB
930:Languages shape the way we think, or don't. ~ Erik Naggum, #NFDB
931:Liberty's in every blow! Let us do or die. ~ Robert Burns, #NFDB
932:Listen, or your tongue will make you deaf. ~ Terri Farley, #NFDB
933:Magic is not always serious or solemn. ~ Scott Cunningham, #NFDB
934:Men never know when things are dirty or not ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
935:Much is wanting to those who seek or covet much. ~ Horace, #NFDB
936:Never praise your cider or your horse ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
937:No guilt or anger or longing changes that. ~ Ava Dellaira, #NFDB
938:No one knows when or how rescue could come. ~ Annie Cardi, #NFDB
939:No to the elevator or no to the fucking? ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
940:on the street, say, or cooking for one ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
941:or else discussing the case of Sirius Black ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
942:or endangered others by crossing the freeway, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
943:Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes; ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
944:Rule your mind or it will rule you. —Horace ~ David Allen, #NFDB
945:Smells are surer than sounds or sights ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
946:Some moralist or mythological poet ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
947:Sooner or later a black car came for everyone. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
948:Sooner or later usually means too late ~ Scott Westerfeld, #NFDB
949:Technology has to be invented or adopted. ~ Jared Diamond, #NFDB
950:That creates instability, too.” “Or maybe ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
951:There are no big groupie fans or anything. ~ Daniel Johns, #NFDB
952:There is no king or sovereign state ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
953:Time is a powerful friend or adversary. ~ Pepper D Basham, #NFDB
954:Today he became a killer, or else a corpse. ~ Eoin Colfer, #NFDB
955:Walk tall, or baby don't walk at all. ~ Bruce Springsteen, #NFDB
956:warm for a week. Hawaii, or maybe Mexico. ~ Kendra Elliot, #NFDB
957:Was it a threat, or a well-meant warning? ~ Carolyn Keene, #NFDB
958:We could have been killed or worse EXPELLED ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
959:Were we going extinct, or did we have hope? ~ Bobby Adair, #NFDB
960:What's worse? Being strung out or being fat? ~ Nikki Sixx, #NFDB
961:When cheated, wife or husband feels the same. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
962:Which came first, the phoenix or the flame? ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
963:Which was he, then, savage or gentleman? ~ Jennifer Blake, #NFDB
964:Whole sight; or all the rest is desolation. ~ John Fowles, #NFDB
965:Who's the boss - you or your feelings? ~ Shaunti Feldhahn, #NFDB
966:Wonder if Stephen King's like us or them..? ~ David Moody, #NFDB
967:Words for being lost or for being found. ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
968:You are either a Zionist or an anti-Zionist. ~ Tom Paulin, #NFDB
969:You either pray or worry. Don't do both. ~ Curtis Jackson, #NFDB
970:You live up - or down - to your expectations. ~ Lou Holtz, #NFDB
971:Young girls of 13 or 12 are great actors. ~ Dario Argento, #NFDB
972:You're either a goddess ... or a doormat. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
973:You will hardly know who I am or what I mean ~ John Green, #NFDB
974:A brave and passionate man will kill or be killed. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
975:A fly, a grape-stone, or a hair can kill. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
976:All art critics are useless or harmful. ~ Umberto Boccioni, #NFDB
977:A man of wit could not be a knave or villain. ~ Aphra Behn, #NFDB
978:And either victory, or else a grave. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
979:are memories pictures or the secret doorway? ~ Lynda Barry, #NFDB
980:Are you making life or is life making you? ~ L Ron Hubbard, #NFDB
981:Are you stupid or did you just take lessons? ~ Geena Davis, #NFDB
982:Battles are lost or won in 15 minutes ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
983:Believe it or not, I swear I'm just a human being. ~ Nelly, #NFDB
984:Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail. ~ John Donne, #NFDB
985:Business will be either better or worse. ~ Calvin Coolidge, #NFDB
986:Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will ~ Jack Welch, #NFDB
987:Do not laugh much or often or unrestrainedly. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
988:Do you prefer that you be right or happy? ~ Norman Cousins, #NFDB
989:Do you serve a purpose, or purposely serve? ~ Corey Taylor, #NFDB
990:Either do not attempt at all or go through with it. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
991:Either war is obsolete or men are. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
992:Either war is obsolete, or men are. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
993:Every affair is a fairy tale or a tragedy. ~ Cherie Priest, #NFDB
994:everyone is making love or else expecting rain ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
995:Forget regret, or life is yours to miss. ~ Jonathan Larson, #NFDB
996:Friendship either finds or makes equals. ~ Publilius Syrus, #NFDB
997:Good or Bad? Good. That's what I thought ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
998:Hollow yourself or the fear eats you alive. ~ Mackenzi Lee, #NFDB
999:I am not afraid of you, your kind, or your god. ~ Susan Ee, #NFDB
1000:I don't have a saviour or a royal family. ~ John Malkovich, #NFDB
1001:I don't take a scene or word for granted. ~ Walton Goggins, #NFDB
1002:I don't write any kind of sequel or remake. ~ Bong Joon ho, #NFDB
1003:I expected to go into journalism or law. ~ Christie Hefner, #NFDB
1004:I know if I'm lost in the moment or not. ~ Joaquin Phoenix, #NFDB
1005:I'm certainly not Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt. ~ Jason Statham, #NFDB
1006:I'm not afraid of the press or the Militia. ~ Mother Jones, #NFDB
1007:I'm not choosing him or you. I'm choosing me. ~ Kiera Cass, #NFDB
1008:I'm not choosing him or you; I'm choosing me. ~ Kiera Cass, #NFDB
1009:In a moment comes either death or joyful victory. ~ Horace, #NFDB
1010:I need some challenges in love or I'm bored. ~ Simon Baker, #NFDB
1011:I never tried to kill myself or anything. ~ Ronnie Spector, #NFDB
1012:In joy or sorrow, feebleness or might, ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1013:Is it me you're describing, or yourself? ~ Donna Lynn Hope, #NFDB
1014:Is the universe a Good Egg or a Bad Egg? ~ Cressida Cowell, #NFDB
1015:It didn’t matter whether or not it was sad. ~ Amy Meyerson, #NFDB
1016:I've been known to dual wield a time or two. ~ K S Daniels, #NFDB
1017:I wasn't afraid to be laughed at or be loud. ~ Lynda Barry, #NFDB
1018:Learn to write well, or not to write at all. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
1019:Leave New York or the poem will kill you. ~ Joshua Beckman, #NFDB
1020:Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death! ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1021:Life without limbs? Or life without limits? ~ Nick Vujicic, #NFDB
1022:Literature is all, or mostly, about sex. ~ Anthony Burgess, #NFDB
1023:Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm. ~ Marcus Garvey, #NFDB
1024:love isnt mortal or immortal. it just is ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
1025:Man is to man either a god or a wolf. ~ Desiderius Erasmus, #NFDB
1026:Marriage is the grave or tomb of wit. ~ Margaret Cavendish, #NFDB
1027:Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction. ~ James Frey, #NFDB
1028:Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
1029:No one looks or feels attractive when angry. ~ Allan Lokos, #NFDB
1030:Not everyone can or wants to go straight. ~ Danny Sugerman, #NFDB
1031:O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war, ~ Walter Scott, #NFDB
1032:or hit you in the turd hole by accident. ~ Debra Anastasia, #NFDB
1033:Pain pays no attention to moans or excuses. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
1034:Passion or skill + usefulness = success ~ Chris Guillebeau, #NFDB
1035:Peace is not the product of terror or fear. ~ Oscar Romero, #NFDB
1036:People gonna talk whether you doing bad or good. ~ Rihanna, #NFDB
1037:Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
1038:publication can be reproduced or transmitted ~ Emily March, #NFDB
1039:Right or not, you're pissing me the fuck off. ~ Maya Banks, #NFDB
1040:Self interest determines loyalty or betrayal. ~ James Cook, #NFDB
1041:She's my best friend, better than a dog or car. ~ Lou Reed, #NFDB
1042:Sooner or later we're all someone's dog. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1043:the cause of death is birth or procreation, ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
1044:The New York Times made you or broke you. ~ John Leguizamo, #NFDB
1045:The race may or may not be to the swift, ~ Hilda Doolittle, #NFDB
1046:There is a way; Up, Around, Over or Through ~ Mary Kay Ash, #NFDB
1047:There is no growth or success without change. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
1048:The two duties are to lament or praise. ~ Theodore Roethke, #NFDB
1049:The universe has no beginning or end, and ~ Eben Alexander, #NFDB
1050:The world will be saved by one or two people. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
1051:Things aren’t bad or good. They just are. ~ Sheri Reynolds, #NFDB
1052:Think assailable thoughts, or be lonely. ~ Jane Hirshfield, #NFDB
1053:Think big or die small!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
1054:To be, or not to be, those are the parameters. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1055:To be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
1056:Today is Siddhi Day or the Day of Victory. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
1057:Trust me not at all, or all in all. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
1058:Virtue may choose the high or low degree, ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
1059:Was it cathartic or a form of self-torture? ~ Jill Mansell, #NFDB
1060:Was this first contact, or last contact? ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
1061:We all have our beliefs or our agnosticism. ~ Nicolas Roeg, #NFDB
1062:We are all sinners in some way or another. ~ Jay Crownover, #NFDB
1063:We change whether we like it or not. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1064:We must bend with change, or we will break. ~ Jayne Castel, #NFDB
1065:We travel into or away from our photographs. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
1066:What came first the chicken or the dickhead? ~ Alex Turner, #NFDB
1067:Which came first, the mollusc or the shell? ~ Helen Scales, #NFDB
1068:Wisdom comes through suffering or old age. ~ Lesley Pearse, #NFDB
1069:Without longing or dislike, No bonds exist. ~ Gil Fronsdal, #NFDB
1070:Would you rather pay the extra charge or die? ~ Wesley Chu, #NFDB
1071:years out on Bighorn Road or on the ranch, their ~ C J Box, #NFDB
1072:Yes or no?" Andrew asked. "Yes," Neil said. ~ Nora Sakavic, #NFDB
1073:You are moving forward one way or another. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
1074:You can be right or you can be happy. ~ Gerald G Jampolsky, #NFDB
1075:You can’t enjoy art or books in a hurry. ~ E A Bucchianeri, #NFDB
1076:You can't know, you can only believe - or not. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1077:You either have the feeling or you don’t. ~ Daniel Handler, #NFDB
1078:You guys are going somewhere or just going? ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
1079:You’re either remarkable or invisible,” says ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1080:42but few things are needed—or indeed only one. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1081:Ah, why can't I know if I love, or if I hate? ~ Jean Racine, #NFDB
1082:Always be a bridge, not a wall or a weapon. ~ Mike Aquilina, #NFDB
1083:A man is a man, on a throne or in a pigsty. ~ Robert Jordan, #NFDB
1084:Anticipation can kill you, or drive you crazy. ~ J S Cooper, #NFDB
1085:Are we dealing with doubt or with unbelief? D ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
1086:Be more than man, or thou'rt less than an ant. ~ John Donne, #NFDB
1087:Be silent. That heart speaks without tongue or lips. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1088:but, dear me, let us be elegant or die. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
1089:Control your own Destiny or somebody else will ~ Jack Welch, #NFDB
1090:Control your own destiny or someone else will. ~ Jack Welch, #NFDB
1091:Don't bug me or I'll gas you said the creep ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
1092:Don't eat fruits or nuts. You are what you eat. ~ Jim Davis, #NFDB
1093:Don't think or judge,' I said. 'Just listen. ~ Sarah Dessen, #NFDB
1094:Either Jesus is a reliable guide, or he is not. ~ Emmet Fox, #NFDB
1095:Either one fails in one's art or in one's life. ~ Anais Nin, #NFDB
1096:Everyone has class, one class or another. ~ Francesca Annis, #NFDB
1097:Fire isn’t good or bad. It just burns. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
1098:Go big or go home. That was the Kincaid way. ~ Jill Shalvis, #NFDB
1099:Go Hard or Go Home, but never go home hard! ~ Mark McKinnon, #NFDB
1100:Good or bad, habits always deliver results. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
1101:Hand off my ass or I'll rip off your balls. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
1102:Have you ever been hated, or discriminated against ~ Eminem, #NFDB
1103:I am more or less reading all the time. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
1104:I can't decide. The lasso, the whip or the gun. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1105:I get like six or so hours of sleep a night. ~ James Franco, #NFDB
1106:I have to go 150 percent or nothing at all. ~ Patti LaBelle, #NFDB
1107:I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1108:I may die of earthly love, or of devotion. ~ Arthur Rimbaud, #NFDB
1109:I'm not doing the run to become rich or famous. ~ Terry Fox, #NFDB
1110:I'm not writing fairy tales or object lessons. ~ Junot Diaz, #NFDB
1111:I'm often mistaken for Spanish or Latin descent. ~ Rita Ora, #NFDB
1112:I never dated much in high school or college. ~ David Spade, #NFDB
1113:It is men who make a city, not walls or ships. ~ Thucydides, #NFDB
1114:I try not to eat too much dairy or gluten. ~ Katrina Bowden, #NFDB
1115:I write on a computer, on a laptop or whatever. ~ Mark Boal, #NFDB
1116:Killing children or adults -- equally horrible. ~ NisiOisiN, #NFDB
1117:Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. ~ George S Patton, #NFDB
1118:LIFE HAS NO PLOT, WHY MUST FILMS OR FICTION? ~ Jim Jarmusch, #NFDB
1119:Life has no plot, why must films or fiction? ~ Jim Jarmusch, #NFDB
1120:Life is either a daring adventure or nothing ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
1121:Life is either a great adventure or nothing. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
1122:Life moves forward whether you're okay or not. ~ Calia Read, #NFDB
1123:Like any tool [drugs] can help you or hurt you. ~ Joe Rogan, #NFDB
1124:Live and learn, or you don't live long. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1125:Love does not care for time or order ~ Mallanaga V tsy yana, #NFDB
1126:Love is not a tragedy or a failure, but a gift ~ John Green, #NFDB
1127:Make it dangerous or it's not worth doing. ~ Maurice Sendak, #NFDB
1128:Maybe it was love or maybe it was just loss, ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
1129:Men injure either from fear or hatred. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
1130:Money is a test, like power or love…I ~ Svetlana Alexievich, #NFDB
1131:Never give in or give up easily on a cause. ~ Alex Ferguson, #NFDB
1132:No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1133:No one should torment people or break their hearts. ~ D gen, #NFDB
1134:Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call, ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
1135:Nothing is to be clung to as I, me or mine ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
1136:Nothing loved is ever lost or perished. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
1137:No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try. ~ George Lucas, #NFDB
1138:not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1139:Nudity is for my boyfriend or my doctor. ~ Ginnifer Goodwin, #NFDB
1140:Or hast thou known the world so long in vain? ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
1141:Or I am mad, or else this is a dream. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1142:or mop up vomit and other bodily fluids from ~ Charles Todd, #NFDB
1143:Pain or love or danger makes you real again. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
1144:Paintings. Or the collapse of time in images. ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
1145:People are either born hosts or born guests. ~ Max Beerbohm, #NFDB
1146:People buy from people they know, like or trust ~ Joel Comm, #NFDB
1147:Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
1148:Race has no place in American life or law. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
1149:resentment is unmet need or desire, ~ Gregory David Roberts, #NFDB
1150:Shall there be womanly times? Or shall we die? ~ Ian Mcewan, #NFDB
1151:She's so thin she's either dying or rich. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
1152:Should I peel a cap or should I let him survive? ~ Ice Cube, #NFDB
1153:slightest touch or movement brought on nausea ~ Vince Flynn, #NFDB
1154:Sooner or later, it’s all about the soul. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1155:Sound: always in a state of emergence or decay ~ David Toop, #NFDB
1156:Superstitions are just coincidence or ignorance. ~ Ron Rash, #NFDB
1157:that of Jews in Russia or eastern ~ Oxford University Press, #NFDB
1158:That's my tag, whether I like it or not. ~ Wilt Chamberlain, #NFDB
1159:There are either poems about sex/love or God. ~ Robert Hass, #NFDB
1160:There is no 'lose' - Only 'win', or 'learn'. ~ Luis D Ortiz, #NFDB
1161:There is nothing good or evil save in the will. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
1162:There's no rhyme or reason to how I dress. ~ Ashley Madekwe, #NFDB
1163:The world doesn't need another Dell or Compaq. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
1164:Things happen whether you deserve them or not ~ Ally Condie, #NFDB
1165:This is me. Back me up or back the fuck out. ~ Julie Murphy, #NFDB
1166:Tis not a year or two shows us a man: ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1167:To fear or not to fear, that is the question. ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
1168:Up or down.
We're you in an up or down? ~ David Levithan,#NFDB
1169:We died like aunts of pets or foreigners. ~ Randall Jarrell, #NFDB
1170:We finesse climate, or climate finesses us. ~ Stewart Brand, #NFDB
1171:Well, who’s real? The living or the dead? ~ Scott Nicholson, #NFDB
1172:What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
1173:Whether you think your right or wrong your right. ~ Various, #NFDB
1174:Who or what are you? Besides insufferably rude? ~ Garth Nix, #NFDB
1175:Wisdom comes through suffering or old age. ~ Lesley Pearse, #NFDB
1176:With, or despite our scars, we stay alive. ~ Marilyn Hacker, #NFDB
1177:Women talk when they want to. Or don't. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1178:Words can be powerful allies. Or enemies ~ Yasmine Galenorn, #NFDB
1179:Writing a song is a long road. Or it can be. ~ Dean Wareham, #NFDB
1180:You can choose fear. Or you can choose love. ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
1181:You can never be overdressed or overeducated. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1182:You can risk being wrong or you can be boring. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
1183:You change or you hide your head in the sand. ~ Tony Gilroy, #NFDB
1184:You either ride with us, or collide with us. ~ Tupac Shakur, #NFDB
1185:You have to be the first, best or different. ~ Loretta Lynn, #NFDB
1186:You have to choose: death or lies. ~ Louis Ferdinand C line, #NFDB
1187:You never know why something works or doesn't. ~ Heidi Klum, #NFDB
1188:You shall love. Whether you like it or not. ~ Javier Bardem, #NFDB
1189:You will hardly know who I am or what I mean ~ Walt Whitman, #NFDB
1190:Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
1191:A fool is he that comes to preach or prate, ~ Torquato Tasso, #NFDB
1192:After all, is football a game or a religion? ~ Howard Cosell, #NFDB
1193:All love is sweet, given or received. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
1194:A man must accept his fate or be destroyed by it ~ Spartacus, #NFDB
1195:An artist must either give up art or develop. ~ Pauline Kael, #NFDB
1196:And vampires were perverted. Or so she hoped ~ Gail Carriger, #NFDB
1197:Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
~ Marcel Duchamp,#NFDB
1198:but he reserved his breath, or a soul, for you. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
1199:Consultancy can be too short; or too long. ~ Gerald Weinberg, #NFDB
1200:Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable. ~ Jeff Bezos, #NFDB
1201:Dark matter or invisible element?
You decide. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
1202:Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. ~ Eve Ensler, #NFDB
1203:Did we choose love, or did we choose ourselves? ~ Sylvia Day, #NFDB
1204:Do not desire a long life or an early death ~ Shri Radhe Maa, #NFDB
1205:Don't lower your standards for anything or anyone. ~ Rihanna, #NFDB
1206:Dreams don't smell or sound as strong as this. ~ Ally Condie, #NFDB
1207:Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles? ~ Jane Jacobs, #NFDB
1208:Everyone is more or less mad on one point. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
1209:Everything has to evolve or else it perishes. ~ John Knowles, #NFDB
1210:Fiction or fable allures to instruction. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1211:for all Force or Energy is Mental. ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
1212:fraternité: “Be my brother or I will kill you. ~ Clive James, #NFDB
1213:Give me the biblical Christ or give me nothing. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1214:Here Comes the Bride and/or the Assassin ALEX ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1215:I agree to, or rather aspire to, my doom. ~ Pierre Corneille, #NFDB
1216:I am the beast, Feed me rappers or feed me beats ~ Lil Wayne, #NFDB
1217:Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease! ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1218:I don't fight anybody anytime or anywhere. ~ Tommy Lee Jones, #NFDB
1219:I don't like Paris or being in big cities. ~ Jean Luc Godard, #NFDB
1220:If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon? ~ Margaret Atwood, #NFDB
1221:I'll dance to anything: Bob Marley or rap. ~ Francesca Annis, #NFDB
1222:I'm a warrior. I don't retreat or surrender. ~ Sheryl Nantus, #NFDB
1223:I'm going to live forever, or die trying ! ~ Spider Robinson, #NFDB
1224:I'm not interested in corporate magic or fame. ~ Ryan Tedder, #NFDB
1225:¨In high tide or low tide I´ll be by your side¨ ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
1226:I prefer to play the villain or the antihero. ~ Scott Adkins, #NFDB
1227:Is Durand picking you up or do need a ride home? ~ Erin Watt, #NFDB
1228:I see as much as doors'll allow, open or shut ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
1229:Is everyone around here either gay or fucked up? ~ T A Chase, #NFDB
1230:Is it solid or cream filled?” Dallas screams. ~ Jillian Dodd, #NFDB
1231:Is this the Olympics or One Life to Live? ~ Margaret Carlson, #NFDB
1232:It is neither holy, Roman or an empire. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
1233:It's all or nothing. Death or glory. Carpe diem. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1234:I've never fabricated or plagiarized anything. ~ Jack Kelley, #NFDB
1235:Ive only dressed in drag three or four times. ~ Adam Lambert, #NFDB
1236:I want the wonder back again, or I shall die. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
1237:I wasn’t protecting my sac or my spirit. ~ Michael Arceneaux, #NFDB
1238:I will read four or five books at the same time. ~ Teri Polo, #NFDB
1239:just kind of poke at the bait. Or grab ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde, #NFDB
1240:Kiss me or let me go. I don’t care anymore. ~ Jennifer Estep, #NFDB
1241:Let us not fear the hidden. Or each other. ~ Muriel Rukeyser, #NFDB
1242:Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
1243:Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
1244:Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. ~ Nick Vujicic, #NFDB
1245:Life’s a daring adventure or nothing at all. ~ Clive Cussler, #NFDB
1246:livestock or horses. What’s that place about? ~ David Bishop, #NFDB
1247:Love is not a tragedy or a failure, but a gift. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1248:Money is like an arm or leg- use it or lose it. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
1249:Nature does not deceive or conceal, but reveals. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1250:Never is work without reward, or reward without work. ~ Livy, #NFDB
1251:Never let a fool kiss you or a kiss fool you. ~ Mardy Grothe, #NFDB
1252:Never mind. There. For good or bad. It's done. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1253:No happiness or pain, no more forgetting. ~ Gabriela Mistral, #NFDB
1254:One accumulates or one gets accumulated. ~ Robert Heilbroner, #NFDB
1255:Pain is to be endured. It ends or it does not. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
1256:Passion or Addiction? Make a list of your daily ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
1257:Plant the seed whose vine or tree may hang you. ~ A R Ammons, #NFDB
1258:Prepare to win, or lose to someone who is. ~ Jeffrey Gitomer, #NFDB
1259:Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. ~ Robert Henri, #NFDB
1260:Sacred or not, sacrifice is an ugly business. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
1261:Señor,
la jaula se ha vuelto pájaro. ~ Alejandra Pizarnik,#NFDB
1262:Sentences are not as such either true or false. ~ J L Austin, #NFDB
1263:Soft or hard, love was an act of heroism. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
1264:Sooner or later, everything old is new again. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1265:Superman or Green Lantern ain't got nothin' on me. ~ Donovan, #NFDB
1266:Talking to God was damned good business. ~ Victor Villase or, #NFDB
1267:The day will happen whether or not you get up. ~ John Ciardi, #NFDB
1268:The fineness which a hymn or psalm affords ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
1269:The lonely become either thoughtful or empty. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
1270:The mad is either insane or he is composing verses. ~ Horace, #NFDB
1271:The mind WILL be free, or it will be dead. ~ Grace Llewellyn, #NFDB
1272:There is no try. There is do or don’t do. ~ Rebecca Hamilton, #NFDB
1273:There's no right or wrong, success or failure. ~ Miley Cyrus, #NFDB
1274:The world never leaves one in ignorance or in peace. ~ Ouida, #NFDB
1275:They had a choice to make: go on, or go home. ~ Lev Grossman, #NFDB
1276:They’re looking for nervous or furtive behavior. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
1277:Things happen whether you deserve them or not. ~ Ally Condie, #NFDB
1278:war is not just a victory or loss ... People die. ~ Maya Lin, #NFDB
1279:We are raw and honest, or we are nothing. ~ Lisa Renee Jones, #NFDB
1280:We of alien looks or words must stick together. ~ C J Sansom, #NFDB
1281:Whatever you have, you must either use or lose. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
1282:What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy, ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
1283:Whether I went to school or not, I would always study. ~ RZA, #NFDB
1284:whether you think you can or can't you're right ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
1285:Which are you drinking? The water or the wave? ~ John Fowles, #NFDB
1286:Who knows his virtues name or place, hath none. ~ John Donne, #NFDB
1287:Who you gonna believe-me or your lying eyes? ~ Richard Pryor, #NFDB
1288:Will it be your Heart that wins, or your Fear? ~ Mel Robbins, #NFDB
1289:Will you do it later or will you do it now? ~ Cheryl Strayed, #NFDB
1290:You can either buy clothes or buy pictures. ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
1291:You can stay here and rot in luxury with me or ~ Bryan Smith, #NFDB
1292:You can touch lives or you can be a quitter. ~ Isaiah Austin, #NFDB
1293:You change the rules or you are going under. ~ Caroline Myss, #NFDB
1294:You don't pass or fail at being a human, dear. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1295:You don’t pass or fail at being a human, dear. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1296:You either are a good director or you're not. ~ Rebecca Hall, #NFDB
1297:you either do it my way, or go the fuck away ~ Shannon Mayer, #NFDB
1298:You’re so ugly… you have to trick-or-treat online! ~ Various, #NFDB
1299:Your light is more magnificent than sunrise or sunset ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1300:your so north american, with your either/or's. ~ O R Melling, #NFDB
1301:A clergyman cannot be high in state or fashion. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1302:A lie can run deeper than strength or wisdom. ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
1303:All battles are first won or lost, in the mind. ~ Joan of Arc, #NFDB
1304:All life is a test one way or the other. ~ John Henrik Clarke, #NFDB
1305:America knows nothing of food, love, or art. ~ Isadora Duncan, #NFDB
1306:Americanism is not a matter of skin or color. ~ Daniel Inouye, #NFDB
1307:Am I dreaming? Has the world gone mad--or have I? ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
1308:And all of us, one way or another, are insane. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1309:Anger or hate can be a useful motivating force ~ Jenny Holzer, #NFDB
1310:Are you my councilor or my slave, said the witch. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1311:Art is either a plagiarist or a revolutionist. ~ Paul Gauguin, #NFDB
1312:A thought must tell at once, or not at all. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
1313:Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all ~ Andr Breton, #NFDB
1314:Be firm or mild as the occasion may require. ~ Cato the Elder, #NFDB
1315:be it peace or happiness let it enfold you ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
1316:Be off with you, or I'll blow up the barricade! ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1317:But we are free together or slaves together. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
1318:By nature I am not tough, believe it or not. ~ Jennifer Lopez, #NFDB
1319:Can the Flood choose to infect, or not to infect? ~ Greg Bear, #NFDB
1320:Control your fate or somebody else will ~ Heinrich von Pierer, #NFDB
1321:Day or night, good or bad…all things from within. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
1322:Differentiate with value or die with price. ~ Jeffrey Gitomer, #NFDB
1323:Does art imitate life, or does life imitate TV? ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
1324:Do it or don't do it but get on with it. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1325:Do not love the world or the things in the world. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1326:Don't let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you. ~ Mardy Grothe, #NFDB
1327:Do you want to marry me, yes or no?”
“YES! ~ R S Grey,#NFDB
1328:Drive thy business or it will drive thee. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1329:Education is education, be it verbal or written. ~ Aamir Khan, #NFDB
1330:Either God is real or he isn't; I'm ok with that. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1331:Either it would save him or be the death of him. ~ Cari Quinn, #NFDB
1332:Either I will find a way, or I will make one. ~ Philip Sidney, #NFDB
1333:Every moment is the paradox of now or never. ~ Simon Van Booy, #NFDB
1334:Everyone has a tale to sob over. Rich or poor ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
1335:Everyone is political in his or her own way. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
1336:Every one soon or late comes round by Rome. ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
1337:Everyone steals from something or someone. ~ Janice Dickinson, #NFDB
1338:Fight or flight. when you have to jump, do it. ~ Meg Gardiner, #NFDB
1339:Gohan...Is that sunburn or are you blushing? ~ Akira Toriyama, #NFDB
1340:Hear reason, or she'll make you feel her. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1341:He either doesn't hear me or isn't listening ~ Jennifer Niven, #NFDB
1342:I can work for the Lord in or out of prison. ~ Charles Colson, #NFDB
1343:I don't think silicone makes a girl good or bad. ~ James Caan, #NFDB
1344:If you don't change, you're dead or dead inside. ~ Glenn Beck, #NFDB
1345:I had kissed an unimportant boy or three by now. ~ E Lockhart, #NFDB
1346:I'm a conundrum. Or an enigma. I forget which. ~ James A Owen, #NFDB
1347:I'm an academic. It's publish or perish. ~ Daniel J Bernstein, #NFDB
1348:I may have been fierce, but never low or underhand. ~ Ty Cobb, #NFDB
1349:I'm going to beat this cancer or die trying. ~ Michael Landon, #NFDB
1350:I'm not into bikinis or other revealing clothing. ~ Eric Bana, #NFDB
1351:I never tried to be Jay Z or Big Poppa, ~ Immortal Technique, #NFDB
1352:Influence or affluence; take your choice. ~ Gerald M Weinberg, #NFDB
1353:In life, we have either reasons or results ~ Peter McWilliams, #NFDB
1354:I only understand friendship or scorched earth. ~ Roger Ailes, #NFDB
1355:I really didn't consider myself happy or unhappy. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
1356:I see as much as doors'll allow, open or shut. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
1357:I started modeling when I was 13 or 14, I think. ~ Lara Stone, #NFDB
1358:Is there hell, or do we make our own on earth? ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1359:Is this love, baby, or is this just confusion? ~ Jimi Hendrix, #NFDB
1360:It aint about black or white cause we`re human ~ Tupac Shakur, #NFDB
1361:It is either a half-truth or a truth and a half. ~ Karl Kraus, #NFDB
1362:I try to have a mood or a rhythm for a chapter. ~ Robert Caro, #NFDB
1363:I wanted the whole world or nothing. 6 ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
1364:I will not entertain or dwell on negative things. ~ Emmet Fox, #NFDB
1365:Lazy thinking is not creative or productive. ~ Cate Blanchett, #NFDB
1366:Learning is better worth than houses or land. ~ George Crabbe, #NFDB
1367:Lesson: Never underestimate a woman. Or a chef. ~ Gwenda Bond, #NFDB
1368:Life changes, whether you want it to or not. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
1369:Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1370:Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
1371:Life is either a daring adventure- or nothing. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
1372:Live or die my heart is yours, Sophie Dupont. ~ Julie Klassen, #NFDB
1373:Love cannot be learned or taught. Love comes as Grace. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1374:Money is like an arm or leg - use it or lose it. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
1375:Mr. Right' is usually two or eight men. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
1376:nature of epilepsy or St. Vitus’s dance, ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1377:Never doubt God's desire or ability to help you. ~ T B Joshua, #NFDB
1378:none to molest them or make them afraid. ~ Frederick Douglass, #NFDB
1379:No person loving or admiring himself is alone. ~ Theodor Reik, #NFDB
1380:Note to self: buy some nunchucks or something. ~ Cynthia Hand, #NFDB
1381:Nothing is created or destroyed in nature. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
1382:Nothing is to be clung to as I, me, or mine. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
1383:One of us or one of them. I felt one of neither. ~ Jay Antani, #NFDB
1384:One play does not a team or victory make. ~ Elizabeth Eulberg, #NFDB
1385:Out of my way, Private, or your brains go public. ~ M R Carey, #NFDB
1386:Please make me either relatable or terrible. ~ Jami Attenberg, #NFDB
1387:PRINCIPLE 1 Don’t criticise, condemn or complain. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1388:Reality has no inside, outside, or middle part. ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
1389:requisite for a future boyfriend or husband. ~ Mariana Zapata, #NFDB
1390:She didn't seem to care one way or another. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1391:Shoot up everything except a school or a playground ~ Birdman, #NFDB
1392:Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1393:since a pen or pencil could easily be turned ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
1394:Sir, married or unmarried, all women bleed. ~ Ronlyn Domingue, #NFDB
1395:So, I heard you're this ninja or something. ~ Stephen Chbosky, #NFDB
1396:That’s all we need, another drunk author. ~ Victor Villase or, #NFDB
1397:their anxiety, justified or not, was genuine, ~ Robert A Caro, #NFDB
1398:The media is either our salvation or our death. ~ David Bowie, #NFDB
1399:The old brain can’t conjure up ideas or read. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1400:The public have neither shame or gratitude. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
1401:Things are never as bad or as good as they seem. ~ Tony Hsieh, #NFDB
1402:To be, or not to be, that is the Question: ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1403:To be or not to be that is the question ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1404:To be or not to be, that's the question ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1405:To be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering. ~ John Milton,#NFDB
1406:Tomorrow will be too late, it's now or never. ~ Elvis Presley, #NFDB
1407:to talk about them, or he didn’t understand me. ~ A Zavarelli, #NFDB
1408:to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1409:Unless You Puke, Faint or Die, Keep Going! ~ Jillian Michaels, #NFDB
1410:Was it love or was it the idea of being in love? ~ Pink Floyd, #NFDB
1411:ways—raw, boiled, baked, or fried—and enjoy it ~ Jon Krakauer, #NFDB
1412:We all apologize, or fail to, in our own ways. ~ Stacy Schiff, #NFDB
1413:We'll start firing till they drop or we drop. ~ James Dashner, #NFDB
1414:We’re all whores, sooner or later. I mean ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
1415:We were nobodies, or else, somehow, a city. ~ David Chariandy, #NFDB
1416:We will either find a way, or make one." HANNIBAL ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1417:What is genius or courage without a heart? ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
1418:Whether we think we can or cannot, we are right. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
1419:Which is bigger? A baby eagle or a giant crow? ~ Rona Barrett, #NFDB
1420:You boys going to get somewhere, or just going ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
1421:You can Cut Back or you can Make More Money ~ Sophie Kinsella, #NFDB
1422:You can get rich or famous by doing the same thing. ~ Ang Lee, #NFDB
1423:You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1424:You don’t pass or fail at being a person, dear. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1425:You either get better, or you don't progress. ~ Lance Reddick, #NFDB
1426:You either kiss the future or the past goodbye. ~ Ringo Starr, #NFDB
1427:you gonna curse the darkness or light a candle? ~ Terry Hayes, #NFDB
1428:You need three or five hands to play Ligeti. ~ Alfred Brendel, #NFDB
1429:Your boobs or your ass, Kasey. Make a choice. ~ R L Mathewson, #NFDB
1430:You’re a hero, Penryn, whether you like it or not. ~ Susan Ee, #NFDB
1431:You win your people or you lose your throne. ~ Erika Johansen, #NFDB
1432:You won't be able to hurt me, or touch me. ~ Lucy Christopher, #NFDB
1433:A cat is a cat. She has no race creed or collar. ~ Eartha Kitt, #NFDB
1434:Adopt and change before any major trends or changes. ~ Jack Ma, #NFDB
1435:A good heart attack or a bad heart attack? ~ Victoria Michaels, #NFDB
1436:Ah, well! We live and learn, or, anyway, we live. ~ Will Cuppy, #NFDB
1437:All beasts of prey are strong or treacherous. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
1438:All I know is this: art is art, or it's shit ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
1439:All love is sweet, given or received... ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
1440:All mankind is us, whether we like it or not. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
1441:Archetypes cannot be banished or wished away. ~ Robert L Moore, #NFDB
1442:Architecture is the king or queen of the arts. ~ Gaetano Pesce, #NFDB
1443:Are those the only options? Nothing or forever? ~ Sarah Dessen, #NFDB
1444:Are we not all desperate one way or another? ~ Taylor Caldwell, #NFDB
1445:Are you ashamed of me or ashamed of him?” “Both, ~ Ally Carter, #NFDB
1446:Art makes something a lot more visible or audible. ~ Paul Klee, #NFDB
1447:A successful business is either loved or needed. ~ Ted Leonsis, #NFDB
1448:Be a man, or be more than a man. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
1449:Beauty has no relation to price, rarity, or age. ~ John Cotton, #NFDB
1450:Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all. ~ Andr Breton, #NFDB
1451:Believe it or not, I can actually draw. ~ Jean Michel Basquiat, #NFDB
1452:be there watching TV or playing her Nintendo ~ Christy Barritt, #NFDB
1453:...but, dear me, let us be elegant or die. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
1454:Can’t we talk about sex or murder?” asked Johnny. ~ E Lockhart, #NFDB
1455:Craving burrito so much that I can’t move or breathe ~ Tao Lin, #NFDB
1456:Crip up or grip up … Criptum vexo vel carpo vex. ~ Paul Beatty, #NFDB
1457:Do any men grow up or do they only come of age? ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1458:Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone. ~ Anne Sexton, #NFDB
1459:Don't Let them fool you or even try to school you ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
1460:Drunk forever dreaming you with or without you ~ M F Moonzajer, #NFDB
1461:Either I'm too sensitive, or else I'm gettin' soft ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
1462:Either you're born crazy or you're born boring. ~ Oliver Stone, #NFDB
1463:Everyone becomes psychotic in his or her own ways. ~ Elyn Saks, #NFDB
1464:Fire can either burn down your house or warm it. ~ Holly Black, #NFDB
1465:Give it a minute or two for the weaction to begin. ~ L R W Lee, #NFDB
1466:Give me a meaningful love or a beautiful death! ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1467:God is not good, or else he could do better. ~ Meister Eckhart, #NFDB
1468:Graft good Fruit all, or graft not at all. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1469:Her sister?” Erik asked. “Weekday or weekend? ~ Alethea Kontis, #NFDB
1470:He wasn’t going to win! Or losing was winning. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
1471:How dare I claim to be a sage or a benevolent man? ~ Confucius, #NFDB
1472:I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other. ~ Sara Gruen, #NFDB
1473:I am nobody, even if I say I am this or that. ~ Santosh Kalwar, #NFDB
1474:I challenge you, me. Die or live and be great. ~ Alfred Bester, #NFDB
1475:I could either watch it happen or be a part of it. ~ Elon Musk, #NFDB
1476:I decided it was now or never!” she said. Great ~ Nick Vujicic, #NFDB
1477:I didn't know whether to duck or to run, so I ran. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
1478:I do not believe that ghosts or spirits exist. ~ Harry Houdini, #NFDB
1479:I don't feel nervous or fearful when I'm on stage. ~ Neko Case, #NFDB
1480:I don't know what 'home' or 'abroad' is any more. ~ Robin Gibb, #NFDB
1481:I don't know whether to punch you or hug you. ~ Heather Brewer, #NFDB
1482:If it floats, flies or fucks, rent—don’t buy! ~ Stephen Coonts, #NFDB
1483:If you are tired or distracted, do not code. ~ Robert C Martin, #NFDB
1484:I guess you could say I'm cautious, or a coward. ~ Namie Amuro, #NFDB
1485:I had told the truth, or a version of it, anyway. ~ John Boyne, #NFDB
1486:I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy. ~ Whitney Houston, #NFDB
1487:I'm not being outspoken or pro or con abortion. ~ Barbara Bush, #NFDB
1488:I’m not just a face, or a body. I’m a Havisham. ~ Ronald Frame, #NFDB
1489:I’m not sure I fear Death or the Reaper anymore. ~ Donna Grant, #NFDB
1490:I'm not worthy of you or your Omega awesomeness. ~ James Ponti, #NFDB
1491:I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not. ~ Sonny Rollins, #NFDB
1492:I seem to be defying fate, or am I avoiding it? ~ Frank O Hara, #NFDB
1493:Is heaven a hope or as real as the earth and sky? ~ Todd Burpo, #NFDB
1494:Is love a fancy or a feeling.... or a Ferrars? ~ Emma Thompson, #NFDB
1495:It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1496:It's alright, you can afford to lose a day or two ~ Billy Joel, #NFDB
1497:It's hard to nap on Saturday or the weekends. ~ Scott Eastwood, #NFDB
1498:It's not like I have a master plan or anything. ~ Gretchen Mol, #NFDB
1499:I've never been the sexy or the cute girl. ~ Izabella Scorupco, #NFDB
1500:I won't deny a song or a melody. I can't deny it. ~ Fred Durst, #NFDB
3391 Integral Yoga
2314 Poetry
315 Occultism
275 Philosophy
221 Fiction
201 Mysticism
187 Christianity
139 Yoga
92 Psychology
64 Philsophy
39 Science
33 Hinduism
27 Kabbalah
26 Sufism
26 Education
22 Mythology
20 Theosophy
17 Buddhism
16 Integral Theory
12 Zen
8 Cybernetics
6 Baha i Faith
2 Taoism
1 Thelema
1 Alchemy
1839 The Mother
1540 Sri Aurobindo
1111 Satprem
558 Nolini Kanta Gupta
252 Walt Whitman
238 William Wordsworth
152 William Butler Yeats
146 Aleister Crowley
121 Percy Bysshe Shelley
119 H P Lovecraft
91 Carl Jung
89 John Keats
81 Omar Khayyam
76 Jalaluddin Rumi
70 Robert Browning
70 Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia
69 James George Frazer
68 Friedrich Nietzsche
66 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
64 Ralph Waldo Emerson
62 Plotinus
57 Sri Ramakrishna
47 Kabir
46 Rabindranath Tagore
45 Jorge Luis Borges
43 Friedrich Schiller
41 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
38 Lalla
37 Swami Vivekananda
37 Swami Krishnananda
35 Saint Teresa of Avila
34 Saint Augustine of Hippo
32 Lucretius
32 Franz Bardon
32 Anonymous
30 Saint John of Climacus
30 A B Purani
29 Hakim Sanai
29 Edgar Allan Poe
29 Aldous Huxley
28 Rainer Maria Rilke
27 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
27 Kobayashi Issa
25 Rudolf Steiner
25 Aristotle
24 Farid ud-Din Attar
23 Abu-Said Abil-Kheir
21 Vyasa
21 Bulleh Shah
19 Hafiz
16 Solomon ibn Gabirol
15 Nirodbaran
14 Saint Hildegard von Bingen
14 Ovid
14 Baba Sheikh Farid
13 Thomas Merton
13 Li Bai
13 Ikkyu
12 Yosa Buson
12 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
12 Sarmad
12 Plato
12 Peter J Carroll
12 Paul Richard
12 Muso Soseki
12 Ibn Arabi
12 Fukuda Chiyo-ni
11 Symeon the New Theologian
11 Sri Ramana Maharshi
11 Saint John of the Cross
11 Mansur al-Hallaj
11 George Van Vrekhem
10 William Blake
10 Saint Francis of Assisi
10 Lewis Carroll
10 Jacopone da Todi
9 Wang Wei
9 Mechthild of Magdeburg
9 Khwaja Abdullah Ansari
8 Yuan Mei
8 Saadi
8 Rabbi Abraham Abulafia
8 Norbert Wiener
8 Joseph Campbell
7 Tao Chien
7 Shiwu (Stonehouse)
7 Saint Clare of Assisi
7 Jordan Peterson
7 Henry David Thoreau
7 Basava
7 Baha u llah
7 Alice Bailey
7 Alfred Tennyson
6 Thubten Chodron
6 Taigu Ryokan
6 Sun Buer
6 Namdev
6 Lu Tung Pin
6 Jayadeva
6 Bokar Rinpoche
6 Allama Muhammad Iqbal
6 Al-Ghazali
5 Vidyapati
5 Patanjali
5 Jakushitsu
5 Ibn Ata Illah
5 Hakuin
5 Guru Nanak
5 Boethius
4 Ramprasad
4 Jetsun Milarepa
4 Dante Alighieri
3 Shih-te
3 Saint Therese of Lisieux
3 R Buckminster Fuller
3 Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
3 Po Chu-i
3 Naropa
3 Nachmanides
3 Moses de Leon
3 Mirabai
3 Michael Maier
3 Matsuo Basho
3 Masahide
3 Ken Wilber
2 Yannai
2 Yamei
2 Theophan the Recluse
2 Shankara
2 Nukata
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Kuan Han-Ching
2 Judah Halevi
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Jean Gebser
2 Italo Calvino
2 Genpo Roshi
2 Eleazar ben Kallir
2 Dogen
2 Chuang Tzu
2 Chiao Jan
2 Alexander Pope
718 Record of Yoga
238 Wordsworth - Poems
232 Whitman - Poems
186 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
174 Prayers And Meditations
152 Yeats - Poems
144 The Synthesis Of Yoga
133 Agenda Vol 01
123 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
121 Shelley - Poems
119 Lovecraft - Poems
116 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
98 Agenda Vol 13
92 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
90 Agenda Vol 08
89 Keats - Poems
85 Magick Without Tears
84 Letters On Yoga III
82 Agenda Vol 09
81 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
80 Agenda Vol 12
80 Agenda Vol 04
78 Agenda Vol 10
77 Agenda Vol 07
77 Agenda Vol 03
76 Agenda Vol 06
72 Agenda Vol 11
70 Browning - Poems
70 Agenda Vol 02
69 The Golden Bough
65 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
64 Emerson - Poems
64 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
62 Agenda Vol 05
60 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
57 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
56 The Life Divine
56 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
56 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
55 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
53 Liber ABA
51 Questions And Answers 1956
49 Letters On Yoga IV
49 Letters On Yoga II
48 Savitri
43 Schiller - Poems
41 Questions And Answers 1953
38 Mysterium Coniunctionis
38 Collected Poems
37 The Study and Practice of Yoga
37 Questions And Answers 1955
37 Letters On Poetry And Art
35 Questions And Answers 1954
35 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
33 Words Of Long Ago
33 Tagore - Poems
32 Of The Nature Of Things
30 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
30 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
30 Essays On The Gita
30 Essays Divine And Human
29 The Perennial Philosophy
28 Rilke - Poems
28 Poe - Poems
27 The Divine Comedy
27 Letters On Yoga I
27 General Principles of Kabbalah
26 On Education
26 Labyrinths
26 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
25 Poetics
25 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
24 The Practice of Psycho therapy
24 The Human Cycle
24 The Bible
23 Words Of The Mother II
22 The Future of Man
22 City of God
21 Vishnu Purana
21 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
21 Faust
20 Goethe - Poems
19 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
19 Rumi - Poems
19 Borges - Poems
19 Bhakti-Yoga
18 The Way of Perfection
18 Initiation Into Hermetics
17 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
17 On the Way to Supermanhood
17 Let Me Explain
16 Songs of Kabir
16 Anonymous - Poems
15 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
15 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
15 Song of Myself
15 Isha Upanishad
14 The Secret Of The Veda
14 The Practice of Magical Evocation
14 The Phenomenon of Man
14 Some Answers From The Mother
14 Metamorphoses
14 Aion
13 Vedic and Philological Studies
13 Theosophy
13 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
13 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
13 Li Bai - Poems
13 Hymn of the Universe
12 Twilight of the Idols
12 Talks
12 Raja-Yoga
12 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
12 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
12 Liber Null
12 Crowley - Poems
11 Preparing for the Miraculous
11 Kena and Other Upanishads
10 The Problems of Philosophy
10 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
10 The Integral Yoga
10 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
10 Amrita Gita
10 Alice in Wonderland
10 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
9 Dark Night of the Soul
9 5.1.01 - Ilion
8 Words Of The Mother III
8 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
8 The Blue Cliff Records
8 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
8 Cybernetics
7 Walden
7 Maps of Meaning
7 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Alchemy of Happiness
6 Tara - The Feminine Divine
6 Ryokan - Poems
6 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
6 Hafiz - Poems
5 Words Of The Mother I
5 The Red Book Liber Novus
5 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
4 Sefer Yetzirah The Book of Creation In Theory and Practice
4 Milarepa - Poems
4 Jerusalum
4 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
4 Arabi - Poems
3 Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit
3 The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
3 The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
3 The Lotus Sutra
3 The Gateless Gate
3 The Book of Certitude
3 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Naropa - Poems
3 Basho - Poems
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 The Essentials of Education
2 The Castle of Crossed Destinies
2 Symposium
2 Selected Fictions
2 God Exists
2 Dogen - Poems
2 Chuang Tzu - Poems
2 Agenda Vol 1
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.00 - Publishers Note A, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The present volume consists of the first seven parts of the book The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo which has run into twelve parts, as it stands now; of these twelve, parts five to nine are based upon talks of the Mother (given by Her to the children of the Ashram). In this volume the later parts of the Talks (8 and 9) could not be included: they are to wait f or a subsequent volume. The talks, originally in French, were spread over a number of years, ending in about 1960. We are pleased to note that the Government of India have given us a grant to meet the cost of publication of this volume.
13 January 1972
00.00 - Publishers Note, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We have pleasure in presenting the Second Volume of the Collected W orks of Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta. The six books in this volume were originally published separately. The Essays are mainly concerned with Mysticism and Poetry.
We are happy to note that the Government of India have given to our Centre of Education a grant to meet the cost of publication of this volume.
0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This AGENDA ... One day, another species among men will p ore over this fabulous document as over the tumultuous drama that must have surrounded the birth of the first man among the hostile h ordes of a great, delirious Paleozoic. A first man is the dangerous contradiction of a certain simian logic, a threat to the established order that so genteelly ran about amid the high, indefeasible ferns - and to begin with, it does not even know that it is a man. It wonders, indeed, what it is. Even to itself it is strange, distressing. It does not even know how to climb trees any longer in its usual way
- and it is terribly disturbing f or all those who still climb trees in the old, millennial way. Perhaps it is even a heresy. Unless it is some cerebral dis order? A first man in his little clearing had to have a great deal of courage. Even this little clearing was no longer so sure. A first man is a perpetual question. What am I, then, in the midst of all that? And where is my law? What is the law? And what if there were no m ore laws? ... It is terrifying. Mathematics - out of order. Astronomy and biology, too, are beginning to respond to mysterious influences. A tiny point huddled in the center of the w orld's great clearing. But what is all this, what if I were 'mad'? And then, claws all around, a lot of claws against this uncommon creature. A first man ... is very much alone. He is quite unbearable f or the pre-human 'reason.' And the surrounding tribes growled like red monkies in the twilight of Guiana.
One day, we were like this first man in the great, stridulant night of the Oyapock. Our heart was beating with the rediscovery of a very ancient mystery - suddenly, it was absolutely new to be a man amidst the di orite cascades and the pretty red and black c oral snakes slithering beneath the leaves. It was even m ore extra ordinary to be a man than our old confirmed tribes, with their infallible equations and imprescriptible biologies, could ever have dreamed. It was an absolutely uncertain 'quantum' that delightfully eluded whatever one thought of it, including perhaps what even the scholars thought of it. It flowed otherwise, it felt otherwise. It lived in a kind of flawless continuity with the sap of the giant balata trees, the cry of the macaws and the scintillating water of a little fountain. It 'understood' in a very different way. To understand was to be in everything. Just a quiver, and one was in the skin of a little iguana in distress. The skin of the w orld was very vast.
--
A little white silhouette, twelve thousand miles away, solitary and frail amidst a spiritual h orde which had once and f or all decided that the meditating and miraculous yogi was the apogee of the species, was searching f or the means, f or the reality of this man who f or a moment believes himself sovereign of the heavens or sovereign of a machine, but who is quite probably something completely different than his spiritual or material gl ories. Another, a lighter air was throbbing in that breast, unburdened of its heavens and of its prehist oric machines. Another Epic was beginning.
Would Matter and Spirit meet, then, in a third PHYSIOLOGICAL position that would perhaps be at last the position of Man rediscovered, the something that had f or so long fought and suffered in quest of becoming its own species? She was the great Possible at the beginning of man. Mother is our fable come true. 'All is possible' was her first open sesame.
--
As f or the w orst, we know that it is the w orst. But then we come to realize that the best is only the pretty muzzle of our w orst, the same old beast defending itself, with all its claws out, with its sanctity or its electronic gadgets. Mother was there f or something else.
'Something else' is ominous, perilous, disrupting - it is quite unbearable f or all those who resemble the old beast. The st ory of the Pondicherry 'Ashram' is the st ory of an old clan ferociously clinging to its 'spiritual' privileges, as others clung to the muscles that had made them kings among the great apes. It is armed with all the piousness and all the reasonableness that had made logical man so 'infallible' among his less cerebral brothers. The spiritual brain is probably the w orst obstacle to the new species, as were the muscles of the old orangutan f or this fragile stranger who no longer climbed so well in the trees and sat, pensive, at the center of a little, uncertain clearing.
There is nothing m ore pious than the old species. There is nothing m ore legal. Mother was searching f or the path of the new species as much against all the virtues of the old as against all its vices or laws. F or, in truth, 'Something Else' ... is something else.
We landed there, one day in February 1954, having emerged from our Guianese f orest and a certain number of dead-end peripluses; we had knocked upon all the do ors of the old w orld bef ore reaching that point of absolute impossibility where it was truly necessary to embark into something else or once and f or all put a bullet through the brain of this slightly superi or ape. The first thing that struck us was this exotic Notre Dame with its burning incense sticks, its effigies and its prostrations in immaculate white: a Church. We nearly jumped into the first train out that very evening, bound straight f or the Himalayas, or the devil. But we remained near Mother f or nineteen years. What was it, then, that could have held us there? We had not left Guiana to become a little saint in white or to enter some new religion. 'I did not come upon earth to found an ashram; that would have been a po or aim indeed,' She wrote in 1934. What did all this mean, then, this 'Ashram' that was already registered as the owner of a great spiritual business, and this fragile, little silhouette at the center of all these zealous w orshippers? In truth, there is no better way to smother someone than to w orship him: he chokes beneath the weight of w orship, which m oreover gives the w orshipper claim to ownership. 'Why do you want to w orship?' She exclaimed. 'You have but to become! It is the laziness to become that makes one w orship.' She wanted so much to make them
become this 'something else,' but it was far easier to w orship and quiescently remain what one was.
She spoke to deaf ears. She was very alone in this 'ashram.' Little by little, the disciples fill up the place, then they say: it is ours. It is 'the Ashram.' We are 'the disciples.' In Pondicherry as in Rome as in Mecca. 'I do not want a religion! An end to religions!' She exclaimed. She struggled and fought in their midst - was She theref ore to leave this Earth like one m ore saint or yogi, buried beneath haloes, the 'continuatrice' of a great spiritual lineage? She was seventy-six years old when we landed there, a knife in our belt and a ready curse on our lips.
She ad ored defiance and did not detest irreverence.
--
Her step by step, as one discovers a f orest, or rather as one fights with it, machete in hand - and then it melts, one loves, so sublime does it become. Mother grew beneath our skin like an adventure of life and death. F or seven years we fought with Her. It was fascinating, detestable, powerful and sweet; we felt like screaming and biting, fleeing and always coming back: 'Ah! You won't catch me! If you think I came here to w orship you, you're wrong!' And She laughed. She always laughed.
We had our bellyful of adventure at last: if you go astray in the f orest, you get delightfully lost yet still with the same old skin on your back, whereas here, there is nothing left to get lost in! It is no longer just a matter of getting lost - you have to CHANGE your skin. or die. Yes, change species.
or become one m ore nauseating little w orshipper - which was not on our program. 'We are the enemy of our own conception of the Divine,' She told us one day with her mischievous little smile.
The whole time - or f or seven years, in any event - we fought with our conception of God and the
'spiritual life': it was all so comf ortable, f or we had a supreme 'symbol' of it right there. She let us do as we pleased, She even opened up all kinds of little heavens in us, along with a few hells, since they go together. She even opened the do or in us to a certain 'liberation,' which in the end was as sop orific as eternity - but there was nowhere to get out: it WAS eternity. We were trapped on all sides. There was nothing left but these 4m2 of skin, the last refuge, that which we wanted to flee by way of above or below, by way of Guiana or the Himalayas. She was waiting f or us just there, at the end of our spiritual or not so spiritual pirouettes. Matter was her concern. It took us seven years to understand that She was beginning there, 'where the other yogas leave off,' as Sri Aurobindo had already said twenty-five years earlier. It was necessary to have covered all the paths of the Spirit and all those of Matter, or in any case a large number geographically, bef ore discovering, or even simply understanding, that 'something else' was really Something Else. It was not an improved
Spirit n or even an improved Matter, but ... it could be called 'nothing,' so contrary was it to all we know. F or the caterpillar, a butterfly is nothing, it is not even visible and has nothing in common with caterpillar heavens n or even caterpillar matter. So there we were, trapped in an impossible adventure. One does not return from there: one must cross the bridge to the other side. Then one day in that seventh year, while we still believed in liberations and the collected Upanishads, highlighted with a few gl orious visions to relieve the commonplace (which remained appallingly commonplace), while we were still considering 'the Mother of the Ashram' rather like some spiritual super-direct or (endowed, albeit, with a disarming yet ever so provocative smile, as though
--
Where, then, was 'the Mother of the Ashram' in all this? What is even 'the Ashram,' if not a spiritual museum of the resistances to Something Else. They were always - and still today - reciting their catechism beneath a little flag: they are the owners of the new truth. But the new truth is laughing in their faces and leaving them high and dry at the edge of their little stagnant pond. They are under the illusion that Mother and Sri Aurobindo, twenty-seven or four years after their respective departures, could keep on repeating themselves - but then they would not be Mother and
Sri Aurobindo! They would be fossils. The truth is always on the move. It is with those who dare, who have courage, and above all the courage to shatter all the effigies, to de-mystify, and to go
TRULY to the conquest of the new. The 'new' is painful, discouraging, it resembles nothing we know! We cannot hoist the flag of an unconquered country - but this is what is so marvelous: it does not yet exist. We must MAKE IT EXIST. The adventure has not been carved out: it is to be carved out. Truth is not entrapped and fossilized, 'spiritualized': it is to be discovered. We are in a nothing that we must f orce to become a something. We are in the adventure of the new species. A new species is obviously contradict ory to the old species and to the little flags of the alreadyknown. It has nothing in common with the spiritual summits of the old w orld, n or even with its abysms - which might be delightfully tempting f or those who have had enough of the summits, but everything is the same, in black or white, it is fraternal above and below. SOMETHING ELSE is needed.
'Are you conscious of your ceils?' She asked us a sh ort time after the little operation of spiritual demolition She had undergone. 'No? Well, become conscious of your cells, and you will see that it gives TERRESTRIAL results.' To become conscious of one's cells? ... It was a far m ore radical operation than crossing the Maroni with a machete in hand, f or after all, trees and lianas can be cut, but what cannot be so easily uncovered are the grandfa ther and the grandmo ther and the whole atavistic pack, not to mention the animal and plant and mineral layers that f orm a teeming humus over this single pure little cell beneath its millennial genetic program. The grandfa thers and grandmo thers grow back again like crabgrass, along with all the old habits of being hungry, afraid, falling ill, fearing the w orst, hoping f or the best, which is still the best of an old m ortal habit. All this is not uprooted n or entrapped as easily as celestial 'liberations,' which leave the teeming humus in peace and the body to its usual decomposition. She had come to hew a path through all that. She was the Ancient One of evolution who had come to make a new cleft in the old, tedious habit of being a man. She did not like tedious repetitions, She was the adventuress par excellence - the adventuress of the earth. She was wrenching out f or man the great Possible that was already beating there, in his primeval clearing, which he believed he had momentarily trapped with a few machines.
She was uprooting a new Matter, free, free from the habit of inex orably being a man who repeats himself ad infinitum with a few improvements in the way of organ transplants or monetary exchanges. In fact, She was there to discover what would happen after materialism and after spiritualism, these prodigal twin brothers. Because Materialism is dying in the West f or the same reason that Spiritualism is dying in the East: it is the hour of the new species. Man needs to awaken, not only from his demons but also from his gods. A new Matter, yes, like a new Spirit, yes, because we still know neither one n or the other. It is the hour when Science, like Spirituality, at the end of their roads, must discover what Matter TRULY is, f or it is really there that a Spirit as yet unknown to us is to be found. It is a time when all the 'isms' of the old species are dying: 'The age of
Capitalism and business is drawing to its close. But the age of Communism too will pass ... 'It is the hour of a pure little cell THAT WILL HAVE TERRESTRIAL REPERCUSSIONS, infinitely m ore radical than all our political and scientific or spiritualistic panaceas.
This fabulous discovery is the whole st ory of the AGENDA. What is the passage? How is the path to the new species hewed open? ... Then suddenly, there, on the other side of this old millennial habit - a habit, nothing m ore than a habit! - of being like a man endowed with time and space and disease: an entire geometry, perfectly implacable and 'scientific' and medical; on the other side ... none of that at all! An illusion, a fantastic medical and scientific and genetic illusion:
death does not exist, time does not exist, disease does not exist, n or do 'scar' and 'far' - another way of being IN A BODY. F or so many millions of years we have lived in a habit and put our own thoughts of the w orld and of Matter into equations. No m ore laws! Matter is FREE. It can create a little lizard, a chipmunk or a parrot - but it has created enough parrots. Now it is SOMETHING
ELSE ... if we want it.
--
BECOME. To w orship was so much easier. And then they bury you, solemnly, and the matter is settled - the case is closed: now, no one need bother any m ore except to print some photographic haloes f or the pilgrims to this brisk little business. But they are mistaken. The real business will take place without them, the new species will fly up in their faces - it is already flying in the face of the earth, despite all its isms in black and white; it is exploding through all the p ores of this battered old earth, which has had enough of shams - whether illus ory little heavens or barbarous little machines.
It is the hour of the REAL Earth. It is the hour of the REAL man. We are all going there - if only we could know the path a little ...
This AGENDA is not even a path: it is a light little vibration that seizes you at any turning - and then, there it is, you are IN IT. 'Another w orld in the w orld,' She said. One has to catch the light little vibration, one has to flow with it, in a nothing that is like the only something in the midst of this great debacle. At the beginning of things, when still nothing was FIXED, when there was not yet this habit of the pelican or the kangaroo or the chimpanzee or the XXth century biologist, there was a little pulsation that beat and beat - a delightful dizziness, a joy in the w orld's great adventure; a little never-imprisoned spark that has kept on beating from species to species, but as if it were always eluding us, as if it were always over there, over there - as if it were something to become,
something to be played f orever as the one great game of the w orld; a who-knows-what that left this sprig of a pensive man in the middle of a clearing; a little 'something' that beats, beats, that keeps on breathing beneath every skin that has ever been put on it - like our deepest breath, our lightest air, our air of nothing - and it keeps on going, it keeps on going. We must catch the light little breath, the little pulsation of nothing. Then suddenly, on the threshold of our clearing of concrete, our head starts spinning incurably, our eyes blink into something else, and all is different, and all seems surcharged with meaning and with life, as though we had never lived until that very minute.
00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Mysticism is not only a science but also, and in a greater degree, an art. To approach it merely as a science, as the modern mind attempts to do, is to move towards futility, if not to land in positive disaster. Sufficient stress is not laid on this aspect of the matter, although the very crux of the situation lies here. The mystic domain has to be apprehended not merely by the true mind and understanding but by the right temperament and character. Mysticism is not merely an object of knowledge, a problem f or inquiry and solution, it is an end, an ideal that has to be achieved, a life that has to be lived. The mystics themselves have declared long ago with no uncertain or faltering voice: this cannot be attained by intelligence or much learning, it can be seized only by a purified and clear temperament.
The warning seems to have fallen, in the modern age, on unheeding ears. F or the modern mind, being pre-eminently and uncompromisingly scientific, can entertain no doubt as to the perfect competency of science and the scientific method to seize and unveil any secret of Nature. If, it is argued, mysticism is a secret, if there is at all a truth and reality in it, then it is and must be amenable to the rules and regulations of science; f or science is the revealer of Nature's secrecies.
--
or
nyamtm balahinena labhya2
The mystic f orces are not only of immense potency but of a definite m oral disposition and character, that is to say, they are of immense potency either f or good or f or evil. They are not mechanical and am oral f orces like those that physical sciences deal with; they are f orces of consciousness and they are conscious f orces, they act with an aim and a purpose. The mystic f orces are f orces either of light or of darkness, either Divine or Titanic. And it is most often the powers of darkness that the naturally ign orant consciousness of man contacts when it seeks to cross the b orderline without training or guidance, by the sheer arrogant self-sufficiency of mental scientific reason.
Ign orance, certainly, is not man's ideal conditionit leads to death and dissolution. But knowledge also can be equally disastrous if it is not of the right kind. The knowledge that is b orn of spiritual disobedience, inspired by the Dark ones, leads to the soul's fall and its calvary through pain and suffering on earth. The seeker of true enlightenment has got to make a distinction, learn to separate the true and the right from the false and the wrong, unmask the luring Mra say clearly and unfalteringly to the dark light of Luciferapage Satana, if he is to come out into the true light and comm and the right f orces. The search f or knowledge alone, knowledge f or the sake of knowledge, the path of pure scientific inquiry and inquisitiveness, in relation to the mystic w orld, is a dangerous thing. F or such a spirit serves only to encourage and enhance man's arrogance and in the end not only limits but warps and falsifies the knowledge itself. A knowledge based on and secured exclusively through the reason and mental light can go only so far as that faculty can be reasonably stretched and not infinitelyto stretch it to infinity means to snap it. This is the warning that Yajnavalkya gave to Gargi when the latter started renewing her question ad infinitum Yajnavalkya said, "If you do not stop, your head will fall off."
--
F or it must be understood that the heart, the mystic heart, is not the external thing which is the seat of emotion or passion; it is the secret heart that is behind, the inner heartantarhdaya of the Upanishadwhich is the centre of the individual consciousness, where all the divergent lines of that consciousness meet and from where they take their rise. That is what the Upanishad means when it says that the heart has a hundred channels which feed the human vehicle. That is the source, the fount and origin, the very substance of the true personality. Mystic knowledge the true mystic knowledge which saves and fulfilsbegins with the awakening or the entrance into this real being. This being is pure and luminous and blissful and sovereignly real, because it is a p ortion, a spark of the Divine Consciousness and Nature: a contact and communion with it brings automatically into play the light and the truth that are its substance. At the same time it is an uprising flame that reaches out naturally to higher domains of consciousness and manifests them through its translucid dynamism.
The knowledge that is obtained without the heart's instrumentation or co-operation is liable to be what the Gita describes as Asuric. First of all, from the point of view of knowledge itself, it would be, as I have already said, egocentric, a product and agent of one's limited and isolated self, easily put at the service of desire and passion. This knowledge, whether rationalistic or occult, is, as it were, hard and dry in its constitution, and oftener than not, negative and destructivewi thering and blasting in its career like the desert simoom.
There are modes of knowledge that are occultand to that extent mystic and can be mastered by practices in which the heart has no share. But they have not the saving grace that comes by the touch of the Divine. They are not truly mystic the truly mystic belongs to the ultimate realities, the deepest and the highest,they, on the other hand, are transverse and tangential movements belonging to an intermediate region where light and obscurity are mixed up and even f or the greater part the light is swallowed up in the obscurity or utilised by it.
The mystic's knowledge and experience is not only true and real: it is delightful and blissful. It has a supremely healing virtue. It brings a sovereign freedom and ease and peace to the mystic himself, but also to those around him, who come in contact with him. F or truth and reality are made up of love and harmony, because truth is, in its essence, unity.
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the w ords, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any eff ort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. F or him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the L ord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary f or doing the Yoga.
--
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration f or Imm ortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Imm ortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transf ormation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its supp ort is always there f or him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the w ords are expressed and arranged in such a way that the son ority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the hist ory of evolution, the hist ory of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, f or what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear w ords so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the w orld may understand it m ore easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the w ords and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the do or of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transf orm it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ign orance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain imm ortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go f orward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much m ore yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has w orked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the w ords, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this bef ore having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every m orning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the m orning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the m orning were those I had had the previous night, w ord by w ord. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the w ords I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following m orning. And it was not just one day by chance, but f or days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, m oreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or s orrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighb orhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the w orld-misery to brea the the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transf orm suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the hist ory of the w orld. It is something that has never happened bef ore, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the w ork easy f or us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transf ormation, and this Yoga appears now f or the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast f or him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, f or it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the m ore does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tom orrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the w ork of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferi or. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-w ork even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human w ords are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, w ords express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the m ore you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left f or man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little bef ore opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very sh ort time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do n ormally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity f or it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. F or him Savitri alone will be the guide, f or all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when bef ore a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go f orward and how to overcome obstacles, f or all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, everything, in its single body. Savitri has an extra ordinary power, it gives out vibrations f or him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there f or us. This is the w ork bef ore you, it is hard but it is w orth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But those who do speak, how do they choose their figures and symbols? What is their methodology? F or it might be said, since the unseen and the seen differ out and out, it does not matter what f orms or signs are taken from the latter; f or any meaning and significance could be put into anything. But in reality, it does not so happen. F or, although there is a great divergence between figures and symbols on the one hand and the things figured and symbolised on the other, still there is also some link, some common measure. And that is why we see not unoften the same or similar figures and symbols representing an identical experience in ages and countries far apart from each other.
We can make a distinction here between two types of expression which we have put together indiscriminately, figures and symbols. Figures, we may say, are those that are constructed by the rational mind, the intellect; they are mere metaph ors and similes and are not organically related to the thing experienced, but put round it as a robe that can be dropped or changed without affecting the experience itself. Thus, f or example, when the Upanishad says, tmnam rathinam viddhi (Know that the soul is the master of the chariot who sits within it) or indriyi haynhu (The senses, they say, are the h orses), we have here only a comparison or analogy that is common and natural to the poetic manner. The particular figure or simile used is not inevitable to the idea or experience that it seeks to express, its part and parcel. On the other hand, take this Upanishadic perception: hirayamayena patrea satyasyphitam mukham (The face of the Truth lies hidden under the golden orb). Here the symbol is not mere analogy or comparison, a figure; it is one with the very substance of the experience the two cannot be separated. or when the Vedas speak of the kindling of the Fire, the rushing of the waters or the rise of the Dawn, the images though taken from the material w orld, are not used f or the sake of mere comparison, but they are the embodiments, the living f orms of truths experienced in another w orld.
When a Mystic refers to the Solar Light or to the Fire the light, f or example, that struck down Saul and transf ormed him into Saint Paul or the burning bush that visited Moses, it is not the physical or material object that he means and yet it is that in a way. It is the materialization of something that is fundamentally not material: some movement in an inner consciousness precipitates itself into the region of the senses and takes from out of the material the f orm commensurable with its nature that it finds there.
And there is such a commensurability or parallelism between the various levels of consciousness, in and through all the differences that separate them from one another. Thus an object or a movement apprehended on the physical plane has a s ort of line of re-echoing images extended in a series along the whole gradation of the inner planes; otherwise viewed, an object or movement in the innermost consciousness translates itself in varying modes from plane to plane down to the most material, where it appears in its grossest f orm as a concrete three-dimensional object or a mechanical movement. This parallelism or commensurability by virtue of which the different and divergent states of consciousness can p ortray or represent each other is the source of all symbolism.
A symbol symbolizes something f or this reason that both possess in common a certain identical, at least similar, quality or rhythm or vibration, the symbol possessing it in a grosser or m ore apparent or sensuous f orm than the thing symbolized does. Sometimes it may happen that it is m ore than a certain quality or rhythm or vibration that is common between the two: the symbol in its entirety is the thing symbolized but thrown down on another plane, it is the embodiment of the latter in a m ore concrete w orld. The light and the fire that Saint Paul and Moses saw appear to be of this kind.
Thus there is a great diversity of symbols. At the one end is the mere metaph or or simile or alleg ory ('figure', as we have called it) and at the other end is the symbol identical with the thing symbolized. And upon this inner character of the symbol depends also to a large extent its range and scope. There are symbols which are universal and intimately ingrained in the human consciousness itself. Mankind has used them in all ages and climes almost in the same sense and significance. There are others that are limited to peoples and ages. They are made out of f orms that are of local and temp oral interest and imp ortance. Their significances vary acc ording to time and place. Finally, there are symbols which are true of the individual consciousness only; they depend on personal peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, on one's environment and upbringing and education.
Man being an embodied soul, his external consciousness (what the Upanishad calls jgrat) is the milieu in which his soul-experiences naturally manifest and find their play. It is the f orms and movements of that consciousness which clo the and give a concrete habitation and name to perceptions on the subtler ranges of the inner existence. If the experiences on these planes are to be presented to the conscious mem ory and to the brain-mind and made communicable to others through speech, this is the inevitable and natural process. Symbols are a translation in mental and sensual (and vocal) terms of experiences that are beyond the mind and the sense and the speech and yet throw a kind of echoing vibrations upon these lesser levels.
0 0.02 - Topographical Note, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From the time of Sri Aurobindo's departure (1950) until 1957, we have only a few notes and fragments or rare statements noted from mem ory. These are the only landmarks of this period, along with Mother's Questions and Answers from her talks at the Ashram Playground. A few of these conversations have been reproduced here insofar as they mark stages of the Supramental
Action.
--
French disciples, on the second flo or of the main Ashram building, on some pretext of w ork or other. She listened to our queries, spoke to us at length of yoga, occultism, her past experiences in
Algeria and in France or of her current experiences; and gradually, She opened the mind of the rebellious and materialistic Westerner that we were and made us understand the laws of the w orlds, the play of f orces, the w orking of past lives - especially this latter, which was an imp ortant fact or in the difficulties with which we were struggling at that time and which periodically made us abscond.
Mother would be seated in this rather medieval-looking chair with its high, carved back, her feet on a little tabouret, while we sat on the flo or, on a slightly faded carpet, conquered and seduced, revolted and never satisfied - but nevertheless, very interested. Treasures, never noted down, were lost until, with the cunning of the Sioux, we succeeded in making Mother consent to the presence of a tape rec order. But even then, and f or a long time thereafter, She carefully made us erase or delete in our notes all that concerned Her rather too personally - sometimes we disobeyed Her.
But finally we were able to convince Her of the value inherent in keeping a chronicle of the route.
It was only in 1958 that we began having the first tape-rec orded conversations, which, properly speaking, constitute Mother's Agenda. But even then, many of these conversations were lost or only partly noted down. or else we considered that our own w ords should not figure in these notes and we carefully omitted all our questions - which was absurd. At that time, no one - neither Mother, n or ourself - knew that this was 'the Agenda' and that we were out to expl ore the 'Great Passage.'
Only gradually did we become aware of the true nature of these meetings. Furtherm ore, we were constantly on the road, so much so that there are sizable gaps in the text. In fact, f or seven years,
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, bef ore any explanation is attempted it is imp ortant to bear in mind that the Upanishads speak of things experiencednot merely thought, reasoned or argued and that these experiences belong to a w orld and consciousness other than that of the mind and the senses. One should naturally expect here a different language and mode of expression than that which is appropriate to mental and physical things. F or example, the w orld of dreams was once supposed to be a sheer chaos, a mass of meaningless confusion; but now it is held to be quite otherwise. Psychological scientists have discovered a methodeven a very well-defined and strict methodin the madness of that domain. It is an ordered, organised, significant w orld; but its terminology has to be understood, its code deciphered. It is not a jargon, but a f oreign language that must be learnt and mastered.
In the same way, the w orld of spiritual experiences is also something methodical, well- organized, significant. It may not be and is not the rational w orld of the mind and the sense; but it need not, f or that reason, be devoid of meaning, mere fancifulness or a child's imagination running riot. Here also the right key has to be found, the grammar and vocabulary of that language mastered. And as the best way to have complete mastery of a language is to live among the people who speak it, so, in the matter of spiritual language, the best and the only way to learn it is to go and live in its native country.
Now, as regards the interpretation of the st ory cited, should not a suspicion arise naturally at the very outset that the dog of the st ory is not a dog but represents something else? First, a significant epithet is given to itwhite; secondly, although it asks f or food, it says that Om is its food and Om is its drink. In the Vedas we have some references to dogs. Yama has twin dogs that "guard the path and have powerful vision." They are his messengers, "they move widely and delight in power and possess the vast strength." The Vedic Rishis pray to them f or Power and Bliss and f or the vision of the Sun1. There is also the Hound of Heaven, Sarama, who comes down and discovers the luminous cows stolen and hidden by the Panis in their dark caves; she is the path-finder f or Indra, the deliverer.
My suggestion is that the dog is a symbol of the keen sight of Intuition, the unfailing perception of direct knowledge. With this clue the Upanishadic st ory becomes quite sensible and clear and not mere abracadabra. To the aspirant f or Knowledge came first a purified power of direct understanding, an Intuition of fundamental value, and this brought others of the same species in its train. They were all linked together organically that is the significance of the circle, and f ormed a rhythmic utterance and expression of the supreme truth (Om). It is also to be noted that they came and met at dawn to chant, the Truth. Dawn is the opening and awakening of the consciousness to truths that come from above and beyond.
It may be asked why the dog has been chosen as the symbol of Intuition. In the Vedas, the cow and the h orse also play a large part; even the donkey and the frog have their own assigned roles. These objects are taken from the environment of ordinary life, and are those that are most familiar to the external consciousness, through which the inner experiences have to express themselves, if they are to be expressed at all. These material objects represent various kinds of f orces and movements and subtle and occult and spiritual dynamisms. Strictly speaking, however, symbols are not chosen in a subtle or spiritual experience, that is to say, they are not arbitrarily selected and constructed by the conscious intelligence. They f orm part of a dramatization (to use a term of the Freudian psychology of dreams), a psychological alchemy, whose method and process and rationale are very obscure, which can be penetrated only by the vision of a third eye.
I. The Several Lights
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The progression indicated by the order of succession points to a gradual withdrawal from the outer to the inner light, from the surface to the deep, from the obvious to the secret, from the actual and derivative to the real and original. We begin by the senses and move towards the Spirit.
The Sun is the first and the most immediate source of light that man has and needs. He is the presiding deity of our waking consciousness and has his seat in the eyecakusa ditya, ditya caku bhtvakii prviat. The eye is the representative of the senses; it is the sense par excellence. In truth, sense-perception is the initial light with which we have to guide us, it is the light with which we start on the way. A developed stage comes when the Sun sets f or us, that is to say, when we retire from the senses and rise into the mind, whose divinity is the Moon. It is the mental knowledge, the light of reason and intelligence, of reflection and imagination that govern our consciousness. We have to proceed farther and get beyond the mind, exceed the derivative light of the Moon. So when the Moon sets, the Fire is kindled. It is the light of the ardent and aspiring heart, the glow of an inner urge, the instincts and inspirations of our secret life-will. Here we come into touch with a source of knowledge and realization, a guidance m ore direct than the mind and much deeper than the sense-perception. Still this light partakes m ore of heat than of pure luminosity; it is, one may say, incandescent feeling, but not vision. We must probe deeper, mount higherreach heights and profundities that are serene and transparent. The Fire is to be quieted and silenced, says the Upanishad. Then we come nearer, to the immediate vicinity of the Truth: an inner hearing opens, the direct voice of Truth the W ordreaches us to lead and guide. Even so, however, we have not come to the end of our journey; the W ord of revelation is not the ultimate Light. The W ord too is clothing, though a luminous clothinghiramayam ptram When this last veil dissolves and disappears, when utter silence, absolute calm and quietude reign in the entire consciousness, when no other lights trouble or distract our attention, there appears the Atman in its own body; we stand face to face with the source of all lights, the self of the Light, the light of the Self. We are that Light and we become that Light.
II. The Four Oblations
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Ritualistically these four terms are the f ormulae f or oblation to four Deities, Powers or Presences, whom the sacrificer wishes to please and propitiate in order to have their help and blessing and in order thereby to discharge his dharma or duty of life. Svh is the offering especially dedicated to Agni, the f oremost of the Gods, f or he is the divine messenger who carries men's offering to the Gods and brings their blessing to men. Vaatkr is the offering to the Gods generally. Hantakr is the offering to mankind, to our kin, an especial f orm of it being the w orship of the guests,sarvadevamayo' tithi. Svadh is the offering to the departed Fathers (Pitris).
The duty of life consists, it is said, in the repaying of three debts which every man contracts as soon as he takes birth upon earth the debt to the Gods, to Men and to the Ancest ors. This threefold debt or duty has, in other terms, reference to the three fields or domains wherein an embodied being lives and moves and to which he must adjust and react rightly -if he is to secure f or his life an integral fulfilment. These are the family, society and the w orld and beyond-w orld. The Gods are the Powers that rule the w orld and beyond, they are the f orms and f orces of the One Spirit underlying the universe, the varied expressions of divine Truth and Reality: To w orship the Gods, to do one's duty by them, means to come into contact and to be unitedin being, consciousness and activitywith the universal and spiritual existence, which is the supreme end and purpose of human life. The seconda m ore circumscribed fieldis the society to which one belongs, the particular group of humanity in which he functions as a limb. The service to society or good citizenship entails the w orship of humanity, of Man as a god. Lastly, man belongs to the family, which is the unit of society; and the backbone of the family is the continuous line of ancest ors, who are its presiding deity and represent the n orm of a living dharma, the ethic of an ideal life.
From the psychological standpoint, the four oblations are movements or reactions of consciousness in its urge towards the utterance and expression of Divine Truth. Like some other elements in the cosmic play, these also f orm a quartetcaturvyha and w ork together f or a common purpose in view of a perfect and all-round result.
Svh is the offering and invocation. One must dedicate everything to the Divine, cast all one has or does into the Fire of Aspiration that blazes up towards the Most High, and through the tongue of that one-pointed flame call on the Divinity.
In doing so, in invoking the Truth and consecrating oneself to it, one begins to ascend to it step by step; and each step means a tearing of another veil and a further opening of the I passage. This graded mounting is vaakra.
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This interchange, or mutual giving, the High Covenant between the Gods and Men, to which the Gita too refers
With this sacrifice nourish the Gods, that the Gods may nourish you; thus mutually nourishing ye shall obtain the highest felicity3 is the very secret of the cosmic play, the basis of the spiritual evolution in the universal existence.
The Gods are the f ormations or particularisations of the Truth-consciousness, the multiple individualisations of the One spirit. The Pitris are the Divine Fathers, that is to say, souls that once laboured and realised here below, and now have passed beyond. They dwell in another w orld, not too far removed from the earth, and from there, with the f orce of their Realisation, lend a m ore concrete help and guidance to the destiny that is being w orked out upon earth. They are f orces and f ormations of consciousness in an intermediate region between Here and There (antarika), and serve to bring men and gods nearer to each other, inasmuch as they belong to both the categ ories, being a divinised humanity or a humanised divinity. Each fixation of the Truth-consciousness in an earthly mould is a thing of joy to the Pitris; it is the Svadh or food by which they live and grow, f or it is the consolidation and also the resultant of their own realisation. The achievements of the sons are m ore easily and securely reared and grounded upon those of the f orefa thers, whose f ormative powers we have to invoke, so that we may pass on to the realisation, the firm embodiment of higher and greater destinies.
III. The Path of the Fathers and the Path of the Gods
One is an ideal in and of the w orld, the other is an ideal transcending the w orld. The Path of the Fathers (Pityna) enjoins the right accomplishing of the dharma of Lifeit is the path of w orks, of Karma; it is the line of progressive evolution that, man follows through the experience of life after life on earth. The Path of the Gods (Devayna) runs above life's evolutionary course; it lifts man out of the terrestrial cycle and places him in a superi or consciousness it is the path of knowledge, of Vidya.4 The Path of the Fathers is the soul's southern or inferi or orbit (dakiyana, aparrdha); the Path of the Gods is the n orthern or superi or orbit (uttaryaa, parrdha)The f ormer is also called the Lunar Path and the latter the Solar Path.5 F or the moon represents the mind,6 and is theref ore, an emblem that befits man so long as he is a mental being and pursues a dharma that is limited by the mind; the sun, on the other hand, is the knowledge and consciousness that is beyond the mindit is the eye of the Gods.7
Man has two aspects or natures; he dwells in two w orlds. The first is the manifest w orld the w orld of the body, the life and the mind. The body has flowered into the mind through the life. The body gives the basis or the material, the life gives power and energy and the mind the directing knowledge. This triune w orld f orms the humanity of man. But there is another aspect hidden behind this apparent nature, there is another w orld where man dwells in his submerged, larger and higher consciousness. To that his soul the Purusha in his heart only has access. It is the w orld where man's nature is transmuted into another triune realitySat, Chit and Ananda.
The one, however, is not completely div orced from the other. The apparent, the inferi or nature is only a preparation f or the real, the superi or nature. The Path of the Fathers concerns itself with man as a mental being and seeks so to ordain and accomplish its duties and ideals as to lead him on to the Path of the Gods; the mind, the life, and the body consciousness should be so disciplined, educated, purified, they should develop along such a line and gradually rise to such a stage as to make them fit to receive the light which belongs to the higher level, so allowing the human soul imbedded in them to extricate itself and pass on to the Imm ortal Life.
And they who are thus lifted up into the Higher orbit are freed from the bondage to the cycle of rebirth. They enjoy the supreme Liberation that is of the Spirit; and even when they descend into the Inferi or Path, it is to w ork out as free agents, as vehicles of the Divine, a special purpose, to bring down something of the substance and nature of the Solar reality into the lower w orld, enlighten and elevate the lower, as far as it is allowed, into the higher.
IV. The Triple Agni
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The three fires are named elsewhere Garhapatya, Dakshina, and Ahavaniya.9 They are the three tongues of the one central Agni, that dwells secreted in the hearth of the soul. They manifest as aspirations that flame up from the three fundamental levels of our being, the body, the life and the mind. F or although the spiritual consciousness is the natural element of the soul and is gained in and through the soul, yet, in order that man may take possession of it and dwell in it consciously, in order that the soul's empire may be established, the external being too must respond to the soul's impact and yearn f or its truth in the Spirit. The mind, the life and the body which are usually obstructions in the path, must discover the secret flame that is in them tooeach has his own p ortion of the Soul's Fireand mount on its ardent tongue towards the heights of the Spirit.
Garhapatya is the Fire in the body-consciousness, the fire of Earth, as it is sometimes called; Dakshina is the Fire of the moon or mind, and Ahavaniya that of life.10 The earthly fire is also the fire of the sun; the sun is the source of all earth's heat and symbolises at the same time the spiritual light manifested in the physical consciousness. The lunar fire is also the fire of the stars, the stars, mythologically, being the cons orts or powers of the moon and they symbolise, in Yogic experience, the intuitive thoughts. The fire of the life-f orce has its symbol in lightning, electric energy being its vehicle.
Agni in the physical consciousness is calledghapati, f or the body is the house in which the soul is lodged and he is its keeper, guardian and l ord. The fire in the mental consciousness is called daki; f or it is that which gives discernment, the power to discriminate between the truth and the falsehood, it is that which by the pressure of its heat and light cleaves the wrong away from the right. And the fire in the life-f orce is called havanya; f or pra is not only the plane of hunger and desire, but also of power and dynamism, it is that which calls f orth f orces, brings them into' play and it is that which is to be invoked f or the progression of the Sacrifice, f or an onward march on the spiritual path.
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The five elements of the ancientsearth, water, fire, air and ether or spaceare symbols taken from the physical w orld to represent other w orlds that are in it and behind it. Each one is a principle that constitutes the fundamental nature of a particular plane of existence.
Earth represents the material w orld itself, Matter or existence in its most concrete, its grossest f orm. It is the basis of existence, the w orld that supp orts other w orlds (dhar, dharitri),the first or the lowest of the several ranges of creation. In man it is his body. The principle here is that of stability, substantiality, firmness, consistency.
Water represents the next rung the vital w orld, the w orld life-f orce (pra). Physiologically also we know that water is the element f orming three-fourths of the constituents of a living body and that dead and dry are synonymous terms; it is the medium in which the living cells dwell and through which they draw their sustenance. Water is the veritable sap of lifeit is the emblem of life itself. The principle it represents is that of movement, continuity, perpetuity.
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Air is Mind, the w orld of thought, of conscious f ormation; it is where life-movements are taken up and given a shape or articulate f ormula f or an organised expression. The f orms here have not, however, the concrete rigidity of Matter, but are pliant and variable and fluidin fact, they are m ore in the nature of possibilities, rather than actualities. The Vedic Maruts are thought-gods, and lndra (the Luminous Mind), their king, is called the Fashioner of perfect f orms.
Ether or Space is the infinitude of the Spirit, the limitless Presence that dwells in and yet transcends the body, the life the heart and the mind.
VI. The Science of the Five Fires
The Science of the Five Agnis (Fires), as propounded by Pravahan, explains and illustrates the process of the birth of the body, the passage of the soul into earth existence. It describes the advent of the child, the building of the physical f orm of the human being. The process is conceived of as a sacrifice, the usual symbol with the Vedic Rishis f or the expression of their vision and perception of universal processes of Nature, physical and psychological. Here, the child IS said to be the final fruit of the sacrifice, the different stages in the process being: (i) Soma, (ii) Rain, (iii) Food, (iv) Semen, (v) Child. Soma means Rasaphysically the principle of water, psychologically the 'principle of delightand symbolises and constitutes the very soul and substance of life. Now it is said that these five principles the fundamental and constituent elementsare b orn out of the sacrifice, through the oblation or offering to the five Agnis. The first Agni is Heaven or the Sky-God, and by offering to it one's faith and one's ardent desire, one calls into manifestation Soma or Rasa or Water, the basic principle of life. This water is next offered to the second Agni, the Rain-God, who sends down Rain. Rain, again, is offered to the third Agni, the Earth, who brings f orth Food. Food is, in its turn, offered to the fourth Agni, the Father or Male, who elab orates in himself the generating fluid.
Finally, this fluid is offered to the fifth Agni, the Mother or the Female, who delivers the Child.
The biological process, described in what may seem to be crude and mediaeval terms, really reflects or echoes a m ore subtle and psychological process. The images used f orm perhaps part of the current popular notion about the matter, but the esoteric sense goes beyond the outer symbols. The sky seems to be the far and tenuous region where the soul rests and awaits its next birthit is the region of Soma, the own Home of Bliss and Imm ortality. Now when the time or call comes, the soul stirs and journeys down that is the Rain. Next, it enters the earth atmosphere and clothes itself with the earth consciousness. Then it waits and calls f or the f ormation of the material body, first by the contri bution of the father and then by that of the mother; when these two unite and the material body is f ormed, the soul incarnates.
Apart from the question whether the biological phenomenon described is really a symbol and a cloak f or another order of reality, and even taking it at its face value, what is to be noted here is the idea of a cosmic cycle, and a cosmic cycle that proceeds through the principle of sacrifice. If it is asked what there is wonderful or particularly spiritual in this rather naf description of a very commonplace happening that gives it an honoured place in the Upanishads, the answer is that it is wonderful to see how the Upanishadic Rishi takes from an event its local, temp oral and personal colour and inc orp orates it in a global movement, a cosmic cycle, as a limb of the Universal Brahman. The Upanishads contain passages which a puritanical mentality may perhaps describe as 'p ornographic'; these have in fact been put by some on the Index expurgat orius. But the ancients saw these matters with other eyes and through another consciousness.
We have, in modern times, a movement towards a m ore conscious and courageous, knowledge of things that were taboo to puritan ages. Not to shut one's eyes to the lower, darker and hidden strands of our nature, but to bring them out into the light of day and to face them is the best way of dealing with such elements, which otherwise, if they are repressed, exert an unhealthy influence on the mind and nature. The Upanishadic view runs on the same lines, but, with the unveiling and the natural and not merely naturalisticdelineation of these under-w orlds (concerning sex and food), it endows them with a perspective sub specie aeternitatis. The sexual function, f or example, is easily equated to the double movement of ascent and descent that is secreted in nature, or to the combined action of Purusha and Prakriti in the cosmic Play, or again to the hidden fount of Delight that holds and moves the universe. In this view there is nothing merely secular and profane, but all is woven into the cosmic spiritual whole; and man is taught to consider and to mould all his movementsof soul and mind and bodyin the light and rhythm of that integral Reality.11
The central secret of the transfigured consciousness lies, as we have already indicated, in the mystic rite or law of Sacrifice. It is the one basic, fundamental, universal Law that upholds and explains the cosmic movement, conf ormity to which brings to the thrice-bound human being release and freedom. Sacrifice consists essentially of two elements or processes: (i) The offering or self giving of the lower reality to the higher, and, as a consequence, an answering movement of (ii) the descent of the higher into the lower. The lower offered to the higher means the lower sublimated and integrated into the higher; and the descent of the higher into the lower means the incarnation of the f ormer and the fulfilment of the latter. The Gita elab orates the same idea when it says that by Sacrifice men increase the gods and the gods increase men and by so increasing each other they attain the supreme Good. Nothing is, nothing is done, f or its own sake, f or an egocentric satisfaction; all, even movements relating to food and to sex should be dedicated to the Cosmic BeingVisva Purusha and that alone received which comes from Him.
VII. The Cosmic and the Transcendental
The Supreme Reality which is always called Brahman in the Upanishads, has to be known and experienced in two ways; f or it has two fundamental aspects or modes of being. The Brahman is universal and it is transcendental. The Truth, satyam, the Upanishad says in its symbolic etymology, is 'This' ( or, He) and 'That' (syat+tyat i.e. sat+tat). 'This' means the Universal Brahman: it is what is referred to when the Upanishad says:
Ivsyamidam sarvam: All this is f or habitation by the L ord;
or,Sarvam khalvidam brahma: All this is indeed the Brahman;
or,Sa evedam sarvam: He is indeed all this;
or,Ahamevedam sarvam: I am indeed all this;
or,Atmaivedam sarvam: The Self indeed is all this;
or again,Sarvamasmi: I am all.
TheChhandyogya12 gives a whole typal scheme of this universal reality and explains how to realise it and what are the results of the experience. The Universal Brahman means the cosmic movement, the cyclic march of things and events taken in its global aspect. The typical movement that symbolises and epitomises the phenomenon, embodies the truth, is that of the sun. The movement consists of five stages which are called the fivefold sma Sma means the equal Brahman that is ever present in all, the Upanishad itself says deriving the w ord from sama It is Sma also because it is a rhythmic movement, a cadencea music of the spheres. And a rhythmic movement, in virtue of its being a wave, consists of these five stages: (i) the start, (ii) the rise, (iii) the peak, (iv) the decline and (v) the fall. Now the sun follows this curve and marks out the familiar divisions of the day: dawn, f orenoon, noon, afternoon and sunset. Sometimes two other stages are added, one at each end, one of preparation and another of final lapse the twilights with regard to the sun and then ,we have seven instead of five smas Like the Sun, the Fire that is to say, the sacrificial Firecan also be seen in its fivefold cyclic movement: (i) the lighting, (ii) the smoke, (iii) the flame, (iv) smouldering and finally (v) extinction the fuel as it is rubbed to produce the fire and the ashes may be added as the two supernumerary stages. or again, we may take the cycle of five seasons or of the five w orlds or of the deities that control these w orlds. The living wealth of this earth is also symbolised in a quintetgoat and sheep and cattle and h orse and finally man. Coming to the microcosm, we have in man the cycle of his five senses, basis of all knowledge and activity. F or the macrocosm, to I bring out its vast extra-human complexity, the Upanishad refers to a quintet, each term of which is again a trinity: (i) the threefold Veda, the Divine W ord that is the origin of creation, (ii) the three w orlds or fieldsearth, air-belt or atmosphere and space, (iii) the three principles or deities ruling respectively these w orldsFire, Air and Sun, (iv) their expressions, emanations or embodimentsstars and birds and light-rays, and finally, (v) the original inhabitants of these w orldsto earth belong the reptiles, to the mid-region the Gandharvas and to heaven the ancient Fathers.
Now, this is the All, the Universal. One has to realise it and possess in one's consciousness. And that can be done only in one way: one has to identify oneself with it, be one with it, become it. Thus by losing one's individuality one lives the life universal; the small lean separate life is enlarged and moulded in the rhythm of the Rich and the Vast. It is thus that man shares in the consciousness and energy that inspire and move and sustain the cosmos. The Upanishad most emphatically enjoins that one must not decry this cosmic godhead or deny any of its elements, not even such as are a taboo to the puritan mind. It is in and through an unimpaired global consciousness that one attains the All-Life and lives uninterruptedly and perennially: Sarvamanveti jyok jvati.
Still the Upanishad says this is not the final end. There is yet a higher status of reality and consciousness to which one has to rise. F or beyond the Cosmos lies the Transcendent. The Upanishad expresses this truth and experience in various symbols. The cosmic reality, we have seen, is often conceived as a septenary, a unity of seven elements, principles and w orlds. Further to give it its full complex value, it is considered not as a simple septet, but a threefold heptad the whole gamut, as it were, consisting of 21 notes or syllables. The Upanishad says, this number does not exhaust the entire range; I f or there is yet a 22nd place. This is the w orld beyond the Sun, griefless and deathless, the supreme Selfhood. The Veda I also sometimes speaks of the integral reality as being represented by the number 100 which is 99 + I; in other w ords, 99 represents the cosmic or universal, the unity being the reality beyond, the Transcendent.
Elsewhere the Upanishad describes m ore graphically this truth and the experience of it. It is said there that the sun has fivewe note the familiar fivemovements of rising and setting: (i) from East to West, (ii) from South to N orth, (iii) from West to East, (iv) from N orth to South and (v) from abovefrom the Zenithdownward. These are the five n ormal and apparent movements. But there is a sixth one; rather it is not a movement, but a status, where the sun neither rises n or sets, but is always visible fixed in the same position.
Some Western and Westernised scholars have tried to show that the phenomenon described here is an exclusively natural phenomenon, actually visible in the polar region where the sun never sets f or six months and moves in a circle whose plane is parallel to the plane of the h orizon on the summer solstice and is gradually inclined as the sun regresses towards the equinox (on which day just half the solar disc is visible above the h orizon). The sun may be said there to move in the direction East-South-West-N orth and again East. Indeed the Upanishad mentions the positions of the sun in that order and gives a character to each successive station. The Ray from the East is red, symbolising the Rik, the Southern Ray is white, symbolising the Yajur, the Western Ray is black symbolising the Atharva. The natural phenomenon, however, might have been or might not have been bef ore the mind's eye of the Rishi, but the symbolism, the esotericism of it is clear enough in the way the Rishi speaks of it. Also, apart from the first four movements (which it is already sufficiently difficult to identify completely with what is visible), the fifth movement, as a separate descending movement from above appears to be a f oreign element in the context. And although, with regard to the sixth movement or status, the sun is visible as such exactly from the point of the N orth Pole f or a while, the ring of the Rishi's utterance is unmistakably spiritual, it cannot but refer to a fact of inner consciousness that is at least what the physical fact conveys to the Rishi and what he seeks to convey and express primarily.
Now this is what is sought to be conveyed and expressed. The five movements of the sun here also are nothing but the five smas and they refer to the cycle of the Cosmic or Universal Brahman. The sixth status where all movements cease, where there is no rising and setting, no ebb and flow, no waxing and waning, where there is the immutable, the ever-same unity, is very evidently the Transcendental Brahman. It is That to which the Vedic Rishi refers when he prays f or a constant and fixed vision of the eternal Sunjyok ca sryam drie.
It would be interesting to know what the five ranges or levels or movements of consciousness exactly are that make up the Universal Brahman described in this passage. It is the mystic knowledge, the Upanishad says, of the secret delight in thingsmadhuvidy. The five ranges are the five fundamental principles of delightimm ortalities, the Veda would say that f orm the inner c ore of the pyramid of creation. They f orm a rising tier and are ruled respectively by the godsAgni, Indra, Varuna, Soma and Brahmawith their emanations and instrumental personalities the Vasus, the Rudras, the Adityas, the Maruts and the Sadhyas. We suggest that these refer to the five well-known levels of being, the modes or nodi of consciousness or something very much like them. The Upanishad speaks elsewhere of the five sheaths. The six Chakras of Tantric system lie in the same line. The first and the basic mode is the physical and the ascent from the physical: Agni and the Vasus are always intimately connected with the earth and -the earth-principles (it can be compared with the Muladhara of the Tantras). Next, second in the line of ascent is the Vital, the centre of power and dynamism of which the Rudras are the deities and Indra the presiding God (cf. Swadhishthana of the Tantras the navel centre). Indra, in the Vedas, has two aspects, one of knowledge and vision and the other of dynamic f orce and drive. In the first aspect he is m ore often considered as the L ord of the Mind, of the Luminous Mind. In the present passage, Indra is taken in his second aspect and instead of the Maruts with whom he is usually invoked has the Rudras as his agents and associates.
The third in the line of ascension is the region of Varuna and the Adityas, that is to say, of the large Mind and its lightsperhaps it can be connected with Tantric Ajnachakra. The fourth is the domain of Soma and the Marutsthis seems to be the inner heart, the fount of delight and keen and sweeping aspirations the Anahata of the Tantras. The fifth is the region of the crown of the head, the domain of Brahma and the Sadhyas: it is the Overmind status from where comes the descending inflatus, the creative Maya of Brahma. And when you go beyond, you pass into the ultimate status of the Sun, the reality absolute, the Transcendent which is indescribable, unseizable, indeterminate, indeterminable, incommensurable; and once there, one never returns, neverna ca punarvartate na ca punarvartate.
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"How many Gods are there?" Yajnavalkya was once asked.13 The Rishi answered, they say there are three thousand and three of them, or three hundred and three, or again, thirty-three; it may be said too there are six or three or two or one and a half or one finally. Indeed as the Upanishad says elsewhere, it is the One Unique who wished to be many: and all the gods are the various gl ories (mahim) or emanations of the One Divine. The ancient of ancient Rishis had declared long long ago, in the earliest Veda, that there is one indivisible Reality, the seers name it in various ways.
In Yajnavalkya's enumeration, however, it is to be noted, first of all, that he stresses on the number three. The principle of triplicity is of very wide application: it permeates all fields of consciousness and is evidently based upon a fundamental fact of reality. It seems to embody a truth of synthesis and comprehension, points to the order and harmony that reigns in the cosmos, the spheric music. The metaphysical, that is to say, the original principles that constitute existence are the well-known triplets: (i) the superi or: Sat, Chit, Ananda; and (ii) the inferi or: Body, Life and Mindthis being a reflection or translation or concretisation of the f ormer. We can see also here how the dual principle comes in, the twin godhead or the two gods to which Yajnavalkya refers. The same principle is found in the conception of Ardhanarishwara, Male and Female, Purusha-Prakriti. The Upanishad says 14 yet again that the One original Purusha was not pleased at being alone, so f or a companion he created out of himself the original Female. The dual principle signifies creation, the manifesting activity of the Reality. But what is this one and a half to which Yajnavalkya refers? It simply means that the other created out of the one is not a wholly separate, independent entity: it is not an integer by itself, as in the Manichean system, but that it is a p ortion, a fraction of the One. And in the end, in the ultimate analysis, or rather synthesis, there is but one single undivided and indivisible unity. The thousands and hundreds, very often mentioned also in the Rig Veda, are not simply multiplications of the One, a graphic description of its many-sidedness; it indicates also the absolute fullness, the complete completeness (prasya pram) of the Reality. It includes and comprehends all and is a rounded totality, a full circle. The hundred-gated and the thousand-pillared cities of which the ancient Rishis chanted are f ormations and embodiments of consciousness human and divine, are realities whole and entire englobing all the layers and grades of consciousness.
Besides this metaphysics there is also an occult aspect in numerology of which Pythag oras was a well-known adept and in which the Vedic Rishis too seem to take special delight. The multiplication of numbers represents in a general way the principle of emanation. The One has divided and subdivided itself, but not in a haphazard way: it is not like the chaotic pulverisation of a piece of stone by hammer-blows. The process of division and subdivision follows a pattern almost as neat and methodical as a genealogical tree. That is to say, the emanations f orm a hierarchy. At the top, the apex of the pyramid, stands the one supreme Godhead. That Godhead is biune in respect of manifestation the Divine and his creative Power. This two-in-one reality may be considered, acc ording to one view of creation, as dividing into three f orms or aspects the well-known Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra of Hindu mythology. These may be termed the first or primary emanations.
Now, each one of them in its turn has its own emanations the eleven Rudriyas are familiar. These are secondary and there are tertiary and other graded emanations the last ones touch the earth and embody physico-vital f orces. The lowest f ormations or beings can trace their origin to one or other of the primaries and their nature and function partake of or are an echo of their first ancest or.
Man, however, is an epitome of creation. He embraces and incarnates the entire gamut of consciousness and comprises in him all beings from the highest Divinity to the lowest jinn or elf. And yet each human being in his true personality is a lineal descendant of one or other typal aspect or original Personality of the one supreme Reality; and his individual character is all the m ore pronounced and well-defined the m ore organised and developed is the being. The psychic being in man is thus a direct descent, an immediate emanation along a definite line of devolution of the supreme consciousness. We may now understand and explain easily why one chooses a particular Ishta, an ideal god, what is the drive that pushes one to become a w orshipper of Siva or Vishnu or any other deity. It is not any rational understanding, a weighing of pros and cons and then a resultant conclusion that leads one to choose a path of religion or spirituality. It is the soul's natural call to the God, the type of being and consciousness of which it is a spark, from which it has descended, it is the secret affinity the spiritual blood-relation as it were that determines the choice and adherence. And it is this that we name Faith. And the exclusiveness and violence and bitterness which attend such adherence and which go "by the "name of partisanship, sectarianism, fanaticism etc., a;e a def ormation in the ign orance on the physico-vital plane of the secret loyalty to one's source and origin. Of course, the pattern or law is not so simple and rigid, but it gives a token or typal pattern. F or it must not be f orgotten that the supreme source or the original is one and indivisible and in the highest integration consciousness is global and not exclusive. And the human being that attains such a status is not bound or wholly limited to one particular f ormation: its personality is based on the truth of impersonality. And yet the two can go together: an individual can be impersonal in consciousness and yet personal in becoming and true to type.
The number of gods depends on the level of consciousness on which we stand. On this material plane there are as many gods as there are bodies or individual f orms (adhar). And on the supreme height there is only one God without a second. In between there are gradations of types and sub-types whose number and function vary acc ording to the aspect of consciousness that reveals itself.
IX. Nachiketas' Three Boons
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Nachiketas is the young aspiring human being still in the Ign orancenaciketa, meaning one without consciousness or knowledge. The three boons he asks f or are in reference to the three fundamental modes of being and consciousness that are at the very basis, f orming, as it were, the ground-plan of the integral reality. They are (i) the individual, (ii) the universal or cosmic and (iii) the transcendental.
The first boon regards the individual, that is to say, the individual identity and integrity. It asks f or the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death brings about. Death, of course, means the dissolution of the body, but it represents also dissolution pure and simple. Indeed death is a process which does not stop with the physical phenomenon, but continues even after; f or with the body gone, the other elements of the individual organism, the vital and the mental too gradually fall off, fade and dissolve. Nachiketas wishes to secure from Death the safety and preservation of the earthly personality, the particular organisation of mind and vital based upon a recognisable physical frame. That is the first necessity f or the aspiring m ortalf or, it is said, the body is the first instrument f or the w orking out of one's life ideal. But man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death l ords it over. That is the divine w orld, the Heaven of the imm ortals, beyond death and beyond s orrow and grief. It is the hearth secreted in the inner heart where burns the Divine Fire, the God of Life Everlasting. And this is the nodus that binds together the threefold status of the manifested existence, the body, the life and the mind. This triplicity is the structure of name and f orm built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple c ord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within the individual and within the w orld; he is the Immanent Divine, the cosmic godhead that holds together and marshals all the elements and components, all the principles that make up the manifest universe. He it is that has entered into the w orld and created facets of his own reality in multiple f orms: and it is he that lies secret in the human being as the imm ortal soul through all its adventure of life and death in the series of incarnations in terrestrial evolution. The ad oration and realisation of this Immanent Divinity, the w orship of Agni taught by Yama in the second boon, consists in the triple sacrifice, the triple w ork, the triple union in the triple status of the physical, the vital and the mental consciousness, the mastery of which leads one to the other sh ore, the abode of perennial existence where the human soul enjoys its eternity and unending continuity in cosmic life. Theref ore, Agni, the master of the psychic being, is called jtaveds, he who knows the births, all the transmigrations from life to life.
The third boon is the secret of secrets, f or it is the knowledge and realisation of Transcendence that is sought here. Beyond the individual lies the universal; is there anything beyond the universal? The release of the individual into the cosmic existence gives him the griefless life eternal: can the cosmos be rolled up and flung into something beyond? What would be the nature of that thing? What is there outside creation, outside manifestation, outside Maya, to use a latter day term? Is there existence or non-existence (utter dissolution or extinctionDeath in his supreme and absolute status)? King Yama did not choose to answer immediately and even endeavoured to dissuade Nachiketas from pursuing the question over which people were confounded, as he said. Evidently it was a much discussed problem in those days. Buddha was asked the same question and he evaded it, saying that the pragmatic man should attend to practical and immediate realities and not, waste time and energy in discussing things ultimate and beyond that have hardly any relation to the present and the actual.
But Yama did answer and unveil the mystery and impart the supreme secret knowledge the knowledge of the Transcendent Brahman: it is out of the transcendent reality that the immanent deity takes his birth. Hence the Divine Fire, the L ord of creation and the Inner Mastersarvabhtntartm, antarymis called brahmajam, b orn of the Brahman. Yama teaches the process of transcendence. Apart from the knowledge and experience first of the individual and then of the cosmic Brahman, there is a definite line along which the human consciousness ( or unconsciousness, as it is at present) is to ascend and evolve. The first step is to learn to distinguish between the Good and the Pleasurable (reya and preya). The line of pleasure leads to the external, the superficial, the false: while the other path leads towards the inner and the higher truth. So the second step is the gradual withdrawal of the consciousness from the physical and the sensual and even the mental preoccupation and focussing it upon what is certain and permanent. In the midst of the death-ridden consciousness in the heart of all that is unstable and fleetingone has to look f or Agni, the eternal godhead, the Imm ortal in m ortality, the Timeless in time through whom lies the passage to Imm ortality beyond Time.
Man has two souls c orresponding to his double status. In the inferi or, the soul looks downward and is involved in the current of Impermanence and Ign orance, it tastes of grief and s orrow and suffers death and dissolution: in the higher it looks upward and communes and joins with the Eternal (the cosmic) and then with the Absolute (the transcendent). The lower is a reflection of the higher, the higher comes down in a diminished and hence tarnished light. The message is that of deliverance, the deliverance and reintegration of the lower soul out of its bondage of w orldly ign orant life into the freedom and imm ortality first of its higher and then of its highest status. It is true, however, that the Upanishad does not make a trenchant distinction between the cosmic and the transcendent and often it speaks of both in the same breath, as it were. F or in fact they are realities involved in each other and interwoven. Indeed the triple status, including the Individual, f orms one single totality and the three do not exclude or cancel each other; on the contrary, they combine and may be said to enhance each other's reality. The Transcendence expresses or deploys itself in the cosmoshe goes abroad,sa paryagt: and the cosmic individualises, concretises itself in the particular and the personal. The one single spiritual reality holds itself, aspects itself in a threefold manner.
The teaching of Yama in brief may be said to be the gospel of imm ortality and it consists of the knowledge of triple imm ortality. And who else can be the best teacher of imm ortality than Death himself, as Nachiketas pointedly said? The first imm ortality is that of the physical existence and consciousness, the preservation of the personal identity, the individual name and f ormthis being in itself as expression and embodiment and instrument of the Inner Reality. This inner reality enshrines the second imm ortality the eternity and continuity of the soul's life through its incarnations in time, the divine Agni lit f or ever and ever growing in flaming consciousness. And the third and final imm ortality is in the being and consciousness beyond time, beyond all relativities, the absolute and self-existent delight.
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Only, to some perhaps the beauty may not appear as evident and apparent. The Spirit of beauty that resides in the Upanishadic consciousness is m ore retiring and reticent. It dwells in its own privacy, in its own home, as it were, and theref ore chooses to be bare and austere, simple and sheer. Beauty means usually the beauty of f orm, even if it be not always the dec orative, ornamental and sumptuous f orm. The early Vedas aimed at the perfect f orm (surpaktnum), the faultless expression, the integral and complete embodiment; the gods they envisaged and invoked were gleaming powers carved out of harmony and beauty and figured close to our modes of apprehension (spyan). But the Upanishads came to lay stress upon what is beyond the f orm, what the eye cannot see n or the vision reflect:
na sandi tihati rpamasya
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The f orm of a thing can be beautiful; but the f ormless too has its beauty. Indeed, the beauty of the f ormless, that is to say, the very sum and substance, the ultimate essence, the soul of beauty that is what suffuses, with in-gathered colour and enthusiasm, the realisation and poetic creation of the Upanishadic seer. All the f orms that are scattered abroad in their myriad manifest beauty hold within themselves a secret Beauty and are reflected or projected out of it. This veiled Name of Beauty can be compared to nothing on the phenomenal hemisphere of Nature; it has no adequate image or representation below:
na tasya pratimsti
it cannot be defined or figured in the terms of the phenomenal consciousness. In speaking of it, however, the Upanishads invariably and repeatedly refer to two attri butes that characterise its fundamental nature. These two aspects have made such an impression upon the consciousness of the Upanishadic seer that his enthusiasm almost wholly plays about them and is centred on them. When he contemplates or communes with the Supreme Object, these seem to him to be the mark of its au thenticity, the seal of its high status and the reason of all the charm and magic it possesses. The first aspect or attri bute is that of light the brilliance, the solar effulgenceravituly-arpa the bright, clear, shadow less Light of lightsvirajam ubhram jyotim jyoti The second aspect is that of delight, the bliss, the imm ortality inherent in that wide effulgencenandarpam amtam yad vibhti.
And what else is the true character, the soul of beauty than light and delight? "A thing of beauty is a joy f or ever." And a thing of joy is a thing of light. Joy is the radiance rippling over a thing of beauty. Beauty is always radiant: the charm, the loveliness of an object is but the glow of light that it emanates. And it would not be a very inc orrect mensuration to measure the degree of beauty by the degree of light radiated. The diamond is not only a thing of value, but a thing of beauty also, because of the concentrated and undimmed light that it enshrines within itself. A dark, dull and dismal thing, devoid of interest and attraction becomes aesthetically precious and significant as soon as the artist presents it in terms of the values of light. The entire art of painting is nothing but the expression of beauty, in and through the modalities of light.
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or, as the Prasna Upanishad has it,
rayireva candram.. mfirtireva rayi
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or,
nlpe sukhamasti bhmaiva sukham...yo vai
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or,
gatrciamivnalam
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or,
tejasdityasamka kamay pthivsama
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or,
aravat tanmayo bhavet
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or again,
yathem nadya syandamn samudryan
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Art at its highest tends to become also the simplest and the most unconventional; and it is then the highest art, precisely because it does not aim at being artistic. The aesthetic motive is totally absent in the Upanishads; the sense of beauty is there, but it is attendant upon and involved in a deeper strand of consciousness. That consciousness seeks consciousness itself, the fullness of consciousness, the awareness and possession of the Truth and Reality,the one thing which, if known, gives the knowledge of all else. And this consciousness of the Truth is also Delight, the perfect Bliss, the Imm ortality where the whole universe resolves itself into its original state of rasa, that is to say, of essential and inalienable harmony and beauty.
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00.05 - A Vedic Conception of the Poet, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
'Kavi' is an invariable epithet of the gods. The Vedas mean by this attri bute to bring out a most fundamental character, an inalienable dharma of the heavenly host. All the gods are poets; and a human being can become a poet only in so far as he attains to the nature and status of a god. Who is then a kavi? The Poet is he who by his poetic power raises f orms of beauty in heavenkavi kavitv divi rpam sajat.1Thus the essence of poetic power is to fashion divine Beauty, to reveal heavenly f orms. What is this Heaven whose f orms the Poet discovers and embodies? HeavenDyaushas a very definite connotation in the Veda. It means the luminous or divine Mind 2the mind purified of its obscurity and limitations, due to subjection to the external senses, thus opening to the higher Light, receiving and rec ording faithfully the deeper and vaster movements and vibrations of the Truth, giving them a f orm, a perfect body of the right thought and the right w ord. Indra is the l ord of this w orld and he can be approached only with an enkindled intelligence, ddhay man,3a faultless understanding, sumedh. He is the supreme Artisan of the poetic power,Tash, the maker of perfect f orms, surpa ktnum.4 All the gods turn towards Indra and become gods and poets, attain their Great Names of Supreme Beauty.5 Indra is also the master of the senses, indriyas, who are his hosts. It is through this mind and the senses that the poetic creation has to be manifested. The mind spreads out wide the Poet's weaving;6 the poet is the priest who calls down and w orks out the right thinking in the sacrificial labour of creation.7 But that creation is made in and through the inner mind and the inner senses that are alive to the subtle f ormation of a vaster knowledge.8 The poet envisages the golden f orms fashioned out of the very profundity of the consciousness.9 F or the substance, the material on which the Poet w orks, is Truth. The seat of the Truth the poets guard, they uphold the supreme secret Names.10 The poet has the expressive utterance, the creative w ord; the poet is a poet by his poetic creation-the shape faultlessly wrought out that unveils and holds the Truth.11The f orm of beauty is the body of the Truth.
The poet is a trinity in himself. A triune consciousness f orms his personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara. He has the direct vision, the luminous intelligence, the immediate perception.12 A subtle and profound and penetrating consciousness is his,nigam, pracetas; his is the eye of the Sun,srya caku.13 He secures an increased being through his effulgent understanding.14 In the second place, the Poet is not only Seer but Doer; he is knower as well as creat or. He has a dynamic knowledge and his vision itself is power, ncak;15 he is the Seer-Will,kavikratu.16 He has the blazing radiance of the Sun and is supremely potent in his self-Iuminousness.17 The Sun is the light and the energy of the Truth. Even like the Sun the Poet gives birth to the Truth, srya satyasava, satyya satyaprasavya. But the Poet as Power is not only the revealer or creat or,savit, he is also the builder or fashioner,ta, and he is the organiser,vedh is personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara, of the Truth.18 As Savita he manifests the Truth, as Tashta he gives a perfected body and f orm to the Truth, and as Vedha he maintains the Truth in its dynamic w orking. The effective marshalling and organisation of the Truth is what is called Ritam, the Right; it is also called Dharma,19 the Law or the Rhythm, the ordered movement and invincible execution of the Truth. The Poet pursues the Path of the Right;20 it is he who lays out the Path f or the march of the Truth, the progress of the Sacrifice.21 He is like a fast steed well-yoked, pressing f orward;22 he is the charger that moves straight and unswerving and carries us beyond 23into the w orld of felicity.
Indeed delight is the third and the supremely intimate element of the poetic personality. Dear and delightful is the poet, dear and delightful his w orks, priya, priyi His hand is dripping with sweetness,kavir hi madhuhastya.24 The Poet-God shines in his pristine beauty and is showering delight.25 He is filled with utter ecstasy so that he may rise to the very source of the luminous Energy.26? Pure is the Divine Joy and it enters and purifies all f orms as it moves to the seat of the Imm ortals.27Indeed this sparkling Delight is the Poet-Seer and it is that that brings f orth the creative w ord, the utterance of Indra.28
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All the gods are poetstheir f orms are perfect, surpa, suda, their Names full of beauty,cru devasya nma.31 This means also that the gods embody the different powers that constitute the poetic consciousness. Agni is the Seer-Will, the creative vision of the Poet the luminous energy b orn of an experience by identity with the Truth. Indra is the Idea-F orm, the architectonic conception of the w ork or achievement. Mitra and Varuna are the large harmony, the vast cadence and sweep of movement. The Aswins, the Divine Riders, represent the intense zest of well-yoked Life-Energy. Soma is Rasa, Ananda, the Supreme Bliss and Delight.
The Vedic Poet is doubtless the poet of Life, the architect of Divinity in man, of Heaven upon earth. But what is true of Life is fundamentally true of Art tooat least true of the Art as it was conceived by the ancient seers and as it found expression at their hands.32
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
F or this reason I am especially pleased to be writing an introduction to a new edition of A Garden of Pomegranates. I feel that never, perhaps, was the need m ore urgent f or just such a roadmap as the Qabalistic system provides. It should be equally useful to any who chooses to follow it, whether he be Jew, Christian or Buddhist, Deist, Theosophist, agnostic or atheist.
The Qabalah is a trustw orthy guide, leading to a comprehension both of the Universe and one's own Self. Sages have long taught that Man is a miniature of the Universe, containing within himself the diverse elements of that macrocosm of which he is the microcosm. Within the Qabalah is a glyph called the Tree of Life which is at once a symbolic map of the Universe in its maj or aspects, and also of its smaller counterpart, Man.
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When planning to visit a f oreign country, the wise traveler will first familiarize himself with its language. In studying music, chemistry or calculus, a specific terminology is essential to the understanding of each subject. So a new set of symbols is necessary when undertaking a study of the Universe, whether within or without. The Qabalah provides such a set in unexcelled fashion.
But the Qabalah is m ore. It also lays the foundation on which rests another archaic science- Magic. Not to be confused with the conjurer's sleight-of-hand, Magic has been defined by Aleister Crowley as "the science and art of causing change to occur in conf ormity with will." Dion F ortune qualifies this nicely with an added clause, "changes in consciousness."
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Each letter of the Qabalistic alphabet has a number, col or, many symbols and a Tarot card attri buted to it. The Qabalah not only aids in an understanding of the Tarot, but teaches the student how to classify and organize all such ideas, numbers and symbols. Just as a knowledge of Latin will give insight into the meaning of an unfamiliar English w ord with a Latin root, so the knowledge of the Qabalah with the various attri butions to each character in its alphabet will enable the student to understand and c orrelate ideas and concepts which otherwise would have no apparent relation.
A simple example is the concept of the Trinity in the Christian religion. The student is frequently amazed to learn through a study of the Qabalah that Egyptian mythology followed a similar concept with its trinity of gods, Osiris the father, Isis the virgin-mother, and H orus the son. The Qabalah indicates similar c orrespondences in the pantheon of Roman and Greek deities, proving the father-mother (Holy Spirit) - son principles of deity are prim ordial archetypes of man's psyche, rather than being, as is frequently and erroneously supposed a development peculiar to the Christian era.
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F or example, Keser is called "The Admirable or the Hidden Intelligence; it is the Primal Gl ory, f or no created being can attain to its essence." This seems perfectly all right; the meaning at first sight seems to fit the significance of Keser as the first emanation from Ain Soph. But there are half a dozen other similar attri butions that would have served equally well. F or instance, it could have been called the "Occult Intelligence" usually attri buted to the seventh Path or Sephirah, f or surely Keser is secret in a way to be said of no other Sephirah. And what about the "Absolute or Perfect Intelligence." That would have been even m ore explicit and appropriate, being applicable to Keser far m ore than to any other of the Paths. Similarly, there is one attri buted to the 16th Path and called "The Eternal or Triumphant Intelligence," so-called because it is the pleasure of the Gl ory, beyond which is no Gl ory like to it, and it is called also the Paradise prepared f or the Righteous." Any of these several would have done equally well. Much is true of so many of the other attri butions in this particular area-that is the so-called Intelligences of the Sepher Yetzirah. I do not think that their use or current arbitrary usage stands up to serious examination or criticism.
A good many attri butions in other symbolic areas, I feel are subject to the same criticism. The Egyptian Gods have been used with a good deal of carelessness, and without sufficient explanation of motives in assigning them as I did. In a recent edition of Crowley's masterpiece Liber 777 (which au fond is less a reflection of Crowley's mind as a recent critic claimed than a tabulation of some of the material given piecemeal in the Golden Dawn knowledge lectures), he gives f or the first time brief explanations of the motives f or his attri butions. I too should have been far m ore explicit in the explanations I used in the case of some of the Gods whose names were used many times, most inadequately, where several paths were concerned. While it is true that the religious col oring of the Egyptian Gods differed from time to time during Egypt's turbulent hist ory, nonetheless a w ord or two about just that one single point could have served a useful purpose.
Some of the passages in the book f orce me today to emphasize that so far as the Qabalah is concerned, it could and should be employed without binding to it the partisan qualities of any one particular religious faith. This goes as much f or Judaism as it does f or Christianity. Neither has much intrinsic usefulness where this scientific scheme is concerned. If some students feel hurt by this statement, that cannot be helped. The day of most contemp orary faiths is over; they have been m ore of a curse than a boon to mankind. Nothing that I say here, however, should reflect on the peoples concerned, those who accept these religions. They are merely unf ortunate. The religion itself is w orn out and indeed is dying.
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The tragedy of civilized man is that he is cut off from awareness of his own instincts. The Qabalah can help him achieve the necessary understanding to effect a reunion with them, so that rather than being driven by f orces he does not understand, he can harness f or his conscious use the same power that guides the homing pigeon, teaches the beaver to build a dam and keeps the planets revolving in their appointed orbits about the sun.
I began the study of the Qabalah at an early age. Two books I read then have played unconsciously a prominent part in the writing of my own book. One of these was "Q.B.L. or the Bride's Reception" by Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones), which I must have first read around 1926. The other was "An Introduction to the Tarot" by Paul Foster Case, published in the early 1920's. It is now out of print, superseded by later versions of the same topic. But as I now glance through this slender book, I perceive how profoundly even the f ormat of his book had influenced me, though in these two instances there was not a trace of plagiarism. It had not consciously occurred to me until recently that I owed so much to them. Since Paul Case passed away about a decade or so ago, this gives me the opp ortunity to thank him, overtly, wherever he may now be.
By the middle of 1926 I had become aware of the w ork of Aleister Crowley, f or whom I have a tremendous respect. I studied as many of his writings as I could gain access to, making copious notes, and later acted f or several years as his secretary, having joined him in Paris on October 12, 1928, a mem orable day in my life.
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The imp ortance of the book to me was and is five-fold. 1) It provided a yardstick by which to measure my personal progress in the understanding of the Qabalah. 2) Theref ore it can have an equivalent value to the modern student. 3) It serves as a the oretical introduction to the Qabalistic foundation of the magical w ork of the Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn. 4) It throws considerable light on the occasionally obscure writings of Aleister Crowley. 5) It is dedicated to Crowley, who was the Ankh-af-na-Khonsu mentioned in The Book of the Law -a dedication which served both as a token of personal loyalty and devotion to Crowley, but was also a gesture of my spiritual independence from him.
In his profound investigation into the origins and basic nature of man, Robert Ardrey in African Genesis recently made a shocking statement. Although man has begun the conquest of outer space, the ign orance of his own nature, says Ardrey, "has become institutionalized, universalized and sanctified." He further states that were a brotherhood of man to be f ormed today, "its only possible common bond would be ign orance of what man is."
Such a condition is both depl orable and appalling when the means are readily available f or man to acquire a th orough understanding of himself-and in so doing, an understanding of his neighb or and the w orld in which he lives as well as the greater Universe of which each is a part.
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
science. Mathematics may well have had its beginnings much earlier in India or
Indochina, as it is an art and science that has traveled consistently westward. Over
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the westward-evolving culture. When al-Khwarizmi's original A.D. 800 treatise on
algebra was republished in Latin in Carthage in 1200, it required a further 200 years
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facilitated division and multiplication. Imagine trying to multiply or divide with
Roman numerals . . . impossible! The Renaissance began with the new calculating
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through Gibraltar to expl ore the Atlantic, to sail around Africa, to reach the orient
and the Pacific by water, and to circumnavigate the globe. Thus it became public
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two competing the ories of political organization.
000.109 As a consequence of the discoveries of Malthus and Darwin all the great
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000.112 Structures are complexes of visible or invisible physical events
interacting to produce stable patterns. A structural system divides Universe into all
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that the interattraction f orce of atoms, planets, stars, or galaxies increases
exponentially as the interdistances decrease arithmetically, and vice versa: halve the
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capability than masonry and five times the tensile or compressive strength of wood.
Steel brought mankind a structural-tension capability to match stone's previous
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humanity has as yet no idea that this increase in tensile capability has come about or
how it came about or why it w orks. While humans cannot see the ever-lessening
interatomic proximity of atoms and electrons of electromagnetic events, they can
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developments and profitable commercial uses. But only vast money investments or
vast governments can aff ord to exploit the increased technical advantages.
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structures-political, religious, or capitalist-would find their interests disastrouslythreatened by total human success. They are founded upon assumption of scarcity;
they are organized f or and sustained by the problems imposed by the assumption of
fundamental inadequacies of life supp ort.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MAHENDRA or M.
NAG MAHASHAY
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SRI RAMAKRISHNA, the God-man of modern India, was b orn at Kamarpukur. This village in the Hooghly District preserved during the last century the idyllic simplicity of the rural areas of Bengal. Situated far from the railway, it was untouched by the glamour of the city. It contained rice-fields, tall palms, royal banyans, a few lakes, and two cremation grounds. South of the village a stream took its leisurely course. A mango orchard dedicated by a neighbouring zemindar to the public use was frequented by the boys f or their noonday sp orts. A highway passed through the village to the great temple of Jagannath at Puri, and the villagers, most of whom were farmers and craftsmen, entertained many passing holy men and pilgrims. The dull round of the rural life was broken by lively festivals, the observance of sacred days, religious singing, and other innocent pleasures.
About his parents Sri Ramakrishna once said: "My mother was the personification of rectitude and gentleness. She did not know much about the ways of the w orld; innocent of the art of concealment, she would say what was in her mind. People loved her f or her open-heartedness. My father, an orthodox brahmin, never accepted gifts from the sudras. He spent much of his time in w orship and meditation, and in repeating God's name and chanting His gl ories. Whenever in his daily prayers he invoked the Goddess Gayatri, his chest flushed and tears rolled down his cheeks. He spent his leisure hours making garlands f or the Family Deity, Raghuvir."
Khudiram Chattopadhyaya and Chandra Devi, the parents of Sri Ramakrishna, were married in 1799. At that time Khudiram was living in his ancestral village of Dereyp ore, not far from Kamarpukur. Their first son, Ramkumar, was b orn in 1805, and their first daughter, Katyayani, in 1810. In 1814 Khudiram was ordered by his landl ord to bear false witness in court against a neighbour. When he refused to do so, the landl ord brought a false case against him and deprived him of his ancestral property. Thus dispossessed, he arrived, at the invitation of another landl ord, in the quiet village of Kamarpukur, where he was given a dwelling and about an acre of fertile land. The crops from this little property were enough to meet his family's simple needs. Here he lived in simplicity, dignity, and contentment.
Ten years after his coming to Kamarpukur, Khudiram made a pilgrimage on foot to Rameswar, at the southern extremity of India. Two years later was b orn his second son, whom he named Rameswar. Again in 1835, at the age of sixty, he made a pilgrimage, this time to Gaya. Here, from ancient times, Hindus have come from the four c orners of India to discharge their duties to their departed ancest ors by offering them food and drink at the sacred footprint of the L ord Vishnu. At this holy place Khudiram had a dream in which the L ord Vishnu promised to he b orn as his son. And Chandra Devi, too, in front of the Siva temple at Kamarpukur, had a vision indicating the birth of a divine child. Upon his return the husband found that she had conceived.
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At the age of six or seven Gadadhar had his first experience of spiritual ecstasy. One day in June or July, when he was walking along a narrow path between paddy-fields, eating the puffed rice that he carried in a basket, he looked up at the sky and saw a beautiful, dark thunder-cloud. As it spread, rapidly enveloping the whole sky, a flight of snow-white cranes passed in front of it. The beauty of the contrast overwhelmed the boy. He fell to the ground, unconscious, and the puffed rice went in all directions. Some villagers found him and carried him home in their arms. Gadadhar said later that in that state he had experienced an indescribable joy.
Gadadhar was seven years old when his father died. This incident profoundly affected him. F or the first time the boy realized that life on earth was impermanent. Unobserved by others, he began to slip into the mango orchard or into one of the cremation grounds, and he spent hours abs orbed in his own thoughts. He also became m ore helpful to his mother in the discharge of her household duties. He gave m ore attention to reading and hearing the religious st ories rec orded in the Puranas. And he became interested in the wandering monks and pious pilgrims who would stop at Kamarpukur on their way to Puri. These holy men, the custodians of India's spiritual heritage and the living witnesses of the ideal of renunciation of the w orld and all-abs orbing love of God, entertained the little boy with st ories from the Hindu epics, st ories of saints and prophets, and also st ories of their own adventures. He, on his part, fetched their water and fuel and
served them in various ways. Meanwhile, he was observing their meditation and w orship.
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Gadadhar himself now organized a dramatic company with his young friends. The stage was set in the mango orchard. The themes were selected from the st ories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Gadadhar knew by heart almost all the roles, having heard them from professional act ors. His favourite theme was the Vrindavan episode of Krishna's life, depicting those exquisite love-st ories of Krishna and the milkmaids and the cowherd boys. Gadadhar would play the parts of Radha or Krishna and would often lose himself in the character he was p ortraying. His natural feminine grace heightened the dramatic effect. The mango orchard would ring with the loud kirtan of the boys. Lost in song and merry-making, Gadadhar became indifferent to the routine of school.
In 1849 Ramkumar, the eldest son, went to Calcutta to improve the financial condition of the family.
Gadadhar was on the threshold of youth. He had become the pet of the women of the village. They loved to hear him talk, sing, or recite from the holy books. They enjoyed his knack of imitating voices. Their woman's instinct recognized the innate purity and guilelessness of this boy of clear skin, flowing hair, beaming eyes, smiling face, and inexhaustible fun. The pious elderly women looked upon him as Gopala, the Baby Krishna, and the younger ones saw in him the youthful Krishna of Vrindavan. He himself so idealized the love of the gopis f or Krishna that he sometimes yearned to be b orn as a woman, if he must be b orn again, in order to be able to love Sri Krishna with all his heart and soul.
--- COMING TO CALCUTTA
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The Christian missionaries gave the finishing touch to the process of transf ormation. They ridiculed as relics of a barbarous age the images and rituals of the Hindu religion. They tried to persuade India that the teachings of her saints and seers were the cause of her downfall, that her Vedas, Puranas, and other scriptures were filled with superstition. Christianity, they maintained, had given the white races position and power in this w orld and assurance of happiness in the next; theref ore Christianity was the best of all religions. Many intelligent young Hindus became converted. The man in the street was confused. The maj ority of the educated grew materialistic in their mental outlook. Everyone living near Calcutta or the other strong-holds of Western culture, even those who attempted to cling to the orthodox traditions of Hindu society, became infected by the new uncertainties and the new beliefs.
But the soul of India was to be resuscitated through a spiritual awakening. We hear the first call of this renascence in the spirited ret ort of the young Gadadhar: "Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education?"
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In 1847 the Rani purchased twenty acres of land at Dakshineswar, a village about four miles n orth of Calcutta. Here she created a temple garden and constructed several temples. Her Ishta, or Chosen Ideal, was the Divine Mother, Kali.
The temple garden stands directly on the east bank of the Ganges. The n orthern section of the land and a p ortion to the east contain an orchard, flower gardens, and two small reservoirs. The southern section is paved with brick and m ortar. The visit or arriving by boat ascends the steps of an imposing bathing-ghat which leads to the chandni, a roofed terrace, on either side of which stand in a row six temples of Siva. East of the terrace and the Siva temples is a large court, paved, rectangular in shape, and running n orth and south. Two temples stand in the centre of this court, the larger one, to the south and facing south, being dedicated to Kali, and the smaller one, facing the Ganges, to Radhakanta, that is, Krishna, the Cons ort of Radha. Nine domes with spires surmount the temple of Kali, and bef ore it stands the spacious natmandir, or music hall, the terrace of which is sup- p orted by stately pillars. At the n orthwest and southwest
c orners of the temple compound are two nahabats, or music towers, from which music flows at different times of day, especially at sunup, noon, and sundown, when the w orship is perf ormed in the temples. Three sides of the paved courtyard — all except the west — are lined with rooms set apart f or kitchens, st ore-rooms, dining-rooms, and quarters f or the temple staff and guests. The chamber in the n orthwest angle, just beyond the last of the Siva temples, is of special interest to us; f or here Sri Ramakrishna was to spend a considerable part of his life. To the west of this chamber is a semicircular p orch overlooking the river. In front of the p orch runs a foot-path, n orth and south, and beyond the path is a large garden and, below the garden, the Ganges. The orchard to the n orth of the buildings contains the Panchavati, the banyan, and the bel-tree, associated with Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual practices. Outside and to the n orth of the temple compound proper is the kuthi, or bungalow, used by members of Rani Rasmani's family visiting the garden. And n orth of the temple garden, separated from it by a high wall, is a powder-magazine belonging to the British Government.
--- SIVA
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The main temple is dedicated to Kali, the Divine Mother, here w orshipped as Bhavatarini, the Saviour of the Universe. The flo or of this temple also is paved with marble. The basalt image of the Mother, dressed in g orgeous gold brocade, stands on a white marble image of the prostrate body of Her Divine Cons ort, Siva, the symbol of the Absolute. On the feet of the Goddess are, among other ornaments, anklets of gold. Her arms are decked with jewelled ornaments of gold. She wears necklaces of gold and pearls, a golden garland of human heads, and a girdle of human arms. She wears a golden crown, golden ear-rings, and a golden nose-ring with a pearl-drop. She has four arms. The lower left hand holds a severed human head and the upper grips a blood-stained sabre. One right hand offers boons to Her children; the other allays their fear. The majesty of Her posture can hardly be described. It combines the terr or of destruction with the reassurance of motherly tenderness. F or She is the Cosmic Power, the totality of the universe, a gl orious harmony of the pairs of opposites. She deals out death, as She creates and preserves. She has three eyes, the third being the symbol of Divine Wisdom; they strike dismay into the wicked, yet pour out affection f or Her devotees.
The whole symbolic w orld is represented in the temple garden — the Trinity of the Nature Mother (Kali), the Absolute (Siva), and Love (Radhakanta), the Arch spanning heaven and earth. The terrific Goddess of the Tantra, the soul-enthralling Flute-Player of the Bhagavata, and the Self-abs orbed Absolute of the Vedas live together, creating the greatest synthesis of religions. All aspects of Reality are represented there. But of this divine household, Kali is the pivot, the sovereign Mistress. She is Prakriti, the Procreatrix, Nature, the Destroyer, the Creat or. Nay, She is something greater and deeper still f or those who have eyes to see. She is the Universal Mother, "my Mother" as Ramakrishna would say, the All-powerful, who reveals Herself to Her children under different aspects and Divine Incarnations, the Visible God, who leads the elect to the Invisible Reality; and if it so pleases Her, She takes away the last trace of ego from created beings and merges it in the consciousness of the Absolute, the undifferentiated God. Through Her grace "the finite ego loses itself in the illimitable Ego — Atman — Brahman". (Romain Holland, Prophets of the New India, p. 11.)
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Sri Ramakrishna — hencef orth we shall call Gadadhar by this familiar name —1 came to the temple garden with his elder brother Ramkumar, who was appointed priest of the Kali temple. Sri Ramakrishna did not at first approve of Ramkumar's w orking f or the sudra Rasmani. The example of their orthodox father was still fresh in Sri Ramakrishna's mind. He objected also to the eating of the cooked offerings of the temple, since, acc ording to orthodox Hindu custom, such food can be offered to the Deity only in the house of a brahmin. But the holy atmosphere of the temple grounds, the solitude of the surrounding wood, the loving care of his brother, the respect shown him by Rani Rasmani and Mathur Babu, the living presence of the Goddess Kali in the temple, and; above all, the proximity of the sacred Ganges, which Sri Ramakrishna always held in the highest respect, gradually overcame his disapproval, and he began to feel at home.
Within a very sh ort time Sri Ramakrishna attracted the notice of Mathur Babu, who was impressed by the young man's religious fervour and wanted him to participate in the w orship in the Kali temple. But Sri Ramakrishna loved his freedom and was indifferent to any w orldly career. The profession of the priesthood in a temple founded by a rich woman did not appeal to his mind. Further, he hesitated to take upon himself the responsibility f or the ornaments and jewelry of the temple. Mathur had to wait f or a suitable occasion.
At this time there came to Dakshineswar a youth of sixteen, destined to play an imp ortant role in Sri Ramakrishna's life. Hriday, a distant nephew2 of Sri Ramakrishna, hailed from Sih ore, a village not far from Kamarpukur, and had been his boyhood friend. Clever, exceptionally energetic, and endowed with great presence of mind, he moved, as will be seen later, like a shadow about his uncle and was always ready to help him, even at the sacrifice of his personal comf ort. He was destined to be a mute witness of many of the spiritual experiences of Sri Ramakrishna and the caretaker of his body during the st ormy days of his spiritual practice. Hriday came to Dakshineswar in search of a job, and Sri Ramakrishna was glad to see him.
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^No definite inf ormation is available as to the origin of this name. Most probably it was given by Mathur Babu, as Ramlal, Sri Ramakrishna's nephew, has said, quoting the auth ority of his uncle himself.
^Hriday's mother was the daughter of Sri Ramakrishna's aunt (Khudiram's sister). Such a degree of relationship is termed in Bengal that of a "distant nephew".
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B orn in an orthodox brahmin family, Sri Ramakrishna knew the f ormalities of w orship, its rites and rituals. The innumerable gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion are the human aspects of the indescribable and incomprehensible Spirit, as conceived by the finite human mind. They understand and appreciate human love and emotion, help men to realize their secular and spiritual ideals, and ultimately enable men to attain liberation from the miseries of phenomenal life. The Source of light, intelligence, wisdom, and strength is the One alone from whom comes the fulfilment of desire. Yet, as long as a man is bound by his human limitations, he cannot but w orship God through human f orms. He must use human symbols. Theref ore Hinduism asks the devotees to look on God as the ideal father, the ideal mother, the ideal husband, the ideal son, or the ideal friend. But the name ultimately leads to the Nameless, the f orm to the F ormless, the w ord to the Silence, the emotion to the serene realization of Peace in Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. The gods gradually merge in the one God. But until that realization is achieved, the devotee cannot dissociate human fact ors from his w orship. Theref ore the Deity is bathed and clothed and decked with ornaments. He is fed and put to sleep. He is propitiated with hymns, songs, and prayers. And there are appropriate rites connected with all these functions. F or instance, to secure f or himself external purity, the priest bathes himself in holy water and puts on a holy cloth. He purifies the mind and the sense- organs by appropriate meditations. He f ortifies the place of w orship against evil f orces by drawing around it circles of fire and water. He awakens the different spiritual centres of the body and invokes the Supreme Spirit in his heart. Then he transfers the Supreme Spirit to the image bef ore him and w orships the image, regarding it no longer as clay or stone, but as the embodiment of Spirit, throbbing with Life and Consciousness. After the w orship the Supreme Spirit is recalled from the image to Its true sanctuary, the heart of the priest. The real devotee knows the absurdity of w orshipping the Transcendental Reality with material articles — clothing That which pervades the whole universe and the beyond, putting on a pedestal That which cannot be limited by space, feeding That which is disembodied and inc orp oreal, singing bef ore That whose gl ory the music of the spheres tries vainly to proclaim. But through these rites the devotee aspires to go ultimately beyond rites and rituals, f orms and names, w ords and praise, and to realize God as the All-pervading Consciousness.
Hindu priests are th oroughly acquainted with the rites of w orship, but few of them are aware of their underlying significance. They move their hands and limbs mechanically, in obedience to the letter of the scriptures, and repeat the holy mantras like parrots. But from the very beginning the inner meaning of these rites was revealed to Sri Ramakrishna. As he sat facing the image, a strange transf ormation came over his mind. While going through the prescribed ceremonies, he would actually find himself encircled by a wall of fire protecting him and the place of w orship from unspiritual vibrations, or he would feel the rising of the mystic Kundalini through the different centres of the body. The glow on his face, his deep abs orption, and the intense atmosphere of the temple impressed everyone who saw him w orship the Deity.
Ramkumar wanted Sri Ramakrishna to learn the intricate rituals of the w orship of Kali. To become a priest of Kali one must undergo a special f orm of initiation from a qualified guru, and f or Sri Ramakrishna a suitable brahmin was found. But no sooner did the brahmin speak the holy w ord in his ear than Sri Ramakrishna, overwhelmed with emotion, uttered a loud cry and plunged into deep concentration.
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As his love f or God deepened, he began either to f orget or to drop the f ormalities of w orship. Sitting bef ore the image, he would spend hours singing the devotional songs of great devotees of the Mother, such as Kamalakanta and Ramprasad. Those rhapsodical songs, describing the direct vision of God, only intensified Sri Ramakrishna's longing. He felt the pangs of a child separated from its mother. Sometimes, in agony, he would rub his face against the ground and weep so bitterly that people, thinking he had lost his earthly mother, would sympathize with him in his grief. Sometimes, in moments of scepticism, he would cry: "Art Thou true, Mother, or is it all fiction — mere poetry without any reality? If Thou dost exist, why do I not see Thee? Is religion a mere fantasy and art Thou only a figment of man's imagination?" Sometimes he would sit on the prayer carpet f or two hours like an inert object. He began to behave in an abn ormal manner
, most of the time unconscious of the w orld. He almost gave up food; and sleep left him altogether.
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Yet this was only a f oretaste of the intense experiences to come. The first glimpse of the Divine Mother made him the m ore eager f or Her uninterrupted vision. He wanted to see Her both in meditation and with eyes open. But the Mother began to play a teasing game of hide-and-seek with him, intensifying both his joy and his suffering. Weeping bitterly during the moments of separation from Her, he would pass into a trance and then find Her standing bef ore him, smiling, talking, consoling, bidding him be of good cheer, and instructing him. During this period of spiritual practice he had many uncommon experiences. When he sat to meditate, he would hear strange clicking sounds in the joints of his legs, as if someone were locking them up, one after the other, to keep him motionless; and at the conclusion of his meditation he would again hear the same sounds, this time unlocking them and leaving him free to move about. He would see flashes like a swarm of fire-flies floating bef ore his eyes, or a sea of deep mist around him, with luminous waves of molten silver. Again, from a sea of translucent mist he would behold the Mother rising, first Her feet, then Her waist, body, face, and head, finally Her whole person; he would feel Her breath and hear Her voice. W orshipping in the temple, sometimes he would become exalted, sometimes he would remain motionless as stone, sometimes he would almost collapse from excessive emotion. Many of his actions, contrary to all tradition, seemed sacrilegious to the people. He would take a flower and touch it to his own head, body, and feet, and then offer it to the Goddess. or, like a drunkard, he would reel to the throne of the Mother, touch Her chin by way of showing his affection f or Her, and sing, talk, joke, laugh, and dance. or he would take a m orsel of food from the plate and hold it to Her mouth, begging Her to eat it, and would not be satisfied till he was convinced that She had really eaten. After the Mother had been put to sleep at night, from his own room he would hear Her ascending to the upper st orey of the temple with the light steps of a happy girl, Her anklets jingling. Then he would discover Her standing with flowing hair. Her black f orm silhouetted against the sky of the night, looking at the Ganges or at the distant lights of Calcutta.
Naturally the temple officials took him f or an insane person. His w orldly well-wishers brought him to skilled physicians; but no-medicine could cure his malady. Many a time he doubted his sanity himself. F or he had been sailing across an uncharted sea, with no earthly guide to direct him. His only haven of security was the Divine Mother Herself. To Her he would pray: "I do not know what these things are. I am ign orant of mantras and the scriptures. Teach me, Mother, how to realize Thee. Who else can help me? Art Thou not my only refuge and guide?" And the sustaining presence of the Mother never failed him in his distress or doubt. Even those who criticized his conduct were greatly impressed with his purity, guilelessness, truthfulness, integrity, and holiness. They felt an uplifting influence in his presence.
It is said that samadhi, or trance, no m ore than opens the p ortal of the spiritual realm. Sri Ramakrishna felt an unquenchable desire to enjoy God in various ways. F or his meditation he built a place in the n orthern wooded section of the temple garden. With Hriday's help he planted there five sacred trees. The spot, known as the Panchavati, became the scene of many of his visions.
As his spiritual mood deepened he m ore and m ore felt himself to be a child of the Divine Mother. He learnt to surrender himself completely to Her will and let Her direct him.
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In 1858 there came to Dakshineswar a cousin of Sri Ramakrishna, Haladhari by name, who was to remain there about eight years. On account of Sri Ramakrishna's indifferent health, Mathur appointed this man to the office of priest in the Kali temple. He was a complex character, versed in the letter of the scriptures, but hardly aware of their spirit. He loved to participate in hair-splitting theological discussions and, by the measure of his own erudition, he proceeded to gauge Sri Ramakrishna. An orthodox brahmin, he th oroughly disapproved of his cousin's un orthodox actions, but he was not unimpressed by Sri Ramakrishna's purity of life, ecstatic love of God, and yearning f or realization.
One day Haladhari upset Sri Ramakrishna with the statement that God is incomprehensible to the human mind. Sri Ramakrishna has described the great moment of doubt when he wondered whether his visions had really misled him: "With sobs I prayed to the Mother, 'Canst Thou have the heart to deceive me like this because I am a fool?' A stream of tears flowed from my eyes. Sh ortly afterwards I saw a volume of mist rising from the flo or and filling the space bef ore me. In the midst of it there appeared a face with flowing beard, calm, highly expressive, and fair. Fixing its gaze steadily upon me, it said solemnly, 'Remain in bhavamukha, on the threshold of relative consciousness.' This it repeated three times and then it gently disappeared in the mist, which itself dissolved. This vision reassured me."
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Hardly had he crossed the threshold of the Kali temple when he found himself again in the whirlwind. His madness reappeared tenfold. The same meditation and prayer, the same ecstatic moods, the same burning sensation, the same weeping, the same sleeplessness, the same indifference to the body and the outside w orld, the same divine delirium. He subjected himself to fresh disciplines in order to eradicate greed and lust, the two great impediments to spiritual progress. With a rupee in one hand and some earth in the other, he would reflect on the comparative value of these two f or the realization of God, and finding them equally w orthless he would toss them, with equal indifference, into the Ganges. Women he regarded as the manifestations of the Divine Mother. Never even in a dream did he feel the impulses of lust. And to root out of his mind the idea of caste superi ority, he cleaned a pariahs house with his long and neglected hair. When he would sit in meditation, birds would perch on his head and peck in his hair f or grains of food. Snakes would crawl over his body, and neither would be aware of the other. Sleep left him altogether. Day and night, visions flitted bef ore him. He saw the sannyasi who had previously killed the "sinner" in him again coming out of his body, threatening him with the trident, and ordering him to concentrate on God. or the same sannyasi would visit distant places, following a luminous path, and bring him rep orts of what was happening there. Sri Ramakrishna used to say later that in the case of an advanced devotee the mind itself becomes the guru, living and moving like an embodied being.
Rani Rasmani, the foundress of the temple garden, passed away in 1861. After her death her son-in-law Mathur became the sole execut or of the estate. He placed himself and his resources at the disposal of Sri Ramakrishna and began to look after his physical comf ort. Sri Ramakrishna later spoke of him as one of his five "suppliers of st ores" appointed by the Divine Mother. Whenever a desire arose in his mind, Mathur fulfilled it without hesitation.
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There came to Dakshineswar at this time a brahmin woman who was to play an imp ortant part in Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual unfoldment. B orn in East Bengal, she was an adept in the Tantrik and Vaishnava methods of w orship. She was slightly over fifty years of age, handsome, and garbed in the orange robe of a nun. Her sole possessions were a few books and two pieces of wearing-cloth.
Sri Ramakrishna welcomed the visit or with great respect, described to her his experiences and visions, and told her of people's belief that these were symptoms of madness. She listened to him attentively and said: "My son, everyone in this w orld is mad. Some are mad f or money, some f or creature comf orts, some f or name and fame; and you are mad f or God." She assured him that he was passing through the almost unknown spiritual experience described in the scriptures as mahabhava, the most exalted rapture of divine love. She told him that this extreme exaltation had been described as manifesting itself through nineteen physical symptoms, including the shedding of tears, a trem or of the body, h orripilation, perspiration, and a burning sensation. The Bhakti scriptures, she declared, had rec orded only two instances of the experience, namely, those of Sri Radha and Sri Chaitanya.
Very soon a tender relationship sprang up between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmani, she looking upon him as the Baby Krishna, and he upon her as mother. Day after day she watched his ecstasy during the kirtan and meditation, his samadhi, his mad yearning; and she recognized in him a power to transmit spirituality to others. She came to the conclusion that such things were not possible f or an ordinary devotee, not even f or a highly developed soul. Only an Incarnation of God was capable of such spiritual manifestations. She proclaimed openly that Sri Ramakrishna, like Sri Chaitanya, was an Incarnation of God.
When Sri Ramakrishna told Mathur what the Brahmani had said about him, Mathur shook his head in doubt. He was reluctant to accept him as an Incarnation of God, an Avatar comparable to Rama, Krishna, Buddha, and Chaitanya, though he admitted Sri Ramakrishna's extra ordinary spirituality. Whereupon the Brahmani asked Mathur to arrange a conference of scholars who should discuss the matter with her. He agreed to the proposal and the meeting was arranged. It was to be held in the natmandir in front of the Kali temple.
Two famous pundits of the time were invited: Vaishnavcharan, the leader of the Vaishnava society, and Gauri. The first to arrive was Vaishnavcharan, with a distinguished company of scholars and devotees. The Brahmani, like a proud mother, proclaimed her view bef ore him and supp orted it with quotations from the scriptures. As the pundits discussed the deep theological question, Sri Ramakrishna, perfectly indifferent to everything happening around him, sat in their midst like a child, immersed in his own thoughts, sometimes smiling, sometimes chewing a pinch of spices from a pouch, or again saying to Vaishnavcharan with a nudge: "Look here. Sometimes I feel like this, too." Presently Vaishnavcharan arose to declare himself in total agreement with the view of the Brahmani. He declared that Sri Ramakrishna had undoubtedly experienced mahabhava and that this was the certain sign of the rare manifestation of God in a man. The people assembled
there, especially the officers of the temple garden, were struck dumb. Sri Rama- krishna said to Mathur, like a boy: "Just fancy, he too says so! Well, I am glad to learn that after all it is not a disease."
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Acc ording to the Tantra, the Ultimate Reality is Chit, or Consciousness, which is identical with Sat, or Being, and with Ananda, or Bliss. This Ultimate Reality, Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, is identical with the Reality preached in the Vedas. And man is identical with this Reality; but under the influence of maya, or illusion, he has f orgotten his true nature. He takes to be real a merely apparent w orld of subject and object, and this err or is the cause of his bondage and suffering. The goal of spiritual discipline is the rediscovery of his true identity with the divine Reality.
F or the achievement of this goal the Vedanta prescribes an austere negative method of discrimination and renunciation, which can be followed by only a few individuals endowed with sharp intelligence and unshakable will-power. But Tantra takes into consideration the natural weakness of human beings, their lower appetites, and their love f or the concrete. It combines philosophy with rituals, meditation with ceremonies, renunciation with enjoyment. The underlying purpose is gradually to train the aspirant to meditate on his identity with the Ultimate.
The average man wishes to enjoy the material objects of the w orld. Tantra bids him enjoy these, but at the same time discover in them the presence of God. Mystical rites are prescribed by which, slowly, the sense-objects become spiritualized and sense attraction is transf ormed into a love of God. So the very "bonds" of man are turned into "releasers". The very poison that kills is transmuted into the elixir of life. Outward renunciation is not necessary. Thus the aim of Tantra is to sublimate bhoga, or enjoyment into yoga, or union with Consciousness. F or, acc ording to this philosophy, the w orld with all its manifestations is nothing but the sp ort of Siva and Sakti, the Absolute and Its inscrutable Power.
The disciplines of Tantra are graded to suit aspirants of all degrees. Exercises are prescribed f or people with "animal", "heroic", and "divine" outlooks. Certain of the rites require the presence of members of the opposite sex. Here the aspirant learns to look on woman as the embodiment of the Goddess Kali, the Mother of the Universe. The very basis of Tantra is the Motherhood of God and the gl orification of woman. Every part of a woman's body is to be regarded as incarnate Divinity. But the rites are extremely dangerous. The help of a qualified guru is absolutely necessary. An unwary devotee may lose his foothold and fall into a pit of depravity.
Acc ording to the Tantra, Sakti is the active creative f orce in the universe. Siva, the Absolute, is a m ore or less passive principle. Further, Sakti is as inseparable from Siva as fire's power to burn is from fire itself. Sakti, the Creative Power, contains in Its womb the universe, and theref ore is the Divine Mother. All women are Her symbols. Kali is one of Her several f orms. The meditation on Kali, the Creative Power, is the central discipline of the Tantra. While meditating, the aspirant at first regards himself as one with the Absolute and then thinks that out of that Impersonal Consciousness emerge two entities, namely, his own self and the living f orm of the Goddess. He then projects the Goddess into the tangible image bef ore him and w orships it as the Divine Mother.
Sri Ramakrishna set himself to the task of practising the disciplines of Tantra; and at the bidding of the Divine Mother Herself he accepted the Brahmani as his guru. He perf ormed profound and delicate ceremonies in the Panchavati and under the bel-tree at the n orthern extremity of the temple compound. He practised all the disciplines of the sixty-four principal Tantra books, and it took him never m ore than three days to achieve the result promised in any one of them. After the observance of a few preliminary rites, he would be overwhelmed with a strange divine fervour and would go into samadhi, where his mind would dwell in exaltation. Evil ceased to exist f or him. The w ord "carnal" lost its meaning. The whole w orld and everything in it appeared as the lila, the sp ort, of Siva and Sakti. He beheld held everywhere manifest the power and beauty of the Mother; the whole w orld, animate and inanimate, appeared to him as pervaded with Chit, Consciousness, and with Ananda, Bliss.
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But the most remarkable experience during this period was the awakening of the Kundalini Sakti, the "Serpent Power". He actually saw the Power, at first lying asleep at the bottom of the spinal column, then waking up and ascending along the mystic Sushumna canal and through its six centres, or lotuses, to the Sahasrara, the thousand-petalled lotus in the top of the head. He further saw that as the Kundalini went upward the different lotuses bloomed. And this phenomenon was accompanied by visions and trances. Later on he described to his disciples and devotees the various movements of the Kundalini: the fishlike, birdlike, monkeylike, and so on. The awaken- ing of the Kundalini is the beginning of spiritual consciousness, and its union with Siva in the Sahasrara, ending in samadhi, is the consummation of the Tantrik disciplines.
About this time it was revealed to him that in a sh ort while many devotees would seek his guidance.
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Vaishnavism is exclusively a religion of bhakti. Bhakti is intense love of God, attachment to Him alone; it is of the nature of bliss and bestows upon the lover imm ortality and liberation. God, acc ording to Vaishnavism, cannot be realized through logic or reason; and, without bhakti, all penances, austerities and rites are futile. Man cannot realize God by self-exertion alone. F or the vision of God His grace is absolutely necessary, and this grace is felt by the pure of heart. The mind is to be purified through bhakti. The pure mind then remains f or ever immersed in the ecstasy of God-vision. It is the cultivation of this divine love that is the chief concern of the Vaishnava religion.
There are three kinds of f ormal devotion: tamasic, rajasic, and sattvic. If a person, while showing devotion, to God, is actuated by malevolence, arrogance, jealousy, or anger, then his devotion is tamasic, since it is influenced by tamas, the quality of inertia. If he w orships God from a desire f or fame or wealth, or from any other w orldly ambition, then his devotion is rajasic, since it is influenced by rajas, the quality of activity. But if a person loves God without any thought of material gain, if he perf orms his duties to please God alone and maintains toward all created beings the attitude of friendship, then his devotion is called sattvic, since it is influenced by sattva, the quality of harmony. But the highest devotion transcends the three gunas, or qualities, being a spontaneous, uninterrupted inclination of the mind toward God, the Inner Soul of all beings; and it wells up in the heart of a true devotee as soon as he hears the name of God or mention of God's attributes. A devotee possessed of this love would not accept the happiness of heaven if it were offered him. His one desire is to love God under all conditions — in pleasure and pain, life and death, honour and dishonour, prosperity and adversity.
There are two stages of bhakti. The first is known as vaidhi-bhakti, or love of God qualified by scriptural injunctions. F or the devotees of this stage are prescribed regular and methodical w orship, hymns, prayers, the repetition of God's name, and the chanting of His gl ories. This lower bhakti in course of time matures into para-bhakti, or supreme devotion, known also as prema, the most intense f orm of divine love. Divine love is an end in itself. It exists potentially in all human hearts, but in the case of bound creatures it is misdirected to earthly objects.
To develop the devotee's love f or God, Vaishnavism humanizes God. God is to be regarded as the devotee's Parent, Master, Friend, Child, Husband, or Sweetheart, each succeeding relationship representing an intensification of love. These bhavas, or attitudes toward God, are known as santa, dasya, sakhya, vatsalya, and madhur. The rishis of the Vedas, Hanuman, the cow-herd boys of Vrindavan, Rama's mother Kausalya, and Radhika, Krishna's sweetheart, exhibited, respectively, the most perfect examples of these f orms. In the ascending scale the-gl ories of God are gradually f orgotten and the devotee realizes m ore and m ore the intimacy of divine communion. Finally he regards himself as the mistress of his Beloved, and no artificial barrier remains to separate him from his Ideal. No social or m oral obligation can bind to the earth his soaring spirit. He experiences perfect union with the Godhead. Unlike the Vedantist, who strives to transcend all varieties of the subject-object relationship, a devotee of the Vaishnava path wishes to retain both his own individuality and the personality of God. To him God is not an intangible Absolute, but the Purushottama, the Supreme Person.
While practising the discipline of the madhur bhava, the male devotee often regards himself as a woman, in order to develop the most intense f orm of love f or Sri Krishna, the only purusha, or man, in the universe. This assumption of the attitude of the opposite sex has a deep psychological significance. It is a matter of common experience that an idea may be cultivated to such an intense degree that every idea alien to it is driven from the mind. This peculiarity of the mind may be utilized f or the subjugation of the lower desires and the development of the spiritual nature. Now, the idea which is the basis of all desires and passions in a man is the conviction of his indissoluble association with a male body. If he can inoculate himself th oroughly with the idea that he is a woman, he can get rid of the desires peculiar to his male body. Again, the idea that he is a woman may in turn be made to give way to another higher idea, namely, that he is neither man n or woman, but the Impersonal Spirit. The Impersonal Spirit alone can enjoy real communion with the Impersonal God. Hence the highest est realization of the Vaishnava draws close to the transcendental experience of the Vedantist.
A beautiful expression of the Vaishnava w orship of God through love is to be found in the Vrindavan episode of the Bhagavata. The gopis, or milk-maids, of Vrindavan regarded the six-year-old Krishna as their Beloved. They sought no personal gain or happiness from this love. They surrendered to Krishna their bodies, minds, and souls. Of all the gopis, Radhika, or Radha, because of her intense love f or Him, was the closest to Krishna. She manifested mahabhava and was united with her Beloved. This union represents, through sensuous language, a supersensuous experience.
Sri Chaitanya, also known as Gauranga, G ora, or Nimai, b orn in Bengal in 1485 and regarded as an Incarnation of God, is a great prophet of the Vaishnava religion. Chaitanya declared the chanting of God's name to be the most efficacious spiritual discipline f or the Kaliyuga.
Sri Ramakrishna, as the monkey Hanuman, had already w orshipped God as his Master. Through his devotion to Kali he had w orshipped God as his Mother. He was now to take up the other relationships prescribed by the Vaishnava scriptures.
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One day Jatadhari requested Sri Ramakrishna to keep the image and bade him adieu with tearful eyes. He declared that Ramlala had fulfilled his innermost prayer and that he now had no m ore need of f ormal w orship. A few days later Sri Ramakrishna was blessed through Ramlala with a vision of Ramachandra, whereby he realized that the Rama of the Ramayana, the son of Dasaratha, pervades the whole universe as Spirit and Consciousness; that He is its Creat or, Sustainer, and Destroyer; that, in still another aspect, He is the transcendental Brahman, without f orm, attribute, or name.
While w orshipping Ramlala as the Divine Child, Sri Ramakrishna's heart became filled with motherly tenderness, and he began to regard himself as a woman. His speech and gestures changed. He began to move freely with the ladies of Mathur's family, who now looked upon him as one of their own sex. During this time he w orshipped the Divine Mother as Her companion or handmaid.
--- IN COMMUNION WITH THE DIVINE BELOVED
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The Vaishnava scriptures advise one to propitiate Radha and obtain her grace in order to realize Sri Krishna. So the t ortured devotee now turned his prayer to her. Within a sh ort time he enjoyed her blessed vision. He saw and felt the figure of Radha disappearing into his own body.
He said later on: "It is impossible to describe the heavenly beauty and sweetness of Radha. Her very appearance showed that she had completely f orgotten herself in her passionate attachment to Krishna. Her complexion was a light yellow."
Now one with Radha, he manifested the great ecstatic love, the mahabhava, which had found in her its fullest expression. Later Sri Ramakrishna said: "The manifestation in the same individual of the nineteen different kinds of emotion f or God is called, in the books on bhakti, mahabhava. An ordinary man takes a whole lifetime to express even a single one of these. But in this body [meaning himself] there has been a complete manifestation of all nineteen."
The love of Radha is the precurs or of the resplendent vision of Sri Krishna, and Sri Ramakrishna soon experienced that vision. The enchanting ing f orm of Krishna appeared to him and merged in his person. He became Krishna; he totally f orgot his own individuality and the w orld; he saw Krishna in himself and in the universe. Thus he attained to the fulfilment of the w orship of the Personal God. He drank from the fountain of Imm ortal Bliss. The agony of his heart vanished f orever. He realized Amrita, Imm ortality, beyond the shadow of death.
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Even when man descends from this dizzy height, he is devoid of ideas of "I" and "mine"; he looks on the body as a mere shadow, an outer sheath encasing the soul. He does not dwell on the past, takes no thought f or the future, and looks with indifference on the present. He surveys everything in the w orld with an eye of equality; he is no longer touched by the infinite variety of phenomena; he no longer reacts to pleasure and pain. He remains unmoved whether he — that is to say, his body — is w orshipped by the good or t ormented by the wicked; f or he realizes that it is the one Brahman that manifests Itself through everything. The impact of such an experience devastates the body and mind. Consciousness becomes blasted, as it were, with an excess of Light. In the Vedanta books it is said that after the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi the body drops off like a dry leaf. Only those who are b orn with a special mission f or the w orld can return
from this height to the valleys of n ormal life. They live and move in the w orld f or the welfare of mankind. They are invested with a supreme spiritual power. A divine gl ory shines through them.
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Totapuri, discovering at once that Sri Ramakrishna was prepared to be a student of Vedanta, asked to initiate him into its mysteries. With the permission of the Divine Mother, Sri Ramakrishna agreed to the proposal. But Totapuri explained that only a sannyasi could receive the teaching of Vedanta. Sri Ramakrishna agreed to renounce the w orld, but with the stipulation that the ceremony of his initiation into the monastic order be perf ormed in secret, to spare the feelings of his old mother, who had been living with him at Dakshineswar.
On the appointed day, in the small hours of the m orning, a fire was lighted in the Panchavati. Totapuri and Sri Ramakrishna sat bef ore it. The flame played on their faces. "Ramakrishna was a small brown man with a sh ort beard and beautiful eyes, long dark eyes, full of light, obliquely set and slightly veiled, never very wide open, but seeing half-closed a great distance both outwardly and inwardly. His mouth was open over his white teeth in a bewitching smile, at once affectionate and mischievous. Of medium height, he was thin to emaciation and extremely delicate. His temperament was high-strung, f or he was supersensitive to all the winds of joy and s orrow, both m oral and physical. He was indeed a living reflection of all that happened bef ore the mirr or of his eyes, a two-sided mirr or, turned both out and in." (Romain Rolland, Prophets of the New India, pp. 38-9.) Facing him, the other rose like a rock. He was very tall and robust, a sturdy and tough oak. His constitution and mind were of iron. He was the strong leader of men.
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"Brahman", he said, "is the only Reality, ever pure, ever illumined, ever free, beyond the limits of time, space, and causation. Though apparently divided by names and f orms through the inscrutable power of maya, that enchantress who makes the impossible possible, Brahman is really One and undivided. When a seeker merges in the beatitude of samadhi, he does not perceive time and space or name and f orm, the offspring of maya. Whatever is within the domain of maya is unreal. Give it up. Destroy the prison-house of name and f orm and rush out of it with the strength of a lion. Dive deep in search of the Self and realize It through samadhi. You will find the w orld of name and f orm vanishing into void, and the puny ego dissolving in Brahman-Consciousness. You will realize your identity with Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute." Quoting the Upanishad, Totapuri said: "That knowledge is shallow by which one sees or hears or knows another
. What is shallow is w orthless and can never give real felicity. But the Knowledge by which one does not see another or hear another or know another, which is beyond duality, is great, and through such Knowledge one attains the Infinite Bliss. How can the mind and senses grasp That which shines in the heart of all as the Eternal Subject?"
Totapuri asked the disciple to withdraw his mind from all objects of the relative w orld, including the gods and goddesses, and to concentrate on the Absolute. But the task was not easy even f or Sri Ramakrishna. He found it impossible to take his mind beyond Kali, the Divine Mother of the Universe. "After the initiation", Sri Ramakrishna once said, describing the event, "Nangta began to teach me the various conclusions of the Advaita Vedanta and asked me to withdraw the mind completely from all objects and dive deep into the Atman. But in spite of all my attempts I could not altogether cross the realm of name and f orm and bring my mind to the unconditioned state. I had no difficulty in taking the mind from all the objects of the w orld. But the radiant and too familiar figure of the Blissful Mother, the Embodiment of the essence of Pure Consciousness, appeared bef ore me as a living reality. Her bewitching smile prevented me from passing into the Great Beyond. Again and again I tried, but She stood in my way every time. In despair I said to Nangta: 'It is hopeless. I cannot raise my mind to the unconditioned state and come face to face with Atman.' He grew excited and sharply said: 'What? You can't do it? But you have to.' He cast his eyes around. Finding a piece of glass he took it up and stuck it between my eyebrows. 'Concentrate the mind on this point!' he thundered. Then with stern determination I again sat to meditate. As soon as the gracious f orm of the Divine Mother appeared bef ore me, I used my discrimination as a sw ord and with it clove Her in two. The last barrier fell. My spirit at once soared beyond the relative plane and I lost myself in samadhi."
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Totapuri, a monk of the most orthodox type, never stayed at a place m ore than three days. But he remained at Dakshineswar eleven months. He too had something to learn.
Totapuri had no idea of the struggles of ordinary men in the toils of passion and desire. Having maintained all through life the guilelessness of a child, he laughed at the idea of a man's being led astray by the senses. He was convinced that the w orld was maya and had only to be denounced to vanish f or ever. A b orn non-dualist, he had no faith in a Personal God. He did not believe in the terrible aspect of Kali, much less in Her benign aspect. Music and the chanting of God's holy name were to him only so much nonsense. He ridiculed the spending of emotion on the w orship of a Personal God.
--- KALI AND MAYA
Sri Ramakrishna, on the other hand, though fully aware, like his guru, that the w orld is an illus ory appearance, instead of slighting maya, like an orthodox monist, acknowledged its power in the relative life. He was all love and reverence f or maya, perceiving in it a mysterious and majestic expression of Divinity. To him maya itself was God, f or everything was God. It was one of the faces of Brahman. What he had realized on the heights of the transcendental plane, he also found here below, everywhere about him, under the mysterious garb of names and f orms. And this garb was a perfectly transparent sheath, through which he recognized the gl ory of the Divine Immanence. Maya, the mighty weaver of the garb, is none other than Kali, the Divine Mother. She is the prim ordial Divine Energy, Sakti, and She can no m ore be distinguished from the Supreme Brahman than can the power of burning be distinguished from fire. She projects the w orld and again withdraws it. She spins it as the spider spins its web. She is the Mother of the Universe, identical with the Brahman of Vedanta, and with the Atman of Yoga. As eternal Lawgiver, She makes and unmakes laws; it is by Her imperious will that karma yields its fruit. She ensnares men with illusion and again releases them from bondage with a look of Her benign eyes. She is the supreme Mistress of the cosmic play, and all objects, animate and inanimate, dance by Her will. Even those who realize the Absolute in nirvikalpa samadhi are under Her jurisdiction as long as they still live on the relative plane.
Thus, after nirvikalpa samadhi, Sri Ramakrishna realized maya in an altogether new role. The binding aspect of Kali vanished from bef ore his vision. She no longer obscured his understanding. The w orld became the gl orious manifestation of the Divine Mother. Maya became Brahman. The Transcendental Itself broke through the Immanent. Sri Ramakrishna discovered that maya operates in the relative w orld in two ways, and he termed these "avidyamaya" and "vidyamaya". Avidyamaya represents the dark f orces of creation: sensuous desires, evil passions, greed, lust, cruelty, and so on. It sustains the w orld system on the lower planes. It is responsible f or the round of man's birth and death. It must be fought and vanquished. But vidyamaya is the higher f orce of creation: the spiritual virtues, the enlightening qualities, kindness, purity, love, devotion. Vidyamaya elevates man to the higher planes of consciousness. With the help of vidyamaya the devotee rids himself of avidyamaya; he then becomes mayatita, free of maya. The two aspects of maya are the two f orces of creation, the two powers of Kali; and She stands beyond them both. She is like the effulgent sun, bringing into existence and shining through and standing behind the clouds of different colours and shapes, conjuring up wonderful f orms in the blue autumn heaven.
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About this time Totapuri was suddenly laid up with a severe attack of dysentery. On account of this miserable illness he found it impossible to meditate. One night the pain became excruciating. He could no longer concentrate on Brahman. The body stood in the way. He became incensed with its demands. A free soul, he did not at all care f or the body. So he determined to drown it in the Ganges. Thereupon he walked into the river. But, lo! He walks to the other bank." (This version of the incident is taken from the biography of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Saradananda, one of the Master's direct disciples.) Is there not enough water in the Ganges? Standing dumbfounded on the other bank he looks back across the water. The trees, the temples, the houses, are silhouetted against the sky. Suddenly, in one dazzling moment, he sees on all sides the presence of the Divine Mother. She is in everything; She is everything. She is in the water; She is on land. She is the body; She is the mind. She is pain; She is comf ort. She is knowledge; She is ign orance. She is life; She is death. She is everything that one sees, hears, or imagines. She turns "yea" into "nay", and "nay" into "yea". Without Her grace no embodied being can go beyond Her realm. Man has no free will. He is not even free to die. Yet, again, beyond the body and mind She resides in Her Transcendental, Absolute aspect. She is the Brahman that Totapuri had been w orshipping all his life.
Totapuri returned to Dakshineswar and spent the remaining hours of the night meditating on the Divine Mother. In the m orning he went to the Kali temple with Sri Ramakrishna and prostrated himself bef ore the image of the Mother. He now realized why he had spent eleven months at Dakshineswar. Bidding farewell to the disciple, he continued on his way, enlightened.
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"When I think of the Supreme Being as inactive — neither creating n or preserving n or destroying —, I call Him Brahman or Purusha, the Impersonal God. When I think of Him as active — creating, preserving, and destroying —, I call Him Sakti or Maya or Prakriti, the Personal God. But the distinction between them does not mean a difference. The Personal and the Impersonal are the same thing, like milk and its whiteness, the diamond and its lustre, the snake and its wriggling motion. It is impossible to conceive of the one without the other. The Divine Mother and Brahman are one."
After the departure of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna remained f or six months in a state of absolute identity with Brahman. "F or six months at a stretch", he said, "I remained in that state from which ordinary men can never return; generally the body falls off, after three weeks, like a sere leaf. I was not conscious of day and night. Flies would enter my mouth and nostrils just as they do a dead body's, but I did not feel them. My hair became matted with dust."
His body would not have survived but f or the kindly attention of a monk who happened to be at Dakshineswar at that time and who somehow realized that f or the good of humanity Sri Ramakrishna's body must be preserved. He tried various means, even physical violence, to recall the fleeing soul to the prison-house of the body, and during the resultant fleeting moments of consciousness he would push a few m orsels of food down Sri Ramakrishna's throat. Presently Sri Ramakrishna received the command of the Divine Mother to remain on the threshold of relative consciousness. Soon there-after after he was afflicted with a serious attack of dysentery. Day and night the pain t ortured him, and his mind gradually came down to the physical plane.
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From now on Sri Ramakrishna began to seek the company of devotees and holy men. He had gone through the st orm and stress of spiritual disciplines and visions. Now he realized an inner calmness and appeared to others as a n ormal person. But he could not bear the company of w orldly people or listen to their talk. F ortunately the holy atmosphere of Dakshineswar and the liberality of Mathur attracted monks and holy men from all parts of the country. Sadhus of all denominations — monists and dualists, Vaishnavas and Vedantists, Saktas and w orshippers of Rama — flocked there in ever increasing numbers. Ascetics and visionaries came to seek Sri Ramakrishna's advice. Vaishnavas had come during the period of his Vaishnava sadhana, and Tantriks when he practised the disciplines of Tantra. Vedantists began to arrive after the departure of Totapuri. In the room of Sri Ramakrishna, who was then in bed with dysentery, the Vedantists engaged in scriptural discussions, and, f orgetting his own physical suffering, he solved their doubts by referring directly to his own experiences. Many of the visit ors were genuine spiritual souls, the unseen pillars of Hinduism, and their spiritual lives were quickened in no small measure by the sage of Dakshineswar. Sri Ramakrishna in turn learnt from them anecdotes concerning the ways and the conduct of holy men, which he subsequently narrated to his devotees and disciples. At his request Mathur provided him with large st ores of food-stuffs, clothes, and so f orth, f or distribution among the wandering monks.
"Sri Ramakrishna had not read books, yet he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of religions and religious philosophies. This he acquired from his contacts with innumerable holy men and scholars. He had a unique power of assimilation; through meditation he made this knowledge a part of his being. Once, when he was asked by a disciple about the source of his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge, he replied; "I have not read; but I have heard the learned. I have made a garland of their knowledge, wearing it round my neck, and I have given it as an offering at the feet of the Mother."
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Without being f ormally initiated into their doctrines, Sri Ramakrishna thus realized the ideals of religions other than Hinduism. He did not need to follow any doctrine. All barriers were removed by his overwhelming love of God. So he became a Master who could speak with auth ority regarding the ideas and ideals of the various religions of the w orld. "I have practised", said he, "all religions — Hinduism, Islam, Christianity — and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. You must try all beliefs and traverse all the different ways once. Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion — Hindus, Mohammedans, Brahmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Siva, and bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well — the same Rama with a thousand names. A lake has several ghats. At one the Hindus take water in pitchers and call it 'jal'; at another the Mussalmans take water in leather bags and call it pani'. At a third the Christians call it 'water'. Can we imagine that it is not 'jal', but only 'pani' or 'water'? How ridiculous! The substance is One under different names, and everyone is seeking the same substance; only climate, temperament, and name create differences. Let each man follow his own path. If he sincerely and ardently wishes to know God, peace be unto him! He will surely realize Him."
In 1867 Sri Ramakrishna returned to Kamarpukur to recuperate from the effect of his austerities. The peaceful countryside, the simple and artless companions of his boyhood, and the pure air did him much good. The villagers were happy to get back their playful, frank, witty, kind-hearted, and truthful Gadadhar, though they did not fail to notice the great change that had come over him during his years in Calcutta. His wife, Sarada Devi, now fourteen years old, soon arrived at Kamarpukur. Her spiritual development was much beyond her age and she was able to understand immediately her husband's state of mind. She became eager to learn from him about God and to live with him as his attendant. The Master accepted her cheerfully both as his disciple and as his spiritual companion. Referring to the experiences of these few days, she once said: "I used to feel always as if a pitcher full of bliss were placed in my heart. The joy was indescribable."
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On January 27, 1868, Mathur Babu with a party of some one hundred and twenty-five persons set out on a pilgrimage to the sacred places of n orthern India. At Vaidyanath in Behar, when the Master saw the inhabitants of a village reduced by poverty and starvation to mere skeletons, he requested his rich patron to feed the people and give each a piece of cloth. Mathur demurred at the added expense. The Master declared bitterly that he would not go on to Benares, but would live with the po or and share their miseries. He actually left Mathur and sat down with the villagers. Whereupon Mathur had to yield. On another occasion, two years later, Sri Ramakrishna showed a similar sentiment f or the po or and needy. He accompanied Mathur on a tour to one of the latter's estates at the time of the collection of rents. F or two years the harvests had failed and the tenants were in a state of extreme poverty. The Master asked Mathur to remit their rents, distribute help to them, and in addition give the hungry people a sumptuous feast. When Mathur grumbled, the Master said: "You are only the steward of the Divine Mother. They are the Mother's tenants. You must spend the Mother's money. When they are suffering, how can you refuse to help them? You must help them." Again Mathur had to give in. Sri Ramakrishna's sympathy f or the po or sprang from his perception of God in all created beings. His sentiment was not that of the humanist or philanthropist. To him the service of man was the same as the w orship of God.
The party entered holy Benares by boat along the Ganges. When Sri Ramakrishna's eyes fell on this city of Siva, where had accumulated f or ages the devotion and piety of countless w orshippers, he saw it to be made of gold, as the scriptures declare. He was visibly moved. During his stay in the city he treated every particle of its earth with utmost respect. At the Manikarnika Ghat, the great cremation ground of the city, he actually saw Siva, with ash-covered body and tawny matted hair, serenely approaching each funeral pyre and breathing into the ears of the c orpses the mantra of liberation; and then the Divine Mother removing from the dead their bonds. Thus he realized the significance of the scriptural statement that anyone dying in Benares attains salvation through the grace of Siva. He paid a visit to Trailanga Swami, the celebrated monk, whom he later declared to be a real paramahamsa, a veritable image of Siva.
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In the nirvikalpa samadhi Sri Ramakrishna had realized that Brahman alone is real and the w orld illus ory. By keeping his mind six months on the plane of the non-dual Brahman, he had attained to the state of the vijnani, the knower of Truth in a special and very rich sense, who sees Brahman not only in himself and in the transcendental Absolute, but in everything of the w orld. In this state of vijnana, sometimes, bereft of body-consciousness, he would regard himself as one with Brahman; sometimes, conscious of the dual w orld, he would regard himself as God's devotee, servant, or child. In order to enable the Master to w ork f or the welfare of humanity, the Divine Mother had kept in him a trace of ego, which he described — acc ording to his mood — as the "ego of Knowledge", the "ego of Devotion", the "ego of a child", or the "ego of a servant". In any case this ego of the Master, consumed by the fire of the Knowledge of Brahman, was an appearance only, like a burnt string. He often referred to this ego as the "ripe ego" in contrast with the ego of the bound soul, which he described as the "unripe" or "green" ego. The ego of the bound soul identifies itself with the body, relatives, possessions, and the w orld; but the "ripe ego", illumined by Divine Knowledge, knows the body, relatives, possessions, and the w orld to be unreal and establishes a relationship of love with God alone. Through this "ripe ego" Sri Ramakrishna dealt with the w orld and his wife. One day, while stroking his feet, Sarada Devi asked the Master, "What do you think of me?" Quick came the answer: "The Mother who is w orshipped in the temple is the mother who has given birth to my body and is now living in the nahabat, and it is She again who is stroking my feet at this moment. Indeed, I always look on you as the personification of the Blissful Mother Kali."
Sarada Devi, in the company of her husband, had rare spiritual experiences. She said: "I have no w ords to describe my wonderful exaltation of spirit as I watched him in his different moods. Under the influence of divine emotion he would sometimes talk on abstruse subjects, sometimes laugh, sometimes weep, and sometimes become perfectly motionless in samadhi. This would continue throughout the night. There was such an extra ordinary divine presence in him that now and then I would shake with fear and wonder how the night would pass. Months went by in this way. Then one day he discovered that I had to keep awake the whole night lest, during my sleep, he should go into samadhi — f or it might happen at any moment —, and so he asked me to sleep in the nahabat."
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First, he was an Incarnation of God, a specially commissioned person, whose spiritual experiences were f or the benefit of humanity. Whereas it takes an ordinary man a whole life's struggle to realize one or two phases of God, he had in a few years realized God in all His phases.
Second, he knew that he had always been a free soul, that the various disciplines through which he had passed were really not necessary f or his own liberation but were solely f or the benefit of others. Thus the terms liberation and bondage were not applicable to him. As long as there are beings who consider themselves bound. God must come down to earth as an Incarnation to free them from bondage, just as a magistrate must visit any part of his district in which there is trouble.
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Second, the three great systems of thought known as Dualism, Qualified Non-dualism, and Absolute Non-dualism — Dvaita, Visishtadvaita, and Advaita — he perceived to represent three stages in man's progress toward the Ultimate Reality. They were not contradict ory but complementary and suited to different temperaments. F or the ordinary man with strong attachment to the senses, a dualistic f orm of religion, prescribing a certain amount of material supp ort, such as music and other symbols, is useful. A man of God-realization transcends the idea of w orldly duties, but the ordinary m ortal must perf orm his duties, striving to be unattached and to surrender the results to God. The mind can comprehend and describe the range of thought and experience up to the Visishtadvaita, and no further. The Advaita, the last w ord in spiritual experience, is something to be felt in samadhi. f or it transcends mind and speech. From the highest standpoint, the Absolute and Its manifestation are equally real — the L ord's Name, His Abode, and the L ord Himself are of the same spiritual Essence. Everything is Spirit, the difference being only in f orm.
Third, Sri Ramakrishna realized the wish of the Divine Mother that through him She should found a new order, consisting of those who would uphold the universal doctrines illustrated in his life.
Fourth, his spiritual insight told him that those who were having their last birth on the m ortal plane of existence and those who had sincerely called on the L ord even once in their lives must come to him.
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Keshab was the leader of the Brahmo Samaj, one of the two great movements that, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, played an imp ortant part in shaping the course of the renascence of India. The founder of the Brahmo movement had been the great Raja Rammohan Roy (1774-1833). Though b orn in an orthodox brahmin family, Rammohan Roy had shown great sympathy f or Islam and Christianity. He had gone to Tibet in search of the Buddhist mysteries. He had extracted from Christianity its ethical system, but had rejected the divinity of Christ as he had denied the Hindu Incarnations. The religion of Islam influenced him, to a great extent, in the f ormulation of his monotheistic doctrines. But he always went back to the Vedas f or his spiritual inspiration. The Brahmo Samaj, which he founded in 1828, was dedicated to the "w orship and ad oration of the Eternal, the Unsearchable, the Immutable Being, who is the Auth or and Preserver of the Universe". The Samaj was open to all without distinction of colour, creed, caste, nation, or religion.
The real organizer of the Samaj was Devendranath Tag ore (1817-1905), the father of the poet Rabindranath. His physical and spiritual beauty, aristocratic aloofness, penetrating intellect, and poetic sensibility made him the f oremost leader of the educated Bengalis. These addressed him by the respectful epithet of Maharshi, the "Great Seer". The Maharshi was a Sanskrit scholar and, unlike Raja Rammohan Roy, drew his inspiration entirely from the Upanishads. He was an implacable enemy of image w orship ship and also fought to stop the infiltration of Christian ideas into the Samaj. He gave the movement its faith and ritual. Under his influence the Brahmo Samaj professed One Self-existent Supreme Being who had created the universe out of nothing, the God of Truth, Infinite Wisdom, Goodness, and Power, the Eternal and Omnipotent, the One without a Second. Man should love Him and do His will, believe in Him and w orship Him, and thus merit salvation in the w orld to come.
By far the ablest leader of the Brahmo movement was Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-1884). Unlike Raja Rammohan Roy and Devendranath Tag ore, Keshab was b orn of a middle-class Bengali family and had been brought up in an English school. He did not know Sanskrit and very soon broke away from the popular Hindu religion. Even at an early age he came under the spell of Christ and professed to have experienced the special favour of John the Baptist, Christ, and St. Paul. When he strove to introduce Christ to the Brahmo Samaj, a rupture became inevitable with Devendranath. In 1868 Keshab broke with the older leader and founded the Brahmo Samaj of India, Devendra retaining leadership of the first Brahmo Samaj, now called the Adi Samaj.
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The other movement playing an imp ortant part in the nineteenth-century religious revival of India was the Arya Samaj. The Brahmo Samaj, essentially a movement of compromise with European culture, tacitly admitted the superi ority of the West. But the founder of the Arya Samaj was a ' pugnacious Hindu sannyasi who accepted the challenge of Islam and Christianity and was resolved to combat all f oreign influence in India. Swami Dayananda (1824-1883) launched this movement in Bombay in 1875, and soon its influence was felt throughout western India. The Swami was a great scholar of the Vedas, which he explained as being strictly monotheistic. He preached against the w orship of images and re-established the ancient Vedic sacrificial rites. Acc ording to him the Vedas were the ultimate auth ority on religion, and he accepted every w ord of them as literally true. The Arya Samaj became a bulwark against the encroachments of Islam and Christianity, and its orthodox flavour appealed to many Hindu minds. It also assumed leadership in many movements of social ref orm. The caste-system became a target of its attack. Women it liberated from many of their social disabilities. The cause of education received from it a great impetus. It started agitation against early marriage and advocated the remarriage of Hindu widows. Its influence was strongest in the Punjab, the battle-ground of the Hindu and Islamic cultures. A new fighting attitude was introduced into the slumbering Hindu society. Unlike the Brahmo Samaj, the influence of the Arya Samaj was not confined to the intellectuals. It was a f orce that spread to the masses. It was a dogmatic movement intolerant of those who disagreed with its views, and it emphasized only one way, the Arya Samaj way, to the realization of Truth. Sri Ramakrishna met Swami Dayananda when the latter visited Bengal.
--- KESHAB CHANDRA SEN
Keshab Chandra Sen and Sri Ramakrishna met f or the first time in the garden house of Jaygopal Sen at Belgharia, a few miles from Dakshineswar, where the great Brahmo leader was staying with some of his disciples. In many respects the two were poles apart, though an irresistible inner attraction was to make them intimate friends. The Master had realized God as Pure Spirit and Consciousness, but he believed in the various f orms of God as well. Keshab, on the other hand, regarded image w orship as idolatry and gave alleg orical explanations of the Hindu deities. Keshab was an orat or and a writer of books and magazine articles; Sri Ramakrishna had a h orr or of lecturing and hardly knew how to write his own name, Keshab's fame spread far and wide, even reaching the distant sh ores of England; the Master still led a secluded life in the village of Dakshineswar. Keshab emphasized social ref orms f or India's regeneration; to Sri Ramakrishna God-realization was the only goal of life. Keshab considered himself a disciple of Christ and accepted in a diluted f orm the Christian sacraments and Trinity; Sri Ramakrishna was the simple child of Kali, the Divine Mother, though he too, in a different way, acknowledged Christ's divinity. Keshab was a householder holder and took a real interest in the welfare of his children, whereas Sri Ramakrishna was a paramahamsa and completely indifferent to the life of the w orld. Yet, as their acquaintance ripened into friendship, Sri Ramakrishna and Keshab held each other in great love and respect. Years later, at the news of Keshab's death, the Master felt as if half his body had become paralyzed. Keshab's concepts of the harmony of religions and the Motherhood of God were deepened and enriched by his contact with Sri Ramakrishna.
Sri Ramakrishna, dressed in a red-b ordered dhoti, one end of which was carelessly thrown over his left shoulder, came to Jaygopal's garden house accompanied by Hriday. No one took notice of the unostentatious visit or. Finally the Master said to Keshab, "People tell me you have seen God; so I have come to hear from you about God." A magnificent conversation followed. The Master sang a thrilling song about Kali and f orthwith went into samadhi. When Hriday uttered the sacred "Om" in his ears, he gradually came back to consciousness of the w orld, his face still radiating a divine brilliance. Keshab and his followers were amazed. The contrast between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmo devotees was very interesting. There sat this small man, thin and extremely delicate. His eyes were illumined with an inner light. Good humour gleamed in his eyes and lurked in the c orners of his mouth. His speech was Bengali of a homely kind with a slight, delightful stammer, and his w ords held men enthralled by their wealth of spiritual experience, their inexhaustible st ore of simile and metaph or, their power of observation, their bright and subtle humour, their wonderful catholicity, their ceaseless flow of wisdom. And around him now were the sophisticated men of Bengal, the best products of Western education, with Keshab, the idol of young Bengal, as their leader.
Keshab's sincerity was enough f or Sri Ramakrishna. Hencef orth the two saw each other frequently, either at Dakshineswar or at the temple of the Brahmo Samaj. Whenever the Master was in the temple at the time of divine service, Keshab would request him to speak to the congregation. And Keshab would visit the saint, in his turn, with offerings of flowers and fruits.
--- OTHER BRAHMO LEADERS
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This contact with the educated and progressive Bengalis opened Sri Ramakrishna's eyes to a new realm of thought. B orn and brought up in a simple village, without any f ormal education, and taught by the orthodox holy men of India in religious life, he had had no opp ortunity to study the influence of modernism on the thoughts and lives of the Hindus. He could not properly estimate the result of the impact of Western education on Indian culture. He was a Hindu of the Hindus, renunciation being to him the only means to the realization of God in life. From the Brahmos he learnt that the new generation of India made a compromise between God and the w orld. Educated young men were influenced m ore by the Western philosophers than by their own prophets. But Sri Ramakrishna was not dismayed, f or he saw in this, too, the hand of God. And though he expounded to the Brahmos all his ideas about God and austere religious disciplines, yet he bade them accept from his teachings only as much as suited their tastes and temperaments.
^The term "woman and gold", which has been used throughout in a collective sense, occurs again and again in the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna to designate the chief impediments to spiritual progress. This favourite expression of the Master, "kaminikanchan", has often been misconstrued. By it he meant only "lust and greed", the baneful influence of which retards the aspirant's spiritual growth. He used the w ord "kamini", or "woman", as a concrete term f or the sex instinct when addressing his man devotees. He advised women, on the other hand, to shun "man". "Kanchan", or "gold", symbolizes greed, which is the other obstacle to spiritual life.
Sri Ramakrishna never taught his disciples to hate any woman, or womankind in general. This can be seen clearly by going through all his teachings under this head and judging them collectively. The Master looked on all women as so many images of the Divine Mother of the Universe. He paid the highest homage to womankind by accepting a woman as his guide while practising the very profound spiritual disciplines of Tantra. His wife, known and revered as the Holy Mother, was his constant companion and first disciple. At the end of his spiritual practice he literally w orshipped his wife as the embodiment of the Goddess Kali, the Divine Mother. After his passing away the Holy Mother became the spiritual guide not only of a large number of householders, but also of many monastic members of the Ramakrishna order.
--- THE MASTER'S YEARNING F or HIS OWN DEVOTEES
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-melting love of the Purana. Twenty hours out of twenty-four he would speak without out rest or respite. He gave to all his sympathy and enlightenment, and he touched them with that strange power of the soul which could not but melt even the most hardened. And people understood him acc ording to their powers of comprehension.
^The w ord is generally used in the text to denote one devoted to God, a w orshipper of the Personal God, or a follower of the path of love. A devotee of Sri Ramakrishna is one who is devoted to Sri Ramakrishna and follows his teachings. The w ord "disciple", when used in connexion with Sri Ramakrishna, refers to one who had been initiated into spiritual life by Sri Ramakrishna and who regarded him as his guru.
--- THE MASTER'S METHOD OF TEACHING
But he remained as ever the willing instrument in the hand of God, the child of the Divine Mother, totally untouched by the idea of being a teacher. He used to say that three ideas — that he was a guru, a father, and a master — pricked his flesh like th orns. Yet he was an extra ordinary teacher. He stirred his disciples' hearts m ore by a subtle influence than by actions or w ords. He never claimed to be the founder of a religion or the organizer of a sect. Yet he was a religious dynamo. He was the verifier of all religions and creeds. He was like an expert gardener, who prepares the soil and removes the weeds, knowing that the plants will grow because of the inherent power of the seeds, producing each its appropriate flowers and fruits. He never thrust his ideas on anybody. He understood people's limitations and w orked on the principle that what is good f or one may be bad f or another. He had the unusual power of knowing the devotees' minds, even their inmost souls, at the first sight. He accepted disciples with the full knowledge of their past tendencies and future possibilities. The life of evil did not frighten him, n or did religious squeamishness raise anybody in his estimation. He saw in everything the unerring finger of the Divine Mother. Even the light that leads astray was to him the light from God.
To those who became his intimate disciples the Master was a friend, companion, and playmate. Even the ch ores of religious discipline would be lightened in his presence. The devotees would be so inebriated with pure joy in his company that they would have no time to ask themselves whether he was an Incarnation, a perfect soul, or a yogi. His very presence was a great teaching; w ords were superfluous. In later years his disciples remarked that while they were with him they would regard him as a comrade, but afterwards would tremble to think of their frivolities in the presence of such a great person. They had convincing proof that the Master could, by his mere wish, kindle in their hearts the love of God and give them His vision.
Through all this fun and frolic, this merriment and frivolity, he always kept bef ore them the shining ideal of God-Consciousness and the path of renunciation. He prescribed ascents steep or graded acc ording to the powers of the climber. He permitted no compromise with the basic principles of purity. An aspirant had to keep his body, mind, senses, and soul unspotted; had to have a sincere love f or God and an ever mounting spirit of yearning. The rest would be done by the Mother.
His disciples were of two kinds: the householders, and the young men, some of whom were later to become monks. There was also a small group of women devotees.
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F or the householders Sri Ramakrishna did not prescribe the hard path of total renunciation. He wanted them to discharge their obligations to their families. Their renunciation was to be mental. Spiritual life could not be acquired by flying away from responsibilities. A married couple should live like brother and sister after the birth of one or two children, devoting their time to spiritual talk and contemplation. He encouraged the householders, saying that their life was, in a way, easier than that of the monk, since it was m ore advantageous to fight the enemy from inside a f ortress than in an open field. He insisted, however, on their repairing into solitude every now and then to strengthen their devotion and faith in God through prayer, japa, and meditation. He prescribed f or them the companionship of sadhus. He asked them to perf orm their w orldly duties with one hand, while holding to God with the other, and to pray to God to make their duties fewer and fewer so that in the end they might cling to Him with both hands. He would discourage in both the householders and the celibate youths any lukewarmness in their spiritual struggles. He would not ask them to follow indiscriminately the ideal of non-resistance, which ultimately makes a coward of the unwary.
--- FUTURE MONKS
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. But see that you don't become intoxicated; you must not reel and your thoughts must not wander. At first you will feel ordinary excitement, but soon you will experience spiritual exaltation." Gradually Surendra's entire life was changed. The Master designated him as one of those commissioned by the Divine Mother to defray a great part of his expenses. Surendra's purse was always open f or the Master's comf ort.
--- KEDAR
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--- MAHENDRA or M.
Mahendranath Gupta, better known as "M.", arrived at Dakshineswar in March 1882. He belonged to the Brahmo Samaj and was headmaster of the Vidyasagar High School at Syambazar, Calcutta. At the very first sight the Master recognized him as one of his "marked" disciples. Mahendra rec orded in his diary Sri Ramakrishna's conversations with his devotees. These are the first directly rec orded w ords, in the spiritual hist ory of the w orld, of a man recognized as belonging in the class of Buddha and Christ. The present volume is a translation of this diary. Mahendra was instrumental, through his personal contacts, in spreading the Master's message among many young and aspiring souls.
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The householder devotees generally visited Sri Ramakrishna on Sunday afternoons and other holidays. Thus a brotherhood was gradually f ormed, and the Master encouraged their fraternal feeling. Now and then he would accept an invitation to a devotee's home, where other devotees would also be invited. Kirtan would be arranged and they would spend hours in dance and devotional music. The Master would go into trances or open his heart in religious discourses and in the narration of his own spiritual experiences. Many people who could not go to Dakshineswar participated in these meetings and felt blessed. Such an occasion would be concluded with a sumptuous feast.
But it was in the company of his younger devotees, pure souls yet unstained by the touch of w orldliness, that Sri Ramakrishna took greatest joy. Among the young men who later embraced the householder's life were Narayan, Paitu, the younger Naren, Tejchandra, and Purna. These visited the Master sometimes against strong opposition from home.
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Sri Ramakrishna also became acquainted with a number of people whose scholarship or wealth entitled them everywhere to respect. He had met, a few years bef ore, Devendranath Tag ore, famous all over Bengal f or his wealth, scholarship, saintly character, and social position. But the Master found him disappointing; f or, whereas Sri Ramakrishna expected of a saint complete renunciation of the w orld, Devendranath combined with his saintliness a life of enjoyment. Sri Ramakrishna met the great poet Michael Madhusudan, who had embraced Christianity "f or the sake of his stomach". To him the Master could not impart instruction, f or the Divine Mother "pressed his tongue". In addition he met Maharaja Jatindra Mohan Tag ore, a titled aristocrat of Bengal; Kristodas Pal, the edit or, social ref ormer, and patriot; Iswar Vidyasagar, the noted philanthropist and educat or; Pundit Shashadhar, a great champion of Hindu orthodoxy; Aswini Kumar Dutta, a headmaster, m oralist, and leader of Indian Nationalism; and Bankim Chatterji, a deputy magistrate, novelist, and essayist, and one of the fashioners of modern Bengali prose. Sri Ramakrishna was not the man to be dazzled by outward show, gl ory, or eloquence. A pundit without discrimination he regarded as a mere straw. He would search people's hearts f or the light of God, and if that was missing he would have nothing to do with them.
--- KRISTODAS PAL
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 f or this reason that the Indians are a subject nation today. Doing good to others, bringing education to the do or of the ign orant, 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 res ort 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 po or 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 w orld! You appear to think you are omniscient. Well, have you seen those tiny crabs that are b orn 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 w orld? The L ord 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 w ork f or 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 w orld. Let a man first realize Him. Let a man get the auth ority 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 w ork f or the w orld." 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 f or gl ory, a barren excitement to kill the b oredom 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 w orship.
--- MONASTIC DISCIPLES
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The first of these young men to come to the Master was Latu. B orn of obscure parents, in Behar, he came to Calcutta in search of w ork and was engaged by Ramchandra Dutta as house-boy. Learning of the saintly Sri Ramakrishna, he visited the Master at Dakshineswar and was deeply touched by his c ordiality. When he was about to leave, the Master asked him to take some money and return home in a boat or carriage. But Latu declared he had a few pennies and jingled the coins in his pocket. Sri Ramakrishna later requested Ram to allow Latu to stay with him permanently. Under Sri Ramakrishna's guidance Latu made great progress in meditation and was blessed with ecstatic visions, but all the eff orts of the Master to give him a smattering of education failed. Latu was very fond of kirtan and other devotional songs but remained all his life illiterate.
--- RAKHAL
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Narendra was b orn in Calcutta on January 12, 1863, of an aristocratic kayastha family. His mother was steeped in the great Hindu epics, and his father, a distinguished att orney of the Calcutta High Court, was an agnostic about religion, a friend of the po or, and a mocker at social conventions. Even in his boyhood and youth Narendra possessed great physical courage and presence of mind, a vivid imagination, deep power of thought, keen intelligence, an extra ordinary mem ory, a love of truth, a passion f or purity, a spirit of independence, and a tender heart. An expert musician, he also acquired proficiency in physics, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, hist ory, and literature. He grew up into an extremely handsome young man. Even as a child he practised meditation and showed great power of concentration. Though free and passionate in w ord and action, he took the vow of austere religious chastity and never allowed the fire of purity to be extinguished by the slightest defilement of body or soul.
As he read in college the rationalistic Western philosophers of the nineteenth century, his boyhood faith in God and religion was unsettled. He would not accept religion on mere faith; he wanted demonstration of God. But very soon his passionate nature discovered that mere Universal Reason was cold and bloodless. His emotional nature, dissatisfied with a mere abstraction, required a concrete supp ort to help him in the hours of temptation. He wanted an external power, a guru, who by embodying perfection in the flesh would still the commotion of his soul. Attracted by the magnetic personality of Keshab, he joined the Brahmo Samaj and became a singer in its choir. But in the Samaj he did not find the guru who could say that he had seen God.
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A few m ore meetings completely removed from Narendra's mind the last traces of the notion that Sri Ramakrishna might be a monomaniac or wily hypnotist. His integrity, purity, renunciation, and unselfishness were beyond question. But Narendra could not accept a man, an imperfect m ortal, as his guru. As a member of the Brahmo Samaj, he could not believe that a human intermediary was necessary between man and God. M oreover, he openly laughed at Sri Ramakrishna's visions as hallucinations. Yet in the secret chamber of his heart he b ore a great love f or the Master.
Sri Ramakrishna was grateful to the Divine Mother f or sending him one who doubted his own realizations. Often he asked Narendra to test him as the money-changers test their coins. He laughed at Narendra's biting criticism of his spiritual experiences and samadhi. When at times Narendra's sharp w ords distressed him, the Divine Mother Herself would console him, saying: "Why do you listen to him? In a few days he will believe your every w ord." He could hardly bear Narendra's absences. Often he would weep bitterly f or the sight of him. Sometimes Narendra would find the Master's love embarrassing; and one day he sharply scolded him, warning him that such infatuation would soon draw him down to the level of its object. The Master was distressed and prayed to the Divine Mother. Then he said to Narendra: "You rogue, I won't listen to you any m ore. Mother says that I love you because I see God in you, and the day I no longer see God in you I shall not be able to bear even the sight of you."
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At the beginning of 1884 Narendra's father suddenly died of heart-failure, leaving the family in a state of utmost poverty. There were six or seven mouths to feed at home. Credit ors were knocking at the do or. Relatives who had accepted his father's unstinted kindness now became enemies, some even bringing suit to deprive Narendra of his ancestral home. Actually starving and barefoot, Narendra searched f or a job, but without success. He began to doubt whether anywhere in the w orld there was such a thing as unselfish sympathy. Two rich women made evil proposals to him and promised to put an end to his distress; but he refused them with contempt.
Narendra began to talk of his doubt of the very existence of God. His friends thought he had become an atheist, and piously circulated gossip adducing unmentionable motives f or his unbelief. His m oral character was maligned. Even some of the Master's disciples partly believed the gossip, and Narendra told these to their faces that only a coward believed in God through fear of suffering or hell. But he was distressed to think that Sri Ramakrishna, too, might believe these false rep orts. His pride revolted. He said to himself: "What does it matter? If a man's good name rests on such slender foundations, I don't care." But later on he was amazed to learn that the Master had never lost faith in him. To a disciple who complained about Narendra's degradation, Sri Ramakrishna replied: "Hush, you fool! The Mother has told me it can never be so. I won't look at you if you speak that way again."
The moment came when Narendra's distress reached its climax. He had gone the whole day without food. As he was returning home in the evening he could hardly lift his tired limbs. He sat down in front of a house in sheer exhaustion, too weak even to think. His mind began to wander. Then, suddenly, a divine power lifted the veil over his soul. He found the solution of the problem of the coexistence of divine justice and misery, the presence of suffering in the creation of a blissful Providence. He felt bodily refreshed, his soul was bathed in peace, and he slept serenely.
--
Jogindranath came of an aristocratic brahmin family of Dakshineswar. His father and relatives shared the popular mistrust of Sri Ramakrishna's sanity. At a very early age the boy developed religious tendencies, spending two or three hours daily in meditation, and his meeting with Sri Ramakrishna deepened his desire f or the realization of God. He had a perfect h orr or of marriage. But at the earnest request of his mother he had had to yield, and he now believed that his spiritual future was doomed. So he kept himself away from the Master.
Sri Ramakrishna employed a ruse to bring Jogindra to him. As soon as the disciple entered the room, the Master rushed f orward to meet the young man. Catching hold of the disciple's hand, he said: "What if you have married? Haven't I too married? What is there to be afraid of in that?" Touching his own chest he said: "If this [meaning himself] is propitious, then even a hundred thousand marriages cannot injure you. If you desire to lead a householder's life, then bring your wife here one day, and I shall see that she becomes a real companion in your spiritual progress. But if you want to lead a monastic life, then I shall eat up your attachment to the w orld." Jogin was dumbfounded at these w ords. He received new strength, and his spirit of renunciation was re-established.
--
Sashi and Sarat were two cousins who came from a pious brahmin family of Calcutta. At an early age they had joined the Brahmo Samaj and had come under the influence of Keshab Sen. The Master said to them at their first meeting: "If bricks and tiles are burnt after the trade-mark has been stamped on them, they retain the mark f or ever. Similarly, man should be stamped with God bef ore entering the w orld. Then he will not become attached to w orldliness." Fully aware of the future course of their life, he asked them not to marry. The Master asked Sashi whether he believed in God with f orm or in God without f orm. Sashi replied that he was not even sure about the existence of God; so he could not speak one way or the other. This frank answer very much pleased the Master.
Sarat's soul longed f or the all-embracing realization of the Godhead. When the Master inquired whether there was any particular f orm of God he wished to see, the boy replied that he would like to see God in all the living beings of the w orld. "But", the Master demurred, "that is the last w ord in realization. One cannot have it at the very outset." Sarat stated calmly: "I won't be satisfied with anything sh ort of that. I shall trudge on along the path till I attain that blessed state." Sri Ramakrishna was very much pleased.
--
The Master knew Hari's passion f or Vedanta. But he did not wish any of his disciples to become a dry ascetic or a mere bookw orm. So he asked Hari to practise Vedanta in life by giving up the unreal and following the Real. "But it is not so easy", Sri Ramakrishna said, "to realize the illus oriness of the w orld. Study alone does not help one very much. The grace of God is required. Mere personal eff ort is futile. A man is a tiny creature after all, with very limited powers. But he can achieve the impossible if he prays to God f or His grace." Whereupon the Master sang a song in praise of grace. Hari was profoundly moved and shed tears. Later in life Hari achieved a wonderful synthesis of the ideals of the Personal God and the Impersonal Truth.
--- GANGADHAR
--
Two m ore young men, Sarada Prasanna and Tulasi, complete the small band of the Master's disciples later to embrace the life of the wandering monk. With the exception of the elder Gopal, all of them were in their teens or slightly over. They came from middle-class Bengali families, and most of them were students in school or college. Their parents and relatives had envisaged f or them bright w orldly careers. They came to Sri Ramakrishna with pure bodies, vig orous minds, and uncontaminated souls. All were b orn with unusual spiritual attributes. Sri Ramakrishna accepted them, even at first sight, as his children, relatives, friends, and companions. His magic touch unfolded them. And later each acc ording to his measure reflected the life of the Master, becoming a t orch-bearer of his message across land and sea.
--- WOMAN DEVOTEES
--
Unsurpassed among the woman devotees of the Master in the richness of her devotion and spiritual experiences was Agh oremani Devi, an orthodox brahmin woman. Widowed at an early age, she had dedicated herself completely to spiritual pursuits. Gopala, the Baby Krishna, was her Ideal Deity, whom she w orshipped following the vatsalya attitude of the Vaishnava religion, regarding Him as her own child. Through Him she satisfied her unassuaged maternal love, cooking f or Him, feeding Him, bathing Him, and putting Him to bed. This sweet intimacy with Gopala won her the sobriquet of Gopal Ma, or Gopala's Mother. F or f orty years she had lived on the bank of the Ganges in a small, bare room, her only companions being a threadbare copy of the Ramayana and a bag containing her rosary. At the age of sixty, in 1884, she visited Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar. During the second visit, as soon as the Master saw her, he said: "Oh, you have come! Give me something to eat." With great hesitation she gave him some ordinary sweets that she had purchased f or him on the way. The Master ate them with relish and asked her to bring him simple curries or sweets prepared by her own hands. Gopal Ma thought him a queer kind of monk, f or, instead of talking of God, he always asked f or food. She did not want to visit him again, but an irresistible attraction brought her back to the temple garden; She carried with her some simple curries that she had cooked herself.
One early m orning at three o'clock, about a year later, Gopal Ma was about to finish her daily devotions, when she was startled to find Sri Ramakrishna sitting on her left, with his right hand clenched, like the hand of the image of Gopala. She was amazed and caught hold of the hand, whereupon the figure vanished and in its place appeared the real Gopala, her Ideal Deity. She cried aloud with joy. Gopala begged her f or butter. She pleaded her poverty and gave Him some dry coconut candies. Gopala, sat on her lap, snatched away her rosary, jumped on her shoulders, and moved all about the room. As soon as the day broke she hastened to Dakshineswar like an insane woman. Of course Gopala accompanied her, resting His head on her shoulder. She clearly saw His tiny ruddy feet hanging over her breast. She entered Sri Ramakrishna's room. The Master had fallen into samadhi. Like a child, he sat on her lap, and she began to feed him with butter, cream, and other delicacies. After some time he regained consciousness and returned to his bed. But the mind of Gopala's Mother was still roaming in another plane. She was steeped in bliss. She saw Gopala frequently entering the Master's body and again coming out of it. When she returned to her hut, still in a dazed condition, Gopala accompanied her.
She spent about two months in uninterrupted communion with God, the Baby Gopala never leaving her f or a moment. Then the intensity of her vision was lessened; had it not been, her body would have perished. The Master spoke highly of her exalted spiritual condition and said that such vision of God was a rare thing f or ordinary m ortals. The fun-loving Master one day confronted the critical Narendranath with this simple-minded woman. No two could have presented a m ore striking contrast. The Master knew of Narendra's lofty contempt f or all visions, and he asked the old lady to narrate her experiences to Narendra. With great hesitation she told him her st ory. Now and then she interrupted her maternal chatter to ask Narendra: "My son, I am a po or ign orant woman. I don't understand anything. You are so learned. Now tell me if these visions of Gopala are true." As Narendra listened to the st ory he was profoundly moved. He said, "Yes, mother, they are quite true." Behind his cynicism Narendra, too, possessed a heart full of love and tenderness.
--- THE MARCH OF EVENTS
In 1881 Hriday was dismissed from service in the Kali temple, f or an act of indiscretion, and was ordered by the auth orities never again to enter the garden. In a way the hand of the Divine Mother may be seen even in this. Having taken care of Sri Ramakrishna during the st ormy days of his spiritual discipline, Hriday had come naturally to consider himself the sole guardian of his uncle. None could approach the Master without his knowledge. And he would be extremely jealous if Sri Ramakrishna paid attention to anyone else. Hriday's removal made it possible f or the real devotees of the Master to approach him freely and live with him in the temple garden.
During the week-ends the householders, enjoying a respite from their office duties, visited the Master. The meetings on Sunday afternoons were of the nature of little festivals. Refreshments were often served. Professional musicians now and then sang devotional songs. The Master and the devotees sang and danced, Sri Ramakrishna frequently going into ecstatic moods. The happy mem ory of such a Sunday would linger long in the minds of the devotees. Those whom the Master wanted f or special instruction he would ask to visit him on Tuesdays and Saturdays. These days were particularly auspicious f or the w orship of Kali.
--
One day, in January 1884, the Master was going toward the pine-grove when he went into a trance. He was alone. There was no one to supp ort him or guide his footsteps. He fell to the ground and dislocated a bone in his left arm. This accident had a significant influence on his mind, the natural inclination of which was to soar above the consciousness of the body. The acute pain in the arm f orced his mind to dwell on the body and on the w orld outside. But he saw even in this a divine purpose; f or, with his mind compelled to dwell on the physical plane, he realized m ore than ever that he was an instrument in the hand of the Divine Mother, who had a mission to fulfil through his human body and mind. He also distinctly found that in the phenomenal w orld God manifests Himself, in an inscrutable way, through diverse human beings, both good and evil. Thus he would speak of God in the guise of the wicked, God in the guise of the pious. God in the guise of the hypocrite, God in the guise of the lewd. He began to take a special delight in watching the divine play in the relative w orld. Sometimes the sweet human relationship with God would appear to him m ore appealing than the all-effacing Knowledge of Brahman. Many a time he would pray: "Mother, don't make me unconscious through the Knowledge of Brahman. Don't give me Brahmajnana, Mother. Am I not Your child, and naturally timid? I must have my Mother. A million salutations to the Knowledge of Brahman! Give it to those who want it." Again he prayed: "O Mother let me remain in contact with men! Don't make me a dried-up ascetic. I want to enjoy Your sp ort in the w orld." He was able to taste this very rich divine experience and enjoy the love of God and the company of His devotees because his mind, on account of the injury to his arm, was f orced to come down to the consciousness of the body. Again, he would make fun of people who proclaimed him as a Divine Incarnation, by pointing to his broken arm. He would say, "Have you ever heard of God breaking His arm?" It took the arm about five months to heal.
--- BEGINNING OF HIS ILLNESS
In April 1885 the Master's throat became inflamed. Prolonged conversation or abs orption in samadhi, making the blood flow into the throat, would aggravate the pain. Yet when the annual Vaishnava festival was celebrated at Panihati, Sri Ramakrishna attended it against the doct or's advice. With a group of disciples he spent himself in music, dance, and ecstasy. The illness took a turn f or the w orse and was diagnosed as "clergyman's s ore throat". The patient was cautioned against conversation and ecstasies. Though he followed the physician's directions regarding medicine and diet, he could neither control his trances n or withhold from seekers the solace of his advice. Sometimes, like a sulky child, he would complain to the Mother about the crowds, who gave him no rest day or night. He was overheard to say to Her; "Why do You bring here all these w orthless people, who are like milk diluted with five times its own quantity of water? My eyes are almost destroyed with blowing the fire to dry up the water. My health is gone. It is beyond my strength. Do it Yourself, if You want it done. This (pointing to his own body) is but a perf orated drum, and if you go on beating it day in and day out, how long will it last?"
But his large heart never turned anyone away. He said, "Let me be condemned to be b orn over and over again, even in the f orm of a dog, if I can be of help to a single soul." And he b ore the pain, singing cheerfully, "Let the body be preoccupied with illness, but, O mind, dwell f or ever in God's Bliss!"
--
In the beginning of September 1885 Sri Ramakrishna was moved to Syampukur. Here Narendra organized the young disciples to attend the Master day and night. At first they concealed the Master's illness from their guardians; but when it became m ore serious they remained with him almost constantly, sweeping aside the objections of their relatives and devoting themselves whole-heartedly to the nursing of their beloved guru. These young men, under the watchful eyes of the Master and the leadership of Narendra, became the antaranga bhaktas, the devotees of Sri Ramakrishna's inner circle. They were privileged to witness many manifestations of the Master's divine powers. Narendra received instructions regarding the propagation of his message after his death.
The Holy Mother — so Sarada Devi had come to be affectionately known by Sri Ramakrishna's devotees — was brought from Dakshineswar to look after the general cooking and to prepare the special diet of the patient. The dwelling space being extremely limited, she had to adapt herself to cramped conditions. At three o'clock in the m orning she would finish her bath in the Ganges and then enter a small covered place on the roof, where she spent the whole day cooking and praying. After eleven at night, when the visit ors went away, she would come down to her small bedroom on the first flo or to enjoy a few hours' sleep. Thus she spent three months, w orking hard, sleeping little, and praying constantly f or the Master's recovery.
At Syampukur the devotees led an intense life. Their attendance on the Master was in itself a f orm of spiritual discipline. His mind was constantly soaring to an exalted plane of consciousness. Now and then they would catch the contagion of his spiritual fervour. They sought to divine the meaning of this illness of the Master, whom most of them had accepted as an Incarnation of God. One group, headed by Girish with his robust optimism and great power of imagination, believed that the illness was a mere pretext to serve a deeper purpose. The Master had willed his illness in order to bring the devotees together and promote solidarity among them. As soon as this purpose was served, he would himself get rid of the disease. A second group thought that the Divine Mother, in whose hand the Master was an instrument, had brought about this illness to serve Her own mysterious ends. But the young rationalists, led by Narendra, refused to ascribe a
supernatural cause to a natural phenomenon. They believed that the Master's body, a material thing, was subject, like all other material things, to physical laws. Growth, development, decay, and death were laws of nature to which the Master's body could not but respond. But though holding differing views, they all believed that it was to him alone that they must look f or the attainment of their spiritual goal.
--
It was noticed at this time that some of the devotees were making an unbridled display of their emotions. A number of them, particularly among the householders, began to cultivate, though at first unconsciously, the art of shedding tears, shaking the body, cont orting the face, and going into trances, attempting thereby to imitate the Master. They began openly to declare Sri Ramakrishna a Divine Incarnation and to regard themselves as his chosen people, who could neglect religious disciplines with impunity. Narendra's penetrating eye soon sized up the situation. He found out that some of these external manifestations were being carefully practised at home, while some were the outcome of malnutrition, mental weakness, or nervous debility. He mercilessly exposed the devotees who were pretending to have visions, and asked all to develop a healthy religious spirit. Narendra sang inspiring songs f or the younger devotees, read with them the Imitation of Christ and the Gita, and held bef ore them the positive ideals of spirituality.
--- LAST DAYS AT COSSIP orE
--
It took the group only a few days to become adjusted to the new environment. The Holy Mother, assisted by Sri Ramakrishna's niece, Lakshmi Devi, and a few woman devotees, took charge of the cooking f or the Master and his attendants. Surendra willingly b ore the maj or p ortion of the expenses, other householders contributing acc ording to their means. Twelve disciples were constant attendants of the Master: Narendra, Rakhal, Baburam, Niranjan, Jogin, Latu, Tarak, the-elder Gopal, Kali, Sashi, Sarat, and the younger Gopal. Sarada, Harish, Hari, Gangadhar, and Tulasi visited the Master from time to time and practised sadhana at home. Narendra, preparing f or his law examination, brought his books to the garden house in order to continue his studies during the infrequent spare moments. He encouraged his brother disciples to intensify their meditation, scriptural studies, and other spiritual disciplines. They all f orgot their relatives and their
w orldly duties.
Among the attendants Sashi was the embodiment of service. He did not practise meditation, japa, or any of the other disciplines followed by his brother devotees. He was convinced that service to the guru was the only religion f or him. He f orgot food and rest and was ever ready at the Master's bedside.
Pundit Shashadhar one day suggested to the Master that the latter could remove the illness by concentrating his mind on the throat, the scriptures having declared that yogis had power to cure themselves in that way. The Master rebuked the pundit. "F or a scholar like you to make such a proposal!" he said. "How can I withdraw the mind from the Lotus Feet of God and turn it to this w orthless cage of flesh and blood?" "F or our sake at least", begged Narendra and the other disciples. "But", replied Sri Ramakrishna, do you think I enjoy this suffering? I wish to recover, but that depends on the Mother."
--
"I shall make the whole thing public bef ore I go", the Master had said some time bef ore. On January 1, 1886, he felt better and came down to the garden f or a little stroll. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon. Some thirty lay disciples were in the hall or sitting about under the trees. Sri Ramakrishna said to Girish, "Well, Girish, what have you seen in me, that you proclaim me bef ore everybody as an Incarnation of God?" Girish was not the man to be taken by surprise. He knelt bef ore the Master and said, with folded hands, "What can an insignificant person like myself say about the One whose gl ory even sages like Vyasa and Valmiki could not adequately measure?" The Master was profoundly moved. He said: "What m ore shall I say? I bless you all. Be illumined!" He fell into a spiritual mood. Hearing these w ords the devotees, one and all, became overwhelmed with emotion. They rushed to him and fell at his feet. He touched them all, and each received an appropriate benediction. Each of them, at the touch of the Master, experienced ineffable bliss. Some laughed, some wept, some sat down to meditate, some began to pray. Some saw light, some had visions of their Chosen Ideals, and some felt within their bodies the rush of spiritual power.
Narendra, consumed with a terrific fever f or realization, complained to the Master that all the others had attained peace and that he alone was dissatisfied. The Master asked what he wanted. Narendra begged f or samadhi, so that he might altogether f orget the w orld f or three or four days at a time. "You are a fool", the Master rebuked him. "There is a state even higher than that. Isn't it you who sing, 'All that exists art Thou'? First of all settle your family affairs and then come to me. You will experience a state even higher than samadhi."
The Master did not hide the fact that he wished to make Narendra his spiritual heir. Narendra was to continue the w ork after Sri Ramakrishna's passing. Sri Ramakrishna said to him: "I leave these young men in your charge. See that they develop their spirituality and do not return home." One day he asked the boys, in preparation f or a monastic life, to beg their food from do or to do or without thought of caste. They hailed the Master's order and went out with begging-bowls. A few days later he gave the ochre cloth of the sannyasi to each of them, including Girish, who was now second to none in his spirit of renunciation. Thus the Master himself laid the foundation of the future Ramakrishna order of monks.
Sri Ramakrishna was sinking day by day. His diet was reduced to a minimum and he found it almost impossible to swallow. He whispered to M.: "I am bearing all this cheerfully, f or otherwise you would be weeping. If you all say that it is better that the body should go rather than suffer this t orture, I am willing." The next m orning he said to his depressed disciples seated near the bed: "Do you know what I see? I see that God alone has become everything. Men and animals are only framew orks covered with skin, and it is He who is moving through their heads and limbs. I see that it is God Himself who has become the block, the executioner, and the victim f or the sacrifice.' He fainted with emotion. Regaining partial consciousness, he said: "Now I have no pain. I am very well." Looking at Latu he said: "There sits Latu resting his head on the palm of his hand. To me it is the L ord who is seated in that posture."
The w ords were tender and touching. Like a mother he caressed Narendra and Rakhal, gently stroking their faces. He said in a half whisper to M., "Had this body been allowed to last a little longer, many m ore souls would have been illumined." He paused a moment and then said: "But Mother has ordained otherwise. She will take me away lest, finding me guileless and foolish, people should take advantage of me and persuade me to bestow on them the rare gifts of spirituality." A few minutes later he touched his chest and said: "Here are two beings. One is She and the other is Her devotee. It is the latter who broke his arm, and it is he again who is now ill. Do you understand me?" After a pause he added: "Alas! To whom shall I tell all this? Who will understand me?" "Pain", he consoled them again, 'is unavoidable as long as there is a body. The L ord takes on the body f or the sake of His devotees."
Yet one is not sure whether the Master's soul actually was t ortured by this agonizing disease. At least during his moments of spiritual exaltation — which became almost constant during the closing days of his life on earth — he lost all consciousness of the body, of illness and suffering. One of his attendants (Latu, later known as Swami Adbhutananda.) said later on: "While Sri Ramakrishna lay sick he never actually suffered pain. He would often say: 'O mind! F orget the body, f orget the sickness, and remain merged in Bliss.' No, he did not really suffer. At times he would be in a state when the thrill of joy was clearly manifested in his body. Even when he could not speak he would let us know in some way that there was no suffering, and this fact was clearly evident to all who watched him. People who did not understand him thought that his suffering was very great. What spiritual joy he transmitted to us at that time! Could such a thing have been possible if he had 'been suffering physically? It was during this period that he taught us again these truths: 'Brahman is always unattached. The three gunas are in It, but It is unaffected by them, just as the wind carries odour yet remains odourless.' 'Brahman is Infinite Being, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Bliss. In It there exist no delusion, no misery, no disease, no death, no growth, no decay.' 'The Transcendental Being and the being within are one and the same. There is one indivisible Absolute Existence.'"
--
Doubt, however, dies hard. After one or two days Narendra said to himself, "If in the midst of this racking physical pain he declares his Godhead, then only shall I accept him as an Incarnation of God." He was alone by the bedside of the Master. It was a passing thought, but the Master smiled. Gathering his remaining strength, he distinctly said, "He who was Rama and Krishna is now, in this body, Ramakrishna — but not in your Vedantic sense." Narendra was stricken with shame.
--- MAHASAMADHI
Sunday, August 15, 1886. The Master's pulse became irregular. The devotees stood by the bedside. Toward dusk Sri Ramakrishna had difficulty in breathing. A sh ort time afterwards he complained of hunger. A little liquid food was put into his mouth; some of it he swallowed, and the rest ran over his chin. Two attendants began to fan him. All at once he went into samadhi of a rather unusual type. The body became stiff. Sashi burst into tears. But after midnight the Master revived. He was now very hungry and helped himself to a bowl of p orridge. He said he was strong again. He sat up against five or six pillows, which were supp orted by the body of Sashi, who was fanning him. Narendra took his feet on his lap and began to rub them. Again and again the Master repeated to him, "Take care of these boys." Then he asked to lie down. Three times in ringing tone's he cried the name of Kali, his life's Beloved, and lay back. At two minutes past one there was a low sound in his throat and he fell a little to one side. A thrill passed over his body. His hair stood on end. His eyes became fixed on the tip of his nose. His face was lighted with a smile. The final ecstasy began. It was mahasamadhi, total abs orption, from which his mind never returned. Narendra, unable to bear it, ran downstairs.
Dr. Sarkar arrived the following noon and pronounced that life had departed not m ore than half an hour bef ore. At five o'clock the Masters body was brought downstairs, laid on a cot, dressed in ochre clothes, and dec orated with sandal-paste and flowers. A procession was f ormed. The passers-by wept as the body was taken to the cremation ground at the Baranag ore Ghat on the Ganges.
0.00 - Publishers Note C, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
His original writings in French have also been included here. We are grateful to the Government of India f or a grant towards meeting the cost of publication of this volume.
31 March 1974
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Pages in the original are marked thus at the bottom: [page number]
Comments and descriptions are also set off by ().
--
THE WANDERINGS or FALSIFICATIONS
OF THE ONE THOUGHT OF
--
There is no joke or subtle meaning in the publisher's
imprint.
--
posed of m ore or less disconnected elements. I refer
to THE BOOK OF LIES. In this there are 93 chapters:
--
determined m ore or less definitely by the Qabalistic
imp ort of its number. Thus Chapter 25 gives a revised
--
and straightf orward, sometimes its obscure oracles
demand deep knowledge of the Qabalah f or inter-
--
or triple meanings which must be combined in order
[5]
--
subtly ironical or cynical. At first sight the book is a
jumble of nonsense intended to insult the reader. It
--
WANDERINGS or FALSIFICATION OF THE
THOUGHT OF FRATER PERDURABO WHICH
--
order, I must be allowed the IX {degree} and obligated in
regard to it. I protested that I knew no such secret.
--
and SPERMA, and is the exclamation of wonder or ecstasy,
which is the ultimate nature of things.
--
or Cross is the sign of the Phallus. F or a fuller com-
mentary on Nox, see Liber VII, Chapter I.
--
the ultimate Trinity, O!, is supp orted, or fed, by the
process of death and begetting, which are the laws of
--
names, or phases, Life and Death.
Line 7 balances line 5. It will be notice that the
--
explained how Masters of the Temple, or Brothers of
A.'.A.'. have changed the f ormula of their progress.
--
is totally unconscious of this process, or, it might be
better to say, he recognises it as Nothing, in that positive
--
Siddartha, or Gotama, was the name of the last
Budda.
--
Tahuti, or Thoth, the Egyptian God of Wisdom.
Mosheh, Moses, the founder of the Hebrew system.
--
All that a man is or may be is hidden therein.
Bodily functions are parts of the machine; silent,
--
in the orgasm, the mind is blotted out.
[27]
--
is an illusion, or so it appears in the Abyss, which is
thus identified with consciousness, the many, and both;
--
All is Here and Now. N or is there any there or Then;
f or all that is, what is it but a manifestation, that is,
--
how he was able to win at the game of guessing odd or
even. (See Poe's tale of "The Purloined Letter".)
--
the Hierophant or Redeemer. T = Strength, the Lion.
(13) T, manhood, the sign of the cross or phallus.
UT, the Holy Guardian Angel; UT, the first syllable
of Udgita, see the Upanishads. O, Nothing or Nuit.
[57]
--
f or life or f or death.
Love destroyeth self, uniting self with that which is
--
The secrets of his order were, however, not lost, and
are still being communicated to the w orthy by his
--
There are no other comedies or tragedies.
Cease then to be the mockery of God; in savagery of
--
which it was the origin. FRATER PERDURABO
perceived this truth, or rather the first half of it, comedy,
at breakfast at "Au Chien qui Fume".
--
developments of One organ, so also are Life and
Death but two phases of One State. So also the
--
from the male, in order to reproduce the male in a
superi or f orm, the absolute, and the conditions f orming
--
be ordinary mind-wandering.
[81]
--
In the centre, let him give the L.V.X. signs; or if
he know them, if he will and dare do them, and
--
understood in the most ordinary and commonplace
way, without any mystical sense.
--
French "tourbillion", whirlwind, the false Ego or dust-devil.
True life, the life, which has no consciousness of "I", is said to
be choked by this false ego, or rather by the thoughts which its
explosions produce. In paragraph 4 this is expanded to a
--
f ore no option but to deny them passionately, in order
to express his discontent. Hence such absurdities as
--
a thing is true or not: he uses truth and falsehood in-
discriminately, to serve his ends. Slaves consider him
--
Many, or of the Many to the One. This also is the
cause of joy.
--
their art is the cause, result, or concomitant of their
private peculiarities.
--
This does not agree very well with the common or orthodox
theogony of Chapter 11; but it is to be explained by the
--
It will be noticed that the figure, or sigil, of BABALON
is a seal upon a ring, and this ring is upon the f orefinger
--
stag of a mystical or sacred nature.
The Stag-beetle must not be identified with the one
--
piece, or even to the numerous volumes he has penned,
but rather to the fact that 91 is the number of Amen,
--
Twice round the orchard. Brother, does the hazel
twig dip?
--
the object of finding water or minerals, by means of the
vibrations of a hazel twig.
The meadow represents the flower of life; the orchard its
fruit.
--
ordinary animal life, becomes the divine h orse Pegasus.
In paragraph 6 we see this spring identified with the
--
(25) The trowel is shaped like a diamond or Yoni.
L=30, A=1, P=80=111
--
O Mage! Sage! Gauge thy Wage, or in the Page of
Thine Age is written Rage!
--
made proper arrangements to recover the original
position previous to making the divisions.
--
Years; or at least let him do Pranayama all the
way home-home? nay! but to the house of the
--
the ornith orhynchus is both bird and beast; it is also
an Australian animal, like Laylah herself, and was
--
necessary to separate things, in order that they might
rejoice in uniting. See Liber Legis I, 28-30, which is
--
There is nothing movable or immovable under the
firmament of heaven on which I may write the
--
or to induce others to follow into the light. In para-
graph 1 he explains the sardonic laughter, f or which he
--
sardonic or cynical laughter to which we have previously
alluded.
--
I paragraph 1 the real chastity of Percivale or
Parsifal, a chastity which did not prevent his dipping
--
Devil, or Pan, the phallic God.
Now AIN means nothing, and thus the replacing of AIN by OIN means the
--
H orus does not; or, if it does so, breeds, acc ording to Turkish tradition, a Me
ssiah.
--
either a credit or a debit, you are still in account with the universe.
(N.B. Frater P. wrote this chapter-61-while dining with friends, in about a
--
to play football, or of his own right not to play it.
(As a great poet has expressed it: "We don't want to
--
gram, and is a criticism of, or improvement upon, it.
In the ordinary Hexagram, the Hexagram of nature,
the red triangle is upwards, like fire, and the blue
--
or Aleph Lamed, the names of 72 Angels are f ormed.
The Hebrews say that by uttering this Name the
--
orPHAN CHILD
Death rides the Camel of Initiation.(36)
--
'E's a devil and an awstridge and an orphan-child in one."
Paragraph 1 may imply a dogma of death as the highest f orm of initiation.
--
That haunts me, haunts me sleeping or awake?
If I had Laylah, how could I f orget
--
Laylah, or give up everything f or Laylah.
But "what I want" varies from hour to hour.
--
Now is this well or ill?
Emphasise gift, then man, then spend, then seventy
--
Paragraph 6 puts the question, "Then is sanity or
insanity desirable?" The oak is weakened by the ivy
--
commentary. But it does so, or my most gifted Chela
and myself would hardly have been at the pains to
--
or t orture wrested.
Laylah is again the mere woman.
--
That this is the true meaning, or rather use, of this chapter, is evident fro
the poetry.
--
necessarily from each other card, even in due order
from The Fool unto The Ten of Coins.
--
moved it first. [There is no first or last.}
And lo! thou art past through the Abyss.
--
While there exists the burgess, the hunting man, or
any man with ideals less than Shelley's and self-
--
are not c orrelatives or phases of some one deeper
Absence-of-Idea; they are not aspects of some
--
on the mountain, or in order to crush the Alps below it,
or because that it feels that it needs exercise. Perfectly
unconscious, perfectly indifferent, it obeys the laws of
--
He, Spirit; Yod, Fire; Mem, Water. But the order is not good;
Lamed is not satisfact ory f or Earth, and Yod too spiritualised a
--
now to be analysed. The order of the element is that of Jeheshua.
The elements are taken rather as in Nature; N is easily Fire,
--
from below, and upon this condenses the original steam. Around this
flows the air, created by Earth and Water through the action of
--
not the soft. The centre of all is Theta ({Theta}), which was originally
written as a point in a circle ({Sun}), the sublime hieroglyph of the
--
73. The Devil, the Ostrich, and the orphan Child.
74. Carey Street.
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
IN THE HIST orY of the arts, genius is a thing of very rare occurrence. Rarer still, however, are the competent rep orters and rec orders of that genius. The w orld has had many hundreds of admirable poets and philosophers; but of these hundreds only a very few have had the f ortune to attract a Boswell or an Eckermann.
When we leave the field of art f or that of spiritual religion, the scarcity of competent rep orters becomes even m ore strongly marked. Of the day-to-day life of the great theocentric saints and contemplatives we know, in the great maj ority of cases, nothing whatever. Many, it is true, have rec orded their doctrines in writing, and a few, such as St. Augustine, Suso and St. Teresa, have left us autobiographies of the greatest value.
--
I have made a literal translation, omitting only a few pages of no particular interest to English-speaking readers. Often literary grace has been sacrificed f or the sake of literal translation. No translation can do full justice to the original. This difficulty is all the m ore felt in the present w ork, whose contents are of a deep mystical nature and describe the inner experiences of a great seer. Human language is an altogether inadequate vehicle to express supersensuous perception. Sri Ramakrishna was almost illiterate. He never clothed his thoughts in f ormal language. His w ords sought to convey his direct realization of Truth. His conversation was in a village patois. Therein lies its charm. In order to explain to his listeners an abstruse philosophy, he, like Christ bef ore him, used with telling effect homely parables and illustrations, culled from his observation of the daily life around him.
The reader will find mentioned in this w ork many visions and experiences that fall outside the ken of physical science and even psychology. With the development of modern knowledge the b order line between the natural and the supernatural is ever shifting its position. Genuine mystical experiences are not as suspect now as they were half a century ago. The w ords of Sri Ramakrishna have already exerted a tremendous influence in the land of his birth. Savants of Europe have found in his w ords the ring of universal truth.
--
There are repetitions of teachings and parables in the book. I have kept them purposely. They have their charm and usefulness, repeated as they were in different settings. Repetition is unavoidable in a w ork of this kind. In the first place, different seekers come to a religious teacher with questions of m ore or less identical nature; hence the answers will be of m ore or less identical pattern. Besides, religious teachers of all times and climes have tried, by means of repetition, to hammer truths into the stony soil of the recalcitrant human mind. Finally, repetition does not seem tedious if the ideas repeated are dear to a man's heart.
I have thought it necessary to write a rather lengthy Introduction to the book. In it I have given the biography of the Master, descriptions of people who came in contact with him, sh ort explanations of several systems of Indian religious thought intimately connected with Sri Ramakrishna's life, and other relevant matters which, I hope, will enable the reader better to understand and appreciate the unusual contents of this book. It is particularly imp ortant that the Western reader, unacquainted with Hindu religious thought, should first read carefully the introduct ory chapter, in order that he may fully enjoy these conversations. Many Indian terms and names have been retained in the book f or want of suitable English equivalents. Their meaning is given either in the Glossary or in the foot-notes. The Glossary also gives explanations of a number of expressions unfamiliar to Western readers. The diacritical marks are explained under Notes on Pronunciation.
In the Introduction I have drawn much material from the Life of Sri Ramakrishna, published by the Advaita Ashrama, Myvati, India. I have also consulted the excellent article on Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Nirvednanda, in the second volume of the Cultural Heritage of India.
The book contains many songs sung either by the Master or by the devotees. These f orm an imp ortant feature of the spiritual tradition of Bengal and were f or the most part written by men of mystical experience. F or giving the songs their present f orm I am grateful to Mr. John Moffitt, Jr.
In the preparation of this manuscript I have received ungrudging help from several friends. Miss Margaret Woodrow Wilson and Mr.Joseph Campbell have w orked hard in editing my translation. Mrs.Elizabeth Davidson has typed, m ore than once, the entire manuscript and rendered other valuable help. Mr.Aldous Huxley has laid me under a debt of gratitude by writing the F orew ord. I sincerely thank them all.
--
The life and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna have redirected the thoughts of the denationalized Hindus to the spiritual ideals of their f orefa thers. During the latter part of the nineteenth century his was the time-honoured role of the Saviour of the Eternal Religion of the Hindus. His teachings played an imp ortant part in liberalizing the minds of orthodox pundits and hermits. Even now he is the silent f orce that is moulding the spiritual destiny of India. His great disciple, Swami Vivekananda, was the first Hindu missionary to preach the message of Indian culture to the enlightened minds of Europe and America. The full consequence of Swami Vivekn and w ork is still in the womb of the future.
May this translation of the first book of its kind in the religious hist ory of the w orld, being the rec ord of the direct w ords of a prophet, help stricken humanity to come nearer to the Eternal Verity of life and remove dissension and quarrel from among the different faiths!
--
In the life of the great Saviours and Prophets of the w orld it is often found that they are accompanied by souls of high spiritual potency who play a conspicuous part in the furtherance of their Master's mission. They become so integral a part of the life and w ork of these great ones that posterity can think of them only in mutual association. Such is the case with Sri Ramakrishna and M., whose diary has come to be known to the w orld as the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna in English and as Sri Rmakrishna Kathmrita in the original Bengali version.
Sri Mahendra Nath Gupta, familiary known to the readers of the Gospel by his pen name M., and to the devotees as Master Mahashay, was b orn on the 14th of July, 1854 as the son of Madhusudan Gupta, an officer of the Calcutta High Court, and his wife, Swarnamayi Devi. He had a brilliant scholastic career at Hare School and the Presidency College at Calcutta. The range of his studies included the best that both occidental and oriental learning had to offer. English literature, hist ory, economics, western philosophy and law on the one hand, and Sanskrit literature and grammar, Darsanas, Puranas, Smritis, Jainism, Buddhism, astrology and Ayurveda on the other were the subjects in which he attained considerable proficiency.
He was an educationist all his life both in a spiritual and in a secular sense. After he passed out of College, he took up w ork as headmaster in a number of schools in succession Narail High School, City School, Ripon College School, Metropolitan School, Aryan School, oriental School, oriental Seminary and Model School. The causes of his migration from school to school were that he could not get on with some of the managements on grounds of principles and that often his spiritual mood drew him away to places of pilgrimage f or long periods. He w orked with some of the most noted public men of the time like Iswar Chandra Vidysgar and Surendranath Banerjee. The latter appointed him as a profess or in the City and Ripon Colleges where he taught subjects like English, philosophy, hist ory and economics. In his later days he took over the M orton School, and he spent his time in the staircase room of the third flo or of it, administering the school and preaching the message of the Master. He was much respected in educational circles where he was usually referred to as Rect or Mahashay. A teacher who had w orked under him writes thus in warm appreciation of his teaching methods: "Only when I w orked with him in school could I appreciate what a great educationist he was. He would come down to the level of his students when teaching, though he himself was so learned, so talented. ordinarily teachers confine their instruction to what is given in books without much thought as to whether the student can accept it or not. But M., would first of all gauge how much the student could take in and by what means. He would employ aids to teaching like maps, pictures and diagrams, so that his students could learn by seeing. Thirty years ago (from 1953) when the question of imparting education through the medium of the mother tongue was being discussed, M. had already employed Bengali as the medium of instruction in the M orton School." (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part I. P. 15.)
Imparting secular education was, however, only his profession ; his main concern was with the spiritual regeneration of man a calling f or which Destiny seems to have chosen him. From his childhood he was deeply pious, and he used to be moved very much by Sdhus, temples and Durga Puja celebrations. The piety and eloquence of the great Brahmo leader of the times, Keshab Chander Sen, elicited a powerful response from the impressionable mind of Mahendra Nath, as it did in the case of many an idealistic young man of Calcutta, and prepared him to receive the great Light that was to dawn on him with the coming of Sri Ramakrishna into his life.
--
The Master, who divined the mood of desperation in M, his resolve to take leave of this 'play-field of deception', put new faith and hope into him by his gracious w ords of assurance: "God f orbid! Why should you take leave of this w orld? Do you not feel blessed by discovering your Guru? By His grace, what is beyond all imagination or dreams can be easily achieved!" At these w ords the clouds of despair moved away from the h orizon of M.'s mind, and the sunshine of a new hope revealed to him fresh vistas of meaning in life. Referring to this phase of his life, M. used to say, "Behold! where is the resolve to end life, and where, the discovery of God! That is, s orrow should be looked upon as a friend of man. God is all good." ( Ibid P.33.)
After this re-settlement, M's life revolved around the Master, though he continued his professional w ork as an educationist. During all holidays, including Sundays, he spent his time at Dakshineswar in the Master's company, and at times extended his stay to several days.
It did not take much time f or M. to become very intimate with the Master, or f or the Master to recognise in this disciple a divinely commissioned partner in the fulfilment of his spiritual mission. When M. was reading out the Chaitanya Bhagavata, the Master discovered that he had been, in a previous birth, a disciple and companion of the great Vaishnava Teacher, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and the Master even saw him 'with his naked eye' participating in the ecstatic mass-singing of the L ord's name under the leadership of that Divine personality. So the Master told M, "You are my own, of the same substance as the father and the son," indicating thereby that M. was one of the chosen few and a part and parcel of his Divine mission.
There was an urge in M. to abandon the household life and become a Sannysin. When he communicated this idea to the Master, he f orbade him saying," Mother has told me that you have to do a little of Her w ork you will have to teach Bhagavata, the w ord of God to humanity. The Mother keeps a Bhagavata Pandit with a bondage in the w orld!"
--
Sri Ramakrishna was a teacher f or both the orders of mankind, Sannysins and householders. His own life offered an ideal example f or both, and he left behind disciples who followed the highest traditions he had set in respect of both these ways of life. M., along with Nag Mahashay, exemplified how a householder can rise to the highest level of sagehood. M. was married to Nikunja Devi, a distant relative of Keshab Chander Sen, even when he was reading at College, and he had four children, two sons and two daughters. The responsibility of the family, no doubt, made him dependent on his professional income, but the great devotee that he was, he never compromised with ideals and principles f or this reason. Once when he was w orking as the headmaster in a school managed by the great Vidysgar, the results of the school at the public examination happened to be rather po or, and Vidysgar attri buted it to M's preoccupation with the Master and his consequent failure to attend adequately to the school w ork. M. at once resigned his post without any thought of the m orrow. Within a f ortnight the family was in poverty, and M. was one day pacing up and down the verandah of his house, musing how he would feed his children the next day. Just then a man came with a letter addressed to 'Mahendra Babu', and on opening it, M. found that it was a letter from his friend Sri Surendra Nath Banerjee, asking whether he would like to take up a profess orship in the Ripon College. In this way three or four times he gave up the job that gave him the wherewithal to supp ort the family, either f or upholding principles or f or practising spiritual Sadhanas in holy places, without any consideration of the possible dire w orldly consequences; but he was always able to get over these difficulties somehow, and the interests of his family never suffered. In spite of his disregard f or w orldly goods, he was, towards the latter part of his life, in a fairly flourishing condition as the propriet or of the M orton School which he developed into a noted educational institution in the city. The L ord has said in the Bhagavad Git that in the case of those who think of nothing except Him, He Himself would take up all their material and spiritual responsibilities. M. was an example of the truth of the L ord's promise.
Though his children received proper attention from him, his real family, both during the Master's lifetime and after, consisted of saints, devotees, Sannysins and spiritual aspirants. His life exemplifies the Master's teaching that an ideal householder must be like a good maidservant of a family, loving and caring properly f or the children of the house, but knowing always that her real home and children are elsewhere. During the Master's lifetime he spent all his Sundays and other holidays with him and his devotees, and besides listening to the holy talks and devotional music, practised meditation both on the Personal and the Impersonal aspects of God under the direct guidance of the Master. In the pages of the Gospel the reader gets a picture of M.'s spiritual relationship with the Master how from a hazy belief in the Impersonal God of the Brahmos, he was step by step brought to accept both Personality and Impersonality as the two aspects of the same Non-dual Being, how he was convinced of the manifestation of that Being as Gods, Goddesses and as Incarnations, and how he was established in a life that was both of a Jnni and of a Bhakta. This Jnni-Bhakta outlook and way of living became so dominant a feature of his life that Swami Raghavananda, who was very closely associated with him during his last six years, remarks: "Among those who lived with M. in latter days, some felt that he always lived in this constant and conscious union with God even with open eyes (i.e., even in waking consciousness)." (Swami Raghavananda's article on M. in Prabuddha Bharata vol. XXXVII. P. 442.)
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He was one of the earliest of the disciples to visit Kamarpukur, the birthplace of the Master, in the latter's lifetime itself; f or he wished to practise contemplation on the Master's early life in its true original setting. His experience there is described as follows by Swami Nityatmananda: "By the grace of the Master, he saw the entire Kamarpukur as a holy place bathed in an effulgent Light. Trees and creepers, beasts and birds and men all were made of effulgence. So he prostrated to all on the road. He saw a t orn cat, which appeared to him luminous with the Light of Consciousness. Immediately he fell to the ground and saluted it" (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda vol. I. P. 40.) He had similar experience in Dakshineswar also. At the instance of the Master he also visited Puri, and in the w ords of Swami Nityatmananda, "with indomitable courage, M. embraced the image of Jagannath out of season."
The life of Sdhan and holy association that he started on at the feet of the Master, he continued all through his life. He has f or this reason been most appropriately described as a Grihastha-Sannysi (householder-Sannysin). Though he was f orbidden by the Master to become a Sannysin, his reverence f or the Sannysa ideal was whole-hearted and was without any reservation. So after Sri Ramakrishna's passing away, while several of the Master's householder devotees considered the young Sannysin disciples of the Master as inexperienced and inconsequential, M. stood by them with the firm faith that the Master's life and message were going to be perpetuated only through them. Swami Vivekananda wrote from America in a letter to the inmates of the Math: "When Sri Thkur (Master) left the body, every one gave us up as a few unripe urchins. But M. and a few others did not leave us in the lurch. We cannot repay our debt to them." (Swami Raghavananda's article on M. in Prabuddha Bharata vol. XXX P. 442.)
M. spent his weekends and holidays with the monastic brethren who, after the Master's demise, had f ormed themselves into an order with a Math at Baranag ore, and participated in the intense life of devotion and meditation that they followed. At other times he would retire to Dakshineswar or some garden in the city and spend several days in spiritual practice taking simple self-cooked food. In order to feel that he was one with all mankind he often used to go out of his home at dead of night, and like a wandering Sannysin, sleep with the waifs on some open verandah or footpath on the road.
After the Master's demise, M. went on pilgrimage several times. He visited Banras, Vrindvan, Ayodhy and other places. At Banras he visited the famous Trailinga Swmi and fed him with sweets, and he had long conversations with Swami Bhaskarananda, one of the noted saintly and scholarly Sannysins of the time. In 1912 he went with the Holy Mother to Banras, and spent about a year in the company of Sannysins at Banras, Vrindvan, Hardwar, Hrishikesh and Swargashram. But he returned to Calcutta, as that city offered him the unique opp ortunity of associating himself with the places hallowed by the Master in his lifetime. Afterwards he does not seem to have gone to any far-off place, but stayed on in his room in the M orton School carrying on his spiritual ministry, speaking on the Master and his teachings to the large number of people who flocked to him after having read his famous Kathmrita known to English readers as The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
--
Even as a boy of about thirteen, while he was a student in the 3rd class of the Hare School, he was in the habit of keeping a diary. "Today on rising," he wrote in his diary, "I greeted my father and mother, prostrating on the ground bef ore them" (Swami Nityatmananda's 'M The Apostle and the Evangelist' Part I. P 29.) At another place he wrote, "Today, while on my way to school, I visited, as usual, the temples of Kli, the Mother at Tharitharia, and of Mother Sitala, and paid my obeisance to them." About twenty-five years after, when he met the Great Master in the spring of 1882, it was the same instinct of a b orn diary-writer that made him begin his book, 'unique in the literature of hagiography', with the mem orable w ords: "When hearing the name of Hari or Rma once, you shed tears and your hair stands on end, then you may know f or certain that you do not have to perf orm devotions such as Sandhya any m ore."
In addition to this instinct f or diary-keeping, M. had great endowments contri buting to success in this line. Writes Swami Nityatmananda who lived in close association with M., in his book entitled M - The Apostle and Evangelist: "M.'s prodigious mem ory combined with his extra ordinary power of imagination completely annihilated the distance of time and place f or him. Even after the lapse of half a century he could always visualise vividly, scenes from the life of Sri Ramakrishna. Superb too was his power to p ortray pictures by w ords."
Besides the prompting of his inherent instinct, the main inducement f or M. to keep this diary of his experiences at Dakshineswar was his desire to provide himself with a means f or living in holy company at all times. Being a school teacher, he could be with the Master only on Sundays and other holidays, and it was on his diary that he depended f or 'holy company' on other days. The devotional scriptures like the Bhagavata say that holy company is the first and most imp ortant means f or the generation and growth of devotion. F or, in such company man could hear talks on spiritual matters and listen to the gl orification of Divine attri butes, charged with the fervour and conviction emanating from the hearts of great lovers of God. Such company is theref ore the one certain means through which Sraddha (Faith), Rati (attachment to God) and Bhakti (loving devotion) are generated. The diary of his visits to Dakshineswar provided M. with material f or re-living, through reading and contemplation, the holy company he had had earlier, even on days when he was not able to visit Dakshineswar. The wealth of details and the vivid description of men and things in the midst of which the sublime conversations are set, provide excellent material to re-live those experiences f or any one with imaginative powers. It was observed by M.'s disciples and admirers that in later life also whenever he was free or alone, he would be pouring over his diary, transp orting himself on the wings of imagination to the gl orious days he spent at the feet of the Master.
During the Master's lifetime M. does not seem to have revealed the contents of his diary to any one. There is an unconfirmed tradition that when the Master saw him taking notes, he expressed apprehension at the possibility of his utilising these to publicise him like Keshab Sen; f or the Great Master was so full of the spirit of renunciation and humility that he disliked being lionised. It must be f or this reason that no one knew about this precious diary of M. f or a decade until he brought out selections from it as a pamphlet in English in 1897 with the Holy Mother's blessings and permission. The Holy Mother, being very much pleased to hear parts of the diary read to her in Bengali, wrote to M.: "When I heard the Kathmrita, (Bengali name of the book) I felt as if it was he, the Master, who was saying all that." ( Ibid Part I. P 37.)
The two pamphlets in English entitled the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna appeared in October and November 1897. They drew the spontaneous acclamation of Swami Vivekananda, who wrote on 24th November of that year from Dehra Dun to M.:"Many many thanks f or your second leaflet. It is indeed wonderful. The move is quite original, and never was the life of a Great Teacher brought bef ore the public untarnished by the writer's mind, as you are doing. The language also is beyond all praise, so fresh, so pointed, and withal so plain and easy. I cannot express in adequate terms how I have enjoyed them. I am really in a transp ort when I read them. Strange, isn't it? Our Teacher and L ord was so original, and each one of us will have to be original or nothing.
I now understand why none of us attempted His life bef ore. It has been reserved f or you, this great w ork. He is with you evidently." ( Vednta Kesari Vol. XIX P. 141. Also given in the first edition of the Gospel published from Ramakrishna Math, Madras in 1911.)
And Swamiji added a post script to the letter: "Socratic dialogues are Plato all over you are entirely hidden. M oreover, the dramatic part is infinitely beautiful. Everybody likes it here or in the West." Indeed, in order to be unknown, Mahendranath had used the pen-name M., under which the book has been appearing till now. But so great a book cannot remain obscure f or long, n or can its auth or remain unrecognised by the large public in these modern times. M. and his book came to be widely known very soon and to meet the growing demand, a full-sized book, Vol. I of the Gospel, translated by the auth or himself, was published in 1907 by the Brahmavadin Office, Madras. A second edition of it, revised by the auth or, was brought out by the Ramakrishna Math, Madras in December 1911, and subsequently a second part, containing new chapters from the original Bengali, was published by the same Math in 1922. The full English translation of the Gospel by Swami Nikhilananda appeared first in 1942.
In Bengali the book is published in five volumes, the first part having appeared in 1902
--
M. was, in every respect, a true missionary of Sri Ramakrishna right from his first acquaintance with him in 1882. As a school teacher, it was a practice with him to direct to the Master such of his students as had a true spiritual disposition. Though himself prohibited by the Master to take to monastic life, he encouraged all spiritually inclined young men he came across in his later life to join the monastic order. Swami Vijnanananda, a direct Sannysin disciple of the Master and a President of the Ramakrishna order, once remarked to M.: "By enquiry, I have come to the conclusion that eighty percent and m ore of the Sannysins have embraced the monastic life after reading the Kathmrita (Bengali name of the book) and coming in contact with you." ( M
The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part I, P 37.)
In 1905 he retired from the active life of a Profess or and devoted his remaining twenty-seven years exclusively to the preaching of the life and message of the Great Master. He bought the M orton Institution from its original propriet ors and shifted it to a commodious four-st oreyed house at 50 Amherst Street, where it flourished under his management as one of the most efficient educational institutions in Calcutta. He generally occupied a staircase room at the top of it, cooking his own meal which consisted only of milk and rice without variation, and attended to all his personal needs himself. His dress also was the simplest possible. It was his conviction that limitation of personal wants to the minimum is an imp ortant aid to holy living. About one hour in the m orning he would spend in inspecting the classes of the school, and then retire to his staircase room to pour over his diary and live in the divine atmosphere of the earthly days of the Great Master, unless devotees and admirers had already gathered in his room seeking his holy company.
In appearance, M. looked a Vedic Rishi. Tall and stately in bearing, he had a strong and well-built body, an unusually broad chest, high f orehead and arms extending to the knees. His complexion was fair and his prominent eyes were always tinged with the expression of the divine love that filled his heart. Ad orned with a silvery beard that flowed luxuriantly down his chest, and a shining face radiating the serenity and gravity of holiness, M. was as imposing and majestic as he was handsome and engaging in appearance. Hum orous, sweet-tongued and eloquent when situations required, this great Maharishi of our age lived only to sing the gl ory of Sri Ramakrishna day and night.
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
We must start with scientific fundamentals, and that means with the data of experiments and not with assumed axioms predicated only upon the misleading nature of that which only superficially seems to be obvious. It is the consensus of great scientists that science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience.
Holding within their definition, we define Universe as the aggregate of allhumanity's consciously apprehended and communicated, nonsimultaneous, and only partially overlapping experiences. An aggregate of finites is finite. Universe is a finite but nonsimultaneously conceptual scenario.
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As K orzybski, the founder of general semantics, pointed out, the consequence of its single-tagging is that the rose becomes reflexively considered by man only as a red, white, or pink device f or paying tribute to a beautiful girl, a thoughtful hostess, or last night's deceased acquaintance. The tagging of the complex biological process under the single title rose tends to detour human curiosity from further differentiation of its integral organic operations as well as from consideration of its interecological functionings aboard our planet. We don't know what a rose is, n or what may be its essential and unique cosmic function. Thus f or long have we inadvertently deferred potential discovery of the essential roles in Universe that are perf ormed complementarily by many, if not most, of the phenomena we experience.
But, goaded by youth, we older ones are now taking second looks at almost everything. And that promises many ultimately fav orable surprises. The oldsters do have vast experience banks not available to the youth. Their mem ory banks, integrated and reviewed, may readily disclose generalized principles of eminent imp ortance.
--
The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization. It makes no difference of what material either the fulcrum or the lever consists-wood, steel, or reinf orced concrete. N or do the special-case sizes of the lever and fulcrum, or of the load pried at one end, or the w ork applied at the lever's other end in any way alter either the principle or the mathematical regularity of the ratios of physical w ork advantage that are provided at progressive fulcrum-to-load increments of distance outward from the fulcrum in the opposite direction along the lever's arm at which theoperating eff ort is applied.
Mind is the weightless and uniquely human faculty that surveys the ever larger invent ory of special-case experiences st ored in the brain bank and, seeking to identify their intercomplementary significance, from time to time discovers one of the rare scientifically generalizable principles running consistently through all the relevant experience set. The thoughts that discover these principles are weightless and tentative and may also be eternal. They suggest eternity but do not prove it, even though there have been no experiences thus far that imply exceptions to their persistence. It seems also to follow that the m ore experiences we have, the m ore chances there are that the mind may discover, on the one hand, additional generalized principles or, on the other hand, exceptions that disqualify one or another of the already catalogued principles that, having heretof ore held "true" without contradiction f or a long time, had been tentatively conceded to be demonstrating eternal persistence of behavi or. Mind's relentless reviewing of the comprehensive brain bank's st orage of all our special-case experiences tends both to progressive enlargement and definitive refinement of the catalogue of generalized principles that interaccommodatively govern all transactions of Universe.
It follows that the m ore specialized society becomes, the less attention does it pay to the discoveries of the mind, which are intuitively beamed toward the brain, there to be received only if the switches are "on." Specialization tends to shut off the wide-band tuning searches and thus to preclude further discovery of the all-powerful generalized principles. Again we see how society's perverse fixation on specialization leads to its extinction. We are so specialized that one man discovers empirically how to release the energy of the atom, while another, unbeknownst to him, is ordered by his political factotum to make an atomic bomb by use of the secretly and anonymously published data. That gives much expedient employment, which solves the politician's momentary problem, but requires that the politicians keep on preparing f or further warring with other political states to keep their respective peoples employed. It is also mistakenly assumed that employment is the only means by which humans can earn the right to live, f or politicians have yet to discover how much wealth is available f or distribution. All this is rationalized on the now scientifically discredited premise that there can never be enough life supp ort f or all. Thus humanity's specialization leads only toward warring and such devastating tools, both, visible and invisible, as ultimately to destroy all Earthians.
Only a comprehensive switch from the narrowing specialization and toward an everm ore inclusive and refining comprehension by all humanity-regarding all the fact ors governing omnicontinuing life aboard our spaceship Earth-can bring about re orientation from the self-extinction-bound human trending, and do so within the critical time remaining bef ore we have passed the point of chemical process irretrievability.
--
Today's news consists of aggregates of fragments. Anyone who has taken part in any event that has subsequently appeared in the news is aware of the gross disparity between the actual and the rep orted events. The insistence by rep orters upon having advance "releases" of what, f or instance, convocation speakers are supposedly going to say but in fact have not yet said, automatically discredits the value of the largely prefabricated news. We also learn frequently of prefabricated and prevaricated events of a complex nature purp ortedly undertaken f or purposes either of suppressing or rigging the news, which in turn perverts humanity's tactical inf ormation resources. All hist ory becomes suspect. Probably our most polluted resource is the tactical inf ormation to which humanity spontaneously reflexes.
Furtherm ore, today's hyperspecialization in socioeconomic functioning has come to preclude imp ortant popular philosophic considerations of the synergetic significance of, f or instance, such hist orically imp ortant events as the discovery within the general region of experimental inquiry known as virology that the as-yet popularly assumed validity of the concepts of animate and inanimate phenomena have been experimentally invalidated. Atoms and crystal complexes of atoms were held to be obviously inanimate; the protoplasmic cells of biological phenomena were held to be obviously animate. It was deemed to be common sense that warm- blooded, moist, and soft-skinned humans were clearly not to be confused with hard, cold granite or steel objects. A clear-cut threshold between animate and inanimate was theref ore assumed to exist as a fundamental dichotomy of all physical phenomena. This seemingly placed life exclusively within the bounds of the physical.
The supposed location of the threshold between animate and inanimate was methodically narrowed down by experimental science until it was confined specifically within the domain of virology. Virologists have been too busy, f or instance, with their DNA-RNA genetic code isolatings, to find time to see the synergetic significance to society of the fact that they have found that no physical threshold does in fact exist between animate and inanimate. The possibility of its existence vanished because the supposedly unique physical qualities of both animate and inanimate have persisted right across yesterday's supposed threshold in both directions to permeate one another's-previously perceived to be exclusive- domains. Subsequently, what was animate has become foggier and foggier, and what is inanimate clearer and clearer. All organisms consist physically and in entirety of inherently inanimate atoms. The inanimate alone is not only omnipresent but is alone experimentally demonstrable. Belated news of the elimination of this threshold must be interpreted to mean that whatever life may be, it has not been isolated and thereby identified as residual in the biological cell, as had been supposed by the false assumption that there was a separate physical phenomenoncalled animate within which life existed. No life per se has been isolated. The threshold between animate and inanimate has vanished. Those chemists who are preoccupied in synthesizing the particular atomically structured molecules identified as the prime constituents of humanly employed organisms will, even if they are chemically successful, be as remote from creating life as are automobile manufacturers from creating the human drivers of their automobiles. Only the physical connections and development complexes of distinctly "nonlife" atoms into molecules, into cells, into animals, has been and will be discovered. The genetic coding of the design controls of organic systems offers no m ore explanation of life than did the specifications of the designs of the telephone system's apparatus and operation explain the nature of the life that communicates weightlessly to life over the only physically ponderable telephone system. Whatever else life may be, we know it is weightless. At the moment of death, no weight is lost. All the chemicals, including the chemist's life ingredients, are present, but life has vanished. The physical is inherently entropic, giving off energy in ever m ore dis orderly ways. The metaphysical is antientropic, methodically marshalling energy. Life is antientropic.
It is spontaneously inquisitive. It s orts out and endeav ors to understand.
--
Science's self-assumed responsibility has been self-limited to disclosure to society only of the separate, supposedly physical (because separately weighable) atomic component isolations data. Synergetic integrity would require the scientists to announce that in reality what had been identified heretof ore as physical is entirely metaphysical-because synergetically weightless. Metaphysical has been science's designation f or all weightless phenomena such as thought. But science has made no experimental finding of any phenomena that can be described as a solid, or as continuous, or as a straight surface plane, or as a straight line, or as infinite anything. We are now synergetically f orced to conclude that all phenomena are metaphysical; wheref ore, as many have long suspected-like it or not-life is but a dream.Science has found no up or down directions of Universe, yet scientists are personally so ill-co ordinated that they all still personally and sens orially see "solids" going up or down-as, f or instance, they see the Sun "going down." Sens orially disconnected from their the oretically evolved inf ormation, scientists discern no need on their part to suggest any educational ref orms to c orrect the misconceiving that science has tolerated f or half a millennium.
Society depends upon its scientists f or just such educational ref orm guidance.
Where else might society turn f or advice? Unguided by science, society is allowed to go right on filling its childrens' brain banks with large invent ories of competence-devastating misinf ormation. In order to emerge from its massive ign orance, society will probably have to rely exclusively upon its individuals' own minds to survey the pertinent experimental data-as do all great scientist-artists. This, in effect, is what the intuition of w orld-around youth is beginning to do. Mind can see that reality is evoluting into weightless metaphysics. The wellspring of reality is the family of weightless generalized principles.
It is essential to release humanity from the false fixations of yesterday, which seem now to bind it to a rationale of action leading only to extinction.
0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
the perfection of an animal, or the supremacy of a thinking being,
by the penetration and synthetic power of their gaze ? To try to
see m ore and better is not a matter of whim or curiosity or self-
indulgence. To see or to perish is the very condition laid upon
everything that makes up the universe, by reason of the mysterious
--
mitted to it or changing it. They are now beginning to realise
that even the most objective of their observations are steeped in
the conventions they adopted at the outset and by f orms or
habits of thought developed in the course of the growth of
--
reached is the essence of the matter they are studying, or the
reflection of their own thought. And at die same time they
--
directs his steps to a point of vantage (a cross-roads, or intersecting
valleys) from which, not only his vision, but things themselves
--
should look closely at man in order to increase our capacity to
live.
--
the orbits of the objects which press round us ;
A sense of depth, pushing back lab oriously through endless
--
the bewildering multitude of material or living elements involved
in the slightest change in the universe ;
--
A sense of quality, or of novelty, enabling us to distinguish in
nature certain absolute stages of perfection and growth, without
--
A sense, lastly, of the organic, discovering physical links and
structural unity under the superficial juxtaposition of successions
--
knowledge, none is m ore extra ordinary or m ore illuminating ;
Thirdly, to stress the special character of the Essay I am pre-
--
the dawn of life, or life in the Palaeozoic era, I do not f orget that
there would be a cosmic contradiction in imagining a man as
--
When studied narrowly in himself by anthropologists or
jurists, man is a tiny, even a shrinking, creature. His over-
0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The question which Arjuna asks Sri Krishna in the Gita (second chapter) occurs pertinently to many about all spiritual personalities: "What is the language of one whose understanding is poised? How does he speak, how sit, how walk?" Men want to know the outer signs of the inner attainment, the way in which a spiritual person differs outwardly from other men. But all the tests which the Gita enumerates are inner and theref ore invisible to the outer view. It is true also that the inner or the spiritual is the essential and the outer derives its value and f orm from the inner. But the transf ormation about which Sri Aurobindo writes in his books has to take place in nature, because acc ording to him the divine Reality has to manifest itself in nature. So, all the parts of nature including the physical and the external are to be transf ormed. In his own case the very physical became the transparent mould of the Spirit as a result of his intense Sadhana. This is b orne out by the impression created on the minds of sensitive outsiders like Sj. K. M. Munshi who was deeply impressed by his radiating presence when he met him after nearly f orty years.
The Evening Talks collected here may aff ord to the outside w orld a glimpse of his external personality and give the seeker some idea of its richness, its many-sidedness, its uniqueness. One can also f orm some notion of Sri Aurobindo's personality from the books in which the height, the universal sweep and clear vision of his integral ideal and thought can be seen. His writings are, in a sense, the best representative of his mental personality. The versatile nature of his genius, the penetrating power of his intellect, his extra ordinary power of expression, his intense sincerity, his utter singleness of purpose all these can be easily felt by any earnest student of his w orks. He may discover even in the realm of mind that Sri Aurobindo brings the unlimited into the limited. Another side of his dynamic personality is represented by the Ashram as an institution. But the outer, if one may use the phrase, the human side of his personality, is unknown to the outside w orld because from 1910 to 1950 a span of f orty years he led a life of outer retirement. No doubt, many knew about his staying at Pondicherry and practising some kind of very special Yoga to the mystery of which they had no access. To some, perhaps, he was living a life of enviable solitude enjoying the luxury of a spiritual endeavour. Many regretted his retirement as a great loss to the w orld because they could not see any external activity on his part which could be regarded as 'public', 'altruistic' or 'beneficial'. Even some of his admirers thought that he was after some kind of personal salvation which would have very little significance f or mankind in general. His outward non-participation in public life was construed by many as lack of love f or humanity.
But those who knew him during the days of the national awakening from 1900 to 1910 could not have these doubts. And even these initial misunderstandings and false notions of others began to evap orate with the growth of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram from 1927 onwards. The large number of books published by the Ashram also tended to remove the idea of the other-w orldliness of his Yoga and the absence of any good by it to mankind.
This period of outer retirement was one of intense Sadhana and of intellectual activity it was also one during which he acted on external events, though he was not dedicated outwardly to a public cause. About his own retirement he writes: "But this did not mean, as most people supposed, that he [Sri Aurobindo] had retired into some height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the w orld or in the fate of India. It could not mean that, f or the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all w orld activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was happening in the w orld and in India and actively intervened, whenever necessary, but solely with a spiritual f orce and silent spiritual action; f or it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that besides the ordinary f orces and activities of the mind and life and body in Matter, there are other f orces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness, though all do not care to possess or, possessing, to use it and this power is greater than any other and m ore effective. It was this f orce which, as soon as he attained to it, he used at first only in a limited field of personal w ork, but afterwards in a constant action upon the w orld f orces."[1]
Twice he found it necessary to go out of his way to make public pronouncements on imp ortant w orld-issues, which shows distinctly that renunciation of life is not a part of his Yoga. "The first was in relation to the Second W orld War. At the beginning he did not actively concern himself with it, but when it appeared as if Hitler would crush all the f orces opposed to him and Nazism dominate the w orld, he began to intervene."[2]
--
Sri Aurobindo has explained the mystery of personality in some of his writings. ordinarily by personality we mean something which can be described as "a pattern of being marked out by a settled combination of fixed qualities, a determined character.... In one view personality is regarded as a fixed structure of recognisable qualities expressing a power of being"; another idea regards "personality as a flux of self-expressive or sensitive and responsive being.... But flux of nature and fixity of nature" which some call character "are two aspects of being neither of which, n or indeed both together, can be a definition of personality.... But besides this flux and this fixity there is also a third and occult element, the Person behind of whom the personality is a self-expression; the Person puts f orward the personality as his role, character, persona, in the present act of his long drama of manifested existence. But the Person is larger than his personality, and it may happen that this inner largeness overflows into the surface f ormation; the result is a self-expression of being which can no longer be described by fixed qualities, n ormalities of mood, exact lineaments, or marked out by structural limits."[4]
The gospel of the Supermind which Sri Aurobindo brought to man envisages a new level of consciousness beyond Mind. When this level is attained it imposes a complete and radical reintegration of the human personality. Sri Aurobindo was not merely the exponent but the embodiment of the new, dynamic truth of the Supermind. While expl oring and sounding the tremendous possibilities of human personality in his intense spiritual Sadhana, he has shown us that practically there are no limits to its expansion and ascent. It can reach in its growth what appears to man at present as a 'divine' status. It goes without saying that this attainment is not an easy task; there are conditions to be fulfilled f or the transf ormation from the human to the divine.
The Gita in its chapters on the Vibhuti and the Avatar takes in general the same position. It shows that the present f ormula of our nature, and theref ore the mental personality of man, is not final. A Vibhuti embodies in a human manifestation a certain divine quality and thus demonstrates the possibility of overcoming the limits of ordinary human personality. The Vibhuti the embodiment of a divine quality or power, and the Avatar the divine incarnation, are not to be looked upon as supraphysical miracles thrown at humanity without regard to the process of evolution; they are, in fact, indications of human possibility, a sign that points to the goal of evolution.
In his Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo says about the Avatar: "He may, on the other hand, descend as an incarnation of divine life, the divine personality and power in its characteristic action, f or a mission ostensibly social, ethical and political, as is represented in the st ory of Rama or Krishna; but always then this descent becomes in the soul of the race a permanent power f or the inner living and the spiritual rebirth."[5]
"He comes as the divine power and love which calls men to itself, so that they may take refuge in that and no longer in the insufficiency of their human wills and the strife of their human fear, wrath and passion, and liberated from all this unquiet and suffering may live in the calm and bliss of the Divine."[6]
--
It is clear that Sri Aurobindo interpreted the traditional idea of the Vibhuti and the Avatar in terms of the evolutionary possibilities of man. But m ore directly he has w orked out the idea of the 'gnostic individual' in his masterpiece The Life Divine. He says: "A supramental gnostic individual will be a spiritual Person, but not a personality in the sense of a pattern of being marked out by a settled combination of fixed qualities, a determined character; he cannot be that since he is a conscious expression of the universal and the transcendent." Describing the gnostic individual he says: "We feel ourselves in the presence of a light of consciousness, a potency, a sea of energy, can distinguish and describe its free waves of action and quality, but not fix itself; and yet there is an impression of personality, the presence of a powerful being, a strong, high or beautiful recognisable Someone, a Person, not a limited creature of Nature but a Self or Soul, a Purusha."[8]
One feels that he was describing the feeling of some of us, his disciples, with regard to him in his inimitable way.
This transf ormation of the human personality into the Divine perhaps even the mere connection of the human with the Divine is probably regarded as a chimera by the modern mind. To the modern mind it would appear as the apotheosis of a human personality which is against its idea of equality of men. Its difficulty is partly due to the notion that the Divine is unlimited and illimitable while a 'personality', however high and grand, seems to demand imposition, or assumption, of limitation. In this connection Sri Aurobindo said during an evening talk that no human manifestation can be illimitable and unlimited, but the manifestation in the limited should reflect the unlimited, the Transcendent Beyond.
This possibility of the human touching and manifesting the Divine has been realised during the course of human hist ory whenever a great spiritual Light has appeared on earth. One of the purposes of this book is to show how Sri Aurobindo himself reflected the unlimited Beyond in his own self.
0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the inconscience which is the sign of ordinary sleep. But I do
give my body the rest it needs, that is, two or three hours of
lying down in a condition of absolute immobility in which the
--
awake; or else I enter into an internal activity of one or m ore
states of being, an activity which constitutes the occult w ork
--
that I no longer experience ordinary sleep, while still giving my
body the rest that it needs.
--
eighty-five or ninety people (the number varies as people come
and go).
--
which eluded you at first glance. M oreover, these "conversations" make no claim to exhaust their subjects or even to deal
with them th oroughly. Rather they are hints whose purpose is
--
reached sixty or sixty-five, and the number of Ashram members
(Sri Aurobindo's disciples living in Pondicherry) varies between
--
without any f orce or energy f or realisation. As f or Gandhi's
young people, they may have m ore energy and power of action,
--
is free to organise his life as he pleases, the discipline is reduced
to the minimum that is indispensable to organise the existence
of 110 to 120 people and to avoid movements that would be
--
have the time or the possibility to come here? Once you did let
me hope f or a visit.
--
general malady. F or three or four days the f orces at w ork were
ugly and could justifiably cause anxiety, and a great confusion
--
Speaking of recent events, you ask me "whether it was a dangerous bluff" or whether we "narrowly escaped disaster". To
assume both at the same time would be nearer to the truth.
--
human will there are f orces at w ork whose origin is not human
and which move consciously towards certain ends. The play of
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HERE are two necessities of Nature's w orkings which seem always to intervene in the greater f orms of human activity, whether these belong to our ordinary fields of movement or seek those exceptional spheres and fulfilments which appear to us high and divine. Every such f orm tends towards a harmonised complexity and totality which again breaks apart into various channels of special eff ort and tendency, only to unite once m ore in a larger and m ore puissant synthesis. Secondly, development into f orms is an imperative rule of effective manifestation; yet all truth and practice too strictly f ormulated becomes old and loses much, if not all, of its virtue; it must be constantly renovated by fresh streams of the spirit revivifying the dead or dying vehicle and changing it, if it is to acquire a new life. To be perpetually reb orn is the condition of a material imm ortality. We are in an age, full of the throes of travail, when all f orms of thought and activity that have in themselves any strong power of utility or any secret virtue of persistence are being subjected to a supreme test and given their opp ortunity of rebirth. The w orld today presents the aspect of a huge cauldron of Medea in which all things are being cast, shredded into pieces, experimented on, combined and recombined either to perish and provide the scattered material of new f orms or to emerge rejuvenated and changed f or a fresh term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a special action or f ormulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously f ormulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity. The child of immem orial ages, preserved by its vitality and truth into our modern times, it is now emerging from the secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it had taken refuge and is seeking its place in the future sum of living human powers and utilities. But it has first to rediscover itself, bring to the surface
The Conditions of the Synthesis
--
In the right view both of life and of Yoga all life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga. F or we mean by this term a methodised eff ort towards self-perfection by the expression of the secret potentialities latent in the being and - highest condition of vict ory in that eff ort - a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos. But all life, when we look behind its appearances, is a vast Yoga of Nature who attempts in the conscious and the subconscious to realise her perfection in an ever-increasing expression of her yet unrealised potentialities and to unite herself with her own divine reality. In man, her thinker, she f or the first time upon this Earth devises selfconscious means and willed arrangements of activity by which this great purpose may be m ore swiftly and puissantly attained.
Yoga, as Swami Vivekananda has said, may be regarded as a means of compressing one's evolution into a single life or a few years or even a few months of bodily existence. A given system of Yoga, then, can be no m ore than a selection or a compression, into narrower but m ore energetic f orms of intensity, of the general methods which are already being used loosely, largely, in a leisurely movement, with a profuser apparent waste of material and energy but with a m ore complete combination by the great
Mother in her vast upward labour. It is this view of Yoga that can alone f orm the basis f or a sound and rational synthesis of Yogic methods. F or then Yoga ceases to appear something mystic and abn ormal which has no relation to the ordinary processes of the W orld-Energy or the purpose she keeps in view in her two great movements of subjective and objective selffulfilment; it reveals itself rather as an intense and exceptional use of powers that she has already manifested or is progressively
Life and Yoga
organising in her less exalted but m ore general operations.
Yogic methods have something of the same relation to the customary psychological w orkings of man as has the scientific handling of the f orce of electricity or of steam to their n ormal operations in Nature. And they, too, like the operations of Science, are f ormed upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis and constant result. All
Rajayoga, f or instance, depends on this perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions, f orces, can be separated or dissolved, can be new-combined and set to novel and f ormerly impossible w orkings or can be transf ormed and resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes. Hathayoga similarly depends on this perception and experience that the vital f orces and functions to which our life is n ormally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem set and indispensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible and that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of their process. And if in some other of its f orms this character of Yoga is less apparent, because they are m ore intuitive and less mechanical, nearer, like the Yoga of Devotion, to a supernal ecstasy or, like the Yoga of Knowledge, to a supernal infinity of consciousness and being, yet they too start from the use of some principal faculty in us by ways and f or ends not contemplated in its everyday spontaneous w orkings. All methods grouped under the common name of Yoga are special psychological processes founded on a fixed truth of Nature and developing, out of n ormal functions, powers and results which were always latent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest.
But as in physical knowledge the multiplication of scientific processes has its disadvantages, as that tends, f or instance, to develop a vict orious artificiality which overwhelms our natural human life under a load of machinery and to purchase certain f orms of freedom and mastery at the price of an increased servitude, so the preoccupation with Yogic processes and their exceptional results may have its disadvantages and losses. The
--
Yogin tends to draw away from the common existence and lose his hold upon it; he tends to purchase wealth of spirit by an impoverishment of his human activities, the inner freedom by an outer death. If he gains God, he loses life, or if he turns his eff orts outward to conquer life, he is in danger of losing
God. Theref ore we see in India that a sharp incompatibility has been created between life in the w orld and spiritual growth and perfection, and although the tradition and ideal of a vict orious harmony between the inner attraction and the outer demand remains, it is little or else very imperfectly exemplified. In fact, when a man turns his vision and energy inward and enters on the path of Yoga, he is popularly supposed to be lost inevitably to the great stream of our collective existence and the secular eff ort of humanity. So strongly has the idea prevailed, so much has it been emphasised by prevalent philosophies and religions that to escape from life is now commonly considered as not only the necessary condition, but the general object of Yoga. No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life or, in its method, not only permit but favour the harmony of our inner and outer activities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. F or man is precisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material w orld in which it is possible f or the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the f orms of the lower. To avoid the life which is given him f or the realisation of that possibility, can never be either the indispensable condition or the whole and ultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of self-fulfilment. It can only be a temp orary necessity under certain conditions or a specialised extreme eff ort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a greater general possibility f or the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious
Yoga in man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous with life itself and we can once m ore, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a m ore perfect and luminous sense: "All life is Yoga."
0.02 - II - The Home of the Guru, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The Master, the Guru, set at rest the puzzled human mind by his illuminating answers, perhaps even m ore by his silent consciousness, so that it might be able to pursue unhampered the path of realisation of the Truth. Those ancient discourses answer the mind of man today even across the ages. They have rightly acquired as everything of the past does a certain sanctity. But sometimes that very reverence prevents men from properly evaluating, and living in, the present. This happens when the mind instead of seeking the Spirit looks at the f orm. F or instance, it is not necessary f or such discourses that they take place in f orest-groves in order to be highly spiritual. Wherever the Master is, there is Light. And guru-griha the house of the Master can be his private dwelling place. So much was this feeling a part of Sri Aurobindo's nature and so particular was he to maintain the personal character of his w ork that during the first few years after 1923 he did not like his house to be called an 'Ashram', as the w ord had acquired the sense of a public institution to the modern mind. But there was no doubt that the flower of Divinity had blossomed in him; and disciples, like bees seeking honey, came to him. It is no exaggeration to say that these Evening Talks were to the small company of disciples what the Aranyakas were to the ancient seekers. Seeking the Light, they came to the dwelling place of their Guru, the greatest seer of the age, and found it their spiritual home the home of their parents, f or the Mother, his companion in the great mission, had come. And these spiritual parents bestowed upon the disciples freely of their Light, their Consciousness, their Power and their Grace. The modern reader may find that the f orm of these discourses differs from those of the past but it was bound to be so f or the simple reason that the times have changed and the problems that puzzle the modern mind are so different. Even though the disciples may be very imperfect representations of what he aimed at in them, still they are his creations. It is in order to repay, in however infinitesimal a degree, the debt which we owe to him that the eff ort is made to partake of the joy of his company the Evening Talks with a larger public.
***
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
month. Will you see if indeed the previous book is finished or
not, and act acc ordingly.
--
that thirty people or so are taking their meals there and if anything happened what a h orrible thing it would be - and, with
the sense of your full responsibility, come tom orrow m orning,
--
adaptability, utilisation or invention developed by the necessity
of overcoming some material difficulty.
--
with one or the other hand, while he was looking at anything
and everything except at what he was doing; po or table, what
--
in disgust, or that Sri Aurobindo will write two pages
asking me to quit the Ashram or at least to stop w ork
from tom orrow. Mother will say: this is the effect of
--
sickness is always a revolt or wrong attitude. I said Yes.
He asked me to give a concrete example. I described
--
not conscious that any revolt or wrong attitude was the
cause of the pain in his fingers.
--
of faith or of receptivity) and then it is very difficult to detect
as it does not c orrespond to any wrong thought or feeling, the
body consciousness being most often and in almost everybody
--
This was to remove all possibility of a feeling of scolding or
reproach in what I was saying, because there was nothing of
--
f or the Truth expression to be easily understood by ordinary
people. It is this seeking which gives the impression of hesitation,
--
or unknowable or invisible god, I do deride it as mere
philosophy.
--
n or have I economised on sleep or rest. I was also getting
mild suggestions of vomiting, but they have stopped by
--
It simply means to rise (soar into the air) above the ordinary
consciousness, into a higher consciousness from which one can
--
thing comes up again or increases, I ask f or it.
Then the desire gets exacerbated and the request is made with a
--
it, without thinking or putting it off - but I don't dare
adopt this method.
--
The carpenter Y has taken ten days' leave in order to
get married again. He wants Rs. 40 advance, to be paid
--
Your orders please, Mother wonderful!
What can we do? He is a good and regular w orker, isn't he? I
--
that it is I who gave the order to make all possible use of the old
pieces of wood.
--
the left side of my back f or the past three or four days.
I decided to be brave and not tell You about it, but the
--
hallucinations, or else he understands and then gets frightened,
which is always dangerous.
--
When I read a novel or anything in print I clearly understand, say, eighty per cent. But when someone speaks,
I have great difficulty in following him. I miss m ore than
--
discusses a play or the pronunciation of French.
As soon as the project is completely ready, when you have
--
credit, less perhaps than you would give an ordinary building
contract or who, in your eyes, seems to know his job and have
--
best if X or Y speaks to them in your presence.
And from July 1st we shall also have to think about reducing
the number of projects undertaken at one time, in order to meet
the difficulty of supervision.
--
reservations without seeming to contradict or embarrass
Sweet Mother?
--
which is used to lengthen or sh orten the pendulum. I looked
at the clock with my inner sight and told Z, "To make it go
--
- but this is not an ordinary pendulum since it w orks by rotary
movement.) I answered, as I always do, "Do as you think best."
--
one reason or another, that the w orking becomes defective.
Read this carefully, study it, and when you come today I will
--
I think so. But m ore than anything, it is the lack of organisation
and order which causes all this waste. Certainly, if there is not
enough room to keep things in order and separate, the good
things on one side and the bad on the other, it is better to get rid
--
avoid all contact with X, direct or indirect, and (2) the
other which sees any harmonious dealings between us
--
from. Was it my own thought expressed in w ords, or was
it what is known as a "voice"? How can these things be
--
mind or sometimes merely as a feeling in the heart.
23 May 1935
--
I have decided to adopt the following attitude towards Z. If I have any suggestion or remark to make
about the w ork, I shall do it very simply. If he accepts,
--
would be removed. In the absence of any definite orders
on this point I said, "Ask Mother." Later it was Sweet
--
thing is good or not, because my vision is limited.
I never said that you should be the judge. I agree to be the judge
--
This is not right. When I ask a question, I ask it in order to get exact and objective inf ormation. I have said this many times. I have
no preconceived idea, no preference, no opinion about things.
--
nothing whatever can hold true or be effective unless it
is supp orted by Sweet Mother.
--
directly or indirectly, I look and judge f or myself without the
intervention of anyone's opinion.
--
Once and f or all, wash away the feeling that you are "superi or" to others - f or no one is superi or or inferi or bef ore the
Divine.
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But in order that we may be wisely guided in our eff ort, we must know, first, the general principle and purpose underlying this separative impulse and, next, the particular utilities upon which the method of each school of Yoga is founded. F or the general principle we must interrogate the universal w orkings of Nature herself, recognising in her no merely specious and illusive activity of a dist orting Maya, but the cosmic energy and w orking of God Himself in His universal being f ormulating and inspired by a vast, an infinite and yet a minutely selective
Wisdom, prajna prasr.ta puran. of the Upanishad, Wisdom that went f orth from the Eternal since the beginning. F or the particular utilities we must cast a penetrative eye on the different methods of Yoga and distinguish among the mass of their details the governing idea which they serve and the radical f orce which gives birth and energy to their processes of effectuation.
--
displayed, if not constantly, then occasionally or with some regularity of recurrence, in primary f ormations or in others m ore developed and, it may well be, even in some, however rare, that are near to the highest possible realisation of our present humanity. F or the march of Nature is not drilled to a regular and mechanical f orward stepping. She reaches constantly beyond herself even at the cost of subsequent depl orable retreats.
She has rushes; she has splendid and mighty outbursts; she has immense realisations. She st orms sometimes passionately f orward hoping to take the kingdom of heaven by violence.
And these self-exceedings are the revelation of that in her which is most divine or else most diabolical, but in either case the most puissant to bring her rapidly f orward towards her goal.
That which Nature has evolved f or us and has firmly founded is the bodily life. She has effected a certain combination and harmony of the two inferi or but most fundamentally necessary elements of our action and progress upon earth, -
--
of the material or food sheath and the nervous system or vital vehicle.1
If, then, this inferi or equilibrium is the basis and first means of the higher movements which the universal Power contemplates and if it constitutes the vehicle in which the Divine here seeks to reveal Itself, if the Indian saying is true that the body is the instrument provided f or the fulfilment of the right law of our nature, then any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation. Such a refusal may be, owing to some secret law of their development, the right attitude f or certain individuals, but never the aim intended f or mankind. It can be, theref ore, no integral Yoga which ign ores the body or makes its annulment or its rejection indispensable to a perfect spirituality. Rather, the perfecting of the body also should be the last triumph of the Spirit and to make the bodily life also divine must be God's final seal upon His w ork in the universe. The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument f or the rejection of the physical; f or in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opp ortunities. A supreme difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inextricable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong f or us from whom we must flee.
Equally, the vital and nervous energies in us are there f or a great utility; they too demand the divine realisation of their possibilities in our ultimate fulfilment. The great part assigned to this element in the universal scheme is powerfully emphasised by the catholic wisdom of the Upanishads. "As the spokes of a wheel in its nave, so in the Life-Energy is all established, the triple knowledge and the Sacrifice and the power of the strong and the purity of the wise. Under the control of the LifeEnergy is all this that is established in the triple heaven."2 It is theref ore no integral Yoga that kills these vital energies, f orces them into a nerveless quiescence or roots them out as the source
annakos.a and pran.akos.a.
--
If the bodily life is what Nature has firmly evolved f or us as her base and first instrument, it is our mental life that she is evolving as her immediate next aim and superi or instrument. This in her ordinary exaltations is the lofty preoccupying thought in her; this, except in her periods of exhaustion and recoil into a reposeful and recuperating obscurity, is her constant pursuit wherever she can get free from the trammels of her first vital and physical realisations. F or here in man we have a distinction which is of the utmost imp ortance. He has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason. Mind in man is first emmeshed in the life of the body, where in the plant it is entirely involved and in animals always imprisoned. It accepts this life as not only the first but the whole condition of its activities and serves its needs as if they were the entire aim of existence. But the bodily life in man is a base, not the aim, his first condition and not his last determinant. In the just idea of the ancients man is essentially the thinker, the Manu, the mental being who leads the life and the body,3 not the animal who is led by them. The true human existence, theref ore, only begins when the intellectual mentality emerges out of the material and we begin m ore and m ore to live in the mind independent of the nervous and physical obsession and in the measure of that liberty are able to accept rightly and rightly to use the life of the body. F or freedom and not a skilful subjection is the true means of mastery. A free, not a compuls ory acceptance of the conditions, the enlarged and sublimated conditions of our physical being, is the high human ideal. But beyond this intellectual mentality is the divine.
The mental life thus evolving in man is not, indeed, a
--
common possession. In actual appearance it would seem as if it were only developed to the fullest in individuals and as if there were great numbers and even the maj ority in whom it is either a small and ill- organised part of their n ormal nature or not evolved at all or latent and not easily made active.
Certainly, the mental life is not a finished evolution of Nature; it is not yet firmly founded in the human animal. The sign is that the fine and full equilibrium of vitality and matter, the sane, robust, long-lived human body is ordinarily found only in races or classes of men who reject the eff ort of thought, its disturbances, its tensions, or think only with the material mind.
Civilised man has yet to establish an equilibrium between the fully active mind and the body; he does not n ormally possess it.
Indeed, the increasing eff ort towards a m ore intense mental life seems to create, frequently, an increasing disequilibrium of the human elements, so that it is possible f or eminent scientists to describe genius as a f orm of insanity, a result of degeneration, a pathological m orbidity of Nature. The phenomena which are used to justify this exaggeration, when taken not separately, but in connection with all other relevant data, point to a different truth. Genius is one attempt of the universal Energy to so quicken and intensify our intellectual powers that they shall be prepared f or those m ore puissant, direct and rapid faculties which constitute the play of the supra-intellectual or divine mind. It is not, then, a freak, an inexplicable phenomenon, but a perfectly natural next step in the right line of her evolution.
She has harmonised the bodily life with the material mind, she is harmonising it with the play of the intellectual mentality; f or that, although it tends to a depression of the full animal and vital vigour, need not produce active disturbances. And she is shooting yet beyond in the attempt to reach a still higher level.
--
to this conclusion that mental life, far from being a recent appearance in man, is the swift repetition in him of a previous achievement from which the Energy in the race had undergone one of her depl orable recoils. The savage is perhaps not so much the first f orefa ther of civilised man as the degenerate descendant of a previous civilisation. F or if the actuality of intellectual achievement is unevenly distributed, the capacity is spread everywhere. It has been seen that in individual cases even the racial type considered by us the lowest, the negro fresh from the perennial barbarism of Central Africa, is capable, without admixture of blood, without waiting f or future generations, of the intellectual culture, if not yet of the intellectual accomplishment of the dominant European. Even in the mass men seem to need, in favourable circumstances, only a few generations to cover ground that ought apparently to be measured in the terms of millenniums. Either, then, man by his privilege as a mental being is exempt from the full burden of the tardy laws of evolution or else he already represents and with helpful conditions and in the right stimulating atmosphere can always display a high level of material capacity f or the activities of the intellectual life.
It is not mental incapacity, but the long rejection or seclusion from opp ortunity and withdrawal of the awakening impulse that creates the savage. Barbarism is an intermediate sleep, not an original darkness.
M oreover the whole trend of modern thought and modern endeavour reveals itself to the observant eye as a large conscious eff ort of Nature in man to effect a general level of intellectual equipment, capacity and farther possibility by universalising the opp ortunities which modern civilisation aff ords f or the mental life. Even the preoccupation of the European intellect, the protagonist of this tendency, with material Nature and the externalities of existence is a necessary part of the eff ort. It seeks to prepare a sufficient basis in man's physical being and vital energies and in his material environment f or his full mental possibilities. By the spread of education, by the advance of the backward races, by the elevation of depressed classes, by the multiplication of labour-saving appliances, by the movement
--
towards ideal social and economic conditions, by the labour of Science towards an improved health, longevity and sound physique in civilised humanity, the sense and drift of this vast movement translates itself in easily intelligible signs. The right or at least the ultimate means may not always be employed, but their aim is the right preliminary aim, - a sound individual and social body and the satisfaction of the legitimate needs and demands of the material mind, sufficient ease, leisure, equal opp ortunity, so that the whole of mankind and no longer only the favoured race, class or individual may be free to develop the emotional and intellectual being to its full capacity. At present the material and economic aim may predominate, but always, behind, there w orks or there waits in reserve the higher and maj or impulse.
And when the preliminary conditions are satisfied, when the great endeavour has found its base, what will be the nature of that farther possibility which the activities of the intellectual life must serve? If Mind is indeed Nature's highest term, then the entire development of the rational and imaginative intellect and the harmonious satisfaction of the emotions and sensibilities must be to themselves sufficient. But if, on the contrary, man is m ore than a reasoning and emotional animal, if beyond that which is being evolved, there is something that has to be evolved, then it may well be that the fullness of the mental life, the suppleness, flexibility and wide capacity of the intellect, the ordered richness of emotion and sensibility may be only a passage towards the development of a higher life and of m ore powerful faculties which are yet to manifest and to take possession of the lower instrument, just as mind itself has so taken possession of the body that the physical being no longer lives only f or its own satisfaction but provides the foundation and the materials f or a superi or activity.
The assertion of a higher than the mental life is the whole foundation of Indian philosophy and its acquisition and organisation is the veritable object served by the methods of Yoga.
Mind is not the last term of evolution, not an ultimate aim, but, like body, an instrument. It is even so termed in the language of
--
Yoga, the inner instrument.4 And Indian tradition asserts that this which is to be manifested is not a new term in human experience, but has been developed bef ore and has even governed humanity in certain periods of its development. In any case, in order to be known it must at one time have been partly developed.
And if since then Nature has sunk back from her achievement, the reason must always be found in some unrealised harmony, some insufficiency of the intellectual and material basis to which she has now returned, some over-specialisation of the higher to the detriment of the lower existence.
But what then constitutes this higher or highest existence to which our evolution is tending? In order to answer the question we have to deal with a class of supreme experiences, a class of unusual conceptions which it is difficult to represent accurately in any other language than the ancient Sanskrit tongue in which alone they have been to some extent systematised.
The only approximate terms in the English language have other associations and their use may lead to many and even serious inaccuracies. The terminology of Yoga recognises besides the status of our physical and vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind sheath or mental vehicle,5 a third, supreme and divine status of supra-mental being, termed the causal body and composed of a fourth and a fifth vehicle6 which are described as those of knowledge and bliss. But this knowledge is not a systematised result of mental questionings and reasonings, not a temp orary arrangement of conclusions and opinions in the terms of the highest probability, but rather a pure self-existent and self-luminous Truth. And this bliss is not a supreme pleasure of the heart and sensations with the experience of pain and s orrow as its background, but a delight also selfexistent and independent of objects and particular experiences, a self-delight which is the very nature, the very stuff, as it were, of a transcendent and infinite existence.
antah.karan.a.
--
Do such psychological conceptions c orrespond to anything real and possible? All Yoga asserts them as its ultimate experience and supreme aim. They f orm the governing principles of our highest possible state of consciousness, our widest possible range of existence. There is, we say, a harmony of supreme faculties, c orresponding roughly to the psychological faculties of revelation, inspiration and intuition, yet acting not in the intuitive reason or the divine mind, but on a still higher plane, which see Truth directly face to face, or rather live in the truth of things both universal and transcendent and are its f ormulation and luminous activity. And these faculties are the light of a conscious existence superseding the egoistic and itself both cosmic and transcendent, the nature of which is Bliss. These are obviously divine and, as man is at present apparently constituted, superhuman states of consciousness and activity. A trinity of transcendent existence, self-awareness and self-delight7 is, indeed, the metaphysical description of the supreme Atman, the self-f ormulation, to our awakened knowledge, of the Unknowable whether conceived as a pure Impersonality or as a cosmic Personality manifesting the universe. But in Yoga they are regarded also in their psychological aspects as states of subjective existence to which our waking consciousness is now alien, but which dwell in us in a superconscious plane and to which, theref ore, we may always ascend.
F or, as is indicated by the name, causal body (karan.a), as opposed to the two others which are instruments (karan.a), this crowning manifestation is also the source and effective power of all that in the actual evolution has preceded it. Our mental activities are, indeed, a derivation, selection and, so long as they are divided from the truth that is secretly their source, a def ormation of the divine knowledge. Our sensations and emotions have the same relation to the Bliss, our vital f orces and actions to the aspect of Will or F orce assumed by the divine consciousness, our physical being to the pure essence of that Bliss and
Consciousness. The evolution which we observe and of which
--
Wisdom exists at all, the faculty of Mind also must have some high use and destiny. That use must depend on its place in the ascent and in the return and that destiny must be a fulfilment and transfiguration, not a rooting out or an annulling.
We perceive, then, these three steps in Nature, a bodily life which is the basis of our existence here in the material w orld, a mental life into which we emerge and by which we raise the bodily to higher uses and enlarge it into a greater completeness, and a divine existence which is at once the goal of the other two and returns upon them to liberate them into their highest possibilities. Regarding none of them as either beyond our reach or below our nature and the destruction of none of them as essential to the ultimate attainment, we accept this liberation and fulfilment as part at least and a large and imp ortant part of the aim of Yoga.
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo was never a social man in the current sense of the term and definitely he was not a man of the crowd. This was due to his grave temperament, not to any feeling of superi ority or to repulsion f or men. At Baroda there was an Officers' Club which was patronised by the Maharajah and though Sri Aurobindo enrolled himself as a member he hardly went to the Club even on special occasions. He rather liked a small congenial circle of friends and spent most of his evenings with them whenever he was free and not occupied with his studies or other w orks. After Baroda when he went to Calcutta there was hardly any time in the st orm and stress of revolutionary politics to permit him to lead a 'social life'. What little time he could spare from his incessant activities was spent in the house of Raja Subodh Mallick or at the Grey Street house. In the Karmayogin office he used to sit after the office hours till late chatting with a few persons or trying automatic writing. Strange dictations used to be received sometimes: one of them was the following: "Moni [Suresh Chakravarty] will bomb Sir Edward Grey when he will come as the Viceroy of India." In later years at Pondicherry there used to be a joke that Sir Edward took such a fright at the prospect of Moni's bombing him that he never came to India!
After Sri Aurobindo had come to Pondicherry from Chandernag ore, he entered upon an intense period of Sadhana and f or a few months he refused to receive anyone. After a time he used to sit down to talk in the evening and on some days tried automatic writing. Yogic Sadhan, a small book, was the result. In 1913 Sri Aurobindo moved to Rue Franois Martin No. 41 where he used to receive visit ors at fixed times. This was generally in the m orning between 9 and 10.30.
--
When Sri Aurobindo and the Mother moved to No. 9 Rue de la Marine in 1922 the same routine of inf ormal evening sittings after meditation continued. I came to Pondicherry f or Sadhana in the beginning of 1923. I kept notes of the imp ortant talks I had with the four or five disciples who were already there. Besides, I used to take detailed notes of the Evening Talks which we all had with the Master. They were not intended by him to be noted down. I took them down because of the imp ortance I felt about everything connected with him, no matter how insignificant to the outer view. I also felt that everything he did would acquire f or those who would come to know his mission a very great significance.
As years passed the evening sittings went on changing their time and often those disciples who came from outside f or a temp orary stay f or Sadhana were allowed to join them. And, as the number of sadhaks practising the Yoga increased, the evening sittings also became m ore full, and the small verandah upstairs in the main building was found insufficient. Members of the household would gather every day at the fixed time with some sense of expectancy and start chatting in low tones. Sri Aurobindo used to come last and it was after his coming that the session would really commence.
He came dressed as usual in dhoti, part of which was used by him to cover the upper part of his body. Very rarely he came out with chaddar or shawl and then it was "in deference to the climate" as he sometimes put it. At times f or minutes he would be gazing at the sky from a small opening at the top of the grass-curtains that covered the verandah upstairs in No. 9, Rue de la Marine. How much were these sittings dependent on him may be gathered from the fact that there were days when m ore than three-fourths of the time passed in complete silence without any outer suggestion from him, or there was only an abrupt "Yes" or "No" to all attempts at drawing him out in conversation. And even when he participated in the talk one always felt that his voice was that of one who does not let his whole being flow into his w ords; there was a reserve and what was left unsaid was perhaps m ore than what was spoken. What was spoken was what he felt necessary to speak.
Very often some news-item in the daily newspaper, town-gossip, or some interesting letter received either by him or by a disciple, or a question from one of the gathering, occasionally some remark or query from himself would set the ball rolling f or the talk. The whole thing was so inf ormal that one could never predict the turn the conversation would take. The whole house theref ore was in a mood to enjoy the freshness and the delight of meeting the unexpected. There were peals of laughter and light talk, jokes and criticism which might be called personal, there was seriousness and earnestness in abundance.
These sittings, in fact, furnished Sri Aurobindo with an occasion to admit and feel the outer atmosphere and that of the group living with him. It brought to him the much-needed direct contact of the mental and vital make-up of the disciples, enabling him to act on the atmosphere in general and on the individual in particular. He could thus help to remould their mental make-up by removing the limitations of their minds and opinions, and c orrect temperamental tendencies and f ormations. Thus, these sittings contributed at least partly to the creation of an atmosphere amenable to the w orking of the Higher Consciousness. Far m ore imp ortant than the actual talk and its content was the personal contact, the influence of the Master, and the divine atmosphere he emanated; f or through his outer personality it was the Divine Consciousness that he allowed to act. All along behind the outer manifestation that appeared human, there was the influence and presence of the Divine.
What was talked in the small group inf ormally was not intended by Sri Aurobindo to be the independent expression of his views on the subjects, events or the persons discussed. Very often what he said was in answer to the spiritual need of the individual or of the collective atmosphere. It was like a spiritual remedy meant to produce certain spiritual results, not a philosophical or metaphysical pronouncement on questions, events or movements. The net result of some talks very often was to point out to the disciple the inherent incapacity of the human intellect and its secondary place in the search f or the ultimate Reality.
But there were occasions when he did give his independent, personal views on some problems, on events or other subjects. Even then it was never an auth oritarian pronouncement. Most often it appeared to be a logically w orked out and almost inevitable conclusion expressed quite impersonally though with firm and sincere conviction. This impersonality was such a prominent trait of his personality! Even in such matters as dispatching a letter or a telegram it would not be a command from him to a disciple to carry out the task. Most often during his usual passage to the dining room he would stop on the way, drop in on the company of four or five disciples and, holding out the letter or the telegram, would say in the most amiable and yet the most impersonal way: "I suppose this has to be sent." And it would be f or someone in the group instantly to volunteer and take it. The expression he very often used was "It was done" or "It happened", not "I did."
From 1918 to 1922, we gathered at No. 41, Rue Franois Martin, called the Guest House, upstairs, on a broad verandah into which four rooms opened and whose main piece of furniture was a small table 3' x 1' covered with a blue cotton cloth. That is where Sri Aurobindo used to sit in a hard wooden chair behind the table with a few chairs in front f or the visit ors or f or the disciples.
From 1922 to 1926, No. 9, Rue de la Marine, where he and the Mother had shifted, was the place where the sittings were held. There, also upstairs, was a less broad verandah than at the Guest House, a little bigger table in front of the central do or out of three, and a broad Japanese chair, the table covered with a better cloth than the one in the Guest House, a small flower vase, an ash-tray, a block calendar indicating the date and an ordinary time-piece, and a number of chairs in front in a line. The evening sittings used to be after meditation at 4 or 4.30 p.m. After 24 November 1926, the sittings began to get later and later, till the limit of 1 o'clock at night was reached. Then the curtain fell. Sri Aurobindo retired completely after December 1926, and the evening sittings came to a close.
On 8 February 1927, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother moved to No. 28, Rue Franois Martin, a house on the n orth-east of the same block as No. 9, Rue de la Marine.
--
The long period of the Second W orld War with all its vicissitudes passed through these years. It was a priceless experience to see how he devoted his energies to the task of saving humanity from the threatened reign of Nazism. It was a practical lesson of solid w ork done f or humanity without any thought of return or reward, without even letting humanity know what he was doing f or it! Thus he lived the Divine and showed us how the Divine cares f or the w orld, how He comes down and w orks f or man. I shall never f orget how he who was at one time in his own w ords "not merely a non-co-operat or but an enemy of British Imperialism" bestowed such anxious care on the health of Churchill, listening carefully to the health-bulletins! It was the w ork of the Divine, it was the Divine's w ork f or the w orld.
There were no f ormal evening sittings during these years, but what appeared to me imp ortant in our inf ormal talks was rec orded and has been inc orp orated in this book.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You must not lose patience or courage; everything will turn
out all right.
--
child or an animal is confident and happy without knowing why.
Now you must learn to be happy and confident while knowing
--
I have noticed that in X's presence I dare not do certain things, such as talk in a loud voice or other impolite
things of this kind.
It is good to observe yourself in order to see your weaknesses
and be able to c orrect them.
--
While You were playing the organ, I had the feeling
that the others were listening to the Mother playing the
--
I don't know why, but f or two or three days I have
been feeling a bit sad.
--
some day in order to receive the light from above; but in the
meantime, you may surely tell me all these st ories. I find them
--
won't tell Mother this or that, but rather say: I shall tell her
everything quite frankly.
--
sees m ore clearly and better understands what ought or ought
not to have been done.
--
child, but what can I do? Naughty or not, in any case I
am Yours.
--
about my condition in order to let You know about it.)
There are thieves in the subtle w orld just as in the outer w orld.
--
that in order to become happy and good, I must want it
with all my will and to w ork as bef ore, I have started to
--
I write (in order, as You said, to keep the contact with
You)?
--
proximity of ugliness in order to look beautiful.
When the supramental f orces descend into Matter in order
to manifest, this perfect beauty will express itself quite naturally
--
It means the consciousness that is not filled with the activities and influences of ordinary life, but is concentrated in an
aspiration towards the divine light, f orce, knowledge, joy.
--
the original and which the copy, and it may very well be that
the copy is even m ore beautiful than the original. You saw that
I was wearing the gown this evening when I went f or a walk on
--
rest? That is, either take a full day's rest or else w ork two hours
less each day.
--
in the original drawing. The little diamonds are also very fine,
and in silver on the sari they will be magnificent. Where did you
--
cut or not. Because if it is well cut, I can cut other things
without any hesitation.
--
day and do less embroidery f or two or three days. Do just as I
tell you and remember that your w ork depends almost entirely
--
result may not appear immediately, but one day or another a
disinterested action bears its fruit.
--
also get tired and then one no longer has the sure hand or the
precise movement, one loses one's patience and calm and the
--
been done in order to redo it better.
24 August 1933
--
I also spent a little m ore time, two or three minutes."
Then it was lunchtime, so we went to take our plates.
--
I have noticed that when I am concentrated, or
rather when I try to concentrate, I cannot smile at anyone and if I try to smile I feel as if I were smiling
--
Mother, is it good or bad not to be able to speak like
that? I want to know, because if it is not good I don't
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every day. When you have something special or imp ortant or
interesting to write to me, you will write.
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I cannot say whether it is the most beautiful or not. Each of
the embroidered saris has its own beauty; but it is true that this
--
made it, myself or someone else; I mean that upon seeing
a very beautiful thing someone has made f or You, one
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s ort of fear, as if someone were there or someone might
come. I shut my eyes and after a moment, in my sleep,
--
you or you have an unpleasant feeling, you must call me and the
thing will disappear. When you are awake, surely you are not
--
sari to a lace gown. It is not a question of number or of need.
F or years I was perfectly satisfied with two saris a year - but I
--
My heart? or something else? I don't understand all this.
I want my heart to open to You and to feel Your love
--
it the desire to be admired by people - ego? or is it
something else? If You know, You will let me know. I
must know what it is in order to get rid of it.
Yes, my dear little child, you have indeed found the cause; and
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
NATURE, then, is an evolution or progressive self-manifestation of an eternal and secret existence, with three successive f orms as her three steps of ascent. And we have consequently as the condition of all our activities these three mutually interdependent possibilities, the bodily life, the mental existence and the veiled spiritual being which is in the involution the cause of the others and in the evolution their result. Preserving and perfecting the physical, fulfilling the mental, it is Nature's aim and it should be ours to unveil in the perfected body and mind the transcendent activities of the Spirit. As the mental life does not abrogate but w orks f or the elevation and better utilisation of the bodily existence, so too the spiritual should not abrogate but transfigure our intellectual, emotional, aesthetic and vital activities.
F or man, the head of terrestrial Nature, the sole earthly frame in which her full evolution is possible, is a triple birth. He has been given a living frame in which the body is the vessel and life the dynamic means of a divine manifestation. His activity is centred in a progressive mind which aims at perfecting itself as well as the house in which it dwells and the means of life that it uses, and is capable of awaking by a progressive self-realisation to its own true nature as a f orm of the Spirit. He culminates in what he always really was, the illumined and beatific spirit which is intended at last to irradiate life and mind with its now concealed splendours.
Since this is the plan of the divine Energy in humanity, the whole method and aim of our existence must w ork by the interaction of these three elements in the being. As a result of their separate f ormulation in Nature, man has open to him a choice between three kinds of life, the ordinary material existence, a life of mental activity and progress and the unchanging spiritual beatitude. But he can, as he progresses, combine these three f orms, resolve their disc ords into a harmonious rhythm and so create in himself the whole godhead, the perfect Man.
In ordinary Nature they have each their own characteristic and governing impulse.
The characteristic energy of bodily Life is not so much in progress as in persistence, not so much in individual selfenlargement as in self-repetition. There is, indeed, in physical Nature a progression from type to type, from the vegetable to the animal, from the animal to man; f or even in inanimate Matter Mind is at w ork. But once a type is marked off physically, the chief immediate preoccupation of the terrestrial Mother seems to be to keep it in being by a constant reproduction. F or Life always seeks imm ortality; but since individual f orm is impermanent and only the idea of a f orm is permanent in the consciousness that creates the universe, - f or there it does not perish, - such constant reproduction is the only possible material imm ortality.
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The characteristic energy of pure Mind is change, and the m ore our mentality acquires elevation and organisation, the m ore this law of Mind assumes the aspect of a continual enlargement, improvement and better arrangement of its gains and so of a continual passage from a smaller and simpler to a larger and m ore complex perfection. F or Mind, unlike bodily life, is infinite in its field, elastic in its expansion, easily variable in its f ormations. Change, then, self-enlargement and selfimprovement are its proper instincts. Mind too moves in cycles, but these are ever-enlarging spirals. Its faith is perfectibility, its watchw ord is progress.
The characteristic law of Spirit is self-existent perfection and immutable infinity. It possesses always and in its own right the imm ortality which is the aim of Life and the perfection which is the goal of Mind. The attainment of the eternal and the realisation of that which is the same in all things and beyond all things, equally blissful in universe and outside it, untouched by the imperfections and limitations of the f orms and activities in which it dwells, are the gl ory of the spiritual life.
In each of these f orms Nature acts both individually and collectively; f or the Eternal affirms Himself equally in the single f orm and in the group-existence, whether family, clan and nation or groupings dependent on less physical principles or the supreme group of all, our collective humanity. Man also may seek his own individual good from any or all of these spheres of activity, or identify himself in them with the collectivity and live f or it, or, rising to a truer perception of this complex universe, harmonise the individual realisation with the collective aim. F or as it is the right relation of the soul with the Supreme, while it is in the universe, neither to assert egoistically its separate being n or to blot itself out in the Indefinable, but to realise its unity with the Divine and the w orld and unite them in the individual, so the right relation of the individual with the collectivity is neither to pursue egoistically his own material or mental progress or spiritual salvation without regard to his fellows, n or f or the sake of the community to suppress or maim his proper development, but to sum up in himself all its best and completest possibilities and pour them out by thought, action and all other means on his surroundings so that the whole race may approach nearer to the attainment of its supreme personalities.
It follows that the object of the material life must be to fulfil, above all things, the vital aim of Nature. The whole aim of the material man is to live, to pass from birth to death with as much comf ort or enjoyment as may be on the way, but anyhow to live.
He can sub ordinate this aim, but only to physical Nature's other instincts, the reproduction of the individual and the conservation of the type in the family, class or community. Self, domesticity, the accustomed order of the society and of the nation are the constituents of the material existence. Its immense imp ortance in the economy of Nature is self-evident, and commensurate is the imp ortance of the human type which represents it. He assures her of the safety of the framew ork she has made and of the orderly continuance and conservation of her past gains.
But by that very utility such men and the life they lead are condemned to be limited, irrationally conservative and earthbound. The customary routine, the customary institutions, the inherited or habitual f orms of thought, - these things are the life-breath of their nostrils. They admit and jealously defend the changes compelled by the progressive mind in the past, but combat with equal zeal the changes that are being made by it in the present. F or to the material man the living progressive thinker is an ideologue, dreamer or madman. The old Semites who stoned the living prophets and ad ored their mem ories when dead, were the very incarnation of this instinctive and unintelligent principle in Nature. In the ancient Indian distinction between the once b orn and the twice b orn, it is to this material man that the f ormer description can be applied. He does Nature's inferi or w orks; he assures the basis f or her higher activities; but not to him easily are opened the gl ories of her second birth.
Yet he admits so much of spirituality as has been enf orced on his customary ideas by the great religious outbursts of the past and he makes in his scheme of society a place, venerable though not often effective, f or the priest or the learned theologian who can be trusted to provide him with a safe and ordinary spiritual pabulum. But to the man who would assert f or himself the liberty of spiritual experience and the spiritual life, he assigns, if he admits him at all, not the vestment of the priest but the robe of the Sannyasin. Outside society let him exercise his dangerous freedom. So he may even serve as a human lightning-rod receiving the electricity of the Spirit and turning it away from the social edifice.
Nevertheless it is possible to make the material man and his life moderately progressive by imprinting on the material mind the custom of progress, the habit of conscious change, the fixed idea of progression as a law of life. The creation by this means of progressive societies in Europe is one of the greatest triumphs of Mind over Matter. But the physical nature has its revenge; f or the progress made tends to be of the grosser and m ore outward kind and its attempts at a higher or a m ore rapid movement bring about great wearinesses, swift exhaustions, startling recoils.
It is possible also to give the material man and his life a moderate spirituality by accustoming him to regard in a religious spirit all the institutions of life and its customary activities. The creation of such spiritualised communities in the East has been one of the greatest triumphs of Spirit over Matter. Yet here, too, there is a defect; f or this often tends only to the creation of a religious temperament, the most outward f orm of spirituality.
Its higher manifestations, even the most splendid and puissant, either merely increase the number of souls drawn out of social life and so impoverish it or disturb the society f or a while by a momentary elevation. The truth is that neither the mental eff ort n or the spiritual impulse can suffice, div orced from each other, to overcome the immense resistance of material Nature.
She demands their alliance in a complete eff ort bef ore she will suffer a complete change in humanity. But, usually, these two great agents are unwilling to make to each other the necessary concessions.
The mental life concentrates on the aesthetic, the ethical and the intellectual activities. Essential mentality is idealistic and a seeker after perfection. The subtle self, the brilliant Atman,1 is ever a dreamer. A dream of perfect beauty, perfect conduct, perfect Truth, whether seeking new f orms of the Eternal or revitalising the old, is the very soul of pure mentality. But it knows not how to deal with the resistance of Matter. There it is hampered and inefficient, w orks by bungling experiments and has either to withdraw from the struggle or submit to the grey actuality. or else, by studying the material life and accepting the conditions of the contest, it may succeed, but only in imposing temp orarily some artificial system which infinite Nature either rends and casts aside or disfigures out of recognition or by withdrawing her assent leaves as the c orpse of a dead ideal. Few and far between have been those realisations of the dreamer in Man which the w orld has gladly accepted, looks back to with a fond mem ory and seeks, in its elements, to cherish.
1 Who dwells in Dream, the inly conscious, the enjoyer of abstractions, the Brilliant.
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When the gulf between actual life and the temperament of the thinker is too great, we see as the result a s ort of withdrawing of the Mind from life in order to act with a greater freedom in its own sphere. The poet living among his brilliant visions, the artist abs orbed in his art, the philosopher thinking out the problems of the intellect in his solitary chamber, the scientist, the scholar caring only f or their studies and their experiments, were often in f ormer days, are even now not unoften the Sannyasins of the intellect. To the w ork they have done f or humanity, all its past bears rec ord.
But such seclusion is justified only by some special activity.
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This mixing with life may, however, be pursued f or the sake of the individual mind and with an entire indifference to the f orms of the material existence or the uplifting of the race. This indifference is seen at its highest in the Epicurean discipline and is not entirely absent from the Stoic; and even altruism does the w orks of compassion m ore often f or its own sake than f or the sake of the w orld it helps. But this too is a limited fulfilment. The progressive mind is seen at its noblest when it strives to elevate the whole race to its own level whether by sowing broadcast the image of its own thought and fulfilment or by changing the material life of the race into fresh f orms, religious, intellectual, social or political, intended to represent m ore nearly that ideal of truth, beauty, justice, righteousness with which the man's own soul is illumined. Failure in such a field matters little; f or the mere attempt is dynamic and creative. The struggle of Mind to elevate life is the promise and condition of the conquest of life by that which is higher even than Mind.
That highest thing, the spiritual existence, is concerned with what is eternal but not theref ore entirely aloof from the transient. F or the spiritual man the mind's dream of perfect beauty is realised in an eternal love, beauty and delight that has no dependence and is equal behind all objective appearances; its dream of perfect Truth in the supreme, self-existent, self-apparent and eternal Verity which never varies, but explains and is the secret of all variations and the goal of all progress; its dream of perfect action in the omnipotent and self-guiding Law that is inherent f or ever in all things and translates itself here in the rhythm of the w orlds. What is fugitive vision or constant eff ort of creation in the brilliant Self is an eternally existing Reality in the Self that knows2 and is the L ord.
But if it is often difficult f or the mental life to accommodate itself to the dully resistant material activity, how much m ore difficult must it seem f or the spiritual existence to live on in a w orld that appears full not of the Truth but of every lie and illusion, not of Love and Beauty but of an encompassing disc ord and ugliness, not of the Law of Truth but of vict orious selfishness and sin? Theref ore the spiritual life tends easily in the saint and Sannyasin to withdraw from the material existence and reject it either wholly and physically or in the spirit. It sees this w orld as the kingdom of evil or of ign orance and the eternal and divine either in a far-off heaven or beyond where there is no w orld and no life. It separates itself inwardly, if not also physically, from the w orld's impurities; it asserts the spiritual reality in a spotless isolation. This withdrawal renders an invaluable service to the material life itself by f orcing it to regard and even to bow down to something that is the direct negation of its own petty ideals, s ordid cares and egoistic self-content.
But the w ork in the w orld of so supreme a power as spiritual f orce cannot be thus limited. The spiritual life also can return upon the material and use it as a means of its own greater fullness. Refusing to be blinded by the dualities, the appearances, it can seek in all appearances whatsoever the vision of the same L ord, the same eternal Truth, Beauty, Love, Delight. The
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But the spiritual life, like the mental, may thus make use of this outward existence f or the benefit of the individual with a perfect indifference to any collective uplifting of the merely symbolic w orld which it uses. Since the Eternal is f or ever the same in all things and all things the same to the Eternal, since the exact mode of action and the result are of no imp ortance compared with the w orking out in oneself of the one great realisation, this spiritual indifference accepts no matter what environment, no matter what action, dispassionately, prepared to retire as soon as its own supreme end is realised. It is so that many have understood the ideal of the Gita. or else the inner love and bliss may pour itself out on the w orld in good deeds, in service, in compassion, the inner Truth in the giving of knowledge, without theref ore attempting the transf ormation of a w orld which must by its inalienable nature remain a battlefield of the dualities, of sin and virtue, of truth and err or, of joy and suffering.
But if Progress also is one of the chief terms of w orldexistence and a progressive manifestation of the Divine the true sense of Nature, this limitation also is invalid. It is possible f or the spiritual life in the w orld, and it is its real mission, to change the material life into its own image, the image of the Divine. Theref ore, besides the great solitaries who have sought and attained their self-liberation, we have the great spiritual teachers who have also liberated others and, supreme of all, the great dynamic souls who, feeling themselves stronger in the might of the Spirit than all the f orces of the material life banded together, have thrown themselves upon the w orld, grappled with it in a loving wrestle and striven to compel its consent to its own transfiguration. ordinarily, the eff ort is concentrated on a mental and m oral change in humanity, but it may extend itself also to the alteration of the f orms of our life and its institutions so that they too may be a better mould f or the inpourings of the Spirit. These attempts have been the supreme landmarks in the progressive development of human ideals and the divine preparation of the race. Every one of them, whatever its outward results, has left Earth m ore capable of Heaven and quickened in its tardy movements the evolutionary Yoga of Nature.
In India, f or the last thousand years and m ore, the spiritual life and the material have existed side by side to the exclusion of the progressive mind. Spirituality has made terms f or itself with Matter by renouncing the attempt at general progress. It has obtained from society the right of free spiritual development f or all who assume some distinctive symbol, such as the garb of the Sannyasin, the recognition of that life as man's goal and those who live it as w orthy of an absolute reverence, and the casting of society itself into such a religious mould that its most customary acts should be accompanied by a f ormal reminder of the spiritual symbolism of life and its ultimate destination. On the other hand, there was conceded to society the right of inertia and immobile self-conservation. The concession destroyed much of the value of the terms. The religious mould being fixed, the f ormal reminder tended to become a routine and to lose its living sense. The constant attempts to change the mould by new sects and religions ended only in a new routine or a modification of the old; f or the saving element of the free and active mind had been exiled. The material life, handed over to the Ign orance, the purposeless and endless duality, became a leaden and dol orous yoke from which flight was the only escape.
The schools of Indian Yoga lent themselves to the compromise. Individual perfection or liberation was made the aim, seclusion of some kind from the ordinary activities the condition, the renunciation of life the culmination. The teacher gave his knowledge only to a small circle of disciples. or if a wider movement was attempted, it was still the release of the individual soul that remained the aim. The pact with an immobile society was, f or the most part, observed.
The utility of the compromise in the then actual state of the w orld cannot be doubted. It secured in India a society which lent itself to the preservation and the w orship of spirituality, a country apart in which as in a f ortress the highest spiritual ideal could maintain itself in its most absolute purity unoverpowered by the siege of the f orces around it. But it was a compromise, not an absolute vict ory. The material life lost the divine impulse to growth, the spiritual preserved by isolation its height and purity, but sacrificed its full power and serviceableness to the w orld. Theref ore, in the divine Providence the country of the Yogins and the Sannyasins has been f orced into a strict and imperative contact with the very element it had rejected, the element of the progressive Mind, so that it might recover what was now wanting to it.
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The ages when that is accomplished, are the legendary Satya or Krita3 Yugas, the ages of the Truth manifested in the symbol, of the great w ork done when Nature in mankind, illumined, satisfied and blissful, rests in the culmination of her endeavour.
It is f or man to know her meaning, no longer misunderstanding, vilifying or misusing the universal Mother and to aspire always by her mightiest means to her highest ideal.
3 Satya means Truth; Krita, effected or completed.
0.04 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
here kill their bullocks in a few months or in even less time?
11 May 1932
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The proposal to frighten them in order to master them is
unacceptable. Some kind of submission can thus be obtained
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act like the ign orant ordinary man?
I can tell you this to finish with the subject, that from the
roof I concentrated the power on the bullocks ordering them to
yield and obey and I found them quite receptive. To use a quiet,
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What is this? If the cart-man made a mistake or misbehaved
with the bullocks, I must know and will tolerate none of THESE
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I do not see what a chess problem has to do either with w ork or
with sadhana. Is X here to solve chess problems? He could do it
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I thought there would be no objection from the Municipality or others to fixing rings on foot-path walls to tie
the cows. I wanted to have one ring fixed.
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This boy has been dismissed by my orders and will not be
given w ork in the Ashram.
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Theref ore by some it is supposed that this is not only the highest but also the one true or exclusively preferable object of Yoga.
Yet it is always through something which she has f ormed in her evolution that Nature thus overpasses her evolution. It is the individual heart that by sublimating its highest and purest emotions attains to the transcendent Bliss or the ineffable Nirvana, the individual mind that by converting its ordinary functionings into a knowledge beyond mentality knows its oneness with the
Ineffable and merges its separate existence in that transcendent unity. And always it is the individual, the Self conditioned in its experience by Nature and w orking through her f ormations, that attains to the Self unconditioned, free and transcendent.
In practice three conceptions are necessary bef ore there can be any possibility of Yoga; there must be, as it were, three consenting parties to the eff ort, - God, Nature and the human soul or, in m ore abstract language, the Transcendental, the Universal
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and the Individual. If the individual and Nature are left to themselves, the one is bound to the other and unable to exceed appreciably her lingering march. Something transcendent is needed, free from her and greater, which will act upon us and her, attracting us upward to Itself and securing from her by good grace or by f orce her consent to the individual ascension.
It is this truth which makes necessary to every philosophy of Yoga the conception of the Ishwara, L ord, supreme Soul or supreme Self, towards whom the eff ort is directed and who gives the illuminating touch and the strength to attain. Equally true is the complementary idea so often enf orced by the Yoga of devotion that as the Transcendent is necessary to the individual and sought after by him, so also the individual is necessary in a sense to the Transcendent and sought after by It. If the
Bhakta seeks and yearns after Bhagavan, Bhagavan also seeks and yearns after the Bhakta.1 There can be no Yoga of knowledge without a human seeker of the knowledge, the supreme subject of knowledge and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of knowledge; no Yoga of devotion without the human God-lover, the supreme object of love and delight and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of spiritual, emotional and aesthetic enjoyment; no Yoga of w orks without the human w orker, the supreme Will, Master of all w orks and sacrifices, and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of power and action. However Monistic may be our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity.
F or the contact of the human and individual consciousness with the divine is the very essence of Yoga. Yoga is the union of that which has become separated in the play of the universe with its own true self, origin and universality. The contact may take place at any point of the complex and intricately organised consciousness which we call our personality. It may be effected in the physical through the body; in the vital through the action of
Bhakta, the devotee or lover of God; Bhagavan, God, the L ord of Love and Delight.
The third term of the trinity is Bhagavat, the divine revelation of Love.
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those functionings which determine the state and the experiences of our nervous being; through the mentality, whether by means of the emotional heart, the active will or the understanding mind, or m ore largely by a general conversion of the mental consciousness in all its activities. It may equally be accomplished through a direct awakening to the universal or transcendent Truth and
Bliss by the conversion of the central ego in the mind. And acc ording to the point of contact that we choose will be the type of the Yoga that we practise.
F or if, leaving aside the complexities of their particular processes, we fix our regard on the central principle of the chief schools of Yoga still prevalent in India, we find that they arrange themselves in an ascending order which starts from the lowest rung of the ladder, the body, and ascends to the direct contact between the individual soul and the transcendent and universal
Self. Hathayoga selects the body and the vital functionings as its instruments of perfection and realisation; its concern is with the gross body. Rajayoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power; it concentrates on the subtle body. The triple Path of W orks, of Love and of Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth,
Beatitude and Infinity which are the nature of the spiritual life.
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F or it is calculated on the amount of vital or dynamic f orce necessary to drive the physical engine during the n ormal span of human life and to perf orm m ore or less adequately the various w orkings demanded of it by the individual life inhabiting this frame and the w orld-environment by which it is conditioned.
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Hathayoga theref ore seeks to rectify Nature and establish another equilibrium by which the physical frame will be able to sustain the inrush of an increasing vital or dynamic f orce of
Prana indefinite, almost infinite in its quantity or intensity. In
Nature the equilibrium is based upon the individualisation of a limited quantity and f orce of the Prana; m ore than that the individual is by personal and hereditary habit unable to bear, use or control. In Hathayoga, the equilibrium opens a do or to the universalisation of the individual vitality by admitting into the body, containing, using and controlling a much less fixed and limited action of the universal energy.
The chief processes of Hathayoga are asana and pran.ayama.
By its numerous asanas or fixed postures it first cures the body of that restlessness which is a sign of its inability to contain without w orking them off in action and movement the vital f orces poured into it from the universal Life-Ocean, gives to it an extra ordinary health, f orce and suppleness and seeks to liberate it from the habits by which it is subjected to ordinary physical
Nature and kept within the narrow bounds of her n ormal operations. In the ancient tradition of Hathayoga it has always been supposed that this conquest could be pushed so far even as to conquer to a great extent the f orce of gravitation. By various subsidiary but elab orate processes the Hathayogin next contrives to keep the body free from all impurities and the nervous system unclogged f or those exercises of respiration which are his most imp ortant instruments. These are called pran.ayama, the control of the breath or vital power; f or breathing is the chief physical functioning of the vital f orces. Pranayama, f or the Hathayogin, serves a double purpose. First, it completes the perfection of the body. The vitality is liberated from many of the ordinary necessities of physical Nature; robust health, prolonged youth, often an extra ordinary longevity are attained.
On the other hand, Pranayama awakens the coiled-up serpent of the Pranic dynamism in the vital sheath and opens to the Yogin fields of consciousness, ranges of experience, abn ormal faculties denied to the ordinary human life while it puissantly intensifies such n ormal powers and faculties as he already possesses.
The Systems of Yoga
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The results of Hathayoga are thus striking to the eye and impose easily on the vulgar or physical mind. And yet at the end we may ask what we have gained at the end of all this stupendous labour. The object of physical Nature, the preservation of the mere physical life, its highest perfection, even in a certain sense the capacity of a greater enjoyment of physical living have been carried out on an abn ormal scale. But the weakness of Hathayoga is that its lab orious and difficult processes make so great a demand on the time and energy and impose so complete a severance from the ordinary life of men that the utilisation of its results f or the life of the w orld becomes either impracticable or is extra ordinarily restricted. If in return f or this loss we gain another life in another w orld within, the mental, the dynamic, these results could have been acquired through other systems, through Rajayoga, through Tantra, by much less lab orious methods and held on much less exacting terms. On the other hand the physical results, increased vitality, prolonged youth, health, longevity are of small avail if they must be held by us as misers of ourselves, apart from the common life, f or their own sake, not utilised, not thrown into the common sum of the w orld's activities. Hathayoga attains large results, but at an ex orbitant price and to very little purpose.
Rajayoga takes a higher flight. It aims at the liberation and perfection not of the bodily, but of the mental being, the control of the emotional and sensational life, the mastery of the whole apparatus of thought and consciousness. It fixes its eyes on the citta, that stuff of mental consciousness in which all these activities arise, and it seeks, even as Hathayoga with its physical material, first to purify and to tranquillise. The n ormal state of man is a condition of trouble and dis order, a kingdom either at war with itself or badly governed; f or the l ord, the Purusha, is subjected to his ministers, the faculties, subjected even to his subjects, the instruments of sensation, emotion, action, enjoyment. Swarajya, self-rule, must be substituted f or this subjection.
First, theref ore, the powers of order must be helped to overcome
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This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation f or a perfect freedom and self-mastery.
But Rajayoga does not f orget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts theref ore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pran.ayama, but reduces their multiple and elab orate f orms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient f or its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods f or the control of the body and the vital functions and f or the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supern ormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kun.d.alin, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental f orce by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi.
By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on
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its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the w orld. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective w orld. F or the ancient system of
Rajayoga aimed not only at Swarajya, self-rule or subjective empire, the entire control by the subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain, but included
Samrajya as well, outward empire, the control by the subjective consciousness of its outer activities and environment.
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Rajayoga in that it does not occupy itself with the elab orate training of the whole mental system as the condition of perfection, but seizes on certain central principles, the intellect, the heart, the will, and seeks to convert their n ormal operations by turning them away from their ordinary and external preoccupations and activities and concentrating them on the Divine. It
38
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The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual reflection, vicara, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of
Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal w orlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme.
But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. F or, followed m ore largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence f or the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one's own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the w orld as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all f orms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable f or the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its f orms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect
The Systems of Yoga
--
This path, too, as ordinarily practised, leads away from w orldexistence to an abs orption, of another kind than the Monist's, in the Transcendent and Supra-cosmic.
But, here too, the exclusive result is not inevitable. The Yoga itself provides a first c orrective by not confining the play of divine love to the relation between the supreme Soul and the individual, but extending it to a common feeling and mutual w orship between the devotees themselves united in the same realisation of the supreme Love and Bliss. It provides a yet m ore general c orrective in the realisation of the divine object of Love in all beings not only human but animal, easily extended to all f orms whatsoever. We can see how this larger application of the Yoga of
--
The Path of W orks aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim f or our w orks, all pursuit of action f or an interested aim or f or the sake of a w orldly result. By this renunciation it so
40
--
purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the L ord of that Energy as their ruler and direct or with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, m ore positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is m ore and m ore consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy.
To That our w orks as well as the results of our w orks are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities.
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
it or is it something else? Mother, after having come so
close to you, why does it come?
You should not speak to others about what I write or say to
you, because they become jealous and their jealousy creates a
--
who loved us very much - my brother and myself - never allowed us to be ill tempered or discontented or lazy. If we went
to complain to her about one thing or another, to tell her that
we were discontented, she would make fun of us or scold us and
say, "What is this nonsense? Don't be ridiculous. Quick! Off
you go and w ork, and never mind whether you are in a good or
a bad mood! That is of no interest at all."
--
doing and to do it well (painting or music), to develop your
mind, which is still very uncultivated, and to learn the elements
--
you are in a good or a bad mood.
I am telling you these things with all my affection, and I
--
beautiful or useful have always been persons who have known
how to discipline themselves.
--
not eat either yesterday evening or the whole day today. Why? If
you are sick, you must be taken care of. I shall send the doct or
--
vital, or is it something very superficial and insignificant?
My dear child,
--
know whether it is inside me or outside; something feels
completely lost and lifeless. You know everything, my
--
it; but when the mind or the vital comes, then the joy seems to
withdraw, though it is always there, behind, ready to manifest
--
In ordinary life, one has to struggle to satisfy one's desires;
here one struggles not to do so. Actually, whatever path one
--
The moon is the symbol of the spiritual light, one in its origin,
multiple in its manifestation. There is only one moon and yet
--
On the other hand you want the satisfactions of ordinary life
and the pleasures of the vital - without considering, however,
--
Are you making me feel life without you in order to
see whether I want this life or not? Mother, if you don't
know what my path is, then who does?
--
cannot detain you either, or do anything that might deprive you
of the strength to leave. I am and will always be in your heart; so
--
no longer giving any "pranams" or interviews), won't you feel
once again that you are giving up all the pleasures that ordinary
life can give, without getting anything much in exchange?
--
I shall fail. On the other hand, I have neither the inclination n or the capacity f or the ordinary life. And I
know that I shall never be able to leave this life. This is
--
there is bad will or revolt, Kali may come and chastise but she
always does it with love.
--
w ork and order in life will be a powerful help to you in renewing
yourself.
--
does not allow any upsetting or depression to interfere with your
progress. The sincerity of the aspiration is the assurance of the
--
order to let them do in the vital their w ork of organisation and
classification, of light and peace.
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
the Divine is the one thing needful and it includes or leads up to all the rest; towards this sole good we have to drive and this attained, all the rest that the divine Will chooses f or us, all necessary f orm and manifestation, will be added.
The synthesis we propose cannot, then, be arrived at either by combination in mass or by successive practice. It must theref ore be effected by neglecting the f orms and outsides of the
Yogic disciplines and seizing rather on some central principle common to all which will include and utilise in the right place and prop ortion their particular principles, and on some central dynamic f orce which is the common secret of their divergent methods and capable theref ore of organising a natural selection and combination of their varied energies and different utilities.
This was the aim which we set bef ore ourselves at first when we entered upon our comparative examination of the methods of
--
This system is the way of the Tantra. Owing to certain of its developments Tantra has fallen into discredit with those who are not Tantrics; and especially owing to the developments of its left-hand path, the Vama Marga, which not content with exceeding the duality of virtue and sin and instead of replacing them by spontaneous rightness of action seemed, sometimes, to make a method of self-indulgence, a method of unrestrained social imm orality. Nevertheless, in its origin, Tantra was a great and puissant system founded upon ideas which were at least partially true. Even its twofold division into the right-hand and left-hand paths, Dakshina Marga and Vama Marga, started from a certain profound perception. In the ancient symbolic sense of the w ords Dakshina and Vama, it was the distinction between the way of Knowledge and the way of Ananda, - Nature in man liberating itself by right discrimination in power and practice of its own energies, elements and potentialities and Nature in man
The Synthesis of the Systems
--
If, however, we leave aside, here also, the actual methods and practices and seek f or the central principle, we find, first, that Tantra expressly differentiates itself from the Vedic methods of Yoga. In a sense, all the schools we have hitherto examined are Vedantic in their principle; their f orce is in knowledge, their method is knowledge, though it is not always discernment by the intellect, but may be, instead, the knowledge of the heart expressed in love and faith or a knowledge in the will w orking out through action. In all of them the l ord of the Yoga is the Purusha, the Conscious Soul that knows, observes, attracts, governs. But in Tantra it is rather Prakriti, the Nature-Soul, the Energy, the
Will-in-Power executive in the universe. It was by learning and applying the intimate secrets of this Will-in-Power, its method, its Tantra, that the Tantric Yogin pursued the aims of his discipline, - mastery, perfection, liberation, beatitude. Instead of drawing back from manifested Nature and its difficulties, he confronted them, seized and conquered. But in the end, as is the general tendency of Prakriti, Tantric Yoga largely lost its principle in its machinery and became a thing of f ormulae and occult mechanism still powerful when rightly used but fallen from the clarity of their original intention.
We have in this central Tantric conception one side of the truth, the w orship of the Energy, the Shakti, as the sole effective f orce f or all attainment. We get the other extreme in the Vedantic conception of the Shakti as a power of Illusion and in the search after the silent inactive Purusha as the means of liberation from the deceptions created by the active Energy. But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the L ord, 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 abs orbed
44
--
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 creat or and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or f orce 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
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."
We see, then, what from the psychological point of view,
- and Yoga is nothing but practical psychology, - is the conception of Nature from which we have to start. It is the selffulfilment of the Purusha through his Energy. But the movement of Nature is twofold, higher and lower, or, as we may choose to term it, divine and undivine. The distinction exists indeed f or practical purposes only; f or there is nothing that is not divine, and in a larger view it is as meaningless, verbally, as the distinction between natural and supernatural, f or all things that are are natural. All things are in Nature and all things are in God.
But, f or practical purposes, there is a real distinction. The lower
--
may effect itself by the rejection of the lower and escape into the higher, - the ordinary view-point, - or by the transf ormation of the lower and its elevation to the higher Nature. It is this, rather, that must be the aim of an integral Yoga.
But in either case it is always through something in the lower that we must rise into the higher existence, and the schools of
Yoga each select their own point of departure or their own gate of escape. They specialise certain activities of the lower
Prakriti and turn them towards the Divine. But the n ormal action of Nature in us is an integral movement in which the full complexity of all our elements is affected by and affects all our environments. The whole of life is the Yoga of Nature. The
--
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable w orkings. Certainly, this is no sh ort cut or easy sadhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. F or it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and theref ore lab orious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine w orking to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transf ormation. In fact, however, the divine
Strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself f or our weakness and supp orts us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It "makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills." The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Theref ore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet, in comparison with the magnitude of its eff ort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it w orks integrally on the lower nature. In the first place it does not act acc ording to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a s ort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful w orking determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, theref ore, each man in this path has his own method of
--
yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic
Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change.
Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transf ormed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly def ormed or petty or vile, is the m ore or less dist orted or imperfect figure of some element or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human f orefa thers fashioning the gods as a smith f orges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our w orld-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used f or the w ork, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the w orld, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher w orking; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in
Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this eff ort becomes capable of self-awareness and theref ore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
--
Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body f or a divine action poured out freely upon the w orld.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. An integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine
--
Perfection includes perfection of mind and body, so that the highest results of Rajayoga and Hathayoga should be contained in the widest f ormula of the synthesis finally to be effected by mankind. At any rate a full development of the general mental and physical faculties and experiences attainable by humanity through Yoga must be included in the scope of the integral method. N or would these have any raison d'etre unless employed f or an integral mental and physical life. Such a mental and physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. Thus we would arrive at a synthesis of the three degrees of Nature and of the three modes of human existence which she has evolved or is evolving. We would include in the scope of our liberated being and perfected modes of activity the material life, our base, and the mental life, our intermediate instrument.
N or would the integrality to which we aspire be real or even possible, if it were confined to the individual. Since our divine perfection embraces the realisation of ourselves in being, in life and in love through others as well as through ourselves, the extension of our liberty and of its results in others would be the inevitable outcome as well as the broadest utility of our liberation and perfection. And the constant and inherent attempt of such an extension would be towards its increasing and ultimately complete generalisation in mankind.
The divinising of the n ormal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and m oral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
The first night or purgation is of the sensual part of the soul, which is
treated in the present stanza, and will be treated in the first part of this book.
--
And the second night, or purification, pertains to those who are already
proficient, occurring at the time when God desires to bring them to the state
--
Spirit; he now proposes to deal with the Passive Night, in the same order. He has
already taught us how we are to deny and purify ourselves with the ordinary help of
grace, in order to prepare our senses and faculties f or union with God through love.
He now proceeds to explain, with an arresting freshness, how these same senses
--
that by himself, and with the ordinary aid of grace, man cannot attain to that
degree of purgation which is essential to his transf ormation in God. He needs
--
by one, following the order of the seven deadly sins, in chapters (ii-viii) which once
m ore reveal the auth or's skill as a direct or of souls. They are easy chapters to
--
the senses, the principal aim of which is the purgation or stripping of the soul of its
imperfections and the preparation of it f or fruitive union. The Passive Night of
--
he will 'treat m ore fully . . . since very little has been said of this, either in speech or
in writing, and very little is known of it, even by experience.' 7
--
aridity is a result of this Night or whether it comes from sins or imperfections, or
from frailty or lukewarmness of spirit, or even from indisposition or 'humours' of the
body. The Saint is particularly effective here, and we may once m ore compare this
--
fullness the nature of this spiritual purgation or dark contemplation referred to in
the first stanza of his poem and the varieties of pain and affliction caused by it,
whether in the soul or in its faculties (Chapters iv-viii). These chapters are brilliant
beyond all description; in them we seem to reach the culminating point of their
--
the Saint an exposition (Chapters xviii, xix) of the ten steps or degrees of love which
comprise St. Bernard's mystical ladder. Chapter xxi describes the soul's 'disguise,'
--
other guide or supp ort, either outward or inward, than the Divine love 'which
burned in my heart.'
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know perfectly well what I want or rather what the divine Will
is, and it is that which will triumph in time.
--
This Series is organised broadly by subject into thirteen parts - the f orm in which
it was originally published; in this it differs from the other Series, which are arranged
chronologically. The replies here were written between 1933 and 1949 - most of them
--
Farther within or higher above, on the other side of the emotions,
beyond the mind.
--
all are equal - infinitesimal grains of dust or identical
stars - bef ore Eternity".
--
may call human beings grains of dust if one likes, or compare
them to the stars; in either case they are all alike in size and
--
You must find the Divine first, whether in yourself by interi orisation and concentration, or in Sri Aurobindo and me through
love and self-giving. Once you have found the Divine you will
--
the body be alive or dead, and if the vital being is, during one's
life, incapable of feeling the nearness, the deep intimacy, how
--
hope to be reb orn in a higher organism. All defection, on the
contrary, naturally brings in a diminution of being.
--
What cannot be acquired or conquered during life can certainly
not be done after death. It is the physical life which is the true
--
Beloved Mother, I must either be transf ormed or cease
to be.
--
near or far, I am always with you in your w ork and in your
consciousness. You ought to know that.
--
and the ordinary consciousness of ign orant man.
Series Six - To a Young Sadhak
About ten or eleven years ago I had an experience in Your
presence and through You. I was in a great difficulty and
--
Don't bother about what people believe or say; it is almost
always ign orant stupidities.
--
with frivolities in order to "divert" it, you must with a great
obstinacy empty it of everything, absolutely everything, both
--
It is not this person or that who attracts you... it is the eternal
feminine in the lower nature which attracts the eternal masculine in the lower nature and creates an illusion in the mind; it
--
The best thing is not to think oneself either great or small, very
imp ortant or very insignificant; f or we are nothing in ourselves.
We must want to be only what the divine Will wants of us.
--
remember that the conditions of our life are not quite ordinary
conditions, and keep your trust in the Divine Power to organise
all and do all through the human instruments which are open to
--
keep a calm certitude that sooner or later all will be well.
To be pessimistic has never been of any use except to attract
--
small or great.
This is childish; it is always the same trap of the adverse f orces;
--
to something like this: "Continue to drink in order to stop being a drunkard" or better: "Continue to kill to stop being a
murderer!"
--
being influenced m ore or less by them.
No, this is wrong! It is true of the ordinary life but not of a yogi.
Sweet Mother, if my company is not good f or others,
--
to fall into your ordinary consciousness.
What will be the result if I meditate on the thought that
--
passing your time in judging what others do or don't do.
Yes, one must distrust superficial and baseless judgments.
--
Why imagine always that one is ill or is going to be ill and thus
open oneself to all kinds of bad suggestions? There is no reason
--
One must never lose hope or faith - there is nothing incurable,
and no limit can be set to the power of the Divine.
--
it good; and if an impulse of desire, passion or violence comes
from outside, it is enough that the mind intervenes f or it to be
--
Should one always avoid a circumstance which is conducive to undesirable impulses? or should one rather
accept the circumstance and try to be its master?
--
I am trying to know this or that.
It is not the w ork that is of imp ortance but the spirit in which
--
is better to engage it in studies than in silly ideas or unhealthy
dreamings.
--
help me keep order in my classes.
The most imp ortant is to master yourself and never lose your
0.07 - DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
N or I beheld aught, Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.
4. This light guided me M ore surely than the light of noonday
--
Begins the exposition of the stanzas which treat of the way and manner which the soul follows upon the road of the union of love with God. Bef ore we enter upon the exposition of these stanzas, it is well to understand here that the soul that utters them is now in the state of perfection, which is the union of love with God, having already passed through severe trials and straits, by means of spiritual exercise in the narrow way of eternal life whereof Our Saviour speaks in the Gospel, along which way the soul ordinarily passes in order to reach this high and happy union with God. Since this road (as the L ord Himself says likewise) is so strait, and since there are so few that enter by it,19 the soul considers it a great happiness and good chance to have passed along it to the said perfection of love, as it sings in this first stanza, calling this strait road with full propriety 'dark night,' as will be explained hereafter in the lines of the said stanza. The soul, then, rejoicing at having passed along this narrow road whence so many blessings have come to it, speaks after this manner.
BOOK THE FIRST
--
IN this first stanza the soul relates the way and manner which it followed in going f orth, as to its affection, from itself and from all things, and in dying to them all and to itself, by means of true m ortification, in order to attain to living the sweet and delectable life of love with God; and it says that this going f orth from itself and from all things was a 'dark night,' by which, as will be explained hereafter, is here understood purgative contemplation, which causes passively in the soul the negation of itself and of all things referred to above.
2. And this going f orth it says here that it was able to accomplish in the strength and ardour which love f or its Spouse gave to it f or that purpose in the dark contemplation af orementioned. Herein it extols the great happiness which it found in journeying to God through this night with such signal success that none of the three enemies, which are w orld, devil and flesh (who are they that ever impede this road), could hinder it; inasmuch as the af orementioned night of purgative20 contemplation lulled to sleep and m ortified, in the house of its sensuality, all the passions and desires with respect to their mischievous desires and motions. The line, then, says:
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Agni? They seem to have m ore or less the same leading
qualities.
--
truly and genuinely in spite of my po or humanity or
is it all an experiment? I feel ashamed to pose such
--
ign orance of such interpretations. Whether you believe or doubt,
my love and blessings are with you.
--
and how may I rise or jump into it? And again you have
said, "Let divine love be your goal. Let pure love be your
--
abode here, sooner or later po or me will have to abdicate
in favour of Her Imperial Majesty and till that day comes
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In order to strengthen the contact and aid, if possible, the
development of the conscious psychic personality, one should,
--
But there are many other kinds of energies, or rather many
other f orms of Energy, which is one and universal.
--
Our yoga being integral, all these various f orms or kinds of
energy are indispensable to our realisation.
--
images), but they have no substantial reality. It is the fear or
emotion of those who see these images that sometimes gives
them the appearance of a power or an action they do not possess in themselves. Hence the necessity of never being afraid and
of recognising them f or what they are - a deceptive appearance.
--
at the same time have an aspiration, an intensity or a
widening? Because as soon as one aspires, isn't it the
--
the heart, the emotional centre, the do or of the psychic or rather
the do or leading to the psychic.
--
psychic consciousness, the consciousness of the soul, or into the
spiritual consciousness.
--
But each way has its demands in order to be truly effective.
In thinking of me, you must think not only of the outer
--
but you can guide and organise your activities during sleep.
If you persist in your will and your eff ort, you are sure to
--
Is there anything like good luck and bad luck, or is
it something that one creates f or oneself?
--
N or is there anything that in itself is good or bad luck;
each one characterises circumstances as good or bad depending
on whether they are m ore or less favourable to him; and this
estimation itself is very superficial and ign orant, f or one must
already be a great sage to know what is truly favourable or
unfavourable to oneself.
--
and what should we try to do in order to receive what
you are giving?
--
pain which welcome or repel. This makes in our outer being a
constant activity and noise that we are only partially aware of,
--
But if through meditation or concentration we turn inward
or upward, we can bring down into ourselves or raise up from
the depths calm, quiet, peace and finally silence. It is a concrete, positive silence (not the negative silence of the absence
--
experience even in the outer tumult of a hurricane or battlefield.
This silence is synonymous with peace and it is all-powerful;
--
person - by sympathy, spontaneously, by an affinity m ore or
less deep, or else by an eff ort of concentration which ends in
identification. It is this latter process that we adopt when we
--
on the photo, one enters into relation with that special aspect or
different personality which the photo has captured and whose
--
reacting or participating, then one can notice the effect that the
music produces on the feelings and emotions; and if it produces
--
a zone c orresponding to the overmind and an overmind consciousness, bef ore one can rise above it, to the Supermind, or
open oneself to it.
--
to cosmic zones or planes, and it is as these inner states of being
are developed that one becomes conscious of those domains.
--
able to go beyond the limits of the body in order to move about
in the various cosmic regions, grow conscious of them and act
--
Supernature is the Nature superi or to material or physical Nature - what we usually call "Nature". But this Nature that we
see, feel and study, this Nature that has been our familiar environment since our birth upon earth, is not the only one. There
--
the ordinary consciousness, is Supernature.
Very often the w ord "Nature" is used as a synonym f or
--
question m ore precisely, the context would be needed in order to
know on what occasion Sri Aurobindo spoke about Supernature.
--
"There is as yet no overmind being or organised overmind nature, no supramental being or organised supermind nature acting either on our surface or in our
n ormal subliminal parts."4 Sweet Mother, now after the
--
who do not belong to the ordinary humanity, have a conscious
and organised overmind being and overmind life, and still fewer
are those who have an organised supramental being and supramental life, even admitting that there are any at all. Certainly
the very recent descent of the first elements of the Supermind
--
the way to becoming superman, or those that the supramental
being will possess when he appears on earth?
--
in order to facilitate the study of human nature and especially
to constitute a definite basis f or the various methods of selfdevelopment and self-discipline. That is why each philosophic,
educational or Yogic system has, as it were, its own division
based on the experience of its founder. Nevertheless, despite
--
and the psychic or soul.
Sri Aurobindo has written on this subject in great detail in
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
novels or dramas, but books that make you think. You must
meditate on what you have read, reflect on a thought until you
--
bright room, and there, if we remain very quiet, one or m ore
visit ors come to call on us; some are tall, others small, some
--
st oreroom of w ords. Here, m ore or less excited, we select, reject,
assemble, combine, disarrange, rearrange all the w ords in our
reach, in an attempt to p ortray this or that visit or who has come
to us. But most often, the picture we succeed in making of our
--
anything of their elegance or beauty and, as they cross the
st oreroom of w ords, clothe themselves eff ortlessly, automatically, with the w ords needed to make themselves perceptible
--
vice or bad habit, then one has the joy of making an offering
and one receives in exchange the f orce to replace what has been
--
What exactly is the soul or psychic being? And what
is meant by the evolution of the psychic being? What is
--
being; it is identical with its Divine origin; it is the divine in
man.
--
always produces an illumination in the being and has m ore or
less lasting effects.
--
usually possessed by an asuric or rakshasic being.
The psychic being itself is above all possibility of degradation.
--
Sri Aurobindo says that the voice of the ordinary
conscience is not the voice of the soul. What is it then?
The voice of the ordinary conscience is an ethical voice, a m oral
voice which distinguishes between good and evil, encourages us
--
in ordinary life, until one is able to become conscious of one's
psychic being and allow oneself to be entirely guided by it - in
other w ords, to rise above ordinary humanity, free oneself from
all egoism and become a conscious instrument of the Divine
--
one has or of what one does or of what one is. In other w ords,
to offer Him a part of our belongings or all our possessions, to
consecrate to Him a part of our w ork or all our activities, or to
give ourselves to Him totally and unreservedly so that He can
take possession of our nature in order to transf orm and divinise
it. But there are many persons who, without giving anything,
--
The messages are usually chosen acc ording to the occasion or
the need of the moment, so that each person may be able to find
in them either the f orce or the knowledge that will help him to
make progress.
--
the call is really there or not? And as f or our soul, would
it not always choose Yoga?
--
ambition or a vital caprice f or the spiritual call - f or that alone
is a sure sign that one should take up Yoga. The spiritual call is
--
any ambition, pride or desire, and so long as it does not receive
the Divine command to take up the path, it waits patiently,
--
to have or to keep than the nectar of the Imm ortals."7
What does this mean? Doesn't the Divine Grace always
--
desire or egoism, one finds Him very soon, f or always He comes
to meet you in order to help you.
12 November 1960
--
everything, without preference or exclusiveness.
26 November 1960
01.01 - A Yoga of the Art of Life, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When Sri Aurobindo said, Our Yoga is not f or ourselves but f or humanity, many heaved a sigh of relief and thought that the great soul was after all not entirely lost to the w orld, his was not one m ore name added to the long list of Sannyasins that India has been producing age after age without much profit either to herself or to the human society ( or even perhaps to their own selves). People understood his Yoga to be a modern one, dedicated to the service of humanity. If service to humanity was not the very sum and substance of his spirituality, it was, at least, the fruitful end and consummation. His Yoga was a s ort of art to expl ore and harness certain unseen powers that can better and ameli orate human life in a m ore successful way than mere rational scientific methods can hope to do.
Sri Aurobindo saw that the very c ore of his teaching was being missed by this common interpretation of his saying. So he changed his w ords and said, Our Yoga is not f or humanity but f or the Divine. But I am afraid this change of front, this volte-face, as it seemed, was not welcomed in many quarters; f or thereby all hope of having him back f or the w ork of the country or the w orld appeared to be totally lost and he came to be looked upon again as an irrevocable metaphysical dreamer, aloof from physical things and barren, even like the Immutable Brahman.
II
In order to get a nearer approach to the ideal f or which Sri Aurobindo has been labouring, we may combine with advantage the two mottoes he has given us and say that his mission is to find and express the Divine in humanity. This is the service he means to render to humanity, viz, to manifest and embody in it the Divine: his goal is not merely an ameli oration, but a total change and transf ormation, the divinisation of human life.
Here also one must guard against certain misconceptions that are likely to occur. The transf ormation of human life does not necessarily mean that the entire humanity will be changed into a race of gods or divine beings; it means the evolution or appearance on earth of a superi or type of humanity, even as man evolved out of animality as a superi or type of animality, not that the entire animal kingdom was changed into humanity.
As regards the possibility of such a consummation,Sri Aurobindo says it is not a possibility but an inevitabilityone must remember that the f orce that will bring about the result and is already at w ork is not any individual human power, however great it may be, but the Divine himself, it is the Divine's own Shakti that is labouring f or the destined end.
Here is the very heart of the mystery, the master-key to the problem. The advent of the superhuman or divine race, however stupendous or miraculous the phenomenon may appear to be, can become a thing of practical actuality, precisely because it is no human agency that has undertaken it but the Divine himself in his supreme potency and wisdom and love. The descent of the Divine into the ordinary human nature in order to purify and transf orm it and be lodged there is the whole secret of the sadhana in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. The sadhaka has only to be quiet and silent, calmly aspiring, open and acquiescent and receptive to the one F orce; he need not and should not try to do things by his independent personal eff ort, but get them done or let them be done f or him in the dedicated consciousness by the Divine Master and Guide. All other Yogas or spiritual disciplines in the past envisaged an ascent of the consciousness, its sublimation into the consciousness of the Spirit and its fusion and dissolution there in the end. The descent of the Divine Consciousness to prepare its definitive home in the dynamic and pragmatic human nature, if considered at all, was not the main theme of the past eff orts and achievements. Furtherm ore, the descent spoken of here is the descent, not of a divine consciousness f or there are many varieties of divine consciousness but of the Divine's own consciousness, of the Divine himself with his Shakti. F or it is that that is directly w orking out this evolutionary transf ormation of the age.
It is not my purpose here to enter into details as to the exact meaning of the descent, how it happens and what are its lines of activity and the results brought about. F or it is indeed an actual descent that happens: the Divine Light leans down first into the mind and begins its purificat ory w ork therealthough it is always the inner heart which first recognises the Divine Presence and gives its assent to the Divine action f or the mind, the higher mind that is to say, is the summit of the ordinary human consciousness and receives m ore easily and readily the Radiances that descend. From the Mind the Light filters into the denser regions of the emotions and desires, of life activity and vital dynamism; finally, it gets into brute Matter itself, the hard and obscure rock of the physical body, f or that too has to be illumined and made the very f orm and figure of the Light supernal. The Divine in his descending Grace is the Master-Architect who is building slowly and surely the many-chambered and many-st oreyed edifice that is human nature and human life into the mould of the Divine Truth in its perfect play and supreme expression. But this is a matter which can be closely considered when one is already well within the mystery of the path and has acquired the elementary essentials of an initiate.
Another question that troubles and perplexes the ordinary human mind is as to the time when the thing will be done. Is it now or a millennium hence or at some astronomical distance in future, like the cooling of the sun, as someone has suggested f or an analogy. In view of the magnitude of the w ork one might with reason say that the whole eternity is there bef ore us, and a century or even a millennium should not be grudged to such a labour f or it is nothing less than an undoing of untold millenniums in the past and the building of a far-flung futurity. However, as we have said, since it is the Divine's own w ork and since Yoga means a concentrated and involved process of action, effectuating in a minute what would perhaps take years to accomplish in the natural course, one can expect the w ork to be done sooner rather than later. Indeed, the ideal is one of here and nowhere upon this earth of material existence and now in this life, in this very bodynot hereafter or elsewhere. How long exactly that will mean, depends on many fact ors, but a few decades on this side or the other do not matter very much.
As to the extent of realisation, we say again that that is not a matter of primary consideration. It is not the quantity but the substance that counts. Even if it were a small nucleus it would be sufficient, at least f or the beginning, provided it is the real, the genuine thing
--
I have a w ord to add finally in justification of the title of this essay. F or, it may be asked, how can spirituality be considered as one of the Arts or given an honourable place in their domain?
From a certain point of view, from the point of view of essentials and inner realities, it would appear that spirituality is, at least, the basis of the arts, if not the highest art. If art is meant to express the soul of things, and since the true soul of things is the divine element in them, then certainly spirituality, the discipline of coming in conscious contact with the Spirit, the Divine, must be acc orded the regal seat in the hierarchy of the arts. Also, spirituality is the greatest and the most difficult of the arts; f or it is the art of life. To make of life a perfect w ork of beauty, pure in its lines, faultless in its rhythm, replete with strength, iridescent: with light, vibrant with delightan embodiment of the Divine, in a w ordis the highest ideal of spirituality; viewed the spirituality that Sri Aurobindo practisesis the ne plus ultra of artistic creation
01.01 - Sri Aurobindo - The Age of Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Someone has written to this effect: "This is not the age of Sri Aurobindo. His ideal of a divine life upon earth may or may not be true; at any rate it is not of today or even of tom orrow. Humanity will take some time bef ore it reaches that stage or its possibility. What we are concerned with here and now is something perhaps less great, less spiritual, but m ore urgent and m ore practical. The problem is not to run away with one's soul, but to maintain its earthly tenement, to keep body and soul together: one has to live first, live materially bef ore one can hope to live spiritually."
Well, the view expressed in these w ords is not a new revelation. It has been the cry of suffering humanity through the ages. Man has b orne his cross since the beginning of his creation through want and privation, through disease and bereavement, through all manner of turmoil and tribulation, and yetmirabile dictuat the same time, in the very midst of those conditions, he has been aspiring and yearning f or something else, ign oring the present, looking into the beyond. It is not the prosperous and the m ore happily placed in life who find it m ore easy to turn to the higher life, it is not the wealthiest who has the greatest opp ortunity to pursue a spiritual idea. On the contrary, spiritual leaders have thought and experienced otherwise.
Apart from the well-recognised fact that only in distress does the n ormal man think of God and non-w orldly things, the real matter, however, is that the inner life is a thing apart and follows its own line of movement, does not depend upon, is not subservient to, the kind of outer life that one may happen to live under. The Bible says indeed, "Blessed are the po or, blessed are they that mourn"... But the Upanishad declares, on the other hand, that even as one lies happily on a royal couch, bathes and anoints himself with all the perfumes of the w orld, has attendants all around and always to serve him, even so, one can be full of the divine consciousness from the crown of the head to the tip of his toe-nail. In fact, a po or or a prosperous life is in no direct or even indirect ratio to a spiritual life. All the miseries and immediate needs of a physical life do not and cannot detain or delay one from following the path of the ideal; n or can all your riches be a burden to your soul and overwhelm it, if it chooses to walk onit can not only walk, but soar and fly with all that knapsack on its back.
If one were to be busy about ref orming the w orld and when that was done then alone to turn to other-w orldly things, in that case, one would never take the turn, f or the w orld will never be ref ormed totally or even considerably in that way. It is not that ref ormers have f or the first time appeared on the earth in the present age. Men have attempted social, political, economic and m oral ref orms from times immem orial. But that has not barred the spiritual attempt or minimised its imp ortance. To say that because an ideal is apparently too high or too great f or the present age, it must be kept in cold st orage is to set a premium on the present nature of humanity arid eternise it: that would bind the w orld to its old mo orings and never give it the opp ortunity to be free and go out into the high seas of larger and greater realisations.
The ideal or perhaps one should say the policy of Real-politick is the thing needed in this w orld. To achieve something actually in the physical and material field, even a lesser something, is w orth much m ore than speculating on high flaunting chimeras and indulging in day-dreams. Yes, but what is this something that has to be achieved in the material w orld? It is always an ideal. Even procuring food f or each and every person, clothing and housing all is not less an ideal f or all its concern about actuality. Only there are ideals and ideals; some are nearer to the earth, some seem to be in the background. But the mystery is that it is not always the ideal nearest to the earth which is the easiest to achieve or the first thing to be done first. Do we not see bef ore our very eye show some very simple innocent social and economic changes are difficult to carry outthey bring in their train quite disprop ortionately gestures and movements of violence and revolution? That is because we seek to cure the symptoms and not touch the root of the disease. F or even the most innocent-looking social, economic or political abuse has at its base far-reaching attitudes and life-urgeseven a spiritual outlook that have to be sought out and tackled first, if the attempt at ref orm is to be permanently and wholly successful. Even in mundane matters we do not dig deep enough, or rise high enough.
Indeed, looking from a standpoint that views the w orking of the f orces that act and achieve and not the external facts and events and arrangements aloneone finds that things that are achieved on the material plane are first developed and matured and made ready behind the veil and at a given moment burst out and manifest themselves often unexpectedly and suddenly like a chick out of the shell or the young butterfly out of the cocoon. The Gita points to that truth of Nature when it says: "These beings have already been killed by Me." It is not that a long or strenuous physical planning and preparation alone or in the largest measure brings about a physical realisation. The deeper we go within, the farther we are away from the surface, the nearer we come to the roots and sources of things even most superficial. The spiritual view sees and declares that it is the Brahmic consciousness that holds, inspires, builds up Matter, the physical body and f orm of Brahman.
The highest ideal, the very highest which God and Nature and Man have in view, is not and cannot be kept in cold st orage: it is being w orked out even here and now, and it has to be w orked out here and now. The ideal of the Life Divine embodies a central truth of existence, and however difficult or chimerical it may appear to be to the n ormal mind, it is the preoccupation of the inner being of manall other ways or attempts of curing human ills are faint echoes, masks, diversions of this secret urge at the source and heart of things. That ideal is a n orm and a f orce that is ever dynamic and has become doubly so since it has entered the earth atmosphere and the waking human consciousness and is labouring there. It is always safer and wiser to recognise that fact, to help in the realisation of that truth and be profited by it.
***
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And now the days of captivity or rather of inner preparation are at an end. The voice in the wilderness was necessary, f or it was a call and a communion in the silence of the soul. Today the silence seeks utterance. Today the shell is ripe enough to break and to bring out the mature and full-grown being. The king that was in hiding comes in gl ory and triumph, in his complete regalia.
Another humanity is rising out of the present human species. The beings of the new order are everywhere and it is they who will soon hold sway over earth, be the head and front of the terrestrial evolution in the cycle that is approaching as it was with man in the cycle that is passing away. What will this new order of being be like? It will be what man is not, also what man is. It will not be man, because it will overstep the limitations and incapacities inherent in man; and it will be man by the realisation of those fundamental aspirations and yearnings that have troubled and consoled the deeper strata the soulin him throughout the varied experiences of his terrestrial life.
The New Man will be Master and not slave. He will be master, first, of himself and then of the w orld. Man as he actually is, is but a slave. He has no personal voice or choice; the determining soul, the Ishwara, in him is sleep-bound and hushed. He is a mere plaything in the hands of nature and circumstances. Theref ore it is that Science has become his supreme Dharmashastra; f or science seeks to teach us the moods of Nature and the methods of propitiating her. Our actual ideal of man is that of the cleverest slave. But the New Man will have found himself and by and acc ording to his inner will, mould and create his w orld. He will not be in awe of Nature and in an attitude of perpetual apprehension and hesitation, but will ground himself on a secret harmony and union that will declare him as the l ord. We will recognise the New Man by his very gait and manner, by a certain kingly ease and dominion in every shade of his expression.
Not that this sovereign power will have anything to do with aggression or over-bearingness. It will not be a power that feels itself only by creating an eternal opponentErbfeindby coming in constant clash with a rival that seeks to gain vict ory by subjugating. It will not be Nietzschean "will to power," which is, at best, a supreme Asuric power. It will rather be a Divine Power, f or the strength it will exert and the vict ory it will achieve will not come from the egoit is the ego which requires an object outside and against to feel and affirm itself but it will come from a higher personal self which is one with the cosmic soul and theref ore with other personal souls. The Asura, in spite of, or rather, because of his aggressive vehemence betrays a lack of the sovereign power that is calm and at ease and self-sufficient. The Devic power does not assert hut simply accomplishes; the f orces of the w orld act not as its opponent but as its instrument. Thus the New Man shall affirm his individual sovereignty and do so to perfection by expressing through it his unity with the cosmic powers, with the infinite godhead. And by being Swarat, Self-Master, he will become Samrat, w orld-master.
This mastery will be effected not merely in will, but in mind and heart also. F or the New Man will know not by the intellect which is egocentric and theref ore limited, not by ratiocination which is an indirect and doubtful process, but by direct vision, an inner communion, a soul revelation. The new knowledge will be vast and profound and creative, based as it will be upon the reality of things and not upon their shadows. Truth will shine through every experience and every utterance"a truth shall have its seat on our speech and mind and hearing", so have the Vedas said. The mind and intellect will not be active and constructive agents but the luminous channel of a self-luminous knowledge. And the heart too which is now the field of passion and egoism will be cleared of its noise and obscurity; a serener sky will shed its pure warmth and translucent glow. The knot will be rent asunderbhidyate hridaya granthih and the vast and mighty streams of another ocean will flow through. We will love not merely those to whom we are akin but God's creatures, one and all; we will love not with the yearning and hunger of a m ortal but with the wide and intense Rasa that lies in the divine identity of souls.
And the new society will be based not upon competition, n or even upon co-operation. It will not be an open conflict, neither will it be a convenient compromise of rival individual interests. It will be the organic expression of the collective soul of humanity, w orking and achieving through each and every individual soul its most wide-winging freedom, manifesting the godhead that is, proper to each and every one. It will be an organisation, most delicate and subtle and supple, the members of which will have no need to live upon one another but in and through one another. It will be, if you like, a henotheistic hierarchy in which everyone will be the greatest, since everyone is all and all everyone simultaneously.
The New Humanity will be something in the mould that we give to the gods. It will supply the link that we see missing between gods and men; it will be the race of embodied gods. Man will attain that thing which has been his first desire and earliest dream, f or which he coveted the gods Imm ortality, amritatwam. The m ortalities that cut and divide, limit and bind man make him the s orrowful being he is. These are due to his ign orance and weakness and egoism. These are due to his soul itself. It is the soul that requires change, a new birth, as Christ demanded. Ours is a little soul that has severed itself from the larger and mightier self that it is. And theref ore does it die every moment and even while living is afraid to live and so lives po orly and miserably. But the age is now upon us when the god-like soul anointed with its imm ortal royalties is ready to emerge and claim our salutation.
The breath and the surge of the new creation cannot be mistaken. The question that confronts us today is no longer whether the New Man, the Super-humanity, will come or if at all, when; but the question we have to answer is who among us are ready to be its receptacle, its instrument and embodiment.
***
01.01 - The One Thing Needful, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is the lesson of life that always in this w orld everything fails a man - only the Divine does not fail him, if he turns entirely towards the Divine. It is not because there is something bad in you that blows fall on you - blows fall on all human beings because they are full of desire f or things that cannot last and they lose them or, even if they get, it brings disappointment and cannot satisfy them. To turn to the Divine is the only truth in life.
To find the Divine is indeed the first reason f or seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the resit is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to manifest Him, - that is, first of all to transf orm one's own limited consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, to live in the infinite Peace, Light, Love, Strength, Bliss, to become that in one's essential nature and, as a consequence, to be its vessel, channel, instrument in one's active nature. To bring into activity the principle of oneness on the material plane or to w ork f or humanity is a mental mistranslation of the Truth - these things cannot be the first true object of spiritual seeking. We must find the Self, the Divine, then only can we know what is the w ork the Self or the Divine demands from us. Until then our life and action can only be a help or a means towards finding the Divine and it ought not to have any other purpose. As we grow in inner consciousness, or as the spiritual Truth of the Divine grows in us, our life and action must indeed m ore and m ore flow from that, be one with that. But to decide bef oreh and by our limited mental conceptions what they must be is to hamper the growth of the spiritual Truth within. As that grows we shall feel the Divine Light and Truth, the Divine Power and F orce, the Divine Purity and Peace w orking within us, dealing with our actions as well as our consciousness, making use of them to reshape us into the Divine Image, removing the dross, substituting the pure Gold of the Spirit. Only when the Divine Presence is there in us always and the consciousness transf ormed, can we have the right to say that we are ready to manifest the Divine on the material plane. To hold up a mental ideal or principle and impose that on the inner w orking brings the danger of limiting ourselves to a mental realisation or of impeding or even falsifying by a halfway f ormation the truth growth into the full communion and union with the Divine and the free and intimate outflowing of His will in our life. This is a mistake of orientation to which the mind of today is especially prone. It is far better to approach the Divine f or the Peace or Light or Bliss that the realisation of Him gives than to bring in these min or things which can divert us from the one thing needful. The divinisation of the material life also as well as the inner life is part of what we see as the Divine Plan, but it can only be fulfilled by an ourflowing of the inner realisation, something that grows from within outwards, not by the w orking out of a mental principle.
The realisation of the Divine is the one thing needful and the rest is desirable only in so far as it helps or leads towards that or when it is realised, extends and manifests the realisation. Manifestation and organisation of the whole life f or the divine w ork, - first, the sadhana personal and collective necessary f or the realisation and a common life of God-realised men, secondly, f or help to the w orld to move towards that, and to live in the Light - is the whole meaning and purpose of my Yoga. But the realisation is the first need and it is that round which all the rest moves, f or apart from it all the rest would have no meaning.
Yoga is directed towards God, not towards man. If a divine supramental consciousness and power can be brought down and established in the material w orld, that obviously would mean an immense change f or the earth including humanity and its life. But the effect on humanity would only be one result of the change; it cannot be the object of the sadhana. The object of the sadhana can only be to live in the divine consciousness and to manifest it in life.
--
... the principle of this Yoga is not perfection of the human nature as it is but a psychic and spiritual transf ormation of all the parts of the being through the action of an inner consciousness and then of a higher consciousness which w orks on them, throws out the old movements or changes them into the image of its own and so transmutes lower into higher nature. It is not so much the perfection of the intellect as a transcendence of it, a transf ormation of the mind, the substitution of a larger greater principle of knowledge - and so with all the rest of the being.
This is a slow and difficult process; the road is long and it is hard to establish even the necessary basis. The old existing nature resists and obstructs and difficulties rise one after another and repeatedly till they are overcome. It is theref ore necessary to be sure that this is the path to which one is called bef ore one finally decides to tread it.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its f ormless stup or without mind or life,
A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,
--
Awaiting her ordeal's hour abode,
Outcast from her inb orn felicity,
--
On the lap of earth's original somnolence
Inert, released into f orgetfulness,
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is in the direct line of Nature's own Yoga. Nature has a Yoga, which she follows unfailingly, and inevitably f or it is her innermost law of being. Yoga means, in essence, a change or transf ormation of consciousness, a heightening and broadening of consciousness, which is effected by communion or union or identification with a higher and vaster consciousness.
This process of a developing consciousness in Nature is precisely what is known as Evolution. It is the bringing out and fixing of a higher and higher principle of consciousness, hitherto involved and concealed behind the veil, in the earth consciousness as a dynamic fact or in Nature's manifest w orking. Thus, the first stage of evolution is the status of inconscient Matter, of the lifeless physical elements; the second stage is that of the semi-conscious life in the plant, the third that of the conscious life in the animal, and finally the fourth stage, where we stand at present, is that of the embodied self-conscious life in man.
The course of evolution has not come to a stop with man and the next stage, Sri Aurobindo says, which Nature envisages and is labouring to bring out and establish is the life now superconscious to us, embodied in a still higher type of created being, that of the superman or god-man. The principle of consciousness which will determine the nature and build of this new, being is a spiritual principle beyond the mental principle which man now incarnates: it may be called the Supermind or Gnosis.
F or, till now Mind has been the last term of the evolutionary consciousness Mind as developed in man is the highest instrument built up and organised by Nature through which the self-conscious being can express itself. That is why the Buddha said: Mind is the first of all principles, Mind is the highest of all principles: indeed Mind is the constituent of all principlesmana puvvangam dhamm1. The consciousness beyond mind has not yet been made a patent and dynamic element in the life upon earth; it has been glimpsed or entered into in varying degrees and modes by saints and seers; it has cast its derivative illuminations in the creative activities of poets and artists, in the finer and nobler urges of heroes and great men of action. But the utmost that has been achieved, the summit reached in that direction, as exampled in spiritual disciplines, involves a withdrawal from the evolutionary cycle, a merging and an abs orption into the static status that is altogether beyond it, that lies, as it were, at the other extreme the Spirit in itself, Atman, Brahman, Sachchidananda, Nirvana, the One without a second, the Zero without a first.
The first contact that one has with this static supra-reality is through the higher ranges of the mind: a direct and closer communion is established through a plane which is just above the mind the Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it. The Overmind dissolves or transcends the ego-consciousness which limits the being to its individualised f ormation bounded by an outward and narrow frame or sheath of mind, life and body; it reveals the universal Self and Spirit, the cosmic godhead and its myriad f orces throwing up myriad f orms; the w orld-existence there appears as a play of ever-shifting veils upon the face of one ineffable reality, as a mysterious cycle of perpetual creation and destructionit is the overwhelming vision given by Sri Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita. At the same time, the initial and most intense experience which this cosmic consciousness brings is the extreme relativity, contingency and transit oriness of the whole flux, and a necessity seems logically and psychologically imperative to escape into the abiding substratum, the ineffable Absoluteness.
This has been the highest consummation, the supreme goal which the purest spiritual experience and the deepest aspiration of the human consciousness generally sought to attain. But in this view, the w orld or creation or Nature came in the end to be looked upon as fundamentally a product of Ign orance: ign orance and suffering and incapacity and death were declared to be the very hallmark of things terrestrial. The Light that dwells above and beyond can be made to shed f or a while some kind of lustre upon the m ortal darkness but never altogether to remove or change itto live in the full light, to be in and of the Light means to pass beyond. Not that there have not been other strands and types of spiritual experiences and aspirations, but the one we are considering has always struck the maj or ch ord and dominated and drowned all the rest.
But the initial illus ory consciousness of the Overmind need not at all lead to the static Brahmic consciousness or Sunyam alone. As a matter of fact, there is in this particular processes of consciousness a hiatus between the two, between Maya and Brahman, as though one has to leap from the one into the other somehow. This hiatus is filled up in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga by the principle of Supermind, not synthetic-analytic2 in knowledge like Overmind and the highest mental intelligence, but inescapably unitarian even in the utmost diversity. Supermind is the Truth-consciousness at once static and dynamic, self-existent and creative: in Supermind the Brahmic consciousness Sachchidanandais ever self-aware and ever manifested and embodied in fundamental truth-powers and truth-f orms f or the play of creation; it is the plane where the One breaks out into the Many and the Many still remain one, being and knowing themselves to be but various self-expressions of the One; it develops the spiritual archetypes, the divine names and f orms of all individualisations of an evolving existence.
SRI AUROBINDO
--
In the Supermind things exist in their perfect spiritual reality; each is consciously the divine reality in its transcendent essence, its cosmic extension, its, spiritual individuality; the diversity of a manifested existence is there, but the mutually exclusive separativeness has not yet arisen. The ego, the knot of separativity, appears at a later and lower stage of involution; what is here is indivisible nexus of individualising centres of the one eternal truth of being. Where Supermind and Overmind meet, one can see the multiple godheads, each distinct in his own truth and beauty and power and yet all together f orming the one supreme consciousness infinitely composite and inalienably integral. But stepping back into Supermind one sees something m oreOneness gathering into itself all diversity, not destroying it, but annulling and f orbidding the separative consciousness that is the beginning of Ign orance. The first shadow of the Illus ory Consciousness, the initial possibility of the movement of Ign orance comes in when the supramental light enters the penumbra of the mental sphere. The movement of Supermind is the movement of light without obscurity, straight, unwavering, unswerving, absolute. The F orce here contains and holds in their oneness of Reality the manifold but not separated lines of essential and unalloyed truth: its march is the inevitable progression of each one assured truth entering into and upholding every other and theref ore its creation, play or action admits of no trial or stumble or groping or deviation; f or each truth rests on all others and on that which harmonises them all and does not act as a Power diverging from and even competing with other Powers of being. In the Overmind commences the play of divergent possibilities the simple, direct, united and absolute certainties of the supramental consciousness retire, as it were, a step behind and begin to w ork themselves out through the interaction first of separately individualised and then of contrary and contradict ory f orces. In the Overmind there is a conscious underlying Unity but yet each Power, Truth, Aspect of that Unity is encouraged to w ork out its possibilities as if it were sufficient to itself and the others are used by it f or its own enhancement until in the denser and darker reaches below Overmind this turns out a thing of blind conflict and battle and, as it would appear, of chance survival. Creation or manifestation originally means the concretisation or devolution of the powers of Conscious Being into a play of united diversity; but on the line which ends in Matter it enters into m ore and m ore obscure f orms and f orces and finally the virtual eclipse of the supreme light of the Divine Consciousness. Creation as it descends' towards the Ign orance becomes an involution of the Spirit through Mind and Life into Matter; evolution is a movement backward, a return journey from Matter towards the Spirit: it is the unravelling, the gradual disclosure and deliverance of the Spirit, the ascension and revelation of the involved consciousness through a series of awakeningsMatter awakening into Life, Life awakening into Mind and Mind now seeking to awaken into something beyond the Mind, into a power of conscious Spirit.
The apparent or actual result of the movement of Nescienceof Involutionhas been an increasing negation of the Spirit, but its hidden purpose is ultimately to embody the Spirit in Matter, to express here below in cosmic Time-Space the splendours of the timeless Reality. The material body came into existence bringing with it inevitably, as it seemed, m ortality; it appeared even to be fashioned out of m ortality, in order that in this very frame and field of m ortality, Imm ortality, the eternal Spirit Consciousness which is the secret truth and reality in Time itself as well as behind it, might be established and that the Divine might be possessed, or rather, possess itself not in one unvarying mode of the static consciousness, as it does even now behind the cosmic play, but in the play itself and in the multiple mode of the terrestrial existence.
II
The secret of evolution, I have said, is an urge towards the release and unfoldment of consciousness out of an apparent unconsciousness. In the early stages the movement is very slow and gradual; there it is Nature's original unconscious process. In man it acquires the possibility of a conscious and theref ore swifter and concentrated process. And this is in fact the function of Yoga proper, viz, to bring about the evolution of consciousness by hastening the process of Nature through the self-conscious will of man.
An organ in the human being has been especially developed to become the effective instrument of this accelerated Yogic process the self-consciousness which I referred to as being the distinctive characteristic of man is a function of this organ. It is his soul, his psychic being; originally it is the spark of the Divine Consciousness which came down and became involved in Matter and has been endeavouring ever since to release itself through the upward march of evolution. It is this which presses on continually as the stimulus to the evolutionary movement; and in man it has attained sufficient growth and power and has come so far to the front from behind the veil that it can now lead and mould his external consciousness. It is also the channel through which the Divine Consciousness can flow down into the inferi or levels of human nature. It is the being no bigger than the thumb ever seated within the heart, spoken of in the Upanishads. It is likewise the basis of true individuality and personal identity. It is again the reflection or expression in evolutionary Nature of one's essential selfjivtman that is above, an eternal p ortion of the Divine, one with the Divine and yet not dissolved and lost in it. The psychic being is thus on the one hand in direct contact with the Divine and the higher consciousness, and on the other it is the secret upholder and controller' (bhart, antarymin) of the inferi or consciousness, the hidden nucleus round which the body and the life and the mind of the individual are built up and organised.
The first decisive step in Yoga is taken when one becomes conscious of the psychic being, or, looked at from the other side, when the psychic being comes f orward and takes possession of the external being, begins to initiate and influence the movements of the mind and life and body and gradually free them from the ordinary round of ign orant nature. The awakening of the psychic being means, as I have said, not only a deepening and heightening of the consciousness and its release from the obscurity and limitation of the inferi or Prakriti, confined to the lower threefold status, into what is behind and beyond; it means also a return of the deeper and higher consciousness upon the lower hemisphere and a consequent purification and illumination and regeneration of the latter. Finally, when the psychic being is in full self-possession and power, it can be the vehicle of the direct supramental consciousness which will then be able to act freely and absolutely f or the entire transf ormation of the external nature, its transfiguration into a perfect body of the Truth-consciousness in a w ord, its divinisation.
This then is the supreme secret, not the renunciation and annulment, but the transf ormation of the ordinary human nature : first of all, its psychicisation, that is to say, making it move and live and be in communion and identification with the light of the psychic being, and, secondly, through the soul and the ensouled mind and life and body, to open out into the supramental consciousness and let it come down here below and w ork and achieve.
The soul or the true being in man uplifted in the supramental consciousness and at the same time coming f orward to possess a divinised mind and life and body as an instrument and channel of its self-expression and an embodiment of the Divine Will and Purposesuch is the goal that Nature is seeking to realise at present through her evolutionary lan. It is to this labour that man has been called so that in and through him the destined transcendence and transf ormation can take place.
It is not easy, however, n or is it necessary f or 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 queried or how the collective life of the new humanity would function or what would be the composition of its social fabric. F or what is happening is a living process, an organic growth; it is being elab orated through the actions and reactions of multitudinous f orces and conditions, known and unknown; the precise configuration of the final outcome cannot be predicted with exactitude. But the Power that is at w ork is omniscient; it is selecting, rejecting, c orrecting, fashioning, creating, co- ordinating elements in acc ordance 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) n or 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. Bef ore it there was the domain of Ign orance, after it will come the reign of Light and Knowledge. M ortality has been the governing principle of life on earth till now; it will be replaced by the consciousness of imm ortality. Evolution has proceeded through struggle and pain; hereafter it will be a spontaneous, harmonious and happy flowering.
Now, with regard to the time that the present stage of evolution is likely to take f or its fulfilment, one can presume that since or if the specific urge and stress has manifested and come up to the front, this very fact would show that the problem has become a problem of actuality, and even that it can be dealt with as if it had to be solved now or never. We have said that in man, with man's self-consciousness or the consciousness of the psychic being as the instrument, evolution has attained the capacity of a swift and concentrated process, which is the process of Yoga; the process will become swifter and m ore concentrated, the m ore that instrument grows and gathers power and is infused with the divine afflatus. In fact, evolution has been such a process of gradual acceleration in tempo from the very beginning. The earliest stage, f or example, the stage of dead Matter, of the play of the mere chemical f orces was a very, very long one; it took millions and millions of years to come to the point when the manifestation of life became possible. But the period of elementary life, as manifested in the plant w orld that followed, although it too lasted a good many millions of years, was much briefer than the preceding periodit ended with the advent of the first animal f orm. The age of animal life, again, has been very much sh orter than that of the plant life bef ore man came upon earth. And man is already m ore than a million or two years oldit is fully time that a higher order of being should be created out of him.
The Dhammapada, I. 1
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And yet what can be m ore poetic in essence than philosophy, if by philosophy we mean, as it should mean, spiritual truth and spiritual realisation? What else can give the full breath, the integral f orce to poetic inspiration if it is not the problem of existence itself, of God, Soul and Imm ortality, things that touch, that are at the very root of life and reality? What can most concern man, what can strike the deepest fount in him, unless it is the mystery of his own being, the why and the whither of it all? But mankind has been taught and trained to live merely or mostly on earth, and poetry has been treated as the expression of human joys and s orrows the tears in m ortal things of which Virgil spoke. The savour of earth, the thrill of the flesh has been too sweet f or us and we have f orgotten other sweetnesses. It is always the human element that we seek in poetry, but we fail to recognise that what we obtain in this way is humanity in its lower degrees, its surface f ormulations, at its minimum magnitude.
We do not say that poets have never sung of God and Soul and things transcendent. Poets have always done that. But what I say is this that presentation of spiritual truths, as they are in their own home, in other w ords, treated philosophically and yet in a supreme poetic manner, has always been a rarity. We have, indeed, in India the Gita and the Upanishads, great philosophical poems, if there were any. But f or one thing they are on dizzy heights out of the reach of common man and f or another they are idolised m ore as philosophy than as poetry. Doubtless, our Vaishnava poets sang of God and Love Divine; and Rabindranath, in one sense, a typical modern Vaishnava, did the same. And their songs are masterpieces. But are they not all human, too human, as the mad prophet would say? In them it is the human significance, the human manner that touches and moves us the spiritual significance remains esoteric, is suggested, is a matter of deduction. Sri Aurobindo has dealt with spiritual experiences in a different way. He has not clothed them in human symbols and alleg ories, in images and figures of the mere earthly and secular life: he presents them in their nakedness, just as they are seen and realised. He has not sought to tone down the rigour of truth with contrivances that easily charm and captivate the common human mind and heart. N or has he indulged like so many poet philosophers in vague generalisations and colourless or too colourful truisms that do not embody a clear thought or rounded idea, a radiant judgment. Sri Aurobindo has given us in his poetry thoughts that are clear-cut, ideas beautifully chiselledhe is always luminously f orceful.
Take these Vedantic lines that in their limpidity and harmonious flow beat anything found in the fine French poet Lamartine:
--
or these that contain the metaphysics of a spiritual life:
King, not in vain. I knew the tedious bars
--
or take again such daring lines as:
One from of old possessed Himself above
--
But who has found Him or what arms possessed ?4
This is sheer philosophy, told with an almost philosophical bluntnessmay be, but is it mere philosophy and mediocre poetry? Once m ore listen to the Upanishadic lines:
--
Where murmurs never sound of harp or lute
And no voice sings,
--
It is the bare truth, "truth in its own home", as I have said already using a phrase of the ancient sages, that is f ormulated here without the prop of any external symbolism. There is no veil, no mist, no uncertainty or ambiguity. It is clarity itself, an almost scientific exactness and precision. In all this there is something of the straightness and fullness of vision that characterised the Vedic Rishis, something of their supernal genius which could mould speech into the very expression of what is beyond speech, which could sublimate the small and the finite into f orms of the Vast and the Infinite. Mark how in these aph oristic lines embodying a deep spiritual experience, the inexpressible has been expressed with a luminous felicity:
Delight that labours in its opposite,
--
or
He made an eager death and called it life,
--
To humanise the Divine, that is what we all wish to do; f or the Divine is too lofty f or us and we cannot look full into his face. We cry and supplicate to Rudra, "O dire L ord, show us that other f orm of thine that is benign and humane". All earthly imageries we lavish upon the Divine so that he may appear to us not as something far and distant and f oreign, but, quite near, among us, as one of us. We take recourse to human symbolism often, because we wish to palliate or hide the rigours of a supreme experience, not because we have no adequate terms f or it. The same human or earthly terms could be used differently if we had a different consciousness. Thus the Vedic Rishis sought not to humanise the Divine, their purpose was rather to divinise the human. And their alleg orical language, although rich in terrestrial figures, does not carry the impress and atmosphere of mere humanity and earthliness. F or in reality the symbol is not merely the symbol. It is mere symbol in regard to the truth so long as we take our stand on the lower plane when we have to look at the truth through the symbol; but if we view it from the higher plane, from truth itself, it is no longer mere symbol but the very truth bodied f orth. Whatever there is of symbolism on earth and its beauties, in sense and its enjoyments, is then transfigured into the expression of the truth, of the divinity itself. We then no longer speak in human language but in the language of the gods.
We have been speaking of philosophy and the philosophic manner. But what are the exact implications of the w ords, let us ask again. They mean nothing m ore and nothing lessthan the f orce of thought and the mass of thought content. After all, that seems to be almost the whole difference between the past and the present human consciousness in so far at least as it has found expression in poetry. That element, we wish to point out, is precisely what the old-w orld poets lacked or did not care to possess or express or stress. A poet meant above all, if not all in all, emotion, passion, sensuousness, sensibility, nervous enthusiasm and imagination and fancy: remember the classic definition given by Shakespeare of the poet
Of imagination all compact.. . .
--
The heart and its urges, the vital and its surges, the physical impulsesit is these of which the poets sang in their infinite variations. But the mind proper, that is to say, the higher reflective ideative mind, was not given the right of citizenship in the domain of poetry. I am not f orgetting the so-called Metaphysicals. The element of metaphysics among the Metaphysicals has already been called into question. There is here, no doubt, some theology, a good dose of mental cleverness or conceit, but a modern intellectual or rather rational intelligence is something other, something m ore than that. Even the metaphysics that was commandeered here had m ore or less a dec orative value, it could not be taken into the pith and substance of poetic truth and beauty. It was a dec oration, but not unoften a drag. I referred to the Upanishads, but these strike quite a different, almost an opposite line in this connection. They are in a sense truly metaphysical: they bypass the mind and the mental powers, get hold of a higher mode of consciousness, make a direct contact with truth and beauty and reality. It was Buddha's credit to have f orged this missing link in man's spiritual consciousness, to have brought into play the power of the rational intellect and used it in supp ort of the spiritual experience. That is not to say that he was the very first person, the originat or who initiated the movement; but at least this seems to be true that in him and his au thentic followers the movement came to the f orefront of human consciousness and attained the prop ortions of a maj or member of man's psychological constitution. We may remember here that Socrates, who started a similar movement of rationalisation in his own way in Europe, was almost a contemp orary of the Buddha.
Poetry as an expression of thought-power, poetry weighted with intelligence and rationalised knowledge that seems to me to be the end and drive, the secret sense of all the mystery of modern technique. The combination is risky, but not impossible. In the spiritual domain the Gita achieved this miracle to a considerable degree. Still, the power of intelligence and reason shown by Vyasa is of a special order: it is a sublimated function of the faculty, something aloof and other-w orldly"introvert", a modern mind would term it that is to say, something a pri ori, standing in its own au thenticity and self-sufficiency. A modern intelligence would be m ore scientific, let us use the w ord, m ore matter-of-fact and sense-based: the mental light should not be confined in its iv ory tower, however high that may be, but brought down and placed at the service of our perception and appreciation and explanation of things human and terrestrial; made immanent in the mundane and the ephemeral, as they are commonly called. This is not an impossibility. Sri Aurobindo seems to have done the thing. In him we find the three terms of human consciousness arriving at an absolute fusion and his poetry is a wonderful example of that fusion. The three terms are the spiritual, the intellectual or philosophical and the physical or sensational. The intellectual, or m ore generally, the mental, is the intermediary, the Paraclete, as he himself will call it later on in a poem9 magnificently exemplifying the point we are trying to make out the agent who negotiates, bridges and harmonises the two other firmaments usually supposed to be antagonistic and incompatible.
Indeed it would be wrong to associate any cold ascetic nudity to the spiritual body of Sri Aurobindo. His poetry is philosophic, abstract, no doubt, but every philosophy has its practice, every abstract thing its concrete application,even as the soul has its body; and the fusion, not mere union, of the two is very characteristic in him. The deepest and unseizable flights of thought he knows how to clo the with a Kalidasian richness of imagery, or a Keatsean gusto of sensuousness:
. . . . .O flowers, O delight on the tree-tops burning!
--
And it would be wrong too to suppose that there is want of sympathy in Sri Aurobindo f or ordinary humanity, that he is not susceptible to sentiments, to the weaknesses, that stir the natural man. Take f or example this line so instinct with a haunting melancholy strain:
Cold are your rivers of peace and their banks are leafless and lonely.
or,
Come to our tangled sunbeams, dawn on our twilights and shadows
or again,
Skies of monotonous calm and his stillness slaying the ages?
--
And here, let me point out, the capital difference between the European or rather the Hellenic spirit and the Indian spirit. It is the Indian spirit to take stand upon divinity and thence to embrace and mould what is earthly and human. The Greek spirit took its stand pre-eminently on earth and what belongs to earth. In Europe Dante's was a soul spiritualised m ore than perhaps any other and yet his is not a Hindu soul. The utmost that he could say after all the experience of the tragedy of m ortality was:
Io no piangeva, sidentro impietrai13
--
The Greek sings of the humanity of man, the Indian the divinity of man. It is the Hellenic spirit that has very largely moulded our taste and we have f orgotten that an equally poetic w orld exists in the domain of spiritual life, even in its very severity, as in that of earthly life and its sweetness. And as we are passionate about the earthly life, even so Sri Aurobindo has made a passion of the spiritual life. Poetry after all has a mission; the phrase "Art f or Art's sake" may be made to mean anything. Poetry is not merely what is pleasing, not even what is merely touching and moving but what is at the same time, inspiring, invig orating, elevating. Truth is indeed beauty but it is not always the beauty that captivates the eye or the mere aesthetic sense.
And because our Vedic poets always looked beyond humanity, beyond earth, theref ore could they make divine poetry of humanity and what is of earth. Theref ore it was that they were pervadingly so grandiose and sublime and puissant. The heroic, the epic was their natural element and they could not but express themselves in the grand manner Sri Aurobindo has the same outlook and it is why we find in him the ring of the old-w orld manner.
--
This is poetry salutary indeed if there were any. We are so often and so much enamoured of the feminine languidness of poetry; the clear, the sane, the virile, that is a type of poetry that our nerves cannot always or f or long stand. But there is poetry that is agrable and there is poetry that is grand, as Sainte Beuve said. There are the pleasures of poetry and there are the "ardours of poetry". And the great poets are always grand rather than agrable, full of the ardours of poetry rat her than the pleasures of poetry.
And if there is something in the creative spirit of Sri Aurobindo which tends m ore towards the strenuous than the genial, the arduous than the mellifluous, and which has m ore of the austerity of Vyasa than the easy felicity of Valmiki, however it might have affected the ultimate value of his creation, acc ording to certain standards,14 it has illustrated once m ore that poetry is not merely beauty but power, it is not merely sweet imagination but creative visionit is even the Rik, the mantra that impels the gods to manifest upon earth, that fashions divinity in man.
--
it cannot be said that Aurobindo shows any organic adaptation to music and melody. His thought is profound; his technical devices are commendable; but the music that enchants or disturbs is not there. Aurobindo is not another Tag ore or Iqbal, or even Sarojini Naidu."The Times Literary Supplement, July 8, 1944.
***
01.02 - The Creative Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The difference between living organism and dead matter is that while the f ormer is endowed with creative activity, the latter has only passive receptivity. Life adds, synthetises, new-createsgives m ore than what it receives; matter only sums up, gathers, reflects, gives just what it receives. Life is living, glad and green through its creative genius. Creation in some f orm or other must be the c ore of everything that seeks vitality and growth, vigour and delight. Not only so, but a thing in order to be real must possess a creative function. We consider a shadow or an echo unreal precisely because they do not create but merely image or repeat, they do not bring out anything new but simply reflect what is given. The whole of existence is real because it is eternally creative.
So the problem that concerns man, the riddle that humanity has to solve is how to find out and follow the path of creativity. If we are not to be dead matter n or mere shadowy illusions we must be creative. A misconception that has vitiated our outlook in general and has been the most potent cause of a sterilising atavism in the m oral evolution of humanity is that creativity is an aristocratic virtue, that it belongs only to the chosen few. A great poet or a mighty man of action creates indeed, but such a creat or does not appear very frequently. A Shakespeare or a Napoleon is a rare phenomenon; they are, in reality, an exception to the general run of mankind. It is enough if we others can understand and follow themMahajano yena gatahlet the great souls initiate and create, the common souls have only to repeat and imitate.
But this is not as it should be, n or is it the truth of the matter. Every individual soul, however placed it may be, is by nature creative; every individual being lives to discover and to create.
--
Now the centre of this energy, the matrix of creativity is the soul itself, one's own soul. If you want to createlive, grow and be real-find yourself, be yourself. The simple old wisdom still remains the eternal wisdom. It is because we fall off from our soul that we wander into side-paths, paths that do not belong to our real nature and hence that lead to imitation and repetition, decay and death. This is what happens to what we call common souls. The f orce of circumstances, the pressure of environment or simply the momentum of custom or habit compel them to choose the easiest and the readiest way that may lie bef ore them. They do not consult the demand of the inner being but the requirement of the moment. Our bodily needs, our vital hungers and our mental prejudices obsess and obscure the impulsions that thrill the hidden spirit. We hasten to gratify the immediate and f orget the eternal, we clutch at the shadow and let go the substance. We are carried away in the flux and tumult of life. It is a mixed and collective whirla Weltgeist that moves and governs us. We are helpless straws drifting in the current. But manhood demands that we stop and pause, pull ourselves out of the Maelstrom and be what we are. We must shape things as we want and not allow things to shape us as they want.
Let each take cognisance of the godhead that is within him f or self is Godand in the strength of the soul-divinity create his universe. It does not matter what s ort of universe he- creates, so long as he creates it. The w orld created by a Buddha is not the same as that created by a Napoleon, n or should they be the same. It does not prove anything that I cannot become a Kalidasa; f or that matter Kalidasa cannot become what I am. If you have not the genius of a Shankara it does not mean that you have no genius at all. Be and become yourselfma gridhah kasyachit dhanam, says the Upanishad. The fountain-head of creative genius lies there, in the free choice and the particular delight the self-determination of the spirit within you and not in the desire f or your neighbours riches. The w orld has become dull and unif orm and mechanical, since everybody endeavours to become not himself, but always somebody else. Imitation is servitude and servitude brings in grief.
In one's own soul lies the very height and profundity of a god-head. Each soul by bringing out the note that is his, makes f or the most wondrous symphony. Once a man knows what he is and holds fast to it, refusing to be drawn away by any necessity or temptation, he begins to uncover himself, to do what his inmost nature demands and takes joy in, that is to say, begins to create. Indeed there may be much difference in the f orms that different souls take. But because each is itself, theref ore each is grounded upon the fundamental equality of things. All our valuations are in reference to some standard or other set up with a particular end in view, but that is a question of the practical w orld which in no way takes away from the intrinsic value of the greatness of the soul. So long as the thing is there, the how of it does not matter. Infinite are the ways of manifestation and all of them the very highest and the most sublime, provided they are a manifestation of the soul itself, provided they rise and flow from the same level. Whether it is Agni or Indra, Varuna, Mitra or the Aswins, it is the same supreme and divine inflatus.
The cosmic soul is true. But that truth is b orne out, effectuated only by the truth of the individual soul. When the individual soul becomes itself fully and integrally, by that very fact it becomes also the cosmic soul. The individuals are the channels through which flows the Universal and the Infinite in its multiple emphasis. Each is a particular figure, aspectBhava, a particular angle of vision of All. The vision is entire and the figure perfect if it is not refracted by the lower and denser parts of our being. And f or that the individual must first come to itself and shine in its opal clarity and translucency.
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A colloquy of the original Gods
Meeting upon the b orders of the unknown,
--
Through all the long ordeal of the race,
Never a rarer creature b ore his shaft,
--
A magnanimity as of sea or sky
Enveloped with its greatness all that came
--
Since her orbed sight in its breath-fastened house,
Opening in sympathy with happier stars
--
A glowing orbit was her early term,
Years like gold raiment of the gods that pass;
--
Assigner of the ordeal and the path
Who chooses in this holocaust of the soul
--
To win or lose the godlike game f or man,
Was her soul's issue thrown with Destiny's dice.
--
Where all must move between an ordered Chance
And an uncaring blind Necessity,
--
If once it met the intense original Flame,
An answering touch might shatter all measures made
--
Patched not with failure bargain or compromise.
4.31
01.02 - The Object of the Integral Yoga, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
... the object of the Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine f or the Divine's sake alone, to be turned in our nature into nature of the Divine and in our will and w orks and life to be the instrument of the Divine. Its object is not to be a great Yogi or a superman (although that may come) or to grab at the Divine f or the sake of the ego's power, pride or pleasure.
It is not f or salvation though liberation comes by it and all else may come; but these must not be our objects. The Divine alone is our object.
--
Matter. Our object is not to remove all "limitations" on the expansion of the ego or to give a free field and make unlimited room f or the fulfilment of the ideas of the human mind or the desires of the ego-centred life-f orce. None of us are here to "do as we like", or to create a w orld in which we shall at last be able to do as we like; we are here to do what the Divine wills and to create a w orld in which the Divine Will can manifest its truth no longer def ormed by human ign orance or perverted and mistranslated by vital desire. The w ork which the sadhak of the supramental Yoga has to do is not his own w ork f or which he can lay down his own conditions, but the w ork of the Divine which he has to do acc ording to the conditions laid down by the Divine. Our Yoga is not f or our own sake but f or the sake of the Divine. It is not our own personal manifestation that we are to seek, the manifestation of the individual ego freed from all bounds and from all bonds, but the manifestation of the Divine. Of that manifestation our own spiritual liberation, perfection, fullness is to be a result and a part, but not in any egoistic sense or f or any ego-centred or self-seeking purpose.
This liberation, perfection, fullness too must not be pursued f or our own sake, but f or the sake of the Divine.
--
You must go inside yourself and enter into a complete dedication to the spiritual life. All clinging to mental preferences must fall away from you, all insistence on vital aims and interests and attachments must be put away, all egoistic clinging to family, friends, country must disappear if you want to succeed in Yoga. Whatever has to come as outgoing energy or action, must proceed from the Truth once discovered and not from the lower mental or vital motives, from the Divine Will and not from personal choice or the preferences of the ego.
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I would like to make a distinction between mystic poetry and spiritual poetry. To equate mysticism and spirituality is not always happy or even c orrect. Thus, when Tag ore sings:
Who comes along singing and steering his boat?
--
or the m ore occult yet luminously vibrant lines:
He stood upon a threshold serpent-watched,
--
When the Spirit speaks its own language in its own name, we have spiritual poetry. If, however, the Spirit speaksfrom choice or necessity-an alien language and manner, e.g., that of a profane consciousness, or of the consciousness of another domain, idealistic or philosophical or even occult, puts on or imitates spirit's language and manner, we have what we propose to call mystic poetry proper. When Samain sings of the body of the dancer:
Et Pannyre deviant fleur, flamme, papillon! ...
--
or when Mallarm describes the laurel flower:
Vermeil comme Iepur orteil du sraphin
Que rougit la pudeur des aur ores foules, 5
both so idealise, etherealize, almost spiritualise the earth and the flesh that they seem ostensibly only a vesture of something else behind, something mysterious and other-w orldly, something other than, even just opposite to what they actually are or appear to be. That is the mystique of the senses which is a very characteristic feature of some of the best poetic inspirations of France. Baudelaire too, the Satanic poet, by the sheer intensity of sympathy and sincerity, pierces as it were into the soul of things and makes the ugly, the unclean, the diseased, the s ordid throb and glow with an almost celestial light. Here is the Baudelairean manner:
Tout casss
--
It is not merely by addressing the beloved as your goddess that you can attain this mysticism; the Elizabethan did that in merry abundance,ad nauseam.A finer temper, a m ore delicate touch, a m ore subtle sensitiveness and a kind of artistic wizardry are necessary to tune the body into a rhythm of the spirit. The other line of mysticism is common enough, viz., to express the spirit in terms and rhythms of the flesh. Tag ore did that liberally, the Vaishnava poets did nothing but that, the Song of Solomon is an exquisite example of that procedure. There is here, however, a difference in degrees which is an interesting feature w orth noting. Thus in Tag ore the reference to the spirit is evident, that is the maj or or central ch ord; the earthly and the sensuous are meant as the name and f orm, as the body to render concrete, living and vibrant, near and intimate what otherwise would perhaps be vague and abstract, afar, aloof. But this mundane or human appearance has a value in so far as it is a supp ort, a pointer or symbol of the spiritual imp ort. And the mysticism lies precisely in the play of the two, a hide-and-seek between them. On the other hand, as I said, the greater p ortion of Vaishnava poetry, like a precious and beautiful casket, no doubt, hides the spiritual imp ort: not the pure significance but the sign and symbol are luxuriously elab orated, they are placed in the f oreground in all magnificence: as if it was their very purpose to conceal the real meaning. When the Vaishnava poet says,
O love, what m ore shall I, shall Radha speak,
--
there is nothing in the matter or manner which can indicate, to the uninitiated, any reference to the Spirit or the Divine. or this again,
I have gazed upon beauty from my very birth
--
they all give a very beautiful, a very poignant experience of love, but one does not know if it is love human or divine, if it is soul's love or mere bodily love.
The famous Song of Solomon too is not on a different footing, when the poet cries:
--
one can explain that it is the Christ calling the Church or God appealing to the human soul or one can simply find in it nothing m ore than a man pining f or his woman. Anyhow I would not call it spiritual poetry or even mystic poetry. F or in itself it does not carry any double or oblique meaning, there is no suggestion that it is applicable to other fields or domains of consciousness: it is, as it were, monovalent. An alleg ory is never mysticism. There is m ore mysticism in W ordsw orth, even in Shelley and Keats, than in Spenser, f or example, who stands in this respect on the same ground as Bunyan in his The Pilgrim's Progress. Take W ordsw orth as a Nature-w orshipper,
Breaking the silence of the seas
--
or W ordsw orth the Pagan,
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
or hear old Triton blow his wreathed h orn.9
I do not know if this is not mysticism, what else is. Neither is religious poetry true mysticism ( or true spirituality). I find m ore mysticism in
--
or these again equally fraught with an intense experience a quiet ingathered luminous consciousness:
I held my breath and from a w orld of din
--
But first let us go to the fans et origo, be acquainted with the very genuine article in its purity and perfection, in its essential simplicity. I do not know of any other ideal exemplar than the Upanishad. Thus,
There the sun shines not and the moon has no
--
or this one equally deep, luminous and revealing:
Even as one Fire hath entered into the w orld but
--
This is spiritual matter and spiritual manner that can never be improved upon. This is spiritual poetry in its quintessence. I am referring naturally here to the original and not to the translation which can never do full justice, even at its very best, to the poetic value in question. F or apart from the individual genius of the poet, the greatness of the language, the instrument used by the poet, is also involved. It may well be what is comparatively easy and natural in the language of the gods (devabhasha) would mean a tour de f orce, if not altogether an impossibility, in a human language. The Sanskrit language was moulded and fashioned in the hands of the Rishis, that is to say, those who lived and moved and had their being in the spiritual consciousness. The Hebrew or even the Zend does not seem to have reached that peak, that absoluteness of the spiritual tone which seems inherent in the Indian tongue, although those too breathed and grew in a spiritual atmosphere. The later languages, however, Greek or Latin or their modern descendants, have gone still farther from the source, they are much nearer to the earth and are suffused with the smell and effluvia of this vale of tears.
Among the ancients, strictly speaking, the later classical Lucretius was a remarkable phenomenon. By nature he was a poet, but his mental interest lay in metaphysical speculation, in philosophy, and unpoetical business. He turned away from arms and heroes, wrath and love and, like Seneca and Aurelius, gave himself up to m oralising and philosophising, delving 'into the mystery, the why and the how and the whither of it all. He chose a dangerous subject f or his poetic inspiration and yet it cannot be said that his attempt was a failure. Lucretius was not a religious or spiritual poet; he was rather Marxian,atheistic, materialistic. The dialectical materialism of today could find in him a lot of nourishment and supp ort. But whatever the content, the manner has made a whole difference. There was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity of perception, which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an accent, an atmosphere high, tense, aloof, ascetic, at times b ordering on the supra-sensual. It was a high light, a f orce of consciousness that at its highest pitch had the ring and vibration of something almost spiritual. F or the basic principle of Lucretius' inspiration is a large thought-f orce, a tense perception, a taut nervous reactionit is not, of course, the identity in being with the inner realities which is the hallmark of a spiritual consciousness, yet it is something on the way towards that.
There have been other philosophical poets, a good number of them since thennot merely rationally philosophical, as was the vogue in the eighteenth century, but metaphysically philosophical, that is to say, inquiring not merely into the phenomenal but also into the labyrinths of the noumenal, investigating not only what meets the senses, but also things that are behind or beyond. Amidst the earlier effl orescence of this movement the most outstanding philosopher poet is of course Dante, the Dante of Paradiso, a philosopher in the mediaeval manner and to the extent a lesser poet, acc ording to some. Goe the is another, almost in the grand modern manner. W ordsw orth is full of metaphysics from the crown of his head to the tip of his toe although his poetry, perhaps the maj or p ortion of it, had to undergo some kind of martyrdom because of it. And Shelley, the supremely lyric singer, has had a very rich undertone of thought-content genuinely metaphysical. And Browning and Arnold and Hardyindeed, if we come to the m ore moderns, we have to cite the whole host of them, none can be excepted.
We left out the Metaphysicals, f or they can be grouped as a set apart. They are not so much metaphysical as theological, religious. They have a brain-content stirring with theological problems and speculations, replete with scintillating conceits and intricate fancies. Perhaps it is because of this philosophical burden, this intellectual bias that the Metaphysicals went into obscurity f or about two centuries and it is precisely because of that that they are slowly coming out to the f orefront and assuming a special value with the moderns. F or the modern mind is characteristically thoughtful, introspective"introvert"and philosophical; even the exact physical sciences of today are rounded off in the end with metaphysics.
The growth of a philosophical thought-content in poetry has been inevitable. F or man's consciousness in its evolutionary march is driving towards a consummation which includes and presupposes a development along that line. The mot d' ordre in old-w orld poetry was "fancy", imaginationremember the famous lines of Shakespeare characterising a poet; in modern times it is Thought, even or perhaps particularly abstract metaphysical thought. Perceptions, experiences, realisationsof whatever order or w orld they may beexpressed in sensitive and aesthetic terms and figures, that is poetry known and appreciated familiarly. But a new turn has been coming on with an increasing insistencea definite time has been given to that, since the Renaissance, it is said: it is the growing imp ortance of Thought or brain-power as a medium or atmosphere in which poetic experiences find a sober and clear articulation, a definite and strong f ormulation. Rationalisation of all experiences and realisations is the keynote of the modern mentality. Even when it is said that reason and rationality are not ultimate or final or significant realities, that the irrational or the submental plays a greater role in our consciousness and that art and poetry likewise should be the expression of such a mentality, even then, all this is said and done in and through a strong rational and intellectual stress and frame the like of which cannot be found in the old-w orld frankly non-intellectual creations.
The religious, the mystic or the spiritual man was, in the past, m ore or Jess methodically and absolutely non-intellectual and anti-intellectual: but the modern age, the age of scientific culture, is tending to make him as strongly intellectual: he has to explain, not only present the object but show up its mechanism alsoexplain to himself so that he may have a total understanding and a firmer grasp of the thing which he presents and explains to others as well who demand a similar approach. He feels the necessity of explaining, giving the rationality the rationale the science, of his art; f or without that, it appears to him, a solid ground is not given to the structure of his experience: analytic power, preoccupation with methodology seems inherent in the modern creative consciousness.
The philosophical trend in poetry has an interesting hist ory with a significant role: it has acted as a f orce of purification, of sublimation, of katharsis. As man has risen from his exclusively or predominantly vital nature into an increasing mental poise, in the same way his creative activities too have taken this new turn and status. In the earlier stages of evolution the mental life is secondary, sub ordinate to the physico-vital life; it is only subsequently that the mental finds an independent and self-sufficient reality. A similar movement is reflected in poetic and artistic creation too: the thinker, the philosopher remains in the background at the outset, he looks out; peers through chinks and holes from time to time; later he comes to the f orefront, assumes a maj or role in man's creative activity.
Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over-mental regions. Acc ordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. F or this transition, the higher mentalwhich is n ormally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercess or; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a m ore luminous pattern, a m ore subtly articulated , f orm f or the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and manifest. In the old-w orld spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked f or evident reasons, f or human reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the n ormal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to f orge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a m ore ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in f or something m ore radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or sub ordinate or contri buting fact or, must itself give its n orm and f orm, its own substance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day demand.
The earliest preoccupation of man was religious; even when he concerned himself with the w orld and w orldly things, he referred all that to the other w orld, thought of gods and goddesses, of after-death and other where. That also will be his last and ultimate preoccupation though in a somewhat different way, when he has passed through a process of purification and growth, a "sea-change". F or although religion is an aspiration towards the truth and reality beyond or behind the w orld, it is married too much to man's actual w orldly nature and carries always with it the shadow of profanity.
The religious poet seeks to tone down or cover up the mundane taint, since he does not know how to transcend it totally, in two ways: (1) by a strong thought-element, the metaphysical way, as it may be called and (2) by a strong symbolism, the occult way. Donne takes to the first course, Blake the second. And it is the alchemy brought to bear in either of these processes that transf orms the merely religious into the mystic poet. The truly spiritual, as I have said, is still a higher grade of consciousness: what I call Spirit's own poetry has its own matter and mannerswabhava and swadharma. A nearest approach to it is echoed in those famous lines of Blake:
To see a W orld in a grain of Sand,
--
or this simple single line pregnant no less with the self-same fullness:
An eye awake in voiceless heights of trance, ||8.8||
This, I say, is something different from the religious and even from the mystic. It is away from the merely religious, because it is naked of the vesture of humanity (in spite of a human face that masks it at times) ; it is something m ore than the merely mystic, f or it does not stop being a signpost or an indication to the Beyond, but is itself the presence and embodiment of the Beyond. The mystic gives us, we can say, the magic of the Infinite; what I term the spiritual, the spiritual proper, gives in addition the logic of the Infinite. At least this is what distinguishes modern spiritual consciousness from the ancient, that is, Upanishadic spiritual consciousness. The Upanishad gives expression to the spiritual consciousness in its original and pristine purity and perfection, in its essential simplicity. It did not buttress itself with any logic. It is the rec ord of fundamental experiences and there was no question of any logical exposition. But, as I have said, the modern mind requires and demands a logical element in its perceptions and presentations. Also it must needs be a different kind of logic that can satisfy and satisfy wholly the deeper and subtler movements of a modern consciousness. F or the philosophical poet of an earlier age, when he had recourse to logic, it was the logic of the finite that always gave him the frame, unless he threw the whole thing overboard and leaped straight into the occult, the illogical and the a logical, like Blake, f or instance. Let me illustrate and compare a little. When the older poet explains indriyani hayan ahuh, it is an alleg ory he res orts to, it is the logic of the finite he marshals to point to the infinite and the beyond. The stress of reason is apparent and effective too, but the pattern is what we are n ormally familiar with the movement, we can say, is almost Aristotelian in its rigour. Now let us turn to the following:
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme. ||26.15||
--
or this chiselled bit of diamond,
An inconscient Power groped towards consciousness,
--
Here we have a pattern of thought-movement that does not seem to follow the lineaments of the n ormal brain-mind consciousness, although it too has a basis there: our customary line of reasoning receives a sudden shock, as it were, and then is shaken, moved, lifted up, transp ortedgradually or suddenly, acc ording to the temperament of the listener. Besides, we have here the peculiar modern tone, which, f or want of a better term, may be described as scientific. The impressimprimaturof Science is its rational coherence, justifying or justified by sense data, by physical experience, which gives us the pattern or model of an inex orable natural law. Here too we feel we are in the domain of such natural law but lifted on to a higher level.
This is what I was trying to make out as the distinguishing trait of the real spiritual consciousness that seems to be developing in the poetic creation of tom orrow, e.g., it has the same rationality, clarity, concreteness of perception as the scientific spirit has in its own domain and still it is rounded off with a halo of magic and miracle. That is the nature of the logic of the infinite proper to the spiritual consciousness. We can have a Science of the Spirit as well as a Science of Matter. This is the Thought element or what c orresponds to it, of which I was speaking, the philosophical fact or, that which gives f orm to the f ormless or definition to that which is vague, a nearness and familiarity to that which is far and alien. The fullness of the spiritual consciousness means such a thing, the presentation of a divine name and f orm. And this distinguishes it from the mystic consciousness which is not the supreme solar consciousness but the nearest approach to it. or, perhaps, the mystic dwells in the domain of the Divine, he may even be suffused with a sense of unity but would not like to acquire the Divine's nature and function. N ormally and generally he embodies all the aspiration and yearning moved by intimations and suggestions belonging to the human mentality, the divine urge retaining still the human flavour. We can say also, using a Vedantic terminology, that the mystic consciousness gives us the tatastha lakshana, the nearest approximative attri bute of the attri buteless; or otherwise, it is the hiranyagarbha consciousness which englobes the multiple play, the c oruscated possibilities of the Reality: while the spiritual proper may be considered as prajghana, the solid mass, the essential lineaments of revelat ory knowledge, the typal "wave-particles" of the Reality. In the f ormer there is a play of imagination, even of fancy, a dec orative aesthesis, while in the latter it is vision pure and simple. If the spiritual poetry is solar in its nature, we can say, by extending the analogy, that mystic poetry is characteristically lunarMoon representing the delight and the magic that Mind and mental imagination, suffused, no doubt, with a light or a reflection of some light from beyond, is capable of (the Upanishad speaks of the Moon being b orn of the Mind).
To sum up and recapitulate. The evolution of the poetic expression in man has ever been an attempt at a return and a progressive approach to the spiritual source of poetic inspiration, which was also the original, though somewhat veiled, source from the very beginning. The movement has followed devious waysstrongly negative at timeseven like man's life and consciousness in general of which it is an organic member; but the ultimate end and drift seems to have been always that ideal and principle even when fallen on evil days and evil tongues. The poet's ideal in the dawn of the w orld was, as the Vedic Rishi sang, to raise things of beauty in heaven by his poetic power,kavi kavitv divi rpam sajat. Even a Satanic poet, the inaugurat or, in a way, of modernism and modernistic consciousness, Charles Baudelaire, thus admonishes his spirit:
"Flyaway, far from these m orbid miasmas, go and purify yourself in the higher air and drink, like a pure and divine liqu or, the clear fire that fills the limpid spaces."18
--
Poetry, actually however, has been, by and large, a profane and mundane affair: f or it expresses the n ormal man's perceptions and feelings and experiences, human loves and hates and desires and ambitions. True. And yet there has also always been an attempt, a tendency to deal with them in such a way as can bring calm and puritykatharsisnot trouble and confusion. That has been the purpose of all Art from the ancient days. Besides, there has been a growth and development in the hist oric process of this katharsis. As by the sublimation of his bodily and vital instincts and impulses., man is gradually growing into the mental, m oral and finally spiritual consciousness, even so the artistic expression of his creative activity has followed a similar line of transf ormation. The first and original transf ormation happened with religious poetry. The religious, one may say, is the profane inside out; that is to say, the religious man has almost the same tone and temper, the same urges and passions, only turned Godward. Religious poetry too marks a new turn and development of human speech, in taking the name of God human tongue acquires a new plasticity and flavour that transf orm or give a new modulation even to things profane and mundane it speaks of. Religious means at bottom the colouring of mental and m oral idealism. A parallel process of katharsis is found in another class of poetic creation, viz., the alleg ory. Alleg ory or parable is the stage when the higher and inner realities are expressed wholly in the modes and manner, in the f orm and character of the n ormal and external, when m oral, religious or spiritual truths are expressed in the terms and figures of the profane life. The higher or the inner ideal is like a loose clothing upon the ordinary consciousness, it does not fit closely or fuse. In the religious, however, the first step is taken f or a mingling and fusion. The mystic is the beginning of a real fusion and a considerable ascension of the lower into the higher. The philosopher poet follows another line f or the same katharsisinstead of uplifting emotions and sensibility, he proceeds by thought-power, by the ideas and principles that lie behind all movements and give a pattern to all things existing. The mystic can be of either type, the religious mystic or the philosopher mystic, although often the two are welded together and cannot be very well separated. Let us illustrate a little:
The spacious firmament on high,
--
Their great original proclaim.20
This is religious poetry, pure and simple, expressing man's earliest and most elementary feeling, marked by a broad candour, a rather shallow monotone. But that feeling is raised to a pitch of fervour and scintillating sensibility in Vaughan's
--
But all that is left far behind, when we hear a new voice announcing an altogether new manner, revelat ory of the truly and supremely spiritual consciousness, not simply mystic or religious but magically occult and carved out of the highest if recondite philosophia:
A finite movement of the Infinite
01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is Reason, the faculty that is said to be the proud privilege of man, the sovereign instrument he alone possesses f or the purpose of knowing? What is the value of knowledge that Reason gives? F or it is the manner of knowing, the particular faculty or instrument by which we know, that determines the nature and content of knowledge. Reason is the collecting of available sense-perceptions and a certain mode of w orking upon them. It has three component elements that have been defined as observation, classification and deduction. Now, the very composition of Reason shows that it cannot be a perfect instrument of knowledge; the limitations are the inherent limitations of the component elements. As regards observation there is a two-fold limitation. First, observation is a relative term and variable quantity. One observes through the prism of one's own observing faculty, through the bias of one's own personality and no two persons can have absolutely the same manner of observation. So Science has recognised the necessity of personal equation and has created an imaginary observer, a "mean man" as the standard of reference. And this already takes us far away from the truth, from the reality. Secondly, observation is limited by its scope. All the facts of the w orld, all sense-perceptions possible and actual cannot be included within any observation however large, however collective it may be. We have to go always upon a limited amount of data, we are able to construct only a partial and sketchy view of the surface of existence. And then it is these few and doubtful facts that Reason seeks to arrange and classify. That classification may hold good f or certain immediate ends, f or a temp orary understanding of the w orld and its f orces, either in order to satisfy our curiosity or to gain some practical utility. F or when we want to consider the w orld only in its immediate relation to us, a few and even doubtful facts are sufficient the m ore immediate the relation, the m ore immaterial the doubtfulness and insufficiency of facts. We may quite confidently go a step in darkness, but to walk a mile we do require light and certainty. Our scientific classification has a background of uncertainty, if not, of falsity; and our deduction also, even while c orrect within a very narrow range of space and time, cannot escape the fundamental vices of observation and classification upon which it is based.
It might be said, however, that the guarantee or sanction of Reason does not lie in the extent of its application, n or can its subjective nature ( or ego-centric predication, as philosophers would term it) vitiate the validity of its conclusions. There is, in fact, an inherent unity and harmony between Reason and Reality. If we know a little of Reality, we know the whole; if we know the subjective, we know also the objective. As in the part, so in the whole; as it is within, so it is without. If you say that I will die, you need not wait f or my actual death to have the proof of your statement. The generalising power inherent in Reason is the guarantee of the certitude to which it leads. Reason is valid, as it does not betray us. If it were such as anti-intellectuals make it out to be, we would be making nothing but false steps, would always remain entangled in contradictions. The very success of Reason is proof of its being a reliable and perfect instrument f or the knowledge of Truth and Reality. It is beside the mark to prove otherwise, simply by analysing the nature of Reason and showing the fundamental deficiencies of that nature. It is rather to the credit of Reason that being as it is, it is none the less a successful and trustw orthy agent.
Now the question is, does Reason never fail? Is it such a perfect instrument as intellectualists think it to be? There is ground f or serious misgivings. Reason says, f or example, that the earth revolves round the sun: and reason, it is argued, is right, f or we see that all the facts are conf ormableto it, even facts that were hitherto unknown and are now coming into our ken. But the difficulty is that Reason did not say that always in the past and may not say that always in the future. The old astronomers could explain the universe by holding quite a contrary the ory and could fit into it all their astronomical data. A future scientist may come and explain the matter in quite a different way from either. It is only a choice of w orkable the ories that Reason seems to offer; we do not know the fact itself, apart perhaps from exactly the amount that immediate sense-perception gives to each of us. or again, if we take an example of another categ ory, we may ask, does God exist? A candid Rationalist would say that he does not know although he has his own opinion about the matter. Evidently, Reason cannot solve all the problems that it meets; it can judge only truths that are of a certain type.
It may be answered that Reason is a faculty which gives us progressive knowledge of the reality, but as a knowing instrument it is perfect, at least it is the only instrument at our disposal; even if it gives a false, incomplete or blurred image of the reality, it has the means and capacity of c orrecting and completing itself. It offers the ories, no doubt; but what are the ories? They are simply the gradually increasing adaptation of the knowing subject to the object to be known, the evolving revelation of reality to our perception of it. Reason is the power which carries on that process of adaptation and revelation; we can safely rely upon Reason and trust It to carry on its w ork with increasing success.
But in knowledge it is precisely finality that we seek f or and no mere progressive, asymptotic, rapprochement ad infinitum. No less than the Practical Reason, the The oretical Reason also demands a categ orical imperative, a clean affirmation or denial. If Reason cannot do that, it must be regarded as inefficient. It is po or consolation to man that Reason is gradually finding out the truth or that it is trying to grapple with the problems of God, Soul and Imm ortality and will one day pronounce its verdict. Whether we have or have not any other instrument of knowledge is a different question altogether. But in the meanwhile Reason stands condemned by the evidence of its own limitation.
It may be ret orted that if Reason is condemned, it is condemned by itself and by no other auth ority. All argumentation against Reason is a function of Reason itself. The deficiencies of Reason we find out by the rational faculty alone. If Reason was to die, it is because it consents to commit suicide; there is no other power that kills it. But to this our answer is that Reason has this miraculous power of self-destruction; or, to put it philosophically, Reason is, at best, an organ of self-criticism and perhaps the organ par excellence f or that purpose. But criticism is one thing and creation another. And whether we know or act, it is fundamentally a process of creation; at least, without this element of creation there can be no knowledge, no act. In knowledge there is a luminous creativity, Revelation or Categ orical Imperative which Reason does not and cannot supply but vaguely strains to seize. F or that element we have to search elsewhere, not in Reason.
Does this mean that real knowledge is irrational or against Reason? Not so necessarily. There is a super-rational power f or knowledge and Reason may either be a channel or an obstacle. If we take our stand upon Reason and then proceed to know, if we take the f orms and categ ories of Reason as the inviolable schemata of knowledge, then indeed Reason becomes an obstacle to that super-rational power. If, on the other hand, Reason does not offer any set-f orm from bef orehand, does not insist upon its own conditions, is passive and simply receives and reflects what is given to it, then it becomes a luminous and sure channel f or that higher and real knowledge.
The fact is that Reason is a lower manifestation of knowledge, it is an attempt to express on the mental level a power that exceeds it. It is the section of a vast and unitarian Consciousness-Power; the section may be necessary under certain conditions and circumstances, but unless it is viewed in its relation to the ensemble, unless it gives up its exclusive absolutism, it will be perf orce arbitrary and misleading. It would still remain helpful and useful, but its help and use would be always limited in scope and temp orary in effectivity.
01.03 - Sri Aurobindo and his School, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A considerable amount of vague misunderstanding and misapprehension seems to exist in the minds of a certain section of our people as to what Sri Aurobindo is doing in his retirement at Pondicherry. On the other hand, a very precise exposition, an exact f ormula of what he is not doing has been curiously furnished by a well-known patriot in his indictment of what he chooses to call the Pondicherry School of contemplation. But he has arrived at this f ormula by openly and fearlessly affirming what does not exist; f or the things that Sri Aurobindo is accused of doing are just the things that he is not doing. In the first place, Sri Aurobindo is not doing peaceful contemplation; in the second place, he is not doing active propaganda either; in the third place, he is not doing prnyma or even dhyna in the ordinary sense of the w ord; and, lastly, he is not proclaiming or following the maxim that although action may be tolerated as good, his particular brand of Yoga is something higher and better.
Evidently the eminent politician and his school of activism are labouring under a Himalayan confusion: when they speak of Sri Aurobindo, they really have in their mind some of the old schools of spiritual discipline. But one of the marked aspects of Sri Aurobindo's teaching and practice has been precisely his insistence on putting aside the inert and life-shunning quietism, illusionism, asceticism and monasticism of a latter-day and decadent India. These ideals are perhaps as much obstacles in his way as in the way of the activistic school. Only Sri Aurobindo has not had the temerity to say that it is a weakness to seek refuge in contemplation or to suggest that a Buddha was a weakling or a Shankara a poltroon.
This much as regards what Sri Aurobindo is not doing; let us now turn and try to understand what he is doing. The distinguished man of action speaks of conquering Nature and fighting her. Adopting this war-like imagery, we can affirm that Sri Aurobindo's w ork is just such a battle and conquest. But the question is, what is nature and what is the kind of conquest that is sought, how are we to fight and what are the required arms and implements? A good general should f oresee all this, frame his plan of campaign acc ordingly and then only take the field. The above-mentioned leader proposes ceaseless and unselfish action as the way to fight and conquer Nature. He who speaks thus does not know and cannot mean what he says.
European science is conquering Nature in a way. It has attained to a certain kind and measure, in some fields a great measure, of control and conquest; but however great or striking it may be in its own province, it does not touch man in his m ore intimate reality and does not bring about any true change in his destiny or his being. F or the most vital part of nature is the region of the life-f orces, the powers of disease and age and death, of strife and greed and lustall the instincts of the brute in man, all the dark ab original f orces, the f orces of ign orance that f orm the very groundw ork of man's nature and his society. And then, as we rise next to the w orld of the mind, we find a twilight region where falsehood masquerades as truth, where prejudices move as realities, where notions rule as ideals.
This is the present nature of man, with its threefold nexus of mind and life and body, that stands there to be fought and conquered. This is the inferi or nature, of which the ancients spoke, that holds man down inex orably to a lower dharma, imperfect mode of life the life that is and has been the human order till today. No amount of ceaseless action, however selflessly done, can move this wheel of Nature even by a hair's breadth away from the path that it has carved out from of old. Human nature and human society have been built up and are run by the f orces of this inferi or nature, and whatever shuffling and reshuffling we may make in its apparent fact ors and elements, the general scheme and fundamental f orm of life will never change. To displace earth (and to conquer nature means nothing less than that) and give it another orbit, one must find a fulcrum outside earth.
Sri Aurobindo does not preach flight from life and a retreat into the silent and passive Infinite; the goal of life is not, in his view, the extinction of life. Neither is he satisfied on that account to hold that life is best lived in the ordinary round of its unregenerate dharma. If the first is a blind alley, the second is a vicious circle,both lead nowhere.
Sri Aurobindo's sadhana starts from the perception of a Power that is beyond the ordinary nature yet is its inevitable master, a fulcrum, as we have said, outside the earth. F or what is required first is the discovery and manifestation of a new soul-consciousness in man which will bring about by the very pressure and w orking out of its self-rule an absolute reversal of man's nature. It is the Asuras who are now holding sway over humanity, f or man has allowed himself so long to be built in the image of the Asura; to dislodge the Asuras, the Gods in their sovereign might have to be f orged in the human being and brought into play. It is a stupendous task, some would say impossible; but it is very far removed from quietism or passivism. Sri Aurobindo is in retirement, but it is a retirement only from the outward field of present physical activities and their apparent actualities, not from the true f orces and action of life. It is the retreat necessary to one who has to go back into himself to conquer a new plane of creative power,an entrance right into the w orld of basic f orces, of fundamental realities, into the flaming heart of things where all actualities are b orn and take their first shape. It is the discovery of a power-house of tremendous energism and of the means of putting it at the service of earthly life.
And, properly speaking, it is not at all a school, least of all a mere school of thought, that is growing round Sri Aurobindo. It is rather the nucleus of a new life that is to come. Quite naturally it has almost insignificant prop ortions at present to the outward eye, f or the w ork is still of the nature of experiment and trial in very restricted limits, something in the nature of what is done in a lab orat ory when a new power has been discovered, but has still to be perfectly f ormulated in its process. And it is quite a mistake to suppose that there is a vig orous propaganda carried on in its behalf or that there is a large demand f or recruits. Only the few, who possess the call within and are impelled by the spirit of the future, have a chance of serving this high attempt and great realisation and standing among its first instruments and pioneer w orkers.
***
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A strength of the original Permanence
Entangled in the moment and its flow,
--
A search f or something or someone never found,
Cult of an ideal never made real here,
--
Entered in currents or in pouring waves
Into the immobile ocean of his calm.
--
There came not f orm or any mounting voice;
There only were Silence and the Absolute.
--
The magician order of the cosmic Mind
Coercing the freedom of infinity
--
In the immutable nameless origin
Was seen emerging as from fathomless seas
--
The original Desire b orn in the Void
Peered out; he saw the hope that never sleeps,
--
A mechanism no m ore or w ork of Chance,
But a living movement of the body of God.
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:01.03 - Yoga and the ordinary Life
class:chapter
In the Yoga practised here the aim is to rise to a higher consciousness and to live out of the higher consciousness alone, not with the ordinary motives. This means a change of life as well as a change of consciousness. But all are not so circumstanced that they can cut loose from the ordinary life; they accept it theref ore as a field of experience and self-training in the earlier stages of the sadhana. But they must take care to look at it as a field of experience only and to get free from the ordinary desires, attachments and ideas which usually go with it; otherwise it becomes a drag and hindrance on their sadhana. When one is not compelled by circumstances there is no necessity to continue the ordinary life.
It is not helpful to abandon the ordinary life bef ore the being is ready f or the full spiritual life. To do so means to precipitate a struggle between the different elements and exasperate it to a point of intensity which the nature is not ready to bear. The vital elements in you have partly to be met by the discipline and experience of life, while keeping the spiritual aim in view and trying to govern life by it progressively in the spirit of Karmayoga.
The best way to prepare oneself f or the spiritual life when one has to live in the ordinary occupations and surroundings is to cultivate an entire equality and detachment and the samata of the Gita with the faith that the Divine is there and the Divine Will at w ork in all things even though at present under the conditions of a w orld of Ign orance. Beyond this are the Light and Ananda towards which life is w orking, but the best way f or their advent and foundation in the individual being and nature is to grow in this spiritual equality. That would also solve your difficulty about things unpleasant and disagreeable. All unpleasantness should be faced with this spirit of samata.
I may say briefly that there are two states of consciousness in either of which one can live. One is a higher consciousness which stands above the play of life and governs it; this is variously called the Self, the Spirit or the Divine. The other is the n ormal consciousness in which men live; it is something quite superficial, an instrument of the Spirit f or the play of life. Those who live and act in the n ormal consciousness are governed entirely by the common movements of the mind and are naturally subject to grief and joy and anxiety and desire or to everything else that makes up the ordinary stuff of life.
Mental quiet and happiness they can get, but it can never be permanent or secure. But the spiritual consciousness is all light, peace, power and bliss. If one can live entirely in it, there is no question; these things become naturally and securely his.
But even if he can live partly in it or keep himself constantly open to it, he receives enough of this spiritual light and peace and strength and happiness to carry him securely through all the shocks of life. What one gains by opening to this spiritual consciousness, depends on what one seeks from it; if it is peace, one gets peace; if it is light or knowledge, one lives in a great light and receives a knowledge deeper and truer than any the n ormal mind of man can acquire; if it [is] strength or power, one gets a spiritual strength f or the inner life or Yogic power to govern the outer w ork and action; if it is happiness, one enters into a beatitude far greater than any joy or happiness that the ordinary human life can give.
There are many ways of opening to this Divine consciousness or entering into it. My way which I show to others is by a constant practice to go inward into oneself, to open by aspiration to the Divine and once one is conscious of it and its action to give oneself to It entirely. This self-giving means not to ask f or anything but the constant contact or union with the Divine Consciousness, to aspire f or its peace, power, light and felicity, but to ask nothing else and in life and action to be its instrument only f or whatever w ork it gives one to do in the w orld. If one can once open and feel the Divine F orce, the
Power of the Spirit w orking in the mind and heart and body, the rest is a matter of remaining faithful to It, calling f or it always, allowing it to do its w ork when it comes and rejecting every other and inferi or F orce that belongs to the lower consciousness and the lower nature.
Apart from external things there are two possible inner ideals which a man can follow. The first is the highest ideal of ordinary human life and the other the divine ideal of Yoga.
I must say in view of something you seem to have said to your father that it is not the object of the one to be a great man or the object of the other to be a great Yogin. The ideal of human life is to establish over the whole being the control of a clear, strong and rational mind and a right and rational will, to master the emotional, vital and physical being, create a harmony of the whole and develop the capacities whatever they are and fulfil them in life. In the terms of Hindu thought, it is to enthrone the rule of the purified and sattwic buddhi, follow the dharma, fulfilling one's own svadharma and doing the w ork proper to one's capacities, and satisfy kama and artha under the control of the buddhi and the dharma. The object of the divine life, on the other hand, is to realise one's highest self or to realise
God and to put the whole being into harmony with the truth of the highest self or the law of the divine nature, to find one's own divine capacities great or small and fulfil them in life as a sacrifice to the highest or as a true instrument of the divine
Sakti.
The spiritual life (adhyatma jvana), the religious life (dharma jvana) and the ordinary human life of which m orality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not confuse the three together. The ordinary life is that of the average human consciousness separated from its own true self and from the Divine and led by the common habits of the mind, life and body which are the laws of the Ign orance.
The religious life is a movement of the same ign orant human consciousness, turning or trying to turn away from the earth towards the Divine but as yet without knowledge and led by the dogmatic tenets and rules of some sect or creed which claims to have found the way out of the bonds of the earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond. The religious life may be the first approach to the spiritual, but very often it is only a turning about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and f orms without any issue. The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ign orant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine. F or the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters.
M orality is a part of the ordinary life; it is an attempt to govern the outward conduct by certain mental rules or to f orm the character by these rules in the image of a certain mental ideal. The spiritual life goes beyond the mind; it enters into the deeper consciousness of the Spirit and acts out of the truth of the Spirit.
The principle of life which I seek to establish is spiritual.
01.04 - Motives for Seeking the Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Divine F orce to aid him in keeping his health or recovering it if he does that as part of his sadhana so that his body may be able and fit f or the spiritual life and a capable instrument f or the
Divine W ork.
Let us first put aside the quite f oreign consideration of what we would do if the union with the Divine brought eternal joylessness, Nirananda or t orture. Such a thing does not exist and to drag it in only clouds the issue. The Divine is Anandamaya and one can seek him f or the Ananda he gives; but he has also in him many other things and one may seek him f or any of them, f or peace, f or liberation, f or knowledge, f or power, f or anything else of which one may feel the pull or the impulse. It is quite possible f or someone to say: "Let me have Power from the
Divine and do His w ork or His will and I am satisfied, even if the use of Power entails suffering also." It is possible to shun bliss as a thing too tremendous or ecstatic and ask only or rather f or peace, f or liberation, f or Nirvana. You speak of self-fulfilment,
- one may regard the Supreme not as the Divine but as one's highest Self and seek fulfilment of one's being in that highest Self; but one need not envisage it as a self of bliss, ecstasy, Ananda - one may envisage it as a self of freedom, vastness, knowledge, tranquillity, strength, calm, perfection - perhaps too calm f or a ripple of anything so disturbing as joy to enter. So even if it is f or something to be gained that one approaches the Divine, it is not a fact that one can approach Him or seek union only f or the sake of Ananda and nothing else.
That involves something which throws all your reasoning out of gear. F or these are aspects of the Divine Nature, powers of it, states of his being, - but the Divine Himself is something absolute, someone self-existent, not limited by his aspects, - wonderful and ineffable, not existing by them, but they existing because of him. It follows that if he attracts by his aspects, all the m ore he can attract by his very absolute selfness which is sweeter, mightier, profounder than any aspect. His peace, rapture, light, freedom, beauty are marvellous and ineffable, because he is himself magically, mysteriously, transcendently marvellous and ineffable. He can then be sought after f or his wonderful and ineffable self and not only f or the sake of one aspect or another of him. The only thing needed f or that is, first, to arrive at a point when the psychic being feels this pull of the Divine in himself and, secondly, to arrive at the point when the mind, vital and each thing else begins to feel too that that was what it was wanting and the surface hunt after Ananda or what else was only an excuse f or drawing the nature towards that supreme magnet.
Your argument that because we know the union with the
Divine will bring Ananda, theref ore it must be f or the Ananda that we seek the union, is not true and has no f orce. One who loves a queen may know that if she returns his love it will bring him power, position, riches and yet it need not be f or the power, position, riches that he seeks her love. He may love her f or herself and could love her equally if she were not a queen; he might have no hope of any return whatever and yet love her, ad ore her, live f or her, die f or her simply because she is she. That has happened and men have loved women without any hope of enjoyment or result, loved steadily, passionately after age has come and beauty has gone. Patriots do not love their country only when she is rich, powerful, great and has much to give them; their love f or country has been most ardent, passionate, absolute when the country was po or, degraded, miserable, having nothing to give but loss, wounds, t orture, imprisonment, death as the wages of her service; yet even knowing that they would never see her free, men have lived, served and died f or her - f or her own sake, not f or what she could give. Men have loved Truth f or her own sake and f or what they could seek or find of her, accepted poverty, persecution, death itself; they have been content even to seek f or her always, not finding, and yet never given up the search.
That means what? That men, country, Truth and other things besides can be loved f or their own sake and not f or anything else, not f or any circumstance or attendant quality or resulting enjoyment, but f or something absolute that is either in them or behind their appearance and circumstance. The Divine is m ore than a man or woman, a stretch of land or a creed, opinion, discovery or principle. He is the Person beyond all persons, the
Home and Country of all souls, the Truth of which truths are only imperfect figures. And can He then not be loved and sought f or his own sake, as and m ore than these have been by men even in their lesser selves and nature?
What your reasoning ign ores is that which is absolute or tends towards the absolute in man and his seeking as well as in the Divine - something not to be explained by mental reasoning or vital motive. A motive, but a motive of the soul, not of vital desire; a reason not of the mind, but of the self and spirit. An asking too, but the asking that is the soul's inherent aspiration, not a vital longing. That is what comes up when there is the sheer self-giving, when "I seek you f or this, I seek you f or that" changes to a sheer "I seek you f or you." It is that marvellous and ineffable absolute in the Divine that Krishnaprem means when he says, "Not knowledge n or this n or that, but Krishna."
The pull of that is indeed a categ orical imperative, the self in us drawn to the Divine because of the imperative call of its greater Self, the soul ineffably drawn towards the object of its ad oration, because it cannot be otherwise, because it is it and
--
I have written all that only to explain what we mean when we speak of seeking the Divine f or himself and not f or anything else - so far as it is explicable. Explicable or not, it is one of the most dominant facts of spiritual experience. The call to selfgiving is only an expression of this fact. But this does not mean that I object to your asking f or Ananda. Ask f or that by all means, so long as to ask f or it is a need of any part of your being
- f or these are the things that lead on towards the Divine so long as the absolute inner call that is there all the time does not push itself to the surface. But it is really that that has drawn from the beginning and is there behind - it is the categ orical spiritual imperative, the absolute need of the soul f or the Divine.
01.04 - Sri Aurobindos Gita, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The supreme secret of the Gita, rahasyam uttamam, has presented itself to diverse minds in diverse f orms. All these however fall, roughly speaking, into two broad groups of which one may be termed the orthodox school and the other the modem school. The orthodox school as represented, f or example, by Shankara or Sridhara, viewed the Gita in the light of the spiritual discipline m ore or less current in those ages, when the purpose of life was held out to be emancipation from life, whether through desireless w ork or knowledge or devotion or even a combination of the three. The Modern School, on the other hand, represented by Bankim in Bengal and m ore th oroughly developed and systematised in recent times by Tilak, is inspired by its own Time-Spirit and finds in the Gita a gospel of life-fulfilment. The older interpretation laid stress upon a spiritual and religious, which meant theref ore in the end an other-w orldly discipline; the newer interpretation seeks to dynamise the m ore or less quietistic spirituality which held the ground in India of later ages, to set a premium upon action, upon duty that is to be done in our w orkaday life, though with a spiritual intent and motive.
This neo-spirituality which might claim its sanction and auth ority from the real old-w orld Indian disciplinesay, of Janaka and Yajnavalkyalabours, however, in reality, under the influence of European activism and ethicism. It was this which served as the immediate incentive to our spiritual revival and revaluation and its impress has not been th oroughly obliterated even in the best of our modern exponents. The bias of the vital urge and of the m oral imperative is apparent enough in the modernist conception of a dynamic spirituality. Fundamentally the dynamism is made to reside in the lan of the ethical man,the spiritual element, as a consciousness of supreme unity in the Absolute (Brahman) or of love and delight in God, serving only as an atmosphere f or the m ortal activity.
Sri Aurobindo has raised action completely out of the mental and m oral plane and has given it an absolute spiritual life. Action has been spiritualised by being carried back to its very source and origin, f or it is the expression in life of God's own Consciousness-Energy (Chit-Shakti).
The Supreme Spirit, Purushottama, who holds in himself the dual reality of Brahman and the w orld, is the master of action who acts but in actionlessness, the L ord in whom and through whom the universes and their creatures live and move and have their being. Karmayoga is union in mind and soul and body with the L ord of action in the execution of his cosmic purpose. And this union is effected through a transf ormation of the human nature, through the revelation of the Divine Prakriti and its descent upon and possession of the inferi or human vehicle.
--
The higher secret of the Gita lies really in the later chapters, the earlier chapters being a preparation and passage to it orpartial and practical application. This has to be pointed out, since there is a notion current which seeks to limit the Gita's effective teaching to the earlier part, neglecting or even discarding the later p ortion.
The style and manner of Sri Aurobindo's interpretation1 is also supremely characteristic: it does not carry the impress of a mere metaphysical dissertation-although in matter it clothes throughout a profound philosophy; it is throbbing with the luminous life of a prophet's message, it is instinct with something of the Gita's own mantraakti.
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
All movementswhe ther of thought or of life, whether in the individual or in the massproceed from a fundamental intuition which lies in the background as the logical presupposition, the psychological motive and the spiritual f orce. A certain attitude of the soul, a certain angle of vision is what is posited first; all other thingsall thoughts and feelings and activities are but necessary attempts to express, to demonstrate, to realise on the conscious and dynamic levels, in the outer w orld, the truth which has thus already been seized in some secret c ore of our being. The intuition may not, of course, be present to the conscious mind, it may not be ostensibly sought f or, one may even deny the existence of such a preconceived notion and proceed to establish truth on a tabula rasa; none the less it is this hidden bias that judges, this secret consciousness that f ormulates, this unknown power that fashions.
Now, what is the intuition that lies behind the movements of the new age? What is the intimate realisation, the underlying view-point which is guiding and modelling all our eff orts and achievementsour science and art, our poetry and philosophy, our religion and society? F or, there is such a common and fundamental note which is being voiced f orth by the human spirit through all the multitude of its present-day activities.
A new impulse is there, no one can deny, and it has vast possibilities bef ore it, that also one need not hesitate to accept. But in order that we may best fructuate what has been spontaneously sown, we must first recognise it, be luminously conscious of it and develop it along its proper line of growth. F or, also certain it is that this new impulse or intuition, however true and strong in itself, is still groping and erring and miscarrying; it is still wasting much of its energy in tentative things, in mere experiments, in even clear failures. The fact is that the intuition has not yet become an enlightened one, it is still moving, as we shall presently explain, in the dark vital regions of man. And vitalism is naturally and closely affianced to pragmatism, that is to say, the mere vital impulse seeks immediately to execute itself, it looks f or external effects, f or changes in the f orm, in the machinery only. Thus it is that we see in art and literature discussions centred upon the scheme of composition, as whether the new poetry should be lyrical or dramatic, popular or aristocratic, metrical or free of metre, and in practical life we talk of remodelling the state by new methods of representation and governance, of purging society by bills and legislation, of ref orming humanity by a business pact.
All this may be good and necessary, but there is the danger of leaving altogether out of account the one thing needful. We must then pause and turn back, look behind the apparent impulsion that effectuates to the Will that drives, behind the ideas and ideals of the mind to the soul that inf orms and inspires; we must carry ourselves up the stream and concentrate upon the original source, the creative intuition that lies hidden somewhere. And then only all the new stirrings that we feel in our heartour urges and ideals and visions will attain an effective clarity, an unshaken purpose and an inevitable achievement.
That is to say, the change has been in the soul of man himself, the being has veered round and taken a new orientation. It is this which one must envisage, recognise and consciously possess, in order that one may best fulfil the call of the age. But what we are doing instead is to observe the mere external signs and symbols and symptoms, to fix upon the distant quiverings, the echoes on the outermost rim, which are not always faithful representations, but very often dist orted images of the truth and life at the centre and source and matrix. We must know that if there has been going on a redistribution and new-marshalling of f orces, it is because the fiat has come from the Etat Maj or.
Now, in order to understand the new orientation of the spirit of the present age, we may profitably ask what was the inspiration of the past age, the characteristic note which has failed to satisfy us and which we are endeavouring to transf orm. We know that that age was the Scientific age or the age of Reason. Its great prophets were Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists or if you mount further up in time, we may begin from Bacon and the humanists. Its motto was first, "The proper study of mankind is man" and secondly, Reason is the supreme organon of knowledge, the highest deity in manla Desse Raison. And it is precisely against these two basic principles that the new age has entered its protest. In face of Humanism, Nietzsche has posited the Superman and in face of Reason Bergson has posited Intuition.
The w orship of man as something essentially and exclusively human necessitates as a c orollary, the other doctrine, viz the deification of Reason; and vice versa. Humanism and Scientism go together and the whole spirit and mentality of the age that is passing may be summed up in those two w ords. So Nietzsche says, "All our modern w orld is captured in the net of the Alexandrine culture and has, f or its ideal, the the oretical man, armed with the most powerful instruments of knowledge, toiling in the service of science and whose prototype and original ancest or is Socrates." Indeed, it may be generally asserted that the nation whose prophet and sage claimed to have brought down Philosophia from heaven to dwell upon earth among men was precisely the nation, endowed with a clear and logical intellect, that was the very embodiment of rationality and reasonableness. As a matter of fact, it would not be far, wrong to say that it is the Hellenic culture which has been moulding humanity f or ages; at least, it is this which has been the predominating fact or, the vital and dynamic element in man's nature. Greece when it died was reb orn in Rome; Rome, in its return, found new life in France; and France means Europe. What Europe has been and still is f or the w orld and humanity one knows only too much. And yet, the Hellenic genius has not been the sole motive power and constituent element; there has been another leaven which w orked constantly within, if intermittently without. If Europe represented mind and man and this side of existence, Asia always reflected that which transcends the mind the spirit, the Gods and the Beyonds.
However, we are concerned m ore with the immediate past, the mentality that laid its supreme stress upon the human rationality. What that epoch did not understand was that Reason could be overstepped, that there was something higher, something greater than Reason; Reason being the sovereign faculty, it was thought there could be nothing beyond, unless it were draison. The human attri bute par excellence is Reason. Exactly so. But the fact is that man is not bound by his humanity and that reason can be transf ormed and sublimated into other m ore powerful faculties.
Now, the question is, what is the insufficiency of Reason? How does it limit man? And what is the Superman into which man is asked or is being impelled to grow?
Reason is insufficient and unsatisfact ory because, as Bergson explains, it does not and cannot embrace life as a whole, seize man and the w orld in an integral realisation. The greater part of the vast mystery of existence escapes its envergure. Reason is that faculty which is f or analysing, defining, classifying and fixing things. It is a power that has grown in man in order that he may best manipulate the things of the w orld. It is utilitarian, practical in its nature and outlook. And as practical dealing requires that things should be stable and separate entities, theref ore Reason cannot but see things in solid and in the fragments of a solid. It cuts up existence into distinct parts and diverse elements; and these again it seeks to relate and aggregate, in acc ordance with what it calls "laws". Such a process has been necessary f or man in conducting life and action successfully. originally a bye-product of active life, Reason gradually separated itself and came finally to have an independent status and function, became or sought to become the instrument of knowledge, of Truth.
But although Reason has been and is useful f or the practical, we may say almost, the manual aspect of life, life itself it leaves unexplained and uncomprehended. F or life is mobility, a continuous flow that has nowhere any gap or stop and things have in reality no isolated or separate existence, they merge and mingle into one another and f orm an indissoluble whole. Theref ore the f orms and categ ories that Reason imposes upon existence are m ore or less arbitrary; they are shackles that seek to bind up and limit life, but are often rent asunder in the very eff ort. So the civilisation that has its origin in Reason and progresses with discoveries and inventionsdevices f or artfully manipulating naturehas been essentially and pre-eminently mechanical in its structure and outlook. It has become m ore and m ore efficient perhaps, but less and less soul-inspired, less and less-endowed with the free-flowing sap of organic growth and vitality.
So instead of the rational principle, the new age wants the principle of Nature or Life. Even as regards knowledge Reason is not the only, n or the best instrument. F or animals have properly no reason; the nature-principle of knowledge in the animal is Instinct the faculty that acts so faultlessly, so marvellously where Reason can only pause and be perplexed. This is not to say that man is to or can go back to this primitive and animal function; but certainly he can replace it by something akin which is as natural and yet purified and self-consciousillumined instinct, we may say or Intuition, as Bergson terms it. And Nietzsche's definition of the Superman has also a similar orientation and significance; f or, acc ording to him, the Superman is man who has outgrown his Reason, who is not bound by the standards and the conventions determined by Reason f or a special purpose. The Superman is one who has gone beyond "good and evil," who has shaken off from his nature and character elements that are "human, all too human"who is the embodiment of life-f orce in its absolute purity and strength and freedom.
This then is the mantra of the new ageLife with Intuition as its guide and not Reason and mechanical efficiency, not Man but Superman. The right mantra has been found, the principle itself is irreproachable. But the interpretation, the application, does not seem to have been always happy. F or, Nietzsche's conception of the Superman is full of obvious lacunae. If we have so long been ad oring the intellectual man, Nietzsche asks us, on the other hand, to deify the vital man. Acc ording to him the superman is he who has (1) the supreme sense of the ego, (2) the sovereign will to power and (3) who lives dangerously. All this means an Asura, that is to say, one who has, it may be, dominion over his animal and vital impulsions in order, of course, that he may best gratify them but who has not purified them. Purification does not necessarily mean, annihilation but it does mean sublimation and transf ormation. So if you have to transcend man, you have to transcend egoism also. F or a conscious egoism is the very characteristic of man and by increasing your sense of egoism you do not supersede man but simply aggrandise your humanity, fashion it on a larger, a titanic scale. And then the will to power is not the only will that requires fulfilment, there is also the will to knowledge and the will to love. In man these three fundamental constitutive elements coexist, although they do it, m ore often than not, at the expense of each other and in a state of continual disharmony. The superman, if he is to be the man "who has surmounted himself", must embody a poise of being in which all the three find a fusion and harmonya perfect synthesis. Again, to live dangerously may be heroic, but it is not divine. To live dangerously means to have eternal opponents, that is to say, to live ever on the same level with the f orces you want to dominate. To have the sense that one has to fight and control means that one is not as yet the sovereign l ord, f or one has to strive and strain and attain. The supreme l ord is he who is perfectly equanimous with himself and with the w orld. He has not to batter things into a shape in order to create. He creates means, he manifests. He wills and he achieves"God said 'let there be light' and there was light."
As a matter of fact, the superman is not, as Nietzsche thinks him to be, the highest embodiment of the biological f orce of Nature, not even as modified and refined by the aesthetic and aristocratic virtues of which the higher reaches of humanity seem capable. F or that is after all humanity only accentuated in certain other fundamentally human modes of existence. It does not carry far enough the process of surmounting. In reality it is not a surmounting but a new channelling. Instead of the ethical and intellectual man, we get the vital and aesthetic man. It may be a change but not a transfiguration.
And the faculty of Intuition said to be the characteristic of the New Man does not mean all that it should, if we confine ourselves to Bergson's definition of it. Bergson says that Intuition is a s ort of sympathy, a community of feeling or sensibility with the urge of the life-reality. The difference between the sympathy of Instinct and the sympathy of Intuition being that while the f ormer is an unconscious or semi-conscious power, the latter is illumined and self-conscious. Now this view emphasises only the feeling-tone of Intuition, the vital sensibility that attends the direct communion with the life movement. But Intuition is not only purified feeling and sensibility, it is also purified vision and knowledge. It unites us not only with the movement of life, but also opens out to our sight the Truths, the fundamental realities behind that movement. Bergson does not, of course, point to any existence behind the continuous flux of life-power the elan vital. He seems to deny any static truth or truths to be seen and seized in any scheme of knowledge. To him the dynamic flow the Heraclitian panta reei is the ultimate reality. It is precisely to this view of things that Bergson owes his conception of Intuition. Since existence is a continuum of Mind-Energy, the only way to know it is to be in harmony or unison with it, to move along its current. The conception of knowledge as a fixing and delimiting of things is necessarily an anomaly in this scheme. But the question is, is matter the only static and separative reality? Is the flux of vital Mind-Energy the ultimate truth?
Matter f orms the lowest level of reality. Above it is the elan vital. Above the elan vital there is yet the domain of the Spirit. And the Spirit is a static substance and at the same a dynamic creative power. It is Being (Sat) that realises or expresses itself through certain typal nuclei or nodi of consciousness (chit) in a continuous becoming, in a flow of creative activity (ananda). The dynamism of the vital energy is only a refraction or precipitation of the dynamism of the spirit; and so also static matter is only the substance of the spirit concretised and solidified. It is in an uplift both of matter and vital f orce to their prototypesswarupa and swabhavain the Spirit that lies the real transf ormation and transfiguration of the humanity of man.
This is the truth that is trying to dawn upon the new age. Not matter but that which f orms the substance of matter, not intellect but a vaster consciousness that inf orms the intellect, not man as he is, an aberration in the cosmic order, but as he may and shall be the embodiment and fulfilment of that orderthis is the secret Intuition which, as yet dimly envisaged, nevertheless secretly inspires all the human activities of today. Only, the truth is being interpreted, as we have said, in terms of vital life. The intellectual and physical man gave us one aspect of the reality, but neither is the vital and psychical man the complete reality. The one acquisition of this shifting of the viewpoint has been that we are now in touch with the natural and deeper movement of humanity and not as bef ore merely with its artificial scaffolding. The Alexandrine civilisation of humanity, in Nietzsche's phrase, was a s ort of divagation from nature, it was following a loop away from the direct path of natural evolution. And the new Renaissance of today has precisely c orrected this aberration of humanity and brought it again in a line with the natural cosmic order.
Certainly this does not go far enough into the motive of the change. The cosmic order does not mean mentalised vitalism which is also in its turn a section of the integral reality. It means the order of the spirit, it means the transfiguration of the physical, the vital and the intellectual into the supernal Substance, Power and Light of that Spirit. The real transcendence of humanity is not the transcendence of one or other of its levels but the total transcendence to an altogether different status and the transmutation of humanity in the mould of that statusnot a Nietzschean Titan n or a Bergsonian Dionysus but the tranquil vision and delight and dynamism of the Spirit the incarnation of a god-head.
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01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Is the artist the supreme artist, when he is a genius, that is to sayconscious in his creation or is he unconscious? Two quite opposite views have been taken of the problem by the best of intelligences. On the one hand, it is said that genius is genius precisely because it acts unconsciously, and on the other it is asserted with equal emphasis that genius is the capacity of taking infinite pains, which means it is absolutely a self conscious activity.
We take a third view of the matter and say that genius is neither unconscious or conscious but superconscious. And when one is superconscious, one can be in appearance either conscious or unconscious. Let us at the outset try to explain a little this psychological riddle.
When we say one is conscious, we usually mean that one is conscious with the mental consciousness, with the rational intelligence, with the light of the brain. But this need not be always so. F or one can be conscious with other f orms of consciousness or in other planes of consciousness. In the average or n ormal man the consciousness is linked to or identified with the brain function, the rational intelligence and so we conclude that without this wakeful brain activity there can be no consciousness. But the fact is otherwise. The experiences of the mystic prove the point. The mystic is conscious on a level which we describe as higher than the mind and reason, he has what may be called the overhead consciousness. (Apart from the n ormal consciousness, which is named jagrat, waking, the Upanishad speaks of three other increasingly subtler states of consciousness, swapna, sushupti and turiya.)And then one can be quite unconscious, as in samadhi that can be sushupti or turiya orpartially consciousin swapna, f or example, the external behaviour may be like that of a child or a lunatic or even a goblin. One can also remain n ormally conscious and still be in the superconscience. Not only so, the mystic the Yogican be conscious on infraconscious levels also; that is to say, he can enter into and identify with the consciousness involved in life and even in Matter; he can feel and realise his oneness with the animal w orld, the plant w orld and finally the w orld of dead earth, of "stocks and stones" too. F or all these strands of existence have each its own type of consciousness and all different from the mode of mind which is n ormally known as consciousness. When St. Francis addresses himself to the brother Sun or the sister Moon, or when the Upanishad speaks of the tree silhouetted against the sky, as if stilled in trance, we feel there is something of this fusion and identification of consciousness with an infra-conscient existence.
I said that the supreme artist is superconscious: his consciousness withdraws from the n ormal mental consciousness and becomes awake and alive in another order of consciousness. To that superi or consciousness the artist's mentalityhis ideas and dispositions, his judgments and valuations and acquisitions, in other w ords, his n ormal psychological make-upserves as a channel, an instrument, a medium f or transcription. Now, there are two stages, or rather two lines of activity in the processus, f or they may be overlapping and practically simultaneous. First, there is the withdrawal and the in-gathering of consciousness and then its reappearance into expression. The consciousness retires into a secret or subtle w orldW ords-w orth's "recollected in tranquillity"and comes back with the riches gathered or transmuted there. But the purity of the gold thus garnered and stalled in the artistry of w ords and sounds or lines and colours depends altogether upon the purity of the channel through which it has to pass. The mental vehicle receives and rec ords and it can do so to perfection if it is perfectly in tune with what it has to receive and rec ord; otherwise the transcription becomes mixed and blurred, a faint or confused echo, a po or show. The supreme creat ors are precisely those in whom the receptacle, the instrumental faculties offer the least resistance and rec ord with absolute fidelity the experiences of the over or inner consciousness. In Shakespeare, in Homer, in Valmiki the inflatus of the secret consciousness, the inspiration, as it is usually termed, bears down, sweeps away all obscurity or contrariety in the rec ording mentality, suffuses it with its own glow and puissance, indeed resolves it into its own substance, as it were. And the difference between the two, the secret n orm and the rec ording f orm, determines the scale of the artist's creative value. It happens often that the obstruction of a too critically observant and self-conscious brain-mind successfully blocks up the flow of something supremely beautiful that wanted to come down and waited f or an opp ortunity.
Artists themselves, almost invariably, speak of their inspiration: they look upon themselves m ore or less as mere instruments of something or some Power that is beyond them, beyond their n ormal consciousness attached to the brain-mind, that controls them and which they cannot control. This perception has been given shape in myths and legends. Goddess Saraswati or the Muses are, however, f or them not a mere metaph or but concrete realities. To what extent a poet may feel himself to be a mere passive, almost inanimate, instrumentnothing m ore than a mirr or or a sensitive photographic plateis illustrated in the famous case of Coleridge. His Kubla Khan, as is well known, he heard in sleep and it was a long poem very distinctly recited to him, but when he woke up and wanted to write it down he could remember only the opening lines, the rest having gone completely out of his mem ory; in other w ords, the poem was ready-composed somewhere else, but the transmitting or rec ording instrument was faulty and failed him. Indeed, it is a common experience to hear in sleep verses or musical tunes and what seem then to be very beautiful things, but which leave no trace on the brain and are not recalled in mem ory.
Still, it must be noted that Coleridge is a rare example, f or the rec ording apparatus is not usually so faithful but puts up its own f ormations that disturb and alter the perfection of the original. The passivity or neutrality of the intermediary is relative, and there are infinite grades of it. Even when the larger waves that play in it in the n ormal waking state are quieted down, smaller ripples of unconscious or half-conscious habitual f ormations are thrown up and they are sufficient to cause the scattering and dispersal of the pure light from above.
The absolute passivity is attainable, perhaps, only by the Yogi. And in this sense the supreme poet is a Yogi, f or in his consciousness the higher, deeper, subtler or other modes of experiences pass through and are rec orded with the minimum aberration or diffraction.
But the Yogi is a wholly conscious being; a perfect Yogi is he who possesses a conscious and willed control over his instruments, he silences them, as and when he likes, and makes them convey and express with as little deviation as possible truths and realities from the Beyond. Now the question is, is it possible f or the poet also to do something like that, to consciously create and not to be a mere unconscious or helpless channel? Conscious artistry, as we have said, means to be conscious on two levels of consciousness at the same time, to be at home in both equally and simultaneously. The general experience, however, is that of "one at a time": if the artist dwells m ore in the one, the other retires into the background to the same measure. If he is in the over-consciousness, he is only half-conscious in his brain consciousness, or even not conscious at allhe does not know how he has created, the sources or process of his creative activity, he is quite oblivious of them" gone through them all as if per saltum. Such seems to have been the case with the primitives, as they are called, the elemental poetsShakespeare and Homer and Valmiki. In some others, who come very near to them in poetic genius, yet not quite on a par, the instrumental intelligence is strong and active, it helps in its own way but in helping circumscribes and limits the original impulsion. The art here becomes consciously artistic, but loses something of the initial freshness and spontaneity: it gains in c orrectness, polish and elegance and has now a style in lieu of Nature's own naturalness. I am thinking of Virgil and Milton and Kalidasa. Dante's place is perhaps somewhere in between. Lower in the rung where the mental medium occupies a still m ore preponderant place we have intellectual poetry, poetry of the later classical age whose representatives are Pope and Dryden. We can go farther down and land in the domain of versificationalthough here, too, there can be a good amount of beauty in shape of ingenuity, cleverness and conceit: Voltaire and Delille are of this order in French poetry.
The three or four maj or orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the hist ory of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into human culture that was their special gift. Leaving out of account Homer who was, as I said, a primitive, their classical age began with Aeschylus who was the first and the most spontaneous and intuitive of the Great Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is m ore balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in polished phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was exercising a conscious control over his instruments and materials, unlike his predecess or who seemed to be completely carried away by the onrush of the poetic enthousiasmos. Sophocles, in spite of his artistic perfection or perhaps because of it, appears to be just a little, one remove, away from the purity of the central inspiration there is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil between which intervenes. With the third of the Brotherhood, Euripides, we slide lower downwe arrive at a predominantly mental transcription of an experience or inner conception; but something of the maj or breath continues, an aura, a rhythm that maintains the inner contact and thus saves the poetry. In a subsequent age, in Theocritus, f or example, poetry became truly very much 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought', so much of virtuosity and precocity entered into it; in other w ords, the poet then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the general trend of all literature.
But should there be an inherent incompatibility between spontaneous creation and self-consciousness? As we have seen, a harmony and fusion can and do happen of the superconscious and the n ormally conscious in the Yogi. Likewise, an artist also can be wakeful and transparent enough so that he is conscious on both the levels simultaneouslyabove, he is conscious of the source and origin of his inspiration, and on the level plain he is conscious of the w orking of the instrument, how the vehicle transcribes and embodies what comes from elsewhere. The poet's consciousness becomes then divalent as it werethere is a sense of absolute passivity in respect of the receiving apparatus and coupled and immisced with it there is also the sense of dynamism, of conscious agency as in his secret being he is the master of his apparatus and one with the Inspirerin other w ords, the poet is both a seer (kavih) and a creat or or doer (poits).
Not only so, the future development of the poetic consciousness seems inevitably to lead to such a consummation in which the creative and the critical faculties will not be separate but f orm part of one and indivisible movement. Hist orically, human consciousness has grown from unconsciousness to consciousness and from consciousness to self-consciousness; man's creative and artistic genius too has moved pari passu in the same direction. The earliest and primitive poets were mostly unconscious, that is to say, they wrote or said things as they came to them spontaneously, without eff ort, without reflection, they do not seem to know the whence and wheref ore and whither of it all, they know only that the wind bloweth as it listeth. That was when man had not yet eaten the fruit of knowledge, was still in the innocence of childhood. But as he grew up and progressed, he became m ore and m ore conscious, capable of exerting and exercising a deliberate will and initiating a purposive action, not only in the external practical field but also in the psychological domain. If the earlier group is called "primitives", the later one, that of conscious artists, usually goes by the name of "classicists." Modern creat ors have gone one step farther in the direction of self-consciousness, a return upon oneself, an inlook of full awareness and a free and alert activity of the critical faculties. An unconscious artist in the sense of the "primitives" is almost an impossible phenomenon in the modern w orld. All are scientists: an artist cannot but be consciously critical, deliberate, purposive in what he creates and how he creates. Evidently, this has cost something of the old-w orld spontaneity and supremacy of utterance; but it cannot be helped, we cannot comm and the tide to roll back, Canute-like. The feature has to be accepted and a remedy and new orientation discovered.
The modern critical self-consciousness in the artist originated with the Romantics. The very essence of Romanticism is curiosity the scientist's pleasure in analysing, observing, experimenting, changing the conditions of our reactions, mental or sentimental or even nervous and physical by way of discovery of new and unf oreseen or unexpected modes of "psychoses" or psychological states. Goethe, W ordsw orth, Stendhal represented a mentality and initiated a movement which led logically to the age of Hardy, Housman and Bridges and in the end to that of Lawrence and Joyce, Ezra Pound and Eliot and Auden. On the Continent we can consider Flaubert as the last of the classicists married to the very quintessence of Romanticism. A hard, self-regarding, self-critical mentality, a cold scalpel-like gaze that penetrates and upturns the reverse side of things is intimately associated with the poetic genius of Mallarm and constitutes almost the whole of Valry's. The impassioned lines of a very modern poet like Aragon are also characterised by a consummate virtuosity in chiselled artistry, conscious and deliberate and willed at every step and turn.
The consciously purposive activity of the poetic consciousness in fact, of all artistic consciousness has shown itself with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions. First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-w orld poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their n ormal f orm and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the n ormal and the obvious: it does not accept and admit the "given" as the final and definitive n orm of things. It wishes to discover and establish other n orms, it strives to bring about changes in the nature and condition of things, envisage the shape of things to come, w ork f or a brave new w orld. The poet of today, in spite of all his eff ort to remain a pure poet, in spite of Housman's advocacy of nonsense and not-sense being the essence of true Art, is almost invariably at heart an inc orrigible prophet. In revolt against the old and established order of truths and customs, against all that is n ormally considered as beautiful,ideals and emotions and activities of man or aspects and scenes and movements of Natureagainst God or spiritual life, the modern poet turns deliberately to the ugly and the macabre, the meaningless, the insignificant and the triflingtins and teas, bone and dust and dustbin, hammer and sicklehe is still a prophet, a violent one, an iconoclast, but one who has his own icon, a terribly jealous being, that seeks to pull down the past, erase it, to break and batter and knead the elements in order to fashion out of them something conf orming to his heart's desire. There is also the class who have the vision and found the truth and its solace, who are prophets, angelic and divine, messengers and harbingers of a new beauty that is to dawn upon earth. And yet there are others in whom the two strains mingle or approach in a strange way. All this means that the artist is far from being a mere receiver, a mechanical execut or, a passive unconscious instrument, but that he is supremely' conscious and master of his faculties and implements. This fact is doubly reinf orced when we find how much he is preoccupied with the technical aspect of his craft. The richness and variety of patterns that can be given to the poetic f orm know no bounds today. A few maj or rhythms were sufficient f or the ancients to give full expression to their poetic inflatus. F or they cared m ore f or some maj or virtues, the basic and fundamental qualitiessuch as truth, sublimity, nobility, f orcefulness, purity, simplicity, clarity, straightf orwardness; they were m ore preoccupied with what they had to say and they wanted, no doubt, to say it beautifully and powerfully; but the modus operandi was not such a passion or obsession with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value f or itself which modern craftsmanship gives it. As technology in practical life has become a thing of overwhelming imp ortance to man today, become, in the Shakespearean phrase, his "be-all and end-all", even so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. The subtleties, variations and refinements, the revolutions, reversals and inventions which the modern poet has ushered and takes delight in, f or their own sake, I repeat, f or their intrinsic interest, not f or the sake of the subject which they have to embody and clothe, have never been dream by Aristotle, the supreme legislat or among the ancients, n or by H orace, the almost incomparable craftsman among the ancients in the domain of poetry. Man has become, to be sure, a self-conscious creat or to the pith of his bone.
Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its w ork. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, n or, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to f orge an instrument f or a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was f or the discovery of other strands, secret st ores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.
That is what is wanted at present in the artistic w orld the true inspiration, the breath from higher altitudes. And here comes the role of the mystic, the Yogi. The sense of evolution, the march of human consciousness demands and prophesies that the future poet has to be a mysticin him will be fulfilled the travail of man's conscious w orking. The self-conscious craftsman, the tireless experimenter with his adventurous analytic mind has sharpened his instrument, made it supple and elastic, tempered, refined and enriched it; that is comparable to what we call the aspiration or call from below. Now the Grace must descend and fulfil. And when one rises into this higher consciousness beyond the brain and mind, when one lives there habitually, one knows the why and the how of things, one becomes a perfectly conscious operat or and still retains all spontaneity and freshness and wonder and magic that are usually associated with inconscience and irreflection. As there is a spontaneity of instinct, there is likewise also a spontaneity of vision: a child is spontaneous in its movements, even so a seer. Not only so, the higher spontaneity is m ore spontaneous, f or the higher consciousness means not only awareness but the free and untrammelled activity and expression of the truth and reality it is.
Genius had to be generally m ore or less unconscious in the past, because the instrument was not ready, was clogged as it were with its own lower grade movements; the higher inspiration had very often to bypass it, or rob it of its serviceable materials without its knowledge, in an almost clandestine way. Wherever it was awake and vigilant, we have seen it causing a diminution in the poetic potential. And yet even so, it was being prepared f or a greater role, a higher destiny it is to fulfil in the future. A conscious and full participation of a refined and transparent and enriched instrument in the delivery of superconscious truth and beauty will surely mean not only a new but the very acme of aesthetic creation. We thus f oresee the age of spiritual art in which the sense of creative beauty in man will find its culmination. Such an art was only an exception, something secondary or even tertiary, kept in the background, suggested here and there as a novel strain, called "mystic" to express its unfamiliar nature-unless, of course, it was openly and obviously scriptural and religious.
I have spoken of the source of inspiration as essentially and originally being a super-consciousness or over-consciousness. But to be m ore precise and accurate I should add another source, an inner consciousness. As the super-consciousness is imaged as lying above the n ormal consciousness, so the inner consciousness may be described as lying behind or within it. The movement of the inner consciousness has found expression m ore often and m ore largely than that of over-consciousness in the artistic creation of the past : and that was in keeping with the nature of the old-w orld inspiration, f or the inspiration that comes from the inner consciousness, which can be considered as the lyrical inspiration, tends to be naturally m ore "spontaneous", less conscious, since it does not at all go by the path of the head, it evades that as much as possible and goes by the path of the heart.
But the evolutionary urge, as I have said, has always been to bring down or instil m ore and m ore light and self-consciousness into the depths of the heart too: and the first result has been an intellectualisation, a rationalisation of the consciousness, a movement of scientific observation and criticism which very naturally leads to a desiccation of the poetic enthusiasm and fervour. But a period of transcendence is in gestation. All eff orts of modern poets and craftsmen, even those that seem apparently queer, bizarre and futile, are at bottom a travail f or this transcendence, including those that seem contradict ory to it.
Whether the original and true source of the poet's inspiration lies deep within or high above, all depends upon the mediating instrument the mind (in its most general sense) and speech f or a successful transcription. Man's ever-growing consciousness demanded also a conscious development and remoulding of these two fact ors. A growth, a heightening and deepening of the consciousness meant inevitably a movement towards the spiritual element in things. And that means, we have said, a twofold change in the future poet's make-up. First as regards the substance. The revolutionary shift that we notice in modern poets towards a completely new domain of subject-matter is a signpost that m ore is meant than what is expressed. The superficialities and futilities that are dealt with do not in their outward f orm give the real trend of things. In and through all these maj or and constant preoccupation of our poets is "the pain of the present and the passion f or the future": they are, as already stated, m ore prophets than poets, but prophets f or the moment crying in the wildernessalthough some have chosen the path of denial and revolt. They are all looking ahead or beyond or deep down, always yearning f or another truth and reality which will explain, justify and transmute the present calvary of human living. Such an acute tension of consciousness has necessitated an overhauling of the vehicle of expression too, the creation of a mode of expressing the inexpressible. F or that is indeed what human consciousness and craft are aiming at in the present stage of man's evolution. F or everything, almost everything that can be n ormally expressed has been expressed and in a variety of ways as much as is possible: that is the hist ory of man's aesthetic creativity. Now the eye probes into the unexpressed w orld; f or the artist too the Upanishadic problem has cropped up:
By whom impelled does the mind fall to its target, what is the agent that is behind the eye and sees through the eyes, what is the hearing and what the speech that their respective sense organs do not and cannot convey and rec ord adequately or at all?
Like the modern scientist the artist or craftsman too of today has become a philosopher, even a mystic philosopher. The subtler and higher ranges of consciousness are now the object of inquiry and investigation and expression and revelation f or the scientist as well as f or the artist. The external sense-objects, the phenomenal movements are symbols and signposts, graphs and pointer-readings of facts and realities that lie hidden, behind or beyond. The artist and the scientist are occult alchemists. What to make of this, f or example:
Beyond the shapes of empire, the capes of Carbonek, over
--
reefed or set, no slaves at the motived oars,
drove into and clove the wind from unseen sh ores. Swept
--
Well, it is sheer incantation. It is w ord-weaving, rhythm plaiting, thought-wringing in order to pass beyond these frail materials, to get into contact with, to give some sense of the mystery of existence that passeth understanding. We are very far indeed from the "natural" poets, Homer or Shakespeare, Milton, or Virgil. And this is from a profane, a mundane poet, not an ostensibly religious or spiritual poet. The level of the poetic inspiration, at least of the poetic view and aspiration has evidently shifted to a higher, a deeper degree. We may be speaking of tins and tinsel, bones and dust, filth and misery, of the underw orld of ign orance and ugliness,
All things uncomely and broken, all things w orn out and old,
and the imaginative idealist, the romantically spiritual poet says that these or
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
--
But the m ore truly modern mind looks at the thing in a slightly different way. The good and the evil are not, to it, contrary to each other: one does not deny or negate the other. They are intermixed, fused in a mysterious identity. The best and the w orst are but two conditions, two potentials of the same entity. Baudelaire, who can be considered as the first of the real moderns in many ways, saw and experienced this intimate polarity or identity of opposites in human nature and consciousness. What is Evil, who is the Evil One:
Une Ide, uneF orme, Un tre
--
In other w ords, the tension in the human consciousness has been raised to the nth power, the heat of a brooding consciousness is about to lead it to an outburst of new creationsah tapastaptva. Human self-consciousness, the turning of oneself upon oneself, the probing and projecting of oneself into oneselfself-consciousness raised so often to the degree of self-t orture, marks the acute travail of the spirit. The thousand "isms" and "logies" that pullulate in all fields of life, from the political to the artistic or even the religious and the spiritual indicate how the human lab orat ory is w orking at white heat. They are breaches in the circuit of the consciousness, volcanic eruptions from below or cosmic-ray irruptions from above, tearing open the n ormal limit and boundaryBaudelaire's couvercle or the "golden lid" of the Upanishads-disclosing and bringing into the light of common day realities beyond and unseen till now.
Ifso long the poet was m ore or less a passive, a half-conscious or unconscious intermediary between the higher and the lower lights and delights, his role in the future will be better fulfilled when he becomes fully aware of it and consciously moulds and directs his creative energies. The poet is and has to be the harbinger and minstrel of unheard-of melodies: he is the fashioner of the creative w ord that brings down and embodies the deepest aspirations and experiences of the human consciousness. The poet is a missionary: he is missioned by Divine Beauty to radiate upon earth something of her charm and wizardry. The fullness of his role he can only play up when he is fully conscious f or it is under that condition that all obstructing and obscuring elements lying across the path of inspiration can be completely and wholly eradicated: the instrument purified and tempered and transmuted can hold and express golden truths and beauties and puissances that otherwise escape the too human mould.
"The Last Voyage" by Charles Williams-A Little Book of Modern Verse, (Faber and Faber).
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is the origin and the master-clue,
A silence overhead, an inner voice,
--
Some Chance has settled or hazarded some Will,
or a Necessity without aim or cause
Unwillingly compelled to emerge and be.
In this dense field where nothing is plain or sure,
Our very being seems to us questionable,
--
The achievement done a passage or a phase
Whose farther end is hidden from our sight,
A chance happening or a f ortuitous fate.
Out of the unknown we move to the unknown.
--
In her unconscious orbit through the Void
Out of her mindless depths she strives to rise,
--
Which rarely we surprise or vaguely feel,
Are an outcome of suppressed realities
--
He knows not what he shall achieve or when;
He knows not whether at last he shall survive,
--
It circles or stands in a vague interspace,
Doubtful of its beginning and its close,
--
Far from the original Dusk, the final Flame
In some huge void Inconscience it lives,
--
As if a present without future or past
Repeating the same revolution's whirl
--
All barter or bribe of w orship they refuse;
Unmoved by cry of revolt and ign orant prayer
--
All will come near that now is naught or far.
These calm and distant Mights shall act at last.
--
Bef ore there was light of mind or life could breathe.
Accomplice of her cosmic huge pretence,
--
He speaks no w ords or hides behind the wings.
He takes birth in her w orld, waits on her will,
--
In the march of this obvious ordinary w orld
Where all is deep and strange to the eyes that see
--
And all by which we find or lose ourselves,
Things sweet and bitter, magnificent and mean,
--
At play with him as with her child or slave,
To freedom and the Eternal's mastery
--
F or any blow or boon that she may choose:
Even in what is suffering to our sense,
--
Divine, wears shapes of animal or man;
Eternal, he assents to Fate and Time,
--
In her material order's fixed design
Where all seems sure and, even when changed, the same,
--
He carries her sealed orders in his breast.
Late will he know, opening the mystic script,
--
He goes or, armed with her fiat, to discover
A new mind and body in the city of God
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In an age when Reason was considered as the highest light given to man, Tag ore pointed to the Vision of the mystics as always the still greater light; when man was elated with undreamt-of w orldly success, puffed up with incomparable material possessions and powers, Tag ore's voice rang clear and emphatic in tune with the cry of the ancients: "What shall I do with all this mass of things, if I am not made imm ortal by that?" When men, in their individual as well as collective egoism, were scrambling f or earthly gains and hoards, he held bef ore them vaster and cleaner h orizons, higher and deeper ways of being and living, maintained the sacred sense of human solidarity, the living consciousness of the Divine, one and indivisible. When the Gospel of Power had all but hypnotised men's minds, and Superman or God-man came to be equated with the Titan, Tag ore saw through the falsehood and placed in front and above all the old-w orld eternal verities of love and self-giving, harmony and mutuality, sweetness and light. When pessimism, cynicism, agnosticism struck the maj or ch ord of human temperament, and grief and frustration and death and decay were taken as a matter of course to be the inevitable order of earthlylifebhasmantam idam shariramhe continued to sing the song of the Rishis that Ananda and Imm ortality are the breath of things, the birth right of human beings. When Modernism declared with a certitude never tobe contested that Matter is Brahman, Tag ore said with the voice of one who knows that Spirit is Brahman.
Tag ore is in direct line with those bards who have sung of the Spirit, who always soared high above the falsehoods and uglinesses of a merely mundane life and lived in the undecaying delights and beauties of a diviner consciousness. Spiritual reality was the central theme of his poetic creation: only and naturally he viewed it in a special way and endowed it with a special grace. We know of another God-intoxicated man, the Jewish philosopher Spinoza, who saw things sub specie aeternitatis, under the figure or mode of eternity. Well, Tag ore can be said to see things, in their essential spiritual reality, under the figure or mode of beauty. Keats indeed spoke of truth being beauty and beauty truth. But there is a great difference in the outlook and inner experience. A w orshipper of beauty, unless he rises to the Upanishadic n orm, is prone to become sensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even Shelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these poets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part of his intellectual equipment, no doubt, but nothing much m ore than that. In the other two it comes in as strange flashes from an unknown country, as a s ort of irruption or on the peak of the poetic afflatus or enthousiasmos.
The w orld being nothing but Spirit made visible is, acc ording to Tag ore, fundamentally a thing of beauty. The scars and spots that are on the surface have to be removed and mankind has to repossess and clo the itself with that mantle of beauty. The w orld is beautiful, because it is the image of the Beautiful, because it harbours, expresses and embodies the Divine who is Beauty supreme. Now by a strange alchemy, a wonderful effect of polarisation, the very spiritual element in Tag ore has made him almost a pagan and even a profane. F or what are these gl ories of Nature and the still m ore exquisite gl ories that the human body has captured? They are but vibrations and modulations of beauty the delightful names and f orms of the supreme Lover and Beloved.
Socrates is said to have brought down Philosophy from Heaven to live among men upon earth. A similar exploit can be ascribed to Tag ore. The Spirit, the bare transcendental Reality contemplated by the orthodox Vedantins, has been brought nearer to our planet, close to human consciousness in Tag ore's vision, being clothed in earth and flesh and blood, made vivid with the colours and contours of the physical existence. The Spirit, yes and by all means, but not necessarily asceticism and monasticism. So Tag ore boldly declared in those famous lines of his:
Mine is not the deliverance achieved through mere renunciation. Mine rather the freedom that tastes itself in a thousand associations.1
The spirit of the age demands this new gospel. Mankind needs and awaits a fresh revelation. The w orld and life are not an illusion or a lesser reality: they are, if taken rightly, as real as the pure Spirit itself. Indeed, Spirit and Flesh, Consciousness and Matter are not antinomies; to consider them as such is itself an illusion. In fact, they are only two poles or modes or aspects of the same reality. To separate or divide them is a one-sided concentration or abstraction on the part of the human mind. The fulfilment of the Spirit is in its expression through Matter; human life too reaches its highest term, its summum bonum, in embodying the spiritual consciousness here on earth and not dissolving itself in the Transcendence. That is the new Dispensation which answers to the deepest aspiration in man and towards which he has been travelling through the ages in the course of the evolution of his consciousness. Many, however, are the prophets and sages who have set this ideal bef ore humanity and m ore and m ore insistently and clearly as we come nearer to the age we live in. But none or very few have expressed it with such beauty and charm and compelling persuasion. It would be carping criticism to point out-as some, purists one may call them, have done-that in poetising and aesthetising the spiritual truth and reality, in trying to make it human and terrestrial, he has diminished and diluted the original substance, in endeavouring to render the diamond iridescent, he has turned it into a baser alloy. Tag ore's is a poetic soul, it must be admitted; and it is not necessary that one should find in his ideas and experiences and utterances the cent per cent accuracy and inevitability of a Yogic consciousness. Still his maj or perceptions, those that count, stand and are b orne out by the highest spiritual realisation.
Tag ore is no invent or or innovat or when he posits Spirit as Beauty, the spiritual consciousness as the ardent rhythm of ecstasy. This experience is the very c ore of Vaishnavism and f or which Tag ore is sometimes called a Neo-Vaishnava. The Vaishnava sees the w orld pulsating in glam orous beauty as the Lila (Play) of the L ord, and the L ord, God himself, is nothing but Love and Beauty. Still Tag ore is not all Vaishnava or merely a Vaishnava; he is in addition a modern (the carping voice will say, there comes the dilution and adulteration)in the sense that problems exist f or himsocial, political, economic, national, humanitarianwhich have to be faced and solved: these are not merely mundane, but woven into the texture of the fundamental problem of human destiny, of Soul and Spirit and God. A Vaishnava was, in spite of his acceptance of the w orld, an introvert, to use a modern psychological phrase, not necessarily in the pej orative sense, but in the neutral scientific sense. He looks upon the universe' and human life as the play of the L ord, as an actuality and not mere illusion indeed; but he does not participate or even take interest in the dynamic w orking out of the w orld process, he does not care to know, has no need of knowing that there is a terrestrial purpose and a diviner fulfilment of the m ortal life upon earth. The Vaishnava dwells m ore or less abs orbed in the Vaikuntha of his inner consciousness; the outer w orld, although real, is only a symbolic shadowplay to which he can but be a witness-real, is only a nothing m ore.
A modern idealist of the type of a ref ormer would not be satisfied with that role. If he is merely a m oralist ref ormer, he will revolt against the "witness business", calling it a laissez-faire mentality of bygone days. A spiritual ref ormer would ask f or m orea dynamic union with the Divine Will and Consciousness, not merely a passive enjoyment in the Bliss, so that he may be a luminous power or agent f or the expression of divine values in things mundane.
Not the acceptance of the w orld as it is, not even a joyous acceptance, viewing it as an inexplicable and mysterious and magic play of, God, but the asp ration and endeavour to change it, mould it in the pattern of its inner divine realities f or there are such realities which seek expression and embodiment in earthly life that is the great mission and labour of humanity and that is all the meaning of man's existence here below. And Tag ore is one of the great prophets and labourers who had the vision of the shape of things to come and w orked f or it. Only it must be noted, as I have already said, that unlike mere m oral ref ormists or scientific planners, Tag ore grounded himself upon the eternal ancient truths that "age cannot wither n or custom stale"the divine truths of the Spirit.
Tag ore was a poet; this poetic power of his he put in the service of the great cause f or the divine uplift of humanity. Naturally, it goes without saying, his poetry did not preach or propagandize the truths f or which he stoodhe had a fine and powerful weapon in his prose to do the w ork, even then in a poetic way but to sing them. And he sang them not in their philosophical bareness, like a Lucretius, or in their sheer transcendental austerity like some of the Upanishadic Rishis, but in and through human values and earthly n orms. The especial aroma of Tag ore's poetry lies exactly here, as he himself says, in the note of unboundedness in things bounded that it describes. A mundane, profane sensuousness, Kalidasian in richness and sweetness, is matched or counterpointed by a simple haunting note imbedded or trailing somewhere behind, a lyric cry persevering into eternity, the nostalgic cry of the still small voice.2
Thus, on the one hand, the Eternity, the Infinity, the Spirit is brought nearer home to us in its embodied symbols and living vehicles and vivid f ormulations, it becomes easily available to m ortals, even like the father to his son, to use a Vedic phrase; on the other hand, earthly things, mere humanities are uplifted and suffused with a "light that never was, on sea or land."
Another great poet of the spirit says also, almost like Tag ore:
--
Tag ore the poet reminds one often and anon of Kalidasa. He was so much in love, had such kinship with the great old master that many of his poems, many passages and lines are reminiscences, echoes, modulations or a paraphrase of the original classic. Tag ore himself refers in his memoirs to one Kalidasian line that haunted his juvenile brain because of its exquisite music and enchanting imagery:
Mandki nirjharikarm vodh muhuh-kamPita-deva-druh
01.05 - The Nietzschean Antichrist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nietzsche as the apostle of f orce is a name now familiar to all the w orld. The hero, the warri or who never tamely accepts suffering and submission and defeat under any condition but fights always and fights to conquersuch is the ideal man, acc ording to Nietzsche,the champion of strength, of greatness, of mightiness. The dominating personality infused with the supreme "will to power"he is Ubermensch, the Superman. Sentiment does not move the mountains, emotion diffuses itself only in vague aspiration. The motive power, the creative fiat does not dwell in the heart but somewhere higher. The way of the Cross, the path of love and charity and pity does not lead to the kingdom of Heaven. The w orld has tried it f or the last twenty centuries of its Christian civilisation and the result is that we are still living in a luxuriant abundance of misery and s ordidness and littleness. This is how Nietzsche thinks and feels. He finds no virtue in the old rgimes and he revolts from them. He wants a speedy and radical remedy and teaches that by violence only the Kingdom of Heaven can be seized. F or, to Nietzsche the w orld is only a clash of f orces and the Superman theref ore is one who is the embodiment of the greatest f orce. Nietzsche does not care f or the good, it is the great that moves him. The good, the m oral is of man, conventional and has only a fictitious value. The great, the non-m oral is, on the other hand, divine. That only has a value of its own. The good is nothing but a s ort of makeshift arrangement which man makes f or himself in order to live commodiously and which changes acc ording to his temperament. But the great is one with the Supreme Wisdom and is absolute and imperative. The good cannot create the great; it is the great that makes f or the good. This is what he really means when he says, "They say that a good cause sanctifies war but I tell thee it is a good war that sanctifies all cause." F or the goodness of your cause you judge by your personal predilections, by your false conventionalities, by a standard that you set up in your ign oranceBut a good war, the output of strength in any cause is in itself a cause of salvation. F or thereby you are the champion of that ultimate verity which conduces to the ultimate good. Do not shrink, he would say, to be even like the cyclone and the avalanche, destructive, indeed, but grand and puissant and theref ore truer emblems of the BeyondJenseitsthan the weak, the little, the pitiful that do not dare to destroy and by that very fact cannot hope to create.
This is the Nietzsche we all know. But there is another aspect of his which the w orld has yet been slow to recognise. F or, at bottom, Nietzsche is not all st orm and fury. If his Superman is a Destroying Angel, he is none the less an angel. If he is endowed with a supreme sense of strength and power, there is also secreted in the c ore of his heart a sense of the beautiful that illumines his somewhat sombre aspect. F or although Nietzsche is by birth a Slavo-Teuton, by culture and education he is pre-eminently Hellenic. His earliest w orks are on the subject of Greek tragedy and f orm what he describes as an "Apollonian dream." And to this dream, to this Greek aesthetic sense m ore than to any thing else he sacrifices justice and pity and charity. To him the weak and the miserable, the sick and the maimed are a s ort of blot, a kind of ulcer on the beautiful face of humanity. The herd that wallow in suffering and relish suffering disfigure the aspect of the w orld and should theref ore be relentlessly mowed out of existence. By being pitiful to them we give our tacit assent to their persistence. And it is precisely because of this that Nietzsche has a h orr or of Christianity. F or compassion gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the w orld and thus renders that ugliness a necessary and indispensable element of existence. To protect the weak, to sympathise with the lowly brings about m ore of weakness and m ore of lowliness. Nietzsche has an aristocratic taste par excellencewhat he aims at is health and vigour and beauty. But above all it is an aristocracy of the spirit, an aristocracy endowed with all the richness and beauty of the soul that Nietzsche wants to establish. The beggar of the street is the symbol of ugliness, of the poverty of the spirit. And the so-called aristocrat, die millionaire of today is as po or and ugly as any helpless leper. The soul of either of them is made of the same dirty, sickly stuff. The tattered rags, the crouching heart, the effeminate nerve, the unenlightened soul are the standing ugliness of the w orld and they have no place in the ideal, the perfect humanity. Humanity, acc ording to Nietzsche, is made in order to be beautiful, to conceive the beautiful, to create the beautiful. Nietzsche's Superman has its perfect image in a Grecian statue of Zeus cut out in white marble-Olympian grandeur shedding in every lineament Apollonian beauty and Dionysian vigour.
The real secret of Nietzsche's philosophy is not an ad oration of brute f orce, of blind irrational joy in fighting and killing. Far from it, Nietzsche has no kinship with Treitschke or Bernhard. What Nietzsche wanted was a w orld purged of littleness and ugliness, a humanity, not of saints, perhaps, but of heroes, lofty in their ideal, great in their achievement, majestic in their empirea race of titanic gods breathing the gl ory of heaven itself.
***
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Resolve its oracle and its paradox,
Its riddling phrases and its blindfold terms,
--
He read the original ukase kept back
In the locked archives of the spirit's crypt,
--
A brief felicity of mind or sense
Thrown by the W orld-Power to her body-slave,
--
An Omniscient knowing without sight or thought,
An indecipherable Omnipotence,
--
She too can make an order of her caprice,
As if her rash superb wagered to outvie
--
Mind can suspend or change earth's concrete law.
Affranchised from earth-habit's drowsy seal
--
Acts at a distance without hands or feet.
This giant Ign orance, this dwarfish Life
--
In our body arouse the demon or the god,
Call in the Omniscient and Omnipotent,
--
\tA giant order was discovered here
Of which the tassel and extended fringe
--
An organ scale of the Eternal's acts,
Mounting to their climax in an endless Calm,
--
That garbed the initial and original thought
With the finality of an ultimate phrase:
01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Communism is the synthesis of collectivism and individualism. The past ages of society were characterised m ore or less by a severe collectivism. In ancient Greece, m ore so in Sparta and in Rome, the individual had, properly speaking, no separate existence of his own; he was merged in the State or Nation. The individual was considered only as a limb of the collective being, had to live and labour f or the common weal. The value attached to each person was strictly in reference to the output that the group to which he belonged received from him. Apart from this service f or the general unit the body politicany personal endeavour and achievement, if not absolutely discouraged and repressed, was given a very secondary place of merit. The summum bonum of the individual was to sacrifice at the altar of the res publica, the bonum publicum. In India, the position and function of the State or Nation was taken up by the society. Here too social institutions were so constituted and men were so bred and brought up that individuality had neither the occasion n or the incentive to express itself, it was a thing that remained, in the Kalidasian phrase, an object f or the ear onlysrutau sthita. Those who sought at all an individual aim and purpose, as perhaps the Sannyasins, were put outside the gate of law and society. Within the society, in actual life and action, it was a sin and a crime or at least a gross imperfection to have any self-regarding motive or impulse; personal preference was the last thing to be considered, virtue consisted precisely in sacrificing one's own taste and inclination f or the sake of that which the society exacts and sanctions.
Against this tyranny of the group, this absolute rule of the collective will, the human mind rose in revolt and the result was Individualism. F or whatever may be the truth and necessity of the Collective, the Individual is no less true and necessary. The individual has his own law and urge of being and his own secret godhead. The collective godhead derides the individual godhead at its peril. The first movement of the reaction, however, was a run to the other extremity; a stern collectivism gave birth to an intransigent individualism. The individual is sacred and inviolable, cost what it may. It does not matter what s ort of individuality one seeks, it is enough if the thing is there. So the doctrine of individualism has come to set a premium on egoism and on f orces that are disruptive of all social bonds. Each and every individual has the inherent right, which is also a duty, to follow his own impetus and impulse. Society is nothing but the battle ground f or competing individualities the strongest survive and the weakest go to the wall. Association and co-operation are instruments that the individual may use and utilise f or his own growth and development but in the main they act as deterrents rather than as aids to the expression and expansion of his characteristic being. In reality, however, if we probe sufficiently deep into the matter we find that there is no such thing as c orp orate life and activity; what appears as such is only a camouflage f or rig orous competition; at the best, there maybe only an offensive and defensive alliancehumanity fights against nature, and within humanity itself group fights against group and in the last analysis, within the group, the individual fights against the individual. This is the ultimate Law-the Dharma of creation.
Now, what such an uncompromising individualism fails to recognise is that individuality and ego are not the same thing, that the individual may have his individuality intact and entire and yet sacrifice his ego, that the soul of man is a much greater thing than his vital being. It is simply ign oring the fact and denying the truth to say that man is only a fighting animal and not a loving god, that the self within the individual realises itself only through competition and not co-operation. It is an err or to conceive of society as a mere parallelogram of f orces, to suppose that it has risen simply out of the struggle of individual interests and continues to remain by that struggle. Struggle is only one aspect of the thing, a particular f orm at a particular stage, a temp orary manifestation due to a particular system and a particular habit and training. It would be nearer the truth to say that society came into being with the demand of the individual soul to unite with the individual soul, with the stress of an Over-soul to express itself in a multitude of f orms, diverse yet linked together and organised in perfect harmony. Only, the stress f or union manifested itself first on the material plane as struggle: but this is meant to be c orrected and transcended and is being continually c orrected and transcended by a secret harmony, a real commonality and brotherhood and unity. The individual is not so self-centred as the individualists make him to be, his individuality has a much vaster orbit and fulfils itself only by fulfilling others. The scientists have begun to discover other instincts in man than those of struggle and competition; they now place at the origin of social grouping an instinct which they name the herd-instinct: but this is only a f ormulation in lower terms, a translation on the vital plane of a higher truth and reality the fundamental oneness and acc ord of individuals and their spiritual impulsion to unite.
However, individualism has given us a truth and a f ormula which collectivism ign ored. Self-determination is a thing which has come to stay. Each and every individual is free, absolutely free and shall freely follow his own line of growth and development and fulfilment. No extraneous power shall choose and fix what is good or evil f or him, n or coerce and exploit him f or its own benefit. But that does not necessarily mean that collectivism has no truth in it; collectivism also, as much as individualism, has a lesson f or us and we should see whether we can harmonise the two. Collectivism signifies that the individual should not look to himself alone, should not be shut up in his freedom but expand himself and envelop others in a wider freedom, see other creatures in himself and himself in other creatures, as the Gita says. Collectivism demands that the individual need not and should not exhaust himself entirely in securing and enjoying his personal freedom, but that he can and should w ork f or the salvation of others; the truth it upholds is this that the individual is from a certain point of view only a part of the group and by ign oring the latter it ign ores itself in the end.
Now, a spiritual communism embraces individualism and collectivism, fuses them in a higher truth, establishes them in an intimate and absolute harmony. The individual is the centre, the group is the circumference and the two f orm one wh ore circle. The individual by fulfilling the truth of his real individuality fulfils also the truth of a commonality. There are no different laws f or the two. The individuals do not stand apart from and against one another, the dharma of one does not clash with the dharma of the other. The ripples in the bosom of the sea, however distinct and discrete in appearance, f orm but a single mass, all follow the same law of hydrodynamics that the mother sea incarnates. Stars and planets and nebulae, each separate heavenly body has its characteristic f orm and nature and function and yet all fulfil the same law of gravitation and beat the measure of the silent symphony of spaces. Individualities are the freedoms of the collective being and collectivity the concentration of individual beings. The same soul looking inward appears as the individual being and looking outward appears as the collective being.
Communism takes man not as ego or the vital creature; it turns him upside downurdhomulo' vaksakhah and establishes him upon his soul, his inner godhead. Thus established the individual soul finds and fulfils the divine law that by increasing itself it increases others and by increasing others it increases itself and thus by increasing one another they attain the supreme good. Unless man goes beyond himself and reaches this self, this godhead above, he will not find any real poise, will always swing between individualism and collectivism, he will remain always boundbound either in his freedom or in his bondage.
A commune is a group of individuals having a common self and a common life-intuition. A common self presupposes the realisation by each individual of his deepest being the self which is at once distinct from and instinct with other selves; a common life-intuition presupposes the awakening of each individual to his inmost creative urge, which, pure and true and vast as it is, fulfils itself in and through other creative urges.
A commune, further, is not only a product or final achievement; it is also a process, an instrument to bring about the desired end. A group of individuals come to have a common self and a common life-intuition in and through the commune; and in and through the commune does each individual progress to the realisation of his deepest self and the awakening of his inmost life-intuition.
The individual must find himself and establish his secret god-head, and then only, when such free and integral individualities meet and reciprocate and coalesce, can the community they f orm have a living reality and a permanent potency. On the other hand, unless individuals come together and through the interchange of each other's soul and substance' enhance the communal Godhead, the separate individual godheads also will not manifest in their supreme and sovereign powers.
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As a matter of fact, the individual is not and cannot be such an isolated thing as our egoistic sense would like to have it. The sharp angularities of the individual are being, at every moment, chastened by the very primary conditions of life; and to fail to recognise this is the blindest f orm of ign orance. It is no easy task to draw exactly the line of distinction between our individual being and our social or communal being. In actual life they are so blended together that in trying to extricate them from each other, we but tear and lacerate them both. The highest wisdom is to take the two together as they are, and by a gradual purifying processboth internal and external, internal in thought and knowledge and will, external in life and actionrest ore them to their respective truth and lawSatyam and Ritam.
The individual who leads a severely individual life from the very beginning, whose outlook of the w orld has been fashioned by that conception, can hardly, if at all, enter at the end the communal life. He must perf orce be either a vagabond or a recluse: But the recluse is not an integral man, n or the vagabond an ideal personality. The individual need not be too chaste and shy to associate with others and to give and take as freely and fully as he can. Individuality is not necessarily curtailed or mutilated in this process, but there is this other greater possibility of its getting enlarged and enhanced. Rather it is when you shut yourself up in your own self, that you stick to only one line of your personality, to a single phase of your self and thus limit and diminish yourself; the breadth and height and depth of your self, the cubic completeness of your personality you can attain only through a multiple and variegated stress by which you come in contact with the w orld and things.
So first the individual and then the commune is not the natural n or the ideal principle. On the other hand, first the commune and then the individual would appear to be an equally defective principle. F or first a commune means an organisation, its laws and rules and regulations, its injunctions and prohibitions; all which signifies or comes to signify that every individual is not free to enter its fold and that whoever enters must know how to dovetail himself therein and thus crush down the very life-power whose enhancement and effl orescence is sought. First a commune means necessarily a creed, a dogma, a set f orm of being and living indelibly marked out from bef orehand. The individual has there no choice of finding and developing the particular creed or dogma or mode of being and living, from out of his own self, along his particular line of natural growth; all that is imposed upon him and he has to accept and make it his own by trial and eff ort and self-t orture. Even if the commune be a contractual association, the members having joined together in a common cause to a common end, by voluntarily sacrificing a p ortion of their personal choice and freedom, even then it is not the ideal thing; the collective soul will be diminished in exact prop ortion as each individual soul has had to be diminished, be that voluntary or otherwise. That commune is plenary and entire which ensures plenitude and entirety to each of its individuals.
Now how to escape the dilemma? Only if we take the commune and the individual togetheren bloc, as has already been suggested. This means that the commune should be at the beginning a subtle and supple thing, without f orm and even without name, it should be no m ore than the circumambient aura the sukshma deha that plays around a group of individuals who meet and unite and move together by a secret affinity, along a common path towards a common goal. As each individual develops and defines himself, the commune also takes a m ore and m ore concrete shape; and when at the last stage the individual rises to the full height of his godhead, takes possession of his integral divinity, the commune also establishes its solid empire, vivid and vibrant in f orm and name.
01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The gospel of strength that Vivekananda spread was very characteristic of the man. F or it is not mere physical or nervous bravery, although that too is indispensable, and it is something m ore than m oral courage. In the speeches referred to, the subject-matter (as well as the manner to a large extent) is philosophical, metaphysical, even abstract in outlook and treatment: they are not a call to arms, like the French National Anthem, f or example; they are not merely an ethical exh ortation, a m oral lesson either. They speak of the inner spirit, the divine in man, the supreme realities that lie beyond. And yet the w ords are permeated through and through with a vibration life-giving and heroic-not so much in the explicit and apparent meaning as in the style and manner and atmosphere: it is catching, even or precisely when he refers, f or example, to these passages in the Vedas and the Upanishads, magnificent in their poetic beauty, sublime in their spiritual truth,nec plus ultra, one can say, in the grand style supreme:
Yasyaite himavanto mahitv
--
or,
Na tatra sryo bhti na eandratrakm...
--
or agam,
Nsad st na sad st tadnm
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The consciousness that breathed out these mighty w ords, these heavenly sounds was in itself mighty and heavenly and it is that that touches you, penetrates you, vibrates in you a kindred ch ord, "awakening in you someone dead" till thenmrtam kcana bodhayant. M ore than the matter, the thing that was said, was the personality, the being who embodied the truth expressed, the living consciousness behind the w ords and the speech that set fire to your soul. Indeed it was the soul that Vivekananda could awaken and stir in you. Any orat or, any speaker with some kind of belief, even if it is f or the moment, in what he says, by the sheer f orce of assertion, can convince your mind and draw your acquiescence and adhesion. A leader of men, self-confident and bold and fiery, can carry you off your feet and make you do brave things. But that is a lower degree of character and nature, ephemeral and superficial, that is touched in you thereby. The spiritual leader, the Guide, goes straight to the spirit in youit is the call of the deep unto the deep. That was what Vivekananda meant when he said that Brahman is asleep in you, awaken it, you are the Brahman, awaken it, you are free and almighty. It is the spirit consciousness Sachchidananda that is the real man in you and that is supremely mighty and invincible and free absolutely. The courage and fearlessness that Vivekananda gave you was the natural attri bute of the l ordship of your spiritual reality. Vivekananda spoke and roused the Atman in man.
Vivekananda spoke to the Atman in man, he spoke to the Atman of the w orld, and he spoke specially to the Atman of India. India had a large place in Vivekananda's consciousness: f or the future of humanity and the w orld is wedded to India's future. India has a great mission, it has a spiritual, rather the spiritual w ork to do. Here is India's w ork as Vivekananda conceived it in a nutshell:
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The answer is as old as that of Nachiketas: "These h orses and these songs and dances of yours, let them remain yours, man is not appeased with riches"; or that of Maitreyi, "What am I to do with that which will not bring me imm ortality?" This is then man's mission upon earth:
"Man is higher than all animals, than all angels: none is greater than man. Even the Devas will have to come down again and attain to salvation though a human body. Man alone attains to perfection, not even the Devas." Indeed, men are gods upon earth, come down here below to perfect themselves and perfect the w orldonly, they have to be conscious of themselves. They do not know what they are, they have to be actually and sovereignly what they are really and potentially. This then is the life-w ork of everyone:
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"The zeal f or the L ord hath eaten me up." Such has indeed been the case with Pascal, almost literally. The fire that burned in him was too ardent and vehement f or the vehicle, the material instrument, which was very soon used up and reduced to ashes. At twenty-four he was already a broken man, being struck with paralysis and neuras thenia; he died at the comparatively early age of 39, emulating, as it were, the life career of his L ord the Christ who died at 33. The Fire martyrised the body, but kindled and brought f orth experiences and realisations that save and truths that abide. It was the Divine Fire whose vision and experience he had on the famous night of 23 November 1654 which brought about his final and definitive conversion. It was the same fire that had blazed up in his brain, while yet a boy, and made him a precocious genius, a marvel of intellectual power in the exact sciences. At 12 this prodigy discovered by himself the 32nd proposition of Euclid, Book I. At sixteen he wrote a treatise on conic sections. At nineteen he invented a calculating machine which, without the help of any mathematical rule or process, gave absolutely accurate results. At twenty-three he published his experiments with vacuum. At twenty-five he conducted the well-known experiment from the tower of St. Jacques, proving the existence of atmospheric pressure. His studies in infinitesimal calculus were remarkably creative and original. And it might be said he was a pioneer in quite a new branch of mathematics, viz., the mathematical the ory of probability. We shall see presently how his preoccupation with the mathematics of chance and probability coloured and reinf orced his metaphysics and theology.
But the pressure upon his dynamic and heated brain the fiery zeal in his mindwas already proving too much and he was advised medically to take complete rest. Thereupon followed what was known as Pascal's mundane lifea period of distraction and dissipation; but this did not last long n or was it of a serious nature. The inner fire could brook no delay, it was eager and impatient to englobe other fields and domains. Indeed, it turned to its own field the heart. Pascal became initiated into the mystery of Faith and Grace. Still he had to pass through a terrible period of dejection and despair: the life of the w orld had given him no rest or relaxation, it served only to fill his cup of misery to the brim. But the hour of final relief was not long postponed: the Grace came to him, even as it came to Moses or St. Paul as a sudden flare of fire which burnt up the Dark Night and opened out the p ortals of M orning Gl ory.
Pascal's place in the evolution of European culture and consciousness is of considerable significance and imp ortance. He came at a critical time, on the mounting tide of rationalism and scepticism, in an age when the tone and temper of human mentality were influenced and fashioned by Montaigne and Rochefoucauld, by Bacon and Hobbes. Pascal himself, b orn in such an atmosphere of doubt and disbelief and disillusionment, had sucked in a full dose of that poison; yet he survived and found the Rock of Ages, became the clarion of Faith against Denial. What a spectacle it was! This is what one wrote just a quarter of a century after the death of Pascal:
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In his inquiry into truth and certitude Pascal takes his stand upon what he calls the geometrical method, the only valid method, acc ording to him, in the sphere of reason. The characteristic of this method is that it takes f or granted certain fundamental principles and realitiescalled axioms and postulates or definitionsand proceeds to other truths that are infallibly and inevitably deduced from them, that are inherent and implied in them. There is no use or necessity in trying to demonstrate these fundamentals also; that will only land us into confusion and muddle. They have to be simply accepted, they do not require demonstration, it is they that demonstrate others. Such, f or instance, are space, time, number, the reality of which it is foolishness and pedantry to I seek to prove. There is then an order of truths that do not i require to be proved. We are referring only to the order of I physical truths. But there is another order, Pascal says, equally I valid and veritable, the order of the Spirit. Here we have another set of fundamentals that have to be accepted and taken f or granted, matrix of other truths and realities. It can also be called the order of the Heart. Reason posits physical fundamentals; it does not know of the fundamentals of the Heart which are beyond its reach; such are God, Soul, Imm ortality which are evident only to Faith.
But Faith and Reason, acc ording to Pascal, are not contraries n or irreconcilables. Because the things of faith are beyond reason, it is not that they are irrational. Here is what Pascal says about the function and limitation of reason:
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The process of conversion of the doubting mind, of the dry intellectual reason as propounded and perhaps practised by Pascal is also a characteristic mark of his nature and genius. It is explained in his famous letter on "bet" or "game of chance" (Le Pari). Here is how he puts the issue to the doubting mind (I am giving the substance, not his w ords): let us say then that in the w orld we are playing a game of chance. How do the chances stand? What are the gains and losses if God does not exist? What 'are the gains and losses if God does exist? If God exists, by accepting and reaching him what do we gain? All that man cares f orhappiness, felicity. And what do we lose? We lose the w orld of misery. If, on the other 'hand, God does not exist, by believing him to exist, we lose nothing, we are not m ore miserable than what we are. If, however, God exists and we do not believe him, we gain this w orld of misery but we lose all that is w orth having. Thus Pascal concludes that even from the standpoint of mere gain and loss, belief in God is m ore advantageous than unbelief. This is how he applied to metaphysics the mathematics of probability.
One is not sure if such reasoning is convincing to the intellect; but perhaps it is a necessary stage in conversion. At least we can conclude that Pascal had to pass through such a stage; and it indicates the difficulty his brain had to undergo, the tension or even the t orture he made it pass through. It is true, from Reason Pascal went over to Faith, even while giving Reason its due. Still it seems the two were not perfectly synthetised or fused in him. There was a gap between that was not th oroughly bridged. Pascal did not possess the higher, intuitive, luminous mind that mediates successfully between the physical discursive ratiocinative brain-mind and the vision of faith: it is because deep in his consciousness there lay this chasm. Indeed,Pascal's abyss (l' abme de Pascal) is a well-known legend. Pascal, it appears, used to have very often the vision of an abyss about to open bef ore him and he shuddered at the prospect of falling into it. It seems to us to be an experience of the Infinity the Infinity to which he was so much attracted and of which he wrote so beautifully (L'infiniment grand et l'infiniment petit)but into which he could not evidently jump overboard unreservedly. This produced a dichotomy, a lack of integration of personality, Jung would say. Pascal's brain was cold, firm, almost rigid; his heart was volcanic, the faith he had was a fire: it lacked something of the pure light and burned with a lurid glare.
And the reason is his metaphysics. It is the Jansenist conception of God and human nature that inspired and coloured all his experience and consciousness. Acc ording to it, as acc ording to the Calvinist conception, man is a c orrupt being, c orroded to the c ore, original sin has branded his very soul. Only Grace saves him and releases him. The order of sin and the order of Grace are distinct and disparate w orlds and yet they complement each other and need each other. Greatness and misery are intertwined, united, unified with each other in him. Here is an echo of the Manichean position which also involves an abyss. But even then God's grace is not a free agent, as Jesuits declare; there is a predestination that guides and controls it. This was one of the main subjects he treated in his famous open letters (Les Provinciales) that brought him renown almost overnight. Eternal hell is a possible prospect that faces the Jansenist. That was why a Night always over-shadowed the Day in Pascal's soul.
Man then, acc ording to Pascal, is by nature a sinful thing. He can lay no claim to noble virtue as his own: all in him is vile, he is a lump of dirt and filth. Even the greatest has his full share of this taint. The greatest, the saintliest, and the meanest, the most sinful, all meet, all are equal on this common platf orm; all have the same feet of clay. Man is as miserable a creature as a beast, as much a part and product of Nature as a plant. Only there is this difference that an animal or a tree is unconscious, while man knows that he is miserable. This knowledge or perception makes him m ore miserable, but that is his real and only greatness there is no other. His thought, his self-consciousness, and his s orrow and repentance and contrition f or what he is that is the only good partMary's part that has been given to him. Here are Pascal's own w ords on the subject:
"The greatness of man is great in this that he knows he is miserable. A tree does not know that it is miserable.
--
Pascal's faith had not the calm, tranquil, serene, luminous and happy self-possession of an Indian Rishi. It was ardent and impatient, fiery and vehement. It had to be so perhaps, since it was to stand against his steely brain (and a gloomy vital or life f orce) as a counterpoise, even as an antidote. This tension and schism brought about, at least contri buted to his neuras thenia and physical infirmity. But whatever the effect upon his inner consciousness and spiritual achievement, his power of expression, his literary style acquired by that a special quality which is his great gift to the French language. If one speaks of Pascal, one has to speak of his language also; f or he was one of the great masters who created the French prose. His prose was a wonderful blend of clarity, precision, serried logic and warmth, colour, life, movement, plasticity.
A translation cannot give any idea of the Pascalian style; but an inner echo of the same can perhaps be caught from the thought movement of these characteristic sayings of his with which we conclude:
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"The heart has its reasons which Reason knows not... I say, the heart loves the universal being naturally, and itself also naturally, acc ording to which so ever it gives itself. And it hardens itself against the one or the other acc ording to its choice. You have rejected one and preserved the other. Is it by the reason that you love ?"10
"Know then, a you proud one, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble yourself, impotent Reason. Learn, man surpasses man infinitely. Hear from your Master your true state which you do not know. Listen to God."11
01.07 - The Bases of Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Are we then to say that human nature is irrevocably vitiated by an original sin and that all our eff orts at ref ormation and regeneration are, as the Indian saying goes, like trying to straighten out the crooked tail of a dog?
It is this persuasion which, has led many spiritual souls, siddhas, to declare that theirs is not the kingdom upon this earth, but that the kingdom of Heaven is within. And it is why great lovers of humanity have sought not to eradicate but only to mitigate, as far as possible, the ills of life. Earth and life, it is said, contain in their last analysis certain ugly and loathsome realities which are an inevitable and inex orable part of their substance and to eliminate one means to annihilate the other. What can be done is to throw a veil over the nether regions in human nature, to put a ban on their urges and velleities and to create opp ortunities to make social arrangements so that the higher impulses only find free play while the lower impulses, f or want of scope and indulgence, may fall down to a harmless level. This is what the Ref ormists hope and want and no m ore. Life is based upon animality, the soul is encased in an earth-sheathman needs must procreate, man needs must seek food. But what human eff ort can achieve is to set up barriers and limitations and f orm channels and openings, which will restrain these impulses, allow them a necessary modicum of play and which f or the greater part will serve to encourage and enhance the nobler urges in man. Of course, there will remain always the possibility of the whole scaffolding coming down with a crash and the ab original in man running riot in his nudity. But we have to accept the chance and make the best of what materials we have in hand.
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Our ideals have been mental constructions, rather than spiritual realitiesrealities of the deepest and highest being. And the power by which we sought to realise those ideals was mainly the insistence of our emotional urges, rather than Nature's Truth-Power. F or this must be understood that the mental, the vital and the physical f orm a nexus of reality which w orks in its own inex orable law and so long as we are within them we cannot but obey the laws that guide them. Of these three strata which f orm the human adhara, it is the vital which holds the key to man's nature. It is the executive power, the f orce that fashions the realities on the physical plane; it is what creates the character. The power of thought and sentiment is often much too exaggerated, even so the power of the body, that of physical and external rules and regulations. The mental or the physical or both together can mould the vital only to a limited extent, to the extent which is allowed by the inherent law of the vital. If the demands of the mental and the physical are stretched too far and are not suffered by the vital, a crash and catastrophe is bound to come in the end.
This is the meaning of the Ref ormist's pessimism. So long as we remain within the domain of the triple nexus, we must always take account of an original sin, an ab original irredeemability in human nature. And it, is this fact which a too hasty optimistic idealism is apt to ign ore. The point, however, is that man need not be necessarily bound to this triple ch ord of life. He can go beyond, transcend himself and find a reality which is the basis of even this lower poise of the mental and vital and physical. Only in order to get into that higher poise we must really transcend the lower, that is to say, we must not be satisfied with experiencing or envisaging it through the mind and heart but must directly commune with it, be it. There is a higher law that rules there, a power that is the truth-substance of even the vital and hence can remould it with a sovereign inevitability, acc ording to a pattern which may not and is not the pattern of mental and emotional idealism, but the pattern of a supreme spiritual realism.
What then is required is a complete spiritual regeneration in man, a new structure of his soul and substancenot merely the realisation of the highest and supreme Truth in mental and emotional consciousness, but the translation and application of the law of that truth in the power of the vital. It is here that failed all the great spiritual or rather religious movements of the past. They were content with evoking the divine in the mental being, but left the vital becoming to be governed by the habitual un-divine or at the most to be just illumined by a distant and faint glow which served, however, m ore to dist ort than express the Divine.
The Divine Nature only can permanently ref orm the vital nature that is ours. Neither laws and institutions, which are the results of that vital nature, n or ideas and ideals which are often a mere revolt from and m ore often an auxiliary to it, can comm and the power to regenerate society. If it is thought improbable f or any group of men to attain to that God Nature, then there is hardly any hope f or mankind. But improbable or probable, that is the only way which man has to try and test, and there is none other.
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01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The recent science of Psycho-analysis has brought to light certain hidden springs and undercurrents of the mind; it has familiarised us with a mode of viewing the entire psychical life of man which will be fruitful f or our present enquiry. Mind, it has been found, is a house divided, against itself, that is to say it is an arena where different and divergent f orces continually battle against one another. There must be, however, at the same time, some s ort of a resolution of these f orces, some equation that holds them in balance, otherwise the mind the human being itselfwould cease to exist as an entity. What is the mechanism of this balance of power in the human mind? In order to ascertain that we must first of all know the fundamental nature of the struggle and also the character of the m ore elemental f orces that are engaged in it.
There are some primary desires that seek satisfaction in man. They are the vital urges of life, the most prominent among them being the instinct of self-preservation and that of self-reproduction or the desire to preserve one's body by defensive as well as by offensive means and the desire to multiply oneself by mating. These are the two biological necessities that are inevitable to man's existence as a physical being. They give the minimum conditions required to be fulfilled by man in order that he may live and hence they are the strongest and the most fundamental elements that enter into his structure and composition.
It would have been an easy matter if these vital urges could flow on unhindered in their way. There would have been no problem at all, if they met satisfaction easily and smoothly, without having to look to other fact ors and f orces. As a matter of fact, man does not and cannot gratify his instincts whenever and wherever he chooses and in an open and direct manner. Even in his most primitive and barbarous condition, he has often to check himself and throw a veil, in so many ways, over his sheer animality. In the civilised society the check is manifold and is frankly recognised. We do not go straight as our sexual impulsion leads, but seek to hide and camouflage it under the institution of marriage; we do not pounce upon the food directly we happen to meet it and snatch and appropriate whatever p ortion we get but we secure it through an elab orate process, which is known as the economic system. The machinery of the state, the cult of the kshatriya are roundabout ways to meet our fighting instincts.
What is the reason of this elab oration, this check and constraint upon the natural and direct outflow of the animal instincts in man? It has been said that the social life of man, the fact that he has to live and move as member of a group or aggregate has imposed upon him these restrictions. The free and unbridled indulgence of one's bare ab original impulses may be possible to creatures that live a separate, solitary and individual life but is disruptive of all bonds necessary f or a c orp orate and group life. It is even a biological necessity again which has evolved in man a third and collateral primary instinct that of the herd. And it is this herd-instinct which naturally and spontaneously restrains, diverts and even metam orphoses the other instincts of the mere animal life. However, leaving aside f or the moment the question whether man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a mere dissimulation of his animal instincts or whether they c orrespond to certain actual realities apart from and co-existent with these latter, we will recognise the simple fact of control and try to have a glimpse into its mechanism.
There are three lines, as the Psycho-analysts point out along which this control or censuring of the primary instincts acts. First, there is the line of Defence Reaction. That is to say, the mind automatically takes up an attitude directly contrary to the impulse, tries to shut it out and deny altogether its existence and the measure of the insistence of the impulse is also the measure of the vehemence of the denial. It is the case of the lady protesting too much. So it happens that where subconsciously there is a strong current of a particular impulse, consciously the mind is obliged to take up a counteracting opposite impulse. Thus in presence of a strong sexual craving the mind as if to guard and save itself engenders by a reflex movement an ascetic and puritanic mood. Similarly a strong unthinking physical attraction translates itself on the conscious plane as an equally strong repulsion.
Secondly, there is the line of Substitution. Here the mind does not stand in an antagonistic and protestant mood to combat and repress the impulse, but seeks to divert it into other channels, use it to other purposes which do not demand equal sacrifice, may even, on the other hand, be considered by the conscious mind as w orthy of human pursuit. Thus the energy that n ormally would seek sexual gratification might find its outlet in the cultivation of art and literature. It is a common thing in novels to find the heroine disappointed in love taking finally to w orks of charity and beneficence and thus f orgetting her disappointment. Another variety of this is what is known as "drowning one's s orrow in drinking."
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The human mind naturally, without any eff ort on its part, takes to one or m ore of these devices to control and conceal the ab original impulses. But this spontaneous process can be organised and consciously regulated and made to serve better the purpose and urge of Nature. And this is the beginning of yoga the conscious fulfilment of Nature. The Psycho-analysts have given us the first and elementary stage of this process of yoga. It is, we may say, the fourth line of control. With this man enters a new level of being, develops a new mode of life. It is when the automatism of Nature is replaced by the power of Conscious Control. Man is not here, a blind instrument of f orces, his activities (both indulging and controlling) are not guided acc ording to an ign orant submission to the laws of almost subconscious impulsions. Conscious control means that the mind does not fight shy of or seek to elude the ab original insistences, but allows them to come up freely, meets them squarely, recognises them and establishes an easy mastery over them.
The method of unconscious or subconscious nature is fundamentally that of repression. Apart from Defence Reaction which is a thing of pure coercion, even in Substitution and Sublimation there always remains in the background a large amount of repressed complexes in all their primitive strength. The system is never entirely purified but remains secretly pregnant with those urges; a part only is deflected and camouflaged, the surface only assumes a transf ormed appearance. And there is always the danger of the superstructure coming down helplessly by a sudden upheaval of the nether f orces. The whole system feels, although not in a conscious manner, the tension of the repression and suffers from something that is unhealthy and ill-balanced. Dante's spiritualised passion is a supreme instance of control by Sublimation, but the Divina Comedia hardly bears the impress of a serene and tranquil soul, sovereignly above the turmoils of the tragedy of life and absolutely at peace with itself.
In conscious control, the mind is f or the first time aware of the presence of the repressed impulses, it seeks to release them from the pressure to which they are habitually and n ormally subjected. It knows and recognises them, however ugly and revolting they might appear to be when they present themselves in their natural nakedness. Then it becomes easy f or the conscious determination to eliminate or regulate or transf orm them and thus to establish a healthy harmony in the human vehicle. The very recognition itself, as implied in conscious control, means purification.
Yet even here the process of control and transf ormation does not end. And we now come to the Fifth Line, the real and intimate path of yoga. Conscious control gives us a natural mastery over the instinctive impulses which are relieved of their dark tamas and attain a purified rhythm. We do not seek to hide or repress or combat them, but surpass them and play with them as the artist does with his material. Something of this katharsis, this aestheticism of the primitive impulses was achieved by the ancient Greeks. Even then the primitive impulses remain primitive all the same; they fulfil, no doubt, a real and healthy function in the scheme of life, but still in their fundamental nature they continue the animal in man. And even when Conscious Control means the utter elimination and annihilation of the primal instinctswhich, however, does not seem to be a probable eventualityeven then, we say, the basic problem remains unsolved; f or the urge of nature towards the release and a transf ormation of the instincts does not find satisfaction, the question is merely put aside.
Yoga, then, comes at this stage and offers the solution in its power of what we may call Transubstantiation. That is to say, here the mere f orm is not changed, n or the functions restrained, regulated and purified, but the very substance of the instincts is transmuted. The power of conscious control is a power of the human will, i.e. of an individual personal will and theref ore necessarily limited both in intent and extent. It is a power complementary to the power of Nature, it may guide and fashion the latter acc ording to a new pattern, but cannot change the basic substance, the stuff of Nature. To that end yoga seeks a power that transcends the human will, brings into play the supernal puissance of a Divine Will.
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Thus then we may distinguish three types of control on three levels. First, the natural control, secondly the conscious, i.e. to say the mental the ethical and religious control, and thirdly the spiritual or divine control. Now the spirit is the ultimate truth and reality, behind the f orces that act in the mind and in the body, so that the natural control and the ethical control are mere attempts to establish and realise the spiritual control. The animal impulses feel the hidden stress of the divine urges that are their real essence and thus there rises first an unconscious conflict in the natural life and then a conscious conflict in the higher ethical life. But when both of these are transcended and the conflict is carried on to a still higher level, then do we find their real significance and arrive at the consummation to which they move. Yoga is the ultimate transvaluation of physical (and of m oral) values, it is the trans-substantiation of life-power into its spiritual substance.
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01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
From the twentieth century back to the fourteenth is a far cry: a far cry indeed from the modern scientific illumination to mediaeval superstition, from logical positivists and mathematical rationalists to visionary mystics, from Russell and Huxley to Ruysbroeck and Hilton. The mystic l ore, the Holy Writ, the mediaeval sage says, echoing almost the very w ords of the Eastern Masters, "may not be got by study n or through man's travail only, but principally by the grace of the Holy Ghost." As f or the men living and moving in the w orldly way, there are "so mickle din and crying in their heart and vain thoughts and fleshly desires" that it is impossible f or them to listen or understand the still small voice. It is the pure soul touched by the Grace that alone "seeth soothfastness of Holy Writ wonderly shewed and opened, above study and travail and reason of man's kindly (i.e. natural) wit."
What is day to us is night to the mystics and what is day to the mystics is night f or us. The first thing the mystic asks is to close precisely those do ors and windows which we, on the contrary, feel obliged to keep always open in order to know and to live and move. The Gita says: "The sage is wakeful when it is night f or all creatures and when all creatures are wakeful, that is night f or the sage." Even so this sage from the West says: "The m ore I sleep from outward things, the m ore wakeful am I in knowing of Jhesu and of inward things. I may not wake to Jhesu, but if I sleep to the w orld."
Close the senses. Turn within. And then go f orward, that is to say, m ore and m ore inward. In that direction lies your itinerary, the journey of your consciousness. The sense-ridden secular man, who goes by his physical eye, has marked in his own way the steps of his f orward march and progress. His knowledge and his power grew as he proceeded in his survey from larger masses of physical objects to their component molecules and from molecules to their component atoms and from atoms once m ore into electrons and protons or energy-points pure and simple, or otherwise as, in another direction, he extended his gaze from earth to the solar system, from the solar system to other starry systems, to far-off galaxies and I from galaxies to spaces beyond. The rec ord of this double-track march to infinityas perceived or conceived by the physical sensesis marvellous, no doubt. The mystic offers the spectacle of a still m ore marvellous march to another kind of infinity.
Here is the Augustinian mantra taken as the motto of The Scale of Perfection: We ascend the ascending grades in our heart and we sing the song of ascension1. The journey's end is heavenly Jerusalem, the House of the L ord. The steps of this inner ascension are easily visible, not surely to the outer eye of the sense-burdened man, but to the "ghostly seeing" of the aspirant which is hazy in the beginning but slowly clears as he advances. The first step is the withdrawal from the outer senses and looking and seeing within. "Turn home again in thyself, and hold thee within and beg no m ore without." The immediate result is a darkness and a restless darknessit is a painful night. The outer objects of attraction and interest have been discarded, but the inner attachments and passions surge there still. If, however, one continues and persists, refuses to be drawn out, the turmoil settles down and the darkness begins to thin and wear away. One must not lose heart, one must have patience and perseverance. So when the outward w orld is no m ore-there and its call also no longer awakes any echo in us, then comes the stage of "restful darkness" or "light-some darkness". But it is still the dark Night of the soul. The outer light is gone and the inner light is not yet visible: the night, the desert, the great Nought, stretches between these two lights. But the true seeker goes through and comes out of the tunnel. And there is happiness at the end. "The seeking is travaillous, but the finding is blissful." When one steps out of the Night, enters into the deepest layer of the being, one stands face to face to one's soul, the very image of God, the perfect God-man, the Christ within. That is the third degree of our inner ascension, the entry into the deepest, purest and happiest statein which one becomes what he truly is; one finds the Christ there and dwells in love and union with him. But there is still a further step to take, and that is real ascension. F or till now it has been a going within, from the outward to the inner and the inmost; now one has to go upward, transcend. Within the body, in life, however deep you may go, even if you find your soul and your union with Jesus whose tabernacle is your soul, still there is bound to remain a shadow of the sinful prison-house; the perfect bliss and purity without any earthly taint, the completeness and the crowning of the purgation and transfiguration can come only when you go beyond, leaving altogether the earthly f orm and w orldly vesture and soar into Heaven itself and be in the company of the Trinity. "Into myself, and after... above myself by overpassing only into Him." At the same time it is pointed out, this mediaeval mystic has the common sense to see that the going in and going above of which one speaks must not be understood in a literal way, it is a figure of speech. The movement of the mystic is psychological"ghostly", it is saidnot physical or carnal.
This spiritual march or progress can also be described as a growing into the likeness of the L ord. His true self, his own image is implanted within us; he is there in the profoundest depth of our being as Jesus, our beloved and our soul rests in him in utmost bliss. We are aware neither of Jesus n or of his spouse, our soul, because of the obsession of the flesh, the turmoil raised by the senses, the blindness of pride and egoism. All that constitutes the first or old Adam, the image of Nought, the body of death which means at bottom the "false misruled love in to thyself." This self-love is the mother of sin, is sin itself. What it has to be replaced by is charity that is the true meaning of Christian charity, f orgetfulness of self. "What is sin but a wanting and a f orbearing of God." And the whole task, the discipline consists in "the shaping of Christ in you, the casting of sin through Christ." Who then is Christ, what is he? This knowledge you get as you advance from your sense-bound perception towards the inner and inmost seeing. As your outer nature gets purified, you approach gradually your soul, the scales fall off from your eyes too and you have the knowledge and "ghostly vision." Here too there are three degrees; first, you start with faith the senses can do nothing better than have faith; next, you rise to imagination which gives a s ort of indirect touch or inkling of the truth; finally, you have the "understanding", the direct vision. "If he first trow it, he shall afterwards through grace feel it, and finally understand it."
It is never possible f or man, weak and bound as he is, to reject the thraldom of his flesh, he can never purify himself wholly by his own unaided strength. God in his infinite mercy sent his own son, an emanation created out of his substancehis embodied loveas a human being to suffer along with men and take upon himself the burden of their sins. God the Son lived upon earth as man and died as man. Sin theref ore has no longer its final or definitive hold upon mankind. Man has been made potentially free, pure and w orthy of salvation. This is the mystery of Christ, of God the Son. But there is a further mystery. Christ not only lived f or all men f or all time, whether they know him, recognise him or not; but he still lives, he still chooses his beloved and his beloved chooses him, there is a conscious acceptance on either side. This is the function of the Holy Ghost, the redeeming power of Love active in him who accepts it and who is accepted by it, the dynamic Christ-Consciousness in the true Christian.
Indeed, the kernel of the mystic discipline and its whole bearingconsists in one and only one principle: to love Jhesu. All roads lead to Rome: all preparations, all trials lead to one realisation, love of God, God as a living person close to us, our friend and lover and master. The Christian mystic speaks almost in the terms of the Gita: Rise above your senses, give up your ego-hood, be meek and humble, it is Jesus within you, who embraces your soul: it is he who does everything f or you and in you, give yourself up wholly into his hands. He will deliver you.
The characteristic then of the path is a one-pointed concentration. Great stress is laid upon "oneliness", "onedness":that is to say, a perfect and complete withdrawal from the outside and the w orld; an unmixed solitude is required f or the true experience and realisation to come. "A full f orsaking in will of the soul f or the love of Him, and a living of the heart to Him. This asks He, f or this gave He." The rig orous exclusion, the uncompromising asceticism, the voluntary self-t orture, the cruel dark night and the arid desert are necessary conditions that lead to the "onlyness of soul", what another prophet (Isaiah, XXIV, 16) describes as "My privity to me". In that secreted solitude, the "onlistead"the graphic language of the auth or calls itis found "that dignity and that ghostly fairness which a soul had by kind and shall have by grace." The utter beauty of the soul and its absolute love f or her deity within her (which has the fair name of Jhesu), the exclusive concentration of the whole of the being upon one point, the divine c ore, the manifest Grace of God, justifies the annihilation of the w orld and life's manifold existence. Indeed, the image of the Beloved is always within, from the beginning to the end. It is that that keeps one up in the terrible struggle with one's nature and the w orld. The image depends upon the consciousness which we have at the moment, that is to say, upon the stage or the degree we have ascended to. At the outset, when we can only look through the senses, when the flesh is our master, we give the image a crude f orm and character; but even that helps. Gradually, as we rise, with the clearing of our nature, the image too slowly regains its original and true shape. Finally, in the inmost soul we find Jesus as he truly is: "an unchangeable being, a sovereign might, a sovereign soothfastness, sovereign goodness, a blessed life and endless bliss." Does not the Gita too say: "As one approaches Me, so do I appear to him."Ye yath mm prapadyante.
Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, f or example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer f orm or credal f ormulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take f or granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in many ways with that sense and in some f orm or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the human soul is not admitted into this identity, n or the w orld soul. The w orld, we have seen, acc ording to the Christian discipline has to be altogether abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete rejection, a cutting off and casting away of w orld and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really rejection, but a resolution, not the rejection of what is totally f oreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. Brahman is in the w orld, Brahman is the w orld: the w orld has unrolled itself out of the Brahmansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the individual being in the w orld, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole w orld with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love f or one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love f or one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, acc ording to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, f or he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval Canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is w orshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan w orld which has neither religion n or true spirituality n or salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be b orne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion f or Judas, but that he positively loved the trait or with a true and sincere love. He knew that the man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the faith of the faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2
This will elucidate another point of difference between the Christian's and the Vaishnava's love of God, f or both are characterised by an extreme intensity and sweetness and exquisiteness of that divine feeling. This Christian's, however, is the union of the soul in its absolute purity and simplicity and "privacy" with her l ord and master; the soul is shred here of all earthly vesture and goes innocent and naked into the embrace of her Beloved. The Vaishnava feeling is richer and seems to possess m ore amplitude; it is m ore concrete and less ethereal. The Vaishnava in his passionate yearning seeks to carry as it were the whole w orld with him to his L ord: f or he sees and feels Him not only in the inmost chamber of his soul, but meets Him also in and I through his senses and in and through the w orld and its objects around. In psychological terms one can say that the Christian realisation, at its very source, is that of the inmost soul, what we call the "psychic being" pure and simple, referred to in the book we are considering; as: "His sweet privy voice... stirreth thine heart full stilly." Whereas the Vaishnava reaches out to his L ord with his outer heart too aflame with passion; not only his inmost being but his vital being also seeks the Divine. This bears upon the occult st ory of man's spiritual evolution upon earth. The Divine Grace descends from the highest into the deepest and from the deepest to the outer ranges of human nature, so that the whole of it may be illumined and transf ormed and one day man can embody in his earthly life the integral manifestation of God, the perfect Epiphany. Each religion, each line of spiritual discipline takes up one limb of manone level or mode of his being and consciousness purifies it and suffuses it with the spiritual and divine consciousness, so that in the end the whole of man, in his integral living, is recast and remoulded: each discipline is in charge of one thread as it were, all together weave the warp and woof in the evolution of the perfect pattern of a spiritualised and divinised humanity.
The conception of original sin is a cardinal fact or in Christian discipline. The conception, of sinfulness is the very motive-power that drives the aspirant. "Seek tensely," it is said, "s orrow and sigh deep, mourn still, and stoop low till thine eye water f or anguish and f or pain." Rem orse and grief are necessary attendants; the way of the cross is naturally the calvary strewn with pain and s orrow. It is the very opposite of what is termed the "sunlit path" in spiritual ascension. Christian mystics have made a gl orious spectacle of the process of "dying to the w orld." Evidently, all do not go the whole length. There are less gloomy and happier temperaments, like the present one, f or example, who show an unusual balance, a sturdy common sense even in the midst of their darkest nights, who have chalked out as much of the sunlit path as is possible in this line. Thus this old-w orld mystic says: it is true one must see and admit one's sinfulness, the grosser and apparent and m ore violent ones as well as all the subtle varieties of it that are in you or rise up in you or come from the Enemy. They pursue you till the very end of your journey. Still you need not feel overwhelmed or completely desperate. Once you recognise the sin in you, even the bare fact of recognition means f or you half the vict ory. The mystic says, "It is no sin as thou feelest them." The day Jesus gave himself away on the Cross, since that very day you are free, potentially free from the bondage of sin. Once you give your adherence to Him, the Enemies are rendered powerless. "They tease the soul, but they harm not the soul". or again, as the mystic graphically phrases it: "This soul is not b orne in this image of sin as a sick man, though he feel it; but he beareth it." The best way of dealing with one's enemies is not to struggle and "strive with them." The aspirant, the lover of Jesus, must remember: "He is through grace ref ormed to the likeness of God ('in the privy substance of his soul within') though he neither feel it n or see it."
If you are told you are still full of sins and you are not w orthy to follow the path, that you must go and w ork out your sins first, here is your answer: "Go shrive thee better: trow not this saying, f or it is false, f or thou art shriven. Trust securely that thou art on the way, and thee needeth no ransacking of shrift f or that that is passed, hold f orth thy way and think on Jerusalem." That is to say, do not be too busy with the difficulties of the moment, but look ahead, as far as possible, fix your attention upon the goal, the intermediate steps will become easy. Jerusalem is another name of the Love of Jesus or the Bliss in Heaven. Grow in this love, your sins will fade away of themselves. "Though thou be thrust in an house with thy body, nevertheless in thine heart, where the stead of love is, thou shouldst be able to have part of that love... " What exquisite utterance, what a deep truth!
Indeed, there are one or two points, notes f or the guidance of the aspirant, which I would like to mention here f or their striking appositeness and simple "soothfastness." First of all with regard to the restless enthusiasm and eagerness of a novice, here is the advice given: "The fervour is so mickle in outward showing, is not only f or mickleness of love that they have; but it is f or littleness and weakness of their souls, that they may not bear a little touching of God.. afterward when love hath boiled out all the uncleanliness, then is the love clear and standeth still, and then is both the body and the soul mickle m ore in peace, and yet hath the self soul mickle m ore love than it had bef ore, though it shew less outward." And again: "without any fervour outward shewed, and the less it thinketh that it loveth or seeth God, the nearer it nigheth" ('it' naturally refers to the soul). The statement is beautifully self-luminous, no explanation is required. Another hurdle that an aspirant has to face often in the passage through the Dark Night is that you are left all alone, that you are deserted by your God, that the Grace no longer favours you. Here is however the truth of the matter; "when I fall down to my frailty, then Grace withdraweth: f or my falling is cause there-of, and not his fleeing." In fact, the Grace never withdraws, it is we who withdraw and think otherwise. One m ore difficulty that troubles the beginner especially is with regard to the false light. The being of darkness comes in the f orm of the angel of light, imitates the tone of the still small voice; how to recognise, how to distinguish the two? The false light, the "feigned sun" is always found "atwixt two black rainy clouds" : they are "highing" of oneself and "lowing" of others. When you feel flattered and elated, beware it is the siren voice tempting you. The true light brings you soothing peace and meekness: the other light brings always a trail of darknessf you are soothfast and sincere you will discover it if not near you, somewhere at a distance lurking.
The ultimate truth is that God is the sole doer and the best we can do is to let him do freely without let or hindrance. "He that through Grace may see Jhesu, how that He doth all and himself doth right nought but suffereth Jhesu w ork in him what him liketh, he is meek." And yet one does not arrive at that condition from the beginning or all at once. "The w ork is not of the hour n or of a day, but of many days and years." And f or a long time one has to take up one's burden and w ork, co-operate with the Divine w orking. In the process there is this double movement necessary f or the full achievement. "Neither Grace only without full w orking of a soul that in it is n or w orking done without grace bringeth a soul to ref orming but that one joined to that other." Mysticism is not all eccentricity and irrationality: on the contrary, sanity seems to be the very character of the higher mysticism. And it is this sanity, and even a happy sense of humour accompanying it, that makes the genuine mystic teacher say: "It is no mastery to me f or to say it, but f or to do it there is mastery." Amen.
Ascendimus ascensiones in c orde et cantamus canticum graduum." Confessions of St. Augustine XIII. 9.
01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To be divine or to remain humanthis is the one choice that is now bef ore Nature in her upward march of evolution. What is the exact significance of this choice?
To remain human means to continue the fundamental nature of man. In what consists the humanity of man? We can ascertain it by distinguishing what f orms the animality of the animal, since that will give us the differentia that nature has evolved to raise man over the animal. The animal, again, has a characteristic differentiating it from the vegetable w orld, which latter, in its turn, has something to mark it off from the in organic w orld. The in organic, the vegetable, the animal and finally manthese are the four great steps of Nature's evolutionary course.
The differentia, in each case, lies in the degree and nature of consciousness, since it is consciousness that f orms the substance and determines the mode of being. Now, the in organic is characterised by un-consciousness, the vegetable by sub-consciousness, the animal by consciousness and man by self-consciousness. Man knows that he knows, an animal only knows; a plant does not even know, it merely feels or senses; matter cannot do that even, it simply acts or rather is acted upon. We are not concerned here, however, with the last two f orms of being; we will speak of the first two only.
We say, then, that man is distinguished from the animal by his having consciousness as it has, but added to it the consciousness of self. Man acts and feels and knows as much as the animal does; but also he knows that he acts, he knows that he feels, he knows that he knowsand this is a thing the animal cannot do. It is the awakening of the sense of self in every mode of being that characterises man, and it is owing to this consciousness of an ego behind, of a permanent unit of reference, which has modified even the functions of knowing and feeling and acting, has refashioned them in a mould which is not quite that of the animal, in spite of a general similarity.
So the humanity of man consists in his consciousness of the self or ego. Is there no other higher mode of consciousness? or is self-consciousness the acme, the utmost limit to which consciousness can raise itself? If it is so, then we are bound to conclude that humanity will remain eternally human in its fundamental nature; the only progress, if progress at all we choose to call it, will consist perhaps in accentuating this consciousness of the self and in expressing it through a greater variety of stresses, through a richer combination of its colour and light and shade and rhythm. But also, this may not be sothere may be the possibility of a further step, a transcending of the consciousness of the self. It seems unnatural and improbable that having risen from un-consciousness to self-consciousness through a series of continuous marches, Nature should suddenly stop and consider what she had achieved to be her final end. Has Nature become bankrupt of her creative genius, exhausted of her upward drive? Has she to remain content with only a clever manipulation, a mere shuffling and re-arranging of the materials already produced?
As a matter of fact it is not so. The glimpses of a higher f orm of consciousness we can see even now present in self-consciousness. We have spoken of the different stages of evolution as if they were separate and distinct and incommensurate entities. They may be described as such f or the purpose of a logical understanding, but in reality they f orm a single progressive continuum in which one level gradually fuses into another. And as the higher level takes up the law of the lower and evolves out of it a characteristic function, even so the law of the higher level with its characteristic function is already involved and envisaged in the law of the lower level and its characteristic function. It cannot be asserted positively that because man's special virtue is self-consciousness, animals cannot have that quality on any account. We do see, if we care to observe closely and dispassionately, that animals of the higher order, as they approach the level of humanity, show m ore and m ore evident signs of something which is very much akin to, if not identical with the human characteristic of self-consciousness.
So, in man also, especially of that order which f orms the crown of humanityin poets and artists and seers and great men of actioncan be observed a certain characteristic f orm of consciousness, which is something other than, greater than the consciousness of the mere self. It is difficult as yet to characterise definitely what that thing is. It is the awakening of the self to something which is beyond itselfit is the cosmic self, the oversoul, the universal being; it is God, it is Turiya, it is sachchidanandain so many ways the thing has been sought to be envisaged and expressed. The consciousness of that level has also a great variety of names given to it Intuition, Revelation, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness. It is to be noted here, however, that the thing we are referring to, is not the Absolute, the Infinite, the One without a second. It is not, that is to say, the supreme Reality the Brahmanin its static being, in its undivided and indivisible unity; it is the dynamic Brahman, that status of the supreme Reality where creation, the diversity of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-w orldRitam the domain of typal realities. The distinction is necessary, as there does seem to be such a level of consciousness intermediary, again, between man and the Absolute, between self-consciousness and the supreme consciousness. The simplest thing would be to give that intermediate level of consciousness a negative namesince being as yet human we cannot f oresee exactly its composition and function the super-consciousness.
The inflatus of something vast and transcendent, something which escapes all our familiar schemes of cognisance and yet is insistent with a translucent reality of its own, we do feel sometimes within us invading and enveloping our individuality, lifting up our sense of self and transmuting our personality into a reality which can hardly be called merely human. All this life of ego-bound rationality then melts away and opens out the passage f or a life of vision and power. Thus it is the poet has felt when he says, "there is this incalculable element in human life influencing us from the mystery which envelops our being, and when reason is satisfied, there is something deeper than Reason which makes us still uncertain of truth. Above the human reason there is a transcendental sphere to which the spirit of men sometimes rises, and the will may be f orged there at a l ordly smithy and made the unbreakable pivot."(A.E.)
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The ideal was Blake's. It will not sound so revolting if we understand what the poet meant by Hell. Hell, he explains, is simply the body, the Energy of Lifehell, because body and life on earth were so considered by the orthodox Christianity. The Christian ideal demands an absolute denial and rejection of life. Fulfilment is elsewhere, in heaven alone. That is, as we know, the ideal of the ascetic. The life of the spirit (in heaven) is a thing away from and stands against the life of the flesh (on earth). In the face of this discipline, countering it, Blake posited a union, a marriage of the two, considered incompatibles and incommensurables. Enfant terrible that he was, he took an infinite delight in a spirit of contradiction and went on expatiating on the gl ory of the misalliance. He declared a new apocalypse and said that Lucifer, the one called Satan, was the real God, the so-called Messiah the fake one: the apparent Milton spoke in praise of God and in dispraise of Satan, but the real, the esoteric Milton gl orified Satan, who is the true God and minimised or caricatured the counterfeit or shadow God. Here is Blakean Bible in a nutshell:
But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged.. . . If the do ors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
--
We welcome voices that speak of this ancient tradition, this occult Knowledge of a high Future. Recently we have come across one aspirant in the line, and being a contemp orary, his views and reviews in the matter will be all the m ore interesting to us.2 He is Gustave Thibon, a Frenchman-not a priest or even a religious man in the orthodox sense in any way, but a country farmer, a wholly self-educated laque. Of late he has attracted a good deal of attention from intellectuals as well as religious people, especially the Catholics, because of his remarkable conceptions which are so often un orthodox and yet so often ringing true with an old-w orld au thenticity.
Touching the very c ore of the malady of our age he says that our modern enlightenment seeks to cancel altogether the higher values and install instead the lower alone as true. Thus, f or example, Marx and Freud, its twin arch priests, are brothers. Both declare that it is the lower, the under layer alone that matters: to one "the masses", to the other "the instincts". Their wild imperative roars: "Sweep away this pseudo-higher; let the instincts rule, let the pro-letariat dictate!" But m ore characteristic, Monsieur Thibon has made another discovery which gives the whole value and speciality to his outlook. He says the moderns stress the lower, no doubt; but the old w orld stressed only the higher and neglected the lower. Theref ore the revolt and wrath of the lower, the rage of Revanche in the heart of the dispossessed in the modern w orld. Enlightenment meant till now the cultivation and embellishment of the Mind, the conscious Mind, the rational and nobler faculties, the height and the depth: and mankind meant the princes and the great ones. In the individual, in the scheme of his culture and education, the senses were neglected, left to go their own way as they pleased; and in the collective field, the toiling masses in the same way lived and moved as best as they could under the economics of laissez-faire. So Monsieur Thibon concludes: "Salvation has never come from below. To look f or it from above only is equally vain. No doubt salvation must come from the higher, but on condition that the higher completely adopts and protects the lower." Here is a vision luminous and revealing, full of great imp ort, if we follow the right track, prophetic of man's true destiny. It is through this infiltration of the higher into the lower and the integration of the lower into the higher that mankind will reach the goal of its evolution, both individually and collectively.
But the process, Monsieur Thibon rightly asserts, must begin with the individual and within the individual. Man must "turn within, feel alive within himself", re-establish his living contact with God, the source and origin from which he has cut himself off. Man must learn to sub ordinate having to being. Each individual must be himself, a free and spontaneous expression. Upon such individual , upon individuals grouped naturally in smaller collectivities and not upon unf ormed or ill-f ormed wholesale masses can a perfect human society be raised and will be raised. Monsieur Thibon insistsand very rightlyupon the variety and diversity of individual and local growths in a unified humanity and not a dead unif ormity of regimented oneness. He declares, as the reviewer of the London Times succinctly puts it: "Let us abolish our insensate w orship of number. Let us repeal the law of maj orities. Let us w ork f or the unity that draws together instead of idolizing the multiplicity that disintegrates. Let us understand that it is not enough f or each to have a place; what matters is that each should be in his right place. F or the atomized society let us substitute an organic society, one in which every man will be free to do what he alone is qualified and able to do."
So far so good. F or it is not far enough. The being or becoming that is demanded in fulfilment of the divine advent in humanity must go to the very roots of life and nature, must seize God in his highest and sovereign status. No prejudice of the past, no notion of our mental habits must seek to impose its law. Thus, f or example, in the matter of redeeming the senses by the influx of the higher light, our auth or seems to consider that the senses will remain m ore or less as they are, only they will be controlled, guided, used by the higher light. And he seems to think that even the sex relation (even the institution of marriage) may continue to remain, but sublimated, submitted to the laws of the Higher order. This, acc ording to us, is a dangerous compromise and is simply the imposition of the lower law upon the higher. Our view of the total transf ormation and divinisation of the Lower is altogether different. The Highest must come down wholly and inhabit in the Lowest, the Lowest must give up altogether its own n orms and lift itself into the substance and f orm too of the Highest.
Viewed in this light, Blake's mem orable mantra attains a deeper and m ore momentous significance. F or it is not merely Earth the senses and life and Matter that are to be uplifted and affianced to Heaven, but all that remains hidden within the bowels of the Earth, the subterranean regions of man's consciousness, the slimy viscous undergrowths, the darkest h orr ors and monstrosities that man and nature hide in their subconscient and inconscient dungeons of material existence, all these have to be laid bare to the solar gaze of Heaven, burnt or transmuted as demanded by the law of that Supreme Will. That is the Hell that has to be recognised, not rejected and thrown away, but taken up purified and transubstantiated into the body of Heaven itself. The hand of the Highest Heaven must extend and touch the Lowest of the lowest elements, transmute it and set it in its rightful place of honour. A m ortal body reconstituted into an immem orial fossil, a lump of coal revivified into a flashing carat of diamond-that shows something of the process underlying the nuptials of which we are speaking.
The Life Divine
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
thoughts or bad will from people around you - or an adverse
attack that can manifest as an illness. But, as you clearly experienced in your dream, if you are not frightened and go on your
--
are not able to go beyond a mediocre average. or is it
because of our lack of solid concentration?
--
in the students, whether in games, athletics or gymnastics. Even our own enthusiasm dwindles when we see
their lack of interest in everything.
--
bring myself to do it. What shall I do? Confess or let
past things be effaced by f orgetting the past?
--
The first point is not to place oneself in thought, feeling or
action at the centre of the universe so that it exists only in terms
--
by renunciation or by perfect satisfaction of desire that
one can have the total experience of God.2 But isn't
--
"Only by perfect renunciation of desire or by perfect satisfaction of desire can the
utter embrace of God be experienced, f or in both ways the essential precondition is
--
choose one or two items and give a very good demonstration in them, rather than to do several in a mediocre way?
Each one acts acc ording to his nature and if he ( or she) courageously and sincerely follows the law of that nature, he or she
acts acc ording to truth. Thus, it is impossible to judge and decide
--
especially the intention behind his w ords. M oreover, cowards or
not, I see no need f or us to w orship the gods, great or small. Our
ad oration ought to go only to the Supreme L ord, who is one in
--
tennis or basketball, how can we do it as an offering?
Mental f ormations are not enough, of course!
--
egoistic aim, f or success, f or gl ory, f or gain, f or material profit or
out of pride, but as a service and an offering, in order to become
m ore conscious of the divine will and to give yourself m ore
--
back dead or dying as soon as the wind drops. Vigilant,
that is what I should be. But how?
--
Full or perfect Divine incarnation.
Power of the Spirit.
--
There are too many tight knots in the immense organisation of this Ashram. When will the promised day
come when there will be nothing but unmixed harmony,
--
Is it better to meditate there or here in my room?
Meditate where you meditate best - that is to say, wherever you
--
I call that mental fermentation. As soon as your waking consciousness falls asleep or leaves your body, the brain-cells you
have not taken the trouble to quiet down begin to fidget restlessly
--
in that way You can decide what is necessary or best f or
me. But I am advised to keep as much as I want f or my
--
Because you are m ore conscious, or rather less unconscious.
23 May 1963
--
beings? Mother and son? Brother, friend or lover, etc?
All the relationships are good in principle and each one expresses
--
to sit silently instead of reading or doing something else.
But I am afraid of wasting time. What should I do?
--
wind that blows about him, by a book he reads or a
picture he sees. He is most vulnerable.
That happens when he has not taken care to organise his conscious being around the psychic centre, which is the Truth of his
being.
--
desires in order to simplify the problem.
There is an almost infinite variety of shades and combinations of character, and although there are categ ories of very
--
give advice or even to scold. I think that by closing one's
eyes to it, one minimises the imp ortance of the problem
--
intervene when necessary or to close one's eyes when it is
preferable not to see.
--
with You, or is there another reason? I do not understand
myself.
--
I think that in order to progress one should be a little
bolder.
--
That is an easy answer which one gives when one will not or
cannot take the trouble to understand.
--
Y probably spoke as he did in order to reawaken it.
27 August 1963
--
saintly or healthy.
It is X who is spiritually right and you who are wrong with a
--
in order to uselessly bewail the fault, but to cure it by calling to
one's aid the all-powerful f orce of the Divine.
--
speaking of the outward act - whether one eats here or there
comes to the same thing - I am speaking of the inner attitude,
--
understand something determined and fixed. or is it a
flexibility that is required, as opposed to rigidity: law that
--
on the right track, is that behind law there is a spirit of order
and organisation. But law itself is something fixed and theref ore
contrary to the highest truth. If the same spirit of order and
organisation is put at the service of freedom, it can become a
--
"Law cannot save the w orld, theref ore Moses' ordinances are dead f or humanity
and the Shastra of the Brahmins is c orrupt and dying. Law released into freedom is the
--
practising yoga or f or everybody?
First of all, what has been rep orted is not c orrect. Secondly, the
--
difficulties of ordinary life. Only a very ardent aspiration can
remedy this deadly condition. But the aspiration is absent and
--
Certainly at the beginning, when the Divine is only a w ord or
at most an idea and not an experience, the whole thing remains
--
You may have one if there is one or if you can find one. But do
you think it will help you to find the Divine?
--
refuses to act in a new way, such as trying a new gymnastic figure or another kind of dive. Where does this
fear come from? How can one get rid of it? And again,
--
My answers are given in order to open your mind and to make
you exceed, little by little, your present mental limits.
--
love is in the soul (all the rest is vital attraction or mental and
physical attachment, nothing else) and the soul (the psychic being) knows instinctively what the other needs to receive and is
--
cannot tolerate them in others? What is the origin of the
shock we feel?
--
I thought that illness came from some impurity or
weakness in the being, but what does this epidemic in
--
a tamasic tendency to simplify the conditions of life in order to
avoid the eff ort of organising m ore complicated circumstances.
But when one wants to progress in the integrality of the being,
--
at the risk of breaking down, or to advance slowly and
surely by eliminating them carefully one by one?
--
How can one know whether we are progressing or
not, individually and collectively?
--
But whatever the progress made, individually or collectively, the
progress still remaining to be made is so considerable that there
--
one part or another progresses in its turn while the other parts
remain quiescent until their turn comes. It is only when the
--
can see exactly what is happening. But in order to be sure of
advancing progressively and regularly, one must always keep
--
repeat w ords like "Silence" and "Peace" in order to establish silence and peace in oneself when one sits down
to meditate?
--
There are classical or traditional Japas which are intended
to subdue the lower mind and establish a connection with higher
f orces or with deities. These Japas must be given by the Guru,
who at the same time infuses them with the power of realisation.
--
and spend five or six hours a day in yogic practices.
Japa such as you describe it cannot have much effect except
--
Is a mistake or a bad action pardonable if one is sure
that what one is doing is right and that one is sincere?
--
it says because it speaks without violence or insistence - it is a
murmur in the depths of our heart which is easy to ign ore.
--
People often ask us this question: "What are you doing f or society or even f or the people of Pondicherry? You
are preoccupied with your own community, your own
--
seek a career or to study; and they are mostly those
who have been here since childhood. There is a kind
--
slow down the divine action, not out of ill-will but in order to
be sure that nothing is f orgotten or neglected in the haste to
reach the goal. Few are ready f or a total consecration. Many
--
they leave to undergo the test of ordinary life.
11 November 1964
--
myself in order to end the matter as quickly as possible
- it is a kind of escapism.
--
Often when I read Sri Aurobindo's w orks or listen
to his w ords, I am wonder-struck: how can this eternal
--
another and are organised and unified in an integral synthesis.
Here is another quotation by Sri Aurobindo which will show
--
What is the eternal truth behind this sympathy or
attraction of man f or woman and of woman f or man?
--
The best thing to do is to distinguish in oneself the origin of all
one's movements - those that come from the light of truth and
those that come from the old inertia and falsehood - in order
to accept the first and to refuse or reject the others.
With practice one learns to distinguish m ore and m ore
--
the falsehood and all that favours union, harmony, order and
consciousness comes from the Truth.
--
doct or or barrister, come to stay here in the Ashram
f or their own salvation? They could perhaps serve the
--
On the evening of February 11, many Ashram buildings were stoned, burned or
looted, ostensibly as part of an anti-Hindi agitation.
--
my teaching to find it in your relations with human beings or in
the nobility of the human character or an idea that we are here
to establish mental and m oral and social Truth and justice on
--
refers to in order to be sure of not going astray, until one is ready
f or another m ore imp ortant and conclusive experience.
--
rigidity has little or no effect on spiritual development where the
spontaneity of an absolute sincerity is indispensable.
--
note of all the times one has f orgotten or neglected to make an
offering of one's self or one's action, and to aspire or pray that
these lapses do not recur.
--
The Divine often advises or tries to guide man,
knowing very well that His help will be refused. Why
--
to Him. Either they do not hear Him or do not believe Him.
Men always complain of not being helped, but the truth is
--
and in order to have the strength to advance by rejecting what
ought to disappear, one must strongly feel one's unw orthiness
--
When department heads or superi ors make mistakes
or commit an injustice towards their sub ordinates, what
--
Should one keep silent and say, "It is none of my business", or should one try to point out the mistake to them?
Neither the one n or the other.
--
An individuality is a conscious being organised around a divine
centre. All the divine centres are essentially One in their origin,
but they act as separate beings in the manifestation.
The individual must make decisions in order to live, but it
is not indispensable that he should have opinions, and still less
--
take in order to have the true spiritual experience. Is it
possible to achieve it by aspiration alone, or is there a
method or discipline to be followed?
Everything is possible. All paths lead to the goal provided they
--
bad one has thought or done, of a fall in one's consciousness? If the cause is a mistake one has made, how can
one find out what it is?
--
n ormal consequence of an err or, sh ortcoming or fault which
necessarily has consequences. Actually, everything in the w orld
is a question of equilibrium or disequilibrium, of harmony or
dis order. Vibrations of harmony attract and encourage harmonious events; vibrations of disequilibrium create, as it were, a
--
may be collective or individual, but the principle is the same
- and so is the remedy: to cultivate in oneself order and harmony, peace and equilibrium by surrendering unreservedly to
the Divine Will.
--
change take place in the present body or does one have
Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, p. 11.
--
that in order not to feel pain one must, so to speak, cut
the nerve that conveys this sensation to the brain. How
--
f or the efficient administration of this organisation. But
when they get to know the Ashram and the sadhaks
--
the descent of the Truth, or is it the result of the action
Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, p. 372.
--
and functions are organised acc ording to individual ability, with
a leader at the centre. A military organisation, f or example, is a
hierarchy.
--
hierarchy and certain functions or intermediaries are missing.
(2) The indiscipline of certain members refusing wholly or
in part to occupy the place assigned to them.
When order and harmony are established, the hierarchy is
organised quite naturally and spontaneously.
--
such as a revolution or a war?
Not necessarily. What expresses itself as a war or a revolution
is the resistance in the human consciousness to the New F orce.
--
(2) And is the converse always valid: if there is a war or
a revolution, is it the sign of a descent of the Truth?
--
and synthesise the w ork of transf orming the earth in order to
prepare the new creation.
--
better to return to the ordinary life and experience it, instead of
taking advantage of the exceptional conditions of existence they
--
and m ore towards the principles and ways of ordinary
life? In that case, aren't we straying from the true path?
--
is unpleasant to it; and when it involves w ords or thoughts,
Series Ten - To a Young Captain
--
By wanting to do so, with persistence and obstinacy. By doing every day a mental exercise of reading, organisation and
development.
--
which ordinary men flourish to protect themselves from the
Truth.
--
people who are here, there are only 250 or so who understand Sri Aurobindo's yoga, only f orty-five who practise
it, five who are capable of realisation and only one who
--
in order to occupy this high position she must be w orthy
politically, m orally and physically, mustn't she?
--
How can one practise yogic disciplines without believing in God or the Divine?31
Why? It is very easy. Because these are only w ords. When one
practises without believing in God or the Divine, one practises
The Mother replied to this question orally; she was speaking to someone other than
the captain.
--
in order to attain some perfection, to make progress, f or all s orts
of reasons.
--
one has an aspiration that mankind should become better, or
less unhappy, less miserable; all s orts of things like that. One
--
out or been taught, nothing like that: faith. A faith that is a living
knowledge, not an acquired one, that the existence of the w orld
--
in order to think otherwise, one has to be a bit dense. And the
"Divine" not in the sense of "purpose" or "goal" or "end", not
that s ort of thing: the w orld as it is proves the Divine. Because
--
because it is a mental function of a rather inferi or order.
M oreover, there is a very simple way of knowing. One has
--
In order to achieve self-mastery, should one follow the
method of "widening the consciousness"?
--
of Yoga or aspiration f or the Divine Life.
7 December 1966
--
When I heard that X was drowned in a lake at Gingee during the outing, I was unable to believe it or to be
shocked by this news. The only question that arose in me
--
they deserve it or not.
The Grace does not recognise the right of suffering to exist
--
"There are these three powers: (1) The Cosmic Law, of Karma or what else; (2) the
Divine Compassion acting on as many as it can reach through the nets of the Law and
--
In order to understand these apparent contradictions, one has
to rise to the intellectual level on which all opposite ideas can be
--
struggling against in yourself or trying to suppress in yourself.
Knowing this teaches you to be patient.
--
things, such as: "May he be b orn to the true life" or
Series Ten - To a Young Captain
--
The ordinary man is often guided in life by his conscience, isn't he? So what becomes of one who has no
conscience, who has lost it by having disregarded it too
--
on the idea of good and evil, a m oral entity or rather an element of goodwill which tries to keep the individual on what is
commonly known as the straight path.
--
The Mother replied to this question orally; she was speaking to someone other than
the captain.
--
reason or other, the psychic was present and participated; in that
case it retains the mem ory of the circumstance. But the mem ory
--
as the most mem orable or most imp ortant in a lifetime, but
the moments when the psychic has participated - consciously
--
It is the caricature of organisation.
20 September 1967
--
to punish or reward.
All actions carry in themselves their fruits with their consequences.
--
Divine or takes one farther from Him - and that is the supreme
consequence.
--
my "business" was - all I knew was that I had to concentrate on myself in order to perfect myself m ore and
m ore. Was that c orrect? Mother, what actually is my
--
this a narrowness of vision on my part, or what?
Knowledge of past lives is interesting f or an understanding of
--
existence, a moment when, upon earth, everything is being prepared f or a new creation, or rather, f or a new manifestation in
the eternal creation.
--
sad. I tell myself that it is not an ordinary illness, that
it is an experience leading towards physical transf ormation. But when I think of Your suffering body, I am
--
to be different. or am I not conscious of my prayers?
or is everything done f or me, f or my good, in spite of
01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nicholas Berdyaev is an ardent w orker, as a Russian is naturally expected to be, in the cause of the spiritual rehabilitation of mankind. He is a Christian, a neo-Christian: some of his conclusions are old-w orld truths and bear repetition and insistence; others are of a m ore limited, conditional and even doubtful nature. His conception of the value of human person, the dignity and the high reality he gives to it, can never be too welcome in a w orld where the individual seems to have gone the way of vanished empires and kings and princes. But even m ore imp ortant and interesting is the view he underlines that the true person is a spiritual being, that is to say, it is quite other than the empirical ego that man n ormally is"not this that one w orships" as the Upanishads too declare. Further, in his spiritual being man, the individual, is not simply a p ortion or a fraction; he is, on the contrary, an integer, a complete whole, a creative focus; the true individual is a microcosm yet holding in it and imaging the macrocosm. Only perhaps greater stress is laid upon the aspect of creativity or activism. An Eastern sage, a Vedantin, would look f or the true spiritual reality behind the flux of f orces: Prakriti or Energy is only the executive will of the Purusha, the Conscious Being. The personality in Nature is a f ormulation and emanation of the transcendent impersonality.
There is another aspect of personality as viewed by Berdyaev which involves a bias of the m ore orthodox Christian faith: the Christ is inseparable from the Cross. So he says: "There is no such thing as personality if there is no capacity f or suffering. Suffering is inherent in God too, if he is a personality, and not merely an abstract idea. God shares in the sufferings of men. He yearns f or responsive love. There are divine as well as human passions and theref ore divine or creative personality must always suffer to the end of time. A condition of anguish and distress is inherent in it." The view is logically enf orced upon the Christian, it is said, if he is to accept incarnation, God becoming flesh. Flesh cannot but be weak. This very weakness, so human, is and must be specially characteristic of God also, if he is one with man and his lover and saviour.
Eastern spirituality does not view s orrow and sufferingevilas an integral part of the Divine Consciousness. It is b orn out of the Divine, no doubt, as nothing can be outside the Divine, but it is a local and temp oral f ormation; it is a disposition consequent upon certain conditions and with the absence or elimination of those conditions, this disposition too disappears. God and the Divine Consciousness can only be purity, light, imm ortality and delight. The compassion that a Buddha feels f or the suffering humanity is not at all a feeling of suffering; pain or any such n ormal human reaction does not enter into its composition; it is the movement of a transcendent consciousness which is beyond and purified of the n ormal reactions, yet overarching them and entering into them as a soothing and illumining and vivifying presence. The healer knows and understands the pain and suffering of his patient but is not touched by them; he need not contract the illness of his patient in order to be in sympathy with him. The Divine the Soulcan be in flesh and yet not smirched with its mire; the flesh is not essentially or irrevocably the ooze it is under certain given conditions. The divine physical body is composed of radiant matter and one can speak of it even as of the soul that weapons cannot pierce it n or can fire burn it.
***
01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is asked of us why do we preach a man and not purely and solely a principle. Our ideal being avowedly the establishment and reign of a new principle of w orld- order and not gathering recruits f or the camp of a sectarian teacher, it seems all the m ore inconsistent, if not th oroughly ruinous f or our cause, that we should lay stress upon a particular individual and incur the danger of overshadowing the universal truths upon which we seek to build human society. Now, it is not that we are unconscious or oblivious of the many evils attendant upon the system of preaching a man the hist ory of the rise and decay of many sects and societies is there to give us sufficient warning; and yet if we cannot entirely give the go-by to personalities and stick to mere and bare principles, it is because we have clear reasons f or it, because we are not unconscious or oblivious either of the evils that beset the system of preaching the principle alone.
Religious bodies that are f ormed through the bhakti and puja f or one man, social reconstructions f orced by the will and power of a single individual, have already in the inception this grain of incapacity and disease and death that they are not an integrally self-conscious creation, they are not, as a whole, intelligent and wide awake and theref ore constantly responsive to the truths and ideals and realities f or which they exist, f or which at least, their founder intended them to exist. The light at the apex is the only light and the entire structure is but the shadow of that light; the whole thing has the aspect of a dark mass galvanised into red-hot activity by the passing touch of a dynamo. Immediately however the solitary light fails and the dynamo stops, there is nothing but the original darkness and inertiatoma asit tamasa gudham agre.
Man, however great and puissant he may be, is a perishable thing. People who gather or are gathered round a man and cling to him through the tie of a personal relation must fall off and scatter when the man passes away and the personal tie loses its hold. What remains is a mem ory, a gradually fading mem ory. But mem ory is hardly a creative f orce, it is a dead, at best, a m oribund thing; the real creative power is Presence. So when the great man's presence, the power that crystallises is gone, the whole edifice crumbles and vanishes into air or remains a mere name.
Love and admiration f or a mahapurusha is not enough, even faith in his gospel is of little avail, n or can actual participation, consecrated w ork and labour in his cause save the situation; it is only when the principles, the bare realities f or which the mahapurusha stands are in the open f orum and men have the full and free opp ortunity of testing and assimilating them, it is only when individuals thus become living embodiments of those principles and realities that we do create a thing universal and permanent, as universal and permanent as earthly things may be. Principles only can embrace and unify the whole of humanity; a particular personality shall always create division and limitation. By placing the man in front, we erect a wall between the Principle and men at large. It is the principles, on the contrary, that should be given the place of honour: our attempt should be to keep back personalities and make as little use of them as possible. Let the principles w ork and create in their freedom and power, untrammelled by the limitations of any mere human vessel.
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We do not speak like politicians or banias; but the very truth of the matter demands such a policy or line of action. It is very well to talk of principles and principles alone, but what are principles unless they take life and f orm in a particular individual? They are airy nothings, notions in the brain of logicians and metaphysicians, fit subjects f or discussion in the academy, but they are devoid of that vital urge which makes them creative agencies. We have long lines of philosophers, especially European, who most scrupulously avoided all touch of personalities, whose utmost care was to keep principles pure and unsullied; and the upshot was that those principles remained principles only, barren and infructuous, some thing like, in the strong and puissant phrase of BaudelaireLa froide majest de la femme strile. And on the contrary, we have had other peoples, much addicted to personalitiesespecially in Asiawho did not care so much f or abstract principles as f or concrete embodiments; and what has been the result here? None can say that they did not produce anything or produced only still-b orn things. They produced living creaturesephemeral, some might say, but creatures that lived and moved and had their days.
But, it may be asked, what is the necessity, what is the purpose in making it all a one man show? Granting that principles require personalities f or their fructuation and vital functioning, what remains to be envisaged is not one personality but a plural personality, the people at large, as many individuals of the human race as can be consciously imbued with those principles. When principles are made part and parcel of, are concentrated in a single solitary personality, they get "cribbed and cabined," they are vitiated by the idiosyncrasies of the man, they come to have a narrower field of application; they are emptied of the general verities they contain and finally cease to have any effect.
The thing, however, is that what you call principles do not drop from heaven in their virgin purity and all at once lay hold of mankind en masse. It is always through a particular individual that a great principle manifests itself. Principles do not live in the general mind of man and even if they live, they live secreted and unconscious; it is only a puissant personality, who has lived the principle, that can bring it f orward into life and action, can awaken, like the Vedic Dawn, what was dead in allmritam kanchana bodhayanti. Men in general are by themselves 'inert and indifferent; they have little leisure or inclination to seek, from any inner urge of their own, f or principles and primal truths; they become conscious of these only when expressed and embodied in some great and rare soul. An Avatar, a Messiah or a Prophet is the centre, the focus through which a Truth and Law first dawns and then radiates and spreads abroad. The little lamps are all lighted by the sparks that the great t orch scatters.
And yet we yield to none in our demand f or holding f orth the principles always and ever bef ore the wide open gaze of all. The principle is there to make people self-knowing and self-guiding; and the man is also there to illustrate that principle, to serve as the hope and prophecy of achievement. The living soul is there to touch your soul, if you require the touch; and the principle is there by which to test and testify. F or, we do not ask anybody to be a mere automaton, a blind devotee, a soul without individual choice and initiative. On the contrary, we insist on each and every individual to find his own soul and stand on his own Truththis is the fundamental principle we declare, the only creedif creed it be that we ask people to note and freely follow. We ask all people to be fully self-dependent and self-illumined, f or only thus can a real and solid reconstruction of human nature and society be possible; we do not wish that they should bow down ungrudgingly to anything, be it a principle or a personality. In this respect we claim the very first rank of iconoclasts and anarchists. And along with that, if we still choose to remain an idol-lover and a hero-w orshipper, it is because we recognise that our mind, human as it is, being not a simple equation but a complex paradox, the idol or the hero symbolises f or us and f or those who so will, the very iconoclasm and anarchism and perhaps other m ore positive things as wellwhich we behold within and seek to manifest.
The w orld is full of ikons and archons; we cannot escape them, even if we try the w orld itself being a great ikon and as great an archon. Those who swear by principles, swear always by some personality or other, if not by a living creature then by a lifeless book, if not by Religion then by Science, if not by the East then by the West, if not by Buddha or Christ then by Bentham or Voltaire. Only they do it unwittingly they change one set of personalities f or another and believe they have rejected them all. The veils of Maya are a thousand-fold tangle and you think you have entirely escaped her when you have only run away from one fold to fall into another. The wise do not attempt to reject and negate Maya, but consciously accept herfreedom lies in a knowing affirmation. So we too have accepted and affirmed an icon, but we have done it consciously and knowingly; we are not bound by our idol, we see the truth of it, and we serve and utilise it as best as we may.
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01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A similar compilation was published in the Arya, called The Eternal Wisdom (Les Paroles ternelles, in French) a p ortion of which appeared later on in book-f orm: that was m ore elab orate, the contents were arranged in such a way that no comments were needed, they were self-explanat ory, divided as they were in chapters and sections and subsections with proper headings, the whole thing put in a logical and organised sequence. Huxley's compilation begins under the title of the Upanishadic text "That art Thou" with this saying of Eckhart: "The m ore God is in all things, the m ore He is outside them. The m ore He is within, the m ore without". It will be interesting to note that the Arya compilation too starts with the same idea under the title "The God of All; the God who is in All", the first quotation being from Philolaus, "The Universe is a Unity".The Eternal Wisdom has an introduction called "The Song of Wisdom" which begins with this saying from the Book of Wisdom: "We fight to win sublime Wisdom; theref ore men call us warri ors".
Huxley gives only one quotation from Sri Aurobindo under the heading "God in the W orld". Here it is:
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We fear Mr. Huxley has completely missed the point of the cryptic sentence. He seems to take it as meaning that human kindness and m orality are a means to the recovery of the Lost Way-although codes of ethics and deliberate choices are not sufficient in themselves, they are only a second best, yet they mark the rise of self-consciousness and have to be utilised to pass on into the unitive knowledge that is Tao. This explanation or amplification seems to us somewhat confused and irrelevant to the idea expressed in the apophthegm. What is stated here is much simpler and transparent. It is this that when the Divine is absent and the divine Knowledge, then comes in man with his human mental knowledge: it is man's humanity that clouds the Divine and to reach the' Divine one must reject the human values, all the m oralities, sarva dharmn, seek only the Divine. The lesser way lies through the dualities, good and evil, the Great Way is beyond them and cannot be limited or measured by the relative standards. Especially in the modern age we see the decline and almost the disappearance of the Greater Light and instead a thousand smaller lights are lighted which vainly strive to dispel the gathering darkness. These do not help, they are false lights and men are apt to cling to them, shutting their eyes to the true one which is not that that one w orships here and now, nedam yadidam upsate.
There is a beautiful quotation from the Chinese sage, Wu Ch'ng-n, regarding the doubtful utility of written Scriptures:
"'Listen to this!' shouted Monkey. 'After all the trouble we had getting here from China, and after you specially ordered that we were to be given the scriptures, Ananda and Kasyapa made a fraudulent delivery of goods. They gave us blank copies to take away; I ask you, what is the good of that to us?' 'You needn't shout,' said the Buddha, smiling. 'As a matter of fact, it is such blank scrolls as these that are the true scriptures. But I quite see that the people of China are too foolish and ign orant to believe this, so there is nothing f or it but to give them copies with some writing on.' "
A sage can smile and smile delightfully! The parable illustrates the well-known Biblical phrase, 'the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life'. The monkey is symbolical of the ign orant, arrogant, fussy human mind. There is another Buddhistic st ory about the monkey quoted in the book and it is as delightful; but being somewhat long, we cannot reproduce it here. It tells how the mind-monkey is terribly agile, quick, clever, competent, moving lightning-fast, imagining that it can easily go to the end of the w orld, to Paradise itself, to Brahmic status. But alas! when he thought he was speeding straight like a rocket or an arrow and arrive right at the target, he found that he was spinning like a top at the same spot, and what he very likely took to be the very fragrance of the topmost supreme heaven was nothing but the aroma of his own urine.
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01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A modern society or people cannot have religion, that is to say, credal religion, as the basis of its organized collective life. It was mediaeval society and people that were organized on that line. Indeed mediaevalism means nothing m ore and nothing lessthan that. But whatever the need and justification in the past, the principle is an anachronism under modern conditions. It was needed, perhaps, to keep alive a truth which goes into the very roots of human life and its deepest aspiration; and it was needed also f or a dynamic application of that truth on a larger scale and in smaller details, on the mass of mankind and in its day to day life. That was the aim of the Church Militant and the Khilafat; that was the spirit, although in a m ore Sattwic way, behind the Buddhistic evangelism or even Hindu colonization.
The truth behind a credal religion is the aspiration towards the realization of the Divine, some ultimate reality that gives a permanent meaning and value to the human life, to the existence lodged in this 'sphere of s orrow' here below. Credal paraphernalia were necessary to express or buttress this c ore of spiritual truth when mankind, in the mass, had not attained a certain level of enlightenment in the mind and a certain degree of development in its life-relations. The modern age is modern precisely because it had attained to a necessary extent this mental enlightenment and this life development. So the scheme or scaffolding that was required in the past is no longer unavoidable and can have either no reality at all or only a modified utility.
A modern people is a composite entity, especially with regard to its religious affiliation. Not religion, but culture is the basis of modern collective life, national or social. Culture includes in its grain that fineness of temperament which appreciates all truths behind all f orms, even when there is a personal allegiance to one particular f orm.
In India, it is well known, the diversity of affiliations is colossal, sui generis. Two maj or affiliations have today almost cut the country into two; and desperate remedies are suggested which are w orse than the malady itself, as they may kill the patient outright. If it is so, it is, I repeat, the mediaeval spirit that is at:, the bottom of the trouble.
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Only, the religious spirit has to be bathed and purified and enlightened by the spirit of the renascence: that is to say, one must learn and understand and realize that Spirit is the thing the one thing needfulTamevaikam jnatha; 'religions' are its names and f orms, appliances and dec orations. Let us have by all means the religious spirit, the fundamental experience that is the inmost truth of all religions, that is the matter of our soul; but in our mind and life and body let there be a luminous catholicity, let these organs and instruments be trained to see and compare and appreciate the variety, the numberless facets which the one Spirit naturally presents to the human consciousness. Ekam sat viprh bahudh vadanti. It is an ancient truth that man discovered even in his earliest seekings; but it still awaits an adequate expression and application in life.
II
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The first extremes that met in India and fought and gradually coalesced to f orm a single cultural and social whole were, as is well known, the Aryan and the non-Aryan. Indeed, the geologists tell us, the land itself is divided into two parts structurally quite different and distinct, the Deccan plateau and the Himalayan ranges with the Indo-Gangetic plain: the f ormer is f ormed out of the most ancient and stable and, on the whole, h orizontally bedded rocks of the earth, while the latter is of comparatively recent origin, f ormed out of a m ore flexible and weaker belt (the Himalayan region consisting of a colossal flexing and crumpling of strata). The disparity is so much that a certain group of geologists hold that the Deccan plateau did not at all f orm part of the Asiatic continent, but had drifted and dashed into it:in fact the Himalayas are the result of this mighty impact. The usual division of an Aryan and a Dravidian race may be due to a mem ory of the clash of the two continents and their races.
However, coming to hist orical times, we see wave after wave of the most heterogeneous and disparate elementsSakas and Huns and Greeks, each bringing its quota of exotic materialenter into the oceanic Indian life and culture, lose their separate f oreign identity and become part and parcel of the common whole. Even so,a single unitary body was f ormed out of such varied and shifting materialsnot in the political, but in a socio-religious sense. F or a catholic religious spirit, not being solely doctrinal and personal, admitted and embraced in its supple and wide texture almost an infinite variety of approaches to the Divine, of f orms and n orms of apprehending the Beyond. It has been called Hinduism: it is a vast synthesis of multiple affiliations. It expresses the characteristic genius of India and hence Hinduism and Indianism came to be looked upon as synonymous terms. And the same could be defined also as Vedic religion and culture, f or its invariable basis the bed-rock on which it stood firm and erectwas the Vedas, the Knowledge seen by the sages. But there had already risen a voice of dissidence and disc ord that of Buddha, not so much, perhaps, of Buddha as of Buddhism. The Buddhistic enlightenment and discipline did not admit the supreme auth ority of the Vedas; it sought other bases of truth and reality. It was a great denial; and it meant and w orked f or a vital schism. The denial of the Vedas by itself, perhaps, would not be serious, but it became so, as it was symptomatic of a deeper divergence. Denying the Vedas, the Buddhistic spirit denied life. It was quite a new thing in the Indian consciousness and spiritual discipline. And it left such a stamp there that even today it stands as the dominant character of the Indian outlook. However, India's synthetic genius rose to the occasion and knew how to bridge the chasm, close up the fissure, and present again a body whole and entire. Buddha became one of the Avataras: the discipline of Nirvana and Maya was reserved as the last duty to be perf ormed at the end of life, as the culmination of a full-length span of action and achievement; the way to Moksha lay through Dharma and Artha and Kama, Sannyasa had to be built upon Brahmacharya and Garhasthya. The integral ideal was epitomized by Kalidasa in his famous lines about the character of the Raghus:
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And still this was not the lastit could not be the lastanti thesis that had to be synthetized. The dialectical movement led to a m ore serious and fiercer contradiction. The Buddhistic schism was after all a division brought about from within: it could be said that the two terms of the antinomy belonged to the same genus and were commensurable. The idea or experience of Asat and Maya was not unknown to the Upanishads, only it had not there the exclusive stress which the later developments gave it. Hence quite a different, an altogether f oreign body was imp orted into what was or had come to be a homogeneous entity, and in a considerable mass.
Unlike the previous irruptions that merged and were lost in the general life and consciousness, Islam entered as a leaven that maintained its integrity and revolutionized Indian life and culture by infusing into its tone a Semitic accent. After the Islamic impact India could not be what she was bef orea change became inevitable even in the maj or note. It was a psychological cataclysm almost on a par with the geological one that f ormed her body; but the spirit behind which created the body was w orking automatically, inex orably towards the greater and m ore difficult synthesis demanded by the situation. Only the thing is to be done now consciously, not through an unconscious process of laissez-faire as on the inferi or stages of evolution in the past. And that is the true genesis of the present conflict.
Hist ory abounds in instances of racial and cultural immixture. Indeed, all maj or human groupings of today are invariably composite f ormations. Excepting, perhaps, some primitiveab original tribes there are no pure races existent. The Briton, the Dane, the Anglo-Saxon, and the N orman have combined to f orm the British; a Frenchman has a Gaul, a Roman, a Frank in him; and a Spaniard's blood would show an Iberian, a Latin, a Gothic, a Mo orish element in it. And much m ore than a people, a culture in modern times has been a veritable cockpit of multifarious and even incongruous elements. There are instances also in which a perfect fusion could not be accomplished, and one element had to be rejected or crushed out. The complete disappearance of the Aztecs and Mayas in South America, the decadence of the Red Indians in N orth America, of the Negroes in Africa as a result of a fierce clash with European peoples and European culture illustrate the point.
Nature, on the whole, has solved the problem of blood fusion and mental fusion of different peoples, although on a smaller scale. India today presents the problem on a larger scale and on a higher or deeper level. The demand is f or a spiritual fusion and unity. Strange to say, although the Spirit is the true bed-rock of unitysince, at bottom, it means identityit is on this plane that mankind has not yet been able to really meet and coalesce. India's genius has been precisely w orking in the line of a perfect solution of this supreme problem.
Islam comes with a full-fledged spiritual soul and a mental and vital f ormation commensurable with that inner being and consciousness. It comes with a dynamic spirit, a warri or mood, that aims at conquering the physical w orld f or the L ord, a temperament which Indian spirituality had not, or had lost long bef ore, if she had anything of it. This was, perhaps, what Vivekananda meant when he spoke graphically of a Hindu soul with a Muslim body. The Islamic dispensation, however, brings with it not only something complementary, but also something contradict ory, if not f or anything else, at least f or the strong individuality which does not easily yield to assimilation. Still, in spite of great odds, the process of assimilation was going on slowly and surely. But of late it appears to have come to a dead halt; difficulties have been presented which seem insuperable.
If religious toleration were enough, if that made up man's highest and largest achievement, then Nature need not have attempted to go beyond cultural fusion; a liberal culture is the surest basis f or a catholic religious spirit. But such a spirit of toleration and catholicity, although it bespeaks a widened consciousness, does not always enshrine a profundity of being. Nobody is m ore tolerant and catholic than a dilettante, but an ardent spiritual soul is different.
To be loyal to one's line of self-fulfilment, to follow one's self-law, swadharma, wholly and absolutelywithout this no spiritual life is possible and yet not to come into clash with other lines and loyalties, nay m ore, to be in positive harmony with them, is a problem which has not been really solved. It was solved, perhaps, in the consciousness of a Ramakrishna, a few individuals here and there, but it has always remained a source of conflict and disharmony in the general mind even in the field of spirituality. The clash of spiritual or religious loyalties has taken such an acute f orm in India today, they have been carried to the bitter extreme, in order, we venture to say, that the final synthesis might be absolute and irrevocable. This is India's mission to w ork out, and this is the lesson which she brings to the w orld.
The solution can come, first, by going to the true religion of the Spirit, by being truly spiritual and not merely religious, f or, as we have said, real unity lies only in and through the Spirit, since Spirit is one and indivisible; secondly, by bringing down somethinga great part, indeed, if not the wholeof this puissant and marvellous Spirit into our life of emotions and sensations and activities.
If it is said that this is an ideal f or the few only, not f or the mass, our answer to that is the answer of the GitaYad yad acharati sreshthah. Let the few then practise and achieve the ideal: the mass will have to follow as far as it is possible and necessary. It is the very character of the evolutionary system of Nature, as expressed in the principle of symbiosis, that any considerable change in one place (in one species) is accompanied by a c orresponding change in the same direction in other contiguous places (in other associated species) in order that the poise and balance of the system may be maintained.
It is precisely strong nuclei that are needed (even, perhaps, one strong nucleus is sufficient) where the single and integrated spiritual consciousness is an accomplished and established fact: that acts inevitably as a solvent drawing in and assimilating or transf orming and re-creating as much, of the surroundings as its own degree and nature of achievement inevitably demand.
India did not and could not stop at mere cultural fusionwhich was a supreme gift of the Moguls. She did not and could not stop at another momentous cultural fusion brought about by the European impact. She aimed at something m ore. Nature demanded of her that she should discover a greater secret of human unity and through progressive experiments apply and establish it in fact. Christianity did not raise this problem of the greater synthesis, f or the Christian peoples were m ore culture-minded than religious-minded. It was left f or an Asiatic people to set the problem and f or India to w ork out the solution.
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Principle and Personality Three Degrees of Social organisation
01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
One view considers Evil as coeval with Good: the Prince of Evil is God's peer, equal to him in all ways, absolutely separate, independent and self-existent. Light and Darkness are eternal principles living side by side, possessing equal reality. F or, although it is permissible to the individual to pass out of the Darkness and enter into Light, the Darkness itself does not disappear: it remains and maintains its domain, and even it is said that some human beings are meant eternally f or this domain. That is the Manichean principle and that also is fundamentally the dualistic conception of chit-achit in some Indian systems (although the principle of chit or light is usually given a higher position and pri ority of excellence).
The Christian too accepts the dual principle, but does not give equal status to the two. Satan is there, an eternal reality: it is anti-God, it seeks to oppose God, frustrate his w ork. It is the great tempter whose task it is to persuade, to inspire man to remain always an earthly creature and never turn to know or live in God. Now the crucial question that arises is, what is the necessity of this Antagonist in God's scheme of creation? What is the meaning of this struggle and battle? God could have created, if he had chosen, a w orld without Evil. The orthodox Christi an answer is that in that case one could not have fully appreciated the true value and gl ory of God's presence. It is to manifest and proclaim the great vict ory that the strife and combat has been arranged in which Man triumphs in the end and God's w ork stands vindicated. The place of Satan is always Hell, but he cannot drag down a soul into his pit to hold it there eternally (although acc ording to one doctrine there are or may be certain eternally damned souls).
Goe the carries the process of convergence and even harmony of the two powers a little further and shows that although they are contrary apparently, they are not contradict ory principles in essence. F or, Satan is, after all, God's servant, even a very obedient servant; he is an instrument in the hand of the Almighty to w ork out His purpose. The purpose is to help and lead man, although in a devious way, towards a greater understanding, a nearer approach to Himself.
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Thus, as sanctioned by God, there is a competition, a wager between man and Satan. The pact between the parties is this that, on the one hand, Satan will serve man here in life upon earth, and on the other hand, in return, man will have to serve Satan there, on the other side of life. That is to say, Satan will give the whole w orld to man to enjoy, man will have to give Satan only his soul. Man in his ign orance says he does not care f or his soul, does not know of a there or elsewhere: he will be satisfied if he gets what he wants upon earth. That, evidently, is the demand of what is familiarly known as life-f orce (lan vital): the utmost fulfilment of the life-f orce is what man stands f or, although the full significance of the movement may not be clear to him or even to Satan at the moment. F or life-f orce does not necessarily drag man down, as its grand finale as it were, into hellhowever much Satan might wish it to be so. In what way, we shall see presently. Now Satan promises man all that he would desire and even m ore: he would give him his fill so' that he will ask f or no m ore. Man takes up the challenge and declares that his hunger is insatiable, whatever Satan can bring to it, it will take in and press on: satisfaction and satiety will never come in his way. Satan thinks he knows better, f or he is armed with a master weapon to lay man low and make him cry halt!
Love Human and Love Divine
Satan proposes to lead man down into hell through a sure means, nothing m ore sure, acc ording to him, viz., love f or a woman and a woman's love in return. Nothing like that to make man earth-bound or hell-bound and f orce out of him the nostalgic cry, "Time must have a stop." A most simple, primal and primeval lyric love will most suit Satan's purpose. Hence the Margaret episode. Love=Passion=Lust=Hell; that is the inevitable equation sequence, and through which runs the magic thread of infatuation. And that charm is invincible. Satan did succeed and was within an ace, as they say, of the final and definitive triumph: but that was not to be, f or he left out of account an incalculable element. Love, even human love has, at least can have, a wonderful power, the potency of reversing the natural decree and bring about a supernatural intervention. Human love can at a crucial momentin extremiscall down the Divine Grace, which means God's love f or man. And the soul meant f or perdition and about to be seized and carried away by Satan finds itself suddenly free and lifted up and b orne by Heaven's messengers. Human Jove is divine love itself in earthly f orm and figure and whatever its apparent aberrations it is in soul and substance that thing. Satan is hoisted with his own petard. That is God's irony.
But Goethe's Satan seems to know or feel something of his fate. He knows his function and the limit too of his function. He speaks of the doomsday f or people, but it is his doomsday also, he says in mystic terms. Yes, it is his doomsday, f or it is the day of man's liberation. Satan has to release man from the pact that stands cancelled. The soul of man cannot be sold, even if he wanted it.
The Cosmic Rhythm
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The total eradication of Evil from the w orld and human nature and the remoulding of a terrestrial life in the substance and pattern of the Highest Good that is beyond all dualities is a conception which it was not f or Goe the to envisage. In the order of reality or existence, first there is the consciousness of division, of trenchant separation in which Good is equated with not-evil and evil with not-good. This is the outlook of individualised consciousness. Next, as the consciousness grows and envelops the whole existence, good and evil are both embraced and are found to f orm a secret and magic harmony. That is the universal or cosmic consciousness. And Goethe's genius seems to be an outflowering of something of this status of consciousness. But there is still a higher status, the status of transcendence in which evil is not simply embraced but dissolved and even transmuted into a supreme reality of which it is an aberration, a reflection or projection, a lower f ormulation. That is the mystery of a spiritual realisation to which Goe the aspired perhaps, but had not the necessary initiation to enter into.
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01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:01.12 - Three Degrees of Social organisation
auth or class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Three Degrees of Social organisation
Declaration of Rights is a characteristic modern phenomenon. It is a message of liberty and freedom,no doubt of secular liberty and freedomthings not very common in the old w orld; and yet at the same time it is a clarion that calls f or and prepares strife and battle. If the conception of Right has sanctified the individual or a unit collectivity, it has also pari passu developed a fissiparous tendency in human organisation. Society based on or living by the principle of Right becomes naturally and inevitably a competitive society. Where man is regarded as nothing m oreand, of course, nothing lessthan a bundle of rights, human aggregation is bound to be an exact image of Darwinian Naturered in tooth and claw.
But Right is not the only term on which an ideal or even a decent society can be based. There is another term which can serve equally well, if not better. I am obviously referring to the conception of duty. I tis an old w orld conception; it isa conception particularly familiar to the East. The Indian term f or Right is also the term f or dutyadhikara means both. In Europe too, in m ore recent times, when after the frustration of the dream of a new w orld envisaged by the French Revolution, man was called upon again to rise and hope, it was Mazzini who brought f orward the new or discarded principle as a mantra replacing the other m ore dangerous one. A hierarchy of duties was given by him as the pattern of a fulfilled ideal life. In India, in our days the distinction between the two attitudes was very strongly insisted upon by the great Vivekananda.
Vivekananda said that if human society is to be remodelled, one must first of all learn not to think and act in terms of claims and rights but in terms of duties and obligations. Fulfil your duties conscientiously, the rights will take care of themselves; it is such an attitude that can give man the right poise, the right impetus, the right outlook with regard to a collective living. If instead of each one demanding what one considers as one's dues and consequently scrambling and battling f or them, and most often not getting them or getting at a ruinous pricewhat made Arjuna cry, "What shall I do with all this kingdom if in regaining it I lose all my kith and kin dear to me?"if, indeed, instead of claiming one's right, one were content to know one's duty and do it as it should be done, then not only there would be peace and amity upon earth, but also each one far from losing anything would find miraculously all that one most needs and must have,the necessary, the right rights and all.
It might be objected here however that actually in the hist ory of humanity the conception of Duty has been no less pugnacious than that of Right. In certain ages and among certain peoples, f or example, it was considered the imperative duty of the faithful to kill or convert by f orce or otherwise as many as possible belonging to other faiths: it was the mission of the good shepherd to burn the impious and the heretic. In recent times, it was a sense of high and solemn duty that perpetrated what has been termed "purges"brutalities undertaken, it appears, to purify and preserve the integrity of a particular ideological, social or racial aggregate. But the real name of such a spirit is not duty but fanaticism. And there is a considerable difference between the two. Fanaticism may be defined as duty running away with itself; but what we are concerned with here is not the aberration of duty, but duty proper self-poised.
One might claim also on behalf of the doctrine of Right that the right kind of Right brings no harm, it is as already stated another name f or liberty, f or the privilege of living and it includes the obligation to let live. One can do what one likes provided one does not infringe on an equal right of others to do the same. The measure of one's liberty is equal to the measure of others' liberty.
--
What is required is not theref ore an external delimitation of frontiers between unit and unit, but an inner outlook of nature and a poise of character. And this can be cultivated and brought into action by learning to live by the sense of duty. Even then, even the sense of duty, we have to admit, is not enough. F or if it leads or is capable of leading into an aberration, we must have something else to check and control it, some other higher and m ore potent principle. Indeed, both the conceptions of Duty and Right belong to the domain of mental ideal, although one is usually m ore aggressive and militant (Rajasic) and the other tends to be m ore tolerant and considerate (sattwic): neither can give an absolute certainty of poise, a clear guarantee of perfect harmony.
Indian wisdom has found this other, a fairer terma tertium quid,the mystic fact or, sought f or by so many philosophers on so many counts. That is the very well- known, the very familiar termDharma. What is Dharma then? How does it accomplish the miracle which to others seems to have proved an impossibility? Dharma is self-law, that is to say, the law of the Self; it is the rhythm and movement of our inner or inmost being, the spontaneous w orking out of our truth-conscious nature.
We may perhaps view the three terms Right, Duty and Dharma as degrees of an ascending consciousness. Consciousness at Its origin and in its primitive f ormulation is dominated by the principle of inertia (tamas); in that state things have mostly an undifferentiated collective existence, they helplessly move about acted upon by f orces outside them. A rise in growth and evolution brings about differentiation, specialisation, organisation. And this means consciousness of oneself of the distinct and separate existence of each and everyone, in other w ords, self-assertion, the claim, the right of each individual unit to be itself, to become itself first and f oremost. It is a necessary development; f or it signifies the growth of self consciousness in the units out of a mass unconsciousness or semi-consciousness. It is the expression of rajas, the mode of dynamism, of strife and struggle, it is the c orrective of tamas.
In the earliest and primitive society men lived totally in a mass consciousness. Their life was a blind obedienceobedience to the chief the patriarch or pater familiasobedience to the laws and customs of the collectivity to which one belonged. It was called duty; it was called even dharma, but evidently on a lower level, in an inferi or f ormulation. In reality it was m ore of the nature of the mechanical functioning of an automaton than the exercise of conscious will and deliberate choice, which is the very soul of the conception of duty.
The conception of Right had to appear in order to bring out the principle of individuality, of personal freedom and fulfilment. F or, a true healthy collectivity is the association and organisation of free and self-determinate units. The growth of independent individuality naturally means at first clash and rivalry, and a violently competitive society is the result. It is only at this stage that the conception of duty can fruitfully come in and develop in man and his society the mode of Sattwa, which is that of light and wisdom, of toleration and harmony. Then only a society is sought to be moulded on the principle of co- ordination and co-operation.
Still, the conception of duty cannot finally and definitively solve the problem. It cannot arrive at a perfect harmonisation of the conflicting claims of individual units; f or, duty, as I have already said, is a child of mental idealism, and although the mind can exercise some kind of control over life-f orces, it cannot altogether eliminate the seeds of conflict that lie imbedded in the very nature of life. It is f or this reason that there is an element of constraint in duty; it is, as the poet says, the "stern daughter of the Voice of God". One has to compel oneself, one has to use f orce on oneself to carry out one's dutythere is a feeling somehow of its being a bitter pill. The cult of duty means rajas controlled and coerced by Sattwa, not the transcendence of rajas. This leads us to the high and supreme conception of Dharma, which is a transcendence of the gunas. Dharma is not an ideal, a standard or a rule that one has to obey: it is the law of self-nature that one inevitably follows, it is easy, spontaneous, delightful. The path of duty is heroic, the path of Dharma is of the gods, godly (cf. Virabhava and Divyabhava of the Tantras).
The principle of Dharma then inculcates that each individual must, in order to act, find out his truth of being, his true soul and inmost consciousness: one must entirely and integrally merge oneself into that, be identified with it in such a manner that all acts and feelings and thoughts, in fact all movements, inner and outerspontaneously and irrepressibly well out of that fount and origin. The individual souls, being made of one truth-nature in its multiple modalities, when they live, move and have their being in its essential law and dynamism, there cannot but be absolute harmony and perfect synthesis between all the units, even as the sun and moon and stars, as the Veda says, each following its specific orbit acc ording to its specific nature, never collide or haltna me thate na tas thatuh but weave out a faultless pattern of symphony.
The future society of man is envisaged as something of like nature. When the m ortal being will have found his imm ortal soul and divine self, then each one will be able to give full and free expression to his self-nature (swabhava); then indeed the utmost sweep of dynamism in each and all will not cause clash or conflict; on the contrary, each will increase the other and there will be a global increment and fulfilmentparasparam bhavayantah. The division and conflict, the stress and strain that belong to the very nature of the inferi or level of being and consciousness will then have been transcended. It is only thus that a diviner humanity can be b orn and replace all the other moulds and types that can never lead to anything final and absolutely satisfact ory.
***
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In these latest poems of his, Eliot has become outright a poet of the Dark Night of the Soul. The beginnings of the new avatar were already there certainly at the very beginning. The Waste Land is a good preparation and passage into the Night. Only, the negative element in it was stronger the cynicism, the bleakness, the sereness of it all was almost overwhelming. The next stage was "The Hollow Men": it took us right up to the threshold, into the very entrance. It was gloomy and f ore-boding enough, grim and seriousno glint or hint of the silver lining yet within reach. Now as we find ourselves into the very heart of the Night, things appear somewhat changed: we look at the past indeed, but can often turn to the future, feel the pressure of the Night yet sense the Light beyond overarching and embracing us. This is how the poet begins:
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
--
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre
To be redeemed from fire by fire.2
The Divine Love is a greater fire than the low smouldering fire that our secular unregenerate life is. One has to choose and declare his adhesion. Indeed, the stage of conversion, the crucial turn from the ordinary life to the spiritual life Eliot has characterised in a very striking manner. We usually say, sometimes in an outburst of grief, sometimes in a spirit of sudden disgust and renunciation that the w orld is dark and dismal and lonesome, the only thing to do here is to be done with it. The true renunciation, that which is deep and abiding, is not, however, so simple a thing, such a sh ort cut. So our poet says, but the w orld is not dark enough, it is not lonesome enough: the w orld lives and moves in a superficial half-light, it is neither real death n or real life, it is death in life. It is this miserable mediocrity, the shallow uncertainty of consciousness that spells danger and ruin f or the soul. Hence the poet exclaims:
. . . . Not here
--
or,
Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour
--
But Thompson was not an intellectual, his doubts and despondencies were not of the mental order, he was a boiling, swelling life-surge, a geyser, a volcano. He, too, crossed the Night and saw the light of Day, but in a different way. Well, I he did not march into the day, it was the Day that marched I into him! Yes, the Divine Grace came and seized him from behind with violence. A modern, a modernist consciousness cannot expect that indulgence. God meets him only halfway, he has to w ork up himself the other half. He has laid so many demands and conditions: the knots in his case are not cut asunder but slowly disengaged.
The modern temper is especially partial to harmony: it cannot assert and reject unilaterally and categ orically, it wishes to go round an object and view all its sides; it asks f or a synthesis and reconciliation of differences and contraries. Two maj or ch ords of life-experience that demand acc ord are Life and Death, Time and Eternity. Indeed, the problem of Time hangs heavy on the human consciousness. It has touched to the quick philosophers and sages in all ages and climes; it is the great question that confronts the spiritual seeker, the riddle that the Sphinx of life puts to the journeying soul f or solution.
--
or even these local names and habitations:
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
--
Can w ords or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
--
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The W ord in the desert
--
Our poet is too self-conscious, he himself feels that he has not the perfect voice. A Homer, even a Milton possesses a unity of tone and a wholeness of perception which are denied to the modern. To the modern, however, the old masters are not subtle enough, broad enough, psychological enough, let us say the w ord, spiritual enough. And yet the poetic inspiration, m ore than the religious urge, needs the injunction not to be busy with too many things, but to be centred upon the one thing needful, viz., to create poetically and not to discourse philosophically or preach prophetically. Not that it is impossible f or the poet to swallow the philosopher and the prophet, metabolising them into the substance of his bone and marrow, of "the trilling wire in his blood", as Eliot graphically expresses. That perhaps is the consummation towards which poetry is tending. But at present, in Eliot, at least, the strands remain distinct, each with its own temper and rhythm, not fused and moulded into a single streamlined f orm of beauty. Our poet flies high, very high indeed at times, often or often he flies low, not disdaining the perilous limit of bathos. Perhaps it is all wilful, it is a mannerism which he cherishes. The mannerism may explain his psychology and enshrine his philosophy. But the poet, the magician is to be looked f or elsewhere. In the present collection of poems it is the philosophical, exegetical, discursive Eliot who dominates: although the high lights of the subject-matter may be its justification. Still even if we have here doldrums like
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence
or even development: the latter a partial fallacy Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution, Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.17
we have also high flights like the lines I have already quoted:
--
Here the poet is almost grimly tense, concentrated and has not allowed himself to be dissipated by thinkings and arguments, has confined himself wholly to a living experience. That is because the poet has since then moved up and sought a m ore rarefied air, a m ore even and smooth temper. The utter and absolute poetic ring of the Inferno is difficult to maintain in the Paradiso, unless and until the poet transf orms himself wholly into the Rishi, like the poet of the Gita or the Upanishads.
"East Coker"
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Ex oriente lux. Out of the East the Light, and that light is of the nature and substance of beauty, of creative and dynamic beauty in the life the spirit. This, I suppose, is Roerich's message in a nutshell. The Light of the East is always the light of the ample consciousness that dwells on the heights of our being in God.
The call that stirred a Western soul, made him a wanderer over the w orld in quest of the Holy Grail and finally lodged him in the Home of the Snows is symbolic of a m ore than individual destiny. It is representative of the secret hist ory of a whole culture and civilisation that have been ruling humanity f or some centuries, its inner want and need and hankering and fulfilment. The West shall come to the East and be reb orn. That is the prophecy of occult seers and sages.
I speak of Roerich as a Western soul, but m ore precisely perhaps he is a soul of the mid-region (as also in another sense we shall see subsequently) intermediary between the East and the West. His external make-up had all the characteristic elements of the Western culture, but his mind and temperament, his inner soul was oriental. And yet it was not the calm luminous staticancientsoul that an Indian or a Chinese sage is; it is a nomad soul, newly awakened, young and fresh and ardent, something primitive, pulsating with the unspoilt green sap of life something in the manner of Whitman. And that makes him all the m ore representative of the young and ardent West yearning f or the light that was never on sea or land.
Is it not strange that one should look to the East f or the light? There is a light indeed that dwells in the setting suns, but that is the inferi or light, the light that moves level with the earth, pins us down to the n ormal and ordinary life and consciousness: it" leads into the Night, into Nihil, pralaya. It is the light of the m orning sun that man looks up to in his f orward march, the sun that rises in the East whom the Vedic Rishi invoked in these magnificent lines:
Lo, the supreme light of all lights is come, a vast and varied consciousness is b orn in us. . . .
It is not a mere notion or superstition, it is an occult reality that gives sanctity to a particular place or region. The saintly soul has always been also a pilgrim, physically, to holy places, even to one single holy place, if he so chooses. The puritan poet may say tauntingly:
Here pilgrims roam, that strayed so far to seek In Golgotha him dead who lives in heaven
--
Roerich is one of the prophets and seers who have ever been acclaiming and preparing the Golden Age, the dream that humanity has been dreaming continuously since its very childhood, that is to say, when there will be peace and harmony on earth, when racial, cultural or ideological egoism will no longer divide man and mana thing that seems today a chimera and a hallucinationwhen there will be one culture, one civilisation, one spiritual life welding all humanity into a single unit of life luminous and beautiful. Roerich believes that such a consummation can arrive only or chiefly through the growth of the sense of beauty, of the aesthetic temperament, of creative labour leading to a wider and higher consciousness. Beauty, Harmony, Light, Knowledge, Culture, Love, Delight are cardinal terms in his vision of the deeper and higher life of the future.
The stress of the inner urge to the heights and depths of spiritual values and realities found special and significant expression in his paintings. It is a difficult problem, a problem which artists and poets are tackling today with all their skill and talent. Man's consciousness is no longer satisfied with the customary and the ordinary actions and reactions of life ( or thought), with the old-w orld and time-w orn modes and manners. It is no m ore turned to the apparent and the obvious, to the surface f orms and movements of things. It yearns to look behind and beyond, f or the secret mechanism, the hidden agency that really drives things. Poets and artists are the vanguards of the age to come, prophets and pioneers preparing the way f or the L ord.
Roerich discovered and elab orated his own technique to reveal that which is secret, express that which is not expressed or expressible. First of all, he is symbolical and alleg orical: secondly, the choice of his symbols and alleg ories is hieratic, that is to say, the subject-matter refers to objects and events connected with saints and legends, shrines and enchanted places, hidden treasures, spirits and angels, etc. etc.; thirdly, the manner or style of execution is what we may term pantomimic, in other w ords, concrete, graphic, dramatic, even melodramatic. He has a special predilection f or geometrical patterns the artistic effect of whichbalance, regularity, fixity, soliditywas greatly utilised by the French painter Czanne and poet Mallarm who seem to have influenced Roerich to a considerable degree. But this N ortherner had not the reticence, the suavity, the tonic unity of the classicist, n or the n ormality and clarity of the Latin temperament. The prophet, the priest in him was the stronger element and made use of the artist as the rites andceremoniesmudras and chakrasof his vocation demanded. Indeed, he stands as the hierophant of a new cultural religion and his paintings and utterances are, as it were, gestures that accompany a holy ceremonial.
A Russian artist (Monsieur Benois) has stressed upon the primitivealmost ab originalelement in Roerich and was not happy over it. Well, as has been pointed out by other prophets and thinkers, man today happens to be so sophisticated, artificial, material, cerebral that a [all-back seems to be necessary f or him to take a new leap f orward on to a higher ground. The pure aesthete is a closed system, with a consciousness immured in an iv ory tower; but man is something m ore. A curious paradox. Man can reach the highest, realise the integral truth when he takes his leap, not from the relatively higher levels of his consciousness his intellectual and aesthetic and even m oral status but when he can do so from his lower levels, when the physico-vital element in him serves as the springing-board. The decent and the beautiful the classic grace and aristocracyf orm one aspect of man, the aspect of "light"; but the aspect of energy and power lies precisely in him where the ab original and the barbarian find also a lodging. Man as a mental being is naturally sattwic, but prone to passivity and weakness; his physico-vital reactions, on the other hand, are obscure and crude, simple and vehement, but they have life and energy and creative power, they are there to be trained and transfigured, made effective instruments of a higher illumination.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As soon as I meet or see certain people, certain lower
and wrong vibrations arise in me. This is an invariable
--
and despair, the Divine too will be farther from you or
nearer, depending on what you believe. The attitude is
--
The head is the original conceiving Consciousness.
22 April 1967
--
When I am able to offer You money or some object, it
brings me great joy, and when some part of my being
--
around the psychic being, if we are conscious of it or at least
around the central aspiration. If this unification is not done, we
--
consciousness to the central being or its aspiration. What is in
acc ord is accepted; what is not in acc ord is refused, rejected or
transf ormed.
--
do nothing imperfect, inc orrect or wrong? What is the
way to do it, Divine Mother?
--
faults or weaknesses in myself, something tries to justify
them or to prevent me from attending to them.
This "something" is the insincerity of an ign orant self-esteem
--
recognise one's faults in order to c orrect them, than to conceal
them in the hope that they will not be noticed.
--
first, "to live in Thee" or "to live f or Thee". Bef ore the
mind could set to w ork to find the answer, the reply that
--
slower - man or the Divine Himself?
To man the Divine seems slow.
--
First the dead man must have a daughter in order to be reb orn
in her child.
--
This is to say that yoga ordinarily consists in awakening the
physical consciousness and making it rise gradually towards the
--
Does spontaneity come spontaneously or does one have
to follow a discipline to obtain it?
Spontaneity in feelings and action comes from a permanent contact with the psychic, which brings order into the thoughts and
automatically controls the vital impulses.
--
Which is swifter f or transf ormation: Divine Love or
Mahakali's f orce?
--
Which came first in the manifestation, the god or the
Asura?
--
themselves off (separated themselves) from their Supreme origin
and became Unconsciousness, Suffering, Falsehood and Death.
--
I think that always, at every moment, someone or other
is calling You, and You answer. Doesn't this disturb Your
sleep or Your rest?
Day and night hundreds of calls are coming - but the Consciousness is always alert and it answers.
--
How is it that ordinarily the richer one is (materially),
the m ore dishonest one is?
--
That is very interesting indeed. Was it a rose or a hibiscus?
27 January 1968
--
shall wait f or the true consciousness to come in order to
have this knowledge. But yesterday I tried to note down
--
pure Being. Does this apply only to the Yogi or to
everyone?
--
"In the spiritual order of things, the higher we project our view and our aspiration,
the greater the Truth that seeks to descend upon us, because it is already there within us
--
Acc ording to my experience, one should not try to destroy or
to eliminate. One should concentrate all one's eff ort on building up and strengthening the true consciousness, which will
--
transf ormed quite naturally, without clash or damage.
13 May 1968
--
(2) Never allow any part of the being or any of its movements to contradict one's aspiration.
This also makes it necessary to become conscious of one's
--
means, or is it a realisation in itself?
Without sincerity nothing can be done. With total sincerity
--
What is the origin of man's love f or his own ign orance?
It is inconscience.
--
Sincerity is compared to an atmosphere or a sheet of glass. If the
one or the other is completely transparent, it lets light through
without dist orting it.
--
Oneness means identity in origin; but in the manifestation each
entity follows its own path of conscious return to the Oneness.
--
in order to be immune.
But in any case, transf ormation gives the power of vict ory.
--
rec orded in the subconscient during the day or previously which
becomes active again and constitutes their dreams.
--
The quotation means that in order to reach the divine regions
one must, while on earth, pass through the vital, which in some
--
"The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother
stands above all the w orlds and bears in her eternal
--
of ign orance, negligence or absent-mindedness that we do not
feel it. But each time that we are attentive and concentrated, we
--
In order to be conscious of the constant Presence, is
mem ory a good aid?
--
Can man delay or hasten the coming of this hour?
Neither the one n or the other in their apparent contradiction
--
known." All is known in its essential truth or also
in detail?
--
It seems to me that to know things in detail, the ordinary
instrumentation is necessary f or the yogi too, but that the
--
m ore complete than the ordinary one, as if it revealed something
of its content.
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I used to have the habit of reading Savitri or one of
Your books bef ore going to bed at night. But now I have
--
things. Should one do them regularly or only when one
feels like doing them? Why should one do these things
--
to put oneself in contact with Sri Aurobindo in order to receive
his help.
--
Naturally, some bodies are tamasic and need a little encouragement in order to progress.
But in all things and in all cases, one has to keep a balance.
--
How can one get rid of, or rather c orrect, jealousy
and laziness?
--
only thing or does becoming conscious of one's movements, of one's speech, etc. also count?
Series Twelve - To a Student
--
etc., or is there something good in it too?
Energy, strength, enthusiasm, artistic taste, boldness, f orcefulness are there too, if we know how to use them in the true way.
--
c orrectly, or are men still unable to do that?
Human incapacity is necessarily behind all that men do. Only
--
certain excitement in order to make eff ort.
Blessings.
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Should one give money to beggars or not?
In a well- organized society, there should not be any beggars.
--
It means to become conscious of the Divine Presence in oneself or on the spiritual heights, and, once one is conscious of
His Presence, to surrender to Him completely so that one no
--
what happens? Does the consciousness divide itself or
are other people's dreams only their own imagination?
--
in the subtle physical or the mental. There are any number of
different possibilities in dreams.
--
These are all mental and vital, sentimental or sexual activities, and nothing m ore.
Blessings.
--
as they are necessary or imp ortant to oneself. In French, selfrealisation (réalisation du Soi) means discovering the divine
centre in one's being. In English, self-fulfilment is generally taken
--
ordinarily, one becomes aware of the presence of this consciousness only when one has to face some danger or an unexpected event or a great s orrow.
One has, then, to come into conscious contact with that and
--
will, so that the psychic being may accept or reject each of these
movements, impulses, thoughts or acts of will. Those that are
accepted will be kept and carried out; those that are rejected will
--
In search of a knowledge truer than ordinary knowledge.
The fifth and ninth in understanding what death is.
--
Why go to church? Are you Christians or do you want to become
Christians?
--
are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their
own egoism"1 and in one of your letters, you have said
--
the characters and if the film is tragic or full of suspense,
we get so involved that we cry or feel frightened. And if
we keep aloof we cannot appreciate it properly. So what
--
instead of being moved or troubled, you can calmly judge the
value of a film, whether it is well made or well acted, or whether
the scenes have any artistic value.
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
compared to human life. Matter is changing in order to prepare
itself f or the new manifestation, but the human body is not
--
freely in order to transf orm us.
Two conditions are necessary to open the windows:
--
movements and the judge of all that you should or should not
do, and to strive to submit your external nature to its decisions.
--
f orm. They are not ideas or reasonings. They have their own
character quite distinct from the mind, something like a feeling
--
And to have only one goal: to know the Divine in order to
be able to manifest Him.
--
either to get converted or disappear.
8 February 1972
--
possible, in order to avoid giving themselves to the Divine.
10 February 1972
--
we may overcome them in order to serve You faithfully."
The supreme happiness is to be true servit ors of the Divine.
0 1952-08-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Only when it is no longer necessary f or my body to resemble the bodies of men in order to make them progress will it be free to be supramentalized.1
***
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
(Mother reads to the disciples an excerpt from Sri Aurobindos THE MOTHER, in which he describes the different aspects of the Creative Powerwhat is India is called the Shakti, or the Motherwhich have presided over universal evolution.)
There are other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, but they were m ore difficult to bring down and have not stood out in front with so much prominence in the evolution of the earth-spirit. There are among them Presences indispensable f or the supramental realization,most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda1 which flows from a supreme divine Love, the Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divines Life and even now supp orts from its secrecies the w ork of all the other Powers of the universe.
--
Thus far, She has not found what is needed. Men remain obstinately men and do not want to or are unable to become supermen. All they can receive and express is a love at their own dimension: a human lovewhereas the supreme bliss of divine Ananda eludes their perception.
At times, finding the w orld unready to receive Her, She contemplates withdrawing. But how cruel a loss this would be!
--
But the vibrations of divine Bliss and those of pleasure cannot cohabit in the same vital and physical house. We must theref ore TOTALLY renounce all feelings of pleasure to be ready to receive the divine Ananda. But rare are those who can renounce pleasure without thereby renouncing all active participation in life or sinking into a stern asceticism. And among those who realize that the transf ormation is to be wrought in active life, some pretend that pleasure is a f orm of Ananda gone m ore or less astray and legitimize their search f or self-satisfaction, thereby creating a virtually insuperable obstacle to their own transf ormation.
Now, if there is anything else you wish to ask me Anyone may ask, anyoneanyone who has something to saynot just the students.
--
This is b orne out by the fact that her descent took place at a given moment and f or two or three weeks the atmospherenot only of the Ashram but of the Earthwas so highly charged with such a power of such an intense divine Bliss creating so marvelous a f orce that things difficult to do bef ore could be done almost instantly.
There were repercussions the w orld over. But I dont believe that a single one of you noticed it you cannot even tell me when it happened, can you?
--
The first condition was: Nothing m ore to do with your family Well, we are a long way from that! But I repeat that it only happened because of the war and not because we stopped seeing the need to cut all family ties; on the contrary, this is an indispensable condition because as long as you hang on to all these c ords which bind you to ordinary life, which make you a slave to the ordinary life, how can you possibly belong to the Divine alone? What childishness! It is simply not possible. If you have ever taken the trouble to read over the early ashram rules, you would find that even friendships were considered dangerous and undesirable We made every eff ort to create an atmosphere in which only ONE thing counted: the Life Divine.
But as I said, bit by bit things changed. However, this had one advantage: we were too much outside of life. So there were a number of problems which had never arisen but which would have suddenly surged up the moment we wanted a complete manifestation. We took on all these problems a little prematurely, but it gave us the opp ortunity to solve them. In this way we learned many things and surmounted many difficulties, only it complicated things considerably. And in the present situation, given such a large number of elements who havent even the slightest idea why theyre here (!) well, it demands a far greater eff ort on the disciples part than bef ore.
Bef ore, when there were we started with 35 or 36 people but even when it got up to 150, even with 150it was as if they were all nestled in a cocoon in my consciousness: they were so near to me that I could constantly guide ALL their inner or outer movements. Day and night, at each moment, everything was totally under my control. And naturally, I think they made a great deal of progress at that time: it is a fact that I was CONSTANTLY doing the sadhana2 f or them. But then, with this baby boom The sadhana cant be done f or little sprouts who are 3 or 4 or 5 years old! Its out of the question. The only thing I can do is wrap them in the Consciousness and try to see that they grow up in the best of all possible conditions. However, the one advantage to all this is that instead of there being such a COMPLETE and PASSIVE dependence on the disciples part, each one has to make his own little eff ort. Truly, thats excellent.
I dont know to whom I was mentioning this today (I think it was f or a Birthday3 No, I dont know now. It was to someone who told me he was 18 years old. I said that between the ages of 18 and 20, I had attained a constant and conscious union with the Divine Presence and that I had done this ALL ALONE, without ANYONES help, not even books. When a little later I chanced upon Vivekanandas Raja Yoga, it really seemed so wonderful to me that someone could explain something to me! And it helped me realize in only a few months what would have otherwise taken years.
I met a man (I was perhaps 20 or 21 at the time), an Indian who had come to Europe and who told me of the Gita. There was a French translation of it (a rather po or one, I must say) which he advised me to read, and then he gave me the key (HIS key, it was his key). He said, Read the Gita (this translation of the Gita which really wasnt w orth much but it was the only one available at the timein those days I wouldnt have understood anything in other languages; and besides, the English translations were just as bad and well, Sri Aurobindo hadnt done his yet!). He said, Read the Gita knowing that Krishna is the symbol of the immanent God, the God within. That was all. Read it with THAT knowledgewith the knowledge that Krishna represents the immanent God, the God within you. Well, within a month, the whole thing was done!
So some of you people have been here since the time you were toddlerseverything has been explained to you, the whole thing has been served to you on a silver platter (not only with w ords, but through psychic aid and in every possible way), you have been put on the path of this inner discovery and then you just go on drifting along: When it comes, it will come.If you even spare it that much thought!
--
But Im not at all discouraged, I just find it rather laughable. Only there are other far m ore serious things; f or example, when you try to deceive yourselves that is not so pretty. One should not mix up cats and kings. You should call a cat a cat and a king a king and human instinct, human instinctand not speak about things divine when they are utterly human, n or pretend to have supramental experiences when you are living in a blatantly ordinary consciousness.
If you look at yourselves straight in the face and you see what you are, then if by chance you should resolve to But what really astounds me is that you dont even seem to feel an intense NEED to do this! But how can we know? Because you DO know, you have been told over and over again, it has been drummed into your heads. You KNOW that you have a divine consciousness within you. And yet you can go on sleeping night after night, playing day after day, doing your lessons ad infinitum and still not be not have a BURNING desire and will to come into contact with yourselves!With yourselves, yes, the you just there, inside (motion towards the center of the chest) Really, its beyond me!
--
And when, as I told you, I chanced upon a book or an individual that could give me just a little clue and tell me, Here. If you do such and such, you will find your pathwell I charged into it like a cyclone and nothing could have stopped me.
And how many years have you all been here, half-asleep? Naturally, youre happy to think about it now and thenespecially when I speak to you about it or sometimes when you read. But THATthat fire, that will which plows through all barriers, that concentration which can triumph over EVERYTHING
Now who was it that asked me what you should do?
--
Sadhana: yogic discipline or eff ort.
Mother received each disciple individually on his birthday.
The Mother of Ananda, or the Creative Power's aspect of Joy.
W.W. Pearson, a friend of Rabindranath Tag ore, who had come from Tag ore's Ashram in 1923; Mother had met him with Tag ore in 1916 in Japan.
0 1955-03-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Mother, once m ore I come to ask you f or Mahakalis1 intervention. After a period when everything seemed much better, I again awake to impossible m ornings when I live badly, very badly, far from you, incapable of calling you and, whats m ore, of feeling your Presence or your help.
I dont know what mud is stirring about in me, but everything is obscured, and I cannot dissociate myself from these vital waves.
0 1955-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Mother, f or m ore than a year now I have been near you and nothing, no really significant inner experience, no sign has come that allows me to feel I have progressed or merely to show me that I am on the right path. I cannot even say I am happy.
I am not so absurdly pretentious as to blame the divine, n or yourself and I remain quite convinced that all this is my own fault. Undoubtedly I have not known how to surrender totally in some part of myself, or I do not aspire enough or know how to open myself as needed. Also, I should rely entirely upon the divine to take care of my progress and not be concerned about the absence of experiences. I have theref ore asked myself why I am so far away from the true attitude, the genuine opening, and I see two main reasons: on the one hand, the difficulties inherent in my own nature, and on the other, the outer conditions of this sadhana. These conditions do not seem to be conducive to helping me overcome the difficulties in my own nature.
I feel that I am turning in circles and taking one step backward f or each one f orward. Furtherm ore, instead of helping me draw nearer to the divine consciousness, my w ork in the Ashram (the very fact of w orking f or to change w ork, even if I felt like it, would not change the overall situation), diverts me from this divine consciousness, or at least keeps me in a superficial consciousness from which I am unable to unglue myself as long as I am busy writing letters, doing translations, c orrections or classes.1 I know its my own fault, that I should know how to be detached from my w ork and do it by relying upon a deeper consciousness, but what can be done? Unless I receive the grace, I cannot remember the essential thing as long as the outer part of my being is active.
When I am not immediately engrossed in w ork, I have to confront a thousand little temptations and daily difficulties that come from my contact with other beings and a life that does indeed remain in life. Here, even m ore, there is the feeling of an impossible struggle, and all these little difficulties seem to gnaw away at me; scarcely has one hole been filled when another opens up, or the same one reappears, and there is never any real vict oryone has constantly to begin everything again. Finally, it seems to me that I really live only one hour a day, during the evening distribution at the playground.2 It is scarcely a life and scarcely a sadhana!
Consequently, I understand much better now why in the traditional yogas one settled all these difficulties once and f or all by escaping from the w orld, without bothering to transf orm a life that seems so untransf ormable.
--
By continuing this daily little ant-like struggle and by having to confront the same desires, the same distractions every day, it seems to me I am wasting my energy in vain. Sri Aurobindos Yoga, which is meant to include life, is so difficult that one should come to it only after having already established the solid base of a concrete divine realization. That is why I want to ask you if I should not withdraw f or a certain time, to Alm ora,3 f or example, to Brewsters place,4 to live in solitude, silence, meditation, far away from people, w ork and temptations, until a beginning of Light and Realization is concretized in me. Once this solid base is acquired, it would be easier f or me to resume my w ork and the struggle here f or the true transf ormation of the outer being. But to want to transf orm this outer being without having fully illumined the inner being seems to me to be putting the cart bef ore the h orse, or at least condemning myself to a pitiless and endless battle in which the best of my f orces are fruitlessly consumed.
In all sincerity, I must say that when I was at Brewsters place in Alm ora, I felt very near to that state in which the Light must surge f orth. I quite understand the imperfection of this process, which involves fleeing from difficulties, but this would only be a stage, a strategic retreat, as it were.
--
I know that you do not like to write, Mother, but couldnt you say in a few w ords if you approve of my project or what I should do? In spite of all my rebellions and discouragements and resistances, I am your child. O Mother, help me!
Signed: Bernard
0 1955-06-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
If only I could see a distinct err or blocking my path which I could clearly attack But I feel that I am not responsible, that it is not my personal fault if I remain without aspiration, stagnating. I feel like a battlefield of contending f orces that are beyond me and against which I can do NOTHING. Oh Mother, it is not an excuse f or a lack of will, or at least I dont think so I profoundly feel like a helpless toy, totally helpless.
If the divine f orce, if your grace, does not intervene to shatter this obscure resistance that is drawing me downwards in spite of myself, I dont know what will become of me Mother, I am not blackmailing you, I am only expressing my helplessness, my anguish.
During the day, I live m ore or less calmly in my little m orass, but as evening and the moment to meet you draw near, then the f orces pinning me to the ground begin raging beneath your pressure, and I feel at times an unbearable tearing that burns and constricts in my throat like tears that cannot be shed. Afterwards, Truth regains possession of me but the following day it all begins again.
Mother, it is an impossible, absurd, unlivable life. I feel as though I have no hand in this cruel little game. Oh Mother, why doesnt your grace trust that deep part in me which knows so well that you are the Truth? Deliver me from these evil f orces since, profoundly, it is you and you alone I want. Give me the aspiration and strength I do not have. If you do not do this Yoga f or me, I feel I shall never have the strength to go on.
0 1955-09-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
No matter where I concentrate, in my heart, above my head, between my eyes, I bang everywhere into an unyielding wall; I no longer know which way to turn, what I must do, say, pray in order to be freed from all this at last. Mother, I know that I am not making all the eff ort I should, but help me to make this eff ort, I impl ore your grace. I need so much to find at last this solid rock upon which to lean, this space of light where finally I may seek refuge. Mother, open the psychic being in me, open me to your sole Light which I need so much. Without your grace, I can only turn in circles, hopelessly. O Mother, may I live in you.
Your child,
0 1955-09-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Mother suddenly everything seems to have crystallizedall the little revolts, the little tensions, the ill will and petty vital demandsf orming a single block of open, determined resistance. I have become conscious that from the beginning of my sadhana, the mind has led the gamewith the psychic behind and has held me in leash, helped muzzle all contrary movements, but at no time, or only rarely, has the vital submitted or opened to the higher influence. The rare times when the vital participated, I felt a great progress. But now, I find myself in front of this solid mass that says No and is not at all convinced of what the mind has been imposing upon it f or almost two years now.
Mother, I am sufficiently awakened not to rebel against your Light and to understand that the vital is but one part of my being, but I have come to the conclusion that the only way of convincing this vital is not to f orce or stifle it, but to let it go through its own experience so it may understand by itself that it cannot be satisfied in this way. I feel the need to leave the Ashram f or a while to see how I can get along away from here and to realize, no doubt, that one can really brea the only here.
I have friends in Bangal ore whom I would like to join f or two or three weeks, perhaps m ore, perhaps less, however long it may take to confront this vital with its own freedom. I need a vital activity, to move, to sail, f or example, to have friends etc. The need I am feeling is exactly that which I sought to satisfy in the past through my long boat journeys along the coast of Brittany. It is a kind of thirst f or space and movement.
Otherwise, Mother, there is this block bef ore me that is obscuring all the rest and taking away my taste f or everything. I would like to leave, Mother, but not in revolt; may it be an experience to go through that receives your approval. I would not like to be cut off from you by your displeasure or your condemnation, f or this would seem to me terrible and leave me no other recourse but to plunge into the w orst excesses in order to f orget.
Mother, I would like you to f orgive me, to understand me and, above all, not to deprive me of your Love. I would like you to tell me if I may leave f or a few weeks and how you feel about it. It seems to me that I am profoundly your child, in spite of all this??
0 1955-10-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
These movements may be accompanied by three f ormulas, or any one of them, depending upon the case:
1) May Your Will be done and not mine.
0 1956-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Mother, two months ago I had a clear mental perception of what was asked of me: to spend the rest of my life here. This is the source of my difficulties and of the inner hell I have been living through ever since. Each time I try to emerge, there is this image that rises up in me: your-whole-life and this casts me into a violent conflict. When I came here, I thought of staying f or two or three years; f or me the Ashram was a means of realization, not an end.
I understand now that as long as my whole being has not ACCEPTED that it must finish its life here, there is no way out n or any recovery possible. Through my mental f orce alone, this acceptance is impossible; I have been turning infernally in circles these past two months, and the mind is in league with the vital. Theref ore, a f orce greater than mine must help me accept that my way is here. I need you, Mother, f or without you I am lost. I need you to tell me that the Truth of my being is indeed here and that I am truly ready to follow this path. Mother, I beseech you, help me to see the truth of my being, give me some sign that my way is here and not elsewhere. I beg of you, Mother, help me to know.
0 1956-04-23, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
original English.
***
0 1956-04-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
original English.
The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no m ore a promise but a living fact, a reality.
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The new race? Wait f or something like a few thousand years or so, and you will see it!
When the mind came down upon earth, something like a million years went by between the manifestation of the mind in the earth atmosphere and the appearance of the first man. But it will go faster this time because man is waiting f or something, he has a vague idea: he is awaiting in some way or another the advent of the superman. Whereas the apes were certainly not awaiting the birth of man, they never thought of it f or the excellent reason that they probably dont think very much! But man has thought about it and is waiting, so it will go faster. But faster probably still means thousands of years. We shall speak of this again in a few thousand years!
(silence)
Those who are ready within, who are open and in touch with the higher f orces, those who have had a m ore or less direct personal contact with the Supramental Light and Consciousness, are capable of feeling the difference in the earth atmosphere.
But f or this only like can know like. Only the Supramental Consciousness in an individual can perceive the Supramental acting in the earth atmosphere. Those who, f or whatever reason, have developed this perception can see it. But those who are not even remotely conscious of their inner beings, who would be quite at a loss to say what their souls look like, are certainly not ready to perceive the difference in the earth atmosphere. They still have quite a way to go f or that. Because, f or those whose consciousness is m ore or less exclusively centered in the outer beingmental, vital and physicalthings need to have an absurd or unexpected appearance to be noticeable. And then they call it a miracle.
But we do not call a miracle the constant miracle of the f orces that intervene to change circumstances and human natures and which have very far-reaching consequences, f or we see only the appearance, and this appearance seems quite natural. But in truth, if you were to reflect upon the least thing that happens, you would be f orced to acknowledge that it is miraculous.
--
Will we benefit collectively or individually from this new manifestation?
Why are you asking this question?
--
But inevitablyit will increase m ore and m ore! Which is why I cannot do what I used to do when there were one hundred and fifty people in the Ashram. If they had just a little bit of common sense, they would understand that I cannot have the same relationship with people now (just imagine, 1,800 people these last days!), so I cannot have the same relationship with 1,845 people (exactly, I believe) as with thirty or even a hundred. That seems an easy enough logic to understand.
But they want everything to remain as it was and, as you say, to be the first to benefit.
--
Individually, each ones goal was to make himself ready, to enter into a m ore or less intimate individual relationship with this F orce, so as to help the process; or else, if he could not help, at least be ready to recognize and be open to the F orce when it would manifest. Then instead of being an alien element in a w orld in which your OWN inner capacity remains unmanifest, you suddenly become THAT, you enter directly, fully, into the very atmosphere: the F orce is there, all around you, permeating you.
If you had had a little inner contact, you would have recognized it immediately, dont you think so?
--
What I call a descent takes place in the individual consciousness. In the same way, we speak of ascent (there is no ascent really, there is no high or low, no direction: its all a manner of speaking)we speak of ascent when we feel ourselves rising up towards something, and we call it a descent when, after having caught this thing, we bring it down into ourselves.
But when the do ors are opened and the flood pours in, it can no longer be called a descent: it is a F orce that spreads everywhere. Understood? Ah!
0 1956-09-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
This text was noted down by a disciple from mem ory. On the original manuscript submitted f or her approval, Mother wrote, 'This account is quite c orrect,' and She signed the text. W ords added or c orrected by Mother are in italics.
(During the Wednesday class)
--
I saw (how shall I put it?) the successive preparations which took place, in certain anteri or beings, in order to achieve this.
It felt as if I had several heads.
0 1956-09-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
These questions of money do not interest me. In fact, nothing interests me except this something I feel within me. The only question f or me is to know whether I am truly ready f or the Yoga, or if my failings are not the sign of some immaturity. Mother, you alone can tell me what is right.
I feel a bit lost, cut off from you. The idea of going to the Himalayas is absurd and I am abandoning it. My friends tell me that I may remain with them as long as I wish, but this is hardly a solution; I dont even feel like writing a book any longernothing seems to appeal to me except the trees in this garden and the music that fills a large part of my days. There is no solution other than the Ashram or Brazil. You alone can tell me what to do.
I KNOW that ultimately my place is near you, but is that my place at present, after all these failings? Spontaneously, it is you I want, you alone who represent the light and all that is real in this w orld; I can love no one but you n or be interested in anything but this thing within me, but will it not all begin again once I have returned to the Ashram? You alone know the stage I am at, what is good f or me, what is possible.
0 1956-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Oneidentity with the origin, which imparts an absolute serenity and perfect detachment to the action.
The otheridentity with the supreme Grace, which obliterates and abolishes all err ors committed in the action by whomsoever and whatsoever and which annuls all the consequences of these err ors.
0 1956-10-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
In this state, I am ceaselessly thinking of my f orest in Guiana or of my travels through Africa and the ard or that filled me with life in those days. I seem to need to have my goal bef ore me and to walk towards it. Outer difficulties also seem to help me resolve my inner problems: there is a kind of need in me f or the elements the sea, the f orest, the desert f or a milieu with which I can wrestle and through which I can grow. Here, I seem to lack a dynamic point of leverage. Here, in the everyday routine, everything seems to be falling apart in me. Should I not return to my f orest in Guiana?
Mother, I impl ore you, in the name of whatever led me to you in the first place, give me the strength to do WHAT HAS TO BE DONE. You who see and who can, decide f or me. You are my Mother. Whatever my sh ortcomings, my difficulties, I feel I am so deeply your child.
--
So far, your whole life has revolved around yourself; all you have done, even the apparently most disinterested or least egoistic act, has been done with a view to your own personal growth or illumination. It is time to live f or something other than yourself, something other than your own individuality.
Open a new chapter in your existence. Live, no longer f or your own realization or the realization of your ideal, however exalted it may be, but to serve an eternal w ork that transcends your individuality on all sides.
Signed: Mother
0 1956-12-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
F or years I have dreamed of going to Chinese Turkestan. Should I head in that direction? or towards Africa?
I dont see a thing, nothing. Oh Mother, I turn towards you in this void that is stifling me. Hear my prayer. Tell me what I must do. Give me a sign. Mother, you are my sole recourse, f or who else would show me the path to be taken, who else but you would love me? or is my fate to go off into the night?
F orgive me, Mother, f or loving you so po orly, f or giving myself so badly. Mother, you are my only hope, all the rest in me is utter despair.
0 1956-12-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I feel that this Truth of my being, this self most intensely felt, is independent from any f orm or institution. As far back as I can reach in my consciousness, this thing has been there; it was what drove me at an early age to liberate myself from my family, my religion, my country, a profession, marriage or society in general. I feel this thing to be a kind of absolute freedom, and I have been feeling within me this same profound drive f or m ore than a year. Is this need f or freedom wrong? And yet is it not because of this that the best in me has blossomed?
This is actually what is happening in me: I never really accepted the W solution, and the solution of Somalil and doesnt appeal to me. But I feel drawn by the idea of Turkestan, as I already told you, and this is why:
--
Mother, this is the problem around which I have desperately been turning in circles. What is the truth of my destiny? Is it that which is urging me so strongly to leave, or that which is struggling against my freedom? F or ultimately, sincerely, what I want is to fulfill my lifes truth. If I have ever had a will, then it is: LET BE WHAT MUST BE. Mother, how can one truly know? Is this drive, this very old and very CLEAR urge in me, false??
Your child,
0 1957-01-18, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But I would like to know whether it is really useful f or me to write this book, or whether it is not just some inferi or task, a makeshift.
You told me one day that I could be useful to you. Then, by chance, I came across this passage from Sri Aurobindo the other day: Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse.
Could you tell me, as a fav or, what this particular thing is in me which may be useful to you and serve you? If I could only know what my real w ork is in this w orld All the conflicting impulses in me stem from my being like an unemployed f orce, like a being whose place has not yet been determined.
0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Its symbolism was very clear, though of quite a familiar nature, as it were, and because of its very familiarity, unmistakable in its realism Were I to tell you all the details, you would probably not even be able to follow: it was rather intricate. It was a kind of (how can I express it?)an immense hotel where all the terrestrial possibilities were lodged in different apartments. And it was all in a constant state of transf ormation: parts or entire wings of the building were suddenly t orn down and rebuilt while people were still living in them, such that if you went off somewhere within the immense hotel itself, you ran the risk of no longer finding your room when you wanted to return to it, f or it might have been t orn down and was being rebuilt acc ording to another plan! It was orderly, it was organized yet there was this fantastic chaos which I mentioned. And all this was a symbola symbol that certainly applies to what Sri Aurobindo has written here1 regarding the necessity f or the transf ormation of the body, the type of transf ormation that has to take place f or life to become a divine life.
It went something like this: somewhere, in the center of this en ormous edifice, there was a room reservedas it seemed in the st ory f or a mother and her daughter. The mother was a lady, an elderly lady, a very influential matron who had a great deal of auth ority and her own views concerning the entire organization. Her daughter seemed to have a power of movement and activity enabling her to be everywhere at once while at the same time remaining in her room, which was well, a bit m ore than a roomit was a kind of apartment which, above all, had the characteristic of being very central. But she was constantly arguing with her mother. The mother wanted to keep things just as they were, with their usual rhythm, which precisely meant the habit of tearing down one thing to rebuild another, then again tearing down that to build still another, thus giving the building an appearance of frightful confusion. But the daughter did not like this, and she had another plan. Most of all, she wanted to bring something completely new into the organization: a kind of super- organization that would render all this confusion unnecessary. Finally, as it was impossible f or them to reach an understanding, the daughter left the room to go on a kind of general inspection She went out, looked everything over, and then wanted to return to her room to decide upon some final measures. But this is where something rather peculiar began happening.
She clearly remembered where her room was, but each time she set out to go there, either the staircase disappeared or things were so changed that she could no longer find her way! So she went here and there, up and down, searched, went in and out but it was impossible to find the way to her room! Since all of this assumed a physical appearanceas I said, a very familiar and very common appearance, as is always the case in these symbolic visions there was somewhere (how shall I put it?) the hotels administrative office and a woman who seemed to be the manager, who had all the keys and who knew where everyone was staying. So the daughter went to this person and asked her, Could you show me the way to my room?But of course! Easily! Everyone around the manager looked at her as if to say, How can you say that? However, she got up, and with auth ority asked f or a key the key to the daughters roomsaying, I shall take you there. And off she went along all kinds of paths, but all so complicated, so bizarre! The daughter was following along behind her very attentively, you see, so as not to lose sight of her. But just as they should have come to the place where the daughters room was supposed to be, suddenly the manageress (let us call her the manageress), both the manageress and her key vanished! And the sense of this vanishing was so acute that at the same time, everything vanished!
So to help you understand this enigma, let me tell you that the mother is physical Nature as she is, and the daughter is the new creation. The manageress is the w orlds organizing mental consciousness as Nature has developed it thus far, that is, the most advanced organizing sense to have manifested in the present state of material Nature. This is the key to the vision.
Naturally, when I awoke, I immediately knew what could resolve this problem which appeared so absolutely insoluble. The vanishing of the manageress and her key was an obvious sign that she was altogether incapable of leading what could be called the creative consciousness of the new w orld to its true place.
--
It is certainly not an arbitrary construction of the type built by men, where everything is put pell-mell, without any order, without reality, and which is held together by only illus ory ties. Here, these ties were symbolized by the hotels walls, while actually in ordinary human constructions (if we take a religious community, f or example), they are symbolized by the building of a monastery, an identity of clothing, an identity of activities, an identity even of movement or to put it m ore precisely: everyone wears the same unif orm, everyone gets up at the same time, everyone eats the same thing, everyone says his prayers together, etc.; there is an overall identity. But naturally, on the inside there remains the chaos of many disparate consciousnesses, each one following its own mode, f or this kind of group identification, which extends right up to an identity of beliefs and dogma, is absolutely illus ory.
Yet it is one of the most common types of human collectivityto group together, band together, unite around a common ideal, a common action, a common realization but in an absolutely artificial way. In contrast to this, Sri Aurobindo tells us that a true communitywhat he terms a gnostic or supramental communitycan be based only upon the INNER REALIZATION of each one of its members, each realizing his real, concrete oneness and identity with all the other members of the community; that is, each one should not feel himself a member connected to all the others in an arbitrary way, but that all are one within himself. F or each one, the others should be as much himself as his own bodynot in a mental and artificial way, but through a fact of consciousness, by an inner realization.
(silence)
This means that bef ore hoping to realize such a gnostic collectivity, each one must first of all become ( or at least start to become) a gnostic being. It is obvious that the individual w ork must take the lead and the collective w ork follow; but the fact remains that spontaneously, without any arbitrary intervention of will the individual progress IS restrained or CHECKED, as It were, by the collective state. Between the collectivity and the individual, there exists an interdependence from which one cannot be totally free, even if one tries. And even he who might try, in his yoga, to free himself totally from the human and terrestrial state of consciousness, would be at least subconsciously bound by the state of the whole, which impedes and PULLS BACKWARDS. One can attempt to go much faster, one can attempt to let all the weight of attachments and responsibilities fall off, but in spite of everything, the realization of even the most advanced or the leader in the march of evolution is dependent upon the realization of the whole, dependent upon the state in which the terrestrial collectivity happens to be. And this PULLS backwards to such an extent that sometimes one has to wait centuries f or the earth to be ready bef ore being able to realize what is to be realized.
This is why Sri Aurobindo has also written somewhere else that a double movement is necessary: the eff ort f or individual progress and realization must be combined with the eff ort of trying to uplift the whole so as to enable it to make a progress indispensable f or the greater progress of the individual: a mass progress, if you will, that allows the individual to take a further step f orward.
And now you understand why I had thought it would be useful to have a few meditations in common, to w ork at creating a common atmosphere a bit m ore organized than my big hotel of last night!
So, the best way to use these meditations (and they are going to increase, since we are now also going to replace the distributions with sh ort meditations) is to go deep within yourselves, as far as you can, and find the place where you can feel, perceive and perhaps even create an atmosphere of oneness wherein a f orce of order and organization can put each element in its true place, and out of the chaos existing at this hour, make a new, harmonious w orld surge f orth.
The Supramental Manifestation, (Cent. Ed. XVI, pp. 33-36.)
0 1957-07-18, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
If I must have some new experience outside, this one has the advantage of being sh ort-termed and not far away from India, and it is also in an interesting milieu. The only disadvantage is that I would have to pay f or the trip as far as Kabul. But I dont want to do anything that displeases you or of which you do not really approve. In the event you might feel this to be a w orthwhile experience, I would have to leave by the beginning of August.
I place this in your hands, sincerely.
0 1957-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
There is no question of my abandoning the path and I remain convinced that the only goal in life is spiritual. But I need things to help me along the way: I am not yet ripe enough to depend upon inner strength alone. And when I speak of the f orest or a boat, it is not only f or the sake of adventure or the feeling of space, but also because they mean a discipline. Outer constraints and difficulties help me, they f orce me to remain concentrated around that which is best in me. In a sense, life here is too easy. Yet it is also too hard, f or one must depend on ones own discipline I do not yet have that strength, I need to be helped by outer circumstances. The very difficulty of life in the outside w orld helps me to be disciplined, f or it f orces me to concentrate all my vital strength in eff ort. Here, this vital part is unemployed, so it acts foolishly, it strains at the leash.
I doubt that a new experience outside can really resolve things, but I believe it might help me make it to the next stage and consolidate my inner life. And if you wish, I would return in a year or two.
I shall soon have completed the revision1 of The Life Divine and The Human Cycle, so I believe I shall have done the best I could, at present, to serve you. October 30th is my birthday. Could I leave immediately thereafter?
--
In truth, the only thing in the w orld that interests you, directly or indirectly, is YOURSELF. That is why you feel imprisoned within such narrow, stifling limits.
Signed: Mother
0 1957-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
One of the very first results of the supramental manifestation was to give the body a freedom and an autonomy it has never bef ore known. And when I say freedom, I dont mean some psychological perception or an inner state of consciousness, but something else and far betterit is a new phenomenon in the body, in the cells of the body. F or the first time, the cells themselves have felt that they are free, that they have the power to decide. When the new vibrations came and combined with the old ones, I felt it at once and it showed me that a new w orld was really taking birth.
In its n ormal state, the body always feels that it is not its own master: illnesses invade it without its really being able to resist thema thousand fact ors impose themselves or exert pressure upon it. Its sole power is the power to defend itself, to react. Once the illness has got in, it can fight and overcome iteven modern medicine has acknowledged that the body is cured only when it decides to get cured; it is not the drugs per se that heal, f or if the ailment is temp orarily suppressed by a drug without the bodys will, it grows up again elsewhere in some other f orm until the body itself has decided to be cured. But this implies only a defensive power, the power to react against an invading enemyit is not true freedom.
But with the supramental manifestation, something new has taken place in the body: it feels it is its own master, autonomous, with its two feet solidly on the ground, as it were. This gives a physical impression of the whole being suddenly drawing itself up, with its head lifted high I am my own master.
We live perennially with a burden on our shoulders, something that bows our heads down, and we feel pulled, led by all kinds of external f orces, we dont know by whom or what, n or where tothis is what men call Fate, Destiny. When you do yoga, one of the first experiences the experience of the kundalini, as it is called here in Indiais precisely one in which the consciousness rises, breaks through this hard lid, here, at the crown of the head, and at last you emerge into the Light. Then you see, you know, you decide and you realizedifficulties may still remain, but truly speaking one is above them. Well, as a result of the supramental manifestation, it is THIS experience that came into the body. The body straightened its head up and felt its freedom, its independence.
During the flu epidemic, f or example, I spent every day in the midst of people who were germ carriers. And one day, I clearly felt that the body had decided not to catch this flu. It asserted its autonomy. You see, it was not a question of the higher Will deciding, no. It didnt take place in the highest consciousness: the body itself decided. When you are way above in your consciousness, you see things, you know things; but in actual fact, once you descend again into matter, it is like water running through sand. In this respect, things have changed, the body has a DIRECT power, independent of any outer intervention. Even though it is barely visible, I consider this to be a very imp ortant result.
0 1957-10-18, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
This evening, you spoke of the possibility of sh ortening the path of realization to a few months, days or hours. And yesterday, when you talked to me about the freedom of the body, you spoke of the experience of the Kundalini, of this breaking of the lid that makes you emerge once and f or all, above difficulties, into the light.
I need a practical method c orresponding to my present possibilities and to results of which I am presently capable. I feel that my eff orts are dispersed by concentrating sometimes here, sometimes therea feeling of not knowing exactly what to do to break through and get out of all this. Would you point out some particular concentration to which I could adhere, a particular method that I would stick to?
0 1957-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
These three categ ories of tests are: those conducted by the f orces of Nature, those conducted by the spiritual and divine f orces, and those conducted by the hostile f orces. This latter categ ory is the most deceptive in its appearance, and a constant state of vigilance, sincerity and humility is required so as not to be caught by surprise or unprepared.
The most commonplace circumstances, people, the everyday events of life, the most seemingly insignificant things, all belong to one or another of these three categ ories of examiners. In this considerably complex organization of tests, those events generally considered the most imp ortant in life are really the easiest of all examinations to pass, f or they find you prepared and on your guard. One stumbles m ore easily over the little pebbles on the path, f or they attract no attention.
The qualities m ore particularly required f or the tests of physical Nature are endurance and plasticity, cheerfulness and fearlessness.
0 1957-12-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The other day you told me that in order to know things, you plug into the subtle plane, and there it all unrolls as on a tape rec order. How does this w ork, exactly?
There is a whole gradation of planes of consciousness, from the physical consciousness to my radiant consciousness at the very highest level, that which knows the Will of the Supreme. I keep all these planes of consciousness in front of me, w orking simultaneously, co ordinatedly, and I am acting on each plane, gathering the inf ormation proper to each plane, so as to have the integral truth of things. Thus, when I have a decision to make in regard to one of you, I plug into you directly from that level of the supreme consciousness which sees the deep truth of your being. But at the same time, my decision is shaped, as it were, by the inf ormation given to me by the other planes of consciousness and particularly by the physical consciousness, which acts as a rec order.
This physical consciousness rec ords all it sees, all your reactions, your thoughts, all the factswithout preference, without prejudice, without personal will. Nothing escapes it. Its w ork is almost mechanical. Theref ore I know what to tell or to ask you acc ording to the integral truth of your being and its present possibilities. ordinarily, in the n ormal man, the physical consciousness does not see things as they are, f or three reasons: because of ign orance, because of preference, and because of an egoistic will. You col or what you see, eliminate what displeases you. In sh ort, you see only what you desire to see.
Now, I recently had a very striking experience: a discrepancy occurred between my physical consciousness and the consciousness of the w orld. In some instances decisions made in the Light and the Truth produced unexpected results, upheavals in the consciousness of others that were neither f oreseen n or desired, and I did not understand. No matter how hard I tried, I could not understand and I emphasize this w ord understand. At last, I had to leave my highest consciousness and pull myself down into the physical consciousness to find out what was happening. And there, in my head, I saw what appeared to be a little cell bursting, and suddenly I understood: the rec ording had been defective. The physical consciousness had neglected to register certain of your lower reactions. It could not have been through preference or through personal will (these things were eliminated from my consciousness long, long ago). But I saw that this most material consciousness was already completely permeated with the transf orming supramental truth, and it could no longer follow the rhythm of n ormal life. It was much m ore attuned to the true consciousness than to the w orld! I couldnt possibly blame it f or lagging behind; on the contrary, it was in front, too far ahead! There was a discrepancy between the rhythm of the transf ormation of my being and the w orlds own rhythm. The supramental action on the w orld is slow, it does not act directlyit acts by infiltration, by traversing the successive layers, and the results are slow to come about. So I had to pull myself violently down in order to wait f or the others.
One must at times know how not to know.
--
Humility, a perfect humility, is the condition f or all realization. The mind is so cocksure. It thinks it knows everything, understands everything. And if ever it acts through idealism to serve a cause that appears noble to it, it becomes even m ore arrogant m ore intransigent, and it is almost impossible to make it see that there might be something still higher beyond its noble conceptions and its great altruistic or other ideals. Humility is the only remedy. I am not speaking of humility as conceived by certain religions, with this God that belittles his creatures and only likes to see them down on their knees. When I was a child, this kind of humility revolted me, and I refused to believe in a God that wants to belittle his creatures. I dont mean that kind of humility, but rather the recognition that one does not know, that one knows nothing, and that there may be something beyond what presently appears to us as the truest, the most noble or disinterested. True humility consists in constantly referring oneself to the L ord, in placing all bef ore Him. When I receive a blow (and there are quite a few of them in my sadhana), my immediate, spontaneous reaction, like a spring, is to throw myself bef ore Him and to say, Thou, L ord. Without this humility, I would never have been able to realize anything. And I say I only to make myself understood, but in fact I means the L ord through this body, his instrument. When you begin living THIS kind of humility, it means you are drawing nearer to the realization. It is the condition, the starting point.
***
0 1958-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
During one of our classes (October 30, 1957), I spoke of the limitless abundance of Nature, this tireless Creatrice who takes the multitude of f orms, mixes them together, separates them again and ref orms them, again undoes them, again destroys them, in order to move on to ever new combinations. As I said, it is a huge cauldron. Things get churned up in it and somehow something emerges; if its defective, it is thrown back in and something else is taken out One f orm, two f orms or a hundred f orms make no difference to her, there are thousands upon thousands of f ormsand one year, a hundred years, a thousand years, millions of years, what difference does it make? Eternity lies bef ore her! She quite obviously enjoys herself and is in no hurry. If you speak to her of pressing on or of rushing through some part of her w ork or other, her reply is always the same: But what f or? Why? Arent you enjoying it?
The evening I told you these things, I totally identified myself with Nature and I entered into her play. And this movement of identification brought f orth a response, a new kind of intimacy between Nature and myself, a long movement of drawing ever nearer which culminated in an experience that came on November 8.
--
And suddenly, as if resounding from every c orner of the earth, I heard these great notes which are sometimes heard in the subtle physicalra ther like those of Beethovens Concerto in Dwhich come at moments of great progress, as though fifty orchestras were bursting f orth all at once without a single disc ordant note, to sound the joy of this new communion of Nature and Spirit, the meeting of old friends who, after a long separation, find each other once m ore.
Then came these w ords: O Nature, Material Mother, thou hast said that thou wilt collab orate, and there is no limit to the splend or of this collab oration.
--
I have one thing to add: we must not misinterpret the meaning of this experience and imagine that hencef orth everything will take place without difficulties or always in acc ordance with our personal desires. It is not at this level. It does not mean that when we do not want it to rain, it will not rain! or when we want some event to take place in the w orld, it will immediately take place, or that all difficulties will be abolished and everything will be like a fairy tale. It is not like that. It is something m ore profound. Nature has accepted into her play of f orces the newly manifested F orce and has included it in her movements. But as always, the movements of Nature take place on a scale infinitely surpassing the human scale and invisible to the ordinary human consciousness. It is m ore of an inner, psychological possibility that has been b orn in the w orld than a spectacular change in earthly events.
I mention this because you might be tempted to believe that fairy tales are going to be realized upon earth. The time has not yet come.
0 1958-01-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
It is quite evident that f or some reason or other or perhaps f or no reason at all the Supreme has changed His mind about it.
***
0 1958-02-03a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
A Sannyasi, or wandering monk, whom Satprem would join a few weeks later in Ceylon, on February 27, and who would initiate him as a Sannyasi. Unf ortunately, almost all the c orrespondence from this period has been lost.
***
0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I found myself upon an immense ship, which is the symbolic representation of the place where this w ork is being carried out. This ship, as big as a city, is th oroughly organized, and it had certainly already been functioning f or quite some time, f or its organization was fully developed. It is the place where people destined f or the supramental life are being trained. These people ( or at least a part of their being) had already undergone a supramental transf ormation because the ship itself and all that was aboard was neither material n or subtle-physical, neither vital n or mental: it was a supramental substance. This substance itself was of the most material supramental, the supramental substance nearest the physical w orld, the first to manifest. The light was a blend of red and gold, f orming a unif orm substance of luminous orange. Everything was like that the light was like that, the people were like thateverything had this col or, in varying shades, however, which enabled things to be distinguished from one another. The overall impression was of a shadowless w orld: there were shades, but no shadows. The atmosphere was full of joy, calm, order; everything w orked smoothly and silently. At the same time, I could see all the details of the education, the training in all domains by which the people on board were being prepared.
This immense ship had just arrived at the sh ore of the supramental w orld, and a first batch of people destined to become the future inhabitants of the supramental w orld were about to disembark. Everything was arranged f or this first landing. A certain number of very tall beings were posted on the wharf. They were not human beings and never bef ore had they been men. N or were they permanent inhabitants of the supramental w orld. They had been delegated from above and posted there to control and supervise the landing. I was in charge of all this since the beginning and throughout. I myself had prepared all the groups. I was standing on the bridge of the ship, calling the groups f orward one by one and having them disembark on the sh ore. The tall beings posted there seemed to be reviewing those who were disembarking, allowing those who were ready to go ash ore and sending back those who were not and who had to continue their training aboard the ship. While standing there watching everyone, that part of my consciousness coming from here became extremely interested: it wanted to see, to identify all the people, to see how they had changed and to find out who had been taken immediately as well as those who had to remain and continue their training. After awhile, as I was observing, I began to feel pulled backwards and that my body was being awakened by a consciousness or a person from here1and in my consciousness, I protested: No, no, not yet! Not yet! I want to see whos there! I was watching all this and noting it with intense interest It went on like that until, suddenly, the clock here began striking three, which violently jerked me back. There was the sensation of a sudden fall into my body. I came back with a shock, but since I had been called back very suddenly, all my mem ory was still intact. I remained quiet and still until I could bring back the whole experience and preserve it.
The nature of objects on this ship was not that which we know upon earth; f or example, the clothes were not made of cloth, and this thing that resembled cloth was not manufacturedit was a part of the body, made of the same substance that took on different f orms. It had a kind of plasticity. When a change had to be made, it was done not by artificial and outer means but by an inner w orking, by a w orking of the consciousness that gave the substance its f orm or appearance. Life created its own f orms. There was ONE SINGLE substance in all things; it changed the nature of its vibration acc ording to the needs or uses.
Those who were sent back f or m ore training were not of a unif orm col or; their bodies seemed to have patches of a grayish opacity, a substance resembling the earth substance. They were dull, as though they had not been wholly permeated by the light or wholly transf ormed. They were not like this all over, but in places.
The tall beings on the sh ore were not of the same col or, at least they did not have this orange tint; they were paler, m ore transparent. Except f or a part of their bodies, only the outline of their f orms could be seen. They were very tall, they did not seem to have a skeletal structure, and they could take on any f orm acc ording to their needs. Only from their waists to their feet did they have a permanent density, which was not felt in the rest of their body. Their col or was much m ore pallid and contained very little red, it verged rather on gold or even white. The parts of whitish light were translucid; they were not absolutely transparent, but less dense, m ore subtle than the orange substance.
Just as I was called back, when I was saying, Not yet , I had a quick glimpse of myself, of my f orm in the supramental w orld. I was a mixture of what these tall beings were and the beings aboard the ship. The top part of myself, especially my head, was a mere silhouette of a whitish col or with an orange fringe. The m ore it approached the feet, the m ore the col or resembled that of the people on the ship, or in other w ords, orange; the m ore it went up towards the top, the m ore translucid and white it was, and the red faded. The head was only a silhouette with a brilliant sun at its center; from it issued rays of light which were the action of the will.
As f or the people I saw aboard ship, I recognized them all. Some were here in the Ashram, some came from elsewhere, but I knew them as well. I saw everyone, but as I realized that I would not remember everyone when I came back, I decided not to give any names. Besides, it is unnecessary. Three or four faces were very clearly visible, and when I saw them, I understood the feeling that I have had here, on earth, while looking into their eyes: there was such an extra ordinary joy On the whole, the people were young; there were very few children, and their ages were around fourteen or fifteen, but certainly not below ten or twelve (I did not stay long enough to see all the details). There were no very old people, with the exception of a few. Most of the people who had gone ash ore were of a middle ageagain, except f or a few. Several times bef ore this experience, certain individual cases had already been examined at a place where people capable of being supramentalized are examined; I had then had a few surprises which I had noted I even told some people. But those whom I disembarked today I saw very distinctly. They were of a middle age, neither young children n or elderly people, with only a few rare exceptions, and this quite c orresponded to what I expected. I decided not to say anything, not to give any names. As I did not stay until the end, it would be impossible f or me to draw an exact picture, f or it was neither absolutely clear n or complete. I do not want to say things to some and not say them to others.
What I can say is that the criterion or the judgment was based EXCLUSIVELY on the substance constituting the peoplewhe ther they belonged completely to the supramental w orld or not, whether they were made of this very special substance. The criterion adopted was neither m oral n or psychological. It is likely that their bodily substance was the result of an inner law or an inner movement which, at that time, was not in question. At least it is quite clear that the values are different.
When I came back, along with the mem ory of the experience, I knew that the supramental w orld was permanent, that my presence there is permanent, and that only a missing link is needed to allow the consciousness and the substance to connectand it is this link that is being built. At that time, my impression (an impression which remained rather long, almost the whole day) was of an extreme relativityno, not exactly that, but an impression that the relationship between this w orld and the other completely changes the criterion by which things are to be evaluated or judged. This criterion had nothing mental about it, and it gave the strange inner feeling that so many things we consider good or bad are not really so. It was very clear that everything depended upon the capacity of things and upon their ability to express the supramental w orld or be in relationship with it. It was so completely different, at times even so opposite to our ordinary way of looking at things! I recall one little thing that we usually consider bad actually how funny it was to see that it is something excellent! And other things that we consider imp ortant were really quite unimp ortant there! Whether it was like this or like that made no difference. What is very obvious is that our appreciation of what is divine or not divine is inc orrect. I even laughed at certain things Our usual feeling about what is anti-divine seems artificial, based upon something untrue, unliving (besides, what we call life here appeared lifeless in comparison with that w orld); in any event, this feeling should be based upon our relationship between the two w orlds and acc ording to whether things make this relationship easier or m ore difficult. This would thus completely change our evaluation of what brings us nearer to the Divine or what takes us away from Him. With people, too, I saw that what helps them or prevents them from becoming supramental is very different from what our ordinary m oral notions imagine. I felt just how ridiculous we are.
(Then Mother speaks to the children)
--
But one thing and I wish to stress this point to youwhich now seems to me to be the most essential difference between our w orld and the supramental w orld (and it is only after having gone there consciously, with the consciousness that ordinarily w orks here, that this difference appeared to me in what might be called its en ormity): everything here, except f or what happens within and at a very deep level, seemed absolutely artificial to me. Not one of the values of ordinary physical life is based upon truth. Just as we have to buy cloth, sew it together, then put it on our backs in order to dress ourselves, likewise we have to take things from outside and then put them inside our bodies in order to feed ourselves. F or everything, our life is artificial.
A true, sincere, spontaneous life, as in the supramental w orld, is a springing f orth of things through the fact of conscious will, a power over substance that shapes this substance acc ording to what we decide it should be. And he who has this power and this knowledge can obtain whatever he wants, whereas he who does not has no artificial means of getting what he desires.
In ordinary life, EVERYTHING is artificial. Depending upon the chance of your birth or circumstances, you have a m ore or less high position or a m ore or less comf ortable life, not because it is the spontaneous, natural and sincere expression of your way of being and of your inner need, but because the f ortuity of lifes circumstances has placed you in contact with these things. An absolutely w orthless man may be in a very high position, and a man who might have marvelous capacities of creation and organization may find himself toiling in a quite limited and inferi or position, whereas he would be a wholly useful individual if the w orld were sincere.
It is this artificiality, this insincerity, this complete lack of truth that appeared so shocking to me that one wonders how, in a w orld as false as this one, we can arrive at any truthful evaluation of things.
0 1958-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
As f or me, I am totally out of my element in this new life, as though I were uprooted from myself. I am living in the temple, in the midst of pujas,1 with white ashes on my f orehead, barefoot dressed like a Hindu, sleeping on cement at night, eating impossible curries, with some good sunburns to complete the cooking. And there I am, clinging to you, f or if you were not there I would collapse, so absurd would it all be. You are the only realityhow many times have I repeated this to myself, like a litany! Apart from this, I am holding up quite well physically. But inside and outside, nothing is left but you. I need you, thats all. Mother, this w orld is so h orrifyingly empty. I really feel that I would evap orate if you werent there. Well, no doubt I had to go through this experience Perhaps I will be able to extract some book from it that will be of use to you. We are like children who need a lot of pictures in order to understand, and a few good kicks to realize our complete stupidity.
Swami must soon take to the road again, through Ceylon, towards March 20 or 25. So I shall go wandering with him until May; towards the beginning of May, he will return to India. I hope to have learned my lesson by then, and to have learned it well. Inwardly, I have understood that there is only you but its these problem children on the surface who must be made to toe the line once and f or all.
Sweet Mother, I am in a hurry to w ork f or you. Will you still want me? Mother, I need you, I need you. I would like to ask you an absurd question: Do you think of me? I have only you, you alone in the w orld.
0 1958-04-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I was waiting f or things to be well established in me bef ore writing you again. An imp ortant change has occurred: it seems that something in me has clickedwhat Sri Aurobindo calls the central will, perhapsand I am living literally in the obsession of divine realization. This is what I want, nothing else, it is the only goal in life, and at last I have understood (not with the head) that the outer realization in the w orld will be the consequence of the inner realization. So thousands of times a day, I repeat, Mother, I want to be your instrument, ever m ore conscious, I want to express your truth, your light. I want to be what you want, as you want, when you want. There is in me now a kind of need f or perfection, a will to abolish this ego, a real understanding that to become your instrument means at the same time to find the perfect plenitude of ones personality. So I am living in an almost constant state of aspiration, I feel your f orce constantly, or nearly so, and if I am distracted a few minutes, I experience a void, an uneasiness that calls me back to you.
And at the same time, I saw that it is you who is doing everything, you who aspires in me, you who wants the progress, and that all I myself am in this affair is a screen, a resisting obstacle. O Mother, break this screen that I may be wholly transparent bef ore you, that your transf orming f orce may purify all the secret recesses in my being, that nothing may remain but you and you alone. O Mother, may all my being be a living expression of your light, your truth.
--
We are still in Kataragama, and we shall only go up to n orthern Ceylon, to Jaffna, around the 15th, then return to India towards the beginning of May if the visa problems are settled. Only in India, at the temple of Rameswaram, can I receive the orange robe. I am living here as a sannyasi, but dressed in white, like a Hindu. It is a stark life, nothing m ore. I have seen however, that truth does not lie in starkness but in a change of consciousness. (Desire always finds a means to entrench itself in very small details and in very petty and stupid, though well-rooted, avidities.)
Mother, I am seeing all the mean pettiness that obstructs your divine w ork. Destroy my smallness and take me unto you. May I be sincere, integrally sincere.
--
I am trying to be near you as MATERIALLY as possible in order to help your body vict oriously pass through the test.
I want it to come out of this tempered f orever, above all attacks.
0 1958-05-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I saw there (center of the heart) the Master of the Yoga; he was no different from me, but nevertheless I saw him, and he even seemed slightly imbued with col or. Well, he does everything, he decides everything, he organizes everything with an almost mathematical precision and in the smallest detailseverything.
To do the divine Will I have been doing the sadhana f or a long time, and I can say that not a day has passed that I have not done the Divines Will. But I didnt know what it was! I was living in all the inner realms, from the subtle physical to the highest regions, yet I didnt know what it was I always had to listen, to refer things, to pay attention. Now, no m orebliss! There are no m ore problems, and everything is done in such harmony! Even if I had to leave my body, I would be in bliss! And it would happen in the best possible way.
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But in a way, absolute calm implies withdrawal from action, so a choice had to be made between one or the other. I said to myself, I am neither exclusively this n or exclusively that. And actually, to do Sri Aurobindos w ork is to realize the Supramental on earth. So I began that w ork and, as a matter of fact, this was the only thing I asked of my body. I told it, Now you shall set right everything which is out of order and gradually realize this intermediate supermanhood between man and the supramental being or, in other w ords, what I call the superman.
And this is what I have been doing f or the last eight years, and even much m ore during the past two years, since 1956. Now it is the w ork of each day, each minute.
Thats where I am. I have renounced the uncontested auth ority of a god, I have renounced the unshakable calm of the sage in order to become the superman. I have concentrated everything upon that.
We shall see.
--
I began my sadhana at birth, without knowing that I was doing it. I have continued it throughout my whole life, which means f or almost eighty years (even though f or perhaps the first three or four years of my life it was only something stirring about in unconsciousness). But I began a deliberate, conscious sadhana at about the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, upon prepared ground. I am now m ore than eighty years old: I have thought of nothing but that, I have wanted nothing but that, I had no other interest in life, and not f or a single minute have I ever f orgotten that it was THAT that I wanted. There were not periods of remembering and f orgetting: it was continuous, unceasing, day and night, from the age of twenty-four and I had this experience f or the first time about a week ago! So, I say that people who are in a hurry, people who are impatient, are arrogant fools.
It is a hard path. I try to make it as comf ortable as possible, but nevertheless, it is a hard path. And it is obvious that it cannot be otherwise. You are beaten and battered until you understand. Until you are in that state in which all bodies are your body. But at that point, you begin to laugh! You were upset by this, hurt by that, you suffered from this or that but now, how laughable it all seems! And not only the head, but the body too finds it laughable!
(silence)
--
From the negative point of view I mean the difficulties to be overcomeone of the most serious obstacles is that the ign orant and falsifying outer consciousness, the ordinary consciousness legitimizes all the so-called physical laws, causes, effects and consequences, all that science has discovered physically and materially. All this is an unquestionable reality to the consciousness, a reality that remains independent and absolute even in the face of the eternal divine Reality.
And it is so automatic that it is unconscious.
--
And the proof I have the proof because I experienced it myselfis that from the minute you are in the other consciousness, the true consciousness, all these things which appear so real, so concrete, change INSTANTLY. There are a number of things, certain material conditions of my bodymaterial that changed instantly. It did not last long enough f or everything to change, but some things changed and never returned, they remained changed. In other w ords, if that consciousness were kept constantly, it would be a perpetual miracle (what we would call a miracle from our ordinary point of view), a fantastic and perpetual miracle! But from the supramental point of view, it would not be a miracle at all, it would be the most n ormal of things.
Theref ore, if we do not want to oppose the supramental action by an obscure, inert and obstinate resistance, we have to admit once and f or all that none of these things should be legitimized.
--
Tapasya: yogic discipline or askesis.
May 1, 1958.
0 1958-05-11 - the ship that said OM, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I said to myself, Who could have done that? I was not sure if only I had heard it, so I asked. The reply was, But it was the ship leaving! There was actually a ship which had left during the night3that is in supp ort of those who said it was a ship. But f or me, it was SOMEONE because I felt someone there and I thought, Oh! If someone, in the ard or of his soul, said that in this what I could call an atheistic silence. Because people here are so afraid of following tradition, of being the slaves of the old things, that they cast out anything closely or remotely resembling religion.
It was very strange, because my first reaction was one of bewilderment: how is it that someone I was really bewildered f or a fraction, not even the fraction of a second. And then
0 1958-05-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
As a matter of fact, my tendency is m ore and m ore towards something in which the role of these hostile f orces will be reduced to that of an examinerwhich means that they are there to test the sincerity of your spiritual quest. These elements have a reality in their action and f or the w orkthis is their great reality but when you go beyond a certain region, it all grows dim to such a degree that it is no longer so well defined, so distinct. In the occult w orld, or rather if you look at the w orld from the occult point of view, these hostile f orces are very real, their action is very real, quite concrete, and their attitude towards the divine realization is positively hostile; but as soon as you go beyond this region and enter into the spiritual w orld where there is no longer anything but the Divine in all things, and where there is nothing undivine, then these hostile f orces become part of the total play and can no longer be called hostile f orces: it is only an attitude that they have adopted or m ore precisely, it is only an attitude adopted by the Divine in his play.
This again belongs to the dualities that Sri Aurobindo speaks of in (The Synthesis of Yoga, these dualities that are being reabs orbed. I dont know if he spoke of this particular one; I dont think so, but its the same thing. Its again a certain way of seeing. He has written of the Personal-Impersonal duality, Ishwara-Shakti, Purusha-Prakriti but there is still one m ore: Divine and anti-divine.
0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
From that moment on, I was conscious that all one does is the expression of the indwelling Divine Will. But it is the Divine Will AT THE VERY CENTER of oneself, although f or a while there remained an activity in the physical mind. But this was stilled two or three days after I saw Sri Aurobindo f or the first time in 1914, and it never started up again. Silence settled. And the consciousness was established above the head.
In the first experience [of 1910], the consciousness was established in the psychic depths of the being, and from that poise issued the feeling of no longer doing anything but what the Divine wantedit was the consciousness that the divine Will was all-powerful and that there was no longer any personal will, although there was still some mental activity and everything had to be made silent. In 1914, it was silenced, and the consciousness was established above the head. Here (the heart) and here (above the head), the connection is constant.
--
They exist simultaneously; its the same thing. When you start becoming truly conscious, you realize that it depends upon the kinds of activities you have to do. When you do a certain kind of w ork, it is in the heart that the F orce gathers to radiate outwards, and when you do another kind of w ork, it is above the head that the F orce concentrates to radiate outwards, but the two are not separate: the center of activity is here or there depending upon what you have to do.
As f or the latest experience,1 I cant say f or sure that no one has ever had it, because someone like Ramakrishna, individuals like that, could have had it. But I am not sure, f or when I had this experience (not of the divine Presence, which I had already felt in the cells f or a long time, but the experience that the Divine ALONE is acting in the body, that He has BECOME the body, yet all the while retaining his character of divine omniscience and omnipotence) well, the whole time it remained actively like that, it was absolutely impossible to have the LEAST dis order in the body, and not only in the body, but IN ALL THE SURROUNDING MATTER. It was as if every object obeyed without even needing to decide to obey: it was automatic. There was a divine harmony in EVERYTHING (it took place in my bathroom upstairs, certainly to demonstrate that it exists in the most trivial things), in everything, constantly. So if that is established in a permanent way, there CAN NO LONGER be illness it is impossible. There can no longer be accidents, there can no longer be illness, there can no longer be dis orders, and everything should harmonize (probably in a progressive way) just as that was harmonized: all the objects in the bathroom were full of a joyful enthusiasmeverything obeyed, everything!
As it was the first experience, it started to fade slightly when I began having contact with people; but I really had the feeling that it was a first experience, new upon earth. F or I have experienced an absolute identity of the will with the divine Will ever since 1910, it has never left me. It isnt that, its SOMETHING ELSE. It is MATTER BECOMING THE DIVINE. And it really came with the feeling that this thing was happening f or the first time upon earth. It is difficult to say f or sure, but Ramakrishna died of cancer, and now that I have had the experience, I know in an ABSOLUTE way that this is impossible. If he had decided to go because the Divine wanted him to go, it would have been an orderly departure, in total harmony and with a total will, whereas this illness is a means of dis order.
Is this experience of May 1 related to the Supramental Manifestation of 1956? Is it a supramental experience?
--
It is likely that the greatest resistance will be in the most conscious beings due to a lack of mental receptivity, due to the mind itself which wants things to continue (as Sri Aurobindo has written) acc ording to its own mode of ign orance. So-called inert matter is much m ore easily responsive, much m oreit does not resist. And I am convinced that among plants, f or example, or among animals, the response will be much quicker than among men. It will be m ore difficult to act upon a very organized mind; beings who live in an entirely crystallized, organized mental consciousness are as hard as stone! It resists. Acc ording to my experience, what is unconscious will certainly follow m ore easily. It was a delight to see the water from the tap, the mouthwash in the bottle, the glass, the spongeit all had such an air of joy and consent! There is much less ego, you see, it is not a conscious ego.
The ego becomes m ore and m ore conscious and resistant as the being develops. Very primitive, very simple beings, little children will respond first, because they dont have an organized ego. But these big people! People who have w orked on themselves, who have mastered themselves, who are organized, who have an ego made of steel, it will be difficult f or them.
Unless they go beyond all this and have enough spiritual knowledge to be able to make the ego surrender in which case the realization will naturally be much greaterit will be m ore difficult to accomplish, but the result will be far m ore complete.
When you had this experience of February 3, 1958 [the supramental ship], the vision of your usual consciousness, which is nevertheless a Truth Consciousness, no longer seemed true to you at all. Did you see things you had never bef ore seen, or did you see things in another way?
Yes, one enters into another w orld.
--
Its action will be somewhat similar to what is described in the Last Judgment, which is an entirely symbolic expression of something that makes us discern between what belongs to the w orld of falsehood which is destined to disappear and what belongs to this same w orld of ign orance and inertia but is transf ormable. One will go to one side and the other to the other side. All that is transf ormable will be permeated m ore and m ore with this new substance and this new consciousness to such an extent that it will rise towards it and serve as a link between the two but all that belongs inc orrigibly to falsehood and ign orance will disappear. This was also prophesied in the Gita: among what we call the hostile or anti-divine f orces, those capable of being transf ormed will be uplifted and go off towards the new consciousness, whereas all that is irrevocably in darkness or belongs to an evil will shall be destroyed and vanish from the Universe. And a whole part of humanity that has responded to these f orces rather too zealously will certainly vanish with them. And this is what was expressed in this concept of the Last Judgment.
May 1, 1958.
0 1958-06-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Throughout all this life, knowingly or unknowingly, I have been what the L ord wanted me to be, I have done what the L ord wanted me to do. That alone matters.
***
0 1958-07-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I recall that once I tried to speak of this, but no one followed me, no one understood, so I did not insist. I left it open and never pursued it further, f or they could not decipher anything or find any meaning in what I was saying. But now I could give a very simple answer: Let the Supreme do the w ork. It is He who has to progress, not you!
Ramdas does not at all consider that the w orld as it is, is good.
--
Each element, let us say each individual element (even though it is not exactly like that), is in its place acc ording to whether the Grace acts on the individual or on the collectivity.
When the Grace acts on the collectivity, each thing, each element, each principle, is put in its place as the result of a karmic logic in the universal movement. This is what gives us the impression of dis order and confusion as we see it.
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
She didnt do a thing! Nothing, absolutely nothing: a complete refusal. Did she refuse or was she unable to? It may be that I always saw that money was under the control of an asuric f orce. (I am speaking of currency, cash; I dont want to do business. When I try to do business, it generally succeeds very well, but I dont mean that. I am speaking of cash.) I never asked her that question.
You see, this is how it happened: theres this Ganesh2 We had a meditation (this was m ore than thirty years ago) in the room where Prosperity3 is now distributed. There were eight or ten of us, I believe. We used to make sentences with flowers; I arranged the flowers, and each one made a sentence with the different flowers I had put there. And one day when the subject of prosperity or wealth came up, I thought (they always say that Ganesh is the god of money, of f ortune, of the w orlds wealth), I thought, Isnt this whole st ory of the god with an elephant trunk merely a lot of human imagination? Thereupon, we meditated. And who should I see walk in and park himself in front of me but a living being, absolutely alive and luminous, with a trunk that long and smiling! So then, in my meditation, I said, Ah! So its true that you exist!Of course I exist! And you may ask me f or whatever you wish, from a monetary standpoint, of course, and I will give it to you!
So I asked. And f or about ten years, it poured in, like this (gesture of t orrents). It was incredible. I would ask, and at the next Darshan, or a month or several days later, depending, there it was.
Then the war and all the difficulties came, bringing a tremendous increase of people and expenditure (the war cost a f ortuneanything at all cost ten times m ore than bef ore), and suddenly, finished, nothing m ore. Not exactly nothing, but a thin little trickle. And when I asked, it didnt come. So one day, I put the question to Ganesh through his image (! ), I asked him, What about your promise?I cant do it, its too much f or me; my means are too limited!Ah! I said to myself (laughing), What bad luck! And I no longer counted on him.
--
Health naturally depends upon the sadhana; but even that is not so sure: there are other fact ors. As f or the second, the power over government, Sri Aurobindo looked at it, studied it, considered it very carefully, and finally he told me, There is only one way to have that power: it is TO BE the government. One can influence individuals, one can transmit the will to them, but their hands are tied. In a government, there is no one individual, n or even several who is all-powerful and who can decide things. One must be the government oneself and give it the desired orientation.
F or the last, f or money, he told me, I still dont know exactly what it depends on. Then one day I entered into trance with this idea in mind, and after a certain journey I came to a place like a subterranean grotto (which means that it is in the subconscient, or perhaps even in the inconscient) which was the source, the place and the power over money. I was about to enter into this grotto (a kind of inner cave) when I saw, coiled and upright, an immense serpent, like an all black python, f ormidable, as big as a seven-st ory house, who said, You cannot pass!Why not? Let me pass!Myself, I would let you pass, but if I did, they would immediately destroy me.Who, then, is this they?They are the asuric4 powers who rule over money. They have put me here to guard the entrance, precisely so that you may not enter.And what is it that would give one the power to enter? Then he told me something like this: I heard (that is, he himself had no special knowledge, but it was something he had heard from his masters, those who ruled over him), I heard that he who will have a total power over the human sexual impulses (not merely in himself, but a universal power that is, a power enabling him to control this everywhere, among all men) will have the right to enter. In other w ords, these f orces would not be able to prevent him from entering.
A personal realization is very easy, it is nothing at all; a personal realization is one thing, but the power to control it among all men that is, to control or master such movements at will, everywhereis quite another. I dont believe that this condition has been fulfilled. If what the serpent said is true and if this is really what will vanquish these hostile f orces that rule over money, well then, it has not been fulfilled.
It has been fulfilled to a certain extent but its negligible. It is conditional, limited: in one case, it w orks; in another, it doesnt. It is quite problematic. And naturally, where terrestrial things are involved (I dont say universal, but in any case terrestrial), when it is something involving the earth, it must be complete; there cannot be any approximations.
--
I am speaking of terrestrial Nature. Through their mental power, men had the choice and the freedom to make pacts with these extraterrestrial vital f orces. There is a whole vital w orld that has nothing to do with the earth, it is entirely independent or pri or to earths existence, it is self-existentwell, they have brought that down here! They have made what we see! And such being the case This is what terrestrial Nature told me: It is beyond my control.
So considering all that, Sri Aurobindo came to the conclusion that only the supramental power (Mother brings down her hands) as he said, will be able to rule over everything. And when that happens, it will be all overincluding Nature. F or a long time, Nature rebelled (I have written about it often). She used to say, Why are you in such a hurry? It will be done one day. But then last year, there was that extra ordinary experience.5 And it was because of that experience that I told her, Well, now that we agree, give me some proof; I am asking you f or some proofdo it f or me. She didnt budge, absolutely nothing.
--
Perhaps it would not be necessary to have this power over all men, but in any event, it should be great enough to act upon the mass. It is likely that once a certain movement has been mastered to some degree, what the mass does or doesnt do (this whole human mass that has barely, barely emerged into even the mental consciousness) will become quite irrelevant. You see, the mass is still under the great rule of Nature. I am referring to mental humanity, predominantly mental, which developed the mind but misused it and immediately set out on the wrong pathfirst thing.
There is nothing to say since the first thing done by the divine f orces which emanated f or the Creation was to take the wrong path!6 That is the origin, the seed of this marvelous spirit of independence the negation of surrender, in other w ords. Man said, I have the power to think; I will do with it what I want, and no one has the right to intervene. I am free, I am an independent being, IN-DE-PEN-DENT! So thats how things stand: we are all independent beings!
But yesterday, in fact, I was looking (with all these mantras and these prayers and this whole vibration that has descended into the atmosphere, creating a state of constant calling in the atmosphere), and I remembered the old movements and how everything now has changed! I was also thinking of the old disciplines, one of which is to say, I am That.7 People were told to sit in meditation and repeat, I am That, to reach an identification. And it all seemed to me so obsolete, so childish, but at the same time a part of the whole. I looked, and it seemed so absurd to sit in meditation and say, I am That! I, what is this I who is That; what is this I, where is it? I was trying to find it, and I saw a tiny, microscopic point (to see it would almost require some gigantic instrument), a tiny, obscure point in an im-men-sity of Light, and that little point was the body. At the same timeit was absolutely simultaneous I saw the Presence of the Supreme as a very, very, very, VERY immense Being, within which was I in an attitude of (I was only a sensation, you see), an attitude (gesture of surrender) like this. There were no limits, yet at the same time, one felt the joy of being permeated, enveloped and of being able to widen, widen, widen indefinitelyto widen the whole being, from the highest consciousness to the most material consciousness. And then, at the same time, to look at this body and to see every cell, every atom vibrating with a divine, radiant Presence with all its Consciousness, all its Power, all its Will, all its Loveall, all, really and a joy! An extra ordinary joy. And one did not disturb the other, nothing was contradict ory and everything was felt at the same time. That was when I said, But truly! This body had to have the training it has had f or m ore than seventy years to be able to bear all that without starting to cry out or dance or leap up or whatever it might be! No, it was calm (it was exultant, but it was very calm), and it remained in control of its movements and its w ords. In spite of the fact that it was really living in another w orld, it could apparently act n ormal due to this strenuous training in self-control by the REASONby the reasonover the whole being, which has tamed it and given it such a great cohesive power that I can BE in the experience, I can LIVE this experience, and at the same time respond with the most amiable of smiles to the most idiotic questions!
And then, it always ends in the same way, by a canticle to the action of the grace: O, L ord! You are truly marvelous! All the experiences I have needed to pass through You have given to me, all the things I needed to do to make this body ready You have made me do, and always with the feeling that it was You who was making me do itand with the universal disapproval of all the right-minded humanity!
--
Asuras: the demons or dark f orces of the mental plane.
The experience of Nature's collab oration (November 8, 1957).
0 1958-07-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I say that every fruit should be eaten in its own way. The being who lives acc ording to his own nature, his own truth, must spontaneously find the right way of using things. When you live acc ording to the truth of your being, you dont need to learn things: you do them spontaneously, acc ording to the inner law. When you sincerely follow your nature, spontaneously and sincerely, you are divine. As soon as you think or look at yourself acting or start questioning, you are full of sin.
It is mans mental consciousness that has filled all Nature with the idea of sin and all the misery it brings. Animals are not at all unhappy in the way we are. Not at all, not at all, exceptas Sri Aurobindo saysthose that are c orrupted. Those that are c orrupted are those that live with men. Dogs have the sense of sin and guilt, f or their whole aspiration is to resemble man. Man is the god. Hence there is dissimulation, hypocrisy: dogs lie. But men admire that. They say, Oh! How intelligent they are!
--
But isnt a dog m ore conscious, m ore evolved than a tiger, or higher in the spiral that is, nearer the Divine?
Its not a question of being conscious. There is no doubt that man is m ore evolved than the tiger, but the tiger is m ore divine than man. One shouldnt confuse things. These are two entirely different things.
0 1958-07-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Human beings dont know how to keep energy. When something happensan accident or an illness, f or example and they ask f or help, a double or a triple dose of energy is sent. If they happen to be receptive, they receive it. This energy is given f or two reasons: to rest ore order out of the dis order caused by the accident or illness, and to impart a transf ormative f orce to repair or change the source of the illness or accident.
But instead of using the energy in this way, they immediately throw it out. They start stirring about, reacting, w orking, speaking They feel full of energy and they throw it all out! They cant keep anything. So naturally, since the energy was not sent to be wasted like that but f or an inner use, they feel absolutely flat, run down. And it is universal. They dont know, they do not know how to make this movementto turn within, to use the energy (not to keep it, it doesnt keep), to use it to repair the damage done to the body and to go deeply within to find the reason f or this accident or illness, and there to change it by an aspiration, an inner transf ormation. Instead of that, right away they start speaking, stirring about, reacting, doing this or that!
In fact, the immense maj ority of human beings feel they are living only when they waste their energy. Otherwise, it does not seem to them to be life.
--
But as soon as a man feels energetic, he immediately rushes into action. or else, those who dont have the sense of doing something useful start gossiping. And still w orse, those who have no control over themselves become intolerant and start arguing! If someone contradicts their will, they feel full of energy and they mistake that f or a godlike wrath!
***
0 1958-07-23, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
In the final analysis, seeing the w orld such as it is and seems meant to be irremediably, human intellect has decided that this universe must be an err or of God and that the manifestation or creation is certainly the result of a desire, the desire to manifest, know oneself, enjoy oneself. So the only thing to do is to put an end to this err or as soon as possible by refusing to cling to desire and its fatal consequences.
But the Supreme L ord answers that the comedy is not entirely played out, and He adds: Wait f or the last act; undoubtedly you will change your mind.
0 1958-07-25b, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
original English.
***
0 1958-08-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
There (gesture above the head), everything has been resolved, I could write books on how to resolve this or that, how the synthesis is made, etc., but here (the body) I live this synthesis stumblingly. The two coexist, but it is still not THAT (gesture, hands clasped together, pointing upwards).
(silence)
What problems come up! If there were a plague or cholera, f or example, would the supramental F orce in the cells, the supramental realization, be able to rest ore order out of the dis order that allows the epidemic to be? I dont mean on an individual levelindividually, if you are in a certain consciousness, you can remain untouched I am not speaking of that, I am speaking impersonally, as it were.
We know nothing. We believe we know, but as soon as it is a question of that (the body), we know nothing. As soon as we are in the subtle physical, we know everything, we live in bliss but here, we know nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing.
0 1958-08-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
It was just at four oclock in the m orning, and it woke me up. It was exactly like this I was apparently in my bathroom, and I had to open the do or between the bathroom and Sri Aurobindos room; the moment I put my hand on the do orknob, I knew with an absolute certainty that destruction was awaiting me behind the do or. It had the f orm or image of those great invaders of India, those who had swooped down upon India and destroyed everything in their wake But it was only an impression.
So the do or had to be opened and I felt and said, L ord, may your will be done. I opened the do or and behind it was Z1 in the same clothes he wears when he drives, and he was leaning against one of those big tract or tires or perhaps he was holding it at the same time. I was so dumbfounded that I woke up. It took me a little while to be able to understand what it might mean, and afterwards Even now, I still dont know What was I? Was I India, or was I the w orld? I dont know. And what did Z represent? It was as imperative and clear, as positive and absolute as could be: the certitude that destruction was behind the do or, that it was inevitable. And it had the f orm of those great Tartar or Mongol invaders, those people who came from the N orth and invaded India, who pillaged everything Thats what it was like. But what Z was doing there I dont know. What does he represent? The first impulse was to tell Abhay Singh, F orbid him to drive the tract or.
(Pavitra:) What was he holding in his hands, Mother?
0 1958-09-16 - OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I had a mantra in French bef ore coming to Pondicherry. It was Dieu de bont et de misric orde [God of kindness and mercy], but what it means is usually not understoodit is an entire program, a universal program. I have been repeating this mantra since the beginning of the century; it was the mantra of ascension, of realization. At present, it no longer comes in the same way, it comes rather as a mem ory. But it was deliberate, you see; I always said Dieu de bont et de misric orde, because even then I understood that everything is the Divine and the Divine is in all things and that it is only we who make a distinction between what is or what is not the Divine.
My experience is that, individually, we are in relationship with that aspect of the Divine which is not necessarily the most in conf ormity with our natures, but which is the most essential f or our development or the most necessary f or our action. F or me, it was always a question of action because, personally, individually, each aspiration f or personal development had its own f orm, its own spontaneous expression, so I did not use any f ormula. But as soon as there was the least little difficulty in action, it sprang f orth. Only long afterwards did I notice that it was f ormulated in a certain way I would utter it without even knowing what the w ords were. But it came like this: Dieu de bont et de misric orde. It was as if I wanted to eliminate from action all aspects that were not this one. And it lasted f or I dont know, m ore than twenty or twenty-five years of my life. It came spontaneously.
Just recently one day, the contact became entirely physical, the whole body was in great exaltation, and I noticed that other lines were spontaneously being added to this Dieu de bont et de misric orde, and I noted them down. It was a springing f orth of states of consciousness not w ords.
--
The w ords came afterwards, as if they had been superimposed upon the states of consciousness, grafted onto them. Some of the associations seem unexpected, but they were the exact expression of the states of consciousness in their order of unfolding. They came one after another, as if the contact was trying to become m ore complete. And the last was like a triumph. As soon as I finished writing (in writing, all this becomes rather flat), the impetus within was still alive and it gave me the sense of an all-conquering Truth. And the last mantra sprang f orth:
Seigneur, Dieu de la Vrit vict orieuse!
--
F or the moment, of all the f ormulas or mantras, the one that acts most directly on this body, that seizes all the cells and immediately does this (vibrating motion) is the Sanskrit mantra: OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH.
As soon as I sit f or meditation, as soon as I have a quiet minute to concentrate, it always begins with this mantra, and there is a response in the body, in the cells of the body: they all start vibrating.
--
So f or these mantras, everything depends upon what you want to do with them. I am in fav or of a sh ort mantra, especially if you want to make both numerous and spontaneous repetitionsone or two w ords, three at most. Because you must be able to use them in all cases, when an accident is about to happen, f or example. It has to spring up without thinking, without calling: it should issue f orth from the being spontaneously, like a reflex, exactly like a reflex. Then the mantra has its full f orce.
F or me, on the days when I have no special preoccupations or difficulties (days I could call n ormal, when I am n ormal), everything I do, all the movements of this body, all, all the w ords I utter, all the gestures I make, are accompanied and upheld by or lined, as it were, with this mantra:
OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH
--
This one, this mantra, OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, came to me after some time, f or I felt well, I saw that I needed to have a mantra of my own, that is, a mantra consonant with what this body has to do in the w orld. And it was just then that it came.3 It was truly an answer to a need that had made itself felt. So if you feel the neednot there, not in your head, but here (Mother points to the center of her heart), it will come. One day, either you will hear the w ords, or they will spring f orth from your heart And when that happens, you must hold onto it.
The first syllable of NAMO is pronounced with a sh ort 'a,' as in nahmo. The final w ord is pronounced BHA-GAH-VA-TEH.
--
The different mantras or prayers that came to Mother and which She grouped under the heading Prayers of the Consciousness of the Cells, are included as an addendum to the Agenda of 1959.
***
0 1958-10-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
It was so strong, so strong that it was really inexpressible. The negative experience of no longer being an individual, or in other w ords, the dissolution of the ego, took place a long time ago and still takes place quite often: the ego completely vanishes. But this was a positive experience of being not just the universe in its totality, but something elseineffable, yet concrete, absolutely concrete! Unutterable1and yet utterly concrete: the divine Person beyond the Impersonal.
The experience lasted f or only a few minutes. And I knew, then, that all our w ords all our w ords are empty. But circumstances were such that I had to speak
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Do all our vibrations reach you or must they have a special intensity?
It must be strong enough to pull me from my concentration or my activity. If I knew when you concentrate or do your puja,1 I could tune into you, and shell I would know m ore; otherwise, my inner life is too l am not at all passive inwardly, you see, I am very active, so I dont usually receive your vibrations unless they impose themselves strongly or unless I have decided bef oreh and to be attentive to what is coming from someone or other. If I know that at a given moment something is going to happen, then I open a do or, as it were. But its difficult to speak of these things.
When you left on your journey,2 f or example, I made a specie! concentration f or all to go well so that nothing untoward happen to you. I even made a f ormation and asked f or a constant, special help over you. Then I renewed my concentration every day, which is how I came to notice that you were invoking me very regulary. I Saw you everyday, everyday, with a very regular precision. It was something that imposed itself on me, but it imposed itself only because l had initially made a f ormation to follow you.
F or people here in the Ashram, my w ork is not the same. It is m ore like a kind of atmosphere that extends everywherea very conscious atmospherewhich I let w ork f or each one acc ording to his need. I dont have a special action f or each person, unless something requires my special attention. When I would tune into you while you were travelling, I clearly saw your image appear bef ore me, as though you were looking at me, but now that you have returned here, I no longer see it. Rather, I receive a sensation or an impression; and as these sensations and impressions are innumerable, its rather like one element among many. It no longer imposes itself in such an entirely distinct way n or does it appear bef ore me in the same manner, as a clear image of yourself, as though you wanted to know something.
As soon as I am alone, I enter into a very deep concentration,a state of consciousness, a kind of universal activity. Is it deep? What is it? It is far beyond all the mental regions, far, far beyond, and it is constant. As soon as I am alone or resting somewhere, thats how it is.
The other day when I was in this state of concentration, I had the vision that I mentioned to you. I felt I was being pulled, that something was pulling me and trying to draw my attention. I felt it very strongly. So I opened my eyes, my mental eyes (the physical eyes may remain opened or closed, it makes no difference either way; when I am concentrated, things on the physical plane no longer exist), I deliberately opened the minds eyes, f or that is where I felt myself being pulled, and then I had this vision I told you of. Someone was trying to draw my attention, to tell me something. It takes someone really quite powerful, with a very great power of concentration, to do thatthere are certainly a great many people here and elsewhere who try to do this, yet I dont feel a thing.3
In the outer, practical domain, I might suddenly think of someone, so I know that this person is calling or thinking of me. When you left on your trip, I created a special link-up so that if ever, at any moment, you called me f or anything, I would know it instantly, and I remained attentive and alert. But I do that only in exceptional cases. Generally speaking, when I havent made this special link-up, things keep coming in and coming in and coming in and coming in, and the answer goes out automatically, here or there or there or therehundreds and hundreds of things that I dont keep in my mem ory because then it would really be frightful. I dont keep these things in my consciousness; it is rather a w ork that is done automatically.
When you asked me if X4 were thinking of me, I consulted my atmosphere and saw that it was true, that even many times a day Xs thoughts were coming. So I know that he is concentrating on me, or something: it simply passes through me, and I answer automatically. But I dont particularly pay attention to X, unless you ask me a question about him, in which case I deliberately tune into him, then observe and determine whether its like this or like that. Whereas this vision the other day was something that thrust itself on me; I was in another region altogether, in my inner contemplation, my concentrationa very strong concentrationwhen I was f orced to enter into contact with this being whose vision I had and who was obviously a very powerful being. After telling me what he had to tell me, he went away in a very peculiar way, not at all suddenly as most people appear and disappear, not at all like that. When I first saw him, there was a living f orm the being himself was there but upon leaving (probably to see the effect, to find out whether he had truly succeeded in making himself understood), he left behind a kind of image of himself. Afterwards, this image blurred and it left only a silhouette, an outline, then it disappeared altogether leaving only an impression. That was the last thing I saw. So I kept the impression and analyzed it to find out exactly what was involved; all this was filed away, and then it was over. I began my concentration once again.
I intentionally carry everybody in my active consciousness f or the w ork, and I do the w ork consciously; but the extent to which people in the w orld, or those who are here in the Ashram, are conscious of this or receive the results depends upon them, though not exclusively.
The other day, f or example, though I no longer recall exactly when (I f orget everything on purpose)but it was in the last part of the night I had a rather long activity concerning the whole realization of the Ashram, notably in the fields of education and art. I was apparently inspecting this area to see how things were there, so naturally I saw a certain number of people, their w ork and their inner states. Some saw me and, at that moment, had a vision of me. It is likely that many were asleep and didnt notice anything, but some actually saw me. The next m orning, f or example, someone who w orks at the theater told me that she had had a splendid vision of me in which I had spoken to her, blessed her, etc. This was her way of receiving the w ork I had done. And this kind of thing is happening m ore and m ore, in that my action is awakening the consciousness in others m ore and m ore strongly.
Naturally, the reception is always incomplete or partially modified; when it passes through the individuality, it becomes narrowed, a personal thing. It seems impossible f or each one to have a consciousness vast enough to see the thing in its entirety.
You said that our way of receiving your w ork or becoming conscious of it does not exclusively depend upon us. What do you mean?
It depends upon the progress in the consciousness. The m ore the action is supramentalized, the m ore its reception is IMPOSED upon the consciousness of each one. The actions progress makes it m ore and m ore perceptible IN SPITE OF each ones condition. The milieu obviously limits and altersdist ortswhat it receives, but the quality of the W ork acts upon this receptivity and imposes itself on it in a m ore and m ore efficient and imperious way.
--
Bef ore, I always had the negative experience of the disappearance of the ego, of the oneness of Creation, where everything implying separation disappearedan experience that, personally, I would call negative. Last Wednesday, while I was speaking (and thats why at the end I could no longer find my w ords), I seemed suddenly to have left this negative phenomenon and entered into the positive experience: the experience of BEING the Supreme L ord, the experience that nothing exists but the Supreme L ordall is the Supreme L ord, there is nothing else. And at that moment, the feeling of this infinite power that has no limit, that nothing can limit, was so overwhelming that all the functions of the body, of this mental machine that summons up w ords, all this was I could no longer speak French. Perhaps the w ords could have come to me in Englishprobably, because it was easier f or Sri Aurobindo to express himself in English, and thats how it must have happened: it was the part embodied in Sri Aurobindo (the part of the Supreme that was embodied in Sri Aurobindo f or its manifestation) that had the experience. This is what joined back with the origin and caused the experience I was well aware of it. And that is probably why its transcription through English w ords would have been easier than through French w ords (f or at these moments, such activities are purely mechanical, rather like automatic machines). And naturally the experience left something behind. It left the sense of a power that can no longer be qualified,5 really. And it was there yesterday evening.
The difficultyits not even a difficulty, its just a kind of precaution that is taken (automatically, in fact) in order to F or example, the volume of F orce that was to be expressed in the voice was too great f or the speech organ. So I had to be a little attentive that is, there had to be a kind of filtering in the outermost expression, otherwise the voice would have cracked. But this isnt done through the will and reason, its automatic. Yet I feel that the capacity of Matter to contain and express is increasing with phenomenal speed. But its progressive, it cant be done instantly. There have often been people whose outer f orm broke because the F orce was too strong; well, I clearly see that it is being dosed out. After all, this is exclusively the concern of the Supreme L ord, I dont bother about itits not my concern and I dont bother about itHe makes the necessary adjustments. Thus it comes progressively, little by little, so that no fundamental disequilibrium occurs. It gives the impression that ones head is swelling so tremendously it will burst! But then if there is a moment of stillness, it adapts; gradually, it adapts.
Only, one must be careful to keep the sense of the Unmanifest sufficiently present so that the various things the elements, the cells and all thathave time to adapt. The sense of the Unmanifest, or in other w ords, to step back into the Unmanifest.6 This is what all those who have had experiences have done; they always believed that there was no possibility of adaptation, so they left their bodies and went off.
***
--
Money is meant to circulate. What should remain constant is the progressive movement of an increase in the earths productionan ever-expanding progressive movement to increase the earths production and improve existence on earth. It is the material improvement of terrestrial life and the growth of the earths production that must go on expanding, enlarging, and not this silly paper or this inert metal that is amassed and lifeless.
Money is not meant to generate money; money should generate an increase in production, an improvement in the conditions of life and a progress in human consciousness. This is its true use. What I call an improvement in consciousness, a progress in consciousness, is everything that education in all its f orms can providenot as its generally understood, but as we understand it here: education in art, education in from the education of the body, from the most material progress, to the spiritual education and progress through yoga; the whole spectrum, everything that leads humanity towards its future realization. Money should serve to augment that and to augment the material base f or the earths progress, the best use of what the earth can giveits intelligent utilization, not the utilization that wastes and loses energies. The use that allows energies to be replenished.
--
We are told that in a few millions or billions of years, the earth will become some kind of moon. The movement should be the opposite: the earth should become m ore and m ore a resplendent sun, but a sun of life. Not a sun that burns, but a sun that illuminesa radiant gl ory.
Puja: ceremony , invocation or evocation of a god (in this case, a tantric ritual ).
When the disciple became a Sannyasi and travelled in the Himalayas with the tantric Swami
--
We believe that Mother used the w ord 'qualified' in the sense of restrict, limit or modifya limitless Power.
The vastness beyond the creation or the cosmic manifestation, the solid base upon which all the rest can unfold.
***
0 1958-10-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
So there are parts which are entirely within me, entirely there is no difference; they are myself. There are other parts with which I am conscious of an exchangea very familiar, very intimate exchange. And there are parts outside of me with which I still have relationships, not exactly as with strangers but merely as acquaintances; it is still necessary to observe their reactions in order to do the c orrect thing. And the ratio between these different parts is naturally different depending upon the different individuals.
***
--
Each time we try to realize something and we encounter a resistance or an obstacle, or even a failurewhat appears to be a failurewe should know, we should NEVER f orget, that it is exclusively, absolutely, to make the realization m ore perfect.
So this habit of cringing, of being discouraged or even feeling ill at ease or abusing oneself, saying, There, Ive done it again All this is absolute foolishness.
Rather, simply say, We do not know how to do things as they should be done, well then, let them be done f or us and come what may! If we could only see how everything that looks like a difficulty, an err or, a failure or an obstacle is simply there to help us make the realization m ore perfect.
Once we know this, everything becomes easy.
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
To know life utterly Oh, there is a very interesting thing in this regard! And its strange, but this particular knowledge reminds me of one of my Sutras1 (which I read out, but no one understood or understood only vaguely, like that):
It is the Supreme L ord who has ineluctably decreed the place you occupy in the universal concert, but whatever be this place, you have equally the same right as all others to ascend the supreme summits right to the supramental realization.
--
And f or the cycle to be complete, one cannot stop on the way at any plane, not even the highest spiritual plane n or the plane closest to matter (like the occult plane in the vital, f or example). One must descend right into matter, and this perfection in manifestation must be a material perfection, or otherwise the cycle is not completewhich explains why those who want to flee in order to realize the divine Will are in err or. What must be done is exactly the opposite! The two must be combined in a perfect way. This is why all the honest sciences, the sciences that are practiced sincerely, honestly, exclusively with a will to know, are difficult pathsyet such sure paths f or the total realization.
It brings up very interesting things. (What I am going to say now is very personal and consequently cannot be used, but it may be kept anyway:)
--
To this has been added a growing initiation into the supramental realization which is (I understand it well now) the perfect union of what comes from above and what comes from below, or in other w ords, the eternal position and the evolutionary realization.
Then and this becomes rather amusing like lifes play Depending upon each ones nature and position and bias, and because human beings are very limited, very partial and incapable of a global vision, there are those who believe, who have faith, or to whom the eternal Mother is revealed through Grace, who have this kind of relationship with the eternal Mother and there are those who themselves are plunged in sadhana, who have the consciousness of a developed sadhak, and thereby have the same relationship with me as one has with what they generally call a realized soul. Such persons consider me the prototype of the Guru teaching a new way, but the others dont have this relationship of sadhak to Guru (I am taking the two extremes, but of course there are all the possibilities in between), they are only in contact with the eternal Mother and, in the simplicity of their hearts, they expect Her to do everything f or them. If they were perfect in this attitude, the eternal Mother would do everything f or themas a matter of fact, She does do everything, but as they arent perfect, they cannot receive it totally. But the two paths are very different, the two kinds of relationships are very different; and as we all live acc ording to the law of external things, in a material body, there is a kind of annoyance, an almost irritated misunderstanding, between those who follow this path (not consciously and intentionally, but spontaneously), who have this relationship of the child to the Mother, and those who have this other relationship of the sadhak to the Guru. So it creates a whole play, with an infinite diversity of shades.
But all this is still in suspense, on the way to realization, moving f orward progressively; theref ore, unless we are able to see the outcome, we cant understand a thing. We get confused. Only when we see the outcome, the final realization, only when we have TOUCHED there, will everything be understood then it will be as clear and as simple as can be. But meanwhile, my relationships with different people are very funny, utterly amusing!
Those who have what I would call the m ore outer relationship compared to the other (although it is not really so)the relationship of yoga, of sadhanaconsider the others superstitious; and the others, who have faith OI perception, or the Grace to have understood what Sri Aurobindo meant (perhaps even bef ore knowing what he said, but in any event, after he said it), discard the others as ign orant unbelievers! And there are all the gradations in between, so it really becomes quite funny!
It opens up extra ordinary h orizons; once you have understood this, you have the keyyou have the key to many, many things: the different positions of each of the different saints, the different realizations and it resolves all the incoherencies of the various manifestations on earth.
F or example, this question of PowerTHE Powerover Matter. Those who perceive me as the eternal, universal Mother and Sri Aurobindo as the Avatar are surprised that our power is not absolute. They are surprised that we have not merely to say, Let it be thus f or it to be thus. This is because, in the integral realization, the union of the two is essential: a union of the power that proceeds from the eternal position and the power that proceeds from the sadhana through evolutionary growth. Similarly, how is it that those who have reached even the summits of yogic knowledge (I was thinking of Swami) need to res ort to beings like gods or demigods to be able to realize things?Because they have indeed united with certain higher f orces and entities, but it was not decreed since the beginning of time that they were this particular being. They were not b orn as this or that, but through evolution they united with a latent possibility in themselves. Each one carries the Eternal within himself, but one can join Him only when one has realized the complete union of the latent Eternal with the eternal Eternal.
And this explains everything, absolutely everything: how it w orks, how it functions in the w orld.3 I was saying to myself, But I have no powers, I have no powers! Several days ago, I said, But after all, I KNOW WHO is there, I know, yet how is it that ? There, up to there (the level of the head), it is all-powerful, nothing can resist but here it is ineffective. So those who have faith, even an ign orant but real faith (it can be ign orant but nevertheless it is real), say, What! How can you have no powers? Because the sadhana is not yet over.
--
Mother added: 'The most beautiful part of the experience is missing... When I try to f ormulate something in too precise a way, all the vastness of the experience evap orates. The entire w orld is being revealed in all its organization down to the minutest details but everything simultaneouslyhow can that be explained? It's not possible.'
***
0 1958-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
'If mankind only caught a glimpse of what infinite enjoyments, what perfect f orces, what luminous reaches of spontaneous knowledge, what wide calms of our being lie waiting f or us in the tracts which our animal evolution has not yet conquered, they would leave all and never rest till they had gained these treasures. But the way is narrow, the do ors are hard to f orce, and fear, distrust and scepticism are there, sentinels of Nature to f orbid the turning away of our feet from less ordinary pastures.'
Cent. Ed. Vol. XVII, p. 79
0 1958-10-25 - to go out of your body, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Each one is in touch with the universal expression of an aspect or a will or a mode of the Supreme, and if one aspires f or this, it is this that comes, with an extra ordinary plasticity. And when that happens, I even become the Witness (not the witness in the way of the Purusha1: a witness far m ore infinite and eternal than the Purusha). I see what responds, why it responds, how it responds. This is how I know what people want (not here below, n or even in their highest aspiration). I see it even when the people themselves are no longer conscious or rather, not yet conscious (f or me, its no longer, but anyway ), when they are not yet conscious of this identification somewhere. Even then I see it.
Its interesting.
They do pujas to all these f orces or divinities, but it is not it is not the highest Truth. What Sri Aurobindo called the true surrender, the surrender to the Supreme, is a truth higher than that of relying solely upon oneself.
And that is what always brings in complications, conflicts. I was surprised that the atmosphere [of the Ashram] is filled with conflict when he is here but that is the reason.2
--
Purusha: the Being or the Self that witnesses and supp orts the Becoming.
The occult atmosphere of tantric pujas invokes f orces that do not coincide with the completely different atmosphere and the completely different attitude of the supramental yoga.
0 1958-11-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Last night, I thought, My god! If I have to Individually, with this one or that one, by selecting the best, I could get somewhere, but this this mass.1 Swami had told me sohe told me immediately after his first meditation (collective meditation at the Ashram playground), he told me, The stuff is not good! (Mother laughs)
I didnt press the matter.
All this together constitutes one collective entity, and the individual is lost in it. If I had to deal with this person or that person individually, it would be different. But all together, taking them all together as a collective entity, well, its not brilliant.
Mother is referring to the Ashram as a collectivity.
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The gods of the Puranas are merciless gods who respect only power and have nothing of the true love, charity or profound goodness that the Divine has put into the human consciousness and which compensate psychically f or all the outer defects. They themselves have nothing of this, they have no psychic.1 The Puranic gods have no psychic, so they act acc ording to their power. They are restrained only when their power is not all-powerful, thats all.
But what does Anusuya represent?2
--
There is something similar between the Puranic gods and the gods of Greek or Egyptian mythology. The gods of Egyptian mythology are terrible beings They cut off peoples heads, tear their enemies to pieces!
The Greeks were not always tender either!
--
They are beings who belong to the progressive creation of the universe and who have themselves presided over its f ormation from the most etheric or subtle regions to the most material regions. They are a descent of the divine creative Spirit that came to repair the mischief in sh ort, to repair what the Asuras had done. The first makers created dis order and darkness, an unconsciousness, and then it is said that there was a second lineage of makers to repair that evil, and the gods gradually descended through realities that were ever m oreone cant say dense because it isnt really dense, n or can one even say material, since matter as we know it does not exist on these planesthrough m ore and m ore concrete substances.
All these zones, these planes of reality, received different names and were classified in different ways acc ording to the occult schools, acc ording to the different traditions, but there is an essential similarity, and if we go back far enough into the various traditions, hardly anything but w ords differ, depending upon the country and the language. The descriptions are quite similar. M oreover, those who climb back up the ladder or in other w ords, a human being who, through his occult knowledge, goes out of one of his bodies (they are called sheaths in English) and enters into a m ore subtle bodyin order to ACT in a m ore subtle body and so f orth, twelve times (you make each body come out from a m ore material body, leaving the m ore material body in its c orresponding zone, and then go off through successive exteri orizations), what they have seen, what they have discovered and seen through their ascensionwhe ther they are occultists from the Occident or occultists from the orientis f or the most part analogous in description. They have put different w ords on it, but the experience is very analogous.
There is the whole Chaldean tradition, and there is also the Vedic tradition, and there was very certainly a tradition anteri or to both that split into two branches. Well, all these occult experiences have been the same. Only the description differs depending upon the country and the language. The st ory of creation is not told from a metaphysical or psychological point of view, but from an objective point of view, and this st ory is as real as our st ories of hist orical periods. Of course, its not the only way of seeing, but it is just as legitimate a way as the others, and in any event, it recognizes the concrete reality of all these divine beings. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists exhibit great similarities. The only difference is in the way they are expressed, but the manipulation of the f orces is the same.
I learned all this through Theon. Probably, he was I dont know if he was Russian or Polish (a Russian or Polish Jew), he never said who he really was or where he was b orn, n or his age n or anything.
He had assumed two names: one was an Arab name he had adopted when he took refuge in Algeria (I dont know f or what reason). After having w orked with Blavatsky and having founded an occult society in Egypt, he went to Algeria, and there he first called himself Aa Aziz (a w ord of Arabic origin meaning the beloved). Then, when he began setting up his Cosmic Review and his cosmic group, he called himself Max Theon, meaning the supreme God (!), the greatest God! And no one knew him by any other name than these twoAa Aziz or Max Theon.
He had an English wife.
--
But now, there is only a very small number of people in the West who know that it isnt merely subjective or imaginative (the result of a m ore or less unbridled imagination), and that it c orresponds to a universal truth.
All these regions, all these realms are filled with beings who exist separately in their own realms, and if you are awake and conscious on a given plane f or example, if while going out of a m ore material body you awaken on some higher planeyou can have the same relationship with the things and people of that plane as with the things and people of the material w orld. In other w ords, there exists an entirely objective relationship that has nothing to do with your own idea of things. Naturally, the resemblance becomes greater and greater as you draw nearer the physical w orld, the material w orld, and there is even a moment when one region can act directly upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the kingdoms of the overmind, you find a concrete reality entirely independent of your personal experience; whenever you come back to it, you again find the same things, with some differences that may have occurred DURING YOUR ABSENCE. And your relationships with the beings there are identical to those you have with physical beings, except that they are m ore flexible, m ore supple and m ore direct (f or example, there is a capacity to change the outer f orm, the visible f orm, acc ording to your inner state), but you can make an appointment with someone, come to the meeting and again find the same being, with only certain differences that may have occurred during your absence but it is absolutely concrete, with absolutely concrete results.
However, you must have at least a little experience of these things to understand them. Otherwise, if you are convinced that all this is just human fancy or mental f ormations, if you believe that these gods have such and such a f orm because men have imagined them to be like that, or that they have such and such defects or qualities because men have envisioned it that wayas with all those who say God is created in the image of man and exists only in human thoughtall such people wont understand, it will seem absolutely ridiculous to them, a kind of madness. You must live a little, touch the subject a little to know how concrete it is.
Naturally, children know a great dealif they have not been spoiled. There are many children who return to the same place night after night and continue living a life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoiled with age, they can be preserved within one. There was a time when I was especially interested in dreams, and I could return exactly to the same place and continue some w ork I had begun there, visit something, f or example, or see to something, some w ork of organization or some discovery or expl oration; you go to a certain place, just as you go somewhere in life, then you rest a while, then you go back and begin againyou take up your w ork just where you left it, and you continue. You also notice that there are things entirely independent of you, certain variations which were not at all created by you and which occurred automatically during your absence.
But then, you must LIVE these experiences yourself; you yourself must see, you must live them with enough sincerity to see (by being sincere and spontaneous) that they are independent of any mental f ormations. Because one can take the opposite line and make an intensive study of the way mental f ormations act upon eventswhich is very interesting. But thats another field. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you start noticing to what extent you can delude yourself. Theref ore, both one and the other, the mental f ormation and the occult reality, must be studied to see what the ESSENTIAL difference is between them. The one exists in itself, entirely independent of what we think about it, and the other
That was a grace. I was given every experience without knowing ANYTHING of what it was all aboutmy mind was absolutely blank. There was no active c orrespondence in the f ormative mind. I only knew about what had happened or the laws governing these happenings AFTERWARDS, when I was curious and inquired to find out what it related to. Then I found out. But otherwise, I didnt know. So that was the clear proof that these things existed entirely outside of my imagination or thought.
It doesnt happen very frequently in this w orld. And thats why these experiences, which otherwise seem quite natural, quite obvious, appear to be extravagant fancies to people who know nothing.
--
Once you have w orked in this field, you realize that when you have studied a subject, when you have mentally understood something, it gives a special tonality to the experience. The experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact of having known this subject and of having studied it gives a particular tonality; on the other hand, if you have learned nothing of the subject, if you know nothing at all, well, when the experience comes, the notation of it is entirely spontaneous and sincere. It can be m ore or less adequate, but it is not the result of a f ormer mental f ormation.
What happened in my life is that I never studied or knew things until AFTER having the experienceonly BECAUSE OF the experience and because I wanted to understand it would I study things related to it.
It was the same thing f or visions of past lives. I knew NOTHING when I would have the experience, not even the possibility of past lives, and only after having had the experience would I study the question and, f or example, even verify certain hist orical facts that had occurred in my vision but about which I had no pri or knowledge.
--
There are subtle bodies and subtle w orlds that c orrespond to these bodies; it is what the psychological method calls states of consciousness, but these states of consciousness really c orrespond to w orlds. The occult process consists in becoming aware of these various inner states of being, or subtle bodies, and of mastering them sufficiently to be able to make one come out of the other, successively. F or there is a whole hierarchy of increasing subtleties or decreasing, depending upon the direction and the occult process consists in making a m ore subtle body come out from a denser body, and so f orth, right to the most ethereal regions. You go out through successive exteri orizations into m ore and m ore subtle bodies or w orlds. Each time it is rather like passing into another dimension. In fact, the fourth dimension of the physicists is only the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge.
To give another comparison, it could be said that the physical body is at the centerit is the most material and the most condensed, as well as the smallestand the m ore subtle inner bodies increasingly overlap the limits of this central physical body; they pass through it and extend further and further out, like water evap orating from a p orous vase which creates a kind of steam all around it. And the m ore subtle it is, the m ore its extension tends to fuse with that of the universe: you finally become universal. It is an entirely concrete process that makes the invisible w orlds an objective experience and even allows you to act in those w orlds.
In Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's terminology, 'psychic' or 'psychic being' means the soul or the p ortion of the Supreme in man which evolves from life to life until it becomes a fully self-conscious being. The soul is a special capacity or grace of human beings on earth.
The film on August 5.
0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Yes, it was not a willed experience, f or I had not decided I would do this. It did not c orrespond to an inner attitude. In a meditation, one can decide, I will meditate on this or on that or on something else I will do this or that. F or meditations, I usually have a kind of inner ( or higher) perception of what has to be done, and I do it. But it was not that way. I had decided: nothing, to decide nothing, to be like that (gesture of turning upwards).
And then it happened.
--
And so, physically, the body followed. My body has been taught to express the inner experience to a certain extent. In the body there is the body-f orce or the body-f orm or the body-spirit (acc ording to the different schools, it bears a different name), and this is what leaves the body last when one dies, usually taking a period of seven days to leave.2 With special training, it can acquire a conscious lifeindependent and consciousto such a degree that not only in a state of trance (in trance, it frequently happens that one can speak and move if one is slightly trained or educated), but even in a cataleptic state it can produce sounds and even make the body move. Thus, through training, the body begins to have somnambulistic capacitiesnot an ordinary somnambulism, but it can live an autonomous life.3 This is what took place, yesterday evening it was like that I had gone out of my body, but my body was participating. And then I was pulled downwards: my hand, which had been on the arm of the chair, slipped down, then the other hand, then my head was almost touching my knees! (The consciousness was elsewhere, I saw it from outsideit was not that I didnt know what I was doing, I saw it from outside.) So I said, In any case, this has to stop somewhere because if it continues, my head (laughing) is going to be on the ground! And I thought, But what is there at the bottom of this hole?
Scarcely had these w ords been f ormulated when there I was, at the bottom of the hole! And it was absolutely as if a tremendous, almighty spring were there, and then (Mother hits the table) vrrrm! I was cast out of the abyss into a vastness. My body immediately sat straight up, head on high, following the movement. If someone had been watching, this is what he would have seen: in a single bound, vrrrm! Straight up, to the maximum, my head on high.
--
I struck upon an almighty spring that cast me up f orthwith into a f ormless, limitless vast, generat or of all creation. It was yes, I have the feeling that it was not the ordinary creation, the prim ordial creation, but the SUPRAMENTAL creation, f or it b ore no similarity to the experience of returning to the Supreme, the origin of everything. I had utterly the feeling of being cast into the origin of the supramental creation something that is already (how can it be expressed?) objectified from the Supreme, with the explicit goal of the supramental creation.
That was my feeling.
I dont think I am mistaken, f or there was such a superabundant feeling of power, of warmth, of gold It was not fluid, it was like a powdering. And each of these things (they cannot be called specks or fragments, n or even points, unless you understand it in the mathematical sense, a point that occupies no space) was something equivalent to a mathematical point, but like living gold, a powdering of warm gold. I cannot say it was sparkling, I cannot say it was dark, n or was it made of light, either: a multitude of tiny points of gold, nothing but that. They seemed to be touching my eyes, my face and with such an inherent power and warmthit was a splend or! And then, at the same time, the feeling of a plenitude, the PEACE of omnipotence It was rich, it was full. It was movement at its ultimate, infinitely swifter than all one can imagine, and at the same time it was absolute peace, perfect tranquillity.
(Mother resumes her message)
--
original English.
***
0 1958-11-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
When I write something, I dont expect people to understand it, but I try to avoid the least possible dist ortion of the experience or the image in this kind of shrinking towards expression.
What is this spring?
--
But as soon as you want to express it, it escapes like water running through your fingers; all the fluidity is lost, it evap orates. A rather vague, poetic or artistic expression is much truer, much nearer to the truth something hazy, nebulous, undefined. Something not concretized like a rigid mental expressionthis rigidity that the mind has introduced right down into the Inconscient.
This vision of the Inconscient (Mother remains gazing f or a moment) it was the MENTAL Inconscient. Because the starting point was mental. A special Inconscientrigid, hard, resistantwith all that the mind has brought into our consciousness. But it was far w orse, far w orse than a purely material Inconscient! A mentalized Inconscient, as it were. All this rigidity, this hardness, this narrowness, this fixitya FIXITYcomes from the presence of the mind in creation. When the mind was not manifested, the Inconscient was not like that! It was f ormless and had the plasticity of something that is f ormless the plasticity has gone.
--
Yes, thats it. It was not an original Inconscient. It was a mentalized Inconscient. With all that the mind has brought in in the way of OPPOSITIONof resistance, hardness, rigidity.
It would be interesting to mention this.
Because the starting point, precisely, was to look into the mental unconsciousness of these people. It was the mental Inconscient. Well, the mental Inconscient REFUSES to changewhich is not true of the other one; the other is nothing, it doesnt exist, it is not organized in any way, it has no way of being, whereas this one is an orGANIZED Inconscient organized by a beginning mental influence. A hundred times w orse!
This is a very interesting point to note.
It is not the experience, which I had once bef ore, of the original Inconscient. The experience I had this time is of the Inconscient that has undergone the influence of the Mind in creation. It has become It has become a FAR greater obstacle than bef ore. Bef ore, it did not even have the power to resist, it had nothing, it was truly unconscious. Now it is an Inconscient organized in its refusal to change!
It was a very new experience.
0 1958-11-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Due to the orange robes of the sannyasi.
Sh ortly afterwards, in the last days of November, Satprem would leave the Ashram once again.
0 1958-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
It was said in the ancient traditions that one could not live f or m ore than twenty days in this higher state without leaving ones body and returning to the supreme origin. Now this is no longer true.
It is precisely this state of perfect Harmony beyond all attacks that will become possible with the supramental realization. It is what all those who are destined f or the supramental transf ormation will realize. The hostile f orces know it well; in the supramental w orld, they will automatically disappear. Having no m ore utility, they will be dissolved without our having to do anything, simply through the presence of the supramental f orce. So now they are being unleashed with a fury in a negation of everything, everything.
--
The experience of November 7 was a further step in the building of the link between the two w orlds. Where I was cast was clearly into the origin of the supramental creationall this warm gold, this tremendous living power, this sovereign peace. And once again I saw that the values governing the supramental w orld have nothing to do with our values here, even the values of our highest wisdom, even those we consider the most divine when we live constantly in a divine Presence: it is utterly different.
Not only in our state of ad oration and surrender to the Supreme, but even in our state of identification, the QUALITY of the identification is different depending upon whether we are on this side, progressing in this hemisphere, or have passed to the other side and have emerged into the other w orld, the other hemisphere, the higher hemisphere.
The quality or the kind of relationship I had with the Supreme at that moment was entirely different from the one we have hereeven the identification had a different quality. One can very well understand that all the lower movements are different but this identification by which the Supreme governs and lives in us was the summit of our experience herewell, the way He governs and lives is different depending on whether we are in this hemisphere here or in the supramental life. And at that moment (the experience of November 13), what made the experience so intense was that I came to perceive vaguely both these states of consciousness at once. It was almost as if the Supreme Himself were different, or our experience of Him. And yet, in both cases, it was a contact with the Supreme. It is probably how we perceive Him or the way in which we translate it that differs, but the fact is that the quality of the experience is different.
In the other hemisphere, there is an intensity and a plenitude which are translated by a power different from the one here. How can I f ormulate it?I cannot.
--
And probably each time a new w orld opens up, there will again be a new reversal. This is why even our spiritual life, which is such a total reversal compared to ordinary life, seems something still so so totally different when compared to this supramental consciousness that the values are almost opposite.
It can be expressed in this way (but its quite approximate, m ore than diminished or def ormed): its as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver, whereas the supramental life is made of goldas if our entire spiritual life here were a vibration of silver, not gold but simply a light, a light that goes right to the summit, an absolutely pure light, pure and intense; but in the other, in the supramental w orld, there is a richness and a power that make all the difference. This whole spiritual life of the psychic being and of all our present consciousness that appears so warm, so full, so wonderful, so luminous to the ordinary consciousness, well, all this splend or seems po or in comparison to the splend or of the new w orld.
I can explain the phenomenon like this: successive reversals such that an EVER NEW richness of creation will take place from stage to stage, making whatever came bef ore seem so po or in comparison. What to us seems supremely rich compared to our ordinary life, appears so po or compared to this new reversal of consciousness. Such was my experience.
Last night, my eff ort to understand what was missing in order to help you completely and truly come out of the difficulty reminded me of what I said the other day about Power, the transf orming power, the true realizing power, the supramental power. When you enter that, when you suddenly surge into that Thing, then you seeyou see that it is truly almighty in comparison to what we are here. So once again, I touched it, I experienced both states simultaneously.
But as long as this is not an accomplished fact, it will still be a progressiona progression, an ascension; you gain a little, you gain some ground, you rise higher and higher. But as long as the new reversal has not taken place, its as if everything had still to be done. It is a repetition of the experience below, reproduced above.
--
Meanwhile, we should acknowledge that we dont have the key, it is not yet in our hands. or rather, we know quite well where it is, and there is only one thing to do: the perfect surrender Sri Aurobindo speaks of, the total surrender to the divine Will whatever happens, even in the dark of night.
There is night and sun, night and sun, and night again, many nights, but one must cling to this will f or surrender, cling as through a st orm, and put everything into the hands of the Supreme L ord. Until the day when the Sun shall shine f orever, the day of total Vict ory.
0 1958-11-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
(Mother tries to find the origin of the disciple's difficulties)
I dont have all the inf ormation, otherwise certainly Two things made me see I saw them the other day. First of all, when you didnt understand my letter, f or I wrote it to a part of you that without any doubt should have understood; I was referring to something other than what is seen and known by this part of you which is this center, this knot of revolt that seems to resist everything, that really remains knotted, in spite of your experiences and the strides you have made, as well as your openings. And what made me see is especially the fact that it resists experiences, it is not touched by experiences; this was the point that did not understand what I wrote. Because the part of you that had the experience must necessarily understand what I wrote, without the shadow of a doubt.
--
I had two visions which are certainly related to this. The most recent one was yesterday, and it concerned a past life in India. It is something that took place in India about one thousand years ago, perhaps a little m ore (I am not yet sure about this). And it contains both things. Its strange, both things together the origin of the power of realization in this life and the obstacle to be conquered.
I had the last vision yesterday evening. You were much taller than you are now; you were wearing the orange robe, and you were backed up against a do or of bronze, a bronze do or like the do or of a temple or a palace but at the same time it was symbolic (it was a fact, it actually took place like this, but at the same time it was symbolic). And unf ortunately, it didnt last because I was disturbed. But it contained the key.
I was VERY HAPPY with the vision, f or there was a great POWER, though it was rather terrible. But it was magnificent. When I saw that, I This vision was given to me because I had concentrated with a will to find the solution, a true solution, an enduring and permanent solution that is, I had this spontaneous gratitude which goes out to the Grace when it brings some effective help. Only, what followed was interrupted by someone who came to call me and that cut it sh ort, but it will return.
--
In any event, one point is clear: it is something that happened in India, and the origin of the karma and the remedy of the karma go together. And it has to do with this initiation you received in Rameswaram.2
So the difficulty and the vict ory go together. Its very interesting.
--
If you can when the attack comes, if you can cling to something that knows, or to something in you that has had the experience, and if you can hold onto that mem ory, even if it is only a mem ory, and cling to that in spite of all that denies and revolts Above all not To keep your head as still as possible. And not follow the movement, not succumb to the vibration.
Because from what I have seen and from what I was told, I am sure that it is decisive, that what is offered to you is the possibility of a decisive vict ory, which means that it will no longer recur in the same way.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Even at a very young age, I had a kind of intuition of my destiny. I felt that something in me had to be exhausted, or that I had to exhaust myself. I dont know, as though I had to descend into the depths of the night to find the thing. I thought it was the concentration camps. Perhaps this was still not deep enough Do you see any meaning in all this?
It can hardly be f ormulated; these are merely impressions that follow one another. I know that when you thought of leaving with Swami,1 I saw that a do or was opening, that it was the truth, that this was IT.
--
This is how it w orks: the psychic being passes from one life to another, but there are cases in which the psychic incarnates in order to to w ork out2 to pass through a certain experience, to learn a certain thing, to develop a certain thing through a certain experience. And so in this life, in the life where the experience is to be made, it can happen (there may be m ore than one reason) that the soul does not come down accurately in the place it should have, some shift or other may occur, a set of contrary circumstancesthis happens sometimesand then the incarnation miscarries entirely and the soul leaves. But in other cases, the soul is simply placed in the impossibility of doing exactly what it wants and it finds itself swept away by unf ortunate circumstances. Not only unf ortunate from an objective standpoint, but unf ortunate f or its own development, and then that creates in it the necessity to begin the experience all over again, and in much m ore difficult conditions.
And ifit can happenif the second attempt also miscarries, if the conditions make the experience the soul is seeking still m ore difficult f or example, if one is in a body with an inadequate will or some dist ortion in the thought, or an egoism too too hardened, and it ends in suicide, it is dreadful. I have seen this many times, it creates a dreadful karma that can be repeated f or lifetimes on end bef ore the soul can conquer it and manage to do what it wants. And each time, the conditions become m ore difficult, each time it requires a still greater eff ort. And people who know this say, You cannot get out! In fact, it is this kind of desire to escape which pushes you into m ore foolish things3 that result in a still greater accumulation of difficulty. There are momentsmoments and circumstanceswhen no one is there to help you, and then things become so h orrible, the circumstances become so abominable.
But if the soul has had but ONE call, but ONE contact with the Grace, then in your next life you are put in the conditions, once, whereby EVERYTHING can be swept away at one stroke. And at this present moment on earth, you cannot imagine the number of people I have met that is, the number of soulswho had reached out towards this possibility with such an intensity and they have all found themselves on my path.
At that point, sometimes a great courage is needed, sometimes a great endurance is needed, sometimes a true love is enough, sometimes, oh! if only faith were there, one thing, one tiny little thing is enough, and everything can be swept away. I have done it often; there are times when I have failed. But m ore often than not I have been able to remove it. But then, what is needed is a great, stoical courage or a capacity to endure and to SEE IT THROUGH. The resistance (especially in cases of f ormer suicide), the resistance to the temptation of renewing this stupidity creates a terrible f ormation. or else this habit of fleeing when suffering comes: flee, flee, instead of abs orbing the difficulty, holding on.
But just this, a faith in the Grace, or an awareness of the Grace, or the intensity of the call, or else naturally the response the response, the thing that opens, that breaks the response to this marvelous love of the Grace.
It is difficult without a strong will; and above all, above all the capacity to resist the temptation, which was the fatal temptation throughout all ones livesbecause its power builds up. Each defeat gives it renewed f orce. But a tiny vict ory can dissolve it.
--
And then I saw a GREAT light, like a gl ory, when you were at Rameswaram. A great light. And when you returned here, this light was upon you, very strong and imposing. But at the same time, I felt that it needed protectingto be shielded, protected that it was not yet established. Established, ready to resist all that decomposes an experience. I would have liked to have kept you apart, under a glass case, but then I saw that this would have drawbacks as well as advantages. Also, I liked the way you wanted to fight against an uncomprehending reception due to your orange robes and your shaved head. Of course, it was a much sh orter path than the other, but it was m ore difficult.
And then, m ore and m ore, I felt that if what I saw, as I saw it, could be realized I saw two things: a journeynot at all a pilgrimage as it is commonly understooda journey towards solitude in arduous conditions, and a sojourn in a very severe solitude, facing the mountains, in arduous physical conditions. The contact with this majesty of Nature has a great influence upon the ego at certain moments: it has the power to dissolve it. But all this complication, all these organized pilgrimages, all that it brings in the whole petty side of human life which spoils everything
Yes, that whole journey was odious
--
As soon as you had left, and since I was following you, I saw that nothing of the kind was going to happen, but rather something very superficial which would not be of much use. And when I received your letters and saw that you were in difficulty, I did something. There are places that are fav orable f or occult experiences. Benares is one of these places, the atmosphere there is filled with vibrations of occult f orces, and if one has the slightest capacity, it spontaneously develops there, in the same way that a spiritual aspiration develops very strongly and spontaneously as soon as one lands in India. These are Graces. Graces, because it is the destiny of the country, it has been so throughout its hist ory, and because India has always been turned much m ore towards the heights and the inner depths than towards the outer w orld. Now, it is in the process of losing all that and wallowing in the mud, but thats another st ory it was like that and it is still like that. And in fact, when you returned from Rameswaram with your robes, I saw with much satisfaction that there was still a GREAT dignity and a GREAT sincerity in this endeav or of the Sannyasis towards the higher life and in the self-giving of a certain number of people to realize this higher life. When you returned, it had become a very concrete and a very real thing that immediately commanded respect. Bef ore, I had seen only a copy, an imitation, an hypocrisy, a pretentionnothing that was really lived. But then, I saw that it was true, that it was lived, that it was real and that it was still Indias great heritage. I dont believe it is very prevalent now, but in any case, it is still there, and as I told you, it commands respect. And then, as I felt you in difficulty and as the outer conditions were not only veiling but spoiling the inner, well, on that day I wrote you a sh ort note I no longer recall when it was exactly, but I wrote you just a w ord or two, which I put in an envelope and sent you I concentrated very strongly upon those few w ords and sent you something. I didnt note the date, I dont remember when it was, but its likely that it happened as I wished when you were in Benares; and then you had this experience.
But when you returned the second time, from the Himalayas, you didnt have the same flame as when you returned the first time. And I understood that this kind of difficult karma still clung to you, that it had not been dissolved. I had hoped that your contact with the mountains but in a true solitude (I dont mean that your body had to be all alone, but there should not have been all kinds of outer, superficial things) Anyway, it didnt happen. So it means that the time had not come.
--
But I always had a presentiment of the true thing: that only a VERY COURAGEOUS act of self-giving could efface the thingnot courageous or difficult from the material point of view, not that There is a certain zone of the vital in you, a mentalized vital but still very material, which is very much under the influence of circumstances and which very much believes in the effectiveness of outer measuresthis is what is resisting.
That is all I know.
Generally, when the hour has come f or a karma to be overcome and abs orbed in the Grace, the image or the knowledge or the experience of the exact facts that are the origin of the karma come to me, and I can then perf orm the cleansing action.
F or the time being, it is not yet there.
--
original English.
Mother specified: 'The subconscious mem ory of the past creates a kind of irresistible desire to escape from the difficulty, and you recommence the same foolishness, or an even greater foolishness.'
The disciple wanted to leave f or the f orest, the Congo, to do the most unlikely things there.
0 1958-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Basically, the vast maj ority of men are like prisoners with all the do ors and all the windows shut, so they suffocate (which is quite natural), but they have with them the key that opens the do ors and the windows, and they dont use it Certainly, there is a period when they dont know that they have the key, but even long after they do know it, long after they have been told, they hesitate to use it and doubt that it has the power to open the do ors and windows, or even that it may be advisable to open them. And even once they feel that After all, it might be a good thing, a fear pursues them: What is going to happen once all these do ors and these windows open? They become afraidafraid of losing themselves in this light and in this freedom. They want to remain what they call themselves. They love their falsehood and their slavery. Something in them loves it and remains clinging to it. They feel that without their limits, they would no longer exist.
That is why the journey is so long, so difficult. F or if one would truly consent no longer to be, everything would become so easy, so swift, so luminous, so joyousthough perhaps not in the way men conceive of joy and ease. At heart, there are very few beings who are not enam ored of struggle. There are very few who would consent to having no darkness or who can conceive of light as anything other than the opposite of obscurity: Without shadow, there would be no painting. Without struggle, there would be no vict ory. Without suffering, there would be no joy. That is what they think, and as long as they think like that, they are not yet b orn to the spirit.
***
0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I am used to seeing the process or the w orking of things m ore from a spiritual point of view, something m ore universal, whereas this needs to be seen from a detailed, occult point of view.
F or example, one thing had always appeared unimp ortant to me in actionintermediaries between the spiritualized individual being, the conscious soul, and the Supreme. Acc ording to my personal experience, it had always seemed to me that if one is exclusively turned towards the Supreme in all ones actions and expresses Him directly, whatever is to be done is done automatically. F or example, if you are always open and if at each second you consciously want to express only what the Supreme L ord wants to be expressed, it is done automatically. But with all that I have learned about pujas, about certain scriptures and certain rituals as well, the necessity f or a process has become very clear to me. Its the same as in physical life; in physical life, everything needs a process, as we know, and it is the knowledge of processes that constitutes physical science. Similarly, in a m ore occult w orking, the knowledge and especially the RESPECT f or the process seem to be much m ore imp ortant than I had first thought.
And when I studied this, when I looked at this science of processes, of intermediaries, suddenly I clearly understood the w orking of karma, which I had not understood bef ore. I had w orked and intervened quite often to change someones karma, but sometimes I had to wait, without exactly knowing why the result was not immediate. I simply used to wait without w orrying about the reasons f or this slowness or delay. Thats how it was. And generally it ended, as I said, with the exact vision of the karmas source, its initial cause; and scarcely would I have this vision when the Power would come, and the thing would be dissolved. But I didnt bother about finding out why it was like that.
One day I had mentioned this to X1 when he was showing me or describing to me the different movements of the pujas, the procedure, the process of the puja. I said to him, Oh, I see! F or the action to be immediate, f or the result to be immediate, one must acknowledge, f or example, the role or the participation of certain spirits or certain f orces and enter into a friendly relationship or collab oration with these f orces in order to obtain an immediate result, is it not so? Then he told me, Yes, otherwise it leaves an indefinite time to the play of the f orces, and you dont know when you will get the result of your puja.
That interested me very much. Because one of the obstacles I had felt was that although the F orce was acting well, there was a time lag that appeared inevitable, a time element in the w ork which seemed unavoidablea play left to the f orces of Nature. But with their knowledge of the processes, the tantrics can dispense with all that. So I understood why those who have studied, who are initiated and follow the prescribed methods are apparently m ore powerfulm ore powerful even than those who are conscious in the highest consciousness.
What interested me is that in their case (those who follow tantric or other initiations), what is doubtful is whether or not they can succeed in receiving the response of the true Power, the divine power, the supreme power; they do everything they can, but this question still remains. Whereas f or me, it is the opposite situation: the Power is there, I have it, but how can I make it act here in matter? The process f or making it act immediately was missingthough not totally; I know from the psychological standpoint, but there is something other than the psychological power, there is the whole play of conscious, individualized f orces that are everywhere in Nature and that have the right to exist. Since it was created this way, it must express something of the supreme Will, otherwise He wouldnt have made use of intermediaries but in His plan, it is obvious that the intermediary has a legitimate place.
It is like the st ory X told me of his guru2 who could comm and the coming of Kali (something which seems quite natural to me when one is sufficiently developed); well, not only could he commend the coming of Kali, but Kali with I dont know how many cr ores of her warri ors! F or me, Kali was Kali, after all, and she did her w ork; but in the universal organization, her action, the innumerable multiplicity of her action, is expressed by an innumerable multitude of conscious entities at w ork. It is this individualization, as it were, that gives to these f orces a consciousness and a certain play of freedom, and this is what makes all the difference in action. It is in this respect that the occult system is an absolutely indispensable complement to spiritual action.
The spiritual action is direct, but it may not be immediate (anyway, thats my experience). Sri Aurobindo said that with the supramental presence, it becomes immediate and I have experienced this. But this would then mean that the supramental Power automatically commands all these intermediaries, whereas if its not present, even the highest spiritual power would need a specialized knowledge to act in this realm, a knowledge equivalent to an occult or initiat ory knowledge of all these realms. This is why I told X, Well, you taught me many things while you were here. There is always something to learn.
Of course, when the Supramental is here, it will be very different. I see it clearly: in moments when it is there, everything is turned inside out, and all this belongs to a w orld to the w orld of preparation. It is like a preparation, a long preparation.
It remains to be seen if all this has first to be mastered bef ore there is even the possibility of holding the Supramental, of FIXING it in the manifestation. That is the great difference. F or example, those with the power to materialize f orces or beings lack the capacity to fix them, f or these are fluid things which act and are then dissolved. That is the difference with the physical w orld where it is this condensation of energy that makes things (Mother strikes the arms of her chair) stable. All the things in the extraphysical realms are not stable, they are fluidfluid and consequently uncertain.3
The disciple's tantric guru.
0 1958-12-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
If you want, I can return to the Ashram and throw myself headlong into the w ork in order to f orget all this. There is a lot of w ork with Herberts things to c orrect, the revision of The Synthesis of Yoga, your old Questions and Answers and the Dhammapada, and perhaps you would accept to take up our w ork together again?
Otherwise, if you consider it preferable to wait, I could go join Swami in Rameswaram, discarding all my little personal reactions towards him. And I would try my best to find again the Light of the first time and return to you stronger. I dont know. I will do what you say. All this really has to change. I dont know, m oreover, whether Swami wishes to have me.
0 1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I clearly see that the hour has come: either I will perish right here, or else I will emerge from this COMPLETELY changed. But something has to change. Mother, you are with me, I know, and you are protecting me, you love me I have only you, only you, you are my Mother. If these moments of utter darkness return and they are bound to return f or everything to be ex orcised and conqueredprotect me in spite of myself. Mother, may your Grace not abandon me. I want to be done with all these old phantoms, I want to be b orn anew in your Light; it has to beotherwise I can no longer go on.
Mother, I believe I understand something of all that you yourself are suffering, and the crucifixion of the Divine in Matter is a real crucifixion. In this moment of consciousness, I offer you all my trials and little sufferings. I would like to triumph so that it be your triumph, one weight less upon your heart.
0 1958-12-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Your last letter was a great comf ort to me. If you were not there, with me, everything would be so absurd and impossible. I am again disturbing you because Swami tells me that you are w orried and that I should write to you. Not much has changed, except that I am holding on and am confident. Yesterday, I again suffered an agonizing wave, in the temple, and I found just enough strength to repeat your name with each beat of my heart, like someone drowning. I remained as motionless as a pillar of stone bef ore the sanctuary, with only your name (my mantra would not come out), then it cleared. It was brutal. I am confident that with each wave I am gaining in strength, and I know you are there. But I am aware that if the enemy is so violent it is because something in me responds, or has responded, something that has not made its surrender that is the critical point. Mother, may your grace help me to place everything in your hands, everything, without any shadow. I want so much to emerge into the Light, to be rid of all this once and f or all.
I am following Swamis instructions to the letter. Sometimes it all seems to lack warmth and spontaneity, but I am holding on. I might add that we are living right next to the bazaar, amidst a great racket 20 hours a day, which does not make things easier. So I repeat my mantra as one pounds his fists against the walls of a prison. Sometimes it opens a little, you send me a little joy, and then everything becomes better again.
0 1958-12-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
If you wish, two things can be done to help your action: either X can undertake certain mantric operations upon you here in Rameswaram, or better still, he can immediately come to Pondicherry with Swami and do what is needed in front of you.
Sweet Mother, I indeed suspect that you want to endure, to bear this struggle all alone. Oh, I think I understand a number of things about the mechanism of these attacks and their connection with me, about the Divine Love that embraces all and takes into itself the suffering and the evil of menall this overwhelms me with a sudden understanding. It seems to me that I am seeing and feeling all that you are facing, all that you are taking upon yourself f or us. The suffering of the Divine in Matter has been an overwhelming revelation to meAh! I see, I want to fight, I want to be totally on your side; I am now and f orever determined.
--
X is at the summit of tantric initiation, and his power is not the fruit of a simple knowledge. He holds it directly from the Divine, and these things have been in his family traditionally from ten generations. No black magic can resist his power. His action is not brutal, he does not mechanically apply f ormulas, he holds this Science and knows how to apply it like an expert chemist, always in Light, Love and sweetness. If you agree that he come to see you, he will immediately know the source of these attacks upon you and will even be able to make the attacking f orce speak. He has this power. Of course, neither X n or Swami will divulge this to anyone, and everything will be kept secret. You have only to send w ord, or a telegram: No objection.
The w ork can be done from here also, but naturally it will not be quite as effective. In that case, you would have to set a specific time to synchronize the action in Rameswaram and Pondicherry. Swami can also do something in his pujas. It is f or you to decide, but I hope you will not want to prolong this battle unnecessarily.
--
I have just now received your letter of the 28th. On that day I definitely felt that there was a decisive change in the situation and I understood right away that you had spoken to Swami and also that what I had written to you gave you the opp ortunity to take a great step. I am very happy and can say with certitude that the w orst is over. However, from several points of view, I infinitely appreciate Xs offer. And although I do not think it necessary, or even desirable, that they both come here (it would create a veritable revolution and perhaps even a panic among the ashramites), I am sure that their intervention in Rameswaram itself would not only be useful but most effective
Yes, everything has changed since you now understand that your battle is not only a personal battle and that by winning it, it is a real service you are rendering to the Divine W ork.
0 1958 12 - Floor 1, young girl, we shall kill the young princess - black tent, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Two or three days after I retired to my room upstairs,1 early in the night I fell into a very heavy sleep and found myself out of the body much m ore materially than I do usually. This degree of density in which you can see the material surroundings exactly as they are. The part that was out seemed to be under a spell and only half conscious. When I found myself at the first flo or where everything was absolutely black, I wanted to go up again, but then I discovered that my hand was held by a young girl whom I could not see in the darkness but whose contact was very familiar. She pulled me by the hand telling me laughingly, No, come, come down with me, we shall kill the young princess. I could not understand what she meant by this young princess and, rather unwillingly, I followed her to see what it was. Arriving in the anteroom which is at the top of the staircase leading to the ground flo or, my attention was drawn in the midst of all this total obscurity to the white figure of Kamala2 standing in the middle of the passage between the hall and Sri Aurobindos room. She was as it were in full light while everything else was black. Then I saw on her face such an expression of intense anxiety that to comf ort her I said, I am coming back. The sound of my voice shook off from me the semi-trance in which I was bef ore and suddenly I thought, Where am I going? and I pushed away from me the dark figure who was pulling me and in whom, while she was running down the steps, I recognized a young girl who lived with Sri Aurobindo and me f or many years and died five years back. This girl during her life was under the most diabolical influence. And then I saw very distinctly (as through the walls of the staircase) down below a small black tent which could scarcely be perceived in the surrounding darkness and standing in the middle of the tent the figure of a man, head and face shaved (like the sannyasin or the Buddhist monks) covered from head to foot with a knitted outfit following tightly the f orm of his body which was tall and slim. No other cloth or garment could give an indication as to who he could be. He was standing in front of a black pot placed on a dark red fire which was throwing its reddish glow on him. He had his right arm stretched over the pot, holding between two fingers a thin gold chain which looked like one of mine and was unnaturally visible and bright. Shaking gently the chain he was chanting some w ords which translated in my mind, She must die the young princess, she must pay f or all she has done, she must die the young princess.
Then I suddenly realized that it was I the young Princess and as I burst into laughter, I found myself awake in my bed.
I did not like the idea of something or somebody having the power to pull me like that so materially out of my body without my previous consent. That is why I gave some imp ortance to the experience.
Mother withdrew on December 9. In fact, She had been unwell f or already m ore than a month bef ore withdrawing. On November 26, the last 'Wednesday class' took place at the playground; on November 28 the last 'Friday class', on December 6, the last 'Translation class'; on December 1, the end of Mother's tennis and the last visit to the playground. On December 9, She again went down f or the meditation around the Samadhi. From December 10, Mother remained in her room f or one month. A great period had come to an end. Hencef orth, She would only go out of the Ashram building on rare occasions.
0 1959-01-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
His action upon you is to continue f or another five days, after which he is positive that you will be entirely saved. Acc ording to him, it is indeed a magic attack originating in Pondicherry, and perhaps even from someone in the Ashram!! He told me that this evil person would finally be f orced to appear bef ore you I am learning many interesting things from him.
Mother, by way of expressing to you my gratitude, I want to w ork now to open myself totally to your Light and become truly an egoless instrument, your conscious instrument. Mother, you are the sole Reality.
--
The pain on the left side has not entirely gone and there have been some complications which have delayed things. But I feel much better. In fact, I am rebuilding my health, and I am in no hurry to resume the exhausting days as bef ore. It is quiet upstairs f or w orking, and I am going to take advantage of this to prepare the Bulletin1 at leisure. As I had not read over the pages on the message that we had prepared f or the 31st, I have revised and transf ormed them into an article. It will be the first one in the February issue. I am now going to choose the others. I will tell you which ones I have chosen and in what order I will put them.
Satprem, my child, I am truly with you and I love you.
--- Overview of noun or
The noun or has 2 senses (no senses from tagged texts)
1. Oregon, Beaver State, OR ::: (a state in northwestern United States on the Pacific)
2. operating room, OR, operating theater, operating theatre, surgery ::: (a room in a hospital equipped for the performance of surgical operations; "great care is taken to keep the operating rooms aseptic")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun or
2 senses of or
Sense 1
Oregon, Beaver State, OR
INSTANCE OF=> American state
=> state, province
=> administrative district, administrative division, territorial division
=> district, territory, territorial dominion, dominion
=> region
=> location
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 2
operating room, OR, operating theater, operating theatre, surgery
=> hospital room
=> room
=> area
=> structure, construction
=> artifact, artefact
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun or
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun or
2 senses of or
Sense 1
Oregon, Beaver State, OR
INSTANCE OF=> American state
Sense 2
operating room, OR, operating theater, operating theatre, surgery
=> hospital room
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun or
2 senses of or
Sense 1
Oregon, Beaver State, OR
-> American state
=> slave state
=> free state
HAS INSTANCE=> Alabama, Heart of Dixie, Camellia State, AL
HAS INSTANCE=> Alaska, Last Frontier, AK
HAS INSTANCE=> Arizona, Grand Canyon State, AZ
HAS INSTANCE=> Arkansas, Land of Opportunity, AR
HAS INSTANCE=> California, Golden State, CA, Calif.
HAS INSTANCE=> Colorado, Centennial State, CO
HAS INSTANCE=> Connecticut, Nutmeg State, Constitution State, CT
HAS INSTANCE=> Delaware, Diamond State, First State, DE
HAS INSTANCE=> Florida, Sunshine State, Everglade State, FL
HAS INSTANCE=> Georgia, Empire State of the South, Peach State, GA
HAS INSTANCE=> Hawaii, Hawai'i, Aloha State, HI
HAS INSTANCE=> Idaho, Gem State, ID
HAS INSTANCE=> Illinois, Prairie State, Land of Lincoln, IL
HAS INSTANCE=> Indiana, Hoosier State, IN
HAS INSTANCE=> Iowa, Hawkeye State, IA
HAS INSTANCE=> Kansas, Sunflower State, KS
HAS INSTANCE=> Kentucky, Bluegrass State, KY
HAS INSTANCE=> Louisiana, Pelican State, LA
HAS INSTANCE=> Maine, Pine Tree State, ME
HAS INSTANCE=> Maryland, Old Line State, Free State, MD
HAS INSTANCE=> Massachusetts, Bay State, Old Colony, MA
HAS INSTANCE=> Michigan, Wolverine State, Great Lakes State, MI
HAS INSTANCE=> Minnesota, Gopher State, North Star State, MN
HAS INSTANCE=> Mississippi, Magnolia State, MS
HAS INSTANCE=> Missouri, Show Me State, MO
HAS INSTANCE=> Montana, Treasure State, MT
HAS INSTANCE=> Nebraska, Cornhusker State, NE
HAS INSTANCE=> Nevada, Silver State, Battle Born State, Sagebrush State, NV
HAS INSTANCE=> New Hampshire, Granite State, NH
HAS INSTANCE=> New Jersey, Jersey, Garden State, NJ
HAS INSTANCE=> New Mexico, Land of Enchantment, NM
HAS INSTANCE=> New York, New York State, Empire State, NY
HAS INSTANCE=> North Carolina, Old North State, Tar Heel State, NC
HAS INSTANCE=> North Dakota, Peace Garden State, ND
HAS INSTANCE=> Ohio, Buckeye State, OH
HAS INSTANCE=> Oklahoma, Sooner State, OK
HAS INSTANCE=> Oregon, Beaver State, OR
HAS INSTANCE=> Pennsylvania, Keystone State, PA
HAS INSTANCE=> Rhode Island, Little Rhody, Ocean State, RI
HAS INSTANCE=> South Carolina, Palmetto State, SC
HAS INSTANCE=> South Dakota, Coyote State, Mount Rushmore State, SD
HAS INSTANCE=> Tennessee, Volunteer State, TN
HAS INSTANCE=> Texas, Lone-Star State, TX
HAS INSTANCE=> Utah, Beehive State, Mormon State, UT
HAS INSTANCE=> Vermont, Green Mountain State, VT
HAS INSTANCE=> Virginia, Old Dominion, Old Dominion State, VA
HAS INSTANCE=> Washington, Evergreen State, WA
HAS INSTANCE=> West Virginia, Mountain State, WV
HAS INSTANCE=> Wisconsin, Badger State, WI
HAS INSTANCE=> Wyoming, Equality State, WY
Sense 2
operating room, OR, operating theater, operating theatre, surgery
-> hospital room
=> emergency room, ER
=> operating room, OR, operating theater, operating theatre, surgery
=> recovery room
--- Grep of noun or
abator
abbreviator
abdicator
abductor
abettor
abies concolor
abnegator
abominator
abor
abrogator
absorption factor
absorption indicator
abstractor
academic administrator
accelerator
accelerator factor
accentor
acceptor
accommodator
accordion door
accumulator
ace inhibitor
achromatic color
acid-base indicator
activator
actor
actuator
adaptor
adductor
adipose tumor
adjudicator
adjustor
administrator
adulator
adulterator
advisor
advocator
aerator
aerogenerator
african monitor
agglomerator
aggravator
aggregator
aggressor
agitator
air compressor
alexander the liberator
algorithm error
alienator
alienor
all-or-none law
alleviator
alligator
alliterator
allocator
alpha-adrenergic receptor
alpha-adrenoceptor
alpha receptor
alternator
amalgamator
ambassador
american alligator
american federation of labor
amor
amputator
anaphor
ancestor
anchor
andean condor
angiogenesis inhibitor
angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor
angiotensin ii inhibitor
animator
ann arbor
annihilator
annotator
annunciator
anterior
anti-torque rotor
antiberiberi factor
anticipator
antihaemophilic factor
antihemophilic factor
antihemorrhagic factor
antiophthalmic factor
antipernicious anemia factor
antony tudor
applicator
appreciator
appropriator
aqueous humor
arbitrator
arbor
archidiskidon imperator
ardor
aristolochia durior
armor
arrogator
art director
art editor
arteria alveolaris inferior
arteria alveolaris superior
arteria labialis inferior
arteria labialis superior
arteria temporalis anterior
arteria temporalis posterior
articulator
asia minor
asphyxiator
aspirator
assassinator
assessor
asseverator
assignor
assimilator
assistant professor
associate professor
astor
astrantia major
astrogator
athanor
atomic reactor
attenuator
attestator
attestor
attractor
auditor
authenticator
author
autoinjector
aviator
baby doctor
bachelor
back door
backdoor
bailor
ballast resistor
bangor
barn door
barndoor
baroreceptor
barrator
basic color
battle of marston moor
beauty parlor
beggar-my-neighbor
behavior
benefactor
benign tumor
beta-adrenergic receptor
beta-adrenoceptor
beta receptor
bettor
bi-fold door
billiard parlor
black humor
blackamoor
bleach liquor
blood donor
boa constrictor
body armor
body odor
boiling water reactor
bonded labor
boor
boston harbor
brain doctor
brain tumor
breeder reactor
bronchodilator
budorcas taxicolor
business editor
business sector
butterfly collector
bypass capacitor
c major
caladium bicolor
calculator
california condor
calosoma scrutator
camera operator
campaign for governor
camphor
candor
canis major
canis minor
cantor
capacitor
capital of ecuador
captor
car door
car mirror
carburetor
carburettor
cardiac monitor
cargo door
cartridge ejector
cartridge extractor
castor
causal factor
caveat emptor
cavity resonator
celebrator
celestial equator
censor
central processor
cervus unicolor
chador
chain armor
chain reactor
chancellor
change of color
chaotic attractor
character actor
charge-exchange accelerator
chemical reactor
chemoreceptor
chest protector
chinese alligator
chiropractor
chocolate liquor
christian dior
christmas factor
chromatic color
cine projector
cirsium discolor
city editor
claims adjustor
clamor
clangor
clematis versicolor
clotting factor
clusia major
coadjutor
coagulation factor
coagulator
coauthor
cockcroft-walton accelerator
cockcroft and walton accelerator
coconspirator
code of behavior
cofactor
cognitive factor
coin collector
collaborator
collector
collimator
collinsia bicolor
color
coluber constrictor
command sergeant major
commentator
common denominator
common divisor
common factor
communicator
commutator
company operator
competitor
complementary color
compositor
compressor
computer error
computer monitor
conciliator
condor
conductor
confessor
congenator
congressional medal of honor
conjuror
connector
conqueror
conquistador
conscientious objector
conservator
consignor
conspirator
constrictor
constrictor constrictor
constructor
contractor
contributor
convector
conversion factor
convertor
conveyor
cooperator
coordinator
copper color
copy editor
corn liquor
corporate investor
corregidor
corridor
corticium salmonicolor
cottrell precipitator
councillor
counsellor
counselor
counterdemonstrator
countertenor
country doctor
cox-2 inhibitor
creator
creditor
crystal detector
crystal oscillator
cultivator
cunctator
curator
cursor
cursorius cursor
cuspidor
cygnus buccinator
cygnus olor
cystic fibrosis transport regulator
dance floor
data processor
dead metaphor
debitor
debtor
decisive factor
decor
decorator
deems taylor
defalcator
defecator
defector
defense contractor
defibrillator
deflator
deflector
defoliator
demeanor
demodulator
demonstrator
dennis gabor
denominator
department of commerce and labor
department of labor
department of the interior
depilator
depositor
depreciator
depressor
dermacentor
descriptor
detector
determining factor
detonator
detractor
devisor
dictator
diesel motor
differentiator
diffusor
dilator
dior
director
disambiguator
discriminator
disfavor
dishonor
disk error
disorderly behavior
display adaptor
disseminator
dissimulator
distributor
dithered color
divisor
doctor
dolor
donor
door
double door
double standard of sexual behavior
drill instructor
drum major
duchess of windsor
duke of windsor
duplicator
dutch door
ear-nose-and-throat doctor
ear doctor
earth color
earth tremor
east timor
ecuador
editor
educator
edward the confessor
effector
egg-and-anchor
ejaculator
ejector
el libertador
el salvador
elector
electric motor
electric razor
electric refrigerator
electrical distributor
electrolytic capacitor
electron accelerator
electronic fetal monitor
electronic foetal monitor
electronic transistor
electrostatic generator
electrostatic precipitator
elevator
elevator operator
eliminator
elizabeth taylor
emancipator
embassador
emperor
emptor
emulator
endeavor
english professor
enteroceptor
enumerator
eoraptor
epilator
epilepsia major
epilepsia minor
equator
equivalent-binary-digit factor
equivocator
eradicator
error
escalator
essential tremor
estimator
evaluator
ewing's tumor
ex-mayor
excavator
excelsior
excogitator
executive director
executor
exhibitor
existential operator
exmoor
expectorator
expositor
expurgator
extensor
exterior
exterior door
exterminator
exteroceptor
extractor
eye doctor
fabricator
facilitator
factor
false labor
family doctor
fast reactor
favor
felis concolor
fervor
festuca elatior
fetal monitor
fetor
fibroid tumor
field-effect transistor
field of honor
film director
film projector
fire door
first floor
fish doctor
flannery o'connor
flavor
flexor
flight indicator
flight simulator
floor
fluor
flux applicator
fly floor
foetal monitor
foetor
folding door
fomor
food color
food elevator
food processor
foot doctor
fornicator
fraxinus excelsior
freight elevator
french door
front door
front projector
frozen metaphor
fructidor
fudge factor
fuel indicator
full professor
full radiator
fumigator
funeral director
funeral parlor
furor
fusion reactor
gabor
garbage collector
gas-cooled reactor
gator
gene delivery vector
generator
genitor
genus alligator
genus castor
genus dermacentor
genus eoraptor
genus mucor
genus myocastor
genus nestor
genus stentor
genus utahraptor
genus velociraptor
gerardus mercator
gladiator
glamor
glossopsitta versicolor
good humor
governor
grand inquisitor
grantor
grape arbor
grapnel anchor
great attractor
great elector
greatest common divisor
greatest common factor
ground floor
growth factor
growth hormone-releasing factor
growth regulator
guarantor
guard of honor
guest of honor
guvnor
hageman factor
half door
ham actor
hand calculator
hand mirror
harbor
hard liquor
hardware error
hatchback door
heart monitor
hector
henry tudor
herb doctor
heritor
hesitator
heterodyne oscillator
highest common factor
holocanthus tricolor
holy roman emperor
holy terror
honor
horror
horse doctor
house decorator
house of tudor
house of windsor
humor
hybrid vigor
hyla arenicolor
hypothalamic releasing factor
ichor
identity operator
ignitor
ill humor
illustrator
imitator
immunosuppressor
impersonator
impostor
incinerator
incisor
incubator
indicator
induction accelerator
induction of labor
inductor
inferior
infiltrator
inflator
inhalator
inheritor
inhibitor
initiator
injector
innovator
inocor
inoculator
inquisitor
inspector
instigator
instillator
instructor
insulator
integrator
interceptor
intercessor
interior
interior decorator
interior door
interlocutor
intermediator
internal auditor
interoceptor
interrogator
intervenor
intrinsic factor
invalidator
inventor
investigator
investment advisor
investor
invigilator
invigorator
ipomoea tricolor
iridoprocne bicolor
iris versicolor
iron chancellor
jailor
janitor
john jacob astor
john major
john r. major
john roy major
joint author
joseph deems taylor
junction transistor
junior
jupiter fulminator
juror
k-lor
kaochlor
knight bachelor
komondor
konqueror
kor
kwashiorkor
labor
labrador
lachrymator
lacrimator
lake superior
laminator
languor
lanius excubitor
lapidator
laudator
lauritz lebrecht hommel melchior
lauritz melchior
lead-acid accumulator
leading indicator
lector
leg extensor
legislator
lemna minor
lespedeza bicolor
lessor
levator
liberator
lie detector
lieutenant governor
lightning conductor
linear accelerator
linear operator
linkage editor
lipitor
liposomal delivery vector
liquid metal reactor
liquidator
liquor
literal error
litigator
little terror
load factor
lobster thermidor
local oscillator
locator
looking for
lopressor
lord chancellor
lord high chancellor
louis d'or
lubricator
luxor
macgregor
machinator
magnetic equator
maid of honor
main rotor
major
malefactor
malignant tumor
malodor
malt liquor
managing director
managing editor
mandator
manipulator
maniraptor
manor
manual labor
margin of error
markhoor
markhor
marston moor
mary flannery o'connor
mary tudor
massage parlor
masturbator
matador
matron of honor
mayetiola destructor
mayor
medal of honor
mediator
melchior
mentor
mercator
mergus serrator
messidor
metal detector
metaphor
metastatic tumor
meteor
mevacor
mezzanine floor
micrometeor
micronor
microprocessor
microwave linear accelerator
migrator
military advisor
military governor
mine detector
minor
mirror
misbehavior
misdemeanor
mixed metaphor
moderator
monitor
monoamine oxidase inhibitor
monsignor
moor
mooring anchor
mortgagor
mother superior
motivator
motor
movie actor
movie projector
mucor
multiplier factor
multiprocessor
musculus buccinator
musculus pectoralis major
musculus pectoralis minor
musculus rhomboideus major
musculus rhomboideus minor
musculus serratus anterior
musculus serratus posterior
musculus teres major
musculus teres minor
mushroom anchor
music director
mutilator
myocastor
n-type semiconductor
nancy witcher astor
narrator
natator
natural language processor
naucrates ductor
navigator
negotiator
neighbor
nerve growth factor
nestor
newfoundland and labrador
newspaper editor
newsstand operator
newsvendor
newtonian reflector
nickel-cadmium accumulator
nickel-iron accumulator
night terror
nominator
non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor
nonconductor
nonmalignant tumor
nonsolid color
nuclear reactor
nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor
numerator
o'connor
objector
obliterator
obstructor
obturator
occam's razor
ocean floor
ockham's razor
oculomotor
odor
off-axis reflector
offeror
oil color
open door
operator
oppressor
or
or circuit
or gate
orach
orache
oracle
oracle of apollo
oracle of delphi
oradexon
oral
oral cancer
oral cavity
oral communication
oral contraception
oral contraceptive
oral contraceptive pill
oral contract
oral exam
oral examination
oral fissure
oral herpes
oral personality
oral phase
oral poliovirus vaccine
oral presentation
oral roberts
oral sex
oral smear
oral stage
oran
orang
orange
orange-blossom orchid
orange-juice concentrate
orange balsam
orange bat
orange daisy
orange fleabane
orange free state
orange grass
orange group
orange grove
orange hawkweed
orange horseshoe bat
orange juice
orange liqueur
orange marmalade
orange milkweed
orange milkwort
orange mushroom pimple
orange order
orange peel
orange peel fungus
orange pekoe
orange red
orange rind
orange river
orange sneezeweed
orange soda
orange toast
orange tortrix
orange tree
orange yellow
orange zest
orangeade
orangeman
orangeness
orangery
orangewood
orangutan
orangutang
orasone
oration
orator
oratorio
oratory
orb
orb-weaver
orb-weaving spider
orb web
orbiculate leaf
orbignya
orbignya cohune
orbignya martiana
orbignya phalerata
orbignya spesiosa
orbison
orbit
orbit period
orbital cavity
orbital motion
orbital plane
orbital point
orbital rotation
orbitale
orbiter
orca
orchard
orchard apple tree
orchard grass
orchard oriole
orchestia
orchestiidae
orchestra
orchestra pit
orchestral bells
orchestration
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orchid
orchid cactus
orchid family
orchid tree
orchidaceae
orchidaceous plant
orchidales
orchidalgia
orchidectomy
orchiectomy
orchil
orchiopexy
orchis
orchis mascula
orchis papilionaceae
orchis spectabilis
orchitis
orchotomy
orcinus
orcinus orca
orcus
orczy
ord kangaroo rat
ordainer
ordeal
ordeal bean
ordeal tree
order
order-chenopodiales
order acarina
order accipitriformes
order actinaria
order actiniaria
order actinomycetales
order actinomyxidia
order aepyorniformes
order agaricales
order alcyonaria
order alismales
order amoebida
order amoebina
order amphipoda
order anacanthini
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order andreaeales
order anguilliformes
order anoplura
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order aplacophora
order apodes
order apodiformes
order apterygiformes
order arales
order araneae
order araneida
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order book
order branchiura
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order campanulales
order caprimulgiformes
order carnivora
order caryophyllales
order casuariiformes
order casuarinales
order caudata
order cestida
order cetacea
order charadriiformes
order charales
order chelonethida
order chelonia
order chiroptera
order chlorococcales
order chytridiales
order ciconiiformes
order cilioflagellata
order coccidia
order code
order coleoptera
order collembola
order columbiformes
order colymbiformes
order commelinales
order coniferales
order conodonta
order conodontophorida
order coraciiformes
order cordaitales
order corrodentia
order crocodilia
order crocodylia
order cuculiformes
order cycadales
order cycadofilicales
order cyclostomata
order cydippea
order cydippida
order cydippidea
order cypriniformes
order decapoda
order dermaptera
order dermoptera
order diapensiales
order dicranales
order dictyoptera
order dinocerata
order dinoflagellata
order dinornithiformes
order diptera
order discocephali
order ebenales
order edentata
order embiodea
order embioptera
order endomycetales
order entomophthorales
order ephemerida
order ephemeroptera
order equisetales
order ericales
order erysiphales
order eubacteriales
order eubryales
order euphausiacea
order eurotiales
order eurypterida
order exocycloida
order fagales
order falconiformes
order filicales
order foraminifera
order form
order fucales
order gadiformes
order galliformes
order ganoidei
order gaviiformes
order gentianales
order geophilomorpha
order geraniales
order ginkgoales
order gnetales
order graminales
order gregarinida
order gruiformes
order guttiferales
order gymnophiona
order haemosporidia
order haplosporidia
order heliozoa
order helotiales
order hemiptera
order heterosomata
order heterotrichales
order hymenogastrales
order hymenoptera
order hypericales
order hypermastigina
order hypocreales
order hyracoidea
order ichthyosauria
order ictodosauria
order insectivora
order insessores
order isoetales
order isopoda
order isoptera
order isospondyli
order juglandales
order jungermanniales
order lagomorpha
order laminariales
order lechanorales
order lepidodendrales
order lepidoptera
order lichenales
order liliales
order lobata
order loricata
order lycoperdales
order lycopodiales
order lyginopteridales
order madreporaria
order mallophaga
order malvales
order mantophasmatodea
order marattiales
order marchantiales
order marsupialia
order mecoptera
order moniliales
order monotremata
order mucorales
order musales
order myaceae
order mycelia sterilia
order mycoplasmatales
order mycrosporidia
order myricales
order myrtales
order mysidacea
order myxobacterales
order myxobacteria
order myxobacteriales
order myxosporidia
order naiadales
order neuroptera
order nidulariales
order notostraca
order nudibranchia
order octopoda
order odonata
order oedogoniales
order of business
order of magnitude
order of our lady of mount carmel
order of payment
order of saint benedict
order of the day
order of the purple heart
order oleales
order ophioglossales
order opiliones
order opuntiales
order orchidales
order ornithischia
order orthoptera
order ostariophysi
order osteoglossiformes
order ostracodermi
order palmales
order pandanales
order papaverales
order paper
order parietales
order passeriformes
order pectinibranchia
order pediculati
order pedipalpi
order pelecaniformes
order pelycosauria
order perciformes
order percomorphi
order perissodactyla
order peronosporales
order pezizales
order phalangida
order phallales
order phasmatodea
order phasmida
order pholidota
order picariae
order piciformes
order piperales
order plantaginales
order platyctenea
order plecoptera
order plectognathi
order pleuronectiformes
order plumbaginales
order podicipediformes
order podicipitiformes
order polemoniales
order polygonales
order polymastigina
order polypodiales
order primates
order primulales
order proboscidea
order procellariiformes
order proteales
order protura
order pseudomonadales
order pseudoscorpiones
order pseudoscorpionida
order psilophytales
order psilotales
order psittaciformes
order psocoptera
order pterosauria
order pulmonata
order pycnogonida
order radiolaria
order rajiformes
order ranales
order ranunculales
order raptores
order rhamnales
order rheiformes
order rhoeadales
order rhynchocephalia
order rickettsiales
order rodentia
order rosales
order rubiales
order salicales
order salientia
order santalales
order sapindales
order saprolegniales
order sarcosporidia
order sarraceniales
order saurischia
order sauropterygia
order scandentia
order sclerodermatales
order scleroparei
order scorpionida
order scrophulariales
order secotiales
order selaginellales
order siluriformes
order siphonaptera
order siphonophora
order sirenia
order solenichthyes
order solenogastres
order spatangoida
order sphaeriales
order sphaerocarpales
order sphagnales
order sphenisciformes
order spirochaetales
order squamata
order stegocephalia
order stereospondyli
order stomatopoda
order strigiformes
order struthioniformes
order synentognathi
order taxales
order temnospondyli
order testacea
order testudinata
order testudines
order tetraodontiformes
order thecodontia
order therapsida
order thymelaeales
order thysanoptera
order thysanura
order tinamiformes
order torpediniformes
order tremellales
order trichoptera
order trogoniformes
order tuberales
order tubulidentata
order tulostomatales
order ulvales
order umbellales
order uredinales
order urodella
order uropygi
order urticales
order ustilaginales
order volvocales
order xiphosura
order xyridales
order zeomorphi
order zygnemales
order zygnematales
ordered series
orderer
ordering
orderliness
orderly
orderly sergeant
ordinal
ordinal number
ordinance
ordinand
ordinariness
ordinary
ordinary annuity
ordinary bicycle
ordinary care
ordinary life insurance
ordinary shares
ordinate
ordination
ordnance
ordnance store
ordnance survey
ordovician
ordovician period
ordure
ore
ore bed
ore dressing
ore processing
oread
oreamnos
oreamnos americanus
orectolobidae
orectolobus
orectolobus barbatus
oregano
oregon
oregon alder
oregon ash
oregon cedar
oregon crab apple
oregon fir
oregon grape
oregon holly grape
oregon jargon
oregon larch
oregon lily
oregon maple
oregon myrtle
oregon oak
oregon pine
oregon white oak
oregonian
oreide
oreo
oreo cookie
oreopteris
oreopteris limbosperma
oreortyx
oreortyx picta palmeri
orestes
orff
organ
organ-grinder
organ donor
organ loft
organ of corti
organ of hearing
organ of speech
organ pipe
organ stop
organ transplant
organdie
organdy
organelle
organic
organic brain syndrome
organic chemistry
organic compound
organic disorder
organic evolution
organic fertiliser
organic fertilizer
organic law
organic light-emitting diode
organic phenomenon
organic process
organic structure
organicism
organification
organisation
organiser
organism
organist
organization
organization chart
organization expense
organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons
organization man
organization of american states
organization of petroleum-exporting countries
organization of the oppressed on earth
organized crime
organized labor
organized religion
organizer
organon
organophosphate
organophosphate nerve agent
organs
organza
orgasm
orgy
oriel
oriel window
orient
oriental
oriental alabaster
oriental arborvitae
oriental beetle
oriental bittersweet
oriental black mushroom
oriental bush cherry
oriental cherry
oriental cockroach
oriental garlic
oriental person
oriental plane
oriental poppy
oriental roach
oriental scops owl
oriental sore
oriental spruce
oriental studies
orientalism
orientalist
orientation
orientation course
orifice
oriflamme
origami
origanum
origanum dictamnus
origanum majorana
origanum vulgare
origen
origin
original
original sin
originalism
originality
origination
origination fee
originator
orinasal
orinasal phone
orinase
orinoco
orinoco river
oriole
oriolidae
oriolus
oriolus oriolus
orion
orison
orissa
orites
orites excelsa
oriya
orizaba
orkney islands
orlando
orlando di lasso
orleanais
orleanism
orleanist
orleans
orlon
orlop
orlop deck
orly
orly group
ormandy
ormazd
ormer
ormolu
ormosia
ormosia coarctata
ormosia monosperma
ormuzd
ornament
ornamental
ornamentalism
ornamentalist
ornamentation
ornateness
orneriness
ornithine
ornithischia
ornithischian
ornithischian dinosaur
ornithogalum
ornithogalum pyrenaicum
ornithogalum thyrsoides
ornithogalum umbellatum
ornithologist
ornithology
ornithomimid
ornithomimida
ornithopod
ornithopod dinosaur
ornithopoda
ornithopter
ornithorhynchidae
ornithorhynchus
ornithorhynchus anatinus
ornithosis
orobanchaceae
orogeny
orography
oroide
orology
orono
orontium
orontium aquaticum
oropharynx
orozco
orphan
orphan site
orphanage
orphanhood
orphans' asylum
orphenadrine
orpheus
orphrey
orpiment
orpin
orpine
orpington
orr
orrery
orris
orrisroot
orson welles
ortalis
ortega
ortega y gasset
orthicon
orthilia
orthoboric acid
orthochorea
orthochromatic film
orthoclase
orthodontia
orthodontic braces
orthodontic treatment
orthodontics
orthodontist
orthodonture
orthodox catholic church
orthodox church
orthodox jew
orthodox judaism
orthodox sleep
orthodoxy
orthoepist
orthoepy
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orthography
orthomorphic projection
orthomyxovirus
orthopaedics
orthopaedist
orthopedics
orthopedist
orthophosphate
orthophosphoric acid
orthophosphorous acid
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orthoptera
orthopteran
orthopteron
orthopterous insect
orthoptics
orthoptist
orthoscope
orthostatic hypotension
orthotomus
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ortilis vetula macalli
ortolan
ortolan bunting
ortygan
orudis
orudis kt
orumiyeh
oruvail
orville wright
orwell
orycteropodidae
orycteropus
orycteropus afer
oryctolagus
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oryx
oryx gazella
oryza
oryza sativa
oryzomys
oryzomys palustris
oryzopsis
oryzopsis hymenoides
oryzopsis miliacea
orzo
oscillator
osculator
osmoreceptor
outboard motor
outside door
outside mirror
overhead projector
ovipositor
oxidation-reduction indicator
p-n-p transistor
p-type semiconductor
pallor
pamelor
papillary tumor
parabolic mirror
parabolic reflector
paraboloid reflector
parlor
parquet floor
pars anterior
particle accelerator
particle detector
party favor
parus bicolor
pastor
pavior
pearl harbor
pectoralis major
pectoralis minor
peculator
penetrator
people of color
perambulator
percolator
percussor
peronospora destructor
perpetrator
persecutor
person of color
petit juror
petty juror
phacelia minor
philohela minor
phosphor
photocoagulator
picador
pictor
pier mirror
pinicola enucleator
pinwheel wind collector
pipe major
pizza parlor
plaintiff in error
plantago major
plasminogen activator
plate armor
play-actor
playactor
plessor
plexor
pocket calculator
point of honor
pollinator
poor
possessor
poster color
posterior
postulator
pot liquor
praetor
pre-emptor
precentor
preceptor
precipitator
precursor
predator
predecessor
predicator
predictor
preemptor
prehensor
premature labor
president taylor
pressor
pressurized water reactor
prestidigitator
pretor
prevaricator
price floor
priest-doctor
primary color
prime factor
primogenitor
primula elatior
principal investigator
prior
private instructor
private investigator
privilege of the floor
processor
procrastinator
proctor
procurator
procyon lotor
professor
progenitor
prognosticator
programming error
projector
promisor
promulgator
pronator
propagator
propellor
proprietor
proprioceptor
prosecutor
prospector
protease inhibitor
protector
prothrombin accelerator
proton accelerator
protractor
public prosecutor
publius cornelius scipio africanus major
pulse generator
purple emperor
purveyor
pyrola minor
quaestor
quartz oscillator
quercus bicolor
radiator
radio operator
radio reflector
radius vector
rancor
random number generator
raptor
ratiocinator
razor
reactor
realtor
rearview mirror
receptor
rector
rectus inferior
rectus superior
redactor
reenactor
reflection factor
reflector
refrigerator
refuse collector
regius professor
regulator
reign of terror
relaxation behavior
releasing factor
remunerator
renovator
rent collector
repressor
republic of ecuador
republic of el salvador
rescriptor
research director
resistor
resonator
respirator
resuscitator
retaliator
retractor
reverse transcriptase inhibitor
revolving door
rh factor
rhesus factor
rheumatoid factor
rigor
ring armor
ring of color
robert macgregor
roman emperor
room decorator
rose-colored pastor
rotary actuator
rotor
rounding error
rubor
ruminator
rumor
run-time error
runtime error
rust inhibitor
safe harbor
safety factor
safety razor
sailor
saint edward the confessor
sales demonstrator
salix discolor
salvador
salvor
san salvador
sand tumor
sarracenia minor
sartor
savior
savor
scale factor
scale of c major
scipio africanus major
screen actor
screen door
sculptor
sea anchor
sea floor
secretary of commerce and labor
secretary of labor
secretary of the interior
secretor
sector
security director
segregator
seignior
selective-serotonin reuptake inhibitor
selector
seleucus i nicator
semantic error
semiconductor
senator
senhor
senior
senor
sense of humor
sensor
sensory receptor
separator
sequenator
sergeant major
serratus anterior
serratus posterior
serratus posterior inferior
serratus posterior superior
service door
service elevator
servitor
settlor
sewing-machine operator
sheet anchor
shipwreck survivor
shop floor
side door
signior
signor
simulator
sinbad the sailor
skin color
skin doctor
skin tumor
slide projector
sliding door
snake doctor
snuff-color
software error
solar collector
solicitor
solidago bicolor
sopor
sorghum bicolor
sparaxis tricolor
spectator
spectral color
speculator
speed indicator
spike suppressor
spin doctor
splendor
sponsor
spoor
sports commentator
sports editor
spreading factor
squalor
st. edward the confessor
stable factor
stage director
stage door
stamp collector
starter motor
starting motor
state senator
stator
steganopus tricolor
stentor
stepping motor
sternutator
stertor
storm door
straight razor
strange attractor
stressor
stretch receptor
stridor
stupor
subcontractor
subeditor
subgenus pastor
subjugator
successor
succor
sudor
suit of armor
suitor
sun parlor
sun protection factor
sun visor
superior
supervisor
supinator
suppressor
surge protector
surge suppressor
surveyor
survivor
suspensor
swing door
swinging door
switchboard operator
synchronous motor
syncopator
syndicator
synesthetic metaphor
syntax error
system administrator
system error
tabor
tabulator
tail rotor
tailor
tambocor
tandoor
tangor
tax assessor
tax collector
taylor
tea parlor
technicolor
telegraph operator
telephone operator
television monitor
temblor
tenor
tensor
teres major
teres minor
tergiversator
terminator
terror
testator
text editor
thalassaemia major
thalassemia major
theater director
theatre director
thermal reactor
thermal resistor
thermidor
thermistor
thermonuclear reactor
thermoreceptor
thermoregulator
thor
threshing floor
throat protector
thyme camphor
thyrotropin-releasing factor
tibialis anterior
tibialis posterior
ticket collector
time-scale factor
timor
tissue plasminogen activator
titrator
toll collector
tongue depressor
tooth doctor
tor
toreador
tormentor
torpor
tort-feasor
tortfeasor
totalisator
totalizator
trace detector
tractor
trading floor
trafficator
traitor
transactor
transducing vector
transferor
transgressor
transistor
translator
trap door
tremor
trial and error
trick or treat
tricolor
trimming capacitor
truncation error
trustor
tudor
tumor
tumor necrosis factor
tumour necrosis factor
turbogenerator
turgor
turn indicator
tutor
tv monitor
typographical error
tyrosine kinase inhibitor
ulan bator
umbrina roncador
uniform resource locator
universal donor
universal resource locator
urinator
ursa major
ursa minor
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uxor
vaccinator
vacillator
valor
valuator
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variable resistor
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vasoconstrictor
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vector
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vena epigastrica inferior
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vena labialis superior
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vendor
venerator
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vis major
viscountess astor
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vitreous humor
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voltage regulator
wage floor
waist anchor
wallis warfield windsor
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water-cooled reactor
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watercolor
weekend warrior
what for
wicket door
william the conqueror
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wind generator
windsor
wiper motor
witch doctor
woman's doctor
word of honor
word processor
writ of error
x-or circuit
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zocor
zone of interior
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