1. A covering. 2. Either of two folds of skin that can be moved to cover or open the eye; hence eyelids. Also fig. **lids.**
1. A loose pliable covering for the head and neck, often attached to a robe or jacket. 2. Something resembling this in shape or use. 3. In animals, a conformation of parts (as in the cobra and the hooded seal), or arrangement of colour about the head or neck, resembling or suggesting a hood. hoods.
1. Came in rough contact while moving; pushed and shoved. 2. Contended with. 3. Unsettled; disturbed. jostling.
1.* Fig. The deepest feelings of love, affection or compassion. *heart-strings".
1. Flickering lightly over or on a surface. 2. Having a gentle glow; luminous.
1. Hammered or struck repeatedly. 2. Defeated, vanquished, baffled, overcome.
1. Passed the tongue over or along something. Also fig. **2. Lapped or flickered at like a tongue; of waves, flame, light, etc. storm-licked.**
1. Portable barriers over which contestants must leap in certain running races. 2.* Fig.* Obstacles or difficulties.
1. The dry external covering of certain fruits or seeds, esp. of an ear of corn. 2. Any worthless outer covering. husks.
1. The state or quality of being divine. 2. A deity, such as a god or goddess; the Supreme Being. 3. The nature of a deity or the state of being divine. 4. A being having divine attributes, ranking below God but above humans. divinity"s, divinities.
1. To be inadequate or insufficient; fall short. 2. To fall short of success or achievement in something expected, attempted, desired, or approved. 3. To dwindle, pass, or die away. 4. To decline, as in strength or effectiveness; fig. of the heart. 5. Of some expected or usual resource: To prove of no use or help to. 6. Of a material thing: To break down under strain or pressure. fails, failed, failed.
1. To demonstrate or prove to be just, right, or valid. 2. To defend or uphold as warranted or well-grounded. justifies, justified, justifying.
1. To give a push or shake to; nudge. 2. To move with a jolting rhythm; to move by shoving, bumping, or jerking; jar. jogs.
1. To hesitate or waver in action, purpose, intent, etc. 2. To move unsteadily; stumble. 3. To speak hesitatingly or brokenly. 4. To move unsteadily as a faltering breeze. falters, faltered, faltering, faltering-limbed.
1. Wearing or covered with or as if with a hood, having a hood on. 2.* Fig.* Covered up, concealed.
A being of the lower vital plane who by the medium of a living human being or by some other means or agency is able to materialise itself sufficiently so as to appear and act in a visible form or speak with an audible voice or, without so appearing, to move about material things, e.g., furniture or to materialise objects or to shift them from place to place. This accounts for what are called poltergeists , phenomena of stone-throwing, tree-inhabiting Bhutas, and other well-known phenomena.
abounds ::: present in overflowing measure; plentiful; prevails widely.
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.
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
accepted ::: 1. Received as offered; well-received; approved.
" . . . a compromise is not a solution; it only salves over the difficulty and in the end increases the complexity of the problem and multiplies its issues.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Action is a resultant of the energy of the being, but this energy is not of one sole kind; the Consciousness-Force of the Spirit manifests itself in many kinds of energies: there are inner activities of mind, activities of life, of desire, passion, impulse, character, activities of the senses and the body, a pursuit of truth and knowledge, a pursuit of beauty, a pursuit of ethical good or evil, a pursuit of power, love, joy, happiness, fortune, success, pleasure, life-satisfactions of all kinds, life-enlargement, a pursuit of individual or collective objects, a pursuit of the health, strength, capacity, satisfaction of the body.” The Life Divine*
adj. 1. Having dropped or come down from a higher place, from an upright position, or from a higher level, degree, amount, quality, value, number. 2. Having sunk in reputation or honour; degraded. 3. Overthrown, destroyed or conquered, esp. of those who have died in battle. (Also, pp. of fall**.**)
adjourned ::: deferred, postponed; held over to another time.
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*
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.**
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.
"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
aesthetic ::: pertaining to a sense of the beautiful or pleasing; characterized by a love of beauty; tasteful, of refined taste.
affections ::: emotions; kind feelings, love, fondness, loving attachment.
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.
a flexible board from which a dive may be executed, secured at one end and projecting over water at the other. Also fig.
*[Agni]. Sri Aurobindo: "Agni is the leader of the sacrifice and protects it in the great journey against the powers of darkness. The knowledge and purpose of this divine Puissance can be entirely trusted; he is the friend and lover of the soul and will not betray it to evil gods. Even for the man sitting far off in the night, enveloped by the darkness of the human ignorance, this flame[Agni] is a light which, when it is perfectly kindled and in proportion as it mounts higher and higher, enlarges itself into the vast light of the Truth. Flaming upward to heaven to meet the divine Dawn, it rises through the vital or nervous mid-world and through our mental skies and enters at last the Paradise of Light, its own supreme home above where joyous for ever in the eternal Truth that is the foundation of the sempiternal Bliss the shining Immortals sit in their celestial sessions and drink the wine of the infinite beatitude.” *The Secret of the Veda
alcoves ::: recessed spaces, as bowers in a garden; arched recesses or niches in the wall of any structure.
". . . a limited consciousness growing out of nescience is the source of error, a personal attachment to the limitation and the error born of it the source of falsity, a wrong consciousness governed by the life-ego the source of evil. But it is evident that their relative existence is only a phenomenon thrown up by the cosmic Force in its drive towards evolutionary self-expression.” The Life Divine
::: "All conscious being is one and indivisible in itself, but in manifestation it becomes a complex rhythm, a scale of harmonies, a hierarchy of states or movements.” The Upanishads
"All depends on the meaning you attach to words used; it is a matter of nomenclature. Ordinarily, one says a man has intellect if he can think well; the nature and process and field of the thought do not matter. If you take intellect in that sense, then you can say that intellect has different strata, and Ford belongs to one stratum of intellect, Einstein to another — Ford has a practical and executive business intellect, Einstein a scientific discovering and theorising intellect. But Ford too in his own field theorises, invents, discovers. Yet would you call Ford an intellectual or a man of intellect? I would prefer to use for the general faculty of mind the word intelligence. Ford has a great and forceful practical intelligence, keen, quick, successful, dynamic. He has a brain that can deal with thoughts also, but even there his drive is towards practicality. He believes in rebirth (metempsychosis), for instance, not for any philosophic reason, but because it explains life as a school of experience in which one gathers more and more experience and develops by it. Einstein has, on the other hand, a great discovering scientific intellect, not, like Marconi, a powerful practical inventive intelligence for the application of scientific discovery. All men have, of course, an ‘intellect" of a kind; all, for instance, can discuss and debate (for which you say rightly intellect is needed); but it is only when one rises to the realm of ideas and moves freely in it that you say, ‘This man has an intellect".” Letters on Yoga
::: "All energies put into activity — thought, speech, feeling, act — go to constitute Karma. These things help to develop the nature in one direction or another, and the nature and its actions and reactions produce their consequences inward and outward: they also act on others and create movements in the general sum of forces which can return upon oneself sooner or later. Thoughts unexpressed can also go out as forces and produce their effects. It is a mistake to think that a thought or will can have effect only when it is expressed in speech or act: the unspoken thought, the unexpressed will are also active energies and can produce their own vibrations, effects or reactions.” Letters on Yoga*
"All life is only a lavish and manifold opportunity given us to discover, realise , express the Divine.” Social and Political Thought
"All phenomenal existence resolves itself into Force, into a movement of energy that assumes more or less material, more or less gross or subtle forms for self-presentation to its own experience.” The Life Divine
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.**
"All true law is the right motion and process of a reality, an energy or power of being in action fulfilling its own inherent movement self-implied in its own truth of existence. This law may be inconscient and its working appear to be mechanical, — that is the character or, at least, the appearance of law in material Nature: it may be a conscious energy, freely determined in its action by the consciousness in the being aware of its own imperative of truth, aware of its plastic possibilities of self-expression of that truth, aware, always in the whole and at each moment in the detail, of the actualities it has to realise; this is the figure of the law of the Spirit.” *The Life Divine
"Always keep in touch with the Divine Force. The best thing for you is to do that simply and allow it to do its own work; wherever necessary, it will take hold of the inferior energies and purify them; at other times it will empty you of them and fill you with itself. But if you let your mind take the lead and discuss and decide what is to be done, you will lose touch with the Divine Force and the lower energies will begin to act for themselves and all go into confusion and a wrong movement.” Letters on Yoga
A mental formation stamped by the thoughts and feelings of a departed human being on the atmosphere of a place or locality, wandering about there or repeating itself, till that formation either exhausts itself or is dissolved by one means or another. This is the explanation of such phenomena as the haunted house in which the scenes attending or surrounding or preceding a murder are repeated over and over again and many other similar phenomena.
amorous ::: inclined or disposed to love; in love, enamoured, fond. 2. Showing or expressing love. 3. Being in love; enamoured.
amour ::: love or affection; a love-affair, courtship. amour"s, amour-song.
anarchy ::: a state of society without government or law ; lawlessness, confusion, chaos, disorder.
"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
anew ::: 1. Over again; again; once more. 2. In a new form or manner different from the previous.
::: "An executive cosmic force shapes us and dictates through our temperament and environment and mentality so shaped, through our individualised formulation of the cosmic energies, our actions and their results. Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us; our ego-sense gathers around itself, refers to itself all this flow of natural activities. It is cosmic Force, it is Nature that forms the thought, imposes the will, imparts the impulse. Our body, mind and ego are a wave of that sea of force in action and do not govern it, but by it are governed and directed.” The Synthesis of Yoga —**cosmic forces.**
**Angel of the Way *Sri Aurobindo: "Love fulfilled does not exclude knowledge, but itself brings knowledge; and the completer the knowledge, the richer the possibility of love. ‘By Bhakti" says the Lord in the Gita ‘shall a man know Me in all my extent and greatness and as I am in the principles of my being, and when he has known Me in the principles of my being, then he enters into Me." Love without knowledge is a passionate and intense, but blind, crude, often dangerous thing, a great power, but also a stumbling-block; love, limited in knowledge, condemns itself in its fervour and often by its very fervour to narrowness; but love leading to perfect knowledge brings the infinite and absolute union. Such love is not inconsistent with, but rather throws itself with joy into divine works; for it loves God and is one with him in all his being, and therefore in all beings, and to work for the world is then to feel and fulfil multitudinously one"s love for God. This is the trinity of our powers, [work, knowledge, love] the union of all three in God to which we arrive when we start on our journey by the path of devotion with Love for the Angel of the Way to find in the ecstasy of the divine delight of the All-Lover"s being the fulfilment of ours, its secure home and blissful abiding-place and the centre of its universal radiation.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
animates ::: 1. Gives life to; makes alive; breathes life into. 2. To move or stir to action; motivate.
::: "An incarnation is something more, something special and individual to the individual being. It is the substitution of the Person of a divine being for the human person and an infiltration of it into all the movements so that there is a dynamic personal change in all of them and in the whole nature; not merely a change of the character of the consciousness or general surrender into its hands, but a subtle intimate personal change. Even when there is an incarnation from the birth, the human elements have to be taken up, but when there is a descent, there is a total conscious substitution.” Letters on Yoga
an inn or hotel providing overnight lodging for travelers.
a piece of plate armour partially or completely covering the front of the torso.
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.
appalled ::: filled or overcome with horror, consternation, or fear, resulting in the loss of courage in the face of something dreadful.
apparelled ::: adorned; covered; decorated; clothed. apparels.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Art is a living harmony and beauty that must be expressed in all the movements of existence. This manifestation of beauty and harmony is part of the Divine realisation upon earth, perhaps even its greatest part.” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 3.
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
::: "As for immortality, it cannot come if there is attachment to the body, — for it is only by living in the immortal part of oneself which is unidentified with the body and bringing down its consciousness and force into the cells that it can come. I speak of course of yogic means. The scientists now hold that it is (theoretically at least) possible to discover physical means by which death can be overcome, but that would mean only a prolongation of the present consciousness in the present body. Unless there is a change of consciousness and change of functionings it would be a very small gain.” Letters on Yoga
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.
aspiration ::: 1. A strong desire for high achievement. 2. A steadfast longing for something above oneself. **aspiration"s.
aspire ::: to have a fixed desire, longing, or ambition for something at present above one; to seek to attain, yearn. aspires, aspired, aspiring.
"A spiritual knowledge, moved to arrive at the true Self in us, must reject, as the traditional way of knowledge rejects, all misleading appearances. It must discover that the body is not our self, our foundation of existence; it is a sensible form of the Infinite.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"As supramental Truth is not merely a sublimation of our mental ideas, so Divine Love is not merely a sublimation of human emotions; it is a different consciousness, with a different quality, movement and substance.” Letters on Yoga
". . . as there is a constant dynamic energy in movement in the universe which takes various material forms more or less subtle or gross, so in each physical body or object, plant or animal or metal, there is stored and active the same constant dynamic force; a certain interchange of these two gives us the phenomena which we associate with the idea of life. It is this action that we recognise as the action of Life-Energy and that which so energises itself is the Life-Force. Mind-Energy, Life-Energy, material Energy are different dynamisms of one World-Force.” The Life Divine
"As there is a cosmic Self and Spirit pervading and upholding the universe and its beings, so too there is a cosmic Force that moves all things, and on this original cosmic Force depend and act many cosmic Forces that are its powers or arise as forms of its universal action.” The Life Divine
astonished ::: 1. Amazed, filled with sudden and overpowering surprise or wonder. 2. Filled with consternation; dismayed. astonishing.
"At every turn it is the divine Reality which we can discover behind that which we are yet compelled by the nature of the superficial consciousness in which we dwell to call undivine and in a sense are right in using that apellation; for these appearances are a veil over the Divine Perfection, a veil necessary for the present, but not at all the true and complete figure.” The Life Divine
"A third step is to find out that there is something in him other than his instrumental mind, life and body, not only an immortal ever-developing individual soul that supports his nature but an eternal immutable self and spirit, and to learn what are the categories of his spiritual being, until he discovers that all in him is an expression of the spirit and distinguishes the link between his lower and his higher existence; thus he sets out to remove his constitutional self-ignorance. Discovering self and spirit he discovers God; he finds out that there is a Self beyond the temporal: he comes to the vision of that Self in the cosmic consciousness as the divine Reality behind Nature and this world of beings; his mind opens to the thought or the sense of the Absolute of whom self and the individual and the cosmos are so many faces; the cosmic, the egoistic, the original ignorance begin to lose the rigidness of their hold upon him.” The Life Divine
autarchy ::: absolute rule or power; despotism; absolute sovereignty.
authorises ::: gives permission for, formal approval to; sanctions or approves.
autocracy ::: unlimited authority, power or influence; absolute government. autocracies.
autonomy ::: 1. Independence or freedom, as of the will or one"s actions. 2. Self-government. autonomies.
awe ::: an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like.
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
bald ::: lacking natural growth or covering as bare trees, landscape, etc.
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.
barrage ::: an overwhelming quantity or explosion as of artillery fire, words, blows, or criticisms.
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.
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.
"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
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.
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*
beloved ::: n. 1. A person who is dearly loved. beloved"s, Beloved, Beloved"s. *adj. *2. Dearly loved.
bestrides ::: towers over, dominates, as a victor over the fallen.
binding ::: n. **1. The covering within which the pages of a book are abound. adj. 2.* Fig.* Commanding adherence to a commitment, obligatory.
bird ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Bird in the Veda is the symbol, very frequently, of the soul liberated and upsoaring, at other times of energies so liberated and upsoaring, winging upwards towards the heights of our being, winging widely with a free flight, no longer involved in the ordinary limited movement or labouring gallop of the Life-energy, the Horse, Ashwa.” *The Secret of the Veda
blind ::: adj. 1. Unable to see; lacking the sense of sight; sightless. Also fig. 2. Unwilling or unable to perceive or understand. 3. Lacking all consciousness or awareness. 4. Not having or based on reason or intelligence; absolute and unquestioning. 5. Not characterized or determined by reason or control. 6. Purposeless; fortuitous, random. 7. Undiscriminating; heedless; reckless. 8. Enveloped in darkness; dark, dim, obscure. 9. Dense enough to form a screen. 10. Covered or concealed from sight; hidden from immediate view. 11. Having no openings or passages for light; (a window or door) walled up. blindest, half-blind. v. 12. To deprive of sight permanently or temporarily. 13. To make sightless momentarily; dazzle. blinded.* n. 14. A blind person, esp. as pl., those who are blind. 15. Fig.* Any thing or action intended to conceal one"s real intention; a pretence, a pretext; subterfuge.
blind alley ::: 1. A road, alley, etc. that is open only at one end. 2. A position or situation offering no hope of progress or improvement. 3. A situation in which no further progress can be made.
blundered ::: moved or acted blindly, stupidly, or without direction or steady guidance.
"Body is the outward sign and lowest basis of the apparent division which Nature plunging into ignorance and self-nescience makes the starting-point for the recovery of unity by the individual soul, unity even in the midst of the most exaggerated forms of her multiple consciousness.” The Life Divine
bond ::: 1. Something, such as a fetter, cord, or band, that binds, ties, or fastens things together. Also fig. 2. A duty, promise, or other obligation by which one is bound. 3. Something that binds one to a certain circumstance or line of behaviour. 4. A uniting force or tie; a link. 5. A binding agreement; a covenant. bonds.
bouge ::: fr. A hovel, dive, slum, or disreputable place.
break ::: v. 1. To destroy by or as if by shattering or crushing. 2. To force or make a way through (a barrier, etc.). 3. To vary or disrupt the uniformity or continuity of. 4. To overcome or put an end to. 5. To destroy or interrupt a regularity, uniformity, continuity, or arrangement of; interrupt. 6. To intrude upon; interrupt a conversation, etc. 7. To discontinue or sever an association, an agreement, or a relationship. **8. To overcome or wear down the spirit, strength, or resistance of. 9. (usually followed by in, into or out). 10. To filter or penetrate as sunlight into a room. 11. To come forth suddenly. 12. To utter suddenly; to express or start to express an emotion, mood, etc. 13. Said of waves, etc. when they dash against an obstacle, or topple over and become surf or broken water in the shallows. 14. To part the surface of water, as a ship or a jumping fish. breaks, broke, broken, breaking.* *n. 15.** An interruption or a disruption in continuity or regularity.
breathe ::: 1. To be alive; live. 2. To take air, oxygen, etc., into the lungs and expel it; inhale and exhale; respire. Also fig. 3. To control the outgoing breath in producing voice and speech sounds. 4. To utter, especially quietly. 5. To make apparent or manifest; express; suggest. 6. To exhale (something); emit. 7. To impart as if by breathing; instil. 8. To move gently or blow lightly, as air. breathes, breathed, breathing. ::: To breathe upon fig. To taint; corrupt.
bridge ::: n. 1. A structure spanning and providing passage over a gap or barrier, such as a river or roadway. bridges, bridge-like. v. 2. To build or provide a bridge over something; span. Also fig. 3. To join by or as if by a bridge; link, connect. bridged, bridging.
brocade ::: a thick, rich fabric woven with a raised design, often using gold or silver threads. brocades.
broken ::: 1. Forcibly separated into two or more pieces; fractured. 2. Crushed in spirit or temper; discouraged; overcome. 3. Incomplete. 4. Interrupted disturbed; disconnected. 5. Torn; ruptured. (Also pp. of break.)
brooding ::: 1. *Fig. Protecting (young) by or as if by covering with the wings. *2. Meditating or dwelling deeply on a thought.
burden ::: n. 1. A weight that is to be borne; a load. 2. Something that is emotionally difficult to bear. v. **3. To load or overload. 4.** To oppress; tax; with responsibility, etc.
buried ::: v. 1. Deposited or hid under ground; covered up with earth or other material. Also fig. **2. Plunged or sunk deep in, so as to be covered from view; put out of sight. adj. 3. Put in the ground or in a tomb; interred. 4. Consigned to a position of obscurity, inaccessibility, or inaction. 5.* Fig.* Consigned to oblivion, put out of the way, abandoned and forgotten.
"But in a higher than our present mental consciousness we find that this duality is only a phenomenal appearance. The highest and real truth of existence is the one Spirit, the supreme Soul, Purushottama, and it is the power of being of this Spirit which manifests itself in all that we experience as universe. This universal Nature is not a lifeless, inert or unconscious mechanism, but informed in all its movements by the universal Spirit. The mechanism of its process is only an outward appearance and the reality is the Spirit creating or manifesting its own being by its own power of being in all that is in Nature. Soul and Nature in us too are only a dual appearance of the one existence.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
"But man also has a life-mind, a vital mentality which is an instrument of desire: this is not satisfied with the actual, it is a dealer in possibilities; it has the passion for novelty and is seeking always to extend the limits of experience for the satisfaction of desire, for enjoyment, for an enlarged self-affirmation and aggrandisement of its terrain of power and profit. It desires, enjoys, possesses actualities, but it hunts also after unrealised possibilities, is ardent to materialise them, to possess and enjoy them also. It is not satisfied with the physical and objective only, but seeks too a subjective, an imaginative, a purely emotive satisfaction and pleasure.” *The Life Divine
". . . but this divine grace . . . is not simply a mysterious flow or touch coming from above, but the all-pervading act of a divine presence which we come to know within as the power of the highest Self and Master of our being entering into the soul and so possessing it that we not only feel it close to us and pressing upon our mortal nature, but live in its law, know that law, possess it as the whole power of our spiritualised nature.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"By Force I mean not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above — as peace comes from above and wideness also, so does this Force (Shakti). Nothing, not even thinking or meditating can be done without some action of Force. The Force I speak of is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, all that has to be done in the yoga, for removal of hostile forces and the wrong movements — it is also of course for external work, whether great or small in appearance does not matter — if that is part of the Divine Will. I do not mean any personal force egoistic or rajasic.” Letters on Yoga
". . . by knowledge we mean in yoga not thought or ideas about spiritual things but psychic understanding from within and spiritual illumination from above.” Letters on Yoga
calm ::: n. 1. Serenity; tranquillity; peace. 2. Nearly or completely motionless as a condition of no wind. Calm, Calm"s, calms, calmness. adj. 3. Not excited or agitated; composed; tranquil; 4. Without rough motion; still or nearly still. calmer, calm-lipped, stone-calm. *adv. calmly.
Sri Aurobindo: "Calm is a still unmoved condition which no disturbance can affect — it is a less negative condition than quiet.” Letters on Yoga*
"Calm is a positive tranquillity which can exist in spite of superficial disturbances.” *Letters on Yoga
"Calm is a strong and positive quietude, firm and solid — ordinary quietude is mere negation, simply the absence of disturbance.” *Letters on Yoga
"But more powerful still is the giving up of the fruit of one"s works, because that immediately destroys all causes of disturbance and brings and preserves automatically an inner calm and peace, and calm and peace are the foundation on which all else becomes perfect and secure in possession by the tranquil spirit.” Essays on the Gita
The Mother: "Calm is self-possessed strength, quiet and conscious energy, mastery of the impulses, control over the unconscious reflexes.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14*.
canopy ::: a high overarching covering, such as the sky.
cap ::: a special head covering worn to indicate rank, occupation, or membership in a particular group.
cape ::: a sleeveless outer garment fastened at the throat and worn hanging over the shoulders.
capital ::: 1. A town or city that is the official seat of government in a political entity, such as a state or nation. 2. Wealth in the form of money or property.
capitol ::: 1. A building occupied by a state legislature. 2. A building that is the seat of government. Also fig.
care ::: n. **1. A burdened state of mind, as that arising from heavy responsibilities; worry. 2. An object of or cause for concern. 3. Watchful oversight; charge or supervision. 4. An object or source of worry, attention, or solicitude. care, cares. v. 5. To be concerned or interested, have concern for. cares, cared.**
caress ::: n. 1. A gentle touch or gesture of fondness, tenderness, or love. v. 2. To touch or stroke lightly in a loving or endearing manner. caressed, caressing.
cased ::: sheathed, enclosed, covered or protected, contained within.
caul ::: a portion of the amnion (A thin, tough, membranous sac) especially when it covers the head of a foetus at birth.
cause ::: 1. A person or thing that acts, happens, or exists in such a way that some specific thing happens as a result; the producer of an effect. 2. A basis for an action or response; a reason. 3. Grounds for action; motive; justification. 4. Good or sufficient reason. 5. The principle, ideal, goal, or movement to which a person or group is dedicated. Cause.
covenant ::: a binding agreement; a compact. covenants.
covered ::: 1. Served as a cover for; extended over. 2. Put all over the surface of.
covering ::: n. **1. Anything that veils, screens, disguises or shuts from sight. 2. Something that covers or is laid, placed, or spread over or upon something else. v. 3. Protecting or shielding from harm, loss, or danger. coverings.**
cover ::: n. 1. Fig. Something, such as darkness, that screens, conceals, or disguises. v. 2. To spread over a surface to protect or conceal or warm something. 3. To hide from view or knowledge; conceal. covers, covered, covering.
covert ::: 1. Secret or hidden from view or knowledge; not openly practiced or engaged in, shown or avowed. 2. Concealment; secrecy. 3. A covered place or shelter; hiding place.
covet ::: 1. To desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others. 2. To wish for, especially eagerly. coveted.
chained ::: restrained or confined as if with chains. love-chained.
chain-work ::: handiwork in which parts are looped or woven together like the links of a chain.
channel ::: n. **1. A course through which something may be transmitted or through which something may be moved or directed onward. 2. The bed of a stream or river, etc. v. 3. To direct or convey something through (or as through) a channel. channels.**
chased ::: 1. Followed rapidly in order to catch; overtake; pursued. 2. Put to flight; driven away by force.
chase ::: v. **1. To follow rapidly in order to catch or overtake; pursue. 2. To follow or devote one"s attention to with the hope of attracting, winning, gaining, etc. 3. To put to flight; drive out. ::: —chases, chased.* *n. 3. The act of pursuing in an effort to overtake or capture thunder-chase.**
cherish ::: 1. To hold great love for someone; feel love for one. 2. To care for, protect and love —(a person). 3. To cling fondly to (a hope, idea, etc.); nurse. cherished.
chess-play ::: the game of chess; a board game for two players, each beginning with 16 pieces of six kinds that are moved according to individual rules, with the objective of checkmating the opposing king. chess-player.
child ::: 1. A person between birth and full growth. 2. A baby or infant. 3. A person who has not attained maturity. 4. One who is childish or immature. 5. An individual regarded as strongly affected by another or by a specified time, place, or circumstance. 6. Any person or thing regarded as the product or result of particular agencies, influences, etc. Child, child"s, children, Children, children"s, child-god, Child-Godhead, child-heart, child-heart"s, child-laughter, child-soul, child-sovereign, child-thought, flame-child, foster-child, God-child, King-children.
chosen ::: n. 1. Having been selected by God; elect. adj. 2. Selected from or preferred above others. self-chosen. (Also pp. of choose.)
clad ::: 1. Dressed; clothed. 2. Covered. green-clad, white-clad.
cloven hoof ::: 1. A divided or cleft hoof, as in deer or cattle. 2. Evil or Satan, often depicted as a figure with cleft hooves.
cloven ::: (Pt. of cleave.)
cleave ::: 1. To split with or as if with a sharp instrument. 2. To pierce or penetrate. cleaves, cloven, cleaving.
cloak ::: 1. A loose outer garment, such as a cape. 2. Anything that covers or conceals. 3. Something that covers or conceals; a disguise. world-cloak.
cloaked ::: covered with or as if with clothes or a wrap or cloak.
cloisters ::: 1. Covered walks with an open colonnade on one side, running along the walls of buildings that face a quadrangle. 2. Secluded, quiet places. cloister"s, cloisters.
clothe ::: 1. To cover as if with clothing. 2. To present in a specific form. 3. To furnish or invest with power or authority or endue or endow attributes, qualities. 4. To cover or envelop (something) so as to change its appearance, as the face of the earth. clothes, clothed.
cloud ::: 1. A visible collection of particles of water or ice suspended in the air, usually at an elevation above the earth"s surface. 2. Any similar mass, esp. of smoke or dust. 3. Something fleeting or unsubstantial. 4. Anything that obscures or darkens something, or causes gloom, trouble, suspicion, disgrace, etc. clouds, clouds", cloud-veils.
cloud-bank ::: a long flat-topped mass of cloud or mist stretching above the horizon.
cloudy ::: 1. Of or like a cloud or clouds. 2. Full of or overcast by clouds. 3. Darkened by gloom, trouble, etc.
clumsy or ponderous as in movement or expressiveness.
coil ::: n. **1. A series of connected spirals or concentric rings formed by gathering or winding. 2. Such a series resembling a serpent or a vine. v. 3. To form concentric rings or spirals. 4. To move in a spiral course. coils, coiled, coiling, coilings.**
coin ::: 1. A small piece of metal, usually flat and circular, authorized by a government for use as money. 2. A mode of expression considered standard, a symbol; token.
colonist ::: a person who settles in a new colony or moves into and helps found a colony or new country.
columns ::: long, narrow formations of troops in which there are more members in line in the direction of movement than at right angles to the direction.—(distinguished from line).
command ::: n. 1. An order; mandate. 2. The possession or exercise of controlling authority. Command. v. 3. To direct with specific authority or prerogative; order. 4. To give orders. 5. To have or exercise authority or control over; be master of; have at one"s bidding or disposal. commands, commanded.
compact ::: an agreement or a covenant.
concealed ::: kept from being seen, found, observed, or discovered; hidden. conceals, concealing, all-concealing, deep-concealed.
conquer ::: 1. To defeat or subdue by force, especially by force of arms. 2. To overcome (an enemy, army, etc.); defeat. 3. To overcome or surmount by physical, mental, or moral force. conquers, conquered, conquering.
*consciousforce. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "In actual fact Mind measures Time by event and Space by Matter; but it is possible in pure mentality to disregard the movement of event and the disposition of substance and realise the pure movement of Conscious-Force which constitutes Space and Time; these two are then merely two aspects of the universal force of Consciousness which in their intertwined interaction comprehend the warp and woof of its action upon itself. And to a consciousness higher than Mind which should regard our past, present and future in one view, containing and not contained in them, not situated at a particular moment of Time for its point of prospection, Time might well offer itself as an eternal present. And to the same consciousness not situated at any particular point of Space, but containing all points and regions in itself, Space also might well offer itself as a subjective and indivisible extension, — no less subjective than Time.” The Life Divine
::: "Consciousness is usually identified with mind, but mental consciousness is only the human range which no more exhausts all the possible ranges of consciousness than human sight exhausts all the gradations of colour or human hearing all the gradations of sound — for there is much above or below that is to man invisible and inaudible. So there are ranges of consciousness above and below the human range, with which the normal human has no contact and they seem to it unconscious, — supramental or overmental and submental ranges.” *Letters on Yoga
consigned ::: handed over or given into the care or charge of another; entrusted.
contest ::: to try to disprove; call in question.
control ::: n. 1. Power to direct, determine or command. 2. A means of regulation or restraint; curb; check. v. 3. To exercise authoritative control or power over. 4. To hold in restraint; check, esp. one"s emotions. controls, controlled, controlling.
convince ::: 1. To move by argument or evidence to belief, agreement, consent, or a course of action; persuade.
cope ::: to contend or strive with difficulties and act to overcome them.
cord ::: 1. An influence, feeling, or force that binds or restrains; a bond or tie. 2. Fig. Like a thin rope made of several strands woven together to hold the parts of anything. cords, heart-cords.
cosmic mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, — towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process.” *The Life Divine
"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; . . . At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, — not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.” The Life Divine
"There is one cosmic Mind, one cosmic Life, one cosmic Body. All the attempt of man to arrive at universal sympathy, universal love and the understanding and knowledge of the inner soul of other existences is an attempt to beat thin, breach and eventually break down by the power of the enlarging mind and heart the walls of the ego and arrive nearer to a cosmic oneness.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"[The results of the opening to the cosmic Mind:] One is aware of the cosmic Mind and the mental forces that move there and how they work on one"s mind and that of others and one is able to deal with one"s own mind with a greater knowledge and effective power. There are many other results, but this is the fundamental one.” Letters on Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness has many levels — the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmic Spirit ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Cosmic Spirit or Self contains everything in the cosmos — it upholds cosmic Mind, universal Life, universal Matter as well as the overmind. The Self is more than all these things which are its formulations in Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"[The Divine in one of its three aspects] . . . is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe - although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
". . . the cosmic spirit, the one self inhabiting the universe, . . . .” *The Life Divine
"For the cosmic Spirit inhabits each and all, but is more than all; . . . .”The Life Divine
cosmic vision ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Cosmic vision is the seeing of the universal movements — it has nothing to do with the psychic necessarily. It can be in the universal mind, the universal vital, the universal physical or anywhere.” Letters on Yoga*
course ::: 1. A direction or route taken or to be taken. 2. The path, route, or channel along which anything moves. 3. Advance or progression in a particular direction; forward or onward movement. 4. The continuous passage or progress through time or a succession of stages. chariot-course.
coursed ::: proceeded or moved swiftly along a specified course or path. coursing.
court ::: 1. An extent of open ground partially or completely enclosed by walls or buildings; a courtyard. 2. The place of residence of a sovereign or dignitary; a royal mansion or palace. courts, courtyard, courtyard"s.
courted ::: 1. Endeavoured to win favour with. 2. Tried to gain the love or affections of. 3. Attempted to gain (applause, favour, a decision, etc.).
cowed ::: frightened with threats, violence, etc.; intimidated; overawed.
cowl ::: n. 1. The hood or hooded robe worn especially by a monk. 2. A hood, especially a loose one; garment. v. 3. To cover with or as with a cowl.
crawl ::: n. 1. The action of moving slowly on the hands or knees or dragging the body along the ground. 2. A very slow movement or progress. v. 3. To move slowly, either by dragging the body along the ground or on the hands and knees. 4. To advance slowly, feebly, laboriously, or with frequent stops. crawls, crawled, crawling.
creep ::: 1. To move with the body close to the ground, as on hands and knees. 2. To go or approach stealthily or furtively. 3. To move slowly, quietly, or cautiously. creeps, crept.
creepered ::: covered with vines (creepers).
creeping ::: the act of creeping or a creeping movement.
cross ::: 1. A structure consisting essentially of an upright and a transverse piece, upon which persons were formerly put to a cruel and ignominious death by being nailed or otherwise fastened to it by their extremities. 2. A representation or delineation of a cross on any surface, varying in elaborateness from two lines crossing each other to an ornamental design painted, embroidered, carved, etc.; used as a sacred mark, symbol, badge, or the like. 3. A trouble, vexation, annoyance; misfortune, adversity; sometimes anything that thwarts or crosses. v. 4. To go or extend across; pass from one side of to the other: pass over. 5. To extend or pass through or over; intersect. 6. To encounter in passing. crosses, crossed, crossing.
cross ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the cross is the sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns it into a stake of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
crowned ::: 1. Invested with regal power; enthroned. 2. Ultimate; perfect; sovereign. 3. Having the finishing touch added to; completed worthily; brought to a successful consummation.
crown ::: n. **1. An ornament worn on the head by kings and those having sovereign power, often made of precious metal and ornamented with gems. 2. A wreath or garland for the head, awarded as a sign of victory, success, honour, etc. 3. The distinction that comes from a great achievement; reward, honour. 4. The top or summit of something, esp. of a rounded object. etc. 5. The highest or more nearly perfect state of anything. 6. An exalting or chief attribute. 7. The acme or supreme source of honour, excellence, beauty, etc. v. 8. To put a crown on the head of, symbolically vesting with royal title, powers, etc. 9. To place something on or over the head or top of. crowns, crowned.**
crust ::: 1. The exterior portion of the earth. 2. Fig. Any hard or stiff outer covering or surface.
cure ::: n. 1. A means of correcting or relieving anything that is troublesome or detrimental. v. 2. To remove or remedy (something harmful or disturbing). curing.
curious ::: 1. Eager to learn more. 2. Arousing interest because of novelty or strangeness.
curtain ::: 1. A hanging piece of fabric used to shut out the light from a window, adorn a room, increase privacy, etc. 2. Something that functions as or resembles a screen, cover, or barrier. curtains.
customs-line ::: an area (or line) where a governmental agency checks baggage or merchandise for contraband and goods subject to duty.
darting ::: an act of darting; a sudden swift movement.
dart ::: n. 1. A small, slender missile that is pointed at one end and usually feathered at the other and is propelled by hand, as in the game of darts, or by a blowgun when used as a weapon. 2. Something similar in function to such a missile, as the stinging member of an insect. *v. 2. To thrust or move suddenly or rapidly.* darts.
dazzled ::: 1. Overpowered or dimmed the vision of (someone) by intense light. 2. Impressed deeply; awed, overwhelmed. 3. Overpowered by light.
dove ::: 1. Any bird of the family Columbid, esp. the smaller species with pointed tails. 2. A pure white member of this species, used as a symbol of innocence, gentleness, tenderness, and peace. dove"s, doves.
dear ::: 1. Precious in one"s regard; cherished. 2. Loved and cherished: Highly esteemed or regarded. 3. Heartfelt; earnest. dearer, dearest.
defeat ::: 1. A bringing to naught; frustration. 2. An overthrow or overturning; vanquishment. 3. The act or event of being bested; losing. **defeats, defeated.
deliberate ::: 1. Carefully weighed or considered; studied; intentional. 2. Leisurely and steady in movement or action; slow and even; unhurried.
delivery ::: the carrying and turning over of letters, goods, etc. to a designated recipient.
denouement ::: the final resolution of the intricacies of a plot, as of a drama or novel; solution, conclusion.
descend ::: to move or pass from a higher to a lower place; come down. Also fig. descends, descended.
descry ::: 1. To see (something unclear or distant) by looking carefully; discern. 2. To discover, perceive, detect. descried.
detached ::: 1. Impartial or objective; disinterested; unbiased. 2. Not involved or concerned; aloof. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Detachment means that one stands back from [imperfections and weakness of the nature, etc.] , does not identify oneself with them or get upset or troubled because they are there, but rather looks on them as something foreign to one"s true consciousness and true self, rejects them and calls in the Mother"s Force into these movements to eliminate them and bring the true consciousness and its movements there.” Letters on Yoga
detect ::: to discover or ascertain the existence, presence, or fact of. detected.
dethroned ::: removed from any position of power or authority.
diarchy ::: government in which power is vested in two rulers or authorities.
dictatorship ("s) ::: absolute, imperious, or overbearing power or control.
dips ::: 1. Plunges briefly into water or another liquid and removes quickly. 2. Sinks or drops down, or below a particular level, as if dipping into water; goes down, sinks, sets. 3. Has a downward inclination; inclines or slopes downwards; is inclined to the horizon. dipped, dipping.
discover ::: 1. To determine the existence, presence, or fact of. 2. To be the first to find or find out or about something. 3. To reveal or make known. discovers, discovered, discovering, all-discovering, new-discovering,
discovered ::: made known; revealed, disclosed.
discoverer ::: someone who is the first to observe something unknown or unseen. discoverers.
discovery ::: the fact of revealing or making known something that was hidden or unknown previously. flame-discovery, self-discovery, self-discovery"s, discoveries, form-discoveries.
disciplined ::: 1. Trained mentally or physically by instruction or exercise. 2. Having or exhibiting discipline, i.e. activity, exercise or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training.
disciplines ::: branches of knowledge as well as training for the improvement of physical powers, self-control, etc.
disclose ::: 1. To make known; reveal or uncover. 2. To cause to appear; allow to be seen; lay open to view. discloses, disclosed, disclosing , heart-disclosing.
disguise ::: n. 1. A mask, costume, or manner that conceals the identity of. 2. Something that serves or is intended for concealment of identity, character, or quality; a deceptive covering, condition, manner, etc. 3. The state of being disguised; masquerade. disguises, self-disguise. v. 4. To hide under a false appearance. disguised.
dislodge ::: to remove or force out of a particular place.
displaced ::: 1. Removed or shifted (something) from its place; put out of the proper or usual place. 2. Took the place of; supplanted.
"Divine Love is of two kinds — the divine Love for the creation and the souls that are part of itself, and the love of the seeker and love for the Divine Beloved; it has both a personal and impersonal element, but the personal is free here from all lower elements or bondage to the vital and physical instincts.” Letters on Yoga
divine love ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Divine Love, in my view of it, is again not something ethereal, cold and far, but a love absolutely intense, intimate and full of unity, closeness and rapture using all the nature for its expression.” *Letters on Yoga
".. . Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; . . . . ” The Synthesis of Yoga
divine Mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” *The Mother
dominate ::: to rule over; govern; control. dominates.
dominations ::: the qualities or powers over others; authority; rule; control.
drag ::: n. 1. A slow, laborious motion or movement against resistance. v. 2. To pull along with difficulty or effort; haul. 3. To trail along the ground. 4. To be drawn or hauled along. 5. To introduce; inject; insert. drags, dragged, dragging.
draped ::: covered, dressed, or hung with or as if with cloth in loose folds. drapes.
draw ::: 1. To cause to move in a given direction or to a given position, as by leading. 2. To bring towards oneself or itself, as by inherent force or influence; attract. 3. To cause to come by attracting; attract. 4. To cause to move in a particular direction by or as by a pulling force; pull; drag. 5. To get, take or obtain as from a source; to derive. 6. To bring, take, or pull out, as from a receptacle or source. 7. To draw a (or the) line (fig.) to determine or define the limit between two things or groups; in modern colloquial use (esp. with at), to lay down a definite limit of action beyond which one refuses to go. 8. To make, sketch (a picture or representation of someone or something) in lines or words; to design, trace out, delineate; depict; also, to mould, model. 9. To mark or lay out; trace. 10. To compose or write out in legal format. 11. To write out (a bill of exchange or promissory note). 12. To disembowel. 13. To move or pull so as to cover or uncover something. 14. To suck or take in (air, for example); inhale. 15. To extend, lengthen, prolong, protract. 16. To cause to move after or toward one by applying continuous force; drag. draws, drew, drawn, drawing, wide-drawn.
drove ::: a large mass of people moving or acting as a body. (Also pt. of drive.)
drenched ::: 1. Wet thoroughly; soaked. 2. Covered or filled completely; bathed.
dress ::: 1. Clothing in general; apparel. 2. Fig. Outer covering or appearance; guise. 3. The outer covering or appearance, esp. of living things.
drift ::: n. 1. A driving movement or force; impulse; impetus; pressure. 2. A gradual deviation from an original course, model, method, or intention. 3. Tendency, trend, meaning, or purport. 4. A bank or pile, as of sand or snow, heaped up by currents of air or water. 5. Something moving along in a current of air or water. 6. Any group of stars having a random distribution of velocities; usually applied to a group of stars with an apparent systematic motion towards some point in the sky. v. 7. To be carried along by or as if by currents of air or water. 8. To move leisurely or sporadically from place to place, especially without purpose. drifts, drifted, drifting, sleet-drift, slow-drifting.
drive ::: v. 1. To impel; constrain; urge; compel. 2. To manoeuvre, guide or steer the progress of. 3. To impel (matter) by physical force; to cause (something) to move along by direct application of physical force; to propel, carry along. 4. To send, expel, or otherwise cause to move away or out by force or compulsion. 5. To strive vigorously and with determination toward a goal or objective. 6. To cause and guide the movement of (a vehicle, an animal, etc.). n. 7. A strong organized effort to accomplish a purpose, with energy, push or aggressiveness. 8. Impulse; impulsive force. adj. 9. Urged onward, impelled. 10. Pertaining to an inner urge that stimulates activity or inhibition. drives, drove, drov"st, driving, driven.
drowned ::: covered with or submerged in a liquid. Also fig.
drown ::: fig. To overwhelm or smother; to immerse, inundate, flood. drowned.
drowning ::: something that is overwhelming or overpowering.
drunk ::: intoxicated as with an alcoholic liquor; overcome or dominated by a strong feeling or emotion. honey-drunk. (Also, pp. of drink.)
eagle ::: any of several large, soaring birds of prey belonging to the hawk family. The strength, keen vision, graceful and powerful flight of the eagle are proverbial, and have given to him the title of the king of birds. eagle"s, eagles, eagle-peaks, eagle-poised, eagle-winged, she-eagle. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
embargo ::: a government order prohibiting the movement of merchant ships into or out of its ports.
emperor ::: the male sovereign or supreme ruler of an empire.
empire ::: 1. Imperial or imperialistic sovereignty, domination, or control. 2. A group of nations or peoples ruled over by an emperor, empress, or other powerful sovereign or government.
empress ::: a female sovereign having the rank equivalent to that of an emperor.
"Emptiness is not in itself a bad condition, only if it is a sad and restless emptiness of the dissatisfied vital. In sadhana emptiness is very usually a necessary transition from one state to another. When mind and vital fall quiet and their restless movements, thoughts and desires cease, then one feels empty. This is at first often a neutral emptiness with nothing in it, nothing in it either good or bad, happy or unhappy, no impulse or movement. This neutral state is often or even usually followed by the opening to inner experience. There is also an emptiness made of peace and silence, when the peace and silence come out from the psychic within or descend from the higher consciousness above. This is not neutral, for in it there is the sense of peace, often also of wideness and freedom. There is also a happy emptiness with the sense of something close or drawing near which is not yet there, e.g. the closeness of the Mother or some other preparing experience.” Letters on Yoga*
enamoured ::: filled or inflamed with love. captivated.
encyclopaedia ::: a book or set of books containing articles on various topics, usually in alphabetical arrangement, covering all branches of knowledge or, less commonly, all aspects of one subject.
engulfed ::: swallowed up or overwhelmed by or as if by overflowing and enclosing. engulfing.
enrich ::: to improve in quality, colour, flavour, etc.; to add greater value or significance to; to enhance. enriched.
ensnare ::: 1. To catch or trap in a snare. 2. To trap or gain power over someone by dishonest or underhand means.
enveloped ::: 1. Wrapped up in or as in a covering. 2. Surrounded entirely. enveloping, envelopment.
envelope ::: something that covers or surrounds.
envy ::: a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another"s advantages, success, possessions, etc.; longing to possess something awarded to or achieved by another.
"Equality is the chief support of the true spiritual consciousness and it is this from which a sadhak deviates when he allows a vital movement to carry him away in feeling or speech or action. Equality is not the same thing as forbearance, — though undoubtedly a settled equality immensely extends, even illimitably, a man"s power of endurance and forbearance. Letters on Yoga
::: Equality means a quiet and unmoved mind and vital, it means not to be touched or disturbed by things that happen or things said or done to you, but to look at them with a straight look, free from the distortions created by personal feeling, and to try to understand what is behind them, why they happen, what is to be learnt from them, what is it in oneself which they are cast against and what inner profit or progress one can make out of them; it means self-mastery over the vital movements, — anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest, — not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of these things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit.” *Letters on Yoga
erase ::: 1. To remove (something written, for example) by rubbing, wiping, or scraping. 2. To eliminate completely; to efface, expunge, obliterate. 3. Fig. To remove from memory or existence. erased, erasing.
::: "Erinyes, in Greek mythology, the goddesses of vengeance, usually represented as three winged maidens, with snakes in their hair. They pursued criminals, drove them mad, and tormented them in Hades. They were spirits of punishment, avenging wrongs done especially to kindred. In Roman literature they were called Furies.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works*
ether ::: 1. The regions of space beyond the earth"s atmosphere; the heavens. 2. The element believed in ancient and medieval civilizations to fill all space above the sphere of the moon and to compose the stars and planets. 3. A hypothetical medium formerly believed to permeate all space, and through which light and other electromagnetic radiation were thought to move. ether"s.
experiment ::: n. **1. A test, trial, or tentative procedure; an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown or of testing a principle, supposition, etc. v. 2.* To try something new, especially in order to gain experience. experiments. adj.* experimenting.
explore ::: 1. To examine or investigate, esp. systematically. 2. To search into or travel in for the purpose of discovery. explores, exploring.
expression ::: 1. The act of expressing, conveying, or representing in something such as a movement, etc. 2. A manifestation. self-expression.
extended far or over a great distance.
extent ::: the range, magnitude, or distance over which a thing extends.
::: **"Fear and anxiety are perverse forms of will. What thou fearest & ponderest over, striking that note repeatedly in thy mind, thou helpest to bring about; for, if thy will above the surface of waking repels it, it is yet what thy mind underneath is all along willing, & the subconscious mind is mightier, wider, better equipped to fulfil than thy waking force & intellect. But the spirit is stronger than both together; from fear and hope take refuge in the grandiose calm and careless mastery of the spirit.” Essays Divine and Human
feint ::: a movement made in order to deceive (an adversary). feints.
ferrets ::: uncovers and brings to light by searching.
fettered ::: bound with chains or ropes, etc. around the legs, as an animal, to restrict the movement of. Hence, fig. imposed restraint upon; confined, impeded, restrained.
feudal ::: of, pertaining to, or like the feudal system (the system of civil government which prevailed in Europe during the Middle Ages, and which was based on the relation of superior and vassal arising out of the holding of lands.)
fig. Hearts filled with despair; disillusionment; devastating sorrow, especially from disappointment or tragedy in love.
fight ::: n. 1. Fig. A confrontation between opposing groups in which each attempts to harm or gain power over the other, as with bodily force or weapons. fights. v. 2. To contend with physically or in battle; attempt to defend oneself against or to subdue, defeat, or destroy an adversary. fighting, fought.
flame ::: n. 1. Burning gas or vapor, as from wood or coal, that is undergoing combustion; a portion of ignited gas or vapor. 2. Fig. A brilliant light; fiery glow. 3. Fig. Intense ardour, zeal, passion, vitality. 4. Spiritual fire. 5. Inner fire. 6. Bright colouring; a streak or patch of color. Flame, flames, flame-ascensions, flame-born, flame-bright, flame-child, flame-discovery, flame-edge, flame-eyed, flame-foot, flame-hills, flame-pure, flame-signs, flame-stabs, flame-throw, flame-white, flame-wrapped, moon-flame. v. 8. To burn with a flame or flames; burst into flames; blaze. 7. To burn or glow as if with fire; become red or fiery 8. To burn or burst forth with strong emotion. flames, flamed. ::: flames out. Bursts out in or as if in flames.
flash ::: n.** 1. A brief, sudden burst of bright light. 2. A sudden thought, insight, inspiration, or vision. 3. A momentary brightness. 4. A very brief moment; instant. flashes, lightening-flash. v. 5. To move or proceed rapidly. 6. To communicate or reveal through flashes. 7. To appear or occur suddenly; come into perception. 8. To cause to flash, as powder by ignition or a sword by waving. flashes, flashed, flashing.**
flee ::: 1. To run away, as from trouble or danger. 2. To run away from; forsake. 3. To move swiftly; fly; speed. 4. To pass swiftly away; vanish. flees, fled, fleeing, fleest.
flight ::: 1. The act or process of flying through the air with or without wings. 2. Fig. A passing above and beyond ordinary bounds. 3. A swift movement, transition, or progression. 4. A series of steps, terraces, etc., ascending without change of direction. flights.
flit ::: 1. To move lightly and swiftly; fly, dart, or skim along. 2. To flutter, as a bird. 3. To pass quickly, as time. flitting.
float ::: 1. To remain suspended within or on the surface of a fluid without sinking. 2. To move or progress smoothly as on a stream. 3. To move or cause to move buoyantly, lightly, or freely across a surface or through air, water, etc.; drift. 4. To move lightly and gracefully. 5. Fig. To move or seem to move lightly and faintly before the eyes. floats, floated, floating.
floating ::: adj. 1. Being buoyed up on water or other liquid. 2. Having little or no attachment; moving from one place to another. 3. Continually changing especially as from one abode or occupation to another. 4. Being suspended in or as in a liquid with freedom to move; also, to move freely through (something).
flood ::: n. **1. A large body of water; a great flow or stream of any fluid; any great overwhelming quantity, also poet. & fig. 2. The rise and flowing in of the tide. 3. The rising of a body of water and its overflowing onto normally dry land. 4. Any great outpouring or stream. floods. v. 5. To flow or pour in or as if in a flood. flooded, flooding. ::: And heard the questioning of the unsatisfied flood **
flow ::: n. 1. To move or progress freely as if in a stream. 2. Fig. Something that resembles a flowing stream in moving continuously. v. 3. To circulate. 4. To move or progress freely as if in a stream. 5. To stream or well forth. 6. To proceed or be produced continuously and effortlessly from or out of a source. flows, flowed.
flown ::: moved or travelled swiftly, passed rapidly, rushed along. (Pp. of fly.)
flutter ::: 1. To flap the wings rapidly or fly with flapping movements. 2. To move quickly in a nervous, restless, or excited fashion; flit. 3. Generally of the heart: to beat abnormally rapidly, esp. in a regular rhythm. 4. To wave, flap or toss about. 5. To move (a thing) in quick irregular motions. flutters, fluttered, fluttering, flutterest.
flux ::: 1. Constant or frequent change; fluctuation; movement. 2. A flowing or flow: Also used with reference to other forms of matter and energy that can be regarded as flowing, such as radiant energy, particles, etc.
follow ::: 1. To come or go after; proceed behind. 2. Lit. and fig. To move along the course of; take a path. 3. Fig. To come after in order, time, or position. 4. To occur or be evident as a consequence; result. 5. Fig. To accompany; attend. 6. To take (a person) as a guide, leader, or master; to accept the authority or example of, obey the dictates or guidance of; to adhere to, espouse the opinions, side, or cause of. 7. Fig. To go after in or as if in pursuit. 8. To accept and follow the leadership or command or guidance of. 9. To watch or trace the movements, progress, or course of. follows, followed, following. ::: following out. Proceeding; following; pursuing something to an end or conclusion.
fond ::: excessively tender; over-affectionate, doting.
force, universal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This force that we feel is the universal Force of the Divine, which, veiled or unveiled, acting directly or permitting the use of its powers by beings in the cosmos, is the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible. For this force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; all is that, power of act, power of thought and knowledge, power of mastery and enjoyment, power of love. Conscious always and in everything, in ourselves and in others, of the Master of Works possessing, inhabiting, enjoying through this Force that is himself, becoming through it all existences and all happenings, we shall have arrived at the divine union through works and achieved by that fulfilment in works all that others have gained through absolute devotion or through pure knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"For if evolution is the progressive manifestation by Nature of that which slept or worked in her, involved, it is also the overt realisation of that which she secretly is. We cannot, then, bid her the right to condemn with the religionist as perverse and presumptuous or with the rationalist as a disease or hallucination any intention she may evince or effort she may make to go beyond. If it be true that Spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature is secret God, then the manifestation of the divine in himself and the realisation of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim possible to man upon earth.” The Life Divine
::: "For the inner knowledge comes from within and above (whether from the Divine in the heart or from the Self above) and for it to come, the pride of the mind and vital in the surface mental ideas and their insistence on them must go. One must know that one is ignorant before one can begin to know.” Letters on Yoga
"For the main business of the heart, its true function is love. It is our destined instrument of complete union and oneness; for to see oneness in the world by the understanding is not enough unless we also feel it with the heart and in the psychic being, and this means a delight in the One and in all existences in the world in him, a love of God and all beings. The heart"s faith and will in good are founded on a perception of the one Divine immanent in all things and leading the world.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
::: "For what we understand by law is a single immutably habitual movement or recurrence in Nature fruitful of a determined sequence of things and that sequence must be clear, precise, limited to its formula, invariable.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
free-love ::: the practice of sexual relationships without fidelity to a single partner or without formal obligations or legal ties.
friction ::: a resistance encountered when one body moves relative to another body with which it is in contact. Surface resistance to relative motion.
frozen ::: made into, covered with, or surrounded by ice. Also fig.
garments ::: outer coverings or outward appearances.
government ::: the exercise of political authority over the actions, affairs, etc., of a political unit, people, etc.
govern ::: v. 1. To direct and control the actions, affairs, policies, functions, etc. 2. To control the actions or behaviour of. 3. To be a predominant influence on (something); decide or determine (something). governs, governed, governing.
gilded ::: 1. Made from or covered with gold. 2. Having a deep golden colour.
glean ::: 1. To gather laboriously, bit by bit. 2. To gather (grain or the like) after the reapers or regular gathers. 3. To learn, discover, of find out, usually little by little or slowly. gleaner.
glide ::: to move smoothly and continuously along, as if without effort or resistance. glides, glided, gliding.
glut ::: n. 1. An excessive amount, an oversupply. v. 2. To feed or fill to satiety. glutted.
godhead ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the Godhead is all that is universe and all that is in the universe and all that is more than the universe. The Gita lays stress first on his supracosmic existence. For otherwise the mind would miss its highest goal and remain turned towards the cosmic only or else attached to some partial experience of the Divine in the cosmos. It lays stress next on his universal existence in which all moves and acts. For that is the justification of the cosmic effort and that is the vast spiritual self-awareness in which the Godhead self-seen as the Time-Spirit does his universal works. Next it insists with a certain austere emphasis on the acceptance of the Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body. For he is the Immanent in all existences, and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic. Finally, it insists at great length on the divine manifestation in all things in the universe and affirms the derivation of all that is from the nature, power and light of the one Godhead.” *Essays on the Gita
goldening ::: covering with the appearance of gold.
good ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Below [the ethical] hides that secret of good in all things which the human being approaches and tries to deliver partially through ethical instinct and ethical idea; above is hidden the eternal Good which exceeds our partial and fragmentary ethical conceptions.” *Social and Political Thought
grace ::: n. **1. Elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action. 2. Favour or goodwill. 3. A manifestation of favour, especially by a superior. 4. Theol. a. The freely given, unmerited favour and love of God. b. The influence or spirit of God operating in humans to regenerate or strengthen them. c. A virtue or excellence of divine origin. d. The condition of being in God"s favour or one of the elect. 5. Divine love and protection bestowed freely on people. v. 6. To lend or add grace to; adorn. graced, graceful, graceless.**
grate ::: a framework of metal bars used to hold fuel or food in a stove, furnace, or fireplace.
grove ::: a small wood or stand of trees lacking dense undergrowth. grove"s, groves, groves".
grovel ::: 1. To lie or creep or crawl in a prostrate position with the face down as in subservience, fear or humility. 2. To behave in a servile or demeaning manner; cringe. 3. To take pleasure in mean or base things. grovels, grovelling.
grey ::: 1. A neutral tone, intermediate between black and white, that has no hue and reflects and transmits only a little light. 2.* Fig. Dismal or dark, esp. from lack of light; gloomy. 3. Dull, dreary or monotonous. 4. Used often in reference to twilight or a gloomy or an overcast day. greyer, grey-eyed, grey-hued, silver-grey. n. *greyness.
grimed ::: covered with dirt, soot or other filthy matter.
groaned ::: made a deep grating or creaking sound due to a sudden or continued overburdening, as with a great weight.
groove ::: 1. A long narrow cut or indentation in a surface; a furrow. 2. A fixed routine; habit, pattern. grooves.
groping ::: showing or reflecting a desire to understand, especially something that proves puzzling.
guardian ::: n. 1. One that guards, watches over, or protects. guardians, Guardians. *adj. *2. Guarding; protecting.
guard ::: n. 1. Something that gives protection; a safeguard. 2. A body of people, esp. soldiers, charged with guarding a place from disturbance, theft, etc. guards. v. 3. To keep safe from harm or danger; to take care of, watch over, protect, defend. 4. To protect from harm by or as if by watching over. guards, guarded, guarding, deep-guarded, self-guarded. ::: on guard. Vigilant; watchful.
halo ::: a geometric shape, usually in the form of a disk, circle, ring or rayed structure, traditionally representing a radiant light around or above the head of a divine or sacred personage. haloed.
hang ::: 1. To fasten or attach (pictures, etc.) to a wall. 2. To suspend (something) around or in front of anything. 3.* Fig. To remain unresolved or uncertain. 4. To make (an idea, form, etc.) dependent on the situation, structure, concept, or the like, usually derived from another source. 5. To fasten or be fastened from above, esp. by a cord, chain, etc.; suspend. 6. To be suspended or poised; hover. 7. To bend forward or downward; to lean over. *hangs, hung, hanging, flower-hung, shadow-hung. ::: hung on: Remained clinging, usually implying expectation or unwillingness to sever one"s connection.
harnessed ::: brought under conditions for effective use; gained control over for a particular end.
haste ::: n. 1. Swiftness of motion; speed; hurry, rush. v. 2. To move or act swiftly; hurry. ::: to make haste: To hurry.
hovered
headdresses ::: decorative coverings for the head.
heave ::: n. 1. The act of lifting something with great effort. heavings. v. 2. To rise up or swell, as if pushed up; bulge. 3. An upward movement (especially a rhythmical rising and falling). heaves, heaved.
hegemony ::: the predominant influence, as of a state, region, or group, over another or others.
height ::: 1. A high point or position. 2. Elevation above a given level, as of the sun or a star above the horizon; altitude. Also fig. 3. The highest or most advanced degree, material or immaterial; the zenith. heights.
herbs ::: a flowering plant whose stem above ground does not become woody.
herd ::: 1. A number of animals kept, feeding, or travelling together; drove; flock. 2. The multitude, the common people, the masses. herds, sun-herds.
high-pitched ::: 1. Acoustically, a pitch that is perceived as above other pitches. 2. Marked by or indicating lofty character or intense emotion.
hooves
hung fluttering or suspended in the air; hovering.
"If discipline of all the members of our being by purification and concentration may be described as the right arm of the body of Yoga, renunciation is its left arm. By discipline or positive practice we confirm in ourselves the truth of things, truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of love, truth of works and replace with these the falsehoods that have overgrown and perverted our nature; by renunciation we seize upon the falsehoods, pluck up their roots and cast them out of our way so that they shall no longer hamper by their persistence, their resistance or their recurrence the happy and harmonious growth of our divine living.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
ignorance ::: the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information. Ignorance, ignorance"s, Ignorance"s, ignorance", world-ignorance, World-Ignorance.
Sri Aurobindo: "Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.” The Life Divine
"Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth, — truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
". . . all ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge . . . .”The Life Divine
"This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One, the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being, the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: . . . .” The Life Divine*
illumined mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; . . . .” The Life Divine
"As the Higher Mind brings a greater consciousness into the being through the spiritual idea and its power of truth, so the Illumined Mind brings in a still greater consciousness through a Truth-sight and Truth-light and its seeing and seizing power.” The Life Divine*
immovable ::: unable to move or be moved; fixed; immobile.
immovably ::: incapable of being moved from one"s purpose, opinion, etc.; steadfast; unyielding.
impassive ::: 1. Without emotion; apathetic; unmoved. 2. Calm; serene. 3. Not subject to suffering; unaffected. impassively.
impoverished ::: deprived of richness and strength.
imperial ::: 1. Of, relating to, or suggestive of an empire or a sovereign, especially an emperor or empress. 2. Regal; majestic. 3. Something magnificent or outstanding in size or quality.
imperious ::: regal; imperial; sovereign; majestic.
*"In a certain sense all genius comes from Overhead; for genius is the entry or inrush of a greater consciousness into the mind or a possession of the mind by a greater power.”
included ::: being part of the whole; contained; covered.
inconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Inconscient and the Ignorance may be mere empty abstractions and can be dismissed as irrelevant jargon if one has not come in collision with them or plunged into their dark and bottomless reality. But to me they are realities, concrete powers whose resistance is present everywhere and at all times in its tremendous and boundless mass.” *Letters on Savitri
". . . in its actual cosmic manifestation the Supreme, being the Infinite and not bound by any limitation, can manifest in Itself, in its consciousness of innumerable possibilities, something that seems to be the opposite of itself, something in which there can be Darkness, Inconscience, Inertia, Insensibility, Disharmony and Disintegration. It is this that we see at the basis of the material world and speak of nowadays as the Inconscient — the Inconscient Ocean of the Rigveda in which the One was hidden and arose in the form of this universe — or, as it is sometimes called, the non-being, Asat.” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient itself is only an involved state of consciousness which like the Tao or Shunya, though in a different way, contains all things suppressed within it so that under a pressure from above or within all can evolve out of it — ‘an inert Soul with a somnambulist Force".” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
"The body, we have said, is a creation of the Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of itself and much of its hidden action; but 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.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga :::
"The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal.” The Life Divine
"Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine. Letters on Savitri :::
"Is it really a fact that even the ordinary reader would not be able to see any difference between the Inconscient and Ignorance unless the difference is expressly explained to him? This is not a matter of philosophical terminology but of common sense and the understood meaning of English words. One would say ‘even the inconscient stone" but one would not say, as one might of a child, ‘the ignorant stone". One must first be conscious before one can be ignorant. What is true is that the ordinary reader might not be familiar with the philosophical content of the word Inconscient and might not be familiar with the Vedantic idea of the Ignorance as the power behind the manifested world. But I don"t see how I can acquaint him with these things in a single line, even with the most. illuminating image or symbol. He might wonder, if he were Johnsonianly minded, how an Inconscient could be teased or how it could wake Ignorance. I am afraid, in the absence of a miracle of inspired poetical exegesis flashing through my mind, he will have to be left wondering.” Letters on Savitri
**inconscient, Inconscient"s.**
incontinent ::: having little or no control (over).
indifferent ::: 1. Having no marked feeling for or against. 2. Without interest or feeling in regard to something; unbiased, impartial, neutral; fair; unconcerned, unmoved, apathetic. 3. Being neither good nor bad; neutral.
indigence ::: poverty; need; destitution.
indigent ::: deficient in what is requisite; poor; impoverished.
indomitable ::: incapable of being overcome, subdued, or vanquished; unconquerable. indomitably.
inert ::: 1. Unable to move or act; immobile, unmoving, lifeless, motionless. 2. Inactive or sluggish by habit or nature. inertness.
infest ::: to invade a person"s thoughts and haunt or overrun them.
"In our errors is the substance of a truth which labours to reveal its meaning to our groping intelligence. The human intellect cuts out the error and the truth with it and replaces it by another half-truth half-error; but the Divine Wisdom suffers our mistakes to continue until we are able to arrive at the truth hidden and protected under every false cover.” The Synthesis of Yoga
in political and legal philosophy and theology, doctrines based on the theory that there are certain unchanging laws which pertain to man"s nature, which can be discovered by reason, and therefore ethically binding in human society, and to which man-made laws should conform.
"Inspiration comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it.” Letters on Yoga*
::: ". . . in such a view, the word consciousness changes its meaning. It is no longer synonymous with mentality but indicates a self-aware force of existence of which mentality is a middle term; below mentality it sinks into vital and material movements which are for us subconscient; above, it rises into the supramental which is for us the superconscient. But in all it is one and the same thing organising itself differently. This is, once more, the Indian conception of Chit which, as energy, creates the worlds.” *The Life Divine
"In Supermind being, consciousness of knowledge and consciousness of will are not divided as they seem to be in our mental operations; they are a trinity, one movement with three effective aspects. Each has its own effect. Being gives the effect of substance, consciousness the effect of knowledge, of the self-guiding and shaping idea, of comprehension and apprehension; will gives the effect of self-fulfilling force. But the idea is only the light of the reality illumining itself; it is not mental thought nor imagination, but effective self-awareness. It is Real-Idea.” The Life Divine
insurgent ::: rebellious or in revolt, as against a government in power or the civil authorities. Also fig. **insurgence.**
intermediate zone ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higher Mind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels , but one can receive something from them, even from the overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers. ::: It is not necessary for everyone to struggle through the intermediate zone. If one has purified oneself, if there is no abnormal vanity, egoism, ambition or other strong misleading element, or if one is vigilant and on one"s guard, or if the psychic is in front, one can either pass rapidly and directly or with a minimum of trouble into the higher zones of consciousness where one is in direct contact with the Divine Truth.
". . . in the 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
intoxication ::: overpowering exhilaration or excitement of the mind or emotions.
intuition ::: direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process. intuition"s, intuitions, half-intuition.
Sri Aurobindo: "Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.” *The Life Divine
"Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of ``stable lightnings"". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"I use the word ‘intuition" for want of a better. In truth, it is a makeshift and inadequate to the connotation demanded of it. The same has to be said of the word ‘consciousness" and many others which our poverty compels us to extend illegitimately in their significance.” *The Life Divine - Sri Aurobindo"s footnote.
"For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret Supermind. . . .” The Life Divine
". . . intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine
"Intuition is above illumined Mind which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
"Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.” Letters on Yoga
invade ::: 1. To enter forcefully as an enemy; go into with hostile intent. 2. To enter as if to take possession. 3. To permeate. 4. To penetrate; spread into or over. invades, invaded, invading.
invincible ::: incapable of being overcome or defeated; unconquerable. invincibly.
irrecoverable ::: incapable of being recovered or regained.
irremovable ::: impossible to remove.
"It is only divine Love which can bear the burden I have to bear, that all have to bear who have sacrificed everything else to the one aim of uplifting earth out of its darkness towards the Divine.” On Himself
::: **"It is therefore necessary from the beginning to understand and accept the arduous difficulty of the path and to feel the need of a faith which to the intellect may seem blind, but yet is wiser than our reasoning intelligence. For this faith is a support from above; it is the brilliant shadow thrown by a secret light that exceeds the intellect and its data; it is the heart of a hidden knowledge that is not at the mercy of immediate appearances.” The Synthesis of Yoga
jealousy ::: mental uneasiness from suspicion or fear of rivalry, unfaithfulness, etc., as in love or aims.
jerk ::: a quick, sharp pull, thrust, twist, throw, or the like; a sudden movement.
"Kali is Krishna revealed as dreadful Power & wrathful Love. She slays with her furious blows the self in body, life & mind in order to liberate it as spirit eternal.” Essays Divine and Human
kennel ::: fig. A ramshackle house; hovel; dog house.
key ::: 1. A small metal instrument specially cut to fit into a lock and move its bolt. 2. Fig. Something that explains a mystery or gives an answer to a mystery, a code etc. 3. Something that is crucial in providing an explanation or interpretation. 4. Fig. Serving as an essential component; "a cardinal rule”. 5. The principal tonality of a composition. 6. Pitch of the voice. keys.
king ::: 1. A male sovereign. 2. One that is supreme or preeminent in a particular group, category, or sphere. 3. Fig. One who or that which is preeminent in a particular category or group or field. king"s, kings, Kings, king-children, king-sages.
kingdom ::: 1. A territory, state, people, or community ruled or reigned over by a king or queen. 2. Fig. The eternal spiritual sovereignty of God; the realm of this sovereignty. 3. A realm or sphere in which one thing is dominant or supreme. 4. Anything conceived as constituting a realm or sphere of independent action or control. 5. A realm or province of nature, especially one of the three broad divisions of natural objects: the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. 6. Rarely, in reference to the realm and rule of evil forces. kingdom"s, kingdoms.
"Krishna as a godhead is the Lord of Ananda, Love and Bhakti; as an incarnation, he manifests the union of wisdom (Jnana) and works and leads the earth-evolution through this towards union with the Divine by Ananda, Love and Bhakti.” Letters on Yoga
"Krishna is the Anandamaya; he supports the evolution through the overmind leading it towards the Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
laden ::: 1. Filled or covered abundantly. 2. Burdened; loaded down.
lame ::: 1. Crippled. 2. Disabled so that movement, especially walking, is difficult or impossible. lamed.
lattice ::: an open framework made of strips of metal, wood, or similar material overlapped or overlaid in a regular, usually crisscross pattern. lattices, lattice-window.
layers ::: thicknesses of material covering a surface.
lays low ::: overpowers or kills; defeats.
::: "Love at its origin is a self-existent force, an absolute, a transcendent . . . which does not depend upon the objects — it depends only on itself or only on the Divine; for it is a self-existent power of the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
love, divine ::: see divine love
"Love in its depths is a contact of the Divine Possibility or Reality in oneself with the Divine Possibility or Reality in the loved.” Letters on Yoga
::: "Love is, in its essence, the joy of identity; it finds its ultimate expression in the bliss of union.” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
::: "Love is in its nature the desire to give oneself to others and to receive others in exchange; it is a commerce between being and being.” *The Life Divine
"Love is the crown of all being and its way of fulfilment, that by which it rises to all intensity and all fullness and the ecstasy of utter self-finding.” The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . love is the crown of knowledge; for love is the delight of union, and unity must be conscious of joy of union to find all the riches of its own delight. Perfect knowledge indeed leads to perfect love, integral knowledge to a rounded and multitudinous richness of love.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Love is the power and passion of the divine self-delight and without love we may get the rapt peace of its infinity, the absorbed silence of the Ananda, but not its absolute depth of richness and fullness. Love leads us from the suffering of division into the bliss of perfect union, but without losing that joy of the act of union which is the soul"s greatest discovery and for which the life of the cosmos is a long preparation. Therefore to approach God by love is to prepare oneself for the greatest possible spiritual fulfilment. ” The Synthesis of Yoga
lovely ::: 1. Having a beauty that appeals to the heart or mind as well as to the eye; charmingly or exquisitely beautiful. 2. Of a great spiritual beauty. lovelier, loveliness.
lover ::: 1. Someone who loves a specified person, thing, ideal, etc. 2. A person who is in love with another. Lover, lover"s, Lover"s, lovers.
love ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Love is an intense self-expression of the soul of Ananda.” *Letters on Yoga
lovest ::: a native English form of the verb, to love, now only in formal and poetic usage.
leap ::: n. 1. An abrupt transition. leaps. v. 2. To spring or bound suddenly upward from or as if from the ground; jump. Also fig. 3. Trans. To spring over; to pass from one side to the other by leaping. Also in phr. to leap bounds (lit. and fig.). 4*.* Fig. To move or pass quickly or abruptly from one condition or subject to another. 5. To beat rapidly as the heart. leaps, leaped, leapt, leaping, arrow-leaps, foam-leap, heaven-leap, lightning-leaps.**
". . . Life-Force emerging turns upon Matter, imposes a vital content on the operations of material Energy while it develops also its own new movements and operations; Life-Mind emerges in Life-Force and Matter and imposes its content of consciousness on their operations while it develops also its own action and faculties; . . . .” The Life Divine*
"Life is universal Force working so as to create, energise, maintain and modify, even to the extent of dissolving and reconstructing, substantial forms with mutual play and interchange of an overtly or secretly conscious energy as its fundamental character.” The Life Divine
light, divine ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . there is a Divine Light that leans over the world and is not only a far-off incommunicable Lustre.” *Letters on Yoga
"The opening of the consciousness to the Divine Light and Truth and Presence is always the one important thing in the yoga.” *Letters on Yoga
"In the Veda the Cow is the Divine Light — . . . .” Letters on Yoga*
light ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy.” *The Life Divine
"Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision"s limited range.
For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.
God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light.” *The Hour of God
"Light is a general term. Light is not knowledge but the illumination that comes from above and liberates the being from obscurity and darkness.” The Mother
The Mother: "The light is everywhere, the force is everywhere. And the world is so small.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15. ::: *Light, light"s, lights, light-petalled, light-tasselled, half-light.
line ::: 1. *Gen.* Text consisting of a row of words written across a page. 2. A chronological or ancestral series, esp. of people. 3. A course of progress or movement; a route. 4. A manner or course of procedure determined by a specified factor. 5. A sequence of related things that leads to a certain ending. 6. A border or boundary. 7. A narrow continuous mark, as one made by a pencil, pen, or brush across a surface.
logic ::: 1. The science that investigates the principles governing correct or reliable inference. 2. The system or principles of reasoning applicable to any branch of knowledge or study. 3. Convincing forcefulness; inexorable truth or persuasiveness. logic"s.
-loop ::: something having a shape, order, or path of motion that is circular or curved over on itself. Time-loop.
lotus ::: any aquatic plant of the genus Nelumbo, of the water lily family, having shieldlike leaves and showy, solitary flowers usually projecting above the water. lotuses, lotus-bud, lotus-cup, lotus-heart, lotus-leaf, lotus-pools, lotus-throne.
lovd"st ::: a native English contracted form of the verb to love, now only in formal and poetic usage.
lov"st ::: a native English contracted form of the verb to love, now only in formal and poetic usage.
lust ::: 1. A passionate or overmastering desire or craving. 2. Longing desire; eagerness to possess. 3. Intense sexual desire or appetite; libidinous desire, degrading animal passion. 4. Desires. lust"s, lusts, lusted, lusting.
mail ::: flexible armor composed of small overlapping metal rings, loops of chain, or scales. mailed.
majesty ::: 1. Regal, lofty, or stately dignity; imposing character; grandeur. 2. Supreme greatness or authority; sovereignty.
managed ::: handled, directed, governed, or controlled in action or use. managing.
"Moreover we see that this cosmic action or any cosmic action is impossible without the play of an infinite Force of Existence which produces and regulates all these forms and movements; and that Force equally presupposes or is the action of an infinite Consciousness, because it is in its nature a cosmic Will determining all relations and apprehending them by its own mode of awareness, and it could not so determine and apprehend them if there were no comprehensive Consciousness behind that mode of cosmic awareness to originate as well as to hold, fix and reflect through it the relations of Being in the developing formation or becoming of itself which we call a universe.” The Life Divine
n. 1. The body or outward appearance of a person or an animal considered separately from the face or head; figure. 2. An object, person, or part of the human body or the appearance of any of these, esp. as seen in nature. 3. The mode in which a thing exists, acts, or manifests itself; kind. 4. The structure, pattern, organization or essential nature of anything. Form, form"s, forms, Forms, form-bound, form-discoveries, form-maker, form-smitten, thought-forms. v. 5. To give form to; shape. 6.* *To take or assume form; to be formed or produced. forms, formed, many-formed, sense-formed. ::: re-form.** To form a second time, form over again.
n. 1. The lower interior part of a ship or airplane where cargo is stored. 2. The act or a means of grasping. v. 3. To have or keep in the hand; keep fast; grasp. 4. To bear, sustain, or support, as with the hands or arms, or by any other means. 5. To contain or be capable of containing. 6. To keep from departing or getting away. 7. To withstand stress, pressure, or opposition; to maintain occupation of by force or coercion. 8. To have in its power, possess, affect, occupy. 9. To engage in; preside over; carry on. 10. To have or keep in the mind; think or believe. 11. To regard or consider. 12. To keep or maintain a grasp on something. 13. To maintain one"s position against opposition; continue in resistance. 14. To agree or side (usually followed by with). holds, holding. ::: hold back. 15. a. To retain possession of; keep back. b. To refrain from revealing; withhold. c. To refrain from participating or engaging in some activity.
n. 1. The point, axis, or pivot about which a body rotates. 2. A point, area, or part that is approximately in the middle of a larger area or volume. 3. A person or thing that is a focus of interest or attention. 4. A point of origin. centre"s, centres. v. 5. To focus or bring together. 6. To move towards, mark, put, or be concentrated at or as at a centre. 7. centred. Brought together to a centre, concentrated.
not able to move or be moved; fixed; stationary; motionless. immobility.
"Of course, the gods exist — that is to say, there are Powers that stand above the world and transmit the divine workings. It is the physical mind which believes only what is physical that denies them. There are also beings of other worlds — gods and Asuras, etc.” Letters on Yoga
::: "One Godhead, occult in all beings, the inner Self of all beings, the all-pervading, absolute without qualities, the overseer of all actions, the witness, the knower.” The Life Divine
"One must go deep and find the soul, the self, the Divine Reality within us and only then can life become a true expression of what we can be instead of a blind and always repeated confused blur of the inadequate and imperfect thing we were. The choice is between remaining in the old jumble and groping about in the hope of stumbling on some discovery or standing back and seeking the Light within till we discover and can build the Godhead within and without us. "Letters on Yoga
On the other hand the passage through the higher zones — higher Mind, illumined Mind, Intuition, overmind is obligatory — they are the true Intermediaries between the present consciousness and the supermind.” Letters on Yoga
"Our ego is only a face of the universal being and has no separate existence; our apparent separative individuality is only a surface movement and behind it our real individuality stretches out to unity with all things and upward to oneness with the transcendent Divine Infinity. Thus our ego, which seems to be a limitation of existence, is really a power of infinity; the boundless multiplicity of beings in the world is a result and signal evidence, not of limitation or finiteness, but of that illimitable Infinity.” The Life Divine
"Over each grade of our being a power of the Spirit presides; we have within us and discover when we go deep enough inwards a mind-self, a life-self, a physical self; there is a being of mind, a mental Purusha, expressing something of itself on our surface in the thoughts, perceptions, activities of our mind-nature, a being of life which expresses something of itself in the impulses, feelings, sensations, desires, external life-activities of our vital nature, a physical being, a being of the body which expresses something of itself in the instincts, habits, formulated activities of our physical nature. These beings or part selves of the self in us are powers of the Spirit and therefore not limited by their temporary expression, for what is thus formulated is only a fragment of its possibilities; but the expression creates a temporary mental, vital or physical personality which grows and develops even as the psychic being or soul-personality grows and develops within us.” The Life Divine
"Soma is the Gandharva, the Lord of the hosts of delight, and guards the true seat of the Deva, the level or plane of the Ananda; gandharva itthâ padam asya rakshati. He is the Supreme, standing out from all other beings and over them, other than they and wonderful, adbhuta, and as the supreme and transcendent, present in the worlds but exceeding them, he protects in those worlds the births of the gods, pâti devânâm janimâni adbhutah. The ‘births of the gods" is a common phrase in the Veda by which is meant the manifestation of the divine principles in the cosmos and especially the formation of the godhead in its manifold forms in the human being.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "Akshara, the immobile, the immutable, is the silent and inactive self, it is the unity of the divine Being, Witness of Nature, but not involved in its movement; it is the inactive Purusha free from Prakriti and her works.” Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: "As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that live by the Falsehood and support it and work for its victory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the existence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there are Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and the impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic Invisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil for the possession of the world and the government of the life of man; — this was the significance of the contest between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other, — invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man to the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to the undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and Evil.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the Mind, Love in the heart, Power in the vital.” *The Future Poetry
Sri Aurobindo: "But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different, — something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence — it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it — not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Cruelty transfigured becomes Love that is intolerable ecstasy; . . . .”
Sri Aurobindo: "Destruction in itself is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of Nature, a necessity in the play of forces, as things are in this world. The Light destroys the Darkness and the Powers of Darkness, and that is not a movement of Ignorance!” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: " . . . Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. The Synthesis of Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Ego is only a faculty put forward by the discriminative mind to centralise round itself the experiences of the sense-mind and to serve as a sort of lynch-pin in the wheel which keeps together the movement. It is no more than an instrument, although it is true that so long as we are limited by our normal mentality, we are compelled by the nature of that mentality and the purpose of the instrument to mistake our ego-function for our very self.” The Upanishads
*Sri Aurobindo: "Emotion itself is not a bad thing; it is a necessary part of the nature, and psychic emotion is one of the most powerful helps to the sadhana. Psychic emotion, bringing tears of love for the Divine or tears of Ananda, ought not to be suppressed: . . . .” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Equality is to remain unmoved within in all conditions.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Experience is a word that covers almost all the happenings in yoga; only when something gets settled, then it is no longer an experience but part of the siddhi; e.g. peace when it comes and goes is an experience — when it is settled and goes no more it is a siddhi.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Gnosis or true supermind is a power above mind working in its own law, out of the direct identity of the supreme Self, his absolute self-conscious Truth knowing herself by her own power of absolute Light without any need of seeking, even the most luminous seeking.” The Upanishads (footnote)
Sri Aurobindo: "He is the Cosmic Spirit and all-creating Energy around us; he is the Immanent within us. All that is is he, and he is the More than all that is, and we ourselves, though we know it not, are being of his being, force of his force, conscious with a consciousness derived from his; even our mortal existence is made out of his substance and there is an immortal within us that is a spark of the Light and Bliss that are for ever. No matter whether by knowledge, works, love or any other means, to become aware of this truth of our being, to realise it, to make it effective here or elsewhere is the object of all Yoga.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "If thou think defeat is the end of thee, then go not forth to fight, even though thou be the stronger. For Fate is not purchased by any man nor is Power bound over to her possessors. But defeat is not the end, it is only a gate or a beginning.” Essays Human and Divine*
Sri Aurobindo: "In considering the action of the Infinite we have to avoid the error of the disciple who thought of himself as the Brahman, refused to obey the warning of the elephant-driver to budge ::: from the narrow path and was taken up by the elephant"s trunk and removed out of the way; ‘You are no doubt the Brahman," said the master to his bewildered disciple, ‘but why did you not obey the driver Brahman and get out of the path of the elephant Brahman?"” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "In other words, ethics is a stage in evolution. That which is common to all stages is the urge of Sachchidananda towards self-expression. This urge is at first non-ethical, then infra-ethical in the animal, then in the intelligent animal even anti-ethical for it permits us to approve hurt done to others which we disapprove when done to ourselves. In this respect man even now is only half-ethical. And just as all below us is infra-ethical, so there may be that above us whither we shall eventually arrive, which is supra-ethical, has no need of ethics. The ethical impulse and attitude, so all-important to humanity, is a means by which it struggles out of the lower harmony and universality based upon inconscience and broken up by Life into individual discords towards a higher harmony and universality based upon conscient oneness with all existences. Arriving at that goal, this means will no longer be necessary or even possible, since the qualities and oppositions on which it depends will naturally dissolve and disappear in the final reconciliation.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Intelligence does not depend on the amount one has read, it is a quality of the mind. Study only gives it material for its work as life also does. There are people who do not know how to read and write who are more intelligent than many highly educated people and understand life and things better. On the other hand, a good intelligence can improve itself by reading because it gets more material to work on and grows by exercise and by having a wider range to move in. But book-knowledge by itself is not the real thing, it has to be used as a help to the intelligence but it is often only a help to stupidity or ignorance — ignorance because knowledge of facts is a poor thing if one cannot see their true significance.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "It could be affirmed as a consequence that there is one all-pervading Life or dynamic energy — the material aspect being only its outermost movement — that creates all these forms of the physical universe, Life imperishable and eternal which, even if the whole figure of the universe were quite abolished, would itself still go on existing and be capable of producing a new universe in its place, must indeed, unless it be held back in a state of rest by some higher Power or hold itself back, inevitably go on creating. In that case Life is nothing else than the Force that builds and maintains and destroys forms in the world; it is Life that manifests itself in the form of the earth as much as in the plant that grows upon the earth and the animals that support their existence by devouring the life-force of the plant or of each other. All existence here is a universal Life that takes form of Matter. It might for that purpose hide life-process in physical process before it emerges as submental sensitivity and mentalised vitality, but still it would be throughout the same creative Life-principle.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "It is true that when Matter first emerges it becomes the dominant principle; it seems to be and is within its own field the basis of all things, the constituent of all things, the end of all things: but Matter itself is found to be a result of something that is not Matter, of Energy, and this Energy cannot be something self-existent and acting in the Void, but can turn out and, when deeply scrutinised, seems likely to turn out to be the action of a secret Consciousness and Being: when the spiritual knowledge and experience emerge, this becomes a certitude, — it is seen that the creative Energy in Matter is a movement of the power of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "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: "Krishna with Radha is the symbol of the Divine Love.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Lust is the perversion or degradation which prevents love from establishing its reign: . . . .” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . our mind has the faculty of imagination; it can create and take as true and real its own mental structures: . . . . Our mental imagination is an instrument of Ignorance; it is the resort or device or refuge of a limited capacity of knowledge, a limited capacity of effective action. Mind supplements these deficiencies by its power of imagination: it uses it to extract from things obvious and visible the things that are not obvious and visible; it undertakes to create its own figures of the possible and the impossible; it erects illusory actuals or draws figures of a conjectured or constructed truth of things that are not true to outer experience. That is at least the appearance of its operation; but, in reality, it is the mind"s way or one of its ways of summoning out of Being its infinite possibilities, even of discovering or capturing the unknown possibilities of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision"s limited range.” *Essays Divine and Human
*Sri Aurobindo: "Pleasure, joy and delight, as man uses the words, are limited and occasional movements which depend on certain habitual causes and emerge, like their opposites pain and grief which are equally limited and occasional movements, from a background other than themselves. Delight of being is universal, illimitable and self-existent, not dependent on particular causes, the background of all backgrounds, from which pleasure, pain and other more neutral experiences emerge. When delight of being seeks to realise itself as delight of becoming, it moves in the movement of force and itself takes different forms of movement of which pleasure and pain are positive and negative currents.” The Life Divine*
Sri Aurobindo: "So the possibility of the sunlit path is not a discovery or original invention of mine. The very first books on yoga I read more than thirty years ago spoke of the dark and sunlit way and emphasised the superiority of the latter over the former.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The first is the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the secret psychic entity, the divine element within us. When that becomes dominant over the nature, when we are consciously the soul and when mind, life and body take their true place as its instruments, we are aware of a guide within that knows the truth, the good, the true delight and beauty of existence, controls heart and intellect by its luminous law and leads our life and being towards spiritual completeness.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "The flute is the call of the Divine Love;” Letters on Yoga ::: "The flute is the symbol of a call — usually the spiritual call.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass though the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” The Mother
Sri Aurobindo: "The motion of the world works under the government of a perpetual stability. Change represents the constant shifting of apparent relations in an eternal Immutability.” The Upanishads
*Sri Aurobindo: "There are some who often or almost invariably have the contact whenever they worship, the Deity may become living to them in the picture or other image they worship, may move and act through it; others may feel him always present, outwardly, subtle-physically, abiding with them where they live or in the very room, but sometimes this is only for a period. Or they may feel the Presence with them, see it frequently in a body (but not materially except sometimes), feel its touch or embrace, converse with it constantly — that is also a kind of milana. The greatest milana is one in which one is constantly aware of the Deity abiding in oneself, in everything in the world, holding all the world in him, identical with existence and yet supremely beyond the world — but in the world too one sees, hears, feels nothing but him, so that the very senses bear witness to him alone — . . . .” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no ignorance that is not part of the Cosmic Ignorance, only in the individual it becomes a limited formation and movement, while the Cosmic Ignorance is the whole movement of world consciousness separated from the supreme Truth and acting in an inferior motion in which the Truth is perverted, diminished, mixed and clouded with falsehood and error.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The sense of release as if from jail always accompanies the emergence of the psychic being or the realisation of the self above. It is therefore spoken of as a liberation, mukti. It is a release into peace, happiness, the soul"s freedom not tied down by the thousand ties and cares of the outward ignorant existence.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above.” Letters on Yoga*
*Sri Aurobindo: "The timeless Spirit is not necessarily a blank; it may hold all in itself, but in essence, without reference to time or form or relation or circumstance, perhaps in an eternal unity. Eternity is the common term between Time and the Timeless Spirit. What is in the Timeless unmanifested, implied, essential, appears in Time in movement, or at least in design and relation, in result and circumstance. These two then are the same Eternity or the same Eternal in a double status; they are a twofold status of being and consciousness, one an eternity of immobile status, the other an eternity of motion in status.” The Life Divine ::: "The spiritual fullness of the being is eternity; . . . ” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘ghost" as used in popular parlance covers an enormous number of distinct phenomena which have no necessary connection with each other. To name a few only: ::: An actual contact with the soul of a human being in its subtle body and transcribed to our mind by the appearance of an image or the hearing of a voice.
Sri Aurobindo: "This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West too the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and mostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy, — that was a notion of the Greeks, — a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga *Ananke"s.
Sri Aurobindo: "To act according to a standard of Truth or a rule or law of action (dharma) or in obedience to a superior authority or to the highest principles discovered by the reason and intelligent will and not according to one"s own fancy, vital impulses and desires. In yoga obedience to the Guru or to the Divine and the law of the Truth as declared by the Guru is the foundation of discipline.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Universal love is the spiritual founded on the sense of the One and the Divine everywhere and the change of the personal into a wide universal consciousness, free from attachment and ignorance.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "When there is some lowering or diminution of the consciousness or some impairing of it at one place or another, the Adversary — or the Censor — who is always on the watch presses with all his might wherever there is a weak point lying covered from your own view, and suddenly a wrong movement leaps up with unexpected force. Become conscious and cast out the possibility of its renewal, that is all that is to be done.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Yes: the purpose is to create a large luminous trailing repetitive movement like the flight of the Bird with its dragon tail of white fire.” *Letters on Savitri
::: "Sri Krishna . . . Lord of the divine love and Ananda — and his flute calls the physical being to awake out of the attachments of the physical world and turn to that love and Ananda.” *Letters on Yoga
"Stability and movement, we must remember, are only our psychological representations of the Absolute, even as are oneness and multitude. The Absolute is beyond stability and movement as it is beyond unity and multiplicity. But it takes its eternal poise in the one and the stable and whirls round itself infinitely, inconceivably, securely in the moving and multitudinous.” The Life Divine
"The Absolute neither creates nor is created, — in the current sense of making or being made; we can speak of creation only in the sense of the Being becoming in form and movement what it already is in substance and status.” *The Life Divine
::: "The ancient Vedanta presents us with . . . the conception and experience of Brahman as the one universal and essential fact and of the nature of Brahman as Sachchidananda [Existence, Consciousness, Bliss]. In this view the essence of all life is the movement of a universal and immortal existence, the essence of all sensation and emotion is the play of a universal and self-existent delight in being, the essence of all thought and perception is the radiation of a universal and all-pervading truth, the essence of all activity is the progression of a universal and self-effecting good.” The Life Divine
The Apsaras then are the divine Hetairae of Paradise, beautiful singers and actresses whose beauty and art relieve the arduous and world-long struggle of the Gods against the forces that tend towards disruption by the Titans who would restore Matter to its original atomic condition or of dissolution by the sages and hermits who would make phenomena dissolve prematurely into the One who is above phenomena. They rose from the Ocean, says Valmiki, seeking who should choose them as brides, but neither the Gods nor the Titans accepted them, therefore are they said to be common or universal. The Harmony of Virtue
"The Avatar 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 colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top: — (1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deep purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eye-brows, two petals, white; (7) the thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our yoga, — (1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes or by some identified with the brain, but that is an error — the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, sunya , either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.” Letters on Yoga*
"The cosmic consciousness is that in which the limits of ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces, universal mind forces, universal life forces, universal energies of Matter, universal overmind forces. But one does not become aware of all these together; the opening of the cosmic consciousness is usually progressive. It is not that the ego, the body, the personal mind disappear, but one feels them as only a small part of oneself. One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one"s own greater reality. All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one"s whole experience of the world is radically different from that of those who are shut up in their personal selves. One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one"s instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting things; and the confines of knowledge can be rolled back to an almost unmeasurable degree. The thing one has to be on guard against in the cosmic consciousness is the play of a magnified ego, the vaster attacks of the hostile forces — for they too are part of the cosmic consciousness — and the attempt of the cosmic Illusion (Ignorance, Avidya) to prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth. These are things that one has to learn from experience; mental teaching or explanation is quite insufficient. To enter safely into the cosmic consciousness and to pass safely through it, it is necessary to have a strong central unegoistic sincerity and to have the psychic being, with its divination of truth and unfaltering orientation towards the Divine, already in front in ::: —the nature.” Letters on Yoga*
"The cosmic Truth is the truth of things as they are at present expressed in the universe. The Divine Truth is independent of the universe, above it and originates it.” Letters on Yoga
"The Cosmic Will is not, to our ordinary consciousness, something that acts as an independent power doing whatever it chooses; it works through all these beings, through the forces at play in the world and the law of these forces and their results — it is only when we open ourselves and get out of the ordinary consciousness that we can feel it intervening as an independent power and overriding the ordinary play of the forces." Letters on Yoga
"The Divine is that from which all comes, in which all lives, and to return to the truth of the Divine now clouded over by Ignorance is the soul"s aim in life. In its supreme Truth, the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
"The general power of Delight is love and the special mould which the joy of love takes is the vision of beauty.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"The Gods are the great undying Powers and immortal Personalities who consciously inform, constitute, preside over the subjective and objective forces of the cosmos.” Essays on the Gita
::: "The Gods, as has already been said, are in origin and essence permanent Emanations of the Divine put forth from the Supreme by the Transcendent Mother, the Adya Shakti; in their cosmic action they are Powers and Personalities of the Divine each with his independent cosmic standing, function and work in the universe. They are not impersonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do ordinarily veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces.” Letters on Yoga
::: "The heart is the centre of the emotional being and the emotions are vital movements. When the heart is purified, the vital emotions change into psychic feelings or else psychicised vital movements.” Letters on Yoga
the horny sheath covering the toes or lower part of the foot of a mammal, such as a horse, ox, or deer. hoof-mark.
"The ‘I" or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear — the true being is felt in its place.” Letters on Yoga
::: "The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; he is Space and all that is in Space; he is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe.” The Life Divine*
::: "The lower nature is ignorant and undivine, not in itself hostile but shut to the Light and Truth. The hostile forces are anti-divine, not merely undivine; they make use of the lower nature, pervert it, fill it with distorted movements and by that means influence man and even try to enter and possess or at least entirely control him.” *Letters on Yoga
The Mother: "Consciousness is indeed the creatrix of the universe, but love is its saviour. . . .” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
::: The Mother: "Of all the aspects of the Mother, Kali most powerfully expresses vibrant and active love, and despite her sometimes terrible aspect, she carries in herself the golden splendour of an all-powerful love.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15*.
The Mother: ‘There are four Asuras. Two have already been converted, and the other two, the Lord of Death and the Lord of Falsehood, made an attempt at conversion by taking on a physical body – they have been intimately associated with my life. The story of these Asuras would be very interesting to recount. . . the Lord of Death disappeared; he lost his physical body, and I don"t know what has become of him. As for the other, the Lord of Falsehood, the one who now rules over this earth, he tried hard to be converted but he found it disgusting!
The Mother: "To be humble means for the mind, the vital and the body never to forget that without the Divine they know nothing, are noting and can do nothing; with the Divine they are nothing but ignorance, chaos and impotence. The Divine alone is Truth, Life, Power, Love, Felicity.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14.
::: The Mother: "With the Divine"s Love is the power of Transformation. It has this power because it is for the sake of Transformation that it has given itself to the world and manifested everywhere. Not only into man but into all the atoms of Matter it has infused itself in order to bring the world back to the original Truth. The moment you open to it, you also receive its power of Transformation.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
"The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and the ineffable Presence; containing or calling the Truths that have to be manifested, she brings them down from the Mystery in which they were hidden into the light of her infinite consciousness and gives them a form of force in her omnipotent power and her boundless life and a body in the universe.” The Mother
"There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self. This inner self once awake opens in its turn to our true real eternal self. It opens inwardly to the soul, called in the language of this yoga the psychic being which supports our successive births and at each birth assumes a new mind, life and body. It opens above to the Self or Spirit which is unborn and by conscious recovery of it we transcend the changing personality and achieve freedom and full mastery over our nature.” Letters on Yoga
"There is a sunlit path as well as a gloomy one and it is the better of the two — a path in which one goes forward in absolute reliance on the Mother, fearing nothing, sorrowing over nothing. Aspiration is needed but there can be a sunlit aspiration full of light and faith and confidence and joy. If difficulty comes, even that can be faced with a smile.” Letters on Yoga
"The spiritual change is the established descent of the peace, light, knowledge, power, bliss from above, the awareness of the Self and the Divine and of a higher cosmic consciousness and the change of the whole consciousness to that.” Letters on Yoga
"The vital is the. . . being behind the Force of Life; in its outer form in the Ignorance it generates the desire-soul which governs most men and which they mistake often for the real soul. ::: The vital as the desire-soul and desire-nature controls the consciousness to a large extent in most men, because men are governed by desire.” Letters on Yoga
"This eternity is not of Time; the eternity of Time is an extension in movement of the Timeless.” Essays Divine and Human
"This Godhead is one in all things that are, the self who lives in all and the self in whom all live and move; therefore man has to discover his spiritual unity with all creatures, to see all in the self and the self in all beings, even to see all things and creatures as himself, âtmaupamyena sarvatra, and accordingly think, feel and act in all his mind, will and living. This Godhead is the origin of all that is here or elsewhere and by his Nature he has become all these innumerable existences, abhût sarvâni bhûtâni; therefore man has to see and adore the One in all things animate and inanimate, to worship the manifestation in sun and star and flower, in man and every living creature, in the forms and forces, qualities and powers of Nature, vâsudevah sarvam iti.” Essays on the Gita ::: *godhead, godheads, godhead"s.
"This is the great truth now dawning on the world, that Will is the thing which moves the world and that Fate is merely a process by which Will fulfils itself.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"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. This imperfection is not a thing to be at all deplored, but rather a privilege and a promise, for it opens out to us an immense vista of self-development and self-exceeding. Man at his highest is a half-god who has risen up out of the animal Nature and is splendidly abnormal in it, but the thing which he has started out to be, the whole god, is something so much greater than what he is that it seems to him as abnormal to himself as he is to the animal. This means a great and arduous labour of growth before him, but also a splendid crown of his race and his victory. A kingdom is offered to him beside which his present triumphs in the realms of mind or over external Nature will appear only as a rough hint and a poor beginning. The Human Cycle
"To me, for instance, consciousness is the very stuff of existence and I can feel it everywhere enveloping and penetrating the stone as much as man or the animal. A movement, a flow of consciousness is not to me an image but a fact. If I wrote "His anger climbed against me in a stream", it would be to the general reader a mere image, not something that was felt by me in a sensible experience; yet I would only be describing in exact terms what actually happened once, a stream of anger, a sensible and violent current of it rising up from downstairs and rushing upon me as I sat in the veranda of the Guest-House, the truth of it being confirmed afterwards by the confession of the person who had the movement. This is only one instance, but all that is spiritual or psychological in Savitri is of that character. What is to be done under these circumstances? The mystical poet can only describe what he has felt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or experienced through exact vision, close contact or identity and leave it to the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand according to his capacity. A new kind of poetry demands a new mentality in the recipient as well as in the writer.” Letters on Savitri
"True knowledge is to know with the inner being, and when the inner being is touched by the light, then it arises to embrace that which is seen, it yearns to possess, it struggles to shape that in itself and itself to it, it labours to become one with the glory of its vision. Knowledge in this sense is an awakening to identity and, since the inner being realises itself by consciousness and delight, by love, by possession and oneness with whatever of itself it has seen, knowledge awakened must bring an overmastering impulse towards this true and only perfect realisation.” Essays on the Gita
::: "Universal forces means all forces good or bad, favourable or hostile, of light and darkness that move in the cosmos.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . universal love is not personal — it has to be held within as a condition of the consciousness which will have its effects according to the Divine Will or be used by that Will if necessary; . . . .” Letters on Yoga ::: *love"s, loves, loved, loving, love-chained, love-maddened, love-music, love-note, all-love, All-love, All-Love.
::: universal love
"Vamana, the Dwarf, in Hindu mythology, one of the ten incarnations of Vishnu, born as a son of Kashyapa and Aditi. The titan King Bali had by his austerities acquired dominion of all the three worlds. To remedy this, Vishnu came to him in the form of a dwarf and begged of him as much land as he could step over in three paces. Bali complied. In two strides the dwarf covered heaven and earth, and with the third step, on Bali"s head, pushed him down to Patala, the infernal regions.” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
"We. . . become conscious, in our physical movements, in our nervous and vital reactions, in our mental workings, of a Force greater than body, mind and life which takes hold of our limited instruments and drives all their motion. There is no longer the sense of ourselves moving, thinking or feeling but of that moving, feeling and thinking in us. This force that we feel is the universal Force of the Divine, which, veiled or unveiled, acting directly or permitting the use of its powers by beings in the cosmos, is the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible. For this force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; all is that, power of act, power of thought and knowledge, power of mastery and enjoyment, power of love.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"When the Peace is established, this higher or Divine Force from above can descend and work in us. It descends usually first into the head and liberates the inner mind centres, then into the heart centre and liberates fully the psychic and emotional being, then into the navel and other vital centres and liberates the inner vital, then into the Muladhara and below and liberates the inner physical being. It works at the same time for perfection as well as liberation; it takes up the whole nature part by part and deals with it, rejecting what has to be rejected, sublimating what has to be sublimated, creating what has to be created. It integrates, harmonises, establishes a new rhythm in the nature. It can bring down too a higher and yet higher force and range of the higher nature until, if that be the aim of the sadhana, it becomes possible to bring down the supramental force and existence. All this is prepared, assisted, farthered by the work of the psychic being in the heart centre; the more it is open, in front, active, the quicker, safer, easier the working of the Force can be. The more love and bhakti and surrender grow in the heart, the more rapid and perfect becomes the evolution of the sadhana. For the descent and transformation imply at the same time an increasing contact and union with the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
"When the Peace is established, this higher or Divine Force from above can descend and work in us. It descends usually first into the head and liberates the inner mind centres, then into the heart centre and liberates fully the psychic and emotional being, then into the navel and other vital centres and liberates the inner vital, then into the Muladhara and below and liberates the inner physical being. It works at the same time for perfection as well as liberation; it takes up the whole nature part by part and deals with it, rejecting what has to be rejected, sublimating what has to be sublimated, creating what has to be created.” Letters on Yoga
"When we study this Life as it manifests itself upon earth with Matter as its basis, we observe that essentially it is a form of the one cosmic Energy, a dynamic movement or current of it positive and negative, a constant act or play of the Force which builds up forms, energises them by a continual stream of stimulation and maintains them by an unceasing process of disintegration and renewal of their substance. This would tend to show that the natural opposition we make between death and life is an error of our mentality, one of those false oppositions — false to inner truth though valid in surface practical experience — which, deceived by appearances, it is constantly bringing into the universal unity.” The Life Divine ::: *life"s, life-born, life-curve, life-delight"s, life-drift, life-foam, life-giving, life-impulse, life-impulse"s, life-motives, life-nature"s, life-pain, life-plan, life-power, life-room, life-scene, life-self, life-thought, life-wants, all-life, sense-life.
"Within us, there are two centres of the Purusha, the inner Soul through which he touches us to our awakening; there is the Purusha in the lotus of the heart which opens upward all our powers and the Purusha in the thousand-petalled lotus whence descend through the thought and will, opening the third eye in us, the lightnings of vision and the fire of the divine energy. The bliss existence may come to us through either one of these centres. When the lotus of the heart breaks open, we feel a divine joy, love and peace expanding in us like a flower of light which irradiates the whole being.” The Synthesis of Yoga
KEYS (10k)
1 Jason Bowman
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
15 Colleen Hoover
11 Anonymous
10 Rumi
9 Ovid
6 Stephen R Covey
6 Denise Grover Swank
5 William Shakespeare
5 Kristen Ashley
5 Kiera Cass
5 Jaci Burton
4 Zen proverb
4 Plato
4 Mitch Albom
4 Hilda Doolittle
4 Emil Aarestrup
4 Cassandra Clare
3 Virgil
3 The Beatles
3 Tara Westover
3 Suzanne Collins
1:Recommended Reading
David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
DH Lawrence - The Rainbow
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love in the Time of Cholera
Karl Ove Knausgaard - My Struggle
Virginia Woolf - To The Lighthouse
Ben Lerner - The Topeka School
Sally Rooney - Conversations With Friends
Nell Zink - The Wallcreeper
Elena Ferrante - The Days of Abandonment
Jack Kerouac - Dharma Bums
Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass
Michael Murphy - Golf in the Kingdom
Barbara Kingsolver - Prodigal Summer
Albertine Sarrazin - Astragal
Rebecca Solnit - The Faraway Nearby
Michael Paterniti - Love and Other Ways of Dying
Rainer Maria Rilke - Book of Hours
James Baldwin - Another Country
Roberto Calasso - Ka
Translation by S. Radhakrishan - Principle Upanisads
Chogyam Trungpa - Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
Translation by Georg Feuerstein - Yoga Sutra
Richard Freeman - The Mirror of Yoga
Translation by S. Radhakrishan - The Bhagavad Gita
Shrunyu Suzuki - Zen Mind Beginner's Mind
Heinrich Zimmer - Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization
Sogyal Rinpoche - The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Joseph Campbell - Myths of Light
Joseph Campbell - The Hero With A Thousand Faces
Sri Aurobindo - Savitri
Thomas Meyers - Anatomy Trains
Wendy Doniger - The Hindus ~ Jason Bowman, http://www.jasonbowmanyoga.com/recommended-reading,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Gjerstadsholmen. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
2:It’s porn time!” he said, ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
3:Her hair smelled of apples. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
4:I saw life; I thought about death. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
5:[L]ove is inventive to infinity. ~ Saint Vincent de Paul, #NFDB
6:The only ones who count are the living. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
7:Joe Dassin. Arja Saijonmaa. Johnny Cash. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
8:As a person, I'm polite - I want to please. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
9:[L]ove, having no geography, knows no boundaries. ~ Truman Capote, #NFDB
10:sopa caliente contra tormentas de emociones. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
11:The silence was not oppressive; it was open. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
12:literature is what words evoke in the reader. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
13:Aber Gefühle sind dazu da, um unterdrückt zu werden ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
14:Beauty is a problem in that it imparts a kind of hope. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
15:Writing is more about destroying than creating" (195). ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
16:What is a work of art if not the gaze of another person? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
17:Go somewhere you know nothing about and see what happens. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
18:Bilgi mesafedir, bilgi durgunluktur ve anlamın düşmanıdır. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
19:Mesele bilgi değildi, onun yaydığı aura, geldiği yerlerdi. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
20:Oh, the beauty of it, how to deal with it? How to meet it? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
21:Why should you live in a world without feeling its weight? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
22:Kalp için hayat basittir:Atabildiği kadar atar.Sonra durur. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
23:Sensitivity and strength of will are not a simple combination. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
24:Zira nostalji sadece utanmaz değil, aynı zamanda kalleştir de. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
25:Letters are nothing but dead signs, and books are their coffins. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
26:self-assurance and serenity, which all great prose writers had, I ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
27:Now it was ruined. That was what I wanted. And now it had happened. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
28:Writing isn't black magic. You just have to come up with an idea... ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
29:Vi lever i nullvisjonens tid. Det betyr også at vi har null visjoner. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
30:Life's a pitch, as the old woman said. She couldn't pronounce her b’s. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
31:The cemetery’s full of irreplaceable people, as Einar Forde once said. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
32:Life's a pitch, as the old woman said. She couldn't pronounce her 'b's. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
33:The world is material. We are always in a certain place. Now I am here. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
34:Who cares about politics when there are flames licking at your insides? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
35:tystnaden från de levande är något helt annat än tystnaden från de döda. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
36:Die Welt zu verstehen heißt, einen bestimmten Abstand zu ihr einzunehmen. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
37:The truth did not, of course, have a one-to-one relationship with reality. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
38:Saying what you believe others want to hear is, of course, a form of lying. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
39:To have an outside where you’ve come from and an inside where you are going. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
40:Understanding must not be confused with knowledge for I knew next to nothing ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
41:For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
42:You’re the only boy who talks about clothes,” Solveig said. “I know,” I said. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
43:Njegova kapija je srce mosta koji je srce ove kasabe koja svakom mora da ostane u srcu. ~ Ivo Andri, #NFDB
44:How desperate do you have to be to start doing push-ups to solve your problems? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
45:For life, it's very, very bad to be sensitive, but for a writer, it's very good. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
46:I have a longing for fiction - to try to believe in it and to disappear into it. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
47:When you have something to do life will not allow you to ove foward until you do it. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
48:If dogs can smell fear, girls can smell nervousness, that was my experience. From ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
49:to judge you have to stand outside, and that is not where creativity takes place. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
50:He was a particularly detestable boy. He reminded me of myself when I was younger. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
51:It is the era that we take photos of, not the people in it, they can’t be captured. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
52:...and if we were not yet where we would like to be, things might well change one day. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
53:He was the kind to cut through to the essence, and thus someone who made a difference. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
54:There is only one thing children find harder to hold back than tears, and that is joy. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
55:People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had. ~ Fredrik Backman, #NFDB
56:The very thought of Dad, the fact that he existed, caused fear to pump through my body. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
57:But what do you say to have any impact on a man who at one time admired the Spice Girls? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
58:We understand everything, and we do so because we have turned everything into ourselves. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
59:Dünyaya bakış açınız genişledikçe, bunun sadece size verdiği acı değil, anlamı da azalır. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
60:The parents give the child life, the child gives the parents hope. That is the transaction ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
61:The needs of the moment always trumped promises of the future, however enticing the latter. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
62:Ah, confundían comida con espíritu, creían que podían llegar a ser mejores personas comiendo, ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
63:that is what you do when you breathe, you trespass, again and again you trespass on the world. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
64:Yngve came in and said that John Bonham, the drummer in Led Zeppelin, was on one of the songs. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
65:Bir fenomen olarak ölüm bizi korkutmuyorsa eğer, ölü bedenlere duyduğumuz bu tiksinti nedendir? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
66:Love recognises virtue even in sin, truth in error. … [L]ove is free, universal, in its nature[.] ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
67:All erect dicks are bent. Or, if not all, then at least enough of them to be eulogized in a poem. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
68:I know loads of people whose childhood was fantastic, but where did it get them? What have they done? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
69:Sometimes it hurts to live, but there is always something to live for. Could you try to remember that? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
70:There was so much he didn't want to engage with. All the emotions I was overflowing with, for example. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
71:Attributing to another author, "Writing a novel is like setting a goal and walking there in your sleep. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
72:The problem is not so much that the world limits your imagination as your imagination limits the world. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
73:Geleceğin vadettikleri ne kadar baştan çıkarıcı olursa olsun anlık, ihtiyaçlara her zaman yenik düşerdi. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
74:if there was one thing I had learned over the last six months it was that all writing was about writing. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
75:I walked around Stockholm’s streets, modern and feminized, with a furious nineteenth-century man inside me. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
76:For it was not the case that language cloaked reality in its moods, but vice versa, reality arose from them. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
77:Off with my clothes, switch on the water, steaming hot, over my head, down my body.
Should i have a wank? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
78:What is literature an expression of, if not an otherwise inaccessible and in reality non-existent closeness? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
79:When engineers and quantity surveyors discuss aesthetics and architects study what cranes do we are on the right road. ~ Ove Arup, #NFDB
80:As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
81:I had a rebellious streak developing... I flirted with the idea of having my ears pierced and my head shaved. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
82:For it was not the case that language cloaked reality in its moods, but vice versa, reality arose from them. I ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
83:I sat down on the sofa, strangely restless, it was as though the tempo inside me was greater than that outside. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
84:Taxis, I loved taxis. Not the ones I came home drunk in, but the ones I caught to airports or railway stations. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
85:Attending a poetry reading is like being in a hospital,” he said as we left the next station. “Full of neuroses. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
86:Before going out i stood in such a way that i could see the face in the wooden flooring. And i was really Christ. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
87:If you are afraid of the dark, you seek the light. But what do you do when even the light is filled with terrors? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
88:Before i going out i stood in such a way that i could see the face in the wooden flooring. and i was really Christ. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
89:Guarda tu l’acqua: perché dicono che è saggia? Perché prende la forma del vaso ove la si versa.” “Anche il vino, mi pare! ~ Grazia Deledda, #NFDB
90:Teď bylo tři čtvrtě na šest a Ove vstával. Kocour seděl v kuchyni a tvářil se, jako by mu Ove dlužil peníze. Ove na kocoura na ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
91:One’s self image not only encompasses the person you are but also the person you want to be, could be or once had been. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
92:Writing was a defeat, it was a humiliation, it was coming face-to-face with yourself and seeing you weren't good enough. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
93:Because fear and ove can hardly co exist together,if we must chose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
94:One’s self-image not only encompasses the person you are but also the person you wanted to be, could be or once had been. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
95:Ove had never been asked how he lived before he met her. But if anyone had asked him, he would have answered that he didn’t. ~ Fredrik Backman, #NFDB
96:The thought of this could sometimes weigh me down because I wanted so much to be someone. I wanted so much to be special. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
97:Leš što si ga lane zakopao u bašti
Pušta li već izdanke? Hoće li procvetati ove godine,
Il' mu je nenadna stud leju uništila? ~ T S Eliot,#NFDB
98:If you really love me, you have to come to me without demands, I thought but didn’t say, I wanted her to notice on her own. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
99:Po pár krocích za sebou uslyšel zavolání. „Ředitel říkal, že jste úplně jako váš otec!“ Ove se neotočil, ale odcházel hrdě vzpřímený. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
100:I have never understood the point of holidays, have never felt the need for them and have always just wanted to do more work. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
101:Burada başka hedefler bulmak zorundayım, bununla yetinmeli, yüzleşip bunları kabullenmeliyim. Sözünü ettiğim şey yaşama sanatı. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
102:For me, personally, it is very important that the days are exactly the same, so I have routines. I do the same thing every day. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
103:Meghan's in lo-ove," sang the phouka, making my heart stop. "Meghan's in lo-ove. Meghan and Ash, sitting in a tre--"
-Tiaothin ~ Julie Kagawa,#NFDB
104:What I was trying to do, and perhaps what all writers try to do – what on earth do I know? – was to combat fiction with fiction. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
105:porque la atención pública es un narcótico, la necesidad que satisface es artificial, pero cuando se ha saboreado, se quiere más. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
106:If there is anything I miss from my childhood it has to be that, laughing uncontrollably with my brother over some tiny stupidity. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
107:In the modernist era the division between art and the world was close to absolute, or put another way, art was a world of its own. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
108:You’re the only person I know who can take communion despite not believing in God and not commit blasphemy. The only person I know. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
109:Ove feels an instinctive skepticism towards all people taller than six feet; the blood can’t quite make it all the way up to the brain. ~ Fredrik Backman, #NFDB
110:Vil du afværge volden, må du elske dig selv så hojt, at du ikke vil finde dig i den. (slutningen af ove Ditlevsens digt "Elsk dig selv") ~ Tove Ditlevsen, #NFDB
111:I’d had the picture of John Lennon in my room all the time I was at gymnas and proceeded to hang it on the wall behind the typewriter. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
112:I, for my part, never looked forward to anything except the moment the office door closed behind me and I was alone and able to write. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
113:Indifference is one of the seven deadly sins, actually the greatest
of them all, because it is the only one that sins against life. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
114:the easy life is nothing to aspire to, the easy choice is never the worthiest solution, only the difficult life is a life worth living. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
115:The only thing I have learned from life is to endure it, never to question it, and to burn up the longing generated by this in writing. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
116:But what we were best at, what we were really the kings of, that was buses and sitting around in bedrooms. No one could beat us at that. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
117:Fark, uysal olanla sert olan arasındaydı; mesafeleri kaldırmaya çalışanla mesafeleri kurmaya çalışan arasında. Bu bir değer meselesiydi. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
118:But now he was married and had children, and even though he still had the boat the aura of island romanticism had gone. The long hair too. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
119:I think that the best literature has a core that you can't lock to a time or place but that can generate lots of meanings and translations. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
120:In our century even our dreams are alike, even dreams are things we sell. Undifferentiated, which is just another way of saying indifferent. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
121:I would have loved to buy a hot dog from her, just to watch her squeezing the ketchup and mustard from the plastic bottles over the sausage, ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
122:Jeg kastet glasset av all min kraft. Det knuste ikke. Selv ikke den klassiske ovelsen ´kaste glass i peisen under en krangel´, fikk jeg til. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
123:I feel almost physically ill in the presence of boring people who consider themselves especially interesting and who blow their own trumpets. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
124:All I needed to know, all true knowledge, the only really essential knowledge, was to be found in the books I read and the music I listened to ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
125:I had never been allowed to invite friends on my birthday, and nor was I on this one. I was sullen and surly, I ate the cake without a word... ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
126:That was my only parameter with art, the feelings it aroused. The feeling of inexhaustibility. The feeling of beauty. The feeling of presence. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
127:Why would someone with such red cheeks who liked to go on long walks in the forest have such a big cock? I wondered. What would he do with it? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
128:The general perception of writers’ lives is that they are exciting and desirable. But you generally spend most of your time cooking and cleaning. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
129:Jedina je pouka koja se može izvući iz ove priče, ili iz bilo koje druge, to da u stvarnom životu za razliku od mašte, ništa nije kako se pričinja. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
130:Her boyfriend was a member of the same congregation, and if I did not threaten their relationship directly I was at least a contrast to her other life. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
131:There was nothing left of my feelings for those I had just spent several hours with. The whole crowd of them could have burned in hell for all I cared. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
132:... to sit alone in a bar chatting with strangers would have been inconceivable for me, it was closer to my nature to make waffles alone in my bedsit... ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
133:I do not want anyone to get close to me, I do not want anyone to see me, and this is the way things have developed: no one gets close and no one sees me. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
134:Bir şeyi az bildiğinde, o yoktur. Bir şeyi çok bildiğinde, o yoktur. Yazmak var olanı, bildiklerimizin gölgesinden çekip çıkarmaktır. Yazmanın olayı budur. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
135:Shame tells you when you've gone too far. Then you try if it's okay to go too far. And it might be so that shame was right. You can never, never know that. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
136:I didn't care anymore anyway. But there had been days when I had cared, days when I had been on the outside and had suffered. Now I was only on the outside. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
137:[L]ove unites. … [N]ot a visionary, imaginary love – no! a real love, a love which has flesh and blood, which vibrates as an almighty force through all living. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
138:Actually there were only two forms of existence, I reflected: one that was tied to a place and one that wasn't. Both had always existed. Neither could be chosen. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
139:When I was a boy I read an enormous quantity of books, my sole object being to get away from the reality I was living in—in other words, pure and simple escapism. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
140:I remember thinking all I wanted to do was to sit right there, in a newly built house, in a circle of light in the middle of the forest and be as stupid as I liked. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
141:Det är en vacker stad. Men kall som is. Du kan leva ett helt liv här utan att få närkontakt med någon. Allt är planerat för att man ska slippa beröring med varandra. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
142:For darkness is the rule and light its exception, as death is the rule and life its exception. Light and life are anomalies, the dawn is their continual affirmation. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
143:It was a fantastic feeling, but it left me restless because the most important thing in it was the longing, for what was going to be, not for what I did or had done. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
144:Fırsatı kaçırmış olmam çok önemli değildi; çok daha önemlisi elimdeki fırsatı kaçırış biçimimdi, son adımları atacak, son köprüden geçecek cesareti bulamamış olmamdı. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
145:I was drunk in that pure joyful way you can be from white wine, when your thoughts collide with one another like bubbles and what emerges when they burst is pleasure. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
146:What was it that Rilke wrote? That music raised him out of himself, and never returned him to where it had found him, but to a deeper place, somewhere in the unfinished. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
147:I asked him whether he was still with the woman he had met, whose name I didn’t even know.
‘No, I’m not,’ he said. ‘She told me where to put my shoes. That’s no good. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
148:Perhaps they were dead and imagined they were living? Perhaps everyone was dead? Perhaps he’d always been dead? That what he’d always assumed was life was actually death? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
149:What the fuck had that got to do with me? I sent her a look of sympathy and concentrated on preventing my eyes from wandering, which can easily happen in such situations. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
150:Pomyślałem, że proza jest czymś, w czym można odpocząć, tak jak można odpocząć w jakimś miejscu, pod drzewem albo na leżaku w ogrodzie, i że to jest wartością samą w sobie. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
151:A memory is a ledge on the mountainside of the mind; there we are, drinking and chatting, and on the ledge below us my dad sits in his chair, dead, his face smeared with blood. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
152:If you are disappearing from yourself, but you're still writing, then there is a kind of activity of thinking going on, which in my world is similar to what's going on in music. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
153:For that’s how it is, we cover up our mistakes and failings, we invent stories that put ourselves in a more favorable light. Self-deception is perhaps the most human thing of all. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
154:[L]ove is also the idealism of nature … Love alone makes the nightingale a songstress; love alone gives the plant it corolla. And what wonders does love not work in our social life! ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
155:You know too little and it doesn’t exist. You know too much and it doesn’t exist. Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows. That is what writing is about. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
156:A hospital that transports its bodies upward, that sites its cold chambers on the upper floors is practically inconceivable. The dead are stored as close to the ground as possible. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
157:I am forty-six years old and that is my insight, that life is made up of events that have to be parried. And that the moments of happiness in life all have to do with the opposite. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
158:As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to keep a certain distance from it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
159:As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
160:As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
161:continually, a storm blew through our world and it always had, and the only place I knew where this was formulated, the most extreme yet simplest things, was in these holy scriptures. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
162:What you lust for is innocence and this is an impossible equation. Lust and innocence can never be compatible. The ultimate is no longer the ultimate when you've stuck your dick in it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
163:Strong themes and styles have to be broken down before literature can come into being. It is this breaking down that is called “writing.” Writing is more about destroying than creating. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
164:The strange thing about writing is that it's so easy to write a novel. It is really easy. But it's getting there to the point where it's easy that's hard. The hard part is to get there. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
165:with a mouth of lush church grass I stand at the crossroads drinking the light of faith on the shores of eternity I lead my body, on like a dun horse in the dusk toward the forest somewhere ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
166:Si uno no sabe nada de vinos, quiero decir. Si tienes mucho dinero, eliges el segundo más caro. Si tienes poco dinero, eliges el segundo más barato. Nunca el más caro, ni nunca el más barato. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
167:It is not the case that we are born equal and that the conditions of life make our lives unequal, it is the opposite, we are born unequal, and the conditions of life make our lives more equal. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
168:Art does not know a beyond, science does not know a beyond, religion does not know a beyond, not anymore. Our world is enclosed around itself, enclosed around us, and there is no way out of it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
169:The houses where we lived were still standing, all of them. The sole difference, which is the difference between a child’s reality and an adult’s, was that they were no longer laden with meaning. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
170:I stopped for a few seconds by the newspaper stand wondering whether to buy the two evening papers here, the two biggest publications. Reading them was like emptying a bag of trash over your head. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
171:what I had tried to do was take the little novel, about one person, where there is not much external action, it is all internal, and extend it into an epic format, do you understand what I mean? He ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
172:Besides, tomorrow everything would look different. The day always came with more than mere light. However frayed your emotions, it was impossible to be wholly unaffected by the day’s new beginnings. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
173:For humans are merely one form among many, which the world produces over and over again, not only in everything that lives but also in everything that does not live, drawn in sand, stone, and water. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
174:... me silent, serious, tormented by the thought that I was silent and serious. Especially together with Bendik, who chatted and laughed non-stop and was the type to say whatever came into his mind. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
175:This state lasted for six months, for six months I was truly happy, truly at home in this world and in myself before slowly it began to lose its luster, and once more the world moved out of my reach. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
176:I thought about something Vanja often asked, about why grown-ups never played. She couldn’t grasp that we found it tedious, and the conclusion she drew was that in that case she never wanted to grow up. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
177:Nevertheless I have more than enough information to know his mood. This is apparent not from his facial expressions but his physical posture, and you do not read it with your mind but with your intuition. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
178:Not only did I change city and country, but also all the people. If this might seem strange, it is even stranger that I hardly ever reflect on it. How did I end up here? Why did things turn out like this? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
179:I liked these short stories so much, but I couldn’t write like this, I didn’t have the imagination. I didn’t have any imagination at all. Everything I wrote was connected to reality and my own experiences. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
180:Sometimes I mused that if all soft feelings could be scraped off like cartilage around the sinews of an injured athlete's knee, what a liberation that would be. No more sentimentality, sympathy, empathy... ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
181:Döden gör livet meningslöst för att allt vi någonsin har strävat efter upphör med den, och den gör livet meningsfullt för att dess närvaro gör det lilla vi har av det omistligt, gör varje ögonblick dyrbart. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
182:Zihinlerimiz, yaşadığımız hayatı hatırı sayılır ölçüde düzenleyen, hiç gitmediğimiz ama yine de bildiğimiz yerlerin, hiç tanışmadığımız ama yine de bildiğimiz insanların imgelerinin bombardımanı altındadır. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
183:Engineering is not a science. Science studies particular events to find general laws. Engineering design makes use of the laws to solve particular practical problems. In this it is more closely related to art or craft. ~ Ove Arup, #NFDB
184:Engineering problems are under-defined, there are many solutions, good, bad and indifferent. The art is to arrive at a good solution. This is a creative activity, involving imagination, intuition and deliberate choice. ~ Ove Arup, #NFDB
185:Whenever I failed to control the ball, whenever I made a bad pass, they let me know, what the hell are you doing with the seniors? Why did they pick you? I knew why, it was because I ran. You just had to run. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
186:But I could see that she was not having the same experience as me, she was lying as before, with eyes closed, mouth half-open, breathing heavily, engrossed in what I had been engrossed, but was not any longer. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
187:Get caught up by life and follow it wherever it might lead you. Nostalgia was dangerous, it was in league with the past against you. And against life. For you can’t live in the past. There is no way back there. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
188:Ove Malkyjeve riječi, kao i mnoge druge stvari koje mi je izravno pisao, navode na zaključak da je gospodar Leto uvijek u potrazi za novinom i izvornošću, ali je i oprezan zbog razorne moći skrivene u takvim stvarima. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
189:One joy of life in the north comes after a winter storm, when the sky, freed of its burden, has paled, and the glow of the unseen sun is everywhere reflected by the snow, so that all things stand out sharp and clear. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
190:When I came to a halt by my front door I looked at my watch.
It had taken me fifteen minutes to walk around the whole village.
So it was within these fifteen minutes I was to live my whole life this coming year. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
191:Death makes life meaningless because verything we have ever striven for ceases when life does, and it makes life meaningful too, because its presence makes the little we have of it indispensable, every moment precious. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
192:What was the point of all this? Flying all over Norway to read for ten minutes to four people? Talking smugly about literature to twelve people? Saying stupid things in the newspapers and burning with shame the day after ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
193:What we never really comprehend, or don't want to comprehend, is that this happens outside us, that we ourselves have no part in it, that we are only that which grows and dies, as blind as the waves in the sea are blind. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
194:Now they’re twenty-four and their real lives lie before them. Jobs of their own, a house of their own, children of their own. There are the two of them, and the future they are moving into is theirs, too.
Or is it? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
195:Geir gave me the chance to look at life and understand it, Linda gave me the chance to live it. In the first instance I became visible to myself, in the second I vanished. That’s the difference between friendship and love. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
196:I have a theory, almost all writers I know of are in some way or another… wrecked, or destroyed, you know, something is broken. Why should you write if that’s not so? I mean it takes so much to write, why should you bother? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
197:physics too is an interpretation of the world and an arrangement of the world, and not an explanation of the world,” and that “we have measured the value of the world with categories that refer to a purely fabricated world. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
198: I have a theory, almost all writers I know of are in some way or another… wrecked, or destroyed, you know, something is broken. Why should you write if that’s not so? I mean it takes so much to write, why should you bother? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
199:I have always had a great need for solitude. I require huge swathes of loneliness and when I do not have it, which has been the case for the last five years, my frustration can sometimes become almost panicked, or aggressive. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
200:Only what slips through one's fingers, only what is never expressed in words, has no thoughts, exists completely. That is the price of proximity: you don't see it. Don't know that it's there. Then it is over, then you see it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
201:Academic writing was actually about hiding what you didn’t know. There was a language, a technique, and I had mastered it. In everything there were gaps which language could cover over as long as you had acquired the know-how. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
202:Leemos, aprendemos, experimentamos, corregimos. Y un día llegamos a un mundo en el que se han fijado todas las distancias necesarias, y establecido todos los sistemas. Es entonces cuando el tiempo empieza a correr más deprisa. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
203:Shameless actually good since it gives a kind of freedom. We consider the old, functionless shame destructive. Today, if you have a strong sense of shame you also have a strong desire to overcome it. And that's when you can write. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
204:Children ate whole wheat pasta and whole wheat bread and all sorts of weird coarse-grained rice that their stomachs could not digest properly, but that didn’t matter because it was “beneficial,” it was “healthy,” it was “wholesome. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
205:Here he stands before me as he was, in midlife, and perhaps that is why reading them is so painful for me, he wasn’t only much more than my feelings for him but infinitely more, a complete and living person in the midst of his life. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
206:And isn’t it actually unbelievable that one simple name encompasses all of this? The fetus in the belly, the infant on the changing table, the forty-year-old in front of the computer, the old man in the chair, the corpse on the bench? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
207:And death, which I have always regarded as the greatest dimension of life, dark, compelling, was no more than a pipe that springs a leak, a branch that cracks in the wind, a jacket that slips off a clothes hanger and falls to the floor. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
208:This wasn’t about knowledge but about the aura knowledge exuded, the places it came from, which were almost all outside the world we lived in now, yet were still within the ambivalent space where all historical objects and ideas reside. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
209:Det är kanske det mest otroliga med de här första fotografierna, att de förhåller sig till tiden så att bara det mest beständiga syns, och att det mänskliga visar sig som så flyktigt och kortvarigt att det inte sätter avtryck någonstans. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
210:I never read the translation before publication. The most important things for me is that the emotion is captured in such a way that the feelings that are in the original are there, much more than the details, if they are right or wrong. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
211:The other guests clapped. I sat down again, full of disgust for myself, because even though losing control of my emotions made a good impression and gave extra emphasis to what I had said, I was ashamed that I had revealed such weakness. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
212:Two Scandinavians at a table in an Italian restaurant one rainy spring evening in Sydney, long silences between them, as one can so often observe between married couples in restaurants but never considers a possibility in one’s own life. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
213:All my adult life I have kept a distance from other people, it has been my way of coping, because I become so incredibly close to others in my thoughts and feelings...they only have to look away dismissively for a storm to break inside me. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
214:That was where I had to go, to the essence, to the inner core of human existence. If it took forty years, so be it, it took forty years. But I should never lose sight of it, never forget it, that was where I was going. There, there, there. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
215:You will come to see it in your own way, you will experience things for yourself and live a life of your own, so of course it is primarily for my own sake that I am doing this: showing you the world, little one, makes my life worth living. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
216:The two men looked at each other for a moment. Then Sonja's father nodded. And Ove nodded curtly back. And then they rose to their feet, objective and determined, in the way two men might behave if they had just agreed to go and kill a third man. ~ Henning Koch, #NFDB
217:I think there are a lot of similarities between writing and music. Music is much more direct and much more emotional and that's the level I want to be at when I'm writing. Writing is much more intellectual and indirect and abstract, in a way. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
218:She just smiled, said that she loved books more than anything, and started telling him excitedly what each of the ones in her lap was about. And Ove realised that he wanted to hear her talking about the things she loved for the rest of his life. ~ Fredrik Backman, #NFDB
219:There was something I couldn’t do and something I didn’t understand. There were secrets and there was darkness, there were shady dealings and there was laughter that jeered at everything. Oh, I sensed it, but I knew nothing about it. Nothing. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
220:in the evenings, while the sun hung above the roof of the summer house, blazing orange, and the shadows kept lengthening, we sat at the long table outside until faces grew indistinct in the darkness and the children had long since gone to bed. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
221:the intensity was so great that sometimes life felt almost unlivable, and when nothing could give me any peace of mind except books, with their different places, different times, and different people, where I was no one and no one was me. That ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
222:She always brought something when she came on Fridays, and this time it had been a book. A Wizard of Earthsea, written by someone called Ursula K. Le Guin, and already after the first few pages I knew that this was an absolutely fantastic book. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
223:Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows. That is what writing is about. Not what happens there, not what actions are played out there, but the there itself. There, that is writing's location and aim. But how to get there? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
224:All my adult life I have kept a distance from other people, it has been my way of coping, because I become so incredibly close to others in my thoughts and feelings of course, they only have to look away dismissively for a storm to break inside me. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
225:I hurried to the Post Office and was given two fat parcels, which I opened with the scissors in the kitchen. Shakespeare’s Collected Works, T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems and Plays, Oscar Wilde’s Collected Works and a book with photos of naked women. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
226:The fact that paintings and, to some extent, photographs were so important for me had something to do with this. They contained no words, no concepts, and when I looked at them what I experienced, what made them so important, was also nonconceptual. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
227:Everything has become intellect, even our bodies, they aren’t bodies any more, but ideas of bodies, something that is situated in our own heaven of images and conceptions within us and above us, where an increasingly large part of our lives is lived. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
228:But maybe these were just excuses, something I said to comfort myself. For that’s how it is, we cover up our mistakes and failings, we invent stories that put ourselves in a more favourable light. Self-deception is perhaps the most human thing of all. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
229:A paper published in Nature by the former head of the One Tree Island Research Station, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, predicted that if current trends continue, then by around 2050 visitors to the Great Barrier Reef will arrive to find “rapidly eroding rubble banks. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert, #NFDB
230:National identity is a motion. It's something you're inside, you don't get what's happening, you can't see it from above. And that's where you have to write. You can't see what's happening now or what's going to happen, so you just dive into it and write. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
231:Actually, there are people from all ove - not just Latin America, certainly not just Cuba, but all over Europe, all over the United States. I like that. I like knowing a lot of different types of people. And I can afford to live in a relatively safe part of Miami. ~ Dave Barry, #NFDB
232:I wandered beneath the sun-dappled shade from the trees, surrounded by the warm fragrances of the forest, thinking that I was in the middle of my life. Not life as an age, not halfway along life’s path, but in the middle of my existence. My heart trembled. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
233:For a writer it was perhaps most important not to write, but to read. Read as much as you can because in so doing you won't lose yourselves, become unoriginal, what happens is the opposite, by doing this you'll find yourselves. The more you read, the better. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
234:The only thing I have learned from life is to endure it, never to question it, and to burn up the longing generated by this in writing. Where this ideal has come from I have no idea, and as I now see it before me, in black and white, it almost seems perverse. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
235:There's no difference between pulp fiction and highbrow fiction, one is as good as the other, the only difference is the aura they have, and that's determined by the people who read the stuff, not by the book itself. There's no such thing as 'the book itself. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
236:You don’t think when you play music, you just try to play and be in it. It is the same for me when the writing is going really well. It’s the same kind of feeling. I’m just in it. It’s not the words, it’s not the sentences, I’m not aware of it. Then it’s good. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
237:I wonder if Karl Ove Knausgård would've written the same books today had been using Twitter. It wasn't around when he was writing those books. Those books were written during the age of the blog, with its big verbiage. The landscape has completely changed today. ~ Kenneth Goldsmith, #NFDB
238:Okuduklarıma kendimi kaptırdığımda özellikle ürkütücüydü, kitaptan başımı kaldırıp doğrulunca hiçbir yerle bağlantım yokmuş gibi geliyordu bana. Yapayalnız olduğum duygusuna kapılıyordum, dışarıda bir duvarı andıran karanlığın ortasında büsbütün bir başımaydım. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
239:This moment was not the beginning of anything, not even an insight, nor was it the conclusion of anything, and maybe that is what I was thinking as I stood digging holes in the ground a few days ago, that I was still in the middle of something and always would be. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
240:I sipped the coffee and lit a cigarette. I can't say that I enjoyed the taste of coffee or the feeling of smoke descending into my lungs, I could barely distinguish the two, the point was to do it, it was a routine, and as with all routines, protocol was everything. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
241:That is its sole law: everything has to submit to form. If any of literature’s other elements are stronger than form, such as style, plot, theme, if any of these take control over form, the result is poor. That is why writers with a strong style often write poor books. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
242:Ruku na srce, Beograd ne spada među najlepše evropske gradove, ali ni pisac ove knjige ne spada među najlepše muškarce, pa bi bilo prilično neučtivo zahtevati neki lepši grad za sebe. Jedva sam i njega dobio! Ali kako to reći Beogradu u lice, kad je toliko osetlјiv na svoj izgled? ~ Momo Kapor, #NFDB
243:Stendhal wrote that music was the highest form of art and that all the other forms really wanted to be music. This was of course a Platonic idea, all the other art forms depict something else, music is the only one that is something in itself, it was absolutely incomparable. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
244:Everyone prioritizes. Everyone wants new jackets and new shoes and new cars and new houses and new caravans and new mountain cabins and new boats. But I don't. I buy books and records because they say something about what life is about, what it is to be a human here on earth. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
245:I always had a bad conscience whenever vehicles had to stop because of me, a kind of imbalance arose, I felt as though I owed them something. The bigger the vehicle, the worse the guilt. I tried to catch the driver's eye as I crossed so that I could not to restore the balance. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
246:I’m not interested in the words or the meaning of the words. I’m interested in disappearing in it completely, to not be aware of yourself at all. That’s the way music works for me. It’s purely emotional. It goes straight to the heart. There are no explanations. That’s just it. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
247:He radiated naïveté, but not as though from inexperience, quite the contrary, he gave every impression of having experienced a great deal, it was more as if all the experiences were there but he hadn’t drawn the consequences, as though they had left him unaffected, so to speak. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
248:The life around me was not meaningful. I always longed to be away from it, and always had done. So the life I led was not my own. I tried to make it mine, this was my struggle, because of course I wanted it, but I failed, the longing for something else undermined all my efforts. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
249:There was also something panicked about my desire to acquire knowledge, in sudden terrible insights I saw that actually I didn’t know anything and it was urgent, I didn’t have a second to lose. It was almost impossible to adapt this urgency to the slowness that reading required. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
250:The next day we moved my things, that is to say all my books, which had now grown to number two and a half thousand titles, a fact which Anders and Geir, who were helping me with the move, cursed from the bottom of their hearts as we shifted the boxes from the lift into the flat. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
251:When I look at a beautiful painting I have tears in my eyes, but not when I look at my children. That does not mean I do not love them, because I do, with all my heart, it simply means that the meaning they produce is not sufficient to fulfill a whole life. Not mine, at any rate. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
252:A town that does not keep its dead out of sight, that leaves people where they died, on highways and byways, in parks and parking lots, is not a town but a hell. The fact that this hell reflects our life experience in a more realistic and essentially truer way is of no consequence. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
253:Meus olhos se enchem de lágrimas quando olho para uma bela pintura, mas não quando olho para os meus filhos. Isso não significa que não os ame, pois os amo do fundo do coração, significa apenas que o que eles me trazem não é suficiente para dar sentido à vida. Ao menos não à minha. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
254:It was always women who took care of everything to do with children and school. They were the ones who went to parents’ evenings, they were the ones who signed the slips children took home, they were the ones who did voluntary work and made sure school trips and so on were paid for. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
255:I wanted dad’s life to be seen in that perspective, not the closeup, not the man children feared and who later drank himself to death, but the broad view, a human who was born on earth, pure and innocent, as all are at birth, and who lived a life as all humans do and died his death. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
256:Jag lade Roman med kokain uppslagen på bordet och hämtade ett par nummer av Vinduet och slängde bredvid, det ena uppslaget, det andra inte. Tre uppslagna böcker verkade för mycket, det såg nästan arrangerat ut, men två uppslagna och en hopslagen kunde ingen misstänka, det var perfekt. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
257:- Draga moja prijateljice, imam sezdeset godina, ne plasim se smrti!
- Zasto onda odlazite?
- Ne mogu da podnesem ovaj haos, ove izlive mrznje, odvratni prizor rata. Otici cu u beki miran kutak, na selo. Zivecu od ono malo para sto mi je ostalo dok se ljudi ponovo ne dozovu pameti. ~ Ir ne N mirovsky,#NFDB
258:Time is distance, and when it is suspended, we are no longer in the world but a part of the world. That is what the music of Orpheus did to the women who in a kind of collective trance or ecstasy tore his head off and tossed it into the sea, where it drifted slowly away, still singing. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
259:I try to write about small insignificant things. I try to find out if it’s possible to say anything about them. And I almost always do if I sit down and write about something. There is something in that thing that I can write about. It’s very much like a rehearsal. An exercise, in a way. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
260:We live in the best of worlds. But still, it's like we've lost something on the way to here: a sense of life. I can't know for sure, I might be the only one who's lost it. Maybe everybody else is living the now, thinking they're having it well. Anyhow, that motivated me to write the books. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
261:Feelings are like water, they always adapt to their surroundings. Not even the worst grief leaves traces; when it feels so overwhelming and lasts for such a long time, it is not because the feelings have set, they can't do that, they stand still, the way water in a forest mere stands still. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
262:I clambered onto the rear seat and leaned back. Taxis, I loved taxis. Not the ones I came home drunk in, but the ones I caught to airports or railway stations. Was there anything better than sitting in the rear seat of a taxi and being driven through towns and suburbs before a long journey? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
263:The number of people we come close to during our lives is small, and we fail to realize how infinitely important each and every one of them is to us until we grow older and can see things from afar. When I was sixteen, I thought life was without end, the number of people in it inexhaustible. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
264:Where are you going, boys?" he asked.
Boys.
What an idiot.
How could he go around with a perm and imagine it looked good? Did he think he looked tough with the mustache and the perm?
Grow up. Lose twenty kilos. Get rid of the 'stache. Get your hair cut. Then we can start talking. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
265:With his hair sticking out in all directions, his suit askew and his tie full of stains he sat there talking, his eyes aglow, they were really glowing, and I will always remember it, for it was pitch-dark outside, the rain was beating against the windows, it was Christmas Eve in Norway 1986, ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
266:Everyone is asleep. I am playing Bon Iver; all the memories from the last time I played it, perhaps two years ago, flood back. Not as images but feelings. Only musiccan do this, can open the frozen tundra, but it is not only good, it also hurts. So much time passes, so much life is held back. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
267:In modern novels I try to not let myself get away and to be here, and that's why I write about my life and myself. But even when I do that there's an element of disappearing to a place that's not me. It's "the selflessness of writing". It seldom happens, but when it does it's worth quite a lot. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
268:Jeg er hans sonn. Historien om ham, Kai Åge Knausgård, er historien om meg, Karl Ove Knausgård. Den har jeg fortalt. Jeg har overdrevet, jeg har lagt til, jeg har trukket fra, og det er mye jeg ikke har forstått. Men det er ikke ham jeg har beskrevet, det er mitt bilde av ham. Det er ferdig nå. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
269:Asbjorn had a nose, that was his great talent, I had never met anyone with such sureness of taste as him, but what use was it, part from being the hub student life revolved around? The essence of a nose is judgment, to judge you have to stand outside, and that is not where creativity takes place. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
270:When I look back at what I've written and try to explain it, it doesn't help, but it helps to be in a process of writing. It's the same thing with reading - you lose yourself when you read as well. When I was younger I used literature that way, it was just escapism, a tool to run away from things. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
271:For a moment I was filled with the sensation of white snow against black water. The way the whiteness erases all the detail around a lake or a river in the forest so that the difference between land and water is absolute, and the water lies there as a deeply alien entity, a black hole in the world. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
272:And when what has kept me going for the whole of my adult life, the ambition to write something exceptional one day, is threatened in this way my one thought, which gnaws at me like a rat, is that I have to escape. Time is slipping away from me, running through my fingers like sand while I … do what? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
273:But love wasn't sensible, love wasn't reasonable, love wasn't appropriate, it was more than that, so for Christ's sake, why not drag up marriage from the mists of time and impose its form on love again? Why not use the big words again? Why not solemnly swear that that we will love each other forever? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
274:What were they like?" he asked.
"What were what like?"
"Her breasts of course."
"They were great. Just the right size and firm. Very firm. Stood up even though she was lying down."
"You bastard. It's not true."
"It is, for Christ's sake."
"Shit."
After that we didn't say anymore. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
275:I stopped for a few seconds by the newspaper stand wondering whether to buy the two evening papers here, the two biggest publications. Reading them was like emptying a bag of trash over your head. Now and then I did buy them, when it felt as though a bit more trash up there wouldn't make any difference. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
276:I would have given absolutely anything to sleep with a girl. Any girl actually. Whether it happened with someone I loved, like Hanne, or with a prostitute, made no difference, if it happened as part of a satanic initiation ceremony with goat’s blood and hoods I would have said, yes, I’m up for that. But ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
277:Periodically her brother stayed with her, a lean, dark-eyed, restless and rough-looking but attractive man whom one of Linda's friends had noticed and with whom she had fallen in love, they were having a relationship of sorts which appeared to be based on him despising her as much as she worshipped him. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
278:All the drinking reinforced my unease, and since nothing of what I did gave me anything back, I became more and more worn down, it was as though I was being drained, I became emptier and emptier, and soon I would be walking around like a shadow, a ghost, as empty and dark as the sky and the sea around me. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
279:It is never easy to confront life-changing news, especially when you are deeply embroiled in the everyday and the banal, which we always are. They absorb almost everything, make almost everything small, apart from the few events that are so immense that they lay waste to all the everyday trivia around you. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
280:The strange thing about Yngve's nocturnal life was that on occasion he could be heard speaking eastern Norwegian dialect in his sleep. He moved from Oslo when he was four and had not spoken dialect for close to thirty years. Yet it could pass his lips when he was asleep. There was something spooky about it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
281:despite my common sense telling me that actually the reverse was true: the world was boundless and unfathomable, the number of events infinite, the present time an open door that stood flapping in the wind of history. But that is not how it felt. It felt as if the world were known, fully explored and charted, ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
282:Or perhaps that was not why I was crying, perhaps it was for quite different reasons, perhaps it was all the grief and misery I had accumulated over the last fifteen years that had now been released. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered, I just walked around the garden cutting the grass that had grown too tall. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
283:The sun rose in my life. At first, as dawn breaking on the horizon, almost as if to say, this is where you have to look. Then came the first rays of sunshine, everything became clearer, lighter, more alive, and I became happier and happier, and then it hung in the sky of my life and shone and shone and shone. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
284:At a table behind, a man was sitting with his knees pinched together and eating as if it were a punishment: for a few seconds his hand sped between the carton of fries, the small tub of ketchup and the chewing mouth, then he swallowed, grabbed the hamburger with both hands, put it to his lips and took a large bite. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
285:Are you planning to go into writing as a career?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s what this is all about for me. I’m planning to write another short story this weekend. Have you read Hemingway by the way?’
‘Oh yes. Part of growing up.’
‘A bit like that, yes. Straight to the point. Simple and clear. With weight behind it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
286:[I felt] a huge sense of relief . . . that the houses and the places that disappeared behind me were also disappearing out of my life, for good. Little did I know then that every detail of this landscape, and every single person living in it, would forever be lodged in my memory with a ring as true as perfect pitch. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
287:Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules and atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large, such as cloud formations, river deltas, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring it within the scope of our senses and we stabilise it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
288:Yngve was too close for me to be ale to judge in this way, for thoughts, whatever good one can say about them, have a great weakness, namely, that they are dependent on a certain distance for effect. Everything inside that distance is subject to emotions. It was because of my emotions that I was starting to hold things back. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
289:Every attempt to understand this universe, whether by charting its motions, systematizing its products, or searching for its origins, is naturally vain and risible, and Pascal was making real fun of the science of his age. What he never grasped was that the real aim of science isn’t to understand the world, but to close it up. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
290:The scenery beneath, first just isolated tableaux visible through rare openings in the cloud cover, was rugged and beautiful with its green islands and blue sea, its steep rock faces and snowy white plains, but gradually it was erased or toned down, as the clouds vanished, until the flat Rogaland terrain was all you could see. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
291:The heavens were inexhaustible, it had rained every day since the beginning of September and except for a couple of hours I hadn’t seen the sun for what would soon be eight months. The streets were deserted apart from a few people who rushed past hugging the walls, in Bergen it was vital to get from A to B as fast as you could. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
292:You know too little and it doesn't exist. You know too much and it doesn't exist. Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows. That is what writing is about. Not what happens there, not what actions are played out there, but the THERE itself. There, that is writing's location and aim. But how to get there? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
293:You know too little and it doesn’t exist. You know too much and it doesn’t exist. Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows. That is what writing is about. Not what happens there, not what actions are played out there, but the there itself. There, that is writing’s location and aim. But how to get there? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
294:Živeti po svojoj volji, bez ove strašne zbrke, idući za svojim životom, za koji se i rodio. Idući nečem vanrednom, što je kao nebo osećao da sve pokriva i završava. Tako da mu se sve što je do sad činio, ne čini ludo i uzaludno, a da mu budućnost bude shvatljiva i u njoj da se ovo prazno, grozno čekanje na mir jednako ne produžava. ~ Milo Crnjanski, #NFDB
295:You’re organised, I can see,’ I said.
‘I’m organised in everything,’ he said. ‘Absolutely everything. There’s nothing in my life that I have not planned or allowed for.’
‘That sounds frightening,’ I said and looked at him.
He smiled.
‘For me it’s frightening to meet someone who moves to Stockholm at one day’s notice. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
296:he said something enormously charged and meaningful about death, the tone was resigned and laconic, but not without irony, and I thought I will have to remember this, this is important, I’ll have to remember this for the rest of my life, but by the time we were in the car on our way home along the Hardanger fjord I had forgotten. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
297:The way we deny death says something about how we live our lives, doesn't it? At least in Sweden or Scandinavia, you don't have to search further back in time than maybe three generations to find another way to relate to death. People then had a different, closer relationship with death; at least it was like that in the countryside. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
298:And art has come to be a spectator of itself, the way it reacts, what newspapers write about it; the artist is a performer. That is how it is. Art does not know a beyond, science does not know a beyond, religion does not know a beyond, not anymore. Our world is enclosed around itself, enclosed around us, and there is no way out of it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
299:A problem with my novels is that they, from the start, have been infantile and incredibly childish. There are childishness, stupidity, lack of wisdom, fantasies. At the same time, that's where my creativity can be found. If I tried to control it and make it more mature, it wouldn't be good at all. It'd be uninteresting, without any vivacity. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
300:I, a fervent anti-Christian from early teenage years and a materialist in my heart of hearts, had in one second, without any reflection, got to my feet, walked up the aisle and knelt in front of the altar. It had been pure impulse. And, meeting those glares, I had no defence, I couldn’t say I was a Christian. I looked down, slightly ashamed. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
301:it is my experience that people are in a sense trapped within themselves, that we all view reality in particular ways and act accordingly, without the possibility of stepping outside ourselves and seeing that that reality is only one of many possible realities, and that we could just as well have acted differently, with as much justification. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
302:Oh, this is the song about being sixteen years old and sitting on a bus and thinking about her, the one, not knowing that feelings will slowly, slowly, weaken and fade, that life, that which is now so vast and so all-embracing, will inexorably dwindle and shrink until it is a manageable entity which doesn’t hurt so much, but nor is it as good. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
303:With its four legs and its flat, soft surface, the bed gently accommodates one of our most basic needs: it is good to lie down in bed, and it is good to sleep there through the night. The bed is placed in the bedroom, which is often the innermost room in the house or apartment, and in two-storey houses the bedroom is usually on the upper floor. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
304:From my own childhood I remember only a handful of incidents, all of which I regarded as momentous, but which I now understand were a few events among many, which completely expunges their meaning, for how can I know that those particular episodes that lodged themselves in my mind were decisive, and not all the others of which I remember nothing? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
305:Toate locurile pe care le purtam în mine, pe care le rememorasem de un infinit de ori pe parcursul vieții se perindau prin fața geamului de mașină fără nicio aură, complet neutre, așa cum erau de fapt. Niște piscuri, un golfuleț, un dig plutitor dărăpănat, un țărm îngust, niște case vechi, în spate, câmpia care se prăvălea spre apă. Asta era tot. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
306:Below me was the waterfall which had frozen in great arcs and arteries of ice, dimly illuminated by the light from the parquet factory. Behind it and behind me rose the uplands. They surrounded the scattered, illuminated habitation in the river valley with darkness and impersonality. The stars above seemed to be lying at the bottom of a frozen sea. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
307:Modernist literature with all its vast apparatus was an instrument, a form of perception, and once absorbed, the insights it brought could be rejected without its essence being lost, even the form endured, and it could then be applied to your own life, your own fascinations, which could then suddenly appear in a completely new and significant light. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
308:Was it the shrill, sickly tone I heard everywhere that I couldn’t stand, the one that arose from all the pseudo people and pseudo places, pseudo events and pseudo conflicts our lives passed through, that which we saw but did not participate in, and the distance that modern life in this way had opened up to our own, actually inalienable here and now? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
309:Nebylo to tak, že by Ove toho kocoura neměl rád. On zkrátka nemusel žádné kočky. Podle něj se jim nedá věřit. Zvlášť když jsou, jako v Ernestově případě, veliké jako moped. Těžko říct, jestli to byl neobvykle velký kocour nebo neobyčejně malý lev. Ove zastával názor, že člověk by se neměl kamarádit s nikým, o kom si nemůže být jistý, že ho ve spánku nesežere. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
310:But Dad was no longer breathing. That was what had happened to him, the connection with the air had been broken, now it pushed against him like any other object, a log, a gasoline can, a sofa. He no longer poached air, because that is what you do when you breathe, you trespass, again and again you trespass on the world. He was lying somewhere in town now. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
311:[L]ove for a particular "object" is only the actualization and concentration of lingering love with regard to one person; it is not, as the idea of romantic love would have it, that there is only the one person in the world whom one can love, that it is the great chance of one's life to find that person, and that love for him results in withdrawal from all others. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
312:Something had happened to him ove the past couple of years, something to do with being home with Aaron, sinking into the rhythm of a kid's day. The little tasks, the small pleasures. The repetition that goes beyond boredom and becomes a kind of peace. You do it long enough, and the adult world starts to drift away. You can't catch up with it, not even if you try. ~ Tom Perrotta, #NFDB
313:My parents used to play music when we had gone to bed, especially on Friday and Saturday evenings. Often it was the last thing I heard before I fell asleep. Every now and again he played records when he was alone in his study. Steinar had told me once that he had brought a Pink Floyd LP into the classroom and played it. He had said this with awe in his voice. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
314:Jag stannade några sekunder framför tidningsstället och funderade på om jag skulle köpa båda kvällstidningarna, som det heter här, alltså de två största lösnummertidningarna. Att bläddra i dem var som att hälla ut en soppåse över huvudet. Jag gjorde det någon gång då och då, när det kändes som om lite sopor där uppe varken gjorde från eller till. Men inte idag. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
315:Everyone knows which way modernism is going, you create a form by breaking up a form, in an endless regression, just let it continue, and for as long as it does, experience will have the upper hand. The unique feature of our times, the pure or independent act, is, as you know, to renounce, not to accept. Accepting is too easy. There’s nothing to be achieved by it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
316:I hardly knew I had these thoughts, they lived in a kind of no-man’s-land, and when they came, in an explosion, I didn’t hold on to them, I let them fall back to where they’d come from, and so it was as though they didn’t exist. But what Jorn had said, that changed everything, because that came from the outside. Everything that came from the outside was dangerous. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
317:...what I learned was that also our ludicrously inconsequential lives, in which we could not attain anything of what we wanted, nothing, in which everything was beyond our abilities and power, had a part in this world, and thus also in the supreme, for books existed, you only had to read them, no one but myself could exclude me from them. You just had to reach up. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
318:I had no future either, not because it existed somewhere else but because I couldn’t imagine it. That I might control my future and try to make it turn out the way I wanted was completely beyond my horizon. Everything was of the moment, I took everything as it came and acted on the basis of premises I didn’t even know myself, and without realizing this is what I did. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
319:Only what slips through one's fingers, only what is never expressed in words, has no thoughts, exists completely. That is the price of proximity: you don't see it. Don't know that it's there. Then it is over, then you see it.
The yellow-red leaves lying wet and smooth on the flagstones between the houses. How the stone darkens when it rains, lightens as it dries. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
320:At the same time, something happened when I entered my thirties, in that some semblance of confidence came to me in the way I engaged with literature, though it was difficult to pin down, most of all a feeling of being able to see that little bit further, think that little bit further, and that what previously had been closed to me suddenly seemed possible to prize open. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
321:I've always been a fast reader. Now I had to do it slowly, discussing each sentence. And every time I wanted to change something I had to come up with an intelligent defense I could be pretty sure that they would turn my suggestion down, as they had so many aspects to keep in mind. However, if I argued well, I could have a chance. I had to think of every comma, every word. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
322:Day in, day out! Wind and rain, sleet and snow, sun and storm, we did the same. We heard something on the grapevine, went there, came back, sat in his bedroom, heard something else, went by bus, bike, on foot, sat in someone’s bedroom. In the summer we went swimming. That was it. What was it all about? We were friends, there was no more than that. And the waiting, that was life. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
323:Then I met Linda and the sun rose. I can’t find a better way to express it. The sun rose in my life. At first, as dawn breaking on the horizon, almost as if to say, this is where you have to look. Then came the first rays of sunshine, everything became clearer, lighter, more alive, and I became happier and happier, and then it hung in the sky of my life and shone and shone and shone. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
324:[I] lay back and continued reading 'The Lord of the Rings,' which I had read only two years before but had already completely forgotten. I couldn't get enough of the battle between light and darkness, good and evil. And when the little man not only resisted the superior powers but also showed himself to be the greatest hero of them all, there were tears in my eyes. Oh how good it was. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
325:I was a wannabe who was actually unable to write because I had nothing to say, who wasn’t honest enough with himself to draw the appropriate conclusions and was therefore trying to get a foot in the world of literature at any cost. Not as someone who created something himself, someone who wrote and was published, but as a parasite, as someone who wrote as others wrote, a second-rater. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
326:Then I met Linda and the sun rose.
I can't find a better way to express it. The sun rose in my life. At first, as dawn breaking on the horizon, almost as if to say, this is where you have to look. Then came the first rays of sunshine, everything became clearer, lighter, more alive, and I became happier and happier, and then it hung in the sky of my life and shone and shone and shone. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
327:Suddenly I realized this was a heart I was watching. How incredibly sad. Not because the heart was beating and couldn’t escape, it wasn’t that. The point was that the heart should not be seen, it should be allowed to beat in secret, hidden from our sight, it was obvious, you understood that when you saw it, a little animal without eyes, it should pound and throb inside your chest unseen. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
328:Oh, we hd danced to Frankie Goes to Hollywood. "The Power of Love."
The POWER of LO-OVE!
But Hanne, Hanne.
Feeling her so close to me. Standing nearly as close and talking. Her laughter. Her green eyes. Her small nose.
Just before we left, on the way out, she had pinned the button on me.
That was what had happened. It wasn't much, but the little there had been was fantastic. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
329:Water and air, rain and clouds, they too have been here for ever, but they are such an integral part that their ancientness is never apparent in our thoughts or emotions, contrary to lightning, which only occur now and then, during brief intervals which we are at once familiar with and foreign to, just as we are at once familiar with and foreign to ourselves and the world we are a part of. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
330:De wereld was grenzeloos en onoverzichtelijk, het aantal gebeurtenissen eindeloos, het heden een openstaande deur die in de wind van de geschiedenis stond te klapperen. Maar zo voelde het niet. Het voelde alsof de wereld bekend was, volledig ontdekt en in kaart gebracht, alsof hij zich niet langer in onvoorziene richtingen kon bewegen, alsof er niets nieuws en verrassends meer kon gebeuren. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
331:I had gained an insight. At great expense, but it was real and important: I was not a writer. What writers had, I did not have. I fought against this insight, I told myself I might be able to have what writers had, it might be attainable provided I persisted for long enough, while knowing in fact this was only a consolation. - Karl Ove Knausgaard, after his year at the Bergen Writing Academy ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
332:Nije isključeno da čovek može živeti i bez igranja. Poznati su i slučajevi u kojima su mladići i devojke proveli mnoge mesece, a da ni na kakvom balu nisu bili, štaviše, ni duh ni telo nisu im zbog toga pretrpeli nikakvu štetu; ali kada se jednom započne - kada se radost brzog pokreta makar i jednom oseti, premda nakratko - zaista bi društvo koje ne bi tražilo još ove blagodeti moralo biti veoma tromo. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
333:To someone who has lived for many years, the door is obvious. The house is obvious, the garden is obvious, the sky and the sea are obvious, even the moon, suspended in the night sky and shining brightly above the rooftops, is obvious. The world expresses its being, but we are not listening, and since we are no longer immersed in it, experiencing it as a part of ourselves, it is as if it escapes us. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
334:Even though we are not attached to the earth with roots, but are able to walk about on top of it, yet we are inseparably bound to it, both in that its transformative and, as it were, moves us about with its force, and in that, when life ebbs away and the earth's force no longer sustains us, it draws us down towards itself in a gruesome final embrace, before we not only become like it, but become it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
335:One night I had been listening to [Goo], downstairs with Espen, we had been smoking hash, and I was lost in the music, literally, I saw it as rooms and corridors, floors and walls, ditches and slopes, small forests between apartment blocks and railway lines, and didn't emerge from it until the song stopped, it was like drawing breath because the next minute a new song started and I was caught again. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
336:But there was something about the darkness. There was something about this small, enclosed place. There was something about seeing the same faces every day. My class. My colleagues. The assistant at the shop. The occasional mother, the occasional father. Now and then the young fishermen. But always the same people, always the same atmosphere. The snow, the darkness, the harsh light inside the school. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
337:Dear Karl Ove Knausgård,
Thank you for sending me your contribution. I read it with interest, but I am afraid I cannot use it in SIGNALER 89.
Best regards,
Lars Saabye Christensen
It gave me a little frisson of excitement to see Saabye Christensen’s signature, it meant he had read what I had written. For a few minutes at any rate I had filled his mind with what existed in mine! ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
338:We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all the necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed. It no longer meets any obstacles, everything is set, time races through our lives, the days pass by in a flash and before we know what is happening we are forty, fifty, sixty ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
339:And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of colour across the sky - so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
340:O outono é uma passagem, um tempo de esvaziamento: da luz no céu, do calor no ar, das folhas nas árvores e plantas. O inverno que se segue é um estado, nele é a imobilidade que impera. A terra endurece, a água gela, a neve cobre o chão. Que este estado por vezes se represente como um rei, deve-se talvez à sensação de que a imobilidade é algo imposto, algo que vem de fora e que é imposto pela força à paisagem. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
341:Water and air, rain and clouds, they too have been here for ever, but they are such an integral part of life that their ancientness is never apparent in our thoughts or emotions, contrary to lightning and thunder, which only occur now and then, during brief intervals which we are at once familiar with and foreign to, just as we are at once familiar with and foreign to ourselves and the world we are a part of. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
342:That’s what money bought, lots of space and distance from others. But not too much space and not too much distance. In the forests you could have as much space as you wanted and there could be miles to the nearest neighbor, but no one with money would ever dream of living there. Space and distance were valuable only if there were other people nearby who had a lot less space and lived a lot closer to each other. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
343:Old age. All the facial detail is visible; all the traces life has left there are to be seen. The face is furrowed, wrinkled, sagging, ravaged by time. But the eyes are bright and, if not young, then somehow transcend the time that otherwise marks the face. It is as though someone else is looking at us, from somewhere inside the face, where everything is different. One can hardly be closer to another human soul. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
344:Căci omul e doar o formă printre alte forme pe care lumea o produce la nesfârșit, nu doar în ceea ce este viu, ci și în ceea ce nu e viu, desenată în nisip,în piatră în apă. Iar moartea, pe care o considerăm întotdeauna drept cea mai importantă dimensiune a vieții, întunecoasă, seducătoare, nu era decât o țeavă din care țâșnește apa, o ramură ce trosnește în vânt, o geacă ce aluncă de pe un cuier și cade pe podea. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
345:[…] once in the quagmire each further action only serves to plunge me deeper. And at least as corrosive is the awareness that I am dealing with children. That it is children who are dragging me down. There is something deeply shameful about this. In such situations I am probably as far from the person I aspire to be as possible. I didn’t have the faintest notion about any of this before I had children. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
346:Growing up in the seventies and the eighties is a joke. We don’t do anything. And what we do do is just nonsense. I write to recapture my lost gravity. That’s what I do. But of course it serves no purpose. You know where I sit. You know what I do. My life is so trivial. And my enemies, they’re so trivial. It’s not worth wasting your strength on. But there’s nothing else. So here I sit, thrashing around in my bedroom. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
347:Nostalgia is an illness, but it belongs to the person through whom time is filtered, unpredictably and individually, with all the flaws and defects inherent in human beings. The era that had passed is located in pockets of consciousness, some hidden and unseen, like ponds in remote forests, some bright and familiar like houses on the forest edge, but all of them fragile and changeable, and they die when consciousness dies. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
348:Zamisli da si bio negde na pragu ove bajke pre mnogo milijardi godina kad je sve stvoreno. Mogao bi da biraš da li ćeš jednom biti rođen i živeti na ovoj planeti. Ne bi znao kad će to biti, ni koliko dugo ćeš ostati ovde, ali tvoj život u svakom slučaju ne bi trajao duže od nekoliko desetina godina. Znao bi samo jedno: ako odabereš da dođeš na ovaj svet, jednoga dana, kad 'kucne čas', moraćeš i da se oprostiš od njega i odeš. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
349:I loved it, I loved the feeling, it was my favorite feeling, but it never led to anything good, and the day after or the days after, it was as closely associated with boundless excess as with stupidity, which I hated with a passion. But when I was in that state, the future did not exist, nor the past, only the moment and that was why I wanted to be in it so much, for my world, in all of its unbearable banality, was radiant. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
350:Did you ever see mum and dad hug?’ Yngve said.
I walked back to him.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not that I can remember. Did you?’
He nodded in front of me in the semi-darkness.
‘Once. It was in Hove, so I must have been five. Dad was yelling at mum so much she burst into tears. She was standing in the kitchen crying. He went into the living room. Then he went back and put his arms around her and consoled her. That’s the only time. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
351:For humans are merely one form among many, which the world produces over and over again, not only in everything that lives but also in everything that does not live, drawn in sand, stone, and water. And death, which I have always regarded as the greatest dimension of life, dark, compelling, was no more than a pipe that springs a leak, a branch that cracks in the wind, a jacket that slips off a clothes hanger and falls to the floor. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
352:I have always had a great need for solitude. I require huge swathes of loneliness and when I do not have it, which has been the case for the last five years, my frustration can sometimes become almost panicked, or aggressive. And when what has kept me going for the whole of my adult life, the ambition to write something exceptional one day, is threatened in this way my one thought, which gnaws at me like a rat, is that I have to escape. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
353:But can’t I sleep here while you’re working?’
‘You know I won’t be able to. I can’t even write with a cat in the room.’
‘You’ve never tried with me in the room. I may have a good effect.’
Even though I was angry I couldn’t bring myself to say no. I had no right to be because what I was implying was that the miserable manuscript I was writing was more important than her. At that moment it was, but I couldn’t say that.
‘OK,’ I said. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
354:Remembe r tha t the r e is only one impor t ant t ime and tha t is now. The pr e s ent moment is the only t ime ove r whi ch we have dominion. The mos t impor t ant pe r son is a lways the pe r son you a r e wi th, who is r ight be for e you, for who knows if you will have dealings wi th any othe r pe r son in the futur e ? The mos t impor t ant pur sui t is making the pe r son s t anding a t your side happy, for tha t a lone is the pur sui t of life. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
355:At the age of forty the life you have lived so far, always pro tem, has for the first time become life itself, and this reappraisal swept away all dreams, destroyed all your notions that real life, the one that was meant to be, the great deeds you would perform, was somewhere else. When you were forty you realised it was all here, banal everyday life, fully formed, and it always would be unless you did something. Unless you took one last gamble. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
356:At the age of forty the life you have lived so far, always pro tem, has for the first time become life itself, and this reappraisal swept away all dreams, destroyed all your notions that real life, the one that was meant to be, the great deeds you would perform, was somewhere else. When you were forty you realized it was all here, banal everyday life, fully formed, and it always would be unless you did something. Unless you took one last gamble. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
357:[L]ove ought to manifest itself in deeds rather than in words.... love consists in a mutual sharing of goods, for example, the lover gives and shares with the beloved what he possesses, or something of that which he has or is able to give; and vice versa, the beloved shares with the lover. Hence, if one has knowledge, he shares it with the one who does not possess it; and so also if one has honors, or riches. Thus, one always gives to the other. ~ Ignatius of Loyola, #NFDB
358:When she had looked at Dad she had seen the baby, the child, the adolescent, the young man; the whole of his character and all of his qualities were contained in that one look, and if he was in such a drunken state that he shat his pants while lying on her sofa, the moment was so brief and she so old that it would not, compared with all the immense span of time together that she had stored, have had enough weight to become the image that counted. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
359:When we were growing up, I chatted all the time with Yngve and we never had any secrets, but at some juncture, perhaps as early as when I was at upper secondary, this changed: from then on I was immensely conscious of who he was and who I was when we were talking, all spontaneity vanished, every statement I made was either planned in advance or analyzed retrospectively, mostly both, apart from when I was drinking, then I regained the old freedom. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
360:Budižkničemu má přítelkyni. O deset let mladší. Ove jí říká odbarvená nána. Podpatky má vysoké jako nástrčkové klíče a potácí se na nich jako opilá panda, našminkovaná je jako klaun a nosí tak obrovské sluneční brýle, že se nedá pořádně odlišit, jestli to jsou ještě brýle, nebo spíš už helma. Má i jednoho z těch psíčků do kabelky, dovolí mu všude běhat bez vodítka, štěkat a čůrat na dlážděnou cestu před Oveho domem. Myslí si, že si toho Ove nevšiml. Všiml. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
361:[L]ove ought to manifest itself in deeds rather than in words.... love consists in a mutual sharing of goods, for example, the lover gives and shares with the beloved what he possesses, or something of that which he has or is able to give; and vice versa, the beloved shares with the lover. Hence, if one has knowledge, he shares it with the one who does not possess it; and so also if one has honors, or riches. Thus, one always gives to the other. ~ Saint Ignatius of Loyola, #NFDB
362:The music was linked with almost everything I had done, none of the records came without a memory. Everything that had happened in the last five years rose like steam from a cup when I played a record, not in the form of thoughts or reasoning, but as moods, openings, space. Some general, others specific. If my memories were stacked in a heap on the back of my life’s trailer, music was the rope that held them together and kept it, my life, in position. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
363:It was a very special feeling to wake up in the morning, all alone in a flat, it was as though emptiness were not only around me but also inside me. Until I started at the gymnas I had always woken to a house where Mom and Dad were already up and on their way to work with all that entailed, cigarette smoke, coffee drinking, listening to the radio, eating breakfast, and car engines warming up outside in the dark. This was something else, and I loved it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
364:Limba criptată și enigmatică a lui Paul Celan nu are nimic de-a face cu inaccesibilitatea sau opacitatea, dimpotrivă, e vorba despre deschiderea unei zone inaccesibile a limbii, dar pe care, undeva în adâncul nostru, o cunoaștem sau o recunoaștem, sau, dacă nu, o descoperim. Cuvintele lui Paul Celan nu se pot contrazice prin cuvinte. Ceea ce posedă ele nu poate fi convertit sau schimbat, ci se găsește doar acolo și în fiecare dintre cei care și le însușesc. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
365:Some of the most influential novels of recent years, by Rachel Cusk and Karl Ove Knausgaard, take the method of self-conscious first-person testimony to a new level. Their more extreme admirers will tell you that imagination and invention are outmoded contrivances; that to inhabit the subjectivity of a character unlike the author is an act of appropriation, even colonialism; that the only authentic and politically defensible mode of narrative is autobiography. ~ Jonathan Franzen, #NFDB
366:I have no problem with uninteresting or unoriginal people – they may have other, more important attributes, such as warmth, consideration, friendliness, a sense of humor or talents such as being able to make a conversation flow to generate an atmosphere of ease around them, or the ability to make a family function – but I feel almost physically ill in the presence of boring people who consider themselves especially interesting and who blow their own trumpets. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
367:Men stjernene blinker over hodet vårt, solen brenner, gresset gror og jorden, ja, jorden, den sluker alt liv og utsletter alle spor, spyr nytt liv ut i en kaskade av lemmer og oyne, blader og negler, strå og haler, kinn og pels og bark og involler, og sluker det igjen. Og det vi aldri riktig forstår, eller ikke vil forstå, er at dette skjer utenfor oss, at vi selv ingen del har i dette, at vi bare er det som vokser og dor, blindt som bolgene i havet er blinde. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
368:Osećanje, za koje nemam imena, obuzelo mi je dušu – osećanje koje se opire analizi, kojem su znanja iz davnih vremena neprimerena, i za koje mi, zebem, ni sama budućnost neće pruţiti kljuĉ. Za duhovni sklop kao što je moj, kobno je ovo drugo saznanje. Neću nikad – znao sam da neću nikad – dokuĉiti prirodu tih svojih misli. Ipak, nije sasvim ĉud-no što su ove moje misli neodreĊene, jer potiĉu iz sasvim novih izvora. Novi osećaj – ne-ka nova suština – uvećali su mi dušu ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
369:In the mist, in the darkness of the forest, in the dewdrops on the spruce needles. In the whales that swam in the sea, in the heart beating in my breast. Mist, heart, blood, trees. Why were they so appealing? What was it that enticed me with such power? That filled me with such enormous desire? Mist, heart, blood, trees. Oh, if only I could write about them, no, not write about them but make my writing be them, then I would be happy. Then I would have peace of mind. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
370:Sverige har inte haft krig på egen mark sedan sextonhundratalet och hur ofta tänkte jag inte den tanken att någon borde invadera Sverige, bomba husen, plundra hela landet, skjuta männen, våldta kvinnorna, och sedan låta något avlägset land, som Chile eller Bolivia, välkomna flyktingarna därifrån med sin stora gästfrihet och säga till dem att de älskar allt skandinaviskt och sedan fösa ihop dem i ett getto utanför någon storstad där. Bara för att få höra vad de skulle säga. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
371:Why didn't they drink? Why didn't everyone drink? Alcohol makes everything big, it is a wind blowing through your consciousness, it is crashing waves and swaying forests, and the light it transmits gilds everything you see, even the ugliest and most revolting person becomes attractive in some way, it is as if all objections and all judgments are cast aside in a wide sweep of the hand, in an act of supreme generosity, here everything, and I do mean everything, is beautiful. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
372:However, a few glances at most were cast upward, perhaps followed by isolated comments about how beautiful the evening was, for sights like this were not exceptional, on the contrary, hardly a day passed without the sky being filled with fantastic cloud formations, each and every one illuminated in unique, never-to-be-repeated ways, and since what you see every day is what you never see, we lived our lives under the constantly changing sky without sparing it a glance or thought. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
373:Hanne was going to sing in a church that evening, and she had asked whether I wanted to go and watch, of course I did. Her boyfriend would be there, so I didn't make my presence known, but when I saw her standing there, so beautiful and so pure, she was mine, no one else's feelings could hold a candle to those I cherished. Outside, the pavement was covered with grime, the remaining snow lay in dips and hollows and up shadowy slopes on both sides of the road. She sang, I was happy. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
374:But the moment I was alone others meant nothing to me. It wasn't that I disliked them, or nurtured feelings of loathing for them; on the contrary, I liked most of them, and the ones I didn't actually like I could always see some worth in, some attribute I could identify with, or at least find interesting, something which could occupy my mind for the moment. But liking them was not the same as caring about them. It was the social situation that bound me, the people within it did not. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
375:Dok je naš Spasitelj sjedio poučavajući ljude i odgovarajući na njihova pitanja, jedan je zakonoznanac ustao i rekao, 'Učitelju što bih trebao učiniti kako bih mogao ponovno sretno živjeti nakon što umrem?' Isus mu je odgovorio, 'Prva je od svih zapovijedi Jedan je naš Gospodin Bog: ljubi Gospodina Boga svoga svim svojim srcem, i svom svojom dušom, i svim svojim umom, i svom svojom snagom. A i druga je poput nje. Ljubi bližnjega svoga kao samoga sebe. Nema veće zapovijedi od ove dvije. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
376:...pero nada de lo que había visto hasta entonces me había advertido de la invasión que implica un niño en tu vida. Esa intimidad inaudita que uno tiene con ellos, cómo tu propio genio y humor se entreteje en cierto modo con su genio y humor, de tal manera que los peores aspectos de tu personalidad ya no es algo que puedes guardar para ti a escondidas, sino que de alguna manera se forman fuera de ti y luego te son arrojados de vuelta. Lo mismo rige para tus mejores cualidades, claro. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
377:To turn 40 is to realize that one’s limitations will last one’s whole life through, but also to know that all the time, whether one likes it or not, and whether one is aware of it or not, new layers are being added to one’s character, a type of knowledge and insight that isn’t directed towards the future, towards what will come to pass or one day be accomplished, but towards the here and now, in the things you do every day, in what you think about them and what you understand of them. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
378:It’s good to be alone, for a few hours to be exempt from all the complicated bonds, all the conflicts, great and small, all the demands and expectations, wills and desires that build up between people, and which after only a short time become so densely intertwined that the room for reflection and for action are both restricted. If everything that stirs between people made a sound, it would be like a chorus, a great murmur of voices would rise from even the faintest glimmer in the eyes. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
379:When you visualized the future and conjured up a world where urban life had spread everywhere and man had achieved his long-desired symbiosis with the machine, you never took account of the simplest elements, beer, for example, so golden and flavorsome and robust, made from corn in the field and hops in the meadow, or bread or beetroot with its sweet but dark, earthy taste, all this we had always eaten and drunk at tables made of wood, inside windows through which beams of sunlight fell. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
380:Why this should be so is hard to say; one might be tempted to believe that it was based on some ancient convention that originally had a practical purpose, such as a cellar being cold and therefore best suited for storing corpses, and that this principle had been retained in our era of refrigerators and cold-storage rooms, had it not been for the notion that transporting bodies upward in buildings seems contrary to the laws of nature, as though height and death are mutually incompatible. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
381:The trick was to eke out the milk because if you came to the last and there was none left it was almost impossible to swallow. Best of all, of course, was to save a drop until everything was eaten, the milk never tasted as good as then, when it no longer had to fulfill a function, kit ran down your throat in its own right, pure and uncontaminated, but unfortunately it was rare for me to manage this. The needs of the moment always trumped promises of the future, however enticing the latter. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
382:A love which is limited by faith is an untrue love. … [L]ove bound by faith … hides in itself the hatred that belongs to faith; it is only benevolent so long as faith is not injured. … [I]n order to retain the semblance of love, it falls into the most diabolical sophisms, as we see in Augustine's apology for the persecution of heretics. … [I]t interprets the deeds of hatred which are committed for the sake of faith as deeds of love. [T]he limitation of love by faith is itself a contradiction. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
383:On the wicker chair the cat lazily raised its head. Meeting my gaze, it got up, padded across the floor and jumped onto my lap. I got rid of the orange peel, which the cat hated. “You can lie here for a bit,” I said, stroking it. “You can. But not all night, you know. I’m going to bed soon.” It began to purr as it curled up on me. Its head sank slowly, resting on one paw, and its eyes, which first had closed with pleasure, were closed in sleep within seconds. “It’s all right for some,” I said. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
384:Perché ha parlato? Perché ha voluto rompere l'incanto del silenzio ove l'anima mia si cullava senza quasi rimorso e senza quasi paura? Perché mi ha voluto strappare i veli vaghi dell'incertezza e mettermi in cospetto del suo amore svelato? Ormai non posso più indugiare, non posso più illudermi, né concedermi una mollezza, né abbandonarmi a un languore. Il pericolo é là, certo, aperto, manifesto; e m'attira con la vertigine, come un abisso. Un attimo di languore, di mollezza, e io sono perduta. ~ Gabriele D Annunzio, #NFDB
385:Sada mi se razjasnilo zašto čeke, streljačke tornjeve, koji uostalom jako podsjećaju na stražarske tornjeve u koncentracijskim logorim, nazivaju amboni – propovjedaonice. Na propovjedaonici Čovjek se postavlja iznad drugih Bića i priznaje sam sebi pravo na njihove živote i smrti. Postaje tiranin i uzurpator. Svećenik je govorio nadahnuto, zamalo pa u ekstazi: - Sebi zemlju podložite. Vama je lovcima, Bog uputio ove riječi, jer Bog čini Čovjeka svojim pomoćnikom da sudjeluje u djelu stvaranja. (...) ~ Olga Tokarczuk, #NFDB
386:As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules and atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large, such as cloud formations, river deltas, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring it within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
387:Pe tot parcursul copilăriei și al adolescenței ne străduim să stabilim distanța corectă față de lucruri și fenomene. Citim, învățăm, experimentăm, ne adaptăm. Și ajungem într-o zi în punctul în care toate distanțele necesare sunt fixate, toate sistemele necesare sunt stabilite. Atunci timpul începe să curgă mai repede. Nu mai întâmpină vreo piedică, totul e stabil; se revarsă prin viețile noastre, zilele dispar cu repeziciune, și, până să ne dăm seama, avem patruzeci, cincizeci, șaizeci de ani... ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
388:And it's a disquieting thought that not even the past is done with, even that continues to change, as if in reality there is only one time, for everything, one time for every purpose under heaven. One single second, one single landscape, in which what happens activates and deactivates what has already happened in endless chain reactions, like the processes that take place in the brain, perhaps, where cells suddenly bloom and die away, all according to the way the winds of consciousness are blowing. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
389:And it's a disquieting thought that not even the past is done with, even that continues to change, as if in reality there is only one time, for everything, one time for every purpose under heaven. One single second, one single landscape, in which what happens activates and deactivates what has already happened in endless chain reactions, like the processes that take place in the brain, perhaps, where cells suddenly bloom and die away, all according to the way the winds of consciousness are blowing. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
390:Miran razgovor je jedino moguć udvoje. Ako u razgovoru učestvuje više njih, onda ne samo da je razgovor nespokojan i strastven, nego i neiskren i izveštačen, čak i među ljudima koji su inače među sobom najiskreniji. Uopšte sve što jse utroje govori, taj govor ne prestaje da stoji u vezi sa onim trećim, da se zadobije njegovo mišljenje, da bude po njegovom ukusu, da bude na strani kojeg od ove dvojice koji diskutuju. On je tu da sudi, odmeri, presudi.
Za miran život treba što manje ljudi i što manje reči. ~ Jovan Du i,#NFDB
391:I had hoped to the very last minute I would slip through the net, but there was no escape – Yngve and I had decided she would get a speech from both of us. I dreaded it like the plague. Sometimes when I had to do a reading or an interview or participate in a discussion on stage I was so nervous I could barely walk. But ‘nervous’ in no way covered my state, nervousness was a transient phase of nerves, a minor aberration, a quivering of the spirit. This was painful and unyielding. It would pass though. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
392:We don’t live our lives alone, but that doesn’t mean we see those alongside whom we live our lives. When Dad moved to Northern Norway and was no longer physically in front of me with his body and his voice, his temper and his eyes, in a way he disappeared from my life, in the sense that he was reduced to a kind of discomfort I occasionally felt when he called or when something reminded me of him, then a kind of zone within me was activated, and in that zone lay all my feelings for him, but he was not there. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
393:When the second song came, Norwegian Wood, I took my eyes off the book and gazed at the ceiling as the mood of the music in some incomprehensible way got into me and raised me to where it was. It was a fantastic feeling. Not only because it was beautiful, there was something else present that had nothing to do with the room I lay in or the world I was surrounded by.
I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me?
She showed me her room, isn’t it good, Norwegian wood?
Fantastic, fantastic. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
394:[I]n music there is no meaning, there is no explanation, there are no people, only voices, each with its own special distinctive quality, as though this is its essential quality, its essence, unadulterated, no body, no personality, yes, a kind of personality without a person, and on every record, there is an infinity of such characteristics, from another world, which you meet whenever you play the music. I never worked out what it was that possessed me when music possessed me, other than that I always wanted it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
395:When the wave, equally suddenly, retreated, it left a void which resembled that of the morning, yet had a character of its own, because though the pattern was repeated it was in reverse order: the scattered schoolchildren who passed my window now were on their way home and there was something unrestrained and boisterous about them, whereas when they had walked past on their way to school in the morning they still bore the silent imprint of sleep and the innate wariness we feel toward things that have not yet begun. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
396:Zaslužila je bolju sreću, ali šta bih ja bez nje? Otrgao sam je iz njenog svijeta, moji je ne vole, njeni je ne priznaju, i sve sam joj što ima, sve što je sanjala da će imati, ljubav, nježnost, sigurnost, štit. To mi je pomoć, ti njeni djevojački snovi, još me sniva željenog. Ali šta će biti kad životna oluja pokida tu krhku pređu, tanju od paučine, i kad čovjek iz snova postane ono što sam ja ove noći, jadan i unižen? Svi ljudski snovi tako počinju i tako propadaju. Zastaće, preneražena. Više nema ništa, čak ni varke. ~ Me a Selimovi, #NFDB
397:What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don’t see the world, don’t observe the world, don’t contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don’t distinguish between it and their own selves. Not until that happens, until a distance appears between what they are and what the world is, does the question arise: what makes life worth living? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
398:I would have given a fortune to know what the people sitting there were thinking. What the world looked like to them. Imagine if it was radically different from what I saw. If it was full of pleasure at the dark leather of the sofa, the black surface of the coffee and its bitter taste, not to mention the yellow eye of custard in the center of the puff pastry’s winding and cracked terrain. What if the whole of this world sang inside them? What if they were full to bursting with the many delights the day had bestowed on them? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
399:The only genres I saw value in, which still conferred meaning, were diaries and essays, the types of literature that did not deal with narrative, that were not about anything, but just consisted of a voice, the voice of your own personality, a life, a face, a gaze you could meet. What is a work of art if not the gaze of another person? Not directed above us, nor beneath us, but at the same height as our own gaze. Art cannot be experienced collectively, nothing can, art is something you are alone with. You meet its gaze alone. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
400:Everything that can be said with words can be contradicted with words, so what’s the point of dissertations, novels, literature? Or put another way: whatever we say is true we can also always say is untrue. It is a zero point and the place from which the zero value begins to spread. However, it is not a dead point, not for literature either, for literature is not just words, literature is what words evoke in the reader. It is this transcendence that validates literature, not the formal transcendence in itself, as many believe. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
401:It was August 1988, I was an 80s person, contemporaneous with Duran Duran and The Cure, not that fiddle and accordion music grandad listened to in the days when he trudged up the hill in the dusk with a friend to court grandma and her sisters. I didn’t belong here, with all of my heart I felt that. It didn’t help that I knew the forest was actually an 80s forest and the mountains actually 80s mountains. So what was I doing here? My plan had been to write. But I couldn’t, I was all on my own and lonely to the depths of my soul. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
402:the doubts that colored such a large part of my thinking never applied to the larger picture but always the smaller, the one associated with my closer surroundings, friends, acquaintances, girls, who, I was convinced, always held a low opinion of me, considered me an idiot, which burned inside me, every day it burned inside me; however, as far as the larger picture was concerned, I never had any doubt that I could attain whatever I wanted, I knew I had it in me, because my yearnings were so strong and they never found any rest. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
403:Ich selbst war fast dreißig Jahre alt, als ich zum ersten Mal eine Leiche sah. Es geschah im Sommer 1998, an einem Nachmittag im Juli, in einer Kapelle in Kristiansand. Mein Vater war gestorben. Er lag auf einem Tisch mitten im Raum, der Himmel war bewölkt, das Licht in dem Zimmer schummrig, auf dem Rasen vor dem Fenster fuhr ein Mäher langsam im Kreis. Ich war dort zusammen mit meinem Bruder. Der Bestatter war hinausgegangen, um uns mit dem Toten allein zu lassen, wir standen ein, zwei Meter von ihm entfernt und starrten ihn an. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
404:The tree was so old, and stood there so alone, that his childish heart had been filled with compassion; if no one else on the farm gave it a thought, he would at least do his best to, even though he suspected that his child's words and child's deeds didn't make much difference. It had stood there before he was born, and would be standing there after he was dead, but perhaps, even so, it was pleased that he stroked its bark every time he passed, and sometimes, when he was sure he wasn't observed, even pressed his cheek against it. ~ Karl Ove Knausgard, #NFDB
405:The tree was so old, and stood there so alone, that his childish heart had been filled with compassion; if no one else on the farm gave it a thought, he would at least do his best to, even though he suspected that his child's words and child's deeds didn't make much difference. It had stood there before he was born, and would be standing there after he was dead, but perhaps, even so, it was pleased that he stroked its bark every time he passed, and sometimes, when he was sure he wasn't observed, even pressed his cheek against it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
406:[l]ove of kindness, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by foolishness. Love of knowledge, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by loose speculation. Love of honesty, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by harmful candour. Love of straightforwardness, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by misdirected judgment. Love of daring, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by insubordination. And love for strength of character, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by intractability ~ Henry Kissinger, #NFDB
407:When someone is going through a difficult time, the difficulties spread out in concentric circles and touch even peripheral situations and relationships. When darkness falls in one person, fire is lit in the other, and thereby all sense of normality vanishes, unless someone struggles to stay within it, without necessarily even realizing what one is doing. For on the one hand, everything is as usual, and it must remain as usual, on the other everything is an emergency. It is the friction between the two levels that starts the fire. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
408:Though actually I think that being in one's twenties is in itself to be restricted. At that age one's vigour is great, and one looks ahead, keeps one's eyes fixed on things to come, and of the things found in one's surroundings the most important are always those that hold the most promise. At the same time, and this is the cruelty of it, this forward-looking gaze is constantly confronted with the limitations of one's character, constantly coming up against a sense of stagnation - hence the youthful fear of stagnating intellectually. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
409:The difference between this painting and the others the late Rembrandt painted is the difference between seeing and being seen. That is, in this picture he sees himself seeing while also being seen, and no doubt it was only in the Baroque period with its penchant for mirrors within mirrors, the play within the play, staged scenes and a belief in the interdependence of all things, when moreover craftsmanship attained heights witnessed neither before nor since, that such a painting was possible. But it exists in our age, it sees for us. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
410:Had the world been different, in my opinion, without mountains and oceans, plains and seas, deserts and forests, and consisted of something else, inconceivable to us, as we don't know anything other than this, we would also have found it beautiful. A world with gloes and raies, evanbillits and conulames, for example, or ibitera, proluffs, and lopsits, whatever they might be, we would have sung their praises because that is the way we are, we extol the world and love it although it's not necessary, the world is the world, it's all we have. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
411:Bylo podivuhodné, jak všechny velké stromy oplývaly svou vlastní jedinečnou osobností, vyjadřovanou skrze naprosto unikátní postavení, v němž rostly, a auru, již dohromady vytvářely kmeny a kořeny, kůra a větve, světlo a stín. Bylo to, jako by promlouvaly. Ne nějakými hlasy samozřejmě, nýbrž tím, čím jsou, což se tak nějak šířilo k těm, kdo se na ně dívali. A promlouvaly jen o tom, že jsou, o ničem jiném. Kudykoliv jsem chodil po osadě či lesích okolo, slýchal jsem tyto hlasy, nebo spíš vnímal otisk těchto nesmírně pomalu rostoucích bytostí. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
412:An essay course started at the Academy, I wrote about Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, one of the books I was really passionate about, alongside Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and even though they didn’t fall into the category of literature the teachers favoured and taught, I still received some praise from Fosse, he said my language was tight and precise, my arguments solid and interesting and that I obviously had a talent for non-fiction. The praise was two-edged: did it mean that my future lay in literature about literature and not in literature itself? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
413:Right there, at that precise moment, I felt as if I would be able to meet whatever challenges came my way, as if there were no limits to what I could do. This wasn’t about writing, this was something else, a boundlessness, as if I could get up and go now, this very minute, and then just walk and walk to the end of the earth.
This feeling lasted for thirty seconds perhaps. Then it was gone, and even though I tried to summon it back it refused to return, a bit like a dream that goes, slips from your grasp as you struggle to recall it after waking. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
414:A dark, deep, perhaps also passionate side, was that her? She had responded, it was only a glimpse, but nonetheless. Then, at that moment, I was nobody. I was crushed. I, with all the notes I had sent her, all the discussions I'd had with her, all my simple hopes and childish desires, I was nothing, a shout on the playground, a rock in scree, the hooting of a car horn.
Could I do this to her? Could I have this effect on her?
Could I have this effect on anyone?
No.
For Hanne, I was nobody and would remain so.
For me, she was everything. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
415:Here too I had seen people who had the gift...who with minimal effort could draw whatever [they] wanted, the tree in the grounds outside the window, the car parked beyond it, the teacher standing in front of the board. When we had to choose optional subjects I wanted to take Form and Color, but since I knew how things stood, that the other students knew how to draw, had the gift, I decided against it. Instead I chose cinematography. The thought of this could sometimes weigh me down because I wanted so much to be someone. I wanted so much to be special. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
416:Even though the suitcase was heavy I carried it by the handle as I walked into the departure hall. I detested the tiny wheels, first of all because they were feminine, thus not worthy of a man, a man should carry, not roll, secondly because they suggested easy options, shortcuts, savings, rationality, which I despised and opposed wherever I could, even where it was of the most trivial significance. Why should you live in a world without feeling its weight? Were we just images? And what were we actually saving energy for with these energy-saving devices? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
417:I can’t speak for other writers, but I write to create something that is better than myself, I think that’s the deepest motivation, and it is so because I’m full of self-loathing and shame. Writing doesn’t make me a better person, nor a wiser and happier one, but the writing, the text, the novel, is a creation of something outside of the self, an object, kind of neutralized by the objectivity of literature and form; the temper, the voice, the style; all in it is carefully constructed and controlled. This is writing for me: a cold hand on a warm forehead. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
418:Ima jedan dan kada svaka mlada djevojka pogleda ovako. Teško onome ko se nađe tu!
Ovaj prvi pogled duše koja još samu sebe ne poznaje kao zora je na nebu. To je buđenje nečega zračog i nepoznatog. Ništa ne može da izrazi opasnu čar ove neočekivane svjetlosti koja najedn neodređeno obasje divne tmine i u kojoj su spojena sva sadašnja nevinst i sva buduća strast. To je neka vrsta neodlučne nježnosti koja se otkrije nasumice i koja očekuje. To je zamka koju nevinost nehotice razapinje i u koju hvata srce i ne hoteći i ne znajući. To je djevojče koje gleda kao žena. ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
419:what I didn’t know, or rather had absolutely no conception of, was that every step I took was defining me, every person I encountered leaving their mark on me, and that the life I was living at that particular time, boundlessly arbitrary as it seemed, was in fact my life. That one day I would look back on my life, and this would be what I looked back on. What then had been insignificant, as weightless as air, a series of events dissolving in exactly the same way as the darkness dissolved in the mornings, would twenty years on seem laden with destiny and fate. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
420:Transfixed, I saw a hull tower above me like a mountainside, and an anchor, thick as a tree trunk, vanishing mutely into the deep. Dreams belong to an ancient substratum within us and constitute a form of consciousness that we have in common with animals. When I woke up, it occurred to me that this must be how our world appears to them, that this is how animals perceive all our constructions, all our skyscrapers, bridges and vessels. For in my dream the oil tankers meant nothing, they were just there, while at the same time the impression they made filled me entirely. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
421:I continued along the road past the fish-processing plant, which was deserted apart from the seagulls huddled on the roof, and on towards the bend which led to the higher part of the village. Beyond the last house the mountain soared straight up. There was no intermediate stage, which I was used to where I had grown up, those diffuse, hard-to-define places which were neither private property nor open nature. This was real nature, and not the low, gentle Sorland type of nature but wild, harsh, windswept Arctic nature, which confronted you as soon as you opened the door. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
422:los demás. Pero conocía su lenguaje corporal, conocía su mímica, sabía cómo olía, todos los matices de su voz me eran familiares y, lo que es más importante, sabía de dónde venía. No era capaz de poner palabras a nada de todo eso, y raramente llegaba hasta mis pensamientos, pero todo estaba ahí. De modo que no tuve que buscar con la mirada por todas las mesas de la pizzería, tampoco tuve que pasearla por las caras sentadas en las sillas junto a las puertas de embarque o por las que iban y venían por la sala, porque en el instante en el que entré, supe dónde estaba. Eché ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
423:The sole really unpredictable factor in this life, from autumn to winter, spring to summer, from one school year to the next, was Dad. I was so frightened of him that even with the greatest effort of will I am unable to recreate the fear; the feelings I had for him I have never felt since, nor indeed anything close.
His footsteps on the stairs — was he coming to see me?
The wild glare in his eyes. The tightness around his mouth. The lips that parted involuntarily. And then his voice.
Sitting here now, hearing it in my inner ear, I almost start crying. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
424:I was so sad for the children. I was so angry and irritable at home. It took nothing for me to tell Heidi off, nothing to shout at her. And Vanja, Vanja . . . When she had her bouts of defiance and not only said no to everything but also shouted and screamed and punched, I shouted back, grabbed her and threw her onto the bed. I was completely out of control. Then came the remorse afterwards, the attempts to be patient, kind, nice, friendly, good. Good. And that was what I wanted to be, all I wanted to be, to be a good father to the three of them.
Wasn’t I a good father? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
425:Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle,
e questa siepe, che da tanta parte
dell'ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati
spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
silenzi, e profondissima quiete
io nel pensier mi fingo, ove per poco
il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
infinito silenzio a questa voce
vo comparando: e mi sovvien l'eterno,
e le morte stagioni, e la presente
e viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa
immensità s'annega il pensier mio:
e il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare. ~ Giacomo Leopardi,#NFDB
426:There is a sort of light surrounding Abel, something pure and strong radiates from him no matter where he is or what he's doing. Sometimes Cain thinks he possesses a soul without shadows. That's what people want to be close to. But if so, it's not like a child's, for a child's soul is delicate, its flickering flame needs no more than the opening of a door onto the world to blow it out. Nothing can destroy Abel's light. In his presence one never feels wicked, only foolish. That darkness which in solitude can seem so powerful, occasionally even intoxicating, seems risible in his company. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
427:When at the same time vast cloud massifs are hanging motionless in the blue sky out on the horizon, or rain dashes against the windscreen forming its irregular patterns, which a moment later are swept away by the wipers, I can sometimes feel intensely happy. The feeling can get particularly strong in the forest by the sea on these autumn afternoons, in the long straight passage between the trees, leafless and stark, when approaching cars come towards us in the dusk with their shining headlights, their dark panes and gleaming bodies, below the surface of which an archaic fire smoulders. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
428:Now let’s see. The class reps on the council this year are therefore Eivind and Marianne!”
I looked down at the desk in front of me.
One vote.
How was that possible?
And, to cap it off, the one vote was my own.
But I was the best student in the class! At least in Norwegian! And natural and social sciences! And in math I was the second best, or perhaps the third. But, altogether, who could be better than me?
OK, Eivind won. But one vote? How was that possible?
Hadn’t anyone voted for me?
There had to be a mistake somewhere.
No one? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
429:Innocence and purity have become a symbol of stupidity, but that’s
nowadays. We live in a culture where the person with the most experience wins. It’s sick. Everyone knows which way modernism is going, you create a form by breaking up a form, in an endless regression; just let it continue, and for as long as it does, experience will have the upper hand. The unique feature of our times, the pure or independent act, is, as you know, to renounce, not to accept. Accepting is too easy. There’s nothing to be achieved by it. That’s more or less where I place you. Almost saint-like, in other words. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
430:Who I am to them I have no idea, probably a vague memory of someone they once knew in their childhood years, for they have done so much to one another in their lives since then, so much has happened and with such impact that the small incidents that took place in their childhoods have no more gravity than the dust stirred up by a passing car, or the seeds of a withering dandelion dispersed by the breath from a small mouth. And oh, wasn't the latter a fine image, of how event after event is dispersed in the air above the little meadow of one's own history, only to fall between the blades of grass and vanish? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
431:We were rooted in the archaic past, nothing radical about us, our bodies, or needs had changed since the first human saw the light of day somewhere in Africa forty thousand years ago or however long Homo sapiens had existed. But we imagined it was different, and so strong was our imaginative power we not only believed that but we also organized ourselves accordingly, as we sat getting drunk in our cafés and darkened clubs, and dancing our dances that presumably were even more clumsy than those performed, shall we say, twenty-five thousand years ago in the glow of a fire somewhere along the Mediterranean coast. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
432:E tutti insieme, pur nella diversità delle ideologie, avrebbero sfilato nella comune gloria dei riflettori, poiché ciò che la politica divide il partito unico dei vip riunisce, e non già di idee si sarebbe parlato, ma di look e toilette, almeno per quella sera, l'ultima sera di tregua. Poiché l'indomani ai presidenti sarebbe stato concesso sparare ed eliminarsi l'un l'altro, e solo il più potente e fortunato alla fine governato, poiché questa era l'unica democrazia possibile sotto il cielo di Tristalia ove era avvenuta una grande battaglia di idee al termine della quale non c'erano stati né vincitori, né vinti, né idee. ~ Stefano Benni, #NFDB
433:L'Infinito
Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle
E questa siepe che da tanta parte
De'l ultimo orrizonte il guarde esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando interminati
Spazi di la da quella, e sovrumani
Silenzi, e profondissima quiete,
Io nel pensier mi fingo, ove per poco
Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
Infinito silenzio a questa voce
Vo comparando; e mi sovvien l'eterno,
E le morte stagioni, e la presente
E viva, e'l suon di lei. Cosi tra questa
Immensita s'annega il pensier mio:
E'l naufragar m'e dolce in questo mare.
~ Count Giacomo Leopardi,#NFDB
434:But when I was twenty-four I saw life as it was. And it was okay, I had my small pleasures too, it wasn't that, and I could endure any amount of loneliness and humiliation, I was a bottomless pit, just bring it on, there were days when I could think, I receive, I am a well, I am the well of the failed, the wretched, the pitiful, the pathetic, the embarrassing, the cheerless, and the ignominious. Come on! Piss on me! Shit on me too if you want! I receive! I endure! I am endurance itself! I have never been in any doubt that this is what girls I have tried my luck with have seen in my eyes. Too much desire, too little hope. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
435:I scored a goal!” I said.
“Oh, great!” Mom said.
When we returned home and I was sitting at the kitchen table to eat supper, I said it again.
“I scored today!”
“Was it a match?” Yngve said.
“No,” I said. “We haven’t had any matches yet. It was training.”
“Then it means nothing,” he said.
A couple of tears detached themselves and rolled down my cheeks. Dad looked at me with that stern, annoyed expression of his.
“For Christ’s sake, you can’t cry about THAT!” he said. “There must be SOMETHING you can take without blubbering!”
By then the tears were in full flow. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
436:And what enriched me while reading Adorno, for example, lay not in what I read but in the perception of myself while I was reading. I was someone who read Adorno! And in this heavy, intricate, detailed, precise language whose aim was to elevate thought ever higher, and where every period was set like a mountaineer’s cleat, there was something else, this particular approach to the mood of reality, the shadow of these sentences that could evoke in me a vague desire to use the language with this particular mood on something real, on something living. Not on an argument, but on a lynx, for example, or on a blackbird or a cement mixer. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
437:I am alive, I have my own children and with them I have tried to achieve only one aim: that they shouldn’t be afraid of their father.
They aren’t. I know that.
When I enter a room, they don’t cringe, they don't look down at the floor, they don’t dart off as soon as they glimpse an opportunity, no, if they look at me, it is not a look of indifference, and if there is anyone I am happy to be ignored by it is them. If there is anyone I am happy to be taken for granted by, it is them. And should they have completely forgotten I was there when they turn forty themselves, I will thank them and take a bow and accept the bouquets. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
438:Was it Jesus you saw a picture of?” he says and looks up at me. If it had not been for the friendly voice and the long pause before the question, I would have thought he was making fun of me. He finds it a little embarrassing that I am a Christian; all he wants is for me not to be different from the other kids, and of all the kids in the neighbourhood, his youngest son is the only one to call himself a Christian.
But he is really wondering about this.
I feel a flutter of joy because he actually cares, and at the same time I become a bit offended that he underestimates me like that.
I shake my head.
“It wasn’t Jesus,” I say. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
439:Većina ljudi neprestano stremi prema
toj bajkovitoj zemlji u kojoj će, prema njihovom mišljenju, svi njihovi problemi biti riješeni, a
oni će biti ispunjeni radošću. Oni sami sebi govore: 'Kad ostvarim ovo ili ono, bit ću sretan'.
Ali, ja smatram da sreća nije odredište na koje stižemo, već unutarnje stanje koje sami
stvaramo. Svatko može biti sretan - sreća je svima na raspolaganju, i to ovog trenutka.
-52-
Moramo se samo zaustaviti i više pozornosti posvetiti dragocjenostima koje nas već okružuju.
Zato ja živim punim plućima. Moje su oči otvorene. Budan sam. Uživam u svakom pojedinom
trenutku ove veličanstvene pustolovine. ~ Robin S Sharma,#NFDB
440:Sometimes I saw what Espen and I did through Yngve’s eyes, then we were transformed into two nerds sitting alone and reading aloud and playing chess and listening to jazz, as far from the social, sociable world of bands and girls and nights out as it was possible to be. Yngve saw that it wasn’t me, and I carried that view with me, I was the guy in the street who liked football and pop music, what was I doing with all this modernist elitist literature? However, it worked the other way too because what Yngve said didn’t always sound so convincing in my ears any more, but this was such a painful thought that I suppressed it the instant it appeared. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
441:Wouldn’t it be more natural to operate with several names since their identities and self-perceptions are so very different? Such that the fetus might be called Jens Ove, for example, and the infant Nils Ove, and the five- to ten-year-old Per Ove, the ten- to twelve-year-old Geir Ove, the twelve- to seventeen-year-old Kurt Ove, the seventeen- to twenty-three-year-old John Ove, the twenty-three- to thirty-two-year-old Tor Ove, the thirty-two- to forty-six-year-old Karl Ove – and so on and so forth? Then the first name would represent the distinctiveness of the age range, the middle name would represent continuity, and the last, family affiliation. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
442:Jezik nas neopozivo udaljuje od onog što jesmo i svaka reč je drugo mesto nešto što se premešta rečito i smrknuto u njemu potpunije sleplje od oka. I nigde u stvarima nema spokojstva. I nigde u stvarima takvog plavog. I ništa se ne može spasti imenovanjem pa ni same ove reči kojima ti govorim – večeras – neobično tronut potaknut njima a kako je rasla nežna rasipna sila raspršujući u meni i Ništa ti ne bi dale ove reči osim čistog zurenja u jednu boju. I ništa ti ne bi dale ove reči osim nepredvidljivog horizonta koji je naše odbijanje da poverujemo da su nas nekada davno izneverili – I kao da nikad nije bilo ovih reči. I kao da nikad nije bilo ovog plavog. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
443:When I think of my three children it is not only their distinctive faces that appear before me, but also the quite distinct feeling they radiate. This feeling, which is constant, is what they “are” for me. And what they “are” has been present in them ever since the first day I saw them. At that time they could barely do anything, and the little bit they could do, like sucking on a breast, raising their arms as reflex actions, looking at their surroundings, imitating, they could all do that, thus what they “are” has nothing to do with qualities, has nothing to do with what they can or can’t do, but is more a kind of light that shines within them. Their ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
444:For who brooded over the meaninglessness of life any more? Teenagers. They were the only ones who were preoccupied with existential issues, and as a result there was something puerile and immature about them, and hence it was doubly impossible for adults with their sense of propriety intact to deal with them. However, this is not so strange, for we never feel more strongly and passionately about life than in our teenage years, when we step into the world for the first time, as it were, and all our feelings are new feelings. So there they are, with their big ideas on small orbits, looking this way and that for an opportunity to launch them, as the pressure builds. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
445:Oh, this is the song about the young man who loves a young woman. Has he the right to use such a word as “love”? He knows nothing about life, he knows nothing about her, he knows nothing about himself. All he knows is that he has never felt anything with such force and clarity before. Everything hurts, but nothing is as good. Oh, this is the song about being sixteen years old and sitting on a bus and thinking about her, the one, not knowing that feelings will slowly, slowly, weaken and fade, that life, that which is now so vast and so all-embracing, will inexorably dwindle and shrink until it is a manageable entity that doesn’t hurt so much, but nor is it as good. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
446:Oh, this is the song about the young man who loves a young woman. Has he the right to use such a word as ‘love’? He knows nothing about life, he knows nothing about her, he knows nothing about himself. All he knows is that he has never felt anything with such force and clarity before. Everything hurts, but nothing is as good. Oh, this is the song about being sixteen years old and sitting on a bus and thinking about her, the one, not knowing that feelings will slowly, slowly, weaken and fade, that life, that which is now so vast and so all-embracing, will inexorably dwindle and shrink until it is a manageable entity which doesn’t hurt so much, but nor is it as good. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
447:I had decided ages ago that I would not continue my education after school, what we learned was just rubbish, basically what life was about was living, and living in the way you want, in other words, enjoying your life. Some enjoyed their lives best by working, others by not working. OK, I was aware that I would need money, which meant that I would also have to work, but not all the time and not on something that would deplete all my energy and eat into my soul, leaving me like one of the middleaged halfwits who guarded their hedges and peered across at their neighbours to see if their status symbols were as wonderful as their own.
I didn’t want that.
But money was a problem. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
448:Now I saw his lifeless sate. And that there was no longer any difference between what once had been my father and the table he was lying on, or the floor on which the table stood, or the wall socket beneath the window, or the cable running to the lamp beside him. For humans are merely one form among many, which the world produces over and over again, not only in everything that lives but also in everything that does not live, drawn in sand, stone, and water. And death, which I have always regarded as the greatest dimension of life, dark, compelling, was no more than a pipe that springs a leak, a branch that cracks in the wind, a jacket that slips off a clothes hanger and falls to the floor. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
449:The article said that Kevin Keegan was an extrovert while Kenny Dalglish was an introvert.
Just seeing the word introvert threw me into despair.
Was I an introvert?
Wasn’t I?
Didn’t I cry more than I laughed? Didn’t I spend all my time reading in my room?
That was introverted behavior, wasn’t it?
Introvert, introvert, I didn’t want to be an introvert.
That was the last thing I wanted to be, there could be nothing worse.
But I was an introvert, and the insight grew like a kind of mental cancer within me.
Kenny Dalglish kept himself to himself.
Oh, so did I! But I didn’t want that. I wanted to be an extrovert! An extrovert! ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
450:Now I saw his lifeless state. And that there was no longer any difference between what once had been my father and the table he was lying on, or the floor on which the table stood, or the wall socket beneath the window, or the cable running to the lamp beside him. For humans are merely one form among many, which the world produces over and over again, not only in everything that lives but also in everything that does not live, drawn in sand, stone, and water. And death, which I have always regarded as the greatest dimension of life, dark, compelling, was no more than a pipe that springs a leak, a branch that cracks in the wind, a jacket that slips off a clothes hanger and falls to the floor. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
451:What would the days be like now?
It was Mom who bound us all together, it was Mom who was at the center of Yngve’s and my life, we knew that, Dad knew that, but perhaps she didn’t. How else could she leave us like this?
Knives and forks clinking on plates, elbows moving, heads held stiff, straight backs. No one saying a word. That is us three, a father and two sons, sitting and eating. Around us, on all sides, it is the seventies.
The silence grows. And we notice it, all three of us, the silence is not the kind that can ease, it is the kind that lasts a lifetime. Well, of course, you can say something inside it, you can talk, but the silence doesn’t stop for that reason. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
452:De huizen waar we hadden gewoond, stonden er nog, allemaal. Het enige verschil, het verschil tussen de werkelijkheid van het kind en die van de volwassene, is dat de dingen hun betekenis hadden verloren. Een paar Le Coq-voetbalschoenen zijn gewoon een paar voetbalschoenen. Wat ik nu voelde als ik zo'n paar in mijn handen hield, was slechts een echo uit mijn jeugd, verder niets, niets speciaals. Hetzelfde gold voor de zee, de scheren en de smaak van zout waarvan de dagen 's zomers doordrongen konden zijn; nu smaakte het gewoon naar zout, einde verhaal. De wereld van dezelfde, maar toch ook weer niet, want de betekenis erin was verschoven en verschoof nog steeds, steeds verder naar het zinloze. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
453:Nijedan čovek nije toliko siromašan da ne može jednom na dan da pogleda u nebo i da se seti neke dobre misli pune života. A zarobljenik koji pri odlasku na rad ponavlja u sebi neki dobar stih, ili pevuši tiho neku dobru melodiju, može u duši dublje da oseti utehu i da više poseduje sve ove lepe stvari nego neki zahtevni čovek koji se oseća umorno u velikoj lepoti i slatkom uživanju.
Ti koji su tužan i daleko od svojih, pročitaj povremeno neku dobru izreku, neku pesmu, seti se lepe muzike, lepog predela, nekog čistog i dobrog trenutka u tvom životu! I pogledaj, zar nije tačno, da se kada to uradiš ozbiljno, dešava čudo, da sati postaju vedriji, budućnost prijatnija, život vredniji življenja! ~ Hermann Hesse,#NFDB
454:I'm in love. Hook, line, and sinker."
..."What's her name?"
"Hanne."
"Hanne," she said, looking at me with a faint smile. "When do I get to meet her?"
"That's the big question. We're not going out together. She has someone else."
"It's not so easy then."
"No."
She sighed.
"No, it isn't always easy. But you look good. You look happy."
"I've never been so happy. Never."
For some insane reason tears welled up in my eyes when I said that. It wasn't just that my eyes glazed over, which often happened when I said something that moved me, no, tears were coursing down my cheeks.
I smiled.
"They're really tears of happiness," I said. And then I let out a sob and had to turn away. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
455:we have measured the value of the world with categories that refer to a purely fabricated world.” A fabricated world? Yes, the world as a superstructure, the world as a spirit, weightless and abstract, of the same material with which thoughts are woven, and through which therefore they can move unhindered. A world that after three hundred years of natural science is left without mysteries. Everything is explained, everything is understood, everything lies within humanity’s horizons of comprehension, from the biggest, the universe, whose oldest observable light, the farthest boundary of the cosmos, dates from its birth fifteen billion years ago, to the smallest, the protons and neutrons and mesons of the atom. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
456:I had always liked staying the night with other families, having your own room with a freshly made bed, full of unfamiliar objects, with a towel and a washcloth nicely laid out, and from there straight into the heart of family life, despite there always being, no matter whom I visited, an uncomfortable side, because even though people always try to keep existing tensions in the background whenever guests are present, the tensions are still noticeable, and you can never know if it is your presence that has caused them or whether they are just there and indeed your presence is helping to suppress them. A third possibility is, of course, that all these tensions were just tensions that lived their own lives in my head. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
457:Forse traverso una catastrofe inaudita prodotta dagli ordigni ritorneremo alla salute. Quando i gas velenosi non basteranno più, un uomo fatto come tutti gli altri, nel segreto di una stanza di questo mondo, inventerà un esplosivo incomparabile, in confronto al quale gli esplosivi attualmente esistenti saranno considerati quali innocui giocattoli. Ed un altro uomo fatto anche lui come tutti gli altri, ma degli altri un po’ più ammalato, ruberà tale esplosivo e s’arrampicherà al centro della terra per porlo nel punto ove il suo effetto potrà essere il massimo. Ci sarà un’esplosione enorme che nessuno udrà e la terra ritornata alla forma di nebulosa errerà nei cieli priva di parassiti e di malattie.
[La coscienza di Zeno, 1923] ~ Italo Svevo,#NFDB
458:For who brooded over the meaninglessness of life anymore? Teenagers. They were the only ones who were preoccupied with existential issues, and as a result there was something puerile and immature about them, and hence it was doubly impossible for adults with their sense of propriety intact to deal with them. However, this is not so strange for we never feel more strongly and passionately about life than in our teenage years, when we step into the world for the first time, as it were, and all our feelings are new feelings. So there they are, with their big ideas on small orbits, looking this way and that for an opportunity to launch them, as the pressure builds. And who is it they light upon sooner or later but Uncle Dostoevsky. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
459:DIDA: Ja od ove žene tražim samo to - da me ostavi na miru! Ali ona ne može shvatiti da mi je od nje mučno. To dolazi od toga što sam previše godina s njom spavao. Morao sam prestati mnogo prije, ali toj staroj nije nikad bilo dosta - a ja sam bio dobar u krevetu... Nisam trebao toliko toga rasipati na nju... Kažu da svatko ima određenu količinu i ta je odbrojena. No, još je malo ostalo u meni, još malo, i ja ću izabrati neku dobru da to na nju potrošim. Izabrat ću nešto naročito, nije mi stalo koliko stoji, obasut ću je krznom od samurovine! Haha! Skinut ću je golu i obasuti je samurovinom i udaviti je draguljima! Haha! Skinut ću je golu i udaviti je draguljima i obasuti je samurovinom i ševiti je od jutra do sutra. Hahahahaha! ~ Tennessee Williams, #NFDB
460:The shadows that descended over the ground outside were so long and distorted that they no longer bore any resemblance to the forms that created them. As though they had sprung forth in their own right, as though there existed a parallel reality of darkness, with dark-fences, dark-trees, dark-houses, populated by dark-people, somehow stranded here in the light, where they seemed so misshapen and helpless, as far from their element as a reef with seaweed and shells and crabs is from the receding water, one might imagine. Oh, isn’t that why shadows get longer and longer in the evening? They are reaching out for the night, this tidal water of darkness that washes over the earth to fulfill for a few hours the shadows’ innermost yearnings. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
461:Nun sah ich das Leblose. Dass es keinen Unterschied mehr zwischen dem gab, was einmal mein Vater gewesen war, und dem Tisch, auf dem er lag, oder dem Fußboden, auf dem der Tisch stand, oder der Steckdose in der Wand unter dem Fenster, oder dem Kabel, das zu der Wandleuchte daneben führte. Denn der Mensch ist nur eine Form unter anderen Formen, die von der Welt immer und immer wieder hervorgebracht werden, nicht nur in allem, was lebt, sondern auch in dem, was, gezeichnet in Sand, Stein, Wasser, nicht lebt. Und der Tod, den ich stets als die wichtigste Größe im Leben betrachtet hatte, dunkel, anziehend, war nicht mehr als ein Rohr, das platzt, ein Ast, der im Wind bricht, eine Jacke, die von einem Kleiderbügel rutscht und zu Boden fällt. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
462:Durante vários anos tentara escrever sobre o meu pai, mas não chegara a lado nenhum, talvez porque o assunto era demasiado próximo da minha vida, e portanto nada fácil de transpor para outra forma, o que naturalmente é um requisito da literatura. É essa a sua única lei: tudo tem de se submeter à forma. Se alguns dos outros elementos for mais forte do que a forma, como o estilo, o enredo, o tema, se algum deles se apoderar da forma, o resultado será pobre. É por isso que escritores com um estilo forte escrevem muitas vezes livros fracos. E também é por isso que escritores com temas fortes escrevem muitas vezes livros fracos. A força do tema e do estilo deve ser destruída para que a literatura possa existir. É a essa destruição que se chama "escrever". ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
463:At the time I didn’t understand any of this and simply believed they didn’t like me; however, since then I have begun to sense what it was that made my presence uncongenial. I was unable to dissemble, unable to play a role, and the scholarly earnestness I brought into the house was impossible to keep at arm’s length in the long run, sooner or later even they would have to engage with it, and the resultant disequilibrium, as their banter never demanded anything at all of me, that was what must have made them ring my mother in the end. My presence always made demands on them, either in concrete ways, such as food, for if I went there after school and before football training, I would otherwise have had to last until eight or nine at night without eating, ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
464:That’s the experience I’ve gained from working in the garden: there’s no reason to be cautious or anxious about anything, life is so robust, it seems to come cascading, blind and green, and at times it is frightening, because we too are alive, but we live in what amounts to a controlled environment, which makes us fear whatever is blind, wild, chaotic, stretching towards the sun, but most often also beautiful, in a deeper way than the purely visual, for the soil smells of rot and darkness, teems with scuttling beetles and convulsing worms, the flower stalks are juicy, their petals brim with scents, and the air, cold and sharp, warm and humid, filled with sunrays or rain, lies against skin, accustomed to the indoors, like a soothing compress of hereness. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
465:I hated all authority, was an opponent of the whole limited society I had grown up in, with its bourgeois values and materialistic view of humanity. I despised what I had learned at gymnas, even about literature; all I needed to know, all true knowledge, the only really essential knowledge, was to be found in the books I read and the music I listened to. I wasn’t interested in money or status symbols; I knew that the essential value in life lay elsewhere. I didn’t want to study, had no wish to receive an education at a conventional institution like a university, I wanted to travel down through Europe, sleep on beaches, in cheap hotels, or with friends I made on the way. Take odd jobs to survive, wash dishes at hotels, load or unload boats, pick oranges … ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
466:Ne u razbuktavanju plamena ili ekscesu lepote nego – Između smrti i smrti šta je bilo to što je svetlelo s gorčinom i što se gorko zadržalo u oku što posmatra nezadrživo krvarenje iz jedinstvenog plavog. Želim da osetiš to plavo boju odbijanja i potpune posvećenosti i ništa drugo kako je proživelo u meni čitave te noći strašnu agoniju ni zbog čega drugog osim njega samog i kako je raslo rasipajući u meni praveći u meni potpuno tu reč. Želim da osetiš to plavo boju samoće i neizvesnosti i ništa drugo dok vazduh i zemlja bukte u pijačnom rasplamsaju slučajnosti kovitlac u razdraženom vazduhu koji nigde ne naseljava. I da posle ja moram da ti spominjem da moram da imenujem susret kad ove noći veličanstvena boja i ono nešto večito što smo konačno izgubili u njemu – 10 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
467:That's the experience I've gained from working in the garden: there's no reason to be cautious or anxious about anything, life is so robust, it seems to come cascading, blind and green, and at times it is frightening, because we too are alive, but we live in what amounts to a controlled environment, which makes us fear whatever is blind, wild, chaotic, stretching towards the sun, but most often also beautiful, in a deeper way than the purely visual, for the soil smells of rot and darkness, teems with scuttling beetles and convulsing worms, the flower stalks are juicy, their petals brim with scents, and the air, cold and sharp, warm and humid, filled with sunrays or rain, lies against the kin, accustomed to the indoors, like a soothing compress of hereness. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
468:A lot happens in our everyday life, but it always happens within the same routine, and more than anything else it has changed my perspective of time. For, while previously I saw time as a stretch of terrain that had to be covered, with the future as a distant prospect, hopefully a bright one, and never boring at any rate, now it is interwoven with our life here and in a totally different way. Were I to portray this with a visual image it would have to be that of a boat in a lock: life is slowly and ineluctably raised by time seeping in from all sides. Apart from the details, everything is always the same. And with every passing day the desire grows for the moment when life will reach the top, for the moment when the sluice gates open and life finally moves on. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
469:the past is now barely present in my thoughts. I believe the main reason for that is our children, since life with them in the here and now occupies all the space. They even squeeze out the most recent past: Ask me what I did three days ago and I can’t remember. Ask me what Vanja was like two years ago, Heidi two months ago, John two weeks ago, and I can’t remember. A lot happens in our little everyday life, but it always happens within the same routine, and more than anything else it has changed my perspective of time. For, while previously I saw time as a stretch of terrain that had to be covered, with the future as a distant prospect, hopefully a bright one, and never boring at any rate, now it is interwoven with our life here and in a totally different way. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
470:Art does not know a beyond, science does not know a beyond, religion does not know a beyond, not anymore. Our world is enclosed around itself, enclosed around us, and there is no way out of it. Those in this situation who call for more intellectual depth, more spirituality, have understood nothing, for the problem is that the intellect has taken over everything. Everything has become intellect, even our bodies, they aren’t bodies anymore, but ideas of bodies, something that is situated in our own heaven of images and conceptions within us and above us, where an increasingly large part of our lives is lived. The limits of that which cannot speak to us – the unfathomable – no longer exist. We understand everything, and we do so because we have turned everything into ourselves. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
471:Vilket korkat jävla idiotland det här var. Alla unga kvinnor drack vatten i sådana mängder att det sprutade ur öronen på dem, de trodde det var 'nyttigt' och 'fräscht', men det enda som hände var att antalet unga inkontinenta i landet sköt rätt upp i höjden. Barn åt fullkornspasta och fullkornsbröd och allsköns märkvärdiga grova rissorter som deras magar inte kunde tillgodogöra sig riktigt, men det spelade ingen roll för det var 'nyttigt', det var 'fräscht', det var 'hälsosamt'. Å, de förväxlade mat med själ, de trodde att de kunde äta sig till att bli bättre människor utan att fatta att mat är en sak, de föreställningar mat väcker något annat. Och sa man det, sa man något i den vägen var man antingen reaktionär eller bara norrman, det vill säga en människa som är tio år efter. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
472:De er ikke nære venner, jeg er ikke god nok til å snakke med folk til å ha nære venner, og så er det det at jeg bruker all tid på meg selv, noe folk merker, selvfolgelig, slik at ingen går det siste stykket. Forsoker noen, trekker jeg meg som regel unna. Slik er din far, litt menneskesky, ikke fordi jeg nodvendigvis vil, men fordi det har blitt slik, og fordi det livet, alene forran tastaturet og skjermen er enklere.
Så da vil jeg det vel kanskje egentlig likevel? Det er ingen god kvalitet, ingenting man vil se i et menneske, men det vil bli en del av ditt liv, og jeg tror det er derfor jeg skriver det, som en slags apologi til deg, når du en gang leser dette. For jeg vil jo at du tenker godt om meg da. Og at du tenker godt om oss, denne sommeren vi hadde det så vanskelig. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
473:OTAC (gotovo prigušeno, sladunjavo ponizan): Samo sam htio znati,gospodine, da li vi stvarno, takav kakav ste sada, vidite sebe samoga... kao što primjerice vidite, s određenim
vremenskim razmakom, sebe kakvi ste bili nekoć, sa svim vašim tadašnjim iluzijama; sa svim stvarima, u vama i oko vas, kakvima su vam se tada činile — a i bile su, za vas su stvarno bile takve! Pa dobro, gospodine: prisjećajući se iluzija koje više ne gajite; prisjećajući se svih onih stvari koje vam se više ne „čine“ onakvima kakve su nekoć za vas „bile“, ne osjećate li kako gubite, neću reći ove kazališne daske, nego tlo, tlo pod nogama, kad zaključite da su svejednako i „ovaj“ kakvim se sada osjećate, i cjelokupna vaša stvarnost takva kakva jest danas, predodređeni činiti vam se tek pukom iluzijom sutra? ~ Luigi Pirandello,#NFDB
474:Het wilgenroosje straalt iets primitiefs uit, iets grofs en oerplantachtigs, het is niet verfijnd, hoewel het mooie, kleurrijke tapijten vormt, en op een merkwaardige manier was het ook betekenisvol dat het juist zo goed gedijde in de grote nieuwbouwwijken, die, hoewel ze toen modern waren en de nieuwe tijd vertegenwoordigden, ook iets eenvoudigs en bruuts hadden - heuvels werden opgeblazen, bossen werden gekapt, de machines denderden en schudden - en tegelijk daarmee, met de hopen blauwe granietsteen, het pas gelegde zwarte asfalt, de grindbergen en gele kiepwagens en bulldozers, schoten de eenvoudige, snelgroeiende en robuuste planten uit de grond, met als enige geheim het meest voor de hand liggende, dat alle fossiele en primitieve schepsels deelden, namelijk dat de wereld altijd nieuw is. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
475:That is how it is. Art does not know a beyond, science does not know a beyond, religion does not know a beyond, not anymore. Our world is enclosed around itself, enclosed around us, and there is no way out of it. Those in this situation who call for more intellectual depth, more spirituality, have understood nothing, for the problem is that the intellect has taken over everything. Everything has become intellect, even our bodies, they aren’t bodies anymore, but ideas of bodies, something that is situated in our own heaven of images and conceptions within us and above us, where an increasingly large part of our lives is lived. The limits of that which cannot speak to us – the unfathomable – no longer exist. We understand everything, and we do so because we have turned everything into ourselves. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
476:What a stupid, fucking, idiotic country this was. All the young women drank water in such vast quantities that it was coming out of their ears, they thought it was "beneficial" and "healthy," but all it did was send the numbers of incontinent young people soaring. Children ate whole wheat pasta and whole wheat bread and all sorts of weird coarse-grained rice that their stomachs could not digest properly, but it didn't matter because it was "beneficial," it was "healthy," it was "wholesome." Oh, they were confusing food with the mind, they thought they could eat their way to being better human beings without understanding that food is one thing and the notions food evokes another. And if you said that, you were either a reactionary or just a Norwegian, in other words ten years behind the times. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
477:Ukrašću tvoju senku, obući je na sebe i
pokazivati svima. Bićeš moj način odevanja
svega nežnog i tajnog. Pa i onda, kad
dotraješ, iskrzanu, izbledelu, neću te sa sebe
skidati. Na meni ćeš se raspasti.
Jer ti si jedini način da pokrijem golotinju
ove detinje duše. I da se više ne stidim pred
biljem i pred pticama.
Na poderanim mestima zajedno ćemo plakati.
Zašivaću te vetrom. Posle ću, znam, pobrkati
moju kožu s tvojom. Ne znam da li me
shvataš: to nije prožimanje.
To je umivanje tobom.
Ljubav je čišćenje nekim. Ljubav je nečiji
miris, sav izatkan po nama.
Tetoviranje maštom.
Evo, silazi sumrak, i svet postaje hladniji.
Ti si moj način toplog. Obući ću te na sebe
da se, ovako pokipeo, ne prehladim od
studeni svog straha i samoće. ~ Miroslav Mika Anti,#NFDB
478:For, while previously I saw time as a stretch of terrain that had to be covered, with the future as a distant prospect, hopefully a bright one, and never boring at any rate, now it is interwoven with our life here and in a totally different way. Were I to portray this with a visual image it would have to be that of a boat in a lock: life is slowly and ineluctably raised by time seeping in from all sides. Apart from the details, everything is always the same. And with every passing day the desire grows for the moment when life will reach the top, for the moment when the sluice gates open and life finally moves on. At the same time I see that precisely this repetitiveness, this enclosedness, this unchangingness is necessary, it protects me. On the few occasions I have left it, all the old ills return. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
479:Ova briga oko čuvanja i održanja novca liči, kao sestra sestri, na onu brigu u detinjstvu za grošem koji je stalno nedostajao, a ove muke štednje i tvrdičenja na muke nemaštine i oskudice. Šta vredi sve to? Šta vredi kad se, evo, posle tolikih napora i uzaludnih bežanja i uspona, čovek vraća na polaznu tačku, kad u njegove misli, samo drugim putem, ulazi ista pakost i grubost, i u njegove reči i postupke surovost i prostota; kad je, da bi se očuvalo ono što je stekao, potrebna ista ružna muka koja prati sirotinju. Ukratko: šta vredi imati.mnogo i biti nešto, kad čovek ne može da se oslobodi straha od sirotinje, ni niskosti u mislima, ni grubosti u rečima, ni nesigumosti u postupcima, kad gorka i neumitna a nevidljiva beda prati čoveka u stopu, a taj lepši, bolji i mirniji život izmiče se kao varljivo priviđenje. ~ Ivo Andri, #NFDB
480:As your prospective of the world increases, not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules or atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large such as cloud formations, river deltas, cloud formations, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. Throughout our childhood and teenage years, we strive to attain to objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
481:In the streets outside everything was still. The hour before five was the only time of day this city slept. In my earlier life, during the twelve years I had lived in Bergen I used to stay up at night as often as I could. I never reflected on this, it was just something I liked and did. It had started as a student ideal, grounded in a notion that in some way night was associated with freedom. Not in itself but as a response to the nine-to-four reality which I, and a couple of others, regarded as middle-class and conformist. We wanted to be free, we stayed up at night. Continuing with this had less to do with freedom than a growing need to be alone. This, I understood now, I shared with my father. In the house where we lived he had a whole studio apartment to himself and he spent more or less every evening there. The night was his. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
482:Now you listen to me," says Ove calmly while he carefully closes the door. "You've given birth to two children and quite soon will be squeezing out a third. You've come here from a land far away and most likely you fled war and persecution and all sorts of other nonsense. You've learned a new language and got yourself an education and you're holding together a family of obvious incompetents. And I'll be damned if I've seen you afraid of a single bloody thing in this world before now....I'm not asking for brain surgery. I'm asking you to drive a car. It's got an accelerator, a brake and a clutch. Some of the greatest twits in world history have sorted out how it works. And you will as well." And then he utters seven words, which Parvaneh will always remember as the loveliest compliment he'll ever give her. "Because you are not a complete twit. ~ Fredrik Backman, #NFDB
483:Sometimes I would hold it in for days so that I could have a really big one and also because it felt good in itself. When I really did have to shit, so much that I could barely stand upright but had to bend forward, I had such a fantastic feeling in my body if I didn't let nature take its course, if I squeezed the muscles in my butt together as hard as I could and, as it were, forced the shit back to where it came from. But this was a dangerous game, because if you did it too many times the turd ultimately grew so big it was impossible to shit it out. Oh Christ, how it hurt when such an enormous turd had to come out! It was truly unbearable, I was convulsed with pain, it was as if my body were exploding with pain, AAAAAAGGGHHH!! I screamed, OOOOOHHH, and then, just as it was at its very worst, suddenly it was out.
Oh, how good that was! ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
484:Until I moved to Stockhold I had felt there was a continuity to my life, as if it stretched unbroken from childhood up to the present, held together by new connections, in a complex and ingenious pattern in which every phenomenon I saw was capable of evoking a memory which unleashed small landslides of feeling in me, some with a known source, others without. The people I encountered came from towns I had been to, they knew other people I had met, it was a network, and it was a tight mesh. But when I moved to Stockholm this flaring up of memories became rarer and rarer, and one day it ceased altogether. That is, I could still remember; what happened was that the memories no longer stirred anything in me. No longing, no wish to return, nothing. Just the memory, and a barely perceptible hint of an aversion to anything that was connected with it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
485:whirs. See?” Heidi grabbed the string and pulled. The snail toppled over. “No, not like that,” Vanja said. “I’ll show you.” She placed the snail upright and slowly dragged it a few meters. “I’ve got a little sister!” she said aloud. Robin had gone to the window where he stood staring out into the backyard. Stella, who was energetic and presumably extra-lively since it was her party, excitedly shouted something that I didn’t understand, pointed to one of the two smaller girls, who handed her the doll she was clutching, took out a little carriage, placed the doll in it, and began to push it down the hall. Achilles had found his way to Benjamin, a boy eighteen months older than Vanja, who usually sat deeply absorbed in something, a drawing or a pile of Legos or a pirate ship with plastic pirates. He was imaginative, independent, and well-behaved, ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
486:I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with other I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts.
When I was older there was little I liked better than to stay up at night, the silence and the darkness had an allure, they carreid the promise of something immense. And autumn was my favorite season, wandering along the road by the river in the dark and the rain, not much could beat that.
But this darkness was different. This darkness rendered everything lifeless. It was static, it was the same whether you were awake or asleep, and it became harder and harder to motivate yourself to get up in the morning. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
487:I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with other I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts.
When I was older there was little I liked better than to stay up at night, the silence and the darkness had an allure, they carried the promise of something immense. And autumn was my favorite season, wandering along the road by the river in the dark and the rain, not much could beat that.
But this darkness was different. This darkness rendered everything lifeless. It was static, it was the same whether you were awake or asleep, and it became harder and harder to motivate yourself to get up in the morning. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
488:I haven’t said anything about your novel yet,’ he said, taking a seat on the other side of the table. ‘But it made an indelible impression on me. I was deeply shaken after reading it.’
‘Why’s that?’ I asked.
‘Because you went so far. You went so unbelievably far. I was glad you did, I was sitting here, smiling, because you had brought it off. When we met you wanted to be a writer. No one else had had the idea. Only you. And then you achieved it. But that wasn’t why I was shaken. It was because you went so far. Do you really have to go that far, I thought at the time. And it was frightening. Speaking for myself, I can’t go that far.’
‘What do you mean? How do you mean I went so far? It’s just a standard novel.’
‘You say things about yourself it’s unheard of to say. Not least the story of the thirteen-year-old. I’d never have thought you would dare. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
489:
Sometimes I would hold it in for days so that I could have a really big one and also because it felt good in itself. When I really did have to shit, so much that I could barely stand upright but had to bend forward, I had such a fantastic feeling in my body if I didn't let nature take its course, if I squeezed the muscles in my butt together as hard as I could and, as it were, forced the shit back to where it came from. But this was a dangerous game, because if you did it too many times the turd ultimately grew so big it was impossible to shit it out. Oh Christ, how it hurt when such an enormous turd had to come out! It was truly unbearable, I was convulsed with pain, it was as if my body were exploding with pain, AAAAAAGGGHHH!! I screamed, OOOOOHHH, and then, just as it was at its very worst, suddenly it was out.
Oh, how good that was! ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
490:We don't live our lives alone, but that doesn't mean we see those alongside whom we live our lives. When Dad moved to Northern Norway and was no longer physically in front of me with his body and his voice, his temper and his eyes, in a way he disappeared from my life, in the sense that he was reduced to a kind of discomfort I occasionally felt when he called or when something reminded me of him, then a kind of zone within me was activated, and in that zone lay all my feelings for him, but he was not there.
Later, in his notebooks, I read about the Christmas when he called from the Canary Islands and the weeks that followed. Here he stands before me as he was, in midlife, and perhaps that is why reading them is so painful for me, he wasn't only much more than my feelings for him but infinitely more, a complete and living person in the midst of his life. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
491:They hung over the town, muted red, dark-pink, surrounded by every conceivable nuance of gray. The setting was wild and beautiful. Actually everyone should be in the streets, I thought, cars should be stopping, doors should be opened and drivers and passengers emerging with heads raised and eyes sparkling with curiosity and a craving for beauty, for what was it that was going on above our heads? However, a few glances at most were cast upward, perhaps followed by isolated comments about how beautiful the evening was, for sights like this were not exceptional, on the contrary, hardly a day passed without the sky being filled with fantastic cloud formations, each and every one illuminated in unique, never-to-be-repeated ways, and since what you see every day is what you never see, we lived our lives under the constantly changing sky without sparing it a glance or a thought. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
492:It feels like I have started something new, something quite different, and that is this family. I think of it every day, that what matters is now, that the years we are living through now are when everything important happens. My previous life seems more and more distant. I am no longer preoccupied with my own childhood. Not interested in my student years, my twenties. All that seems far, far away. And I can imagine how it will be when what is happening now is over, when the children have moved out, the thought that these were the important years, this is when I was alive. Why didn’t I appreciate it while I had it? Because then, I sometimes think, I hadn’t had it yet. Only what slips through one’s fingers, only what is never expressed in words… exists completely. That is the price of proximity: you don’t see it. Don’t know that it’s there. Then it is over, then you see it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
493:he pulled me up into the world of advanced literature, where you wrote essays about a line of Dante, where nothing could be made complex enough, where art dealt with the supreme, not in a high-flown sense because it was the modernist canon with which we were engaged, but in the sense of the ungraspable, which was best illustrated by Blanchot’s description of Orpheus’s gaze, the night of the night, the negation of the negation, which of course was in some way above the trivial and in many ways wretched lives we lived, but what I learned was that also our ludicrously inconsequential lives, in which we could not attain anything of what we wanted, nothing, in which everything was beyond our abilities and power, had a part in this world, and thus also in the supreme, for books existed, you only had to read them, no one but myself could exclude me from them. You just had to reach up. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
494:All the books I liked were basically about the same topic. White Niggers by Ingvar Ambjornsen, Beatles and Lead by Lars Saabye Christensen, Jack by Alf Lundell, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr., Novel with Cocaine by M. Agayev, Colossus by Finn Alnæs, Lasso Round the Moon by Agnar Mykle, The History of Bestiality trilogy by Jens Bjorneboe, Gentlemen by Klas Östergren, Icarus by Axel Jensen, The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, Humlehjertene by Ola Bauer and Post Office by Charles Bukowski.
Books about young men who struggled to fit into society, who wanted more from life than routines, more from life than a family, in short, young men who hated middle-class values and sought freedom. They travelled, they got drunk, they read and they dreamed about their life's Great Passion or writing the Great Novel.
Everything they wanted I wanted too. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
495:Obojica su se slagali da je zivot u Bosni neobicno tezak i narod svih vera bedan i zaostao u svakom pogledu. Trazeci razloge i objasnjenja tome stanju, fratar je sve svodio na tursku vladavinu i tvrdio da nikakvog boljitka ne moze da bude dok se ove zemlje ne oslobode turske sile i dok tursku vlast ne zameni hriscanska. Defose nije hteo da se zadovolji tim tumacenjem, nego je trazio razloge i u hriscanima samima. Turska vladavina stvorila je, tvrdio je on, kod svojih hriscanskih podanika izvesne karakteristicne osobine, kao pritvorstvo, upornost, nepoverenje, lenost misli i strah od svake novine i svakog rada i pokreta. Te osobine, nastale u stolecima nejednake borbe i stalne odbrane, presle su u prirodu ovdasnjeg coveka i postale trajne crte njegovog karaktera. Nastale od nuzde i pod pritiskom, one su danas, i bice i ubuduce, velika prepreka napretku, rdjavo nasledje teske proslosti i krupne mane koje bi trebalo iskoreniti. ~ Ivo Andri, #NFDB
496:She did occasionally criticise my priorities, how could I buy three new LPs one Friday afternoon when I was walking around in shoes with the sole flapping off? They’re just material goods, I responded, objects, while music was completely different. This was the mind, for Christ’s sake. This is what we need, really, and I do mean really, and it’s important to prioritise it. Everyone prioritises. Everyone wants new jackets and new shoes and new cars and new houses and new caravans and new mountain cabins and new boats. But I don’t. I buy books and records because they say something about what life is about, what it is to be a human here on earth. Do you understand?
‘Yes, you’re probably right, in a way. But isn’t it terribly impractical to walk around with your soles coming off? And it doesn’t look very nice, either, does it.’
‘What do you want me to do? I haven’t got any money. I prioritised music on this occasion. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
497:Over recent years I had increasingly lost faith in literature. I read and thought this is something someone has made up. Perhaps it was because we were totally inundated with fiction and stories... All these millions of paperbacks, hardbacks, DVDs and TV series, they were all about made-up people in a made-up, though realistic, world. And news in the press, TV news and radio news had exactly the same format, documentaries had the same format, they were also stories, and it made no difference whether what they told had actually happened or not...
Fictional writing has no value, documentary narrative has no value. The only genres I saw value in, which still conferred meaning, were diaries and essays, the types of literature that did not deal with narrative, that were not about anything, but just consisted of a voice, the voice of your own personality, a life, a face, a gaze you could meet. What is a work of art if not the gaze of another person? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
498:I saw all this around me constantly, there were girls everywhere, the supply was infinite, a well, no, I was drifting in an ocean of women, I saw several hundred of them every day, all with their own individual ways of moving, standing, turning, walking, holding and twisting their heads, blinking, looking — take for example a feature such as their eyes, which expressed their utter uniqueness, everything that lived and breathed was here in this one person, was revealed, regardless of whether the gaze was meant for me or not. Oh, those sparkling eyes! Oh, those dark eyes! Oh, that glint of happiness! The alluring darkness! Or, for that matter, the unintelligent, the stupid eyes! For in them too there was an appeal, and no small appeal either: the stupid vacant eyes, the open mouth in that perfect beautiful body.
All this was never far from my mind, and all of them were thirty seconds away from the only thing I wanted — but on the other side of a chasm. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
499:Desp ite the na me , I d o n’ t think Eye b rig ht is a lo tio n a t a ll.It’ s a ve ry t h in , co o l liq u id th a t yo u c a n a p p ly to a co t t o n b a ll o r p a d. Ju st da b it ove r yo u r c lo se d eye s, an d th e y’ ll inst a n t ly fe e l e ne rg ize d a n d a w a k e. Yo u r e ye s will also lo o k b rig h t e r an d le ss pu ffy fo r th e tim e t o o n yo u b e in g , so eve n tho ug h yo u m a y n o t b e a n ea rly b ird , yo u ’ ll lo o k lik e o n e . If yo u e ve r ne e d so m e e xt ra R& R, try so a k in g 2 c o t t o n pa d s in Eye b rig h t an d p la c e th e m ove r yo u r e ye s fo r ab ou t 10 m in u t e s. It ’ s re la xin g a n d so so o t h in g – d e fin it e ly b e t t e r th a n u sin g c u c um b e r slic e s! I th in k t h e Eye b rig h t So o t h in g Eye Lo t io n is a gre a t wa y to aw a k en an d re v it a lize yo u r e ye s un t il th e re st of yo u r b o d y c a n c a t c h u p . Fin d ou t mo re a t lizea rle . c o mi | P a g e ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
500:Traut je 2001. godine, dok su se pripremale dagnje na buzaru, rekao da je život neporecivo izopačen. "Ali naši mozgovi dovoljno su veliki da nam omoguće da se prilagodimo neizbežnom burlesknom lakrdijašenju", nastavio je, "pomoću veštački stvorenih epifanija poput ove." Mislio je na pripremanje dagnji na plaži pod zvezdanim nebom.
"Ako ovo nije lepo, šta jeste?" rekao je on.
Izjavio je da je klip kukuruza, kuvan u pari zajedno sa morskom travom, jastozima i dagnjama, rajska stvar. Dodao je "A zar sve ove dame večeras ne liče na anđele?". Uživao je u kukuruzu i ženama kao idejama.
Kukuruz nije mogao da jede zato što mu je gornja veštačka vilica bila klimava. Njegove duže veze sa ženama bile su katastrofalne. U jedinoj ljubavnoj priči u kojoj se ikada okušao, "Poljubi me opet", napisao je: "Ne postoji nikakav način da lepa žena u bilo kojem značajnijem, dužem periodu ostane dostojna svog izgleda." Pouka na kraju te priče glasi:"Muškarci su kreteni. Žene su psihopate. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
501:Želim da se oslobodim, poništim i iskorenim te negativnosti." Zaista
sam slušao sebe kako u sebi govorim: "Hoću da se oslobodim želje. Hoću da se
oslobodim ljutnje. Neću da više ikada budem uplašen ili ljubomoran. Hoću da budem
hrabar. Hoću da u mome srcu budu samo radost i vedrina."
Ovo vežbanje ne znači da mrzite sami sebe zato što imate takve misli, već da zaista vidite
kako su one zapravo naučene reakcije vašega uma. One su nešto prolazno. Želja nije
nešto što mi jesmo, već je ona način na koji mi obično reagujemo zbog neznanja, onda
kada nismo razumeli ove četiri plemenite istine u njihova tri aspekta. Skloni smo da na
sve tako reagujemo. To su normalne reakcije koje proizlaze iz neznanja.
No, ne moramo nastaviti da patimo. Mi nismo samo bespomoćne žrtve želje. Možemo
dopustiti želji da bude ono što jeste i tako početi da je napuštamo. Želja ima moć nad
nama i zavodi nas sve dotle dok se poistovećujemo sa njom, verujemo u nju i reagujemo
na nju. ~ Ajahn Sumedho,#NFDB
502:CALVIN: Hey, I got some mail! It's a Valentine card.
HOBBES: From Susie Derkins!
CALVIN: It says "Please be my Valentine."
HOBBES: You're Susie's Valentine!
CALVIN: I'm not her Valentine just because I got this in the mail, am I? Does the Post Master General know about this?
HOBBES: Calvin and Susie, sitting in a tree-ee! Kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-en-gee!
CALVIN: I don't have the KISS her, do I?! Is that what Valentines do??! Oh, gross!
HOBBES: First comes lo-ove, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage!
CALVIN: This can't be happening! I need a lawyer! She can't make me be her Valentine!
HOBBES: Here she comes! Here comes Susie!
SUSIE: Hi, Calvin.
CALVIN: Get away from me! I'm not your Valentine! Take your card back! Eww! Girls! YECCHH!
SUSIE: That card wasn't for YOU, you Moron. Didn't you read the back of the envelope?
CALVIN: "Calvin, please give this to Hobbes." HOBBES?!
HOBBES: Me? Really? Hot dog! Smooch City, here I come! ~ Bill Watterson,#NFDB
503:The darkness that thinking about her could generate inside me was therefore of a different order from the other darkness that sometimes came over me, which had a depressing and burdening effect on everything, and which Geir also felt, it transpired. One evening we sat in his room and he asked me what was up with me.
“Nothing much,” I said.
“You’re so quiet!” he said.
“Oh, that,” I said. “I’m just fed up.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. There’s no particular reason. I’m just fed up.”
“I feel like that sometimes, too,” he said.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“You’re just fed up for no particular reason?”
“Yes. I’m like that, too.”
“I didn’t realize,” I said. “Didn’t realize others could feel like that, too.”
“That’s what we’ll have to call it,” he said. “Like that. We can say it when we’re in that mood. ‘I’m like that today,’ we can say, and then the other person will understand right away.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
504:Noi ci siamo ricordati di quello che la maggior parte degli uomini ha dimenticato, in quest'epoca di brutto, infruttifero lavoro delle falsificazioni: che è possibile essere felici, che il lavoro può essere un piacere, anzi, che l'essenza del piacere si trova nel lavoro se questo è giustamente indirizzato, ossia incamminato verso il raggiungimento di quelle funzioni che le persone sagge e sane desiderano vedere realizzate; in altre parole, se il principio che lo muove è l'aiuto reciproco.
In breve, noi artisti ci troviamo in questa situazione: siamo i rappresentanti dell'artigianato che si è estinto nella produzione commerciale. Facciamo perciò del nostro meglio per diventare i migliori artigiani possibili; e se non possiamo essere buoni artigiani ad un certo livello, fermiamoci ad un livello inferiore in modo da trovare il nostro posto nelle arti, ove rendere pienamente; insomma se siamo artisti possiamo essere certi che troveremo ciò che siamo in grado di far bene, anche se non sarà molto facile. ~ William Morris,#NFDB
505:But I didn’t despise the Christian girls. No, for some strange reason it was precisely them I fell for. How could I explain that to Hilde? And although I, like her, always tried to see beneath the surface, on the basis of a fundamental yet unstated tenet that what lay beneath was the truth or the reality, and, like her, always sought meaning, even if it were only to be found in an acknowledgment of meaninglessness, it was actually on the glittering and alluring surface that I wanted to live, and the chalice of meaninglessness I wanted to drain – in short I was attracted by all the town’s discos and nightspots, where I wanted nothing more than to drink myself senseless and stagger around chasing girls I could fuck, or at least make out with. How could I explain that to Hilde? I couldn’t, and I didn’t. Instead I opened a new subdivision in my life. “Booze and hopes of fornication” it was called, and it was right next to “insight and sincerity,” separated only by a minor garden-fence-like change of personality. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
506:Literature has always been related to utopia, so when the utopia loses meaning, so does literature. What I was trying to do, and perhaps what all writers try to do-- what on earth do I know?-- was to combat fiction with fiction. What I ought to do was affirm what existed, affirm the state of things as they are, in other words, revel in the world outside instead of searching for a way out, for in that way I could undoubtedly have a better life, but I couldn't do it, I couldn't, something had congealed inside me, a conviction was rooted inside me, and although it was essentialist, that is, outmoded and, furthermore, romantic, I could not get past it, for the simple reason that it had not only been thought but also experienced, in these sudden states of clear-sightedness that everyone must know, where for a few seconds you catch sight of another world from the one you were in only a moment earlier, where the world seems to step forward and show itself for a brief glimpse before reverting and leaving everything as before... ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
507:This is not a loss, at any rate not for me, I don't get anything out of socializing anyway. I never say what I really think, what I really mean, but always more or less agree with whomever I am talking to at the time, pretend that what they say is of interest to me, except when I am drinking, in which case more often than not I go too far the other way, and wake up to the fear of having overstepped the mark. This has become more pronounced over the years and can last now for weeks. When I drink I also have blackouts and completely lose control of my actions, which are generally desperate and stupid, but also on occasion desperate and dangerous. That is why I no longer drink. I do not want anyone to get close to me, I do not want anyone to see me, and this is the way things have developed: no one gets close and no one sees me. This is what must have engraved itself in my face, this is what must have made it so stiff and masklike and almost impossible to associate with myself whenever I happen to catch a glimpse of it in a shop window. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
508:The number of people we come close to during our lives is small, and we fail to realise how infinitely important each and every one of them is to us until we grow older and can see things from afar. When I was sixteen, I thought that life was without end, the number of people in it inexhaustible. This was by no means strange, since right from starting school at the age of seven I’d been surrounded by hundreds of children and adults; people were a renewable resource, found in abundance, but what I didn’t know, or rather had absolutely no conception of, was that every step I took was defining me, every person I encountered leaving their mark on me, and that the life I was living at that particular time, boundlessly arbitrary as it seemed, was in fact my life. That one day i would look back on my life and this would be what I looked back on. What then had been insignificant, as weightless as air, a series of events dissolving in exactly the same way as the darkness dissolved in the mornings, would twenty years on seem laden with destiny and fate. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
509:The smooth, flat rocks were exactly the same, the sea pounded down on them in the same way, and also the landscape under the water, with its small valleys and bays and steep chasms and slopes, strewn with starfish and sea urchins, crabs and fish, was the same. You could still buy Slazenger tennis rackets, Tretorn balls, and Rossignol skis, Tyrolia bindings and Koflach boots. The houses where we lived were still standing, all of them. The sole difference, which is the difference between a child’s reality and an adult’s, was that they were no longer laden with meaning. A pair of Le Coq soccer boots was just a pair of soccer boots. If I felt anything when I held a pair in my hands now it was only a hangover from my childhood, nothing else, nothing in itself. The same with the sea, the same with the rocks, the same with the taste of salt that could fill your summer days to saturation, now it was just salt, end of story. The world was the same, yet it wasn’t, for its meaning had been displaced, and was still being displaced, approaching closer and closer to meaninglessness. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
510:I got up and went to the payphone, inserted forty kroner and dialled Linda’s mobile number.
‘How was it this morning?’ I asked.
‘Terrible,’ she said. ‘Absolute chaos. Uttterly out of control. Heidi clawed John again. Vanja and Heidi had a fight. And Vanja had a temper tantrum on the street as we were about to go.’
‘Oh no. Oh no,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘And then when we got to the nursery Vanja said. “You and dad are always so angry. You’re always so angry.” I was so upset! So unbelievably upset.’
‘I can understand that. It’s terrible. We’ll have to sort this out, Linda. We have to. We have to find a solution. It’s no good what we’re doing. I’ll have to pull myself together. A lot of this is my fault.’
‘Yes, we must,’ Linda said. ‘We’ll have to talk about it when you come home. What drives me to despair is that I only want us to be happy. That’s all I want. And I can’t do it! I’m such a terrible mother. I can’t even be alone with my own children.’
‘No, that’s not true. You’re a fantastic mother. That’s not what this is about. But we’ll get there. We will. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
511:He was an old man, wore old man’s clothes, a flannel shirt and old man’s trousers, slippers and a hat, and had an old man’s gait, yet there was nothing old mannish about him, such as there was with my grandfather or my father’s uncle, Alf; on the contrary, when he suddenly opened up to us and wanted to show us things, it was in a kind of artless, childlike way, infinitely friendly, but also infinitely vulnerable, the way a boy without friends might behave when someone showed some interest in him, one might imagine, unthinkable in the case of my grandfather or Alf, it must have been at least sixty years since they had opened up to anyone like that, if indeed they ever had. But no, Hauge hadn’t really opened himself to us, it was more as if it had been his natural self which his rejection had been protecting when we arrived. I saw something I didn’t want to see because the person showing us was unaware of how it looked. He was more than eighty years old, but nothing in him had died or calcified, which actually makes life far too painful to live, that’s what I think now. At the time it just made me uneasy. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
512:Modernist literature with all its vast apparatus was an instrument, a form of perception, and once absorbed, the insights it brought could be rejected without its essence being lost, even the form endured, and it could be applied to your own life, your own fascinations, which could then suddenly appear in a new and significant light. Espen took that path, and I followed him like a brainless puppy, it was true, but I did follow him. I leafed through Adorno, read some passages of Benjamin, sat bowed over Blanchot for a few days, had a look at Derrida and Foucault, had a go at Kristeva, Lacan, Deleuze, while poems by Ekelöf, Björling, Pound, Mallarmé, Rilke, Trakl, Ashbery, Mandelstam, Lunden, Thomsen, and Hauge floated around, on which I spent more than a few minutes, I read them as prose, like a book by MacLean or Bagley, and learned nothing, understood nothing, but just having contact with them, having their books in the bookcase, led to a shifting of consciousness, just knowing they existed was an enrichment, and if they didn't furnish me with insights I became all the richer for intuitions and feelings. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
513:When I was outdoors, walking, like now, what I saw gave me nothing. Snow was snow, trees were trees. It was only when I saw a picture of snow or of trees that they were endowed with meaning. Monet had an exceptional eye for light on snow, which Thaulow, perhaps technically the most gifted Norwegian painter ever, also had. It was a feast for the eyes, the closeness of the moment was so great that the value of what gave rise to it increased exponentially, an old tumbledown cabin by a river or a pier at a holiday resort suddenly became priceless, the paintings were charged with the feeling that they were here at the same time as us, in this intense here and now, and that we would soon be gone from them, but with regard to the snow, it was as if the other side of this cultivation of the moment became visible, the animation of this and its light so obviously ignored something, namely the lifelessness, the emptiness, the non-charged and the neutral, which were the first features to strike you when you entered a forest in winter, and in the picture, which was connected with perpetuity and death, the moment was unable to hold its ground. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
514:The name has always occupied a space between the concrete and the abstract, the individual and the social, but when it begins to be shaped and charged with meaning in places removed from the physical world, in that way entertaining the world of fiction, albeit unseen by the majority, at the same time as this fictional world is expanding and taking up an ever greater part of our lives - the TV screens are now not only in our own rooms, but also on the walls of our trains and under the luggage bins of our planes, in the waiting rooms of our doctors' offices and the halls of our banks, even in the supermarkets, quite apart from our carrying them around in the form of laptop computers and cell phones, in such a way that we inhabit two realities, one abstract and image-based, in which all kinds of people and places present themselves before us with nothing in common but being somewhere other than where we are, and one concrete, physical, which is the one we move around in and are more palpably a part of - when we arrive at a point where everything is either fiction or seen as fiction, the job of the novelist can no longer be to write more fiction. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
515:But if it were possible to see everyone who has retired to their beds in a great city at night, in London, New York or Tokyo, for example, if we imagined that the buildings were made of glass and that all the rooms were lit, the sight would be deeply unsettling. Everywhere there would be people lying motionless in their cocoons, in room after room for miles on end, and not just at street level, along roads and crossroads, but even up in the air, separated by plateaus, some of them twenty metres above ground, some fifty, some a hundred. We would be able to see millions of immobile people who have withdrawn from others in order to lie in a coma throughout the night. Sleep’s vertiginous link to primordial times, not just with human life as it first unfolded on the plains of Africa three hundred thousand years ago, but with life on earth in its very first form, rising out of the sea and coming ashore four hundred million years ago, would become apparent. And a bed would no longer be merely a piece of furniture acquired from a shop, but a boat that every human being has and which we board every evening to let ourselves be carried through the night. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
516:As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules and atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large, such as cloud formations, river deltas, constellations, we reduce. At length, we bring it within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. Throughout our childhood and teenage years, we strive to attain the correct distance to objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all the necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed. It no longer meets any obstacles, everything is set, time races through our lives, the days pass by in a flash and before we know what is happening we are forty, fifty, sixty...Meaning requires content, content requires time, time requires resistance. Knowledge is distance, knowledge is stasis and the enemy of meaning. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
517:That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle--behold, the Running Man.
Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn't live to love anything else. And like everyhing else we ove--everything we sentimentally call our 'passions' and 'desires' it's really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We're all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known. ~ Christopher McDougall,#NFDB
518:Over recent years I had increasingly lost faith in literature. I read and thought, this is something someone has made up. Perhaps it was because we were totally inundated with fiction and stories. It had got out of hand. Wherever you turned you saw fiction. All these millions of paperbacks, hardbacks, DVDs, and TV series, they were all about made-up people in a made-up, though realistic, world. And news in the press, TV news, and radio news had exactly the same format, documentaries had the same format, they were also stories, and it made no difference whether what they told had actually happened or not. It was a crisis, I felt it in every fiber of my body, something saturating was spreading through my consciousness like lard, not the least because the nucleus of all this fiction, whether true or not, was verisimilitude and the distance it held to reality was constant. In other words, it saw the same. This sameness, which was our world, was being mass-produced. The uniqueness, which they all talked about, was thereby invalidated, it didn’t exist, it was a lie. Living like this, with the certainty that everything could equally well have been different, drove you to despair. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
519:We were nobodies, two young lit. students chatting away in a rickety old house in a small town at the edge of the world, a place where nothing of any significance had ever happened and presumably never would, we had barely started out on our lives and knew nothing about anything, but what we read was not nothing, it concerned matters of the utmost significance and was written by the greatest thinkers and writers in Western culture, and that was basically a miracle, all you had to do was fill in a library lending slip and you had access to what Plato, Sappho or Aristophanes had written in the incomprehensibly distant mists of time, or Homer, Sophocles, Ovid, Lucullus, Lucretius or Dante, Vasari, da Vinci, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Cervantes or Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Lukács, Arendt or those who wrote in the modern day, Foucault, Barthes, Lévi-Strauss, Deleuze, Serres. Not to mention the millions of novels, plays and collections of poetry which were available. All one lending slip and a few days away. We didn’t read any of these to be able to summarise the contents, as we did with the literature on the syllabus, but because they could give us something. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
520:When I arrived Dad was at home. He was in the laundry room at the bottom of the house. He turned to me, anger in every movement.
“I picked you some flowers,” I said.
He reached out with his hand, took them, and threw them in the large sink.
“Little girls pick flowers,” he said.
He was right. And he was probably ashamed of me. Once some of his colleagues had come home and they had seen me on the stairs, with my blond hair quite long, because it was winter, and I was wearing red long johns.
“What a nice girl you’ve got,” one of them said.
“It’s a boy,” Dad answered. He had smiled, but I knew him well enough to know the comment had not gladdened his heart.
There was my interest in clothes, my crying if I didn’t get the shoes I wanted, my crying if it was too cold when we were in the boat on the sea, indeed my crying if he raised his voice in situations when it would have been absolutely normal to raise your voice. Was it so strange he thought: what kind of son have I got here?
I was a mama’s boy, he was constantly telling me. I was, too. I longed for her. And no one was happier than I when she moved back for good at the end of the month. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
521:À medida que perspectiva do mundo se amplia, não diminui apenas a dor que ela causa, mas também o significado que tem. Compreender o mundo exige que se mantenha uma certa distância dele. Ampliamos coisas que são demasiado pequenas para serem vistas a olho nu, como moléculas e átomos. Reduzimos coisas que são demasiados grandes, como nuvens, deltas de rios e constelações. Só fixamos o mundo quando o temos ao alcance dos nossos sentidos. A essa fixação chamamos conhecimento. Durante a nossa infância e juventude lutamos para manter a distância correta das coisas e dos fenómenos. Lemos aprendemos, experimentamos, corrigimos. Então, um dia, chegamos ao ponto em que todas as distâncias necessárias foram determinadas, todos os sistemas necessários foram estabelecidos. É aí que o tempo começa a acelerar. Já não encontra qualquer obstáculo, está tudo determinado, o tempo passa rapidamente pelas nossas vidas, os dias sucedem-se num piscar de olhos, e , antes que nos apercebamos do que está a acontecer, temos quarenta, cinquenta, sessenta anos... O sentido requer conteúdo, o conteúdo requer tempo, o tempo requer resistência. O conhecimento é distância, o conhecimento é estagnação e inimigo do sentido. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
522:Neću da joj pomognem, neka se otkrije sama, to je i smisao ove igre u kojoj se uspostavlja naš odnos. Pomalo sam nadmoćan, jer vidim da se ne brani, ali osjećam da nije slučajno stala na moj put : nešto će se desiti među nama. Čini mi se da to znamo i ona i ja, tražimo se i čekamo. I uvijek sve odgađamo, kao u strahu od rješenja. Ovako je mogućnost, cvjetanje, prostranstvo želje. Sve je tu moguće, sve je pred nama. A kad pređemo tu granicu, naći ćemo se na čvrstom tlu tačno određenog odnosa i obaveza kojih se bojim. Samo ona i ja, u uskom kavezu moguće ali nedovoljne nježnosti, omeđeni sobom i osjećanjima koja bi se mogla zaviti, ili koja bismo pokazivali da ne bude sasvim mučno. Samo ona i ja, bez svjetla, bez neomeđenih širina, koje nas draže kao mogućnost ... I ne znam šta je jače, šta je važnije, i zato se ispitujemo i čekamo. Bez ikakve logike, dirnut sam što osjećam da sam joj potreban i što me gleda drukčije nego ikoga drugog, a baš toga se bojim. Žao bi mi bilo da joj nanesem bol, a sigurno bi tako bilo. Ili vrlo vjerovatno. Užasavaju me obaveze, mogle bi da budu mučne, a privlači me što ih ona nudi. To rađa nadmoćnost, koja može da bude surova, ali i velikodušna : čuvam se i jednog i drugog ... ~ Me a Selimovi, #NFDB
523:The Infinite
This solitary hill has always been dear to me
And this hedge, which prevents me from seeing most of
The endless horizon.
But when I sit and gaze, I imagine, in my thoughts
Endless spaces beyond the hedge,
An all encompassing silence and a deeply profound quiet,
To the point that my heart is almost overwhelmed.
And when I hear the wind rustling through the trees
I compare its voice to the infinite silence.
And eternity occurs to me, and all the ages past,
And the present time, and its sound.
Amidst this immensity my thought drowns:
And to founder in this sea is sweet to me.
L'infinito
Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle
E questa siepe che da tanta parte
De'l ultimo orrizonte il guarde esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando interminati
Spazi di la da quella, e sovrumani
Silenzi, e profondissima quiete,
Io nel pensier mi fingo, ove per poco
Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
Infinito silenzio a questa voce
Vo comparando; e mi sovvien l'eterno,
E le morte stagioni, e la presente
E viva, e'l suon di lei. Cosi tra questa
Immensita s'annega il pensier mio:
E'l naufragar m'e dolce in questo mare.
~ Count Giacomo Leopardi,#NFDB
524:I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with others I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts.
When I was older there was little I liked better than to stay up at night, the silence and the darkness had an allure, they carried a promise of something immense. And autumn was my favorite season, wandering along the road by the river in the dark and the rain, not much could beat that.
But this darkness was different. This darkness rendered everything lifeless. It was static, it was the same whether you were awake or asleep, and it became harder and harder to motivate yourself to get up in the morning. I succeeded, and five minutes later I was standing in front of my desk again, but what happened there was also rendered lifeless. It felt as though I was getting nothing back from what I was doing. However much effort I put in, nothing came back. Everything vanished, everything dissolved into the great darkness in which we lived. I might as well say this as that, do this as that, nothing made any difference. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
525:Sijepa ljubav majke prema svom djetetu, glupi, slijepo ponos oca, uobraženog oca na sina jedinca, šturo neobuzdano stremljenje za adiđarima i zadivljenim pogledima muškaraca kod neke mlade, sujetne žene, svi ovi nagoni, sve ove djetinjarije, svi ovi priprosti, budalasti, ali neobično snažni, toliko životni i silno prodorni porivi i požude za Sidartu više nisu bili djetinjarija, vidio je da ljudi radi njih žive, radi njih stvaraju neizmjerna čuda, putuju, vode ratove, neizmjerno pate, neizmjerno trpe, pa je zbog toga mogao samo da ih voli, vidio je život, životvornost, ono nerazrušivo u svim njihovim strastima, u svim njihovim djelima. Ljudi su bili dostojni ljubavi i divljenja u svojoj slijepoj odanosi, snazi i žilavosti. Ništa im nije nedostajalo, posvećeni i mislioci su bili samo malko ispred njih, imali su samo jedno jedino sićušno preimućstvo: svijest, svjesnu misao o jedinstvu svega živog. U izvjesnim časovima Sidarta bi, štaviše, posumnjao, treba li to saznanje, tu misao ocijeniti tako visoko, nije li samo možda i to djetinjarija misaonih ljudi, misaono djetinjih ljudi. U svemu drugom su ljudi iz svijeta bili ravni mudracu, često i daleko nadmoćniji, kao što i životinje, u svom upornom, nepokolebljivom izvršavanju onoga što je potrebno, u izvjesnim trenucima na izgled imaju nadmoć nad ljudima. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
526:Mislim na odgovor a u glavi mi tek mrak
I stoga ja uzimam taj mrak
i stavljam ga u Tvoje ruke.
I molim Te Gospode dobri Bože
da bude kod Tebe samo sat vremena
drži ga u ruci toliko
koliko je dovoljno da se istopi crnilo,
da se istopi zlo
što stvaraju taj mrak i to crnilo,
u glavi,
u srcu,
bi li bio tako ljubazan?
Mogao bi se samo nagnuti
pogledati ga
nasmiješiti mu se
otvoriti ga
ukrasti mu tračak
svjetlosti i pustiti ga da padne
a ja ću se već pobrinuti da ga nađem
da vidim gdje je.
Za Tebe je to prava sitnica,
a za mene baš i nije.
Slušaš li me Gospode dobri Bože?
Ne tražim mnogo od Tebe
kada tražim da.
I nije uvreda
nadati se da Ti.
Nije glupo
zanositi se da.
Napokon, to je tek molitva,
jedan od mnogih načina ispisivanja mirisa očekivanja.
Ti ispiši,
kuda god želiš,
put što sam ga izgubio.
Dovoljan je znak,
bilo što,
lagana ogrebotina
na zjenicama tih očiju što gledaju,
a ne vide,
i ja ću to znati.
Ispiši svijetom jednu jedinu riječ ispisanu za mene,
i ja ću je pročitati.
Dotakni trenutak ove tišine,
i ja ću to osjetiti.
Nemaj straha,
ja se ne bojim.
I neka ova molitva poleti snagom svojih riječi
preko krletke svijeta sve do tko zna kamo. Amen. ~ Alessandro Baricco,#NFDB
527:Recommended Reading
David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
DH Lawrence - The Rainbow
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love in the Time of Cholera
Karl Ove Knausgaard - My Struggle
Virginia Woolf - To The Lighthouse
Ben Lerner - The Topeka School
Sally Rooney - Conversations With Friends
Nell Zink - The Wallcreeper
Elena Ferrante - The Days of Abandonment
Jack Kerouac - Dharma Bums
Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass
Michael Murphy - Golf in the Kingdom
Barbara Kingsolver - Prodigal Summer
Albertine Sarrazin - Astragal
Rebecca Solnit - The Faraway Nearby
Michael Paterniti - Love and Other Ways of Dying
Rainer Maria Rilke - Book of Hours
James Baldwin - Another Country
Roberto Calasso - Ka
Translation by S. Radhakrishan - Principle Upanisads
Chogyam Trungpa - Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
Translation by Georg Feuerstein - Yoga Sutra
Richard Freeman - The Mirror of Yoga
Translation by S. Radhakrishan - The Bhagavad Gita
Shrunyu Suzuki - Zen Mind Beginner's Mind
Heinrich Zimmer - Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization
Sogyal Rinpoche - The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Joseph Campbell - Myths of Light
Joseph Campbell - The Hero With A Thousand Faces
Sri Aurobindo - Savitri
Thomas Meyers - Anatomy Trains
Wendy Doniger - The Hindus ~ Jason Bowman, http://www.jasonbowmanyoga.com/recommended-reading,#NFDB
528:... I suppose I understood that I’ve always been on the other side, always been the one to help, the one to understand, the one to give . . . Not unconditionally of course, but in the main. My brother when we were growing up, my father and also my mother, sometimes. And then everything was turned on its head: when I fell ill I was on the receiving end. I had to accept help. The strange thing is . . . Well, the only moments I’ve had of freedom, where I’ve done what I wanted, were when I was manic. But the freedom was so great I couldn’t handle it. It hurt. There was something good about it though. Finally being free. But of course it couldn’t work. Not like that.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Two things actually. One has nothing to do with you. But it was what you said about receiving. It struck me that if I’d been in your position I wouldn’t have accepted anything. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see me. And definitely not to help me. This is so strong in me you have no idea. Receiving is not for me. And it never will be, either. That’s one thing. The second was wondering what you did when you were manic. I mean, since you connect it with freedom so much. What did you do when you were free?’
‘If you won’t receive how can anyone reach you?’
‘What makes you think I want to be reached?’
‘But that’s no good.’
‘Come on, you answer my question first. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
529:As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules and atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large, such as cloud formations, river deltas, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring it within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. Throughout our childhood and teenage years, we strive to attain the correct distance to objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all the necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed. It no longer meets any obstacles, everything is set, time races through our lives, the days pass by in a flash and before we know that is happening we are fort, fifty, sixty... Meaning requires content, content requires time, time requires resistance. Knowledge is distance, knowledge is stasis and the enemy of meaning. My picture of my father on that evening in 1976 is, in other words, twofold: on the one hand I see him as I saw him at that time, through the eyes of an eight-year-old: unpredictable and frightening; on the other hand, I see him as a peer through whose life time is blowing and unremittingly sweeping large chunks of meaning along with it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
530:The next day we sat in Geir’s bedroom and wrote a love letter to Anne Lisbet. His parents’ house was identical to ours, it had exactly the same rooms, facing in exactly the same directions, but it was still unendingly different, because for them functionality reigned supreme, chairs were above all else comfortable to sit in, not attractive to look at, and the vacuumed, almost mathematically scrupulous, cleanliness that characterized our rooms was utterly absent in their house, with tables and the floor strewn with whatever they happened to be using at that moment. In a way, their lifestyle was integrated into the house. I suppose ours was, too, it was just that ours was different. For Geir’s father, sole control of his tools was unthinkable, quite the contrary, part of the point of how he brought up Geir and Gro was to involve them as much as possible in whatever he was doing. They had a workbench downstairs, where they hammered and planed, glued and sanded, and if we felt like making a soap-box cart, for example, or a go-kart, as we called it, he was our first port of call. Their garden wasn’t beautiful or symmetrical as ours had become after all the hours Dad had spent in it, but more haphazard, created on the functionality principle whereby the compost heap occupied a large space, despite its unappealing exterior, and likewise the stark, rather weed-like potato plants growing in a big patch behind the house where we had a ruler-straight lawn and curved beds of rhododendrons. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
531:English was my worst subject, and I was only two years older than the oldest pupils, so while I was walking over to the other building, where the eighth and ninth forms had their classroom, my stomach was churning again. I put my pile of books down on the raised table. The pupils were scattered across their desks as if they had just been hurled out of a spin dryer. No one paid any attention to me.
‘Hello, class!’ I said. ‘My name is Karl Ove Knausgaard, and I’m going to be your English teacher this year. How do you do?’
No one said anything. The class consisted of four boys and five girls. A couple of them watched me, the others sat scribbling something, one was knitting. I recognised the boy from the snack bar stand: he was wearing a baseball cap and rocking back and forth on his chair while eyeing me with a smirk on his face. He had to be Stian.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Now I would like you to introduce yourselves in English.’
‘Snakk norsk!’ Stian said in Norwegian. The boy behind him, a conspicuously tall, thin figure, taller than me, and I was one metre ninety-four, guffawed. Some of the girls tittered.
‘If you are going to learn a language, then you have to talk it,’ I said.
One of the girls, dark-haired and white-skinned, with regular, slightly chubby facial features and blue eyes, put up her hand.
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘Isn’t your English a bit too bad? I mean, for teaching?’
I could feel my cheeks burning, I stepped forward with a smile to hide my embarrassment. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
532:Op deze dingen hadden we geen greep. We konden denken dat onze wereld alles omvatte, we konden druk bezig zijn met onze eigen dingen hier beneden aan de oever, rondrijden met onze auto's, elkaar opbellen en met elkaar praten, bij elkaar op bezoek gaan, eten en drinken, binnenzitten en ons laten overspoelen door opvattingen en meningen en de lotgevallen van hen die op het tv-scherm verschijnen, in die wonderlijke halfkunstmatige symbiose waarin we leefden, en ons steeds dieper, jaar in jaar uit dieper in slaap laten sussen met het idee dat dat alles was, maar als we dan onze blik naar boven richtten en dit zagen, was de enige mogelijke gedachte die van ongrijpbaarheid en onmacht, want hoe klein en beperkt was dat waarin we ons in slaap lieten sussen eigenlijk niet?
O, zeker, de drama's die we zagen waren groots, de beelden die we in ons opnamen subliem en soms zelf apocalyptisch, alleen, kom nou toch, slaven, welk aandeel hadden we daar eigenlijk in?
Geen.
Maar de sterren blinken boven ons, de zon schijnt, het gras groeit en de aarde, ja, de aarde, die slokt alle leven op en wist alle sporen, spuwt nieuw leven uit in een cascade aan ledematen en ogen, bladeren en nagels, strootjes en staarten, wangen en bont, schors en ingewanden om het vervolgens weer op te slokken. En wat we nooit helemaal begrijpen of niet willen begrijpen, is dat dit buiten ons om gebeurt, dat we daar zelf geen deel aan hebben, dat wij slechts datgene zijn wat groeit en sterft, blind als de golven in de zee. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
533:Yes, we were good at using the grapevine. But what we were best at, what we were really the kings of, that was buses and sitting around in bedrooms.
No one could beat us at that.
None of this led anywhere. Well, we probably weren’t very good at doing things that led somewhere. We didn’t have particularly good conversations, no one could say we did, the few topics we had developed so slowly we ourselves assumed they had nowhere to go; not one of us was a brilliant guitarist, although that is what we would have loved to be, more than anything else, and as far as girls were concerned, it was rare we came across one who wouldn’t object if we pulled up her jumper so that we could lower our heads and kiss her nipples. These were great moments. They were luminous shafts of grace in our world of yellowing grass, grey muddy ditches and dusty country roads. Yes, that was how it was for me. I assumed it was the same for him.
What was this all about? Why did we live like this? Were we waiting for something? In which case, how did we manage to be so patient? For nothing ever happened! Nothing happened! It was always the same. Day in, day out! Wind and rain, sleet and snow, sun and storm, we did the same. We heard something on the grapevine, went there, came back, sat in his bedroom, heard something else, went by bus, bike, on foot, sat in someone’s bedroom. In the summer we went swimming. That was it.
What was it all about?
We were friends, there was no more than that.
And the waiting, that was life. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
534:And oh the darkness that was a constant in Bergen! Not linked to night in any way, nor to shadow, nevertheless it was almost always here, this muted darkness suffused with falling rain. Objects and events became so concentrated when it was like this because the sun opened up airspace, and everything that was in it: a father putting shopping bags in a car boot outside Stoletorget while the mother bundled their children onto the back seat, got in at the front, drew the safety belt across her chest and buckled it into place, watching this when the sun was shining and the sky was light and open was one thing, then all their movements seemed to flutter past and vanish the moment they were carried out; however, it was a very different matter watching the same family if it was raining, enveloped by the muted darkness, for then there was a leadenness about their movements, it was as if they were statues, these people, transfixed in this moment — which, the very next, they had left anyway. The dustbins outside the stairs, seeing them in strong sunlight was one thing, they were hardly there, as almost nothing was, but it was quite a different matter in rain-darkened daylight, then they stood like shining pillars of silver, some of them magnificent, others sadder and more wretched, but all there, just then, at that moment.
Yes, Bergen. The incredible power that lay in all the various house fronts squeezed together everywhere. The head rush you had as you slogged your way uphill and saw this, at your feet, could be wonderful. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
535:For her our row was long forgotten. It was just me who could be gruff and sullen for several weeks, just me who could nourish resentment for several years. Against no one else but her though. Linda was the only person I argued with, she was the only person I held grudges against. If my mother, my brother or my friends said something offensive, I let it go. Nothing of what they said touched me or mattered very much to me, not really. I assumed it was part of my life as an adult that I had succeeded in muting all the overtones and undertones of my character, which at first had been explosive, and I would therefore live the rest of my life in peace and tranquillity, and solve any cohabitation problems with irony, sarcasm and the sulky silence I had honed to perfection after the three lengthy relationships I’d had. But with Linda it was as though I had been cast back to the time when my feelings swung from wild elation to wild fury to the pits of despair and desperation, the time when I lived in a series of all-decisive moments, and the intensity was so great that sometimes life felt almost unlivable, and when nothing could give me any peace of mind except books, with their different places, different times and different people, where I was no one and no one was me.
That was when I was young and had no options.
Now I was thirty-five years old and wanted as few disturbances and as little mental agitation as possible, I should be able to have that, shouldn’t I, or at least be in a position to get it?
Didn’t really look like it. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
536:... she continued to hurl abuse at me, it came in one long stream, passers-by sent us looks, but she didn’t care, her fury, which I had always feared, had her in its grip. I felt like asking her to stop, asking her to be nice, I had apologised, and it wasn’t as though I had done anything, there was no connection between our texts and the fact that I had been drinking with a guest from Norway, nor between the fact that I had got drunk and the pregnancy test she was holding in her hand, but she didn’t see it like that, for her this was all the same, she was a romantic, she had a dream about the two of us, about love and our child, and my behaviour smashed that dream, or reminded her that it was a dream. I was a bad person, an irresponsible person, how could I even imagine becoming a father? How could I subject her to this? I walked beside her, burning with shame because people were looking at us, burning with guilt because I had been drinking and burning with terror because, in her unbridled rage, she went straight for me and the person I was. This was humiliating, but for as long as she was in the right, for as long as what she said was true – that this was the day we might find out if we were going to have a child and I had met her off the train drunk – I couldn’t ask her to stop or tell her to go to hell. She was right, or she was within her rights, I would have to bow my head and put up with this.
It struck me that Eirik might be close by and bowed my head even lower, this was almost the worst thought, that someone I knew would see me like this. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,#NFDB
537:Kundera was also a postmodernist writer, but he completely lacked this embracing of other worlds, with him the world was always the same, it was Prague and Czechoslovakia and the Soviets who had either invaded or were on the point of doing so, and that was fine, but he kept withdrawing his characters from the plot, intervening and going on about something or other while the characters stood still, waiting as it were, by the window or wherever it was they happened to be until he had finished his explanation and they could move forward. Then you saw that the plot was only ‘a plot’ and that the characters were only ‘characters’, something he had invented, you knew they didn’t exist, and so why should you read about them? Kundera’s polar opposite was Hamsun, no one went as far into his characters’ world as he did, and that was what I preferred, at least in a comparison of these two, the physicality and the realism of Hunger, for example. There the world had weight, there even the thoughts were captured, while with Kundera the thoughts elevated themselves above the world and did as they liked with it. Another difference I had noticed was that European novels often had only one plot, everything followed one track as it were, while South American novels had a multiplicity of tracks and sidetracks, indeed, compared with European novels, they almost exploded with plots. One of my favourites was A Hundred Years of Solitude by García Márquez, but I also loved Love in the Time of Cholera. Kjærstad had a little of the same, but in a European way, and there was also something of Kundera in him. That was my opinion anyway. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
538:Few things are harder to visualise than that a cold snowbound landscape, so marrow-chillingly quiet and lifeless, will, within mere months, be green and lush and warm, quivering with all manner of life, from birds warbling and flying through the trees to swarms of insects hanging in scattered clusters in the air. Nothing in the winter landscape presages the scent of sun-warmed heather and moss, trees bursting with sap and thawed lakes ready for spring and summer, nothing presages the feeling of freedom that can come over you when the only white that can be seen is the clouds gliding across the blue sky above the blue water of the rivers gently flowing down to the sea, the perfect, smooth, cool surface, broken now and then by rocks, rapids and bathing bodies. It is not there, it does not exist, everything is white and still, and if the silence is broken it is by a cold wind or a lone crow caw-cawing. But it is coming ... it is coming... One evening in March the snow turns to rain, and the piles of snow collapse. One morning in April there are buds on the trees, and there is a trace of green in the yellow grass. Daffodils appear, white and blue anemones too. Then the warm air stands like a pillar among the trees on the slopes. On sunny inclines buds have burst, here and there cherry trees are in blossom. If you are sixteen years old all of this makes an impression, all of this leaves its mark, for this is the first spring you know is spring, with all your sense you know this is spring, and it is the last, for all coming springs pale in comparison with your first. If, moreover, you are in love, well, then ... then it is merely a question of holding on. Holding on to all the happiness, all the beauty, all the future that resides in everything. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
539:Conclusioni futuriste. Per evitare lo spopolamento, terribile per la garanzia futura dell’integrità dei territori nazionali occorre: 1º Abolire il matrimonio perchè dannoso alla libera procreazione e non rispondente ai giusti scopi di umanità e di libertà; 2º Permettere all’uomo maschio il possesso di più femmine e viceversa; 3º Favorire il libero amplesso; 4º Rendere la donna indipendente al pari dell’uomo dando ad essa il mezzo di vivere senza bisogno di fare la mantenuta del maschio. Onorarla se s’approssima a diventare madre, proteggerla, glorificarla perchè essa è il simbolo della proprietà di uno stato; 5º Istituire la tassa di filiatico a carico di tutti quegli uomini atti a procreare figli sani; 6º Col reddito di questa tassa fondare in tutte le città degli Istituti di allevamento e di educazione della prole , la cui gestione appartenga allo stato, ove i figli saranno allevati, educati ed avviati ad un’arte, professione o mestiere secondo le loro tendenze e volontà, tutto a spese del Governo, senza alcuna ingerenza o compartecipazione dei genitori; 7º Eguagliare i figli bastardi ai figli legali; 8º Dichiarare in seguito alla libertà di procreazione l’inutilità dei postriboli ed abolirli e vietarli come pericolosi e nocivi alla salute e agli interessi della Nazione; 9º Spogliarsi dal ridicolo sentimentalismo della santità della famiglia, dell’amore fraterno, paterno, figliale, materno, liberarsi da tutto ciò che significa poesia, sentimentalismo, gelosia, amore ideale o platonico, da tutto ciò che in una parola sola suona convenzioni passatiste, tradizione, usanza, esperienza, sapienza e castità. Arturo Blangino ». ~ Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, #NFDB
540:_Conclusioni futuriste._ Per evitare lo spopolamento, terribile per la garanzia futura dell’integrità dei territori nazionali occorre: 1º Abolire il matrimonio perchè dannoso alla libera procreazione e non rispondente ai giusti scopi di umanità e di libertà; 2º Permettere all’uomo maschio il possesso di più femmine e viceversa; 3º Favorire il libero amplesso; 4º Rendere la donna indipendente al pari dell’uomo dando ad essa il mezzo di vivere senza bisogno di fare la mantenuta del maschio. Onorarla se s’approssima a diventare madre, proteggerla, glorificarla perchè essa è il simbolo della proprietà di uno stato; 5º Istituire la _tassa di filiatico_ a carico di tutti quegli uomini atti a procreare figli sani; 6º Col reddito di questa tassa fondare in tutte le città degli _Istituti di allevamento e di educazione della prole_, la cui gestione appartenga allo stato, ove i figli saranno allevati, educati ed avviati ad un’arte, professione o mestiere secondo le loro tendenze e volontà, tutto a spese del Governo, senza alcuna ingerenza o compartecipazione dei genitori; 7º Eguagliare i figli bastardi ai figli legali; 8º Dichiarare in seguito alla libertà di procreazione l’inutilità dei postriboli ed abolirli e vietarli come pericolosi e nocivi alla salute e agli interessi della Nazione; 9º Spogliarsi dal ridicolo sentimentalismo della santità della famiglia, dell’amore fraterno, paterno, figliale, materno, liberarsi da tutto ciò che significa poesia, sentimentalismo, gelosia, amore ideale o platonico, da tutto ciò che in una parola sola suona convenzioni passatiste, tradizione, usanza, esperienza, sapienza e castità. _Arturo Blangino_». ~ Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, #NFDB
541:Yes, all of this I thought about, all of this filled me with sorrow and a sense of helplessness, and if there was a world I turned to in my mind, it was that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with its enormous forests, its sailing ships and horse-drawn carts, its windmills and castles, its monasteries and small towns, its painters and thinkers, explorers and inventors, priests and aldrugstores. What would it have been like to live in a world where everything was made from the power of yours hands, the wind or the water? What would it have been like to live in a world where the American Indians still lived their lives in peace? Where that life was an actual possibility? Where Africa was unconquered? Where darkness came with the sunset and light with the sunrise? Where there were too few humans and their tools were too rudimentary to have any effect on animal stocks, let alone wipe them out? Where you could not travel from one place to another without exerting yourself, and a comfortable life was something only the rich could afford, where the sea was full of whales, the forests full of bears and wolves, and there were still countries that were so alien no adventure story could do them justice, such as China, to which a voyage not only took several months and was the prerogative of only a tiny minority of sailors and traders, but was also fraught with danger. Admittedly, that world was rough and wretched, filthy and ravaged with sickness, drunken and ignorant, full of pain, low life expectancy and rampant superstition, but it produced the greatest writer, Shakespeare, the greatest painter, Rembrandt, the greatest scientist, Newton, all still unsurpassed in their fields, and how can it be that this period achieved this wealth? Was it because death was closer and life was starker as a result? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
542:The same year that the third great Viking ship found in Norway was excavated, at Oseberg, the town of Ålesund burned. At that time the Viking ships were displayed in makeshift exhibition halls, and the great Ålesund fire hastened the process of building a separate museum for them. The architect Fritz Holland proposed building an enormous crypt for them beneath the royal palace in Oslo. It was to be 63 metres long and 15 metres wide, with a niche for each ship. The walls were to be covered with reliefs of Viking motifs. Drawings exist of this underground hall. It is full of arches and vaults, and everything is made of stone. The ships stand in a kind of depression in the floor. More than anything it resembles a burial chamber, and that is fitting, one might think, both because the three ships were originally graves and because placed in a subterranean crypt beneath the palace gardens they would appear as what they represented: an embodiment of a national myth, in reality relics of a bygone era, alive only in the symbolic realm. The crypt was never built, and the power of history over the construction of national identity has since faded away almost entirely. There is another unrealised drawing of Oslo, from the 1920s, with tall brick buildings like skyscrapers along the main thoroughfare, Karl Johans Gate, and Zeppelins sailing above the city. When I look at these drawings, of a reality that was never realised, and feel the enormous pull they exert, which I am unable to explain, I know that the people living in Kristiania in 1904, as Oslo was called then, would have stared open-mouthed at nearly everything that surrounds us today and which we hardly notice, unable to believe their eyes. What is a stone crypt compared to a telephone that shows living pictures? What is the writing down of Draumkvedet (The Dream Poem), a late-medieval Norwegian visionary ballad, compared to a robot lawnmower that cuts the grass automatically? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
543:Of course, I don’t remember any of this time. It is absolutely impossible to identify with the infant my parents photographed, indeed so impossible that it seems wrong to use the word “me” to describe what is lying on the changing table, for example, with unusually red skin, arms and legs spread, and a face distorted into a scream, the cause of which no one can remember, or on a sheepskin rug on the floor, wearing white pajamas, still red-faced, with large, dark eyes squinting slightly. Is this creature the same person as the one sitting here in Malmö writing? And will the forty-year-old creature who is sitting in Malmö writing this one overcast September day in a room filled with the drone of the traffic outside and the autumn wind howling through the old-fashioned ventilation system be the same as the gray, hunched geriatric who in forty years from now might be sitting dribbling and trembling in an old people’s home somewhere in the Swedish woods? Not to mention the corpse that at some point will be laid out on a bench in a morgue? Still known as Karl Ove. And isn’t it actually unbelievable that one simple name encompasses all of this? The fetus in the belly, the infant on the changing table, the forty-year-old in front of the computer, the old man in the chair, the corpse on the bench? Wouldn’t it be more natural to operate with several names since their identities and self-perceptions are so very different? Such that the fetus might be called Jens Ove, for example, and the infant Nils Ove, and the five- to ten-year-old Per Ove, the ten- to twelve-year-old Geir Ove, the twelve- to seventeen-year-old Kurt Ove, the seventeen- to twenty-three-year-old John Ove, the twenty-three- to thirty-two-year-old Tor Ove, the thirty-two- to forty-six-year-old Karl Ove — and so on and so forth? Then the first name would represent the distinctiveness of the age range, the middle name would represent continuity, and the last, family affiliation. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
544:Ne zanima me od čega živiš. Želim znati za čim žudiš i imaš li hrabrosti snivati o ispunjenju želja srca svoga.
Ne zanima me koliko ti je godina. Želim znati jesi li spreman riskirati ispasti budala zbog ljubavi, zbog svojih snova, zbog ove pustolovine koju nazivamo životom.
Ne zanima me koji planeti djeluju na tvoj mjesec. Želim znati jesi li stigao do središta vlastite boli, jesu li te životna razočarenja otvorila ili si se skrutio i zatvorio od straha da ponovo ne osjetiš bol. Želim znati jesi li u stanju trpjeti bol, moju ili svoju, a da je pritom ne moraš skrivati ili ublažavati ili izbrisati.
Želim znati znaš li se radovati, zbog mene ili sebe, i možeš li divlje zaplesati i pustiti da te ekstaza preplavi sve do vrškova prstiju, a da nas pritom ne upozoravaš neka budemo pažljivi, realni, svjesni ljudskih ograničenja.
Ne zanima me je li priča koju mi pričaš istinita. Želim znati jesi li spreman razočarati drugoga kako bi bio iskren prema sebi; jesi li spreman podnijeti optužbe za izdaju, a pritom ne iznevjeriti sebe: možeš li biti izdajica i samim time vrijedan povjerenja.
Želim znati jesi li u stanju vidjeti ljepotu, pa i ako nije lijepa, svakoga dana, i možeš li svoj život nadahnjivati Njezinom prisutnošću.
Želim znati jesi li dovoljno snažan živjeti s neuspjehom, svojim i mojim, i da svejedno stojiš na rubu jezera i ushićeno vičeš prema srebrnom punom mjesecu: "To!"
Ne zanima me gdje živiš i koliko novaca imaš. Želim znati jesi li sposoban ustati, nakon noći ispunjene tugom i očajem, umoran i do kostiju izubijan, i učiniti sve što je potrebno kako bi nahranio svoju djecu.
Ne zanima me koga poznaješ i kako si dospio ovamo. Želim znati hoćeš li i dalje sa mnom stajati u žaru vatre i ne posustajati.
Ne zanima me gdje si ili što ili s kim si studirao. Želim znati što te u tebi samom gura naprijed u trenucima kad se sve ostalo ruši.
Želim znati možeš li biti sam sa sobom i voliš li uistinu osobu koja jesi u trenucima praznine. ~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer,#NFDB
545:There were two things that particularly bothered me in those days. One was that I came too fast, often before anything had happened at all, and the other was that I never laughed. That is, it did happen once in a while, maybe once every six months, when I would be overcome by the hilarity of something and just laugh and laugh, but that was always unpleasant because then I completely lost control, I was unable to regain my composure, and I didn’t like showing that side of myself to others. So basically I was able to laugh, I had the capacity, but in my everyday life, in social situations, when I was with people around a table chatting, I never laughed. I had lost that ability. To make up for this, I smiled a lot, I might also emit some laughter-like sounds, so I don’t think anyone noticed or found it conspicuous. But I knew: I never laughed. As a result, I became especially conscious of laughter as such, as a phenomenon — I noticed how it occurred, how it sounded, what it was. People laughed almost all the time, they said something, laughed, others said something, everyone laughed. It lubricated conversations or gave them a shot of something else which didn’t have so much to do with what was being said as with being together with others. People meeting. In this situation everyone laughed, each in their own way, of course, and sometimes because of something genuinely funny, in which case the laughter lasted longer and could at times completely take over, but also for no apparent reason at all, just as a token of friendliness or openness. It could conceal insecurity, I knew that well, but it could also be strong and generous, a helping hand. When I was small I laughed a lot, but at some point it stopped, perhaps as early as the age of twelve, at any rate I remember there was a film with Rolv Wesenlund that filled me with horror, it was called The Man Who Could Not Laugh, and it was probably when I heard about it that I realised actually I didn’t laugh. From then on, all social situations were something I took part in and watched from the outside as I lacked what they were full of, the interpersonal link: laughter. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
546:XVIII ALLA SUA DONNA Cara beltà che amore Lunge m’inspiri o nascondendo il viso, Fuor se nel sonno il core Ombra diva mi scuoti, 5 O ne’ campi ove splenda Più vago il giorno e di natura il riso; Forse tu l’innocente Secol beasti che dall’oro ha nome, Or leve intra la gente 10 Anima voli? o te la sorte avara Ch’a noi t’asconde, agli avvenir prepara? Viva mirarti omai Nulla spene m’avanza; S’allor non fosse, allor che ignudo e solo 15 Per novo calle a peregrina stanza Verrà lo spirto mio. Già sul novello Aprir di mia giornata incerta e bruna, Te viatrice in questo arido suolo Io mi pensai. Ma non è cosa in terra 20 Che ti somigli; e s’anco pari alcuna Ti fosse al volto, agli atti, alla favella, Saria, così conforme, assai men bella. Fra cotanto dolore Quanto all’umana età propose il fato, 25 Se vera e quale il mio pensier ti pinge, Alcun t’amasse in terra, a lui pur fora Questo viver beato: E ben chiaro vegg’io siccome ancora Seguir loda e virtù qual ne’ prim’anni 30 L’amor tuo mi farebbe. Or non aggiunse Il ciel nullo conforto ai nostri affanni; E teco la mortal vita saria Simile a quella che nel cielo india. Per le valli, ove suona 35 Del faticoso agricoltore il canto, Ed io seggo e mi lagno Del giovanile error che m’abbandona; E per li poggi, ov’io rimembro e piagno I perduti desiri, e la perduta 40 Speme de’ giorni miei; di te pensando, A palpitar mi sveglio. E potess’io, Nel secol tetro e in questo aer nefando, L’alta specie serbar; che dell’imago, Poi che del ver m’è tolto, assai m’appago. 45 Se dell’eterne idee L’una sei tu, cui di sensibil forma Sdegni l’eterno senno esser vestita, E fra caduche spoglie Provar gli affanni di funerea vita; 50 O s’altra terra ne’ superni giri Fra’ mondi innumerabili t’accoglie, E più vaga del Sol prossima stella T’irraggia, e più benigno etere spiri; Di qua dove son gli anni infausti e brevi, 55 Questo d’ignoto amante inno ricevi. ~ Giacomo Leopardi, #NFDB
547:Sada ću misliti na tebe, draga, samo na tebe, cele noći. Misliću samo na tebe, to je jedini način da osetim samog sebe, ako te držim u svom središtu kao drvo, ako se malo - pomalo odvojim od stabla koje me drži i vodi, ako oprezno lebdim oko tebe, opipavajući vazduh svakim listom (zelenim, zelenim, ja i ti, sočno stablo i zeleno lišće: zeleno, zeleno) ne udaljavajući se od tebe, ne dopuštajući da bilo ko drugi prodre između mene i tebe, učini da ne mislim na tebe, ma i na trenutak me liši saznanja da ova noć kruži ka svitanju i da će tamo, s druge strane, tamo gde živiš i spavaš, biti ponovo noć kad zajedno stignemo i uđemo u tvoju kuću, popnemo se uza stepenice na tremu, upalimo svetla, pomilujemo tvog psa, popijemo kafu, dugo se gledamo pre nego što te ja zagrlim (da te držim u svom središtu kao drvo) i povedem te ka stepeništu (ali nema nikakve staklene kugle) i počnemo da se penjemo, penjemo, vrata su zatvorena, ali imam ključ u džepu...
Ko će znati kako je moglo da se završi nešto što nije čak ni počelo, što je krenulo iz sredine i nestalo bez jasnih obrisa, raspršivši se na ivici druge magle.
... to odsustvo koje se sada stani u mojoj kući samca, dotiče moj jastuk svojom zlatnom meduzom, primorava me da pišem ovo što pišem u besmislenoj nadi da postoji bajalica, slatki golem od reči.
... tu ima nekih rupa i bičeva, neka voda teče niz lice i zaslepljuje i grize, neki zvuk kao tutnjava iz dubina, trenutak bez vremena, nepodnošljivo lep.
... za mene je bila kao topola od bronze i sna...
... to je pre odgovor na smrt i na ništavilo, stavljanje stvari i vremena na određeno mesto, uvođenje vremena i prolaza, protivljenje vremenu punom rupa i tamnih mesta.
Ti koji me čitaš, nije li se i tebi desilo nešto što počinje kao san i vraća se u mnogim snovima ali to nije to, nije samo san? Nešto što jeste tu, ali gde, i kako; nešto što prolazi kroz snove, razume se, puki san ali posle takođe tu, na drugi način jer je meko i puno rupa, ali tu dok pereš zube, u dnu lavaboa ga i dalje vidiš kad ispljuneš pastu za zube ili stavljaš lice pod hladnu vodu, već istanjeno ali još zalepljeno za pidžamu, u korenu jezika dok podgrevaš kafu, tu ali gde, kako, zalepljeno za jutro, sa svojom tišinom u koju već ulaze zvuci dana, vesti na radiju koje smo pustili jer smo budni i jer smo ustali i svet i dalje ide svojim putem.
... kako je to moguće, šta je to bilo, šta smo to bili u snu koji je međutim nešto drugo, svako malo se vraća i tu je, ali gde je to tu?
... ta trideset i jedna godina nije ono što je važno, mnogo je gori ovaj prelazak iz sna u reči, rupa između onoga što je i dalje ovde ali se sve više predaje jasnoj ošztici stvari s ove strane, tom nožu od reči koje i dalje i dalje ispisujem i koje više nisu to što je i dalje tu, ali gde, kako.
Ovde je nešto trebalo da bude rečeno bez reči, samo slušajući neki neodređen šum.
... postoji neka slika nečega priteranog uza zid, nečega opkoljenog: duboka istina, okružena lažima nepopravljivog konformizma.
Probuditi se, probuditi se na svaki način, ali Valentina je osećala da bi samo nešto što bi ličilo na bič moglo da je razbudi. ~ Julio Cort zar,#NFDB
548:ŠUBERTIJANA
I
U večernjem sumraku nadomak Njujorka, na vidikovcu
odakle jednim pogledom možeš da obuhvatiš
domove osam miliona ljudi.
Džinovski grad tamo preko je dugački svetlucavi
nanos, spiralna galaksija viđena bočno.
Tu u galaksiji šoljice za kafu klize po pultu,
od prolaznika izlozi prose, metež cipela
što trag ne ostavljaju.
Pentrajuća požarna stepeništa, vrata lifta
što šume istovremeno, a za vratima s jakim
bravama vazda se ukrštaju glasovi.
Dremljiva, oklembešena tela po vagonima metroa,
sudarajuće katakombe.
Takođe znam - mimo statistike - da upravo ovog
časa neko počinje da svira Šuberta u jednoj
sobi onamo i da su za nj ove note stvarnije no
išta drugo.
II
Beskrajno prostranstvo ljudskog mozga skvrčilo
se u veličinu pesnice.
U aprilu lasta se vraća u svoje prošlogodišnje
gnezdo pod olukom istog ambara u istom
zaseoku.
Kreće ona iz Južne Afrike, preseca ekvator, u
šest nedelja preleće dva kontinenta, nepogrešivo
stremeći k toj nestajućoj tački zemaljskih
prostranstava.
I taj što hvata signale čitavog jednog života u
nekoliko posve jednostavnih tonova na pet
struna,
taj što čitavu jednu reku prodeva kroz iglene
uši, debeljuškasti je mladi bečki gospodin
od prijatelja prozvan „Pečurkica“, koji običavaše
da spava s naočarima na nosu
i ustajaše izjutra za svoj pisaći sto ni časak jedan
ne kasneći.
I čudesna stonoga njegovog rukopisa kreće.
III
Gudački kvintet bruji. Vraćam se kroz razgrejanu
šumu s tlom što se poda mnom ugiba,
zgrčen poput embriona, pospan, vrteći se
bestežinski
u vremenu budućem, osetivši iznenada kako i rastinje
poseduje misao.
IV
U nama toliko mnogo vere mora da je kako bismo
današnji dan mogli da proživimo kroz zemlju
ne propavši!
Vere u snežne smetove što se grčevito drže
litica nadnesenih nad selom.
Vere u obećanje tišine i osmeh samorazumevanja,
vere da telegram o nesreći nije za nas i da
nenadanog udarca iznutra neće biti.
Vere u osovinu što nas iznosi na autoput sred za
trista puta uvećanog čeličnog pčelinjeg roja.
Ali ništa od toga nije vredno našeg pouzdanja.
Pet struna kazuju da možemo verovati u nešto
drugo.
U šta? U nešto drukčije, i one nas prate komadić
puta do tamo.
Kao kad se ugasi svetlo u stepeništu i ruka sledi
- pouzdano - hvatajući naslepo gelender u
mraku.
V
Zbijamo se pred klavir i sviramo u četiri ruke
u ef-molu, dvojica kočijaša jednog istog
fijakera – ispada tako nekako malo luckasto.
Čini se kao da naše ruke pokreću napred i nazad
zvoneće tegove u dodiru s protivtežom
nastojeći da narušimo užasnu ravnotežu: radost
i patnja pri tom imaju istu ulogu.
Ana reče: „Ta muzika je tako herojska“, i imala je
pravo.
Ali ti što sa zavišću motre preduzimljivog
čoveka, ti koji potajno gaje samoprezir jer
nisu ubice, ti ne mogaše ovde da prepoznaju
sami sebe.
I mnogi što trguju ljudima i veruju da baš
svakog mogu kupiti, oni ovde ne prepoznaju
sami sebe.
Ne njihovu muziku. Duga melodija koja ostaje to
što jeste u svim varijacijama, katkad
blistajući i preobražavajući se, katkad
hrapava i snažna, sluz puževog traga i žica
čelična.
Istrajni bruji što sledi nas još ovog časa
naviše
duboko. ~ Tomas Transtr mer,#NFDB
549:Nasred trga, oko Piramide Napoleonove, vrte se sjajni automobili. Ne zato što tehnika napreduje, nego je to uspomena na karusele. Ta sjajna zvezda vrtloga dovoljna je da ceo grad zavoli vrtlog zvezda. Šare na stubu, koji kao kameni mač strši iz zemlje, sa gotskom oštrinom, niko ne može da pročita. Kamene žene, koje predstavljaju složne francuske gradove, uzalud čitaju. U njihovim očima, sa kojih kaplje kiša, zjapi samo ironija kamena u noći. Dani prolaze, i svaki vrši svoj posao. Ban Jelačić, na konju, sred Zagreba, pokazuje mačem na Mađarsku, i zaboravlja da spusti ruku. Dositej elegantno skida šešir, i ulazi sa Kalemegdana u hotel „Krunu“, a nikako da uđe. Da, da, ja „futurista“ imam osećaj da se uopšte, negde u svemiru, nešto skamenilo, i da nikako neće ući u hotel. Hijeroglifi mirno stoje, automobili se vrte i jure oko njih, a nikako da ih pročitaju. Kiša sipa, sitna, beskrajna - no to ne treba nikog da uznemiruje. Eno Madlen, posuta helenskom limunadom, stoji, sva crna, u noći – seća se izginulih vojnika Velike armije za koje je zidana, i misli na otmene svadbe koje su, u njoj, češće nego otmena krštenja. Dva velika, zažarena oka Orleanske stanice gledaju mirno u Senu. Da, samo sam ja patetičan, noći je svejedno.
Pobesneli konji spomenika na Gran Paleu hoće da skoče dole. Poda mnom, duboko, u zemlji, ispod Sene, jure vozovi, a kraj mene prolaze zagrljeni parovi, i protrčavaju mačke. U Carigradu vole pse, ovde mačke. Ljubav je večna, beskrajna, i opšta. Svi su parovi jednaki, i sve mačke crne. Neka vas ne vređa sve ovo. U Čikagu ima jedan pesnik, optimista, on peva i slavi velike gradove, ogroman život, i večno, zaljubljeno čovečanstvo. Ja, mada sam civilizovan, kao i ostali naši književnici, i ne bih prevrnuo čašu na dvorskom ručku, ipak, gledam ove mokre, ogromne konture sa mnogo manje divljenja.
Potomak pastira, sa malo razumljive afektacije, znam da su plavi zidovi nebesa ogromniji; vidim zvezdane površine reka, šuma i gora, i osećam da ću jednom, teškim korakom, hodati po njima, davno zaboravivši sve ovo. Oprostite što teško prelazim na stvar. Sve te zamršene misli jure po glavi, iz kineskih pesama, iz knjiga o gotici. Ta vi znate da nema Srbina koji može zamisliti da neko i kod nas može šta zamisliti. U detinjstvu smo odrasli sa konturama Bocarećeva Šarca, i sa divnom konturom Saborne crkve, a sad smo klasičari, kosmičari, kubiste, radikali, već kako ko – pa je malo teško. Zar ne ?
Ipak, ja sam ovde, umoran i prokisao, samo zato da vam javim da se, već jednom, opet setite večnosti.
U ogromnim ovim vrtovima i širinama, pod granjem mokrim, koje znam da je počelo da pupi, ovde gde je Pariz najlepši, zastajem da vam javim – pre nego što vam počnem pisati o parlamentima, Evropi, izložbama, Srbima na Sen Mišelu – da zaboravite već jednom sve, da se opet jednom, bezbrižni, setite večnosti. Stojim visoko. Dubina mosta d'Jena, koja se beli i sjaji od kiše, i prolazi ispod čudovišta Ajfelova, odvodi u beskraj. Nigde na svetu nije ovako duboka voda i ovako široko nebo. Veliki vrtovi u kojima cvetaju svetiljke, zelene, žute i crvene; njino svetlucanje u vodama, polako diže ceo Pariz u providan, jutarnji zrak. Kiša se jedva oseća. Prvi tramvaji prolaze. Daleko, u stajaćoj, širokoj vodi, suro, kao neka galija čuvarica u luci, sa svojim crvenim svetiljkama, ljulja se ostrvo Pariza, sa starim zidovima i gotskim kulama. Nad Notrdamom se vedri, trepere pobledele zvezde, kao iskre bežičnog brzojava. Oni javljaju da dolazi proleće. ~ Milo Crnjanski,#NFDB
550:Neće ti smetati ako slušamo muziku?" pita Ošima.
Neće, kažem.
On pritisne dugme cd plejera. Počinje klasična klavirska muzika. Neko vreme pomno slušam tu muziku i dobijam ideju šta bi to moglo biti. Nije ni Betoven, ni Šuman. Istorijski gledano, tu je negde između.
"Šubert ?" pitam ja.
"Da", kaže on. I sa rukama na volanu, u položaju u kom kazaljke na satu pokazuju 10.10, pogleda me krajičkom oka. "Voliš Šubertovu muziku ?"
Ne nešto naročito, kažem.
Ošima klimne glavom. "Kad vozim, često odvrnem Šubertove klavirske sonate do daske. Šta misliš zašto ?"
"Ne znam", kažem ja.
"Zato što su klavirske sonate Franca Šuberta među najtežim kompozicijama na svetu da se savršeno izvedu. Naročito ova sonata u D-duru. Ta je strašno komplikovana. ako se izdvoji samo jedan ili dva stava tog dela, ima pijanista koji su u stanju gotovo savršeno da ih odsviraju. ali, ako slušaš sva četiri stava zaredom kao jedinstveno delo, ne postoji ni jedna njihova zadovoljavajuća interpretacija, bar ne koliko je meni poznato. Do sada su se razni čuveni pijanisti okušali u izazovu ove kompozicije, ali svaki od njih ima očigledne nedostatke. Još nije bilo nijedne izvedbe za koju možeš da kažeš 'E, to je to !' Šta misliš, zbog čega ?"
"Ne znam", kažem.
"Zato što je sama kompozicija nepotpuna. Robert Šuman, koji je bio odličan poznavalac Šubertove klavirske muzike, ovu je kompoziciju ocenio kao 'nebeski preopširnu'.
"Ako je sama kompozicija nepotpuna, zašto su se razni čuveni pijanisti oprobavali na njoj ?"
"To je dobro pitanje", kaže Ošima. Onda zastane. Tu tišinu ispunjava muzika. "Nemam konkretno objašnjenje za to. Ali mogu jedno da kažem, a to je da dela koja poseduju određenu vrstu nepotpunosti, upravo zbog te nesavršenosti privlače čovekovu dušu - bar snažno privlače dušu određene vrste ljudi. Recimo, tebe privlači 'Rudar". Zbog toga on ima moć da te usisa kakve nema u zaokruženim delima kao što je 'Duša' ili 'Sanširo'. Ti to delo pronađeš ili ono pronađe tebe. Šubertova sonata u D-duru je upravo takva. U njoj postoji nešto što veže nit tvoje duše kako nijedna druga kompozicija ne može.
"Dakle", kažem ja, "da se vratim na prvo pitanje - zbog čega ti slušaš Šubertove sonate ? Naročito dok voziš automobil."
"Šubertove sonate, posebno sonata u D-duru, ne mogu se smatrati umetnošću samo zato što su dobro izvedene. Kao što je Šuman ukazao, ova sonata je previše pastoralna i predugačka je, a i sa stanovišta tehnike je isuviše jednostavna. Kad se ta kompozicija dosledno odsvira, pretvori se u najobičniji bljutavi, suvoparni antikvitet. Zato joj svojom virtuoznošću svaki pijanista doda ponešto. Smisli nešto. Recimo, evo ovako pojačava artikulaciju. Ili svira rubato, ubrza tempo ili uradi varijaciju. Ako to ne učini, nema čime da popuni vreme. Ali, ako se to ne izvede pažljivo, takav jedan dodatak naruši integritet dela. To onda nije više Šubertova muzika. Bez izuzetka svi pijanisti koji sviraju sonatu u D-duru upadnu u taj paradoks.
On osluškuje muziku. Pevuši melodiju. A onda nastavlja priču.
"Zbog toga ja često slušam Šuberta dok vozim. Kao što sam ti malopre rekao, baš zato što su izvedbe njegove muzike u izvesnom smislu nepotpune. Kvalitetna nesavršenost puna naboja stimuliše čovekovu svest, izoštrava mu pažnju. Kad bih u vožnji slušao savršenu muziku bez premca u savršenom izvođenju, možda bih poželeo da samo zatvorim oči i tako umrem. Zauzvrat, ja slušam sonatu u D-duru i u njoj razaznajem granice čovekove moći. Spoznajem da određena vrsta savršenstva može da se otelotvori isključivo beskonačnom akumulacijom nesavršenosti. To me ohrabruje. Razumeš šta hoću da ti kažem? ~ Haruki Murakami,#NFDB
551:GALERIJA
Prenoćio sam u motelu na autoputu E3.
U sobi vonj znan mi
iz muzeja sa azijskom postavkom:
tibetanske, japanske maske na svetlom zidu.
Ali to sad nisu maske, već lica
što prodiru kroz beli zid zaboravnosti
da se dokopaju vazduha, da nešto zamole.
Ležim budan i posmatram ih kako se bore
iščezavaju i vraćaju.
Neke svoj izgled zajme od onih drugih, obrazine
menjaju duboko u meni
gde zaborav i sećanje obavljaju svoje nagodbe.
Onda prodiru kroz premaz zaboravnosti
belog zida,
iščeznu, a potom su opet tu.
Ima ovde one žalosti što ne bi da se tako zove.
Dobro došli u ove prave galerije!
Dobro došli u ove prave galerije!
U stvarne rešetke!
Dečak što je nekog paralisao karate udarcem
još snatri o brzoj zaradi.
Žena grozničavo kupuje stvari
kako bi ih zavrljačila u ždrelo praznog budžaka
što se iza nje krije.
Gospodin Iks se ne usuđuje da napusti svoj stan.
Mračni stroj zagonetnih prilika
tu je, između njega
i obzorja, večito iščezavajućeg.
Ona što negde pobeže iz Karelije,
koja je umela da se smeje...
pojavljuje se sad,
ali nema, okamenjena, sumerski kip.
Kao kad mi ono bi deset godina i kad kasno stigoh
kući.
Na stepeništu svetla behu pogašena,
ali lift je svetleo, i pođe uvis
kao ronilačko zvono u mrklu dubinu,
sprat za spratom, dok nestvarna lica
na rešetke navaljivahu...
Ali to su stvarna lica, ne ona iz uobrazilje.
Ležim raspet poput raskršća.
Mnogo njih diže se iz bele magle.
Jedni druge dodirnusmo, odista!
Dug svetao hodnik miriše na karbol.
Invalidska kolica. Tinejdžerka
koja posle saobraćajnog udesa uči da govori.
Onaj što htede pod vodom da vikne
te mu grozna hladet čitavog sveta
nahrupi kroz nos i usta.
Glasovi u mikrofon sasuše: Brzina je sila,
brzina je moć!
Igraj igru, The show must go on!!
Napredujemo u karijerama kruto, korak po korak,
kao u „no“ drami
pod maskama, s pesme krikom: Ja, to sam ja!
One što gube
predstavlja umotan čaršav.
Neki umetnik kaza: Ranije bejah planeta
s vlastitim debelim vazdušnim omotačem.
Zrake spolja razbijahu se u dúge,
a unutra bes grmaljavine neprestani.
Sad ugašen sam, suv i otkriven.
Nema više detinjaste energije:
Jedna mi je strana topla, druga hladna.
Bez dúga.
Ugnezdih se u kući vrlo istančanog sluha.
Mnogi bi da uđu kroz zidove,
ali većina to ne uspeva:
beli šum zaborava ih zagluši.
Neznana pesma davi se u zidovima.
Uzdržano kuckanje što bi da i ne sasluša
isprekidane uzdahe
moje ostarele odgovore dok beskućnički puze.
Slušaj rutinski samoprekor društva,
glas što nemalo pirka,
poput veštački stvorenog vetra po hodnicima
rudnika šesto metara duboko.
Oči su nam pod zavojima širom otvorene.
Bar da sam im pomogao da shvate
kako drhtanje pod nama
beše znak da smo na mostu...
Često sam morao da stojim nepokretan.
Partner bacača noževa u cirkusu!
Pitanja što sam u besu sa sebe stresao
vraćala su se strmoglavo natrag
ne dosežući do mene nego se zabadajući u obris,
grubo ocrtavajući još
mesto s kog bejah već iskoračio.
Često bih morao da ćutim. Svojevoljno!
Pošto je „poslednja reč“ izgovarana uvek iznova.
Zbog „Dobar dan“ i „Do viđenja“...
Zbog dana nalik ovom...
Zbog toga što će margine prerasti
vlastite rubove
i preplaviti čitav tekst.
Prenoćih u motelu somnambula.
Mnoga lica ovde su beznadna,
a druga su smirena
nakon hodočašća po zaboravu.
Dišu, iščezavaju, upinju se da se vrate,
gledaju kroz mene,
svi bi one ikonice pravednosti da se dokopaju.
Ali retko se dogodi
da neko od nas doista vidi drugog:
Za časak, ukaže se čovek
kao na fotografiji, samo kudikamo jasnije,
a u pozadini,
nešto je veće od njegove senke.
Cela njegova figura stoji pred brdom.
Pre će biti da je to puževa kućica nego brdo.
Pre će biti istinska kuća nego puževa ljuska.
Nije čak ni kuća, ali ima mnoštvo odaja.
Sve je neodrađeno, ali još kako rečito.
On izrasta iz toga, a to iz njega.
To je njegov život, njegov lavirint. ~ Tomas Transtr mer,#NFDB
552:Inferno Canto 01
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita .
When I had journeyed half of our life's way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.
Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura !
Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was,
that savage forest, dense and difficult,
which even in recall renews my fear:
Tant'è amara che poco è più morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,
dirò de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte .
so bitter-death is hardly more severe!
But to retell the good discovered there,
I'll also tell the other things I saw.
Io non so ben ridir com'i' v'intrai,
tant'era pien di sonno a quel punto
che la verace via abbandonai .
I cannot clearly say how I had entered
the wood; I was so full of sleep just at
the point where I abandoned the true path.
Ma poi ch'i' fui al piè d'un colle giunto,
là dove terminava quella valle
che m'avea di paura il cor compunto ,
241
But when I'd reached the bottom of a hillit rose along the boundary of the valley
that had harassed my heart with so much fear-
guardai in alto, e vidi le sue spalle
vestite già de' raggi del pianeta
che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle .
I looked on high and saw its shoulders clothed
already by the rays of that same planet
which serves to lead men straight along all roads.
Allor fu la paura un poco queta
che nel lago del cor m'era durata
la notte ch'i' passai con tanta pieta .
At this my fear was somewhat quieted;
for through the night of sorrow I had spent,
the lake within my heart felt terror present.
E come quei che con lena affannata
uscito fuor del pelago a la riva
si volge a l'acqua perigliosa e guata ,
And just as he who, with exhausted breath,
having escaped from sea to shore, turns back
to watch the dangerous waters he has quit,
così l'animo mio, ch'ancor fuggiva,
si volse a retro a rimirar lo passo
che non lasciò già mai persona viva .
so did my spirit, still a fugitive,
turn back to look intently at the pass
that never has let any man survive.
242
Poi ch'èi posato un poco il corpo lasso,
ripresi via per la piaggia diserta,
sì che 'l piè fermo sempre era 'l più basso .
I let my tired body rest awhile.
Moving again, I tried the lonely slopemy firm foot always was the one below.
Ed ecco, quasi al cominciar de l'erta,
una lonza leggera e presta molto,
che di pel macolato era coverta ;
And almost where the hillside starts to riselook there!-a leopard, very quick and lithe,
a leopard covered with a spotted hide.
e non mi si partia dinanzi al volto,
anzi 'mpediva tanto il mio cammino,
ch'i' fui per ritornar più volte vòlto .
He did not disappear from sight, but stayed;
indeed, he so impeded my ascent
that I had often to turn back again.
Temp'era dal principio del mattino,
e 'l sol montava 'n sù con quelle stelle
ch'eran con lui quando l'amor divino
The time was the beginning of the morning;
the sun was rising now in fellowship
with the same stars that had escorted it
mosse di prima quelle cose belle;
sì ch'a bene sperar m'era cagione
di quella fiera a la gaetta pelle
when Divine Love first moved those things of beauty;
so that the hour and the gentle season
243
gave me good cause for hopefulness on seeing
l'ora del tempo e la dolce stagione;
ma non sì che paura non mi desse
la vista che m'apparve d'un leone .
that beast before me with his speckled skin;
but hope was hardly able to prevent
the fear I felt when I beheld a lion.
Questi parea che contra me venisse
con la test'alta e con rabbiosa fame,
sì che parea che l'aere ne tremesse .
His head held high and ravenous with hungereven the air around him seemed to shudderthis lion seemed to make his way against me.
Ed una lupa, che di tutte brame
sembiava carca ne la sua magrezza,
e molte genti fé già viver grame ,
And then a she-wolf showed herself; she seemed
to carry every craving in her leanness;
she had already brought despair to many.
questa mi porse tanto di gravezza
con la paura ch'uscia di sua vista,
ch'io perdei la speranza de l'altezza .
The very sight of her so weighted me
with fearfulness that I abandoned hope
of ever climbing up that mountain slope.
E qual è quei che volontieri acquista,
e giugne 'l tempo che perder lo face,
che 'n tutt'i suoi pensier piange e s'attrista ;
244
Even as he who glories while he gains
will, when the time has come to tally loss,
lament with every thought and turn despondent,
tal mi fece la bestia sanza pace,
che, venendomi 'ncontro, a poco a poco
mi ripigneva là dove 'l sol tace .
so was I when I faced that restless beast
which, even as she stalked me, step by step
had thrust me back to where the sun is speechless.
Mentre ch'i' rovinava in basso loco,
dinanzi a li occhi mi si fu offerto
chi per lungo silenzio parea fioco .
While I retreated down to lower ground,
before my eyes there suddenly appeared
one who seemed faint because of the long silence.
Quando vidi costui nel gran diserto,
«Miserere di me», gridai a lui,
«qual che tu sii, od ombra od omo certo !».
When I saw him in that vast wilderness,
"Have pity on me," were the words I cried,
"whatever you may be-a shade, a man."
Rispuosemi: «Non omo, omo già fui,
e li parenti miei furon lombardi,
mantoani per patria ambedui .
He answered me: "Not man; I once was man.
Both of my parents came from Lombardy,
and both claimed Mantua as native city.
245
Nacqui sub Iulio, ancor che fosse tardi,
e vissi a Roma sotto 'l buono Augusto
nel tempo de li dèi falsi e bugiardi .
And I was born, though late, sub Julio,
and lived in Rome under the good Augustusthe season of the false and lying gods.
Poeta fui, e cantai di quel giusto
figliuol d'Anchise che venne di Troia,
poi che 'l superbo Ilión fu combusto .
I was a poet, and I sang the righteous
son of Anchises who had come from Troy
when flames destroyed the pride of Ilium.
Ma tu perché ritorni a tanta noia?
perché non sali il dilettoso monte
ch'è principio e cagion di tutta gioia? ».
But why do you return to wretchedness?
Why not climb up the mountain of delight,
the origin and cause of every joy?"
«Or se' tu quel Virgilio e quella fonte
che spandi di parlar sì largo fiume?»,
rispuos'io lui con vergognosa fronte .
"And are you then that Virgil, you the fountain
that freely pours so rich a stream of speech?"
I answered him with shame upon my brow.
«O de li altri poeti onore e lume
vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amore
che m'ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume .
"O light and honor of all other poets,
may my long study and the intense love
246
that made me search your volume serve me now.
Tu se' lo mio maestro e 'l mio autore;
tu se' solo colui da cu' io tolsi
lo bello stilo che m'ha fatto onore .
You are my master and my author, youthe only one from whom my writing drew
the noble style for which I have been honored.
Vedi la bestia per cu' io mi volsi:
aiutami da lei, famoso saggio,
ch'ella mi fa tremar le vene e i polsi ».
You see the beast that made me turn aside;
help me, o famous sage, to stand against her,
for she has made my blood and pulses shudder,"
«A te convien tenere altro viaggio»,
rispuose poi che lagrimar mi vide,
«se vuo' campar d'esto loco selvaggio :
"It is another path that you must take,"
he answered when he saw my tearfulness,
"if you would leave this savage wilderness;
ché questa bestia, per la qual tu gride,
non lascia altrui passar per la sua via,
ma tanto lo 'mpedisce che l'uccide ;
the beast that is the cause of your outcry
allows no man to pass along her track,
but blocks him even to the point of death;
e ha natura sì malvagia e ria,
che mai non empie la bramosa voglia,
e dopo 'l pasto ha più fame che pria .
247
her nature is so squalid, so malicious
that she can never sate her greedy will;
when she has fed, she's hungrier than ever.
Molti son li animali a cui s'ammoglia,
e più saranno ancora, infin che 'l veltro
verrà, che la farà morir con doglia .
She mates with many living souls and shall
yet mate with many more, until the Greyhound
arrives, inflicting painful death on her.
Questi non ciberà terra né peltro,
ma sapienza, amore e virtute,
e sua nazion sarà tra feltro e feltro .
That Hound will never feed on land or pewter,
but find his fare in wisdom, love, and virtue;
his place of birth shall be between two felts.
Di quella umile Italia fia salute
per cui morì la vergine Cammilla,
Eurialo e Turno e Niso di ferute .
He will restore low-lying Italy for which
the maid Camilla died of wounds,
and Nisus, Turnus, and Euryalus.
Questi la caccerà per ogne villa,
fin che l'avrà rimessa ne lo 'nferno,
là onde 'nvidia prima dipartilla .
And he will hunt that beast through every city
until he thrusts her back again to Hell,
for which she was first sent above by envy.
248
Ond'io per lo tuo me' penso e discerno
che tu mi segui, e io sarò tua guida,
e trarrotti di qui per loco etterno ,
Therefore, I think and judge it best for you
to follow me, and I shall guide you, taking
you from this place through an eternal place,
ove udirai le disperate strida,
vedrai li antichi spiriti dolenti,
ch'a la seconda morte ciascun grida ;
where you shall hear the howls of desperation
and see the ancient spirits in their pain,
as each of them laments his second death;
e vederai color che son contenti
nel foco, perché speran di venire
quando che sia a le beate genti .
and you shall see those souls who are content
within the fire, for they hope to reachwhenever that may be-the blessed people.
A le quai poi se tu vorrai salire,
anima fia a ciò più di me degna:
con lei ti lascerò nel mio partire ;
If you would then ascend as high as these,
a soul more worthy than I am will guide you;
I'll leave you in her care when I depart,
ché quello imperador che là sù regna,
perch'i' fu' ribellante a la sua legge,
non vuol che 'n sua città per me si vegna .
because that Emperor who reigns above,
since I have been rebellious to His law,
249
will not allow me entry to His city.
In tutte parti impera e quivi regge;
quivi è la sua città e l'alto seggio:
oh felice colui cu' ivi elegge! ».
He governs everywhere, but rules from there;
there is His city, His high capital:
o happy those He chooses to be there!"
E io a lui: «Poeta, io ti richeggio
per quello Dio che tu non conoscesti,
acciò ch'io fugga questo male e peggio ,
And I replied: "O poet-by that God
whom you had never come to know-I beg you,
that I may flee this evil and worse evils,
che tu mi meni là dov'or dicesti,
sì ch'io veggia la porta di san Pietro
e color cui tu fai cotanto mesti ».
to lead me to the place of which you spoke,
that I may see the gateway of Saint Peter
and those whom you describe as sorrowful."
Allor si mosse, e io li tenni dietro.
Then he set out, and I moved on behind him.
~ Dante Alighieri,#NFDB
553:Inferno Canto02
Lo giorno se n'andava, e l'aere bruno
toglieva li animai che sono in terra
da le fatiche loro; e io sol uno
The day was now departing; the dark air
released the living beings of the earth
from work and weariness; and I myself
m'apparecchiava a sostener la guerra
sì del cammino e sì de la pietate,
che ritrarrà la mente che non erra .
alone prepared to undergo the battle
both of the journeying and of the pity,
which memory, mistaking not, shall show.
O muse, o alto ingegno, or m'aiutate;
o mente che scrivesti ciò ch'io vidi,
qui si parrà la tua nobilitate .
O Muses, o high genius, help me now;
o memory that set down what I saw,
here shall your excellence reveal itself!
Io cominciai: «Poeta che mi guidi,
guarda la mia virtù s'ell'è possente,
prima ch'a l'alto passo tu mi fidi .
I started: "Poet, you who are my guide,
see if the force in me is strong enough
before you let me face that rugged pass.
Tu dici che di Silvio il parente,
corruttibile ancora, ad immortale
secolo andò, e fu sensibilmente .
251
You say that he who fathered Sylvius,
while he was still corruptible, had journeyed
into the deathless world with his live body.
Però, se l'avversario d'ogne male
cortese i fu, pensando l'alto effetto
ch'uscir dovea di lui e 'l chi e 'l quale ,
For, if the Enemy of every evil
was courteous to him, considering
all he would cause and who and what he was,
non pare indegno ad omo d'intelletto;
ch'e' fu de l'alma Roma e di suo impero
ne l'empireo ciel per padre eletto :
that does not seem incomprehensible,
since in the empyrean heaven he was chosen
to father honored Rome and her empire;
la quale e 'l quale, a voler dir lo vero,
fu stabilita per lo loco santo
u' siede il successor del maggior Piero .
and if the truth be told, Rome and her realm
were destined to become the sacred place,
the seat of the successor of great Peter.
Per quest'andata onde li dai tu vanto,
intese cose che furon cagione
di sua vittoria e del papale ammanto .
And through the journey you ascribe to him,
he came to learn of things that were to bring
his victory and, too, the papal mantle.
252
Andovvi poi lo Vas d'elezione,
per recarne conforto a quella fede
ch'è principio a la via di salvazione .
Later the Chosen Vessel travelled there,
to bring us back assurance of that faith
with which the way to our salvation starts.
Ma io perché venirvi? o chi 'l concede?
Io non Enea, io non Paulo sono:
me degno a ciò né io né altri 'l crede .
But why should I go there? Who sanctions it?
For I am not Aeneas, am not Paul;
nor I nor others think myself so worthy.
Per che, se del venire io m'abbandono,
temo che la venuta non sia folle.
Se' savio; intendi me' ch'i' non ragiono ».
Therefore, if I consent to start this journey,
I fear my venture may be wild and empty.
You're wise; you know far more than what I say."
E qual è quei che disvuol ciò che volle
e per novi pensier cangia proposta,
sì che dal cominciar tutto si tolle ,
And just as he who unwills what he wills
and shifts what he intends to seek new ends
so that he's drawn from what he had begun,
tal mi fec'io 'n quella oscura costa,
perché, pensando, consumai la 'mpresa
che fu nel cominciar cotanto tosta.
so was I in the midst of that dark land,
because, with all my thinking, I annulled
253
the task I had so quickly undertaken.
«S'i' ho ben la parola tua intesa»,
rispuose del magnanimo quell'ombra;
«l'anima tua è da viltade offesa ;
"If I have understood what you have said,"
replied the shade of that great-hearted one,
"your soul has been assailed by cowardice,
la qual molte fiate l'omo ingombra
sì che d'onrata impresa lo rivolve,
come falso veder bestia quand'ombra .
which often weighs so heavily on a mandistracting him from honorable trialsas phantoms frighten beasts when shadows fall.
Da questa tema acciò che tu ti solve,
dirotti perch'io venni e quel ch'io 'ntesi
nel primo punto che di te mi dolve .
That you may be delivered from this fear,
I'll tell you why I came and what I heard
when I first felt compassion for your pain.
Io era tra color che son sospesi,
e donna mi chiamò beata e bella,
tal che di comandare io la richiesi .
I was among those souls who are suspended;
a lady called to me, so blessed, so lovely
that I implored to serve at her command.
Lucevan li occhi suoi più che la stella;
e cominciommi a dir soave e piana,
con angelica voce, in sua favella :
254
Her eyes surpassed the splendor of the star's;
and she began to speak to me-so gently
and softly-with angelic voice. She said:
"O anima cortese mantoana,
di cui la fama ancor nel mondo dura,
e durerà quanto 'l mondo lontana ,
'O spirit of the courteous Mantuan,
whose fame is still a presence in the world
and shall endure as long as the world lasts,
l'amico mio, e non de la ventura,
ne la diserta piaggia è impedito
sì nel cammin, che volt'è per paura ;
my friend, who has not been the friend of fortune,
is hindered in his path along that lonely
hillside; he has been turned aside by terror.
e temo che non sia già sì smarrito,
ch'io mi sia tardi al soccorso levata,
per quel ch'i' ho di lui nel cielo udito .
From all that I have heard of him in Heaven,
he is, I fear, already so astray
that I have come to help him much too late.
Or movi, e con la tua parola ornata
e con ciò c'ha mestieri al suo campare
l'aiuta, sì ch'i' ne sia consolata .
Go now; with your persuasive word, with all
that is required to see that he escapes,
bring help to him, that I may be consoled.
255
I' son Beatrice che ti faccio andare;
vegno del loco ove tornar disio;
amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare .
For I am Beatrice who send you on;
I come from where I most long to return;
Love prompted me, that Love which makes me speak.
Quando sarò dinanzi al segnor mio,
di te mi loderò sovente a lui".
Tacette allora, e poi comincia' io :
When once again I stand before my Lord,
then I shall often let Him hear your praises.'
Now Beatrice was silent. I began:
"O donna di virtù, sola per cui
l'umana spezie eccede ogne contento
di quel ciel c'ha minor li cerchi sui ,
'O Lady of virtue, the sole reason why
the human race surpasses all that lies
beneath the heaven with the smallest spheres,
tanto m'aggrada il tuo comandamento,
che l'ubidir, se già fosse, m'è tardi;
più non t'è uo' ch'aprirmi il tuo talento .
so welcome is your wish, that even if
it were already done, it would seem tardy;
all you need do is let me know your will.
Ma dimmi la cagion che non ti guardi
de lo scender qua giuso in questo centro
de l'ampio loco ove tornar tu ardi ".
But tell me why you have not been more prudentdescending to this center, moving from
256
that spacious place where you long to return?'
"Da che tu vuo' saver cotanto a dentro,
dirotti brievemente", mi rispuose,
"perch'io non temo di venir qua entro .
'Because you want to fathom things so deeply,
I now shall tell you promptly,' she replied,
'why I am not afraid to enter here.
Temer si dee di sole quelle cose
c'hanno potenza di fare altrui male;
de l'altre no, ché non son paurose .
One ought to be afraid of nothing other
than things possessed of power to do us harm,
but things innocuous need not be feared.
I' son fatta da Dio, sua mercé, tale,
che la vostra miseria non mi tange,
né fiamma d'esto incendio non m'assale .
God, in His graciousness, has made me so
that this, your misery, cannot touch me;
I can withstand the fires flaming here.
Donna è gentil nel ciel che si compiange
di questo 'mpedimento ov'io ti mando,
sì che duro giudicio là sù frange .
In Heaven there's a gentle lady-one
who weeps for the distress toward which I send you,
so that stern judgment up above is shattered.
Questa chiese Lucia in suo dimando
e disse: - Or ha bisogno il tuo fedele
di te, e io a te lo raccomando -.
257
And it was she who called upon Lucia,
requesting of her: "Now your faithful one
has need of you, and I commend him to you."
Lucia, nimica di ciascun crudele,
si mosse, e venne al loco dov'i' era,
che mi sedea con l'antica Rachele .
Lucia, enemy of every cruelty,
arose and made her way to where I was,
sitting beside the venerable Rachel.
Disse: - Beatrice, loda di Dio vera,
ché non soccorri quei che t'amò tanto,
ch'uscì per te de la volgare schiera ?
She said: "You, Beatrice, true praise of God,
why have you not helped him who loves you so
that-for your sake-he's left the vulgar crowd?
non odi tu la pieta del suo pianto?
non vedi tu la morte che 'l combatte
su la fiumana ove 'l mar non ha vanto ? Do you not hear the anguish in his cry?
Do you not see the death he wars against
upon that river ruthless as the sea?"
Al mondo non fur mai persone ratte
a far lor pro o a fuggir lor danno,
com'io, dopo cotai parole fatte,
No one within this world has ever been
so quick to seek his good or flee his harm
as I-when she had finished speaking thusvenni qua giù del mio beato scanno,
258
fidandomi del tuo parlare onesto,
ch'onora te e quei ch'udito l'hanno ".
to come below, down from my blessed station;
I trusted in your honest utterance,
which honors you and those who've listened to you.'
Poscia che m'ebbe ragionato questo,
li occhi lucenti lagrimando volse;
per che mi fece del venir più presto ;
When she had finished with her words to me,
she turned aside her gleaming, tearful eyes,
which only made me hurry all the more.
e venni a te così com'ella volse;
d'inanzi a quella fiera ti levai
che del bel monte il corto andar ti tolse .
And, just as she had wished, I came to you:
I snatched you from the path of the fierce beast
that barred the shortest way up the fair mountain.
Dunque: che è? perché, perché restai?
perché tanta viltà nel core allette?
perché ardire e franchezza non hai ?
What is it then? Why, why do you resist?
Why does your heart host so much cowardice?
Where are your daring and your openness
poscia che tai tre donne benedette
curan di te ne la corte del cielo,
e 'l mio parlar tanto ben ti promette? ».
as long as there are three such blessed women
concerned for you within the court of Heaven
and my words promise you so great a good?"
259
Quali fioretti dal notturno gelo
chinati e chiusi, poi che 'l sol li 'mbianca
si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo ,
As little flowers, which the chill of night
has bent and huddled, when the white sun strikes
grow straight and open fully on their stems,
tal mi fec'io di mia virtude stanca,
e tanto buono ardire al cor mi corse,
ch'i' cominciai come persona franca :
so did I, too, with my exhausted force;
and such warm daring rushed into my heart
that I-as one who has been freed-began:
«Oh pietosa colei che mi soccorse!
e te cortese ch'ubidisti tosto
a le vere parole che ti porse !
"O she, compassionate, who has helped me!
And you who, courteous, obeyed so quickly
the true words that she had addressed to you!
Tu m'hai con disiderio il cor disposto
sì al venir con le parole tue,
ch'i' son tornato nel primo proposto .
You, with your words, have so disposed my heart
to longing for this journey-I return
to what I was at first prepared to do.
Or va, ch'un sol volere è d'ambedue:
tu duca, tu segnore, e tu maestro».
Così li dissi; e poi che mosso fue ,
260
Now go; a single will fills both of us:
you are my guide, my governor, my master."
These were my words to him; when he advanced
intrai per lo cammino alto e silvestro .
I entered on the steep and savage path.
~ Dante Alighieri,#NFDB
1905 Integral Yoga
877 Poetry
245 Occultism
242 Philosophy
171 Fiction
155 Christianity
114 Mysticism
107 Yoga
79 Psychology
37 Philsophy
32 Science
24 Hinduism
20 Education
16 Sufism
16 Integral Theory
15 Mythology
14 Theosophy
8 Cybernetics
7 Kabbalah
7 Buddhism
6 Baha i Faith
5 Zen
1 Thelema
1 Alchemy
1060 The Mother
905 Sri Aurobindo
703 Satprem
317 Nolini Kanta Gupta
113 Walt Whitman
102 William Wordsworth
101 H P Lovecraft
101 Aleister Crowley
79 Friedrich Nietzsche
77 Percy Bysshe Shelley
77 Carl Jung
65 James George Frazer
59 Rabindranath Tagore
58 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
56 Sri Ramakrishna
53 William Butler Yeats
48 Robert Browning
38 Plotinus
38 John Keats
37 Ralph Waldo Emerson
34 Saint Augustine of Hippo
33 Anonymous
28 Swami Krishnananda
26 Friedrich Schiller
26 A B Purani
25 Li Bai
23 Rainer Maria Rilke
22 Saint Teresa of Avila
22 Rudolf Steiner
22 Lucretius
22 Jorge Luis Borges
21 Saint John of Climacus
19 Swami Vivekananda
19 Aldous Huxley
17 Edgar Allan Poe
15 Vyasa
15 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
15 Franz Bardon
14 Nirodbaran
12 Plato
10 Peter J Carroll
10 George Van Vrekhem
9 Sri Ramana Maharshi
8 Norbert Wiener
8 Lewis Carroll
8 Joseph Campbell
7 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
7 Ovid
7 Henry David Thoreau
7 Baha u llah
6 Paul Richard
6 Jordan Peterson
6 Jalaluddin Rumi
6 Ibn Arabi
5 Thubten Chodron
5 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
5 Saint Hildegard von Bingen
5 Ramprasad
5 Bokar Rinpoche
5 Al-Ghazali
4 Yosa Buson
4 Taigu Ryokan
4 Patanjali
4 Kabir
4 Aristotle
4 Alice Bailey
3 R Buckminster Fuller
3 Ken Wilber
3 Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia
3 Hafiz
2 William Blake
2 Symeon the New Theologian
2 Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
2 Omar Khayyam
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Lalla
2 Kahlil Gibran
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Jean Gebser
2 Italo Calvino
2 Genpo Roshi
2 Bulleh Shah
303 Record of Yoga
126 The Synthesis Of Yoga
105 Whitman - Poems
102 Wordsworth - Poems
101 Lovecraft - Poems
77 Shelley - Poems
72 Prayers And Meditations
71 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
71 Agenda Vol 01
65 The Golden Bough
63 Magick Without Tears
62 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
61 Agenda Vol 08
59 Agenda Vol 10
59 Agenda Vol 04
57 Tagore - Poems
57 Agenda Vol 12
55 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
55 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
53 Yeats - Poems
52 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
52 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
52 Agenda Vol 03
50 The Life Divine
48 Browning - Poems
47 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
47 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
47 Agenda Vol 09
46 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
46 Agenda Vol 13
46 Agenda Vol 02
45 Letters On Yoga IV
45 Agenda Vol 06
44 Agenda Vol 07
44 Agenda Vol 05
39 Letters On Yoga II
39 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
38 Keats - Poems
37 Emerson - Poems
37 Agenda Vol 11
36 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
35 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
33 Liber ABA
32 Savitri
32 Questions And Answers 1956
32 Mysterium Coniunctionis
28 The Study and Practice of Yoga
28 Questions And Answers 1955
27 Words Of Long Ago
27 Letters On Yoga I
27 Essays On The Gita
26 Schiller - Poems
26 Questions And Answers 1953
26 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
25 Questions And Answers 1954
25 Li Bai - Poems
25 Letters On Yoga III
24 The Bible
23 Rilke - Poems
22 Of The Nature Of Things
22 City of God
21 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
21 The Human Cycle
20 The Future of Man
20 The Divine Comedy
20 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
19 The Practice of Psycho therapy
19 The Perennial Philosophy
19 On Education
18 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
17 On the Way to Supermanhood
17 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
17 Collected Poems
17 Anonymous - Poems
16 Poe - Poems
16 Labyrinths
16 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
15 Vishnu Purana
15 Letters On Poetry And Art
15 Essays Divine And Human
14 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
14 The Phenomenon of Man
14 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
13 Words Of The Mother II
13 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
13 Some Answers From The Mother
13 Faust
12 The Way of Perfection
12 The Secret Of The Veda
12 The Practice of Magical Evocation
12 Talks
12 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
12 Let Me Explain
12 Hymn of the Universe
12 Aion
11 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
10 Vedic and Philological Studies
10 Theosophy
10 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
10 Preparing for the Miraculous
10 Liber Null
10 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
9 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
9 Raja-Yoga
9 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
9 Isha Upanishad
9 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
9 5.1.01 - Ilion
8 Twilight of the Idols
8 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
8 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
8 Cybernetics
8 Crowley - Poems
8 Alice in Wonderland
7 Words Of The Mother III
7 Walden
7 The Blue Cliff Records
7 Song of Myself
7 Metamorphoses
7 Kena and Other Upanishads
7 General Principles of Kabbalah
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Red Book Liber Novus
6 The Integral Yoga
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
6 Maps of Meaning
6 Bhakti-Yoga
6 Arabi - Poems
5 The Problems of Philosophy
5 The Alchemy of Happiness
5 Tara - The Feminine Divine
5 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
5 Borges - Poems
4 Words Of The Mother I
4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
4 Songs of Kabir
4 Ryokan - Poems
4 Poetics
4 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
4 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
4 Amrita Gita
3 Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit
3 The Book of Certitude
3 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Rumi - Poems
3 Initiation Into Hermetics
3 Hafiz - Poems
3 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
2 The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
2 The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
2 The Prophet
2 The Lotus Sutra
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 The Essentials of Education
2 The Castle of Crossed Destinies
2 Symposium
2 Selected Fictions
2 Goethe - Poems
2 Dark Night of the Soul
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 for 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 G overnment of India have given us a grant to meet the cost of publication of this volume.
13 January 1972
0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This AGENDA ... One day, another species among men will pore over this fabulous document as over the tumultuous drama that must have surrounded the birth of the first man among the hostile hordes of a great, delirious Paleozoic. A first man is the dangerous contradiction of a certain simian logic, a threat to the established order that so genteelly ran about amid the high, indefeasible ferns - and to begin with, it does not even know that it is a man. It wonders, indeed, what it is. Even to itself it is strange, distressing. It does not even know how to climb trees any longer in its usual way
- and it is terribly disturbing for all those who still climb trees in the old, millennial way. Perhaps it is even a heresy. Unless it is some cerebral disorder? A first man in his little clearing had to have a great deal of courage. Even this little clearing was no longer so sure. A first man is a perpetual question. What am I, then, in the midst of all that? And where is my law? What is the law? And what if there were no more laws? ... It is terrifying. Mathematics - out of order. Astronomy and biology, too, are beginning to respond to mysterious influences. A tiny point huddled in the center of the world's great clearing. But what is all this, what if I were 'mad'? And then, claws all around, a lot of claws against this uncommon creature. A first man ... is very much alone. He is quite unbearable for the pre-human 'reason.' And the surrounding tribes growled like red monkies in the twilight of Guiana.
--
To be a man after redisc overing a million years was mysteriously like being something still other than man, a strange, unfinished possibility that could also be all kinds of other things. It was not in the dictionary, it was fluid and boundless - it had become a man through habit, but in truth, it was formidably virgin, as if all the old laws belonged to laggard barbarians. Then other moons began whirring through the skies to the cry of macaws at sunset, another rhythm was born that was strangely in tune with the rhythm of all, making one single flow of the world, and there we went, lightly, as if the body had never had any weight other than that of our human thought; and the stars were so near, even the giant airplanes roaring overhead seemed vain artifices beneath smiling galaxies. A man was the overwhelming Possible. He was even the great disc overer of the Possible.
Never had this precarious invention had any other aim through millions of species than to disc over that which surpassed his own species, perhaps the means to change his species - a light and lawless species. After redisc overing a million years in the great, rhythmic night, a man was still something to be invented. It was the invention of himself, where all was not yet said and done.
--
'Are you conscious of your ceils?' She asked us a short time after the little operation of spiritual demolition She had undergone. 'No? Well, become conscious of your cells, and you will see that it gives TERRESTRIAL results.' To become conscious of one's cells? ... It was a far more radical operation than crossing the Maroni with a machete in hand, for after all, trees and lianas can be cut, but what cannot be so easily unc overed are the grandfa ther and the grandmo ther and the whole atavistic pack, not to mention the animal and plant and mineral layers that form a teeming humus over this single pure little cell beneath its millennial genetic program. The grandfa thers and grandmo thers grow back again like crabgrass, along with all the old habits of being hungry, afraid, falling ill, fearing the worst, hoping for the best, which is still the best of an old mortal habit. All this is not uprooted nor entrapped as easily as celestial 'liberations,' which leave the teeming humus in peace and the body to its usual decomposition. She had come to hew a path through all that. She was the Ancient One of evolution who had come to make a new cleft in the old, tedious habit of being a man. She did not like tedious repetitions, She was the adventuress par excellence - the adventuress of the earth. She was wrenching out for man the great Possible that was already beating there, in his primeval clearing, which he believed he had momentarily trapped with a few machines.
She was uprooting a new Matter, free, free from the habit of inexorably being a man who repeats himself ad infinitum with a few impr ovements in the way of organ transplants or monetary exchanges. In fact, She was there to disc over what would happen after materialism and after spiritualism, these prodigal twin brothers. Because Materialism is dying in the West for the same reason that Spiritualism is dying in the East: it is the hour of the new species. Man needs to awaken, not only from his demons but also from his gods. A new Matter, yes, like a new Spirit, yes, because we still know neither one nor the other. It is the hour when Science, like Spirituality, at the end of their roads, must disc over what Matter TRULY is, for it is really there that a Spirit as yet unknown to us is to be found. It is a time when all the 'isms' of the old species are dying: 'The age of
--
Day after day, for seventeen years, She sat with us to tell us of her impossible odyssey. Ah, how well we now understand why She needed such an 'outlaw' and an incorrigible heretic like us to comprehend a little bit of her impossible odyssey into 'nothing.' And how well we now understand her infinite patience with us, despite all our revolts, which ultimately were only the revolts of the old species against itself. The final revolt. 'It is not a revolt against the British g overnment which any one can easily do. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature!' Sri Aurobindo had proclaimed fifty years earlier. She listened to our grievances, we went away and we returned. We wanted no more of it and we wanted still more. It was infernal and sublime, impossible and the sole possibility in this old, asphyxiating world. It was the only place one could go to in this barbedwired, mechanized world, where Cincinnati is just as crowded and polluted as Hong Kong. The new species is the last free place in the general Prison. It is the last hope for the earth. How we listened to her little faltering voice that seemed to return from afar, afar, after having crossed spaces and seas of the mind to let its little drops of pure, crystalline words fall upon us, words that make you see. We listened to the future, we touched the other thing. It was incomprehensible and yet filled with another comprehension. It eluded us on all sides, and yet it was dazzlingly obvious. The 'other species' was really radically other, and yet it was vibrating within, absolutely recognizable, as if it were THAT we had been seeking from age to age, THAT we had been invoking through all our illuminations, one after another, in Thebes as in Eleusis as everywhere we have toiled and grieved in the skin of a man. It was for THAT we were here, for that supreme Possible in the skin of a man at last. And then her voice grew more and more frail, her breath began gasping as though She had to traverse greater and greater distances to meet us. She was so alone to beat against the walls of the old prison. Many claws were out all around. Oh, we would so quickly have cut ourself free from all this fiasco to fly away with Her into the world's future. She was so tiny, stooped over, as if crushed beneath the 'spiritual' burden that all the old surrounding species kept heaping upon her. They didn't believe, no. For them, She was ninety-five years old + so many days. Can someone become a new species all alone? They even grumbled at Her: they had had enough of this unbearable Ray that was bringing their sordid affairs into the daylight. The Ashram was slowly closing over Her. The old world wanted to make a new, golden little Church, nice and quiet. No, no one wanted TO
BECOME. To worship was so much easier. And then they bury you, solemnly, and the matter is settled - the case is closed: now, no one need bother any more except to print some photographic haloes for the pilgrims to this brisk little business. But they are mistaken. The real business will take place without them, the new species will fly up in their faces - it is already flying in the face of the earth, despite all its isms in black and white; it is exploding through all the pores of this battered old earth, which has had enough of shams - whether illusory little heavens or barbarous little machines.
--
This AGENDA is not even a path: it is a light little vibration that seizes you at any turning - and then, there it is, you are IN IT. 'Another world in the world,' She said. One has to catch the light little vibration, one has to flow with it, in a nothing that is like the only something in the midst of this great debacle. At the beginning of things, when still nothing was FIXED, when there was not yet this habit of the pelican or the kangaroo or the chimpanzee or the XXth century biologist, there was a little pulsation that beat and beat - a delightful dizziness, a joy in the world's great adventure; a little never-imprisoned spark that has kept on beating from species to species, but as if it were always eluding us, as if it were always over there, over there - as if it were something to become,
something to be played forever as the one great game of the world; a who-knows-what that left this sprig of a pensive man in the middle of a clearing; a little 'something' that beats, beats, that keeps on breathing beneath every skin that has ever been put on it - like our deepest breath, our lightest air, our air of nothing - and it keeps on going, it keeps on going. We must catch the light little breath, the little pulsation of nothing. Then suddenly, on the threshold of our clearing of concrete, our head starts spinning incurably, our eyes blink into something else, and all is different, and all seems surcharged with meaning and with life, as though we had never lived until that very minute.
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Integral Yoga
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge ab ove all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, everything, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 N ovember 1967
00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Mystics all over the world and in all ages have clothed their sayings in pr overbs and parables, in figures and symbols. To speak in symbols seems to be in their very nature; it is their characteristic manner, their inevitable style. Let us see what is the reason behind it. But first who are the Mystics? They are those who are in touch with supra-sensual things, whose experiences are of a world different from the common physical world, the world of the mind and the senses.
These other worlds are constituted in other ways than ours. Their contents are different and the laws that obtain there are also different. It would be a gross blunder to attempt a chart of any of these other systems, to use an Einsteinian term, with the measures and conventions of the system to which our external waking consciousness belongs. For, there "the sun shines not, nor the moon, nor the stars, neither these lightnings nor this fire." The difficulty is further enhanced by the fact that there are very many unseen worlds and they all differ from the seen and from one another in manner and degree. Thus, for example, the Upanishads speak of the swapna, the suupta, and the turya, domains beyond the jgrat which is that where the rational being with its mind and senses lives and m oves. And there are other systems and other ways in which systems exist, and they are practically innumerable.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The third in the line of ascension is the region of Varuna and the Adityas, that is to say, of the large Mind and its lightsperhaps it can be connected with Tantric Ajnachakra. The fourth is the domain of Soma and the Marutsthis seems to be the inner heart, the fount of delight and keen and sweeping aspirations the Anahata of the Tantras. The fifth is the region of the crown of the head, the domain of Brahma and the Sadhyas: it is the overmind status from where comes the descending inflatus, the creative Maya of Brahma. And when you go beyond, you pass into the ultimate status of the Sun, the reality absolute, the Transcendent which is indescribable, unseizable, indeterminate, indeterminable, incommensurable; and once there, one never returns, neverna ca punarvartate na ca punarvartate.
VIII. How Many Gods?
--
The first boon regards the individual, that is to say, the individual identity and integrity. It asks for the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death brings about. Death, of course, means the dissolution of the body, but it represents also dissolution pure and simple. Indeed death is a process which does not stop with the physical phenomenon, but continues even after; for 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 for the aspiring mortalfor, it is said, the body is the first instrument for the working out of one's life ideal. But man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death lords it over. That is the divine world, the Heaven of the immortals, beyond death and beyond sorrow and grief. It is the hearth secreted in the inner heart where burns the Divine Fire, the God of Life Everlasting. And this is the nodus that binds together the threefold status of the manifested existence, the body, the life and the mind. This triplicity is the structure of name and form built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple cord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within the individual and within the world; he is the Immanent Divine, the cosmic godhead that holds together and marshals all the elements and components, all the principles that make up the manifest universe. He it is that has entered into the world and created facets of his own reality in multiple forms: and it is he that lies secret in the human being as the immortal soul through all its adventure of life and death in the series of incarnations in terrestrial evolution. The adoration and realisation of this Immanent Divinity, the worship of Agni taught by Yama in the second boon, consists in the triple sacrifice, the triple work, the triple union in the triple status of the physical, the vital and the mental consciousness, the mastery of which leads one to the other shore, the abode of perennial existence where the human soul enjoys its eternity and unending continuity in cosmic life. Therefore, Agni, the master of the psychic being, is called jtaveds, he who knows the births, all the transmigrations from life to life.
The third boon is the secret of secrets, for it is the knowledge and realisation of Transcendence that is sought here. Beyond the individual lies the universal; is there anything beyond the universal? The release of the individual into the cosmic existence gives him the griefless life eternal: can the cosmos be rolled up and flung into something beyond? What would be the nature of that thing? What is there outside creation, outside manifestation, outside Maya, to use a latter day term? Is there existence or non-existence (utter dissolution or extinctionDeath in his supreme and absolute status)? King Yama did not choose to answer immediately and even endeavoured to dissuade Nachiketas from pursuing the question over which people were confounded, as he said. Evidently it was a much discussed problem in those days. Buddha was asked the same question and he evaded it, saying that the pragmatic man should attend to practical and immediate realities and not, waste time and energy in discussing things ultimate and beyond that have hardly any relation to the present and the actual.
But Yama did answer and unveil the mystery and impart the supreme secret knowledge the knowledge of the Transcendent Brahman: it is out of the transcendent reality that the immanent deity takes his birth. Hence the Divine Fire, the Lord of creation and the Inner Mastersarvabhtntartm, antarymis called brahmajam, born of the Brahman. Yama teaches the process of transcendence. Apart from the knowledge and experience first of the individual and then of the cosmic Brahman, there is a definite line along which the human consciousness (or unconsciousness, as it is at present) is to ascend and evolve. The first step is to learn to distinguish between the Good and the Pleasurable (reya and preya). The line of pleasure leads to the external, the superficial, the false: while the other path leads towards the inner and the higher truth. So the second step is the gradual withdrawal of the consciousness from the physical and the sensual and even the mental preoccupation and focussing it upon what is certain and permanent. In the midst of the death-ridden consciousness in the heart of all that is unstable and fleetingone has to look for Agni, the eternal godhead, the Immortal in mortality, the Timeless in time through whom lies the passage to Immortality beyond Time.
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And what else is the true character, the soul of beauty than light and delight? "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." And a thing of joy is a thing of light. Joy is the radiance rippling over a thing of beauty. Beauty is always radiant: the charm, the l oveliness of an object is but the glow of light that it emanates. And it would not be a very incorrect mensuration to measure the degree of beauty by the degree of light radiated. The diamond is not only a thing of value, but a thing of beauty also, because of the concentrated and undimmed light that it enshrines within itself. A dark, dull and dismal thing, devoid of interest and attraction becomes aesthetically precious and significant as soon as the artist presents it in terms of the values of light. The entire art of painting is nothing but the expression of beauty, in and through the modalities of light.
And where there is light, there is cheer and joy. Rasamaya and jyotirmayaare thus the two conjoint characteristics fundamental to the nature of the ultimate reality. Sometimes these two are named as the 'solar and the lunar aspect. The solar aspect refers obviously to the Light, that is to say, to the Truth; the lunar aspect refers to the rasa (Soma), to Immortality, to Beauty proper,
--
like the sky hard to cross over,
or,
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
over and over their findings have been confirmed, proving the Qabalah contains within it not only the elements of the science itself but the method with which to pursue it.
When planning to visit a foreign 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.
--
The Qabalah reveals the nature of certain physical and psychological phenomena. Once these are apprehended, understood and correlated, the student can use the principles of Magic to exercise control over life's conditions and circumstances not otherwise possible. In short. Magic provides the practical application of the theories supplied by the Qabalah.
It serves yet another vital function. In addition to the advantages to be gained from its philosophical application, the ancients disc overed a very practical use for the literal Qabalah.
--
Some of the passages in the book force 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 for Judaism as it does for 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 contemporary faiths is over; they have been more 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 unfortunate. The religion itself is worn out and indeed is dying.
The Qabalah has nothing to do with any of them. Attempts on the part of cultish-partisans to impart higher mystical meanings, through the Qabalah, etc., to their now sterile faiths is futile, and will be seen as such by the younger generation. They, the flower and l ove children, will have none of this nonsense.
I felt this a long time ago, as I still do, but even more so. The only way to explain the partisan Jewish attitude demonstrated in some small sections of the book can readily be explained. I had been reading some writings of Arthur Edward Waite, and some of his pomposity and turgidity stuck to my mantle. I disliked his patronising Christian attitude, and so swung all the way over to the other side of the pendulum. Actually, neither faith is particularly important in this day and age. I must be careful never to read Waite again before embarking upon literary work of my own.
Much knowledge obtained by the ancients through the use of the Qabalah has been supported by disc overies of modern scientists- anthropologists, astronomers, psychiatrists, et al. Learned Qabalists for hundreds of years have been aware of what the psychiatrist has only disc overed in the last few decades-that man's concept of himself, his deities and the Universe is a constantly evolving process, changing as man himself evolves on a higher spiral. But the roots of his concepts are buried in a race-consciousness that antedated Neanderthal man by uncounted aeons of time.
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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 format 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 opportunity to thank him, overtly, wherever he may now be.
By the middle of 1926 I had become aware of the work of Aleister Crowley, for 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 for several years as his secretary, having joined him in Paris on October 12, 1928, a memorable day in my life.
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The last chapter of A Garden deals with the Way of Return. It used almost entirely Crowley's concept of the Path as described in his superb essay "One Star in Sight." In addition to this, I borrowed extensively from Lawrence's Apropos. Somehow, they all fitted together very nicely. In time, all these variegated notes were incorporated into the text without acknowledgment, an oversight which I now feel sure would be forgiven, since I was only twenty-four at the time.
Some modern Nature-worshippers and members of the newly-washed and redeemed witch-cult have complimented me on this closing chapter which I entitled 'The Ladder." I am pleased about this. For a very long time I was not at all familiar with the topic of witchcraft. I had avoided it entirely, not being attracted to its literature in any way. In fact, I only became slightly conversant with its theme and literature just a few years ago, after reading "The Anatomy of Eve" written by Dr. Leopold Stein, a Jungian analyst. In the middle of his study of four cases, he included a most informative chapter on the subject. This served to stimulate me to wider reading in that area.
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
Indochina, as it is an art and science that has traveled consistently westward. over
3,000 years ago the Greeks made further magnificent contributions to geometry,
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of world wealth. Ships could carry cargoes that overland caravans could not.
000.106 In 1600 the East India Company was founded as a private enterprise by
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and the low overall displacement weights involved, made possible for humans to
design and fabricate air-enclosing wooden vessels whose structure and space
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
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. For the first time the boy realized that life on earth was impermanent. Unobserved by others, he began to slip into the mango orchard or into one of the cremation grounds, and he spent hours absorbed in his own thoughts. He also became more helpful to his mother in the discharge of her household duties. He gave more attention to reading and hearing the religious stories recorded in the Puranas. And he became interested in the wandering monks and pious pilgrims who would stop at Kamarpukur on their way to Puri. These holy men, the custodians of India's spiritual heritage and the living witnesses of the ideal of renunciation of the world and all-absorbing l ove of God, entertained the little boy with stories from the Hindu epics, stories of saints and prophets, and also stories of their own adventures. He, on his part, fetched their water and fuel and
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corners 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 worship is performed in the temples. Three sides of the paved courtyard — all except the west — are lined with rooms set apart for kitchens, store-rooms, dining-rooms, and quarters for the temple staff and guests. The chamber in the northwest angle, just beyond the last of the Siva temples, is of special interest to us; for here Sri Ramakrishna was to spend a considerable part of his life. To the west of this chamber is a semicircular porch overlooking the river. In front of the porch runs a foot-path, north and south, and beyond the path is a large garden and, below the garden, the Ganges. The orchard to the north of the buildings contains the Panchavati, the banyan, and the bel-tree, associated with Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual practices. Outside and to the north of the temple compound proper is the kuthi, or bungalow, used by members of Rani Rasmani's family visiting the garden. And north of the temple garden, separated from it by a high wall, is a powder-magazine belonging to the British G overnment.
--- SIVA
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Sri Ramakrishna — henceforth 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 appr ove of Ramkumar's working for 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, according 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; ab ove 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 short 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 worship in the Kali temple. But Sri Ramakrishna l oved his freedom and was indifferent to any worldly 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 for the ornaments and jewelry of the temple. Mathur had to wait for a suitable occasion.
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Hindu priests are thoroughly acquainted with the rites of worship, but few of them are aware of their underlying significance. They m ove their hands and limbs mechanically, in obedience to the letter of the scriptures, and repeat the holy mantras like parrots. But from the very beginning the inner meaning of these rites was revealed to Sri Ramakrishna. As he sat facing the image, a strange transformation came over his mind. While going through the prescribed ceremonies, he would actually find himself encircled by a wall of fire protecting him and the place of worship from unspiritual vibrations, or he would feel the rising of the mystic Kundalini through the different centres of the body. The glow on his face, his deep absorption, and the intense atmosphere of the temple impressed everyone who saw him worship the Deity.
Ramkumar wanted Sri Ramakrishna to learn the intricate rituals of the worship of Kali. To become a priest of Kali one must undergo a special form of initiation from a qualified guru, and for Sri Ramakrishna a suitable brahmin was found. But no sooner did the brahmin speak the holy word in his ear than Sri Ramakrishna, overwhelmed with emotion, uttered a loud cry and plunged into deep concentration.
Mathur begged Sri Ramakrishna to take charge of the worship in the Kali temple. The young priest pleaded his incompetence and his ignorance of the scriptures. Mathur insisted that devotion and sincerity would more than compensate for any lack of formal knowledge and make the Divine Mother manifest Herself through the image. In the end, Sri Ramakrishna had to yield to Mathur's request. He became the priest of Kali.
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But he did not have to wait very long. He has thus described his first vision of the Mother: "I felt as if my heart were being squeezed like a wet towel. I was overpowered with a great restlessness and a fear that it might not be my lot to realize Her in this life. I could not bear the separation from Her any longer. Life seemed to be not worth living. Suddenly my glance fell on the sword that was kept in the Mother's temple. I determined to put an end to my life. When I jumped up like a madman and seized it, suddenly the blessed Mother revealed Herself. The buildings with their different parts, the temple, and everything else vanished from my sight, leaving no trace whatsoever, and in their stead I saw a limitless, infinite, effulgent Ocean of Consciousness. As far as the eye could see, the shining billows were madly rushing at me from all sides with a terrific noise, to swallow me up! I was panting for breath. I was caught in the rush
and collapsed, unconscious. What was happening in the outside world I did not know; but within me there was a steady flow of undiluted bliss, altogether new, and I felt the presence of the Divine Mother." On his lips when he regained consciousness of the world was the word "Mother".
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Hardly had he crossed the threshold of the Kali temple when he found himself again in the whirlwind. His madness reappeared tenfold. The same meditation and prayer, the same ecstatic moods, the same burning sensation, the same weeping, the same sleeplessness, the same indifference to the body and the outside world, the same divine delirium. He subjected himself to fresh disciplines in order to eradicate greed and lust, the two great impediments to spiritual progress. With a rupee in one hand and some earth in the other, he would reflect on the comparative value of these two for the realization of God, and finding them equally worthless he would toss them, with equal indifference, into the Ganges. Women he regarded as the manifestations of the Divine Mother. Never even in a dream did he feel the impulses of lust. And to root out of his mind the idea of caste superiority, he cleaned a pariahs house with his long and neglected hair. When he would sit in meditation, birds would perch on his head and peck in his hair for grains of food. Snakes would crawl over his body, and neither would be aware of the other. Sleep left him altogether. Day and night, visions flitted before him. He saw the sannyasi who had previously killed the "sinner" in him again coming out of his body, threatening him with the trident, and ordering him to concentrate on God. Or the same sannyasi would visit distant places, following a luminous path, and bring him reports of what was happening there. Sri Ramakrishna used to say later that in the case of an advanced devotee the mind itself becomes the guru, living and moving like an embodied being.
Rani Rasmani, the foundress of the temple garden, passed away in 1861. After her death her son-in-law Mathur became the sole executor of the estate. He placed himself and his resources at the disposal of Sri Ramakrishna and began to look after his physical comfort. Sri Ramakrishna later spoke of him as one of his five "suppliers of stores" appointed by the Divine Mother. 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 important part in Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual unfoldment. Born in East Bengal, she was an adept in the Tantrik and Vaishnava methods of worship. 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 visitor 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 world is mad. Some are mad for money, some for creature comforts, some for name and fame; and you are mad for 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 l ove. She told him that this extreme exaltation had been described as manifesting itself through nineteen physical symptoms, including the shedding of tears, a tremor of the body, horripilation, perspiration, and a burning sensation. The Bhakti scriptures, she declared, had recorded only two instances of the experience, namely, those of Sri Radha and Sri Chaitanya.
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Thus the insane priest was by verdict of the great scholars of the day proclaimed a Divine Incarnation. His visions were not the result of an over-heated brain; they had precedent in spiritual history. And how did the proclamation affect Sri Ramakrishna himself? He remained the simple child of the Mother that he had been since the first day of his life. Years later, when two of his householder disciples openly spoke of him as a Divine Incarnation and the matter was reported to him, he said with a touch of sarcasm: "Do they think they will enhance my glory that way? One of them is an actor on the stage and the other a physician. What do they know about Incarnations? Why, years ago pundits like Gauri and Vaishnavcharan declared me to be an Avatar. They were great scholars and knew what they said. But that did not make any change in my mind."
Sri Ramakrishna was a learner all his life. He often used to quote a pr overb to his disciples: "Friend, the more I live the more I learn." When the excitement created by the Brahmani's declaration was over, he set himself to the task of practising spiritual disciplines according to the traditional methods laid down in the Tantra and Vaishnava scriptures. Hitherto he had pursued his spiritual ideal according to the promptings of his own mind and heart. Now he accepted the Brahmani as his guru and set foot on the traditional highways.
--- TANTRA
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Sri Ramakrishna set himself to the task of practising the disciplines of Tantra; and at the bidding of the Divine Mother Herself he accepted the Brahmani as his guru. He performed profound and delicate ceremonies in the Panchavati and under the bel-tree at the northern extremity of the temple compound. He practised all the disciplines of the sixty-four principal Tantra books, and it took him never more than three days to achieve the result promised in any one of them. After the observance of a few preliminary rites, he would be overwhelmed with a strange divine fervour and would go into samadhi, where his mind would dwell in exaltation. Evil ceased to exist for him. The word "carnal" lost its meaning. The whole world and everything in it appeared as the lila, the sport, of Siva and Sakti. He beheld held everywhere manifest the power and beauty of the Mother; the whole world, animate and inanimate, appeared to him as pervaded with Chit, Consciousness, and with Ananda, Bliss.
He saw in a vision the Ultimate Cause of the universe as a huge luminous triangle giving birth every moment to an infinite number of worlds. He heard the Anahata Sabda, the great sound Om, of which the innumerable sounds of the universe are only so many echoes. He acquired the eight supernatural powers of yoga, which make a man almost omnipotent, and these he spurned as of no value whatsoever to the Spirit. He had a vision of the divine Maya, the inscrutable Power of God, by which the universe is created and sustained, and into which it is finally absorbed. In this vision he saw a woman of exquisite beauty, about to become a mother, emerging from the Ganges and slowly approaching the Panchavati. Presently she gave birth to a child and began to nurse it tenderly. A moment later she assumed a terrible aspect, seized the child with her grim jaws, and crushed it. Swallowing it, she re-entered the waters of the Ganges.
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On the appointed day, in the small hours of the morning, a fire was lighted in the Panchavati. Totapuri and Sri Ramakrishna sat before it. The flame played on their faces. "Ramakrishna was a small brown man with a short beard and beautiful eyes, long dark eyes, full of light, obliquely set and slightly veiled, never very wide open, but seeing half-closed a great distance both outwardly and inwardly. His mouth was open over his white teeth in a bewitching smile, at once affectionate and mischievous. Of medium height, he was thin to emaciation and extremely delicate. His temperament was high-strung, for he was supersensitive to all the winds of joy and sorrow, both moral and physical. He was indeed a living reflection of all that happened before the mirror of his eyes, a two-sided mirror, turned both out and in." (Romain Rolland, Prophets of the New India, pp. 38-9.) Facing him, the other rose like a rock. He was very tall and robust, a sturdy and tough oak. His constitution and mind were of iron. He was the strong leader of men.
In the burning flame before him Sri Ramakrishna performed the rituals of destroying his attachment to relatives, friends, body, mind, sense-organs, ego, and the world. The leaping flame swallowed it all, making the initiate free and pure. The sacred thread and the tuft of hair were consigned to the fire, completing his severance from caste, sex, and society. Last of all he burnt in that fire, with all that is holy as his witness, his desire for enjoyment here and hereafter. He uttered the sacred mantras giving assurance of safety and fearlessness to all beings, who were only manifestations of his own Self. The rites completed, the disciple received from the guru the loin-cloth and ochre robe, the emblems of his new life.
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Eight years later, some time in N ovember 1874, Sri Ramakrishna was seized with an irresistible desire to learn the truth of the Christian religion. He began to listen to readings from the Bible, by Sambhu Charan Mallick, a gentleman of Calcutta and a devotee of the Master. Sri Ramakrishna became fascinated by the life and teachings of Jesus. One day he was seated in the parlour of Jadu Mallick's garden house (This expression is used throughout to translate the Bengali word denoting a rich man's country house set in a garden.) at Dakshineswar, when his eyes became fixed on a painting of the Madonna and Child. Intently watching it, he became gradually overwhelmed with divine emotion. The figures in the picture took on life, and the rays of light emanating from them entered his soul. The effect of this experience was stronger than that of the vision of Mohammed. In dismay he cried out, "O Mother! What are You doing to me?" And, breaking through the barriers of creed and religion, he entered a new realm of ecstasy. Christ possessed his soul. For three days he did not set foot in the Kali temple. On the fourth day, in the afternoon, as he was walking in the Panchavati, he saw coming toward him a person with beautiful large eyes, serene countenance, and fair skin. As the two faced each other, a voice rang out in the depths of Sri Ramakrishna's soul: "Behold the Christ, who shed His heart's blood for the redemption of the world, who suffered a sea of anguish for l ove of men. It is He, the Master Yogi, who is in eternal union with God. It is Jesus, L ove Incarnate." The Son of Man embraced the Son of the Divine Mother and merged in him. Sri Ramakrishna krishna realized his identity with Christ, as he had already realized his identity with Kali, Rama, Hanuman, Radha, Krishna, Brahman, and Mohammed. The Master went into samadhi and communed with the Brahman with attributes. Thus he experienced the truth that Christianity, too, was a path leading to God-Consciousness. Till the last moment of his life he believed that Christ was an Incarnation of God. But Christ, for him, was not the only Incarnation; there were others — Buddha, for instance, and Krishna.
--- ATTITUDE TOWARD DIFFERENT RELIGIONS
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Without being formally initiated into their doctrines, Sri Ramakrishna thus realized the ideals of religions other than Hinduism. He did not need to follow any doctrine. All barriers were rem oved by his overwhelming l ove of God. So he became a Master who could speak with authority regarding the ideas and ideals of the various religions of the world. "I have practised", said he, "all religions — Hinduism, Islam, Christianity — and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. You must try all beliefs and traverse all the different ways once. Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion — Hindus, Mohammedans, Brahmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Siva, and bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well — the same Rama with a thousand names. A lake has several ghats. At one the Hindus take water in pitchers and call it 'jal'; at another the Mussalmans take water in leather bags and call it pani'. At a third the Christians call it 'water'. Can we imagine that it is not 'jal', but only 'pani' or 'water'? How ridiculous! The substance is One under different names, and everyone is seeking the same substance; only climate, temperament, and name create differences. Let each man follow his own path. If he sincerely and ardently wishes to know God, peace be unto him! He will surely realize Him."
In 1867 Sri Ramakrishna returned to Kamarpukur to recuperate from the effect of his austerities. The peaceful countryside, the simple and artless companions of his boyhood, and the pure air did him much good. The villagers were happy to get back their playful, frank, witty, kind-hearted, and truthful Gadadhar, though they did not fail to notice the great change that had come over him during his years in Calcutta. His wife, Sarada Devi, now fourteen years old, soon arrived at Kamarpukur. Her spiritual development was much beyond her age and she was able to understand immediately her husband's state of mind. She became eager to learn from him about God and to live with him as his attendant. The Master accepted her cheerfully both as his disciple and as his spiritual companion. Referring to the experiences of these few days, she once said: "I used to feel always as if a pitcher full of bliss were placed in my heart. The joy was indescribable."
--- PILGRIMAGE
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Sri Ramakrishna visited Allahabad, at the confluence of the Ganges and the Jamuna, and then proceeded to Vrindavan and Mathura, hallowed by the legends, songs, and dramas about Krishna and the gopis. Here he had numerous visions and his heart overflowed with divine emotion. He wept and said: "O Krishna! Everything here is as it was in the olden days. You alone are absent." He visited the great woman saint, Gangamayi, regarded by Vaishnava devotees as the reincarnation of an intimate attendant of Radha. She was sixty years old and had frequent trances. She spoke of Sri Ramakrishna as an incarnation of Radha. With great difficulty he was persuaded to leave her.
On the return journey Mathur wanted to visit Gaya, but Sri Ramakrishna declined to go. He recalled his father's vision at Gaya before his own birth and felt that in the temple of Vishnu he would become permanently absorbed in God. Mathur, honouring the Master's wish, returned with his party to Calcutta.
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During this period Sri Ramakrishna suffered several bereavements. The first was the death of a nephew named Akshay. After the young man's death Sri Ramakrishna said: "Akshay died before my very eyes. But it did not affect me in the least. I stood by and watched a man die. It was like a sword being drawn from its scabbard. I enjoyed the scene, and laughed and sang and danced over it. They rem oved the body and cremated it. But the next day as I stood there (pointing to the southeast verandah of his room), I felt a racking pain for the loss of Akshay, as if somebody were squeezing my heart like a wet towel. I wondered at it and thought that the Mother was teaching me a lesson. I was not much concerned even with my own body — much less with a relative. But if such was my pain at the loss of a nephew, how much more must be the grief of the householders at the loss of their near and dear ones!" In 1871 Mathur died, and some five years later Sambhu Mallick — who, after Mathur's passing away, had taken care of the Master's comfort. In 1873 died his elder brother Rameswar, and in 1876, his bel oved mother. These bereavements left their imprint on the tender human heart of Sri Ramakrishna, albeit he had realized the immortality of the soul and the illusoriness of birth and death.
In March 1875, about a year before the death of his mother, the Master met Keshab Chandra Sen. The meeting was a momentous event for both Sri Ramakrishna and Keshab. Here the Master for the first time came into actual, contact with a worthy representative of modern India.
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Sri Ramakrishna, dressed in a red-bordered dhoti, one end of which was carelessly thrown over his left shoulder, came to Jaygopal's garden house accompanied by Hriday. No one took notice of the unostentatious visitor. Finally the Master said to Keshab, "People tell me you have seen God; so I have come to hear from you about God." A magnificent conversation followed. The Master sang a thrilling song about Kali and forthwith went into samadhi. When Hriday uttered the sacred "Om" in his ears, he gradually came back to consciousness of the world, his face still radiating a divine brilliance. Keshab and his followers were amazed. The contrast between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmo devotees was very interesting. There sat this small man, thin and extremely delicate. His eyes were illumined with an inner light. Good humour gleamed in his eyes and lurked in the corners of his mouth. His speech was Bengali of a homely kind with a slight, delightful stammer, and his words held men enthralled by their wealth of spiritual experience, their inexhaustible store of simile and metaphor, their power of observation, their bright and subtle humour, their wonderful catholicity, their ceaseless flow of wisdom. And around him now were the sophisticated men of Bengal, the best products of Western education, with Keshab, the idol of young Bengal, as their leader.
Keshab's sincerity was enough for Sri Ramakrishna. Henceforth the two saw each other frequently, either at Dakshineswar or at the temple of the Brahmo Samaj. Whenever the Master was in the temple at the time of divine service, Keshab would request him to speak to the congregation. And Keshab would visit the saint, in his turn, with offerings of flowers and fruits.
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Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, the right-hand man of Keshab and an accomplished Brahmo preacher in Europe and America, bitterly criticized Sri Ramakrishna's use of uncultured language and also his austere attitude toward his wife. But he could not escape the spell of the Master's personality. In the course of an article about Sri Ramakrishna, Pratap wrote in the "Theistic Quarterly Review": "What is there in common between him and me? I, a Europeanized, civilized, self-centred, semi-sceptical, so-called educated reasoner, and he, a poor, illiterate, unpolished, half-idolatrous, friendless Hindu devotee? Why should I sit long hours to attend to him, I, who have listened to Disraeli and Fawcett, Stanley and Max Muller, and a whole host of European scholars and divines? . . . And it is not I only, but dozens like me, who do the same. . . . He worships Siva, he worships Kali, he worships Rama, he worships Krishna, and is a confirmed advocate of Vedantic doctrines. . . . He is an idolater, yet is a faithful and most devoted meditator on the perfections of the One Formless, Absolute, Infinite Deity. . . . His religion is ecstasy, his worship means transcendental insight, his whole nature burns day and night with a permanent fire and fever of a strange faith and feeling. . . . So long as he is spared to us, gladly shall we sit at his feet to learn from him the sublime precepts of purity, unworldliness, spirituality, and inebriation in the l ove of God. . . . He, by his childlike bhakti, by his strong conceptions of an ever-ready Motherhood, helped to unfold it [God as our Mother] in our minds wonderfully. . . . By associating with him we learnt to realize better the divine attributes as scattered over the three hundred and thirty millions of deities of mythological India, the gods of the Puranas."
The Brahmo leaders received much inspiration from their contact with Sri Ramakrishna. It broadened their religious views and kindled in their hearts the yearning for God-realization; it made them understand and appreciate the rituals and symbols of Hindu religion, convinced them of the manifestation of God in diverse forms, and deepened their thoughts about the harmony of religions. The Master, too, was impressed by the sincerity of many of the Brahmo devotees. He told them about his own realizations and explained to them the essence of his teachings, such as the necessity of renunciation, sincerity in the pursuit of one's own course of discipline, faith in God, the performance of one's duties without thought of results, and discrimination between the Real and the unreal.
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Manomohan at first met with considerable opposition from his wife and other relatives, who resented his visits to Dakshineswar. But in the end the unselfish l ove of the Master triumphed over worldly affection. It was Manomohan who brought Rakhal to the Master.
--- SURENDRA
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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 before, Devendranath Tagore, famous all over Bengal for his wealth, scholarship, saintly character, and social position. But the Master found him disappointing; for, whereas Sri Ramakrishna expected of a saint complete renunciation of the world, Devendranath combined with his saintliness a life of enjoyment. Sri Ramakrishna met the great poet Michael Madhusudan, who had embraced Christianity "for the sake of his stomach". To him the Master could not impart instruction, for the Divine Mother "pressed his tongue". In addition he met Maharaja Jatindra Mohan Tagore, a titled aristocrat of Bengal; Kristodas Pal, the editor, social reformer, and patriot; Iswar Vidyasagar, the noted philanthropist and educator; Pundit Shashadhar, a great champion of Hindu orthodoxy; Aswini Kumar Dutta, a headmaster, moralist, and leader of Indian Nationalism; and Bankim Chatterji, a deputy magistrate, n ovelist, and essayist, and one of the fashioners of modern Bengali prose. Sri Ramakrishna was not the man to be dazzled by outward show, glory, or eloquence. A pundit without discrimination he regarded as a mere straw. He would search people's hearts for the light of God, and if that was missing he would have nothing to do with them.
--- KRISTODAS PAL
--
Even before Rakhal's coming to Dakshineswar, the Master had had visions of him as his spiritual son and as a playmate of Krishna at Vrindavan. Rakhal was born of wealthy parents. During his childhood he developed wonderful spiritual traits and used to play at worshipping gods and goddesses. In his teens he was married to a sister of Manomohan Mitra, from whom he first heard of the Master. His father objected to his association with Sri Ramakrishna but afterwards was reassured to find that many celebrated people were visitors at Dakshineswar. The relationship between the Master and this bel oved disciple was that of mother and child. Sri Ramakrishna allowed Rakhal many liberties denied to others. But he would not hesitate to chastise the boy for improper actions. At one time Rakhal felt a childlike jealousy because he found that other boys were receiving the Master's affection. He soon got over it and realized his guru as the Guru of the whole universe. The Master was worried to hear of his marriage, but was relieved to find that his wife was a spiritual soul who would not be a hindrance to his progress.
--- THE ELDER GOPAL
--
During his second visit, about a month later, suddenly, at the touch of the Master, Narendra felt overwhelmed and saw the walls of the room and everything around him whirling and vanishing. "What are you doing to me?" he cried in terror. "I have my father and mother at home." He saw his own ego and the whole universe almost swallowed in a nameless void. With a laugh the Master easily restored him. Narendra thought he might have been hypnotized, but he could not understand how a monomaniac could cast a spell over the mind of a strong person like himself. He returned home more confused than ever, resolved to be henceforth on his guard before this strange man.
But during his third visit Narendra fared no better. This time, at the Master's touch, he lost consciousness entirely. While he was still in that state, Sri Ramakrishna questioned him concerning his spiritual antecedents and whereabouts, his mission in this world, and the duration of his mortal life. The answers confirmed what the Master himself had known and inferred. Among other things, he came to know that Narendra was a sage who had already attained perfection, and that the day he learnt his real nature he would give up his body in yoga, by an act of will.
--
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.
Narendra now realized that he had a spiritual mission to fulfil. He resolved to renounce the world, as his grandfather had renounced it, and he came to Sri Ramakrishna for his blessing. But even before he had opened his mouth, the Master knew what was in his mind and wept bitterly at the thought of separation. "I know you cannot lead a worldly life," he said, "but for my sake live in the world as long as I live."
--
This was a very rich and significant experience for Narendra. It taught him that Sakti, the Divine Power, cannot be ignored in the world and that in the relative plane the need of worshipping a Personal God is imperative. Sri Ramakrishna was overjoyed with the conversion. The next day, sitting almost on Narendra's lap, he said to a devotee, pointing first to himself, then to Narendra: "I see I am this, and again that. Really I feel no difference. A stick floating in the Ganges seems to divide the water; But in reality the water is one. Do you see my point? Well, whatever is, is the Mother — isn't that so?" In later years Narendra would say: "Sri Ramakrishna was the only person who, from the time he met me, believed in me uniformly throughout. Even my mother and brothers did not. It was his unwavering trust and l ove for me that bound me to him for ever. He alone knew how to l ove. Worldly people, only make a show of l ove for selfish ends.
--- TARAK
--
Two more young men, Sarada Prasanna and Tulasi, complete the small band of the Master's disciples later to embrace the life of the wandering monk. With the exception of the elder Gopal, all of them were in their teens or slightly over. They came from middle-class Bengali families, and most of them were students in school or college. Their parents and relatives had envisaged for them bright worldly careers. They came to Sri Ramakrishna with pure bodies, vigorous minds, and uncontaminated souls. All were born with unusual spiritual attributes. Sri Ramakrishna accepted them, even at first sight, as his children, relatives, friends, and companions. His magic touch unfolded them. And later each according to his measure reflected the life of the Master, becoming a torch-bearer of his message across land and sea.
--- WOMAN DEVOTEES
--
One early morning 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 for butter. She pleaded her p overty and gave Him some dry coconut candies. Gopala, sat on her lap, snatched away her rosary, jumped on her shoulders, and m oved 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 for a moment. Then the intensity of her vision was lessened; had it not been, her body would have perished. The Master spoke highly of her exalted spiritual condition and said that such vision of God was a rare thing for ordinary mortals. The fun-loving Master one day confronted the critical Narendranath with this simple-minded woman. No two could have presented a more striking contrast. The Master knew of Narendra's lofty contempt for all visions, and he asked the old lady to narrate her experiences to Narendra. With great hesitation she told him her story. Now and then she interrupted her maternal chatter to ask Narendra: "My son, I am a poor ignorant woman. I don't understand anything. You are so learned. Now tell me if these visions of Gopala are true." As Narendra listened to the story he was profoundly m oved. He said, "Yes, mother, they are quite true." Behind his cynicism Narendra, too, possessed a heart full of l ove and tenderness.
--
In April 1885 the Master's throat became inflamed. Prolonged conversation or absorption 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 doctor's advice. With a group of disciples he spent himself in music, dance, and ecstasy. The illness took a turn for the worse and was diagnosed as "clergyman's sore 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 nor 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 worthless 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 perforated 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 born over and over again, even in the form of a dog, if I can be of help to a single soul." And he bore the pain, singing cheerfully, "Let the body be preoccupied with illness, but, O mind, dwell for ever in God's Bliss!"
One night he had a hemorrhage of the throat. The doctor now diagnosed the illness as cancer. Narendra was the first to break this heart-rending news to the disciples. Within three days the Master was rem oved to Calcutta for better treatment. At Balaram's house he remained a week until a suitable place could be found at Syampukur, in the northern section of Calcutta. During this week he dedicated himself practically without respite to the instruction of those bel oved devotees who had been unable to visit him oftener at Dakshineswar. Discourses incessantly flowed from his tongue, and he often went into samadhi. Dr. Mahendra Sarkar, the celebrated homeopath of Calcutta, was invited to undertake his treatment.
--
"I shall make the whole thing public before I go", the Master had said some time before. On January 1, 1886, he felt better and came down to the garden for 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 before everybody as an Incarnation of God?" Girish was not the man to be taken by surprise. He knelt before the Master and said, with folded hands, "What can an insignificant person like myself say about the One whose glory even sages like Vyasa and Valmiki could not adequately measure?" The Master was profoundly m oved. He said: "What more shall I say? I bless you all. Be illumined!" He fell into a spiritual mood. Hearing these words 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 for 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 for samadhi, so that he might altogether forget the world for 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."
--
Sunday, August 15, 1886. The Master's pulse became irregular. The devotees stood by the bedside. Toward dusk Sri Ramakrishna had difficulty in breathing. A short time afterwards he complained of hunger. A little liquid food was put into his mouth; some of it he swallowed, and the rest ran over his chin. Two attendants began to fan him. All at once he went into samadhi of a rather unusual type. The body became stiff. Sashi burst into tears. But after midnight the Master revived. He was now very hungry and helped himself to a bowl of porridge. He said he was strong again. He sat up against five or six pillows, which were supported by the body of Sashi, who was fanning him. Narendra took his feet on his lap and began to rub them. Again and again the Master repeated to him, "Take care of these boys." Then he asked to lie down. Three times in ringing tone's he cried the name of Kali, his life's Bel oved, and lay back. At two minutes past one there was a low sound in his throat and he fell a little to one side. A thrill passed over his body. His hair stood on end. His eyes became fixed on the tip of his nose. His face was lighted with a smile. The final ecstasy began. It was mahasamadhi, total absorption, from which his mind never returned. Narendra, unable to bear it, ran downstairs.
Dr. Sarkar arrived the following noon and pronounced that life had departed not more than half an hour before. At five o'clock the Masters body was brought downstairs, laid on a cot, dressed in ochre clothes, and decorated with sandal-paste and flowers. A procession was formed. The passers-by wept as the body was taken to the cremation ground at the Baranagore Ghat on the Ganges.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
spirit came over me, and I scribbled the chapter
down by the light of a farthing dip.. When I read it
over, I was as discontented as before, but I stuck it
into the book in a sort of anger at myself as a
--
Soft and hollow, how thou dost overcome the hard
and full!
--
To all impressions thus. Let them not overcome thee;
yet let them breed within thee. The least of the
--
the blue; it wingeth over the fields of rice; at its
coming they push forth the green.
--
necessary steps to his acquisition of s overeignty over
them.
--
overturn the Universe.
Be not caught within that web, O child of Freedom!
--
"White is white" is the lash of the overseer: "white
is black" is the watchword of the slave. The Master
--
overcome.
Do this by virtue of THAT in thyself before which
--
repose. Cynicism is a great cure for over-study.
There is a great deal of cynicism in this book, in one
--
were else too sweet. It prevents one from slopping over
into sentimentality.
--
over Aleph in Ain, that is O.(29)
OP-us, the Work! the OP-ening of THE EYE!(30)
--
Utter it once, O mortal over-rash!-
The Universe were swallowed up in flame
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
He was an educationist all his life both in a spiritual and in a secular sense. After he passed out of College, he took up work as headmaster in a number of schools in succession Narail High School, City School, Ripon College School, Metropolitan School, Aryan School, Oriental School, Oriental Seminary and Model School. The causes of his migration from school to school were that he could not get on with some of the managements on grounds of principles and that often his spiritual mood drew him away to places of pilgrimage for long periods. He worked with some of the most noted public men of the time like Iswar Chandra Vidysgar and Surendranath Banerjee. The latter appointed him as a professor in the City and Ripon Colleges where he taught subjects like English, philosophy, history and economics. In his later days he took over the Morton School, and he spent his time in the staircase room of the third floor of it, administering the school and preaching the message of the Master. He was much respected in educational circles where he was usually referred to as Rector Mahashay. A teacher who had worked under him writes thus in warm appreciation of his teaching methods: "Only when I worked with him in school could I appreciate what a great educationist he was. He would come down to the level of his students when teaching, though he himself was so learned, so talented. Ordinarily teachers confine their instruction to what is given in books without much thought as to whether the student can accept it or not. But M., would first of all gauge how much the student could take in and by what means. He would employ aids to teaching like maps, pictures and diagrams, so that his students could learn by seeing. Thirty years ago (from 1953) when the question of imparting education through the medium of the mother tongue was being discussed, M. had already employed Bengali as the medium of instruction in the Morton School." (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part I. P. 15.)
Imparting secular education was, however, only his profession ; his main concern was with the spiritual regeneration of man a calling for which Destiny seems to have chosen him. From his childhood he was deeply pious, and he used to be m oved 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.
--
Sri Ramakrishna was a teacher for both the Orders of mankind, Sannysins and householders. His own life offered an ideal example for both, and he left behind disciples who followed the highest traditions he had set in respect of both these ways of life. M., along with Nag Mahashay, exemplified how a householder can rise to the highest level of sagehood. M. was married to Nikunja Devi, a distant relative of Keshab Chander Sen, even when he was reading at College, and he had four children, two sons and two daughters. The responsibility of the family, no doubt, made him dependent on his professional income, but the great devotee that he was, he never compromised with ideals and principles for this reason. Once when he was working as the headmaster in a school managed by the great Vidysgar, the results of the school at the public examination happened to be rather poor, and Vidysgar attri buted it to M's preoccupation with the Master and his consequent failure to attend adequately to the school work. M. at once resigned his post without any thought of the morrow. Within a fortnight the family was in p overty, and M. was one day pacing up and down the verandah of his house, musing how he would feed his children the next day. Just then a man came with a letter addressed to 'Mahendra Babu', and on opening it, M. found that it was a letter from his friend Sri Surendra Nath Banerjee, asking whether he would like to take up a professorship in the Ripon College. In this way three or four times he gave up the job that gave him the wherewithal to support the family, either for upholding principles or for practising spiritual Sadhanas in holy places, without any consideration of the possible dire worldly consequences; but he was always able to get over these difficulties somehow, and the interests of his family never suffered. In spite of his disregard for worldly goods, he was, towards the latter part of his life, in a fairly flourishing condition as the proprietor of the Morton School which he developed into a noted educational institution in the city. The Lord has said in the Bhagavad Git that in the case of those who think of nothing except Him, He Himself would take up all their material and spiritual responsibilities. M. was an example of the truth of the Lord's promise.
Though his children received proper attention from him, his real family, both during the Master's lifetime and after, consisted of saints, devotees, Sannysins and spiritual aspirants. His life exemplifies the Master's teaching that an ideal householder must be like a good maidservant of a family, loving and caring properly for the children of the house, but knowing always that her real home and children are elsewhere. During the Master's lifetime he spent all his Sundays and other holidays with him and his devotees, and besides listening to the holy talks and devotional music, practised meditation both on the Personal and the Impersonal aspects of God under the direct guidance of the Master. In the pages of the Gospel the reader gets a picture of M.'s spiritual relationship with the Master how from a hazy belief in the Impersonal God of the Brahmos, he was step by step brought to accept both Personality and Impersonality as the two aspects of the same Non-dual Being, how he was convinced of the manifestation of that Being as Gods, Goddesses and as Incarnations, and how he was established in a life that was both of a Jnni and of a Bhakta. This Jnni-Bhakta outlook and way of living became so dominant a feature of his life that Swami Raghavananda, who was very closely associated with him during his last six years, remarks: "Among those who lived with M. in latter days, some felt that he always lived in this constant and conscious union with God even with open eyes (i.e., even in waking consciousness)." (Swami Raghavananda's article on M. in Prabuddha Bharata vol. XXXVII. P. 442.)
--
Besides the prompting of his inherent instinct, the main inducement for M. to keep this diary of his experiences at Dakshineswar was his desire to provide himself with a means for living in holy company at all times. Being a school teacher, he could be with the Master only on Sundays and other holidays, and it was on his diary that he depended for 'holy company' on other days. The devotional scriptures like the Bhagavata say that holy company is the first and most important means for the generation and growth of devotion. For, in such company man could hear talks on spiritual matters and listen to the glorification of Divine attri butes, charged with the fervour and conviction emanating from the hearts of great l overs of God. Such company is therefore 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 for re-living, through reading and contemplation, the holy company he had had earlier, even on days when he was not able to visit Dakshineswar. The wealth of details and the vivid description of men and things in the midst of which the sublime conversations are set, provide excellent material to re-live those experiences for any one with imaginative powers. It was observed by M.'s disciples and admirers that in later life also whenever he was free or alone, he would be pouring over his diary, transporting himself on the wings of imagination to the glorious days he spent at the feet of the Master.
During the Master's lifetime M. does not seem to have revealed the contents of his diary to any one. There is an unconfirmed tradition that when the Master saw him taking notes, he expressed apprehension at the possibility of his utilising these to publicise him like Keshab Sen; for the Great Master was so full of the spirit of renunciation and humility that he disliked being lionised. It must be for this reason that no one knew about this precious diary of M. for a decade until he brought out selections from it as a pamphlet in English in 1897 with the Holy Mother's blessings and permission. The Holy Mother, being very much pleased to hear parts of the diary read to her in Bengali, wrote to M.: "When I heard the Kathmrita, (Bengali name of the book) I felt as if it was he, the Master, who was saying all that." ( Ibid Part I. P 37.)
--
And Swamiji added a post script to the letter: "Socratic dialogues are Plato all over you are entirely hidden. More over, 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 for long, nor can its author 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 author himself, was published in 1907 by the Brahmavadin Office, Madras. A second edition of it, revised by the author, 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
--
In 1905 he retired from the active life of a Professor and devoted his remaining twenty-seven years exclusively to the preaching of the life and message of the Great Master. He bought the Morton Institution from its original proprietors and shifted it to a commodious four-storeyed 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 important aid to holy living. About one hour in the morning 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 forehead and arms extending to the knees. His complexion was fair and his prominent eyes were always tinged with the expression of the divine l ove that filled his heart. Adorned 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. Humorous, sweet-tongued and eloquent when situations required, this great Maharishi of our age lived only to sing the glory of Sri Ramakrishna day and night.
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. Advancing science has now disc overed that all the known cases of biological extinction have been caused by overspecialization, whose concentration of only selected genes sacrifices general adaptability. Thus the specialist's brief for pinpointing brevity is dubious. In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual's leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others.
Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.
--
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.
The human brain is a physical mechanism for storing, retrieving, and re-storing again, each special-case experience. The experience is often a packaged concept.
--
Intellectually advantaged with no more than the child's facile, lucid eagerness to understand constructively and usefully the major transformational events of our own times, it probably is synergetically advantageous to review swiftly the most comprehensive inventory of the most powerful human environment transforming events of our totally known and reasonably extended history. This is especially useful in winnowing out and understanding the most significant of the metaphysical revolutions now recognized as swiftly tending to reconstitute history. By such a comprehensively schematic review, we might identify also the unprecedented and possibly heretofore overlooked pivotal revolutionary events not only of today but also of those trending to be central to tomorrow's most cataclysmic changes.
It is synergetically reasonable to assume that relativistic evaluation of any of the separate drives of art, science, education, economics, and ideology, and their complexedly interacting trends within our own times, may be had only through the most comprehensive historical sweep of which we are capable.
There could be produced a synergetic understanding of humanity's cosmic functioning, which, until now, had been both undisc overed and unpredictable due to our deliberate and exclusive preoccupation only with the separate statistics of separate events. As a typical consequence of the latter, we observe our society's persistent increase of educational and employment specialization despite the already mentioned, well-documented scientific disclosure that the extinctions of biological species are always occasioned by overspecialization. Specialization's preoccupation with parts deliberately forfeits the opportunity to apprehend and comprehend what is provided exclusively by synergy.
Today's news consists of aggregates of 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 reported events. The insistence by reporters upon having advance "releases" of what, for instance, convocation speakers are supposedly going to say but in fact have not yet said, automatically discredits the value of the largely prefabricated news. We also learn frequently of prefabricated and prevaricated events of a complex nature purportedly undertaken for purposes either of suppressing or rigging the news, which in turn perverts humanity's tactical information resources. All history becomes suspect. Probably our most polluted resource is the tactical information to which humanity spontaneously reflexes.
--
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, for 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 disc overed. The genetic coding of the design controls of organic systems offers no more 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 more disorderly ways. The metaphysical is antientropic, methodically marshalling energy. Life is antientropic.
It is spontaneously inquisitive. It sorts out and endeavors to understand.
The overconcentration on details of hyperspecialization has also been responsible for the lack of recognition by science of its inherently mandatory responsibility to reorient all our educational curricula because of the synergetically disclosed, but popularly uncomprehended, significance of the 1956 Nobel Prize-winning disc overy in physics of the experimental invalidation of the concept of "parity" by which science previously had misassumed that positive-negative complementations consisted exclusively of mirror-imaged behaviors of physical phenomena.
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 heretofore as physical is entirely metaphysical-because synergetically weightless. Metaphysical has been science's designation for 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 forced to conclude that all phenomena are metaphysical; wherefore, 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-coordinated that they all still personally and sensorially see "solids" going up or down-as, for instance, they see the Sun "going down." Sensorially disconnected from their theoretically evolved information, scientists discern no need on their part to suggest any educational reforms to correct the misconceiving that science has tolerated for half a millennium.
0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
jurists, man is a tiny, even a shrinking, creature. His over-
pronounced individuality conceals from our eyes the whole to
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
over and ab ove Sadhana, writing work and rendering spiritual help to the world during his apparent retirement there were plenty of other activities of which the outside world has no knowledge. Many prominent as well as less known persons sought and obtained interviews with him during these years. Thus, among well-known persons may be mentioned C.R. Das, Lala Lajpat Rai, Sarala Devi, Dr. Munje, Khasirao Jadhav, Tagore, Sylvain Levy. The great national poet of Tamil Nadu, S. Subramanya Bharati, was in contact with Sri Aurobindo for some years during his stay at Pondicherry; so was V.V.S. Aiyar. The famous V. Ramaswamy Aiyangar Va Ra of Tamil literature[3] stayed with Sri Aurobindo for nearly three years and was influenced by him. Some of these facts have been already mentioned in The Life of Sri Aurobindo.
Jung has admitted that there is an element of mystery, something that baffles the reason, in human personality. One finds that the greater the personality the greater is the complexity. And this is especially so with regard to spiritual personalities whom the Gita calls Vibhutis and Avatars.
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, nor 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 forward 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 formation; the result is a self-expression of being which can no longer be described by fixed qualities, normalities 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 exploring 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 for the transformation 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 formula of our nature, and therefore the mental personality of man, is not final. A Vibhuti embodies in a human manifestation a certain divine quality and thus demonstrates the possibility of overcoming the limits of ordinary human personality. The Vibhuti the 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, for a mission ostensibly social, ethical and political, as is represented in the story of Rama or Krishna; but always then this descent becomes in the soul of the race a permanent power for the inner living and the spiritual rebirth."[5]
0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(not counting those who are scattered all over India); and I
have become responsible for all this; I am at the centre of the
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But as in physical knowledge the multiplication of scientific processes has its disadvantages, as that tends, for instance, to develop a victorious artificiality which overwhelms our natural human life under a load of machinery and to purchase certain forms 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
The Conditions of the Synthesis
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
of overcoming some material difficulty.
The cause of reserve in asking is that a person is full
--
of paper over it.
I pray for a gracious word from You to strike at the
--
will take only 30 days; otherwise it would extend over more than
two months!
--
made, the conscious will loses nearly all control over them unless
a counter-formation is made to destroy them. Something like
--
of thoroughness, since this awareness allows you to make further progress. Indeed, making progress, overcoming a difficulty,
learning something, seeing clearly into an element of unconsciousness - these are the things that make one truly happy.
--
I believe in the superiority of the inner vision over the outer
vision and this belief is based not merely on theoretical knowledge but on the thousands of examples I have come across in
--
true enough to have the power to overcome the hostility of his
attitude.
--
mind. These things are very difficult to overcome, for it requires
that both of you open yourselves to a higher consciousness. This
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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.
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But, over and ab ove newcomers, some local people and the few inmates of the house used to have informal talks with Sri Aurobindo in the evening. In the beginning the inmates used to go out for playing football, and during their absence known local individuals would come in and wait for Sri Aurobindo. Afterwards regular meditations began at about 4 p.m. in which practically all the inmates participated. After the meditation all of the members and those who were permitted shared in the evening sitting. This was a very informal gathering depending entirely upon Sri Aurobindo's leisure.
When Sri Aurobindo and the Mother m oved to No. 9 Rue de la Marine in 1922 the same routine of informal evening sittings after meditation continued. I came to Pondicherry for Sadhana in the beginning of 1923. I kept notes of the important 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 importance I felt about everything connected with him, no matter how insignificant to the outer view. I also felt that everything he did would acquire for those who would come to know his mission a very great significance.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
- and least of all about their difficulties; it is uncharitable because it does not help them to overcome the difficulties. As
for doctors, the rule is that they should not talk about their
--
more the confident child you were, do not brood over your faults
and difficulties - it is your smile that will chase them away.
--
is only so you may understand that I don't hold you responsible for this change which has come over you from outside.
Now there is only one way open, the way of progress - since
--
not torment yourself over such little things.
Tender l ove.
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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; for the progress made tends to be of the grosser and more outward kind and its attempts at a higher or a more rapid m ovement 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; for this often tends only to the creation of a religious temperament, the most outward form 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 imp overish it or disturb the society for a while by a momentary elevation. The truth is that neither the mental effort nor the spiritual impulse can suffice, divorced from each other, to overcome the immense resistance of material Nature.
She demands their alliance in a complete effort before she will suffer a complete change in humanity. But, usually, these two great agents are unwilling to make to each other the necessary concessions.
--
In India, for the last thousand years and more, the spiritual life and the material have existed side by side to the exclusion of the progressive mind. Spirituality has made terms for itself with Matter by renouncing the attempt at general progress. It has obtained from society the right of free spiritual development for all who assume some distinctive symbol, such as the garb of the Sannyasin, the recognition of that life as man's goal and those who live it as worthy of an absolute reverence, and the casting of society itself into such a religious mould that its most customary acts should be accompanied by a formal reminder of the spiritual symbolism of life and its ultimate destination. On the other hand, there was conceded to society the right of inertia and immobile self-conservation. The concession destroyed much of the value of the terms. The religious mould being fixed, the formal reminder tended to become a routine and to lose its living sense. The constant attempts to change the mould by new sects and religions ended only in a new routine or a modification of the old; for the saving element of the free and active mind had been exiled. The material life, handed over to the Ignorance, the purposeless and endless duality, became a leaden and dolorous yoke from which flight was the only escape.
The schools of Indian Yoga lent themselves to the compromise. Individual perfection or liberation was made the aim, seclusion of some kind from the ordinary activities the condition, the renunciation of life the culmination. The teacher gave his knowledge only to a small circle of disciples. Or if a wider m ovement was attempted, it was still the release of the individual soul that remained the aim. The pact with an immobile society was, for the most part, observed.
--
But their aim is one in the end. The generalisation of Yoga in humanity must be the last victory of Nature over her own delays and concealments. Even as now by the progressive mind in Science she seeks to make all mankind fit for the full development of the mental life, so by Yoga must she inevitably seek to make all mankind fit for the higher evolution, the second birth, the spiritual existence. And as the mental life uses and perfects the material, so will the spiritual use and perfect the material and the mental existence as the instruments of a divine self-expression.
The ages when that is accomplished, are the legendary Satya or Krita3 Yugas, the ages of the Truth manifested in the symbol, of the great work done when Nature in mankind, illumined, satisfied and blissful, rests in the culmination of her endeavour.
0.04 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
be safer to use those ropes. As soon as the work is over,
the ropes will be rem oved. Those ropes are not tight;
--
of chess play. So till the cart was turned over and touched
the ground, he did not know.
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yet it is always through something which she has formed in her evolution that Nature thus overpasses her evolution. It is the individual heart that by sublimating its highest and purest emotions attains to the transcendent Bliss or the ineffable Nirvana, the individual mind that by converting its ordinary functionings into a knowledge beyond mentality knows its oneness with the
Ineffable and merges its separate existence in that transcendent unity. And always it is the individual, the Self conditioned in its experience by Nature and working through her formations, that attains to the Self unconditioned, free and transcendent.
--
First, therefore, the powers of order must be helped to overcome
36
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
into you to enable you to overcome all difficulties.
L ove.
--
within myself, not just now but over the past two years,
I find nothing. Sometimes I feel: "Why all these efforts?
--
in yourself; but persist in your will to overcome it and it will
suddenly give way.
--
Read my letter very carefully, think it over well to be sure
that you have understood it completely, and when you have seen
--
hardest part will be over.
With all my l ove and blessings.
--
resolved to be patient, the difficulties will surely be overcome.
L ove from your mother.
--
work enough. Inactivity is just as tiring as over-activity. Not to
work enough is just as bad as working too much.
--
and that you aspire to overcome the weaknesses. When they
come, you should not think that I am displeased, but on the
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for our weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It "makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills." The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet, in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
is capable of overcoming all suffering and even death.
It may be that human life is indeed incapable of it; but for the
--
Only the resolution to face courageously, in the present existence, all the difficulties, and to overcome them, is the sure
means of attaining the union you desire.
--
My sweet Mother, do You say that I ought to overcome
this desire to come to You physically?
--
corner, and if I had not the full assurance that you can overcome
all these difficulties, I would not even have mentioned them. It
--
Bel oved Mother, how to master this lethargy that overcomes me? I do not live, Mother, I just exist in some way.
Mother, I must find something which can divert me.
--
"You will overcome all your difficulties" - I repeat this;
only my whole being does not accept it.
--
is the best means of overcoming an attraction, whether
small or great.
--
One cannot help others to overcome their sorrows and sufferings
unless one has overcome all this in oneself and is master of one's
feelings and reactions.
--
the mind over the vital is when the latter takes no initiative,
accepts no impulse which has not been first sanctioned by the
--
temper. If you don't have control over yourself, how can you
expect to control others, ab ove all, children, who feel it immediately when someone is not master of himself?
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
now intervene in a more overt form so that my earthly
eyes can see and understand somewhat of its working in
--
spread over my children and calls down upon them the Divine's
Grace to help and to protect.
--
Nothing can resist the steady action of l ove. It melts all resistances and triumphs over all difficulties...
L ove and blessings to my dear child.
--
You overwhelm me with your l ove, dear Mother. I know
I do not deserve one iota of the kindness you show to
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Is it possible to have control over oneself during
sleep? For example, if I want to see you in my dreams,
--
exhaustion arising from that internal over-activity and noise
which generally escape our control and cease neither by day nor
--
What is the work of the overmind?3
The overmind is the region of the gods, the beings of divine
origin who have been charged with supervising, directing and
--
regions and to preside over the formation of the mind and its
progressive ascension. It is usually to the gods of the overmind
that the prayers of the various religions are addressed. These religions most often choose, for various reasons, one of these gods
--
a zone corresponding to the overmind and an overmind consciousness, before one can rise ab ove it, to the Supermind, or
open oneself to it.
--
development and mastery of the overmind.
27 N ovember 1959
--
What is meant by "a zone corresponding to the overmind" and how can one develop it in oneself? What is
meant by the "mastery of the overmind"?
The individual being is made up of states of being corresponding
--
I spoke of when I mentioned the mastery of the overmind.
It goes without saying that all this is not done in a day,
--
vital, mental, overmental, demands assiduous effort and a great
Series Eight - To a Young Captain
--
"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
normal subliminal parts."4 Sweet Mother, now after the
--
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
--
he opens to the higher mind and overmind, and through those
Series Eight - To a Young Captain
01.01 - Sri Aurobindo - The Age of Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Apart from the well-recognised fact that only in distress does the normal man think of God and non-worldly things, the real matter, however, is that the inner life is a thing apart and follows its own line of m ovement, 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 poor, 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 world, 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 poor 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; nor 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 reforming the world and when that was done then alone to turn to other-worldly things, in that case, one would never take the turn, for the world will never be reformed totally or even considerably in that way. It is not that reformers have for the first time appeared on the earth in the present age. Men have attempted social, political, economic and moral reforms from times immemorial. But that has not barred the spiritual attempt or minimised its importance. To say that because an ideal is apparently too high or too great for the present age, it must be kept in cold storage is to set a premium on the present nature of humanity arid eternise it: that would bind the world to its old moorings and never give it the opportunity to be free and go out into the high seas of larger and greater realisations.
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That Power, that Spirit has been growing and gathering its strength during all the millenniums that humanity has lived through. On the momentous day when man appeared on earth, the Higher Man also took his birth. Since the hour the Spirit refused to be imprisoned in its animal sheath and came out as man, it approached by that very uplift a greater freedom and a vaster m ovement. It was the crest of that underground wave which peered over the surface from age to age, from clime to clime through the experiences of poets and prophets and sages the Head of the Sacrificial Horse galloping towards the Dawn.
And now the days of captivity or rather of inner preparation are at an end. The voice in the wilderness was necessary, for 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 glory 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 world. 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. Therefore it is that Science has become his supreme Dharmashastra; for 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 according to his inner will, mould and create his world. 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 lord. 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 s overeign 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 victory 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, for the strength it will exert and the victory 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 therefore with other personal souls. The Asura, in spite of, or rather, because of his aggressive vehemence betrays a lack of the s overeign power that is calm and at ease and self-sufficient. The Devic power does not assert hut simply accomplishes; the forces of the world act not as its opponent but as its instrument. Thus the New Man shall affirm his individual s overeignty 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, world-master.
This mastery will be effected not merely in will, but in mind and heart also. For the New Man will know not by the intellect which is egocentric and therefore 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 l ove not merely those to whom we are akin but God's creatures, one and all; we will l ove not with the yearning and hunger of a mortal but with the wide and intense Rasa that lies in the divine identity of souls.
01.01 - The One Thing Needful, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This is a slow and difficult process; the road is long and it is hard to establish even the necessary basis. The old existing nature resists and obstructs and difficulties rise one after another and repeatedly till they are overcome. It is therefore necessary to be sure that this is the path to which one is called before one finally decides to tread it.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And bent over earth's pondering forehead curve.
1.28
--
As one who watching over men left blind
Takes up the load of an unwitting race,
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The 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 ab ove the mind the overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it. The overmind dissolves or transcends the ego-consciousness which limits the being to its individualised formation bounded by an outward and narrow frame or sheath of mind, life and body; it reveals the universal Self and Spirit, the cosmic godhead and its myriad forces throwing up myriad forms; the world-existence there appears as a play of ever-shifting veils upon the face of one ineffable reality, as a mysterious cycle of perpetual creation and destructionit is the overwhelming vision given by Sri Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita. At the same time, the initial and most intense experience which this cosmic consciousness brings is the extreme relativity, contingency and transitoriness of the whole flux, and a necessity seems logically and psychologically imperative to escape into the abiding substratum, the ineffable Absoluteness.
This has been the highest consummation, the supreme goal which the purest spiritual experience and the deepest aspiration of the human consciousness generally sought to attain. But in this view, the world or creation or Nature came in the end to be looked upon as fundamentally a product of Ignorance: ignorance and suffering and incapacity and death were declared to be the very hallmark of things terrestrial. The Light that dwells ab ove and beyond can be made to shed for a while some kind of lustre upon the mortal darkness but never altogether to rem ove or change itto live in the full light, to be in and of the Light means to pass beyond. Not that there have not been other strands and types of spiritual experiences and aspirations, but the one we are considering has always struck the major chord and dominated and drowned all the rest.
But the initial illusory consciousness of the overmind need not at all lead to the static Brahmic consciousness or Sunyam alone. As a matter of fact, there is in this particular processes of consciousness a hiatus between the two, between Maya and Brahman, as though one has to leap from the one into the other somehow. This hiatus is filled up in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga by the principle of Supermind, not synthetic-analytic2 in knowledge like overmind and the highest mental intelligence, but inescapably unitarian even in the utmost diversity. Supermind is the Truth-consciousness at once static and dynamic, self-existent and creative: in Supermind the Brahmic consciousness Sachchidanandais ever self-aware and ever manifested and embodied in fundamental truth-powers and truth-forms for the play of creation; it is the plane where the One breaks out into the Many and the Many still remain one, being and knowing themselves to be but various self-expressions of the One; it develops the spiritual archetypes, the divine names and forms of all individualisations of an evolving existence.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Upanishads speak of a solar and a lunar Path in the spiritual consciousness. Perhaps they have some reference to these two linesone through the Mayic consciousness of the overmind enters into the static Bliss, ecstatic Nihil, and the other mounts still farther to the solar status which is a mass, a sea, an infinity of that light and ecstasy but which can at the same time express and embody itself as the creative Truth-consciousness (srya svitr ).
In the Supermind things exist in their perfect spiritual reality; each is consciously the divine reality in its transcendent essence, its cosmic extension, its, spiritual individuality; the diversity of a manifested existence is there, but the mutually exclusive separativeness has not yet arisen. The ego, the knot of separativity, appears at a later and lower stage of involution; what is here is indivisible nexus of individualising centres of the one eternal truth of being. Where Supermind and overmind meet, one can see the multiple godheads, each distinct in his own truth and beauty and power and yet all together forming the one supreme consciousness infinitely composite and inalienably integral. But stepping back into Supermind one sees something moreOneness gathering into itself all diversity, not destroying it, but annulling and forbidding the separative consciousness that is the beginning of Ignorance. The first shadow of the Illusory Consciousness, the initial possibility of the m ovement of Ignorance comes in when the supramental light enters the penumbra of the mental sphere. The m ovement of Supermind is the m ovement of light without obscurity, straight, unwavering, unswerving, absolute. The Force here contains and holds in their oneness of Reality the manifold but not separated lines of essential and unalloyed truth: its march is the inevitable progression of each one assured truth entering into and upholding every other and therefore its creation, play or action admits of no trial or stumble or groping or deviation; for each truth rests on all others and on that which harmonises them all and does not act as a Power diverging from and even competing with other Powers of being. In the overmind 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 work themselves out through the interaction first of separately individualised and then of contrary and contradictory forces. In the overmind there is a conscious underlying Unity but yet each Power, Truth, Aspect of that Unity is encouraged to work out its possibilities as if it were sufficient to itself and the others are used by it for its own 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 more and more obscure forms and forces and finally the virtual eclipse of the supreme light of the Divine Consciousness. Creation as it descends' towards the Ignorance becomes an involution of the Spirit through Mind and Life into Matter; evolution is a m ovement 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 m ovement of Nescienceof Involutionhas been an increasing negation of the Spirit, but its hidden purpose is ultimately to embody the Spirit in Matter, to express here below in cosmic Time-Space the splendours of the timeless Reality. The material body came into existence bringing with it inevitably, as it seemed, mortality; it appeared even to be fashioned out of mortality, in order that in this very frame and field of mortality, Immortality, the eternal Spirit Consciousness which is the secret truth and reality in Time itself as well as behind it, might be established and that the Divine might be possessed, or rather, possess itself not in one unvarying mode of the static consciousness, as it does even now behind the cosmic play, but in the play itself and in the multiple mode of the terrestrial existence.
--
The Supermind is not merely synthetic. The Supermind is synthetic only on the lowest spaces of itself, where it has to prepare the principles of overmind,synthesis is necessary only where analysis has taken place, one has dissected everything, put in pieces (analysis), so one has to piece together. But Supermind is unitarian, has never divided up, so it does not need to add and piece together the parts and fragments. It has always held the conscious Many together in the conscious One.
***
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And his overburdening mass of outward needs
To a first thin strip of simple animal wants,
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over-mental regions. Accordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the higher mentalwhich is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated , form for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked for evident reasons, for human reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the m ovement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate or contri buting factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own substance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day demand.
The earliest preoccupation of man was religious; even when he concerned himself with the world and worldly things, he referred all that to the other world, thought of gods and goddesses, of after-death and other where. That also will be his last and ultimate preoccupation though in a somewhat different way, when he has passed through a process of purification and growth, a "sea-change". For although religion is an aspiration towards the truth and reality beyond or behind the world, it is married too much to man's actual worldly nature and carries always with it the shadow of profanity.
--
Something of the fullness of spiritual matter and manner overflows in these epic lines:
His spirit mingles with eternity's heart
--
This, I say, is something different from the religious and even from the mystic. It is away from the merely religious, because it is naked of the vesture of humanity (in spite of a human face that masks it at times) ; it is something more than the merely mystic, for it does not stop being a signpost or an indication to the Beyond, but is itself the presence and embodiment of the Beyond. The mystic gives us, we can say, the magic of the Infinite; what I term the spiritual, the spiritual proper, gives in addition the logic of the Infinite. At least this is what distinguishes modern spiritual consciousness from the ancient, that is, Upanishadic spiritual consciousness. The Upanishad gives expression to the spiritual consciousness in its original and pristine purity and perfection, in its essential simplicity. It did not buttress itself with any logic. It is the record of fundamental experiences and there was no question of any logical exposition. But, as I have said, the modern mind requires and demands a logical element in its perceptions and presentations. Also it must needs be a different kind of logic that can satisfy and satisfy wholly the deeper and subtler m ovements of a modern consciousness. For the philosophical poet of an earlier age, when he had recourse to logic, it was the logic of the finite that always gave him the frame, unless he threw the whole thing overboard and leaped straight into the occult, the illogical and the a logical, like Blake, for instance. Let me illustrate and compare a little. When the older poet explains indriyani hayan ahuh, it is an allegory he resorts to, it is the logic of the finite he marshals to point to the infinite and the beyond. The stress of reason is apparent and effective too, but the pattern is what we are normally familiar with the m ovement, we can say, is almost Aristotelian in its rigour. Now let us turn to the following:
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme. ||26.15||
01.03 - Sri Aurobindo and his School, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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. For what is required first is the disc overy and manifestation of a new soul-consciousness in man which will bring about by the very pressure and working out of its self-rule an absolute reversal of man's nature. It is the Asuras who are now holding sway over humanity, for man has allowed himself so long to be built in the image of the Asura; to dislodge the Asuras, the Gods in their s overeign might have to be forged in the human being and brought into play. It is a stupendous task, some would say impossible; but it is very far rem oved 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 forces 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 world of basic forces, of fundamental realities, into the flaming heart of things where all actualities are born and take their first shape. It is the disc overy 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 proportions at present to the outward eye, for the work is still of the nature of experiment and trial in very restricted limits, something in the nature of what is done in a laboratory when a new power has been disc overed, but has still to be perfectly formulated in its process. And it is quite a mistake to suppose that there is a vigorous propaganda carried on in its behalf or that there is a large demand for 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 workers.
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
His soul breaks out to join the oversoul,
His life is oceaned by that superlife.
--
Then is revealed in man the overt Divine.
A static Oneness and dynamic Power
--
Ab ove the golden overmind's shimmering ridge.
Even were caught as through a cunning veil
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral 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 work 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
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
However, we are concerned more with the immediate past, the mentality that laid its supreme stress upon the human rationality. What that epoch did not understand was that Reason could be overstepped, that there was something higher, something greater than Reason; Reason being the s overeign 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 transformed and sublimated into other more powerful faculties.
Now, the question is, what is the insufficiency of Reason? How does it limit man? And what is the Superman into which man is asked or is being impelled to grow?
--
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. For, Nietzsche's conception of the Superman is full of obvious lacunae. If we have so long been adoring the intellectual man, Nietzsche asks us, on the other hand, to deify the vital man. According to him the superman is he who has (1) the supreme sense of the ego, (2) the s overeign 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 transformation. So if you have to transcend man, you have to transcend egoism also. For 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 l ove. In man these three fundamental constitutive elements coexist, although they do it, more 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 forces you want to dominate. To have the sense that one has to fight and control means that one is not as yet the s overeign lord, for one has to strive and strain and attain. The supreme lord is he who is perfectly equanimous with himself and with the world. 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 force of Nature, not even as modified and refined by the aesthetic and aristocratic virtues of which the higher reaches of humanity seem capable. For 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.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When we say one is conscious, we usually mean that one is conscious with the mental consciousness, with the rational intelligence, with the light of the brain. But this need not be always so. For one can be conscious with other forms of consciousness or in other planes of consciousness. In the average or normal man the consciousness is linked to or identified with the brain function, the rational intelligence and so we conclude that without this wakeful brain activity there can be no consciousness. But the fact is otherwise. The experiences of the mystic pr ove the point. The mystic is conscious on a level which we describe as higher than the mind and reason, he has what may be called the overhead consciousness. (Apart from the normal consciousness, which is named jagrat, waking, the Upanishad speaks of three other increasingly subtler states of consciousness, swapna, sushupti and turiya.)And then one can be quite unconscious, as in samadhi that can be sushupti or turiyaorpartially consciousin swapna, for example, the external behaviour may be like that of a child or a lunatic or even a goblin. One can also remain normally conscious and still be in the superconscience. Not only so, the mystic the Yogican be conscious on infraconscious levels also; that is to say, he can enter into and identify with the consciousness involved in life and even in Matter; he can feel and realise his oneness with the animal world, the plant world and finally the world of dead earth, of "stocks and stones" too. For all these strands of existence have each its own type of consciousness and all different from the mode of mind which is normally known as consciousness. When St. Francis addresses himself to the brother Sun or the sister Moon, or when the Upanishad speaks of the tree silhouetted against the sky, as if stilled in trance, we feel there is something of this fusion and identification of consciousness with an infra-conscient existence.
I said that the supreme artist is superconscious: his consciousness withdraws from the normal mental consciousness and becomes awake and alive in another order of consciousness. To that superior consciousness the artist's mentalityhis ideas and dispositions, his judgments and valuations and acquisitions, in other words, his normal psychological make-upserves as a channel, an instrument, a medium for transcription. Now, there are two stages, or rather two lines of activity in the processus, for they may be overlapping and practically simultaneous. First, there is the withdrawal and the in-gathering of consciousness and then its reappearance into expression. The consciousness retires into a secret or subtle worldWords-worth's "recollected in tranquillity"and comes back with the riches gathered or transmuted there. But the purity of the gold thus garnered and stalled in the artistry of words and sounds or lines and colours depends altogether upon the purity of the channel through which it has to pass. The mental vehicle receives and records and it can do so to perfection if it is perfectly in tune with what it has to receive and record; otherwise the transcription becomes mixed and blurred, a faint or confused echo, a poor show. The supreme creators are precisely those in whom the receptacle, the instrumental faculties offer the least resistance and record with absolute fidelity the experiences of the over or inner consciousness. In Shakespeare, in Homer, in Valmiki the inflatus of the secret consciousness, the inspiration, as it is usually termed, bears down, sweeps away all obscurity or contrariety in the recording mentality, suffuses it with its own glow and puissance, indeed resolves it into its own substance, as it were. And the difference between the two, the secret norm and the recording form, determines the scale of the artist's creative value. It happens often that the obstruction of a too critically observant and self-conscious brain-mind successfully blocks up the flow of something supremely beautiful that wanted to come down and waited for an opportunity.
Artists themselves, almost invariably, speak of their inspiration: they look upon themselves more or less as mere instruments of something or some Power that is beyond them, beyond their normal consciousness attached to the brain-mind, that controls them and which they cannot control. This perception has been given shape in myths and legends. Goddess Saraswati or the Muses are, however, for them not a mere metaphor but concrete realities. To what extent a poet may feel himself to be a mere passive, almost inanimate, instrumentnothing more than a mirror or a sensitive photographic plateis illustrated in the famous case of Coleridge. His Kubla Khan, as is well known, he heard in sleep and it was a long poem very distinctly recited to him, but when he woke up and wanted to write it down he could remember only the opening lines, the rest having gone completely out of his memory; in other words, the poem was ready-composed somewhere else, but the transmitting or recording 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 memory.
--
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 for the poet also to do something like that, to consciously create and not to be a mere unconscious or helpless channel? Conscious artistry, as we have said, means to be conscious on two levels of consciousness at the same time, to be at home in both equally and simultaneously. The general experience, however, is that of "one at a time": if the artist dwells more in the one, the other retires into the background to the same measure. If he is in the over-consciousness, he is only half-conscious in his brain consciousness, or even not conscious at allhe does not know how he has created, the sources or process of his creative activity, he is quite oblivious of them" gone through them all as if per saltum. Such seems to have been the case with the primitives, as they are called, the 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 correctness, polish and elegance and has now a style in lieu of Nature's own naturalness. I am thinking of Virgil and Milton and Kalidasa. Dante's place is perhaps somewhere in between. Lower in the rung where the mental medium occupies a still more preponderant place we have intellectual poetry, poetry of the later classical age whose representatives are Pope and Dryden. We can go farther down and land in the domain of versificationalthough here, too, there can be a good amount of beauty in shape of ingenuity, cleverness and conceit: Voltaire and Delille are of this order in French poetry.
The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an 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 more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in polished phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was exercising a conscious control over his instruments and materials, unlike his predecessor who seemed to be completely carried away by the onrush of the poetic enthousiasmos. Sophocles, in spite of his artistic perfection or perhaps because of it, appears to be just a little, one rem ove, away from the purity of the central inspiration there is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil between which intervenes. With the third of the Brotherhood, Euripides, we slide lower downwe arrive at a predominantly mental transcription of an experience or inner conception; but something of the major breath continues, an aura, a rhythm that maintains the inner contact and thus saves the poetry. In a subsequent age, in Theocritus, for example, poetry became truly very much 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought', so much of virtuosity and precocity entered into it; in other words, the poet then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the general trend of all literature.
But should there be an inherent incompatibility between spontaneous creation and self-consciousness? As we have seen, a harmony and fusion can and do happen of the superconscious and the normally conscious in the Yogi. Likewise, an artist also can be wakeful and transparent enough so that he is conscious on both the levels simultaneouslyab ove, he is conscious of the source and origin of his inspiration, and on the level plain he is conscious of the working 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 words, the poet is both a seer (kavih) and a creator or doer (poits).
--
The consciously purposive activity of the poetic consciousness in fact, of all artistic consciousness has shown itself with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions. First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-world poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it does not accept and admit the "given" as the final and definitive norm of things. It wishes to disc over and establish other norms, it strives to bring about changes in the nature and condition of things, envisage the shape of things to come, work for a brave new world. The poet of today, in spite of all his effort to remain a pure poet, in spite of Housman's advocacy of nonsense and not-sense being the essence of true Art, is almost invariably at heart an incorrigible prophet. In revolt against the old and established order of truths and customs, against all that is normally considered as beautiful,ideals and emotions and activities of man or aspects and scenes and m ovements of Natureagainst God or spiritual life, the modern poet turns deliberately to the ugly and the macabre, the meaningless, the insignificant and the triflingtins and teas, bone and dust and dustbin, hammer and sicklehe is still a prophet, a violent one, an iconoclast, but one who has his own icon, a terribly jealous being, that seeks to pull down the past, erase it, to break and batter and knead the elements in order to fashion out of them something conforming to his heart's desire. There is also the class who have the vision and found the truth and its solace, who are prophets, angelic and divine, messengers and harbingers of a new beauty that is to dawn upon earth. And yet there are others in whom the two strains mingle or approach in a strange way. All this means that the artist is far from being a mere receiver, a mechanical executor, a passive unconscious instrument, but that he is supremely' conscious and master of his faculties and implements. This fact is doubly reinforced when we find how much he is preoccupied with the technical aspect of his craft. The richness and variety of patterns that can be given to the poetic form know no bounds today. A few major rhythms were sufficient for the ancients to give full expression to their poetic inflatus. For they cared more for some major virtues, the basic and fundamental qualitiessuch as truth, sublimity, nobility, forcefulness, purity, simplicity, clarity, straightforwardness; they were more preoccupied with what they had to say and they wanted, no doubt, to say it beautifully and powerfully; but the modus operandi was not such a passion or obsession with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value for itself which modern craftsmanship gives it. As technology in practical life has become a thing of overwhelming importance to man today, become, in the Shakespearean phrase, his "be-all and end-all", even so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. The subtleties, variations and refinements, the revolutions, reversals and inventions which the modern poet has ushered and takes delight in, for their own sake, I repeat, for their intrinsic interest, not for the sake of the subject which they have to embody and clothe, have never been dream by Aristotle, the supreme legislator among the ancients, nor by Horace, the almost incomparable craftsman among the ancients in the domain of poetry. Man has become, to be sure, a self-conscious creator to the pith of his bone.
Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instrument for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the disc overy of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first disc overy 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.
--
I have spoken of the source of inspiration as essentially and originally being a super-consciousness or over-consciousness. But to be more precise and accurate I should add another source, an inner consciousness. As the super-consciousness is imaged as lying ab ove the normal consciousness, so the inner consciousness may be described as lying behind or within it. The m ovement of the inner consciousness has found expression more often and more largely than that of over-consciousness in the artistic creation of the past : and that was in keeping with the nature of the old-world inspiration, for the inspiration that comes from the inner consciousness, which can be considered as the lyrical inspiration, tends to be naturally more "spontaneous", less conscious, since it does not at all go by the path of the head, it evades that as much as possible and goes by the path of the heart.
But the evolutionary urge, as I have said, has always been to bring down or instil more and more light and self-consciousness into the depths of the heart too: and the first result has been an intellectualisation, a rationalisation of the consciousness, a m ovement of scientific observation and criticism which very naturally leads to a desiccation of the poetic enthusiasm and fervour. But a period of transcendence is in gestation. All efforts of modern poets and craftsmen, even those that seem apparently queer, bizarre and futile, are at bottom a travail for this transcendence, including those that seem contradictory to it.
Whether the original and true source of the poet's inspiration lies deep within or high ab ove, all depends upon the mediating instrument the mind (in its most general sense) and speech for a successful transcription. Man's ever-growing consciousness demanded also a conscious development and remoulding of these two factors. A growth, a heightening and deepening of the consciousness meant inevitably a m ovement 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 more is meant than what is expressed. The superficialities and futilities that are dealt with do not in their outward form give the real trend of things. In and through all these major and constant preoccupation of our poets is "the pain of the present and the passion for the future": they are, as already stated, more prophets than poets, but prophets for 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 for 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. For that is indeed what human consciousness and craft are aiming at in the present stage of man's evolution. For everything, almost everything that can be normally expressed has been expressed and in a variety of ways as much as is possible: that is the history of man's aesthetic creativity. Now the eye probes into the unexpressed world; for 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 record adequately or at all?
--
Beyond the shapes of empire, the capes of Carbonek, over
the topless waves of trenched Broceliande, drenched by
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A silence overhead, an inner voice,
A living image seated in the heart,
--
Or overleap this matted hedge of sense.
All that transpires on earth and all beyond
--
Who are overseers of Fate and Chance and Will
And experts of the theorem of world-need,
--
Behind the appearance and the overt act,
Behind this clock-work Chance and vague surmise,
--
His knowledge overrules our nescience;
Whatever the appearance we must bear,
--
And gaze at each other over bourneless Time;
Spirit and Matter are their end and source.
--
And passes over the edge of mortal sight
To a new vision of himself and things.
--
And the morns of God have overtaken his night.
As long as Nature lasts, he too is there,
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its foreheads glowing with the oversoul,
Its forms projected from the Unknowable,
--
This overt universe whose figures hide
The secrets merged in superconscient light,
01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 ignoring 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 error to conceive of society as a mere parallelogram of forces, 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 form at a particular stage, a temporary 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 forms, diverse yet linked together and organised in perfect harmony. Only, the stress for union manifested itself first on the material plane as struggle: but this is meant to be corrected and transcended and is being continually corrected 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 disc over 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 formulation in lower terms, a translation on the vital plane of a higher truth and reality the fundamental oneness and accord of individuals and their spiritual impulsion to unite.
However, individualism has given us a truth and a formula which collectivism ignored. 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 for him, nor coerce and exploit him for 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 for 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 work for 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 ignoring the latter it ignores itself in the end.
01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A personal reminiscence. A young man in prison, accused of conspiracy and waging war against the British Empire. If convicted he might have to suffer the extreme penalty, at least, transportation to the Andamans. The case is dragging on for long months. And the young man is in a solitary cell. He cannot always keep up his spirits high. Moments of sadness and gloom and despair come and almost overwhelm him. Who was there to console and cheer him up? Vivekananda. Vivekananda's speeches, From Colombo to Almora, came, as a godsend, into the hands of the young man. Invariably, when the period of despondency came he used to open the book, read a few pages, read them over again, and the cloud was there no longer. Instead there was hope and courage and faith and future and light and air.
Such is Vivekananda, the embodiment of Fearlessnessabh, the Upanishadic word, the mantra, he was so fond of. The life and vision of Vivekananda can be indeed summed up in the mighty phrase of the Upanishads, nyam tm balahnena labhya. 'This soul no weakling can attain.' Strength! More strength! Strength evermore! One remembers the motto of Danton, the famous leader in the French Revolution:De l'audance, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 torture 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 thoroughly 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 before 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. According to it, as according to the Calvinist conception, man is a corrupt being, corroded to the core, 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 worlds 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, according 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 platform; 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 more miserable, but that is his real and only greatness there is no other. His thought, his self-consciousness, and his sorrow and repentance and contrition for what he is that is the only good partMary's part that has been given to him. Here are Pascal's own words on the subject:
01.07 - The Bases of Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The French Revolution wanted to remould human society and its ideal was liberty, equality and fraternity. It pulled down the old machinery and set up a new one in its stead. And the result? "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" remained always in effect a cry in the wilderness. Another wave of idealism is now running over the earth and the Bolshevists are its most fiercely practical exponents. Instead of dealing merely with the political machinery, the Socialistic Revolution tries to break and remake, ab ove all, the social machinery. But judged from the results as yet attained and the tendencies at work, few are the reasons to hope but many to fear the worst. Even education does not seem to promise us anything better. Which nation was better educatedin the sense we understood and still commonly understand the wordthan Germany?
And yet we have no hesitation today to call them Huns and Barbarians. That education is not giving us the right thing is pr oved further by the fact that we are constantly changing our programmes and curriculums, everyday remodelling old institutions and founding new ones. Even a revolution in the educational system will not bring about the desired millennium, so long as we lay so much stress upon the system and not upon man himself. And finally, look to all the religions of the worldwe have enough of creeds and dogmas, of sermons and mantras, of churches and templesand yet human life and society do not seem to be any the more worthy for it.
--
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 l overs 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 inexorable 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 opportunities to make social arrangements so that the higher impulses only find free play while the lower impulses, for want of scope and indulgence, may fall down to a harmless level. This is what the Reformists hope and want and no more. Life is based upon animality, the soul is encased in an earth-sheathman needs must procreate, man needs must seek food. But what human effort can achieve is to set up barriers and limitations and form channels and openings, which will restrain these impulses, allow them a necessary modicum of play and which for 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 aboriginal 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.
No doubt this is a most dismal kind of pessimism. But it is the logical conclusion of all optimism that bases itself upon a particular view of human nature. If we question that pessimism, we have to question the very grounds of our optimism also. As a matter of fact, all our idealism has been so long infructuous and will be so in the future, if we do not shift our foundation and start from a different IntuitionWeltanschauung.
01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 factors and forces. 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 portion we get but we secure it through an elaborate 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 elaboration, 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 m ove as member of a group or aggregate has imposed upon him these restrictions. The free and unbridled indulgence of one's bare aboriginal impulses may be possible to creatures that live a separate, solitary and individual life but is disruptive of all bonds necessary for a corporate 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 metamorphoses the other instincts of the mere animal life. However, leaving aside for the moment the question whether man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a mere dissimulation of his animal instincts or whether they correspond 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.
--
The human mind naturally, without any effort on its part, takes to one or more of these devices to control and conceal the aboriginal 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 forces, his activities (both indulging and controlling) are not guided according to an ignorant submission to the laws of almost subconscious impulsions. Conscious control means that the mind does not fight shy of or seek to elude the aboriginal 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 transformed appearance. And there is always the danger of the superstructure coming down helplessly by a sudden upheaval of the nether forces. The whole system feels, although not in a conscious manner, the tension of the repression and suffers from something that is unhealthy and ill-balanced. Dante's spiritualised passion is a supreme instance of control by Sublimation, but the Divina Comedia hardly bears the impress of a serene and tranquil soul, s overeignly ab ove the turmoils of the tragedy of life and absolutely at peace with itself.
--
Yet even here the process of control and transformation 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; for the urge of nature towards the release and a transformation 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 form is not changed, nor 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 therefore necessarily limited both in intent and extent. It is a power complementary to the power of Nature, it may guide and fashion the latter according 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.
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 Lord. 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 more 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 world is no more-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 l ove and union with him. But there is still a further step to take, and that is real ascension. For 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 form and worldly vesture and soar into Heaven itself and be in the company of the Trinity. "Into myself, and after... ab ove 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 ab ove of which one speaks must not be understood in a literal way, it is a figure of speech. The m ovement 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 Lord. His true self, his own image is implanted within us; he is there in the profoundest depth of our being as Jesus, our bel oved and our soul rests in him in utmost bliss. We are aware neither of Jesus nor of his spouse, our soul, because of the obsession of the flesh, the turmoil raised by the senses, the blindness of pride and egoism. All that constitutes the first or old Adam, the image of Nought, the body of death which means at bottom the "false misruled l ove in to thyself." This self-l ove is the mother of sin, is sin itself. What it has to be replaced by is charity that is the true meaning of Christian charity, forgetfulness of self. "What is sin but a wanting and a forbearing of God." And the whole task, the discipline consists in "the shaping of Christ in you, the casting of sin through Christ." Who then is Christ, what is he? This knowledge you get as you advance from your sense-bound perception towards the inner and inmost seeing. As your outer nature gets purified, you approach gradually your soul, the scales fall off from your eyes too and you have the knowledge and "ghostly vision." Here too there are three degrees; first, you start with faith the senses can do nothing better than have faith; next, you rise to imagination which gives a sort of indirect touch or inkling of the truth; finally, you have the "understanding", the direct vision. "If he first trow it, he shall afterwards through grace feel it, and finally understand it."
--
The conception of original sin is a cardinal factor in Christian discipline. The conception, of sinfulness is the very motive-power that drives the aspirant. "Seek tensely," it is said, "sorrow and sigh deep, mourn still, and stoop low till thine eye water for anguish and for pain." Remorse and grief are necessary attendants; the way of the cross is naturally the calvary strewn with pain and sorrow. It is the very opposite of what is termed the "sunlit path" in spiritual ascension. Christian mystics have made a glorious spectacle of the process of "dying to the world." Evidently, all do not go the whole length. There are less gloomy and happier temperaments, like the present one, for example, who show an unusual balance, a sturdy common sense even in the midst of their darkest nights, who have chalked out as much of the sunlit path as is possible in this line. Thus this old-world mystic says: it is true one must see and admit one's sinfulness, the grosser and apparent and more violent ones as well as all the subtle varieties of it that are in you or rise up in you or come from the Enemy. They pursue you till the very end of your journey. Still you need not feel overwhelmed or completely desperate. Once you recognise the sin in you, even the bare fact of recognition means for you half the victory. The mystic says, "It is no sin as thou feelest them." The day Jesus gave himself away on the Cross, since that very day you are free, potentially free from the bondage of sin. Once you give your adherence to Him, the Enemies are rendered powerless. "They tease the soul, but they harm not the soul". Or again, as the mystic graphically phrases it: "This soul is not borne in this image of sin as a sick man, though he feel it; but he beareth it." The best way of dealing with one's enemies is not to struggle and "strive with them." The aspirant, the l over of Jesus, must remember: "He is through grace reformed to the likeness of God ('in the privy substance of his soul within') though he neither feel it nor see it."
If you are told you are still full of sins and you are not worthy to follow the path, that you must go and work out your sins first, here is your answer: "Go shrive thee better: trow not this saying, for it is false, for thou art shriven. Trust securely that thou art on the way, and thee needeth no ransacking of shrift for that that is passed, hold forth thy way and think on Jerusalem." That is to say, do not be too busy with the difficulties of the moment, but look ahead, as far as possible, fix your attention upon the goal, the intermediate steps will become easy. Jerusalem is another name of the L ove of Jesus or the Bliss in Heaven. Grow in this l ove, 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 l ove is, thou shouldst be able to have part of that l ove... " What exquisite utterance, what a deep truth!
01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 forms 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 world, which latter, in its turn, has something to mark it off from the inorganic world. The inorganic, 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 forms the substance and determines the mode of being. Now, the inorganic 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 forms of being; we will speak of the first two only.
--
So, in man also, especially of that order which forms the crown of humanityin poets and artists and seers and great men of actioncan be observed a certain characteristic form of consciousness, which is something other than, greater than the consciousness of the mere self. It is difficult as yet to characterise definitely what that thing is. It is the awakening of the self to something which is beyond itselfit is the cosmic self, the oversoul, the universal being; it is God, it is Turiya, it is sachchidanandain so many ways the thing has been sought to be envisaged and expressed. The consciousness of that level has also a great variety of names given to it Intuition, Revelation, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness. It is to be noted here, however, that the thing we are referring to, is not the Absolute, the Infinite, the One without a second. It is not, that is to say, the supreme Reality the Brahmanin its static being, in its undivided and indivisible unity; it is the dynamic Brahman, that status of the supreme Reality where creation, the diversity of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-worldRitam the domain of typal realities. The distinction is necessary, as there does seem to be such a level of consciousness intermediary, again, between man and the Absolute, between self-consciousness and the supreme consciousness. The simplest thing would be to give that intermediate level of consciousness a negative namesince being as yet human we cannot foresee exactly its composition and function the super-consciousness.
The inflatus of something vast and transcendent, something which escapes all our familiar schemes of cognisance and yet is insistent with a translucent reality of its own, we do feel sometimes within us invading and enveloping our individuality, lifting up our sense of self and transmuting our personality into a reality which can hardly be called merely human. All this life of ego-bound rationality then melts away and opens out the passage for a life of vision and power. Thus it is the poet has felt when he says, "there is this incalculable 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. Ab ove the human reason there is a transcendental sphere to which the spirit of men sometimes rises, and the will may be forged there at a lordly smithy and made the unbreakable pivot."(A.E.)
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
their body and provide it with all the reasons needed to overcome
its fear.
--
What is the most effective way of overcoming desires
and attachments: to cut them off all at one stroke, even
--
yourself that you have overcome your desires, whereas at best
you are merely sitting on them - they remain repressed in the
--
consciousness grows enough to have an overall view that one
can see exactly what is happening. But in order to be sure of
--
inner and ultimate prevail over the outer and immediate reality.
Christ and Buddha have come and gone but it is Rudra who still
--
The protection is over the group - and if the action of the group
is coordinated and disciplined, the protection acts. But when an
01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Eastern spirituality does not view sorrow and sufferingevilas an integral part of the Divine Consciousness. It is born out of the Divine, no doubt, as nothing can be outside the Divine, but it is a local and temporal formation; it is a disposition consequent upon certain conditions and with the absence or elimination of those conditions, this disposition too disappears. God and the Divine Consciousness can only be purity, light, immortality and delight. The compassion that a Buddha feels for the suffering humanity is not at all a feeling of suffering; pain or any such normal human reaction does not enter into its composition; it is the m ovement of a transcendent consciousness which is beyond and purified of the normal reactions, yet overarching them and entering into them as a soothing and illumining and vivifying presence. The healer knows and understands the pain and suffering of his patient but is not touched by them; he need not contract the illness of his patient in order to be in sympathy with him. The Divine the Soulcan be in flesh and yet not smirched with its mire; the flesh is not essentially or irrevocably the ooze it is under certain given conditions. The divine physical body is composed of radiant matter and one can speak of it even as of the soul that weapons cannot pierce it nor can fire burn it.
***
01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 world-order and not gathering recruits for the camp of a sectarian teacher, it seems all the more inconsistent, if not thoroughly ruinous for 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 history 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 for 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 formed through the bhakti and puja for one man, social reconstructions forced 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 therefore constantly responsive to the truths and ideals and realities for which they exist, for 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.
01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This latest work of Aldous Huxley is a collection of sayings of sages and saints and philosophers from all over the world and of all times. The sayings are arranged under several heads such as "That art Thou", "The Nature of the Ground", "Divine Incarnation", "Self-Knowledge", "Silence", "Faith" etc., which clearly give an idea of the contents and also of the "Neo-Brahmin's" own personal preoccupation. There is also a running commentary, rather a note on each saying, meant to elucidate and explain, naturally from the compiler's standpoint, what is obviously addressed to the initiate.
A similar compilation was published in the Arya, called The Eternal Wisdom (Les Paroles ternelles, in French) a portion of which appeared later on in book-form: that was more elaborate, the contents were arranged in such a way that no comments were needed, they were self-explanatory, divided as they were in chapters and sections and subsections with proper headings, the whole thing put in a logical and organised sequence. Huxley's compilation begins under the title of the Upanishadic text "That art Thou" with this saying of Eckhart: "The more God is in all things, the more He is outside them. The more He is within, the more without". It will be interesting to note that the Arya compilation too starts with the same idea under the title "The God of All; the God who is in All", the first quotation being from Philolaus, "The Universe is a Unity".The Eternal Wisdom has an introduction called "The Song of Wisdom" which begins with this saying from the Book of Wisdom: "We fight to win sublime Wisdom; therefore men call us warriors".
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Still, the conception of duty cannot finally and definitively solve the problem. It cannot arrive at a perfect harmonisation of the conflicting claims of individual units; for, duty, as I have already said, is a child of mental idealism, and although the mind can exercise some kind of control over life-forces, it cannot altogether eliminate the seeds of conflict that lie imbedded in the very nature of life. It is for this reason that there is an 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 force on oneself to carry out one's dutythere is a feeling somehow of its being a bitter pill. The cult of duty means rajas controlled and coerced by Sattwa, not the transcendence of rajas. This leads us to the high and supreme conception of Dharma, which is a transcendence of the gunas. Dharma is not an ideal, a standard or a rule that one has to obey: it is the law of self-nature that one inevitably follows, it is easy, spontaneous, delightful. The path of duty is heroic, the path of Dharma is of the gods, godly (cf. Virabhava and Divyabhava of the Tantras).
The principle of Dharma then inculcates that each individual must, in order to act, find out his truth of being, his true soul and inmost consciousness: one must entirely and integrally merge oneself into that, be identified with it in such a manner that all acts and feelings and thoughts, in fact all m ovements, 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, m ove and have their being in its essential law and dynamism, there cannot but be absolute harmony and perfect synthesis between all the units, even as the sun and moon and stars, as the Veda says, each following its specific orbit according to its specific nature, never collide or haltna me thate na tas thatuh but weave out a faultless pattern of symphony.
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In these latest poems of his, Eliot has become outright a poet of the Dark Night of the Soul. The beginnings of the new avatar were already there certainly at the very beginning. The Waste Land is a good preparation and passage into the Night. Only, the negative 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 fore-boding enough, grim and seriousno glint or hint of the silver lining yet within reach. Now as we find ourselves into the very heart of the Night, things appear somewhat changed: we look at the past indeed, but can often turn to the future, feel the pressure of the Night yet sense the Light beyond overarching and embracing us. This is how the poet begins:
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The call that stirred a Western soul, made him a wanderer over the world in quest of the Holy Grail and finally lodged him in the Home of the Snows is symbolic of a more than individual destiny. It is representative of the secret history of a whole culture and civilisation that have been ruling humanity for some centuries, its inner want and need and hankering and fulfilment. The West shall come to the East and be reborn. That is the prophecy of occult seers and sages.
I speak of Roerich as a Western soul, but more precisely perhaps he is a soul of the mid-region (as also in another sense we shall see subsequently) intermediary between the East and the West. His external make-up had all the characteristic elements of the Western culture, but his mind and temperament, his inner soul was oriental. And yet it was not the calm luminous staticancientsoul that an Indian or a Chinese sage is; it is a nomad soul, newly awakened, young and fresh and ardent, something primitive, pulsating with the unspoilt green sap of life something in the manner of Whitman. And that makes him all the more representative of the young and ardent West yearning for the light that was never on sea or land.
--
A Russian artist (Monsieur Benois) has stressed upon the primitivealmost aboriginalelement in Roerich and was not happy over it. Well, as has been pointed out by other prophets and thinkers, man today happens to be so sophisticated, artificial, material, cerebral that a [all-back seems to be necessary for him to take a new leap forward on to a higher ground. The pure aesthete is a closed system, with a consciousness immured in an ivory tower; but man is something more. A curious paradox. Man can reach the highest, realise the integral truth when he takes his leap, not from the relatively higher levels of his consciousness his intellectual and aesthetic and even moral status but when he can do so from his lower levels, when the physico-vital element in him serves as the springing-board. The decent and the beautiful the classic grace and aristocracyform one aspect of man, the aspect of "light"; but the aspect of energy and power lies precisely in him where the aboriginal and the barbarian find also a lodging. Man as a mental being is naturally sattwic, but prone to passivity and weakness; his physico-vital reactions, on the other hand, are obscure and crude, simple and 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.
All elemental personalities have something of the unconventional and irrational in them. And Roerich is one such in his own way. The truths and realities that he envisages and seeks to realise on earth are elemental and fundamental, although apparently simple and commonplace.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I want to be closer to You, I see that I must overcome my ego. But when I think of overcoming my ego,
I see that I must be closer to You. How can I solve this
--
I want to overcome a difficulty: it is that when I perceive
faults or weaknesses in myself, something tries to justify
--
What is the most effective way to overcome the ego?
The simplest and most effective way is to offer it to the Divine;
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
gives an exceptional control over all activities, mental, vital and
physical.
--
A vital converted and consecrated to the Divine Will becomes a bold and forceful instrument that can overcome all
obstacles. But it first has to be disciplined, and this it consents
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Consciousness, the true consciousness, gives control over
one's own character and, to a large extent, over events.
23 December 1969
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A victory won over the lower nature gives a deeper and more
lasting joy than any external success.
--
to overcome his ego in a total and unconditional self-giving to
the Divine. Then the Divine will make you do what you have to
--
Difficult hours come to the earth to compel men to overcome
their small personal egoism and turn exclusively to the Divine
--
The best thing we can do to express our gratitude is to overcome all egoism in ourselves and make a constant effort towards this transformation. Human egoism refuses to abdicate
on the grounds that others are not transformed. But that is
--
This gives life its true meaning and will help us to overcome
all obstacles.
--
trust and gratitude that the difficulties will be overcome.
1 February 1972
--
luminous force floods our consciousness with a vast and luminous peace which prevails over all petty reactions and prepares
us for union with the Divine - the very purpose of individual
--
we may overcome them in order to serve You faithfully."
The supreme happiness is to be true servitors of the Divine.
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 more 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 for 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 L ove, 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 supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe.
--
There were repercussions the world over. But I dont believe that a single one of you noticed it you cannot even tell me when it happened, can you?
When did it happen?
--
Yes, I have always said that it changed when we had to take the very little children. How can you envision an ascetic life with little sprouts no bigger than that? Its impossible! But thats the little surprise package the war left on our doorstep. When it was found that Pondicherry was the safest place on earth, naturally people came wheeling in here with all their baby carriages filled and asked us if we could shelter them, so we couldnt very well turn them away, could we?! Thats how it happened, and in no other way But, in the beginning, the first condition for coming here was that you would have nothing more to do with your family! If a man was married, then he had to completely overlook the fact that he had a wife and childrencompletely sever all ties, have nothing further to do with them. And if ever a wife asked to come just because her husb and happened to be here, we told her, You have no business coming here!
In the beginning, it was very, very strict for a long time.
The first condition was: Nothing more 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 cords 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 effort 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 opportunity to solve them. In this way we learned many things and surmounted many difficulties, only it complicated things considerably. And in the present situation, given such a large number of elements who havent even the slightest idea why theyre here (!) well, it demands a far greater effort on the disciples part than before.
--
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!
As soon as I found outand no one told me, I found out through an experienceas soon as I found out that there was a disc overy to be made within myself, well, it became THE MOST IMPORTANT thing in the world. It took precedence over everything else!
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?
--
(To the disciple handling the microphone:) Its over now.
(Mother gets up to go, but while leaving, She says to the children around her:) If you had made just one little decision to try to feel your psychic being, my time would not have been wasted.
0 1955-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I am not so absurdly pretentious as to blame the divine, nor 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 therefore 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 for each one forward. Furthermore, instead of helping me draw nearer to the divine consciousness, my work in the Ashram (the very fact of working for to change work, 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, corrections or classes.1 I know its my own fault, that I should know how to be detached from my work 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 work, I have to confront a thousand little temptations and daily difficulties that come from my contact with other beings and a life that does indeed remain in life. Here, even more, there is the feeling of an impossible struggle, and all these little difficulties seem to gnaw away at me; scarcely has one hole been filled when another opens up, or the same one reappears, and there is never any real victoryone has constantly to begin everything again. Finally, it seems to me that I really live only one hour a day, during the evening distribution at the playground.2 It is scarcely a life and scarcely a sadhana!
0 1956-03-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The control over the m ovements of the vertebrae, lost a long time ago (which resulted in a kind of insensitivity and incapacity to m ove them at will) has returned to a great extent: the consciousness is once again able to express itself and the back can straighten up very visibly.
***
0 1956-03-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But the age of Communism, too, will pass. For Communism as it is preached is not constructive, it is a weapon to combat plutocracy. But when the battle is over and the armies are disbanded for want of employment, then Communism, having no more utility, will be transformed into something else that will express a higher truth.
We know this truth, and we are working for it so that it may reign upon earth.
0 1956-04-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Therefore, Sweet Mother, I come to ask a great grace of you, from the depths of my heart: take my freedom into your hands. Prevent me from falling back, far away from you. I place this freedom in your hands. Keep me safe, Mother, protect me. Grant me the grace of watching over me and of taking me in your hands completely, like a child whose steps are unsure. I no longer want this Freedom. It is you I want, the Truth of my being. Mother, as a grace, I implore you to free me from my freedom to choose wrongly.
I am your child and I l ove you.
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
They ask if their inner difficulties will be easier to overcome.
I would repeat the same thing. What reason and what right have they to ask that things be easier? What have they done on their side? Why should it be easier? To satisfy peoples laziness and slothor what?
--
But really, this attitude this rather overly commercial attitude, is usually not very profitable. If you have difficulties and you sincerely aspire, it is likely that the difficulties will diminish. Let us hope so.
(Turning to the disciple) So you may tell them this: be sincere and you will be helped.
--
What I call a descent is the individual m ovement in an individual consciousness. But when a new world is manifesting in an old worldas when similarly the mind spread over the earth I call it a manifestation.
You may call it whatever you like, it makes no difference to me, but we must understand each other.
0 1956-09-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Go to Brazil, to this good rich man, make him understand the importance of our work, the extent to which his fortune would be used to the utmost for the good of all and for the earths salvation were he to put it, even partially, at the disposal of our action. Win this victory over the power of money, and by so doing you will be freed from all your personal difficulties. Then you can return here with no apprehension, and you will be ready for the transformation.
Reflect upon this, take your time, tell me very frankly how you feel about it and whether it appears to you, as it does to me, to be a door opening onto a path that will bring you back, free and strong at last to me.
0 1956-10-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I am facing the same difficulties as before my departure to Hyderabad, and I have made the same mistakes. The main reason for this state is that, on the one hand, words and ideas seem to have lost all power over me, and on the other, the vital elan which led me thus far is dead. So upon what shall my faith rest? I still have some faith, of course, but it has become totally ABSTRACT. The vital does not cooperate, so I feel all withered, suspended in a void, nothing seems to give me direction anymore. There is no rebelliousness in me, but rather a void.
In this state, I am ceaselessly thinking of my forest in Guiana or of my travels through Africa and the ardor that filled me with life in those days. I seem to need to have my goal before 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 for the elements the sea, the forest, the desert for 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 forest in Guiana?
0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
It went something like this: somewhere, in the center of this enormous edifice, there was a room reservedas it seemed in the story for a mother and her daughter. The mother was a lady, an elderly lady, a very influential matron who had a great deal of authority and her own views concerning the entire organization. Her daughter seemed to have a power of m ovement and activity enabling her to be everywhere at once while at the same time remaining in her room, which was well, a bit more than a roomit was a kind of apartment which, ab ove all, had the characteristic of being very central. But she was constantly arguing with her mother. The mother wanted to keep things just as they were, with their usual rhythm, which precisely meant the habit of tearing down one thing to rebuild another, then again tearing down that to build still another, thus giving the building an appearance of frightful confusion. But the daughter did not like this, and she had another plan. Most of all, she wanted to bring something completely new into the organization: a kind of super-organization that would render all this confusion unnecessary. Finally, as it was impossible for them to reach an understanding, the daughter left the room to go on a kind of general inspection She went out, looked everything over, and then wanted to return to her room to decide upon some final measures. But this is where something rather peculiar began happening.
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 authority asked for 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!
--
It is certainly not an arbitrary construction of the type built by men, where everything is put pell-mell, without any order, without reality, and which is held together by only illusory ties. Here, these ties were symbolized by the hotels walls, while actually in ordinary human constructions (if we take a religious community, for example), they are symbolized by the building of a monastery, an identity of clothing, an identity of activities, an identity even of m ovementor to put it more precisely: everyone wears the same uniform, everyone gets up at the same time, everyone eats the same thing, everyone says his prayers together, etc.; there is an overall identity. But naturally, on the inside there remains the chaos of many disparate consciousnesses, each one following its own mode, for this kind of group identification, which extends right up to an identity of beliefs and dogma, is absolutely illusory.
Yet it is one of the most common types of human collectivityto group together, band together, unite around a common ideal, a common action, a common realization but in an absolutely artificial way. In contrast to this, Sri Aurobindo tells us that a true communitywhat he terms a gnostic or 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. For each one, the others should be as much himself as his own bodynot in a mental and artificial way, but through a fact of consciousness, by an inner realization.
0 1957-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
In its normal state, the body always feels that it is not its own master: illnesses invade it without its really being able to resist thema thousand factors impose themselves or exert pressure upon it. Its sole power is the power to defend itself, to react. Once the illness has got in, it can fight and overcome iteven modern medicine has acknowledged that the body is cured only when it decides to get cured; it is not the drugs per se that heal, for if the ailment is temporarily suppressed by a drug without the bodys will, it grows up again elsewhere in some other form until the body itself has decided to be cured. But this implies only a defensive power, the power to react against an invading enemyit is not true freedom.
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.
0 1957-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The most commonplace circumstances, people, the everyday events of life, the most seemingly insignificant things, all belong to one or another of these three categories of examiners. In this considerably complex organization of tests, those events generally considered the most important in life are really the easiest of all examinations to pass, for they find you prepared and on your guard. One stumbles more easily over the little pebbles on the path, for they attract no attention.
The qualities more particularly required for the tests of physical Nature are endurance and plasticity, cheerfulness and fearlessness.
0 1957-12-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
In the world, an overall vision of what is to be done.
Individually, at each moment and in each circumstance, the vision of the truth of the moment, of the circumstance, of the individual.
0 1958-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Then, from the supreme Reality came this command: Awaken, O Nature, to the joy of collaboration. And suddenly, all Nature rushed forth in an immense bounding of joy, saying, I accept! I will collaborate! And at the same time, there came a calm, an absolute tranquillity, to allow this receptacle, this body, to receive and contain without breaking and without losing anything of the Joy of Nature that was rushing forth in a m ovement of grateful recognition like an overwhelming flood. She accepted, she sawwith all eternity before her that this supramental consciousness would fulfill her more perfectly and impart a still greater force to her m ovement and more richness, more possibilities to her play.
And suddenly, as if resounding from every corner of the earth, I heard these great notes which are sometimes heard in the subtle physicalra ther like those of Beeth ovens Concerto in Dwhich come at moments of great progress, as though fifty orchestras were bursting forth all at once without a single discordant note, to sound the joy of this new communion of Nature and Spirit, the meeting of old friends who, after a long separation, find each other once more.
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 work is being carried out. This ship, as big as a city, is thoroughly organized, and it had certainly already been functioning for quite some time, for its organization was fully developed. It is the place where people destined for the supramental life are being trained. These people (or at least a part of their being) had already undergone a supramental transformation because the ship itself and all that was aboard was neither material nor subtle-physical, neither vital nor mental: it was a supramental substance. This substance itself was of the most material supramental, the supramental substance nearest the physical world, the first to manifest. The light was a blend of red and gold, forming a uniform substance of luminous orange. Everything was like that the light was like that, the people were like thateverything had this color, in varying shades, however, which enabled things to be distinguished from one another. The overall impression was of a shadowless world: there were shades, but no shadows. The atmosphere was full of joy, calm, order; everything worked smoothly and silently. At the same time, I could see all the details of the education, the training in all domains by which the people on board were being prepared.
This immense ship had just arrived at the shore of the supramental world, and a first batch of people destined to become the future inhabitants of the supramental world were about to disembark. Everything was arranged for this first landing. A certain number of very tall beings were posted on the wharf. They were not human beings and never before had they been men. Nor were they permanent inhabitants of the supramental world. They had been delegated from ab ove and posted there to control and supervise the landing. I was in charge of all this since the beginning and throughout. I myself had prepared all the groups. I was standing on the bridge of the ship, calling the groups forward one by one and having them disembark on the shore. The tall beings posted there seemed to be reviewing those who were disembarking, allowing those who were ready to go ashore and sending back those who were not and who had to continue their training aboard the ship. While standing there watching everyone, that part of my consciousness coming from here became extremely interested: it wanted to see, to identify all the people, to see how they had changed and to find out who had been taken immediately as well as those who had to remain and continue their training. After awhile, as I was observing, I began to feel pulled backwards and that my body was being awakened by a consciousness or a person from here1and in my consciousness, I protested: No, no, not yet! Not yet! I want to see whos there! I was watching all this and noting it with intense interest It went on like that until, suddenly, the clock here began striking three, which violently jerked me back. There was the sensation of a sudden fall into my body. I came back with a shock, but since I had been called back very suddenly, all my memory was still intact. I remained quiet and still until I could bring back the whole experience and preserve it.
--
Those who were sent back for more training were not of a uniform color; 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 transformed. They were not like this all over, but in places.
The tall beings on the shore were not of the same color, at least they did not have this orange tint; they were paler, more transparent. Except for a part of their bodies, only the outline of their forms could be seen. They were very tall, they did not seem to have a skeletal structure, and they could take on any form according 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 color was much more 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, more subtle than the orange substance.
--
A true, sincere, spontaneous life, as in the supramental world, is a springing forth of things through the fact of conscious will, a power over substance that shapes this substance according 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 more or less high position or a more or less comfortable life, not because it is the spontaneous, natural and sincere expression of your way of being and of your inner need, but because the fortuity of lifes circumstances has placed you in contact with these things. An absolutely worthless 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 inferior position, whereas he would be a wholly useful individual if the world were sincere.
0 1958-02-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Some people come to see me in utter despair, in tears, in what they call terrible moral suffering; when I see them like that I slightly shift the needle in that part of my consciousness containing all of you, and when they leave, they are completely relieved. It is just like a compass needle I slightly shift the needle in my consciousness, and its over. Naturally, through habit, it returns later on. But these are mere soap bubbles.
I too have known suffering, but there was always a part of me that knew how to hold itself back and remain aloof.
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
From the negative point of view I mean the difficulties to be overcomeone of the most serious obstacles is that the ignorant and falsifying outer consciousness, the ordinary consciousness legitimizes all the so-called physical laws, causes, effects and consequences, all that science has disc overed 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.
0 1958-05-11 - the ship that said OM, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I became stiff from it. When the forest scene5 was over, I was so stiff that I was like that (gesture): one single mass.
Mother is referring to her 'Darshan' when four times a year She appeared on her balcony high ab ove the assembled mass of disciples and visitors on the street below. The 'darshan days' were February 21, April 24, August 15 and N ovember 24.
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The first time I came here and spoke with Sri Aurobindo about what was needed for the Work, he told me (he also wrote it to me) that for the secure achievement of the Work we would need three powers: one was the power over health, the second was the power over g overnment, and the third was the power over money.
Health naturally depends upon the sadhana; but even that is not so sure: there are other factors. As for the second, the power over g overnment, 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 g overnment. One can influence individuals, one can transmit the will to them, but their hands are tied. In a g overnment, there is no one individual, nor even several who is all-powerful and who can decide things. One must be the g overnment oneself and give it the desired orientation.
For the last, for money, he told me, I still dont know exactly what it depends on. Then one day I entered into trance with this idea in mind, and after a certain journey I came to a place like a subterranean grotto (which means that it is in the subconscient, or perhaps even in the inconscient) which was the source, the place and the power over money. I was about to enter into this grotto (a kind of inner cave) when I saw, coiled and upright, an immense serpent, like an all black python, formidable, as big as a seven-story house, who said, You cannot pass!Why not? Let me pass!Myself, I would let you pass, but if I did, they would immediately destroy me.Who, then, is this they?They are the asuric4 powers who rule over money. They have put me here to guard the entrance, precisely so that you may not enter.And what is it that would give one the power to enter? Then he told me something like this: I heard (that is, he himself had no special knowledge, but it was something he had heard from his masters, those who ruled over him), I heard that he who will have a total power over the human sexual impulses (not merely in himself, but a universal power that is, a power enabling him to control this everywhere, among all men) will have the right to enter. In other words, these forces would not be able to prevent him from entering.
A personal realization is very easy, it is nothing at all; a personal realization is one thing, but the power to control it among all men that is, to control or master such m ovements at will, everywhereis quite another. I dont believe that this condition has been fulfilled. If what the serpent said is true and if this is really what will vanquish these hostile forces that rule over money, well then, it has not been fulfilled.
It has been fulfilled to a certain extent but its negligible. It is conditional, limited: in one case, it works; in another, it doesnt. It is quite problematic. And naturally, where terrestrial things are involved (I dont say universal, but in any case terrestrial), when it is something involving the earth, it must be complete; there cannot be any approximations.
Therefore, its an affair between the asuras and the human species. To transform itself is the only solution left to the human speciesin other words, to tear from the asuric forces the power of ruling over the human species.
You see, the human species is a part of Nature, but as Sri Aurobindo has explained, from the moment mind expressed itself in man, it put him into a relationship with Nature very different from the relationship all the lower species have with her. All the lower species right up to man are completely under the rule of Nature; she makes them do whatever she wants, and they can do nothing without her consent. Whereas man begins to act and to live as an equal; not as an equal in terms of power, but from the standpoint of consciousness (he is beginning to do so since he has the capacity to study and to find out Natures secrets). He is not superior to her, far from it, but he is on an equal footing. And so he has acquiredthis is a fac the has acquired a certain power of independence that he immediately used to put himself under the influence of the hostile forces, which are not terrestrial but extra-terrestrial.
--
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. For a long time, Nature rebelled (I have written about it often). She used to say, Why are you in such a hurry? It will be done one day. But then last year, there was that extraordinary experience.5 And it was because of that experience that I told her, Well, now that we agree, give me some proof; I am asking you for some proofdo it for me. She didnt budge, absolutely nothing.
Perhaps it is a kind of it can hardly be called an intuition, but a kind of divination of this idea that made people speak of selling ones soul to the devil for money, of money being an evil force, which produces this shrinking on the part of all those who want to lead a spiritual life but as for that, they shrink from everything, not only from money!
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 m ovement has been mastered to some degree, what the mass does or doesnt do (this whole human mass that has barely, barely emerged into even the mental consciousness) will become quite irrelevant. You see, the mass is still under the great rule of Nature. I am referring to mental humanity, predominantly mental, which developed the mind but misused it and immediately set out on the wrong pathfirst thing.
There is nothing to say since the first thing done by the divine forces which emanated for the Creation was to take the wrong path!6 That is the origin, the seed of this marvelous spirit of independence the negation of surrender, in other words. Man said, I have the power to think; I will do with it what I want, and no one has the right to intervene. I am free, I am an independent being, IN-DE-PEN-DENT! So thats how things stand: we are all independent beings!
0 1958-07-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
It is an ascending curve, but a curve that swerves away from the Divine. So naturally, one has to climb much higher to find a higher Divine, since it is a conscious Divine, whereas the others are divine spontaneously and instinctively, without being conscious of it. All our moral notions of good and evil, all of that, are what we have thrown over the creation with our distorted and perverted consciousness. It is we who have invented it.
We are the distorting intermediary between the purity of the animal and the divine purity of the gods.
0 1958-07-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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 worse, 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 for a godlike wrath!
***
0 1958-08-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Evidently the gods of the Puranas are a good deal worse than human beings, as we saw in that film the other day1 (and that story was absolutely true). The gods of the overmind are infinitely more egocentric the only thing that counts for them is their power, the extent of their power. Man has in addition a psychic being, so consequently he has true l ove and compassionwherein lies his superiority over the gods. It was very, very clearly expressed in this film, and its very true.
The gods are faultless, for they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint; it is their godly way. But if one looks at it from a higher point of view, if one has a higher vision, a vision of the whole, they have fewer qualities than man. In this film, it was pr oved that through their capacity for l ove and self-giving, men can have as much power as the gods, and even morewhen they are not egoists, when they can overcome their egoism.
Certainly man is nearer the Supreme than the gods. Provided he fulfills the necessary conditions, he can be nearerhe isnt so automatically, but he can be, he has the power, the potentiality to be.
0 1958-09-16 - OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The other day (I was in my bathroom upstairs), it came; it took hold of the entire body. It rose up in the same way, and all the cells were trembling. And with such a power! So I stopped everything, all m ovement, and I let the thing grow. The vibration went on expanding, ever widening, as the sound itself was expanding, expanding, and all the cells of the body were seized with an intensity of aspiration as if the entire body were swellingit became overwhelming. I felt that it would all burst.
I understood those who withdraw from everything to live that totally.
0 1958-09-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Ever since my childhood, I have spent my time veiling myself: one veil over another veil over another veil, so as to remain invisible. Because to see me without the true attitude is the great sin. Anyway, sin in the sense Sri Aurobindo defines itmeaning that things are no longer in their place.
***
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
When you left on your journey,2 for example, I made a specie! concentration for all to go well so that nothing untoward happen to you. I even made a formation and asked for 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 formation to follow you.
For people here in the Ashram, my work is not the same. It is more like a kind of atmosphere that extends everywherea very conscious atmospherewhich I let work for each one according to his need. I dont have a special action for each person, unless something requires my special attention. When I would tune into you while you were travelling, I clearly saw your image appear before 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 nor does it appear before me in the same manner, as a clear image of yourself, as though you wanted to know something.
--
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 forced 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 form 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 for the work, and I do the work consciously; but the extent to which people in the world, or those who are here in the Ashram, are conscious of this or receive the results depends upon them, though not exclusively.
--
Before, I always had the negative experience of the disappearance of the ego, of the oneness of Creation, where everything implying separation disappearedan experience that, personally, I would call negative. Last Wednesday, while I was speaking (and thats why at the end I could no longer find my words), I seemed suddenly to have left this negative phenomenon and entered into the positive experience: the experience of BEING the Supreme Lord, the experience that nothing exists but the Supreme Lordall is the Supreme Lord, there is nothing else. And at that 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 words, all this was I could no longer speak French. Perhaps the words could have come to me in Englishprobably, because it was easier for Sri Aurobindo to express himself in English, and thats how it must have happened: it was the part embodied in Sri Aurobindo (the part of the Supreme that was embodied in Sri Aurobindo for its manifestation) that had the experience. This is what joined back with the Origin and caused the experience I was well aware of it. And that is probably why its transcription through English words would have been easier than through French words (for at these 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 For example, the volume of Force that was to be expressed in the voice was too great for the speech organ. So I had to be a little attentive that is, there had to be a kind of filtering in the outermost expression, otherwise the voice would have cracked. But this isnt done through the will and reason, its automatic. Yet I feel that the capacity of Matter to contain and express is increasing with phenomenal speed. But its progressive, it cant be done instantly. There have often been people whose outer form broke because the Force was too strong; well, I clearly see that it is being dosed out. After all, this is exclusively the concern of the Supreme Lord, I dont bother about itits not my concern and I dont bother about itHe makes the necessary 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.
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
On the one hand, there is what Sri Aurobindowho, as the Avatar, represented the supreme Consciousness and Will on earthdeclared me to be, that is, the supreme universal Mother; and on the other hand, there is what I am realizing in my body through the integral sadhana.2 I could be the supreme Mother and not do any sadhana, and as a matter of fact, as long as Sri Aurobindo was in his body, it was he who did the sadhana, and I received the effects. These effects were automatically established in the outer being, but he was the one doing it, not II was merely the bridge between his sadhana and the world. Only when he left his body was I forced to take up the sadhana myself; not only did I have to do what I was doing beforebeing a bridge between his sadhana and the world but I had to carry on the sadhana myself. When he left, he turned over to me the responsibility for what he himself had been doing in his body, and I had to do it. So there are both these things. Sometimes one predominates, sometimes the other (I dont mean successively in time, but it depends on the moment), and they are trying to combine in a total and perfect realization: the eternal, ineffable and immutable Consciousness of the Executrice of the Supreme, and the consciousness of the Sadhak of the integral Yoga who strives in an ascending effort towards an ever increasing progression.
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 ab ove and what comes from below, or in other words, the eternal position and the evolutionary realization.
--
And this explains everything, absolutely everything: how it works, how it functions in the world.3 I was saying to myself, But I have no powers, I have no powers! Several days ago, I said, But after all, I KNOW WHO is there, I know, yet how is it that ? There, up to there (the level of the head), it is all-powerful, nothing can resist but here it is ineffective. So those who have faith, even an ignorant but real faith (it can be ignorant but nevertheless it is real), say, What! How can you have no powers? Because the sadhana is not yet over.
The Lord will possess his universe only when the universe will have consciously become the Lord.
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
They are beings who belong to the progressive creation of the universe and who have themselves presided over its formation from the most etheric or subtle regions to the most material regions. They are a descent of the divine creative Spirit that came to repair the mischief in short, to repair what the Asuras had done. The first makers created disorder and darkness, an unconsciousness, and then it is said that there was a second lineage of makers to repair that evil, and the gods gradually descended through realities that were ever moreone cant say dense because it isnt really dense, nor can one even say material, since matter as we know it does not exist on these planesthrough more and more concrete substances.
All these zones, these planes of reality, received different names and were classified in different ways according to the occult schools, according to the different traditions, but there is an essential similarity, and if we go back far enough into the various traditions, hardly anything but words differ, depending upon the country and the language. The descriptions are quite similar. More over, those who climb back up the ladderor in other words, 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 more subtle bodyin order to ACT in a more subtle body and so forth, twelve times (you make each body come out from a more material body, leaving the more material body in its corresponding zone, and then go off through successive exteriorizations), what they have seen, what they have disc overed and seen through their ascensionwhe ther they are occultists from the Occident or occultists from the Orientis for the most part analogous in description. They have put different words on it, but the experience is very analogous.
--
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 for example, if while going out of a more 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 world. In other words, 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 world, the material world, 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 more flexible, more supple and more direct (for example, there is a capacity to change the outer form, the visible form, according 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 formations, if you believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have imagined them to be like that, or that they have such and such defects or qualities because men have envisioned it that wayas with all those who say God is created in the image of man and exists only in human thoughtall such people wont understand, it will seem absolutely ridiculous to them, a kind of madness. You must live a little, touch the subject a little to know how concrete it is.
--
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 more subtle inner bodies increasingly overlap the limits of this central physical body; they pass through it and extend further and further out, like water evaporating from a porous vase which creates a kind of steam all around it. And the more subtle it is, the more its extension tends to fuse with that of the universe: you finally become universal. It is an entirely concrete process that makes the invisible worlds an objective experience and even allows you to act in those worlds.
In Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's terminology, 'psychic' or 'psychic being' means the soul or the portion 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.
0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I do not want to put the word Unless, instead of putting generator of all creation, I put of the new creation Oh, but then it becomes absolutely overwhelming! It is THAT, in fact. It is that. But is it time to say so? I dont know
Generator of the new creation
--
Later Mother further explained: 'When one is exteriorized, this body-spirit retains a connection with the being that has gone out, and what has gone out has a power over itwhich is precisely why one isn't completely dead! The being that has gone out also has the power to make the body m ove.'
Later, Mother explained: 'I don't mean an autonomous will (it is the being that has gone out which has the power to make the body m ove), it has only acquired, through training, the capacity to express the will of the being with which it has kept a relationship through this link of the body-spirit which is broken only at death.'
0 1958-11-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Yes. Because at the very bottom of the Inconscient is the Supreme. It is the same idea as the highest height touching the deepest depth. The universe is like a circleit is represented by the serpent biting its tail, its head touching its tail. It means that the supreme height touches the most material matter, without any intermediary. I have already said this several times. But that was the experience. I didnt know what was happening. I expected nothing and it was stupendousin a single bound, I sprang up! If someone had had his eyes open, I assure you he would have had to laugh: I was bent over, like this, more and more, more and more, more and more, my head was just about to touch my knees when suddenlyvrrrm! Straight, straight up, my head upright in a single bound!
But as soon as you want to express it, it escapes like water running through your fingers; all the fluidity is lost, it evaporates. A rather vague, poetic or artistic expression is much truer, much nearer to the truth something hazy, nebulous, undefined. Something not concretized like a rigid mental expressionthis rigidity that the mind has introduced right down into the Inconscient.
0 1958-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The link between the two worlds has not yet been built, but it is in the process of being built; this was the meaning of the experience of February 3 1958, 1: to build a link between the two worlds. For both worlds are indeed therenot one ab ove the other, but within each other, in two different dimensions. Only, there is no communication between them; they overlap, as it were, without being connected. In the experience of February 3, I saw certain people from here (and from elsewhere) who already belong to the supramental world in a part of their being, but there is no connection, no link. But now the hour has come in universal history for this link to be built.
What is the relationship between this experience of February 3 and that of N ovember 7 (the almighty spring)? Is what you found in the depths of the Inconscient this same Supramental?
--
And each time, you have the feeling of having lived on the surface of things. Its a feeling that is repeated over and over again. With each new conquest, you feel that until then you had lived only on the surface of thingson the surface of the realization, on the surface of surrender, on the surface of power. It was only the surface of things, the surface of the experience. Behind the surface, there is a depth, and only when one enters into this depth does one touch the True Thing. And it is the same experience each time: what seemed a depth becomes the surface. A surface, with all that it entails of inaccuracy, yes, of artificialityartificialan artificial transcription. It feels like something not really alive, a copy, an imitation: its an image, a reflection, but not THE Thing itself. You step into another zone and you feel you have unc overed the Source and the Power and the Truth of things; then this source and power and truth in turn become an appearance, an imitation, a mere transcription in comparison to something concrete: the new realization.
(silence)
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
This is how it works: the psychic being passes from one life to another, but there are cases in which the psychic incarnates in order to to work 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 more 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 unfortunate circumstances. Not only unfortunate from an objective standpoint, but unfortunate for its own development, and then that creates in it the necessity to begin the experience all over again, and in much more difficult conditions.
And ifit can happenif the second attempt also miscarries, if the conditions make the experience the soul is seeking still more difficult for example, if one is in a body with an inadequate will or some distortion 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 for lifetimes on end before the soul can conquer it and manage to do what it wants. And each time, the conditions become more difficult, each time it requires a still greater effort. And people who know this say, You cannot get out! In fact, it is this kind of desire to escape which pushes you into more 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 horrible, the circumstances become so abominable.
--
Generally, when the hour has come for a karma to be overcome and absorbed 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 perform the cleansing action.
For the time being, it is not yet there.
Only, and this is what I wrote to you the other day which you did not understand: it is precisely at the most painful point, at the time when the suggestions are strongest, that one must hold on. Otherwise, it has always to be done all over again, always to be reconfronted. There comes a day, a moment, when it has to be done. And now, there is truly an opportunity on earth that is offered only once in thousands of years, a conscious help, with the necessary Power
But thats about all I know.
0 1958-12-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Swami told me that the mantra to Durga is intended to pierce through into the subconscient. To complement this work, he does his pujas to Kali, and finally one of his friends, X, the High Priest of the temple in Rameswaram (who presided over my initiation and has great occult powers), has undertaken to say a very powerful mantra over me daily, for a period of eight days, to extirpate the dark forces from my subconscious. The operation already began four days ago. While reciting his mantra, he holds a glass of water in his hand, then he makes me drink it. It seems that on the eighth day, if the enemy has been trapped, this water turns yellow then the operation is over and the poisoned water is thrown out. (I tell you all this because I prefer that you know.) In any event, I like X very much, he is a very luminous, very good man. If I am not delivered after all this!
In truth, I believe only in the Grace. My mantra and all the rest seem to me only little tricks to try to win over your Grace.
Mother, l ove me. I have only you, I want to belong to you alone.
0 1958-12-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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 L ove that embraces all and takes into itself the suffering and the evil of menall this overwhelms me with a sudden understanding. It seems to me that I am seeing and feeling all that you are facing, all that you are taking upon yourself for us. The suffering of the Divine in Matter has been an overwhelming revelation to meAh! I see, I want to fight, I want to be totally on your side; I am now and forever determined.
But you have enough to do with the higher beasts of prey without still having to fight the little scorpions. I beg of you, Sweet Mother, accept the help that is being offered to you, preserve your strength for the higher struggle. I quite understand that your L ove can even go to the scorpions that are attacking you, but it is not forbidden to protect yourself from their venom. You have enough to do on other planes.
--
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 opportunity to take a great step. I am very happy and can say with certitude that the worst 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 Work.
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 more 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 floor where everything was absolutely black, I wanted to go up again, but then I disc overed 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 floor, 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 comfort her I said, I am coming back. The sound of my voice shook off from me the semi-trance in which I was before 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 for 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) c overed from head to foot with a knitted outfit following tightly the form 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 words which translated in my mind, She must die the young princess, she must pay for 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.
0 1959-01-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
X continues his work on me daily; it is to last 41 days in all. He told me that he wants to undo the things of several births. When it is over, he will explain it all to me. I do not know how to tell you how luminous and good this man is, he is a very great soul. He is also giving me Sanskrit lessons, and little by little, each evening, speaks to me of the Tantra.
His action upon you is to continue for another five days, after which he is positive that you will be entirely saved. According 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 forced to appear before you I am learning many interesting things from him.
--
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 before. It is quiet upstairs for working, 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 for the 31st, I have revised and transformed 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 l ove you.
0 1959-01-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
For the time being, I am going downstairs only in the mornings at 6 for the balcony darshan and I immediately come back up without seeing anyone then in the afternoons, I go down once more at about 3 to take my bath and at 4:30 I come back up again. I do not yet know what will happen next month. I shall have to find some way to meet you so that we can work together I am going to think it over.
I do not ask you to write me your news,4 because I know that these are things it is better not to write about. But you know that it keenly interests me.
0 1959-01-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Apart from this, he has not yet entirely finished the work of purging that he has been doing on me for over a month, but I believe that everything will be completed in a short time from now.
Sweet Mother, I have a kind of fear that all these mantras are not bringing me nearer to you I mean you in your physical body, for it is not upon you physically that I was told to concentrate. Also, I almost never see you in my dreams any longer, or else only very vaguely. Last night, I dreamed that I was offering you flowers (not very pretty ones), one of which was called mantra, but I did not see you in my dream. Mother, I would like to be true, to do the right thing, to be as you want me to be.
--
All is well I am enthusiastic and you can count on my conscious help to overcome all the obstacles and all the bad will that may try to stop or delay your progress. It is a matter of being more obstinate, much more obstinate than the enemy, and whatever the cost, to reach the goal in time.
Since my last letter, I have thought about it and I see that I will be able to go down in the morning three times a week for one hour, from 10 to 11, to work with you, but you will have to do only the strict minimum in order to have as much free time as you need for the other things.1
0 1959-03-10 - vital dagger, vital mass, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I, who know the consequences of these things, stopped him just in time I gave him a blow. Then I had enough of all this and it was over, I cleaned the place out. It was almost a physical cleaning, for I had my hands clasped together (I was in a semitrance) and I threw them apart in an abrupt m ovement, left and right, powerfully, as if to sweep something away, and frrt! immediately everything was gone.
But had that not happened I was watching, not exactly with curiosity, but in order to learnto learn what kind of atmosphere people live in! And it is ALWAYS like that! They are always pestered by HORDES of little formations that are absolutely swarming and disgusting, each one making its nasty little suggestion.
0 1959-03-26 - Lord of Death, Lord of Falsehood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The power of this Titan comes from an Asura. There are four Asuras. Two have already been converted, and the other two, the Lord of Death and the Lord of Falsehood, made an attempt at conversion by taking on a physical bodythey have been intimately associated with my life. The story of these Asuras would be very interesting to recount The Lord of Death disappeared; he lost his physical body, and I dont know what has become of him.1 As for the other, the Lord of Falsehood, the one who now rules over this earth, he tried hard to be converted, but he found it disgusting!
At times he calls himself the Lord of Nations. It is he who sets all wars in motion, and only by thwarting his plans could the last war be won This one does not want to be converted, not at all. He wants neither the physical transformation nor the supramental world, for that would spell his end. Besides, he knows We talk to each other; beyond all this, we have our relationship. For after all, you see (laughing), I am his mother! One day he told me, I know you will destroy me, but meanwhile, I will create all the havoc possible.
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender1). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation, and when you come down to the body, when you attempt to make it take one step forwardoh, not even a real step, just a little step!everything starts grating; its like stepping on an anthill And yet the presence, the help of the supreme Mother, is there constantly; thus you realize that for ordinary men such a task is impossible, or else millions of lives would be needed but in truth, unless the work is done for them and the sadhana of the body done for the entire earth consciousness, they will never achieve the physical transformation, or else it will be so remote that it is better not even to speak of it. But if they open themselves, if they give themselves over in an integral surrender, the work can be done for themthey have only to let it be done.
The path is difficult. And yet this body is full of good will; it is filled with the psychic in every one of its cells. Its like a child. The other day, it cried out quite spontaneously, O my Sweet Lord, give me the time to realize You! It did not ask to hasten the process, it did not ask to lighten its work; it only asked for enough TIME to do the work. Give me the time!
0 1959-05-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I can easily understand that your task on this earth is not particularly encouraging and you must find our human matter stupid and rebellious. I do not wish to throw upon you more bad things than you already receive, but I wish you could also understand certain things. I am not made for this withered life, not made for putting sentences together all day long, not made for living alone in my holefriendless, l oveless, with nothing but mantras, and waiting for a better that never comes. For three years I have wanted to leave and each time I yielded out of scruples that you needed me, though also because I am attached to you. But after the [book on] Sri Aurobindo, there will be something else, there will always be something else that will make my departure look like a betrayal. I am fed up with living in my head, always in my head, with paper and ink. It was not of this that I dreamed when I was ten years old and ran with the wind over the untamed heaths. I am suffocating. You ask too much of me; or rather, I am not worth your expectation.
A l ove for you might have held me here. And indeed, for you I have devotion, veneration, respect, an attachment, but there has never been this marvelous thing, warm and full, that links one to a being in the same beating of a heart. Through l ove, I could do all, accept all, endure all, sacrifice all but I do not feel this l ove. You cannot give yourself with your head, through a mental decision, yet that is what I have been doing for five years. I have tried to serve you as best I could. But I am at the end of my rope. I am suffocating.
0 1959-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Before five months are over (in September, October or N ovember), Pakistan will attack India with the help or the complicity or the military resources of the United States. And at about the same time, China will attack India because of the Dalai Lama, under the pretext that India is supporting the Dalai Lama and that thousands of Tibetan refugees are escaping into India to carry on anti-Chinese activities. Then America will offer its support to India against China and then, said X, We shall see what will be the political policy of the Congress Party, which pretends to be unaligned with any bloc. If India accepts American aid, there will be no more Pakistan but rather American troops to prevent conflicts between Muslims and Hindus, and a single g overnment for both countries. I pointed out to X that this sounded very much like a world war
Then he made the following comparison: When you throw a pebble into a pond, there is just one center, one point where it falls, and everything radiates out from this center. There are two such centers in the world at present, two places where there are great vibrations: one is India and Pakistan, and that will radiate all over Asia. And the other is.
In any case, I had never heard him attacking the Congress as he did yesterday evening, almost violently.
0 1959-06-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The only thing that affirms itself with a certitude and a greater and greater force is my soul. I cling to It with all my strength. It is my only refuge. If I did not have that, I would throw my life overboard, for the outer circumstances and the immediate future seem to me impossible, unlivable.
I was touched by your blessings for Sujata and myself. But there lies another impossibility.
These last days I have come to realize that to blame all my crises on the hostile forces is perhaps to oversimplify things. I understand better and better, for in my suffering, my soul is all I have and I rely on that alone; otherwise I could never bear all that I have borne, all that I still bear. I understand, too, that there was also a truth in the force which periodically impelled me to leave, the truth of that destiny in me which is not fulfilled in the Ashram.
Mother, I have suffered so much and prayed so much this last while that I am sure my soul cannot but arrange circumstances in such a way that somehow I may live at last that somehow EVERYTHING may truly become reconciled: not later on or one of these days, but soon for it cannot go on any longer; I am at my end.
0 1959-08-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Now I can tell you that not for one hour have I left you; I have been constantly near you, hoping that your inner eyes would open and that you would see me, watching over you and enveloping you with my force and my l ove. It is within yourself that I want you to find the certitude, truth and joy.
Now I write you what I have wanted to tell you from the beginning: when you return to the Ashram, do not put on the orange robe1 again, return with the clothing X has given you
0 1959-10-06 - Sri Aurobindos abode, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And Sri Aurobindo was there, with a majesty, a magnificent beauty. He had all his beautiful hair as before. It was all so concrete, so substantialhe was even being served some kind of food. I remained there for one hour (I had looked at my watch before and I looked at it afterwards). I spoke to Sri Aurobindo, for I had some important questions to ask him about the way certain things are to be realized. He said nothing. He listened to me quietly and looked at me as if all my words were useless: he understood everything at once. And he answered me with a gesture and two expressions on his face, an unexpected gesture that did not at all correspond to any thought of mine; for example, he picked up three combs that were lying near the mirror (combs similar to those I use here, but larger) and he put them in his hair. He planted one comb in the middle of his head and the two others on each side, as if to gather all his hair over his temples. He was literally COIFFED with these three combs, which gave him a kind of crown. And I immediately understood that by this he meant that he was adopting my conception: You see, I embrace your conception of things, and I coif myself with it; it is my will. Anyway, I remained there for one hour.
And when I awoke, I didnt have this feeling of returning from afar and of having to re-enter my body, as I usually do. No, it was simply as though I were in this other world, then I took a step backwards and found myself here again. It took me a good half an hour to understand that this world here existed as much as the other and that I was no longer on the other side but here, in the world of falsehood. I had forgotten everythingpeople, things, what I had to do; everything had gone, as if it had no reality at all.
0 1959-10-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I would wish to be like Sujata, completely transparent, your child with her at your feet. Mother, help me. I need you. Sujata is healing something that was very painful in me, as though it were flayed or wounded, and which threw me into revolt. With this calming influence, I would like to begin a new life of self-giving. This change of residence is for me like the symbol of another change. Oh, Mother! may the painful road be over, and may all be achieved in the joy of your Will.
Your child,
0 1960-03-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And there are many, many experiences like this. It is only a small, a very small beginning. This one in particular came to mark the new stage: four years have elapsed, and now four years to come. Because everything has focused on this body to prepare it, everything has concentrated on itNature, the Master of the Yoga, the Supreme, everything So only when its over, not before, will it really be interesting to speak of all this. But maybe it will never be over, after all. Its a small beginning, very small.
The Darshan on February 29, 1960, the first anniversary of the Supramental Manifestation.
0 1960-05-16, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
If there is one fundamental necessity, it is humility. To be humble. Not humble as it is normally understood, such as merely saying, I am so small, Im nothing at allno, something else Because the pitfalls are innumerable, and the further you progress in yoga, the more subtle they become, and the more the ego masks itself behind marvelous and saintly appearances. So when somebody says, I no longer want to rely on anything but Him. I want to close my eyes and rest in Him alone, this comfortable Him, which is exactly what you want him to be, is the egoor a formidable Asura, or a Titan (depending on each ones capacity). Theyre all over the earth, the earth is their domain. So the first thing to do is to pocket your egonot preserve it, but get rid of it as soon as possible!
You can be sure that the God youve created is a God of the ego whenever something within you insists, This is what I feel, this is what I think, this is what I see; its my way, my very ownits my way of being, my way of understanding, my relationship with the Divine, etc.
--
X has the power of rendering things very material thats his great power, which is why things get upset when he comes here. overnight, someone progressing well comes to grips with difficulties; money on the way stops coming; you fall sick, things break downall because he has the power to give materiality to things from ab ove. For, you see, you can go right to the height of your consciousness and from there sweep away the difficulties (at a certain moment of the sadhana, difficulties truly dont exist, its only a matter of nabbing the undesirable vibration and its over, its reduced to dust). And everything is fine up ab ove, but down below its swarming. When X comes, its precisely all this swarming that becomes tangible.
The mastery must be a TRUE mastery, a very humble and austere mastery which starts from the very bottom and, step by step, establishes control. As a matter of fact, it is a battle against small, really tiny things: habits of being, ways of thinking, feeling and reacting.
0 1960-05-21 - true purity - you have to be the Divine to overcome hostile forces, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
object:0_1960-05-21 - true purity - you have to be the Divine to overcome hostile forces
author class:The Mother
--
At times, I feel that Ill never get over the difficulty. We are besieged by this enormous world of hostile forcesoceans of forces, churning and combining and submerging each other in gigantic pralayas,1 then again regrouping and combining. When you see that, it feels as if you had to be the Divine Himself to get over the difficulty. Precisely so! (And its the hostile forces who help you to see this, its their role.) You have TO BE THE DIVINE, that is the solution, that is the true divine purity.
***
When X is here, I get the impression that things are going backwards instead of forwards. But once hes left, I suddenly leap ahead. And then I perceive that the progress is a real progress, that things won have really been won and they dont come undone again. That is Xs true power, a very material power. For I often feel that things could come into being, they could be realized in the consciousness ab ove (and the vision is there, the Power is there, I have it the invisible power over the earth). But when you come down to the material plane, everything is uncertain. Whereas with X, once things have come down, they no longer dissipate. This is certainly why the Supreme put him on my path.
For example, there was one difficulty he helped me resolve. I have always been literally pestered, constantly, night and day, by all kinds of thoughts coming from peopleall kinds of calls, questions, formations2 that have naturally to be answered. For I have trained myself to be conscious of everything, always. But it disturbed me in the work, particularly when I needed absolute concentration and I could never cut myself off from people or cut myself off from the world. I had to answer all these calls and these questions, I had to send the necessary force, the necessary light, the healing power, I constantly had to purify all these formations, these thoughts, these wills, these false m ovements that were falling on me.
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
This experience last night also enabled me to understand what X had felt during one of our meditations. He had explained his experience by way of saying that I was this mystic tree whose roots plunge into the Supreme and whose branches spread forth over the world,3 and he said that one of these branches had entered into himand it had been a unique experience. He had said, this is the Mother.
And now I understand that what he had seen and translated by this Vedic image was that kind of perpetual flood.
0 1960-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
It gives me the impression of something like Yes, thats it, like a cavemanOh (Mother speaks mockingly), surely one of the cave artists or poets or writers! The intellectual life of the caves, I mean! But the cave happens to be low and when youre in it, you are like this (Mother stoops over), but the whole time you want to stand up straight. That makes you furious. Thats exactly the feeling it gives menot a cave meant for a man standing on his two feet; its a cave for a lion or for for any four-legged animal.
Its symbolic. Im speaking symbolically.
0 1960-07-12 - Mothers Vision - the Voice, the ashram a tiny part of myself, the Mothers Force, sparkling white light compressed - enormous formation of negative vibrations - light in evil, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I heard the Voice and awoke with the feeling of this Power, this Light, this Force of realization concentrated here which sets everything in motion (as always, it is always the same, a Power in motion). It was a dazzling white light. But then, what I found funny was that there I was, quite in my natural state, and this, the Ashram, was a tiny, tiny part of myself. And throughout the whole experience, it remained like thata very tiny part of myself. Everything else was I cant say deconcentrated, but an entirely general, overall activity, as it normally is every night. And I saw the Ashram quite clearlyit was something special, made for special reasons, but whereas I seemed to have an immense body, that was very small, very small. It went on for an hour. Thats what I found amusing; the other things just happen, and they may be interesting, but this was so spontaneous; I was watching it (I dont know where my head was), I was looking down from ab ove so tiny, so tiny.
What was me was up ab ove, and the Ashram was It began just here (the navel) and went that way (downwards), and it was encircled, to show that it was a special formationencircled in the inconscience of the terrestrial creation. And I was everything else, with the usual vibrations of power and light. And then one current and another current and another were passing into it, into this formation, and they kept going in and in and in, accumulating. They kept going in, and yet they did not come out, they did not leave. It was not an undulatory m ovement, but rather a pulsating m ovementit had no beginning, it didnt go out, and yet it kept moving. Its very difficult to describe.
--
The first reaction is always a kind of shrinking before things which seem horrible, but if you can overcome that and really have the experience, everything changes.
And there are hundreds and hundreds of little experiences like that, like so many little stones marking the way. Then you see that the two things are ALWAYS together: the destructive and the constructive. You cant see one without seeing the other. A time comes when the effort is to conquer the negative parts of creation and death (as at the end of Savitri), and when you have conquered that, then youre ab ove. And then if you look at all these things, even those which seem the most opposed to the Divine, even acts of cruelty done for the pleasure of cruelty, you see the Presence the Presence that annuls their effects. And its absolutely marvelous.
0 1960-07-23 - The Flood and the race - turning back to guide and save amongst the torrents - sadhana vs tamas and destruction - power of giving and offering - Japa, 7 lakhs, 140000 per day, 1 crore takes 20 years, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Right at the end, there was a place where the water had to turn to run downthis was the Great Passage. If you got caught in that, it was all over. You had to reach this spot and cross over before the water came. It was the only place you could get across. Then a last plunge, and like an arrow shot from a bow, full speed ahead, I crossed over and there I was.
And once on the other side, without even a rise in ground level (I dont know why), it was immediately safe. And the current went on and on, waves upon waves, on and on, as far as the eye could see, but it was canalized here at the Great Turning; and as soon as it went past this point, the inundation was total, it spread out over something over the earth. And the current turnedit turned but I was already on the other side. And down below, everything was finished, the water rushed down everywhere. Only, as soon as I was on the other side, it could not touch me the water could not get across, it was stopped by something invisible, and it turned away.
More over, it seemed that everything had already been prepared, as if the way had been made to divert the water.
--
The vehicles path was not on earth, but up ab ove (probably in interstellar regions!), a special path for this vehicle. And I didnt know where the water was coming from; I couldnt see its origin, which was off beyond the horizon. But it came raging down in torrentsnot precipitously like a waterfall, but rather like a rushing torrent. My path passed between the torrents of water and the earth below. And I saw the water before me, everywhere, in front and behindit was so extraordinary, for it looked like it was everywhere, you see, except along my path (and even then, there was some seepage). Water speeding everywhere. But there was a kind of conscious will in this onrush, and I had to reach the Great Passage before this conscious will. This water resembled something physical, but there was a consciousness, a conscious will, and I had to it was like a battle between the will I represented and that will. And I passed each fissure just in time. Only when I reached the Great Turning did I see the will that impelled this water. And I reached there just before it. And passed through at a fantastic speedlike lightning. Even time ceased I crossed over like a flash of lightning. And then, suddenly, respite and it was blue. A square.
At the time, I didnt know what it all meant. Then this morning, I thought, It must have something to do with the world situation.
--
What was pleasing, and really quite interesting, was this tremendous speed, like an arrow, and I always arrived in time, just in time, just in time. Once I had crossed over to the other side (I clearly felt that nothing would be left, for it was such a powerful deluge), the danger was finished, there was no longer ANY possibility at all of being touchedthis was the main feeling. Everything was stopped. Nothing could touch.
I turned around and saw all this water rushing down, and I thought, Now lets see if we can do something here. There was someone behind who interested me, someone or somethingit was still something; it was very likable and had something of the blue color that was here on the other side. Not really individuals, but more like beings representative of something that was following me quite closely. When I was there, it also was there, but it could not keep up, it kept losing groundas my speed increased, its decreased. It could not keep up. But it interested me in a special way. Oh, hes so close (he or it); he might just make it, I thought. And at that moment, I saw that all this destructive will with its instrument of water, symbolically water, had rushed past and was spreading out everywhere. But there was still a chance of saving all those who were along this path. And thats immediately what I thought of, it was my first wish: Lets see if they can still get across, if I can manage to get them across. I remembered some especially dangerous spots (while speeding past, I had remarked, Oh, here we might still be able to do this, there that could still be donemy consciousness m oved at the same speed, and I noted everything along the way), and once I was firmly there on the other side, I started sending back messages.
0 1960-07-26 - Mothers vision - looking up words in the subconscient, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Coming at the end of the night as it did, it means that its an exploration in some part or another of a subconscious mental activity. And you can make so many disc overies there it is unbelievable! But its l ovely. And rarely unpleasant. There was a time when it was very unpleasant, oppressive, full of effort and resistance. I would want to go somewhere, but it would be impossible; I toiled and struggled, but everything would go wrong the straight paths would suddenly plunge into an abyss, and Id have to cross the abyss. For years it was like that. Just recently, I looked back over this whole period But now it is over. Now its something its l ovely, its enjoyable, its a little it has a childlike simplicity.
However, its not a personal subconscient, but a its more than the Ashram. For me, the Ashram is not a separate individualityexcept in that vision the other day,1 which is what surprised me. Its hardly that. Rather, it is still this M ovement of everything, of everything that is included. So its like entering into the subconscient of the whole earth, and it takes on forms which are quite familiar images to me, but they are absolutely symbolic and very, very funny! It took a moment to see that vainquons is spelled q-u-o-n-s. And I wasnt sure! I meant to ask Pavitra for a dictionary which gives verb conjugations, for then if Im stuck on something while writing, I can look it up.
0 1960-08-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But L has enlarged the program. (Mother indicates the plan) This is only a small part of his extensive total program. He is planning to have a school of agriculture, a modern dairy with grazing landtheres a lot of agriculture, really a lotfruit orchards, large rice fields, many things. And then a ceramics factory. My ceramics factory will be at the far end of the lake, so as to utilize the clay the g overnment has agreed; as they have to dig out the lake one day, we shall use the top soil for the fields. First well rem ove all the pebbles (you know, there are hills over there), which can be used for constructionits a mine of pebbles. After removing the pebbles, there will be holes which then well fill with earth from the lake. And below this earth is a thick and compact layer of clay which is so hard it cant be used for farmingits impossible but its wonderful for making ceramics. So right at the very end, in Indian territory,4 well have a large ceramics industry. On the other side, well have a little factory for firing clay.
All this is huge. A tremendous program.5
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And life itself has responded by bringing people forward to form a nucleus. Of course, we clearly saw that this would make the work a bit more complex and difficult (it gives me a heavy responsibility, an enormous material work), but from the overall point of view for the Workits indispensable and even inevitable. And in any case, as we were later able to verify, each one represents simultaneously a possibility and a special difficulty to resolve. I have even said, I believe, that each one here is an impossibility.3
But this way of seeing is too far rem oved from the state of mind and spiritual education in which X has lived,4 of course, for him to understand. Nor am I in favor of proselytizing (to convince X); it would disturb him quite needlessly. He has not come here for that. He came here for something special, something I wanted which he brought, and I have learnt it. Now its excellent, he is a part of the group in his own fashion, thats all. And in a certain way, his presence here is having a very good effect on a whole category of people who had not been touched but who are now becoming more and more favorably inclined. It was difficult to reach all the traditionalists, for example, the people attached to the old spiritual forms; well, they seem now to have been touched by something.
--
Later on, I heard Sri Aurobindo saying that there were two people here to whom he had done this and as soon as there was silence, they panicked: My God, Ive gone stupid!! And they threw it all overboard by starting to think again.
Once it was done, it was done. It was well-rooted.
--
After that, I made a kind of pact with them the trouble, you see, is that there are constantly new ones. If only they were the same! They are constantly coming in new floods, so there was the need of a permanent formation over there. Ive tried to make this permanent formation, to take and absorb them, to calm them down and scatter them a little so they dont accumulate in one spot, which in the end could be dangerous.
I found this quite amusing.
0 1960-10-02a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Before going to bed, sometimes I say to myself, I will do what is necessary to spend my night in these great currents of force(because there is a way to do it). And then I think, Oh, what an egotist you are, my girl! So sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesntwhen theres something important to do, it doesnt happen. But all I have to do is concentrate in a certain way before going to sleep to spend my whole night in these very far from here, very far I cant say very far from the earth, for surely its in an intermediate zone between the forces from ab ove and the earths atmosphere. Thats what it mainly is, in any case. Its a great universal current as well, but mainly its what descends and comes onto the earth, and it is permeating the earths atmosphere all the time, all the time, and it comes with this wide, overall visionit makes for wonderful nights I no longer bother about people at allat least not as such, but in a more impersonal way.
(silence)
0 1960-10-02b, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
As I did not find the translation of the Message fully satisfying, I have continued pondering over it. Then another possibility, which MAY be better, presented itself. Here it is:
Ce monde merveilleux de flicit,
0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
In these Questions and Answers, for example, you had wanted to edit out the words Sweet Mother since people from the West might not understand. But then, we have just now received a letter from someone who suddenly had a very beautiful experience when he came across those words, Sweet Mother. He saw, he suddenly felt this maternal presence of l ove and compassion watching over the world. The moment had come and, precisely, it did its work. Its very interesting.
Mentally we say, Oh, that cant go. And even I am often inclined to say, Dont publish this, dont speak of something or other. Then I realize how silly it is! There is something that uses everything. Even what may seem useless to usor perhaps worse than useless, harmfulmight be just the thing to give someone the right shock.
0 1960-10-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Z's work involved seeing Mother everyday to watch over her health and her food.
***
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
There was a considerable library in the studio; one whole end was given over to the librarymore than two thousand books belonging to my brother. There were even the complete works of several classical writers. And I had my entire collection of the Revue Cosmique, and my post card collection (it was down below)mainly post cards of Algeria, Tlemcen, nearly 200 of them. But there were five years of the Revue Cosmique. And written in such a French! How funny it was!
Theons wife dictated it in English while she was in trance. Another English lady who was there claimed to know French like a Frenchman. Myself, I never use a dictionary, she would say, I dont need a dictionary. But then she would turn out such translations! She made all the classic mistakes of English words that mustnt be translated like that. Then it was sent to me in Paris for correcting. It was literally impossible.
--
She was a small woman, fat, almost flabbyshe gave you the feeling that if you leaned against her, it would melt! Once, I remember I was there in Tlemcen with Andres father, who had come to join usa painter, an artist. Theon was wearing a dark purple robe. Theon said to him, This robe is purple. No, its not purple, the other answered, its violet. Theon went rigid: When I say purple, its purple! And they started arguing over this foolishness. Suddenly there flashed from my head, No, this is too ridiculous!I didnt say a word, but it went out from my head (I even saw the flash), and then Madame Theon got up and came over to me, stood behind me (neither of us uttered a word the other two were staring at each other like two angry cocks), then she laid my head against her breastabsolutely the feeling of sinking into eiderdown!
And never in my life, never, had I felt such peaceit was absolutely luminous and soft a peace, such a soft, tender, luminous peace. After a moment, she bent down and whispered in my ear, One must never question ones master! It wasnt I who was questioning!
--
I looked at this problem yesterday; it occupied me for much of the day. And Im sure this head came to give me the solution. For me, its very easyat once three seconds, and everything stops, everything. But the others are stubborn! And yet Im positive, Im positive, I tell them, But relax; why are you on pins and needles like that? Relax! Its the only way to overcome your fatigue. But they immediately start feeling that theyll lose their faculties and become inert the opposite of life!
And this is surely what oriented my night, for I started my night looking at this problem: How can I make them accept this? For neither should they fall into the other extreme and slip from this weary agitation into tamas.3 Thats obvious.
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
There is a black cloud over the ashram. Its origin is rather unique and very interesting.
S has a nephew in Bombay, and one day towards the end of August or beginning September, he told me an extraordinary story about this nephew, who had disappeared (he showed me his photographhe looks rather like a medium). He returned home two days later, I believe. Hed been found in a train in a hypnotic state; fortunately someone shook him and he suddenly woke up: Why am I here? What am I doing here? (He had no intention of travelling, you see; he had simply left his house to visit a neighbor in Bombay.) So he returned home without knowing what had happened to him. And he was quite bizarre, really rather off.
--
He woke up in a railway station somewhere between Bombay and Poona, and he began telling them that he was hungry (he was with those same two persons). They punched him in the stomach and put a handkerchief over his nosehe again passed out! At Poona, he woke up again (hed lost his appetite by then!), and again they put the handkerchief over his nose. And it went on like thatthey kept on punching him a lot. When he woke up in the country on the outskirts of Poona, four men were around him arguing in a language he didnt know (his language is Gujarati). They were probably speaking in some other language, I dont know which oneit seems they were very dark. He didnt understand, but from various signs they made he could see that they were arguing about whether to kill him or not. Finally, they told him (probably in a language he could understand), Either you join our gang, or well kill you. He grunted in reply so as not to commit himself. The others decided to wait for their chief (thus the chief wasnt there): Well decide after he comes. Then just to make sure, they punched him a few more times in the belly and put the handkerchief over his noseout!
Sometime later (he doesnt know how long, for until he returned he had no sense of time), he woke up in a rather dark, low-roofed house way out in the country; there were five persons now, not four. They were busy eating, so he was careful not to budge. Mainly they were drinking (they have prohibition there). Four of them were already dead drunk. So he got up to have a look. The fifth one, whom he hadnt seen before (he must have been the chief), was not yet totally drunk; when he saw the boy stirring, he let out a fearful growlso the poor boy threw himself flat in the corner and lay stillhe waited. After awhile, the fifth one (after downing another bottle) was also dead drunk. So now that he saw them all fast asleep, he got up very cautiously and he said he ran for an hour and a half! A boy pummelled as he had been, who hadnt eaten for four days! I think thats a miracle.
--
But unfortunately, this spread all over the Ashram, all over everyonea black cloud everywhere. It was rather troublesome!
But some days later, a telephone call: the boy was found in Ahmedabad and brought back to Bombay.
--
This is why I tell people (not that I expect them to do it, at least not now, but its good they know) that its NOT a matter of fate, NOT something that completely escapes our control, NOT some sort of Law of Nature over which we have no powerit is not so. We are truly the masters of everything which has been brought together to create our transitory individuality; we have been given the power of control, if only we knew how to use it.
Its a discipline, a tremendous tapasya.9
0 1960-10-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
According to tradition, Anubis, the jackal-headed god, helped Isis to rebuild the body of her spouse, Osiris, who had been killed and dismembered by his brother Set. Osiris was the first god to rule over men. Owing to certain special rites, Isis, helped by Anubis, succeeded in bringing him back to life. So we are not very far from the legend of Savitri and Satyavan.
L'Orpailleur, which had just been published. The man's description, as a matter of fact, bears a striking resemblance to the publisher.
0 1960-11-05, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And we carry that within us! We arent aware of it, its almost subconscious for you see, the consciousness is there to prevent us from yielding to thatits cowardly, and it can make you fall sick IN A MINUTE. I saw it, I saw things that had been cured and overcome in myself (cured in the true manner, not in an outer way), and then they return! Its cured, but then it begins again.
So then I went in search of its origin. Its something in the subconscientin the cells subconscient. Its roots are there, and on the least occasion And its so very, very ingrained that For example, you can be feeling very good, the body can be perfectly harmonious (and when the body is perfectly harmonious, its motions are harmonious, things are in their true places, everything works exactly as it should without needing the least attentiona general harmony), when suddenly the clock strikes, for example, or someone utters a word, and you have just the faint impression Oh, its late, Im not going to be on timea second, a split second, and the whole working of the body falls apart. You suddenly feel feeble, drained, uneasy. And you have to intervene. Its terrible. And were at the mercy of such things!
0 1960-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Its an approach which is not at all mental nor intellectual nor (God knows!) moral in the leastno notion of Good or Evil nor any of those things, absolutely none of that. Theres a moment in life when you begin thinking a little and you see all this from an overall or universal point of view in which all moral notions completely disappearFOR ANOTHER REASON. This experience with Z reminded me of a certain way of approaching Beauty that enables you even to find it in what appears dirty and ugly to the common vision. It is She trying to express herself in this something which to the common vision is ugly, dirty, hypocritical. But of course, if you yourself have striven assiduously and have greatly held yourself in, then you look at it reprovingly.
From my earliest childhood, instinctively, I have never felt the slightest contempt or how should I say (well, well! I was thinking in English) shrinking or disapproval, severe criticism or disgust for the things people call vice.
--
These things are like landmarks along the ascending path: you go forward step by step, and sometimes its painful, sometimes joyful, or with a certain amount of toil that bears witness still to the presence of the personality or the individuality and its limitations (the Questions and Answers are full of this)but the other thing is different, completely different: the other thing is an overflowing joy, and not only the joy of knowing but the joy of BEING. An overflowing joy.2
There, my child.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
A while ago You know that I have TREMENDOUS financial difficulties. In fact, I have handed the whole matter over to the Lord, telling Him, Its your affair; if you want us to continue this experience, well, you must provide the means. But this upsets some of them, so they come along with all kinds of suggestions to keep me from having to to resort to something so drastic. They suggest all kinds of things; some time ago they said, What about a good cyclone, or a good earthquake? A lot of damage to the Ashram, a public appeal that would bring in some funds! (Mother laughs) Yes, its of this order! And its all quite clear and definitewe have veritable conversations!
I listen, I answer. Its not satisfactory! I told them. But theyve kept to their idea, they like it. When that first storm came some time back (you remember, with those terrible bolts of lightning and that asuric being P.K. saw and sketched): Dont you want us to destroy something? I got angry. But it was This influence was so close and acute that it gave you goose bumps! The whole time the storm lasted, I had to hold on tight in my bed, like this (Mother closes her fists tight as in a trance or deep concentration), and I didnt m ovedidnt m ovelike a a rock during the entire storm, until he consented to go a bit further away. Then I m oved. And even now, it comesfrom others (theres not just one, you see, there are many): How about a good flood? A roof collapsed the other day with someone underneath, but he was able to escape. So roofs are collapsing, houses Arouse public sympathy, we must help the Ashram! Its no good, I said. But maybe thats whats responsible for this interminable rain. And they offer so many other things oh, what they parade past me! You could write books on all this!
--
On a small scale, in very small details, I feel that of all the forces, this is the strongest. And its the only one with a power over hostile wills. Only for the world to change, it must manifest here in all its fullness. We have to be up to it
Sri Aurobindo had also written to the effect, If Divine L ove were to manifest now in all its fullness and totality, not a single material organism would but burst. So we must learn to widen, widen, widen not only the inner consciousness (that is relatively easyat least feasible), but even this conglomeration of cells. And Ive experienced this: you have to be able to widen this sort of crystallization if you want to be able to hold this Force. I know. Two or three times, upstairs (in Mothers room), I felt the body about to burst. Actually, I was on the verge of saying, burst and be done with. But Sri Aurobindo always intervenedall three times he intervened in an entirely tangible, living and concrete way and he arranged everything so that I was forced to wait.
--
But three times now, Ive really felt that I was on the verge of falling apart. The first time it brought a fever, a fever so I dont know, as if I had at least 115!I was roasting from head to toe; everything became red hot, and then it was over. That was the day when suddenlysuddenly I was You see, I had said to myself, All right, you must be peaceful, lets see what happens, so then I brought down the Peace, and immediately I was able to pass into a second of unconsciousness and I woke up in the subtle physical, in Sri Aurobindos abode.4 There he was. And then I spent some time with him, explaining the problem.
But that was really an experience, a decisive experience (it was many months ago, perhaps more than a year ago).
0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And then it became so clear that behind all this there was always the same luminous Presence, this Presence that is everywhere, always, watching over everything.
And as I look now at the things of life, at people, at this totality, I see that its identically the same thing when seen from there, from that consciousness its so drab, dull, insipid, gray, uninteresting, lifeless Oh, all of life, WHATEVER IT IS, is like that when seen from that consciousness!
--
While it was all coming up, I thought, How is this possible? For during those years of my life (Im now outside things; I do them but Im entirely outside, so they dont involve mewhether its like this or like that makes no difference to me; Im only doing my work, thats all), I was already conscious, but nevertheless I was IN what I was doing to a certain extent; I was this web of social life (but thank God it wasnt here in India, for had it been here I could not have withstood it! I think that even as a child I would have smashed everything, because here its even worse than over there). You see, there its its a bit less constricting, a bit looser, you can slip through the mesh from time to time to brea the some air. But here, according to what Ive learned from people and what Sri Aurobindo told me, its absolutely unbearable (its the same in Japan, absolutely unbearable). In other words, you cant help but smash everything. over there, you sometimes get a breath of air, but still its quite relative. And this morning I wondered (you see, for years I lived in that way for years and years) just as I was wondering, How was I ABLE to live that and not kick out in every direction?, just as I was looking at it, I saw up ab ove, ab ove this (it is worse than horrible, it is a kind of Oh, not despair, for there isnt even any sense of feeling there is NOTHING! It is dull, dull, dull gray, gray, gray, clenched tight, a closed web that lets through neither air nor life nor lightthere is nothing) and just then I saw a splendor of such sweet light ab ove itso sweet, so full of true l ove, true compassion something so warm, so warm the relief, the solace of an eternity of sweetness, light, beauty, in an eternity of patience which feels neither the past nor the inanity and imbecility of thingsit was so wonderful! That was entirely the feeling it gave, and I said to myself, THAT is what made you live, without THAT it would not have been possible. Oh, it would not have been possible I would not have lived even three days! THAT is there, ALWAYS there, awaiting its hour, if we would only let it in.
(silence)
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And then things dont happen at all as they do in ordinary life for three or four minutes, sometimes five or ten minutes, Im a-bo-minably sick, with every sign that its all over.
(silence)
But its only to make me find the to make me go through the experience and to find the strength. And also to give the body this absolute faith in its Divine Realityto show it that the Divine is there and that He wants to be there and that He shall be there. And its only at such moments as thesewhen logically, according to the ordinary physical logic, its all over that you can seize the key.
You have to go right through everything without flinching.
I havent told this to anyone until now, especially not to those who take care and watch over me, for I dont want to terrify them. Besides, Im not so sure of their reactionsyou understand, if they started getting frightened, it would be terrible. So I dont tell them. But it has happened at least five or six times, usually in the morning before going down to the balcony, just when I dont have the time And it has to be done quickly, for I have to be ready on time!
Its very, very interesting. But then, you see, at such moments the concreteness of the Presence6concrete to the touch, really to the material touchis extraordinary!
--
Dont write all this down, erase it, because Ill speak of it lateronce its over, when Ive reached the end. I dont want it to fall into anyones hands by accident. And for you, keep it in your consciousness.
(silence)
0 1960-12-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And the problem is to hold both of them so PERFECTLY together that they are no longer in opposition. For one second, it comesah!just a thousandth of a secondah, yes!and then its over, its gone. And you have to begin again.
(silence)
0 1960-12-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Of course, if one is so unfortunate as to start thinking, its all over.
(silence)
0 1960-12-23, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I sat down shortly before ten oclock for meditation. I was in my normal state and I was interested to see if there would be any difference from earlier times. And really, at first there was no difference at all. Then slowly, slowly, I felt this type of smiling and serene peace that I live in entering into the body. The cells are still not always conscious of it (sometimes they feel a sort of tension of life I dont know what to call it). Theyre conscious of their existence and of what it means and of the Energy that is acting (yes, conscious of the Action and the Energy that acts), but during the meditation THAT descended and there was an extraordinary relaxation. Not the relaxation that comes with surrender,1 which I normally feel before sleeping, but the relaxation that comes from a kind of serene, immutable and eternal joy. At that moment the body felt it could remain like that forever! Oh, how nice I feel! it said. And as a matter of fact, Im not sure but I think he felt the meditation was over, whereas I was still I felt him stirring, so I stopped.
There was a marked difference.
0 1960-12-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
On the 6th, everyone will finally be gone. But tomorrow is going to be dreadful; I have to sit there for at least two hours distributing calendars. And on top of that, there are all these contr oversies over the music they play at the library each week. Some say that its very good, others that its very bad (the usual things). And each party has pleaded his case. They told me that theyll give me a concert at Prosperity4 so that I may judge for myself. Its all recorded. Im afraid it will be rather noisy For myself, I know quite well how to get out of it I think of something else! But its going to I can see it already. Didnt I tell you were in a chaos? Well, I have the feeling that this is going to beat all.
How do you mean a chaos?
--
I must say that downstairs on Darshan days people chat, look each other over, see how he or she is dressedits like a county fair around the Samadhi.
Yes, its truewhos there, who isnt, how he looks, whos he with Oh!
0 1961-01-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I am how to put it? Nothing we say is ever absolutely true, but, to stretch it a bit, while I am not worried, not perturbed, not discouraged, I feel I cant get anything done; I spend all my time, all my time, seeing people, receiving and answering lettersdoing nothing. I havent touched my translation1 for over a week. T. sent me her notebook with questions and I had it for two weeks before I found time to answer.2 Nothing is ready for the Bulletin except what you have done.
Its a pity you have no time to do your work.
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Put this way, there is no need to bring the principle of l ove into our explanation. But if we want to know or understand the nature of the Force or Power that permits and accomplishes this transformation (specially in the case of evil, but for ugliness to some extent as well), we see that of all powers, L ove is obviously the mightiest, the most integralintegral in that it applies to all cases. Its even mightier than the power of purification which dissolves bad wills and is, in a way, master over the adverse forces, but which doesnt have the direct transforming power; because the power of purification Must FIRST dissolve in order to form again later. It destroys one form to make a better one from it, while L ove doesnt need to dissolve in order to transform: it has the direct transforming power. L ove is like a flame changing the hard into the malleable, then sublimating even the malleable into a kind of purified vapor. It doesnt destroy: it transforms.
L ove, in its essence and in its origin, is like a white flame obliterating ALL resistances. You can have the experience yourself: whatever the difficulty in your being, whatever the weight of accumulated mistakes, the ignorance, incapacity, bad will, a single SECOND of this L ovepure, essential, suprememelts everything in its almighty flame. One single moment and an entire past can vanish. One single TOUCH of That in its essence and the whole burden is consumed.
--
Then why dont you just speak? T or Z could come and listen to youthey would be overjoyed!
Oh no, my child, you dont see at all! To speak I must have a receptive atmosphere! The idea of talking aloud all alone in my room would never occur to me. Sound doesnt come: what comes is a direct transmission and if I manage to connect it to my hand and write its transmitted, although it always gets somewhat pulled down. I can be doing anything at all, it doesnt matter, but it must be something that doesnt monopolize my attention, like brushing my hair in the morning for example: then it comes directly and nothing stops it! But I would never think of uttering a word! That only happens when I find some receptivity in front of me, something I can use.
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The title of the folder is the line from Savitri that gave me the most overpowering experience of the entire book (because, as I told you, as I read, I would LIVE the experiencesreading brought, instantly, a living experience). And when I came to this particular line I was as if suddenly swept up and engulfed in (the is wrong, an is wrongits neither one nor the other, its something else) eternal Truth. Everything was abolished except this:
For ever l ove, O beautiful slave of God3
--
When asked later about the meaning of this somewhat elliptical statement, Mother said: 'There are two stages. The first involves a mental (and possibly intuitive) vision of what will be (perhaps in an immediate future), and this is what we call seeing things "as they should be." The other is an identification with the supreme Will and the perception that at each second everything is exactly as the Supreme wants it to be, that it is the precise expression of the Supreme. The first is a vision of what is coming and says, "That's how things should be." But we overlook the distance between what presently exists and what is coming. While if we go high ab ove and become one with the Consciousness of the supreme Will, we see that at every instant, at every moment in the universe, all is exactly as it should beexactly as the Supreme wants it to be. That is Omnipotence.'
Saraswati represents the universal Mother's aspect of Knowledge and artistic creativity. On this occasion, Mother would go down to the Meditation Hall and the disciples would silently pass in front of her to receive a message. This year they would receive a folder containing five photographs of Mother.
0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
After that I felt quite at ease. The battle was overit was over FOR THE MOMENT, because they werent finished: they continued their uproar on the other side; but I didnt have to go there anymore.
It has been deferred because I was still down below; I had not yet returned to the upper levels. Anyhow.
--
It isnt over.
I simply consented to stay there. You will have all you need, stay here quietly. And what beautiful things she had, l ovely things! They were unused and dusty. (It was surely the symbol of ancient realizationsrealizations of the ancient Rishis, things like that. Who knows?) They were first class, but completely neglected and thick with dust, like material objects left unusedwhich no one knew HOW to use. She put them at my disposal: Look, look, let me show you! There was a tremendous accumulation of things, piled in such great confusion that one couldnt see. Yet the marvel of it was that when she led me to a corner to show me something, everything immediately m oved aside and order was restored, so that the object she wanted to show me stood out all by itself. And oh, a thing of beauty! Made of pink marble! A pink marble bathtub of a shape I didnt recognizenot Roman, not antique (not modern, far from it!)how beautiful it was! And whenever she wanted to show me something in this untidy and cluttered room full of objects piled one on top of another, they would organize themselves, take their proper place, and all became neat. You will just have to dust them off a bit, she said. (Mother laughs)
--
For me it was in the head (not last night but over the past few days), when I was trying to do my japaoh, it was as though my head would burst! All the nerves were not just tense (Mother touches the nape of her neck), but cramped. And my head felt as if boiling oil were being poured inside it; it was about to explode, and I couldnt see clearly.
Something was obviously bent on preventing me from going down for the distribution.4 But by an act of will I went down. I will do it, I said. But it was difficult. There were moments when it sidled up to me: Now youre going to faint, and then, Now your legs will no longer be able to walk. Now. It kept coming like that. So I kept repeating the japa the whole time, and it was touch-and-go right up to the end. Finally I couldnt distinguish people, I saw only shapes, forms passing by, and not clearly. When the distribution was over, I got up (I knew I had to get up), I stood up without flinching and stepped down from the chair without faltering. But I was not careful and when I turned away from the light in the room to go towards the staircasean abrupt blackout. Not the blackout of a faintmy eyes no longer saw. I saw only shadows. Ah! I said to myself, where is the step?! And to avoid missing it, I clutched the railing. What a commotion that made! Champaklal came rushing up, thinking I was about to fall!
Anyhow.
--
You see, personal surrender and devotion is an excellent solution for the individual, but it doesnt work for the collectivity. For example, as soon as I am alone and lying on my bedpeace! (Ah, I forgot! They had invented yet another thing: making my heartbeats irregular. Every three or four beats it would stop; then it would start up again, pounding as if I had been struck. Three, four beats, a faint little beat, then stop then, bang! Blow after blow. One more of their extraordinary inventions!) But, as soon as I stretch out and make a total surrender of all the cellsno more activity, nothingeverything goes well. But I am well aware that this surrender has an effect on the action only to the extent that the Supreme Lord has decided upon the action, and those m ovements stretch over long periods of time5: all sorts of things may happen before the final Victory is won. Because, for us, the scale is very small; even if it were of terrestrial proportions, it would be a very small scale; but on a universal scale. These forces have their place and their action, their universe, and as long as their place and their action are maintained, they will be here. So before their action can be exhausted or become useless, many things can happen.
Individually, however, there is almost instantaneous bliss. But this is not a true solution its a solution in the long run, by repercussion. To have true comm and here in this world, all of that must be mastered.
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the middle of the night before last, I woke up (or rather I returned to an external consciousness) with the feeling of having a much larger (by larger I mean more voluminous) and much more powerful being in my body than I usually have. it was as if it could scarcely be held inside me but was spilling over; and SO COMPACTLY POWERFUL that it was almost uncomfortable. The feeling of: what to do with all this?
It lasted the remainder of the night and all day long I had considerable trouble containing an overwhelming power that spontaneously created reactions utterly disproportionate to a human body and made me speak in a way that. When something was not going well: wham! Such an instantaneous and strong reply that it looked like anger. And I found it difficult to control the m ovementit had happened already in the morning and it very nearly happened again in the afternoon. That last attack has weakened me terribly! I told myself, I dont have the strength to contain this Power; its difficult to remain calm and controlled. That was my first thought, so I insisted upon calm.
Then yesterday afternoon, when I went upstairs to walk,1 a couple of things occurrednot personal, but of a general natureconcerning, for instance, certain old-fashioned conventions having to do with women and their particular nature (not psychological, physical)old ideas like that which had always seemed utterly stupid to me suddenly provoked a kind of reprobation completely out of proportion to the fact itself. Then one or two other things2 happened in regard to certain people, certain circumstances (nothing to do with me personally: it came from here and there). Then suddenly, I saw a Force coming (coming, well, manifesting) which was the same as that thing I had felt within me but even bigger; it began whirling upon the earth and within circumstances oh, like a cyclone of compact power moving forward with the intention of changing all this! It had to change. At all costs, it must change!
I was ab ove, as usual (Mother points ab ove her head, indicating the higher consciousness), and I looked at that (Mother bends over, as if looking down at the earth), and said to myself, Hmm, this is getting dangerous. If it continues like this, it will result in in a war or a revolution or some catastrophea tidal wave or an earthquake. So I tried to counteract it by applying the highest consciousness to it, that of a perfect serenity. And I saw especially that this consciousness has been missioned to transform the earth through the Supermind and by the supramental Force, avoiding all catastrophes as far as possible: the Work is to be done as luminously and harmoniously as the earth would allow, even by going at a slower pace if need be. That was the idea. And I tried to counteract that whirlwind power with this consciousness.
(long silence)
--
When I got up today, I was going over all this to myself, and my first instinct was not to speak of it, to observe and see what would happen; but then I received a distinct and precise Command to tell it to you this morning. The experience had to be noted down just as it occurred, recorded in its exact form.
In the body now, there is a very clear not only a certitude, but a feeling that a certain omnipotence is not far away, and that very soon when it sees (it sees it! There is only one It in this whole affair, which is neither he nor she nor), when it sees that something must be, it automatically will be.
0 1961-01-31, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is the logical consequence of the research I have been doing for a long time now on the cause of illnesses and how to overcome them.
This ought to be noted down, because its important. It has seemed all the more important to me these last two days. Beginning yesterday evening, there was a whole series of experiences, and this morning I came to a certain conclusion, whose starting point, I realized, was that experience I had upon coming out of trance.
--
Its not yet perfect, its still being worked on, but when I read it over, I saw that I had truly gone beyond the stage where one tries to find a correspondence with what one reads, an appropriate expression sufficiently close to the original text (thats the state I was in before). Now its not like that anymore! The translation seems to come spontaneously: that is English, this is French sometimes very different, sometimes very close. It was rather interesting, for you know that Sri Aurobindo was strongly drawn to the structure of the French language (he used to say that it created a far better, far clearer and far more forceful English than the Saxon structure), and often, while writing in English, he quite spontaneously used the French syntax. When its like that, the translation adapts naturallyyou get the impression that it was almost written in French. But when the structure is Saxon, what used to happen is that a French equivalent would come to me; but now its almost as if something were directing: That is English, this is French.
It was there, it was clear; but its not yet permanent. Something is beginning. I hope its going to become established before too long and that there will be no more translating difficulties.
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One could almost say that of all animals, the serpent is the most sensitive to hypnotic or magnetic power. If you have it (magnetic power comes from the most material vital), you can easily gain a mastery over snakes; all the people who like snakes have it and use it to make snakes obey them. Thats how I got out of my encounter with the cobra at Tlemcen7do you know the story? Theon had told me about this power and I was aware of it in myself, so I was able to make the cobra obey and he left. Afterwards (Ive told this story, too), I was visited by the King of Serpents I mean the spirit of the species. He came to me in Tlemcen after this and another incident when I helped a cat overpower a little asp (there are asps over there like Cleopatras, very dangerous)a big russet angora cat. At first it started to play with the asp, but then naturally grew furious. The asp struck at the cat, but the cat leapt aside with such swiftness that the asp missed it (I watched this going on for more than ten minutes, it was extraordinary). Just as the snake darted by, the cat would swat at it with all his claws outand the asp got scratched each time, so that little by little it ran out of energy, and at the end. I stopped the cat from eating it that part was disgusting!
Then after these two incidents, I received a visit one night from the King of Serpents. He was wearing a superb crown on his headsymbolic, of course, but anyway, he was the spirit of the species. He had the appearance of a cobra, and he was wonderful! A formidable beast, and wonderful! He said he had come to make a pact with me: I had demonstrated my power over his species, so he wanted to come to an understanding. All right, I said, what do you propose? I not only promise that serpents wont harm you, he replied, but that they will obey you. But you must promise me something in return: never to kill one of them. I thought it over and said, No, I cant make this promise, because if ever one of yours attacks one of mine (a being that depends upon me), my pact with you could not stop me from protecting him. I can assure you that I have no bad feelings and no intention of killingkilling is not on my program! But I cant commit myself, because it would restrict my freedom of decision. He left without replying, so it remains status quo.
I have had several experiences demonstrating my power over snakes (not so much as over catswith cats its extraordinary!). Long ago, I often used to take a drive and then stop somewhere for a walk. One day after my walk, as I was getting back into the car to drive away (the door was still open), a very large snake came out, right from the spot I had just left. He was furious and heading straight towards the open door, ready to strike (luckily I was alone, neither the driver nor Pavitra were there, otherwise). When the snake had come quite near, I looked at him closely and said, What do you want? Why have you come here? There was a pause. Then he fell down flat and off he went. I hadnt made a m ove, only asked him, What do you want? Why have you come here? You know, they have a way of suddenly falling back, going limp, and prrt! Gone!
How many, many experiences there were during those days at Tlemcen! Surely youve heard them. Were you there when I told the story about the big toad? A huge toad, c overed with warts. No? The sitting room was upstairs in Theons house (the house was built on a hillside) and it was connected by large open doors to a small terrace that sat almost on top of the hill. I played the piano in this room every day. And one day, what did I see hopping in through the open bay windows but an enormous black toadenormous! He sat down on his backside right in the entrance and puffed up his throat: poff! poff! And for the whole time I played, he stayed there going Poff! poff!, as though in a state of delight! When I finished, I turned around and he gave me one last Poff! and hopped away. It was comical!
--
And do you know how he received me when I arrived there? It was the first time in my life I had traveled alone and the first time I had crossed the Mediterranean. Then there was a fairly long train ride between Oran and Tlemcenanyway, I managed rather well: I got there. He met me at the station and we set off for his place by car (it was rather far away). Finally we reached his estatea wonder! It spread across the hillside overlooking the whole valley of Tlemcen. We arrived from below and had to climb up some wide pathways. I said nothingit was truly an experience from a material standpoint. When we came in sight of the house, he stopped: Thats my house. It was red! Painted red! And he added, When Barley came here, he asked me, Why did you paint your house red? (Barley was a French occultist who put Theon in touch with France and was his first disciple.) There was a mischievous gleam in Theons eyes and he smiled sardonically: I told Barley, Because red goes well with green! With that, I began to understand the gentleman. We continued on our way uphill when suddenly, without warning, he spun around, planted himself in front of me, and said, Now you are at my mercy. Arent you afraid? Just like that. So I looked at him, smiled and replied, Im never afraid. I have the Divine here. (Mother touches her heart.)
Well, he really went pale.
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Two nights ago, I saw a formation of illness over the entire Ashram, a kind of adverse formation trying to prevent me from leaving my room, and I had to hide to get out, leave clandestinely. Oh, what a terrible atmosphere, so heavy, so grayeverybody was ill. And this formation had some actual effects because many people fell ill who normally never do. It is an adverse formation and theres no reason to concede its victory; its simply a force which doesnt want us to succeed, of courseso we need not pay attention.
The trouble is, if I were thirty or forty years old, people wouldnt be affected. But unfortunately they think about how old I am all the time and it creates a bad atmosphere. After all, they keep saying, Mother is old and. All the usual nonsense.
But I know differently and so does my bodyto me its all foolishness and has no importance. For instance, when Vinoba Bhave came to see me4 (the man who takes care of poor people), he looked at me and said, Oh, youll live a hundred years! And I simply said, Yes, it all seemed so natural. At that moment, there wasnt even (how to put it?) the least intimation of a doubt. Of course its a clich, but nevertheless, he said it; afterwards he told people that this was what he had felt. And it seems completely natural I know if my body can last till its a hundred (a little less than twenty years more), then we will be on the other side the difficulty will be over.
I rather feel that your dream is another part of this present mass attack, but.
--
You see, theres a curious fluctuation possibly indicating that your dream is part of the present attack which continues with such violence. The night before last, between midnight and half-past, there was a formidable attack. When I emerged from it, I felt that something had lifted, a victory had been won and that the bodys condition had impr oved. It happens like that, the horizon clears and this Certainty comes with. (The presence is always hereSri Aurobindo and I are together almost every night but the night when I saw that formation, the illness spell over the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo was quite sick in his bed, just as I saw him in 1950.) So when it lifts, all is well: once again there is harmony, there is joy, there is force and again the whole thing continues, the effort continues, consciously. Yet there is a kind of fluctuation: it will go on like that for a few moments or a few hours and then suddenly everything becomes muddled again and I am beset by a fatigue. A fatigue which is I cant say almost unbearable, because nothing in the consciousness feels it to be unbearable but it makes me like this (Mother clenches her fist tightly in a tension to hold on).
For example, at five-thirty in the evening, after Ive spent an hour and a half here with people, its a labor to climb the stairs; and by the time I get upstairs, I feel strained to the breaking point. Then I begin to walk (I dont stop, I dont rest), I immediately begin to walk with my japa, and within half an hour, pfft! it has lifted.
--
Thats how it works. Because all substance is ONE. All is onewe constantly forget that! We always have a sense of separation, and that is total, total falsehood; its because we rely on what our eyes see, on (Mother touches her hands and arms, as if to indicate a separate body, cut off from other bodies). That is truly Falsehood. As soon as your consciousness changes a little, you realize that what we see is like an image plastered over something. But its not true, NOT TRUE AT ALL. Even in the most material Matter, even a stoneeven in a stoneas soon as ones consciousness changes, all this separation, all this division, completely vanishes. These are (how to put it?) modes of concentration (something akin to yet not quite that), vibratory modes WITHIN THE SAME THING.8
(The clock strikes) Oh, now I must go!
0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To give a rather curious example, there was a kind of spell of illness over the Ashram, stemming mainly from peoples thoughts, from their way of thinking. It was quite widespread and it was horrible, gloomy, full of fear, pettiness, blind submission, oh! Everyone was in a state of expectation.1 In short, the atmosphere was such that there was an attempt to prevent me from leaving my room I had to sneak out! It was disgusting! Well, on the very night I saw the spell over the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo was lying sick in his bed, just as I had seen him in 1950. Normally, we spend almost every night together, doing this, seeing that, arranging things, talkingits a kind of second life behind this one, and it makes existence pleasant. But that night when I had to sneak out of my room (in my nightgown!), and people were trying to find me to (laughing) force me back into bed, he was lying sick in bedand this struck me hard, for it means these things still affect him in his consciousness. He was in a kind of trance and not at all well. It didnt last, but nonetheless.
Oh, the things that can collect there,2 ugh!
--
It is something pouring over the world.
Your book should convey this feelingwithout stating it. Convey the feeling, transmit ittransmit this solar light.
--
I have a feeling (but these are old ideas) that if I were all alone somewhere and didnt have to look after these people and things, it would be easier. But that would not be the TRUE thing. For when I had the experience [of January 24], all that is normally under my care was present: the whole earth seemed to be present at the experience. There is no individuality (Mother indicates her body). I have difficulty finding an individuality now, even in my own body. What I do find in this body are the subconscious vibrations (conscious as well as subconscious) of a WORLD, a whole world of things. So it can be done ONLY on a large scale, otherwise its the same old story but then its not the power HERE [in matter]one simply quits this world. Oh, these people cant imagine what it is! They have made such a fuss over their departure. They have wanted us to believe it was something quite extraordinary. But its infantile, its childs play, its nothing at all to quit this world! One simply goes poff!, like diving into watera little kick and one resurfaces, and thats all there is to it, its done (Mother laughs).
And the same goes for their stories about attachments and desiresmy god! Theres nothing to it! Imagine, with anything concerning my body, through all this horror of the subconscient, NOT ONCE have I had to bear the consequence of a desire; I have always had to bear the consequences of the battle against lifes unconscious and malicious resistances, but not once has something come up like that (gesture of something resurging from below) to tell me, You see! You had a desire, now heres the result of it! Not oncevery, very sincerely.
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Darshan went rather well, much better than I was expecting; but the following two days it was difficult here [in the body]. Then one night (I dont remember which), I I cant say grumbled, but (it wasnt my body grumbling, it is very docile and doesnt protest), but I sometimes find that well, I found it a little exaggerated that day. All the same, I said, this may be demanding a bit too much of it! And then (Mother laughs) the whole night through, each time I awoke and looked (not with my physical eyes), I saw serpents! They were drawn up straight in a circlemagnificent cobras with white bellies, pearl gray backs and flecks of gold on their hoods! They surrounded me, watching, exactly as though they were saying, All the necessary energy is there! You neednt worry! So I concluded that this whole affair11 must have its utilityit cant be simply the bodys lack of plasticity and incapacity to receive. It must have a usefulness but what? I havent understood. Perhaps I will get the explanation later, once its over.
And the next afternoon, I closed my eyes while I was bathing and what did I see but an enormous, magnificent cobra! It gazed at me, almost smiling, and stuck out its tongue! Good, I said, then everything is all right! (laughing) I have only to hold on.
--
All this [the world, the Ashram] is held in my consciousness with a kind of essential compassion applying equally to all things, all difficulties, all obstacles. I receive letters by the dozens, as you know, and each person comes to me with his own little misery or problem, inner or outer (a tiny pimple becomes a mountain). When people come to me, my inner consciousness always responds in the same way, with a kind of equality and compassion for all. But when people are talking to me or I am reading a letter and my body grows conscious of what it calls the to-do they make over their miseries, it has a kind of feeling (I mean there is a feeling in the cells): Why do they take things like that! They are making things much more difficult. The body understands. It understands that their way of taking the least little difficulty in such a blind, egotistical and self-centered manner, increases its difficulties furiously!
Its a rather amusing sensation, a combination of sensation and feeling, that the ordinary human attitude towards things multiplies and magnifies the difficulties to FANTASTIC proportions; while if they simply had the true attitudea NORMAL attitude, quite simple, uncomplicatedahh, all life would be much easier. For the body feels the vibrations (those very vibrations which concentrate to form a body), it feels their nature and sees that its normal reaction, a peaceful and confident reaction, makes things so much easier! But as soon as this agitation of anxiety, fear, discontent comes in, the reaction of a will that doesnt want any of it oh, right away it becomes like water boiling: pff! pff! pff! like a machine. While if the difficulty is accepted with confidence and simplicity, its reduced to its minimum, and I mean purely materially, in the material vibration itself.
--
Even in this, right now, in what I am saying, theres a sense of tapasya; theres the whole inner consciousness making the body do a tapasya. But my knowledge and my certainty (what I KNOW) is that it may be a necessary preparation, but it is NOT what accomplishes the work.15 Rather, it is something acting like that (Mother abruptly turns her hand over to indicate a reversal of states). And when it goes like that, it is done, all is done. All is done.
Are these disorders necessary for it to become like that? I have my doubts. I have my doubts. But the question cant even be asked, because what it implies seems to verge on a fatalism having no truth in itselfit is not a fatalism, not at all. What is it? Something that defies expression.
--
All our aspirations, all our seekings, all our ascents always remind me of that flower I gave you the other day16: its something like that (Mother makes a vague, ethereal gesture), vibrating, vibrating, vibrating, very luminous, very delicate, essentially very l ovely (silence) but it is not THAT (Mother again turns her hand over to indicate an abrupt reversal). It is not That.
(silence)
0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now it has all fallen flat. They are carrying on with their little activities, but its absolutely unimportant. They publish a small journal, and V, who writes for them, is far from stupid. She is rather intelligent and I have some control over her, so I will try to stop her from writing nonsense.
They also had a sudden brainstorm to affiliate with the Sri Aurobindo Society. But the Sri Aurobindo Society has absolutely nothing to do with their project: its a strictly external thing, organized by businessmen to bring in moneyEXCLUSIVELY. That is, they want to put people in a position where they feel obliged to give (so far they have succeeded and I believe they will succeed). But this has nothing to do with working for an ideal, it is COMPLETELY practical.10 And of course, World Union has nothing to offer the Sri Aurobindo Society: they would simply siphon off funds. So I told them, Nothing doingits out of the question!
0 1961-03-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It comes and goes along the way, you dont keep it permanently; its like crossing a zone, a perfumed zone, and then its past for the moment, its over. A fleeting caress.
***
0 1961-03-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A sort of power over circumstances does come to me, however, as if I could rise ab ove it all and give the subconscient a bit of a work- over. Naturally this has some results: entire areas are brought under control. Thats the most important thing. Individuals get the repercussions later because they are very very coagulated, a bit hard! A lack of plasticity.
Take the case of this man Im not naming Ive been training him, working with him, for more than thirty years and I still havent managed to get him to do things spontaneously, according to the needs of the moment, without all his preconceived ideas. Thats the point where he resists: when things have to be done quickly he follows his usual rule and it takes forever! This was illustrated strikingly that night. I told him, Just look: its there its THEREhurry up and warm it a little and Ill go. Ah! He didnt protest, didnt say anything, but he did things exactly according to his own preconceptions.
0 1961-03-21, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then I woke up (I always wake up three or four times during the night) and when I went back to bed I had an attack of what the doctor and I have taken to be filariasis but a strange type of filariasis, for as soon as I master it in one spot it appears in another, and when I master it there it reappears somewhere else. Last night it was in the arms (it lasted quite a while, between 2:30 and 4 a.m.); but I was fully conscious, and each time the attack came, I went like this (gestures over the arms, to drive away the attack) and my arms were not affected at all. When it was over, I consciously entered the most material subtle physical, just beyond the body. I was sitting in my room there (an immense, cubic room) reading or writing something, when I heard the door open and close, but I was busy and didnt pay attention, presuming it was one of the people usually around me. Then suddenly I had such an unpleasant sensation in my body that I raised my head and looked, and I saw someone there. Do you know how the magicians in Europe dress, in short satin breeches and a shirt? He was wearing something like that. He was Indian, tall and rather dark, with slicked-down hairwhat you would normally call a handsome young man. He seemed to have been drawn1 there becausehe was standing in front of me staring into space, not looking at me. And the moment I saw him, there was the same sensation in all my cells as I have with what Ive been calling filariasis (its a special, minute kind of pain) and simultaneously all the cells felt disgusta tremendous will of rejection. Then I sat up straight (I didnt stand up) and said to him as forcefully as possible, How do you dare to come in here! I said it so loudly that the noise woke me up! I dont know what happened then, but things went much better afterwards.
The moment I saw this person I knew he was only an instrument, but a well-paid instrumentsomeone paid a great deal to have him do that! I would recognize him again among hundreds I can still see him I see him more clearly than with physical eyes. He is an unintelligent man with no personal animosity, merely a very well-paid instrumentsomeone is hiding behind him, using him as a screen.
--
Of course, there are certain symptoms which never appear with filariasis. And the doctor has been astounded at the control Ive had over it: it began in the feet, I checked it there; it went higher, I checked it there; then it went higher still and I continued to control it. Finally, the other day, it tried to get into the arms, but it couldnt hold outand last night there was a real riot! (Mother laughs) So perhaps its the deformation or transposition of some sort of mantric effort, like last time in 58 when there was an attempt to make me throw up all my blood but only food came out! Its probably something similar. My impression (Ive had it from the start) is that they have made a try at thrombosis (you know, when something blocks the circulation). Besides, it seems that X asked the doctor if blood-poisoning might be involved, so he must have seen this possibility. There has been absolutely nothing of the kind, but there has been an effort to block the circulation in the veins, probably an adaptation of the magic attack. And along with this have come all the usual things: all the usual suggestions, all the usual prophecies [about Mothers departure]. But for me, these are the normal facts of life, thats all. I am used to it. It has no importance.
Do you really believe Z could be behind this magician you saw?
--
I had told N. to knock at the door when he arrived with X, but he didnt do itluckily I heard the door opening. I stood up, still in that state and almost fell over! X must have thought I was having a spell of weakness or something, because I was holding onto the arms of the chair, and when I took his flowers, my hands were trembling I wasnt in my body. And afterwards, ah, what a concentration! We remained in it for about thirty-five minutes. It was SOLIDan extraordinary solidity! I didnt want to waste time waiting for it to subside before coming here, and you must have seen how I was when I arrived: like a sleepwalker! I said to the people I passed in the corridor, Im coming back, Im coming back! Thats all I could say, like an idiot.
(silence)
--
Im a little overloaded by too many things.
Too much work.
--
Z was Satprem's first guru when he became a sannyasi. Then Z tried to exert his control over Satprem and predicted to Mother that he would never remain in the Ashram. Finally Satprem broke with him and Z went away furious.
Satprem has never believed for a minute that Z practiced black magic against Mother: it must have been something or someone else.
0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For a long time X has said nothing about his meditations with me, but just yesterday he told N. that he had some difficulty at the start of the meditation due to the presence of an adverse force, and it took him five minutes to overcome it!
Evidently he was in a completely different state of consciousness.
--
Still, it surprises me. Because sitting in that room, one has the feeling (I say one, its probably I dont know what it is), I thought he had the same feeling I did: oh, it could last an eternity! Its like that: tranquil, tranquil, peaceful, balanced, strong. On other occasions there was a kind of m ovement: it came, went, came, went; but this time (Mother stretches forth her arms as if time had stopped) and I am like that (not the I here, the I ab ove), I see it like that. Then just as the clock is about to strike, when the half-hour is finished, something comes and tells my body, Now! A tiny shock, and two or three seconds later the clock strikes. I always feel beforehand, Now its over. Otherwise there would be no reason for it to endits so peaceful! And not something diluted, as it were, but strong, compact. Compact. Then that tiny shock and the body comes to attention: Ah, Im going to have to m ove! And always after about two seconds, the clock strikes. I open my eyes, look at X and wait. Three or four seconds later, or after a minute or two, he opens his eyes, bows to me and gets up. Then I get up. Its always the same. So I dont know why. I dont understand what goes on in his consciousness. I no longer understand.
Im not so sure about what he said to N.
--
I dont know, because N. said quite categorically: X told me that on arriving for this mornings meditation he had some difficulties and it took him five minutes to get over it; an adverse force was present. N. was quite positive and I even made him repeat it. Are you sure, I asked him, that it didnt happen when X came to you? No, N. replied, X met that force THERE. He said THERE! Yet that it could have been there, with all the force, light and peace that descended is incomprehensible to me. Because the first thing I do when I sit down is to make a thorough cleaning.
It ruffles me because its like a negation of my power. Till yesterday I had never experienced anything of the kind! On the 29th, you know, it will be forty-seven years since I first came here3thats not exactly yesterday! And ever since I began working with Sri Aurobindo, I have had the sense of this Power, it has never left me; so. It is disconcerting to have this kind of episode come up after such a long time.
--
And theres no point in giving up, because it would just have to be started all over again next time. What I always say is: Heres the opportunitygo right to the end. Its no use saying, Ah, I cant, because next time it will be even more difficult.
A region high in the Himalayas, also known as the abode of Shiva.
0 1961-04-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Saying nothing is elementary for me! But the body didnt say anythingit didnt even fidget; it didnt even have, you know, that feeling of, When will it be over? Nothing. It just stayed quiet, quiet. I was like a statue in my bed, stinging from head to toe. So I really cant complain! The instrument I have been given is of truly good quality. An unflinching goodwill.
But without any doubt, this is diabolical.
0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, I made a pact with cats, with the King of the Catsit goes back very, very far. And its extraordinary (it happened in Tlemcen, entirely on the occult plane), extraordinary! For certain reasons, the King of the Cats gave me a power over these creaturesand its true. Only I have to see them.
We shall try.
--
When I m oved here to the Ashram, I said, We cant bring any cats into this house, its quite impossible. This was after Big Boys death, and we had had enough of cats. I gave away the others, but the first one, the mother of the whole line, was old and didnt want to leave, so I felt her behind. She stayed in a house over there, within the Ashram compound. And one dayshe was very old and could no longer m ove I saw her come dragging in and sit down on that terrace on the other side. (Now you cant see it any more the Service Tree has hidden it completely but in those days you could see it very clearly.) She came and sat down over there where she could watch me until she died. Quietly, without moving, she died watching me.
All these cat stories! If we had photographs, we could make a pretty little album of cat stories.
--
And she taught them everything. To eat, to. This cat would never eat before they had all eaten. She would show them what to do, give each one what it needed. And once they had grown up and she didnt have to look after them anymore, if they kept coming back she would send them away: Go away! Your turn is over, its finished. Go out into the world! And she would take care of the new ones.
Once one of her kittens was ill. She was pretty and gray colored, clear gray like a very soft fur, very pretty. She had caught this cat sickness and was lying down. And the mother was teaching all the little ones not to come near her; she would make them go all the way around, as if her instinct told her it was contagious. And you would see them (the sick kitten was right in their way) going all the way around, never coming near.
--
Mind you, I would never have considered having any, but two cats were already there when I came to the house. They were not very interesting cats, but they became the parents of the one I just told you about (those boys who were living with Sri Aurobindo had already had some experience; they knew quite a few things about cats), and that was the origin of all the cats I had here. But people (you know how simplistic they always are!) believed I had some special attachment for cats, so then of course everybody started keeping cats! It was no use my telling them, No, its a particular study were making I wanted to see, to learn certain things, and I learned what I had to but now that I have m oved to another house, the cat era is over; the old friends are gone, only the younger generation is left. I gave them all away and said) Thats enough. But its hard to make people understandsome people here have 25 cats! Thats unreasonable! Its not the way to deal with cats. You have to look after them as I did, and then it becomes interesting.
There was one I know I SAW it: when he died there was already the embryo of a psychic being, ready for a human incarnation. I made them progress like wildfire.
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now I no longer have the experience of that state except as a memory, so I cant formulate it accurately. But what was very clear and comes very oftenvery oftenis the perception of a superimposition of falsehood over a real fact. This brings us back to what I was telling you some time ago,4 that everything is very simple in its truth, that human consciousness is what complicates everything. But the former was an even more total experience of it.
It is very interesting from the standpoint of death. I saw it once so clearly when someone (I no longer remember whom) had left his body. The word death and all these human reactions seemed so foolish! So senseless, ignorant, stupidfalse, without reality. There was simply something that shifted, like this (Mother draws a curve showing a shift of consciousness from one mode of being to another), and then we, in our false consciousness, made a drama out of it. But it was simply something evolving (same gesture).
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Look here, theres a muddle in all this. The Sri Aurobindo Society people had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with the spiritual life when they began; they didnt at all present themselves as a spiritual groupnothing of the kind; they were people of good will who volunteered to collect money to help the Ashram. So I said, Very well, excellent and as long as its like that, Im behind it. Leaflets can be handed outwhatever people like; its enough if their interest is aroused, if they know there is an Ashram and that it needs some help to go on. But thats all. It has nothing to do with yoga or spiritual progress or anything of the kindit was a strictly practical organization. It was not the same thing as World Union. World Union wanted to do a spiritual work on earth and to create human unity. I told them, You are taking something of an inward nature and you want to externalize it, so naturally it immediately goes rotten.(But its almost over now, Ive pulled the rug out from under them.)
Anyway.
--
Oh, how clumsy all this is! But what is clear, completely clear, is the total absence of cause and effect and of goal, of intentionpurpose. There is no (Mother makes a horizontal motion) this kind of connection doesnt exist; its like this (Mother makes a vertical motion which towers over and embraces everything at once).
And so, in an individual consciousness its expressed by an infinitesimal pointa physical body and everything dependent on it; but its exactly the same thing as the Supreme Point and everything depending on that. Its the same thing. It is only like the shifting of a glanceif it can be called a glancelike a needle point occupying no space.12 And yet it is the same consciousness: is it consciousness? Something like that. It is not consciousness as we understand it, nor is it perception; it is a kind of will to see (good God, what words!), and with such absolute freedom and omnipotence: it can be this or that, or yet another, and it is EXACTLY the same thing.
--- Grep of noun ove
above
agape love
alcove
apojove
australian turtledove
baseball glove
batting glove
bird of jove
black mangrove
boxing glove
brotherly love
button mangrove
calf love
chess move
city of brotherly love
clove
common foxglove
cooking stove
cookstove
costal groove
countermove
courtly love
cove
cupboard love
dove
drove
erotic love
false foxglove
filial love
foxglove
free love
garlic clove
gas stove
glove
golf glove
groove
grove
jove
kid glove
kitchen stove
labor of love
labour of love
lad's love
ladylove
lemon grove
light-o'-love
light-of-love
love
making love
mangrove
metal glove
mourning dove
move
oilstove
opening move
orange grove
oven
oven stuffer
oven stuffer roaster
oven thermometer
ovenbird
ovenware
over
over-crowding
over-the-counter drug
over-the-counter market
over-the-counter medicine
over-the-shoulder bombing
over the counter security
over the counter stock
overabundance
overachievement
overachiever
overacting
overactivity
overage
overall
overanxiety
overappraisal
overbearingness
overbid
overbite
overburden
overcall
overcapitalisation
overcapitalization
overcast
overcasting
overcharge
overclothes
overcoat
overcoating
overcomer
overcompensation
overconfidence
overcredulity
overcrossing
overcup oak
overdraft
overdraft credit
overdrive
overeating
overemphasis
overestimate
overestimation
overexertion
overexploitation
overexposure
overfeeding
overflight
overflow
overflow incontinence
overgarment
overgrowth
overhand knot
overhand pitch
overhand stitch
overhang
overhaul
overhead
overhead projector
overhead railway
overheating
overindulgence
overkill
overlap
overlapping
overlay
overlayer
overlip
overload
overlook
overlord
overlordship
overmantel
overmuch
overmuchness
overnight bag
overnight case
overnighter
overpass
overpayment
overplus
overpopulation
overpressure
overprint
overproduction
overprotection
overrating
overreaction
overreckoning
overrefinement
override
overrun
overseas cap
overseas telegram
overseer
oversensitiveness
overshielding
overshoe
overshoot
oversight
oversimplification
overskirt
overspill
overstatement
overstrain
overstuffed chair
oversupply
overt operation
overtaking
overthrow
overthrust fault
overtime
overtime period
overtolerance
overtone
overture
overturn
overuse
overutilisation
overutilization
overvaluation
overview
overweight
overwork
overworking
perijove
poove
potbelly stove
primus stove
puppy love
remove
ringdove
rock dove
self-love
sexual love
shove
spirit stove
stove
straw foxglove
suede glove
treasure trove
trove
truelove
turtledove
white mangrove
yellow foxglove