TERMS STARTING WITH
renable ::: a. --> Reasonable; also, loquacious.
renaissance ::: n. --> A new birth, or revival.
The transitional movement in Europe, marked by the revival of classical learning and art in Italy in the 15th century, and the similar revival following in other countries.
The style of art which prevailed at this epoch.
renaissant ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the Renaissance.
renal ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the kidneys; in the region of the kidneys.
renal-portal ::: a. --> Both renal and portal. See Portal.
rename ::: v. t. --> To give a new name to.
renardine ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Renard, the fox, or the tales in which Renard is mentioned.
renard ::: n. --> A fox; -- so called in fables or familiar tales, and in poetry.
renascence ::: n. --> The state of being renascent.
Same as Renaissance.
renascency ::: n. --> State of being renascent.
renascent ::: a. --> Springing or rising again into being; being born again, or reproduced.
See Renaissant.
renascible ::: a. --> Capable of being reproduced; ablle to spring again into being.
renate ::: a. --> Born again; regenerate; renewed.
renavigate ::: v. t. --> To navigate again.
renay ::: v. t. --> To deny; to disown.
rencontre ::: n. --> Same as Rencounter, n.
rencountered ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Rencounter
rencountering ::: p. pr. & vb/ n. --> of Rencounter
rencounter ::: v. t. --> To meet unexpectedly; to encounter.
To attack hand to hand. ::: v. i. --> To meet unexpectedly; to encounter in a hostile manner; to come in collision; to skirmish.
rend ::: 1. To tear apart; split; divide. Also fig. 2. To cause pain or distress to; esp. the heart.** rends, rent, rending.**
renderable ::: a. --> Capable of being rendered.
rendered ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Render
renderer ::: n. --> One who renders.
A vessel in which lard or tallow, etc., is rendered.
rendering ::: an act or instance of interpretation, rendition, reproduction or representation. renderings.
rendering "graphics, text" The conversion of a high-level object-based description into a graphical image for display. For example, {ray-tracing} takes a mathematical model of a three-dimensional object or scene and converts it into a {bitmap} image. Another example is the process of converting {HTML} into an image for display to the user. (2001-02-06)
rendering ::: (graphics, text) The conversion of a high-level object-based description into a graphical image for display.For example, ray-tracing takes a mathematical model of a three-dimensional object or scene and converts it into a bitmap image. Another example is the process of converting HTML into an image for display to the user.(2001-02-06)
rendering ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Render ::: n. --> The act of one who renders, or that which is rendered.
A version; translation; as, the rendering of the Hebrew text.
In art, the presentation, expression, or interpretation
render ::: n. --> One who rends.
A surrender.
A return; a payment of rent.
An account given; a statement. ::: v. t. --> To return; to pay back; to restore.
render unceasing praise to their Maker. Here St.
rendezvous ::: 1. In Ada, the method of synchronising the activity of different tasks.2. Query language, close to natural English.[Seven Steps to Rendezvous with the Casual User, E. Codd in Data Base Management, J.W. Klimbie et al eds, N-H 1974, pp.179-199].
rendezvous 1. In {Ada}, the method of synchronising the activity of different tasks. 2. Query language, close to natural English. ["Seven Steps to Rendezvous with the Casual User", E. Codd in Data Base Management, J.W. Klimbie et al eds, N-H 1974, pp.179-199].
rendezvous ::: a prearranged meeting place.
rendezvoused ::: imp. &. p. p. --> of Rendezvous
rendezvouses ::: pl. --> of Rendezvous
rendezvousing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Rendezvous
rendezvous ::: n. --> A place appointed for a meeting, or at which persons customarily meet.
Especially, the appointed place for troops, or for the ships of a fleet, to assemble; also, a place for enlistment.
A meeting by appointment.
Retreat; refuge. ::: v. i.
rendible ::: a. --> Capable of being rent or torn.
Capable, or admitting, of being rendered.
rending ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Rend
rendition ::: n. --> The act of rendering; especially, the act of surrender, as of fugitives from justice, at the claim of a foreign government; also, surrender in war.
Translation; rendering; version.
rendrock ::: n. --> A kind of dynamite used in blasting.
rend ::: v. t. --> To separate into parts with force or sudden violence; to tear asunder; to split; to burst; as, powder rends a rock in blasting; lightning rends an oak.
To part or tear off forcibly; to take away by force. ::: v. i. --> To be rent or torn; to become parted; to separate; to
renegade ::: n. --> One faithless to principle or party.
An apostate from Christianity or from any form of religious faith.
One who deserts from a military or naval post; a deserter.
A common vagabond; a worthless or wicked fellow.
renegado ::: n. --> See Renegade.
renegation ::: n. --> A denial.
renegat ::: n. --> A renegade.
renege ::: v. t. --> To deny; to disown. ::: v. i. --> To deny.
To revoke.
renerve ::: v. t. --> To nerve again; to give new vigor to; to reinvigorate.
reneved ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Renew
renew ::: 1. To make new or as if new again; restore. Also fig. 2. To revive; re-establish. 3. To become new again. renews, renewed, renewing.
renewability ::: n. --> The quality or state of being renewable.
renewable ::: a. --> Capable of being renewed; as, a lease renewable at pleasure.
renewal ::: n. --> The act of renewing, or the state of being renewed; as, the renewal of a treaty.
renewedly ::: adv. --> Again; once more.
renewedness ::: n. --> The state of being renewed.
renewer ::: n. --> One who, or that which, renews.
renewing of things; according to Maniliits, they
renewing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Renew
renew ::: v. t. --> To make new again; to restore to freshness, perfection, or vigor; to give new life to; to rejuvenate; to re/stablish; to recreate; to rebuild.
Specifically, to substitute for (an old obligation or right) a new one of the same nature; to continue in force; to make again; as, to renew a lease, note, or patent.
To begin again; to recommence.
To repeat; to go over again.
reneye ::: v. t. --> To deny; to reject; to renounce.
rengebu 蓮華部. See PADMAKULA
rengeza 蓮華坐. See PADMĀSANA
renge 蓮華. See PADMA
reng ::: n. --> A rank; a row.
A rung or round of a ladder.
renidification ::: n. --> The act of rebuilding a nest.
reniform ::: a. --> Having the form or shape of a kidney; as, a reniform mineral; a reniform leaf.
renitence ::: n. --> Alt. of Renitency
renitency ::: n. --> The state or quality of being renitent; resistance; reluctance.
renitent ::: a. --> Resisting pressure or the effect of it; acting against impulse by elastic force.
Persistently opposed.
renner ::: n. --> A runner.
renneted ::: a. --> Provided or treated with rennet.
renneting ::: n. --> Same as 1st Rennet.
rennet ::: n. --> A name of many different kinds of apples. Cf. Reinette. ::: v. --> The inner, or mucous, membrane of the fourth stomach of the calf, or other young ruminant; also, an infusion or preparation of it, used for coagulating milk.
renne ::: v. t. --> To plunder; -- only in the phrase "to rape and renne." See under Rap, v. t., to snatch. ::: v. i. --> To run.
renning ::: n. --> See 2d Rennet.
rennin ::: n. --> A milk-clotting enzyme obtained from the true stomach (abomasum) of a suckling calf. Mol. wt. about 31,000. Also called chymosin, rennase, and abomasal enzyme.
renomee ::: n. --> Renown.
renounce ::: 1. To give up (a title, for example), esp. by formal announcement. 2. To reject; disown; disclaim; refuse to recognize. 3. To give up or put aside voluntarily; forsake, forego, forswear. renounces, renounced, renouncing.
renounced ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Renounce
renouncement ::: n. --> The act of disclaiming or rejecting; renunciation.
renouncer ::: n. --> One who renounces.
renounce ::: v. t. --> To declare against; to reject or decline formally; to refuse to own or acknowledge as belonging to one; to disclaim; as, to renounce a title to land or to a throne.
To cast off or reject deliberately; to disown; to dismiss; to forswear.
To disclaim having a card of (the suit led) by playing a card of another suit.
renouncing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Renounce
renovate ::: v. t. --> To make over again; to restore to freshness or vigor; to renew.
renovation ::: n. --> The act or process of renovating; the state of being renovated or renewed.
renovator ::: n. --> One who, or that which, renovates.
renovelance ::: n. --> Renewal.
renovel ::: v. t. --> To renew; to renovate.
renowmed ::: a. --> Renowned.
renowme ::: n. --> Renown.
renowned ::: a. --> Famous; celebrated for great achievements, for distinguished qualities, or for grandeur; eminent; as, a renowned king.
renownedly ::: adv. --> With renown.
renowner ::: n. --> One who gives renown.
renownful ::: a. --> Having great renown; famous.
renownless ::: a. --> Without renown; inglorius.
renown ::: v. --> The state of being much known and talked of; exalted reputation derived from the extensive praise of great achievements or accomplishments; fame; celebrity; -- always in a good sense.
Report of nobleness or exploits; praise. ::: v. t. --> To make famous; to give renown to.
renru boluomi 忍辱波羅蜜. See KsĀNTIPĀRAMITĀ
renru 忍辱. See KsĀNTI
rensselaerite ::: n. --> A soft, compact variety of talc,, being an altered pyroxene. It is often worked in a lathe into inkstands and other articles.
rentable ::: a. --> Capable of being rented, or suitable for renting.
rentage ::: n. --> Rent.
rental ::: n. --> A schedule, account, or list of rents, with the names of the tenants, etc.; a rent roll.
A sum total of rents; as, an estate that yields a rental of ten thousand dollars a year.
rented ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Rent
rente ::: n. --> In France, interest payable by government on indebtedness; the bonds, shares, stocks, etc., which represent government indebtedness.
rentered ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Renter
renterer ::: n. --> One who renters.
rentering ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Renter
renter ::: n. --> One who rents or leases an estate; -- usually said of a lessee or tenant. ::: v. t. --> To sew together so that the seam is scarcely visible; to sew up with skill and nicety; to finedraw.
To restore the original design of, by working in new
rentian jiao. (C) (人天教). See HUAYAN WUJIAO.
rentian jiao
rentier ::: n. --> One who has a fixed income, as from lands, stocks, or the like.
rent ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Rend ::: v. i. --> To rant.
To be leased, or let for rent; as, an estate rents for five hundred dollars a year.
renting ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Rent
rent regard for the other members of the great series. Thus, if we regard the vital or the subtle physical plane, we see great ranges of it, (most of it), existing in themselves, without any relation with the material world and with no movement to affect or influence it, still less to precipitate a corresponding manifes- tation in the physical formula. At most we can say that the existence of anything in the vital, subtle physical or any other plane creates a possibility for a corresponding movement of manifestation in the physical world. But something more is needed to turn that static or latent possibility into a dynamic potentiality or an actual urge towards a material creation. That something may be a call from the material plane, e.g., some force or some one on the physical existence entering into touch with a supraphysical power or world or part of it and moved to bring it down into the earth-life. Or it may be an impulse in the vital or other plane itself, e.g., a vital being moved to extend his action towards the earth and establish there a kingdom for himself or the play of the forces for which he stands in his own domain.
rent ::: see **rend.**
renumerate ::: v. t. --> To recount.
renunciation ::: n. --> The act of renouncing.
Formal declination to take out letters of administration, or to assume an office, privilege, or right.
renunciatory ::: a. --> Pertaining to renunciation; containing or declaring a renunciation; as, renunciatory vows.
renversement ::: n. --> A reversing.
renverse ::: v. t. --> To reverse. ::: a. --> Alt. of Renverse
Reversed; set with the head downward; turned contrary to the natural position.
renvoy ::: v. t. --> To send back. ::: n. --> A sending back.
ren ::: v. t. & i. --> See Renne. ::: n. --> A run.
renwozhi 人我執. See PUDGALĀTMAGRAHA
renwuwo 人無我. See PUDGALANAIRĀTMYA
ren 人. See MANUsYA, PUDGALA, PURUsA
Renaissance ::: (Latin) Name usually given to the "rebirth" of classical knowledge that erupted in the 15th century and provided background for the protestant reformation and associated events in Europe.
Renaissance: (Lat. re + nasci, to be born) Is a term used by historians to characterize various periods of intellectual revival, and especially that which took place in Italy and Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. The term was coined by Michelet and developed into a historical concept by J. Burckhardt (1860) who considered individualism, the revival of classical antiquity, the "discovery" of the world and of man as the main characters of that period as opposed to the Middle Ages. The meaning, the temporal limits, and even the usefulness of the concept have been disputed ever since. For the emphasis placed by various historians on the different fields of culture and on the contribution of different countries must lead to different interpretations of the whole period, and attempts to express a complicated historical phenomenon in a simple, abstract definition are apt to fail. Historians are now inclined to admit a very considerable continuity between the "Renaissance" and the Middle Ages. Yet a sweeping rejection of the whole concept is excluded, for it expresses the view of the writers of the period itself, who considered their century a revival of ancient civilization after a penod of decay. While Burckhardt had paid no attention to philosophy, others began to speak of a "philosophy of the renaissance," regarding thought of those centuries not as an accidental accompaniment of renaissance culture, but as its characteristic philosophical manifestation. As yet this view has served as a fruitful guiding principle rather than as a verified hypothesis. Renaissance thought can be defined in a negative way as the period of transition from the medieval, theological to the modern, scientific interpretation of reality. It also displays a few common features, such as an emphasis on man and on his place in the universe, the rejection of certain medieval standards and methods of science, the increased influence of some newly discovered ancient sources, and a new style and literary form in the presentation of philosophical ideas. More obvious are the differences between the various schools and traditions which cannot easily be brought to a common denominator Humimsm, Platonism, Aristotelianism, scepticism and natural philosophy, to which may be added the group of the founders of modern science (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo). -- P.O.K.
Renaissance: Originally, the term refers to a period of cultural, technological, and artistic vitality during the British economic expansion in the late 1500s and early 1600s. More generally a renaissance is any period in which a people or nation experiences a period of vitality and explosive growth in its art, poetry, education, economy, linguistic development, or scientific knowledge. The term is positive in connotation.
Renan, Ernest. The Life of Jesus. London: Watts [1947].
RenderMan Shading Language ::: [The RenderMan Companion, S. Upstill, A-W 1989, chaps 13-15].
RenderMan Shading Language ["The RenderMan Companion", S. Upstill, A-W 1989, chaps 13-15].
Renewable resources - Productive resources that can be replaced as they are used up, as with physical capital; distinguished from non renewable resources, which are available in a fixed stock that can be depleted but not replaced.
Rengeshiki 蓮華色. See UTPALAVARnĀ
Rengeshu 蓮華手. See PADMAPĀnI
Rennyo
Rennyo. (蓮如) (1415-1499). In Japanese, "Lotus Suchness"; proper name of the Japanese monk who played a crucial role in the consolidation of JoDO SHINSHu tradition. Rennyo was born at the monastery of HONGANJI in the Higashiyama district of Kyoto. He was the son of Zonnyo (1396-1457), himself a descendent of SHINRAN and the seventh abbot of Honganji. Despite some opposition from his stepmother and her son Nyojo (1412-1460), Rennyo succeeded his father as abbot of Honganji after his father's death in 1457. Rennyo began expanding his sphere of influence by proselytizing in the outskirts of Kyoto. In 1465, the monks of HIEIZAN (see ENRYAKUJI) destroyed Honganji in order to restrict the spread of Rennyo's influence in regions under TENDAI control. Rennyo was able to save the portrait of Shinran (goei) from destruction and installed it temporarily at the temple of MIIDERA. After the attack, Rennyo wandered from region to region until he settled down far away from Mt. Hiei in Hokuriku (present-day Echizen), where he acquired a large following (of mostly peasants) through active proselytizing and the writing of pastoral letters (ofumi). In 1475, Rennyo returned to Kyoto, where he began the construction of a new Honganji in the district of Yamashina the following year. Rennyo also restored the hoonko memorial service for Shinran and established the nenbutsu (C. NIANFO; see NAMU AMIDABUTSU) inscriptions as an important object of worship. In his writings, Rennyo also systematized the teachings of Shinran and criticized priestly corruption and "heretical" teachings that did not emphasize exclusive faith in the buddha AMITĀBHA and his name. Under Rennyo's tenure as abbot, the Honganji complex grew into one of the most powerful monasteries of its era, controlling a vast network of subtemples. This period is traditionally considered to represent the institutional formation of Jodo Shinshu.
Reno —the corresponding angel for the angel
Renouvier, Charles: (1818-1903) a thinker strongly influenced by Leibniz and Kant. His philosophy has been called 'phenomenological neo-criticism', and its peculiar feature is that it denies the existence of all transcendental entities, such as thing-in-itself, the absolute, and the noumenon. -- R.B.W.
Renru xianren 忍辱仙人. See KsĀNTIVĀDIN
Rent seeking - Behaviour whereby private firms and individuals try to use the powers of the government to enhance their own economic well being.
Renunciation Not a painful obligation, but the result of a free choice; nor the giving up of an object of desire in favor of another object of desire. The question of advantage or disadvantage does not enter into it; these are delusions of the personal ego. The one who truly renounces abandons the acquisitiveness and desire for personal advantage which are the law of the lower nature, and follows the law of the higher nature, which is the law of love and harmony. The question as to whether he gains or loses is then relatively meaningless for him, for he has forgotten himself, because he has found his greater self.
Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is the Yoga I teach,—no other renunciation.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 36, Page: 222
RENUNCIATION. ::: Renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an object ; nor can it be the only or the chief instrument since our object is the fulfilment of the Divine in the human being, a positive aim which cannot be reached by nega-
Renunciation ::: Renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an object; nor can it be the only or the chief instrument since our object is the fulfilment of the Divine in the human being, a positive aim which cannot be reached by negative means. The negative means can only be for the removal of that which stands in the way of the positive fulfilment. It must be a renunciation, a complete renunciation of all that is other than and opposed to the divine self-fulfilment and a progressive renunciation of all that is a lesser or only a partial achievement. our renunciation must obviously be an inward renunciation; especially and above all, a renunciation of attachment and the craving of desire in the senses and the heart, of self-will in the thought and action and of egoism in the centre of the consciousness.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 329
Renunciation
Renwang baigaozuo hui. (J. Ninno hyakukozae; K. Inwang paekkojwa hoe 仁王百高座會). In Chinese, lit., "Humane Kings assembly of one hundred high seats." See RENWANG JING; HUGUO FOJIAO.
Renwang baigaozuo hui
Renwang bore boluomi jing. (C) (仁王般若波羅蜜經). See RENWANG JING.
Renwang bore boluomi jing
Renwang huguo bore boluomiduo jing. (C) (仁王護國般若波羅蜜多經). See RENWANG JING.
Renwang huguo bore boluomiduo jing
Renwang jing. (J. Ninnogyo; K. Inwang kyong 仁王經). In Chinese, "Scripture for Humane Kings"; an influential indigenous Chinese scripture (see APOCRYPHA), known especially for its role in "state protection Buddhism" (HUGUO FOJIAO) and for its comprehensive outline of the Buddhist path of practice (MĀRGA). Its full title (infra) suggests that the scripture belongs to the "perfection of wisdom" (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ) genre of literature, but it includes also elements drawn from both the YOGĀCĀRA and TATHĀGATAGARBHA traditions. The text's audience and interlocutors are not the typical sRĀVAKAs and BODHISATTVAs but instead kings hailing from the sixteen ancient regions of India, who beseech the Buddha to speak this sutra in order to protect both their states and their subjects from the chaos attending the extinction of the dharma (MOFA; SADDHARMAVIPRALOPA). By having kings rather than spiritual mentors serve as the interlocutors, the scripture thus focuses on those qualities thought to be essential to governing a state founded on Buddhist principles. The text's concepts of authority, the path, and the world draw analogies with the "humane kings" of this world who serve and venerate the transcendent monks and bodhisattvas. The service and worship rendered by the kings turns them into bodhisattvas, while the soteriological vocation of the monks and bodhisattvas conversely renders them kings. Thus, the relationship between the state and the religion is symbiotic. The sutra is now generally presumed to be an indigenous Chinese scripture that was composed to buttress imperial authority by exalting the benevolent ruler as a defender of the dharma. The Renwang jing is also known for including the ten levels of faith (sRADDHĀ) as a preliminary stage of the Buddhist path prior to the arousal of the thought of enlightenment (BODHICITTOTPĀDA). It is one of a number of Chinese Buddhist apocrypha that seek to provide a comprehensive elaboration of all fifty-two stages of the path, including the PUSA YINGLUO BENYE JING and the YUANJUE JING. The Renwang jing is not known in Sanskrit sources, but there are two recensions of the Chinese text. The first, Renwang bore boluomi jing, is purported to have been translated by KUMĀRAJĪVA and is dated to c. 402, and the latter, titled Renwang huguo bore boluomiduo jing, is attributed to AMOGHAVAJRA and dated to 765. The Amoghavajra recension is based substantially on the Kumārajīva text, but includes additional teachings on MAndALA, MANTRA, and DHĀRAnĪ, additions that reflect Amoghavajra's place in the Chinese esoteric Buddhist tradition. Furthermore, because Amoghavajra was an advisor to three Tang-dynasty rulers, his involvement in contemporary politics may also have helped to shape the later version. Chinese scriptural catalogues (JINGLU) were already suspicious about the authenticity of the Renwang jing as least as early as Fajing's 594 Zhongjing mulu; Fajing lists the text together with twenty-one other scriptures of doubtful authenticity (YIJING), because its content and diction do not resemble those of the ascribed translator. Modern scholars have also recognized these content issues. One of the more egregious examples is the RENWANG JING's reference to four different perfection of wisdom (prajNāpāramitā) sutras that the Buddha is said to have proclaimed; two of the sutras listed are, however, simply different Chinese translations of the same text, the PANCAVIMsATISĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA, a blunder that an Indian author could obviously not have committed. Another example is the scripture's discussion of a three-truth SAMĀDHI (sandi sanmei), in which these three types of concentrations are named worldly truth (shidi), authentic truth (zhendi), and supreme-meaning truth (diyiyidi). This schema is peculiar, and betrays its Chinese origins, because "authentic truth" and "supreme-meaning truth" are actually just different Chinese renderings of the same Sanskrit term, PARAMĀTHASATYA. Based on other internal evidence, scholars have dated the composition of the sutra to sometime around the middle of the fifth century. Whatever its provenance, the text is ultimately reclassified as an authentic translation in the 602 catalogue Zongjing mulu by Yancong and continues to be so listed in all subsequent East Asian catalogues. See also APOCRYPHA; SANDI.
Renwang jing
Renxian 仁賢. See BHADRIKA
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. Any abnormal phenomenon or product or unusual object; anomaly; aberration. 2. A sudden and apparently causeless change or turn or events; occurrence, etc. freaks.
1. The apparent intersection of the earth and sky as seen by an observer. 2. The range or limit of scope, interest, knowledge, etc. horizon"s, horizons.
1. To become dim, as light, or lose brightness of illumination. 2.* Become less clearly visible or distinguishable; disappear gradually or seemingly, lit. and fig. *3. To lose strength or vitality; wane. 4. To vanish slowly; die out. 5. To grow dim, fade away, become less loud. fades, faded, fading.
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.
"A basis can be created for a subjective illusion-consciousness which is yet part of Being, if we accept in the sense of an illusory subjective world-awareness the account of sleep and dream creation given to us in the Upanishads. For the affirmation there is that Brahman as Self is fourfold; the Self is Brahman and all that is is the Brahman, but all that is is the Self seen by the Self in four states of its being. In the pure self-status neither consciousness nor unconsciousness as we conceive it can be affirmed about Brahman; it is a state of superconscience absorbed in its self-existence, in a self-silence or a self-ecstasy, or else it is the status of a free Superconscient containing or basing everything but involved in nothing. But there is also a luminous status of sleep-self, a massed consciousness which is the origin of cosmic existence; this state of deep sleep in which yet there is the presence of an omnipotent Intelligence is the seed state or causal condition from which emerges the cosmos; — this and the dream-self which is the continent of all subtle, subjective or supraphysical experience, and the self of waking which is the support of all physical experience, can be taken as the whole field of Maya.” The Life Divine
abdicate ::: to renounce (a throne, power, responsibility, rights, etc.), esp. formally.
arenas ::: central stages, rings, areas, or the like, used for sports or other forms of entertainment, surrounded by seats for spectators.
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.
abyss ::: 1. The great deep, the primal chaos; the ‘bowels of the earth", the supposed cavity of the lower world; the ‘infernal pit". 2. A bottomless gulf; any unfathomable or apparently unfathomable cavity or void space; a profound gulf, chasm, or void extending beneath. Abyss, abyss"s, abysses.
account ::: n. 1. A record of debts and credits, applied to other things than money or trade. 2. A particular statement or narrative of an event or thing; a relation, report, or description. v. 3. To render an account or reckoning of; to give a satisfactory reason for, to give an explanation.
"A change into a higher consciousness or state of being is not only the whole aim and process of religion, of all higher askesis, of Yoga, but it is also the very trend of our life itself, the secret purpose found in the sum of its labour.” *The Life Divine
"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*
actual ::: in action or existence at the time; present, current, real. Actual"s.
adj. 1. Lacking in colour or brightness, vividness, clearness, loudness, strength, etc. 2. Indistinct, ill-defined; dim; faded; slight. 3. Feeble through hunger, fear, exhaustion, etc. 4. Inclined to ‘faint" or swoon. faintest, faint-foot. v. 5. To lose strength, brightness, colour, courage etc.; to fade. 6. To grow weak. 7. To feel weak, dizzy or exhausted; falter; about to lose consciousness. 8. To weaken in purpose or spirit. faints, fainted, fainting.
adj. 1. Not imprisoned or enslaved; being at liberty. 2. Unconstrained; unconfined. 3. Unobstructed; clear. 4. Ready or generous in using or giving; liberal; lavish. 5. Exempt from external authority, interference, restriction, etc., as a person or one"s will, thought, choice, action, etc.; independent; unrestricted. 6. Exempt or released from something specified that controls, restrains, burdens, etc. (usually followed by from or of). 7. Given readily or in profusion. freer, thought-free, world-free. *adv. *8. In a free manner; without constraints; unimpeded. v. 9. To make free; set at liberty; release from bondage, imprisonment, or restraint. 10. To disengage or clear something from an entanglement. 11. To relieve or rid of a burden, an inconvenience or an obligation. freed. set free. Released; liberated; freed.
adj. 1. Rousing (something) or being aroused, as if from sleep. n. awakenings. 2. Recognitions, realizations, or coming into awareness of things.
"Adjustment for practical purposes of rival courses of action, systems, or theories, conflicting opinions or principles, by the sacrifice or surrender of a part of each. . . .” Essays Divine and Human*
adoration ::: 1. The act of paying honour, as to a divine being; worship. 2. Reverent homage. 3. Fervent and devoted love. **adoration"s.*Sri Aurobindo: "Especially in love for the Divine or for one whom one feels to be divine, the Bhakta feels an intense reverence for the Loved, a sense of something of immense greatness, beauty or value and for himself a strong impression of his own comparative unworthiness and a passionate desire to grow into likeness with that which one adores.” Letters on Yoga*
adore ::: 1. To worship as a deity, to pay divine honours to. 2. To reverence or honour very highly; to regard with the utmost respect and affection. adores, adored, adoring, adorer, adorer"s.
aegis ::: originally the shield or breastplate of Zeus, or Athena. Currently, protection; support; sponsorship; auspices.
"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
air ::: 1. The transparent, invisible, inodorous, and tasteless gaseous substance which envelopes the earth. 2. *Fig. With reference to its unsubstantial or impalpable nature. 3. Outward appearance, apparent character, manner, look, style: esp. in phrases like ‘an air of absurdity"; less commonly of a thing tangible, as ‘the air of a mansion". 4. Mien or gesture (expressive of a personal quality or emotion). *air"s.
"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 existence, – as the mind and sense know existence – is manifestation of an Eternal and Infinite which is to the mind and sense unknowable but not unknowable to its own self-awareness.” The Hour of God
"All force is power or means of a secret spirit; the Force that sustains the world is a conscious Will and Nature is its machinery of executive power.” The Renaissance in India
::: ". . . all our spiritual and psychic experience bears affirmative witness, brings us always a constant and, in its main principles, an invariable evidence of the existence of higher worlds, freer planes of existence. Not having bound ourselves down, like so much of modern thought, to the dogma that only physical experience or experience based upon the physical sense is true, the analysis of physical experience by the reason alone verifiable, and all else only result of physical experience and physical existence and anything beyond this an error, self-delusion and hallucination, we are free to accept this evidence and to admit the reality of these planes. We see that they are, practically, different harmonies from the harmony of the physical universe; they occupy, as the word ‘plane" suggests, a different level in the scale of being and adopt a different system and ordering of its principles.” The Life Divine
allowed ::: 1. Permitted the occurrence or existence of. 2. Allotted, assigned, bestowed. allows.
" . . . all suffering in the evolution is a preparation of strength and bliss. . . " The Upanishads*
"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
altar ::: 1. A block, pile, table, stand, mound, platform, or other elevated structure on which to place or sacrifice offerings to a deity. 2. With reference to the uses, customs, dedication, or peculiar sanctity of the altar. 3. A place consecrated to devotional observances. altar"s, altars, altar-burnings, mountain-altars.
alter ::: to make otherwise or different in some respect; to make some change in character, shape, condition, position, quantity, value, etc. without changing the thing itself for another; to modify, to change the appearance of. alters, altered, altering.
anarch ::: a. Lawless, rebellious; n. An adherent of anarchy or a leader practicing it.
And perfect sincerity comes when at the centre of the being there is the consciousness of the divine Presence, the consciousness of the divine Will, and when the entire being, like a luminous, clear, transparent whole, expresses this in all its details. This indeed is true sincerity. CWMCE Questions and Answers Vol. 6*
anew ::: 1. Over again; again; once more. 2. In a new form or manner different from the previous.
::: "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
anniversary ::: the yearly recurrence of the date of a past event, esp. the celebration or commemoration of such a date.
another ::: adj. 1. Being one more or more of the same; further; additional. 2. Very similar to; of the same kind or category as. 3. Different; distinct; of a different period, place, or kind. pron. **4. A person other than oneself or the one specified. 5. One more; an additional one. another"s**.
apathy ::: indifference; insensibility to passion or feeling.
apparent ::: readily seen; exposed to sight; open to view. 2. Capable of being easily perceived or understood; plain or clear; obvious; visible.
apprentice ::: a learner; novice; tyro; one who is learning the rudiments; a trainee. apprenticeship.
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.
arbitrary ::: 1. Based on or subject to individual will, judgment or preference: judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one"s discretion. 2. Capricious; unreasonable; unsupported. 3. Derived from mere opinion or preference; capricious; uncertain. 4. Having unlimited power; uncontrolled or unrestricted by law; despotic; tyrannical.
arc ::: 1. Any unbroken part of the circumference of a circle or other curved line. 2. A luminous bridge formed in a gap between two electrodes. arcs.
arcturus ::: a giant star in the constellation Boötes. It is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere and the fourth brightest star in the sky, with an apparent magnitude of 0.00; sometimes referring to the Great Bear itself.
a reference book containing an alphabetical list of words with information about them.
arming ::: providing with whatever will add strength, force, or security; support; fortify.
armour ::: 1. Any covering worn as a defense against weapons, especially a metallic sheathing, suit of armour, mail. 2. Any quality, characteristic, situation, or thing that serves as protection. armours, armoured.* n. 1. Weapons. v. 2. Provides with weapons or whatever will add strength, force or security; supports; fortifies. *armed, arming.
arm ::: power; might; strength. (All other references are to arm(s) as a part of the body.) arm"s, arms.
arms ::: n. 1. Weapons. v. 2. Provides with weapons or whatever will add strength, force or security; supports; fortifies. armed, arming.
art ::: v. archaic** A second person singular present indicative of be, now only poet., not in modern usage. All other references are to art as the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. Also, the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria. art"s, arts, art-parades.
::: "As for prophecy, I have never met or known of a prophet, however reputed, who was infallible. Some of their predictions come true to the letter, others do not, — they half-fulfil or misfire entirely. It does not follow that the power of prophecy is unreal or the accurate predictions can be all explained by probability, chance, coincidence. The nature and number of those that cannot is too great. The variability of fulfilment may be explained either by an imperfect power in the prophet sometimes active, sometimes failing or by the fact that things are predictable in part only, they are determined in part only or else by different factors or lines of power, different series of potentials and actuals. So long as one is in touch with one line, one predicts accurately, otherwise not — or if the lines of power change, one"s prophecy also goes off the rails. All the same, one may say, there must be, if things are predictable at all, some power or plane through which or on which all is foreseeable; if there is a divine Omniscience and Omnipotence, it must be so. Even then what is foreseen has to be worked out, actually is worked out by a play of forces, — spiritual, mental, vital and physical forces — and in that plane of forces there is no absolute rigidity discoverable. Personal will or endeavour is one of those forces.” Letters on Yoga
assent ::: 1. Agreement, as to a proposal; concurrence. 2. Acquiescence; compliance, concession. assents, assenting.
"As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above, adhyaksa; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the individual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has this greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast universality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a sheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature. Even so, freedom and impersonality are always the character of the Self. There is no appearance of subjection to the workings of its own Power in the universe, such as the apparent subjection of the Purusha to Prakriti. To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
"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
awake ::: v. 1. To arouse from sleep or inactivity. 2. Fig. To rise from a state resembling sleep, such as death, indifference, inaction; to become active or vigilant. 3. To come or bring to an awareness, to become cognizant, to be fully conscious, to appreciate fully (often followed by to). awakes, awoke, awaking. *adj.* 4. Not asleep; conscious; vigilant, alert. half-awake.
awe ::: an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like.
awed ::: 1. inspired or influenced by a feeling of fearful wonderment or reverence; 2. Inspired with reverential wonder combined with an element of latent fear.
awful ::: 1. Inspiring fear; terrible, dreadful, appalling, awe-inspiring. 2. Extremely impressive. 3. Profoundly inspired by a feeling of fearful wonderment or reverence.
babel ::: "The reference is to the mythological story of the construction of the Tower of Babel, which appears to be an attempt to explain the diversity of human languages. According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and tower ‘with its top in the heavens". God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. The tower was never completed and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica) Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works Sri Aurobindo: "The legend of the Tower of Babel speaks of the diversity of tongues as a curse laid on the race; but whatever its disadvantages, and they tend more and more to be minimised by the growth of civilisation and increasing intercourse, it has been rather a blessing than a curse, a gift to mankind rather than a disability laid upon it. The purposeless exaggeration of anything is always an evil, and an excessive pullulation of varying tongues that serve no purpose in the expression of a real diversity of spirit and culture is certainly a stumbling-block rather than a help: but this excess, though it existed in the past, is hardly a possibility of the future. The tendency is rather in the opposite direction. In former times diversity of language helped to create a barrier to knowledge and sympathy, was often made the pretext even of an actual antipathy and tended to a too rigid division. The lack of sufficient interpenetration kept up both a passive want of understanding and a fruitful crop of active misunderstandings. But this was an inevitable evil of a particular stage of growth, an exaggeration of the necessity that then existed for the vigorous development of strongly individualised group-souls in the human race. These disadvantages have not yet been abolished, but with closer intercourse and the growing desire of men and nations for the knowledge of each other"s thought and spirit and personality, they have diminished and tend to diminish more and more and there is no reason why in the end they should not become inoperative.” The Human Cycle
background ::: n.** 1. The general scene or surface against which designs, patterns, or figures are represented or viewed. 2. Fig. The complex of physical, cultural, and psychological factors that serves as the environment of an event or experience; the set of conditions against which an occurrence is perceived. backgrounds. adj. 3.** Of, pertaining to, or serving as a background.
barren ::: 1. Unproductive of results or gains; unprofitable. 2. Lacking vegetation, especially useful vegetation. 3. Devoid of something specified.
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.
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 ::: the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, colour, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else, (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest). Beauty, beauty"s, Beauty"s, beauty-drenched, earth-beauty"s.
being ::: 1. The state or quality of having existence. 2. The totality of all things that exist. 3. One"s basic or essential nature; self. 4. All the qualities constituting one that exists; the essence. 5. A person; human being. 6. The Divine, the Supreme; God. Being, being"s, Being"s, beings, Beings, beings", earth-being"s, earth-beings, fragment-being, non-being, non-being"s, Non-Being, Non-Being"s, world-being"s.
Sri Aurobindo: "Pure Being is the affirmation by the Unknowable of Itself as the free base of all cosmic existence.” *The Life Divine :::
"The Absolute manifests itself in two terms, a Being and a Becoming. The Being is the fundamental reality; the Becoming is an effectual reality: it is a dynamic power and result, a creative energy and working out of the Being, a constantly persistent yet mutable form, process, outcome of its immutable formless essence.” *The Life Divine
"What is original and eternal for ever in the Divine is the Being, what is developed in consciousness, conditions, forces, forms, etc., by the Divine Power is the Becoming. The eternal Divine is the Being; the universe in Time and all that is apparent in it is a Becoming.” Letters on Yoga
"Being and Becoming, One and Many are both true and are both the same thing: Being is one, Becomings are many; but this simply means that all Becomings are one Being who places Himself variously in the phenomenal movement of His consciousness.” The Upanishads :::
"Our whole apparent life has only a symbolic value & is good & necessary as a becoming; but all becoming has being for its goal & fulfilment & God is the only being.” *Essays Divine and Human
"Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
being, Master of ::: Sri Aurobindo: " Vamadeva goes on to say, "Let us give expression to this secret name of the clarity, — that is to say, let us bring out this Soma wine, this hidden delight of existence; let us hold it in this world-sacrifice by our surrenderings or submissions to Agni, the divine Will or Conscious-Power which is the Master of being.” The Secret of the Veda
belief ::: 1. Confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof. 2. Trust or confidence, faith. 3. Something believed; an opinion or conviction. beliefs.
Question: "Sweet Mother, l don"t understand very clearly the difference between faith, belief and confidence.”
Mother: "But Sri Aurobindo has given the full explanation here. If you don"t understand, then. . . He has written ‘Faith is a feeling in the whole being." The whole being, yes. Faith, that"s the whole being at once. He says that belief is something that occurs in the head, that is purely mental; and confidence is quite different. Confidence, one can have confidence in life, trust in the Divine, trust in others, trust in one"s own destiny, that is, one has the feeling that everything is going to help him, to do what he wants to do. Faith is a certitude without any proof. Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 6.
bend ::: 1. To assume a curved, crooked, or angular form or direction, esp. to bend the body; stoop. 2. Fig. To bow, esp. in reverence. 3. To turn or incline in a particular direction; be directed. bends.
binding ::: n. **1. The covering within which the pages of a book are abound. adj. 2.* Fig.* Commanding adherence to a commitment, obligatory.
blaspheme ::: to speak in an irreverent, contemptuous or disrespectful manner; curse; (esp. God, a divine being or sacred things).
bleak ::: 1. Exposed to the elements; unsheltered and barren; desolate; cold and cutting; raw, windswept. 2. Offering little or no hope or encouragement.
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.
blindfold ::: fig. With the awareness or clear thinking impaired, the mind blinded and without perception.
blindness ::: 1. A lack or impairment of vision. 2. *Fig.* Lack of vision or awareness.
bliss ::: perfect happiness; serene joy or ecstasy. (See delight for Sri Aurobindo"s definitions.) **self-bliss, World-Bliss.
blood-glued ::: in reference to the bloody shirt that stuck to the body of the Centaur.
blow ::: to produce a sound or cause to sound as by expelling a current of air.
blunt ::: made less intense, lessened the strength of; weakened.
body ::: 1. The entire material or physical structure of an organism, especially of a human or animal as differentiated from the soul. 2. The entire physical structure of a human being. 3. A mass of matter that is distinct from other masses. 4. Substance. 5. An agent or entity. 6. The mass of a thing. 7. A mass of matter that is distinct from other masses. 8. The largest or main part of anything; the foundation; central part. body"s, bodies.
"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
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.
breeze ::: a light current of air; a gentle wind. breezes.
rend ::: 1. To tear apart; split; divide. Also fig. 2. To cause pain or distress to; esp. the heart.** rends, rent, rending.**
rendering ::: an act or instance of interpretation, rendition, reproduction or representation. renderings.
rendezvous ::: a prearranged meeting place.
renew ::: 1. To make new or as if new again; restore. Also fig. 2. To revive; re-establish. 3. To become new again. renews, renewed, renewing.
renounce ::: 1. To give up (a title, for example), esp. by formal announcement. 2. To reject; disown; disclaim; refuse to recognize. 3. To give up or put aside voluntarily; forsake, forego, forswear. renounces, renounced, renouncing.
rent ::: see **rend.**
brief ::: a memorandum of points of fact or of law for use in conducting a case. (All other references are as: short lived, fleeting, transitory. briefer, brief-lived.)
cadence ::: 1. Balanced, rhythmic flow, as of poetry or oratory. 2. Music. A sequence of notes or chords that indicates the momentary or complete end of a composition, section, phrase, etc. 3. The flow or rhythm of events. 4. A recurrent rhythmical series; a flow, esp. the pattern in which something is experienced. 5. A slight falling in pitch of the voice in speaking or reading. cadences.
calculus ::: a method of calculation, esp. one of several highly systematic methods of treating problems by a special system of algebraic notations, as differential or integral calculus.
call ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. The soul that is called to this deep and vast inward change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may reach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap to it by a sudden touch or shock; it may be pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward necessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod the path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come.” *The Synthesis of 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*.
careless ::: 1. Unconcerned or indifferent; heedless. 2. Taking insufficient care; negligent; inattentive.
change ::: v. 1. To make the form, nature, content, future course, etc. of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone. 2. To become different or undergo alteration. changes, changed, changing, ever-changing.* n. 3. The act or fact of changing; transformation or modification of anything. Change, changes, soul-change.
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.
circumference ::: the boundary line of a circle; perimeter; figure, area, or object or the area within the boundary.
circumstance ::: 1. A condition, fact or detail attending an event and having some bearing on it; a determining or modifying factor. 2. A particular incident or occurrence. Circumstance.
clarity ::: 1. Clearness or lucidity as to perception or understanding; freedom from indistinctness or ambiguity. 2. The state or quality of being clear or transparent to the eye; pellucidity; brightness, splendour.
clear ::: 1. Not obscured or darkened; bright. 2. Free from darkness, obscurity, or cloudiness; transparent. 3. Serene; calm; untroubled. 4. Free from doubt or confusion; certain. 5. Easily perceptible to the eye or ear; distinct. 6. Easily understood; without ambiguity. 7. Free from impediment, obstruction, or hindrance; open. clearer, sun-clear, surface-clear.
clearness ::: purity; transparency.
cold-hearted ::: lacking sympathy or feeling; indifferent; unkind, unfeeling.
collapse ::: 1. To fall or cave in; crumble suddenly. 2. Fig. To break down suddenly in strength or health and thereby cease to function. collapsed, collapsing.
colloquy ::: a formal conversation, dialogue or conference. colloquies.
colony ::: a group of emigrants or their descendants who settle in a distant territory but remain subject to or closely associated with the parent country. colonies.
compromise ::: 1. A settlement of differences in which each side makes concessions.
conditions ::: circumstances that are indispensable to the appearance or occurrence of another; prerequisites.
conscious ::: 1. Having an awareness of one"s environment and one"s own existence, sensations, and thoughts. 2. Conscious implies being awake or awakened to an inner realization of a fact, a truth, a condition. half-conscious, half-consciously.
::: "Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces. Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.” Letters on Yoga
::: ‘Consecration" generally has a more mystical sense but this is not absolute. A total consecration signifies a total giving of one"s self; hence it is the equivalent of the word ``surrender"", not of the word (soumission} which always gives the impression that one accepts'' passively. You feel a flame in the wordconsecration"", a flame even greater than in the word offering''. To consecrate oneself isto give oneself to an action""; hence, in the yogic sense, it is to give oneself to some divine work with the idea of accomplishing the divine work.” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 4*.
contorts ::: twists, wrenches, or bends severely out of shape.
contrast ::: a difference, especially a strong dissimilarity, between entities or objects compared.
craftsman ::: a person who practices or is highly skilled in a craft; artisan. (Here in reference to the Divine). craftsman** **(in general).
crowded ::: 1. Filled near or to capacity. 2. Filled with a crowd. 3.* Fig.* packed closely together, as experiences, events; occurrences.
crucified ::: 1. Afflicted with severe pain or distress; tormented. 2. In reference to being put to death by nailing or otherwise fastening to a cross.
crystal ::: 1. A mineral, especially a transparent form of quartz, having a crystalline structure, often characterized by external planar faces. 2. Resembling crystal; transparent as water or a liquid. 3. Fig. Sometimes used to describe the eyes.
cult ::: 1. Obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing. 2. A specific system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and deity. 3. A group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal. cults.
currency ::: money in any form when in actual use as a medium of exchange; also anything that has value.
current ::: 1. (esp. of water or air) A steady usually natural flow in a particular direction. 2. A flow of electric charge through a conductor. current"s, currents.
dam ::: a female parent (esp. used of four-footed domestic animals).
drenched ::: 1. Wet thoroughly; soaked. 2. Covered or filled completely; bathed.
"Death has no reality except as a process of life. Disintegration of substance and renewal of substance, maintenance of form and change of form are the constant process of life; death is merely a rapid disintegration subservient to life"s necessity of change and variation of formal experience. Even in the death of the body there is no cessation of Life, only the material of one form of life is broken up to serve as material for other forms of life.” The Life Divine
debt ::: 1. Something that is owed, such as money, goods, or services. 2. An obligation or liability to pay or render something to someone else.
declining ::: failing in strength, vigour, character value, etc.; deteriorating.
decoration ::: an addition that renders something more attractive or ornate; adornment.
delicate ::: 1. Distinguishing subtle differences. 2. Of instruments: precise, skilled, or sensitive in action or operation. 3. Marked by sensitivity of discrimination and skillful in expression, technique, etc. 4. Exquisitely or beautifully fine in texture, construction, or finish. 5. Exquisite, fine, or subtle in quality, character, construction, etc. 6. (of colour, tone, taste, etc.) Pleasantly subtle, soft, or faint.
deliver ::: 1. To give into another"s possession or keeping; surrender. 2. To set free or liberate; emancipate, release. 3. To rescue or save. 4. To assist (a female) in bringing forth young. 5. To disburden (oneself) of thoughts, opinions, etc. delivered, delivering, deliverers.
desert ::: 1. A region so arid because of little rainfall that it supports only sparse and widely spaced vegetation or no vegetation at all. 2. Any area in which few forms of life can exist because of lack of water, permanent frost, or absence of soil. 3. Any place lacking in something; desolate, barren. deserts.
design ::: n. 1. Purpose, aim, intention, especially with reference to a Divine Creator. 2. Plan or scheme. 3. A combination of details or features; pattern or motif. design"s, designs. *v. 4. To work out the structure or form of (something). 5. To plan and make (something) artistically or skilfully. *designed, designing.
desolate ::: 1. Uninhabited, laid waste, deserted, without any sign of life, barren. 2. Devoid of inhabitants; deserted. 3. Bereft of friends or hope; sad and forlorn. 4. Wretched or forlorn. 5. Dreary, dismal, gloomy. desolately.
destroy ::: 1. To reduce anything to useless fragments, a useless form, or remains, as by rending, burning, or dissolving; injuring beyond repair or renewal; demolish; ruin; annihilate. 2. To subdue or defeat completely; crush. 3. To slay, to kill. destroys, destroyed, destroying, world-destroying.
"Destruction is always a simultaneous or alternate element which keeps pace with creation and it is by destroying and renewing that the Master of Life does his long work of preservation. More, destruction is the first condition of progress. Inwardly, the man who does not destroy his lower self-formations, cannot rise to a greater existence. Outwardly also, the nation or community or race which shrinks too long from destroying and replacing its past forms of life, is itself destroyed, rots and perishes and out of its debris other nations, communities and races are formed. By destruction of the old giant occupants man made himself a place upon earth. By destruction of the Titans the gods maintain the continuity of the divine Law in the cosmos. Whoever prematurely attempts to get rid of this law of battle and destruction, strives vainly against the greater will of the World-Spirit.” Essays on the Gita
difference ::: 1. The quality or condition of being unlike or dissimilar. 2. An instance of disparity or unlikeness. differences.
different ::: 1. Not alike in character or quality; differing; dissimilar. 2. Not identical; separate or distinct.
differ ::: to be of a different opinion; disagree.
disaster ::: an occurrence that causes great distress or destruction. disasters".
disciples ::: those who are pupils or adherents of the doctrines of another; followers.
disjointed ::: lacking order or coherence; disconnected.
disparate ::: fundamentally distinct or different in kind; entirely dissimilar.
distinguishing ::: perceiving clearly by sight or other sense; discerning something as being different or distinct.
divine Reality ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Divine Reality is infinite in its being; in this infinite being, we find limited being everywhere, — that is the apparent fact from which our existence here seems to start and to which our own narrow ego and its ego-centric activities bear constant witness. But, in reality, when we come to an integral self-knowledge, we find that we are not limited, for we also are infinite.” *The Life Divine
downstream ::: in the direction of a stream"s current.
dragon of the dark foundation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother, Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, Master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, — Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.” The Secret of the Veda
drain ::: v. 1. To deplete (a person or a thing) gradually, especially to the point of complete exhaustion. n. 2. A gradual depletion of energy or resources. 3. Something (a ditch, trench, waterpipe etc.) designed to carry away water. drained.
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.
dread ::: n. **1. Profound fear; terror. 2. An object of fear, awe, or reverence. v. 3. To be in fear or terror of. 4. To anticipate with alarm, distaste, or reluctance. adj. 5. Fearful terrible; causing terror. 6. Held in awe or reverential fear. Dread, dreads, dreaded.**
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.
drooping ::: weak from exhaustion; depleted of strength or energy.
dynamo ::: 1. An electric generator, esp. for direct current. 2. An energetic, hardworking, forceful person. dynamo"s.
"Each inner experience is perfectly real in its own way, although the values of different experiences differ greatly, but it is real with the reality of the inner self and the inner planes. It is a mistake to think that we live physically only, with the outer mind and life. We are all the time living and acting on other planes of consciousness, meeting others there and acting upon them, and what we do and feel and think there, the forces we gather, the results we prepare have an incalculable importance and effect, unknown to us, upon our outer life.” Letters on Yoga
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.)
ecstasy ::: 1. Intense joy or delight. 2. A state of exalted emotion so intense that one is carried beyond thought. 3. Used by mystical writers as the technical name for the state of rapture in which the body was supposed to become incapable of sensation, while the soul was engaged in the contemplation of divine things. 4. The trance, frenzy, or rapture associated with mystic or prophetic exaltation. Ecstasy, ecstasy"s, ecstasies, ecstasied, self-ecstasy, strange-ecstasied.
eddy ::: 1. A current at variance with the main current in a stream of liquid or gas, esp. one having a rotary or whirling motion. 2. A small whirlpool. eddies, eddying.
edged ::: 1. Having or provided with an edge or border. ::: 2. Having a cutting edge or especially an edge or edges as specified (often used in combination). 3. keen-edged. Sharpness with reference to the mind.
elfin ::: suggestive of an elf in strangeness and otherworldliness; in reference to legendary beings with magical powers, usually characterized as small, manlike, and mischievous.
else ::: adv. 1. In a different or additional time, place, or manner. adj. 2. Other than the persons or things mentioned or implied.
embody ::: 1. To invest (a spiritual entity) with a body or with bodily form; render incarnate; make corporeal. 2. To give a tangible, bodily, or concrete form to (an abstract concept) or to be an example of or express (an idea, principle, etc. embodies, embodied, embodying, self-embodying.
endeavour ::: a strenuous effort; attempt.
enigma ::: 1. A puzzling or mystifying saying, in which some known thing is concealed under obscure language; an obscure question; a riddle. 2. Something seemingly having no explanation; a puzzling or inexplicable occurrence or situation. enigma"s, Enigma, Enigma"s, enigmaed.
ensleeved ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. The prefix en, occurring originally in loanwords from French, forms verbs with the general sense "to cause (a person or thing) to be in” a place, condition, or state. Hence, ensleeved in this instance is "held within a sleeve”.
entrenched ::: established firmly or solidly; fig. dug in.
::: **"Even in failure there is a preparation for success: our nights carry in them the secret of a greater dawn.” The Renaissance in India*
event ::: 1. Something that happens, or is regarded as happening; an occurrence, esp. one of some importance. 2. Something that occurs in a certain place during a particular interval of time. Event, event"s, events, shape-events. ::: Event, divine
"Everything is a ‘substance" — even peace, consciousness, Ananda, — only there are different orders of substance.” *Letters on Yoga
evolution ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Evolution is nothing but the progressive unfolding of spirit out of the density of material consciousness and the gradual self-revelation of God out of this apparent animal being.” *The Hour of God
existing or remaining within; inherent.
expose ::: 1. To lay open to something specified. 2. To lay open to the action or influence of. 3. To lay open to danger, attack, harm, etc. 4. To make visible or apparent. 5. To reveal or unmask (a crime, fraud, impostor, etc.). exposes, exposed.
father ::: n. 1. A male parent. father"s. v. 2. Fig. Create, found, originate, etc. fathers, fathering.
frenzied ::: violently agitated; frantic; wild.
fear ::: n. 1. A distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. v. 2. To regard with fear; be afraid of. 3. To have reverential awe of.** fear"s, fears, feared, fearing, fear-filled.
feeble ::: 1. Lacking in volume, loudness, brightness, distinctness, etc. 2. Lacking in force, strength or effectiveness.
fell ::: of an inhumanly cruel nature; fierce; destructive. (All other references to the word are as the past tense of fall.)
fibre ::: 1. A filamentous substance; a web of thread-like tissue such as composes living tissue generally. 2. That which fundamentally constitutes the strength of a thing; sinew; stuff; character. fibres, fibred.
film ::: 1. A movie. 2. A thin flexible strip of cellulose coated with a photographic emulsion, used to make negatives and transparencies.
fit ::: v. 1. To adjust in order to render appropriate. 2. To be adapted to or suitable for (a purpose, object, occasion, etc.). fits. adj. 3. To be appropriate or suitable for. 4. Having the right qualifications; qualifying; competent.
flasque ::: Sri Aurobindo: "‘Flasque" is a French word meaning ‘slack", ‘loose", ‘flaccid" etc. I have more than once tried to thrust in a French word like this, for instance, ‘A harlot empress in a bouge" – somewhat after the manner of Eliot and Ezra Pound.” Letters on Savitri.
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.
follower ::: 1. Someone who travels behind or pursues another. 2. One who subscribes to the teachings or methods of another; an adherent. followers.
"For by an absolute self-giving all egoistic desire disappears from the heart and there is a perfect union between the Divine and the individual soul through an inner renunciation of its separate living.” Essays on the Gita
". . . Force is inherent in Existence. Shiva and Kali, Brahman and Shakti are one and not two who are separable. Force inherent in existence may be at rest or it may be in motion, but when it is at rest, it exists none the less and is not abolished, diminished or in any way essentially altered.” The Life Divine
force ::: n. 1. Strength; energy; power; intensity. 2. Fig. An agency, influence, or source of power likened to a physical force. Force, force"s, forces, Force-compelled, Conscious-Force, earth-force, God-Force, lion-forces, Mother-Force, Nature-force, Nature-Force, serpent-force, soul-force, Soul-Forces, world-force, World-Force, world-forces. *v. 3. To compel or cause (a person, group, etc.) to do something through effort, superior strength, etc.; coerce. 4. To propel or drive despite resistance. 5. To break open (a gate, door, etc.) *forces, forced, forcing.
forego ::: to abstain from, go without, deny to oneself; to let go or pass, omit to take or use; to give up, part with, relinquish, renounce, resign. foregone.
foreknowledge ::: knowledge or awareness of something before its existence or occurrence; prescience.
"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
formidable ::: 1. Arousing fear, dread, or alarm. 2. Of discouraging or awesome strength, size, difficulty, etc.; intimidating. 3. Arousing feelings of awe or admiration because of grandeur, strength, etc. 4. Of great strength; forceful; powerful.
forsake ::: 1. To give up (something formerly held dear); renounce. 2. To leave altogether; abandon. forsaking.
fortify ::: to impart physical strength or endurance to; invigorate. fortifying.
::: "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
foster-child ::: a child raised by someone who is not its natural or adoptive parent.
found ::: 1. To set up or establish on a firm basis or for enduring existence; to originate, create, initiate. 2. To establish or set up, especially with provision for continuing existence. Also fig. (All other references are to the word as the pp. or pt. of find. **half-found*.*) founds, founded.**
foundling ::: a deserted or abandoned child of unknown parentage.
furrow ::: a long, narrow, shallow trench made in the ground by a plough. Also fig. furrows.
gandhamadan ::: "In Hindu mythology, a mountain and forest in Ilavrta, the central region of the world which contains Mount Meru. Gandhamadan dorms the division between Ilavrta and Bhadrasva, to the east of Meru. The forest of Gandhamadan is renowned for its fragrance. (Dow.; Enc. Br.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
gaol ::: a prison, esp. one for the detention of persons awaiting trial or convicted of minor offences. (A variant spelling of jail. In British official use the form with G is still current; in literary and journalistic use both the G and the J form is now admitted as correct; in the U.S. the J form is standard.) gaoled.
gauze ::: 1. A thin, transparent fabric with a loose open weave, used for curtains and clothing. *Also fig.*
genii ::: 1. A rendering of Arab., jinn, the collective name of a class of spirits (some good, some evil) supposed to interfere powerfully in human affairs. 2. Spirits, often appearing in human form, that when summoned carry out the wishes of the summoner.
giantess ::: an imaginary female being of human form but superhuman size, strength, etc.
giant ::: n. 1. Any creature of exceptional size or strength. giant"s, giants. adj. **2.** Of extraordinary size, extent, or force; gigantic, huge, monstrous.
gird ::: 1. To encircle; surround. 2. To provide, equip, or invest, as with power or strength. girt.
glory ::: n. 1. Majestic and radiant beauty and splendour; resplendence. 2. Great honour, praise, or distinction accorded by common consent; renown. 3. A state of extreme happiness or exaltation. 4. A state of absolute happiness; gratification. Glory, glory"s, glories, self-glory. v. 5. Rejoice proudly (usually followed by in). glories, gloried, glorying.
god ::: a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions. gods, gods", God"s, Gods, God-bliss, God-born, god-chant, God-child, god-children, God-ecstasy, God-face, God-frame, God-Force, God-given, god-haunts, God-instinct"s, God-joy, God-Light, god-kind, God-knowledge, God-language, God-light, god-mind, god-phase, God-spark, god-speech, God-state, god-touch, God-vision"s, god-wings, child-god, dream-god"s, half-god, Sun-god"s.
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
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.**
grammared ::: classified, as the different parts of speech in a language.
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.
gross ::: 1. Used in reference to material things that the senses can perceive in contrast to those that are spiritual or ethereal. 2. Thick; dense; heavy. grosser, grossly.
gurgling ::: flowing in a broken, irregular, noisy current; emitting a sound as of bubbling liquid.
habit ::: 1. A recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behaviour that is acquired through frequent repetition. 2. A dominant or regular disposition or tendency; prevailing character or quality. habit"s, habits, earth-habit"s, Nature-habit"s.
happening ::: an event, occurrence, incident. happenings.
happens ::: 1. Comes to pass. 2. Comes to pass by chance; occurs without apparent reason or design. happened.
helpless ::: adj. **1. Deprived of strength or power; powerless; incapacitated. 2.* Unable to help oneself; weak or dependent. adv. helplessly. n.* helplessness.
herculean ::: requiring tremendous effort, strength, etc. (Sri Aurobindo capitalises the word.)
hew ::: 1. To cut something by repeated blows, as of an axe. 2. To make or shape as with an axe. 3. To sever from a larger or another portion as with a blow. 4. To cut down with an axe; fell; slay. hews, hewed, hewn, hewing, hewer, half-hewn, rock-hewn. ::: rough-hewn. Shaped out roughly, given crude form to; worked or executed in the rough. (Here in reference to Satyavan"s abode.)
hide-and-seek ::: a children"s game in which one player tries to find and catch others who are hiding.
**"I certainly won"t have ‘attracted" [in place of ‘allured"] — there is an enormous difference between the force of the two words and merely ‘attracted by the Ecstasy" would take away all my ecstasy in the line — nothing so tepid can be admitted. Neither do I want ‘thrill" [in place of ‘joy"] which gives a false colour — precisely it would mean that the ecstasy was already touching him with its intensity which is far from my intention.Your statement that ‘joy" is just another word for ‘ecstasy" is surprising. ‘Comfort", ‘pleasure", ‘joy", ‘bliss", ‘rapture", ‘ecstasy" would then be all equal and exactly synonymous terms and all distinction of shades and colours of words would disappear from literature. As well say that ‘flashlight" is just another word for ‘lightning" — or that glow, gleam, glitter, sheen, blaze are all equivalents which can be employed indifferently in the same place. One can feel allured to the supreme omniscient Ecstasy and feel a nameless joy touching one without that Joy becoming itself the supreme Ecstasy. I see no loss of expressiveness by the joy coming in as a vague nameless hint of the immeasurable superior Ecstasy.” Letters on Savitri*
"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*
"I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights, — yet perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e tree) is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari budhna esam.” Letters on Yoga
"Immortality is one of the possible results of supramentalisation, but it is not an obligatory result and it does not mean that there will be an eternal or indefinite prolongation of life as it is. That is what many think it will be, that they will remain what they are with all their human desires and the only difference will be that they will satisfy them endlessly; but such an immortality would not be worth having and it would not be long before people are tired of it. To live in the Divine and have the divine Consciousness is itself immortality and to be able to divinise the body also and make it a fit instrument for divine works and divine life would be its material expression only.” *Letters on Yoga
impassive ::: 1. Without emotion; apathetic; unmoved. 2. Calm; serene. 3. Not subject to suffering; unaffected. impassively.
impersonal ::: 1. Having no personal reference or connection. 2. Lacking personality; not being a person; devoid of human character or traits.
". . . impersonality is in the original undifferentiated truth of things the pure substance of nature of the Being, the Person; in the dynamic truth of things it differentiates its powers and lends them to constitute by their variations the manifestation of personality.” The Life Divine ::: *personalities, World-personality.
impersonal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Impersonal is not He, it is It. . . . The Impersonal Brahman is inactive, aloof, indifferent, not concerned with what happens in the universe.” *Letters on Yoga
impotent ::: lacking sufficient strength or ability; powerless to achieve.
impoverished ::: deprived of richness and strength.
incapacity ::: lack of ability, qualification, or strength; esp. to receive.
incident ::: 1. An individual occurrence or event. 2. Something contingent on or related to something else. incidents.
incoherent ::: without logical or meaningful connection; disjointed; rambling. incoherence, incoherencies.
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.**
indifference ::: absence of feeling, interest or concern; apathy; impartiality. world-indifference.
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.
indubitable ::: too apparent to be doubted; unquestionable.
inducing ::: bringing about or stimulating the occurrence of; causing.
inference ::: the act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true.
innerness ::: more profound or obscure; less apparent; relating to the soul, mind, spirit, consciousness, etc.
insensible ::: 1. Unaware; unconscious. 2. Not endowed with feeling or sensation, as matter; inanimate. 3. Unaware; unmindful; not emotionally responsive; indifferent. 4. Unresponsive in feeling; not susceptible of emotion or passion; void of any feeling. insensibly.
inspiring mingled reverence and admiration; impressing the emotions or imagination as magnificent; majestic, stately, sublime, solemnly grand; venerable, revered; of supreme dignity.
::: ". . . 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
intense ::: 1. Existing or occurring in a high or extreme degree. 2. Having a characteristic quality in a high degree. 3. Characterized by deep or forceful feelings or emotions. 4. Of an extreme kind; very great, as in strength, keenness, severity, or the like. intenser, intensity, intensities.
::: ". . . in the language of the Upanishad, the life-force is the food of the body and the body the food of the life-force; in other words, the life-energy in us both supplies the material by which the form is built up and constantly maintained and renewed and is at the same time constantly using up the substantial form of itself which it thus creates and keeps in existence.” *The Life Divine
"In the spiritual sense, however, sacrifice has a different meaning — it does not so much indicate giving up what is held dear as an offering of oneself, one"s being, one"s mind, heart, will, body, life, actions to the Divine. It has the original sense of ‘making sacred" and is used as an equivalent of the word yajna. When the Gita speaks of the ‘sacrifice of knowledge", it does not mean a giving up of anything, but a turning of the mind towards the Divine in the search for knowledge and an offering of oneself through it. It is in this sense, too, that one speaks of the offering or sacrifice of works. The Mother has written somewhere that the spiritual sacrifice is joyful and not painful in its nature. On the spiritual path, very commonly, if a seeker still feels the old ties and responsibilities strongly he is not asked to sever or leave them, but to let the call in him grow till all within is ready. Many, indeed, come away earlier because they feel that to cut loose is their only chance, and these have to go sometimes through a struggle. But the pain, the struggle, is not the essential character of this spiritual self-offering.” Letters on Yoga
intolerant ::: 1. Unable or unwilling to endure or support. 2. Unwilling to tolerate differences in opinions, practices, or beliefs, especially religious beliefs. intolerance.
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
iron ::: n. 1. A silver-white metal, usually an admixture of some other substance, usually carbon, rendering it extremely hard and useful for tools, implements, machinery, constructions, and in many other applications. adj. 2. Inflexible; unyielding; firm. 3. Stern; harsh; cruel. 4. *Fig.* Resembling iron in firmness, strength, colour, etc.
" . . . it is through self-giving or surrender of soul and nature to the Divine Being that we can attain to our highest self and supreme Reality, for it is the Divine Being who is that highest self and that supreme Reality, and we are self-existent and eternal only in his eternity and by his self-existence.” The Life Divine
kind ::: 1. A class or group of individual objects, people, animals, etc., of the same nature or character, or classified together because they have traits in common; category. 2. Nature or character as determining likeness or difference between things. 3. One"s family, clan, kin, or kinsfolk. earth-kind, god-kind, self-kind.
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.
lantern ::: a light with a transparent or translucent protective case. Also fig. lantern"s.
laurelled ::: crowned with or as if with laurel symbolizing victory; hence, renowned.
laxity ::: the state or quality of being lax; looseness; lacking in strength.
leave ::: 1. To go away from, depart from permanently, quit (a place, person, or thing). 2. To let remain or have remaining behind after going, disappearing, ceasing, etc. 3. To go without taking. 4. To permit, allow. 5. To let (someone) remain in a position to do something without interference. 6. To give in charge; entrust. 7. Have as a result or residue. leaves. (All other references to leaves are as pl. of leaf.)
lens ::: a ground or moulded piece of glass, plastic, or other transparent material with opposite surfaces either or both of which are curved, by means of which light rays are refracted so that they converge or diverge to form an image as for magnification, or in correcting defects of vision.
"Life then is the dynamic play of a universal Force, a Force in which mental consciousness and nervous vitality are in some form or at least in their principle always inherent and therefore they appear and organise themselves in our world in the forms of Matter.” The Life Divine
liquid ::: 1. Shining, transparent, or brilliant. 2. Smooth and flowing in quality, as a bird song; entirely free of harshness.
lists ::: 1. Arenas for jousting tournaments or other contests. 2. A place of combat.
lodgers ::: those who pay rent in return for accommodation in someone else"s house.
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.
"Man himself is not a life and mind born of Matter and eternally subject to physical Nature, but a spirit that uses life and body.” The Renaissance in India
manichean ::: manicheans or their doctrines; i.e. adherents of the dualistic religious system of Manes, a combination of Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and various other elements, with a basic doctrine of a conflict between light and dark, matter being regarded as dark and evil.
manifest ::: v. 1. To show or demonstrate plainly; reveal, display. manifested. adj. 2. Readily noticed or perceived; evident; obvious; apparent; plain; visible. manifesting.
manifold ::: having numerous different parts, elements, features, forms, etc.
mar ::: to damage or spoil to a certain extent; to render less perfect, attractive, useful; impair or spoil. Now poet. or rhet. **marred.**
mass ::: n. 1. A body of coherent matter, usually of indefinite shape and often of considerable size. 2. A large amount or number, such as a great body of people. masses, flower-masses. 3. Bulk, size, expanse, or massiveness. 4. The main body, bulk, or greater part of anything. 5. Physics. A measure of the amount of matter contained in or constituting a physical body. adj. 6. Of, involving, composed of masses of people (or things) or the majority of people (or a society, group, etc.); done, made, etc., on a large scale. v. 7. To gather into or dispose in a mass or masses; assemble. massed.
master ::: n. 1. One who has the power, knowledge and ability to control, manage, direct; as a teacher, guru, etc. with the authority and qualifications to teach apprentices. 2. A person eminently skilled in something, as an occupation, art, or science. 3. A person who has general authority over others. master"s, masters. *v. 4. To be or become completely proficient or skilled in; become an adept in. masters, mastered. adj. 5. Being master; exercising mastery; dominant. 6. Dominating or predominant. 7. Chief or principle. *master-clue, master-point.
"Matter is the form of substance of being which the existence of Sachchidananda [a trinity of Existence (sat), Consciousness (cit), and Delight (ananda),] assumes when it subjects itself to this phenomenal action of its own consciousness and force.” The "Matter is the body or field of a consciousness hidden within it, the material universe a form and movement of the Spirit.” The Renaissance in India
mediator ::: one that mediates, especially one that reconciles differences between disputants. mediators.
menial ::: pertaining to domestic servants. In current usage, lowly and sometimes degrading; servile.
metamorphosis ::: 1. Any complete change in appearance, character, circumstances, etc. 2. A change or succession of changes in form during the life cycle of an animal, allowing it to adapt to different environmental conditions, as a caterpillar into a butterfly.
mighty ::: 1. Having, characterized by or showing superior power or strength. 2. Very great in extent, importance, etc. 3. Of great size; huge. Mighty, mightier, mightiest.
mind of light ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Mind of Light is a subordinate action of Supermind, dependent upon it even when not apparently springing direct from it, . . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ‘Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this yoga the words ‘mind" and ‘mental" are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are part of his intelligence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer.” The Life Divine
"Mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis, but not of essential knowledge. Its function is to cut out something vaguely from the unknown Thing in itself and call this measurement or delimitation of it the whole, and again to analyse the whole into its parts which it regards as separate mental objects.” The Life Divine
"The mind proper is divided into three parts — thinking Mind, dynamic Mind, externalising Mind — the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forces for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give).” Letters on Yoga
"The difference between the ordinary mind and the intuitive is that the former, seeking in the darkness or at most by its own unsteady torchlight, first, sees things only as they are presented in that light and, secondly, where it does not know, constructs by imagination, by uncertain inference, by others of its aids and makeshifts things which it readily takes for truth, shadow projections, cloud edifices, unreal prolongations, deceptive anticipations, possibilities and probabilities which do duty for certitudes. The intuitive mind constructs nothing in this artificial fashion, but makes itself a receiver of the light and allows the truth to manifest in it and organise its own constructions.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"He [man] has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Our mind is an observer of actuals, an inventor or discoverer of possibilities, but not a seer of the occult imperatives that necessitate the movements and forms of a creation. . . .” *The Life Divine
"The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and error.” Letters on Yoga
"For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense formations, — as if bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve.” The Life Divine
The Mother: "The true role of the mind is the formation and organization of action. The mind has a formative and organizing power, and it is that which puts the different elements of inspiration in order for action, for organizing action. And if it would only confine itself to that role, receiving inspirations — whether from above or from the mystic centre of the soul — and simply formulating the plan of action — in broad outline or in minute detail, for the smallest things of life or the great terrestrial organizations — it would amply fulfil its function. It is not an instrument of knowledge. But is can use knowledge for action, to organize action. It is an instrument of organization and formation, very powerful and very capable when it is well developed.” Questions and Answers 1956, MCW Vol. 8.*
mine ::: n. 1. An excavation in the earth from which ore or minerals can be extracted. v. 2. To remove something from its source without attempting to replenish it. (All other references are to mine as: belonging to me.)
missalled ::: with reference to the illumination of manuscripts and books of prayer; i.e. Savitri is likened to a beautifully illuminted book of prayer.
moonstone ::: a semitransparent or translucent, opalescent, pearly-blue variety of adularia, used as a gem.
"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
mottled ::: spotted or blotched with different shades or colors.
movement ::: 1. The act or an instance of moving; a change in place or position. A particular manner of moving. 2. Usually, movements, actions or activities, as of a person or a body of persons. ::: movement"s, movements, many-movemented.
Sri Aurobindo: "When we withdraw our gaze from its egoistic preoccupation with limited and fleeting interests and look upon the world with dispassionate and curious eyes that search only for the Truth, our first result is the perception of a boundless energy of infinite existence, infinite movement, infinite activity pouring itself out in limitless Space, in eternal Time, an existence that surpasses infinitely our ego or any ego or any collectivity of egos, in whose balance the grandiose products of aeons are but the dust of a moment and in whose incalculable sum numberless myriads count only as a petty swarm." *The Life Divine
". . . the purest, freest form of insight into existence as it is shows us nothing but movement. Two things alone exist, movement in Space, movement in Time, the former objective, the latter subjective.” The Life Divine
"The world is a cyclic movement (samsâra ) of the Divine Consciousness in Space and Time. Its law and, in a sense, its object is progression; it exists by movement and would be dissolved by cessation of movement. But the basis of this movement is not material; it is the energy of active consciousness which, by its motion and multiplication in different principles (different in appearance, the same in essence), creates oppositions of unity and multiplicity, divisions of Time and Space, relations and groupings of circumstance and Causality. All these things are real in consciousness, but only symbolic of the Being, somewhat as the imaginations of a creative Mind are true representations of itself, yet not quite real in comparison with itself, or real with a different kind of reality.” The Upanishads*
muse ::: myth. Any of the nine daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, each of whom presided over a different art or science.
mystical ::: 1. Of or having a spiritual reality, import, or union with the Divine not apparent to the intelligence or senses. 2. Mystic; occult. mystically.
mystic ::: n. **1. One who believes in the existence of realities beyond human comprehension and who has had spiritual experiences. mystic"s. adj. 2. Of occult character, power, or significance. 3. Of the nature of or pertaining to mysteries known only to the initiated; esoteric. 4.** Having an import not apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence; beyond ordinary understanding.
n. 1. A competition of speed, as in running or riding. 2. A strong or swift current of water. race-fields. *v. 3. To run, move or go swiftly. 4. To engage in a contest of speed; run a race. *raced, racing.
n. 1. The horizontal line or plane in which anything is situated, with regard to its elevation. 2. A plane or position in a graded scale; position in a hierarchy. 3. On the same plane, on an equality (with). levels. *adj. 4.** *Having a surface without slope, tilt in which no part is higher or lower than another. 5. Height, position, strength, rank, plane, etc. Also fig. v. 6. Fig. To bring persons or things to an equal level; equalize. levelled, all-levelling.**
name ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Name in its deeper sense is not the word by which we describe the object, but the total of power, quality, character of the reality which a form of things embodies and which we try to sum up by a designating sound, a knowable name, Nomen. Nomen in this sense, we might say, is Numen; the secret Names of the Gods are their power, quality, character of being caught up by the consciousness and made conceivable. The Infinite is nameless, but in that namelessness all possible names, Numens of the gods, the names and forms of all realities, are already envisaged and prefigured, because they are there latent and inherent in the All-Existence.” The Life Divine
native ::: 1. Natural; originating naturally; naturally resulting. 2. Belonging to a person by birth or to a thing by nature; inherent. 3. Of indigenous origin, growth, or production. 4. Remaining or growing in a natural state; real, genuine, original. 5. Being the place or environment in which a person was born or a thing came into being.
natural ::: 1. Not acquired; inherent. 2. Having a particular character by nature. 3. Of, pertaining to, or proper to the nature or essential constitution. 4. Functioning or occurring in a normal way; lacking abnormalities or deficiencies. 5. Of or pertaining to nature or the universe.
nature ::: 1. The universe, with all its phenomena. 2. The forces and processes that produce and control all the phenomena of the material world. 3. The material world, esp. as surrounding human kind and existing independently of human activities. 4. The essential characteristics and qualities of a human being. 5. A particular combination of qualities belonging to a person, animal, thing, of class by birth, origin, or constitution; native or inherent character. 6. Characteristic disposition; temperament. nature"s, Nature"s, natures, earth-nature ("s), Earth-Nature"s, Heaven-nature"s, life-nature"s, soul-nature, World-Nature"s, twi-natured.
nescience ::: absence of knowledge or awareness; ignorance. **
no man"s land ::: 1. An unowned or unclaimed tract of usually barren land. 2. An area between opposing armies, over which no control has been established.
::: (Note: (Other references are to opening as a n. or a form of the v.)
"Nothing can be more remarkable and suggestive than the extent to which modern Science confirms in the domain of Matter the conceptions and even the very formulae of language which were arrived at, by a very different method, in the Vedanta, — the original Vedanta, not of the schools of metaphysical philosophy, but of the Upanishads. And these, on the other hand, often reveal their full significance, their richer contents only when they are viewed in the new light shed by the discoveries of modern Science, — for instance, that Vedantic expression which describes things in the Cosmos as one seed arranged by the universal Energy in multitudinous forms.(1) Significant, especially, is the drive of Science towards a Monism which is consistent with multiplicity, towards the Vedic idea of the one essence with its many becomings.” The Life Divine
novel ::: strikingly new, unusual, or different. different from anything seen or known before.
nursery ::: a room or area in a household set apart for the use of children.
nursery school ::: a school for children usually between the ages of three and five years.
nympholepts ::: those who are in an emotional frenzy, esp. with desires that cannot be fulfilled.
obvious ::: easily perceived or understood; quite apparent.
odds ::: the likelihood of the occurrence of one thing rather than the occurrence of another thing, as in a contest.
oestrus ::: a regularly occurring period of sexual receptivity in most female mammals, except humans, during which ovulation occurs and copulation can take place; heat. [from Latin oestrus gadfly, hence frenzy, from Greek oistros]
"One can speak of the chakras only in reference to yoga. In ordinary people the chakras are not open, it is only when they do sadhana that the chakras open. For the chakras are the centres of the inner consciousness and belong originally to the subtle body. So much as is active in ordinary people is very little — for in them it is the outer consciousness that is active.” Letters on Yoga
"One starts by an intense idea and will to know or reach the Divine and surrenders more and more one"s ordinary personal ideas, desires, attachments, urges to action or habits of action so that the Divine may take up everything. Surrender means that, to give up our little mind and its mental ideas and preferences into a divine Light and a greater Knowledge, our petty personal troubled blind stumbling will into a great, calm, tranquil, luminous Will and Force, our little, restless, tormented feelings into a wide intense divine Love and Ananda, our small suffering personality into the one Person of which it is an obscure outcome.” Letters on Yoga
opaque ::: impenetrable by light; neither transparent nor translucent.
opposite ::: adj. **1. Contrary or radically different in some respect common to both, as in nature, qualities, direction, result, or significance; opposed. 2. Situated, placed, or lying face to face with something else or each other, or in corresponding positions with relation to an intervening line, space, or thing. n. 2. One that is opposite or contrary to another. opposites, Opposites.**
"Ordinarily we mean by it [consciousness] our first obvious idea of a mental waking consciousness such as is possessed by the human being during the major part of his bodily existence, when he is not asleep, stunned or otherwise deprived of his physical and superficial methods of sensation. In this sense it is plain enough that consciousness is the exception and not the rule in the order of the material universe. We ourselves do not always possess it. But this vulgar and shallow idea of the nature of consciousness, though it still colours our ordinary thought and associations, must now definitely disappear out of philosophical thinking. For we know that there is something in us which is conscious when we sleep, when we are stunned or drugged or in a swoon, in all apparently unconscious states of our physical being. Not only so, but we may now be sure that the old thinkers were right when they declared that even in our waking state what we call then our consciousness is only a small selection from our entire conscious being. It is a superficies, it is not even the whole of our mentality. Behind it, much vaster than it, there is a subliminal or subconscient mind which is the greater part of ourselves and contains heights and profundities which no man has yet measured or fathomed.” Letters on Yoga
orgy ::: a secret rite in the cults of ancient Greek or Roman deities, typically involving frenzied singing, dancing, drinking, and sexual activity.
otherness ::: the state or fact of being different or distinct.
"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
"Our sins are the misdirected steps of a seeking Power that aims, not at sin, but at perfection, at something that we might call a divine virtue. Often they are the veils of a quality that has to be transformed and delivered out of this ugly disguise: otherwise, in the perfect providence of things, they would not have been suffered to exist or to continue. The Master of our works is neither a blunderer nor an indifferent witness nor a dallier with the luxury of unneeded evils. He is wiser than our reason and wiser than our virtue.” The Synthesis of Yoga
outbreak ::: 1. A sudden breaking out or occurrence. 2. A sudden and active manifestation. outbreaks.
outward ::: n. 1. Relating to physical reality rather than with thoughts or the mind; the material or external world. outward"s, outwardness. adj. 2. Relating to the physical self. 3. Purely external; superficial. 4. Belonging or pertaining to external actions or appearances, as opposed to inner feelings, mental states, etc. 5. Pertaining to or being what is seen or apparent, as distinguished from the underlying nature, facts, etc.; pertaining to surface qualities only; superficial.
overhead ::: over or above the level of the head; high or higher up; situated or operating above head height or some other reference level; on high.
overmind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The overmind is a sort of delegation from the supermind (this is a metaphor only) which supports the present evolutionary universe in which we live here in Matter. If supermind were to start here from the beginning as the direct creative Power, a world of the kind we see now would be impossible; it would have been full of the divine Light from the beginning, there would be no involution in the inconscience of Matter, consequently no gradual striving evolution of consciousness in Matter. A line is therefore drawn between the higher half of the universe of consciousness, parardha , and the lower half, aparardha. The higher half is constituted of Sat, Chit, Ananda, Mahas (the supramental) — the lower half of mind, life, Matter. This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, depends on it indeed, but in receiving it, divides, distributes, breaks it up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds, each of which it is possible by a further diminution of consciousness, such as we reach in Mind, to regard as the sole or the chief Truth and all the rest as subordinate or contradictory to it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The overmind is the highest of the planes below the supramental.” *Letters on Yoga
"In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light.” The Life Divine
"The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort of inferior Supermind, — although it is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global wholes or constituted by separate independent realities uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature.” The Life Divine
"The overmind sees calmly, steadily, in great masses and large extensions of space and time and relation, globally; it creates and acts in the same way — it is the world of the great Gods, the divine Creators.” *Letters on Yoga
"The Overmind is essentially a spiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its stand on a spiritual foundation. It embraces beauty and sublimates it; it has an essential aesthesis which is not limited by rules and canons, it sees a universal and an eternal beauty while it takes up and transforms all that is limited and particular. It is besides concerned with things other than beauty or aesthetics. It is concerned especially with truth and knowledge or rather with a wisdom that exceeds what we call knowledge; its truth goes beyond truth of fact and truth of thought, even the higher thought which is the first spiritual range of the thinker. It has the truth of spiritual thought, spiritual feeling, spiritual sense and at its highest the truth that comes by the most intimate spiritual touch or by identity. Ultimately, truth and beauty come together and coincide, but in between there is a difference. Overmind in all its dealings puts truth first; it brings out the essential truth (and truths) in things and also its infinite possibilities; it brings out even the truth that lies behind falsehood and error; it brings out the truth of the Inconscient and the truth of the Superconscient and all that lies in between. When it speaks through poetry, this remains its first essential quality; a limited aesthetical artistic aim is not its purpose.” *Letters on Savitri
"In the overmind the Truth of supermind which is whole and harmonious enters into a separation into parts, many truths fronting each other and moved each to fulfil itself, to make a world of its own or else to prevail or take its share in worlds made of a combination of various separated Truths and Truth-forces.” Letters on Yoga
*Overmind"s.
oversoul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "But with the extension of our knowledge we discover what this Spirit or Oversoul is: it is ultimately our own highest deepest vastest Self, it is apparent on its summits or by reflection in ourselves as Sachchidananda creating us and the world by the power of His divine Knowledge-Will, spiritual, supramental, truth-conscious, infinite.” *The Life Divine.
parentage ::: derivation or descent from parents or ancestors; birth, origin or lineage.
parent ::: n. 1. A father or mother. 2. Fig. A source or cause; an origin. parent"s, parents, parents". adj. 3. Being the original source.
pactise ::: Sri Aurobindo combines the word pact [an agreement or covenant] with ise, a noun suffix occurring in loanwords from French, indicating quality, condition, or function.
paradox ::: 1. Any person, thing, or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature; puzzle; anomaly; riddle. 2. A statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. paradoxical.
parley ::: a discussion, discourse, or conference.
pass ::: v. 1. To move on or ahead; proceed. 2. To move by. 3. To go or get through (something), lit. and fig. **4. To go across or over (a stream, threshold, etc.); cross. 5. To cross, traverse, in reference to times, stages, states, conditions, processes, actions, experiences, etc. 6. To be transferred from one to another; circulate. 7. To come to or toward, then go beyond. 8. To come to an end. 9. To cease to exist. 10. To convey, transfer, or transmit; deliver (often followed by on). 11. To be accepted as or believed to be. 12. To sanction or approve. passes, passed, passing. n. 13. A way, such as a narrow gap between mountains, that affords passage around, over, or through a barrier. passes. ::: pass by. To let go without notice, action, remark, etc.; leave unconsidered; disregard; overlook.
"Patience is our first great necessary lesson, but not the dull slowness to move of the timid, the sceptical, the weary, the slothful, the unambitious or the weakling; a patience full of a calm and gathering strength which watches and prepares itself for the hour of swift great strokes, few but enough to change destiny.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
perennial ::: lasting an indefinitely long time; enduring.
pellucid ::: admitting the passage of light; transparent or translucent.
"Perishable and transitory delight is always the symbol of the eternal Ananda, revealed and rapidly concealed, which seeks by increasing recurrence to attach itself to some typal form of experience in material consciousness. When the particular form has been perfected to express God in the type, its delight will no longer be perishable but an eternally recurrent possession of mental beings in matter manifest in their periods & often in their moments of felicity.” Essays Divine and Human*
phantasm ::: something apparently seen but having no physical reality; a phantom or an apparition.
phantom ::: n. 1. Something apparently seen, heard, or sensed, but having no physical reality; a ghost or an apparition. 2. An image that appears only in the mind; an illusion. adj. 3. Of, pertaining to, or of the nature of a phantom; illusory. phantom"s, phantoms.
phenomenon ::: 1. An unusual, significant, or unaccountable fact or occurrence; a marvel. 2. Phil. An object as it is perceived by the senses.
picture ::: 1. A visual representation or image painted, drawn, photographed, or otherwise rendered on a flat surface. 2. A visible image however produced. 3. A particular image or reality as portrayed in an account or description; depiction; version. pictures. (See also moving picture (‘s).)
pilgrim ::: someone who journeys to different places in distant lands. (Sri Aurobindo often employs the word as an adjective.) pilgrim"s.
plausible ::: seemingly or apparently valid, likely, or acceptable; credible.
pointillage ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. The suffix age, originally in words adopted from Fr., is typically used in abstract nouns to indicate "aggregate”. Hence, pointillage indicates something made up of minute details; particularized. The root word, pointillism, refers to a method, invented by French impressionist painters, of producing luminous effects by crowding a surface with small spots of various colours, which are blended by the eye.
potency ::: 1. Efficacy; effectiveness; strength. 2. Inherent capacity for growth and development; potentiality. potencies.
potent ::: possessing inner or physical strength; powerful; having great control or authority.
pour ::: Sri Aurobindo [in reference to the following lines]: ::: **Here too the gracious mighty Angel poured
power ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Power means strength and force, Shakti, which enables one to face all that can happen and to stand and overcome, also to carry out what the Divine Will proposes. It can include many things, power over men, events, circumstances, means etc. But all this not of the mental or vital kind, but by an action through unity of consciousness with the Divine and with all things and beings. It is not an individual strength depending on certain personal capacities, but the Divine Power using the individual as an instrument.” *Letters on Yoga
precisian ::: one who is strict and precise in adherence to established rules, forms, or standards, especially with regard to religious observance or moral behaviour.
presence ::: 1. The state or fact of being present; current existence or occurrence. 2. A divine, spiritual, or supernatural spirit or influence felt or conceived as present. 3. The immediate proximity of someone or something.
Sri Aurobindo: "It is intended by the word Presence to indicate the sense and perception of the Divine as a Being, felt as present in one"s existence and consciousness or in relation with it, without the necessity of any further qualification or description. Thus, of the ‘ineffable Presence" it can only be said that it is there and nothing more can or need be said about it, although at the same time one knows that all is there, personality and impersonality, Power and Light and Ananda and everything else, and that all these flow from that indescribable Presence. The word may be used sometimes in a less absolute sense, but that is always the fundamental significance, — the essential perception of the essential Presence supporting everything else.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” Essays Divine and Human
"But if we learn to live within, we infallibly awaken to this presence within us which is our more real self, a presence profound, calm, joyous and puissant of which the world is not the master — a presence which, if it is not the Lord Himself, is the radiation of the Lord within.” *The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
"If we need any personal and inner witness to this indivisible All-Consciousness behind the ignorance, — all Nature is its external proof, — we can get it with any completeness only in our deeper inner being or larger and higher spiritual state when we draw back behind the veil of our own surface ignorance and come into contact with the divine Idea and Will behind it. Then we see clearly enough that what we have done by ourselves in our ignorance was yet overseen and guided in its result by the invisible Omniscience; we discover a greater working behind our ignorant working and begin to glimpse its purpose in us: then only can we see and know what now we worship in faith, recognise wholly the pure and universal Presence, meet the Lord of all being and all Nature.” *The Life Divine
"The presence of the Spirit is there in every living being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure spiritual existence and consciousness, of the delight of a divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and the farthest chambers of the outer being.” *The Life Divine
"There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"For what Yoga searches after is not truth of thought alone or truth of mind alone, but the dynamic truth of a living and revealing spiritual experience. There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as their true Self, tangible as their imperishable Essence, met by us closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"One must have faith in the Master of our life and works, even if for a long time He conceals Himself, and then in His own right time He will reveal His Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"They [the psychic being and the Divine Presence in the heart] are quite different things. The psychic being is one"s own individual soul-being. It is not the Divine, though it has come from the Divine and develops towards the Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
"For it is quietness and inwardness that enable one to feel the Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” *Essays Divine and Human
The Mother: "For, in human beings, here is a presence, the most marvellous Presence on earth, and except in a few very rare cases which I need not mention here, this presence lies asleep in the heart — not in the physical heart but the psychic centre — of all beings. And when this Splendour is manifested with enough purity, it will awaken in all beings the echo of his Presence.” Words of the Mother, MCW, Vol. 15.
present ::: adj. 1. Being, existing, occurring, or going on now, current. 2. Existing or in use at, or belonging to, the particular time under consideration n. 3. The present time, the time that now is (as opposed to the past and the future). present"s.
prevail ::: 1. To be or become effective; become dominant. 2. To be most common or frequent; be predominant; to predominate. 3. To be in force, use, or effect; be current. prevails, prevailed.
prism ::: a transparent solid body, often having triangular bases, used for dispersing light into a spectrum or for reflecting rays of light. Also fig.
profaning ::: treating with irreverence, esp. with towards sacred objects.
"Progress admittedly does not march on securely in a straight line like a man sure of his familiar way or an army covering an unimpeded terrain or well-mapped unoccupied spaces. Human progress is very much an adventure through the unknown, an unknown full of surprises and baffling obstacles; it stumbles often, it misses its way at many points, it cedes here in order to gain there, it retraces its steps frequently in order to get more widely forward.” *The Renaissance in India
proximity ::: nearness in place, time, order, occurrence, or relation.
puny ::: of inferior size, strength, or significance; weak.
purposeless ::: having no purpose or apparent meaning.
quiet ::: n. 1. An untroubled state; free from disturbances. 2. The absence of sound. 3. adj. Free of noise or uproar; or making little if any sound. 4. Free of mental or emotional turmoil and agitation; untroubled. 5. Tranquil; serene. quieted, quietly.
reason ::: v. 1. To form conclusions, judgments, or inferences from facts or premises. 2. To determine or conclude by logical thinking. reasons, reasoned.* *n. 3. An underlying fact or cause that provides logical sense for a premise or occurrence. Reason, reason"s, Reason"s. ::: *
recall ::: n. 1. The act of remembering; recollecting. v. 2. To summon back to awareness of or concern with the subject or situation at hand. 3. To revoke or withdraw. recalled, recalling.
recurrence ::: something that happens again; that reappears. recurrences.
recurrent ::: occurring or coming again (esp. frequently or periodically); reappearing.
reference ::: meaning or denotation.
reinterpret ::: to interpret (an idea, etc.) in a new or different way; interpret anew.
rekindling ::: fig. Reviving or renewing.
resident ::: one who resides in a particular place permanently or for an extended period. Here in reference to the divinity within us.
resides ::: of things, qualities, etc.: Abides, lies, or is present habitually; exists or is inherent.
resigns ::: gives up; submits; relinquishes; surrenders.
respect ::: to feel or show deferential regard for.
"Revelation is direct sight, the direct hearing or inspired memory of Truth. . . it is the highest experience and always accessible to renewed experience.” Essays Divine and Human*
reverse ::: n. **1. The side of a coin or medal that does not carry the principal design. v. 2. To revoke or set aside (a judgment, decree, etc.); annul. 3. To change into something different or contrary; alter completely. 4. To turn and proceed in the opposite direction. reversed, reversing.**
reword ::: to state or express again in the same or different words.
rhythm ::: 1. Procedure marked by the regular recurrence of particular elements, phases, etc.; flow, pulse, cadence. 2. Regular recurrence of elements in a system of motion. 3. Music. The pattern of regular or irregular pulses caused in music by the occurrence of strong and weak melodic and harmonic beats. 4. Measured movement, as in dancing. 5. Physiol. The regular recurrence of an action of function, as of the beat of the heart. 6. The arrangement of words into a more or less regular sequence of stressed and unstressed or long and short syllables. 7. Pros. Metrical or rhythmical form; metre; a particular kind of metrical form or metrical movement. rhythms, rhythm-beats, fire-rhythm, jewel-rhythm, world-rhythms. (Sri Aurobindo also employs rhythms as a v., rhythmed as a v. and an adj., and rhythming as a v. and an adj.)
riven ::: rent or torn apart.
round ::: adj. 1. Full, complete, entire. rounded. 2. Whole or complete; full. 3. Expressed to the nearest ten, hundred, or thousand; rounded by approximation. adv. 4. Involving or using circular motion. 5. On all sides; all about; surrounding; enveloping. 6. In all directions from a centre or point of reference. 7. In a circular or rounded course. prep. 8. Around.
round ::: n. 1. A completed course of time, series of events or operations, etc., ending at a point corresponding to that at the beginning. 2. A going around from place to place as in a habitual or definite circuit. 3. A recurring period of time, succession of events, duties, etc. 4. Moving in or forming a circle. round"s, rounds. wonder-rounds. 5. A composition for two or more voices in which each voice enters at a different time with the same melody. rounds. v. 6. Brings to a highly developed, finished, or refined state.
rule ::: n. 1. Action, procedure, arrangement, etc. 2. Governing power or its possession or use; authority. 3. A usual, customary, or generalized course of action or behaviour. 4. The customary or normal circumstance, occurrence, manner, practice, quality, etc. 5. A thin metal strip of various widths and designs, used to print borders or lines, as between columns. Chiefly fig. rules, rule-maker, self-rule. *v. 6. To control or direct; exercise dominating power, authority, or influence over; govern. *rules, ruled, ruling.
sacred ::: 1. Devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated. 2. Reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object; consecrated, hallowed. 3. Secured against violation, infringement, etc., as by reverence or sense of right; sacrosanct. 4. Entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy; venerable; divine.
sacrifice ::: n. **1. The surrender to God or a deity, for the purpose of propitiation or homage, of some object of possession. Also applied fig. to the offering of prayer, thanksgiving, penitence, submission, or the like. 2. Forfeiture or surrender of something highly valued for the sake of one considered to have a greater value or claim. tree-of-sacrifice. v. 3.** To surrender or give up (something).
sadistic ::: pertaining to cruelty that evidences a subconscious craving and is apparently satisfied, sexually or otherwise, by the infliction of pain on another by means of aggressive or destructive behaviour or the assertion of power over that person; also loosely, deliberate or excessive cruelty morbidly enjoyed.
save ::: with the exception of; except. (All other references to save are as to protect or rescue from peril or hurt; safeguard or preserve, put in safety.)
scatter ::: n. 1. The act of scattering or causing to separate and go in different directions. v. 2. To throw loosely about; distribute at irregular intervals. 3. To separate and go in different directions; disperse. scatters, scattered, scattering.
schooled ::: educated, trained (a person, his mind, powers, tastes, etc.); to render wise, skilful, or tractable by training or discipline.
science ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The beginning of Science is the examination of the truths of the world-force that underlie its apparent workings such as our senses represent them to be; . . .” *The Synthesis of Yoga
serene ::: calm, peaceful, tranquil.
serenely ::: in a peacefully serene manner; unaffected by disturbance; calm and unruffled.
serenity ::: the state or quality of being serene, calm, or tranquil.
secret ::: n. 1. Something unknown or kept hidden from others or is beyond understanding or explanation; a mystery. 2. A reason or explanation not immediately or generally apparent. secrets. adj. **3. Kept from knowledge or observation; hidden, concealed. 4. Kept from the knowledge of any but the initiated and privileged. 5. Beyond ordinary human understanding; esoteric. 6.** Secluded, remote, sheltered, or withdrawn.
::: **"See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret & violent ecstasy.” Essays Divine and Human
seem ::: 1. To have an aspect of truth and probability. 2. To give the impression of being; to appear to be, to be apparently. 3. To appear to be, feel or do something. 4. To appear to one"s own senses, mind, observation, judgement, etc. seems, seemed.
see-saw ::: moving up and down, backwards and forwards, or alternately ahead and behind in the manner of a see-saw (a recreation in which children sit one or more at each end of a board or piece of timber balanced in the middle so that the ends move alternately up and down).
self-moved ::: moved by inherent power, without the aid of external impulse.
sensations (‘s) ::: 1. Perception or awareness of stimuli through the senses. 2. A physical ‘feeling" considered apart from the resulting ‘perception" of an object. 3. A state of intense or heightened interest or emotion; an exciting experience resulting from the stimulation of one of the sense organs. sensations.
sensibility ::: 1. Capacity for sensation or feeling; responsiveness or susceptibility to sensory stimuli. 2. Mental or emotional responsiveness toward something; such as the feelings of another; discernment; awareness. sensibilities.
settled ::: v. 1. Rendered or made stable or permanent; fixed in a certain condition; established. 2. Sank down gradually and remained. 3. Sank deeply into (the mind, heart). 4. Discontinued moving and came to rest in one place. adj. 5. Established on a permanent basis; stabilized.
shade ::: 1. The comparative darkness caused by the interception or screening of rays of light from an object, place, or area. 2. A place or an area of comparative darkness, as one sheltered from the sun. 3. A shadow. 4. A spectre; a shadow. 5. Something that provides a shield or protection from a direct source of light. 6. A colour that varies slightly from a standard colour due to a difference in hue, saturation, or luminosity. 7. Fig. Something resembling a ghost or a disembodied spirit; something insubstantial or fleeting. 8. shades. Darkness gathering at the close of day. Shade, shades.
shell ::: 1. An exterior or enclosing cover or case; an external part. Also fig. 2. Something without substance; hollow. Also fig. 3. The outer covering of crustaceans, molluscs, and other invertebrates, often with reference to the formation of pearls within the shells of molluscs. conch-shells.* See under *conch.
shoulder ::: n. 1. Of the human body: The upper joint of the arm and the portion of the trunk between this and the base of the neck. 2. As the part of the body on which burdens are carried; also, as the seat of muscular strength employed in carrying, pushing, etc. 3. A comparatively gentle slope on the side of a hill and near the top. shoulders. v. 4. To push with or as if with the shoulder, esp. roughly. shouldered.
siren ::: classical Mythol. One of several fabulous sea nymphs, part woman, part bird, who were supposed to lure sailors to destruction by their enchanting singing. Fig. One who, or that which, sings sweetly, charms, allures, or deceives, like the Sirens. (Sri Aurobindo uses the word in its adjectival sense: Seductive, tempting.)
sire ::: the male parent of an animal, especially a domesticated mammal such as a horse.
slight ::: adj. 1. Small in size, degree, or amount.2. Unimportant, trifling, trivial. 3. Lacking strength, substance, or solidity; frail. 4. Frail, flimsy, delicate. slightest. v. 5. To treat as of little importance; to disregard, disdain, ignore.
softened ::: modified or toned down; rendered less pronounced or prominent.
solemnised ::: made solemn; rendered serious or grave.
soul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘soul", as also the word ‘psychic", is used very vaguely and in many different senses in the English language. More often than not, in ordinary parlance, no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire — the false soul or desire-soul — is intended by the words ‘soul" and ‘psychic" and not the true soul, the psychic being.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul is very vaguely used in English — as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That was why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” *Letters on Yoga
"A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine — none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.)” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events. . . .” *Essays on the Gita
". . . the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being — ‘no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers — and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity or ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction of Nature.” The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
*Soul, soul"s, Soul"s, souls, soulless, soul-bridals, soul-change, soul-force, Soul-Forces, soul-ground, soul-joy, soul-nature, soul-range, soul-ray, soul-scapes, soul-scene, soul-sense, soul-severance, soul-sight, soul-slaying, soul-space,, soul-spaces, soul-strength, soul-stuff, soul-truth, soul-vision, soul-wings, world-soul, World-Soul.
specious ::: 1. Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually false. 2. Apparently good or right thought lacking real merit; superficially pleasing or plausible. 3. Plausible but false.
spent ::: 1. Depleted of energy, force, or strength; exhausted. 2. Having come to an end; passed. (Also, pt. and pp. of spend.)
splendid ::: 1. Glorious or illustrious; having great beauty and splendour. 2. Distinguished or glorious, as a name, reputation, victory, etc. 3. Imposing by reason of showiness or grandeur; magnificent. 4. Brilliant with light or colour; radiant. (Sometimes used, by way of contrast, to qualify nouns having an opposite or different connotation.) splendidly.
Sri Aurobindo: A symbol, as I understand it, is the form on one plane that represents a truth of another. For instance, a flag is the symbol of a nation…. But generally all forms are symbols. This body of ours is a symbol of our real being and everything is a symbol of some higher reality. There are, however, different kinds of symbols: 1. Conventional symbols, such as the Vedic Rishis formed with objects taken from their surroundings. The cow stood for light because the same word `go ‘ meant both ray and cow, and because the cow was their most precious possession which maintained their life and was constantly in danger of being robbed and concealed. But once created, such a symbol becomes alive. The Rishis vitalised it and it became a part of their realisation. It appeared in their visions as an image of spiritual light. The horse also was one of their favourite symbols, and a more easily adaptable one, since its force and energy were quite evident. 2. What we might call Life-symbols, such as are not artificially chosen or mentally interpreted in a conscious deliberate way, but derive naturally from our day-to-day life and grow out of the surroundings which condition our normal path of living. To the ancients the mountain was a symbol of the path of yoga, level above level, peak upon peak. A journey, involving the crossing of rivers and the facing of lurking enemies, both animal and human, conveyed a similar idea. Nowadays I dare say we would liken yoga to a motor-ride or a railway-trip. 3. Symbols that have an inherent appositeness and power of their own. Akasha or etheric space is a symbol of the infinite all-pervading eternal Brahman. In any nationality it would convey the same meaning. Also, the Sun stands universally for the supramental Light, the divine Gnosis. 4.* Mental symbols, instances of which are numbers or alphabets. Once they are accepted, they too become active and may be useful. Thus geometrical figures have been variously interpreted. In my experience the square symbolises the supermind. I cannot say how it came to do so. Somebody or some force may have built it before it came to my mind. Of the triangle, too, there are different explanations. In one position it can symbolise the three lower planes, in another the symbol is of the three higher ones: so both can be combined together in a single sign. The ancients liked to indulge in similar speculations concerning numbers, but their systems were mostly mental. It is no doubt true that supramental realities exist which we translate into mental formulas such as Karma, Psychic evolution, etc. But they are, so to speak, infinite realities which cannot be limited by these symbolic forms, though they may be somewhat expressed by them; they might be expressed as well by other symbols, and the same symbol may also express many different ideas. Letters on Yoga
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: "Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle which it embodies.” The Renaissance in India
Sri Aurobindo: "Every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of a universal Power and, apart from the inner Presence, there is no such essential difference between one action and another, one kind of instrumentation and another as would warrant the folly of an egoistic pride. The difference between knowledge and ignorance is a grace of the Spirit; the breath of divine Power blows where it lists and fills today one and tomorrow another with the word or the puissance. If the potter shapes one pot more perfectly than another, the merit lies not in the vessel but the maker. The attitude of our mind must not be ‘This is my strength" or ‘Behold God"s power in me", but rather ‘A Divine Power works in this mind and body and it is the same that works in all men and in the animal, in the plant and in the metal, in conscious and living things and in things apparently inconscient and inanimate."” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Form is the basic means of manifestation and without it it may be said that the manifestation of anything is not complete. Even if the Formless logically precedes Form, yet it is not illogical to assume that in the Formless, Form is inherent and already existent in a mystic latency, otherwise how could it be manifested?” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "History teaches us nothing; it is a confused torrent of events and personalities or a kaleidoscope of changing institutions. We do not seize the real sense of all this change and this continual streaming forward of human life in the channels of Time. What we do seize are current or recurrent phenomena, facile generalisations, partial ideas. We talk of democracy, aristocracy and autocracy, collectivism and individualism, imperialism and nationalism, the State and the commune, capitalism and labour; we advance hasty generalisations and make absolute systems which are positively announced today only to be abandoned perforce tomorrow; we espouse causes and ardent enthusiasms whose triumph turns to an early disillusionment and then forsake them for others, perhaps for those that we have taken so much trouble to destroy. For a whole century mankind thirsts and battles after liberty and earns it with a bitter expense of toil, tears and blood; the century that enjoys without having fought for it turns away as from a puerile illusion and is ready to renounce the depreciated gain as the price of some new good. And all this happens because our whole thought and action with regard to our collective life is shallow and empirical; it does not seek for, it does not base itself on a firm, profound and complete knowledge. The moral is not the vanity of human life, of its ardours and enthusiasms and of the ideals it pursues, but the necessity of a wiser, larger, more patient search after its true law and aim.” *The Human Cycle etc.
Sri Aurobindo: "If this higher buddhi {{understanding in the profoundest sense] could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future(1) no less than the past. ::: Footnote: In this sense the power of prophecy has been aptly called a memory of the future.]” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: [in reference to the following lines of Virgil] ::: Largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit
"Sri Aurobindo: "It has been held that ecstasy is a lower and transient passage, the peace of the Supreme is the supreme realisation, the consummate abiding experience. This may be true on the spiritual-mind plane: there the first ecstasy felt is indeed a spiritual rapture, but it can be and is very usually mingled with a supreme happiness of the vital parts taken up by the Spirit; there is an exaltation, exultation, excitement, a highest intensity of the joy of the heart and the pure inner soul-sensation that can be a splendid passage or an uplifting force but is not the ultimate permanent foundation. But in the highest ascents of the spiritual bliss there is not this vehement exaltation and excitement; there is instead an illimitable intensity of participation in an eternal ecstasy which is founded on the eternal Existence and therefore on a beatific tranquillity of eternal peace. Peace and ecstasy cease to be different and become one. The Supermind, reconciling and fusing all differences as well as all contradictions, brings out this unity; a wide calm and a deep delight of all-existence are among its first steps of self-realisation, but this calm and this delight rise together, as one state, into an increasing intensity and culminate in the eternal ecstasy, the bliss that is the Infinite.” 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: "[‘Its passive flower of love and doom it gave."] Good Heavens! how did Gandhi come in there? Passion-flower, sir — passion, not passive.” Letters on Savitri [in reference to a typographical error]
Sri Aurobindo: "I used the word ‘mystic" in the sense of a certain kind of inner seeing and feeling of things, a way which to the intellect would seem occult and visionary — for this is something different from imagination and its work with which the intellect is familiar.” *On Himself
*Sri Aurobindo: "Pain is the key that opens the gates of strength; it is the high-road that leads to the city of beatitude.” 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: ” See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret & violent ecstasy. If thou believest firmly & unweariedly, in the end thou wilt see & experience the All-true, Almighty & All-blissful.” Essays Divine and Human*
::: Sri Aurobindo: "Spiritual force has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a stream, for instance) of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely on whatever object one chooses. This is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. But there is also such a thing as a willed use of any subtle force — it may be spiritual, mental or vital — to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or currents of electricity, so there are mind-waves, thought-currents, waves of emotion, — for example, anger, sorrow, etc., — which go out and affect others without their knowing whence they come or that they come at all, they only feel the result. One who has the occult or inner senses awake can feel them coming and invading him.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Surrender is giving oneself to the Divine — to give everything one is or has to the Divine and regard nothing as one"s own, to obey only the Divine will and no other, to live for the Divine and not for the ego.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "That (‘to blend and blur shades owing to technical exigencies"] might be all right for mental poetry — it won"t do for what I am trying to create — in that, one word won"t do for the other. Even in mental poetry I consider it an inferior method. ‘Gleam" and ‘glow" are two quite different things and the poet who uses them indifferently has constantly got his eye upon words rather than upon the object.” Letters on Savitri *
Sri Aurobindo: "The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. But there is a wall of separative ignorance between. Once it breaks down he becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it, etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The faith in the divine Shakti must be always at the back of our strength and when she becomes manifest, it must be or grow implicit and complete. There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit"s omnipotence.” The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "The Mask is mentioned not twice but four times in this opening passage and it is purposely done to keep up the central connection of the idea running through the whole. The ambassadors wear this grey Mask, so your criticism cannot stand since there is no separate mask coming as part of a new idea but a very pointed return to the principal note indicating the identity of the influence throughout. It is not a random recurrence but a purposeful touch carrying a psychological meaning.” — 1948 Letters on Savitri*
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 is] a Supernature behind all that is apparent, a supreme power of the Spirit in Time and beyond Time, in Space and beyond Space, a conscious Power of the Self who by her becomes all becomings, of the Absolute who by her manifests all relativities.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no difference between the terms ‘universal" and ‘cosmic" except that ‘universal" can be used in a freer way than ‘cosmic". Universal may mean ‘of the universe", cosmic in that general sense. But it may also mean ‘common to all", e.g., ‘This is a universal weakness" — but you cannot say ‘This is a cosmic weakness".” 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: "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 be entirely sincere means to desire the divine Truth only, to surrender yourself more and more to the Divine Mother, to reject all personal demand and desire other than this one aspiration, to offer every action in life to the Divine and do it as the work given without bringing in the ego. This is the basis of the divine life.” Bases of 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
staggered ::: fig. Began to lose confidence or strength of purpose; wavered.
stand ::: 1. To remain erect on one"s feet in a specified place, occupation, position, condition, etc. 2. To be, to continue or remain in a specified state, position, relation, etc. 3. To be set, placed, located, fixed or situated. 4. To take a position or place as indicated. 5. To have or adopt a certain policy, course, or attitude, as of adherence, support, opposition, or resistance. 6. To remain erect and firm under (a crushing weight, or the like), often with up. 7. To remain firm or steadfast, as in a cause. stands, stood, standing.
standardise ::: to bring to or make of an established standard size, weight, quality, strength, or the like. standardised.
Strength is all right for the strong — but aspiration and the Grace answering to it are not altogether myths; they are great realities of the spiritual life.” Letters on Yoga*
strenuous ::: characterized by vigorous exertion, as action, efforts, life, etc.
stir ::: n. 1. A slight movement. 2. A strong reaction, esp. a movement of activity; excitement, emotion, etc. v. 3. To rouse, as from indifference or inaction and prompt to action. 4. To move, esp. slightly or lightly. 5. To become active, as from some rousing or quickening impulse. 6. To provoke one to be moved emotionally to feeling, emotion, or passion or action. 7. To prod into brisk or vigorous action; bestir. stirs, stirred, stirring.
stoic ::: adj. 1. Of or pertaining to the school of philosophy founded by Zeno, who taught that people should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and submit without complaint to unavoidable necessity. n. 2. A member or adherent of the Stoic school of philosophy. Stoic"s.
straining ::: the fact of being stretched, wrenched, etc.
strain ::: n. 1. A passage of melody, music, or songs as rendered or heard. 2. Kind, type or sort. strains. v. 3. To force to extreme effort, exert to the utmost (one"s limbs, organs, powers). 4. To make an extreme or excessive effort at or after some object of attainment. 5. Fig. To purify or refine by filtration. strains, strained, straining.
streak ::: n. 1. A long thin mark or trace of some contrasting colour or texture different from the background. 2. A flash leaving a visible line or after effect, as of lightening; bolt. 3. A ray or flash of light or the faint line of he dawn"s light. Also fig. **streaks. v. streaked. 3.** Went quickly; advanced; went at full speed.
stress ::: 1. Physical, mental or emotional strain or tension; a situation, occurrence, condition or factor causing strain. 2. Stimulus or pressure of the influence of an adverse force. 3. Special or exceptional emphasis or significance attached to something. stress-vision.
strive ::: 1. To exert oneself vigorously; try hard. 2. Make strenuous efforts towards any goal. 3. To struggle vigorously, as in opposition or resistance. 4. To contend in opposition, battle, or any conflict; compete. strives, striven, strove, striving, forward-striving, strivings.
struggle ::: n. 1. A strenuous effort; a striving against difficulty. *v. 2. To exert strenuous effort against opposition, often of a stronger or superior adversary. 3. To make a strenuous or labored effort; contend against difficulty; to advance with great or violent effort. *struggles, struggled, struggling.
style ::: 1. A particular kind, sort, or type, as with reference to form, appearance, character, etc. 2. The combination of distinctive features of literary or artistic expression, execution, or performance characterizing a particular person, group, school, or era. 3. A particular, distinctive, or characteristic mode or form of construction or execution in any art or work.
subconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: "In our yoga we mean by the subconscient that quite submerged part of our being in which there is no wakingly conscious and coherent thought, will or feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up in itself and from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements, crudely repeated or disguised in strange forms can surge up into dream or into the waking nature. No, subliminal is a general term used for all parts of the being which are not on the waking surface. Subconscient is very often used in the same sense by European psychologists because they do not know the difference. But when I use the word, I mean always what is below the ordinary physical consciousness, not what is behind it. The inner mental, vital, physical, the psychic are not subconscious in this sense, but they can be spoken of as subliminal.” *The Synthesis of Yoga.
"The subconscient is a concealed and unexpressed inarticulate consciousness which works below all our conscious physical activities. Just as what we call the superconscient is really a higher consciousness above from which things descend into the being, so the subconscient is below the body-consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there.
Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient to us and supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature, so the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature.” Letters on Yoga
"That part of us which we can strictly call subconscient because it is below the level of mind and conscious life, inferior and obscure, covers the purely physical and vital elements of our constitution of bodily being, unmentalised, unobserved by the mind, uncontrolled by it in their action. It can be held to include the dumb occult consciousness, dynamic but not sensed by us, which operates in the cells and nerves and all the corporeal stuff and adjusts their life process and automatic responses. It covers also those lowest functionings of submerged sense-mind which are more operative in the animal and in plant life.” *The Life Divine
"The subconscient is a thing of habits and memories and repeats persistently or whenever it can old suppressed reactions, reflexes, mental, vital or physical responses. It must be trained by a still more persistent insistence of the higher parts of the being to give up its old responses and take on the new and true ones.” Letters on Yoga
"About the subconscient — it is the sub-mental base of the being and is made up of impressions, instincts, habitual movements that are stored there. Whatever movement is impressed in it, it keeps. If one impresses the right movement in it, it will keep and send up that. That is why it has to be cleared of old movements before there can be a permanent and total change in the nature. When the higher consciousness is once established in the waking parts, it goes down into the subconscient and changes that also, makes a bedrock of itself there also.” Letters on Yoga
"The sub-conscious is the evolutionary basis in us, it is not the whole of our hidden nature, nor is it the whole origin of what we are. But things can rise from the subconscient and take shape in the conscious parts and much of our smaller vital and physical instincts, movements, habits, character-forms has this source.” Letters on Yoga
"The subconscient is the support of habitual action — it can support good habits as well as bad.” Letters on Yoga
"For the subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements.” The Life Divine *subconscient"s.
subdue ::: 1. To overpower; overcome; conquer; prevail over. 2. To bring under mental or emotional control or subjection; render submissive. subdued.
"Subliminal is a general term used for all parts of the being which are not on the waking surface. Subconscient is very often used in the same sense by European psychologists because they do not know the difference. But when I use the word, I mean always what is below the ordinary physical consciousness, not what is behind it. The inner mental, vital, physical, the psychic are not subconscious in this sense, but they can be spoken of as subliminal.” Letters on Yoga
sublimity ::: something in physical objects that evokes or awakens awe and reverence.
submit ::: to yield or surrender (oneself) to the will or authority of another. submits, submitting.
sundered ::: broke or wrenched apart; severed into parts.
superconscience ::: Sri Aurobindo: "But a third power or possibility of the Infinite Consciousness can be admitted, its power of self-absorption, of plunging into itself, into a state in which self-awareness exists but not as knowledge and not as all-knowledge; the all would then be involved in pure self-awareness, and knowledge and the inner consciousness itself would be lost in pure being. This is, luminously, the state which we call the Superconscience in an absolute sense, — although most of what we call superconscient is in reality not that but only a higher conscient, something that is conscious to itself and only superconscious to our own limited level of awareness.” The Life Divine
"Surrender means to consecrate everything in oneself to the Divine, to offer all one is and has, not to insist on one"s ideas, desires, habits, etc., but to allow the divine Truth to replace them by its knowledge, will and action everywhere.” Letters on Yoga
surrender. ::: v. Fig. To give over or resign oneself to something such as an influence. surrendered.
surface ::: n. **1. The outer face, outside, or exterior boundary of a thing; outermost or uppermost layer or area. 2. The superficial, outward or external aspect or appearance. 3. The upper layer of a body of water or other liquids. surfaces. adj. 4. Of, on, or pertaining to the surface; external. 5. Apparent rather than real; superficial. surface-clear.**
tempered ::: imparted strength or toughness to (steel or cast iron) by heating and cooling. Also fig.
tenancy ::: possession or occupancy of lands, buildings, or other property by title, under a lease, or on payment of rent. Also fig.** space-tenancy.**
tenement ::: fig. A building for human habitation, often in reference to the soul in the body.
terrain ::: n. 1. An area of land; ground. Also fig. terrains. adj. 2. Of the earth, esp. with reference to its physical character.
"That is the way things come, only one does not notice. Thoughts, ideas, happy inventions etc., etc., are always wandering about (in thought-waves or otherwise), seeking a mind that may embody them. One mind takes, looks, rejects — another takes, looks, accepts. Two different minds catch the same thought-form or thought-wave, but the mental activities being different, make different results out of them. Or it comes to one and he does nothing, then it walks off saying, ‘O this unready animal!" and goes to another who promptly welcomes it and it settles into expression with a joyous bubble of inspiration, illumination or enthusiasm of original discovery or creation and the recipient cries proudly, ‘I, I have done this". Ego, sir! ego! You are the recipient, the conditioning medium, if you like — nothing more.” Letters on Yoga
"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 animal is satisfied with a modicum of necessity; the gods are content with their splendours. But man cannot rest permanently until he reaches some highest good. He is the greatest of living beings because he is the most discontented, because he feels most the pressure of limitations. He alone, perhaps, is capable of being seized by the divine frenzy for a remote ideal.” The Life Divine
"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 Force, masked as a material Energy, hides from our view by its insistent materiality of process the occult fact that the working of the Inconscient is really the expression of a vast universal Life, a veiled universal Mind, a hooded Gnosis, and without these origins of itself it could have no power of action, no organising coherence.” The Life Divine
"The culmination of the soul"s constant touch with the Supreme is that self-giving which we call surrender to the divine Will and immergence of the separated ego in the One who is all.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The Divine Grace is something not calculable, not bound by anything the intellect can fix as a condition, — though ordinarily some call, aspiration, intensity of the psychic being can awaken it, yet it acts sometimes without any apparent cause even of that kind.” Letters on Yoga*
". . . the ego is the lynch-pin invented to hold together the motion of our wheel of nature. The necessity of centralisation around the ego continues until there is no longer need of any such device or contrivance because there has emerged the true self, the spiritual being, which is at once wheel and motion and that which holds all together, the centre and the circumference.” The Life Divine
"The essential character of Supermind is a Truth-consciousness which knows by its own inherent right of nature, by its own light: it has not to arrive at knowledge but possesses it.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"The first word of the supramental Yoga is surrender; its last word also is surrender. It is by a will to give oneself to the eternal Divine, for lifting into the divine consciousness, for perfection, for transformation, that the Yoga begins; it is in the entire giving that it culminates; for it is only when the self-giving is complete that there comes the finality of the Yoga, the entire taking up into the supramental Divine, the perfection of the being, the transformation of the nature.” Essays Divine and Human
"The gods are the powers of Light, the children of Infinity, forms and personalities of the one Godhead who by their help and by their growth and human workings in man raise him to the truth and the immortality.” The Secret of the Veda
". . . the heart of man is nearer to the Truth than his intelligence.” *The Renaissance in India
::: "The idea is only a partial expression of the spirit.” The Renaissance in India
"The Infinite creates and is Brahma.” The Renaissance in India ::: "Brahman is not only the cause and supporting power and indwelling principle of the universe, he is also its material and its sole material. Matter also is Brahman and it is nothing other than or different from Brahman.” The Life Divine*
the method of psychological therapy originated by Sigmund Freud in which free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts, in order to free psychic energy for mature love and work.
::: ". . . the modern man, even the modern cultured man, is or tends to be to a degree quite unprecedented politikon zôon, a political, economic and social being valuing above all things the efficiency of the outward existence and the things of the mind and spirit mainly, when not exclusively, for their aid to humanity"s vital and mechanical progress: he has not that regard of the ancients which looked up towards the highest heights and regarded an achievement in the things of the mind and the spirit with an unquestioning admiration or a deep veneration for its own sake as the greatest possible contribution to human culture and progress. And although this modern tendency is exaggerated and ugly and degrading in its exaggeration, inimical to humanity"s spiritual evolution, it has this much of truth behind it that while the first value of a culture is its power to raise and enlarge the internal man, the mind, the soul, the spirit, its soundness is not complete unless it has shaped also his external existence and made of it a rhythm of advance towards high and great ideals. This is the true sense of progress and there must be as part of it a sound political, economic and social life, a power and efficiency enabling a people to survive, to grow and to move securely towards a collective perfection, and a vital elasticity and responsiveness that will give room for a constant advance in the outward expression of the mind and the spirit.” The Renaissance in India
The Mother: "Surrender is the decision taken to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. Without this decision nothing is at all possible; if you do not surrender, the Yoga is entirely out of the question. Everything else comes naturally after it, for the whole process starts with surrender.” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 3.
" The natural attitude of the psychic being is to feel itself as the Child, the Son of God, the Bhakta; it is a portion of the Divine, one in essence, but in the dynamics of the manifestation there is always even in identity a difference.” Letters on Yoga
"The Non-Manifestation is not a Non-Existence. Non-Existence is a term created by the mind and has no absolute significance; there is no such thing as an absolute Nihil or Zero. It is agreed even by the philosophies of the Nihil, Tao or Zero (Sunya) that the Non-Existence of which they speak is a Nought in which all is and from which all comes. Tao, Nihil or Zero is not different from the Absolute or the Supreme Brahman of Vedanta; it is only another way of describing or naming it. The Supreme is an Existence beyond what we know of our existence and therefore only it can seem to our mind as a Zero, a Nihil, a Non-Existence.” Essays Divine and Human*
"The reality of the Hostiles and the nature of their role and trend of their endeavour cannot be doubted by any one who has had his inner vision unsealed and made their unpleasant acquaintance.” Letters on Savitri
"There are different kinds of knowledge. One is inspiration, i.e. something that comes out of the knowledge planes like a flash and opens up the mind to the Truth in a moment. That is inspiration. It easily takes the form of words as when a poet writes or a speaker speaks, as people say, from inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
"There is no such thing as death, for it is the body that dies and the body is not the man. That which really is, cannot go out of existence, though it may change the forms through which it appears, just as that which is non-existent cannot come into being. The soul is and cannot cease to be. This opposition of is and is not, this balance of being and becoming which is the mind"s view of existence, finds its end in the realisation of the soul as the one imperishable self by whom all this universe has been extended. Finite bodies have an end, but that which possesses and uses the body, is infinite, illimitable, eternal, indestructible. It casts away old and takes up new bodies as a man changes worn-out raiment for new; and what is there in this to grieve at and recoil and shrink? This is not born, nor does it die, nor is it a thing that comes into being once and passing away will never come into being again. It is unborn, ancient, sempiternal; it is not slain with the slaying of the body. Who can slay the immortal spirit? Weapons cannot cleave it, nor the fire burn, nor do the waters drench it, nor the wind dry. Eternally stable, immobile, all-pervading, it is for ever and for ever. Not manifested like the body, but greater than all manifestation, not to be analysed by the thought, but greater than all mind, not capable of change and modification like the life and its organs and their objects, but beyond the changes of mind and life and body, it is yet the Reality which all these strive to figure.” Essays on the Gita
::: "The silent mind is a result of yoga; the ordinary mind is never silent. . . . The thinkers and philosophers do not have the silent mind. It is the active mind they have; only, of course, they concentrate, so the common incoherent mentalising stops and the thoughts that rise or enter and shape themselves are coherently restricted to the subject or activity in hand. But that is quite a different matter from the whole mind falling silent.” Letters on Yoga
"The spiritual 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 sunlit path can be followed by those who are able to practise surrender, first a central surrender and afterwards a more complete self-giving in all the parts of the being. If they can achieve and preserve the attitude of the central surrender, if they can rely wholly on the Divine and accept cheerfully whatever comes to them from the Divine, then their path becomes sunlit and may even be straightforward and easy.” Letters on Yoga*
"The sunlit path can only be followed if the psychic is constantly or usually in front or if one has a natural spirit of faith and surrender or a face turned habitually towards the sun or psychic predisposition (e.g. a faith in one"s spiritual destiny) or, if one has acquired the psychic turn. That does not mean that the sunlit man has no difficulties; he may have many, but he regards them cheerfully as all in the day's work''. If he gets a bad beating, he is capable of saying,Well, that was a queer go but the Divine is evidently in a queer mood and if that is his way of doing things, it must be the right one; I am surely a still queerer fellow myself and that, I suppose, was the only means of putting me right."" Letters on Yoga
"The Supermind is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness.” The Supramental Manifestation
"The whole energy of the soul is not at play in the physical body and life, the secret powers of mind are not awake in it, the bodily and nervous energies predominate. But all the while the supreme energy is there, asleep; it is said to be coiled up and slumbering like a snake, — therefore it is called the kundalinî sakti, — in the lowest of the chakras, in the mûlâdhâra. When by Pranayama the division between the upper and lower prana currents in the body is dissolved, this Kundalini is struck and awakened, it uncoils itself and begins to rise upward like a fiery serpent breaking open each lotus as it ascends until the Shakti meets the Purusha in the brahmarandhra in a deep samadhi of union.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle. Those who aspire in their human strength by effort of knowledge or effort of virtue or effort of laborious self-discipline, grow with much anxious difficulty towards the Eternal; but when the soul gives up its ego and its works to the Divine, God himself comes to us and takes up our burden.” Essays on the Gita
"They” means nobody in particular but corresponds to the French "On dit” meaning vaguely "people in general”. This is a use permissible in English; for instance, "They say you are not so scrupulous as you should be.” Letters on Savitri— 1948
::: "This conception of the Person and Personality, if accepted, must modify at the same time our current ideas about the immortality of the soul; for, normally, when we insist on the soul"s undying existence, what is meant is the survival after death of a definite unchanging personality which was and will always remain the same throughout eternity. It is the very imperfect superficial I'' of the moment, evidently regarded by Nature as a temporary form and not worth preservation, for which we demand this stupendous right to survival and immortality. But the demand is extravagant and cannot be conceded; theI"" of the moment can only merit survival if it consents to change, to be no longer itself but something else, greater, better, more luminous in knowledge, more moulded in the image of the eternal inner beauty, more and more progressive towards the divinity of the secret Spirit. It is that secret Spirit or divinity of Self in us which is imperishable, because it is unborn and eternal. The psychic entity within, its representative, the spiritual individual in us, is the Person that we are; but the I'' of this moment, theI"" of this life is only a formation, a temporary personality of this inner Person: it is one step of the many steps of our evolutionary change, and it serves its true purpose only when we pass beyond it to a farther step leading nearer to a higher degree of consciousness and being. It is the inner Person that survives death, even as it pre-exists before birth; for this constant survival is a rendering of the eternity of our timeless Spirit into the terms of Time.” The Life Divine
"This secret Self in all beings is not apparent, but it is seen by means of the supreme reason, the subtle, by those who have the subtle vision. — Katha Upanishad. *The Life Divine
"This universal aesthesis of beauty and delight does not ignore or fail to understand the differences and oppositions, the gradations, the harmony and disharmony obvious to the ordinary consciousness; but, first of all, it draws a Rasa from them and with that comes the enjoyment, Bhoga. and the touch or the mass of the Ananda. It sees that all things have their meaning, their value, their deeper or total significance which the mind does not see, for the mind is only concerned with a surface vision, surface contacts and its own surface reactions. When something expresses perfectly what it was meant to express, the completeness brings with it a sense of harmony, a sense of artistic perfection; it gives even to what is discordant a place in a system of cosmic concordances and the discords become part of a vast harmony, and wherever there is harmony, there is a sense of beauty. ” Letters on Savitri*
"Thought is quite possible without words. Children have thoughts, animals too — thoughts can take another form than words. Thought perceptions come first — language comes to express the perceptions and itself leads to fresh thoughts.” Letters on Yoga*
thought-Mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Our first decisive step out of our human intelligence, our normal mentality, is an ascent into a higher Mind, a mind no longer of mingled light and obscurity or half-light, but a large clarity of the Spirit. Its basic substance is a unitarian sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamisation capable of the formation of a multitude of aspects of knowledge, ways of action, forms and significances of becoming, of all of which there is a spontaneous inherent knowledge. It is therefore a power that has proceeded from the Overmind, — but with the Supermind as its ulterior origin, — as all these greater powers have proceeded: but its special character, its activity of consciousness are dominated by Thought; it is a luminous thought-mind, a mind of Spirit-born conceptual knowledge. An all-awareness emerging from the original identity, carrying the truths the identity held in itself, conceiving swiftly, victoriously, multitudinously, formulating and by self-power of the Idea effectually realising its conceptions, is the character of this greater mind of knowledge. " *The Life Divine
time ::: 1. Duration regarded as belonging to the present life as distinct from the life to come or from eternity; finite duration. 2. A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future. 3. A period in the existence or history of the world; an age, an era. Time, time-born, time-bound, time-constructed, time-driven, time-field, time-flakes, time-inn, time-loop, time-made, time-plan, time-vexed, time-walk, world-time, World-Time"s.
"Time and Space are not limited, they are infinite — they are the terms of an extension of consciousness in which things take place or are arranged in a certain relation, succession, order. There are again different orders of Time and Space; that too depends on the consciousness. The Eternal is extended in Time and Space, but he is also beyond all Time and Space. Timelessness and Time are two terms of the eternal existence. The Spaceless Eternal is not one indivisible infinity of Space, there is in it no near or far, no here or there — the Timeless Eternal is not measurable by years or hours or aeons, the experience of it has been described as the eternal moment. But for the mind this state cannot be described except by negatives, — one has to go beyond and to realise it.” Letters on Yoga
tired ::: 1. Exhausted of strength or energy; fatigued. 2. Impatient; bored.
titan ::: 1. One of prodigious size, strength, or achievement. 2. Gigantic, immense.
::: "To be free from all preference and receive joyfully whatever comes from the Divine Will is not possible at first for any human being. What one should have at first is the constant idea that what the Divine wills is always for the best even when the mind does not see how it is so, . . . .” Letters on Yoga*
"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
"We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of what we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit. For the subliminal proper is no more than the inner being on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance luminous, powerful and extended indeed beyond the poor conception of our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the whole sense of our being, not its ultimate mystery.” The Life Divine
"We see that the Absolute, the Self, the Divine, the Spirit, the Being is One; the Transcendental is one, the Cosmic is one: but we see also that beings are many and each has a self, a spirit, a like yet different nature. And since the spirit and essence of things is one, we are obliged to admit that all these many must be that One, and it follows that the One is or has become many; but how can the limited or relative be the Absolute and how can man or beast or bird be the Divine Being? But in erecting this apparent contradiction the mind makes a double error. It is thinking in the terms of the mathematical finite unit which is sole in limitation, the one which is less than two and can become two only by division and fragmentation or by addition and multiplication; but this is an infinite Oneness, it is the essential and infinite Oneness which can contain the hundred and the thousand and the million and billion and trillion. Whatever astronomic or more than astronomic figures you heap and multiply, they cannot overpass or exceed that Oneness; for, in the language of the Upanishad, it moves not, yet is always far in front when you would pursue and seize it. It can be said of it that it would not be the infinite Oneness if it were not capable of an infinite multiplicity; but that does not mean that the One is plural or can be limited or described as the sum of the Many: on the contrary, it can be the infinite Many because it exceeds all limitation or description by multiplicity and exceeds at the same time all limitation by finite conceptual oneness.” The Life Divine
"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 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.
"You can only distinguish the different sheaths either by intuition or by experience and then you have established direct knowledge of the different sheaths.” Letters on Yoga*
KEYS (10k)
1 Rilke
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
129 Emile Verhaeren
61 Lauren Oliver
53 Rachel Ren e Russell
34 Bren Brown
31 Karen Marie Moning
22 D H Lawrence
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18 Adam Oehlenschläger
16 Anonymous
15 Lauren Groff
13 Rick Warren
12 Ren e Ahdieh
12 Darren Shan
11 Terence
10 Christian Winther
9 Mark Lawrence
9 Lauren Blakely
1:When speaking to parents, I encourage them to take their child(ren) to a children's museum and watch carefully what the child does, how she/she does it, what he/she returns to, where there is definite growth. Teachers could do the same or could set up 'play areas' which provide 'nutrition' for different intelligences... and watch carefully what happens and what does not happen with each child. ~ Howard Gardner, #KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Sören Kierkegaard has another answer: human existence is possible as existence not in despair, as existence not in tragedy; it is possible as existence in faith... Faith is the belief that in God the impossible is possible, that in Him time and eternity are one, that both life and death are meaningful. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 2:The Master said, "Wealth and honor are things that all people desire, and yet unless they are acquired in the proper way I will not abide them. Poverty and disgrace are things that all people hate, and yet unless they are avoided in the proper way I will not despise them. If the gentleman abandons ren, how can he be worthy of that name? The gentleman does not violate ren even for the amount of time required to eat a meal. Even in times of urgency or distress, he does not depart from it." ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
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57:unanswered questions ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
58:A Panegyric upon Abraham ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
59:Be that self that one is ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
60:From the stars, to the stars. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
61:gonna LOVE it!” . . . ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
62:HAMPTON HILLS CLASSES ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
63:He who hid well, lived well. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
64:It is you,” Ren murmured. ~ Alan Dean Foster, #NFDB
65:De omnibus dubitandum est ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
66:Doubt is the origin of wisdom ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
67:Everyday objects shriek aloud. ~ Ren Magritte, #NFDB
68:Her hate was a thing of glory. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
69:I AM !! Jealous much?! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
70:Il faisait un froid de guerre. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
71:MacKenzie laughed. “He ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
72:My soul sees its equal in you. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
73:Where have all the Fembots gone? ~ Ren Garcia, #NFDB
74:dangerous misdiagnosis. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
75:Don't bare your neck to a wolf. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
76:like I was Shaq O’Neal. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
77:Love is—a shade of what I feel. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
78:That’s So Hot! magazine ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
79:hyperventilated! Almost. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
80:What labels me, negates me. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
81:Wicked Witch of the West ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
82:Intohimo ei merkitse sanoja. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
83:Loving someone is to lose control ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
84:my advice column is going ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
85:So I just smiled, thanked ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
86:ME, DOING MY SNOOPY “HAPPY ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
87:toilet-papered your house! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
88:After all, every story has a story. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
89:another three inches today! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
90:Don't forget to love yourself. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
91:Girls Just Want to Have Fun ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
92:Courage is life's only measure. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
93:Life. We'd long known it was cruel. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
94:Love will always be among Ash and Ember, ~ Dani Ren, #NFDB
95:Perhaps heroes were a thing to hate. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
96:She Blinded Me with Science. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
97:You become what you understand. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
98:Believe in actions and actions alone. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
99:Better well hanged than ill wed. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
100:business@simonandschuster.com ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
101:I am a mediocre being, a bit cunning. ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
102:Oleminen ei ole mukavuuskysymys. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
103:Once you label me you negate me. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
104:Sleeping is the height of genius ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
105:Everything in life began with an idea. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
106:inside this prison he lived in freedom ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
107:Mainly because she’ll tell you ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
108:Nothing ventured, nothing gained. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
109:Sneaking into the boys’ locker ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
110:The Price Is Right for Morons. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
111:And he smiled a smile to shame the sun. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
112:I am a fork, and I will stick you! ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
113:My standpoint is armed neutrality. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
114:True weakness is weakness of the spirit ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
115:Conquer yourself rather than the world. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
116:Hope is a passion for the possible. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
117:In the end, there is only time for love. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
118:La curiosité l'avait désormais enchaîné. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
119:Write like you got Chuck Norris after ya'! ~ Ren Garcia, #NFDB
120:All lives end, but not all conclude. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
121:Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
122:As always. As ever. As a rose to the sun. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
123:In myth, violent death is always justified. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
124:Let your inner dork shine through ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
125:Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
126:Without risk, life is far too predictable ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
127:words, rejecting the doctrine of sin ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
128:For his children, he would move mountains. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
129:Hope is passion for what is possible. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
130:Let your inner DORK shine through. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
131:Some secrets are safer behind lock and key ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
132:But I'm not here to fight. I'm here to win. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
133:Don't say the words I wanted to hear from Ren. ~ Ai Yazawa, #NFDB
134:Faith is the highest passion in a man. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
135:if god loves me, he is my mortal enemy ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
136:I prefer to fight battles I know I can win. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
137:One becomes weary only of what is new. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
138:She was not a half. She was wholly her own. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
139:The darker the sky, the brighter the stars. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
140:What is truth but to live for an idea? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
141:baby Tyrannosaurus rex. On STEROIDS! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
142:For a story was only as good as its villain. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
143:I'm very much aware I can't think. I'm a poet. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
144:Sometimes we must fall foward to keep moving ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
145:The power behind words lies with the person. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
146:To be human, is not a fact, but a task. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
147:With me, everything turns into mathematics. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
148:Better late than never."-Dork Diaries ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
149:I can’t help it. I’m SUCH a DORK!! !! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
150:I learned I have a great deal to learn.” Reza ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
151:I never lose, nor am I afraid to spill blood. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
152:Our greatest enemy can often be found within. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
153:Raskain rangaistus on nimenomaan muisto. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
154:sometimes we must fall forward to keep moving ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
155:the woman said, practically drooling. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
156:we made the noise of savage animals, of men. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
157:Beauty fades, but a pain in the ass is forever ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
158:Genius never desires what does not exist. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
159:It is impossible to exist without passion ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
160:MacKenzie, and I was a nervous wreck ! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
161:There is nothing more ancient than the truth. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
162:The rose’s rarest essence lives in the thorns. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
163:You put a nasty STINK BUG in my hair!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
164:Beauty fades. But a pain in the ass is forever. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
165:Everything depends upon how one is placed. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
166:Give me a meaningful love or a beautiful death! ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
167:La sonrisa de un alma perseguida por espectros. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
168:Perhaps true weakness is weakness of the spirit ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
169:So many FREAKS and not enough CIRCUSES! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
170:Forget the rope! They’d probably KILL ME ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
171:How right you are. You are not mine. I am yours. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
172:I knew then that my future had always been Ren. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
173:It's much easier to hate a memory. I would know. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
174:Loss is loss. And the lesson is always the same. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
175:Perhaps I have a strange affinity for old books. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
176:So cry yourself a river, build a bridge, ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
177:This destroyer of worlds and creature of wonder. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
178:Time and again, you wound me and walk away!” Her ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
179:Wow, it sounds like a really fascinating ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
180:And never forget my heart is always in your hands ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
181:Do it or don’t do it — you will regret both. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
182:I’ll adore you, as a drowned person does the sea. ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
183:Now, with God's help, I shall become myself. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
184:We kept forgetting. And we also couldn’t let go. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
185:you are boundless, there is nothing you can't do. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
186:Jos en tiedä omasta takaa, en tiedä lainkaan. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
187:OMG! Like, WHO does that to their CRUSH?!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
188:Our unending discords are the ransom of our freedom. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
189:But no one fought for Orianna Catherine Speerling. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
190:CHICKEN or a CHAMPION. The choice is YOURS! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
191:Cogito ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.) ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
192:Hattori Mariko was not just any girl. She was more. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
193:Joonam. He'd called her that before. My everything. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
194:La réalité du monde ne lui apparaissait pas solide. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
195:Leap of faith – yes, but only after reflection ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
196:Little T. gave a shrug. “I got my meds. Got to go. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
197:Nothing is as heady as the wine of possibility ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
198:Boredom is the only continuity the ironist has. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
199:For the wonder of a first love can never be matched. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
200:I RUN INTO MACKENZIE IN THE GIRLS’ BATHROOM! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
201:Numbers are the most dangerous of all illusions ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
202:One day I hope to say something that stays with you. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
203:The ghosts tonight have already told their stories. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
204:When you forget how bad it hurts, you feel so free. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
205:You are loved. It isn't enough, but it's all I have. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
206:Art is here taken to mean knowledge realized in action. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
207:—Écoutez, Coban, c'est terminé.
—C'est commencé... ~ Ren Barjavel,#NFDB
208:Faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
209:HAPPY APRIL FOOL’S DAY! Did you prank anyone? ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
210:Her lips were hers one moment. And the they were his. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
211:My bad!" She giggled. "Sugar makes me chatty. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
212:Respect is not a thing granted. It is a thing earned. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
213:Teenage girls know more than we’re given credit for. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
214:There is no power but in conviction. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
215:Trying to live up to yourself is the most trying thing. ~ Ren Garcia, #NFDB
216:All we have is now. And our promise to make it better. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
217:And I shall take from you these lives, a thousandfold. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
218:Aşk için her şey imgedir; ama imge de hakikattir. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
219:cardboard toilet paper rolls strewn across the ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
220:Everyone pretended to understand so as not to interrupt. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
221:If you are just one girl, I am just one boy.” Shahrzad ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
222:Lost Ark, Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
223:Most people, in the end, really are all on their own. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
224:Mr. Biz! The shrewd and savage business shark, ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
225:Only the noble of heart are called to difficulty. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
226:Our deepest truths are usually the hardest to conceal. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
227:repentance and remorse. The one calls us forward. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
228:What’s done is done. But in the future, do better. She ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
229:Aber Existieren ist etwas ganz anderes als Wissen. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
230:Arrêtez-vous ! Arrachez-vous au vertige, réfléchissez ! ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
231:Blue oceans are right next to you in every industry. ~ Ren e Mauborgne, #NFDB
232:I almost puked my lunch on her Jimmy Choos! But ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
233:NIKKI MAXWELL:
THE MAKING OF A POP PRINCESS! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell,#NFDB
234:screeching cat with a violent case of diarrhea! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
235:Seems like secret romances have a shelf life" -Ren ~ Jenna Evans Welch, #NFDB
236:SHE actually accused ME of taking her sandwich! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
237:This place has only three exits, sir: Madness, and Death. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
238:Upravo loša savest može učiniti život zanimljivim. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
239:Do not live in fear, Khalid-jan, for that is not a life. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
240:Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
241:Hey, we were vandals, but we WEREN’T litterbugs! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
242:I may be partial to roses, but I am not a fragile flower ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
243:It is not truth that rules the world but illusions. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
244:Me and Zoey were like, “TATTOOS?! Are you NUTS?! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
245:On ne sait jamais rien. Sauf ce qui est sans importance. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
246:sessizliklerin en kesini susmak değil, konuşmaktir. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
247:You don't take away my choices. You are my choice. -Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
248:A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
249:Everywhere I hid, the camera eventually found me. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
250:I don’t need a STUPID book with 288 BLANK pages!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
251:Imitation is human intelligence in its most dynamic aspect. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
252:Mutismul cel mai sigur nu-i să taci, ci să vorbeşti. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
253:Ours is a love stronger than fear and deeper than the sea ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
254:Though a promise means little without a measure of trust. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
255:Vivre les malheurs à l'avance, c'est les subir deux fois. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
256:You have a beautiful laugh. Like the promise of tomorrow. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
257:You honestly expect me to breathe in a world without air? ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
258:AAAAAAAAAAAAHHH ☹!!! (That was me screaming!) OMG! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
259:Ask me what you wish; just do not ask me for reasons. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
260:Battle day and night against the guile of oblivion... ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
261:Being your sister is one of the best things about being me ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
262:I beseech you, my star . . . please see past the darkness. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
263:I smile at all who weep and I weep before those who smile. ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
264:Sometimes a perfect memory can be ruined if put to words. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
265:Sometimes you need more than one way to reach the outside ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
266:WHAAAT?! No way! Brandon, You said you couldn’t go ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
267:Who would you like to meet under the mistletoe?! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
268:«Ya habéis entregado vuestra vida. No espero... nada mas.» ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
269:You are my pearl without a price."
-Ren, Tiger's Curse ~ Colleen Houck,#NFDB
270:You yourself are the bizarre flower of some unknown dream. ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
271:And one thing the author must not forget: his purpose. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
272:And while we worked, we had a serious chat. BRANDON ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
273:Ce qui s'apprend sans peine ne vaut rien et ne demeure pas. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
274:It does not take courage to kill. It takes courage to live. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
275:I was looking back into memories I didn't own, wanting in. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
276:MY fault if those snobby little drama queens RUINED ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
277:Okay, I’ll admit it. That part was MY fault! I just ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
278:The door opened, and Ren emerged, and my heart did a thing. ~ Steven Brust, #NFDB
279:The philistine tranquillises himself with the trivial. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
280:We are as a rose unfurling, becoming more clearly ourselves ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
281:and give her a high five! In the FACE. With a CHAIR! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
282:Brandon for being excited about the student exchange ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
283:Il avait à peine besoin de disparaître pour ne plus exister. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
284:I suspect she will be like air. Like knowing how to breathe. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
285:It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
286:It must be a special book."
"All books are special, dear. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
287:Our concern for victims is the secular mask of Christian love. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
288:So Brandon, would you like to take... A POP QUIZ??!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
289:Sure. I would go. Balloon or bus or thumb out onthe highway ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
290:Then how does one go about making the impossible, possible ? ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
291:You laugh very loud—as if you are the only one in the world. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
292:Armitage has to get ready. Kylo Ren doesn’t like to wait. ~ Delilah S Dawson, #NFDB
293:A shared history does not entitle you to a future, my friend. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
294:Dream big dreams,because little dreams have no magic. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
295:For a mistake was only a mistake if it was left to remain so. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
296:Il se trouvait prisonnier du passé, enchaîné par des ombres ! ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
297:I venerate / the Woman whom I fear, the Wildness that I love. ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
298:ME, GETTING SUPEREMOTIONAL DURING OUR DEEP KNEE BENDS ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
299:my butt cheeks had frozen into two big chunks of ice. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
300:No hace falta coraje para matar, hace falta coraje para vivir ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
301:Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
302:There is no one I would rather see the sunrise with than you. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
303:Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist ~ Ren Magritte, #NFDB
304:But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
305:But you do laugh too loud. And I hope you never stop.” Despina ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
306:Elle pleurait des mots qui se mélangeaient les uns aux autres. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
307:It is very important in life to know when your cue comes. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
308:Mom, I don’t need a STUPID book with 288 BLANK pages!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
309:My melancholy is the most faithful sweetheart I have had. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
310:Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
311:She rose onto her knees. Let her arms spread wide in the wind. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
312:The most common form of despair is not being who you are. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
313:The only power any man has over you is the power you give him. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
314:Calling MacKenzie a mean girl is an understatement. She ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
315:I have a good friend, and she’s smart, funny, and kind. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
316:I stick my finger into existence and it smells of nothing. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
317:Just the thought of it made me break into a cold sweat. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
318:Las flores más bonitas son las que parecen un poco imperfectas. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
319:Orice cunoaștere este esențialmente identificare cu obiectul său. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
320:Well, I’m really sorry to disappoint those snobby CCPs! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
321:What is youth? A dream. What is love? The dream's content. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
322:What is youth? A dream. What is love? The dream’s content. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
323:- a bad conscience is indeed able to make life interesting. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
324:A veces, la familia que elegimos ....es mas fuerte que la sangre ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
325:I am in no mood for boorish men. Or their warmongering. “Weapons ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
326:I choose one thing: always to have the laughter on my side. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
327:If you want to be loathsome to God, just run with the herd. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
328:I've always believed a man is what he does, not what others say. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
329:Khalid would break every bone in your body for what you've done. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
330:Now is easy. It's easy to say what you want in a passing moment. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
331:Our private tastes in books showed a hint of our secret selves. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
332:That’s, like, the ONLY reason I’m not failing her class! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
333:un buen narrador puede atrapar una audiencia con una sola frase. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
334:Voler une ombre, dépouiller un souvenir, est-ce vraiment voler ? ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
335:While most students in our city would be attending their ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
336:and nails done, right after she visited the school nurse, ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
337:Anything is possible so long as there is a strong will behind it. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
338:It must be said. These truths, no matter how harsh, must be said. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
339:My cell phone BATTERY lasts LONGER than your FRIENDSHIPS! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
340:Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
341:The path of greatest desires often lies ...through the undesirable. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
342:The story you choose to tell isn't always the story you believe. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
343:A monster did not deserve to consider the motivations of his prey. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
344:Brianna is actually a baby Tyrannosaurus rex. On STEROIDS! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
345:Hearts can never be stolen, Cy. They can only be given.” – Ren ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
346:Ils liront demain dans leur journal ce qu'ils doivent en savoir... ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
347:Les formes paraissaient étranges parce qu'elles étaient inconnues. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
348:Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
349:there’s something really important I need to tell YOU!” He ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
350:EMBARRASSED!! I knew right then and there I had pretty much ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
351:Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
352:I don't like sleeping in the dark jungle by myself.
Ren ~ Colleen Doran,#NFDB
353:I don't like sleeping in the dark jungle by myself.
Ren ~ Colleen Houck,#NFDB
354:It was never about belonging to someone. It was belonging together. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
355:La vie me sied mal; le mort m'ira peut-être mieux. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
356:Les mythes débutent presque toujours par un état de désordre extrême. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
357:Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
358:A true plague of a girl. And yet a queen in every sense of the word. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
359:Ils venaient de prendre conscience de l'immensité de leur ignorance. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
360:In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
361:I once told Ren our story wasn't over.
And it's not.
Not yet. ~ Colleen Houck,#NFDB
362:It's better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
363:Let those who want to dance, dance. Let those who can awaken, awake. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
364:ME, ADMIRING THE HUGE BANNER OF US HANGING FROM THE CEILING! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
365:«No hay nadie con quien preferiría ver el amanecer mas que contigo.» ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
366:Probably she died. Consumption. Fever. Mountain lion. I don't know. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
367:To be lost in spiritlessness is the most terrible thing of all. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
368:to have faith is precisely to lose one's mind so as to win God. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
369:BRIANNA, ACCUSING ME OF SWIPING HER YUCK-A-LICIOUS SANDWICH!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
370:Come, sleep and death; you promise nothing, you hold everything. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
371:I love you, a thousand times over. And I will never apologize for it. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
372:It is not what happens to me that makes me great, but what I do. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
373:Mükemmel aşk, insanın kendisini mutsuz edecek kişiyi sevmesidir. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
374:One always loves badly [...] To love well is to no longer be in love. ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
375:Then he evacuated all the students from the classroom because ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
376:The reward of the good man is to be allowed to worship in truth. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
377:Two stubborn lovers, protecting each other from the very same threat. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
378:Where there is a setting sun, there is also a rising one. Seventy-two ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
379:He fears all worldly setback for there is nothing eternal in him. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
380:[L]ike a kingfisher I have made my nest on the waves. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
381:Never forget, Sanada Takeo: in this forest, there is no place to hide. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
382:Nothing about the facts had changed. Yet the picture looked different. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
383:On the secretly blushing cheek is reflected the glow of the heart ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
384:Sure, I sort of hated that girl a little bit. But I’d NEVER go ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
385:didn’t work! But that little mishap with her broken wand DID!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
386:For without a measure of arrogance, how can one attempt the impossible? ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
387:Hey, I’m so BROKE, I have a milkshake on layaway at McDonald’s! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
388:Les mots ne sont rien en pareil cas, — l’art de les prononcer est tout… ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
389:man who lives under his own supervision, alone in the whole world, ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
390:Only the one who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
391:Rien ne s'y trouve formé, parce que toutes les formes y sont possibles. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
392:Sometimes," he gasped, "the family you choose...is stronger than blood. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
393:Stay or go. I leave it to you. But you are welcome always. In all ways. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
394:The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
395:You sent Shahrzad away with a boy I would not trust with a dying snake. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
396:Anxiety can just as well express itself by muteness as by a scream. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
397:Control is an illusion. Expectations will not rule my days. Not anymore. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
398:Corespawn it, Ren, you can’t just go around cutting people’s hands off! ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
399:Get up, Shahrzad al-Khayzuran. You kneel before no one. Least of all me. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
400:It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
401:ME, PRACTICING IN THE STUDIO WHEN AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR DROPS IN ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
402:That is exactly why you can't have me yet, Ren. I'm not going to share. ~ Andrea Cremer, #NFDB
403:The mighty Caliph of Khorasan. The King of Kings. Her beautiful monster. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
404:El mejor modo de castigar a los humanos, es dándoles lo que tanto reclaman. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
405:Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
406:Prove that a real man doesn’t make a show of what’s his. It just is.” “Is ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
407:To believe is indeed to lose the understanding in order to gain God. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
408:...why bother remembering a past that cannot be made into a present? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
409:admit, Chloe and Zoey’s pizzas are DELISH!! Although I felt really ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
410:Beautiful words were beautiful words, even to the most practical of minds. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
411:In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn than to contemplate. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
412:La vita può essere capita solo all'indietro, ma va vissuta in avanti. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
413:Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
414:Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
415:My mother used to say that a man who can’t appreciate poetry lacks a soul. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
416:The peoples of the world do not invent their gods. They deify their victims. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
417:WHY? Mostly because I’m the biggest DORK in the entire school. And ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
418:Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
419:Never halt on a shifting slope. Even if you think you have a firm foothold... ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
420:Then FINALLY he brushed his shaggy bangs out of his eyes and smiled ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
421:Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
422:I believe when you truly love someone, you want what's best for that person. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
423:I love you, a thousand times over. And I will never apologize for it. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
424:La mala conciencia, sin embargo, puede hacer interesante la existencia… ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
425:Maybe my homemade facial cream will make me a BILLIONAIRE after all. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
426:No matter how high a man rose in life, death was the greatest of equalizers. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
427:Ori made it wanted. She acted like it was lucky. And forever after, it was. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
428:Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself! ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
429:We were gasoline rushing for a lit match. We bared our teeth. Balled fists. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
430:A knife is neither true nor false, but anyone impaled on its blade is in error. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
431:He doesn’t ask Sarabeth, he doesn’t ask Tommy. The person he’s asking is me. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
432:juicy stuff online on your BLOG so MILLIONS can read it!!! . . . Only ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
433:Shahrzad paused. Then made a decision. Honey catches more flies than vinegar. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
434:The destructive action of time only allows what is superior to time to survive. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
435:The vast space sparkling with stars seemed to want to become part of my body. ~ Ren Depestre, #NFDB
436:To return to the source of things, one has to travel in the opposite direction. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
437:attention, there was an incessant gnawing deep down inside my gut that ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
438:et les anciens sages instruisaient leurs disciples sur le bord des précipices... ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
439:Every company wants one, yet few companies have one: a compelling strategy. ~ Ren e Mauborgne, #NFDB
440:For this was untrammeled need; this was a body of water and a soul of ash. The ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
441:Hey, get a load of those two! It must be mating season or something... ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
442:I could see her daring a cobra to strike, swearing her venom would kill first. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
443:If I am marching to my death, then I will march to it as a girl. Without fear. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
444:I have depeloped a substance which allows me to command time at my discretion. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
445:I pulled enough HAIR out of the drains to start my own weave business! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
446:Kincaid after class, she told me I was in bio, not ART class. Then she ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
447:she does not suspect how much reason I have for deprecating all sympathy. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
448:The more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
449:Then she sashayed away! I just HATE it when MacKenzie sashays. Anyway, ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
450:What is the New Testament? A handbook for those who are to be sacrificed. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
451:All I strive for each day is to convince my shadow I'm someone worth following. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
452:For it is not what happens to me that makes me great, but it is what I do. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
453:Heartbreak happens every day . . . anyone can break your heart if you let them. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
454:I personally think we should consider taking legal action or something. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
455:I wish you happiness, Vikram Singh.” “And I you, meraa dost—my greatest friend. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
456:Mais rien, personne, ne peut empêcher la multitude de se ruer vers sa fatalité. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
457:Moments spent in idleness were moments left to thought. Moments left to memory. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
458:So, how was your week at Hogwarts? Luv the tacky uniforms (LOL)! NIKKI: ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
459:Such is the way of rumors. We are often the last to know the ones in our honor. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
460:The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
461:A 'no' does not hide anything, but a 'yes' very easily becomes a deception. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
462:For faith is this paradox, that the particular is higher than the universal ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
463:It is a great gift to find lasting love - one that gives for every bit it takes. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
464:Justice is the bread of the nation, it is always hungry for it. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
465:La seule fréquentation des mathématiques ne mûrit guère le cœur ni le caractère. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
466:Petoksen olemassaolo on samalla alituinen mahdollisuus totuuden näkemiseen. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
467:AND DOING COOL FORTNITE DANCES, LIKE THE FLOSS, HYPE, AND ORANGE JUSTICE! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
468:Brandon’s birthday party is on Friday, January 31, and I can hardly wait! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
469:Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
470:Girls go missing every day. They slip out bedroom windows and into strange cars. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
471:I may lie every day of my life, Hattori Mariko. But my heart will always be true. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
472:I want her to engulf me in her blaze & scorch me until my darkness lies in ashes. ~ Dani Ren, #NFDB
473:Just as gold is purified in the fire, so the soul is purified in sufferings. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
474:Life can only be understood going backward, but must be lived going forward. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
475:LISTEN, GURL! WE HAVE A CONNECTION! I LUV U MORE THAN MY LEGO COLLECTION! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
476:Many of us pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we hurry past it. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
477:The “end of a world” never is and never can be anything but the end of an illusion. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
478:There is a vast difference between meaning to do something and actually doing it. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
479:The underground appeared in this novel as the failure and reversal of Christianity. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
480:This is the profound secret of innocence, that at the same time it is dread. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
481:Until you can learn to let go of your hatred, you will always love yourself more. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
482:Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
483:Why would you be curious as to where he found me, my lord? Are you in the market? ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
484:...all I strive for each day is to convince my shadow I'm someone worth following. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
485:Because when we help one another, we are able to accomplish things faster.” Kamyar ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
486:DAD, MAX THE ROACH, AND OUR RAGGEDY OLD VAN WERE BACK WHERE THEY BELONGED! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
487:Historiallisissa kysymyksissä suurinkin mahdollinen varmuus on vain likiarvo. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
488:People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
489:Ren alsjeblieft niet weg. En, eh, ik heb ook liever dat je me niet meer schopt! ~ Stephanie Meyer, #NFDB
490:Ren alsjeblieft niet weg. En, eh, ik heb ook liever dat je me niet meer schopt. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
491:The last time I saw my mother, she’d turned her back on me like I was the bullet. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
492:THEY MADE FUN OF MACKENZIE BECAUSE OF THAT VIDEO WITH THE BUG IN HER HAIR! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
493:To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
494:Against all odds, I feel a drop of sympathy . . . amidst a sea of hatred.” “Khalid. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
495:A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
496:Because when I kiss you, I want yours to be the first... and last lips I ever kiss. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
497:Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
498:I want to fly away sometimes. I think about leaping off a cliff and soaring in the air. ~ Dani Ren, #NFDB
499:Language has time as its element; all other media have space as their element. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
500:Philosophy teaches how man thinks he thinks; but drinking shows how he really thinks. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
501:There is no way to know for certain what lurks in the shadowed corners of the mind. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
502:True ideas do not change or develop, but remain as they are in the timeless 'present. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
503:When life is a DUMPSTER, don’t get MAD! EMBRACE the good, and TOSS the BAD! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
504:But no, it’s not the Ori I knew. It’s an Ori I never knew. The Ori I made her into. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
505:Caring about him meant he had real power over her. That he held sway over her heart. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
506:He was good at that. Good at robbing the world of light, even in its barest measure. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
507:if you ask me, the best way to go about flying is to cut the strings tying you down ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
508:Je sais fort bien que je ne suis qu'une machine à faire des livres. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
509:ME, GAGGING AT THE HORRID STENCH OF MISS BRI-BRI’S MANURE AND MUD SPA BATH!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
510:Najviše što jedan čovek može da uradi za drugog jeste da ga natera da se zapita ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
511:The Highest, after all, is not to comprehend the Highest, but to do it. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
512:You know, sometimes life doesn’t give you what you want, but it gives you what you need. ~ Dani Ren, #NFDB
513:I did. I still do. It's kind of grown to a "Ren and Stimpy" kind of lab, which is fun. ~ Kellan Lutz, #NFDB
514:If you could be any Disney princess, which one would you choose and why? YEAR ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
515:I need the enchantment of creative work to help me forget life's mean pettiness. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
516:Markus Müller, “Interview with René Girard,” Anthropoetics 2, no. 1 (June 1996): 3–5. 2 ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
517:People do not know what they ought to say but only that they must say something. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
518:Taylor Swift makes writing mushy songs about your boyfriend look really easy. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
519:When life gives her LEMONS, she squeezes the juice in other people’s EYES!! I ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
520:Why is it the most difficult to throw? Because it is the only one without a model. When ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
521:Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
522:Do you think you’re invincible? That you live off nothing but fresh dew and cold fury? ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
523:For my son, born of a dragon and a phoenix. Fight not for greatness, but for goodness. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
524:It was a quiet taunt...a poisoned glass of wine, meant to intoxicate and exsanguinate. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
525:I wonder who drove all the way up here to leave this piece of hate mail for the dead. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
526:Man has made a discovery ... the way to make life easy is to make it meaningless. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
527:mean fake advice letters to students, and spreading lies and nasty rumors. And ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
528:Pour agir, Saint-Menoux va cesser pendant quelques secondes de se tenir hors du temps. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
529:The other two weren’t even dancers. They were football players. Which was ridiculous. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
530:Those many quiet moments reminiscing on days long past. On memories ever present. “May ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
531:We have only one recourse in the face of death: make art before it happens. —René Char ~ Ren Depestre, #NFDB
532:At vove er at miste fodfæstet et kort ojeblik - ikke at vove er at miste sig selv. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
533:But of course I said all of that inside my head so no one else heard it but me. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
534:I am just curious at heart, and my curious heart has quite a fondness for love stories. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
535:I need the enchantment of creative work to help me forget life’s mean pettinesses. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
536:Maybe, long ago, we used to be good. Maybe all little girls are good in the beginning. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
537:My fear — even when it is feigned — has more weight when it is matched alongside anger. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
538:No. He was not here to retrieve his wife. For his wife was not a thing to be retrieved. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
539:Something I would always remember. When you forget how bad it hurts, you feel so free. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
540:Such misplaced faith in a boy with a murderous past and a girl with treacherous intent. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
541:We were supposed to be brainstorming. But, unfortunately, my brain was farting. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
542:And isn't it true here too that those whom God blesses he damns in the same breath? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
543:Hurt her? I'm not going to harm her. You, on the other, hand I'm going to destroy. -Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
544:If anything is to be done, one must try to introduce Christianity into Christendom. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
545:NIKKI: It was good. Can’t wait to get back to WCD. How was South Ridge? BRANDON: ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
546:The only intelligent tactical response to life’s horror is to laugh defiantly at it ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
547:Therefore, truth is not a matter of knowing this or that but of being in the truth. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
548:The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
549:Where Kylo Ren and his sorcery had failed, Hux and his technological prowess would triumph. ~ Jason Fry, #NFDB
550:You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
551:And another hour to scrape seven of them off the stove, floor, and ceiling. . . . ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
552:At digte sig ind i en pige er en kunst, at digte sig ud af hende er et mesterstykke. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
553:Besides, Christianity is not a doctrine to be taught, but rather a life to be lived. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
554:Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
555:Faith is namely this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
556:I am not calm," she said. "It's a constant effort to quell my fear."
"Then why bother? ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
557:If a man in truth wills the Good then he must be willing to suffer all for the Good. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
558:Shahrzad followed him with her eyes, aware she likely resembled a predator stalking prey. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
559:The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
560:The specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
561:The stars could fall - the moon could crash from the heavens - and Mariko could not care. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
562:—Vous êtes bien? demanda Coban.
Elle ne le regarda même pas. Elle savait qu'il savait. ~ Ren Barjavel,#NFDB
563:You are not weak. You are not indecisive. You are strong. Fierce. Capable beyond measure. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
564:Il ne faut pas comprendre, il faut voir. Paris vous guérira. PARIS VOUS GUÉRIRA DU PASSÉ ! ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
565:The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
566:When you were called, did you answer or did you not? Perhaps softly and in a whisper? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
567:And why does it smell like something DIED in the mud and is STILL in there rotting? ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
568:But, if you ask me, the best way to go about flying is to cut the strings tying you down... ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
569:I think I possess because I do not try to give,
Trying to give, I see that I have nothing. ~ Ren Daumal,#NFDB
570:IT WAS ONLY A RING.
Yet it signified so much to her.
Much to lose. Much to fight for. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
571:RECYCLED ELVIS SUPERHERO COSTUME, POWER ROCKING WITH MY MIGHTY MICROPHONE OF DOOM!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
572:You're such a big BABY. So cry me a river, build yourself a bridge, and GET OVER IT ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
573:You’re such a big BABY. So cry me a river, build yourself a bridge and GET OVER IT! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
574:And to contend with the whole world is a comfort, but to contend with oneself dreadful. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
575:Creo que se podría vivir constantemente absorto en la contemplación de un ser femenino. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
576:I have loved to the limit of my strength. No one has a right to ask more of any human being. ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
577:I’m infected with the romantic fever. It began in my teens when I read Baudelaire in secret. ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
578:I once had a thousand desires, But in my one desire to know you, all else melted away. Jalal ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
579:Job endured everything — until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
580:<...> tikėjimą turėti - pavydėtina dalia, net jei niekas apie tai nežinotų. (7-8) ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
581:The more a person pushes others away, the clearer it becomes he is in need of love the most. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
582:There are no mourners here. No tourists. No rubberneckers. No one to sideswipe Tommy’s car. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
583:To know what people really think, pay attention to what they do, rather than what they say. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
584:What distinguishes all love from lust is the fact that it bears an impress of eternity. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
585:You’re such a big BABY. So cry me a river, build yourself a bridge, and GET OVER IT! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
586:BECAUSE I’M SO HORRIBLY CRUDDY AT ICE-SKATING, I COULDN’T EVEN STAND UP! THAT’S WHY!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
587:Doubt is conquered by faith, just as it is faith which has brought doubt into the world. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
588:I am strange.” She brandished her practice sword. “And you had better learn to appreciate it. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
589:If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream. ~ Ren Magritte, #NFDB
590:If you cannot say what it is you desire in your own dream, then where can you dare to say it? ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
591:She smelled of deep, dark things and untold secrets and all of what she was keeping from me. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
592:Such works are mirrors: when an ape peers into them, no Apostle can be seen looking out. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
593:To dare is to momentarily lose one’s footing.
But not to dare is to lose one’s self. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
594:Being made up of distinctions, language finds it almost impossible to express undifferentiation. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
595:But, if you ask me, the best way to go about flying is to cut the strings tying you down . . . ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
596:Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum.
(English: "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am") ~ Ren Descartes,#NFDB
597:Durven is even de grond onder je voeten verliezen.
Niet durven is je leven verliezen. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
598:I would rather be a swineherd, understood by the swine, than a poet misunderstood by men. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
599:This is called closure, and it’s also called justice, and they are not always the same thing. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
600:Truth is not a sum of statements, not a definition, not a system of concepts, but a life. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
601:Typical Ren, Hux thought. Self-centered, arrogant, indifferent to the interests of others. ~ Alan Dean Foster, #NFDB
602:What matters to us, the judgment of men? What have we to doubt, since we are pure before life? ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
603:A girl willingly donning a crown of death. A small girl with immense courage. Immense hate. Why ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
604:a true friend is someone who thinks you're a good egg, even if you're slightly cracked. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
605:Destiny was for fools. Sharzad would not wait for her life to happen. She would make it happen. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
606:Dream big dreams,because little dreams have no magic.~ Rachel Ren e RussellDork Diaries ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
607:I am thinking that I love you more than Ren and Stimpy, playing Sega on a rainy Saturday morning, ~ M J Fields, #NFDB
608:I'm so misunderstood that people misunderstand me even when I tell them I'm misunderstood. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
609:Järjestelmään liittyy sulkeutuvuus, mutta olemassaolo on jotakin täsmälleen päinvastaista. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
610:Laughing (they thought we were laughing at them). Walking fast (they thought we were running). ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
611:No woman in maternity confinement can have stranger and more impatient wishes than I have. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
612:So you do have some claws after all!' (Wyea)
'You have no idea,' Ren responded and charged. ~ Colleen Houck,#NFDB
613:That overflowing feeling became love. But I don't sing for Ren's sake. I sing for myself everyday. ~ Ai Yazawa, #NFDB
614:A intra ca un vis în gândurile unei fete e o artă,a reuşi să-i ieşi din gând e o capodoperă ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
615:Hakiki iman şövalyesi daima mutlak bir yalnızlığın; yapmacığıysa tarikatçılığın peşindedir. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
616:In the blank where it said “Name of act,” I had scrawled, “Actually, I’m not really sure ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
617:I opened my eyes and saw the real world, and I began to laugh, and i haven't stopped since. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
618:I was pretty sure MacKenzie’s yoga pants cost more than my mom’s CAR! I am so NOT lying. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
619:So soon as I talk I express the universal, and if I do not do so, no one can understand me. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
620:Spiritually, a man's thoughts must be the building in which he lives, otherwise it's wrong. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
621:This dangerous girl. This captivating beauty.
This destroyer of worlds and creator of wonder. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
622:Algo de un rey se encuentra en mi ser; pero tú no puedes siquiera imaginar cuál es mi reino. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
623:All our lives are forfeit, sayyidi. It is just a question of when. And I would like one more day. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
624:La loyauté de chacun d'eux —dont personne ne doutait— serait garantie par la présence des autres. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
625:Life has become a bitter drink to me, and yet it must be taken in drops, counted one by one. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
626:Life is messy, Ren. It's not easy and it's definitely not for the timid. Everyone has a past. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
627:My light in the dark,
Pieces fit like a puzzle,
Twin flames, Soul mates,
My lumiére, forever ~ Dani Ren,#NFDB
628:Notre seule défense contre eux était de leur faire peur. Mais nous leur avoins fait TROP PEUR!... ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
629:Seducing a girl is no art, but it needs a stroke of good fortune to find one worth seducing. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
630:What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
631:Y ahora, un poco de paciencia, sin apremios: me la han destinado y algún día me pertenecerá. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
632:Aşa cum filozofia începe cu îndoiala, o viaţă care să poată fi numită umană începe cu ironia. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
633:EVERYONE DABBING AND DOING COOL FORTNITE DANCES, LIKE THE FLOSS, HYPE, AND ORANGE JUSTICE! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
634:I do not like money, either for itself or for what it can buy, since I want nothing we know about. ~ Ren Magritte, #NFDB
635:The air between them filled with all that remained unsaid. All that should be said.
Yet wasn't. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
636:Then she slammed her locker shut and sashayed away. I just HATE it when MacKenzie sashays. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
637:Victimism uses the ideology of concern for victims to gain political or economic or spiritual power. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
638:An object is not so attached to its name that we cannot find another one that would suit it better. ~ Ren Magritte, #NFDB
639:How to be listed as a dream in the mind of a young girl is an art, going out is a masterpiece. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
640:Let the thunder of a hundred cannon remind you three times daily to resist the force of habit. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
641:Love was a sunrise. A welter of crimson that rose much like a warning. Slowly and almost in secret. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
642:Ren sighed, but he nodded. “We're backing her up.”
Mason grinned. “She is woman. Hear her roar. ~ Andrea Cremer,#NFDB
643:Then she cackled like a witch and sashayed away. I just HATE it when MacKenzie sashays. But ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
644:You’re better than beautiful.” Rahim took a careful breath. “You’re interesting. Never forget that. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
645:An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
646:Only some one who knows how to remain essentially silent can really talk -- and act essentially ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
647:The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
648:The warm sound of her laughter stole through Khalid's skin, heating the coldest reaches of his soul. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
649:Ulysses was not comely, but he was eloquent,
Yet he fired two goddesses of the sea with love ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
650:Do not fear what the setting sun may bring. Where there is a setting sun, there is also a rising one. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
651:I can compel no man to agree with my opinions, but at least I can compel him to have an opinion. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
652:La fe […] comienza con los movimientos del infinito, y sólo más tarde pasa a los de lo infinito. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
653:Lord, give us weak eyes for things of little worth, and eyes clear-sighted in all of your truth. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
654:The best proof adduced of the wretchedness of life is that derived from contemplating its glory. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
655:They let her get away with EVERYTHING! But when I ask to do stuff, it’s always a big fat “NO! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
656:Historiassa kaikki ymmärretään jälkikäteen ja sen vuoksi unohdetaan, että kuolleet kerran elivät. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
657:So I write it to the sky— I love you, a thousand times over. And I will never apologize for it. Khalid ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
658:The man who would find his vegetal negative and unite with it would restore the integrity of the cosmos. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
659:when life presents challenges, you can be either a CHICKEN or a CHAMPION. The choice is YOURS! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
660:You don't know the beginning of me." She trembled as she spoke. "And . . . you will never see the end. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
661:«A volte», disse Rahim ansimando, «la famiglia che scegli… rappresenta un legame più forte del sangue». ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
662:But I do know I can’t remember the last time I wanted something so much,” he finished in a quiet voice. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
663:It is unbelievable what a person of prayer can achieve if he would but close the doors behind him. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
664:La hora del dolor puede volvernos altivos, si es que no nos quiebra: en ella, nada se ha quebrado… ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
665:Only the person who is essentially capable of remaining silent is capable of speaking essentially. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
666:Softly, Kishan said, "And it seems that the only girls I'm ever interested in... always belong to Ren. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
667:Some things exist in our lives for but a brief moment. And we must let them go on to light another sky. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
668:The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
669:There's something ugly about a pretty boy who knows he's pretty and assumes everyone else know it too. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
670:The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
671:et quant aux silences, comment raconter des silences au moyen de mots ? Seule la poésie pourrait le faire. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
672:From that day on it was as if Ren freed me from gravity. I was floating in the sky. Higher. Higher. Higher. ~ Ai Yazawa, #NFDB
673:I love you, she said. Khalid lifted his head to hers. She placed a hand against his cheek. Beyond words. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
674:It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
675:la vida sólo puede ser entendida mirando hacia atrás; aunque deba ser vivida mirando hacia adelante ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
676:My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
677:People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
678:un couteau, dit un autre, n'est ni vrai ni faux, mais celui qui l'empoigne par la lame est dans l'erreur". ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
679:All distinctions between the many different kinds of love are essentially abolished by Christianity. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
680:At last I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
681:BTW, the roach's name is Max (courtesy of Brianna, "because of I had a puppy, I'd name him Max"). ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
682:he who loves God without faith reflects upon himself he who loves God believingly reflects upon God. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
683:Is not the heart of man indeed the vase in which his life is continuously maintained by means of his blood? ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
684:It was easy to be good and kind in times of plenty. The trying times were the moments that defined a man. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
685:My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known -- no wonder, then, that I return the love. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
686:Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
687:To even attempt something, one must first believe in the possibility. And then be granted an opportunity. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
688:I can resist anything except temptation." Ren, main character in Sherrilyn Kenyon's novel Time Untime. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
689:If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
690:If the Gospels were mythical themselves, they could not provide the knowledge that demythologizes mythology. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
691:The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
692:This morning I had these fluttery butterflies in my stomach that were making me feel SUPERnauseous ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
693:To fit in somewhere in the world, even if there were chains and gates and fences to keep us from running. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
694:What is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
695:A friend... sort of. Ren watches me like I'm a cookie jar he wouldn't mind being caught with his hands in. ~ Andrea Cremer, #NFDB
696:Are you also going to inform me I need to be as swift as a fire so I may move mountains in the wind?” Yoshi ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
697:Humankind exhausts, little by little, all illusions, including inferior notions of God swept away by atheism. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
698:I wondered how they could know so much about my brain without lifting open my skull and poking through it. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
699:Perhaps you should spend less time despising the game and more time building the patients necessary to win. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
700:Sometimes it could be the smallest thing that could topple over a whole life, and, in the end, destroy it. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
701:The worst kind of lie—the kind shrouded in good intentions. The kind cowards use to justify their weakness. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
702:Your future is not set in stone, my dearest star. A coin turns on itself a number of times before it lands. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
703:[...] alayhi çalatu Rabbil-Arshi dawman, « que sur lui la prière du Seigneur du Trône soit perpétuellement » ! ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
704:I knew that just because people on the outside were free and clean, it didn’t mean they were the good ones. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
705:It is curious to see how a science as 'positivist' as modern astronomy can occasion such extravagant daydreams ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
706:It’s easy to take people you really care about for granted. Then, one day, they’re out of your life. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
707:My melancholy is the most faithful mistress I have known; what wonder, then, that I love her in return. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
708:Our kisses were so full of need, so long, so fierce that I could hardly gasp for breath.
(Calla and Ren) ~ Andrea Cremer,#NFDB
709:People understand me so little that they do not even understand when I complain of being misunderstood. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
710:SECRETLY hanging out in the JANITOR’S CLOSET, like, FOREVER. . . . “That’s not even everything we’ve ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
711:When will you tell him?' 'When I muster the courage or when I'm left with no choice - whichever comes first. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
712:A revolution begins with a single willful act, he told himself. Only these people don't seem entirely…willful. ~ Ren Cummins, #NFDB
713:El amor es una fuerza en sí misma. Por amor, la gente concibe lo impensable... y a menudo logra lo imposible. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
714:For it was easy to be good and kind in times of plenty. The trying times were the moments that defined a man. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
715:Give me a meaningful love or a beautiful death!” Alas, Omar was a greedy man. He’d always hoped to have both. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
716:I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
717:I’m warning you, Maxwell. Just back off!! Or you’ll be sorry. You don’t belong at this school anyway. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
718:Instead of reorganizing the demoniac, rearranging it a bit, like a psychoanalyst, you do away with it entirely. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
719:I smirked at Ren before answering. "Yes. I dreamed I fed Ren to the kraken."
-- Tigers Voyage
Pg. 405 ~ Colleen Houck,#NFDB
720:Silence is the snare of the demon, and the more one keeps silent, the more terrifying the demon becomes. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
721:Vous allez encore mourir ! cette fois, vos sales inventions ne pourront rien pour vous. Et vous serez damné ! ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
722:Et il regrettait de ne pas avoir plus de mains, plus de lèvres pour lui faire partout plus de joies à la fois. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
723:I deny being a slave to any one thing. In any situation we can choose who we are and choose who we want to be. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
724:It is in your power to review your life, to look at things you saw before, but from another point of view ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
725:It's a good thing Jack was no longer in my hands, because I would've pulled a full-on Kylo Ren temper tantrum. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
726:our Lord satisfied the stomach before satisfying the eye, but the imagination acts in the reverse fashion ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
727:The moment I saw him running toward you that morning, I knew you were going to save him, just as he saved you. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
728:We were alive. I remember it that way. We were still alive, and we couldn't see how close we were to the end. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
729:But I do not see this as a shortcoming. For without a measure of arrogance, how can one attempt the impossible? ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
730:It was Ruby's favorite kind of story: where the boys lost and the girls won and got a souvenir in the bargain. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
731:ME, STEALING YOUR LETTER DUE TO POST-DETENTION STRESS SYNDROME Anyway, while we were in class listening ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
732:Sweetie, when life presents challenges, you can be either a CHICKEN or a CHAMPION. The choice is YOURS! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
733:The girl made an impression on me, and I forgot her; the other made no impression, and her I can remember. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
734:With Master Ren, if I'd tell him I can't do that and he'd say, yes you can, and it turns out I very much can do it. ~ Lou Reed, #NFDB
735:In the Christianity of Christendom the Cross has become something like the child’s hobby-horse and trumpet. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
736:It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand... ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
737:None has more contempt for what it is to be a man than they who make it their profession to lead the crowd. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
738:So you would have me throw Shazi to the wolves?”
“Shazi?” Jalal’s grin widened. “Honestly, I pity the wolves. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
739:Te montrer à l'univers, le temps d'un éclair, puis m'enfermer avec toi, seul, et te regarder pendant l'éternité. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
740:To be isolated is always to assert oneself numerically; when you assert yourself as one, that is isolation. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
741:To live without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
742:You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
743:„Are you a good spy?“
„The best.“
„A good spy would hide her identity.“
„The best spies don’t have to. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
744:For every single individual who escapes into the crowd... flees in cowardice from being a single individual. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
745:He who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
746:It is not a ridiculous question. It is a very simple one. The difficulty lies in the answer. Why do you love her? ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
747:Its like a sort of internet Ren Fair. Its like Dungeons & Dragons but for cool people who have got friends. ~ Craig Ferguson, #NFDB
748:People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
749:True strength isn’t about sovereignty. It’s about knowing when you need help and having the courage to accept it. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
750:When the father is no longer an overbearing patriarch the son looks everywhere for the law - and finds no lawgiver. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
751:Alţii sunt virtuoşi ziua şi păcătuiesc noaptea;eu ziua sunt pură prefecătorie,iar noaptea sunt numai dorinţe. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
752:By comparison with a passionate age, an age without passion gains in scope what is loses in intensity. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
753:For I have trained myself and am training myself always to be able to dance lightly in the service of thought ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
754:He thought against Napoleon, in both senses of the word. See how fruitful resentment can be, and how it can make one ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
755:Jusqu'au fond de l'horizon imaginable, jusqu'au bout du monde, il entendait la chute immense et molle des flocons. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
756:No debemos estar solos, Sherezade. Cuanto más aparta uno a los demás, más evidente es que está necesitado de amor. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
757:rien n’est moins tolérant en pratique que les gens qui éprouvent le besoin de prêcher la tolérance et la fraternité. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
758:Shows itself in the notion that what may be objectively true may in the mouth of certain people become false. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
759:WHY?
SO IT WILL BE
PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE
FOR MY PARENTS TO
FORCE ME TO WATCH
THIS GARBAGE!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell,#NFDB
760:And finally I could make it down the bunny hill without falling. Or knocking over any little kids. Woo-hoo! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
761:But even the moment when the leaves fall from their boughs—even that moment—has a beauty to it. A glory of its own. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
762:for he who loves God without faith reflects upon himself, he who loves God believingly reflects upon God. Upon ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
763:I bet the popular kids at his school called him “Puke,” “Schmuck,” “Yuck,” or something worse. POOR PUCK !! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
764:I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto 'to live well you must live unseen ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
765:Today he'd intentionally wandered too far. Wandered away from those who hovered around him like flies to a carcass. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
766:What good would it do me if truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
767:With everyone else, he was chipped ice on a mountain. With her sister, he was a summer breeze across the sea. Alas, ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
768:Before she could stop her hands, they reached for him, as though they existed for no other reason than to touch him. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
769:I barely got any sleep last night. I just lay there, wide awake, trying to figure out how to stop MacKenzie. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
770:KISS everything HELLO! Like the walls, the floors, my locker, my textbooks, and my very cute CRUSH, Brandon! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
771:Silence is the only conduct truly befitting a solipsist, the only one, however, that he cannot bring himself to adopt. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
772:This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
773:Alexander created cities everywhere he passed: I have left dreams everywhere I have trailed my life. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
774:For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
775:If that was to be my last meal," Mariko murmured, "how fitting is it that it fell from my lips before I could eat it? ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
776:In fact one is tempted to ask whether there is a single man left ready, for once, to commit an outrageous folly. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
777:In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life to doubt, as far as possible, of all things. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
778:Is it not possible that my activity as an objective observer of nature will weaken my strength as a human being? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
779:None of our parents saw what we could see, which had us decide that growing up into adulthood must mean going blind. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
780:Purgatory surpasses heaven and hell in poetry, because it represents a future and the others do not. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
781:[...]Quand on est en possession d'une base stable et d'une direction sûre, on n'éprouve nul besoin de changement. [...] ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
782:For love, people consider the unthinkable . . . and often achieve the impossible. I would not sneer at its power.” The ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
783:For this was a kiss of definition. A kiss of understanding. For a marriage absent pretense. And a love without design. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
784:Her fire is intoxicating I want her to burn me. To make me feel something other than the numbness that's enveloped my life ~ Dani Ren, #NFDB
785:In this age of decadence that we live in, people's minds are twisted and only words are loved but not preactial deeds. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
786:Is that kind of disrespect... normal?"
"It's not normal. But it's not unexpected. It's the curse of being a woman". ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
787:It was hoped we might have two lives—the way cats are said to have nine. This life we ruined, and another, for after. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
788:It was THE most important thing I had EVER attempted in my entire fourteen years of life here on planet Earth. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
789:I wish I possessed your particular brand of optimism," Rahim grumbled.
"And what brand would that be?"
"Idiotic. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
790:Pour les gens qui vous entourent, vous n'êtes jamais là, toujours en retard ou en avance d'une seconde sur leur temps. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
791:The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown. ~ Ren Magritte, #NFDB
792:The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
793:To grumble about the world and its unhappiness is always easier than to beat one's breast and groan over oneself. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
794:To pace about, looking to obtain status, looking to attain 'importance' - I can think of nothing more ridiculous. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
795:Well, it’s not MY fault you’re such an AIRHEAD that if you open your mouth I can hear the ocean!” I shot back. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
796:I pulled Frosty from her hutch and held her tight just the way Ren taught me. And then I told them what he’d told me. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
797:La civilisation chrétienne avait [...] perverti en condamnant les joies les plus belles que Dieu ait données à l'homme. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
798:ROW, ROW, ROW YOUR BOAT, BABY! GOTTA ROW TO THAT FUNKY BEAT, BABY!” she howled. “DANCING DOWN THE STREEEEEEEAM! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
799:The next my parents and Brianna come rollin' up in here, I'm gonna scream, "Hey! Why don't y'all just MOVE IN?! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
800:There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true. The other is to refuse to accept what is true. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
801:What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
802:What shall it profit the sick man to imagine himself, as all men do, to be well, if the physician says he is sick! ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
803:Where the successful or failed dialogues between Christianity and other cultures are concerned, we could go on for hours. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
804:Do better than this, Shazi. My queen is without limitations. Boundless in all that she does. Show them.” Her pulse raced ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
805:In the first case, he personally enjoyed the esthetic; in the second case, he esthetically enjoyed his personality. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
806:There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
807:There are two ways to be fooled: one is to believe what isn't true, the other is to refuse to believe what is true. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
808:To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking Him. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
809:You deserve someone who will feel you at her side without needing to see you. And I've only felt that way about one boy. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
810:Cuando un hombre habla como un libro impreso, es aburrido escucharle, pero a menudo es muy útil hablar de este modo. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
811:For love is exultant when it unites equals, but it is triumphant when it makes that which was unequal equal in love. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
812:I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
813:Just a book. Merely scratchings on a page.
Khalid smiled a bitter smile. The power behind words lies with the person. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
814:Khalid had to answer for such vile deeds. Such rampant death. Even if he was her air. Even if she loved him beyond words. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
815:La verdadera fuerza no se trata de ser soberbio. Se trata de saber cuándo necesitas ayuda y tener el coraje de aceptarla. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
816:Totally-awesome-completely-unbelievable-too-good-to-be-true-exciting-wonderful thing #2: I WAS CROWNED SWEETHEART ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
817:What we call worldliness simply consists of such people who, if one may so express it, pawn themselves to the world. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
818:Algunas cosas existen por nuestra vida por nada más que un corto momento, y tenemos que dejarlas ir a iluminar otro cielo. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
819:Oh, by the way, I LOVE what you did with your hair today. How did you get it to come out of one nostril like that? ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
820:There was NO WAY we were just sitting there in the library like a bride and groom sharing a piece of wedding cake! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
821:Bir kadın olarak benden nefret ediyor, yetenekli bir kadın olarak benden korkuyor, zeki bir kadın olarak beni seviyor. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
822:I didn't need your permission," I spat back. Ren smirked. "Honey, I know what you need and you're going to get it. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
823:Ren? I begged. Please don't leave me.
You are in my heart. Always. His warm voice whispered softly and then faded away. ~ Colleen Houck,#NFDB
824:And how will you know when you've found the elusive someone?
I suspect she will be like air. Like knowing how to breathe. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
825:Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
826:Games? War is not a game, my friend. Games are for small children and old men like me. War is a young man's blighted delight ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
827:It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
828:Khalid’s features smoothed knowingly. “How right you are. You are not mine.” He dropped his palm from the door. “I am yours. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
829:Sharzad had not intended to torment Khalid with the magic carpet. Not at first. But he brought it on himself. Truly, he did. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
830:We are ready to deconstruct anything except the idea that we are self-directed and that the persecutors are always the others. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
831:Birkaç ağlama nöbetinin ardından şimdi şu dingin ruh haliyle ne kadar güzelleşti. Varlığı hüzünle acının güzel bir uyumu ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
832:Bushidō is about experiencing life in every breath. Seeing life in the simplest of things. There is beauty and honor in that. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
833:I would rather be a swineherd at Amagerbro and be understood by the swine than be a poet and be misunderstood by people. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
834:My opinion is, of course, completely my own. I would not impose it on anyone else and decline any pressure to change it. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
835:Nikki, why didn’t you tell me?” Brandon asked. “That’s pretty important news! And it impacts ALL of our summer plans. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
836:No daring is fatal. The whole logic of the universe is contained in daring, in creating from the flimsiest, slenderest support. ~ Ren Crevel, #NFDB
837:No one may pride himself at being more than an individual, and no one despondently think that he is not an individual... ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
838:Pourquoi cet absurde besoin de savoir ? Et si les hommes veulent être heureux, qu'ils se chargent eux-mêmes de leur bonheur ! ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
839:She embodies all the melancholy of autumn. She has learned to cherish with mournful tenderness a past she dares not remember. ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
840:Subjectivity is truth and if subjectivity is in existing, then, if I may put it this way, Christianity is a perfect fit. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
841:they stood together under the dome of the Grand Portico, with the indecipherable art of love poems giving silent testament. • ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
842:Until nothing at all existed between them.
But shared breaths.
And unspoken promises.
Lies.
And unshakable truth. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
843:What would Ren do in Oregon? Would he get a job? What would he put on his resume? High Protector and former Prince of India? ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
844:You are saddened by love's importance in the emir's life?"
He paused. "I am frustrated by its importance in all our lives. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
845:Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every
generation may not come that far, but none comes further. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
846:I did not seek permission from anyone, General al-Khoury. Nor shall I seek permission from anyone in the future. For anything. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
847:I Looked at Ren. his gaze met mine. He winked. One side of my lips kicked up. ‘I love you.’
‘Prove it to me later. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
848:Il y a des temps où l’on ne doit dépenser le mépris qu’avec économie, à cause du grand nombre de nécessiteux. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
849:In spite of her cute little angelic face and pink sneakers, Brianna is actually a baby Tyrannosaurus rex. On STEROIDS! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
850:I was just slipping my pajama top over my head when I heard Ren bellow, “YOU ate ALL of my peanut . . . butter . . . COOKIES? ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
851:I will even be able to free it from the power of gravity which attracts it to the future and to make it go back into the past. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
852:Metaphorically speaking, a person's ideas must be the building he lives in - otherwise there is something terribly wrong. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
853:Sharzad was rewarded with one of his uncommonly effortless smiles. The kind that changed a face of shadows into one of light". ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
854:It is a question of discovering a truth which is truth for me, of finding the idea for which I am willing to live and die. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
855:MOM! Please come quick! I don’t feel so good. My stomach is really queasy and I think I’m going to . . . blecchuuarggh! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
856:NIKKI: Yep! I’m trying to help her earn a cooking badge for Scouts. Any ideas for a super-EZ brat-proof snack? BRANDON: ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
857:Och ren måste den som man älskar vara. Annars kan man inte älska henne. Men att älska en människa är också att göra henne ren. ~ Stig Dagerman, #NFDB
858:On aina arveluttavaa leimata absurdiksi, käsittämättömäksi jokin, minkä joku toinen voi selittää helposti ymmärrettäväksi. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
859:Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only person at my school who believes Satan’s kid sister has a locker right next to mine. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
860:The Hawk’s keen nose is picking up the scent of a COWARD! Right . . . about . . . HERE!” he snarled, and pointed at ME! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
861:These two words from a boy who was less than nothing. These two words that gave her the will to fight off the demons: My queen. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
862:A boy who'd thrived in the shadows.
Now he had to live in the light.
To live . . . fiercely.
To fight for every breath. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
863:BRANDON: We had fun hanging out with Max C. Definitely one cool dude. His lil’ bro, Oliver, and Brianna are BFFs? NIKKI: ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
864:... but when I asked where the extra doors led,Ruby smiled and said sometimes you need more than oneway to reach the outside... ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
865:I didn't expect anything. I just wanted to be near her. The world outside fell away. Melted around us. Then, she kissed me.#Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
866:So wonderful a power is remorse, so sincere is its friendship that to escape it entirely is the most terrible thing of all. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
867:What Christendom needs at every moment is someone who expresses Christianity uncalculatingly or with absolute recklessness. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
868:Christianity is a founding murder in reverse, which illuminates what has to remain hidden to produce ritual, sacrificial religions. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
869:he who will not pass through this curriculum is helped very little by the fact that he was born in the most enlightened age. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
870:idea the situation was so bad until I asked each committee member to present a status report at our meeting this morning. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
871:In her ear, he whispered, "Do better than this Shazi. My queen is without limitations. Boundless in all that she does. Show them. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
872:Is it so arrogant to want something that doesn’t change with the wind? That doesn’t crumble at the first sign of adversity?” “You ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
873:No puedo evitar sonreírme cuando pienso la habilidad con la que sé pronunciar su nombre, ese nombre, en un momento decisivo. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
874:Quelques corbeaux passèrent au ras du plafond des nuages, se posèrent en grappes noires sur l'orme dressé au milieu de la plaine. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
875:Be as swift as the wind. As silent as the forest. As fierce as the fire. As unshakable as the mountain. And you can do anything... ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
876:I believe when you truly love someone, you want what’s best for that person.” “I find that not only absurd, but arrogant, as well. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
877:It is the Other whom one must love as oneself if one does not desire to idolize and hate the Other in the depths of the underground. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
878:It's never been a question of who is going to let me behave a certain way; it's always been a question of who is going to stop me. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
879:Skal man hjelpe en annen, må man forst finne ut hvor han er, og mote ham der. Dette er det forste bud i all sann hjelpekunst. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
880:The distance between Don Quixote and the petty bourgeois victim of advertising is not so great as romanticism would have us believe. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
881:After confessing her love, she ran from me. I wanted to stop her but I let her go. If she really loved me how could she leave?#Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
882:it is very tempting, when you talk about the events of the past, to impose clarity and order upon what had neither one nor the other. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
883:That's quite gallant of you. After you've ignored me for the better part of a week, like a boy half your age with twice your charm. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
884:There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
885:A friend is someone who knows the SONG in your HEART and can SING it back to you when you FORGET the WORDS!’—Author unknown. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
886:As you said, revenge will never replace what I have lost. What you have lost. All we have is now. And our promise to make it better. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
887:Calling Mackenzie a "mean girl" is an understatement. She's a GRIZZLY BEAR with a French manicure and blonde hair extensions ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
888:For nothing, not the sun, not the rain, not even the brightest star in the darkest sky, could begin to compare to the wonder of you. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
889:Perhaps it was the lure of marrying a king. Or the vain hope you might be the one to stay the course and win the heart of a monster. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
890:Ruby told me it didn't matter what a boy was thinking about you so long as you had a good hold on what you were thinking about him. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
891:She was leaving so I made a sound and thought, "Please. Just stay a little longer. Don't go yet." That's when...she touched me.#Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
892:The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard, nor read about, nor seen, but, if one will, are to be lived. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
893:Understood what it meant to feel at home wherever you were. To feel as though you belonged in any moment, at any place, in any time. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
894:What he imagines evokes nothing imaginary, it evokes the reality of the world that experience and reason treat in a confused manner. ~ Ren Magritte, #NFDB
895:And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
896:Bulutların hızlı uçuşları, ışık ve karanlığın birbirini kovalaması beni öylesine sarhoş eder ki uyanık olduğum halde düş görürüm ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
897:He would learn the truth. Tonight he would flout his own rules. Meet the girl alone. Ask her a single question. He could afford that. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
898:I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
899:I don't know what's worse. Being mistreated because of the color of your skin, your size, or having to prove that it really happened. ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
900:I don’t know what’s worse. Being mistreated because of the color of your skin, your size, or having to prove that it really happened. ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
901:Makes me feel like no matter how dressed up we are, no matter how respectful we are, some people will only see what they want to see. ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
902:WHY in the world would MacKenzie ask ME to vote for HER for Sweetheart Princess when it’s so obvious that she HATES my guts?! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
903:Words are foolish. Promises are useless. Anyone can say anything to get what it is they desire. Believe in actions and actions alone. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
904:Anyone not wanting to sink in the wretchedness of the finite is obliged in the most profound sense to struggle with the infinite. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
905:had always been like that—incapable of withholding the truth but incapable of cruelty. A rare kind of person. The best kind of friend. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
906:If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
907:La angustia, sin embargo, no es hermosa por sí misma, sino solamente cuando aparece acompañada por la energía que sabe dominarla. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
908:La raison rétrécit la vie, comme l'eau rétrécit les tricots de laine, si bien qu'on s'y sent coincé et on ne peut plus lever les bras. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
909:My soul is like the dead sea, over which no bird can fly; when it gets halfway, it sinks down spent to its death and destruction. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
910:Naisissa tapaa usein huumoria, mutta ei koskaan ironiaa.
Puhdas naisellinen luonto pitää ironiaa jonkinlaisena julmuutena. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
911:One must see how no attack is so feared as that of laughter... because more than any other this attack isolates the one attacked. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
912:That is not the way of it. Your future is not set in stone, my dearest star. A coin turns on itself a number of times before it lands. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
913:The entire time she'd watched him - waited for him to join her, even in death - her features had remained serene. A flame in the mist. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
914:But a sad fatality hung over this young girl. She had been given to seven husbands, all of whom had perished in the bride-chamber. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
915:Flustered by the budding understanding of why her sister might have chosen to love this supposed monster, Irsa fumbled for her satchel. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
916:It costs a man just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven. Narrow, exceedingly narrow is the way to perdition! ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
917:I understand how difficult it is, putting your heart in someone else’s hands. But, if you don’t, how will you ever truly know a person? ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
918:Le garde sut que cette femme ne mentait pas. Elle n'était pas de celles qui s'abaissent à mentir, quelles que soient les circonstances. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
919:mieux vaut, pour la renommée d’un philosophe, inventer une erreur nouvelle que de redire une vérité qui a déjà été exprimée par d’autres. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
920:Ren watched us as he leaned casually against the table, holding a pair of scissors. I'd never seen a classroom tool look so dangerous. ~ Andrea Cremer, #NFDB
921:Wat voor goed zou het me doen als de waarheid voor me stond, koud en naakt, en er niet om gaf of ze door mij werd herkend of niet. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
922:Calling MacKenzie a mean girl is an understatement. She’s a cobra with hoop earrings, blond hair extensions, and a spray-on tan. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
923:Ei ajattelu ole yhtään sen arvokkaampaa kuin mielikuvitus tai tunne, vaan niihin rinnastettavaa. Ajattelun ylivalta johtaa harhaan. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
924:I believe the stars align so souls can find one another. Whether they are meant to be souls in love or souls in life remains to be seen. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
925:I'll pluck out my eye with a pencil and eat it with a Spam and mustard sandwich IF ONLY you'll sit me at lunch today, MacKenzie! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
926:I was immediately aware of her when she stood at the window but I didn't move at first. I wanted to look at her with my human eyes.#Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
927:Then we rushed down to the library and made it just in time to get our student ID photos. I think mine came out SUPERcute! . . . ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
928:This boy did not take steps. He glided like a shark through the water. And like the sea, the members of the Black Clan parted around him ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
929:We cannot help noticing that, like all propagandists, the apostles of tolerance, truth to tell, are very often the most intolerant of men. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
930:He was stronger than she was. Of that, there was no doubt. She could not best him physically. But I’m not here to fight. I’m here to win. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
931:I don't want to make sense anymore. I want to be happy. When I really stopped to think about it I realized I'm happiest when I'm with you ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
932:Intelligence has got the upper hand to such an extent that it transforms the real task into an unreal trick and reality into a play. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
933:Jalal," she said, "I can explain."
"There's no need."
"I'm not - "
"I told you; there's no need." He spoke simply. "I trust you. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
934:She believed she was ordinary? Impossible! Any man with common sense would see what I do. The more she went on the angrier I became.#Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
935:The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
936:When we left Ren in the jungle it was like a
#Iscrewedupmydatewithadreamyguy +
#Iabandonedmypetonthesideoftheroad feeling.#Kelsey ~ Colleen Houck,#NFDB
937:If he is not supposed to be that, then he is a hypocrite, and the higher he climbs on this path, the more dreadful a hypocrite he is. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
938:I raced alongside the car but they were too far down the road. Brokenheartedly, I roared out in hopelessness and grief. She was gone.#Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
939:Kelsey was jealous of the waitress. I almost laughed. This beautiful girl was absolutely perfect for me. How could I look at another?#Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
940:Le lycée ne fut plus qu'un immense vaisseau bouillonnant de la joie furieuse de dix mille enfants qui venaient de retrouver leur jeunesse. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
941:Respect must be earned, Ren. Not demanded. A questioning mind is the most cherished resource man has and the rarest.” – Choo Co La Tah ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
942:She smiled at me, and I felt a sudden burning tenderness for this creature so like fruit and roses. I desired her like blue water at dawn. ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
943:The world’s myths do not reveal a way to interpret the Gospels, but exactly the reverse: the Gospels reveal to us the way to interpret myth. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
944:Thrilled with the knowledge that she loved me, it took me a moment to realize that she was angry. I found her tantrum irresistible." #Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
945:You better be glad I like you.” – Ren
“I am indeed, for I have seen how you throw a knife and it is truly awe inspiring.” – Sundown ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
946:BRANDON LOOKS AT THE PICS! Right then all I wanted to do was dig a really deep hole right next to my desk, CRAWL into it, and DIE!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
947:il est curieux de voir à quelles extravagantes rêveries peut donner lieu une science aussi « positive » que veut l’être l’astronomie moderne. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
948:Indivizii nu erau altceva pentru el decât nişte stimulente;şi îndată ce acţiunea provocată de ei se consuma,el se debarasa de aceştia. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
949:In my life, the one thing I have learned above all is that no individual can reach the height of their potential without the love of others ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
950:It is you,” Ren murmured. His words unsettled her: Not for the first time, he seemed to know more about her than she did about herself. ~ Alan Dean Foster, #NFDB
951:We made it through the traps. Though dangerous, I'd go back through them all just to have her wrap her arms around me like that again.#Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
952:You be really careful.” – Sundown “Always. You have to be careful when you fly, or you end up smeared on the side of a building.” – Ren ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
953:And only those watching very carefully saw the Caliph of Khorasan lean back against the cushions and toy with the bangles on his wife’s arm. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
954:In my life, the one thing I have learned above all is that no individual can reach the height of their potential without the love of others. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
955:I wasn’t sure if I was actually AWAKE and just THOUGHT I was DREAMING! Or if I was actually DREAMING and just THOUGHT I was AWAKE! I ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
956:I was so thrilled about being human it took half a day for me to realize that Kelsey was nervously pulling away. What am I doing wrong?#Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
957:She insisted on heading back and immediately pulled away from me. I need to know if what I feel is one sided or if she's just stubborn.#Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
958:Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic — if it is pulled out I shall die. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
959:The demon in me that knows there's a demon in you who can mop the floor with my raunchy butt tells me to say yes. I care. Deeply." (Ren) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
960:The less support an idea has,the more fervently it must be believed in, so that a totally preposterous idea requires unflinching faith. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
961:Then—without another sound—the beast glided toward her. Like a ghost. Like a demon of the forest, flying on a whorl of black smoke. Mariko’s ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
962:Do you still want Ren?" I listened to my own heartbeat for a minute before answering. "Yes." "That's one hot mess, Cal." Ansel smiled at me. ~ Andrea Cremer, #NFDB
963:I believe the stars align so that souls can find one another. Whether they are meant to be souls in love or souls in life remains to be seen. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
964:Kelsey went swimming. I rehearsed what I wanted to say, headed outside, & saw her hug Kishan. Insanely jealous, I broke the railing.#Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
965:Ren’s conquests fell into two categories: those girls who still pined for him and those who stuck pins into his voodoo likeness every night. ~ Andrea Cremer, #NFDB
966:She’d fought off her assailant. And in doing so, she’d displayed one of the seven virtues of bushidō: Courage. The way of the warrior. Mariko ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
967:The essence of desire is to have no essential goal. Truly to desire, we must have recourse to people about us; we have to desire their desires. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
968:The natural strategic orientation of many companies is toward retaining existing customers and seeking further segmentation opportunities. ~ Ren e Mauborgne, #NFDB
969:What could I say to make this beautiful girl know how desperately I needed her? Practiced words fled my mind & I shamelessly begged.#Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
970:What is it to be God’s elect ? It is to be denied in youth the wishes of youth, so as with great pains to get them fulfilled in old age. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
971:Between words and objects one can create new relations and specify characteristics of language and objects generally ignored in everyday life. ~ Ren Magritte, #NFDB
972:But a cold shower in stinky black muck that looked and smelled like elephant diarrhea would probably make most people have a meltdown. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
973:[...] Cela n'autorise-t-il pas à dire que la suprême habileté du diable, de quelque façon qu'on le conçoive, c'est de faire nier son existence ? ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
974:Dans la numération chinoise, la croix représente le nombre 10 (le chiffre romain X n’est d’ailleurs, lui aussi, que la croix autrement disposée) ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
975:God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
976:I had no right to be in love. I had nothing to offer her. But reason drowned in the beat of my heart, and I asked permission to kiss her.#Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
977:I put on such a theatrical performance that I should receive an Academy Award nomination for Most Dramatic Meltdown in a Family Convo. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
978:If I'm a plague, then you should keep your distance, unless you plan on being destroyed."
"No." His hands dropped to her waist. "Destroy me. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
979:It’s a fitting punishment for a monster. to want something so much—to hold it in your arms — and know beyond a doubt you will never deserve it. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
980:It seemed like such a grave injustice that HE had to clean up the horrible mess that MacKenzie had made. Sometimes life is SO UNFAIR !! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
981:Louann is ours, Amy thought. That’s it. We know what she can do and what she can’t do. We don’t need any Mrs. Peck trying to change things. ~ Betty Ren Wright, #NFDB
982:Ren clasped Kishan's arm in his and said with a quiver in his voice,
"Yours in life, Kishan".
"Yours in death, Dhiren," Kishan finished. ~ Colleen Houck,#NFDB
983:Shake your groove thing, shake your groove thing, yeah, yeah,” and then you just repeat those words 1,962 times until the song is over. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
984:She answered with a passion I didn’t expect & I was lost. In that moment our hearts beat as one. In that moment I knew she loved me." #Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
985:...the odor of literature as a stopgap, of words piled one upon the other to avoid taking action or to console oneself for being incapable of it. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
986:Trevor Chase, the world-famous producer, has asked me to put together a thirty-minute show that includes our original song “Dorks Rule! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
987:You be really careful.” – Sundown
“Always. You have to be careful when you fly, or you end up smeared on the side of a building.” – Ren ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
988:A growl rumbled behind us. "Could you not touch her?" Ren didn't make it sound like a question. "Bite me," Shay snarled. "Stop it. Both of you. ~ Andrea Cremer, #NFDB
989:But for all the things I like, I can't but wonder why the changes we've always wanted in the community had to come from other people and not us. ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
990:Every day, I think I am going to be surprised by how remarkable you are, but I am not. Because this is what it means to be you. It means knowing ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
991:It's not the end of it when you've drowned your black thoughts, because afterwards there are blue thoughts and red thoughts and yellow thoughts... ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
992:I wrapped the unyielding woman I loved in my arms & kissed her slowly, hoping that some part of her would sense my absolute devotion." #Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
993:OMG! Wouldn’t it be great if we went on tour and opened for Lady Gaga or One Direction?! We could take this music thing and run with it. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
994:She was wearing a pink Ren and Stimpy shirt, stretched tightly across her ample chest. She could have modeled for one of her romance book covers. ~ Selena Kitt, #NFDB
995:Vain mustalaisilla ja rosvoilla ja huijareilla on tunnuslauseenaan, että sinne, missä kerran on käyty, ei pidä koskaan tulla toista kertaa. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
996:Do you love me, Ally?” he asked in his sweet voice.
I stared into his eyes. I drew in a breath.
Then I answered, “Yes, Ren. I love you. ~ Kristen Ashley,#NFDB
997:For as the Good is only a single thing, so all ways lead to the Good, even the false ones: when the repentant one follows the same way back. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
998:Kazna odgovara krivici: da nam bude uskraćeno svako zadovoljstvo
življenja, da smo dovedeni do najvišeg stepena odvratnosti prema životu. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
999:Minu ema moto kõlab: "No kuulge! Miks peaks laskma väikesel gangreenil või tillukesel pidalitõvehool takistada teekonda hariduse juurde?! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1000:The profane sciences of which the modern world is so proud are really and truly only the degenerate ‘residues’ of the ancient traditional sciences. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1001:„When you meet the one who makes you smile as you’ve never smiled before, cry as you have never cried before… there is nothing to do but to fall. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1002:Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that in which all human life is united is passion, and faith is a passion. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1003:I succeeded by following the same method, which consists in regarding the problem as solved and deducing from the solution all logical consequences. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
1004:Violence is the divine force that everyone tries to use for his own purposes and that ends by using everyone for its own—the Dionysus of The Bacchae ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1005:Alcune cose entrano nelle nostre vite per lo spazio di un respiro. E dobbiamo lasciarle andare, per
consentire loro di illuminare un altro cielo ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1006:Did we come all the way here for a book, Baba?”
“Just one, my child. Just one.”
“It must be a special book.”
“All books are special, dear. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1007:Eternity He who binds himself to a joy Does the winged life destroy But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sun rise —WILLIAM BLAKE ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
1008:« I believe nevertheless that I shall get her, in virtue, that is, of the absurd, in virtue of the fact that with God all things are possible. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1009:It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1010:Love is a force unto itself, sayyidi. For love, people consider the unthinkable...and often achieve the impossible. I would not sneer at its power. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1011:Perhaps the forest simply knew this was where someone like Mariko - a lost girl in search of a place to call home - could plant roots and flourish. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1012:Here was the moment to drop some wisdom from my three years, one month, and fifteen days of being incarcerated at Aurora Hills, but I kept it back. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1013:Imagination is rich, abundant, full of marvels, existence poor, dry, disenchanted. One inhabits, with a full heart, an empty world. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
1014:...I sat there in the boat under her stars and her moon gated on all sides by the mountains watching the last bits of her breath float up and away. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1015:You can fold fitted sheets?" From the kitchen, Ren replied, "Yeah." I scowled. "Are you even human? No mere mortal can fold a fitted sheet. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
1016:Zealousness to learn from life is seldom found, but all the more frequently a desire, inclination, and reciprocal haste to be deceived by life. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1017:Because sometimes a diary can help you vent frustration, face your fears, find your courage, embrace your dreams, and learn to love yourself. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1018:He writes because for him it is a luxury which becomes the more agreeable and more evident, the fewer there are who buy and read what he writes. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1019:In relationship to God one can not involve himself to a certain degree. God is precisely the contradiction to all that is 'to a certain degree'. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1020:A trickle of blood slid down his arm.
He felt nothing. He only saw it.
Because nothing hurt like missing her.
He suspected nothing ever would ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1021:Elle se disait qu'il était peut-être là, séparé d'elle par un rien de temps, par un millième de seconde, plus infranchissable qu'un mur de forteresse. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
1022:felt SO insanely happy I could just . . . VOMIT sunshine, rainbows, confetti, glitter and . . . um . . . those yummy little Skittles thingies! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1023:I thought you were a believer, Ren,” Mack says. “I’m also a scientist,” I fire back, irritated with his mocking tone. “They’re not incompatible.” (It’s ~ Emma Newman, #NFDB
1024:No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1025:To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one's self.... And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one's self. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1026:And here I thought I was being stealthy.” – Ren
“With that girly caw you let out? Did a frog crawl down your throat and die, or what?” – Sundown ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
1027:A warmth settled upon her.
All Shahrzad wanted was before her. All Shahrzad needed was within her.
She woke to each dawn with a grateful heart. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1028:Il n'est qu'un bien, c'est le tendre plaisir.
Quelle immortalité vaut une nuit heureuse ?
Pour tes baisers je vendrais l'avenir. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand,#NFDB
1029:Oh God, I was head over heels, drowning underwater, in love with Ren- with Renald Owens. I was in love with a dude whose real name was Renald. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
1030:The way of objective reflection turns the individual into something accidental, and thus turns existence into an indifferent, vanishing something. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1031:Deep within every man there lies the dread of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the household of millions upon millions. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1032:Everything was cold, and she chewed from habit rather than enjoyment, but she knew she would regret it later if she went to bed hungry as well as angry. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1033:Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well.... ~ Ren Magritte, #NFDB
1034:Hesitating, at the threshold of various illusory paths of life, I considered them one by one, without daring to pursue any one of them. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
1035:Home is where the heart is, and where the hell is, and where the hate is, and where the hopelessness is. Which made Aurora Hills pretty much like home. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1036:I looked at you and knew what was missing in my life. What I wanted in my life. I've never stopped loving you, Ren. I can't make it any simpler than that. ~ Maya Banks, #NFDB
1037:I will live to see tomorrow's sunset. Make no mistake. I swear. I will live to see as many sunsets as it takes. And I will kill you. With my bare hands. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1038:Mats har ingen hemmeligheter. Det er derfor han er så hemmelighetsfull. Ingen må forstyrre ham, han må få være uforstyrret i en forenklet og ren verden. ~ Tove Jansson, #NFDB
1039:Now is easy. It’s easy to say what you want in a passing moment. That’s why a harem waits outside your door and the mother of your child won’t have you. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1040:People hardly ever make use of the freedom which they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as compensation. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1041:To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1042:A Reflexão é o anjo exterminador da espontaneidade… Se fosse verdade que a reflexão devesse controlar a inclinação amorosa, nunca haveria casamento. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1043:Compel a person to an opinion, a conviction, a belief - in all eternity, that I cannot do. But one thing I can do: I can compel him to become aware. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1044:From earliest childhood, an arrow of grief has been embedded in my heart. As long as it remains there, I am ironic — if it is drawn out, I will die. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1045:Neither can one who wills the Good do so out of fear of punishment. In essence, this is the same thing as willing the Good for the sake of a reward. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1046:Only by investing and speaking your
vision with passion can the truth, one
way or the other, finally penetrate the
reluctance of the world. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
1047:SERIOUSLY! That place was an ICKY mildew-and-bug-infested NIGHTMARE! There were more species of INSECTS in there than in the Amazon rain forest!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1048:The commandment that prohibits desiring the goods of one's neighbor attempts to resolve the number one problem of every human community: internal violence. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1049:The only thing criminal about these girls is the way they’re murdering those stilettos. OMG! They walk like dizzy giraffes with jellyfish ankles. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1050:The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, 'Create silence'. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1051:...tian ren he yi. It refers to a state of harmony between people and nature...It is kind of a personal philosophy for each person, yet it is everything. ~ Annie Proulx, #NFDB
1052:I am ripping and cutting. Gluing and pasting. Rearranging reality, redefining, covering, disguising.
Tonight I am taking ugly and making beautiful, ~ Ren e Watson,#NFDB
1053:Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm and shrewdly relapsing into repose. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1054:Si quelques heures font une grande différence dans le cœur de l’homme, faut-il s’en étonner ? Il n’y a qu’une minute de la vie à la mort. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
1055:When I was in the desert, I woke each day and carried on with my life, but it wasn’t living; it was merely existing. I want to live. You are where I live. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1056:A life with Ren was harder to picture. We didn't look as if we belonged together. It was like matching up Ken with Strawberry Shortcake. He needed Barbie. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
1057:He who loved himself became great in himself, and he who loved others became great through his devotion, but he who loved God became greater than all. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1058:My attitude is that you very rarely come in contact with someone of Master Ren's level, so every opportunity I could get to learn from him I wanted to do that. ~ Lou Reed, #NFDB
1059:People say the good Lord fills the stomach before the eyes. I haven’t noticed; my eyes have had enough and I am weary of everything, and yet I hunger. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1060:Ruby’s stories didn’t have morals. They meant one thing in the light and one thing in the dark and another thing entirely when she was wearing sunglasses. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1061:YOU ARE A HERO! YOOOOOU ARE A HEEEEEERO!! So go out and save the world! WARNING! You have just become the unsuspecting victim of a Jedi mind trick. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1062:...for our times are not satisfied with faith and not even with the miracle of changing water into wine - they 'go right on,' changing wine into water. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1063:In a truly global world, the renunciation of violent reprisal is bound to become, in a more and more obvious way, the indispensable condition of our survival. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1064:In what world did you think you could get away with this?" Jalal seethed. "To my cousin? To my family?" His gleaming hilt continued its punishing onslaught. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1065:Kelsey," Ren brushed a hand through his hair, and his smile turned into a lopside grin, "the fact is...I'm in love with you, and I have been for some time. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
1066:Sixty years of virginity tried in vain to dam the waters of instinct as they burst through the granite of good intentions,the rock of irreproachablee conduct. ~ Ren Crevel, #NFDB
1067:FROM BRANDON: Hi Nikki, Looking forward 2 going 2 the dance with you. Good luck finding a dress that will actually make you look beautiful! 7:39 p.m. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1068:It is also said that Genghis Khan wanted to attack the kingdom of Prester John, but that the latter repulsed him by unleashing thunderbolts against his armies. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1069:No one comes back from the dead, no one has entered the world without crying; no one is asked when he wishes to enter life, nor when he wishes to leave. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1070:Balance, Chlo … Give and take. Push and pull. You for her, her for you. I think they're mad that I tried to have it both ways to keep you alive and her, too. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1071:He who first invented the notion of defending Christianity is de facto Judas No. 2; he also betrays with a kiss, only his treachery is that of stupidity. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1072:I’m about to shove these idle hands so far up your ass, you’ll think you’ve become a puppet.” “You know what?” Ren leaned forward, lowering his voice ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
1073:I think beauty is rarely worth the trouble.” Shahrzad gripped Irsa’s hand tighter in sisterly solidarity. “But I am worth a great deal more than what you see. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1074:It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1075:It's inevitable. When you meet the one who makes you smile as you've never smiled before, cry as you've never cried before... there is nothing to do but fall. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1076:It was the last thing I ever said to her. A lie. The worst kind of lie --the kind shrouded in good intentions. The kind cowards use to justify their weakness. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1077:Miss Penelope THINKS I need beauty sleep?! Sorry, Brianna, but Miss Penelope CAN’T think. She doesn’t have a BRAIN! She’s a hand puppet!” I shot back. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1078:The more one approaches madness, the more one equally approaches the truth, and if one does not fall into the former, one must end up necessarily in the latter. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1079:Myths are the retrospective transfiguration of sacrificial crises, the reinterpretation of those crises in light of the cultural order that has arisen from them. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1080:PARIS, FRANCE!! . . . . . . AS AN INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE STUDENT! So now I need to really impress the North Hampton Hills foreign languages department. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1081:There are two ways to be fooled.
One is to believe what isn’t true;
the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
1082:Was your mom a gardener?' I asked innocently.
'What?' Ren’s mouth hung open slightly.
'Because a face like yours belongs planted on the ground. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
1083:As the sea, when it lies calm and deeply transparent, yearns for heaven, so may the pure heart, when it is calm and deeply transparent, yearn for the Good. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1084:For the sadness in legitimate humour consists in the fact that honestly and without deceit it reflects in a purely human way upon what it is to be a child. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1085:It's never been a question of who is going to let me behave a certain way; it's always been a question of who is going to stop me. I thank you for answering it. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1086:Los recuerdos, con el tiempo, se vuelven un precioso tema de conversación y en su alma causará más efecto aquello que conmovió tan profundamente su sentir. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1087:No one shall be forgotten who was great in this world; but everyone was great in his own way, and everyone in proportion to the greatness of what he loved. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1088:Thanks to them, not only did I look like a cover model, but by lunchtime I had received a half dozen compliments on my lip gloss, eye shadow, and blush. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1089:You will leave Starkiller at once and come to me with Kylo Ren. Leave immediately.” He added grimly, “It appears that he may have been right about the girl. ~ Alan Dean Foster, #NFDB
1090:Are you ever angry you were born a woman?"
"I've never been angry to have been born a woman. There have been times I've been angry at how the world treats us. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1091:Brianna is supposed to go potty INSIDE but sometimes has accidents OUTSIDE! And Daisy is supposed to go potty OUTSIDE but sometimes has accidents INSIDE! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1092:[...] Cela ne m’étonne guère, car, au point de vue technique, l’ignorance de tous ces gens, à commencer par Frithjof Schuon lui-même, est véritablement effrayante… ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1093:C'est une habitude constante de tous les schismes et de toutes les hérésies de quelque ordre que ce soit, de se présenter comme un retour à la pureté des origines. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1094:How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1095:In the deepest sense, the being in a state of sin is the sin, the particular sins are not the continuation of sin, they are expressions of its continuation. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1096:Let them fear what is to come. Let them know what it is to cower in the darkness, uncertain of their future.
Let them be afraid of Khorasan and its king. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1097:Of what good is an armchair of velvet when the rest of the environment does not match? It is like a man going around naked and wearing a three-cornered hat. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1098:Some of us had been running all our lives. We ran because we could and because we could not. We ran for our lives. We still thought they were worth running for. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1099:The caliph was marrying again at dusk. Despina had lost count of how many young girls had been brought to the palace to wed a king only to die the following day. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1100:Visible things can be invisible. However, our powers of thought grasp both the visible and the invisible – and I make use of painting to render thoughts visible. ~ Ren Magritte, #NFDB
1101:Aren't people absurd! They never use the freedoms they do have but demand those they don't have; they have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1102:BRANDON: So, how was your week at Hogwarts? Luv the tacky uniforms (LOL)! NIKKI: It was good. Can’t wait to get back to WCD. How was South Ridge? BRANDON: ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1103:But it's inevitable. When you meet the one who makes you smile as you've never smiled before, cry as you've never cried before... there is nothing to do but fall. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1104:Deep within every man there lies the dread of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the tremendous household of millions and millions. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1105:I was like, JUST GREAT! Grandma is finally going SENILE! Doesn’t she understand that some things in life you’re STUCK with and powerless to change?! Jeez! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1106:Love was something that did much to change a person. It brought joy as it brought suffering, and in turn brought about those moments that defined one’s character. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1107:No, not one shall be forgotten who was great in the world. But each was great in his own way, and each in proportion to the greatness of that which he loved. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1108:The majority of men are curtailed "I's"; what was planned by nature as a possibility capable of being sharpened into an I is soon dulled into a third person. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1109:There is something frightful in the fact that the most dangerous thing of all, playing at Christianity, is never included in the list of heresies and schisms. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1110:We women are a sad lot, aren’t we?” “What do you mean?” “Strong enough to take on the world with our bare hands, yet we permit ridiculous boys to make fools of us. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1111:Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief,
but it is belief that is the positive, it is belief
that sustains thought and holds the world together. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
1112:I adore fairy stories. And I still have the wistful spirit of a child that listens wide-eyed to the marvellous tales told over and over during long winter evenings. ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
1113:If you would, give him the love that will enable him to see it for himself. To a lost soul, such a treasure is worth its weight in gold. Worth its weight in dreams. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1114:The good son imitates the father with such passion that father and son become each other's chief stumbling block - a situation the indifferent son more easily avoids. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1115:Tout ce qu'on adore est cadavre, sauf Dieu [...]. C'est pourquoi je dis: mon corps est mort, ma voix est morte; toute science est cadavre, toute oeuvre est un cadavre ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
1116:Words are made for a certain exactness of thought, as tears are for a certain degree of pain. What is least distinct cannot be named; what is clearest is unutterable. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
1117:Anxiety is freedom’s possibility; this anxiety alone is, through faith, absolutely formative, since it consumes all finite ends, discovers all their deceptions. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1118:But an absolute value is not proven by logic or metaphysical arguments; it is accepted, believed (even when not discussed), and hedged about with taboos to protect it. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1119:I look in the mirror, at my thick twists. Black Princess of the Nile. When Nikki said it, she made it sound like a bad thing, but actually, I kind of like that name. ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
1120:It is modest of the nightingale not to require anyone to listen to it; but it is also proud of the nightingale not to care whether any one listens to it or not. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1121:la pensée n’étant pas soumise à la condition spatiale, sa forme n’est aucunement «localisable» ; c’est dans l’ordre subtil qu’elle se situe, non dans l’ordre corporel. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1122:L’arbre tombe feuille à feuille : si les hommes contemplaient chaque matin ce qu’ils ont perdu la veille, ils s’apercevraient bien de leur pauvreté. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
1123:The misfortune of our time is just this, that it has become simply nothing else but 'time', the temporal, which is impatient of hearing anything about eternity. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1124:your locker door. But due to my severe allergic reaction to your coat, all I could muster was a weak and very hoarse whisper that you apparently didn’t hear. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1125:Le Bouillon, c'est notre surveillant ; on l'appelle comme ça parce qu'il dit tout le temps : « Regardez moi bien dans les yeux », et dans le bouillon il y a des yeux. ~ Ren Goscinny, #NFDB
1126:The levelling process is the victory of abstraction over the individual. The levelling process in modern times, corresponds, in reflection, to fate in antiquity. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1127:THREE things to be VERY happy about: 1. The Tyra Banks show ROCKED! 2. My rash completely cleared up. 3. My parents think I’m a fourteen-year-old Rachael Ray. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1128:A mere trinket? Love is a force unto itself, sayyidi. For love, people consider the unthinkable . . . and often achieve the impossible. I would not sneer at its power. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1129:Even though it be true that the conception of God is absolute help, it is also the only help which is absolutely capable of revealing to man his own helplessness. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1130:Jealousy is a childish, petty emotion.” The caliph switched the single shamshir to his left hand in a single, fluid motion. “I don’t feel jealousy. I feel rage.” Tariq ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1131:Learning to know anxiety is an adventure which every man has to affront if he would not go to perdition either by not having known anxiety or by sinking under it. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1132:So I’m definitely NOT going to sit around holding my BREATH, waiting for a FANTASY SUMMER IN PARIS to happen. WHY? Because LIFE is NOT a romantic comedy movie! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1133:Sorry, Nikki! You must be mistaking me for someone who actually CARES! Is your little bathroom DRAMA going to have an intermission soon? Because I need to pee! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1134:When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1135:Because reason...is the only thing that makes us men, and distinguishes us from the beasts, I would prefer to believe that it exists, in its entirety, in each of us... ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
1136:Era porque ellos eran dos partes de un todo. Él no le pertenecía. Y ella no le pertenecía a él. Nunca fue sobre pertenecerle a alguien.
Era sobre pertenecer juntos. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1137:It feels good to have something to bring to the table,” Ren said. “I will agree with that. But don't
mistake having money or stuff as being the same as being worthy. ~ Cameron Dane,#NFDB
1138:The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1139:Het is allemaal waar wat de filosofie zegt: het leven moet achterwaarts worden begrepen. Maar dan vergeet men de tweede zin: dat het voorwaarts moet worden geleefd. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1140:I hope one day my family gets to a place where we can be thankful just to be thankful and not because we've compared ourselves to someone who has less than we do. - Jade ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
1141:I went for him, shook him by the shoulders with nothing better to shout at him but 'Why? Why?'
He answered me gravely, 'It's true. But you must begin to think of *how*. ~ Ren Daumal,#NFDB
1142:NIKKI, I CAN’T WAIT TO SNEAK UPSTAIRS TO PLAY OUR SECRET GAME!” she screamed excitedly. “I PROMISE I WON’T TELL MOM AND DAD A THING! AND, MUH, MUH, MUH, MUH . . ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1143:The point is, every book we had could save us in a different way -- only, we had to open it. We had to drop our eyes to the page and drink in the words that were there. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1144:There was something to be said for the bodiless feeling that came after the cold. Something I would always remember. When you forget how bad it hurts, you feel so free. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1145:[...] assurément, des aveugles seraient tout aussi bien fondés à nier l’existence de la lumière et à en tirer prétexte pour se vanter d’être supérieurs aux hommes normaux ! ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1146:For it is not what happens to me that makes me great, but what I do, and there is surely no one who thinks that anyone became great by winning the big lottery prize. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1147:Miss Bri-Bri has designed a gazillion booty-ful dresses for very famous and important people, like Princess Sugar Plum, Selena Gomez, Beyoncé, and Mrs. Claus! And ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1148:We are surrounded by curtains. We only perceive the world behind a curtain of semblance. At the same time, an object needs to be covered in order to be recognized at all. ~ Ren Magritte, #NFDB
1149:Whatever happens, we've got your back, girlfriend! Unless, of course, the crowd gets mad and decides to tar and feather us. Then, I'll be leaving you in the dust! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1150:She was pleased with Cherie’s contribution, which was a tree with the head of a man and the feet of a bird, possibly a chicken, and spiked eyelashes made of razor blades. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1151:The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1152:Brianna! I wouldn’t feed that nasty sandwich to my WORST ENEMY!” And by worst enemy, I meant people like . . . well, you know . . . MACKENZIE HOLLISTER !! Although, ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1153:Holy McNuggets! Those dancing rats are HUGE! And guess what?! My sister had a Halloween costume like that! Didn’t you, Nikki? Except yours was really stinky . . . ! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1154:I don't know how to describe that feeling, just to say that it's kind of like cold, sunny days. Something is discomforting about a sun that gives no heat but keeps shining. ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
1155:Like Hölderlin, I think that Christ alone allows us to face this reality without sinking into madness. The apocalypse does not announce the end of the world; it creates hope. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1156:My time I divide as follows: the one half I sleep; the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep; that would be a shame, because to sleep is the height of genius. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1157:The dogs were FILTHY. The bathroom was FILTHY. And even Brianna and I were FILTHY. There was just no WAY I could clean up all this FILTH before my parents got home. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1158:Those girls are not the opposite of me. We are perpendicular. We may be on different paths, yes. But there’s a place where we touch, where we connect and are just the same. ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
1159:After all, it is the best time of one’s life, the first period of falling in love, when with every meeting, every glance, one brings home something new to rejoice over. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1160:loved. For he who loved himself became great by himself, and he who loved other men became great by his selfless devotion, but he who loved God became greater than all. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1161:I have just returned from a party of which I was the life and soul; wit poured from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me–but I went away– and wanted to shoot myself. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1162:I won’t ask for forgiveness, but I am so very sorry,” he said, with the simple brevity she was learning to expect. She pressed her lips into his soft, dark hair. “I know.” He ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1163:What Jesus invites us to imitate is his own desire, the spirit that directs him toward the goal on which his intention is fixed: to resemble God the Father as much as possible. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1164:And if you decide to cancel it, make sure you notify Principal Winston and the student council. Although, I wouldn’t want to be the one to disappoint the entire school ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1165:I knew Chloe LOVED to read, but I was in the middle of a MAJOR life crisis! For once, couldn’t she just try focusing on ME instead of her stupid book characters?! Then ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1166:I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.” Ren moved out onto the walkway toward Han. “Will you help me?” “Yes,” Han told him. “Anything. ~ Alan Dean Foster, #NFDB
1167:Is that kind of disrespect … normal?”
Shahrzad lifted a shoulder. “It’s not normal. But it’s not unexpected. It’s the curse of being a woman,” she joked in a morose manner. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1168:Mae West, a famous vaudeville actress, once said, “A man’s kiss is his signature.” I grinned to myself. If that was true, then Ren’s signature was the John Hancock of kisses. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
1169:There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life’s highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1170:There is such strength in being a woman. But it is a strength you must choose for yourself. No one can choose it for you. We can bend the wind to our ear if we would only try. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1171:When writing fiction, memories still filter in, and these memories twist and distort and transform until they become living, breathing pieces of the story, as they have here. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1172:You pretended to be seriously HURT during dodgeball so that I would get DETENTION (which, BTW, could totally RUIN my chances of getting into an Ivy League university)! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1173:A deep gully formed, separating her from General Hux and the arriving troopers. Utilizing the tiny position sensor emplaced in Ren’s belt, Hux had tracked him to this spot. ~ Alan Dean Foster, #NFDB
1174:BRANDON: I have a bag of candy. Will bring it right over. NIKKI: You’re coming to my house? NOW?!! NIKKI: Brandon? NIKKI: Hello? R U there?! NIKKI: We’ll just cook a PB ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1175:OMG! Look at that! They’re ALL wearing the same butt-ugly ensemble! Wait, don’t tell me. They were giving them away for free with a purchase of a McDonald’s Happy Meal! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1176:Silence is the demon's trap, and the more one is silenced, the more terrible the demon; but silence is also the divinity's mutual understanding with the single individual. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1177:So the merman cannot belong to Agnes unless, after having made the infinite movement, the movement of repentance, he makes still one more movement by virtue of the absurd. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1178:the measure of a person’s disposition is this: how far is he from what he understands to what he does, how great is the distance between his understanding and his actions. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1179:What are you doing to me, you plague of a girl?” he whispered.
“If I’m a plague, then you should keep your distance, unless you plan on being destroyed.”
“No. Destroy Me. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1180:It was because they were two parts of a whole. He did not belong to her. And she did not belong to him. It was never about belonging to someone. It was about belonging together. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1181:So it isn't I who am master of my life, I am just one of the threads to be woven into life's calico! Well then, even if I cannot spin, I can at least cut the thread in two. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1182:The men of today boast of the ever growing extent of the modifications they impose on the world, and the consequence is that everything is thereby made more and more ‘artificial’… ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1183:But the eternal is not a thing which can be had regardless of the way in which it is acquired; no, the eternal is not really a thing, but is the way in which it is acquired. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1184:Instead of proclaiming the ideals, they educe what experience teaches, what the experience of all the centuries has taught, that the millions get no further than mediocrity. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1185:Oh my God, I . . . I almost got run over by a moped," I said, turning my bewildered stare back on Ren. "That would've been so embarrassing to be taken out by one of them ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
1186:Shahrzad took a deep breath. “Tariq—” “I’m not leaving without you!” He spun around and pulled her against him. “This is not your fight! It never should have been your fight!” At ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1187:After we hung up, I sent Brandon a text. . . . Thanks again for volunteering to start band practice! Then he texted me a thumbs-up, music notes, and a HEART! SQUEEEEEEE !! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1188:C'est le passé. L'avenir sombre dans le passé dès qu'il a cessé d'être futur.
Le présent n'existe pas. Vouloir l'éterniser, c'était éterniser le néant. C'est ce que j'ai fait ! ~ Ren Barjavel,#NFDB
1189:First of all, a CRUSH can be a noun (the PERSON you’re obsessed with) or a verb (having warm-’n’-fuzzy FEELINGS for that person). Which means you can CRUSH on your CRUSH ! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1190:«It was because they were two parts of a whole. He did not belong to her. And she did not belong to him. It was never about belonging to someone. It was about belonging together.» ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1191:I was STILL haunted by the horrible memory of making homemade ice cream at Thanksgiving and both Brianna and Dad getting their tongues stuck on the metal ice cream thingy! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1192:Le passé et le présent sont deux statues incomplètes: l'une a été retirée toute mutilée du débris des âges, l'autre n'a pas encore reçu sa perfection de l'avenir. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
1193:My favorite color is violet. The scent of roses makes me feel at home, wherever I am. I do not enjoy fish, but I will eat it to make a loved one happy, suffering through my smile. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1194:She remembered Chiyo telling her that finding one's match was like finding one's other half. Mariko had never understood the notion.
She was not a half. She was wholly her own. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1195:You are friendly and outgoing, and you love people. You will most enjoy writing a blog. Select a fab online ID and share your exciting, DIVALICIOUS life with your friends. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1196:But one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1197:Os soldados usam as estrelas no céu para guiá-los em segurança para casa. Você tem sido e sempre será minha estrela guia. Cada vez que olhar para os céus, eu vou pensar em você; - Ren ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1198:Stunned by his own action, Kylo Ren fell to his knees. Following through on the act ought to have made him stronger, a part of him believed. Instead, he found himself weakened. ~ Alan Dean Foster, #NFDB
1199:Then its beating seemed to rise from the depths of the earth, as if the root of the cosmos and my heart were beating as one to nourish the mysterious language of my return to life. ~ Ren Depestre, #NFDB
1200:With every increase in the degree of consciousness, and in proportion to that increase, the intensity of despair increases: the more consciousness the more intense the despair ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1201:I am so fed up and joyless that not only have I nothing to fill my soul, I cannot even conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it - alas, not even the bliss of heaven. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1202:Odio. Venganza. Retribución. Como tú dices, la venganza nunca podrá reemplazar lo que he perdido. Lo que has perdido. Todo lo que tenemos es ahora. Nuestra promesa es hacerlo mejor. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1203:There will never be another Ren Lewis. And that’s why God gave you such impossible talents. Because you were meant to do things humans shouldn’t. That is your talent and your curse. ~ Sarah Noffke, #NFDB
1204:War is a total social phenomenon. In this respect, Clausewitz’s analysis is a precursor of Durkheim’s sociology. Clausewitz has things to teach us about “mass” violence and contagion. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1205:Well, MacKenzie, YOU’RE the expert on toilets! It’s only 8:00 a.m. and your BRAIN is completely CONSTIPATED while your MOUTH has a severe case of DIARRHEA! Please, go FLUSH! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1206:With every increase in the degree of consciousness, and in proportion to that increase, the intensity of despair increases: the more consciousness the more intense the despair. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1207:[...] d’ailleurs nous ne pouvons nous empêcher de constater que, comme tous les propagandistes, les apôtres de la tolérance sont très souvent, en fait, les plus intolérants des hommes. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1208:If man were a beast or an angel, he would not be able to be in anxiety. Since he is both beast and angel, he can be in anxiety, and the greater the anxiety, the greater the man. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1209:Your packmate?
Ren lowered his head. My second
I'm sorry. My father rested his muzzle on Ren's shoulder.
Ren whimpered softly, leaning into my father. ~ Andrea Cremer,#NFDB
1210:People fall in and out of love with the rising and setting of the sun. Rather like a boy who loves the color green one day, only to discover on the morrow that he truly prefers blue. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1211:The next day over Ren's third omelet and Kishan's fourth, Ren announced he wanted to take up wushu again. Kishan clapped his hands together, showing he couldn't wait to clobber Ren. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
1212:Unless you grasp that it requires all the strength of spirit to die, that the hero always dies before his death, you will not come particularly far in your observations on life. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1213:Well, if I tell Mr. Zimmerman, I can kiss the newspaper good-bye!” I groaned. “He already threatened to FIRE me if I compromised the security of the Miss Know-It-All website. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1214:What a difference! Under the esthetic sky, everything is buoyant, beautiful, transient! when ethics arrives on the scene, everything becomes harsh, angular and infinitely boring ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1215:What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1216:You could always go home."
"To my brothers and their screaming children?" Rahim scoffed. "To the constant attempts to marry me off to a cousin's friend's ugly sister? I think not. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1217:A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1218:An illusion can never be destroyed directly, and only by indirect means can it be radically removed... That is, one must approach from behind the person who is under an illusion. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1219:It isn’t running away they’re afraid of. We wouldn’t get far. It’s those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge. —Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1220:Le nom de « religiosité » ne conviendrait-il pas beaucoup mieux à un tel ensemble de vagues aspirations sentimentales, qu’une étrange illusion fait prendre pour de la « spiritualité » ? ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1221:Let us speak of this in purely human terms. Oh! how pitiable a person who has never felt the loving urge to sacrifice everything for love, who has therefore been unable to do so! ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1222:The only fundamental basis for understanding is that one himself becomes what he understands and one understands only in proportion to becoming himself that which he understands. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1223:What men call chance is simply their ignorance of causes; if the statement that something had happened by chance were to mean that it had no cause, it would be a contradiction in terms. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1224:You a sower today, baby. You cast seeds of knowledge to those chil’ren. You ain’t gonna know how or where or if they gonna blossom, but you did God’s work today—you sowed some seeds. ~ Laila Ibrahim, #NFDB
1225:Et voilà ! Ils sont là ! Ils sont nous ! Ils ont repeuplé le monde, et ils sont aussi cons qu'avant, et prêts à faire de nouveau sauter la baraque. C'est pas beau, ça ? C'est l'homme ! ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
1226:Ben Solo had sought to abandon everything he had been, even casting aside his name. But Luke sensed that Kylo Ren was just a shell around the same broken boy he had tried so hard to reach. ~ Jason Fry, #NFDB
1227:Book five of Dork Diaries is one of my favorite books it brings my thoughts deep into the book and think if you haven't read it you should you will probably fell just as I fell. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1228:But I don't shut up and I don't die.
I live
and fight, maddening
those who rule my country.
For if I live
I fight,
and if I fight
I contribute to the dawn. ~ Otto Ren Castillo,#NFDB
1229:I was a little sister to two alpha male brothers. Me finding a man was going to be something they would not dig dealing with normally.
Ren being a Zano didn’t make matters better. ~ Kristen Ashley,#NFDB
1230:On dit même que le diable, quand il veut, est fort bon théologien ; il est vrai, pourtaint qu'il ne peut s'empêcher de laisse échapper toujours quelque sottise, qui est comme sa signature ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1231:melt twenty-eight caramel candies into a sauce with two tablespoons of water in the microwave, (2) cook one bag of popcorn, and (3) stir them together, shape into balls, and EAT! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1232:No one ever comes back from the dead., no one ever enters the world without weeping; no one is ever asked when he wishes to enter life, no one is ever asked when he wishes to leave. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1233:Nunca se sabe qué desesperadas ideas pueden ocurrírsele a un hombre desesperado; en ocasiones, hasta los más tímidos y previsores se atreven, en tal estado, a los más audaces actos. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1234:On se réconcilie avec un ennemi qui nous est inférieur pour les qualités du coeur ou de l'esprit ; on ne pardonne jamais à celui qui nous surpasse par l'âme et le génie. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
1235:That’s when I totally lost it and screamed, “Wow! MacKenzie is just so WONDERFUL! I bet she farts GLITTER too!” But I just said it inside my head, so no one else heard it but me. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1236:There is a view of life which conceives that where the crowd is, there is also truth. There is another view of life which conceives that wherever there is a crowd, there is untruth. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1237:Vengeance succeeds in spanning generations and encompassing the world. It transcends time and space. One should not be surprised that in the ancient world vengeance was taken to be sacred. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1238:With each word, he broke past every barrier, every wall. And Sharazad's will fought him, screamed a silent scream, while her heart welcomed the intrusion as a songbird welcomes the dawn. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1239:I knew middle school was going to be challenging, but I never expected to end up DEAD in the computer lab, wearing a SUPERHERO COSTUME, with four slices of PIZZA stuck to my BUTT! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1240:What did we possess of real value? ...For no one saw anything around him or in him which really belonged to him. It reached the point where we were just eight beggars, possessing nothing... ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
1241:You are ridiculous, Khalid Ibn al-Rashid. I am just one girl. You are the Caliph of Khorasan, and you have a responsibility to a kingdom.”
“If you are just one girl, I am just one boy. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1242:But doubt is wily and cunning and never, as it is sometimes said to be, loud or defiant. It is unassuming and sly, not bold or assertive - and the more unassuming, the more dangerous. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1243:For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than the increasing discovery of my own ignorance ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
1244:In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1245:One is not, my dear sir, a superior man merely because one sees the world in an odious light. One only hates mankind and life itself through failing to look deeply enough. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
1246:The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God. — Soren Kierkegaard ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1247:You, who are so observant, will no doubt concede the generalization that people divide into two large classes, those who live mainly in hope and those who live mainly in recollection. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1248:Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1249:Am I a hypocrite?” I ask. “You’re a black girl who fell in love with a white boy.” “And a black girl who cares about race and class issues.” Nikki leans back in the chair. “You can be both. ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
1250:I see it perfectly; there are two possible situations - once can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1251:It is dangerous to preach humility to feeble souls. This distances them even more from themselves. Someone who is rigid, and turned inwards, can become aware of his destiny only by rebelling. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
1252:People had not so much as the courage and honesty and truth to say to God bluntly, "That I cannot agree to," they resorted to hypocrisy and thought they were perfectly secure. pp 168-6 ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1253:Y la esperanza va ensanchando por momentos su ciclo sobre mí, y una imagen, su imagen, pasa vagamente por el éter, como la luna, a veces cegándome de luz ya veces cegándome de sombras. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1254:You train yourself in the art of being mysterious to everyone. My dear friend! What if there were no one, who cared about guessing your riddle, what pleasure would you then take in it? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1255:Freedom is always in communication (even taking the religious meaning of the word into consideration does no harm); unfreedom withdraws ever more in its reserve and will not communicate. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1256:I love you, Shahrzad al-Khayzuran. There is nothing I would not do for you. Nothing I would not consider if it meant keeping you safe. The world itself should fear me if it stands between us. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1257:This is how I know blood is meaningless family connections are a lot like old gum -you don't have to keep chewing. You can always spit it out and stick it under the table. You can walk away. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1258:You are free to leave, as well." Khalid resumed his trek toward his chamber.
Jalal cut it front of Khalid. "You look terrible." His eyes were bright, and his forehead was lined with worry. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1259:You should therefore say: alone in one's boat, alone with one's care, alone with one's despair, which one is craven enough to want rather to keep than submit to the pain of being healed. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1260:A poet is an unhappy being whose heart it torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1261:I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1262:I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1263:Satan's despair is absolute because Satan, as pure spirit, is pure consciousness, and for Satan (and all men in his predicament) every increase in consciousness is an increase in despair. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1264:The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1265:There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1266:For the universal will constantly torture him and say, 'You ought to have talked. Where will you find the certainty that it was not after all a hidden pride which governed your resolution? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1267:know love is fragile. And loving someone like you is near impossible. Like holding something shattered through a raging sandstorm. If you want her to love you, shelter her from that storm . . . ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1268:Murderer, monster, madman... Khalid may very well be all of those things. But he's also loved. By me and by my father. But, most of all, by Shazi. With her, he is as fiercely loved as he loves. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1269:The slaves of paltriness, the frogs in life’s swamp, will naturally cry out, “Such a love is foolishness. The rich brewer’s widow is a match fully as good and respectable.” Let them croak. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1270:It is perhaps the misfortune of my life that I am interested in far too much but not decisively in any one thing; all my interests are not subordinated in one but stand on an equal footing. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1271:And thus, the actions of life often not allowing any delay, it is a truth very certain that, when it is not in our power to determine the most true opinions we ought to follow the most probable. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
1272:More and more, it seems to me, modern individualism assumes the form of a desperate denial of the fact that, through mimetic desire, each of us seeks to impose his will upon his fellow man, whom he ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1273:Still, Depestre does not shy away from showing the ways that a town, or a country, as he has stated in several interviews, can become zombified through repression, desperation, fear, and neglect. ~ Ren Depestre, #NFDB
1274:The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. That is what I now recognize as the most important thing. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1275:Is this the same teaching, when Christ says to the rich young man, "Sell all that thou hast, and give it to the poor"; and when the priest says, "Sell all that thou hast and...give it to me"? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1276:It isn't at all difficult for philosophy to begin. Far from it: it begins with nothing and can accordingly always begin. What seems so difficult to philosophy and the philosophers is to stop. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1277:They're us!They've repopulated the world, and now they've achieved the same state of idiocy they were in before, ready to blow themselves up all over again. Great, isn't it? That's the human race! ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
1278:As the ironist does not have the new within his power, it might be asked how he destroys the old, and to this it must be answered: he destroys the given actuality by the given actuality itself. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1279:In relation to the labyrinth of her heart, every young girl is an Ariadne; she owns the thread by which one can find one’s way through it, but she owns it without herself knowing how to use it. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1280:One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1281:So long as western people imagine that there only exists a single type of humanity, that there is only one 'civilization', at different stages of development, no mutual understanding will be possible. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1282:Then I had a continental breakfast with freshly squeezed orange juice, half a bagel with goat cheese, and a green smoothie, all served on a silver tray by my maid, Olga, right in my bedroom. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1283:We condemn the Inquisition in the name of Christian values. After all, we can't condemn it in the name of the Mahabharata, which is comprised of a series of alternating murders, rather like the Iliad! ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1284:But, his majesty Ao ji says that the night before the murder, Lord Ren Shun said something about a mysterious book. And given that he`s now dead... well, who else would kill someone over a book.? ~ Genevieve Cogman, #NFDB
1285:Quand on parle des vices d’un homme, si on vous dit : “Tout le monde le dit” ne le croyez pas ; si l’on parle de ses vertus en vous disant encore : “Tout le monde le dit”, croyez-le. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
1286:So that she could be by his side, make him smile as she laughed, weave tales by lamplight, and share secrets in the dark. So that she could fall asleep in his arms and awaken to a brilliant tomorrow. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1287:It makes me feel like I'm learning a secret code or something. I don't know. It's powerful....knowing how to read words and knowing when to speak them is the most valuable commodity a person can have. ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
1288:She refused to die like an animal locked in a cage. Like a girl with nothing to save her name. Better to die by the sword. Better to die at the mercy of the nightbeasts. To die in the night air. Free. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1289:Everywhere and always, when human beings either cannot or dare not take their anger out on the thing that has caused it, they unconsciously search for substitutes, and more often than not they find them. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1290:She wanted to kiss him.
No.
It was one thing to return his kiss; she’d been prepared for that. But it was another thing entirely to want his kiss… another thing entirely to desire his affections. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1291:For like a poisonous breath over the fields, like a mass of locusts over Egypt, so the swarm of excuses is a general plaque, a ruinous infection among men, that eats off the sprouts of the Eternal. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1292:I'd much rather fall to my death than admit my weakness to you."
"The captain of the Royal Guard wants to impress a lowly handmaiden?"
"A clumsy young man wants to impress a beautiful young woman. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1293:If I’m a plague, then you should keep your distance, unless you plan on being destroyed.” The weapons still in her grasp, she shoved against his chest. “No.” His hands dropped to her waist. “Destroy me. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1294:In reality I was a pencil drawing of a photocopy of a Polaroid of my sister- you could see the resemblance in a certain light if you were seeking it out because I told you first if you were being nice. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1295:Let us note in this regard a rather interesting formulation cited by Valli: in all medieval (as opposed to modern) art, 'what is at stake is the incarnation of an idea, not the idealization of a reality'; ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1296:When you are one of several, then you have lost your freedom; you cannot send for your traveling boots whenever you wish, you cannot move aimlessly about in the world. ~ S ren Kierkegaard Either/Or ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1297:If we ask what poetry is
we may say in general that it is
a victory over the world;
it is through a negation of the
imperfect actuality
that poetry opens up
a higher actuality ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
1298:Reflection is and remains the hardest creditor in existence; hitherto it has cunningly bought up all the possible views of life, but it cannot buy the essentially religious and eternal view of life. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1299:The moon is beautiful, isn't it?" she said.
"I imagine the moon would be a thing of beauty on a night like this. But I prefer what I'm looking at now." His eyes remained focused on Mariko as he spoke. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1300:[The writer] can easily foresee his fate ... in an age when an author who wants to have readers must take care to write in such a way that the book can easily be perused during an afternoon nap .... ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1301:Brianna! Did you take my clock again?!” I yelled. “If I’M late for school, it’s all YOUR fault!” “I didn’t take your clock. Miss Penelope did! She thinks you need all the BEAUTY SLEEP you can get! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1302:Did you hear?” Ruha said quietly once the two young girls had left. “This one volunteered.” Despina cut her gaze at Ruha. “What?” “She volunteered to marry the caliph.” Despina blinked. “Poor little fool. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1303:I smiled as I leaned in, pressing my forehead against his. I was brave, and I had my entire life to be brave. I love you, I whispered.
Ren’s lips curved into a grin against mine. Prove it. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
1304:It is not difference that dominates the world, but the obliteration of difference by mimetic reciprocity, which itself, being truly universal, shows the relativism of perpetual difference to be an illusion. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1305:Yes. Miss Halfwolf scares me a lot. But that doesn’t make her a monster. Don’t be like the Witches, Master Ren. They call us monsters because it makes it easier to hurt us. But monsters are people, too. ~ Marjorie M Liu, #NFDB
1306:You have no idea how much it bothers me to know that I was the man she meant to kill tonight and now I have to protect her.” – Ren “Yeah, well, she tried to kill me, too, and I got over it.” – Sundown ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1307:Your sweetheart isn't too happy about this," Shay said, still smiling. I looked toward the back of the room. Ren watched us, holding a pair of scissors. I'd never seen a classroom tool look so dangerous. ~ Andrea Cremer, #NFDB
1308:A fé não constitui, portanto, um impulso de ordem estética; é de outra ordem muito mais elevada, justamente porque pressupõe a resignação. Não é o instinto imediato do coração, mas o paradoxo da vida. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1309:For all his dour black and stern expressions, all the whispered rumors of trick swords and cold brutality, he did not appear worthy of genuine fear. He appeared bored with life. Bored and in need of a nap. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1310:I got up at exactly 6:15 a.m., showered, and did ten minutes of yoga. Then I had a continental breakfast with freshly squeezed orange juice, half a bagel with goat cheese, and a green smoothie, all ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1311:She awakens first at the touch of love; before that time she is a dream, yet in her dream life we can distinguish two stages: in the first, love dreams about her; in the second, she dreams about love. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1312:She was a dangerous, dangerous girl. A plague. A Mountain of Adamant who tore the iron from ships, sinking them to their watery graves without a second thought. With a mere smile and a wrinkle of her nose. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1313:The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism – no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity served up sweet. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1314:concept of ren: inadequately conveyed by “benevolence,” that quality which is quintessentially human, which can only be cultivated through interaction with others, and which a solitary person cannot manifest. ~ Ted Chiang, #NFDB
1315:Moi, l'homme, je suis anglais ou patagon et heureux de l'être, mais je suis d'abord l'homme vivant, je ne veux pas tuer et je ne veux pas qu'on me tue. Je refuse la guerre, quelles qu'en soient les raisons. ~ Ren Barjavel, #NFDB
1316:When she wound her fingers in his hair to draw her body against his, he stilled for breath, and she knew, as he knew, that they were lost. Lost forever. In this kiss. This kiss that would change everything. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1317:about but a business deal?” “I—I don’t have the slightest idea!” I stammered. That’s when I looked deep into my father’s eyes and desperately pleaded with him: “DAD! PLEASE! DON’T GO TO THAT MEETING! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1318:But could one ever know what to expect of the redheaded creature who had already carried off a son-in-law, or of the crane who had devoured the most clairvoyant of all fish-owls ever to haunt an earthly dream? ~ Ren Crevel, #NFDB
1319:Check on Ren.” – Sundown
“In the electricity cube? What kind of psycho are you?” – Sasha
“Sasha…” – Sundown
“Fine. I get shocked, you better start checking shoes before you put them on.” – Sasha ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
1320:for there are things for which a symbolical mode of expression properly
so called is the only one possible, and which will consequently never
be understood by those for whom symbolism is a dead letter. ~ Ren Gu non,#NFDB
1321:He cannot become old, for he has never been young; he cannot become young, for he has already become old; in a way he cannot die, for he has never lived; in a way he cannot live, for he is already dead. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1322:I stared down the wall, which did not stare back at me. I wouldn’t let her rattle me. The cart barely had any books on it, and the ones there were just tossed on, upside down, disorganized. It hurt to look. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1323:It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content… it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble, and from babble to confusion. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
1324:The preference that cultures grant to themselves, in other words, must be perpetuated at any cost. This preference is inseparably bound up with the identity, the autonomy, the very existence of these cultures. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1325:You have no idea how much it bothers me to know that I was the man she meant to kill tonight and now I have to protect her.” – Ren
“Yeah, well, she tried to kill me, too, and I got over it.” – Sundown ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
1326:About as genuine as tea made from a bit of paper which once lay in a drawer beside another piece of paper which had been used to wrap up a few tea leaves from which tea had already been made three times. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1327:¡Maldito azar! ¡Tú, mi único amigo íntimo, único ser al que creía digno de confianza, de mi alianza y de mi enemistad, siempre inestable y siempre igual a ti mismo, siempre incomprensible, eterno enigma! ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1328:Truth always rests with the minority … because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1329:Tyhmät ja touhukkaat ihmiset kuvittelevat, että he toimivat ja toimivat ja toimivat. Sen sijaan käy suorastaan tietynlaisten älypäiden tunnusmerkistä se taituruus, jota osoittaen he välttävät toimimisen. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1330:All men have a natural fear of making a mistake--by believing too well of a person. However, the error of believing too ill of a person is perhaps not feared, at least not in the same degree as the other. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1331:Happy my lot in life if my desire coincides with my duty, and conversely; and most people's task in life is exactly to stay under their obligation, and by their enthusiasm to transform it into their wish. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1332:Fingers circled my wrist. My head whipped around to see Ren’s eyes dancing with dark mirth while he drew me toward him like he was reeling in a prize catch.
“So what’s for lunch?” He pulled me onto his lap. ~ Andrea Cremer,#NFDB
1333:For with his little secret that he cannot divulge, the poet buys this power of the word to tell everybody else's dark secrets. A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1334:I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it...but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1335:It's kind of not fair for us to feel guilty for getting what we deserve. We work hard....I know so many people who work hard but still don't get the things they deserve, sometimes not even the things they need. ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
1336:Some things do not have to be said. You didn’t have to tell me you were in love with Khalid Ibn al-Rashid. And I didn’t have to tell you I cried myself to sleep for weeks after you left. Love speaks for itself. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1337:Then never speak of sending me away again. I am not yours to do with as you will.'
Khalid's features smoothed knowingly. 'How right you are. You are not mine.' He dropped his palm from the door. 'I am yours. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1338:The paradox in Christian truth is invariably due to the fact that it is the truth that exists for God. The standard of measure and the end is superhuman; and there is only one relationship possible: faith. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1339:Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubld himself to guess your riddle--what joy, then, would you have in it? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1340:Language is partly something originally given, partly that which develops freely. And just as the individual... can never reach the point at which he becomes absolutely independent ... so too with language. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1341:When Brandon sees me tomorrow, he’ll hopefully be so captivated by my magical, mystical, and miraculous BEAUTY that he’ll profess his undying LOVE for me. Or at least notice that my zits have cleared up! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1342:Yes, I know. It’s a VERY prestigious school, known for its outstanding students, rigorous academics, chic uniforms, and beautiful campus that’s a twist between Hogwarts and a five-star luxury hotel! Most ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1343:You are—remarkable. Every day, I think I am going to be surprised by how remarkable you are, but I am not. Because this is what it means to be you. It means knowing no bounds. Being limitless in all that you do. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1344:And, with a kiss, Shahrzad let herself fall.
For the boy who was an impossible, improbable study in contrasts. The boy who burned her life to cinder, only to remake of it a world unlike any she had ever known. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1345:And with me, Mom, and Dad out of the way, Brianna would have unlimited use of my CELL PHONE and get to eat her favorite meal—a big bowl of ketchup, raisins, and ice cream—for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1346:Don't you know that a midnight hour comes when everyone has to take off his mask? Do you think life always lets itself be trifled with? Do you think you can sneak off a little before midnight to escape this? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1347:Do you understand, Brat Calipha?” Despina continued.
Shahrzad glanced over her shoulder at her handmaiden, in stalwart silence.
Despina sighed. “On pain of death…you are as important to him as his own life. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1348:If this had not been the case with Abraham, then perhaps he might have loved God but not
believed; for he who loves God without faith reflects upon himself, he who loves God believingly reflects upon God. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
1349:They said I have to." "Have to what?" "Break you." ... "I don't believe you wanted to hurt me." I said. "And I don't believe you would have, even if Monroe hadn't---" ... "I wouldn't have." Ren whispered. ~ Andrea Cremer, #NFDB
1350:She refused to die like an animal locked in a cage. Like a girl with nothing, save her name.
Better to die by the sword. Better to die at the mercy of the nightbeasts.
To die in the night air. Free. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1351:You never did...anything else with Ren?"
I knew he wasn't talking about me painting him and stuff. "Why would I want him when I got you?" And then I got worried, 'cause I wasn't sure if I still had Larry or not. ~ J L Merrow,#NFDB
1352:Men think that it is impossible for a human being to love his enemies, for enemies are hardly able to endure the sight of one another. Well, then, shut your eyes--and your enemy looks just like your neighbor. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1353:Tink was there … Slung over his shoulder was a…Wonder Woman backpack. I parted from Ren, walking up to him. “Where did you get that?”
“I stole it from a little fae girl.” He paused. “Hashtag thug life. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
1354:You don’t belong here, Maxwell! You’re just a pathetic little FAKE, and I’m going to expose the truth to the entire WORLD! So you better watch your back!” Then she cackled like a witch and sashayed away. I ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1355:If we ceased to desire the goods of our neighbor, we would never commit murder or adultery or theft or false witness. If we respected the tenth commandment, the four commandments that precede it would be superfluous. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1356:Lucky for me it wasn’t Brianna at my door, but my parents. Before I could say, “Come in”, they just kind of barged in, like they always do, which really irritated me, because this is supposed to be MY room! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1357:She was a riddle, who mysteriously possessed her own solution, a secret, and what are all diplomats' secrets compared with this, an enigma, and what in all the world is so beautiful as the word that solves it? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1358:We both need to be there for Chloe when she’s ready to talk. Just remember . . . ‘A friend is someone who knows the SONG in your HEART and can SING it back to you when you FORGET the WORDS!’—Author unknown. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1359:Indeed the study of the Easy as we know it today, if undertaken in a really direct way, would be of great assistance towards the understanding of all Antiquity, on account of that very quality of fixity and stability. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1360:Der Freiheit Inhalt, intellektuell gesehen, ist Wahrheit, und die Wahrheit macht den Menschen frei. Eben darum aber ist die Wahrheit ein Werk der Freiheit dergestalt, dass sie fort und fort die Wahrheit erzeugt. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1361:I am young, and, therefor, I know my words only carry a certain weight in the world, but I do know enough to realize you cannot control the actions of others. You can only control what you do with yourself afterward. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1362:Il est à peine besoin de dire, après cela, que le Taoïsme est particulièrement mal compris : on s’imagine y trouver toute sorte de choses, excepté la doctrine purement métaphysique qu’il est essentiellement en réalité… ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1363:When things are bad, we take a bit of comfort in the thought that they could always be WORSE. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get BETTER.’—Malcolm S. Forbes. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1364:am young, and, therefore, I know my words only carry a certain weight with the world, but I do know enough to realize you cannot control the actions of others. You can only control what you do with yourself afterward. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1365:But the new Calipha of Khorasan was purportedly the quiet sort. And when Despina had last seen her—though it was but a brief instant—the lovely girl seemed . . . elsewhere. As though her mind lived amongst the clouds. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1366:A dynamic force seems to be drawing first Western society, then the rest of the world, toward a state of relative indifferentiation never before known on earth, a strange kind of nonculture or anticulture we call modern. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1367:Is that kind of disrespect . . . normal?” Shahrzad lifted a shoulder. “It’s not normal. But it’s not unexpected. It’s the curse of being a woman,” she joked in a morose manner. “It’s obscene. He deserves to be flogged. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1368:NIKKI: Really?! What are the ingredients? BRANDON: Just popcorn and caramel candy. Cooks in microwave. NIKKI: That’s all?! Very cool! Be right back . . . NIKKI: We have popcorn ! But no caramel candy ! BRANDON: ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1369:Were I to wish for anything I would not wish for wealth and power, but for the passion of the possible, that eye which everywhere, ever young, ever burning, sees possibility. Pleasure disappoints, not possibility. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1370:And this makes me wonder if a black girl’s life is only about being stitched together and coming undone, being stitched together and coming undone. I wonder if there’s ever a way for a girl like me to feel whole. Wonder ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
1371:He is Monroe's son." I pointed at Ren. "And he's your best hope to win this war." "He's what?" Shay's voice was dead quiet. I'm what?" Ren kept his own voice to a whisper, but the look he'd thrown me was a bit alarmed. ~ Andrea Cremer, #NFDB
1372:Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1373:One hundred lives for the one you took. One life to one dawn. Should you fail but a single morn, I shall take from you your dreams. I shall take from you your city. And I shall take from you these lives, a thousandfold. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1374:The stone that was rolled before Christ's tomb might appropriately be called the philosopher's stone because its removal gave not only the pharisees but, now for 1800 years, the philosophers so much to think about. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1375:A crowd in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1376:As a special surprise and a reward for all of my hard work, Trevor Chase booked a VIP suite for an overnight stay for my family and me! He’d also arranged for us to be picked up and transported by a limo service! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1377:Fools and young men prate about everything being possible for a man. That, however, is a great error. Spiritually speaking, everything is possible, but in the world of the finite there is much which is not possible. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1378:Mariko realized that every person she’d ever met, from the smallest of children to the most notorious of thieves, had a life as intricate and significant as that of an emperor or a samurai or an elegant lady of the court. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1379:Tap for all del ikke lysten til å gå: jeg går meg til det daglige velbefinnende hver dag og går fra enhver sykdom; jeg har gått meg til mine beste tanker og jeg kjenner ingen tanke så tung at man ikke kan gå fra den. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1380:This is the way a person always gains courage; when he fears a greater danger, he always has the courage to face a lesser one; when he is exceedingly afraid of one danger, it is as if the others did not exist at all. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1381:Vivienne Westwood, The Sex Pistols, Seven Stars, coffee with milk and strawberry cake. And Ren flowers.
Nana's favorite things never change.
It was so cool for someone like me who keeps on changing their mind. ~ Ai Yazawa,#NFDB
1382:We women are a sad lot, aren't we?"
"What do you mean?"
"Strong enough to take on the world with our bare hands, yet we permit ridiculous boys to make fools of us."
"I am not a fool."
"No, you're not. Not yet. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1383:[C]ouches and chairs covered in scratches aim away from one another, making it possible for a dozen people to sit in this room at once and not have to talk to one other person, which is a miracle in furniture arrangement. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1384:Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1385:Teenage girls know more than we're given credit for. We sense danger even when everyone's telling us it's fine, he's a perfectly nice man, an upstanding member of our community, have you tasted his sugar-cream pie? ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1386:It sometimes so happens that people who imagine that they are fighting the devil, whatever their particular notion of the devil may be, are thus turned, without any suspicion of the fact on their part, into his best servants! ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1387:SATURDAY, MAY 31—11:15 P.M. IN MY BEDROOM Okay, I think this is probably going to be my LONGEST diary entry EVER! First of all, I didn’t have the slightest idea if Brandon was even going to show up at Queasy Cheesy. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1388:Man is the synthesis of the infinite and the finite, the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short it is a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two factors. So regarded, man is not yet a self. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1389:On principle' one can do anything and what one does is, fundamentally, a matter of indifference, just as a man's life remains insignificant even though 'on principle' he gives his support to all the 'needs of the times. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1390:Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight to avoid this? ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1391:I broke up with Ren a year and nine months ago. Soon it will be two springs.
My 20th birthday is in march. I'm working hard to buy myself a present.
A one-way ticket to Tokyo.
I will just carry my guitar and cigarettes. ~ Ai Yazawa,#NFDB
1392:Only a TOTAL DORK would be caught WRITING in a DIARY!! This is THE worst present I have ever received in my entire life! I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs: “Mom, I don’t need a STUPID book with 288 BLANK pages!! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1393:Only the lower natures forget themselves and become something new. Thus the butterfly has entirely forgotten that it was a caterpillar, perhaps it may in turn so entirely forget it was a butterfly that is becomes a fish. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1394:To have distinctiveness is to believe in the distinctiveness of everyone else, because distinctiveness is not mine but is God’s gift by which he gives being to me, and he indeed gives to all, gives being to all. (p. 271) ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1395:That instant he dies – for one who does not understand that the whole power of the spirit is required for dying, and that the hero always dies before he dies, that man will not get so very far with his conception of life. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1396:Toujours et partout on peut résumer la situation initiale en termes d'une crise qui fait peser sur la communauté et son système culturel une menace de destruction totale. Cette crise est presque toujours résolue par la violence. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1397:All the means we've been given to stay alert we use to ornament our sleep. If instead of endlessly inventing new ways to make life more comfortable we'd apply our ingenuity to fabricating instruments to jog man out of his torpor! ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
1398:Idleness, we are accustomed to say, is the root of all evil. To prevent this evil, work is recommended.... Idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; on the contrary, it is truly a divine life, if one is not bored.... ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1399:Let us add that nature is given its full significance only if it is looked at as offering us a means of rising up to the knowledge of divine truths, which is precisely the essential function which we have recognized in symbolism. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1400:Hate. This girl hated him with all the violence Khalid felt in his heart. Hated the very sight of him. Hated everything he was with everything she had. Her hate was a thing of glory. She was not afraid. Why isn’t she afraid? His ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1401:I am alone, as I have always been; abandoned not by men, that would not pain me, but by the happy spirits of joy who in countless hosts encircled me, who met everywhere with their kind, pointed everywhere to an opportunity. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1402:I know love is fragile. And loving someone like you is near impossible. Like holding something shattered through a raging sandstorm. If you want her to love you, shelter her from that storm…And make certain that storm isn’t you. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1403:. . . ITALIAN GELATO. TAKE THE deliciousness of a regular ice-cream cone, times it by a million, then sprinkle it with crushed-up unicorn horns. Ren stopped me after my fourth scoop. I probably would have kept going forever ~ Jenna Evans Welch, #NFDB
1404:Kahraman, gururun aldatıcı ilahından vazgeçerek kölelikten kurtulur ve sonunda mutsuzluğun hakikatine erişir. Bu vazgeçiş, yaratıcı vazgeçişten ayırt edilemez. Romantıik bir yazarı gerçek romancı yapan metafizik arzuyu yenmesidir. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1405:Lauren," he began gravely, "I would like four daughters with wobbly blue eyes and studious horn-rimmed glasses on their little noses. Also, I've become very partial to your honey-colored hair, so if you could manage… ~ Judith McNaught, #NFDB
1406:Przyszłość zachowa czarnych we wdzięcznej pamięci. Przyjdzie taki dzień, kiedy siedzące pod palmami młode damy ze łzami w oczach czytać będą powieść Ostatni Murzyn. A Niger stanie się równie romantyczną rzeką jak Ren. THE END. ~ Sven Lindqvist, #NFDB
1407:The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1408:The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1409:The tears and the pain all but blinding her, she forced open her eyes one more time, to a curtain of dark hair; to a waterfall of black ink spilling across the last page of her life.
No.
I’m not nothing.
I was loved. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1410:Truth always rests with the minority … because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion” – Soren Kierkegaard ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1411:I am convinced that God is love, this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably blissful, when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than does the lover for his object. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1412:J'attends avec impatience le jour où les chercheurs se rendront compte que, dans les mythes, ils ont affaire aux mêmes thèmes que dans la chasse aux sorcières, structurés de la même façon et faussement perçus comme indéchiffrables. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1413:Sasha and Ren exchanged a bemused stare. "I don't drive," they said simultaneously.
Her heart sank. Of course they didn't. Ren flew as a bird and Sasha did that flashing thing. When would they need a driver's license? ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
1414:Silas?" I glanced from Ren to the mad-haired scholar. "He was your company?"
"Still jealous?" Ren winked at me.
"I was not jealous," I said.
"Really?" Ren said. "So that harpy-ish tone was your normal speaking voice? ~ Andrea Cremer,#NFDB
1415:The more he needs God, the more deeply he comprehends he is in need of God, and then the more he in his need presses forward to God, the more perfect he is... To need God is nothing to be ashamed of but is perfection itself. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1416:These were not the words of a madman. For the first time, Tariq saw what Shahrzad saw when she looked at Khalid Ibn al-Rashid. He saw a boy. Who loved a girl. More than anything in the world. And he hated him all the more for it. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1417:When I had to be a badass all day and cases got tough and I came home, or when life just sucked, or when life was awesome and going along fine, I knew this was what Ren Zano would give me.
Always.
Exactly what I needed. ~ Kristen Ashley,#NFDB
1418:Every man carries within himself a world made up of all that he has seen and loved; and it is to this world that he returns, incessantly, though he may pass through and seem to inhabit a world quite foreign to it. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
1419:It would make sense, for the purposes of this study, to determine whether the idea of the zombie is in fact one of the traps of colonial history—something Haitians might have internalized and integrated into their own worldview. I ~ Ren Depestre, #NFDB
1420:Je sentis frissonner sur mes lèvres muettes la douceur et l'effroi de ton premier baiser. Sous tes pas, j'entendis les lyres se briser, en criant vers le ciel l'ennui fier des poètes, parmi des flots de sons languissamment décrus. ~ Ren e Vivien, #NFDB
1421:Umorul are un scepticism mult mai profund decât ironia, fiindcă în sfera lui accentul cade asupra păcatului, nu asupra finitudinii. Nu-şi găseşte liniştea doar făcându-l pe om să fie om, ci făcându-l pe om să fie Dumnezeu-om. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1422:You are first and foremost a person. A reckless, foolish person, but a person nonetheless. If I ever say you are not permitted to do something, rest assured that the last reason I would ever say so would be because you are a girl. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1423:BRANDON: How about caramel popcorn balls? Yummy too! NIKKI: Popcorn balls?! Are you kidding me? Sounds way too complicated! BRANDON: Nope. Super EZ! Even I can make them and I’m a cruddy cook. I made some last night. NIKKI: ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1424:I do not have to lose my wife to understand the meaning of loss, Tariq. A child with a broken toy understands such things."
"Are you likening my suffering to that of a child?"
"Loss is loss. And the lesson is always the same. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1425:il arrive malheureusement parfois que ceux qui croient combattre le diable, quelque idée qu’ils s’en fassent d’ailleurs, se trouvent ainsi tout simplement, sans s’en douter le moins du monde, transformés en ses meilleurs serviteurs ! ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1426:[...] le mot « infini », qui s’y trouve trois fois, est impropre et devrait être remplacé par « indéfini » : Dieu seul est infini, l’espace et le temps ne peuvent être qu’indéfinis.
"Le Cœur du Monde dans la Kabbale hébraïque ~ Ren Gu non,#NFDB
1427:Sometimes we must fall forward to keep moving. Remain motionless—remain unyielding—and you are as good as dead.
Death follows indecision, like a twisted shadow. Fall forward. Keep moving. Even if you must pick yourself up first. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1428:What was zat, Miss Penelope?” she asked. “You are on zee phone with Dora zee Explorer and Boots zee Monkey? You say Boots needs new boots? Very well, dah-ling! Pencil him in before my six o’clock appointment with SpongeBob! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1429:It is almost as if the Greeks, at a time when they were about to disappear from history, wished to avenge themselves for their own incomprehension by imposing on a whole section of mankind the limitations of their own mental horizons. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1430:People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1431:Chloe and Zoey are the BEST friends EVER! But they’re also the second- and third-biggest dorks in the entire school. So sometimes their ideas are a little… how should I say it… DORKY too. CHLOE & ZOEY’S WACKY IDEA #1,397: ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1432:Kebencian. Prasangka. Ganjaran. Seperti yang kau katakan, balas dendam tidak akan mengembalikan apa yang telah hilang dariku. Apa yang telah hilang darimu. Yang kita miliki adalah sekarang. Dan janji kita untuk membuatnya lebih baik. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1433:when the man with the perfect smile asks, “And what have you learned?” I tell him I’ve learned I don’t have to wait to be given an opportunity, but that I can make an opportunity and use my voice to speak up for what I need and want. ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
1434:With the daguerreotype everyone will be able to have their portrait taken—formerly it was only the prominent—and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same, so we shall only need one portrait. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1435:As for my family, Ren was Ren and his family was his family and mine were who they were and usually this would be a Romeo and Juliet type of scenario. But I wasn’t big on Shakespeare so my family was also just going to have to deal. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
1436:Bravery did not come to her naturally. She spent too much time weighing her options to be brave. Too much time calculating the many paths before her. But Mariko knew it was time to do more. Time to be more. She would not die a coward. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1437:It’s called the ren ,’ Sadie explained. ‘Everyone has one, even if you don’t know it. The ren is … well, the definition of who you are. Once I shared it, Annabeth had access to my experiences, my abilities, all my general amazingness. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1438:Oh my Queen Mab, I thought you were dead! Or at least knocked up! And I thought I’d be dead, because no one but Jerk-Face over there knew about me, and I thought I would starve. Starve to death!” “Tink,” Ren warned, voice low. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
1439:The profundity of Christianity is that Christ is both our redeemer and our judge, not that one is our redeemer and another is our judge, for then we certainly come under judgement, but that the redeemer and the judge are the same. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1440:When I was a boy, my mother would tell me that one of the best things in life is the knowledge that our story isn't over yet. Our story may have come to a close, but your story is still yet to be told.
Make it a story worthy of you ~ Ren e Ahdieh,#NFDB
1441:...But as for Gabriel Sullivan." Ren reach out his six-fingered hand toward me. I clasped it. Warmth flooded me. But something else. Certainty. Trust. Compassion. Courage. He pulled his hand back, smiled. "That is all I can tell you. ~ Linnea Sinclair, #NFDB
1442:I’m reminded of the Confucian concept of ren: inadequately conveyed by “benevolence,” that quality which is quintessentially human, which can only be cultivated through interaction with others, and which a solitary person cannot manifest. ~ Ted Chiang, #NFDB
1443:But still he must have recourse to the paradox. For when the individual by his guilt has gone outside the universal he can return to it only by virtue of having come as the individual into an absolute relationship with the absolute. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1444:It is related of a Swedish priest that, profoundly disturbed by the sight of the effect his address produced upon the auditors, who were dissolved in tears, he said soothingly, "Children, do not weep; the whole thing might be a lie. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1445:J’avais déjà eu connaissance de l’extrait du Journal de Gide (vous savez sans doute qu’il est ici en ce moment) ; cela donne une bien triste idée de sa prétendue “intelligence” !
lettre du 30 janvier 1946 à un correspondant inconnu ~ Ren Gu non,#NFDB
1446:What I mean is, it reminded me of one of the happiest moments of childhood, before broken wrists and purpling bruises and nasty names hissed when my mother’s back was turned. Before “Who do you think you are? You’re ugly. You’re nobody. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1447:And despite being seventeen - Hattori Mariko knew her place in life. She would marry Minamoto Raiden. Her parents would have the prestige of a daughter in the Heian Castle. And Mariko would be the only one to know the stain on that honor. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1448:The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1449:The resistance to the mimetic contagion prevents the myth from taking shape. The conclusion in the light of the Gospels is inescapable: myths are the voice of communities that unanimously surrender to the mimetic contagion of victimization. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1450:All this is only fooling, for if it is true that every man must work for his own salvation, then all the prophecies about the future of the world are only valuable and allowable as a recreation, or a joke, like playing bowls or cards. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1451:A man’s life is wasted when he lives on, so deceived by the joys of life or by its sorrows, that he never becomes decisively conscious of himself as spirit, as self, that is, he never is aware in the deepest sense that there is a God. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1452:The night had turned into a complete DISASTER! My FRIENDS were down the hall. My CRUSH, Brandon, was standing next to me. My DAD was at the front door. MAX THE ROACH was parked at the curb. And I, NIKKI MAXWELL, was about to PEE my ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1453:A “no” does not hide anything, but a yes can very easily become a deception, a self-deception; which of all difficulties is the most difficult to conquer. Ah, it is all too
true that, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
1454:The young Calipha of Khorasan—Ava, the girl who studied calligraphy and spoke with the gentleness of a passing breeze—had perished. Two mornings ago, the caliph himself had found her on that very same balcony, cold and motionless and alone. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1455:Mimetic desire enables us to escape from the animal realm. It is responsible for the best and the worst in us, for what lowers us below the animal level as well as what elevates us above it. Our unending discords are the ransom of our freedom. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1456:Only two possible reactions to the mimetic contagion exist, and they make an enormous difference. Either we surrender and join the persecuting crowd, or we resist and stand alone. The first way is the unanimous self-deception we call mythology. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1457:Every individual, however original he may be, is still a child of God, of his age, of his nation, of his family and friends. Only thus is he truly himself. If in all this relativity he tries to be the absolute, then he becomes ridiculous. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1458:Siapakah penyair? Seseorang yang tidak bahagia yang menyembunyikan kesedihan yang sangat mendalam di dalam hatinya, tapi bibirnya berbentuk sedemikian rupa, sehingga desakan dan tangisan yang melaluinya terdengar seperti musik yang indah. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1459:There's nothing you can do about the past." "You're wrong. I can learn from it..." Tariq dug his heels into his stallion's flanks, and the horse shot forward, painting a dark smudge across the sand. "And I can make sure it never happens again! ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1460:but to say that there is in every being
a mixture of act and potency comes back to the same thing in the
end, for act is that in him by which he participates in essence, and
potency is that in him by which he participates in substance ~ Ren Gu non,#NFDB
1461:By faith he was a stranger in the land of promise, and there was nothing to recall what was dear to him, but by its novelty everything tempted his soul to melancholy yearning — and yet he was God's elect, in whom the Lord was well pleased! ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1462:More and more individuals, owing to their bloodless indolence, will aspire to be nothing at all--in order to become the public: that abstract whole formed in the most ludicrous way, by all participants becoming a third party (an onlooker). ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1463:Some primitive societies avoid striking out at the true guilty party because it might awaken the spirit of vengeance. Channeling violence toward a sacrificial victim as if toward a lightning rod doubtless stops violence, but it's not very pretty. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1464:Sometimes it feels like I leave home a whole person, sent off with kisses from Mom, who is hanging her every hope on my future. By the time I get home I feel like my soul has been shattered into a million pieces. Mom’s love repairs me. Whenever ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
1465:Can’t you see it’s an emergency?! A mean old witch has kidnapped Princess Sugar Plum. And Miss Penelope needs to get this money out of the water so we can buy a real, live baby unicorn from the grocery store and fly to save the princess! ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1466:I have only one friend, and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because I love my sorrow, and echo does not take it away from me. I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night. Why is it my confidant? Because it remains silent. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1467:I look just like one of Brianna’s UGLY finger paintings. Because now I’m completely covered with: 1. brown peanut-butter stains 2. purple jelly stains 3. white soap suds AND 4. bright fluorescent-green hand soap from the girls’ bathroom. ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
1468:She knew nothing of Ren except his name, his aptitude with vocabulary, the fact that he wasn’t in college, and the way his hair narrowed to a curling point at the nape of his neck. And she hadn’t even realized she knew that last thing until now. ~ Molly Ringle, #NFDB
1469:Why then did Abraham do it ? For God’s sake, and (in complete identity with this) for his own sake. He did it for God’s sake because God required this proof of his faith ; for his own sake he did it in order that he might furnish the proof. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1470:an adventure that every human being has to live through, learning to be anxious so as not to be ruined either by never having been in anxiety or by sinking into it. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1471:Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breath forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1472:March.
Rain lingers, promising flowers on the other side of the storm. Clocks move forward and daylight visits us longer, stays through evening, keeping us company. The morning light whispers to me, calling me out of bed.
I am awake, alive. ~ Ren e Watson,#NFDB
1473:Not merely in the realm of commerce but in the world of ideas as well our age is organizing a regular clearance sale. Everything is to be had at such a bargain that it is questionable whether in the end there is anybody who will want to bid. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1474:The task is not to find the lovable object, but to find the object before you lovable – whether given or chosen – and to be able to continue finding this one lovable, no matter how that person changes. To love is to love the person one sees. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1475:When I was a little girl in Thebes, I remember asking my mother what heaven was. She replied, ‘A heart where love dwells.’ Of course, I then demanded to know what constituted hell. She looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘A heart absent love. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1476:Being able to forget depends always on how one remembers, but how one remembers depends in turn on how one experiences reality. The person who sticks fast in it with the momentum of hope will remember in a way that makes him unable to forget. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1477:I have learned above all is that no individual can reach the height of their potential without the love of others. We are not meant to be alone, Shahrzad. The more a person pushes others away, the clearer it becomes he is in need of love the most. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1478:Everything I know about bombs tells me they are built to explode. But something must set them off first. There must be a trigger before the noise goes off, before the big burst of bright, choking smoke. Otherwise a girl could stay quiet for years. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1479:In order than everything should be reduced to the same level, it is first of all necessary to procure a phantom, its spirit, a monstrous abstraction, an all-embracing something which is nothing, a mirage--and that phantom is the public. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1480:I’ve missed the silence of you listening to me.” Shahrzad attempted a weak smile. “No one listens to me as you do.” His expression turned quizzical. “You don’t wait to speak,” she clarified. “You truly listen.” “Only to you,” Khalid replied gently. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1481:I write my resolution in black Sharpie marker on top of a background made out of cut-up scriptures, words from newspaper headlines, and numbers from last year's calendar.
Be bold.
Be brave.
Be beautiful.
Be brilliant.
Be (your) best. ~ Ren e Watson,#NFDB
1482:Only the lower natures forget themselves and become something new. For instance, the butterfly has entirely forgotten that it was a caterpillar; perhaps in turn it can forget that it was a butterfly so completely that it can become a fish. The ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1483:Les organisations ésotériques islamiques se transmettent un signe de reconnaissance qui, suivant la tradition, fut communiqué au Prophète par l’archange Gabriel lui-même. On ne saurait indiquer plus nettement l’origine « non-humaine » de l’initiation. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
1484:Reflection is not the evil; but a reflective condition and the deadlock which it involves, by transforming the capacity for action into a means of escape from action, is both corrupt and dangerous, and leads in the end to a retrograde movement. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1485:A superstitious belief which embraces an error keeps the possibility open that the truth may come to arouse it; but when the truth is there, and the superstitious mode of apprehending it transforms it into a lie, no saving awakening is possible. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1486:One must see how laughter is feared above all other sorts of attack, how even a man who had boldly encountered mortal peril for a cause that did not concern him, would hardly hesitate to betray father and mother in case the danger were laughter. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1487:Philosophy cannot and should not give us an account of faith, but should understand itself and know just what it has indeed to offer, without taking anything away, least of all cheating people out of something by making them think it is nothing. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1488:Because of the a priori element in intention, good intentions are so tempting - compared with a successive unfolding in time - and have so often in them some narcotic which develops an inner gaze instead of a resilience that begets energy. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1489:If a man had a little button sewn on the inner pocket of his coat 'on principle' his otherwise unimportant and quite serviceable action would become charged with importance--it is not improbable that it would result in the formation of a society. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1490:It is terrifying when God takes out the instruments for the surgery for which no human being has the strength: to take away a person’s human zest for life, to slay him – in order that he can live as one who has died to the world and to the flesh. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1491:Above all, do not loose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1492:We must renounce the gambit of "good" and "bad" - even in its inverted form. We must acknowledge that misapprehensions abound, that violence is to be found everywhere, and that our partial understanding of violence by no means assures us victory over it. ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1493:When the child must be weaned, the mother too is not without sorrow at the thought that she and the child are separated more and more, that the child which first lay under her heart and later reposed upon her breast will be so near to her no more. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1494:Whereas in the old days one acquired eternal happiness by the grace of God, now too often the eternal happiness seems to have become like an aged and infirm pensioner who sustains his life in the house of the rich on the wretched crust of poverty. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1495:El azar propicio aparece tan rara vez que cuando se presenta o se encuentra, hay que saberlo agarrar con toda la fuerza; el seducir a una muchacha no es un arte, pero sí lo es, ¡y cómo!, saber encontrar a una muchacha que merezca que se la seduzca. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1496:To relate oneself expectantly to the possibility of the good is to hope. To relate oneself expectantly to the possibility of evil is to fear. By the decision to choose hope one decides infinitely more than it seems, because it is an eternal decision ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1497:When I learned the Spanish word for succeed, I thought it was kind of ironic that the word exit is embedded in it. Like the universe was telling me that in order for me to make something of this life, I'd have to leave home, my neighbourhood, my friends. ~ Ren e Watson, #NFDB
1498:Where am I? Who am I?
How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director?
I want to see him. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,#NFDB
1499:...my soul always reverts to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that it's human beings talking. There people hate, people love, people murder their enemy and curse his descendants through all generations, there people sin. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1500:Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
495 Integral Yoga
355 Poetry
118 Christianity
113 Occultism
106 Philosophy
82 Fiction
69 Yoga
45 Psychology
27 Mysticism
22 Science
19 Mythology
15 Hinduism
12 Philsophy
10 Integral Theory
8 Theosophy
7 Sufism
6 Kabbalah
6 Baha i Faith
5 Education
4 Buddhism
1 Thelema
1 Cybernetics
1 Alchemy
416 Sri Aurobindo
184 The Mother
112 Nolini Kanta Gupta
97 Satprem
62 William Wordsworth
56 Sri Ramakrishna
48 H P Lovecraft
42 James George Frazer
41 Percy Bysshe Shelley
41 Carl Jung
40 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
34 Aleister Crowley
32 Saint Augustine of Hippo
29 Plotinus
26 Lucretius
24 Friedrich Schiller
20 Robert Browning
18 Walt Whitman
17 A B Purani
15 William Butler Yeats
15 Saint John of Climacus
15 Rudolf Steiner
14 Jorge Luis Borges
14 Friedrich Nietzsche
13 Ovid
13 Anonymous
13 Aldous Huxley
12 Vyasa
12 Ralph Waldo Emerson
12 Paul Richard
12 John Keats
11 Plato
10 Saint Teresa of Avila
9 Swami Vivekananda
8 Rabindranath Tagore
7 Sri Ramana Maharshi
7 George Van Vrekhem
7 Baha u llah
6 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
6 Nirodbaran
6 Kabir
6 Joseph Campbell
6 Jordan Peterson
6 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
5 Franz Bardon
4 Swami Krishnananda
4 Edgar Allan Poe
3 Thubten Chodron
3 Rainer Maria Rilke
3 Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
3 Ken Wilber
3 Jalaluddin Rumi
3 Henry David Thoreau
3 Farid ud-Din Attar
3 Bokar Rinpoche
3 Aristotle
3 Al-Ghazali
2 Patanjali
2 Namdev
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Jean Gebser
2 Hafiz
88 Record of Yoga
78 The Synthesis Of Yoga
62 Wordsworth - Poems
55 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
48 Lovecraft - Poems
42 The Golden Bough
41 Shelley - Poems
32 The Life Divine
31 Savitri
26 Prayers And Meditations
26 Of The Nature Of Things
26 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
24 Schiller - Poems
23 Essays On The Gita
22 City of God
20 Browning - Poems
18 Mysterium Coniunctionis
18 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
18 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
18 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
17 Whitman - Poems
17 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
17 Letters On Yoga IV
17 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
16 The Bible
16 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
16 Collected Poems
15 Yeats - Poems
15 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
15 The Future of Man
15 Liber ABA
13 The Perennial Philosophy
13 The Divine Comedy
13 Metamorphoses
13 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
13 Agenda Vol 01
12 Vishnu Purana
12 Magick Without Tears
12 Keats - Poems
12 Emerson - Poems
12 Agenda Vol 04
11 Letters On Yoga II
11 Essays Divine And Human
10 The Secret Of The Veda
10 The Phenomenon of Man
10 The Human Cycle
10 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
10 Talks
10 Agenda Vol 03
9 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
9 The Practice of Psycho therapy
9 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
9 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
9 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
9 Labyrinths
9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
9 Agenda Vol 10
8 Words Of Long Ago
8 Vedic and Philological Studies
8 Tagore - Poems
8 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
8 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
8 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
8 Isha Upanishad
8 Hymn of the Universe
8 Aion
8 5.1.01 - Ilion
7 Theosophy
7 Preparing for the Miraculous
7 On Education
7 Let Me Explain
7 Crowley - Poems
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
7 Agenda Vol 08
7 Agenda Vol 02
6 Twilight of the Idols
6 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
6 The Way of Perfection
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
6 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
6 Some Answers From The Mother
6 Questions And Answers 1953
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
6 Maps of Meaning
6 General Principles of Kabbalah
6 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
5 Words Of The Mother II
5 The Problems of Philosophy
5 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
5 Questions And Answers 1956
5 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
5 Agenda Vol 09
5 Agenda Vol 05
4 The Study and Practice of Yoga
4 The Practice of Magical Evocation
4 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
4 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
4 Songs of Kabir
4 Poe - Poems
4 Letters On Poetry And Art
4 Agenda Vol 12
4 Agenda Vol 11
4 Agenda Vol 07
3 Walden
3 The Lotus Sutra
3 The Book of Certitude
3 The Alchemy of Happiness
3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
3 Tara - The Feminine Divine
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Rumi - Poems
3 Rilke - Poems
3 Raja-Yoga
3 Questions And Answers 1955
3 Questions And Answers 1954
3 Poetics
3 On the Way to Supermanhood
3 Kena and Other Upanishads
3 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
3 Goethe - Poems
3 Faust
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
3 Borges - Poems
3 Bhakti-Yoga
3 Anonymous - Poems
3 Agenda Vol 06
2 Words Of The Mother III
2 The Red Book Liber Novus
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 Symposium
2 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
2 Letters On Yoga I
2 Hafiz - Poems
2 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
2 Agenda Vol 13
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Ignorance, certainly, is not man's ideal conditionit leads to death and dissolution. But knowledge also can be equally disastrous if it is not of the right kind. The knowledge that is born of spiritual disobedience, inspired by the Dark ones, leads to the soul's fall and its calvary through pain and suffering on earth. The seeker of true enlightenment has got to make a distinction, learn to separate the true and the right from the false and the wrong, unmask the luring Mra say clearly and unfalteringly to the dark light of Luciferapage Satana, if he is to come out into the true light and comm and the right forces. The search for knowledge alone, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, the path of pure scientific inquiry and inquisitiveness, in relation to the mystic world, is a dangerous thing. For such a spirit serves only to encourage and enhance man's arrogance and in the end not only limits but warps and falsifies the knowledge itself. A knowledge based on and secured exclusively through the reason and mental light can go only so far as that faculty can be reasonably stretched and not infinitelyto stretch it to infinity means to snap it. This is the warning that Yajnavalkya gave to Gargi when the latter started renewing her question ad infinitum Yajnavalkya said, "If you do not stop, your head will fall off."
The mystic truth has to be approached through the heart. "In the heart is established the Truth," says the Upanishad: it is there that is seated eternally the soul, the real being, who appears no bigger than the thumb. Even if the mind is utilised as an instrument of knowledge, the heart must be there behind as the guide and inspiration. It is precisely because, as I have just mentioned, Gargi sought to shoot uplike "vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself" of which Shakespeare speaksthrough the mind alone to the highest truth that Yajnavalkya had to pull her up and give the warning that she risked losing her head if she persisted in her questioning endlessly.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A certain rationalistic critic divides the Upanishadic symbols into three categoriesthose that are rational and can be easily understood by the mind; those that are not understood by the mind and yet do not go against reason, having nothing inhe rently irrational in them and may be simply called non-rational; those that seem to be quite irrational, for they go frankly against all canons of logic and common sense. As an example of the last, the irrational type, the critic cites a story from the Chhndogya, which may be rendered thus:
There was an aspirant, a student who was seeking after knowledge. One day there appeared to him a white dog. Soon, other dogs followed and addressed their predecessor: "O Lord, sing to our Food, for we desire to eat." The white dog answered, "Come to me at dawn here in this very place." The aspirant waited. The dogs, like singer-priests, circled round in a ring. Then they sat and cried aloud; they cried out," Om We eat and Om we drink, may the gods bring here our food."
--
Hantakr is the appearance, the manifestation of the Divinity that which makes the worshipper cry in delight, "Hail!" It is the coming of the Dawnahanwhen the night has been traversed and the lid rent open, the appearance of the Divine to a human vision for the human consciousness to seize, almost in a human form.
Finally, once the Truth is reached, it is to be held fast, firmly established, embodied and fixed in its inhe rent nature here in life and the waking consciousness. This is Svadh.
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
Roman numerals . . . impossible! The renaissance began with the new calculating
facility introduced by the cipher. The cipher was not only an essential tool in the
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Gadadhar was seven years old when his father died. This incident profoundly affected him. For the first time the boy realized that life on earth was impermanent. Unobserved by others, he began to slip into the mango orchard or into one of the cremation grounds, and he spent hours absorbed in his own thoughts. He also became more helpful to his mother in the discharge of her 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 love of God, entertained the little boy with stories from the Hindu epics, stories of saints and prophets, and also stories of their own adventures. He, on his part, fetched their water and fuel and
served them in various ways. Meanwhile, he was observing their meditation and worship.
--
The anguish of the inner soul of India found expression through these passionate words of the young Gadadhar. For what did his unsophisticated eyes see around him in Calcutta, at that time the metropolis of India and the centre of modem culture and learning? Greed and lust held sway in the higher levels of society, and the occasional religious practices were merely outer forms from which the soul had long ago departed. Gadadhar had never seen anything like this at Kamarpukur among the simple and pious villagers. The sadhus and wandering monks whom he had served in his boyhood had revealed to him an altogether diffe rent India. He had been impressed by their devotion and purity, their self-control and renunciation. He had learnt from them and from his own intuition that the ideal of life as taught by the ancient sages of India was the realization of God.
When Ramkumar reprimanded Gadadhar for neglecting a "bread-winning education", the inner voice of the boy reminded him that the legacy of his ancestors — the legacy of Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Sankara, Ramanuja, Chaitanya — was not worldly security but the Knowledge of God. And these noble sages were the true representatives of Hindu society. Each of them was seated, as it were, on the crest of the wave that followed each successive trough in the tumultuous course of Indian national life. All demonstrated that the life cur rent of India is spirituality. This truth was revealed to Gadadhar through that inner vision which scans past and future in one sweep, unobstructed by the barriers of time and space. But he was unaware of the history of the profound change that had taken place in the land of his birth during the previous one hundred years.
--
But the soul of India was to be resuscitated through a spiritual awakening. We hear the first call of this renascence in the spirited retort of the young Gadadhar: "Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education?"
Ramkumar could hardly understand the import of his young brother's reply. He described in bright colours the happy and easy life of scholars in Calcutta society. But Gadadhar intuitively felt that the scholars, to use one of his own vivid illustrations, were like so many vultures, soaring high on the wings of their uninspired intellect, with their eyes fixed on the charnel-pit of greed and lust. So he stood firm and Ramkumar had to give way.
--
In the twelve Siva temples are installed the emblems of the Great God of renunciation in His various aspects, worshipped daily with proper rites. Siva requires few articles of worship. White flowers and bel-leaves and a little Ganges water offered with devotion are enough to satisfy the benign Deity and win from Him the boon of liberation.
--- RADHAKANTA
--
For the achievement of this goal the Vedanta prescribes an austere negative method of discrimination and renunciation, which can be followed by only a few individuals endowed with sharp intelligence and unshakable will-power. But Tantra takes into consideration the natural weakness of human beings, their lower appetites, and their love for the concrete. It combines philosophy with rituals, meditation with ceremonies, renunciation with enjoyment. The underlying purpose is gradually to train the aspirant to meditate on his identity with the Ultimate.
The average man wishes to enjoy the material objects of the world. Tantra bids him enjoy these, but at the same time discover in them the presence of God. Mystical rites are prescribed by which, slowly, the sense-objects become spiritualized and sense attraction is transformed into a love of God. So the very "bonds" of man are turned into "releasers". The very poison that kills is transmuted into the elixir of life. Outward renunciation is not necessary. Thus the aim of Tantra is to sublimate bhoga, or enjoyment into yoga, or union with Consciousness. For, according to this philosophy, the world with all its manifestations is nothing but the sport of Siva and Sakti, the Absolute and Its inscrutable Power.
The disciplines of Tantra are graded to suit aspirants of all degrees. Exercises are prescribed for people with "animal", "heroic", and "divine" outlooks. Certain of the rites require the presence of members of the opposite sex. Here the aspirant learns to look on woman as the embodiment of the Goddess Kali, the Mother of the Universe. The very basis of Tantra is the Motherhood of God and the glorification of woman. Every part of a woman's body is to be regarded as incarnate Divinity. But the rites are extremely dangerous. The help of a qualified guru is absolutely necessary. An unwary devotee may lose his foothold and fall into a pit of depravity.
--
The Brahmani was the enthusiastic teacher and astonished beholder of Sri Ramakrishna in his spiritual progress. She became proud of the achievements of her unique pupil. But the pupil himself was not permitted to rest; his destiny beckoned him forward. His Divine Mother would allow him no respite till he had left behind the entire realm of duality with its visions, experiences, and ecstatic dreams. But for the new ascent the old tender guides would not suffice. The Brahmani, on whom he had depended for, three years, saw her son escape from her to follow the command of a teacher with masculine st rength, a sterner mien, a gnarled physique, and a virile voice. The new guru was a wandering monk, the sturdy Totapuri, whom Sri Ramakrishna learnt to address affectionately as Nangta, the "Naked One", because of his total renunciation of all earthly objects and attachments, including even a piece of wearing cloth.
Totapuri was the bearer of a philosophy new to Sri Ramakrishna, the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy, whose conclusions Totapuri had experienced in his own life. This ancient Hindu system designates the Ultimate Reality as Brahman, also described as Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Brahman is the only Real Existence. In It there is no time, no space, no causality, no multiplicity. But through maya, Its inscrutable Power, time, space, and causality are created and the One appears to break into the many. The eternal Spirit appears as a manifold of individuals endowed with form and subject to the conditions of time. The Immortal becomes a victim of birth and death. The Changeless undergoes change. The sinless Pure Soul, hypnotized by Its own maya, experiences the joys of heaven and the pains of hell. But these experiences based on the duality of the subject-object relationship are unreal. Even the vision of a Personal God
--
The path of the Vedantic discipline is the path of negation, "neti", in which, by stern determination, all that is unreal is both negated and renounced. It is the path of jnana, knowledge, the direct method of realizing the Absolute. After the negation of everything relative, including the discriminating ego itself, the aspirant merges in the One without a Second, in the bliss of nirvikalpa samadhi, where subject and object are alike dissolved. The soul goes beyond the realm of thought. The domain of duality is transcended. Maya is left behind with all its changes and modifications. The Real Man towers above the delusions of creation, preservation, and destruction. An avalanche of indescribable Bliss sweeps away all relative ideas of pain and pleasure, good and evil. There shines in the heart the glory of the Eternal Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Knower, knowledge, and known are dissolved in the Ocean of one eternal Consciousness; love, lover, and beloved merge in the unbounded Sea of supreme Felicity; birth, growth, and death vanish in infinite Existence. All doubts and misgivings are quelled for ever; the oscillations of the mind are stopped; the momentum of past actions is exhausted. Breaking down the ridge-pole of the tabernacle in which the soul has made its abode for untold ages, stilling the body, calming the mind, drowning the ego, the sweet joy of Brahman wells up in that superconscious state. Space disappears into nothingness, time is swallowed in eternity, and causation becomes a dream of the past. Only Existence is. Ah! Who can describe what the soul then feels in its communion with the Self?
Even when man descends from this dizzy height, he is devoid of ideas of "I" and "mine"; he looks on the body as a mere shadow, an outer sheath encasing the soul. He does not dwell on the past, takes no thought for the future, and looks with indiffe rence on the present. He surveys everything in the world with an eye of equality; he is no longer touched by the infinite variety of phenomena; he no longer reacts to pleasure and pain. He remains unmoved whether he — that is to say, his body — is worshipped by the good or tormented by the wicked; for he realizes that it is the one Brahman that manifests Itself through everything. The impact of such an experience devastates the body and mind. Consciousness becomes blasted, as it were, with an excess of Light. In the Vedanta books it is said that after the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi the body drops off like a dry leaf. Only those who are born with a special mission for the world can return
--
Totapuri, discovering at once that Sri Ramakrishna was prepared to be a student of Vedanta, asked to initiate him into its mysteries. With the permission of the Divine Mother, Sri Ramakrishna agreed to the proposal. But Totapuri explained that only a sannyasi could receive the teaching of Vedanta. Sri Ramakrishna agreed to renounce the world, but with the stipulation that the ceremony of his initiation into the monastic order be performed in secret, to spare the feelings of his old mother, who had been living with him at Dakshineswar.
On the appointed day, in the small hours of the morning, a fire was lighted in the Panchavati. Totapuri and Sri Ramakrishna sat before it. The flame played on their faces. "Ramakrishna was a small brown man with a short beard and beautiful eyes, long dark eyes, full of light, obliquely set and slightly veiled, never very wide open, but seeing half-closed a great distance both outwardly and inwardly. His mouth was open over his white teeth in a bewitching smile, at once affectionate and mischievous. Of medium height, he was thin to emaciation and extremely delicate. His temperament was high-strung, for he was supersensitive to all the winds of joy and sorrow, both moral and physical. He was indeed a living reflection of all that happened before the mirror of his eyes, a two-sided mirror, turned both out and in." (Romain Rolland, Prophets of the New India, pp. 38-9.) Facing him, the other rose like a rock. He was very tall and robust, a sturdy and tough oak. His constitution and mind were of iron. He was the strong leader of men.
--
Sri Ramakrishna used to say that when the flower blooms the bees come to it for honey of their own accord. Now many souls began to visit Dakshineswar to satisfy their spiritual hunger. He, the devotee and aspirant, became the Master. Gauri, the great scholar who had been one of the first to proclaim Sri Ramakrishna an Incarnation of God, paid the Master a visit in 1870 and with the Master's blessings renounced the world. Narayan Shastri, another great pundit, who had mastered the six systems of Hindu philosophy and had been offered a lucrative post by the Maharaja of Jaipur, met the Master and recognized in him one who had realized in life those ideals which he himself had encountered merely in books. Sri Ramakrishna initiated Narayan Shastri, at his earnest request, into the life of sannyas. Pundit Padmalochan, the court pundit of the Maharaja of Burdwan, well known for his scholarship in both the Vedanta and the Nyaya systems of philosophy, accepted the Master as an Incarnation of God. Krishnakishore, a Vedantist scholar, became devoted to the Master. And there arrived Viswanath Upadhyaya, who was to become a favourite devotee; Sri Ramakrishna always addressed him as "Captain". He was a high officer of the King of Nepal and had received the title of Colonel in recognition of his merit. A scholar of the Gita, the Bhagavata, and the Vedanta philosophy, he daily performed the worship of his Chosen Deity with great devotion. "I have read the Vedas and the other scriptures", he said. "I have also met a good many monks and devotees in diffe rent places. But it is in Sri Ramakrishna's presence that my spiritual yearnings have been fulfilled. To me he seems to be the embodiment of the truths of the scriptures."
The Knowledge of Brahman in nirvikalpa samadhi had convinced Sri Ramakrishna that the gods of the diffe rent religions are but so many readings of the Absolute, and that the Ultimate Reality could never be expressed by human tongue. He understood that all religions lead their devotees by differing paths to one and the same goal. Now he became eager to explore some of the alien religions; for with him understanding meant actual experience.
--
On January 27, 1868, Mathur Babu with a party of some one hundred and twenty-five persons set out on a pilgrimage to the sacred places of northern India. At Vaidyanath in Behar, when the Master saw the inhabitants of a village reduced by poverty and starvation to mere skeletons, he requested his rich patron to feed the people and give each a piece of cloth. Mathur demurred at the added expense. The Master declared bitterly that he would not go on to Benares, but would live with the poor and share their miseries. He actually left Mathur and sat down with the villagers. Whereupon Mathur had to yield. On another occasion, two years later, Sri Ramakrishna showed a similar sentiment for the poor and needy. He accompanied Mathur on a tour to one of the latter's estates at the time of the collection of rents. For two years the harvests had failed and the tenants were in a state of extreme poverty. The Master asked Mathur to remit their rents, distribute help to them, and in addition give the hungry people a sumptuous feast. When Mathur grumbled, the Master said: "You are only the steward of the Divine Mother. They are the Mother's tenants. You must spend the Mother's money. When they are suffering, how can you refuse to help them? You must help them." Again Mathur had to give in. Sri Ramakrishna's sympathy for the poor sprang from his perception of God in all created beings. His sentiment was not that of the humanist or philanthropist. To him the service of man was the same as the worship of God.
The party entered holy Benares by boat along the Ganges. When Sri Ramakrishna's eyes fell on this city of Siva, where had accumulated for ages the devotion and piety of countless worshippers, he saw it to be made of gold, as the scriptures declare. He was visibly moved. During his stay in the city he treated every particle of its earth with utmost respect. At the Manikarnika Ghat, the great cremation ground of the city, he actually saw Siva, with ash-covered body and tawny matted hair, se renely approaching each funeral pyre and breathing into the ears of the corpses the mantra of liberation; and then the Divine Mother removing from the dead their bonds. Thus he realized the significance of the scriptural statement that anyone dying in Benares attains salvation through the grace of Siva. He paid a visit to Trailanga Swami, the celebrated monk, whom he later declared to be a real paramahamsa, a veritable image of Siva.
--
Totapuri, coming to know of the Master's marriage, had once remarked: "What does it matter? He alone is firmly established in the Knowledge of Brahman who can adhere to his spirit of discrimination and renunciation even while living with his wife. He alone has attained the supreme illumination who can look on man and woman alike as Brahman. A man with the idea of sex may be a good aspirant, but he is still far from the goal." Sri Ramakrishna and his wife lived together at Dakshineswar, but their minds always soared above the worldly plane. A few months after Sarada Devi's arrival Sri Ramakrishna arranged, on an auspicious day, a special worship of Kali, the Divine Mother. Instead of an image of the Deity, he placed on the seat the living image, Sarada Devi herself. The worshipper and the worshipped went into deep samadhi and in the transcendental plane their souls were united. After several hours Sri Ramakrishna came down again to the relative plane, sang a hymn to the Great Goddess, and sur rendered, at the feet of the living image, himself, his rosary, and the fruit of his life-long sadhana. This is known in Tantra as the Shorasi Puja, the "Adoration of Woman". Sri Ramakrishna realized the significance of the great statement of the Upanishad: "O Lord, Thou art the woman. Thou art the man; Thou art the boy. Thou art the girl; Thou art the old, tottering on their crutches. Thou pervadest the universe in its multiple forms."
By his marriage Sri Ramakrishna admitted the great value of marriage in man's spiritual evolution, and by adhering to his monastic vows he demonstrated the imperative necessity of self-control, purity, and continence, in the realization of God. By this unique spiritual relationship with his wife he proved that husband and wife can live together as spiritual companions. Thus his life is a synthesis of the ways of life of the householder and the monk.
--
Keshab was the leader of the Brahmo Samaj, one of the two great movements that, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, played an important part in shaping the course of the renascence of India. The founder of the Brahmo movement had been the great Raja Rammohan Roy (1774-1833). Though born in an orthodox brahmin family, Rammohan Roy had shown great sympathy for Islam and Christianity. He had gone to Tibet in search of the Buddhist mysteries. He had extracted from Christianity its ethical system, but had rejected the divinity of Christ as he had denied the Hindu Incarnations. The religion of Islam influenced him, to a great extent, in the formulation of his monotheistic doctrines. But he always went back to the Vedas for his spiritual inspiration. The Brahmo Samaj, which he founded in 1828, was dedicated to the "worship and adoration of the Eternal, the Unsearchable, the Immutable Being, who is the Author and Preserver of the Universe". The Samaj was open to all without distinction of colour, creed, caste, nation, or religion.
The real organizer of the Samaj was Devendranath Tagore (1817-1905), the father of the poet Rabindranath. His physical and spiritual beauty, aristocratic aloofness, penetrating intellect, and poetic sensibility made him the foremost leader of the educated Bengalis. These addressed him by the respectful epithet of Maharshi, the "Great Seer". The Maharshi was a Sanskrit scholar and, unlike Raja Rammohan Roy, drew his inspiration entirely from the Upanishads. He was an implacable enemy of image worship ship and also fought to stop the infiltration of Christian ideas into the Samaj. He gave the movement its faith and ritual. Under his influence the Brahmo Samaj professed One Self-existent Supreme Being who had created the universe out of nothing, the God of Truth, Infinite Wisdom, Goodness, and Power, the Eternal and Omnipotent, the One without a Second. Man should love Him and do His will, believe in Him and worship Him, and thus merit salvation in the world to come.
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Gradually other Brahmo leaders began to feel Sri Ramakrishna's influence. But they were by no means uncritical admirers of the Master. They particularly disapproved of his ascetic renunciation and condemnation of "woman and gold".1 They measured him according to their own ideals of the householder's life. Some could not understand his samadhi and described it as a nervous malady. Yet they could not resist his magnetic personality.
Among the Brahmo leaders who knew the Master closely were Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, Vijaykrishna Goswami, Trailokyanath Sannyal, and Shivanath Shastri.
--
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.
This contact with the educated and progressive Bengalis opened Sri Ramakrishna's eyes to a new realm of thought. Born and brought up in a simple village, without any formal education, and taught by the orthodox holy men of India in religious life, he had had no opportunity to study the influence of modernism on the thoughts and lives of the Hindus. He could not properly estimate the result of the impact of Western education on Indian culture. He was a Hindu of the Hindus, renunciation being to him the only means to the realization of God in life. From the Brahmos he learnt that the new generation of India made a compromise between God and the world. Educated young men were influenced more by the Western philosophers than by their own prophets. But Sri Ramakrishna was not dismayed, for he saw in this, too, the hand of God. And though he expounded to the Brahmos all his ideas about God and austere religious disciplines, yet he bade them accept from his teachings only as much as suited their tastes and temperaments.
^The term "woman and gold", which has been used throughout in a collective sense, occurs again and again in the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna to designate the chief impediments to spiritual progress. This favourite expression of the Master, "kaminikanchan", has often been misconstrued. By it he meant only "lust and greed", the baneful influence of which retards the aspirant's spiritual growth. He used the word "kamini", or "woman", as a concrete term for the sex instinct when addressing his man devotees. He advised women, on the other hand, to shun "man". "Kanchan", or "gold", symbolizes greed, which is the other obstacle to spiritual life.
--
Through all this fun and frolic, this merriment and frivolity, he always kept before them the shining ideal of God-Consciousness and the path of renunciation. He prescribed ascents steep or graded according to the powers of the climber. He permitted no compromise with the basic principles of purity. An aspirant had to keep his body, mind, senses, and soul unspotted; had to have a sincere love for God and an ever mounting spirit of yearning. The rest would be done by the Mother.
His disciples were of two kinds: the householders, and the young men, some of whom were later to become monks. There was also a small group of women devotees.
--
For the householders Sri Ramakrishna did not prescribe the hard path of total renunciation. He wanted them to discharge their obligations to their families. Their renunciation was to be mental. Spiritual life could not be acquired by flying away from responsibilities. A married couple should live like brother and sister after the birth of one or two child ren, devoting their time to spiritual talk and contemplation. He encouraged the householders, saying that their life was, in a way, easier than that of the monk, since it was more advantageous to fight the enemy from inside a fortress than in an open field. He insisted, however, on their repairing into solitude every now and then to st rengthen their devotion and faith in God through prayer, japa, and meditation. He prescribed for them the companionship of sadhus. He asked them to perform their worldly duties with one hand, while holding to God with the other, and to pray to God to make their duties fewer and fewer so that in the end they might cling to Him with both hands. He would discourage in both the householders and the celibate youths any lukewarmness in their spiritual struggles. He would not ask them to follow indiscriminately the ideal of non-resistance, which ultimately makes a coward of the unwary.
--- FUTURE MONKS
But to the young men destined to be monks he pointed out the steep path of renunciation, both external and internal. They must take the vow of absolute continence and eschew all thought of greed and lust. By the practice of continence, aspirants develop a subtle nerve through which they understand the deeper mysteries of God. For them self-control is final, imperative, and absolute. The sannyasis are teachers of men, and their lives should be totally free from blemish. They must not even look at a picture which may awaken their animal passions. The Master selected his future monks from young men untouched by "woman and gold" and plastic enough to be cast in his spiritual mould. When teaching them the path of renunciation and discrimination, he would not allow the householders to be anywhere near them.
--- RAM AND MANOMOHAN
--
Harish, a young man in affluent circumstances, renounced his family and took shelter with the Master, who loved him for his sincerity, singleness of purpose, and quiet nature. He spent his leisure time in prayer and meditation, turning a deaf ear to the entreaties and threats of his relatives. Referring to his undisturbed peace of mind, the Master would say: "Real men are dead to the world though living. Look at Harish. He is an example." When one day the Master asked him to be a little kind to his wife, Harish said: "You must excuse me on this point. This is not the place to show kindness. If I try to be sympathetic to her, there is a possibility of my forgetting the ideal and becoming entangled in the world."
--- BHAVANATH
--
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, novelist, 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
The Europeanized Kristodas Pal did not approve of the Master's emphasis on renunciation and said; "Sir, this cant of renunciation has almost ruined the country. It is for this reason that the Indians are a subject nation today. Doing good to others, bringing education to the door of the ignorant, and above all, improving the material conditions of the country — these should be our duty now. The cry of religion and renunciation would, on the contrary, only weaken us. You should advise the young men of Bengal to resort only to such acts as will uplift the country." Sri Ramakrishna gave him a searching look and found no divine light within, "You man of poor understanding!" Sri Ramakrishna said sharply. "You dare to slight in these terms renunciation and piety, which our scriptures describe as the greatest of all virtues! After reading two pages of English you think you have come to know the world! You appear to think you are omniscient. Well, have you seen those tiny crabs that are born in the Ganges just when the rains set in? In this big universe you are even less significant than one of those small creatures. How dare you talk of helping the world? The Lord will look to that. You haven't the power in you to do it." After a pause the Master continued: "Can you explain to me how you can work for others? I know what you mean by helping them. To feed a number of persons, to treat them when they are sick, to construct a road or dig a well — isn't that all? These, are good deeds, no doubt, but how trifling in comparison with the vastness of the universe! How far can a man advance in this line? How many people can you save from famine? Malaria has ruined a whole province; what could you do to stop its onslaught? God alone looks after the world. Let a man first realize Him. Let a man get the authority from God and be endowed with His power; then, and then alone, may he think of doing good to others. A man should first be purged of all egotism. Then alone will the Blissful Mother ask him to work for the world." Sri Ramakrishna mistrusted philanthropy that presumed to pose as charity. He warned people against it. He saw in most acts of philanthropy nothing but egotism, vanity, a desire for glory, a bar ren excitement to kill the boredom of life, or an attempt to soothe a guilty conscience. True charity, he taught, is the result of love of God — service to man in a spirit of worship.
--- MONASTIC DISCIPLES
--
Gopal Sur of Sinthi came to Dakshineswar at a rather advanced age and was called the elder Gopal. He had lost his wife, and the Master assuaged his grief. Soon he renounced the world and devoted himself fully to meditation and prayer. Some years later Gopal gave the Master the ochre cloths with which the latter initiated several of his disciples into monastic life.
--- NA renDRA
--
A few more meetings completely removed from Na rendra's mind the last traces of the notion that Sri Ramakrishna might be a monomaniac or wily hypnotist. His integrity, purity, renunciation, and unselfishness were beyond question. But Na rendra could not accept a man, an imperfect mortal, as his guru. As a member of the Brahmo Samaj, he could not believe that a human intermediary was necessary between man and God. Moreover, he openly laughed at Sri Ramakrishna's visions as hallucinations. Yet in the secret chamber of his heart he bore a great love for the Master.
Sri Ramakrishna was grateful to the Divine Mother for sending him one who doubted his own realizations. Often he asked Na rendra to test him as the money-changers test their coins. He laughed at Na rendra's biting criticism of his spiritual experiences and samadhi. When at times Na rendra's sharp words distressed him, the Divine Mother Herself would console him, saying: "Why do you listen to him? In a few days he will believe your every word." He could hardly bear Na rendra's absences. Often he would weep bitterly for the sight of him. Sometimes Na rendra would find the Master's love embarrassing; and one day he sharply scolded him, warning him that such infatuation would soon draw him down to the level of its object. The Master was distressed and prayed to the Divine Mother. Then he said to Na rendra: "You rogue, I won't listen to you any more. Mother says that I love you because I see God in you, and the day I no longer see God in you I shall not be able to bear even the sight of you."
--
Na rendra 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."
One day, soon after, Na rendra requested Sri Ramakrishna to pray to the Divine Mother to remove his poverty. Sri Ramakrishna bade him pray to Her himself, for She would certainly listen to his prayer. Na rendra entered the shrine of Kali. As he stood before the image of the Mother, he beheld Her as a living Goddess, ready to give wisdom and liberation. Unable to ask Her for petty worldly things, he prayed only for knowledge and renunciation, love and liberation. The Master rebuked him for his failure to ask the Divine Mother to remove his poverty and sent him back to the temple. But Na rendra, standing in Her presence, again forgot the purpose of his coming. Thrice he went to the temple at the bidding of the Master, and thrice he returned, having forgotten in Her presence why he had come. He was wondering about it when it suddenly flashed in his mind that this was all the work of Sri Ramakrishna; so now he asked the Master himself to remove his poverty, and was assured that his family would not lack simple food and clothing.
This was a very rich and significant experience for Na rendra. 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 Na rendra's lap, he said to a devotee, pointing first to himself, then to Na rendra: "I see I am this, and again that. Really I feel no diffe rence. 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 Na rendra 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 love for me that bound me to him for ever. He alone knew how to love. Worldly people, only make a show of love for selfish ends.
--
Baburam Ghosh came to Dakshineswar accompanied by Rakhal, his classmate. The Master, as was often his custom, examined the boy's physiognomy and was satisfied about his latent spirituality. At the age of eight Baburam had thought of leading a life of renunciation, in the company of a monk, in a hut shut out from the public view by a thick wall of trees. The very sight of the Panchavati awakened in his heart that dream of boyhood. Baburam was tender in body and soul. The Master used to say that he was pure to his very bones. One day Hazra in his usual mischievous fashion advised Baburam and some of the other young boys to ask Sri Ramakrishna for some spiritual powers and not waste their life in mere gaiety and merriment. The Master, scenting mischief, called Baburam to his side and said: "What can you ask of me? Isn't everything that I have already yours? Yes, everything I have earned in the shape of realizations is for the sake of you all. So get rid of the idea of begging, which alienates by creating a distance. Rather realize your kinship with me and gain the key to all the treasures.
--- NIRANJAN
--
Sri Ramakrishna employed a ruse to bring Jogindra to him. As soon as the disciple entered the room, the Master rushed forward to meet the young man. Catching hold of the disciple's hand, he said: "What if you have married? Haven't I too married? What is there to be afraid of in that?" Touching his own chest he said: "If this [meaning himself] is propitious, then even a hundred thousand marriages cannot injure you. If you desire to lead a householder's life, then bring your wife here one day, and I shall see that she becomes a real companion in your spiritual progress. But if you want to lead a monastic life, then I shall eat up your attachment to the world." Jogin was dumbfounded at these words. He received new st rength, and his spirit of renunciation was re-established.
--- SASHI AND SARAT
--
With his woman devotees Sri Ramakrishna established a very sweet relationship. He himself embodied the tender traits of a woman: he had dwelt on the highest plane of Truth, where there is not even the slightest trace of sex; and his innate purity evoked only the noblest emotion in men and women alike. His woman devotees often said: "We seldom looked on Sri Ramakrishna as a member of the male sex. We regarded him as one of us. We never felt any constraint before him. He was our best confidant." They loved him as their child, their friend, and their teacher. In spiritual discipline he advised them to renounce lust and greed and especially warned them not to fall into the snares of men.
--- GOPAL MA
--
When Sri Ramakrishna's illness showed signs of aggravation, the devotees, following the advice of Dr. Sarkar, rented a spacious garden house at Cossipore, in the northern suburbs of Calcutta. The Master was removed to this place on December 11, 1885.
It was at Cossipore that the curtain fell on the varied activities of the Master's life on the physical plane. His soul lingered in the body eight months more. It was the period of his great Passion, a constant crucifixion of the body and the triumphant revelation of the Soul. Here one sees the humanity and divinity of the Master passing and repassing across a thin border line. Every minute of those eight months was suffused with touching tenderness of heart and breath-taking elevation of spirit. Every word he uttered was full of pathos and sublimity.
--
The Master did not hide the fact that he wished to make Na rendra his spiritual heir. Na rendra was to continue the work after Sri Ramakrishna's passing. Sri Ramakrishna said to him: "I leave these young men in your charge. See that they develop their spirituality and do not return home." One day he asked the boys, in preparation for a monastic life, to beg their food from door to door without thought of caste. They hailed the Master's order and went out with begging-bowls. A few days later he gave the ochre cloth of the sannyasi to each of them, including Girish, who was now second to none in his spirit of renunciation. Thus the Master himself laid the foundation of the future Ramakrishna Order of monks.
Sri Ramakrishna was sinking day by day. His diet was reduced to a minimum and he found it almost impossible to swallow. He whispered to M.: "I am bearing all this cheerfully, for otherwise you would be weeping. If you all say that it is better that the body should go rather than suffer this torture, I am willing." The next morning he said to his depressed disciples seated near the bed: "Do you know what I see? I see that God alone has become everything. Men and animals are only frameworks covered with skin, and it is He who is moving through their heads and limbs. I see that it is God Himself who has become the block, the executioner, and the victim for the sacrifice.' He fainted with emotion. Regaining partial consciousness, he said: "Now I have no pain. I am very well." Looking at Latu he said: "There sits Latu resting his head on the palm of his hand. To me it is the Lord who is seated in that posture."
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
but to do so would render the humour of the chapter too
subtle for the average reader in Oshkosh for whom
--
These preach renunciation, "virtue", cowardice in
every form.
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
In the preparation of this manuscript I have received ungrudging help from several friends. Miss Margaret Woodrow Wilson and Mr.Joseph Campbell have worked hard in editing my translation. Mrs.Elizabeth Davidson has typed, more than once, the entire manuscript and rendered other valuable help. Mr.Aldous Huxley has laid me under a debt of gratitude by writing the Foreword. I sincerely thank them all.
In the spiritual firmament Sri Ramakrishna is a waxing crescent. Within one hundred years of his birth and fifty years of his death his message has spread across land and sea. Romain Rolland has described him as the fulfilment of the spiritual aspirations of the three hundred millions of Hindus for the last two thousand years. Mahatma Gandhi has written: "His life enables us to see God face to face. . . . Ramakrishna was a living embodiment of godliness." He is being recognized as a compeer of Krishna, Buddha, and Christ.
--
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.)
The two pamphlets in English entitled the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna appeared in October and November 1897. They drew the spontaneous acclamation of Swami Vivekananda, who wrote on 24th November of that year from Dehra Dun to M.:"Many many thanks for your second leaflet. It is indeed wonderful. The move is quite original, and never was the life of a Great Teacher brought before the public untarnished by the writer's mind, as you are doing. The language also is beyond all praise, so fresh, so pointed, and withal so plain and easy. I cannot express in adequate terms how I have enjoyed them. I am really in a transport when I read them. Strange, isn't it? Our Teacher and Lord was so original, and each one of us will have to be original or nothing.
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, #Zen
Twice he found it necessary to go out of his way to make public pronouncements on important world-issues, which shows distinctly that renunciation of life is not a part of his Yoga. "The first was in relation to the Second World War. At the beginning he did not actively concern himself with it, but when it appeared as if Hitler would crush all the forces opposed to him and Nazism dominate the world, he began to intervene."[2]
The second was with regard to Sir Stafford Cripps' proposal for the transfer of power to India.
Over and above Sadhana, writing work and rendering spiritual help to the world during his appa rent 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.
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HERE are two necessities of Nature's workings which seem always to intervene in the greater forms of human activity, whether these belong to our ordinary fields of movement or seek those exceptional spheres and fulfilments which appear to us high and divine. Every such form tends towards a harmonised complexity and totality which again breaks apart into various channels of special effort and tendency, only to unite once more in a larger and more puissant synthesis. Secondly, development into forms is an imperative rule of effective manifestation; yet all truth and practice too strictly formulated becomes old and loses much, if not all, of its virtue; it must be constantly renovated by fresh streams of the spirit revivifying the dead or dying vehicle and changing it, if it is to acquire a new life. To be perpetually reborn is the condition of a material immortality. We are in an age, full of the throes of travail, when all forms of thought and activity that have in themselves any strong power of utility or any secret virtue of persistence are being subjected to a supreme test and given their opportunity of rebirth. The world today presents the aspect of a huge cauldron of Medea in which all things are being cast, shredded into pieces, experimented on, combined and recombined either to perish and provide the scattered material of new forms or to emerge rejuvenated and changed for a fresh term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity. The child of immemorial ages, preserved by its vitality and truth into our modern times, it is now emerging from the secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it had taken refuge and is seeking its place in the future sum of living human powers and utilities. But it has first to rediscover itself, bring to the surface
The Conditions of the Synthesis
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
a notebook is to be renewed the finished notebook must be sent
up to me at the same time as the chit for the new one.
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Matter, which, however the too ethereally spiritual may despise it, is our foundation and the first condition of all our energies and realisations, and the Life-Energy which is our means of existence in a material body and the basis there even of our mental and spiritual activities. She has successfully achieved a certain stability of her constant material movement which is at once sufficiently steady and durable and sufficiently pliable and mutable to provide a fit dwelling-place and instrument for the progressively manifesting god in humanity. This is what is meant by the fable in the Aitareya Upanishad which tells us that the gods rejected the animal forms successively offered to them by the Divine Self and only when man was produced, cried out, "This indeed is perfectly made," and consented to enter in. She has effected also a working compromise between the inertia of matter and the active Life that lives in and feeds on it, by which not only is vital existence sustained, but the fullest developments of mentality are rendered possible. This equilibrium constitutes the basic status of Nature in man and is termed in the language of Yoga his gross body composed
The Three Steps of Nature
--
If, then, this inferior equilibrium is the basis and first means of the higher movements which the universal Power contemplates and if it constitutes the vehicle in which the Divine here seeks to reveal Itself, if the Indian saying is true that the body is the instrument provided for the fulfilment of the right law of our nature, then any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation. Such a refusal may be, owing to some secret law of their development, the right attitude for certain individuals, but never the aim intended for mankind. It can be, therefore, no integral Yoga which ignores the body or makes its annulment or its rejection indispensable to a perfect spirituality. Rather, the perfecting of the body also should be the last triumph of the Spirit and to make the bodily life also divine must be God's final seal upon His work in the universe. The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument for the rejection of the physical; for in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities. A supreme difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inextricable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee.
Equally, the vital and nervous energies in us are there for a great utility; they too demand the divine realisation of their possibilities in our ultimate fulfilment. The great part assigned to this element in the universal scheme is powerfully emphasised by the catholic wisdom of the Upanishads. "As the spokes of a wheel in its nave, so in the Life-Energy is all established, the triple knowledge and the Sacrifice and the power of the strong and the purity of the wise. Under the control of the LifeEnergy is all this that is established in the triple heaven."2 It is therefore no integral Yoga that kills these vital energies, forces them into a nerveless quiescence or roots them out as the source
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Then, on 23 November 1938, I got up at 2 o'clock to prepare hot water for the Mother's early bath because the 24th was Darshan day. Between 2.20 and 2.30 the Mother rang the bell. I ran up the staircase to be told about an accident that had happened to Sri Aurobindo's thigh and to be asked to fetch the doctor. This accident brought about a change in his complete retirement, and rendered him available to those who had to attend on him. This opened out a long period of 12 years during which his retirement was modified owing to circumstances, inner and outer, that made it possible for him to have direct physical contacts with the world outside.
The long period of the Second World War with all its vicissitudes passed through these years. It was a priceless experience to see how he devoted his energies to the task of saving humanity from the threatened reign of Nazism. It was a practical lesson of solid work done for humanity without any thought of return or reward, without even letting humanity know what he was doing for it! Thus he lived the Divine and showed us how the Divine cares for the world, how He comes down and works for man. I shall never forget how he who was at one time in his own words "not merely a non-co-operator but an enemy of British Imperialism" bestowed such anxious care on the health of Churchill, listening carefully to the health-bulletins! It was the work of the Divine, it was the Divine's work for the world.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
a perpetual renewal of force comes from communion
with the Infinite.
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The mental life concentrates on the aesthetic, the ethical and the intellectual activities. Essential mentality is idealistic and a seeker after perfection. The subtle self, the brilliant Atman,1 is ever a dreamer. A dream of perfect beauty, perfect conduct, perfect Truth, whether seeking new forms of the Eternal or revitalising the old, is the very soul of pure mentality. But it knows not how to deal with the resistance of Matter. There it is hampered and inefficient, works by bungling experiments and has either to withdraw from the struggle or submit to the grey actuality. Or else, by studying the material life and accepting the conditions of the contest, it may succeed, but only in imposing temporarily some artificial system which infinite Nature either rends and casts aside or disfigures out of recognition or by withdrawing her assent leaves as the corpse of a dead ideal. Few and far between have been those realisations of the dreamer in Man which the world has gladly accepted, looks back to with a fond memory and seeks, in its elements, to cherish.
1 Who dwells in Dream, the inly conscious, the enjoyer of abstractions, the Brilliant.
--
But if it is often difficult for the mental life to accommodate itself to the dully resistant material activity, how much more difficult must it seem for the spiritual existence to live on in a world that appears full not of the Truth but of every lie and illusion, not of Love and Beauty but of an encompassing discord and ugliness, not of the Law of Truth but of victorious selfishness and sin? Therefore the spiritual life tends easily in the saint and Sannyasin to withdraw from the material existence and reject it either wholly and physically or in the spirit. It sees this world as the kingdom of evil or of ignorance and the eternal and divine either in a far-off heaven or beyond where there is no world and no life. It separates itself inwardly, if not also physically, from the world's impurities; it asserts the spiritual reality in a spotless isolation. This withdrawal renders an invaluable service to the material life itself by forcing it to regard and even to bow down to something that is the direct negation of its own petty ideals, sordid cares and egoistic self-content.
But the work in the world of so supreme a power as spiritual force cannot be thus limited. The spiritual life also can return upon the material and use it as a means of its own greater fullness. Refusing to be blinded by the dualities, the appearances, it can seek in all appearances whatsoever the vision of the same Lord, the same eternal Truth, Beauty, Love, Delight. The
--
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 reve rence, and the casting of society itself into such a religious mould that its most customary acts should be accompanied by a formal reminder of the spiritual symbolism of life and its ultimate destination. On the other hand, there was conceded to society the right of inertia and immobile self-conservation. The concession destroyed much of the value of the terms. The religious mould being fixed, the formal reminder tended to become a routine and to lose its living sense. The constant attempts to change the mould by new sects and religions ended only in a new routine or a modification of the old; for the saving element of the free and active mind had been exiled. The material life, handed over to the Ignorance, the purposeless and endless duality, became a leaden and dolorous yoke from which flight was the only escape.
The schools of Indian Yoga lent themselves to the compromise. Individual perfection or liberation was made the aim, seclusion of some kind from the ordinary activities the condition, the renunciation of life the culmination. The teacher gave his knowledge only to a small circle of disciples. Or if a wider movement was attempted, it was still the release of the individual soul that remained the aim. The pact with an immobile society was, for the most part, observed.
The utility of the compromise in the then actual state of the world cannot be doubted. It secured in India a society which lent itself to the preservation and the worship of spirituality, a country apart in which as in a fortress the highest spiritual ideal could maintain itself in its most absolute purity unoverpowered by the siege of the forces around it. But it was a compromise, not an absolute victory. The material life lost the divine impulse to growth, the spiritual preserved by isolation its height and purity, but sacrificed its full power and serviceableness to the world. Therefore, in the divine Providence the country of the Yogins and the Sannyasins has been forced into a strict and imperative contact with the very element it had rejected, the element of the progressive Mind, so that it might recover what was now wanting to it.
0.04 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
intend that it should never be renewed.
10 March 1934
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
the powers of disorder. The preliminary movement of Rajayoga is a careful self-discipline by which good habits of mind are substituted for the lawless movements that indulge the lower nervous being. By the practice of truth, by renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and inclination to the divine
Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, glad, clear state of mind and heart is established.
--
The Path of Works aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so
40
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
work and order in life will be a powerful help to you in renewing
yourself.
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of
Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation.
01.01 - A Yoga of the Art of Life, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In order to get a nearer approach to the ideal for which Sri Aurobindo has been labouring, we may combine with advantage the two mottoes he has given us and say that his mission is to find and express the Divine in humanity. This is the service he means to render to humanity, viz, to manifest and embody in it the Divine: his goal is not merely an amelioration, but a total change and transformation, the divinisation of human life.
Here also one must guard against certain misconceptions that are likely to occur. The transformation of human life does not necessarily mean that the entire humanity will be changed into a race of gods or divine beings; it means the evolution or appearance on earth of a superior type of humanity, even as man evolved out of animality as a superior type of animality, not that the entire animal kingdom was changed into humanity.
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 se rener sky will shed its pure warmth and translucent glow. The knot will be rent asunderbhidyate hridaya granthih and the vast and mighty streams of another ocean will flow through. We will love not merely those to whom we are akin but God's creatures, one and all; we will love not with the yearning and hunger of a mortal but with the wide and intense Rasa that lies in the divine identity of souls.
And the new society will be based not upon competition, nor even upon co-operation. It will not be an open conflict, neither will it be a convenient compromise of rival individual interests. It will be the organic expression of the collective soul of humanity, working and achieving through each and every individual soul its most wide-winging freedom, manifesting the godhead that is, proper to each and every one. It will be an organisation, most delicate and subtle and supple, the members of which will have no need to live upon one another but in and through one another. It will be, if you like, a henotheistic hierarchy in which everyone will be the greatest, since everyone is all and all everyone simultaneously.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Compelled renewed consent to see and feel.
A thought was sown in the unsounded Void,
--
In its grim rendezvous with death and fear,
No cry broke from her lips, no call for aid;
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This then is the supreme secret, not the renunciation and annulment, but the transformation of the ordinary human nature : first of all, its psychicisation, that is to say, making it move and live and be in communion and identification with the light of the psychic being, and, secondly, through the soul and the ensouled mind and life and body, to open out into the supramental consciousness and let it come down here below and work and achieve.
The soul or the true being in man uplifted in the supramental consciousness and at the same time coming forward to possess a divinised mind and life and body as an instrument and channel of its self-expression and an embodiment of the Divine Will and Purposesuch is the goal that Nature is seeking to realise at present through her evolutionary lan. It is to this labour that man has been called so that in and through him the destined transcendence and transformation can take place.
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is not merely by addressing the beloved as your goddess that you can attain this mysticism; the Elizabethan did that in merry abundance,ad nauseam.A finer temper, a more delicate touch, a more subtle sensitiveness and a kind of artistic wizardry are necessary to tune the body into a rhythm of the spirit. The other line of mysticism is common enough, viz., to express the spirit in terms and rhythms of the flesh. Tagore did that liberally, the Vaishnava poets did nothing but that, the Song of Solomon is an exquisite example of that procedure. There is here, however, a diffe rence in degrees which is an interesting feature worth noting. Thus in Tagore the refe rence to the spirit is evident, that is the major or central chord; the earthly and the sensuous are meant as the name and form, as the body to render concrete, living and vibrant, near and intimate what otherwise would perhaps be vague and abstract, afar, aloof. But this mundane or human appearance has a value in so far as it is a support, a pointer or symbol of the spiritual import. And the mysticism lies precisely in the play of the two, a hide-and-seek between them. On the other hand, as I said, the greater portion of Vaishnava poetry, like a precious and beautiful casket, no doubt, hides the spiritual import: not the pure significance but the sign and symbol are luxuriously elaborated, they are placed in the foreground in all magnificence: as if it was their very purpose to conceal the real meaning. When the Vaishnava poet says,
O love, what more shall I, shall Radha speak,
--
The growth of a philosophical thought-content in poetry has been inevitable. For man's consciousness in its evolutionary march is driving towards a consummation which includes and presupposes a development along that line. The mot d'ordre in old-world poetry was "fancy", imaginationremember the famous lines of Shakespeare characterising a poet; in modern times it is Thought, even or perhaps particularly abstract metaphysical thought. Perceptions, experiences, realisationsof whatever order or world they may beexpressed in sensitive and aesthetic terms and figures, that is poetry known and appreciated familiarly. But a new turn has been coming on with an increasing insistencea definite time has been given to that, since the renaissance, it is said: it is the growing importance of Thought or brain-power as a medium or atmosphere in which poetic experiences find a sober and clear articulation, a definite and strong formulation. Rationalisation of all experiences and realisations is the keynote of the modern mentality. Even when it is said that reason and rationality are not ultimate or final or significant realities, that the irrational or the submental plays a greater role in our consciousness and that art and poetry likewise should be the expression of such a mentality, even then, all this is said and done in and through a strong rational and intellectual stress and frame the like of which cannot be found in the old-world frankly non-intellectual creations.
The religious, the mystic or the spiritual man was, in the past, more or Jess methodically and absolutely non-intellectual and anti-intellectual: but the modern age, the age of scientific culture, is tending to make him as strongly intellectual: he has to explain, not only present the object but show up its mechanism alsoexplain to himself so that he may have a total understanding and a firmer grasp of the thing which he presents and explains to others as well who demand a similar approach. He feels the necessity of explaining, giving the rationality the rationale the science, of his art; for without that, it appears to him, a solid ground is not given to the structure of his experience: analytic power, preoccupation with methodology seems inhe rent in the modern creative consciousness.
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A gap was rent in the all-concealing vault;
The conscious ends of being went rolling back:
--
An old pull of subconscious cords renews;
It draws the unwilling spirit from the heights,
--
A dense veil was rent, a mighty whisper heard;
Repeated in the privacy of his soul,
--
It rent the gauze opaque of Nescience:
Her lifted finger's keen unthinkable tip
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But although Reason has been and is useful for the practical, we may say almost, the manual aspect of life, life itself it leaves unexplained and uncomprehended. For life is mobility, a continuous flow that has nowhere any gap or stop and things have in reality no isolated or separate existence, they merge and mingle into one another and form an indissoluble whole. Therefore the forms and categories that Reason imposes upon existence are more or less arbitrary; they are shackles that seek to bind up and limit life, but are often rent asunder in the very effort. So the civilisation that has its origin in Reason and progresses with discoveries and inventionsdevices for artfully manipulating naturehas been essentially and pre-eminently mechanical in its structure and outlook. It has become more and more efficient perhaps, but less and less soul-inspired, less and less-endowed with the free-flowing sap of organic growth and vitality.
So instead of the rational principle, the new age wants the principle of Nature or Life. Even as regards knowledge Reason is not the only, nor the best instrument. For animals have properly no reason; the nature-principle of knowledge in the animal is Instinct the faculty that acts so faultlessly, so marvellously where Reason can only pause and be perplexed. This is not to say that man is to or can go back to this primitive and animal function; but certainly he can replace it by something akin which is as natural and yet purified and self-consciousillumined instinct, we may say or Intuition, as Bergson terms it. And Nietzsche's definition of the Superman has also a similar orientation and significance; for, according to him, the Superman is man who has outgrown his Reason, who is not bound by the standards and the conventions determined by Reason for a special purpose. The Superman is one who has gone beyond "good and evil," who has shaken off from his nature and character elements that are "human, all too human"who is the embodiment of life-force in its absolute purity and st rength and freedom.
--
This is the truth that is trying to dawn upon the new age. Not matter but that which forms the substance of matter, not intellect but a vaster consciousness that informs the intellect, not man as he is, an aberration in the cosmic order, but as he may and shall be the embodiment and fulfilment of that orderthis is the secret Intuition which, as yet dimly envisaged, nevertheless secretly inspires all the human activities of today. Only, the truth is being interpreted, as we have said, in terms of vital life. The intellectual and physical man gave us one aspect of the reality, but neither is the vital and psychical man the complete reality. The one acquisition of this shifting of the viewpoint has been that we are now in touch with the natural and deeper movement of humanity and not as before merely with its artificial scaffolding. The Alexandrine civilisation of humanity, in Nietzsche's phrase, was a sort of divagation from nature, it was following a loop away from the direct path of natural evolution. And the new renaissance of today has precisely corrected this aberration of humanity and brought it again in a line with the natural cosmic order.
Certainly this does not go far enough into the motive of the change. The cosmic order does not mean mentalised vitalism which is also in its turn a section of the integral reality. It means the order of the spirit, it means the transfiguration of the physical, the vital and the intellectual into the supernal Substance, Power and Light of that Spirit. The real transcendence of humanity is not the transcendence of one or other of its levels but the total transcendence to an altogether diffe rent status and the transmutation of humanity in the mould of that statusnot a Nietzschean Titan nor a Bergsonian Dionysus but the tranquil vision and delight and dynamism of the Spirit the incarnation of a god-head.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instrument for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.
That is what is wanted at present in the artistic world the true inspiration, the breath from higher altitudes. And here comes the role of the mystic, the Yogi. The sense of evolution, the march of human consciousness demands and prophesies that the future poet has to be a mysticin him will be fulfilled the travail of man's conscious working. The self-conscious craftsman, the tireless experimenter with his adventurous analytic mind has sharpened his instrument, made it supple and elastic, tempered, refined and enriched it; that is comparable to what we call the aspiration or call from below. Now the Grace must descend and fulfil. And when one rises into this higher consciousness beyond the brain and mind, when one lives there habitually, one knows the why and the how of things, one becomes a perfectly conscious operator and still retains all spontaneity and freshness and wonder and magic that are usually associated with inconscience and irreflection. As there is a spontaneity of instinct, there is likewise also a spontaneity of vision: a child is spontaneous in its movements, even so a seer. Not only so, the higher spontaneity is more spontaneous, for the higher consciousness means not only awa reness but the free and untrammelled activity and expression of the truth and reality it is.
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Suggested a million renderings to the Mind,
It lends a purport to a random world.
--
We must renew the secret bond in things,
Our hearts recall the lost divine Idea,
--
Careless of the pain that rends its body and life;
Above joy and sorrow is that grandeur's walk:
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Mine is not the deliverance achieved through mere renunciation. Mine rather the freedom that tastes itself in a thousand associations.1
The spirit of the age demands this new gospel. Mankind needs and awaits a fresh revelation. The world and life are not an illusion or a lesser reality: they are, if taken rightly, as real as the pure Spirit itself. Indeed, Spirit and Flesh, Consciousness and Matter are not antinomies; to consider them as such is itself an illusion. In fact, they are only two poles or modes or aspects of the same reality. To separate or divide them is a one-sided concentration or abstraction on the part of the human mind. The fulfilment of the Spirit is in its expression through Matter; human life too reaches its highest term, its summum bonum, in embodying the spiritual consciousness here on earth and not dissolving itself in the Transcendence. That is the new Dispensation which answers to the deepest aspiration in man and towards which he has been travelling through the ages in the course of the evolution of his consciousness. Many, however, are the prophets and sages who have set this ideal before humanity and more and more insistently and clearly as we come nearer to the age we live in. But none or very few have expressed it with such beauty and charm and compelling persuasion. It would be carping criticism to point out-as some, purists one may call them, have done-that in poetising and aesthetising the spiritual truth and reality, in trying to make it human and terrestrial, he has diminished and diluted the original substance, in endeavouring to render the diamond iridescent, he has turned it into a baser alloy. Tagore's is a poetic soul, it must be admitted; and it is not necessary that one should find in his ideas and experiences and utterances the cent per cent accuracy and inevitability of a Yogic consciousness. Still his major perceptions, those that count, stand and are borne out by the highest spiritual realisation.
Tagore is no inventor or innovator when he posits Spirit as Beauty, the spiritual consciousness as the ardent rhythm of ecstasy. This experience is the very core of Vaishnavism and for which Tagore is sometimes called a Neo-Vaishnava. The Vaishnava sees the world pulsating in glamorous beauty as the Lila (Play) of the Lord, and the Lord, God himself, is nothing but Love and Beauty. Still Tagore is not all Vaishnava or merely a Vaishnava; he is in addition a modern (the carping voice will say, there comes the dilution and adulteration)in the sense that problems exist for himsocial, political, economic, national, humanitarianwhich have to be faced and solved: these are not merely mundane, but woven into the texture of the fundamental problem of human destiny, of Soul and Spirit and God. A Vaishnava was, in spite of his acceptance of the world, an introvert, to use a modern psychological phrase, not necessarily in the pejorative sense, but in the neutral scientific sense. He looks upon the universe' and human life as the play of the Lord, as an actuality and not mere illusion indeed; but he does not participate or even take interest in the dynamic working out of the world process, he does not care to know, has no need of knowing that there is a terrestrial purpose and a diviner fulfilment of the mortal life upon earth. The Vaishnava dwells more or less absorbed in the Vaikuntha of his inner consciousness; the outer world, although real, is only a symbolic shadowplay to which he can but be a witness-real, is only a nothing more.
--
"Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight."Gitanjali,73.
Tagore the poet reminds one often and anon of Kalidasa. He was so much in love, had such kinship with the great old master that many of his poems, many passages and lines are reminiscences, echoes, modulations or a paraphrase of the original classic. Tagore himself refers in his memoirs to one Kalidasian line that haunted his juvenile brain because of its exquisite music and enchanting imagery:
01.05 - The Nietzschean Antichrist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is the Nietzsche we all know. But there is another aspect of his which the world has yet been slow to recognise. For, at bottom, Nietzsche is not all storm and fury. If his Superman is a Destroying Angel, he is none the less an angel. If he is endowed with a supreme sense of st rength and power, there is also secreted in the core of his heart a sense of the beautiful that illumines his somewhat sombre aspect. For although Nietzsche is by birth a Slavo-Teuton, by culture and education he is pre-eminently Hellenic. His earliest works are on the subject of Greek tragedy and form what he describes as an "Apollonian dream." And to this dream, to this Greek aesthetic sense more than to any thing else he sacrifices justice and pity and charity. To him the weak and the miserable, the sick and the maimed are a sort of blot, a kind of ulcer on the beautiful face of humanity. The herd that wallow in suffering and relish suffering disfigure the aspect of the world and should therefore be relentlessly mowed out of existence. By being pitiful to them we give our tacit assent to their persistence. And it is precisely because of this that Nietzsche has a horror of Christianity. For compassion gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the world and thus renders that ugliness a necessary and indispensable element of existence. To protect the weak, to sympathise with the lowly brings about more of weakness and more of lowliness. Nietzsche has an aristocratic taste par excellencewhat he aims at is health and vigour and beauty. But above all it is an aristocracy of the spirit, an aristocracy endowed with all the richness and beauty of the soul that Nietzsche wants to establish. The beggar of the street is the symbol of ugliness, of the poverty of the spirit. And the so-called aristocrat, die millionaire of today is as poor and ugly as any helpless leper. The soul of either of them is made of the same dirty, sickly stuff. The tattered rags, the crouching heart, the effeminate nerve, the unenlightened soul are the standing ugliness of the world and they have no place in the ideal, the perfect humanity. Humanity, according to Nietzsche, is made in order to be beautiful, to conceive the beautiful, to create the beautiful. Nietzsche's Superman has its perfect image in a Grecian statue of Zeus cut out in white marble-Olympian grandeur shedding in every lineament Apollonian beauty and Dionysian vigour.
The real secret of Nietzsche's philosophy is not an adoration of brute force, of blind irrational joy in fighting and killing. Far from it, Nietzsche has no kinship with Treitschke or Bernhard. What Nietzsche wanted was a world purged of littleness and ugliness, a humanity, not of saints, perhaps, but of heroes, lofty in their ideal, great in their achievement, majestic in their empirea race of titanic gods breathing the glory of heaven itself.
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The imprisoned deity rent its magic fence.
As with a sound of thunder and of seas,
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 diffe rence 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:
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 appa rent 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 adhe rence to Him, the Enemies are rendered powerless. "They tease the soul, but they harm not the soul". Or again, as the mystic graphically phrases it: "This soul is not borne in this image of sin as a sick man, though he feel it; but he beareth it." The best way of dealing with one's enemies is not to struggle and "strive with them." The aspirant, the lover of Jesus, must remember: "He is through grace reformed to the likeness of God ('in the privy substance of his soul within') though he neither feel it nor see it."
If you are told you are still full of sins and you are not worthy to follow the path, that you must go and work out your sins first, here is your answer: "Go shrive thee better: trow not this saying, for it is false, for thou art shriven. Trust securely that thou art on the way, and thee needeth no ransacking of shrift for that that is passed, hold forth thy way and think on Jerusalem." That is to say, do not be too busy with the difficulties of the moment, but look ahead, as far as possible, fix your attention upon the goal, the intermediate steps will become easy. Jerusalem is another name of the Love of Jesus or the Bliss in Heaven. Grow in this love, your sins will fade away of themselves. "Though thou be thrust in an house with thy body, nevertheless in thine heart, where the stead of love is, thou shouldst be able to have part of that love... " What exquisite utterance, what a deep truth!
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
by renunciation or by perfect satisfaction of desire that
one can have the total experience of God.2 But isn't
--
"Only by perfect renunciation of desire or by perfect satisfaction of desire can the
utter embrace of God be experienced, for in both ways the essential precondition is
--
liberator. Not the Pundit, but the Yogin, not monasticism, but the inner renunciation of
desire and ignorance and egoism."
--
Naturally, this decision should be renewed every day and
manifested in a constant and effective will.
--
You have written: "Of all renunciations, the most
difficult is to renounce one's good habits." What exactly
do you mean by this? Does it suggest that good habits
--
You have written: "So long as you have to renounce
anything, you are not on this path."20 But doesn't all
--
there is no longer any question of renouncing it because it is no
longer an object of desire.
--
When she renounces falsehood and lives in the Truth.
28 April 1965
--
be able to renew his body and become a young man of
twenty-five?
01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In Europe such a contingency did not arise, because the religious spirit, rampant in the days of Inquisitions and St. Bartholomews, died away: it died, and (or, because) it was replaced by a spirit that was felt as being equally, if not more, au thentic and, which for the moment, suffused the whole consciousness with a large and high afflatus, commensurate with the amplitude of man's aspiration. I refer, of course, to the spirit of the renaissance. It was a spirit profane and secular, no doubt, but on that level it brought a catholicity of temper and a richness in varied interesta humanistic culture, as it is calledwhich constituted a living and unifying ideal for Europe. That spirit culminated in the great F rench Revolution which was the final coup de grace to all that still remained of mediaevalism, even in its outer structure, political and economical.
In India the spirit of renascence came very late, late almost by three centuries; and even then it could not flood the whole of the continent in all its nooks and corners, psychological and physical. There were any number of pockets (to use a cur rent military phrase) left behind which guarded the spirit of the past and offered persistent and obdurate resistance. Perhaps, such a dispensation was needed in India and inevitable also; inevitable, because the religious spirit is closest to India's soul and is its most direct expression and cannot be uprooted so easily; needed, because India's and the world's future demands it and depends upon it.
Only, the religious spirit has to be bathed and purified and enlightened by the spirit of the renascence: that is to say, one must learn and understand and realize that Spirit is the thing the one thing needfulTamevaikam jnatha; 'religions' are its names and forms, appliances and decorations. Let us have by all means the religious spirit, the fundamental experience that is the inmost truth of all religions, that is the matter of our soul; but in our mind and life and body let there be a luminous catholicity, let these organs and instruments be trained to see and compare and appreciate the variety, the numberless facets which the one Spirit naturally presents to the human consciousness. Ekam sat viprh bahudh vadanti. It is an ancient truth that man discovered even in his earliest seekings; but it still awaits an adequate expression and application in life.
II
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine Love is a greater fire than the low smouldering fire that our secular unregenerate life is. One has to choose and declare his adhesion. Indeed, the stage of conversion, the crucial turn from the ordinary life to the spiritual life Eliot has characterised in a very striking manner. We usually say, sometimes in an outburst of grief, sometimes in a spirit of sudden disgust and renunciation that the world is dark and dismal and lonesome, the only thing to do here is to be done with it. The true renunciation, that which is deep and abiding, is not, however, so simple a thing, such a short cut. So our poet says, but the world is not dark enough, it is not lonesome enough: the world lives and moves in a superficial half-light, it is neither real death nor real life, it is death in life. It is this miserable mediocrity, the shallow uncertainty of consciousness that spells danger and ruin for the soul. Hence the poet exclaims:
. . . . Not here
--
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.
Sin is Behovely, but
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Perpetual renewal.
6 March 1967
--
future, and if this giving is constantly renewed, the past will fall
away by itself and no longer encumber you.
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But the vibrations of divine Bliss and those of pleasure cannot cohabit in the same vital and physical house. We must therefore TOTALLY renounce all feelings of pleasure to be ready to receive the divine Ananda. But rare are those who can renounce pleasure without thereby renouncing all active participation in life or sinking into a stern asceticism. And among those who realize that the transformation is to be wrought in active life, some pretend that pleasure is a form of Ananda gone more or less astray and legitimize their search for self-satisfaction, thereby creating a virtually insuperable obstacle to their own transformation.
Now, if there is anything else you wish to ask me Anyone may ask, anyoneanyone who has something to saynot just the students.
0 1955-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I am not now going to renounce Sri Aurobindos Yoga, Mother, for my whole life is based upon it, but I believe I should employ other meanswhich is why I am writing you this letter.
By continuing this daily little ant-like struggle and by having to confront the same desires, the same distractions every day, it seems to me I am wasting my energy in vain. Sri Aurobindos Yoga, which is meant to include life, is so difficult that one should come to it only after having already established the solid base of a concrete divine realization. That is why I want to ask you if I should not withdraw for a certain time, to Almora,3 for example, to Brewsters place,4 to live in solitude, silence, meditation, far away from people, work and temptations, until a beginning of Light and Realization is concretized in me. Once this solid base is acquired, it would be easier for me to resume my work and the struggle here for the true transformation of the outer being. But to want to transform this outer being without having fully illumined the inner being seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse, or at least condemning myself to a pitiless and endless battle in which the best of my forces are fruitlessly consumed.
0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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 movement 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, above all, had the characteristic of being very central. But she was constantly arguing with her mother. The mother wanted to keep things just as they were, with their usual rhythm, which precisely meant the habit of tearing down one thing to rebuild another, then again tearing down that to build still another, thus giving the building an appearance of frightful confusion. But the daughter did not like this, and she had another plan. Most of all, she wanted to bring something completely new into the organization: a kind of super-organization that would render all this confusion unnecessary. Finally, as it was impossible 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!
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Thats where I am. I have renounced the uncontested authority of a god, I have renounced the unshakable calm of the sage in order to become the superman. I have concentrated everything upon that.
We shall see.
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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.
--
But how many people know how to use it in this way? Very few, which is why they have to be taught. What I call teach is to show, to give the example. We want to be the example of true living in the world. Its a challenge I am placing before the whole financial world: I am telling them that they are in the process of withering and ruining the earth with their idiotic system; and with even less than they are now spending for useless thingsmerely for inflating something that has no inhe rent life, that should be only an instrument at the service of life, that has no reality in itself, that is only a means and not an end (they make an end of something that is only a means)well then, instead of making of it an end, they should make it the means. With what they have at their disposal they could oh, transform the earth so quickly! Transform it, put it into contact, truly into contact, with the supramental forces that would make life bountiful and, indeed, constantly renewedinstead of becoming withered, stagnant, shrivelled up: a future moon. A dead moon.
We are told that in a few millions or billions of years, the earth will become some kind of moon. The movement should be the opposite: the earth should become more and more a resplendent sun, but a sun of life. Not a sun that burns, but a sun that illuminesa radiant glory.
0 1958-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
7) But even in the event you have not made the irrevocable decision at the outset, should you have the good fortune to live during one of these unimaginable hours of universal history when the Grace is present, embodied upon earth, It will offer you, at certain exceptional moments, the renewed possibility of making a final choice that will lead you straight to the goal.
That was the message of hope.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
At that point, sometimes a great courage is needed, sometimes a great endurance is needed, sometimes a true love is enough, sometimes, oh! if only faith were there, one thing, one tiny little thing is enough, and everything can be swept away. I have done it often; there are times when I have failed. But more often than not I have been able to remove it. But then, what is needed is a great, stoical courage or a capacity to endure and to SEE IT THROUGH. The resistance (especially in cases of former suicide), the resistance to the temptation of renewing this stupidity creates a terrible formation. Or else this habit of fleeing when suffering comes: flee, flee, instead of absorbing the difficulty, holding on.
But just this, a faith in the Grace, or an awa reness of the Grace, or the intensity of the call, or else naturally the response the response, the thing that opens, that breaks the response to this marvelous love of the Grace.
It is difficult without a strong will; and above all, above all the capacity to resist the temptation, which was the fatal temptation throughout all ones livesbecause its power builds up. Each defeat gives it renewed force. But a tiny victory can dissolve it.
Oh, the most terrible of all is when one does not have the st rength, the courage, something indomitable! How many times do they come to tell me, I want to die, I want to flee, I want to die.I say, But die, then, die to yourself! No one is asking you to let your ego survive! Die to yourself since you want to die! Have that courage, the true courage, to die to your egoism.
0 1958-12-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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.
Happy New Year, my dear child! I am sure it will bring us a decisive victory.
0 1959-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I come to renew before you the resolution that I took this morning at the Samadhi.1
Henceforth I refuse to be an accomplice to this force. It is my enemy. Whatever form it may take, or whatever supports it may find in my nature, I will refuse to yield to it and will cling to you. You are the only reality: that is my mantra. Anything that seeks to make me doubt you is my enemy. You are the only Reality.
0 1959-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
That is all, Sweet Mother. In spite of my anesthesia, I think of you. (I am not blocked; on the contrary, it seems to me that the bond has been renewed since our last meeting, but I feel strangely empty.) I am unable to understand how you can love me. Oh Mother, I have truly to begin living, truly loving!
Your child,
0 1959-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have no other details to give you, except that I am not happy. The fact is that these last three years I have been tied down by my penury, otherwise I would be travelling along other roads, far from herewith no greater hope in my heart, but with space before me, at least. I am only here to render you service, but I do not know if I shall be able to repress my need for space much longerit has already been going on too long. This is the undisguised truth. But what can I do?I am tied down. If I truly loved, things would be diffe rent, but it seems I love no one, not even myself, and the only love of which I am capable, human love, is forbidden to me. So I can do nothing, not on any plane, and I have no hope in anything. Forgive me, I do not wish to pain you, but neither can I pretend any longer to be happy with my lot.
Signed: Satprem
0 1960-05-16, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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 above. 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 above, 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 1960-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
He lives in a region which is largely a kind of vital vibration which penetrates the mind and makes use of the imagination (essentially its the same region most so-called cultured men live in). I dont mean to be severe or critical, but its a world that likes to play to itself. Its not really what we could call histrionics, not thatits rather a need to dramatize to oneself. So it can be an heroic drama, it can be a musical drama, it can be a tragic drama, or quite simply a poetic drama and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, its a romantic drama. And then, these soul states (!) come replete with certain spoken expressions (laughing) Im holding myself back from saying certain things!You know, its like a theatricals store where you rent scenery and costumes. Its all ready and waitinga little call, and there it comes, ready-made. For a particular occasion, they say, Youre the woman of my life (to be repeated as often as necessary), and for another they say Its a whole world, a whole mode of human life which I suddenly felt I was holding in my arms. Yes, like a decoration, an ornament, a nicetyan ornament of existence, to keep it from being flat and dull and the best means the human mind has found to get out of its tamas. Its a kind of artifice.
So for persons who are severe and grave (there are two such examples here, but its not necessary to name them) There are beings who are grave, so serious, so sincere, who find it hypocritical; and when it borders on certain (how shall I put it?) vital excesses, they call it vice. There are others who have lived their entire lives in a yogic or religious discipline, and they see this as an obstacle, illusion, dirtyness (Mother makes a gesture of rejecting with disgust), but above all, its this terrible illusion that prevents you from nearing the Divine. And when I saw the way these two people here reacted, in fact, I said to myself, but you see, I FELT So strongly that this too is the Divine, it too is a way of getting out of something that has had its place in evolution, and still has a place, individually, for certain individuals. Naturally, if you remain there, you keep turning in circles; it will always be (not eternally, but indefinitely) the woman of my life, to take that as a symbol. But once youre out of it, you see that this had its place, its utilityit made you emerge from a kind of very animal-like wisdom and quietude that of the herd or of the being who sees no further than his daily round. It was necessary. We mustnt condemn it, we mustnt use harsh words.
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But these people just cant get out of their education! Here is a lady [A. Bailey], quite renowned, it seems (shes dead now), who became the disciple of a Tibetan lama and she still speaks of Christ as the sole Avatar! She just cant get out of it!
And each one has the absolute Truth!
0 1961-06-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When one does not repeat ones past mistakes, the divine power, the power of the divine Grace, abolishes their consequences their karmain the being. But as long as mistakes are repeated nothing can be abolished, because one re-creates them at every minute. When a person has made a serious error, say, a serious mistake (it can be serious or not, but we are concerned primarily with the serious ones), such mistakes have their consequences in life, a karma which has to be exhausted. The divine Grace, if you call upon it, has the power to abolish that karma, to cut short the consequences but the Grace can only do this when you, within yourself, dont begin all over again, when the mistake committed is not renewed. The past can be completely purified and abolished, on condition that one does not keep making it into a perpetual present.
I have said it there in one sentence, but I didnt want people to believe that they can continue making the same stupid blunder indefinitely and have the Grace indefinitely annul all the consequences.1 It isnt like that! The past can be cleansed to the point where it has no effect of any kind on the future, but only on condition that you stop the wrong vibration in yourself, that you dont reproduce the same vibration indefinitely.
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have had the experience of being missioned, so to speak, in a form of Love and Consciousness combineddivine Love in its supreme purity, divine Consciousness in its supreme purity and emanated DIRECTLY, without passing through all the intermediate states, directly into the nethermost depths of the Inconscient. And there I had the impression of being, or rather of finding a symbolic Being in deep sleep so veiled that he was almost invisible. Then, at my contact, the veil seemed to be rent and, without his awakening, there was a sort of radiation spreading out. I can still see my vision.2
(silence)
0 1961-10-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One sees glimpses of it. I told you Ive often seen it with X. I also saw it with another tantric who came here (someone said to be greatly renowned in the North)this sort of very well organized mental power, a mental-physical power. But it was always vibrating or intermittent or partial, passing flashes or fluctuating formations. Here it wasnt that; it was a feeling of eternity.
Normally one would have said that my body was in trance; yet it could move, it could speaksince I did speak to you; but nevertheless, it was a peculiar feeling (which I still have somewhat), like having a head too large for my body. Its not painful or disagreeable, but Im not used to it.
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But we have not yet reached the heart of the Vedic secret. The birth of Agni, the soul (and so many men are still unborn) is merely the start of the voyage. This inner flame seeks, it is the seeker within us, for it is a spark of the great primordial Fire and will never be satisfied until it has recovered its solar totality, the lost sun of which the Veda incessantly speaks. Yet even when we have risen from plane to plane and the Flame has taken successive births in the triple world of our lower existence (the physical, vital and mental world), it will still remain unsatisfiedit wants to ascend, ascend further. And soon we reach a mental frontier where there seems to be nothing to grasp any longer, nor even to see, and nothing remains but to abolish everything and leap into the ecstasy of a great Light. At this point, we feel almost painfully the imprisoning carapace of matter all around us, preventing that apotheosis of the Flame; then we understand the cry, My kingdom is not of this world, and the insistence of Indias Vedantic sagesand perhaps the sages of all worlds and all religions that we must abandon this body to embrace the Eternal. Will our flame thus forever be truncated here below and our quest always end in disappointment? Shall we always have to choose one or the other, to renounce earth to gain heaven?
Yet beyond the lower triple world, the Rishis had discovered a certain fourth, touryam svid; they found the vast dwelling place, the solar world, Swar: I have arisen from earth to the mid-world [life], I have arisen from the mid-world to heaven [mind], from the level of the firmament of heaven I have gone to the Sun-world, the Light (Yajur-veda 17.67). And it is said, Mortals, they achieved immortality (Rig-veda I.110.4). What then was their secret? How did they pass from a heaven of mind to the great heaven without leaving the body, without, as it were, going off into ecstasies?
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A few days later, it was the same scene again. It was always the same scene. Then he would take the furniture (it wasnt ours, we had rented a furnished apartment) and start throwing it out the window into the courtyard!
A novel.
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Dear Sir I must begin by telling you that although this text is an excellent essay, it is not, in its present form, a book for the Spiritual Masters series. Let us enumerate the reasons for this. First of all, the general impression is of an ABSTRACT text. I can straight-away imagine your reaction to this and I dread misunderstandings! But putting myself in the readers place, since, once again, it does involve a collection intended for a wide public that we are beginning to know well, I can assure you that this public will not be able to follow page after page of reflections upon what one is bound to call a philosophical and spiritual system. Obviously this impression is caused primarily by the fact that you have begun with twenty-one pages where the reader is assumed to already know of Sri Aurobindos historical existence and the content of the Vedas and the Upanishads, plus I dont know how many other notions of rite, truth, divinity, wisdom, etc., etc. In my view, and the solution is going to appear cruel to you, for you certainly value these twenty-one pages [on the Secret of the Veda], they should purely and simply be deleted, for everything you say there, which is very rich in meaning, can only become clear when one has read what follows. There are many books in which readers can be asked to make the effort entailed in not understanding the beginning until they have read the end: but not books of popular culture. One could envisage an introduction of three or four pages to situate the spiritual climate and cultural world in which Sri Aurobindos thought has taken place, provided, however, that it is sufficiently descriptive, and not a pre-synthesis of everything to be expounded upon in what follows. In a general way you are going to smile, finding me quite Cartesian! But the readership we address is more or less permeated by a widespread Cartesianism, and you can help them, if you like, to reverse their methodology, but on the condition that you make yourself understood right from the start. Generally, you dont make enough use of analysis and, even before analysis, of a description of the realities being analyzed. That is why the sections of pure philosophical analysis seem much too long to us, and, even apart from the abstract character of the chapter on evolution (which should certainly be shorter), one feels at a positive standstill! After having waited patiently, and sometimes impatiently, for some light to be thrown on Sri Aurobindos own experience, one reads with genuine amazement that one can draw on energies from above instead of drawing on them from the material nature around oneself, or from an animal sleep, or that one can modify his sleep and render it conscious master illnesses before they enter the body. All of that in less than a page; and you conclude that the spirit that was the slave of matter becomes again the master of evolution. But how Sri Aurobindo was led to think this, the experiences that permitted him to verify it, those that permit other men to consider the method transmittable, the difficulties, the obstacles, the realizationsdoesnt this constitute the essence of what must be said to make the reader understand? Once again, it is the question of a pedagogy intimately tied in with the spirit of the collection. Let me add as well that I always find it deplorable when a thought is not expressed purely for its own sake, but is accompanied by an aggressive irony towards concepts which the author does not share. This is pointless and harms the ideas being presented, all the more so because they are expressed in contrast with caricatured notions: the allusions you make to such concepts as you think yourself capable of evoking the soul, creation, virtue, sin, salvationwould only hold some interest if the reader could find those very concepts within himself. But, as they are caricatured by your pen, the reader is given the impression of an all too easily obtained contrast between certain ideas admired and others despised. Whereas it would be far more to the point if they corresponded to something real in the religious consciousness of the West. I have too much esteem for you and the spiritual world in which you live to avoid saying this through fear of upsetting you.
Amen.
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother frequently addressed Satprem as "mon petit" or "petit," terms of endearment she used for very few other people, which can be approximately rendered as "my little one" or "my child." Since no English phrase can capture the nuances of Mother's simple "petit" and "mon petit," we have decided to leave them in the original F rench wherever they occur.
Sri Aurobindo on Himself.
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I voluntarily renounced all that in order to go further. And when I did it, I understood what people here in India mean when they say: he sur rendered his experience. I had never really understood what that meant. When I did it, I understood. No, I said, I dont want to stop there; I am giving it all to You, that I may go on to the end. Then I understood what it meant.
Had I kept it, oh I would have become one of those world- renowned phenomena, turning the course of the earths history upside down! A stupendous power! Stupendous, unheard-of. But it meant stopping there, accepting that experience as final I went on.
0 1962-02-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I can have that experience at any moment whatsoever: one second of concentration, stepping back from action, and its Bliss. And when I dont step back, then its something like an eternal omnipotence geared to action and entirely upheld and englobed by That. This power geared to action is the first manifestation of That thats what manifests first when That begins to exist consciously. (Mother places her palms together and, without separating them, turns her hands from side to side, as if to show two faces of the same thing.) So its indissoluble: its not two things, not even two aspects, because it isnt an aspect at all (words are idiotic, imbecilic, meaningless). The experience is renewable at will: one single thing in its essence, innumerable in its expression, and appa rently increasing in power. I have experienced this at will, in every possible circumstance, including physically fainting (I told you the other day). Its called fainting, but I didnt lose consciousness for a minute! Not for one minute did I PHYSICALLY lose consciousness and behind it all, witnessing everything, was this experience.
(Pavitra enters the room to ask Mother an urgent question)
--
And the experience is renewable, renewable, renewable I have only to make a slight inner movement and there it is.
Ultimately, looking at it like any idiot who thinks himself intelligent, one could say: this must be why the Lord created the universe.
0 1962-05-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Let me put it to you more clearly: your physical body, for example, should have been either stronger or more supple or endowed with certain very strong vital compensations, so that you wouldnt suffer from your working conditions. Of course, for someone following a yogic ascent, whose soul is in the process of formation, the external conditions of life are normally what is best for inner development, whatever that may beeven if, on the surface, those conditions a rent good. So the only advice you can give such a person is, Well, either renounce the spiritual life or else putup with it. But thats not your case. There is a Mission, a work, and a kind of gap between a certain physical formation and that Mission. So if you ask me plainly what I see, I can tell you plainly, instead of saying as I would to certain sadhaks or anyone sincerely wanting to do yoga, Take it or leave it; you must learn to transform yourself inwardly to the point where you can master the body and its needs. I cant tell you that, because thats not how it is for you.
I mean it may beit may be that even an inner transformation (a complete conversion of the vital being, for instance) wouldnt necessarily bring an improvement in your health. It is here where. Its not something I see imperatively. And to go back to ordinary life would be the end of everythingof your physical life and your inner life too.
0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, mon petit, I said one day that in the history of earth, wherever there was a possibility for the Consciousness to manifest, I was there1; this is a fact. Its like the story of Savitri: always there, always there, always there, in this one, that oneat certain times there were four emanations simultaneously! At the time of the Italian and F rench renaissance. And again at the time of Christ, then too. Oh, you know, I have remembered so many, many things! It would take volumes to tell it all. And then, more often than not (not always, but more often than not), what took part in this or that life was a particular yogic formation of the vital beingin other words something immortal.2 And when I came this time, as soon as I took up the yoga, they came back again from all sides, they were waiting. Some were simply waiting, others were working (they led their own independent lives) and they all gathered together again. Thats how I got those memories. One after the other, those vital beings camea deluge! I had barely enough time to assimilate one, to see, situate and integrate it, and another would come. They are quite independent, of course, they do their own work, but they are very centralized all the same. And there are all kindsall kinds, anything you can imagine! Some of them have even been in men: they are not exclusively feminine.
At first, I used to think they were fantasies.
0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I found out many, many things about Joan of Arcmany things. And with stunning precision, which made it extremely interesting. I wont repeat them because I dont remember with exactness, and these things have no value unless they are exact. And then, for the Italian renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa; and for the F rench renaissance: Franois I, Marguerite de Valois,2 and so forth.
Twice I knew that it wasnt just images but something that had happened to ME, but it took another form. Once (when I was older, around twenty) it happened at Versailles. I had been invited to dinner by a cousin who, with no warning, served me dry champagne during dinner and I drank it unsuspectingly (I who never drank at all, neither wine nor liquor!). When I had to get up and cross the crowded room, oh, how very difficult it became, so difficult! Then we went to a place near the chateau, with a view of the whole park. And I was staring at the park, when I saw I saw the park filling up with lights (the electric lights had vanished), with all kinds of lights, torches, lanterns and then crowds of people walking about in Louis XIV dress! I was staring at this with my eyes wide open, holding on to the balustrade to keep from falling down (I wasnt too sure of myself!). I was seeing it all, then I saw myself there, engrossed in conversation with some people (I dont remember now, but there were certain corrections here too). I mean I was a certain person (I dont remember who) and there were those two brothers who were sculptors (Mother vainly tries to recollect the names3) anyhow, all kinds of people were there and I saw myself talking, chatting. And I seem to have been sufficiently in control of myself, because when I related all that I had seen, there were some quite interesting details and corrections. That was one time.
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The peculiarity of this yoga is that until there is siddhi above the foundation does not become perfect. Those who have been following my course had kept many of the old samskaras; some of them have dropped away, but others still remain. There was the samskara of Sannyasa, even the wish to create an Aravinda Math [Sri Aurobindo monastery]. Now the intellect has recognized that Sannyasa is not what is wanted, but the stamp of the old idea has not yet been effaced from the prana [breath, life energy]. And so there was next this talk of remaining in the midst of the world, as a man of worldly activities and yet a man of renunciation. The necessity of renouncing desire has been understood, but the harmony of renunciation of desire with enjoyment of Ananda has not been rightly seized by the mind. And they took up my Yoga because it was very natural to the Bengali temperament, not so much from the side of Knowledge as from the side of Bhakti and Karma [Works]. A little knowledge has come in, but the greater part has escaped; the mist of sentimentalism has not been dissipated, the groove of the sattwic bhava [religious fervor] has not been broken. There is still the ego. I am not in haste, I allow each to develop according to his nature. I do not want to fashion all in the same mould. That which is fundamental will indeed be one in all, but it will express itself in many forms. Everybody grows, forms from within. I do not want to build from outside. The basis is there, the rest will come.
What I am aiming at is not a society like the present rooted in division. What I have in view is a Samgha [community] founded in the spirit and in the image of its oneness. It is with this idea that the name Deva Samgha has been given the commune of those who want the divine life is the Deva Samgha. Such a Samgha will have to be established in one place at first and then spread all over the country. But if any shadow of egoism falls over this endeavor, then the Samgha will change into a sect. The idea may very naturally creep in that such and such a body is the one true Samgha of the future, the one and only centre, that all else must be its circumfe rence, and that those outside its limits are not of the fold or even if they are, have gone astray, because they think diffe rently.
0 1962-09-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the middle of the First World War, Sri Aurobindo noted with prophetic force: The defeat of Germany could not of itself kill the spirit then incarnate in Germany; it may well lead merely to a new incarnation of it, perhaps in some other race or empire, and the whole battle would then have to be fought over again. So long as the old gods are alive, the breaking or depression of the body which they animate is a small matter, for they know well how to transmigrate. Germany overthrew the Napoleonic spirit in France in 1813 and broke the remnants of her European leadership in 1870; the same Germany became the incarnation of that which it had overthrown. The phenomenon is easily capable of renewal on a more formidable scale.2 Today we are finding that the old gods know how to transmigrate. Gandhi himself, seeing all those years of nonviolence culminate in the terrible violence that marked Indias partition in 1947, ruefully observed shortly before his death: The attitude of violence which we have secretly harboured now recoils on us, and makes us fly at each others throats when the question of distribution of power arises. Now that the burden of subjection is lifted, all the forces of evil have come to the surface. For neither nonviolence nor violence touch upon the root of Evil.
Ahimsa: nonviolence.
0 1962-10-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I tell you, it also has an EXTRAORDINARY utility: it automatically renews all the energies. Actually, thats the true reason for sleep: to be able to enter that state. And thats why those who can enter it consciously in meditation need much less sleep. Much less. Its what enables the body to last: Sat. And whenever I have meditated with you, Ive always had a feeling of entering that state.
Pure existence, outside of the Manifestation. It is wonderfully luminous, immobile, tranquil, and a sort of bliss devoid of any vibration, beyond vibration.
0 1962-12-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Rightly or wrongly, Satprem did not keep the recording of this conversation, not to obey Mother, for he was never very obedient, but because the words that follow rent his heart. He didn't know at the time how very true they all were.
***
0 1963-01-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have finished my translation [of the Synthesis]. When you have finished your book and we have prepared the next Bulletin and we have a nice quiet moment, well go over it again. And then Ive begun Savitriah! As you know, I prepare some illustrations with H., and for her illustrations she has chosen some passages from Savitri (the choice isnt hers, its A.s and P.s and made intelligently), so she gives me these passages one by one, neatly typed (which is easier for my eyes). Its from the Book I, Canto IV. And then, as I expected, the experience is rather interesting. I had noticed, while reading Savitri, that there was a sort of absolute understanding, that is to say, it cant mean this or that or thisit means THAT. It comes with an imperative. And thats what led me to think, When I translate it, it will come in the same way. And it did. I take the text line by line and make a resolve (not personal) to translate it line by line, without the slightest regard for the literary point of view, but rendering what he meant in the clearest possible way.
The way it comes is both exclusive and positiveits really interesting. Theres none of the minds ceaseless wavering, Is this better? Is that better? Should it be like this? Should it be like that? Noit is LIKE THIS (Mother brings down her hand in a gesture of imperative descent). And then in certain cases (without anything to do with the literary angle or even the sound of the wordnei ther sound nor anything, but meaning), Sri Aurobindo himself suggests a word. Its as if he were telling me, Isnt this better F rench, tell me?(!)
0 1963-02-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its an explanation of why the world is as it is. At the start he says, He worships her (here again, there are no words in F rench: Il lui rend un culte, but that makes a whole sentence). He worships her as something far greater than Himself. And then you are almost a spectator of the Supreme projecting Himself to take on this creative aspect (necessarily, otherwise it couldnt be done!), the Witness watching His own work of creation and falling in love with this power of manifestationyou see it all. And oh, He wants to give Her her fullest chance and see, watch all that is going to happen, all that can happen with this divine Power thrust free into the world. And Sri Aurobindo expresses it as though he had absolutely fallen in love with Her: whatever She wants, whatever She does, whatever She thinks, whatever She wills, all of itits all wonderful! All is wonderful. Its so lovely!
And, I must say, I was observing this because, originally, the first time I heard of it, this conception shocked me, in the sense that (I dont know, it wasnt an idea, it was a feeling), as though it meant lending reality to something which in my consciousness, for a very long time (at least millennia perhaps, I dont know), had been the Falsehood to be conquered. The Falsehood that must cease to exist. Its the aspect of Truth that must manifest itself, its not all that: doing anything whatsoever just for the fun of it, simply because you have the full power. You have the power to do everything, so you do everything, and knowing that there is a Truth behind, you dont give a damn about consequences. That was something something which, as far back as I can remember, I have fought against. I have known it, but it seems to me it was such a long, long time ago and I rejected it so strongly, saying, No, no! and implored the Lord so intensely that things may be otherwise, beseeched Him that his all-powerful Truth, his all-powerful Purity and his all-powerful Beauty may manifest and put an end to all that mess. And at first I was shocked when Sri Aurobindo told me that; previously, in this life, it hadnt even crossed my mind. In that sense Theons explanation had been much more (what should I say?) useful to me from the standpoint of action: the origin of disorder being the separation of the primal Powers but thats not it! HE is there, blissfully worshipping all this confusion!
0 1963-02-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was really very interesting. Afterwards its just a memory, no longer the thing. It concerned the creation of the material world, the material universe, in the light of the conception of the Supreme in love with His emanation. But the vision was all-embracing, as if I were on the other side the side of the Supreme, not of the creation and saw the creation as a whole, with the true sense of progress, the true sense of advance, of movement, and the true way in which all that doesnt belong to the future creation will disappear in a kind of pralaya1 (it cant really disappear but it will be withdrawn from the Manifestation). And it was very interesting: all that doesnt collaborate (in the sense that it is a sufficient experience, an experience that has come to its end) was reabsorbed. It was like the true vision of what was rendered as the Last Judgment. It is something going on constantly, that mighty gust of manifestation, and there are things that have been, according to our vision of time, but that live on, that continue to exist in the future; there are things that exhaust themselves (thats in the present), and there are things that have no more purpose, that cannot keep pace with the movement (I dont know how to explain this) and enter the Non-Being the pralaya, the Non-Being, the unmanifestof course, not in their forms but in their essence; that is to say, the Supreme in them remains the Supreme but unmanifest.
But it was all a living, palpable experience which lasted for a day and a half. The entire universal movement was LIVED and sensed. Not merely seen but lived and in what light! What stupendous power! With that kind of certitude at the core of everything something very odd. Its very difficult to express. But the experience lasted so long that it became perfectly familiar. To translate it into words I might say: it is the Supremes way of seeingof feeling, of living. I was living things the way He does. And it gives a power of certitude of realization. In the sense that what we are heading for is already here; the road we look back on, the road we have traveled and the road yet to travel, it all lives simultaneously. And with such logic! An eternal, wonderful superlogic which makes it obviousness itselfeverything is obviousness itself. Struggle, effort, fear, all of that, oh, absolutely, absolutely nonexistent. And together with this, the explanation of the feeling we have of not wanting certain things any more: they leave the Manifest. You see, its like a sieve into which everything is thrown and where He to Him, everything, but everything is the same, but there is the vision of what He wants, and also of what is useless for what He wants or would prevent the fullness and totality of what He wants (contradictions of sorts, I dont know how to explain it)so with that He just goes this way (gesture of reswallowing) and it goes out of the Manifestation.
0 1963-03-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Also when I was eleven or twelve, my mother rented a cottage at the edge of a forest: we didnt have to go through the town. I used to go and sit in the forest all alone. I would sit lost in reverie. One day (it happened often), one day some squirrels had come, several birds, and also (Mother opens her eyes wide), deer, looking on. How lovely it was! When I opened my eyes and saw them, I found it charming they scampered away.
The memory of all these things returned AFTERWARDS, when I met Thonlong afterwards, when I was more than twenty, that is, more than ten years later. I met Thon and got the explanation of these things, I understood. Then I remembered all that had happened to me, and I thought, Well! Because Madame Thon said to me (I told her all my childhood stories), she said to me, Oh, but I know, you are THAT, the stamp of THAT is on you. I thought over what she had said, and I saw it was indeed true. All those experiences I had were very clear indications that there were certainly people in the invisible looking after me! (Mother laughs)
0 1963-07-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I realized that I knew this man [Paul VI], a thought came to me as if in jest: what if someone showed him my photo (because I know some people who can do it), and if he himself said, But I know this woman! Then I saw that old instinct, that habit not to allow anyone even to say or express opinions contrary to theirs. And I saw the curve the curve we have traveled just the same towards freedom. He would be almost obliged to tolerate me. His predecessors predecessor [Pius XII] forbade the archbishop here to excommunicate people who came to the Ashram. (The archbishop wanted to do that, but he couldnt without the Popes permission, and the Pope answered him, Keep quiet.) The next archbishop renewed the excommunication here from his pulpit, but it didnt go beyond that. So I wondered, What will be the Popes attitude? Because naturally, that kind of individual is quite capable of ordering the excommunication of something he considers and KNOWS to be true thats just what youre seeing in this photo [Satprems sense of repulsion]. Naturally, in them the political spirit overrides everything else.
Dont record all Ive said. I dont want to have it here, I dont want it kept. Because the time hasnt come for me to meddle in these affairs.
0 1963-07-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont seek to translate poetically, I only try to render the meaning. I read the English sentence until I SEE the meaning clearly, and once I see it, I put it into F rench, but very awkwardly I dont claim to be a poet! Only, the meaning is correct.
This translation will not serve any purposeit serves a purpose only for me. But I dont even have the time, I can hardly spare half an hour a day for this work I hope I can offer myself half an hour a day!
0 1963-07-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The greatest difficulty is that the bodys texture is made of Ignorance, so that every time the Force, the Light, the Power try to penetrate somewhere, that Ignorance has to be dislodged. Every time the experience is similar, renewed in detail (but not in essence; I mean, every time its a particular point, but the essence of the problem is always the same): its a sort of Negation out of ignorant stupiditynot out of ill will, there is no ill will: its an inert and ignorant stupidity which, by the very fact of what it is, DENIES the possibility of the divine Power. And thats what has to be dissolved every time. At every step, in every detail, its always the same thing that has to be dissolved.
Its repeated again and again. Its not as in the realm of ideas, where once you have seen the problem clearly and have the knowledge, its over; some doubts or absurdities may come back to you from outside, but the thing is established, the Light is there, and automatically things are either repelled or transformed. But this here isnt the same thing! Every single aggregate of cells. Not that it comes from outside: its BUILT that way! Built by an inert and stupid Ignorance. An inert and stupid automatism. And so, automatically, it deniesnot denies, theres no will to deny: it is an opposite, I mean it CANNOT understand, its an oppositean ESTABLISHED oppositeof the divine Power. And every time, there is a kind of action which really in every detail is almost miraculous: suddenly that negation is compelled compelled to recognize that the divine Force is all-powerful. Seen from another angle, its a sort of perpetual little miracle.
0 1963-08-17, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its about renunciation.
There is that thing I said: acceptance and struggleboth together. What did he say about renunciation?
94All renunciation is for a greater joy yet ungrasped. Some renounce for the joy of duty done, some for the joy of peace, some for the joy of God and some for the joy of self-torture, but renounce rather as a passage to the freedom and untroubled rapture beyond.
And your question?
--
I never had much that experience of renunciation. To renounce something, you must be attached to it, while I always had the thirst, the need to go farther, to go higher, to progress, to do better, to know better and instead of having a sense of renunciation, you have rather a sense of good riddance! Something you get rid of that hampers you, weighs you down, hinders your advance.
In that light, its very interesting.
0 1963-08-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Then Mother returns to the aphorism on renunciation. She remains silent. She still appears to be shaken.)
Its difficult because
0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I told you that the only process Ive known, and which recurred several times in my life, is to renounce an error. Something you believe to be truewhich probably was true for a timeon which you partly base your action, but which, in actuality, was only one opinion. You thought it was a truthful finding with all its logical consequences, and your action (part of your action) was based on it, so that everything proceeded from it automatically. Till suddenly an experience, a circumstance or an intuition warns you that your finding isnt so true as it appeared to be (!) Then there is a whole period of observation and study (sometimes too it comes as a revelation, a massive proof), and then its not just your idea or false knowledge that needs to be changed, but also all its consequences, perhaps an entire way of acting on a particular point. At that moment, you get a sort of sensation, something that feels like a sensation of renunciation; that is to say, you have to undo a whole collection of things you had built. Sometimes its quite considerable, sometimes a very small thing, but the experience is the same: the movement of a force, a dissolving power, and the resistance of all that must be dissolved, all the past habit. It is the contact of the movement of dissolution with the corresponding resistance that probably translates in the ordinary human consciousness as the sense of renunciation.
I saw that very recently; its something insignificant, the circumstances are completely unimportant in themselves (its only the study of the whole that makes it interesting). Its the only phenomenon that has recurred several times in my life and which for that reason I know well. And as the being progresses, the power of dissolution increases, becomes more and more immediate, and the resistance lessens. But I remember the time when the resistances were at their highest (more than half a century ago), and it never worked in any other way: it was always something outside menot outside my consciousness but outside my will something that resists the will. I never had the feeling I had to renounce things but I felt as if I had to exert a pressure on them to dissolve them. Whereas now, the farther I go, the more imperceptible the pressure becomes, its immediate: as soon as the Force that comes to dissolve a collection of things manifests, theres no resistance, everything gets dissolved; on the contrary, theres hardly any sense of liberation theres something that is amused every time and says, Ah, again! How many times you limit yourself. How many times you think youre constantly moving on, smoothly, without stopping, and how many times you set a little limit to your action (it isnt a big limit because its a very little thing within an immense whole, but its a limit nonetheless). And then when the Force acts to dissolve the limit, at first you feel liberated, you feel a joy; but now its not even like that any more: there is a smile. Because its not a sense of liberationyou very simply remove a stone that stands in your way.
Thats more or less what I told you last night, but I told it to you complete with illustrations! It would take pages, you understand! (Laughing) Thats why the illustrations are gone, otherwise it would fill a volume. There were all the explanations, all the details.
That idea of renunciation can occur only in an egocentric consciousness. Naturally, people (those whom I call quite unevolved) are attached to thingswhen they have something, they dont want to let go of it! That seems so childish to me! For them, if they are obliged to give it up, it hurts! Because they identify with the things they hold on to. But thats childish. The real process behind is the amount of resistance in the things that developed on a certain basis of knowledgea knowledge at a given time, no longer a knowledge at another timea partial knowledge, not fleeting but impermanent. There is a whole collection of things built on that knowledge, and they resist the Force that says, No! Its not true, (laughing) your basis is no longer true, away with it! But then, Oh, it hurts!thats what people feel as renunciation.
The difficult thing is perhaps not so much to renounce as to accept [Mother smiles] when you see life as it is now. But then if you accept, how can you live in the midst of all that while having that untroubled rapture the untroubled rapture not up there but here?1
This has been my problem for weeks.
--
"All renunciation is for a greater joy yet ungrasped. Some renounce for the joy of duty done, some for the joy of peace, some for the joy of God and some for the joy of self-torture, but renounce rather as a passage to the freedom and untroubled rapture beyond."
Let us recall in this connection the experience of many disciples who in their "dreams" see Mother much taller than she is appa rently.
0 1963-08-28, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had already told you about my misgivings.1 As to the motives for the decision, it always boils down to the same point: a sincere (though ambiguous) will of ecumenism, a broad rather than deep intellectual curiosity, permit mentalities such as those that give our firm its orientation and public image to pay some attention to academic essays regarded (wrongly so in the present instance) as dealing with the famous Eastern spirituality. But as soon as the essays are lived from within, the goodwill withdraws into its shell. The reaction is even worse if the author is a renegade, a Westerner who has gone over to the enemy side. (I can vouch for that!2) I must emphasize that this whole process is not only unintentional but, more than that, unconscious (which is not an excuse but an aggravating circumstance). The opposition put up against your first manuscript3 rather hardened with the second, a much more personal book, I mean less detached, still less objective than the firstand more ample. Through the medium of literature, you were able to convey whatever you liked. Through a direct essay, you will reach and so much the worse, or so much the betteronly those who seek. Our firm and its public do not belong, for that matter, to the category of those who seek.
Hes conscious!
--
(There follows a discussion between Mother and Satprem to decide whether Mothers comment on the last aphorism, on renunciation, should be published in the Bulletin in full or only in excerpts. At first Mother finds it too personal. This raises the problem of the publication of Mothers words.)
It should have been said objectively, not as my experience. But if I start saying my experience, I have to go right to the end of my experience, I cant stop halfway.
0 1963-11-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
95Only by perfect renunciation of desire or by perfect satisfaction of desire can the utter embrace of God be experienced, for in both ways the essential precondition is effected,the desire perishes.
Its impossible to satisfy desire perfectlyits something. impossible. And to renounce desire too: you renounce one desire and get another one. Therefore, both ways are relatively impossiblewhats possible is to enter a condition in which there is no desire.
(long silence)
--
If we look at it from a psychological standpoint On the mental plane, its very easy; on the vital plane, its not too difficult; on the physical plane, its a little heavier, because desires are passed off as needs. But there too, there has been a field of experience these last few days: the study of medical and scientific conceptions on the bodys makeup, its needs, and whats good or bad for it. And all this, in its essence, again boils down to the same question of vibrations. It was quite interesting: there was an appearance (because all things as the ordinary consciousness sees them are nothing but appearances), there was an appearance of food poisoning (mushrooms that are thought to have been bad). It was the object of a particular study to find out whether there was something absolute about the poisoning, or whether it was relative, that is, based on ignorance, a wrong reaction and the absence of the true Vibration. And the conclusion was as follows: its a question of proportion between the amount, the sum of the vibrations that belong to the Supreme, and the sum of the vibrations that still belong to darkness. Depending on the proportion, the poisoning appears as something concrete, real, or else as something that can be eliminated, in other words, that doesnt resist the influence of the Vibration of Truth. And it was very interesting, because, immediately, as soon as the consciousness became aware of the cause of the trouble in the bodys functioning (the consciousness perceived where it came from and what it was), immediately the observation began, with the idea: Lets see what happens. First set the body perfectly at rest with the certainty (which is always there) that nothing happens except by the Lords Will and that the effect too is the Lords Will, all the consequences are the Lords Will, and consequently one should be very still. So the body is very still: untroubled, not agitated, it doesnt vibrate, nothingvery still. Once this is achieved, to what extent are the effects unavoidable? Because a certain quantity of matter that contained an element unfavorable to the bodys elements and life was absorbed, what is the proportion between the favorable and the unfavorable elements, or between the favorable and the unfavorable vibrations? And I saw very clearly: the proportion varies according to the amount of cells in the body that are under the direct Influence, that respond to the supreme Vibration alone, and the amount of other cells that still belong to the ordinary way of vibrating. It was very clear, because I could see all the possibilities, from the ordinary mass [of cells], which is completely upset by that intrusion and where you have to fight with all the ordinary methods to get rid of the undesirable element, to the totality of the cellular response to the supreme Force, which renders the intrusion perfectly innocuous. But this is still a dream for tomorrowwere on the way. But the proportion has become rather favorable (I cant say all-powerful, far from it, but rather favorable), so that the consequences of the ill-being didnt last very long and the damage was, so to say, minimal.
But all the experiences nowadays, one after the otherall the PHYSICAL experiences, of the bodypoint to the same conclusion: everything depends on the proportion between the elements that respond exclusively to the Supremes Influence, the half-and-half elements, on the road to transformation, and the elements that still follow Matters old vibratory process. The latter appear to be decreasing in number, to a great extent, but there are still enough of them to bring about unpleasant effects or unpleasant reactionsthings that are untransformed, that still belong to ordinary life. But all problems, whether psychological or purely material or chemical, all problems boil down to this: they are nothing but questions of vibrations. And there is the perception of that totality of vibrations and of what we could call (in a very rough and approximative way) the diffe rence between the constructive and the destructive vibrations. We can say (to put it very simply) that all the vibrations that come from the One and express Oneness are constructive, while all the complications of the ordinary, separative consciousness lead to destruction.
0 1964-02-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
98Revelation is the direct sight, the direct hearing or inspired memory of Truth, drishti, shruti, smriti; it is the highest experience and always accessible to renewed experience. Not because God spoke it, but because the soul saw it, is the word of the Scriptures our supreme authority.
I presume this is in reply to the biblical belief in Gods Commandments received by Moses, which the Lord is supposed to have uttered Himself and Moses is supposed to have heardits a roundabout way (Mother laughs) to say its not possible!
0 1964-03-11, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All our endeavour is to make this consciousness and this will govern our lives and action and organise all our activities. It is the way in which the Ashram has been created. Since 1926 when Sri Aurobindo retired and gave me full charge of it (at that time there were only two rented houses and a handful of disciples) all has grown up and developed like the growth of a forest, and each service was created not by any artificial planning but by a living and dynamic need. This is the secret of constant growth and endless progress. The present difficulties come chiefly from psychological resistances in the disciples who have not been able to follow the rather rapid pace of the sadhana and the yielding to the intrusion of mental methods which have corrupted the initial working.
A growth and purification of the consciousness is the only remedy.
0 1964-09-16, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That was the idea, I think, of all the apostles of renunciation: eliminate all that comes from outside or from below, so that if something from above manifests, you will be in a fit state to receive it. But from the collective point of view, its a process that may take thousands of years! From the individual point of view, its possible; but then the aspiration to receive the true impulse should be kept intactnot the aspiration to total liberation, but the aspiration to the ACTIVE identification with the Supreme, in other words, to want only what He wants, to do only what He wants, to exist only through Him, in Him.
So the method of renunciation may be tried, but its a method for someone who wants to cut himself off from others. And can there be an integrality in that case? It doesnt seem possible to me.
Announcing publicly what you intend to do helps considerably. It may give rise to objections, contempt, conflicts, but thats largely made up for by the public expectation, if we may say so: by what others expect from you. That was certainly the reason for those robes: to let people know. Obviously, you may incur the contempt and ill will of some people, but there are all those who feel, I mustnt touch this, I mustnt have anything to do with it, its not my concern.
--
Sannyasa: renunciation of works and worldly life.
King of Mithila at the time of the Upanishads, famed for his spiritual knowledge and divine realization, even though he led a worldly life.
Sannyasin: a wandering monk who has renounced works and worldly life.
See Aphorisms 88 to 92
0 1964-09-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On the practical level, I have seen obvious examples of this; it was even my great argument with Durga (I told you, didnt I, that she used to come at the time of the pujas and that, two years ago, she sur rendered), that was my great argument, I said to her, But the purpose of your existence in this formin this form of combative actionwould disappear if through identification you obtained the powers that render those forces unnecessary. And its after I told her these things that she sur rendered to the supreme Will; she said, I shall do what the Supreme wants me to do.
It was a very interesting result indeed.
0 1964-10-24a, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But how is your renouncing or your having no powers sufficient to sweep the adverse forces away?
No, its the fact that I ANNOUNCED it.
0 1965-07-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Soon afterwards, Satprem proposes to Mother the publication of a few brief extracts from the previous and very interesting conversation on illnesses in Notes on the Way, a new series started in the Ashrams Bulletin on Satprems insistence. In fact, Satprem wanted the Ashram to benefit a little from the treasure of Mothers experienceat least a few drops of it. It was those Notes on the Way that were, after Mothers departure, cooly and fraudulently renamed Mothers Agenda by the heads of the Ashram in the hope of stealing the title, throwing people into confusion, and preventing at any cost the integral publication of the real Agenda, which they dared to declare not genuine, so afraid were they of Mothers clear perception of the people around her and of the Ashram in general. Satprem remembers how much he had to insist with Mother to be allowed to publish those Notes on the Way. Her reluctance is now easier to understand.)
I wondered if we couldnt use the last conversation for the next Notes on the Way?
0 1965-09-25, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its a very small thing (a very small thing because the consciousness is sufficient not to be affected in the least), but the incomprehension is so general and total! In other words, you receive abuse, expressions of contempt and all the rest, precisely because of what you do, because according to them (all the great intelligences of the earth), you have renounced your divinity. They dont say it like that, they say, What? You claim to have a divine consciousness, and then And this manifests in everyone and every circumstance. Now and then, someone for a moment has a flash, but thats quite exceptional, while Well, show your power!, thats everywhere.
For them, the Divine on earth must be all-powerful, obviously.
0 1965-10-16, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I wanted to say that to this American. For them, spiritual life is sacrifice, its the God who sacrifices himself: he renounces the joys of the earth and sacrifices his existence to save mankind. And they cant get out of it!
So to those, its the photo of the young Sri Aurobindo that should be sent, like the one in the reception room. Because he had just come out of his ascetic period here, and he still had a long face.
0 1966-04-27, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Two standpoints: the need for renunciation and the futility of fleeing. Those are the two ideas that cause the hesitation. But in the chronological order of things, it should first be the need for renunciation, then the discovery of the futility of fleeing, and then instead of a fleeing, there should be a return, free, without attachment. A return to life without attachment.
Apart from that, I understand: in order to write a book, one generally cannot describe more than one cycle, because theres a beginning, a development, and a culmination, a realization. Then another book, which starts from that realization and has the full experience of its futility. And then, the crowning realization: the return to life, free.
0 1966-09-07, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont have any money either. I owe him 15,000 rupees and the poor man has to pay all the rents. I have debts everywhere! (Mother laughs)
Thats how it is, it doesnt matter!
0 1966-09-28, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
She writes this: We must stop encouraging torturers, whether of men or of animals. I am writing to beg you to teach me how to obtain the powers to lessen sufferings in others through concentration of fluid, and how to act by inwardly returning blow for blow to the aggressors, without hatred but implacably. I beg you to help me. Which inner giving, which renunciation is necessary? Who will teach me the force and justice that will enable me to act and not to always let evil triumph? It is too easy to forget, deny, minimize others suffering. I can no longer put up with it. I no longer want to shut my eyes and comfort myself till the next time. What should I undertake?
When did you get this letter?
0 1966-09-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oddly, these last few days again, this has been the subject of my meditations (not willed ones: they are imposed from above). Because in all the transition from plant to animal and from animal to man (especially from animal to man), the diffe rences of form are, ultimately, minor: the true transformation is the intervention of another agent of consciousness. All the diffe rences between the life of the animal and the life of man stem from the intervention of the Mind; but the substance is essentially the same and it obeys the same laws of formation and construction. There isnt much diffe rence, for instance, between the calf being formed in a cows womb and the child being formed in its mothers womb. There is one diffe rence: that of the Minds intervention. But if we envisage a PHYSICAL being, that is, as visible as the physical now is and with the same density, for instance a body that wouldnt need blood circulation and bones (especially these two things: the skeleton and blood circulation) its very hard to imagine. And as long as it is like this, with this blood circulation, this functioning of the heart, we could imaginewe can imagine the renewal of st rength, of energy through a power of the Spirit, through other means than food. Its conceivable. But the rigidity, the solidity of the body, how is it possible without a skeleton? So it would be an infinitely greater transformation than that from animal to man; it would be a transition from man to a being that would no longer be built in the same way, that would no longer function in the same way, that would be like a densification or concretization of something. Up till now, it doesnt correspond to anything we have seen physically, unless the scientists have found something I am not aware of.
We may conceive of a new light or force giving the cells a sort of spontaneous life, a spontaneous st rength.
--
I can very well conceive of a being who could, through spiritual power, the power of his inner being, absorb the necessary forces, renew himself and remain ever young; thats quite easily conceivable; even providing for a certain suppleness so as to be able to change the form if necessary. But the complete disappearance of this system of construction right awayfrom one to the other right away, that seems It appears to require stages.
Obviously, unless something happens (which we are forced to call a miracle because we cant understand how it could happen), how can a body like ours become a body entirely built and driven by a higher force, and without a material support? How can this (Mother pinches the skin of her hands), how can this change into that other thing? It appears impossible.
--
Theres only this question: I can conceive of a perpetual change; I could even conceive of a flower that doesnt wither; but its this principle of immortality. Which means, basically, a life that escapes the necessity of renewal: the eternal Force would manifest directly and eternally, and this would still be a physical body (Mother touches the skin of her hands).
I quite understand a progressive change and that this substance could be made into something capable of renewing itself eternally from within outward. That would be immortality. But it seems to me that between what is now, what we are, and that other mode of life, a lot of stages might be necessary. You see, if for instance you ask these cells, with all the consciousness and experience they now have, Is there something you cannot do?, in their sincerity they will answer, No, what the Lord wills, I can do. Thats their state of consciousness. But the appearance is otherwise. The personal experience is like this: all that I do with the Lords Presence, I do effortlessly, without difficulty, without fatigue, without wear and tear, like that (Mother spreads out her arms in a great, harmonious Rhythm), but its still open to the whole influence from outside and the body is forced to do things that a rent directly the expression of the supreme Impulsion, hence the fatigue, the friction. So a supramental body suspended in a world thats not the earth is not the thing!
No.
0 1967-02-25, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These are things (those seconds) that happen very often, and without any relationship whatever to outer circumstances. Which means that if one were all aloneall alone, immobile, in meditationit would be more radical and definitive. But its mixed in with the movement of life, with outer circumstances, and because of the necessities of those outer circumstances it goes more or less unnoticed. So the result is less complete, only partial, and so it recurs again and again, its renewed. It stretches over a considerable time.
(silence)
0 1967-04-24, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For after all it is the will in the being that gives to circumstances their value, and often an unexpected value; the hue of appa rent actuality is a misleading indicator. If the will in a race or civilisation is towards death, if it clings to the lassitude of decay and the laissez-faire of the moribund or even in st rength insists blindly upon the propensities that lead to destruction or if it cherishes only the powers of dead Time and puts away from it the powers of the future, if it prefers life that was to life that will be, nothing, not even abundant st rength and resources and intelligence, not even many calls to live and constantly offered opportunities will save it from an inevitable disintegration or collapse. But if there comes to it a strong faith in itself and a robust will to live, if it is open to the things that shall come, willing to seize on the future and what it offers and strong to compel it where it seems adverse, it can draw from adversity and defeat a force of invincible victory and rise from appa rent helplessness and decay in a mighty flame of renovation to the light of a more splendid life. This is what Indian civilisation is now rearising to do as it has always done in the eternal st rength of its spirit.1
Sri Aurobindo
0 1967-06-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are two things that make you die. One (the one that precedes the dramatic human existence) is wear and tear. What does wear and tear come from? From Ignorance, obviously. From Ignorance and the incapacity to renew forces; and that means the whole lower life: it decomposes, recomposes, decomposes again. But its only with animality and the beginning of a mental functioning that (Mother takes on a grandiloquent tone) death comes, such as we conceive it. But that is when the vital element that gives life (what we call life) breaks down. There are innumerable reasons for that, all of which stem from the same source. Of course, taken together, it is the incapacity to follow the movement of progress: the need to remix everything together in order to start all over again. But for those who are beginning to think, that no longer has any reason to exist.
An accident? An accident to the material combination? But what accident, since the heart can stop and start again? Its a question of how long the accident lasts.
0 1967-07-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For a time I attended a private school: I didnt go to a state school because my mother considered it unfitting for a girl to be in a state school! But I was in a private school, a school of high repute at the time: their teachers were really capable people. The geography teacher, a man of renown, had written books, his books on geography were well-known. He was a fine man. So then, we were doing geography (I enjoyed maps more fully because it all had to be drawn) and one day, the teacher looked at me (he was an intelligent man), he looked at me and asked, Why are towns, the big cities, settled on rivers? I saw the students bewildered look, they were saying to themselves, Lucky the question wasnt put to me! I replied, But its very simple! Its because rivers are a natural means of communication. (Mother laughs) He too was taken aback! Thats how it was, all my studies were like that, I enjoyed myself all the timeenjoyed myself thoroughly, it was great fun!
The teacher of literature He was an old fellow full of all the most conventional ideas imaginable. What a bore he was, oh! So all the students sat there, their noses to the grindstone. He would give subjects for essaysdo you know The Path of Later On and the Road of Tomorrow? I wrote it when I was twelve, it was my homework on his question! He had given a proverb (now I forget the words) and expected to be told all the sensible things! I told my story, that little story, it was written at the age of twelve. Afterwards he would eye me with misgivings! (Laughing) He expected me to make a scene. Oh, but I was a good girl!
0 1967-10-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I remember, long ago, right at the beginning (I think I had just moved into Sri Aurobindos house), someone, I forget who (did Tagore have a sister?1), she was a tall and strong woman, rather awe-inspiring, who had come to spend a day in the Ashram, and she said to me, Why dont you keep some rooms and rent them out to visitors? You would get ten rupees a day. (Mother laughs) I stared at her, I was flabbergasted (she was teaching me to be practical!). And at the end, she said, God bless you. At that point I couldnt restrain myself, and I answered her, Its already done! (Mother laughs)
So its the same thing everywhere, a patronizing attitude.
0 1967-11-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is something that renders into words (its wordless, but something in there renders into words), and so there are conversations between the cells (Mother laughs): You fool, why are you afraid? Dont you see its the Lord doing this to transform you? Then the other: Ah! And then it falls quiet, opens out, and waits. And the pain goes away, the disorder goes away, and then everything works out.
Its admirable.
0 1967-12-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the interesting part is that formulating it in words makes it sound artificialits much more sincere, much truer, much more spontaneous than anything expressed or expressible by the mind. No formula can render the sinceritysimplicity, sincerity, spontaneity, something uncalculatingof the material movement. There was a time when expressing or formulating caused a very unpleasant sensation, like putting something artificial on something spontaneously true; and that unpleasantness was cured only, to begin with, by a higher knowledge that all that is formulated must be surpassed. For instance, every experience expressed or described CALLS FOR a new progress, a new experience. In other words, it hastens the movement. That has been a consolation, because in fact, with the old sensation of something very stable and solid and immobile because of inertia (a past inertia, which is now being transformed but has left marks), because of that inertia there is a tendency to prefer things to be solid; so there is a thrill at being forced to No, no! No rest, no halt, go on!farther and farther and farther on When an experience has been very fruitful and highly pleasant, let us say, when its had a great force and a great effect, the first movement is to say, We wont talk about that, well keep it. Then after comes, Well say it in order to go farther onto go farther on, ever farther, ever farther.
There is a stability in the resolve and in the aspiration, a stability that can be found nowhere as much as here (Mother strikes the ground). Thats a characteristic of Matter. And you know, when it has given itself and has faith, it becomes so stable, so constant, and the joy, that sort of widening, of luminous expansionit becomes such a perpetual need that in no other part of the being has it ever been like that. Its something ESTABLISHED. And established effortlessly, established spontaneously, naturally, normally. So we can foresee that when this Matter will become truly divinetruly divineits manifestation will be infinitely more complete, more perfect in the details, and more stable than anywhere else.
0 1968-02-07, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
2) We solemnly dedicate this city as the constantly renewed synthesis of the latest conquests of science and the most ancient wisdom.
3) We solemnly set as the chief function of this city the preparation of every child to his highest spiritual and planetary
0 1968-02-14, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Do you know how the Hindu spiritual tradition was convincedwas forced to be convincedof the multiplicity of souls (they dont say souls), of the divine being in individuals? Because those people were very logical: had there been a single soul, that is, a single supreme consciousness, anywhere, at any time, once it had experienced liberation (flight into Nirvana, the renunciation of everything, the whole illusion of life and creation), if there had been only one soul, the whole thing would have been over! But as it happens, a number of beings went through the experience, and it made no diffe rence to the world (as a whole, at any rate). So they reached the conclusion that there were perhaps as many souls as there were individuals, and that they communicate only up above, not down here.
When someone said that to me, it quite amused me!
0 1968-03-02, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then, from the point of view of the transformation of the cells and the organism, this collective influence is a state like a bath in which you are plunged, and when people wanted to escape from it, they would cut themselves off: they tried to isolate themselves. The result is that they would leave the material zone, because its impossible to be like this (gesture as in a shell), like something without any connection with the whole. So they would renounce life.
In the relationship with the whole, there are roughly three we might call them means of defense, or attitudes one can take. The attitude of isolation, which cant be total unless you withdraw, and which is only very relatively effective. The attitude of attack: a power fighting and repulsing adversaries (that has a big drawback which is that if you use forces on the same plane, they are ineffective, or very relatively effective; and if its supreme forces, then the effect is rather catastrophic: it would amount to destroying in order to conquer, which is certainly not the Supremes intention). And finally, there is the way of the contagion of the higher Force, but that implies what expresses itself here as time. That is the attitude which has been adopted. But it implies timewhich is why ages go by.
0 1968-11-09, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday, it was even very interesting, because I told her, I said to her mind, Yes, if you like, you can settle in and make use of this instrument [Mother], but you know, you will have to renounce your prefe rences and prejudices! She still used to have terrible reactions when she found that people didnt behave properly with her. So I told her, All that will have to go! (Mother laughs).
But now she is quiet. Last night I succeeded in quieting her.
0 1968-12-25, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Finally theres a letter from P.L. My stay in Spain was prolonged more than I had thought. Tell Sweet Mother that I am continuing my struggle and my effort, that she follows me everywhere and her protection is my support. I will tell you about my experience. I went to spend a weekend by the sea, where I have a very pretty tiny apartment. There I meditate and go through all the teachings of Mother again by immersing myself in The Life Divine and the Questions and Answers. I lighted an incense stick. Suddenly my whole body broke into a profuse sweat, and an atrocious struggle began. If I could use religious terms from before my Ashramite experiences, I would say that all of St. Anthonys temptations fell on me to destroy and shatter me spiritually. First, a disarray, a very deep distress of helplessness: What use is my life? What am I doing? Why do I live? My efforts are useless. Then there was the attraction of woman, which came to ridicule my continence. Everything was called into question: whys and more whys made my head burst. After that came the invasion of power: Why did you renounce the hope of becoming a bishop? Glory would have come to you. Then the desire for money. Everything in a macabre and at the same time attractive carrousel. Finally, total solitude abandoned by all, all having gone away: my friends, my connections in the Vatican, my family, all of you. How much time went by? I do not know. Nevertheless I think I heard a very small voice (but I was so weak that I cannot say if it was true) telling me, Do not weep, I am with you. If I am with you, others are superfluous, and if you are without me, others wont be able to help you. I remained in a void the whole night passed. In the morning, the sunshine, everything was so beautiful! When I returned to the Rome house, I was told I was transformed! So there.
I did say that to him [I am with you].
0 1969-01-04, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A renowned F rench writer (18851972).
See Agenda II of August 5, 1961.
0 1969-03-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Constantly renewed?
renewed gives the impression that there was a stop. Its not that. It CONTINUES to be like that. Its the consciousness constantly at work, not as a sequel of what was there before, but as a result of what it perceives every instant. In the mental movement, there is the consequence of what youve done beforeits not that, its the consciousness which CONSTANTLY sees what has to be done. Its extremely important to understand that, because thats how its still working for everything. Its not at all a formation whose development you must look after: its the consciousness which, every second, followsfollows its own movement. That allows everything! Its precisely what allows miracles, reversals, and so onit allows everything. Its the very opposite of human creations. It was like that, it continues to be like that, and it will always be like that so long as I am here.
***
0 1969-04-09, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Before one takes a first step into the great Kingdom, I think one must have definitively felt all mental comprehension, all mental illumination, and naturally all mental explanation, to be worthless or inadequate. For more than ten years I have not read any book, but if I am given one in my hands, I immediately know the level of its vibration, In order to see clearly, one must get out of it, obviously. The same goes for the little individual renouncing the individual is what you call saintliness, but its merely the beginning of Humanity! Does one renounce an anthill?One gets out of it! And it is wide and joyful. We are right in the middle of human infancy.
S.
0 1969-04-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like a conflict between the forces that want to destroy the earth and the terrestrial transformation. If those forces can be checked, can be mastered or rendered powerless, then the earths progress and transformation will go on soaring upmagnificent! But now monsters seem to be coming up from every side to prevent that.
(silence)
0 1969-05-10, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A disciple once put this question to Sri Aurobindo: "is it true that the same consciousness that took the form of Leonardo da Vinci had previously manifested as Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome? If so, will you please tell me what exactly Augustus Caesar stood for in the history of Europe and how Leonardo's work was connected with his?" Sri Aurobindo replied: "Augustus Caesar organised the life of the Roman Empire and it was this that made the framework of the first transmission of the Graeco-Roman civilisation to Europehe came for that work and the writings of Virgil and Horace and others helped greatly towards the success of his mission. After the interlude of the Middle Ages, this civilisation was reborn in a new mould in what is called the renaissance, not in its life-aspects but in its intellectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual, Leonardo da Vinci, who took up again the work and summarised in himself the seeds of modern Europe."
(Life, Literature and Yoga, p. 6, July 29, 1937)
0 1969-07-23, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Asram in Pondicherry came into being in this way. Sri Aurobindo at first lived in Pondicherry with a few inmates in his house; afterwards a few more joined him. Later on after the Mother joined him, in 1920 the numbers began so much to increase that it was thought necessary to make an arrangement for lodging those who came and houses were bought and rented according to need for the purpose. Arrangements had also to be made for the maintenance, repair, rebuilding of houses, for the service of food and for decent living and hygiene. All these were private rules by the Mother and entirely at her discretion to increase, modify or alterthere is nothing in them of a public character.
All houses of the Asram are owned either by Sri Aurobindo or by the Mother. All the money spent belongs either to Sri Aurobindo or the Mother. Money is given by many to help in Sri Aurobindos work. Some who are here give their earnings, but it is given to Sri Aurobindo or the Mother and not to the Asram as a public body, for there is no such body.
--
The Asram is not a political institution; all association with political activities is renounced by those who live here. All propagandareligious, political or socialhas to be eschewed by the inmates.
The Asram is not a religious association. Those who are here come from all religions and some are of no religion. There is no creed or set of dogmas, no governing religious body; there are only the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and certain psychological practices of concentration and meditation, etc., for the enlarging of the consciousness, receptivity to the Truth, mastery over the desires, the discovery of the divine self and consciousness concealed within each human being, a higher evolution of the nature.8
0 1969-10-11, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres nothing to be done with those government people. They are fully in Falsehood, that is to say, they govern with Falsehood. They havent yet renounced falsehood, so
Yet this Indira is nice, she does what she can. You saw her, didnt you?
0 1969-11-22, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Very far ahead, one does see the possibility (as you yourself said) of a materialization, but between now and then, there is something. Lately Ive discovered a great deal of things while looking in that direction. I saw (I dont know if I noted that, I think I forgot to write it), I saw that with most people who have child ren almost without wanting it, just like that, for them its a sort of (naturally, many women desire to have child ren, but without even knowing what it means), for the VAST majority of educated people, that is to say, whose heads have been stuffed full of ideas about the faults one mustnt have, the qualities one must have and so on, all that they repressed in their beings, all the bad, pernicious instincts, it all comes out [in the child]. I remembered (I observed and saw), I remembered something I read very, very long ago; I think it was by renan, he wrote somewhere that one should beware of pa rents who are good and very respectable, because (laughing) birth is a purge! And he also said: observe carefully the child ren of bad people, because those often are a reaction! So then, after that, after my experience, when I saw, I said to myself, But that man was right! For people, its a way of purging themselves. They throw out of themselves all that they dont want. There are some child ren here horrid! And thats it, you wonder, How come? Their pa rents are very good people. Its very interesting, because it gives the KEY of what should be doneby showing you what shouldnt be done, it gives you the key of what should be done.
In that case, this p renatal education Y speaks of isnt a falsehood after all. Its something that may be true.
0 1969-12-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What might possibly best render the impression is the supreme Divinity, because thats not too I dont know how to put it. Everything has a mental stamp, you cant help it.
But the broadest word is still consciousness, the Supreme Consciousness.
0 1970-03-21, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
407I am not a Bhakta [lover of the Divine], for I have not renounced the world for God. How can I renounce what He took from me by force and gave back to me against my will? These things are too hard for me.
(Mother laughs) So T. asks me what he means. Then, there is another.
0 1970-05-02, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Auroville is for those who want to live a life essentially [religious] but who renounce all forms of religions whether they be ancient, modern, new or future.2
Mother, excuse me, but why didnt you put spiritual instead of religious?
0 1970-05-27, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then what would form this (Mother points to the bodys substance), the first formation? We can picture the elimination of wear and tear and an indefinite prolongation with a renewal of vitality, thats quite conceivable, but the first formation?
Yes, matter, substance.
0 1970-07-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is rather a crude statement of a fact. The Mother in order to do her work had to take all the Sadhaks inside her personal being and consciousness; thus personally (not merely impersonally) taken inside, all the disturbances and difficulties in them including illnesses could throw themselves upon her in a way that could not have happened if she had not renounced the self-protection of separateness. Not only illnesses of others could translate themselves into attacks on her bodythese she could generally throw off as soon as she knew from what quarter and why it came but their inner difficulties, revolts, outbursts of anger and hatred against her could have the same and a worse effect.
Thats still true. With some people, as soon as they come, Ill suddenly feel a disorder, or Ill start coughing, or Then when I look, I see why. When I see why, I can keep the thing at a distance. Its curious.
0 1971-07-28, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A veil behind the heart, a lid over the mind divide us from the Divine. Love and devotion rend the veil, in the quietude of the mind the lid thins and vanishes.
September 9, 1936
0 1971-10-02, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Last year, after the death of General de Gaulle, Satprems friend Y.L. had met Andr Malraux at Verrires; he immediately asked her, Is the Mother still alive? As Y.L. was a little taken aback, he added, I went there before you, 33 years ago. So I assume you know what they have been looking for in India. Again a few days ago, Y.L. met Andr Malraux after his cry Volunteer for Bengal; he said to her, What is essential in the fight Im going to wage for Bengal is to know the attitude and action of Pondicherry. Y.L. therefore came to put the question directly to Mother. Mother asked, When is Andr Malraux meeting Indira Gandhi? In November, in Paris. Mother again asked, When is Andr Malraux thinking of coming to India? I dont know. Then Mother remained absorbed a long time and said, He will only get THE answer when he arrives in India, because the answer is in him. After meeting Indira Gandhi in Paris, Andr Malraux will renounce his plan of action. Let us note that when Y.L. met him, he leafed through the Auroville pressbook and said, All this is familiar Im part of it I know this. And closing the book, Its as if the sun had risen. And it goes down. And we begin again. Y.L. simply replied: And what if the sun has risen for good?)
[These notes are taken from Y.L.s travel diary.]
0 1971-10-06, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, you see, it is bound to go on one side or the other, that is, either my body will be renewed and become stronger (I mean my eyesight better, and so on), and then it will be easy, or else finished.
No!
0 1971-12-11, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This year, we are celebrating Sri Aurobindos Birth Centenary. He is known to barely a handful of men and yet his name will resound when the great men of today or yesterday are buried under their own debris. His work is discussed by philosophers, praised by poets, people acclaim his sociological vision and his yoga but Sri Aurobindo is a living ACTION, a Word becoming real, and every day in the thousand circumstances that seem to want to rend the earth and topple its structures we can witness the first reflux of the Force he has set in motion. At the beginning of this century, when India was still struggling against British domination, Sri Aurobindo asserted: It is not a revolt against the British Government [that is needed]. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature.2
For the problem is fundamental. It is not a question of bringing a new philosophy to the world or new ideas or illuminations, as they are called. The question is not of making the Prison of our lives more habitable, or of endowing man with ever more fantastic powers. Armed with his microscopes and telescopes, the human gnome remains a gnome, pain-ridden and helpless. We send rockets to the moon, but we know nothing of our own hearts. It is a question, says Sri Aurobindo, of creating a new physical nature which is to be the habitation of the Supramental being in a new evolution.3 For, in actuality, he says, the imperfection of Man is not the last word of Nature, but his perfection too is not the last peak of the Spirit.4 Beyond the mental man we are, there exists the possibility of another being who will be the spearhead of evolution as man was once the spearhead of evolution among the great apes. If, says Sri Aurobindo, the animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man, man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman, the god.5 Sri Aurobindo has come to tell us how to create this other being, this supramental being, and not only to tell us but actually to create this other being and open the path of the future, to hasten upon earth the rhythm of evolution, the new vibration that will replace the mental vibrationexactly as a thought one day disturbed the slow routine of the beastsand will give us the power to shatter the walls of our human prison.
0 1972-03-10, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If I can hold onif only I can hold onat one hundred things will be better. That I know. I am absolutely convinced there will be a renewal of energy. But I have to hold on. Thats all.
(silence)
0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That contradiction is powerfully expressed in your books, it is striking to my Indian students. And they are surprised, for the urge to do something at all coststo do anything at all, as long as we do something, as one often hears in Europewithout this action being based on a being which it expresses and of which it is but the material translation, appears to them a strange attitude. Neither the despair, the silence or the revolt, nor the absurd pointlessness that sometimes surrounds the death of many of your heroes escape them. They feel that your heroes flee from themselves rather than express themselves. This torment between being and doing can be found in each one of them. They have appa rently renounced to be something in order to do something, as one character stresses in Hope, but are they not desperately seeking to be through their actions, a being that they will capture only as time is abolished, in death? The same obsession seems to run through each of them: from Perken, who wants to leave his scar on the map, to outlive himself through twenty tribes, who fights against time as one fights against cancer, to Tchen, who shuts himself in the world of terrorism: an eternal world where time does not exist, and to Katow, who whispers to himself, O prisons, where time stops. In that respect, these characters clearly symbolize the impotence of a religion that has not been able to give the earth its meaning and plenitude.
To the question raised by the Swedish magazine and to the one many characters in your books ask themselves, I believe that Sri Aurobindo and his vast synthesis bring the key to a reconciliation and long-sought answer, a reconciliation between being and doing, which religion is incapable of supplying. Through our Yoga, Sri Aurobindo wrote, we propose nothing less than to break totally the past and present formations which make up the ordinary mental and material man and create a new centre of vision, a new universe of activities in ourselves, which will form a divine humanity or a superhuman nature. This is not an idea but an experience to be lived, which Sri Aurobindo has minutely described in his extensive body of works. It is what some thousand men and women from all over the world are trying to do at the Pondicherry Ashram.
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is a war to which even spiritual seekers can hardly remain indiffe rent with impunity. There are spiritual paths, however, that ask to render unto God what is God's and unto Satan what belongs to Satan; in other words, spirituality is kept apart from what is called worldliness, clean and untouched by the dust and murk of IgnoranceMaya. The injunction accordingly is that they who are worldly must remain worldly, they have no business, no right to meddle with spirituality, and they who are spiritual should, on the other hand, remain strictly spiritual, should have nothing to do with worldliness. Because of this complete divorce between the spiritual and the worldly, the world remains worldly even today, continues to be the empire of unspirituality and obscurity, of suffering and grief, it is unable to become a dynamic and living expression and embodiment of the Spirit.
Not that spiritual men have not served and worked for the welfare of the world; but their work could not be wholly effective, it was mixed, maimed, temporary in effect. This could not be otherwise, for their activity proceeded from inferior and feebler sources of inspiration and consciousness other than those that are purely spiritual. Firstly, little more was possible for them than to exercise an indirect influence; their spiritual realisation could bring into the life of the world only a reminiscence, an echo, just a touch and a ray from another world. Or, secondly, when they did take part in worldly affairs, their activity could not rise much beyond the worldly standard; it remained enclosed within the sphere of the moral and the conventional, took such forms as, for example, charity and service and philanthropy. Nothing higher than ideas and ideals confined to the moral, that is to say, the mental plane, could be brought into play in the world and its practical lifeeven the moral and mental idea itself has often been mistaken for true spirituality. Thus the very ideal of governing or moulding our worldly preoccupations according to a truly spiritual or a supramental or transcendental consciousness was a rare phenomenon and even where the ideal was found, it is doubtful whether the right means and methods were discovered. Yet the sole secret of changing man's destiny and transmuting the world lies in the discovery and application of a supreme spiritual Conscious-Power.
02.02 - The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And hearts by sharp division seized and rent
And delight and beauty are inhabitants
02.03 - The Shakespearean Word, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This world I do renounce. . .
[Rising]Now, fellow, fare thee well.
02.05 - Robert Graves, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Until the sound renews.3
Here in this connection one is naturally reminded of Sri Aurobindo's The Other Earths. The poem reveals other earths like this earth of ours as reflections or projections or prototypes: like the concretely visible earth here, they too are equally beautiful, with million colours and shades. We are blind and cannot see them. But when we learn to see with the eye of our eye there appear clear before us
02.05 - The Godheads of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And ever renewing its recur rent beat,
These mobile rounds that stereotype a flux,
02.06 - Boris Pasternak, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
rendered from the F rench version: "C'est que toute existence attend Sa chaleur d'un peu de souffrance."
"Encounter".
02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The surface rendering of a life within.
All forces are Life's retinue in that world
02.07 - India One and Indivisable, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is no use laying stress on distinctions and diffe rences: we must, on the contrary, put all emphasis upon the fundamental unity, upon the demand and necessity for a dynamic unity. Naturally there are diverse and even contradictory elements in the make-up of a modern nation. France, for example, was not one, but many to start with and for long. We know of the mortal feud between the Bourguignons and the Armagnacs and the struggle among the Barons generally, some even siding with foreigners against their own countrymen (an Indian parallel we have in the story of Prithwiraj and Jayachand), poor Jeanne d'Arc lamenting over the 'much pity' that was in sweet France. There were several rival languagesBreton, Gascon, Provenal, besides the F rench of Isle de France. Apart from these provincial or regional rivalries there were schisms on religious groundsHuguenots and Catholics, Jansenists and Arians were flying at each other's throat and made of France a veritable bedlam of confusion and chaos. Well, all that was beaten down and smoothed under the steam-roller of a strong centralised invincible spirit of France, one and indivisible and inexorable, that worked itself out through Jeanne d'Arc and Francis the First and Henry the Great and Richelieu and Napoleon. But all nations have the same story. And it is too late now in the day to start explaining the nature and origin of nationhood; it was done long ago by Mazzini and by renan and once for all.
Indeed, what we see rampant in India today is the mediaeval spirit. This reversion to an olderan extinct, we ought to have been able to saytype of mentality is certainly a fall, a lowering of the collective consciousness. It bas got to be remedied and set right. Whatever the motive forces that lie at the back of the movement, motives of fear or despair or class interest or parochial loyalty, motives of idealism, misguided and obscurantist, they have to be taken by the horns and dominated and eliminated. A breath of modernism, some pure air of clear perception and knowledge and wider consciousness must blow through the congested hectic atmosphere of the Indian body politic.
02.07 - The Descent into Night, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The veil was rent that covers Nature's depths:
He saw the fount of the world's lasting pain
02.09 - The Way to Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Common love, common labour and, above all, as the great F rench thinker, Ernest renan,1 pointed out, common suffering that is the cement which welds together the disparate elements of a nationa nation is not formed otherwise. A nation means peoples differing in race and religion, caste and creed and even language, fused together into a composite but indivisible unit. Not pact nor balancing of interests nor sharing of power and profit can permanently combine and unify conflicting groups and collectivities. Hindus and Muslims, the two major sections that are at loggerheads today in India, must be given a field, indeed more than one field, where they can, work together; they must be made to come in contact with each other, to coalesce and dovetail into each other in as many ways and directions as possible. Instead of keeping them separate in water-tight compartments, in barred cages, as it were, lest they pounce upon each other like wild beasts, it would be wiser to throw them together; let them brea the the same air, live the same life, share the same troubles, the same difficulties, solve the same problems. That is how they will best understand, appreciate and even love each other, become comrades and companions, not rivals and opponents.
Ernest renan: "Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?"
Translation: "In the past a heritage of glory and regrets to share, in the future the same programme to realise; to have suffered, enjoyed, hoped together, that indeed is better than common customs and strategic frontiers; that is what one understands in spite of diversities of race and language. I said just now: "to have suffered together"; yes, common suffering unites more than common joy. In respect of the memories of a nation griefs are worth more than triumphs. . . . "
Ernest renan: "What is a nation?"
To have union, one must unitedivision can never lead to unity. Also this unity is established automatically and irrevocably, not by any abstract sense of justice and equality, nor by any romantic or imaginative feeling of fraternity, but by a dynamic living together. A common political and civic and economic life creates a field of force that can draw together into a harmonious working the most contrary and refractory elements.
02.09 - Two Mystic Poems in Modern French, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
rene Char
Explanatory Paraphrase
--
Jean-Claude renard
Explanatory Paraphrase
02.10 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A rendezvous of Knowledge with Ignorance.
66.13
--
There leaps no rending flash of absolute power,
There dawns no light of heavenly certitude.
02.11 - Hymn to Darkness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Ramprasad the Bhakta thus speaks of Kali, his dark Mother: the poem itself is very dark, that is to say, the meaning is dark, and the style, the phrasing is darker still. A literal translation is out of question. A very free rendering is only possible:
I have brooded over it and I am utterly confused;
02.11 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It recovers its renounced imperial right,
It wears once more a purple robe of thought
02.13 - In the Self of Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Immortal by renewed mortality,
It wandered in the spiral of its acts
02.13 - On Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A social organization must have two fundamental objects. The central purpose is to serve and help the individual. That is the first thing to be remembered. Organization for the sake of organization is not the end. Organization for the sake of perpetuating a system, however laudable it may be, is not the end either. It is, as I say, by the service that an organization renders to its individual members, and not merely by its mechanical order and efficiency that it is to be judged. This service, I have said, is twofold. First, each individual must find his proper vocation: the right man in the right place. The function of each man must be in accordance with his nature and character. Secondly, each person, while fulfilling his Dharma, (that is the right word) must be trained, must have the opportunity to grow and increase in his being and consciousness. First of all, a prosperous, at least an adequately equipped outer life, and then as adequate a lebensraum for the inner personality to have its free and full play and expression.
A totalitarian equality takes men as blocks or chunks of wood and also cuts and clips them as such whenever and wherever needed, thrusts them indiscriminately into any nook and corner of the social framework for the sake of its upkeep and maintenance. It is something that is characteristic of a modern armythoroughly mechanisedin which men are not diffe rent from the nuts and bolts of a machine, all forming a stream-lined massive unity, where persons and individuals as such have no value or consideration, they are dumb and almost dead materials and when worn out just simply to be replaced by others. If it is to be compared to any living thing, we can think of only the regimentation that obtains in an ant-hill or a bee-hive.
02.14 - Panacea of Isms, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So the cry is for greater human values. Man needs food and shelter, goes without saying, but he yearns for other things also, air and light: he needs freedom, he needs culturehigher thoughts, finer emotions, nobler urges the field and expression of personal worth. The acquisition of knowledge, the creation of beauty, the pursuit of philosophy, art, literature, and science in their pure forms and for their own sake are things man holds dear to his heart. Without them life loses its charm and significance. Mind and sensibility must be free to roam, not turned and tied to the exclusive needs and interests of physical life, free, that is to say, to discover and create norms and ideals and truths that are values in themselves and also lend values to the matter-of-fact terrestrial life. It is not sufficient that all men should have work and wages, it is not sufficient that I all should have learnt the three R's, it is not sufficient that they should understand their rightssocial, political, economic and claim and vindicate them. Nor is it sufficient for men to r become merely useful or indispensablealthough happy and I contentedmembers of a collective body. The individual must be free, free in his creative joy to bring out and formulate, in thought, in speech, in action, in all the modes of expression, the truth, the beauty, the good he experiences within. An all-round culture, a well-developed mind, a well-organised life, a well-formed body, a harmonious working of all the members of the system at a high level of consciousness that is man's need, for there lies his self-fulfilment. That is the ideal of Humanismwhich the ancient Grco-Roman culture worshipped, which was again revived by the renaissance and which once again became a fresh and living force after the great Revolution and is still the high light to which Science and modern knowledge turns.
The More Beyond
02.14 - The World-Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He cast from the rent stillness of his soul
A cry of adoration and desire
03.01 - Humanism and Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Humanism proper was bornor rebornwith the renaissance. It was as strongly and vehemently negative and protestant in its nature as it was positive and affirmative. For its fundamental character that which gave it its very namewas a protest against, a turning away from whatever concerned itself with the supra-human, with God or Self, with heaven or other worlds, with abstract or transcendental realities. The movement was humanistic precisely because it stood against the theological and theocratical mediaeval age.
The Graeco-Latin culture was essentially and predominantly humanistic. Even so, the mediaeval culture also, in spite of its theological stress, had a strong basis in humanism. For the religion itself, as has been pointed out, is deeply humanistic, in the sense that it brought salvation and heaven close to the level of human frailtythrough the miracle of Grace and the humanity of Christand that it envisaged a kingdom of heaven or city of God the body of Christformed of the brotherhood of the human race in its solidarity.
The Indian outlook, it is said, is at a double remove from this type of humanism. It has not the pagan GrrecoRoman humanism, nor has it the religious humanism of Christianity. Its spirit can be rendered in the vigorous imagery of Blake: it surrounds itself with cold floods of abstraction and the forests of solitude.
The religious or Christian humanism of the West is in its essential nature the pagan and profane humanism itself, at least an extension of the same. The sympathy that a St. Francis feels for his leprous brother is, after all, a human feeling, a feeling that man has for man; and even his love for the bird or an inanimate object is also a very human feeling, transferred to another receptacle and flowing in another direction. Itis a play of the human heart, only refined and widened; there is no change in kind.
03.01 - The Malady of the Century, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed a peculiar aridity has invaded the modern consciousness; the sap has dried that once made life fresh and green and glad. It is not that we are turned away from life; on the contrary, we are attached to it more than ever,but the attachment has come upon us like a morbid hunger. And so we have the lust for life, but know not the joy of life. We lay an inordinate stress upon the body, upon what is external and superficial, upon the matter of life, and suffer from a simultaneous recoil and disgust for it. Human nature has been rent in twain and life has lost its unity of rhythm.
The old-world had no experience of this self-division. It had a frank and full joy in things of life, even in their most material forms. And when it turned away from life, it did so in the same spirit, of joy and frankness and wholeness. There was not this immixture, this Hamletian "to be or not to be"an unregenerate, barbaric life-impulse "sicklied o'er with the pale cast O' thought" that troubles the modern consciousness.
03.01 - The New Year Initiation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Grant that the mistakes recognised may never be renewed.
Grant, lastly, that its actions may be the exact and sincere expression of its proclaimed ideals.
--
In her last year's message1 the Mother gave a clear warning that we must have no more hesitation, that we must renounce one side, free ourselves from all its influence and embrace the other side without hesitation, without reservation. At the decisive moment in the life of the world and of mankind, one must definitely, irrevocably choose one's loyalty. It will not do to say, like the over-wise and the over-liberal, that both sides the Allies and the Axis Powersare equalequally right or equally wrong and that we can afford to be outside or above the prejudices or interests of either. There is no room today for a neutral. He who pretends to be a neutral is an enemy to the cause of truth. Whoever is Dot with us is against us.
We who have taken the side that is for Light and Evolution and the great Future, must be thoroughly alive to the heavy responsibility that lies on us. The choice of the path is not by itself sufficient. Next to that, we have to see, at every step, and make sure that we are really walking straight along the true path, that we do not fall and slip down, that we do not stray unawares into a wrong track or a blind alley.
03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Mantra or initiation, in its essence, is nothing else than contacting the inner being. In our Path, at least, there is no other rite or rule, injunction or ceremony. The only thing needed is to awake to the consciousness of the psychic being, to hear its callto live and move and act every moment of our life under the eye of this indwelling Guide, in accordance with its direction and impulsion. Our initiation is not therefore a one-time affair only; but at every moment, at each step, it has to be taken again and again, it must be renewed, revitalised, furthered and st reng thened constantly and unceasingly; for it means that at each step and at every moment we have to maintain the contact of our external consciousness with the inner being; at each step and every moment we have to undergo the test of our sincerity and loyalty the test whether we are tending to our inner being, moving in its stream or, on the contrary, walking the way of our external animal nature, whether the movements in the mind and life and body are controlled by their habitual inferior nature or are open to and unified with their hidden divine source. This recur rent and continuous initiation is at the secret basis of all spiritual disciplinein the Integral Yoga this is the one and all-important principle.
Mundaka, Ill. 2. 4
03.03 - Arjuna or the Ideal Disciple, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To say this is to miss the whole nature of discipleship, at least as it is conceived in the Gita. A disciple is not a bundle of qualifications and attainments, however high or considerable they may be. A disciple is first and foremost an aspiring soul. He may not have high qualities to his credit; on the contrary, he may have what one calls serious defects, but even that would not matter if he possessed the one thing needful, the unescapable urge of the soul, the undying fire in the secret heart. Yudhishthira may have attained a high status of sttvic nature; but the highest spiritual status, the Gita says, lies beyond the three Gunas. He is the fittest person for this spiritual life who has abandoned all dharmasprinciples of conduct, modes of living and taken refuge in the Lord alone, made the Lord's will the sole and sufficient law of life. Even though to outward regard such a person be full of sins, the Lord promises to deliver him from all that. It is the soul's love for the Divine given unconditionally and without reserve that can best purify the dross of the inferior nature and render one worthy of the Divine Grace.
Such was Arjuna's capacity; herein lay his st rength, his spiritual superiority. It was because he could be so intimate with the Divine as to call him his friend and companion and playmate and speak to him in familiar and homely termseven though he felt contrition for having in this way perhaps slighted the Lord and not paid sufficient regard towards him. Yet this turn of his soul and nature points to the straightness and simplicity and candidness that were there and it was this that helped to call in the Divine and the Divine choice to fall upon him.
03.03 - Modernism - An Oriental Interpretation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The domination of the religious sense reached its apogee in the Middle Ages when it almost swallowed up and annihilated all other faculties and movements in man. The end of that epoch and the first beginnings of the Modern Age were signalised by the Mind, i.e. the Reason, declaring its independence. This was the renaissance; and it was then that the seed was sown of modern science and scientism.
Mindmind in its rational modethus emancipated, exercised in its turn a domineering control over man's entire nature. All other members were made a subservient tri butary to that which was considered the members par excellence in the rational animal. The seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries form the period of its rule the former its bright period when it expressed itself in its truth and power, as embodied in what is called classicism in literature; the latter its darker phase, its decline, the manifestation of its weakness. Its death-knell was first sounded by Voltaire who symbolised the mind's destructive criticism of itself, the same which Anatole France in France and Shaw in England have continued in our days almost to a successful issue.
--
Thus life has come to mean today the life exclusively of the senses, the life that is instinctive, reflexive, automatical in its elan, which is beyond the control of the conscious will and intelligence, the life that is interwoven and unified with body and matter. For it was this life which could never come to its ownnot even in man's primitive stage which was more or less a rigid system of taboos, religious and social, in spite of contrary appearances; it was this life which could not express freely and fully its own truth and reality in its own way, under the domination of what are known as the higher movements of the human consciousness. Life in another sense, as part of this higher and aristocratic movement, had had some autonomy and a field and scope of its own even under the old regime. The life-force that inspires noble ambitions, high enterprises, large creations, vast enjoyments, and proud renunciations, and violent and sweeping passions, has always been to us a familiar element.
Today, however, in pursuit of the mystery of life we have entered into darker and more obscure regionsof cells and genes, of colloid actions and neuron reactions: the elementary instincts, the primary reflexes, the tangle of short and brief vibrations, and half-articulate pulsations of the most physical and material consciousness are the stuff of the life we seek to live and to capture and mirror. The creative and active force in life as well as in art is now invested in the nervous dynamism and sensational perception. The old morals and sthetics and the sentiments and notions around them are considered today merely conventional and bourgeois; they have given place to a freer life-movement, the expression and embodiment of an unrestrained and au thentic life, life in its natural, original; unspoilt (and crude and coarse) verity. We are probing into the mystery of the crust.
03.03 - The House of the Spirit and the New Creation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A playground of miracles, a rendezvous
For the secret powers of a mystic Timelessness:
03.04 - The Other Aspect of European Culture, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nor is it a fact that Europe is and has been merely profane and materialistic in her outlook and attainment. The godless and mechanistic civilisation which is rampant today in Europe is a distemper of comparatively recent growth. Its farthest limit does not go beyond the sixteenth or the fifteenth century when the first seeds were sown by the Humanists of the renaissance. It sprouted with the rationalists of the eighteenth century and the F rench Revolution cleared the ground for its free and untrammelled growth. But only in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries has it reached such vast and disconcerting proportions as to swallow all Europe's other motives and velleities and to appear as the only form of her life-expression. But in the earlier centuries, those that preceded the New Enlightenment, Europe had a diffe rent conception of culture and civilisation, she possessed almost another soul. The long period that is known as the mediaeval age was not after all so dark and unregenerate as it has been the familiar custom to represent it. Christian Europe the Europe of cathedrals and monasteries, of saints and sages, of St. Francis and St. Teresa, of Boehme and Bernard, of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, had an enlightenment all her own, which was real and living and dynamic, possessing a far-extending and deeply penetrating influence; in as much as it was this that called into being and fashioned the more abiding forces, which underlie Europe's cultural life and social institutions, although latterly "fallen on evil days and on evil tongues".
Even the still more ancient Grco-Latin Europe which was not, to a general and appa rent view, quite spiritual or other-worldly, was yet not so exclusively materialistic and profane as modern Europe. Classical culture was rationalistic, without doubt; but that rationalism was the function of a sublimated intelligence and a refined sensibility and served as a vehicle for a Higher Perceptiona ratiocinative and ultra-logical mind, like that of Socrates, could yet be so passive and upgazing as to receive and obey the commandments of a Dmon; whereas the rationalism, which is in vogue today and to which orthodox Scientism has affixed its royal sign manual, is the product of mere brain-power, vigorous but crude, of an intellect shut up in its self-complacent cunningness, obfuscated by its infinite but shallow inquisitiveness.
--
In this connection the history of Ireland's destiny affords an instructive study, since it is symbolic also of Europe's life-course. It was the natural idealism, the inborn spiritual outlook which Ireland possessed of yore the Druidic Mysteries were more ancient than the Greek culture and formed perhaps the basis of the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysterieswhich impelled her foremost to embrace the new revelation brought on by Christianity. As she was among the pioneers to champion the cause of the Christ, she became also the fortress where the new cult found a safe refuge when the old world was being overwhelmed and battered to pieces by the onrush of peoples of a dense and rough-hewn nature. When continental Europe lay a desert waste under the heels of the barbarians that almost wiped away the last vestiges of the Classical Culture, it was Ireland who nursed and reared the New Child in her bosom and when the time came sent Him out again to reconquer and revivify Europe. Once more when the tide of Modernism began to rise and swell and carry everything before it, Ireland stood firm and threw up an impregnable barrier. The story of Ireland's struggle against Anglo-Saxon domination is at bottom the story of the struggle between Europe's soul power and body power. Ireland was almost slain in the combat, physically, but would not lose her soul. And now she rises victorious at long last, her ancient spirit shines resplendent, the voice of the Irish renaissance that speaks through Yeats and Russell1 heralds a new dawn for her and who knows if not for Europe and the whole West?
Is it meant that "Mediaeval obscurantism" was Europe's supreme ideal and that the cry should be: "Back to the Dark Age, into the gloom of Mystic superstitions and Churchian dogmas?" Now, one cannot deny that there was much of obscurantism and darkness in that period of Europe's evolution. And the revolt launched against it by the heralds of the Modern Age was inevitable and justified to some extent; but to say that unadulterated superstition was what constituted the very substance of Middle Age Culture and that the whole thing was more or less a nightmare, is only to land into another sort of superstition and obscurantism. The best when corrupt does become the worst. The truth of the matter is that in its decline the Middle Age clung to and elaborated only the formal aspect of its culture, leaving aside its inner realisation, its living inspiration. The renaissance was a movement of reaction and correction against the lifeless formalism, the dry scholasticism of a decadent Middle Age; it sought to infuse a new vitality, by giving a new outlook and intuition to Europe's moribund soul. But, in fact, it has gone a little too far in its career of correction. In its violent enthusiasm to pull down the worn-out edifice of the past and to build anew for the future, it has almost gone to the length of digging up the solid foundation and erasing the fundamental ground-plan upon which Europe's real life and culture reposed and can still safely repose.
If then Europe can cut across the snares that Modernism has spread all about her and get behind the surface turmoils and ebullitions and seek that which she herself once knew and esteemed as the one thing needful, then will she really see what the East means, then only will she find the bond of indissoluble unity with Asia. For the Truth that Europe carried in her bosom is much bigger than anything she ever suspected even in her best days. And she carried it not with the full illumination and power of a Master, but rather in the twilight consciousness of a servant or a devotee. The Truth in its purity flowed there for the most part much under the main cur rent of life, and its formulations in life were not its direct expressions and embodiments but echoes and images. It is Asia who grasps the Truth with the hand of the Master, the Truth in its full and absolute truth and it is Asia who can show in fact and life how to embody it integrally.
03.04 - The Vision and the Boon, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All breaks and all renews and is the same.
Huge revolutions of life's fruitless gyre,
03.04 - Towardsa New Ideology, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The distinction between the attitudes that underlie these two conceptions was once upon a time greatly stressed by Vivekananda, who was the first to strike two or three major chords that were needed to create the grand symphony of the Indian renaissance. It is true Europe too had her Mazzini whose scheme of a new humanity was based on the conception of the duties of man. But his was a voice in the wilderness and he was not honoured in his own country.
The malady of the modern age springs precisely from this poisonous source, viz., it views man as a bundle of rights and its problem of social organisation is the problem of safeguarding and, if possible, even of increasing individual and collective rights. Thus came into being the competitive societya society necessarily red in tooth and claw like Nature.
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The system of varnas and ashramas of ancient Indiaeven if it be supposed that it never existed actually in its purest ideal formserves as a graphic example of how man as a social being should create and organise his existence in order that that existence might be rendered as perfect and integrally sound as things can be. That system we hold forth as only an illustration; we do not mean that it is a pattern of life that should be or could be implanted on our present day social circumstances. These are certainly very diffe rent and demand diffe rent groupings and hierarchies that must naturally grow out of them.
It should be noted that in contemporary life stress is laid upon one side, one part and one function of human nature which cover only a superficialhowever useful and necessaryarea. Man is not a political animal (even in the Aristotelian sense); and it is an error to say that he is an economic animal. These notions divide man's integral being into various sectional views only; they seek to cut out and suppress all other members excepting the favoured one. The politically militant bourgeois ideal of the Nazi or the Fascist and the economically militant ideal of the proletarian are equally guilty of this lapse. Even the ideal of man as a rational being does not go far enough to be able to save man and mankind. All of them evoke conflict, some deliberately, and the resolution of the conflict ends in suppression, amputation and atrophy.
03.06 - Divine Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Humanism proper was bornor rebornwith the renaissance.It was as strongly and vehemently negative and protestant in its nature, on one side, as it was positive and affirmative on the other. For its fundamental character that which gave it its Very namewas a protest against a turning away from, whatever concerned itself with the supra-human, with God or Self, with heaven or other worlds, with abstract or transcendental realities. The movement was humanistic precisely because it stood against the theological and theocratical mediaeval age.
The Grco-Latin culture was essentially and predominantly humanistic. Even so, the mediaeval culture too, in spite of its theological stress, had a strong basis in humanism. For the religion itself, as has been pointed out, was deeply humanistic, in the sense that it brought salvation and heaven close to the level of human frailtythrough the miracle of Grace and the humanity of Christand that it envisaged a kingdom of heaven or city of God the body of Christformed of the brotherhood of the human race in its solidarity.
The Indian outlook, it is said, is at a double remove from this type of humanism. It has not the pagan Grco-Roman humanism, nor has it the religious humanism of Christianity. Its spirit can best be rendered in the vigorous imagery of Blake; it surrounds itself:
With cold floods of abstraction and
04.01 - The Birth and Childhood of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Again there was renewed, again revealed
The ancient closeness by earth-vision veiled,
04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Greece and Rome may be taken to represent two types of culture. And accordingly we can distinguish two types of elevation or crest-formation of human consciousness one of light, the other of power. In certain movements one feels the intrusion, the expression of light, that is to say, the play of intelligence, understanding, knowledge, a fresh outlook and consideration of the world and things, a revaluation in other terms and categories of a new consciousness. The greatest, at least, the most representative movement of this kind is that of the renaissance. It was really a New Illumination: a flood of light poured upon the mind and intellect and understanding of the period. There was a brightness, a brilliance, a happy agility and keenness in the movements of the brain. A largeness of vision, a curious sensibility, a wide and alert consciousness: these are some of the fundamental characteristics of this remarkable New Birth. It is the birth of what has been known as the scientific outlook, in the- broadest sense: it is the threshold of the modern epoch of humanity. All the modern European languages leaped into maturity, as it were, each attaining its definitive form and full-blooded individuality. Art and literature flooded in their magnificent creativeness all nations and peoples of the whole continent. The Romantic Revival, starting somewhere about the beginning of the nineteenth century, is another outstanding example of a similar phenomenon, of the descent of light into human consciousness. The light that descended into human consciousness at the time of the renaissance captured the higher mind and intelligence the Ray touched as it were the frontal lobe of the brain; the later descent touched the heart, the feelings and emotive sensibility, it evoked more vibrant, living and powerful perceptions, created varied and dynamic sense-complexes, new idealisms and aspirations. The manifestation of Power, the descent or inrush of forcemighty and terriblehas been well recognised and experienced in the great F rench Revolution. A violence came out from somewhere and seized man and society: man was thrown out of his gear, society broken to pieces. There came a change in the very character and even nature of man: and society had to be built upon other foundations. The past was gone. Divasa gatah. Something very similar has happened again more recently, in Russia. The F rench Revolution brought in the bourgeois culture, the Russian Revolution has rung in the Proletariate.
In modern India, the movement that led her up to Independence was at a crucial moment a mighty evocation of both Light and Power. It had not perhaps initially the magnitude, the manifest scope or scale of either the renaissance or the Great Revolutions we mention. But it carried a deeper import, its echo far-reaching into the future of humanity. For it meant nothing less than the spiritual awakening of India and therefore the spiritual regeneration of the whole world: it is the harbinger of the new epoch in human civilisation.
These larger human movements are in a sense anonymous. They are not essentially the creation of a single man as are some of the well-known religious movements. They throw up great aspiring souls, strong men of action, indeed, but as part of themselves, in their various aspects, facets, centres of expression, lines of expansion. An Augustus, a Pericles, a Leo X, a Louis XIV, or a Vikramaditya are not more than nuclei, as I have already said, centres of refe rence round which their respective epoch crystallises as a peak culture unit. They are not creators or originators; they are rather organisers. A Buddha, a Christ or a Mohammed or even a Napoleon or Caesar or Alexander are truly creators: they bring with them somethingsome truth, some dynamic revelation that was not there before. They realise and embody each a particular principle of being, a unique mode of consciousnessa new gift to earth and mankind. Movements truly anonymous, however, have no single nucleus or centre of refe rence: they are multi-nuclear. The names that adorn the renaissance are many, it had no single head; the men through whom the great F rench Revolution unrolled itself were many in number, that is to say, the chiefs, who represented each a face or phase of the surging movement.
The cosmic spirit works itself out in the world and in human affairs in either of these forms:(1) as embodied in a single personality and (2) as an impersonal movement, sometimes through many personalities, sometimes through a few outstanding personalities and sometimes even quite anonymously as a mass movement. Either mode has each its own special purpose, its function in the cosmic labour, its contri bution to the growth and unfoldment of the human consciousness upon earth as a whole. Generally, we may say, when it is an intensive work, when it is a new truth that has to be disclosed and set in man's heart and consciousness, then the individual is called up and undertakes the work: when, however, the truth already somehow found or near at hand is to be spread wide and made familiar to men and established upon earth, then the larger anonymous movements are born and have sway.
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If we look at Europe once again and cast a glance at its origins, we find at the source the Grco-Roman culture. It was pre-eminently a culture based upon the powers of mind and reason: it included a strong and balanced body (both body natural and body politic) under the aegis of mens sana (a sound mind). The light that was Greece was at its zenith a power of the higher mind and intelligence, intuitively dynamic in one the earlierphase through Plato, Pythagoras, Heraclitus and the mystic philosophers, and discursively and scientifically rational through the Aristotelian tradition. The practical and robust Roman did not indulge in the loftier and subtler activities of the higher or intuitive mind; his was applied intelligence and its characteristic turn found expression in law and order and governance. Virgil was a representative poet of the race; finely sensitive and yet very self-consciousearth-bound and mind-boundas a creative artist: a clear and careful intelligence with an idealistic imagination that is yet sober and fancy-free is the very hall mark of his poetic genius. In the post-Roman age this bias for mental consciousness or the play of reason and intellectual understanding moved towards the superficial and more formal faculties of the brain ending in what is called scholasticism: it meant stagnation and decadence. It is out of this slough that the renaissance raised the mind of Europe and bathed it with a new light. That movement gave to the mind a wider scope, an alert curiosity, a keener understanding; it is, as I have said, the beginning of that modern mentality which is known as the scientific outlook, that is to say, study of facts and induction from given data, observation and experience and experiment instead of the other scholastic standpoint which goes by a priori theorising and abstraction and deduction and dogmatism.
We may follow a little more closely the march of the centuries in their undulating movement. The creative intelligence of the renaissance too belonged to a region of the higher mind, a kind of inspirational mind. It had not the altitude or even the depth of the Greek mind nor its subtler resonances: but it regained and re-established and carried to a new degree the spirit of inquiry and curiosity, an appreciation of human motives and preoccupations, a rational understanding of man and the mechanism of the world. The original intuitive fiat, the imaginative brilliance, the spirit of adventure (in the mental as well as the physical world) that inspired the epoch gradually dwindled: it gave place to an age of consolidation, organisation, stabilisation the classical age. The seventeenth century Europe marked another peak of Europe's civilisation. That is the Augustan Age to which we have referred. The following century marked a further decline of the Intuition and higher imagination and we come to the eighteenth century terre terre rationalism. Great figures still adorned that agestalwarts that either stuck to the prevailing norm and gave it a kind of stagnant nobility or already leaned towards the new light that was dawning once more. Pope and Johnson, Montesquieu and Voltaire are its high-lights. The nineteenth century brought in another crest wave with a special gift to mankind; appa rently it was a reaction to the rigid classicism and dry rationalism of the preceding age, but it came burdened with a more positive mission. Its magic name was Romanticism. Man opened his heart, his higher feeling and nobler emotional surge, his subtler sensibility and a general sweep of his vital being to the truths and realities of his own nature and of the cosmic nature. Not the clear white and transpa rent almost glaring light of reason and logic, of the brain mind, but the rosy or rainbow tint of the emotive and aspiring personality that seeks in and through the cosmic panorama and dreams of
A light that was ne'er on sea or land. . .
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Turning to India we find a fuller and completerif not a globalpicture of the whole movement. India, we may say, is the spiritual world itself: and she epitomised the curve of human progress in a clearer and more significant manner. Indian history, not its political but its cultural and spiritual history, divides itself naturally into great movements with corresponding epochs each dwelling upon and dealing with one domain in the hierarchy of man's consciousness. The stages and epochs are well known: they are(l) Vedic, (2) Upanishadic, (3) Darshanasroughly from Buddha to Shankara, (4) Puranic, (5) Bhagavataor the Age of Bhakti, and finally (6) the Tantric. The last does not mean that it is the latest revelation, the nearest to us in time, but that it represents a kind of complementary movement, it was there all along, for long at least, and in which the others find their fruition and consummation. We shall explain presently. The force of consciousness that came and moved and moulded the first and the earliest epoch was Revelation. It was a power of direct vision and occult will and cosmic perception. Its physical seat is somewhere behind and or just beyond the crown of the head: the peak of man's manifest being that received the first touch of Surya Savitri (the supreme Creative Consciousness) to whom it bowed down uttering the invocation mantra of Gayatri. The Ray then entered the head at the crown and illumined it: the force of consciousness that ruled there is Intuition, the immediate perception of truth and reality, the cosmic consciousness gathered and concentrated at that peak. That is Upanishadic knowledge. If the source and foundation of the Vedic initiation was occult vision, the Upanishad meant a pure and direct Ideation. The next stage in the coming down or propagation of the Light was when it reached further down into the brain and the philosophical outlook grew with rational understanding and discursive argumentation as the channel for expression, the power to be cultivated and the limb to be developed. The Age of the Darshanas or Systems of Philosophy started with the Buddha and continued till it reached its peak in Shankaracharya. The age sought to give a bright and strong mental, even an intellectual body to the spiritual light, the consciousness of the highest truth and reality. In the Puranic Age the vital being was touched by the light of the spirit and principally on the highest, the mental level of that domain. It meant the advent of the element of feeling and emotiveness and imagination into the play of the Light, the beginning of their reclamation. This was rendered more concrete and more vibrant and intense in the next stage of the movement. The whole emotional being was taken up into the travailing crucible of consciousness. We may name it also as the age of the Bhagavatas, god-lovers, Bhaktas. It reached its climax in Chaitanya whose physical passion for God denoted that the lower ranges of the vital being (its physical foundations) were now stirred in man to awake and to receive the Light. Finally remains the physical, the most material to be worked upon and made conscious and illumined. That was the task of the Tantras. Viewed in that light one can easily understand why especial stress was laid in that system upon the esoteric discipline of the five m's (pancha makra),all preoccupied with the handling and harnessing of the grossest physical instincts and the most material instruments. The Tantric discipline bases itself upon Nature Power coiled up in Matter: the release of that all-conquering force through a purification and opening into the consciousness of the Divine Mother, the transcendent creatrix of the universe. The dynamic materialising aspect of consciousness was what inspired the Tantras: the others forming the Vedantic line, on the whole, were based on the primacy of the static being, the Purusha, aloof and withdrawing.
The Indian consciousness, we say, presented the movement as an intensive and inner, a spiritual process: it dealt with the substance itself, man's very nature and sought to know it from within and shape it consciously. In Europe where the frontal consciousness is more stressed and valued, the more characteristic feature of its history is the unfoldment and metamorphosis of the forms and expressions, the residuary powers, as it were, of man's evolving personality, individual and social.
04.02 - Human Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Jung speaks of two kinds or grades of thinking: (1) the directed thinking and (2) the wishful thinking; one conscious and objective, the other automatic and subjective. The first is the modern or scientific thinking, the second the old-world mythopoeic thinking. These two lines of mental movement mark off two definite stages in the cultural history of man. Down to the Middle Ages man's mental life was moved and coloured by his libidodesire soul; it is with the renascence that he began to free his mind from, the libido and transfer and transform the libido into non-egoistic and realistic thinking. In simpler psychological terms we can say that man's mentality was coloured and modulated by his biological make-up out of which it had emerged; the age of modernism and scientism began with the development of a rigorous rationalism which means a severance and transcendence of the biological antecedent.
In other words, it can be said that the older humanity was intuitive and instinctive, while modern humanity is rationalistic. Now it has been questioned whether this change or reorientation is a sign of progress, whether it has not been at the most a mixed blessing. Many idealists and reformers frankly view the metamorphosis with anxiety. Gerald Heard vehemently declares that the rationalism of the modern age is a narrowing down of the consciousness to a superficial movement, a foreshortening, and a top-heavy specialisation which means stagnation, decay and death. He would rather release the tension in the strangulation of consciousness, even if it means a slight coming down to the anterior level of instinct and intuition, but of more plasticity and less specialisation: it is, he says, only in conditions of suppleness and variability, of life organised yet sufficiently free that the forces of evolution can act fruitfully. It has also been pointed out that homo sapiens is not a direct descendant of homo neanderthalis who was already a far too specialised being, but of a stock anterior to it which was still uncertain, wavering, groping towards a definite emergence.
04.02 - The Growth of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To rend the veil of the last mysteries.
Intense philosophies pointed earth to heaven
04.03 - The Call to the Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The body's sense renounced its earthly look;
Immortal met immortal in their gaze.
04.04 - Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A progressive revelation of higher and higher and more integral states of the spiritual consciousness in and through the realisations of mystics and sages and seersdivine men of all ages, such is the process of evolution that marks the life of man upon earth. This spiritual evolution, however, may not be obviously visible in the external life and character of man: it has been a phenomenon more in his inner being and consciousness, an occult phenomenon. Hence there has intervened a veil, wall of separation between the two. The veil has not been rent precisely because the very highest spiritual potential has not been reached and brought into play. The call of the present age is just to do away with this veil, make of human nature a unified, a streamlined entity, a complete incarnation of the spiritual consciousness in the fullness of its own nature at its source and origin.
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04.05 - The Immortal Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is the cause of this strange longevity or stability that India or China enjoys? Whence this capacity to renew life, to rejuvenate the past that survives and persists? Before dealing with this question let us turn for a while to another curious phenomenon : which is allied to it and may throw some light upon it.
It is about the life-span of peoples. The life-span of peoples is not uniform: it differs with diffe rent peoples and differs considerably. The Spanish or Portuguese hegemony in modern Europe was after all rather briefa matter of one century or twoin comparison with the lease enjoyed by Rome or Greece. Indeed it might seem that the older the nation the longer it lived. Take, for example, the oldest nation recognized as such in history, Egypt; her life-span is to be measured not by centuries but by millenniums. The Hellenic civilisation that succeeded the Egyptian did not last as long and yet it lasted more than its own successor, the Roman, did. How was it then the more ancient people resisted more successfully the forces of decline and disintegration? What was it that made the later and younger nations less successful in the battle of life?
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The truth then is this: the stronger the inner life a nation builds up and organises, the longer it lives and the greater the power it acquires to revive when it falls for a time into decline. Naturally, a good deal depends upon the nature and quality of this inner life. There are certain types of inner life which mean the very source of life, there are others that are only secondary sources. Ancient Greece or even modern France has had a well-developed inner life, but this inner life was very strongly wedded to and welded into the outer life, it lay at least at one remove farther from the true source of life. Ancient Egypt less intellectual, less mentally cultivated, was in contact with the occult, the subliminal base of life, more potent and dynamic springs of consciousness. This was the cause of Egypt's greater longevity and some capacity of renewal. The older people generally lived in, or at least, were in living contact with principles of existence more fundamental and therefore more enduring. The gods of the mind and of the inner vital enjoy a longer immortality than the deities that rule man's outer life and body.
Viewed from this standpoint India stands as a case sui generis. She did not stop short satisfied with the lesser gods. She aspired for the highest One, the supreme spiritual reality and it was her mission, her destiny, to foster it and keep guard over it for the sake of humanity. Whatever the outer vicissitudes, she maintained throughout the inner continuity of her spiritual life and realisation. That is where she drank of the nectar of immortality and that is how she could always revive and renew herself after a period of decline and almost disintegration, because she possessed the mystery of the self. Other peoples were busy about many other things important or unimportant in some measure, but here was a race that never forgot the one thing needful. India of today, we repeat, is fundamentally and essentially the India of the Vedas, even in a more literal sense than that China of Mao-tse- Tung (or Sun-yat-Sen) is the China of Lao-tse.
A race dies out altogether or continues to lead a superficial mechanical existence, that is to say, vegetates as an inchoate mass, when it knows to live only in its body, confined only to the demands of the barest physical necessities. The life of a race gains a meaning and a new vitality when a higher light and aspiration inspire and move its spirit; when a deeper and finer sensibility, a nobler ambition stir its affections, when a superior intelligence and understanding illumine its mental horizon, its lease of life is increased by that and also its power of recuperation and renewal. And the further it enters into these basic constants of existence the greater that power of rejuvenation. 1
We may compare with profit perhaps in this regard the life of an individual person with that of a people or nation. Even as an individual has a soul beyond his body and mind, a spiritual personality behind his appa rent name and form, a nation too has a soul apart from its political, economic and cultural life. As in the individual, in the aggregate too a spiritual principle seeks to express and incarnate itself. It is this immortal reality in the individual man that reincarnates in life after life surviving appa rent death and disintegration. But only those individuals that live consciously a soul-life, express to some extent at least the soul's light in and through the external personality of a mind and body and vitality and maintain a true individuality and a strong and durable formation through the lives; otherwise, the soul is there no doubt, but in its own world, exerts only a very indirect influence and the rest of the personality, the dynamic members disintegrate and are taken up into the general earth atmosphere. Something of the same kind is likely to happen in the case of collective groups too. A nation like India that hitched her wagon of life to a star the supreme spiritual realityis bound to regain her life always through whatever calamities and catastrophes might befall her.
One may note three or four crises, practically rebirths, in India's life history. They correspond roughly with the great racial infiltrations or what is described as such by anthropologists, what others may describe as operations of blood transfusion. There was an original autochthonous people, the early humanity out of the stone age, usually called proto-Dravidians, whose remnants are still found among the older and cruder aboriginal tribes. Then the Dravidian infusion which culminated in the humanity, the Indian humanity, of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Next the Aryan avatar. One usually begins Indian history with the Dravido-Aryan civilisation which is taken as the basic foundation, the general layout of the whole structure. The first shock or blow the edifice received was from the Greeks and then the Huns and Scythians the Tartars something that struck at the most essential element of Indian culture and character. Psychologically the new leaven was brought in and injected by Gautama Buddha the un-Vedic Buddha the external invasion and penetration was possible because of this opening already made from within. This injection was necessary as an antidote to the decline and fall that had set in sometime between the passing of Sri Krishna and the advent of Buddha. But traditional India absorbed this new leaven and came out with a renewed and enriched personality. The next major shaking came with the Islamic inundation. This meant or would have meant a great and even catastrophic reversal, but this too in the course of centuries succeeded only in invigorating and enlarging the life and consciousness of eternal India. The last and perhaps the most dangerous assault came from the Europeans, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the F rench and finally, most of all, from the British. An absolutely matter-of-fact vitalistic Europe overran and overwhelmed a predominantly otherworldly spirit and almost succeeded in obliterating that spirit and replacing it by a replica of its own life-pattern and Weltanschauung. Even such a blow India could survive, not only so, could utilise it for her own purpose, for the greater fulfilment of her mission in life. She is coming out of that ordeal a towering personality, a godhead for the remoulding of humanity and earth-life.
It may be argued that all nations and peoples are a mixture of various races and foreign strands which are gradually, soldered and unified together in course of time. The British nation, for example, is built upon a base of Celtic blood and culture (the original Briton), to which were added one by one the German (Angles and the Saxon), the Danish, the F rench. But what is to be noted is that the resultant is at the end some-thing very diffe rent from the start something unrecognisable when compared with the original pattern and genius. The resultant seems to be arrived at not by a gradual evolution and continuous transformation but by disparate echelons or , breaks, as it were, in the line. In France also or in Italy the growth and the unification were achieved through violent revolutions, eruptions and irruptions. In the former, a Gaelic and Iberian base and in the latter an Etruscan were all but swept off by the Roman rule which again saw its end at the hand of the Barbarians. The history of Greece offers a typical picture of the destiny of these peoples. Her life-line is sundered completely at three diffe rent epochs giving us not one but three diffe rent personalities or peoples: at the outset there was the original classical Greece, then the first and milder although sufficiently serious break came with the Roman conquest; the second catastrophic change was wrought by the Goths and Vandals which was stabilised in the Byzantine Empire and the third avatar appeared with the Turkish regime. At the present time, she is acquiring another life and body.
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In any case, the revival or renaissance of a nationa collective consciousness and beingis quite possible, and the normal curve of lifebirth and growth and deathis not even for it the ineluctable destiny. For like the individual, the group too has that in it or the possibility of that in it which is akin, toan isotope of the soul or self, the immortal conscious being.
Toynbee also speaks of the possibility of, national regenerationfreedom from the cycle of decline and deaththrough religion (although he limits religion to the Christian faith).
04.06 - Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A progressive revelation of higher and higher and more integral states of the spiritual consciousness in and through the realisations of mystics and sages and seersdivine menof all ages, such is the process of evolution that marks the life of man upon earth. This spiritual evolution, however, may not be obviously visible in the external life and character of man: it has been a phenomenon more in his inner being and consciousness, an occult phenomenon. Hence there has intervened a veil, a wall of separation between the two. The veil has not been rent precisely because the very highest spiritual potential has not been reached and brought into play. The call of the present age is just to do away with this veil, make of human nature a unified, a streamlined entity, a complete incarnation of the spiritual consciousness in the fullness of its own nature at its source and origin.
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05.02 - Physician, Heal Thyself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It should have been proved beyond doubt by now that the fact is not so. The only way to cure the world outside is to cure oneself first inside. The ancient proverb still holds good: the macrocosm is only an enlargement of the microcosm, the microcosm is the macrocosm in miniature. The universe is a transcript, a projection on a large scale of the individual nature within. What is there is here and what is not here is not found there. When we see some wrong in the world, something that has got to be set right, instead of rushing out and trying to tackle it in the external field, if one were to hold oneself back and look within, one would surely find, perhaps to his surprise I and enlightenment, a very similar movement, often an exact I replica in one's own consciousness and character of what one finds in the larger anonymous movements of nature and society. Now it may be admitted that one has no control or almost none over one's nature; the outside world is beyond our reach and we cannot order or mould it as we like. But the smaller world which is ourselves is not too far or too great for us; our own individual nature and character is ours and we have been given sufficient freedom and power to reform, renew and remake it. That is the secret, although it seems to be a very simple truth, almost a truism.
And if we cannot correct and mould as we wish the little world within which is our own, how can we expect to correct or change the vaster outer world? To leave oneself to be as one is and to try to make others change is evidently an absurd and self-contradictory proposition. On the other hand, if the first thing that one does is to correct oneself, then one will find, much to one's surprise and satisfaction, that there is very little to correct in the world, everything has been already corrected automatically.
05.03 - Of Desire and Atonement, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But there is too a Purity, a drop of which can render crystal clear a whole morass of soil and dirt.
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05.08 - An Age of Revolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The search for a universal principle of Nature is a meta-physical as well as a scientific preoccupation. In ancient days, fo example, we had the Water of Thales or the Fire of Heraclitus as the one original unifying principle of this kind. With the coming of the renascence and the New Illumination we laughed them out and installed instead the mysterious Ether. For a long time this universalreigned supreme and now that too has gone the way of its predecessors. We thought for a time that we had found in Electric Energy the one sovereign principle in Nature. At a time when we had a few elementsdiscrete, diffe rent, fundamental units that in their varying combinations built up the composite structure of Nature, apart from the fact that they reposed finally on the ultimate unifying principle of Ether, it was found also that they all behaved in a uniform and identical and therefore predictable manner. The time and the place (and the mass) being given, everything went according to a pattern and a formula, definite, fixed, mathematically rigid. Even the discovery of one element after another till the number reached the famous figure 92 (itself following a line of mathematically precise and inevitable development) did not materially alter the situation and caused no tribulation. For on further scrutiny a closer unity revealed itself: the supposed disparity in the substance of the various elements was found to be an illusion, for they all appeared now as diffe rent organisations or dispositions of the same electric energy (although the identity of electric energy with radiant energy was not always very clear). Thus we could conclude that as the substance was the same, its mode of working also would be' uniform and patterned. In other words, the mechanistic conception still ruled our view' of Nature. That means, the ultimate units, the particles (of energy) that compose Nature are like sea-sands or water-drops, each one is fundamentally similar to any other and all behave similarly, reacting uniformly to the same forces that act upon them.
Well, it is now found that they do not do so. However same or similar constitutionally, each unit is sui generisand its movement cannot be predicted. That movement does not depend upon its mass or store of energy or its position in a pattern, as a wholly mechanistic conception would demand: it is something incalculable, one should say even, erratic. In a radioactive substance, the particle that is shot out, becomes active, cannot be predetermined by any calculation, even if that is due to a definitely and precisely arranged bombardment. So we have come to posit a principle of uncertainty, as a very fundamental law of Nature. It practically declares that the ultimate particle is an autonomou unit, it is an' individual, almost a personality, and seems to have a will of its own. A material unit acts very much like a biological unit: it does not obey mechanically, answer mechanically as an automaton, but seems to possess a capacity for choice, for assent or refusal, for a free determination. The mechanistic view presented is due to an average functioning. The phenomenon has been explained by a very apt image. It is like an army. A group of soldiers, when they are on parade, look all similar and geometrically patterned: each is just like another and all move and march in the same identical manner. But that' is when you look at the whole, the collectivity, but looked individually, each one regains his separate distinct personality, each having his own nature and character, his own unique history: there no two are alike, each is non pareil and behaves diffe rently, incalculably.
05.08 - True Charity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Charity is commonly understood to consist in rendering material help to your fellow men, giving alms to the poor, medicine to the sick, money or material to those who need them and physical service also where that is required. All this is well and good. The world is ridden with diseases and privations and calamities. And if something is done to alleviate them, it is as it should be, activities in that direction deserve full encouragement. But this does not go far enough, does not touch the root of the matter. It is the human way of dealing with things and must naturally be very limited in its scope and efficacy. There is a higher, a diviner way the way of the Spirit for the cure of earthly ills, cure and not mere alleviation. That was the secret inspiration behind the message of the Christ and the Buddha.
It is not true that when one's wants are met, one always becomes or remains happy; all paupers are not unhappy, nor are the affluent invariably happy. Happiness is a quality that depends upon something else and comes from elsewhere: it is not directly proportional to material well-being. Unhappiness too is a psychological entity and consists in a special vibration of mind and vitality and consequently of the physical beingdue to a warp in the consciousness itself, in the core of the inner personality. The material conditions serve only to manifest it, maintain or aggravate it, but do not create ittruly they are created by it. That is why the spiritual healers always refer to the bliss of the Spirit as the sole remedy for physical ills even, for disease, misery and death. And the unhappy mortals are always called to turn to the Divine alone in their distressbhajasva mm.
05.11 - The Soul of a Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We do not believe that India was ever completely dead or hopelessly moribund: her soul, although not always in front, was ever present as a living force, presiding over and guiding her destiny. That is why there is a pe rennial capacity for renewal in her and the capacity to go through dire ordeals. And to live up to her genius, she too must know how to march with the time, that is to say, not to cling to old and past formsto be faithful to the ancient soul does not mean eternising the external frames and formulas that expressed that soul one time or another. Indeed the soul becomes alive and vigorous when it finds a new disposition of the life plan which can embody and translate a fresh creative activity, a new fulfilment emanating from the depths of the soul.
***
05.19 - Lone to the Lone, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Some mystics and philosophers recently come into vogue (inspired or encouraged by the Christian or the Buddhist way of Realisation) have emphasised this outlook. But it has also been counterbalanced by another way of spiritual growth and fulfilment: we may call it the modern way, for it has been a pronounced characteristic of the modern consciousness. We referred in our previous essay to the Existentialist who has attracted so much attention in these days, the linchpin of whose philosophy is the value of the individual person, especially the individual personal in relation to each other. Kierkegaard, the Danish mystic, from whom this school is supposed to originate, speaks of the Absolute as the Single One that excludes and annuls all "others", the crowd. He lays especial emphasis upon complete solitariness and total renunciation as the very condition, sine qua non, of the soul's spiritual journey and yet characterises the singlenessof the one in terms that make of it an essential whole, an integer. Man must isolate himself from his phenomenal being, certainlyas the neti netiformula enjoins but also he must first find or become his real self, realise his true individuality before he can reach God, the Divine Self, identify himself with the Transcendent. It is only a freely and truly formed individual being that can give itself to the Divine or become one with it. This true individuality is indeed a solitary being away and apart from the crowd of personalities that surround itit has been called by the Indian mystics, the Purusha in the heart, no bigger than the thumb, the Dwarf Godhead (Vmana).
When one is a member of the crowd, he has no personality or individuality, he is an amorphous mass, moving helplessly in the cur rent of life, driven by Nature-force as it pleases her: spiritual life begins by withdrawing oneself from this flow of Ignorance and building up or taking cognisance of one's true person and being. When one possesses oneself integrally, is settled in the armature of one's spirit self, he has most naturally turned away from the inferior personalities of his own being and the comradeship also of people in bondage and ignorance. But then one need not stop at this purely negative poise: one can move up and arrive at a positive status, a new revaluation and reaffirmation. For when the divine selfhood is attained, one is no longer sole or solitary. Indeed, the solitariness or loneliness that is attributed to the spiritual status is a human way of viewing the experience: that is the impression left on the normal mind consciousness when the Purusha soars out of it, upwards from the life of the world to the life of the Spirit. But the soul, the true spiritual being in the individual, is not and cannot be an isolated entity; the nature of the spiritual consciousness is first transcendence, no doubt, transcendence of the merely temporal and ephemeral, but it is also universalisation, that is to say, the cosmic realisation that has its classic expression in the famous mantra of the Gita, he who sees himself in other selves and other selves in his own self. In that status "own" and "other" are not distinct or contrary things, but aspects of the one and the same reality, diffe rent stresses in one rhythm.
The flight then represents the freedom, the movement in height of the soul; but there is also the other, the horizontal movement leading to expansiveness and comprehension. One is transcendental, the other global or cosmic. First we have to reject, reject the false formations one by one (sheath by sheath, as it is described in the Upanishads) and arrive at the purest core of truth and reality; but again we have to come back, take up a new, the true formation. What was renounced has to be reintegrated in the divine becoming. While we are in Ignorance, our relations with men and the world are false and, ignorant, but once we attain our true self, we find the same self in men and things and we have no more revulsion for themtato na vijigupsate.
***
06.01 - The Word of Fate, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Even a stranger's anguish rends my heart,
And this, O Narad, is my well-loved child.
06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its lonely universe is their rendezvous.
A day may come when she must stand unhelped
06.17 - Directed Change, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In point of fact, however, no two succeeding moments, whether in your consciousness or in the world movement, are exactly the same. Even if you try seriously and sincerely, you can never recapture a thing of the past as it was or as it came to you, not, that is to say, in the same exact manner. For you are no longer the same nor is the world. The world is a continuous flow, it has been very often declared: but it is not a continual repetition or recur rence, a mere cyclic order. On the other hand, constant renewal is the very character of the change. At every moment something new is coming down on the scene, something that was not surges out: Nature is bringing out at every step something that was hidden or latent in her secret depth, something is dropped from above into her normal movement, something unforeseen and unexpected. The march of time means evolution, that is to say, the addition of a new factor to the existing factors, making manifest some-thing that was unmanifestmrtam kacana bodhayanti, as the Vedic Rishi says. Even if to an appa rent sight everything seems to remain the same, yet it is not so in reality; always a new element is being poured into the existing circumstances, always an additional spark or influence enters into actual play of forces. It is the accumulated pressure of all the variables that brings about the great changes upon earth and in humanity which are summed up in the word evolutionchanges cosmological and psychological.
You have to accept this principle of change and move onto be one with the cosmic spirit,never to stand still or turn back, but look forward and forge ahead. To be stagnant means to die and be fossilised. Now, if things change continually, it means things can change and must be changed. Only, one must see to the direction in which the change occurs. A change can be, after all, for better or for worse. And you have the power, if you are conscious with the right consciousness, to direct the change and even to initiate one of the right order. Have you ever climbed a hill? There are many ways, paths, issues leading towards the top, some more or less direct, some zigzag, others winding or taking a long round. This does not matter, provided you look upward, have the sense of direction to the summit, then you mount up. Otherwise if you have your face downward or look below, you move downward away from the top. In the same way changes that happen will be directed according to the direction of your look. And there is only one direction towards which you must turn your look: towards the summit, towards the highest goal. It is to grow conscious, to grow more and more conscious-to be conscious of yourself, to be conscious of the universe and to be conscious of the Divine who dwells in you and permeates the world and then to manifest the Divine, in your physical life and in the physical life of the world.
06.30 - Sweet Holy Tears, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Cross symbolises all the suffering and difficulty, the renunciation and self-denudation that the ascent to the Goal involves. The Calvary of the Christian legend means Ascension and Resurrection is Transformation in our sadhana. The Cross is also symbolic of the Transformed consciousness. It has three branches and represents the triple Divine, the Divine in his three modes of existence. The top branch, the vertical portion above the transverse line, stands for the supreme or transcendent Divine, one who is above manifestation; the middle the transverse or horizontal branch stands for the expanse of the universal consciousness, the Cosmic Divine; and the bottom portion, the vertical line below the transverse stands for the individual Divine immanent or imbedded in the manifestation. You will note that the flower we call transformation has a form similar to the Cross.
The Mother: Prayers and Meditations, 3 September 1919
06.36 - The Mother on Herself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And yet there is a compulsion. It is the secret pressure of one's own nature that drives it forward through all vicissitudes back again to its original source. When it is said that the Divine Grace can and should do all, it means nothing more and nothing less than that: the Divine Grace only accelerates the process of return and recognition. But on the side of the journeying element, the soul, there must be awakened a conscious collaboration, an initial consent and a constantly renewed adhesion. It is this that brings out, at least helps to establish outside on the physical level, the force that is already and has always been at work within and on the subtler and higher levels. That is the pattern of the play, the system of conditions under which the game is carried out. The Grace works and incarnates in and through a body of willing and conscious collaborators; these become themselves part and parcel of the Force that works.
The truth I bring will manifest itself and will be embodied upon earth; for, it is the earth's and world's inevitable destiny. The question of time is not relevant. In one respect the truth which I say will be made manifest is already fully manifest, is already realised and established: there is no question of time there. It is in a consciousness timeless or eternally present. There is a process, a play of translation between that timeless poise and the poise in time that we know here below. The measure of that hiatus is very relative, relative to the consciousness that measures, long or short according to the yardstick each one brings. But that is not the essence of the problem: the essence is that the truth is there active, in the process of materialisation, only one should have the eye to see it and the soul to greet it.
07.01 - The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Until it seemed no power could rend apart,
Since even the body's walls could not divide.
07.02 - The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Her mind renouncing thought heard and was mute:
"Why camest thou to this dumb deathbound earth,
--
All that has been renews in him its birth;
All that can be is figured in his soul.
--
The seeds of sins renounced sprout from hid soil;
The evil cast from our hearts once more we face;
07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature renounce the spirit's government
And the bare elemental energies
07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Has rent with helpless grief and wrath my soul.
I have seen the peasant burning in his hut,
--
I rend man's narrow and successful life
And force his sorrowful eyes to gaze at the sun
07.06 - Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As if the heart-strings rent could work no more
And joy and grief could never rise again.
--
If all existence could renounce to be
And Being take refuge in Non-being's arms
07.17 - Why Do We Forget Things?, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is another thing. Apart from the fact that memory by itself in its very nature is a defective organ, there is the other fact that I there are diffe rent states of consciousness one following another. Each state faithfully records the phenomena of that moment, whatever they may be. Now, if your mind is calm and clear, wide and strong, you can by concentrating your consciousness on that moment bring out of it and recall in your present active state what is recorded there of your movements then; you can, that is to say, go back to the particular state of consciousness at a given moment and live it again. What is registered in your consciousness is never obliterated and hence not really forgotten. You can live a thousand years and you will not have forgotten that. Therefore, if you do not want to forget a thing, you must retain it through your consciousness, and not through your mental memory. As I have said, the mental memory fades away, new things, things of today replace old things, things of yesterday. But that of which you are conscious in your conscious-ness, you can never forget. It lies somewhere in the background, returns to you at your bidding. You have only to withdraw to that state of the consciousness where it lies imbedded. In this way you can recall things that you knew perhaps centuries ago. It is how you remember your past lives. For, a movement of consciousness never dies out, it is only the impressions on the surface brain-mind that are fugitive. What you have learnt with this superficial instrument laboriouslyonly read, heard, noted, underlinedleaves no lasting mark, but what is imbibed, breathed in into the stuff of consciousness remains. The brain is being constantly renewed and reformed. Old cells, cells that have become weak and atrophied are replaced by younger and stronger ones or the old cells combine diffe rently or enter into other organisations. Thus the old impressions or memories they carried are obliterated.
It is, as I say, by entering into a previous state of consciousness where you experienced a thing that you can always call back the thing. Only you must know how to get at the point, submerged somewhere in the depths. The body, after death, dissolves, the greater part of the vital and the mind dissolves alsoonly a small portion that has been well organised, given a compact cohesive form endures. Such an achievement is a rare phenomenon. But it is otherwise with the consciousness. Consciousness is eternal. If you contact the consciousness you discover the whole mystery of the earth and creation. It is consciousness that can create.
07.26 - Offering and Surrender, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the beginning you make a general sur render or submission, in principle, as it were: it is in your inner being. It must be brought forth gradually in the outer being, carried out in all the details of life. That is how difficulties arise. You have made your offering, you say, even you have worked at it for a long time, worked hard, given much time and much will; suddenly you find, upsetting your calculations, something diffe rent happening, you have not succeeded in something. So there is a revolt, a turning back and so on. But what you have to do is to renew your offering, reaffirm your adhesion. When the adhesion is complete, when there is the spontaneous acceptance of the Divine Will in everything, in every manner of happening, then comes the sur render, the perfect obedience which is calm, tranquil, at peace in either case, whether things happen in this way or that.
You ask if you cannot make a mistake unwittingly, do a wrong even if you do not want to. It is not likely. If you are sincere to the core, you are always conscious and you cannot be taken unawares. It is some form or degree of insincerity that veils your sense of right and wrong, makes you unconscious, as it were. Your discrimination is clouded, because you wish things to happen in a way, or do not wish them to happen in another way. On the other hand, if you are straight, if you are indiffe rent to either way and await only the Divine's will, you will always immediately perceive if there is or likely to be a wrong movement in you; you know it intimately in a very precise manner, for you are ready to rectify it.
07.32 - The Yogic Centres, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This consummation is supremely effected when there is the double breaking of the barrier I was speaking about. The first is the piercing of the veil above, when the consciousness rises into the superconscient, takes the human being into the divine being; the second is the rending of the lower veil and the descent of the divine consciousness into the most material, the subconscient and the inconscient, realising the divine life on earth.
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07.40 - Service Human and Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You will make a remarkable discovery as you proceed to know what you are and who you are. That is how you should begin. I want to serve humanity. How can I serve? Who is this 'I' that wants to serve? You say, I am such a person, this form and this name. But the form you have now was not there when you were a baby: it has been changing constantly All the elements of your body are being renewed totally. Neither are your sensations and feelings those you had a few years ago. Your thoughts and ideas have undergone revolutions. The I covers a sum of ever-changing factors. There is nothing particularly to be called I : it is only a ring of changes. An empty name seems to be the only constant thing. One element at a time comes forwardan idea, a feeling, an Impulse and that is your I for the moment. At another moment another element comes up and becomes your I. You are not one I but a crowd of many Is. So what is the value of the declaration of one of the 1's that it has found the goal, the truth, the duty you have to follow? Thus if you proceed further, questioning and analysing yourself thoroughly and sincerely, you will stumble upon the reality. You will find that I does not exist at all. What exists is something else: it is the one indivisible reality, the Divine alone.
It is this self-discovery that will give you the basic knowledge, the foundation of your life, the discovery that your self as yourself does not exist, you are indeed nothing. This sense of nothingness must pervade your being, fill all the elements of your being before the truth can dawn upon you and the Divine Presence can be felt. And what you have been doing all along is the very contrary thing, asserting your egoism, your vanitypretending that you were somebody, you could do something, that the world needed your help and you could give that help. Nothing of the kind. When you discover this truth and accept it, when you are humbled and in true humility you approach life and reality, you will find your real career and vocation.
07.42 - The Nature and Destiny of Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In ancient times, in the great ages, in Greece, for example or even during the Italian renaissance, particularly, however, in Greece and in Egypt, they erected buildings, constructed monuments for the sake of public utility. Their buildings were meant for the most part to be temples, sanctuaries to lodge their gods and deities. What they had in view was something total, whole and entire, beautiful and complete in itself. That was the purpose of architecture embodying the harmony of sweeping and majestic lines: sculpture was a part of architecture supplying details of expression and even painting came up to complete the expression: but the whole held together in a coordinated unity which was the monument itself. The sculpture was for the monument, the painting was for the monument; it was not that each was separate from the other and existed for itself and one did not know why it was there. In India, when a temple was being built, for example, what was aimed at was a total creation, all the parts combined to give effect to one end, to make a beautiful vesture for God, the one object of their adoration. All the great epochs of art were of this kind. But in modern times, in the latter part of the last century, Art' became a matter of business. A painting was done in order to be sold. You do your paintings, put each one in a frame and place them side by side or group them, that is, lump them together without much reason. The same with regard to sculpture. You make a statue and set it up anywhere without any connection whatsoever with the surroundings. It is always something foreign, extraneous in its setting, like a mushroom or a parasite. The thing in itself may not be quite ugly, but it is out of place, it is not part of an organic whole. We exhibit art today. Indeed, it is exhibitionism, it is the showing off of cleverness, talent, skill, virtuosity. A piece of architecture does not incarnate a living force as it used to do once upon a time. It is no longer the expression of an aspiration, of something that uplifts the spirit nor the expression of the magnificence of the Divine whose dwelling it is meant to be. You build houses here and there pell-mell or somehow juxtaposed without any coordinating idea governing them, without any relation to the environment where they are situated. When you enter a house, it is the same thing. A bit of painting here, a bit of sculpture there, some objects of art in one corner, a few others in another. Yes, it is an exhibition, a museum, a kaleidoscopic collection. It gives a shock to the truly sensitive artistic taste.
I do not say that a museum is not necessary or useful. It is a good means of education, that is to say, getting information about what other people or other epochs did. It is an aid to the historic knowledge of things. But it is far from being artistic. A museum is not the place where art can find its highest or its true expression. There is an art which seeks to coordinate, integrate distinct, discrete, contrary objects. It is called decorative art. And in so far as this art is successful, we are a step forward even in these days towards true art.
08.03 - Death in the Forest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Strove to rend life's strong heart-cords and be free.
Then helped, as if a beast had left its prey,
--
Such agony rends me as the tree must feel
When it is sundered and must lose its life.
09.01 - Towards the Black Void, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nor rent with tears the marble seals of pain:
She rose not yet to face the dreadful god.
--
Over was the haunted pain, the rending fear:
Her grief had passed away, her mind was still,
--
Where from her lap renounced on the smooth grass
Softly it lay, as often before in sleep
09.02 - The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its effort it renounced to live and know,
Convinced at last that it had never been;
10.01 - The Dream Twilight of the Ideal, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The rending of the Inconscient's seal of sleep,
The primal and unpardoned revolt that broke
--
And all renewed unendingly its charm
Alluring ever the expectant heart
10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I guard that seal against thy rending hands.
Love must not cease to live upon the earth;
--
He who has met the Self, renounces self.
The voyagers of the million routes of mind
10.04 - The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If Mind is all, renounce the hope of bliss;
If Mind is all, renounce the hope of Truth.
For Mind can never touch the body of Truth
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
Sight follows on this, the third sense, and the one definitely marking the correlation of ideas, or the relation between; it parallels the coming of Mind, both in time and function. We have hearing, touch or feeling, and then sight. In connection with the correspondence it is to be noted that sight came in with the third root-race in this round, and that the third race saw also the coming in of Mind. The Self and the not-self were immediately correlated, and co-ordinated. Their close partnership became an accomplished fact, and evolution hastened forward with renewed impetus.
These three major senses (if I might so describe them) are very definitely allied, each with one of the three Logoi:
1.00 - Introduction to Alchemy of Happiness, #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The remarkable treatise, which I introduce to your notice, is a translation from one of the numerous works of the Arabian Philosopher, Abou Hamid Mohammed ben Mohammed al Ghazzali, who flourished in the eleventh century. He was born about the year A. D. 1056, or 450 of the Mohammedan era, at Tous in Khorasan, and he died in the prime of life in his native country about the year 1011, or 505 A. H. Although educated by Mohammedan pa rents, he avows that during a considerable period of his life he was a prey to doubts about the truth, and that at times he was an absolute sceptic. While yet comparatively young, his learning and genius recommended him to the renowned sovereign Nizam ul Mulk, who gave him a professorship in the college which he had founded at Bagdad. His speculative mind still harassing him with doubts, in his enthusiasm to arrive at a solid foundation for knowledge, he resigned his position, visited Mecca and Jerusalem, and finally returned to Khorasan, where he led a life of both monastic study and devotion, and consecrated his pen to writing the results of his meditations.
Mohammedan scholars of the present day still hold him in such high respect, that his name is never mentioned by them without some such distinctive epithet, as the "Scientific [6] Imaum," or "Chief witness for Islamism." His rank in the eastern world, as a philosopher and a theologian, had naturally given his name some distinction in our histories of philosophy, and it is enumerated in connection with those of Averroes (Abu Roshd) and Avicenna (Abu Sina) as illustrating the intellectual life and the philosophical schools of the Mohammedans. Still his writings were less known than either of the two others. His principal work, The Destruction of the Philosophers, called forth in reply one of the two most important works of Averroes entitled The Destruction of the Destruction. Averroes, in his commentary upon Aristotle, extracts from Ghazzali copiously for the purpose of refuting bis views. A short treatise of his had been published at Cologne, in 1506, and Pocock had given in Latin his interpretation of the two fundamental articles of the Mohammedan creed. Von Hammer printed in 1838, at Vienna, a translation of a moral essay, Eyuha el Weled, as a new year's token for youth.
1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
O ye peoples of the world! Know assuredly that My commandments are the lamps of My loving providence among My servants, and the keys of My mercy for My creatures. Thus hath it been sent down from the heaven of the Will of your Lord, the Lord of Revelation. Were any man to taste the sweetness of the words which the lips of the All-Merciful have willed to utter, he would, though the treasures of the earth be in his possession, renounce them one and all, that he might vindicate the truth of even one of His commandments, shining above the Dayspring of His bountiful care and loving-kindness.
Say: From My laws the sweet-smelling savour of My garment can be smelled, and by their aid the standards of Victory will be planted upon the highest peaks. The Tongue of My power hath, from the heaven of My omnipotent glory, addressed to My creation these words: "Observe My commandments, for the love of My beauty." Happy is the lover that hath inhaled the divine fragrance of his Best-Beloved from these words, laden with the perfume of a grace which no tongue can describe. By My life! He who hath drunk the choice wine of fairness from the hands of My bountiful favour will circle around My commandments that shine above the Dayspring of My creation.
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When travelling, if ye should stop and rest in some safe spot, perform ye-men and women alike-a single prostration in place of each unsaid Obligatory Prayer, and while prostrating say "Glorified be God, the Lord of Might and Majesty, of Grace and Bounty". Whoso is unable to do this, let him say only "Glorified be God"; this shall assuredly suffice him. He is, of a truth, the all-sufficing, the ever-abiding, the forgiving, compassionate God. Upon completing your prostrations, seat yourselves cross-legged-men and women alike-and eighteen times repeat "Glorified be God, the Lord of the kingdoms of earth and heaven". Thus doth the Lord make plain the ways of truth and guidance, ways that lead to one way, which is this Straight Path. render thanks unto God for this most gracious favour; offer praise unto Him for this bounty that hath encompassed the heavens and the earth; extol Him for this mercy that hath pervaded all creation.
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Say: This is that hidden knowledge which shall never change, since its beginning is with nine, the symbol that betokeneth the concealed and manifest, the inviolable and unapproachably exalted Name. As for what We have appropriated to the child ren, this is a bounty conferred on them by God, that they may render thanks unto their Lord, the Compassionate, the Merciful. These, verily, are the Laws of God; transgress them not at the prompting of your base and selfish desires. Observe ye the injunctions laid upon you by Him Who is the Dawning-place of Utterance. The sincere among His servants will regard the precepts set forth by God as the Water of Life to the followers of every faith, and the Lamp of wisdom and loving providence to all the denizens of earth and heaven.
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What hath become of your bygone days, your lost centuries? Happy the days that have been consecrated to the remembrance of God, and blessed the hours which have been spent in praise of Him Who is the All-Wise. By My life! Neither the pomp of the mighty, nor the wealth of the rich, nor even the ascendancy of the ungodly will endure. All will perish, at a word from Him. He, verily, is the All-Powerful, the All-Compelling, the Almighty. What advantage is there in the earthly things which men possess? That which shall profit them, they have utterly neglected. Erelong, they will awake from their slumber, and find themselves unable to obtain that which hath escaped them in the days of their Lord, the Almighty, the All-Praised. Did they but know it, they would renounce their all, that their names may be mentioned before His throne.
They, verily, are accounted among the dead.
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Whoso wisheth to make use of vessels of silver and gold is at liberty to do so. Take heed lest, when partaking of food, ye plunge your hands into the contents of bowls and platters. Adopt ye such usages as are most in keeping with refinement. He, verily, desireth to see in you the manners of the inmates of Paradise in His mighty and most sublime Kingdom. Hold ye fast unto refinement under all conditions, that your eyes may be preserved from beholding what is repugnant both to your own selves and to the dwellers of Paradise. Should anyone depart therefrom, his deed shall at that moment be rendered vain; yet should he have good reason, God will excuse him. He, in truth, is the Gracious, the Most Bountiful.
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He Who is the Dawning-place of God's Cause hath no partner in the Most Great Infallibility. He it is Who, in the kingdom of creation, is the Manifestation of "He doeth whatsoever He willeth". God hath reserved this distinction unto His own Self, and ordained for none a share in so sublime and transcendent a station. This is the Decree of God, concealed ere now within the veil of impenetrable mystery. We have disclosed it in this Revelation, and have thereby rent asunder the veils of such as have failed to recognize that which the Book of God set forth and who were numbered with the heedless.
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Know ye from what heights your Lord, the All-Glorious, is calling? Think ye that ye have recognized the Pen wherewith your Lord, the Lord of all names, commandeth you? Nay, by My life! Did ye but know it, ye would renounce the world, and would hasten with your whole hearts to the presence of the Well-Beloved.
Your spirits would be so transported by His Word as to throw into commotion the Greater World-how much more this small and petty one! Thus have the showers of My bounty been poured down from the heaven of My loving-kindness, as a token of My grace, that ye may be of the thankful.
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Should resentment or antipathy arise between husb and and wife, he is not to divorce her but to bide in patience throughout the course of one whole year, that perchance the fragrance of affection may be renewed between them. If, upon the completion of this period, their love hath not returned, it is permissible for divorce to take place. God's wisdom, verily, hath encompassed all things. The Lord hath prohibited, in a Tablet inscribed by the Pen of His command, the practice to which ye formerly had recourse when thrice ye had divorced a woman. This He hath done as a favour on His part, that ye may be accounted among the thankful. He who hath divorced his wife may choose, upon the passing of each month, to remarry her when there is mutual affection and consent, so long as she hath not taken another husband. Should she have wed again, then, by this other union, the separation is confirmed and the matter is concluded unless, clearly, her circumstances change. Thus hath the decree been inscribed with majesty in this glorious Tablet by Him Who is the Dawning-place of Beauty.
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God hath decreed, in token of His mercy unto His creatures, that semen is not unclean. Yield thanks unto Him with joy and radiance, and follow not such as are remote from the Dawning-place of His nearness. Arise ye, under all conditions, to render service to the Cause, for God will assuredly assist you through the power of His sovereignty which overshadoweth the worlds. Cleave ye unto the cord of refinement with such tenacity as to allow no trace of dirt to be seen upon your garments. Such is the injunction of One Who is sanctified above all refinement. Whoso falleth short of this standard with good reason shall incur no blame. God, verily, is the Forgiving, the Merciful. Wash ye every soiled thing with water that hath undergone no alteration in any one of the three respects; take heed not to use water that hath been altered through exposure to the air or to some other agent. Be ye the very essence of cleanliness amongst mankind. This, truly, is what your Lord, the Incomparable, the All-Wise, desireth for you.
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We see you rejoicing in that which ye have amassed for others and shutting out yourselves from the worlds which naught except My guarded Tablet can reckon. The treasures ye have laid up have drawn you far away from your ultimate objective. This ill beseemeth you, could ye but understand it. Wash from your hearts all earthly defilements, and hasten to enter the Kingdom of your Lord, the Creator of earth and heaven, Who caused the world to tremble and all its peoples to wail, except them that have renounced all things and clung to that which the Hidden Tablet hath ordained.
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By the righteousness of God! It is not Our wish to lay hands on your kingdoms. Our mission is to seize and possess the hearts of men. Upon them the eyes of Baha are fastened. To this testifieth the Kingdom of Names, could ye but comprehend it. Whoso followeth his Lord will renounce the world and all that is therein;
how much greater, then, must be the detachment of Him Who holdeth so august a station! Forsake your palaces, and haste ye to gain admittance into His Kingdom. This, indeed, will profit you both in this world and in the next. To this testifieth the Lord of the realm on high, did ye but know it.
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Should anyone acquire one hundred mithqals of gold, nineteen mithqals thereof are God's and to be rendered unto Him, the Fashioner of earth and heaven. Take heed, O people, lest ye deprive yourselves of so great a bounty. This We have commanded you, though We are well able to dispense with you and with all who are in the heavens and on earth; in it there are benefits and wisdoms beyond the ken of anyone but God, the Omniscient, the All-Informed. Say: By this means He hath desired to purify what ye possess and to enable you to draw nigh unto such stations as none can comprehend save those whom God hath willed. He, in truth, is the Beneficent, the Gracious, the Bountiful. O people! Deal not faithlessly with the Right of God, nor, without His leave, make free with its disposal. Thus hath His commandment been established in the holy Tablets, and in this exalted Book. He who dealeth faithlessly with God shall in justice meet with faithlessness himself; he, however, who acteth in accordance with God's bidding shall receive a blessing from the heaven of the bounty of his Lord, the Gracious, the Bestower, the Generous, the Ancient of Days. He, verily, hath willed for you that which is yet beyond your knowledge, but which shall be known to you when, after this fleeting life, your souls soar heavenwards and the trappings of your earthly joys are folded up. Thus admonisheth you He in Whose possession is the Guarded Tablet.
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Ye have been enjoined to renew the furnishings of your homes after the passing of each nineteen years; thus hath it been ordained by One Who is Omniscient and All-Perceiving. He, verily, is desirous of refinement, both for you yourselves and for all that ye possess; lay not aside the fear of God and be not of the negligent. Whoso findeth that his means are insufficient to this purpose hath been excused by God, the Ever-Forgiving, the Most Bounteous.
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O Land of Kaf and Ra!+F1 We, verily, behold thee in a state displeasing unto God, and see proceeding from thee that which is inscrutable to anyone save Him, the Omniscient, the All-Informed; and We perceive that which secretly and stealthily diffuseth from thee. With Us is the knowledge of all things, inscribed in a lucid Tablet. Sorrow not for that which hath befallen thee. Erelong will God raise up within thee men endued with mighty valour, who will magnify My Name with such constancy that neither will they be deterred by the evil suggestions of the divines, nor will they be kept back by the insinuations of the sowers of doubt. With their own eyes will they behold God, and with their own lives will they render Him victorious. These, truly, are of those who are steadfast.
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O concourse of divines! When My verses were sent down, and My clear tokens were revealed, We found you behind the veils. This, verily, is a strange thing. Ye glory in My Name, yet ye recognized Me not at the time your Lord, the All-Merciful, appeared amongst you with proof and testimony. We have rent the veils asunder. Beware lest ye shut out the people by yet another veil. Pluck asunder the chains of vain imaginings, in the name of the Lord of all men, and be not of the deceitful. Should ye turn unto God and embrace His Cause, spread not disorder within it, and measure not the Book of God with your selfish desires. This, verily, is the counsel of God aforetime and hereafter, and to this God's witnesses and chosen ones, yea, each and every one of Us, do solemnly attest.
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Tear the veils asunder in such wise that the inmates of the Kingdom will hear them being rent. This is the comm and of God, in days gone by and for those to come. Blessed the man that observeth that whereunto he was bidden, and woe betide the negligent.
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This is not a Cause which may be made a plaything for your idle fancies, nor is it a field for the foolish and faint of heart. By God, this is the a rena of insight and detachment, of vision and upliftment, where none may spur on their chargers save the valiant horsemen of the Merciful, who have severed all attachment to the world of being. These, truly, are they that render God victorious on earth, and are the dawning-places of His sovereign might amidst mankind.
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Say: O source of perversion! Abandon thy wilful blindness, and speak forth the truth amidst the people. I swear by God that I have wept for thee to see thee following thy selfish passions and renouncing Him Who fashioned thee and brought thee into being. Call to mind the tender mercy of thy Lord, and remember how We nurtured thee by day and by night for service to the Cause. Fear God, and be thou of the truly repentant. Granted that the people were confused about thy station, is it conceivable that thou thyself art similarly confused? Tremble before thy Lord and recall the days when thou didst stand before Our throne, and didst write down the verses that We dictated unto
thee-verses sent down by God, the Omnipotent Protector, the Lord of might and power. Beware lest the fire of thy presumptuousness debar thee from attaining to God's Holy Court. Turn unto Him, and fear not because of thy deeds. He, in truth, forgiveth whomsoever He desireth as a bounty on His part; no God is there but Him, the Ever-Forgiving, the All-Bounteous.
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Should anyone unintentionally take another's life, it is incumbent upon him to render to the family of the deceased an indemnity of one hundred mithqals of gold. Observe ye that which hath been enjoined upon you in this Tablet, and be not of those who overstep its limits.
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1.00 - PREFACE - DESCENSUS AD INFERNOS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
I learned that the meanings of the most profound substrata of belief systems can be rendered explicitly
comprehensible, even to the skeptical rational thinker and that, so rendered, can be experienced as
fascinating, profound and necessary. I learned why people wage war why the desire to maintain, protect
1.00 - Preliminary Remarks, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
No religion has failed hitherto by not promising enough; the present breaking up of all religions is due to the fact that people have asked to see the securities. Men have even renounced the important material advantages which a wellorganised religion may confer upon a State, rather than acquiesce in fraud or falsehood, or even in any system which, if not proved guilty, is at least unable to demonstrate its innocence.
Being more or less bankrupt, the best thing we can do is to attack the problem afresh without preconceived ideas. Let us begin by doubting every statement. Let us find a way of subjecting every statement to the test of experiment. Is there any truth at all in the claims of various religions? Let us examine the question.
1.00 - The Constitution of the Human Being, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
regard the objects in refe rence to themselves personally. They lack the gauge of pleasure and displeasure, attraction and repulsion, usefulness and harmfulness; this gauge they have to renounce entirely. They should, as dispassionate and, so to speak, divine beings, seek and examine what is, and not what gratifies. Thus the true botanist should not be affected either by the beauty or by the usefulness of the plants. He has to study their structure and their relation to the rest of the vegetable kingdom; and just as they are one and all enticed forth and shone upon by the sun, so should he with an equable, quiet glance look at and survey them all and obtain the gauge for this knowledge, the data for his deductions, not out of himself, but from within the circle of things which he observes."
The thought thus expressed by Goe the directs attention to three kinds of things. First, the objects concerning which information continually flows to man through the doors of his senses, those that he touches, smells, tastes, hears, and sees. Second, the impressions which these make on him, and which record themselves as his pleasure and displeasure, his
1.012 - Sublimation - A Way to Reshuffle Thought, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We have been discussing a very important principle in the practice of yoga namely, self-restraint. I would like to touch upon another aspect of it which is an essential in the practice. Self-restraint or self-control is not a pressure of will exerted upon oneself, but a spontaneous growth inwardly experienced on account of transcendence and not by way of rejection. The term 'vairagya' also has some relevance to the meaning of the term 'self-control'. Vairagya is renunciation, self-abandonment, relinquishment, etc. which is mostly interpreted as an abandonment of certain things in the world.
But vairagya is not an abandonment of things in the world. It is an abandonment of false values, the wrong interpretation of things, and a misconstruing of one's relationship with everything around oneself. It is this erroneous notion about things around oneself that is the reason for attachments, aversions, likes, dislikes, and what not. So also is the principle of self-control. A rejection of an existent value is impossible. This is very important to remember. Anything that is real cannot be rejected. If we think that the world is real, we cannot abandon it - the question of abandoning it does not arise. Anything which has already been declared to be real cannot be abandoned. How can we abandon real things? So, also, if self-control or self-restraint implies a withdrawal of consciousness from those things or values which are real and external to oneself, then it is impossible, because the consciousness or the mind which is expected to withdraw itself from externals will insist that abandonment of real values is impracticable and unadvisable.
10.13 - Go Through, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed not only love but all human impulses and urges are to be dealt with in the same way. The Gita furnishes a beautiful and crucial example. The Gita teaches man to go through the field of activity and not to reject or avoid it. The whole of the Gita is an ideal lesson in the technique of going through. The Gita says, do not renounce work but dedicate itnot karmatyga but karmanysa. What does this dedication mean? The first step in the process of dedication is desirelessnessto do work without desire. It is usually thought that desire is the source and origin of work. If you have no desire, you have no need or impulse to work. But this is a very superficial view of things. The impulse for work springs from elsewhere, from a deeper and impersonal source. The true spirit in which you should work is, as the Gita enjoins, to do a work because it is a thing to be done, not because you desire it. So naturally you do not hanker for the fruit of your action. First then, no attachment to the action itself, then no attachment to the fruit that it brings. This can be done only when you are unselfish. Not only unselfishness but you have to go a step farther, to selflessness. So then there are these three stages in the process of dedication or purification. First to work without desire, without attachment to the result of the work. Then you will be able to see that you are an instrument only, the work is being done through you. At the beginning you are a desireless, unselfish doer of works, next you see yourself as a detached witness of your action and finally you see that the action happening in you is Nature working in you, Nature the instrument of the Divine. Finally yourself is no longer there, it is the Divine alone that is and acts.
What has been said of works is true of all activities in man, his thoughts, feelings, impulses, physical acts. It is the process of going through and meeting the reality beyond, which hides, encloses itself with all its envelopes or coverings which you pass through.
1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
after being rediscovered during the renaissance, bought by
Cosimo de Medici and translated by Marsilio Ficino. Long
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misunderstandings which rendered Gnosticism suspect,
not unintentionally. Yet, names of Man and Woman or
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(as rendered in the sephiroth, the chakras and the chain of
being) the structures of the macro- and microcosm. For
1.01 - A NOTE ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
for it seems certain that any outward upheaval or internal renova-
tion which might suffice to transform the Universe as it is could
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justice will set its seal and all things be renewed.
the truth can now be seen: Progress is not what the popular
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world, and crowning it with renewed faith in Christ the Physical
Center of Creation; finding in this need the natural energy re-
quired for the renewal of the world's life; thus do I see the New
Jerusalem, descending from Heaven and rising from the Earth.
1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
seeks to renounce the false riches of the spirit in order to with-
draw not only from the sorry remnants which today call them-
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Pierre Benoit. The renaissance dream known as the Ipneroto-
machia of Poliphilo, 31 and Goethe's Faust, likewise reach deep
1.01 - BOOK THE FIRST, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
Nor yet was Earth suspended in the sky,
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They rend the world, resistless, where they pass;
And mighty marks of mischief leave behind;
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From Earth unask'd, nor was that Earth renew'd.
From veins of vallies, milk and nectar broke;
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And their demolish'd works to pieces rent.
Sing'd with the flames, and with the bolts transfixt,
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And what the wife, renew'd the female race.
Hence we derive our nature; born to bear
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The prize was fame: in witness of renown
An oaken garl and did the victor crown.
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Be thou the prize of honour, and renown;
The deathless poet, and the poem, crown.
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Equal in years, and rival in renown
With Epaphus, the youthful Phaeton
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearers character, until we hesitate to lay them aside, without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. But even if the rent is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this;who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a gentlemans legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow? Passing a cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. He was only a little more weather-beaten than when I saw him last. I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who approached his masters premises with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell surely of any company of civilized men, which belonged to the most respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she was now in a civilized country, where people are judged of by their clothes.
Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. But they yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far hea then, and need to have a missionary sent to them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless; a womans dress, at least, is never done.
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However, if one designs to construct a dwelling house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night, and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting. Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands. Gookin, who was superintendent of the Indians subject to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, The best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indiffe rently tight and warm, but not so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses. He adds, that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string. Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or its apartment in one.
In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this tax the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared with the savages. An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars, these are the country rates, entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a
_poor_ civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage? If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man, and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborers life, even if he is not encumbered with a family;estimating the pecuniary value of every mans labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less;so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before _his_ wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?
It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store against the future, so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself.
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By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it, my house was framed and ready for the raising. I had already bought the shanty of James Collins, an Irishman who worked on the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards. James Collins shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one. When I called to see it he was not at home. I walked about the outside, at first unobserved from within, the window was so deep and high. It was of small dimensions, with a peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt being raised five feet all around as if it were a compost heap. The roof was the soundest part, though a good deal warped and made brittle by the sun. Door-sill there was none, but a pe rennial passage for the hens under the door board. Mrs. C. came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside. The hens were driven in by my approach. It was dark, and had a dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board and there a board which would not bear removal. She lighted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and also that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own words, they were good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a good window,of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed out that way lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt-framed looking-glass, and a patent new coffee mill nailed to an oak sapling, all told. The bargain was soon concluded, for James had in the meanwhile returned. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents to-night, he to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to nobody else meanwhile: I to take possession at six. It were well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust claims on the score of ground rent and fuel. This he assured me was the only encumbrance. At six I passed him and his family on the road. One large bundle held their all,bed, coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens,all but the cat, she took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last.
I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond side by small cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and warp back again in the sun. One early thrush gave me a note or two as I drove along the woodl and path. I was informed treacherously by a young Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an
--
I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement.
Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy,chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man,I will brea the freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and physical system; and I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devils attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth. At Cambridge College the mere rent of a students room, which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars each year, though the corporation had the advantage of building thirty-two side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps a residence in the fourth story. I cannot but think that if we had more true wisdom in these respects, not only less education would be needed, because, forsooth, more would already have been acquired, but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would in a great measure vanish. Those conveniences which the student requires at
Cambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of life as they would with proper management on both sides.
--
These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive they may appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain value also. Nothing was given me of which I have not rendered some account.
It appears from the above estimate, that my food alone cost me in money about twenty-seven cents a week. It was, for nearly two years after this, rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses, and salt, and my drink water. It was fit that I should live on rice, mainly, who loved so well the philosophy of India.
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My furniture, part of which I made myself, and the rest cost me nothing of which I have not rendered an account, consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for taking them away. Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man but a philosopher would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes? That is Spauldings furniture. I could never tell from inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so called rich man or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken.
Indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do we
1.01f - Introduction, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
Majur: What is the reason for this marvelous sign, this great ray of light that illuminates the eighteen thousand worlds in the east and renders visible the adornments of all the buddha worlds?
Thereupon Bodhisattva Maitreya, wanting to elaborate the meaning of this further, spoke to Majur in verse:
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And who have renounced idlers and foolish companions
And approached the wise.
--
The last buddha fathered eight princes before he renounced household life. The rst was called Mati, the second Sumati, the third Anantamati, the fourth Ratimati, the fth was called Vieamati, the sixth Vimatisamudghtin, the seventh Ghoamati, and the eighth was called Dharmamati. These eight princes were endowed with dignity and power, and each of them ruled over four great continents. Having heard that their father had renounced household life and obtained highest, complete enlightenment, all of them abandoned their kingdoms and also renounced household life. Each caused the spirit of the Mahayana to arise within him, practiced the pure path of discipline and integrity, and became an expounder of the Dharma. They all planted roots of good merit under many thousands of myriads of buddhas.
At that time, the Buddha Candrasryapradpa taught the Mahayana sutra called Immeasurable Meanings, the instruction for the bodhisattvas and treasured lore of the buddhas. Having taught this sutra, he sat down
--
But because he had also planted various roots of good merit, he was able to meet innumerable hundreds of thousands of myriads of kois of buddhas whom he rendered homage to, honored, revered, and praised.
O Maitreya! You should know that Bodhisattva Varaprabha at that time was none other than myself, and Bodhisattva Yaaskma was none other than you. The marvel we see here is exactly the same as the previous one. Therefore I am certain that today the Tathgata will teach the Mahayana sutra called the Lotus Sutra, the instruction for bodhisattvas and treasured lore of the buddhas.
--
Before renouncing household life
The Buddha fathered eight princes.
1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
several diffe rent meanings, but not easy to render in an English
translation and very often impossible. Thus the word for cow,
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1 Sayana, though in several passages he takes ghrta in the sense of light, renders it
here by "water"; he seems to think that the divine horses were very tired and perspiring
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2 This is Sayana's rendering of the passage and rises directly from the words.
Foreword
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accompanied by a number of renderings of the hymns of the Rig
Veda which were rather interpretations than translations and to
--
kept close to the text; the renderings of those hymns in the
second and sixth Mandalas are now published in this book for
--
fix firmly the rendering of key-words like r.tam, sravas, kratu,
ketu, etc. essential to the esoteric interpretation. This also was
--
start with a bare and scrupulously exact rendering of the actual
language and adhere to that as the basis of the interpretation;
--
these ancient mystics. But any rendering of such great poetry as
the hymns of the Rig Veda, magnificent in their colouring and
--
be conjectured or else diffe rent renderings are equally possible.
In many passages I have had to leave a provisional rendering;
it was intended to keep the final decision on the point until the
--
have occasionally tried to render this double sense.
1.01 - Fundamental Considerations, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
Scarcely five hundred years ago, during the renaissance, an unmistakable reorganization of our consciousness occurred: the discovery of perspective which opened up the three-dimensionality of space. This discovery is so closely linked with the entire intellectual attitude of the modern epoch that we have felt obliged to call this age the age of perspectivity and characterize the age immediately preceding it as the unperspectival age. These definitions, by recognizing a fundamental characteristic of these eras, lead to the further appropriate definition of the age of the dawning new consciousness as the aperspectival age, a definition supported not only by the results of modern physics, but also by developments in the visual arts and literature, where the incorporation of time as a fourth dimension into previously spatial conceptions has formed the initial basis for manifesting the new.Aperspectival is not to be thought of as merely the opposite or negation of perspectival; the antithesis of perspectival is unperspectival. The distinction in meaning suggested by the three terms unperspectival, perspectival, and aperspectival is analogous to that of the terms illogical, logical, and alogical or immoral, moral, and amoral. We have employed here the designation aperspectival to clearly emphasize the need of overcoming the mere antithesis of affirmation and negation. The so-called primal words (Urworte), for example, evidence two antithetic connotations: Latin altus meant high as well as low; sacer meant sacred as well as cursed. Such primal words as these formed an undiffe rentiated psychically-stressed unity whose bivalent nature was definitely familiar to the early Egyptians and Greeks. This is no longer the case with our present sense of language; consequently, we have required a term that transcends equally the ambivalence of the primal connotations and the dualism of antonyms or conceptual opposites.
Hence we have used the Greek prefix a- in conjunction with our Latin-derived word perspectival in the sense of an alpha privativum and not as an alpha negativum, since the prefix has a liberating character (privativum, derived from Latin privare, i.e., to liberate). The designation aperspectival, in consequence, expresses a process of liberation from the exclusive validity of perspectival and unperspectival, as well as pre-perspectival limitations. Our designation, then, does not attempt to unite the inhe rently coexistent unperspectival and perspectival structures, nor does it attempt to reconcile or synthesize structures which, in their deficient modes, have become irreconcilable. If aperspectival were to represent only a synthesis it would imply no more than perspectival-rational and it would be limited and only momentarilyvalid, inasmuch as every union is threatened by further separation. Our concern is with integrality and ultimately with the whole; the word aperspectival conveys our attempt to deal with wholeness. It is a definition which diffe rentiates a perception of reality that is neither perspectivally restricted to only one sector nor merely unperspectivally evocative of a vague sense of reality.
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It is our intent to furnish evidence that the aperspectival world, whose nascence we are witnessing, can liberate us from the superannuated legacy of both the unperspectival and the perspectival worlds. In very general terms we might say that the unperspectival world preceded the world of mind- and ego-bound perspective discovered and anticipated in late antiquity and first appa rent in Leonardos application of it. Viewed in this manner the unperspectival world is collective, the perspectival individualistic. That is, the unperspectival world is related to the anonymous one or the tribal we, the perspectival to the I or Ego; the one world is grounded in Being, the other, beginning with the renaissance, in Having; the former is predominantly irrational, the later rational.
Today, at least in Western civilization, both modes survive only as deteriorated and consequently dubious variants. This is evident from the sociological and anthropological questions cur rently discussed in the Occidental forum; only questions that are unresolved are discussed with the vehemence characteristic of these discussions. The cur rent situation manifests on the one hand an egocentric individualism exaggerated to extremes and desirous of.possessing everything, while on the other it manifests an equally extreme collectivism that promises the total fulfillment of mans being. In the latter instance we find the utter abnegation of the individual valued merely as an object in the human aggregate; in the former a hyper-valuation of the individual who, despite his limitations, is permitted everything. This deficient, that is destructive, antithesis divides the world into two warring camps, not just politically and ideologically, but in all areas of human endeavor.
--
Our concern is to render transpa rent everything latent behind and before the world - to render transpa rent our own origin, our entire human past, as well as the present, which already contains the future. We are shaped and determined not only by today and yesterday, but by tomorrow as well. The author is not interested in outlining discrete segments, steps or levels of man, but in disclosing the transpa rency of man as a whole and the interplay of the various consciousness structures which constitute him. This transpa rency or diaphaneity of our existence is particularly evident during transitional periods, and it is from the experiences of man in transition, experiences which man has had with the concealed and latent aspects of his dawning future as he became aware of them, that will clarify our own experiencing of the present.
It is perhaps unnecessary to reiterate that we cannot employ the methods derived from and dependent an our present consciousness structure to investigate diffe rent structures of consciousness, but will have to adapt our method to the specific structure under investigation. Yet if we relinquish a unitary methodology we do not necessarily regress to an unmethodological or irrational attitude, or to a kind of conjuration or mystical contemplation. Contemporary methods employ predominantly dualistic procedures that do not extend beyond simple subject-object relationships; they limit our understanding to what is commensurate with the present Western mentality. Even where the measurements of contemporary methodologies are based primarily an quantitative criteria, they are all vitiated by the problem of the antithesis between measure and mass (as we will discuss later in detail). Our method is not just a measured assessment, but above and beyond this an attempt at diaphany or rendering transpa rent. With its aid, whatever lies behind (past) and ahead of (future) the cur rently dominant mentality becomes accessible to the new subject-object relationship. Although this new relationship is no longer dualistic, it does not threaten man with a loss of identity, or with his being equated with an object.
Although this new method is still in its infancy, we are nevertheless compelled to make use of it.
1.01 - Historical Survey, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
To come down to more historic ground, the Qabalah is the Jewish mystical teaching concerning the initiated inter- pretation of the Hebrew scriptures. It is a system of spiritual philosophy or theosophy, using this word in its original implications of 0eo? 2 o$ia, which has not only exercised for centuries an influence on the intellectual development of so shrewd and clear-thinking a people as the Jews, but has attracted the attention of many renowned
17
1.01 - How is Knowledge Of The Higher Worlds Attained?, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
The power obtained through devotion can be rendered still more effective when the life of feeling is enriched by yet another quality. This consists in giving oneself up less and less to impressions of the outer world, and to develop instead a vivid inner life. A person who darts from one impression of the outer world to another, who constantly seeks distraction, cannot find the way to higher knowledge. The student must not blunt himself to the outer world, but while lending himself to its impressions, he should be directed by his rich inner life. When passing through a beautiful mountain district, the traveler with depth of soul and wealth of feeling has diffe rent experiences from one who is poor in feeling. Only what we experience within ourselves unlocks for us the beauties of the outer world. One person sails across the ocean, and only a few inward experiences pass through his soul; another will hear the eternal language of the cosmic spirit; for him are unveiled the mysterious riddles of existence. We must learn to remain in
p. 15
--
reverberate, as it were, but rather to renounce any further enjoyment, and work upon the past experience. The peril here is very great. Instead of working inwardly, it is very easy to fall into the opposite habit of trying to exploit the enjoyment. Let no one underestimate the fact that immense sources of error here confront the student. He must pass through a host of tempters of his soul. They would all harden his ego and imprison it within itself. He should rather open it wide to all the world. It is necessary that he should seek enjoyment, for only through enjoyment can the outer world reach him. If he blunts himself to enjoyment he is like a plant which cannot any longer draw nourishment from its environment. Yet if he stops short at the enjoyment he shuts himself up within himself. He will only be something to himself and nothing to the world. However much he may live within himself, however intensely he may cultivate his ego-the world will reject him. To the world he is dead. The student of higher knowledge considers enjoyment only as a means of ennobling himself for the world. Enjoyment is to him like a scout informing him about the world; but once instructed
p. 17
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Now, the scope and significance of these facts must be realized. We must bear in mind that the higher man within us is in constant development. But only the state of calm and se renity here described renders an orderly development possible. The waves of outward life constrain the inner man from all sides if, instead of mastering this outward life, it masters him. Such a man is like a plant which tries to expand in a cleft in the rock and is stunted in growth until new
p. 27
1.01 - Introduction, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
But now the day which the luminous point of the conscious ego has created in us, can extend itself beyond our limits over the whole universe. For that extension it is enough that we should learn to enter once more into communion with all that we have rendered alien to us.
There is not in the whole of infinity a single reality, be it object or being, on which our internal gaze, once clarified, cannot shed its pure illumination.
--
This world of phenomena which we call the universe, is only the appa rent figure, the image in us of the real world; it is the myth which covers a truth too profound for us. All philosophy consists in the discovery of its hidden sense, and it is the more and more veridical interpretation of it that we call knowledge. May its illumination render the human mind master of the shadow and the mystery and open to us the paths of the unknown!
But how shall we discover the paths that lead to an unknown? And how shall we discover that unknown itself if we do not first know the paths? Therefore these two, the way and its goal, must manifest themselves together and each must reveal the other.
1.01 - Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
1. All this is for habitation1 by the Lord, whatsoever is individual universe of movement in the universal motion. By that renounced thou shouldst enjoy; lust not after any man's possession.
2. Doing verily2 works in this world one should wish to live a hundred years. Thus it is in thee and not otherwise than this; action cleaves not to a man.3
--
World, renunciation and Enjoyment, Action and internal Freedom, the One and the
Many, Being and its Becomings, the passive divine Impersonality and the active divine
--
3 Shankara reads the line, "Thus in thee - it is not otherwise than thus - action cleaves not, a man." He interprets karman.i in the first line in the sense of Vedic sacrifices which are permitted to the ignorant as a means of escaping from evil actions and their results and attaining to heaven, but the second karma in exactly the opposite sense, "evil action". The verse, he tells us, represents a concession to the ignorant; the enlightened soul abandons works and the world and goes to the forest. The whole expression and construction in this rendering become forced and unnatural. The rendering I give seems to me the simple and straightforward sense of the Upanishad.
4 We have two readings, asurya, sunless, and asurya, Titanic or undivine. The third verse is, in the thought structure of the Upanishad, the starting-point for the final movement in the last four verses. Its suggestions are there taken up and worked out. The prayer to the Sun refers back in thought to the sunless worlds and their blind gloom, which are recalled in the ninth and twelfth verses. The sun and his rays are intimately connected in other Upanishads also with the worlds of Light and their natural opposite is the dark and sunless, not the Titanic worlds.
--
"waters". If this accentuation is disregarded, we may take it as the singular apas, work, action. Shankara, however, renders it by the plural, works. The difficulty only arises because the true Vedic sense of the word had been forgotten and it came to be taken as referring to the fourth of the five elemental states of Matter, the liquid. Such a refe rence would be entirely irrelevant to the context. But the Waters, otherwise called the seven streams or the seven fostering Cows, are the Vedic symbol for the seven cosmic principles and their activities, three inferior, the physical, vital and mental, four superior, the divine
Truth, the divine Bliss, the divine Will and Consciousness, and the divine Being. On this conception also is founded the ancient idea of the seven worlds in each of which the seven principles are separately active by their various harmonies. This is, obviously, the right significance of the word in the Upanishad.
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9 Anyadeva - eva here gives to anyad the force, "Quite other than the result described in the preceding verse is that to which lead the Knowledge and the Ignorance." We have the explanation of anyad in the verse that follows. The ordinary rendering, "Knowledge has one result, Ignorance another", would be an obvious commonplace announced with an exaggerated pompousness, adding nothing to the thought and without any place in the sequence of the ideas.
10 In the inner sense of the Veda Surya, the Sun-God, represents the divine Illumination of the Kavi which exceeds mind and forms the pure self-luminous Truth of things. His principal power is self-revelatory knowledge, termed in the Veda "Sight". His realm is described as the Truth, the Law, the Vast. He is the Fosterer or Increaser, for he enlarges and opens man's dark and limited being into a luminous and infinite consciousness. He is the sole Seer, Seer of Oneness and Knower of the Self, and leads him to the highest Sight.
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
however, that renders the alchemical description worth examining not from the perspective of the history
of science, concerned with the examination of outdated objective ideas, but from the perspective of
--
problem. No functioning society or individual can avoid rendering moral judgment, regardless of what
might be said or imagined about the necessity of such judgment. Action presupposes valuation, or its
--
usually also rendered way by Arthur Waley and others, though I understand that the character
representing the word is formed of radicals meaning something like head-going. The sacred book of
1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Sri Ramakrishna said: "When, hearing the name of Hari or Rma once, you shed tears and your hair stands on end, then you may know for certain that you do not have to perform such devotions as the sandhya any more. Then only will you have a right to renounce rituals; or rather, rituals will drop away of themselves. Then it will be enough if you repeat only the name of Rma or Hari, or even simply Om." Continuing, he said, "The sandhya merges in the Gayatri, and the Gayatri merges in Om."
M. looked around him with wonder and said to himself: "What a beautiful place! What a charming man! How beautiful his words are! I have no wish to move from this spot."
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M: "I don't understand what you mean by 'annas'. But of this I am sure: I have never before seen such knowledge, ecstatic love, faith in God, renunciation, and catholicity anywhere."
The Master laughed.
1.01 - MAXIMS AND MISSILES, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
with virtue ye renounce all "advantages" ... (to be nailed to an
Antisemite's door).
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however, renders the lines thus:--
_"Wo man singt, da lass dich ruhig nieder;_ _Base Menschen_ [evil men]
1.01 - NIGHT, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Ha! in my heart what rending stroke!
With new impulsion
--
To Life it now renews the old allegiance.
Once Heavenly Love sent down a burning kiss
1.01 - On knowledge of the soul, and how knowledge of the soul is the key to the knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
However, that knowledge of the soul which leads to the knowledge of God, is not of this kind. The knowledge which you need to possess is, to know what you are; how you are created; whence you are; for what you are here; whither you are going; in what your happiness consists, and what you must do to secure it; in what your misery consists, and what you must do to avoid it. And further, your internal qualities are distributed into animal, ferocious, demoniacal and angelic qualities. You need to know, therefore, what qualities predominate in your character, and in the predominance of which your true happiness consists. If your qualities are chiefly animal, the essence of which is to eat and drink, you will day and night seek after these things. If your qualities are of the ferocious kind, the essence of which is to tear and rend, to injure and destroy, you will act accordingly. If you are endowed chiefly with the qualities of devils, which consist in evil machinations, deceit and delusion, then you should know and be aware of it, that you may turn towards the path of perfection. And if you possess angelic qualities, whose nature it is to worship God in sincerity and continually to await the vision of His beauty, then like them you should unceasingly, resting neither day or night, be zealous and strive that you may become worthy of the vision of the Lord. For know, O student of the mysteries! that man was created to stand at the door of service in frailty and weakness, [15] and wait for the opening of the door of spiritual union, and for the vision of beauty, as God declares in his holy word: "I have not created the genii and men except that they should worship me."1
These qualities, whether animal, or ferocious or demoniacal have been bestowed upon man, that by their means the body might be adapted to be a vehicle for the spirit, and that the spirit, by means of the body which is its vehicle, while herein this temporary home of earth, might seek after the knowledge and love of God, as the huntsman would seek to make the phœnix and the griffin his prey. Then, when it leaves this strange land for the region of spiritual friendship, it shall be worthy to partake of the mystery contained in the invitation, "enter in peace, O believers!"2 and which is in the homage, "Peace is the word they shall hear from the merciful Lord."3 People in general suppose that this refers to Paradise. Woe to him who has no portion in this knowledge! There is great danger in his path. The way of faith is veiled from his eyes.
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Think not that these discoveries of truth are limited to the prophets alone. On the contrary every man in his essential nature is endowed with attributes rendering him capable of participating in the same discoveries. What God says, "Am I not your Lord?"2 refers to this quality. And the holy saying of the prophet of God: "Every man is born with the nature of Islamism; but his ancestors practised Judaism, Naza renism or Magianism," is an indication of the same thing.
The heart of man while in the spiritual world knew its maker and creator; it had mingled with angels and knew for what service it was created; and in the assembly where they said, "Yes," it was intoxicated as with wine at the [26] interrogation, "Am I not your Lord?" As at that moment, it was seen with the eye of certainty, no person had any doubt on the subject, as God says in his holy word: "If you ask them, who created the heavens and the earth, they will answer thee, the wise and holy God."1 All the prophets were appa rently of the same nature as other men without any diffe rence, as we find in God's holy word: "Say, I am a man like you: it was revealed to me."2 Afterwards the heart descended from the world of divine union to this house of separation, from that assembly of love to this station of sorrow, and from the spiritual to the material, and entering within the curtain of the senses, it became occupied with the care of the body and was overcome by the animal affections and material pleasures. The heart of man, veiled with the garments of heedlessness, forgot the assembly with which it had been familiar, and imagining that this miserable place was to be its mansion of rest, it chose to establish itself here in this world of perdition, as if this was its home. Still the veil of heedlessness disappeared from the eyes of those to whom the grace and guidance of the Eternal and unchangeable gave aid and support, and the discovery of the invisible world was not concealed from the view of some of those who came into this material world, but was anew revealed to them, after a measure of exertion of spiritual ardor.
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If a person possessing great knowledge of the outward world, should use his knowledge as a means of progress in the way of truth, instead of being satisfied with such disputes as of buying and selling; marrying and divorcing, and should be assiduous in gaining divine knowledge, which is the end of all other knowledge, it is all well and good. His knowledge of the outward world will give him st rength in his course, and will serve as a guide to him in [32] the way to eternal truth. For if the pilgrim do not understand the grounds of the respect due to, and the law-fulness of his food and drink, his dwelling and his clothing, if he do not understand the causes which impair or render complete acts of purification and devotion, what has a tendency to give st rength to the blameable affections of the soul, and what is their nature and their remedy, he can derive no advantage from the sciences of spiritual exercise, discovery and revelation. In short to an ignorant pilgrim, the least doubt may operate as a hindrance in his course for many years. If, however, he should fall into a spirit of disputation, and should say, "knowledge implies nothing else than to be able to study a book and to correct the composition, the punctuation and the declensions," he will certainly be frustrated from obtaining and discovering inward knowledge, - that is, he will not attain to the knowledge of God, which is the object of all knowledge, which is the most sublime knowledge, and compared with which all other knowledge is but husks. Therefore, when we hear some good man, who has travelled far on the road of spiritual discovery affirm, that knowledge of the external world, in the sense which we at first alluded to, is a hindrance in the way of truth, we ought to be careful not to deny the truth of what he says.
There are, however, in our times certain weak persons and indiffe rent to religious truth for the most part, who in the guise of soofees,1 after learning a few of their obscure phrases and ornamenting themselves with their cap and robes, treat knowledge and the doctors of the law2 as inimical to themselves, and continually find fault with them. They are devils and deserve judicial death. They are enemies of God, and of the apostle of God. For God has extolled knowledge and the doctors of the law; and the [33] established way of salvation, with which God has inspired the prophets, has its basis in external knowledge. These miserable and weak men, since they have no acquaintance with science, and no education, and knowledge of external things, why should they indulge in such corrupt fancies, and unfounded language? They resemble, beloved, a person who having heard it said that alchemy was of more value than gold, because that whatsoever thing should be touched with the philosophers' stone would turn to gold, should be proud of the idea and should be carried away with a passion for alchemy. And when gold in full bags is offered him, he replies : "Shall I turn my attention to gold, when I am dissolving the philosophers' stone?" And he finishes with being deprived of the gold, and with only hearing the name of the philosophers' stone. He becomes forever a miserable, destitute, and naked vagabond, who wastes his life upon alchemy.
--
Our intention has been to show you that man is a great world, and that you might know what a multitude of servants his body has to minister to him : so that you might realize while in your enjoyments, in walking, in sleeping or at rest in your world, that by God's appointment, these numerous servants in your employ never suffer their functions to cease for a minute. Listen now for a moment candidly. If you had a servant who had been faithful to you during his whole life, with whose services you were not able to dispense, while he could at any time find a better master-yet if he should only for a single day disobey your orders, you would get angry, beat him, and wish to get rid of him. But God has been abundant in kindness to you, and has given you so many servants, and has in no wise any need of you. How then can it be just that you should become enslaved to yourself, and follow your own passions, and that forgetful of pleasing the infinite God, you should rebel against your Creator and Benefactor, and that you should render obedience to Satan, who is your enemy and the enemy of God ?
Many and even innumerable books, O student of the divine mysteries, have been written in explanation of the organization of the body and the uses of is parts: but they have no more made the subject clear and exhausted it, than a drop can illustrate the ocean, or an atom illustrate the sun. [38] It is impossible for the thing formed to understand the knowledge of him that formed it. And how is it possible, that he who is of yesterday, should comprehend the secrets of the operations of the Ancient of days ?
1.01 - On renunciation of the world, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
object:1.01 - On renunciation of the world
subject:Christianity
--
On renunciation of the world
Our God and King is good, ultra-good and all-good (it is best to begin with God in writing to the servants of God). Of the rational beings created by Him and honoured with the dignity of free-will, some are His friends, others are His true servants, some are worthless, some are completely estranged from God, and others, though feeble creatures are equally His opponents. By friends of God, dear and holy Father,1 we simple people mean, properly speaking, those intellectual and incorporeal beings which surround God. By true servants of God we mean all those who tirelessly and unremittingly do and have done His will. By worthless servants we mean those who think of themselves as having been granted baptism, but have not faithfully kept the vows they made to God. By those estranged from God and alienated from Him, we mean those who are unbelievers or heretics. Finally, the enemies of God are those who have not only evaded and rejected the Lords commandment themselves, but who also wage bitter war on those who are fulfilling it.
--
Those who aim at ascending with the body to heaven, need violence indeed and constant suffering6 especially in the early stages of their renunciation, until our pleasure-loving dispositions and unfeeling hearts attain to love of God and chastity by visible sorrow. A great toil, very great indeed, with much unseen suffering, especially for those who live carelessly, until by simplicity, deep angerlessness and diligence, we make our mind, which is a greedy kitchen dog addicted to barking, a lover of chastity and watchfulness. But let us who are weak and passionate have the courage to offer our infirmity and natural weakness to Christ with unhesitating faith, and confess it to Him; and we shall be certain to obtain His help, even beyond our merit, if only we unceasingly go right down to the depth of humility.
All who enter upon the good fight, which is hard and narrow, but also easy, must realize that they must leap into the fire, if they really expect the celestial fire to dwell in them. But, let everyone examine himself, and so let him eat the bread of it with its bitter herbs, and let him drink the cup of it with its
--
Those who enter this contest must renounce all things, despise all things, deride all things, and shake off all things, that they may lay a firm foundation. A good foundation of three layers and three pillars is innocence, fasting and temperance. Let all babes in Christ begin with these virtues, taking as their model the natural babes. For you never find in them anything sly or deceitful. They have no insatiate appetite, no insatiable stomach, no body on fire; but perhaps as they grow, in proportion as they take more food, their natural passions also increase.
To lag in the fight at the very outset of the struggle and thereby to furnish proof of our coming defeat2 is a very hateful and dangerous thing. A firm beginning will certainly be useful for us when we later grow slack. A soul that is strong at first but then relaxes is spurred on by the memory of its former zeal. And in this way new wings are often obtained.
--
The man who renounces the world from fear is like burning incense, that begins with fragrance but ends in smoke. He who leaves the world through hope of reward is like a millstone, that always moves in the same way.3 But he who withdraws from the world out of love for God has obtained fire at the very outset; and, like fire set to fuel, it soon kindles a larger fire.
Some build bricks upon stones. Others set pillars on the bare ground. And there are some who go a short distance and, having got their muscles and joints warm, go faster. Whoever can understand, let him understand this allegorical word.
--
In the very beginning of our renunciation, it is certainly with labour and grief that we practise the virtues. But when we have made progress in them, we no longer feel sorrow, or we feel little sorrow. But as soon as our mortal mind is consumed, and mastered by our alacrity, we practise them with all joy and eagerness, with love and with divine fire.
Those who at once from the very outset follow the virtues and fulfil the commandments with joy and alacrity certainly deserve praise. And in the same way those who spend a long time in asceticism4 and still find it a weariness to obey the commandments, if they obey them at all, certainly deserve pity.
Let us not even abhor or condemn the renunciation due merely to circumstances. I have seen men who had fled into exile meet the emperor by accident when he was on tour, and then join his company, enter his palace, and dine with him. I have seen seed casually fall on the earth and bear plenty of
1 This means: If every baptized person is not saved, so the same can be said about monksnot all who have made the vow are real monks and will be saved. But I prefer to pass over this matter in silence.
--
The Lord designedly makes easy the battles of beginners so that they should not immediately return to the world at the outset. And so rejoice in the Lord always, all servants of His, detecting in this the first sign of the Masters love for us, and a sign that He Himself has called us. But when God sees courageous souls, He has often been known to act in this way: He lets them have conflicts from the very beginning in order to crown them the sooner. But the Lord hides the difficulty4 of this contest from those in the world. For if they were to know, no one would renounce the world.
Offer to Christ the labours of your youth, and in your old age you will rejoice in the wealth of dispassion. What is gathered in youth nourishes and comforts those who are tired out in old age. In our youth let us labour ardently and let us run vigilantly, for the hour of death is unknown. We have very evil and dangerous, cunning, unscrupulous foes, who hold fire in their hands and try to burn the temple of God with the flame that is in it. These foes are strong; they never sleep; they are incorporeal and invisible. Let no one when he is young listen to his enemies, the demons, when they say to him: Do not wear out your flesh lest you make it sick and weak. For you will scarcely find anyone, especially in the present generation, who is determined to mortify his flesh, although he might deprive
1.01 - ON THE THREE METAMORPHOSES, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
the lion? Why is not the beast of burden, which renounces and is reve rent, enough?
To create new values-that even the lion cannot do;
1.01 - Our Demand and Need from the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Only those Scriptures, religions, philosophies which can be thus constantly renewed, relived, their stuff of permanent truth constantly reshaped and developed in the inner thought and spiritual experience of a developing humanity, continue to be of living importance to mankind. The rest remain as monuments of the past, but have no actual force or vital impulse for the future.
Essays on the Gita
1.01 - Principles of Practical Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
power which renders men, animals, and plants fruitful and endows
chieftain and medicine-man with magical st rength. Mana, as Lehmann
--
is the more difficult: to accumulate a wide knowledge or to renounce onesprofessional authority and anonymity. At all events the latter necessity
involves a moral strain that makes the profession of psycho therapist not
1.01 - Proem, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
His dauntless heart to be the first to rend
The crossbars at the gates of Nature old.
1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
mind, the lake, into various waves. renunciation is the power
of battling against these, and holding the mind in check.
--
into a wave form with regard to them is renunciation; to
control the twofold motive powers arising from my own
--
them. This sort of mental st rength is called renunciation. This
Vairagyam is the only way to freedom.
--
cannot perfectly renounce all powers. Their minds for a time
merge in nature, to re-emerge as its masters. We shall all
1.01 - Tara the Divine, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
The left bent leg represents renouncing conflicting
emotions. The right half bent leg shows that Tara is
1.01 - the Call to Adventure, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
lest he should be moved to thoughts of life renunciation; for it
had been prophesied at his birth that he was to become either
1.01 - The Dark Forest. The Hill of Difficulty. The Panther, the Lion, and the Wolf. Virgil., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
1.01 - The Divine and The Universe, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Is it not, for the Divine, a supreme sacrifice to renounce the beatitude of His unity in order to create the painful multiplicity of the world?
Poor Divine! Of what an amount of horrors He is accused.
1.01 - The Four Aids, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
23:To be conscious of him in all parts of our being and equally in all that the dividing mind sees as outside our being, is the consummation of the individual consciousness. To be possessed by him and possess him in ourselves and in all things is the term of all empire and mastery. To enjoy him in all experience of passivity and activity, of peace and of power, of unity and of diffe rence is the happiness which the jiva, the individual soul manifested in the world, is obscurely seeking. This is the entire definition of the aim of integral Yoga; it is the rendering in personal experience of the truth which universal Nature has hidden in herself and which she travails to discover. It is the conversion of the human soul into the divine soul and of natural life into divine living.
24:The surest way towards this integral fulfilment is to find the Master of the secret who dwells within us, open ourselves constantly to the divine Power which is also the divine Wisdom and Love and trust to it to effect the conversion. But it is difficult for the egoistic consciousness to do this at all at the beginning. And, if done at all, it is still difficult to do it perfectly and in every strand of our nature. It is difficult at first because our egoistic habits of thought, of sensation, of feeling block up the avenues by which we can arrive at the perception that is needed. It is difficult afterwards because the faith, the sur render, the courage requisite in this path are not easy to the ego-clouded soul. The divine working is not the working which the egoistic mind desires or approves; for it uses error in order to arrive at truth, suffering in order to arrive at bliss, imperfection in order to arrive at perfection. The ego cannot see where it is being led; it revolts against the leading, loses confidence, loses courage. These failings would not matter; for the divine Guide within is not offended by our revolt, not discouraged by our want of faith or repelled by our weakness; he has the entire love of the mother and the entire patience of the teacher. But by withdrawing our assent from the guidance we lose the consciousness, though not all the actuality-not, in any case, the eventuality -- of its benefit. And we withdraw our assent because we fail to distinguish our higher Self from the lower through which he is preparing his self-revelation. As in the world, so in ourselves, we cannot see God because of his workings and, especially, because he works in us through our nature and not by a succession of arbitrary miracles. Man demands miracles that he may have faith; he wishes to be dazzled in order that he may see. And this impatience, this ignorance may turn into a great danger and disaster if, in our revolt against the divine leading, we call in another distorting Force more satisfying to our impulses and desires and ask it to guide us and give it the Divine Name.
1.01 - The Human Aspiration, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5:Thus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent, indefinable, timeless and spaceless Being who alone renders time and space and cosmos possible, and in all these the higher truth realisable by the lower term, justify themselves to the deliberate reason as well as to the persistent instinct or intuition of mankind. Attempts are sometimes made to have done finally with questionings which have so often been declared insoluble by logical thought and to persuade men to limit their mental activities to the practical and immediate problems of their material existence in the universe; but such evasions are never permanent in their effect. Mankind returns from them with a more vehement impulse of inquiry or a more violent hunger for an immediate solution. By that hunger mysticism profits and new religions arise to replace the old that have been destroyed or stripped of significance by a scepticism which itself could not satisfy because, although its business was inquiry, it was unwilling sufficiently to inquire. The attempt to deny or stifle a truth because it is yet obscure in its outward workings and too often represented by obscurantist superstition or a crude faith, is itself a kind of obscurantism. The will to escape from a cosmic necessity because it is arduous, difficult to justify by immediate tangible results, slow in regulating its operations, must turn out eventually to have been no acceptance of the truth of Nature but a revolt against the secret, mightier will of the great Mother It is better and more rational to accept what she will not allow us as a race to reject and lift it from the sphere of blind instinct, obscure intuition and random aspiration into the light of reason and an instructed and consciously self-guiding will. And if there is any higher light of illumined intuition or self-revealing truth which is now in man either obstructed and inoperative or works with intermittent glancings as if from behind a veil or with occasional displays as of the northern lights in our material skies, then there also we need not fear to aspire. For it is likely that such is the next higher state of consciousness of which Mind is only a form and veil, and through the splendours of that light may lie the path of our progressive self-enlargement into whatever highest state is humanity's ultimate resting-place.
1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The European sets great store by machinery. He seeks to renovate humanity by schemes of society and systems of government; he hopes to bring about the millennium by an act of
Parliament. Machinery is of great importance, but only as a working means for the spirit within, the force behind. The nineteenth century in India aspired to political emancipation, social renovation, religious vision and rebirth, but it failed because it adopted Western motives and methods, ignored the spirit, history and destiny of our race and thought that by taking over
The Ideal of the Karmayogin
--
We do not believe that by changing the machinery so as to make our society the ape of Europe we shall effect social renovation. Widow-remarriage, substitution of class for caste, adult marriage, intermarriages, interdining and the other nostrums of the social reformer are mechanical changes which, whatever their merits or demerits, cannot by themselves save the soul of the nation alive or stay the course of degradation and decline.
It is the spirit alone that saves, and only by becoming great and
1.01 - The King of the Wood, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
dragged in to render intelligible the murderous rule of succession
to the Arician priesthood. In regard to Hippolytus the case is not
1.01 - The Lord of hosts, #Sefer Yetzirah The Book of Creation In Theory and Practice, #Anonymous, #Various
Ten are the numbers out of nothing, and not the number nine, ten and not eleven. Comprehend this great wisdom, understand this 7 knowledge, inquire into it and ponder on it, render it evident and lead 8 the Creator back to His throne again.
SECTION 4.
1.01 - The Mental Fortress, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
That is where we are. The illusion is not dead; it even rages with unprecedented violence, equipped with all the arms we have so obligingly polished up for it. But these are the last convulsions of a colossus with feet of clay which is actually a gnome, an oversized, overoutfitted gnome. The ancient sages of India knew it well. They divided human evolution into four concentric circles: that of the men of knowledge (Brahmins), who lived at the beginning of humanity, in the age of truth; that of the nobles and warriors (Kshatriya), when only three fourths of the truth was left; that of the merchants and middle class (Vaishya), who had only half of the truth; and finally ours, the age of the little men, the Shudra, the servants (of the machine, of the ego, of desire), the great proletariat of regimented liberties the Dark Age, Kali Yuga, when no truth is left at all. But because this circle is the most extreme, because all the truths have been tried and exhausted, and all possible roads explored, we are nearing the right solution, the true solution, the emergence of a new age of truth, the supramental age Sri Aurobindo spoke of, like the buttercup breaking its last envelope to free its golden fruit. If the parallel holds true between the collective body and our human body, we could say that the center governing the age of the sages was located at the level of the forehead, while that of the age of the nobles was at the level of the heart, that of the age of the merchants, at the stomach, and the one governing our age is at the level of sex and matter. The descent is complete. But that descent has a meaning a meaning for matter. Had we stayed forever at the forehead level of the divine truths of the mind, this earth and body would never have been changed, and we would have probably ended up escaping into some spiritual heaven or nirvana. Now, everything must be transformed, even the body and matter, since we are right in it. Ironically, this is the greatest service this dark, materialistic and scientific age may have rendered us: to compel such a plunge of the spirit into matter that it had either to lose itself in it or to be transformed with it. Absolute darkness is but the shadow of a greater Sun, which digs its abysses in order to raise up a more stable beauty, founded on the purified base of our earthly subconscious and seated erect in truth down to the very cells of our bodies.
O Force-compelled, Fate-driven earth-born race,
1.01 - The Offering, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
by this renewal of labor. Into my chalice I shall
pour all the sap which is to be pressed out this day
1.01 - THE STUFF OF THE UNIVERSE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
From the aspect of energy, renewed by radio-active pheno-
mena, material corpuscles may now be treated as transient
1.01 - The Three Metamorphoses, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
18:My breth ren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reve rent?
19:To create new values--that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to create itself freedom for new creating--that can the might of the lion do.
1.01 - To Watanabe Sukefusa, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
However, a person who leaves his home to take the vows of a Buddhist monk has, in doing so, renounced his former self completely. He sets out in search of a good master who can help him achieve his goal, engaging in arduous practice day and night, precisely because he is concerned with obtaining a favorable rebirth for his pa rents into the endless future. He is performing the greatest kind of filial piety.
It is said that on receiving a just remonstrance, you should not consider the person who delivers it.
10.21 - Short Notes - 4- Ego, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To renounce is a greater delight than to enjoy.
To give is a greater joy than to take.
1.02.1 - The Inhabiting Godhead - Life and Action, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
in the universal motion. By that renounced thou shouldst enjoy; lust not after any man's
possession.
--
Enjoyment of the universe and all it contains is the object of world-existence, but renunciation of all in desire is the condition of the free enjoyment of all.
The renunciation demanded is not a moral constraint of self-denial or a physical rejection, but an entire liberation of the spirit from any craving after the forms of things.
The terms of this liberation are freedom from egoism and, consequently, freedom from personal desire. Practically, this renunciation implies that one should not regard anything in the universe as a necessary object of possession, nor as possessed by another and not by oneself, nor as an object of greed in the heart or the senses.
This attitude is founded on the perception of unity. For it has already been said that all souls are one possessing Self, the Lord; and although the Lord inhabits each object as if separately, yet all objects exist in that Self and not outside it.
1.02.2.2 - Self-Realisation, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
Brahman, to renounce desire and illusion through the ascent to
the pure Self and the Non-Becoming and yet to enjoy by means
--
line, fixing as the rule of divine life universal renunciation of
desire as the condition of universal enjoyment in the spirit, has
10.23 - Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Lorsque j' tais enfantvers l' ge de treize ans et pendant un an environtous les soirs ds que j' tais couche, il me semblait que je sortais de mon corps et que je m' levais tout droit au-dessus de la maison, puis de la ville, trs haul. Je me voyais alors vtue d'une magnifique robe dore, plus longue que moi;.et mesure que jemontais, cette robe s' allongeait en s' tendant circulairement autour de moi pour former comme un toil immense au-dessus de la ville. Alors je voyais de taus cts sortir des hommes, des femmes, des enfants, des vieillards, des malades, des malheureux; its s' assemblaient sous la robe tendue, implorant secours, racontant leurs misres, leurs souffrances, leurs peines. En rponse, la robe, souple et vivante, s' allongeait vers eux individuellement, et ds qu'ils l' avaient touche, its taient consols ou guris, et rentraient dans leurs corps plus heureux et plus forts qu' avant d' en tre sortis.16
But her being and consciousness are not limited to mankind alone. She has identified herself with even material objects, with all the small insignificant physical things which our earthly existence deals with. This is how she takes leave of the house where she had lived, and the things it had sheltered, on the eve of a long journey:
1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The practice of yoga is nothing but a conscious participation in the universal working of nature itself and, therefore, it is the most natural thing that we can do, and the most natural thing that we can conceive. There can be nothing more natural than to participate consciously in the evolutionary work of the universe, which is the attempt of the cosmos to become Self-conscious in the Absolute. Evolution is nothing but a movement of the whole universe towards Self-awa reness this is called God-realisation. Our every activity from the cup of tea that we take, to the breath that we breathe, from even the sneeze that we jet forth, to the least action that we perform, from even a single thought which occurs in the mind everything is a part of this cosmic operation which is the evolution of the universe towards Self-realisation. Therefore, the practice of yoga is the most natural thing that we can think of and the most necessary duty of a human being. Nothing can be more obligatory on our part than this duty. It is from this point of view, perhaps, that Lord Krishna proclaims, towards the end of the Bhagavadgita, sarvadharmnparityajya mmeka araa vraja (B.G. XVIII.66): renounce every other duty and come to Me for rescue which means to say, take resort in the law of the Absolute. This is the practice of yoga, and every other dharma is subsumed under it and included within it, as every drop and every river is in the ocean. In this supreme duty, every other duty is included. There is no need to think of every individual, discrete and isolated duty, because all duties are included in this one duty, which is the mother of all duties.
This peculiar feature of spiritual practice, sadhana, being so difficult to understand intellectually, cannot be regarded as merely an individual's affair. Sadhana is God's affair, ultimately. Spiritual sadhana is God's grace working. Though it appears that is individual effort, it only seems to be so, but really it is something else. Not even the greatest of philosophical thinkers, such as Shankara, could logically answer the question, "How does knowledge arise in the jiva?" How can it be said that individual effort produces knowledge of God? Knowledge of God cannot rise by individual effort, because individual effort is so puny, so inadequate to the purpose, to the task, that we cannot expect such an infinite result to follow from the finite cause. The concept of God is an inscrutable event that takes place in the human mind. Can we imagine an ass thinking about God? However much it may put forth effort and go on trying its best throughout its life, the concept of God will never arise in an ass's mind or in a buffalo's mind. How it arises is a mystery. Suddenly, it comes.
1.028 - Bringing About Whole-Souled Dedication, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We were discussing the relationship between abhyasa and vairagya in the system of yoga. The practice of yoga becomes effective when it is charged with the power of vairagya or the spirit of renunciation because, while practice is the endeavour to fix oneself in a particular attitude of consciousness, vairagya is a sympathetic attitude which simultaneously frees consciousness from attention to contrary objectives, or objectives which are irrelevant to the one that is taken up for the purpose of concentration and meditation. We cannot have a double attitude in yoga. That is, our attention cannot be diverted into two channels. Else, there would be split devotion, as they call it vyabhicharini bhakti not whole-souled devotion.
What is called for in this practice is wholeheartedness, and perhaps every other qualification is included in this. When we are wholehearted in anything, we shall succeed, whatever be the direction. But our difficulty seems to be that we can never be wholehearted in anything. It is merely a peculiar trait of the mind that it cannot give itself up entirely to any kind of effort, thought, feeling, or volition. There is an inhe rent inadequacy in the structural character of the mind, which makes it sometimes look like a double-edged sword, cutting both ways sometimes like a naughty child asking for what is impossible, and at other times trying to upset, every moment, what it is trying to achieve by its effort.
--
Practice, or abhyasa, is always st reng thened, and has to be st reng thened, by a corresponding practice that goes on simultaneously with abhyasa, and that parallel practice is the automatic withdrawal of the mind from all distracting factors. If we are pulled in two directions with equal force, we will not be able to move even a little bit. We have had occasion to contemplate to some extent on the details of what renunciation is, and what are the various stages of vairagya which Patanjali regards as indispensable to the practice of yoga. He tells us that the practice consists in an insistent attempt on our part to fix ourselves in a single or given attitude. Tatra sthitau yatna abhysa (I.13): Abhyasa or practice is the effort to fix one's own self in a given attitude. What is this given attitude? We have to choose a particular attitude in which to fix ourselves for a protracted period; this is called practice. The attitude in which we have to fix ourselves should be such that we would tend to greater and greater stages of freedom of the soul, and a lessening and decreasing of the intensity of bondage.
As we had occasion to observe, the practice commences with being seated in a particular posture; and sitting in a particular posture is itself a practice. Often we may be under the wrong notion that 'sitting' is not a very important part of yoga, because yoga is mental concentration. Yes, it is true, but the concentration of the mind will not be possible when we are seated in an awkward posture. We must remember that there is a vital connection obtaining among every part of our psychophysical organism. Right from the skin, which is the outermost part of our body, to the deepest level of our psychological being, there is an internal relationship. Any kind of disturbance that is felt in any part of this organic structure will be sympathetically felt to a particular degree in other parts or levels of this organic structure. The posture or asana, the steady seatedness in a particular mood not only of the mind, but also of the body, the nerves and the pranas is essential for the concentration of the mind on the objective.
1.02.9 - Conclusion and Summary, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
secondary position, exalting the opposite series, God, renunciation, Quietism, the One, Cessation of Birth, the Knowledge,
until this t rend of thought culminated in Illusionism and the
--
a dependence of one on the other. renunciation is to go to the
extreme, but also enjoyment is to be equally integral; Action has
--
and to be possessed and enjoyed, not dependent either for acquisition or enjoyment on the renunciation of life and bodily
existence. This thought has never entirely passed out of Indian
--
2. renunciation and Enjoyment.
3. Action in Nature and Freedom in the Soul.
--
ENJOYMENT AND renUNCIATION
2. Real integral enjoyment of all this movement and multiplicity
in its truth and in its infinity depends upon an absolute renunciation; but the renunciation intended is an absolute renunciation
of the principle of desire founded on the principle of egoism and
not a renunciation of world-existence.2 This solution depends
on the idea that desire is only an egoistic and vital deformation of the divine Ananda or delight of being from which the
--
the renunciation of desire and egoism as the essential but would hold that renunciation of
egoism means the renunciation of all world-existence, for it sees desire and not Ananda
as the cause of world-existence.
1.02 - BEFORE THE CITY-GATE, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
O happy he, who still renews
The hope, from Error's deeps to rise forever!
1.02 - BOOK THE SECOND, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
That herbs for cattle daily I renew,
And food for Man, and frankincense for you?
--
Wou'd rend her hair, but fills her hands with leaves;
One sees her thighs transform'd, another views
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And now renounc'd his office to mankind.
"Ere since the birth of time," said he, "I've born
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When Athens she beheld, for arts renown'd,
With peace made happy, and with plenty crown'd,
1.02 - Fire over the Earth, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
stem, as part of an endlessly renewed process of ev-
olution.
1.02 - In the Beginning, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The periods of renascence have always been those centuries in which the longing for the Beautiful has awakened along with the need for the True; they are the epochs in which crucified sensibility and Reason have been restored to life.
Catholicism itself was modified for the better under the influence of the feminine Principle from the day when the Virgin Mother took her place close to the masculine Trinity, and it is the cult of Mary, more than anything else, that has saved the Faith from the fanatical aberrations of the Middle Ages and the Church from the reprisals with which she was threatened. If this feminine symbol had been the object of interpretations less gross, the Church might have found in it the means by which she could have succeeded in wedding together the two contrary tendencies of the human mind, unifying the discoveries of Science with the intuitions of faith and transforming her ignorant spiritual dogmatism into a spirituality worthy of the name. She would then have understood that the true Mater Dolorosa is no other than this suffering Matter whose progressive evolution is indeed a perpetual Assumption.
1.02 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Quoting the last part of the song, he said to Keshab: "That is to say, renounce everything and call on God. He alone is real; all else is illusory. Without the realization of God everything is futile. This is the great secret."
The Master sat down again and began to converse with the devotees. For a while he listened to a piano recital, enjoying it like a child. Then he was taken to the inner apartments, where he was served with refreshments and the ladies saluted him.
1.02 - Isha Analysis, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
On this conception the rule of a divine life for man is founded, - enjoyment of all by renunciation of all through the exclusion of desire. (Verse 1, line 2)
There is then declared the justification of works and of the physical life on the basis of an inalienable freedom of the soul, one with the Lord, amidst all the activity of the multiple movement. (Verse 2)
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
world idealized in fantasy, render affective judgment, and act, in consequence. Trivial promises and
satisfactions indicate that we are doing well, are progressing towards our goals. An unexpected opening in
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portions of the brain to render judgment about the relative value of desired states (and, similarly, to
determine the proper order, for the manifestation of means78). These advanced systems must take all states
--
because we render judgment of value, using every bit of information at our disposal. We determine that
something is worth having, at a given time and place, and make the possession of that thing our goal. And
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to those ends (my plans to go to the cafeteria) have been rendered utterly irrelevant. I no longer know what
to do. This means, in a non-trivial sense, that I no longer know where I am. I presumed I was in a place I
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knowledge emerges. Everything presently known to each, everything rendered predictable, was at one time
unknown to all, and had to be rendered predictable beneficial at best, irrelevant at worst as a
consequence of active exploration-driven adaptation. The matrix is of indeterminable breadth: despite our
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system that, and the (integrally related) inculcation and renewal of memory [integrally related, as it is
significant events that transform knowledge, that are stored in memory (more accurately, that alter
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course. They are rendered irrelevant, as a consequence of (successful) exploratory behavior. When they are
first encountered, however, they are meaningful. It is the amygdala, at bottom, that appears responsible for
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innate reaction to everything that has not been rendered predictable, as a consequence of successful,
creative exploratory behavior undertaken in its presence, at some time in the past. LeDoux states:
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disinhibited, and the rats return to the scene of the crime. The space renovelized by the fact of the cat has
to be transformed once again into explored territory as a consequence of active modification of behavior
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exploring into something determinate in the worst case, rendering it non-threatening, non-punishing; in
the best, manipulating and/or categorizing it so that it is useful. Animals perform this transformation in the
--
consequences of those patterns. The hand itself was rendered more useful by the development of vertical
stance, which extended visual range, and freed the upper body from the demands of locomotion. The fine
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world of human experience is constantly transformed and renewed as a consequence of such exploration. In
this manner, the word constantly engenders new creation.
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doing. This is in part because everything thoroughly explored has in fact been rendered either promising or
satisfying (or, at least, irrelevant). If threat or punishment still lurks somewhere that is, somewhere we
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operation in explored territory, where things have been rendered either irrelevant or positive, as a
consequence of previous exploration. Our brains contain two emotional systems, so to speak one
--
The chaos that constitutes the unknown is rendered predictable is turned into the world by the
generation of adaptive behaviors and modes of representation. It is the process of novelty-driven
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Explicit (moral) philosophy arises from the mythos of culture, grounded in procedure, rendered
progressively more abstract and episodic through ritual action, and observation of that action. The process
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cognitive/exploratory maneuver that renders an unpredictable occur rence conditionally predictable or
familiar is most likely to be adopted. This is another example of proof through utility if a solution
--
familiar to us that its contents have been rendered explicit. This mediator, I would suggest, is nothing but
those metaphoric, imagistic processes, dependent upon limbic-motivated right-hemispheric activity, that
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the festival of the New Year, when the old world is renewed.
The Enuma elish expresses in image and narrative the idea that the psychological function giving order
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works of metaphysical speculation, which more directly address the idea of the heroic renewal of culture.
The three constituent elements of experience and the fourth who proceeds them can be viewed, at a
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means, can bend to our own ends) have been likewise rendered predictable by definition. The territory
of explored territory is therefore defined, at least in general, by security. Secure territory is that place
--
to render beneficial constitute home ground.
Home ground explored territory is that place where unfamiliar things do not exist. Many of the
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necessarily means, therefore, where human activity has been rendered predictable, as well as where the
course of natural events can be accurately determined. The maps that make territory familiar
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adapt to the unpredictable and to explored territory itself, where everything has been rendered secure.
Although the unknown is truly unknown, it can be regarded as possessed of stable characteristics, in a
--
The ideas of kingship, creativity and renewal are given a diffe rent and more sophisticated slant
in the central myth of Osiris, which served as an alternate basis for Egyptian theology. The story of
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themselves, is composed of what has been explored, and rendered familiar; what has yet to be encountered,
and is therefore unpredictable; and the process that mediates between the two. One final element must be
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associated with behaviors that render it beneficial, in the ideal, or at least irrelevant. The omnipresent
unknown, by contrast, presents threat and promise infinite in scope, impossible to encapsulate, equally
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of the Divine Mother) or Mary (the Divine Mother herself) in late medieval and early renaissance art is
the mandorla, or vesica pisces, the fishes bladder, which appears to have served as sexual/symbolic
--
feminine, like the mothers of experience; is something with an endlessly fecund and renewed (maternal and
virginal) nature is something that defines fertility and, therefore, femininity itself. Things come from
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fecund virgin (because eternally renewed), the mother of the savior serves as the embodiment of the
helpful source; serves as constant aid to painful travail, tragic suffering, and existential concern.
--
and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generation she passes into holy souls
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and were rendered in the image of woman, whose body generated human life, and nourishment for that life.
The body-vessel represented beneficial nature itself:
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involves exposing an individual, ritualistically, (that is, under circumstances rendered predictable by
authority) to novel or otherwise threatening stimuli (with appropriate reaction modelled by that authority.320
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procreative feminine unknown necessary precedent to continual renewal and rebirth of the individual and
community. This is an idea precisely as magnificent as that contained in the Osiris/Horus myth; an idea
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adaptation, as schemas of action and representation are extended, such that the unknown is rendered
beneficial; revolution, as the old is restructured, to allow place for the new. This restructuring is equivalent
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formulated, nor rationally constructed in the same manner) renders individual creativity socially acceptable,
and provides the precondition for change. The most fundamental presumption of the myth of the hero is
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Virgin Mother, a maiden forever renewed, forever young, belonging to all men, but to no one man. Myth
commonly utilizes the (symbolically sexual) motif of heavenly incest the image of devouring or engulfing
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with this monster, and emerges victorious in the morning, rising renewed in the East:
In this sequence of danger, battle, and victory, the light whose significance for consciousness we
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capable of originating new behavioral patterns, eternally specialized to render harmless or positively
beneficial something previously threatening or unknown. It is declarative representation of the pattern of
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concrete, abstract, intrapsychic and interpersonal variants. In the most basic case, an individual is rendered
subject to an intolerable conflict, as a consequence of the perceived (affective) incompatibility of two or
--
psychological punishment, render the other impotent, so to speak, and subordinate permanently
frustrated, miserable, anxious and hostile. The marriage may thus lose much of its value, or may dissolve
--
may do without other advantages. Culture is thus attained through the renunciation of instinctual
gratifications and furthered by every new development which serves the purposes of renunciation.
In all this, we stand before the pure specimen of homo natura: bodily instinct, the gaining of pleasure
--
been rendered comfortably predictable). The state becomes increasingly tyrannical, however, as the
pressure for uniformity increases. As the drive towards similarity becomes extreme, everyone becomes the
--
stone, in mythological language. Lack of variability in action and ideation renders society and the
individuals who compose it increasingly vulnerable to precipitous environmental transformation (that
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is founded. This renders them self-defeating.356
Figure 43: Explored Territory as Tyrannical Father 357 presents the forces of tradition as sondevouring King. The conservative tendency of any culture, striving to maintain itself, can easily transform
1.02 - Meditating on Tara, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
realizing emptiness. The determination to be free is also called renunciation.
It is a state of mind in which we have seen the defects of cyclic existence,
1.02 - On detachment, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
3. After our renunciation of the world, the demons suggest to us that we should envy those living in the world who are merciful and compassionate, and be sorry for ourselves as deprived of these virtues. The aim of our foes is, by false humility, either to make us return to the world, or, if we remain monks, to plunge us into despair. It is possible to belittle those living in the world out of conceit; and it is also possible to disparage them behind their backs in order to avoid despair and to obtain hope.
4. Let us listen to what the Lord said to the young man who had fulfilled nearly all the commandments: One thing thou lackest; sell what thou hast and give to the poor1 and become a beggar who receives alms from others.
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9. No one will enter the heavenly bridechamber wearing a crown unless he makes the first, second and third renunciation. I mean the renunciation of all business, and people, and pa rents; the cutting out of ones will; and the third renunciation, of the conceit that dogs obedience. Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean world.5 For who amongst them has ever worked any miracles? Who has raised the dead? Who has driven out devils? No one. All these
1 St. Mark x, 21.
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10. After our renunciation, when the demons inflame our hearts by reminding us of our pa rents and breth ren, then let us arm ourselves against them with prayer, and let us inflame ourselves with the remembrance of the eternal fire, so that by reminding ourselves of this, we may quench the untimely fire of our heart.
11. If anyone thinks he is without attachment to some object, but is grieved at its loss, then he is completely deceiving himself.
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2 This is a double translation for a single Greek word xeniteia which means living as a stranger (not necessarily as a vagrant) and might be translated unworldliness. But several considerations, notably paragraphs 6 and 22 of this chapter, have led me to think that in our authors time the word contained a notion of movement also, and might be rendered pilgrimage. However, in the text we have kept to the word exile.
3 St. John iv, 44.
1.02 - On the Knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
Beloved, in proportion as a man analyzes the nature of his body and the variety of uses of its several members, his reve rence and love for its Creator and Maker will increase. Let a man observe, for example, that his hands are made like columns and separated from the body, to serve as an instrument to seize, or take hold of, or to defend it from an enemy. At the extremity of the hands are five fingers, four of which are in a row, and some long and some short, SO that when they take hold of anything, they may come equally together in the palm of the hand. The thumb, which is opposite to the four fingers, is shorter than any of them and stronger, that it may be a help to the whole and render them capable of retaining and grasping. The four fingers have three joints each, and the thumb has but two, that when contracted they may become like the bowl of a spoon or ladle, and that when open they may become like a plate, and so discharge an infinity of services. The front teeth were formed sharp, to cut and separate the food : the side teeth were formed broad to mash and grind the food. The tongue was formed like a spoon to throw the food into the throat. There is, also, under the tongue, an organ by which water is poured out, and the food is made of the consistence of dough, that it may be more easily swallowed and digested. All the organs, in short, have been devised with the best arrangement and form for use, and each one of them is punctual day and night in discharging its function. Think not, that they are lazy or sleeping. If the minds of the intelligent, the science of the learned, and the wisdom of the sage had been united and had been employed since the beginning of the world, in reflection and contrivance, they could not have discovered anything more excellent than the present arrangement, [44] nor any forms more useful and beautiful. If the eye had been attached to the top of the head, or the ear to the nape of the neck, or the mouth to the back of the body, or if three fingers had been given instead of four, it is plain to a person of intelligence that the existing advantages would not have been secured, and the present beauty of form and appearance would have been imperfect.
Let us notice, also, the daily necessities of man, his need of food, of clothing and of a dwelling; his need of rain, clouds, wind, heat and cold : and that he needs the weaver, the cotton-spinner, the clothier and the fuller to provide him with clothing; and that each one of these has need of so many instruments, and of so many trades, like those of the blacksmith, the farmer, the carpenter, the dyer, and the tanner; and besides, their need of iron, lead, wood and the like. Notice at the same time, the adaptation of these workmen to their instruments, and of the instruments to the trades, and how each art has given rise to several others, and the mind is astonished and distracted. The adaptation of all these instruments comes from the pure grace and perfect mercy of God, and from the fountain of his benevolence. Moreover, God's creating prophets, sending them to us, and leading us to their law and to love them, is a perfume of His universal beneficence. He proclaims himself, "My mercy surpasses my anger," and the Prophet has said: "Verily, God is more full of compassion to his servants, than the affectionate mother to her nursing child."
1.02 - Prayer of Parashara to Vishnu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
khya this incongruity does not occur; for there Pradhāna is independent, and coordinate with primary spirit. The Purāṇas give rise to the inconsistency by a lax use of both philosophical and pantheistical expressions. The most incongruous epithets in our text are however explained away in the comment. Thus nitya, 'eternal,' is said to mean 'uniform, not liable to increase or diminution:' Sadasadātmaka, 'comprehending what is and what is not,' means 'having the power of both cause and effect', as proceeding from Viṣṇu, and as giving origin to material things. Anādi, 'without beginning,' means 'without birth', not being engendered by any created thing, but proceeding immediately from the first cause. 'The mother,' or literally the womb of the world', means the passive agent in creation,' operated on or influenced by the active will of the Creator. The first part of the passage in the text is a favourite one with several of. the Purāṇas, but they modify it and apply it after their own fashion. In the Viṣṇu the original is ###, rendered as above. The Vāyu, Brahmānda, and p. 11 Kūrmma Purāṇas have 'The indiscrete cause, which is uniform, and both cause and effect, and whom those who are acquainted with first principles call Pradhāna and Prakriti-is the uncognizable Brahma, who was before all.' But the application of two synonymes of Prakriti to Brahma seems unnecessary at least. The Brahmā P. corrects the reading appa rently: the first line is as before; the second is, ###. The passage is placed absolutely; 'There was an indiscrete cause eternal, and cause and effect, which was both matter and spirit (Pradhāna and Puruṣa), from which this world was made. Instead of 'such' or this,' some copies read 'from which Īśvara or god (the active deity or Brahmā) made the world.' The Hari Vaṃśa has the same reading, except in the last term, which it makes ### that is, according to the commentator, the world, which is Īśvara, was made.' The same authority explains this indiscrete cause, avyakta kārana, to denote Brahmā, the creator an identification very unusual, if not inaccurate, and possibly founded on misapprehension of what is stated by the Bhaviṣya P.: 'That male or spirit which is endowed with that which is the indiscrete cause, &c. is known in the world as Brahmā: he being in the egg, &c.' The passage is precisely the same in Manu, I, 11; except that we have 'visṛṣta' instead of 'viśiṣṭha:' the latter is a questionable reading, and is probably wrong: the sense of the latter is, detached; and the whole means very consistently, 'embodied spirit detached from the indiscrete cause of the world is known as Brahmā.' The Padma P. inserts the first line, ### &c., but has 'Which creates undoubtedly Mahat and the other qualities' assigning the first epithets, therefore, as the Viṣṇu does, to Prakriti only. The Li
ga also refers the expression to Prakriti alone, but makes it a secondary cause: 'An indiscrete cause, which those acquainted with first principles call Pradhāna and Prakriti, proceeded from that Īśvara (Śiva).' This passage is one of very many instances in which expressions are common to several Purāṇas that seem to be borrowed from one another, or from some common source older than any of them, especially in this instance, as the same text occurs in Manu.
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[16]: The metre here is one common to the Vedas, Tṛṣtubh, but in other respects the language is not characteristic of those compositions. The purport of the passage is rendered somewhat doubtful by its close, and by the explanation of the commentator. The former is, 'One Pradhānika Brahma Spirit: THAT, was. The commentator explains Pradhānika, Pradhāna eva, the same word as Pradhāna; but it is a derivative word, which may be used attributively, implying 'having, or conjoined with, Pradhāna.' The commentator, however, interprets it as the substantive; for he adds, 'There was Pradhāna and Brahma and Spirit; this triad was at the period of dissolution.' He evidently, however, understands their conjoint existence as one only; for he continues, 'So, according to the Vedas, then there was neither the existent (invisible cause, or matter) nor the non-existent (visible effect, or creation),' meaning that there was only One Being, in whom matter and its modifications were all comprehended.
[17]: Or it might be rendered, 'Those two other forms (which proceed) from his supreme nature;' that is, from the nature of Viṣṇu, when he is Nirupādhi, or without adventitious attributes: ### 'other' (###); the commentator states they are other or separate from Viṣṇu only through Māyā, illusion,' but here implying false notion;' the elements of creation being in essence one with Viṣṇu, though in existence detached and diffe rent.
[18]: Pradhāna, when unmodified, is, according to the Sā
--
khya p. 13 Kārikā, p. 52;) so in the Matsya P.: ###. This state is synonymous with the non-evolution of material products, or with dissolution; implying, however, separate existence, and detached from spirit This being the case, it is asked who. should sustain matter and spirit whilst separate, or renew their combination so as to renovate creation? It is answered, Time, which is when every thing else is not; and which, at the end of a certain interval, unites Matter, Pradhāna, and Puruṣa, and produces creation. Conceptions of this kind are evidently comprised in the Orphic triad, or the ancient notion of the cooperation of three such principles in creation; as Phanes or Eros, which is the Hindu spirit or Puruṣa; Chaos, matter or Pradhāna; and Chronos, or Kāla, time.
[19]: Pradhāna is styled Vyaya 'that which may be expended;' or Pariṇāmin, 'which may be modified:' and Puruṣa is called Avyaya, 'inconsumable; or aparinā.min, 'immutable.' The expressions 'having entered into,' and 'agitated,' recall the mode in which divine intelligence, mens, νοῦς, was conceived by the ancients to operate upon matter:
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kāra cannot be very well rendered by any European term. It means the principle of individual existence, that which appropriates perceptions, and on which depend the notions, I think, I feel, I am. It might be expressed by the proposition of Descartes reversed; "Sum, ergo cogito, sentio," &c. The equivalent employed by Mr. Colebrooke, egotism, has the advantage of an analogous etymology, Aha
kāra being derived from Aham, 'I;' as in the Hari Vaṃśa: 'He (Brahmā), oh Bhārata, said, I will create creatures.' See also S. Kārikā, p. 91.
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kāra is that which is endowed with Tejas, heat' or energy,' in consequence of its having the property of Rajas, 'passion' or 'activity;' and the third kind, Bhūtādi, or 'elementary,' is the Tāmasa, or has the property of darkness. From the first kind proceed the senses; from the last, the rudimental unconscious elements; both kinds, which are equally of themselves inert, being rendered productive by the cooperation of the second, the energetic or active modification of Aha
kāra, which is therefore said to be the origin of both the senses and the elements.
1.02 - SADHANA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
and another dragging another, rendering permanent happiness
impossible.
1.02 - Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7:The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral sur render; it must offer itself in every part and every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sensemind so much less real than the material world and its objects. Our whole being-soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit which is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga. Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that "That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore." Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence. Mind has to cease to be mind and become brilliant with something beyond it. Life has to change into a thing vast and calm and intense and powerful that can no longer recognise its old blind eager narrow self or petty impulse and desire. Even the body has to submit to a mutation and be no longer the clamorous animal or the impeding clod it now is, but become instead a conscious servant and radiant instrument and living form of the spirit.
8:The difficulty of the task has led naturally to the pursuit of easy and t renchant solutions; it has generated and fixed deeply' the tendency of religions and of schools of Yoga to separate the life of the world from the inner life. The powers of this world and their actual activities, it is felt, either do not belong to God at all or are for some obscure and puzzling cause, Maya or another, a dark contradiction of the divine Truth. And on their own opposite side the powers of the Truth and their ideal activities are seen to belong to quite another plane of consciousness than that, obscure, ignorant and perverse in its impulses and forces, on which the life of the earth is founded. There appears at once the antinomy of a bright and pure kingdom of God and a dark and impure kingdom of the devil; we feel the opposition of our crawling earthly birth and life to an exalted spiritual God-consciousness; we become readily convinced of the incompatibility of life's subjection to Maya with the soul's concentration in pure Brahman existence. The easiest way is to turn away from all that belongs to the one and to retreat by a naked and precipitous ascent into the other. Thus arises the attraction and, it would seem, the necessity of the principle of exclusive concentration which plays so prominent a part in the specialised schools of Yoga; for by that concentration we can arrive through an uncompromising renunciation of the world at an entire self-consecration to the One on whom we concentrate. It is no longer incumbent on us to compel all the lower activities to the difficult recognition of a new and higher spiritualised life and train them to be its agents or executive powers. It is enough to kill or quiet them and keep at most the few energies necessary, on one side, for the maintenance of the body and, on the other, for communion with the Divine.
9:The very aim and conception of an integral Yoga debars us from adopting this simple and st renuous high-pitched process. The hope of an integral transformation forbids us to take a short cut or to make ourselves light for the race by throwing away our impediments. For we have set out to conquer all ourselves and the world for God; we are determined to give him our becoming as well as our being and not merely to bring the pure and naked spirit as a bare offering to a remote and secret Divinity in a distant heaven or abolish all we are in a holocaust to an immobile Absolute. The Divine that we adore is not only a remote extracosmic Reality, but a half-veiled Manifestation present and near to us here in the universe. Life is the field of a divine manifestation not yet complete: here, in life, on earth, in the body, -- ihaiva, as the Upanishads insist, -- we have to unveil the Godhead; here we must make its transcendent greatness, light and sweetness real to our consciousness, here possess and, as far as may be, express it. Life then we must accept in our Yoga in order utterly to transmute it; we are forbidden to shrink from the difficulties that this acceptance may add to our struggle. Our compensation is that even if the path is more rugged, the effort more complex and bafflingly arduous, yet after a point we gain an immense advantage. For once our minds are reasonably fixed in the central vision and our wills are on the whole converted to the single pursuit. Life becomes our helper. Intent, vigilant, integrally conscious, we can take every detail of its forms and every incident of its movements as food for the sacrificial Fire within us. Victorious in the struggle, we can compel Earth herself to be an aid towards our perfection and can enrich our realisation with the booty torn from the powers that oppose us.
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21:Into all our endeavour upward the lower element of desire will at first naturally enter. For what the enlightened will sees as the thing to be done and pursues as the crown to be conquered, what the heart embraces as the one thing delightful, that in us which feels itself limited and opposed and, because it is limited, craves and struggles, will seek with the troubled passion of an egoistic desire. This craving life-force or desire-soul in us has to be accepted at first, but only in order that it may be transformed. Even from the very beginning it has to be taught to renounce all other desires and concentrate itself on the passion for the Divine. This capital point gained, it has to be taught to desire, not for its own separate sake, but for God in the world and for the Divine in ourselves; it has to fix itself upon no personal spiritual gain, though of all possible spiritual gains we are sure, but on the great work to be done in us and others, on the high coming manifestation which is to be the glorious fulfilment of the Divine in the world, on the Truth that has to be sought and lived and enthroned for ever. But last, most difficult for it, more difficult than to seek with the right object, it has to be taught to seek in the right manner; for it must learn to desire, not in its own egoistic way, but in the way of the Divine. It must insist no longer, as the strong separative will always insists, on its own manner of fulfilment, its own dream of possession, its own idea of the right and desirable; it must yearn to fulfil a larger and greater Will and consent to wait upon a less interested and ignorant guidance. Thus trained, Desire, that great unquiet harasser and troubler of man and cause of every kind of stumbling, will become fit to be transformed into its divine counterpart. For desire and passion too have their divine forms; there is a pure ecstasy of the soul's seeking beyond all craving and grief, there is a Will of Ananda that sits glorified in the possession of the supreme beatitudes.
22:When once the object of concentration has possessed and is possessed by the three master instruments, the thought, the heart and the will, -- a consummation fully possible only when the desire-soul in us has submitted to the Divine Law, -- the perfection of mind and life and body can be effectively fulfilled in our transmuted nature. This will be done, not for the personal satisfaction of the ego, but that the whole may constitute a fit temple for the Divine Presence, a faultless instrument for the divine work. For the work can be truly performed only when the instrument, consecrated and perfected, has grown fit for a selfless action, -- and that will be when personal desire and egoism are abolished, but not the liberated individual. Even when the little ego has been abolished, the true Spiritual Person can still remain and God's will and work and delight in him and the spiritual use of his perfection and fulfilment. Our works will then be divine and done divinely; our mind arid life and will, devoted to the Divine, will be used to help fulfil in others and in the world that which has been first realised in ourselves, -all that we can manifest of the embodied Unity, Love, Freedom, St rength, Power, Splendour, immortal Joy which is the goal of the spirit's terrestrial adventure.
--
25:For here, there are two movements with a transitional stage between them, two periods of this Yoga, -- one of the process of sur render, the other of its crown and consequence. In the first the individual prepares himself for the reception o? the Divine into his members. For all this first period he has to work by means of the instruments of the lower Nature, but aided more and more from above. But in the later transitional stage of this movement our personal and necessarily ignorant effort more and more dwindles and a higher Nature acts; the eternal shakti descends into this limited form of mortality and progressively possesses and transmutes it. In the second period the greater movement wholly replaces the lesser, formerly indispensable first action; but this can be done only when our self-sur render is complete. The ego person in us cannot transform itself by its own force or will or knowledge or by any virtue of its own into the nature of the Divine; all it can do is to fit itself for the transformation and make more and more its sur render to that which it seeks to become. As long as the ego is at work in us, our personal action is and must always be in its nature a part of the lower grades of existence; it is obscure or half-enlightened, limited in its field, very partially effective in its power. If a spiritual transformation, not a mere illumining modification of our nature, is to be done at all, we must call in the Divine shakti to effect that miraculous work in the individual; for she alone has the needed force, decisive, all-wise and illimitable. But the entire substitution of the divine for the human personal action is not at once entirely possible. All interfe rence from below that would falsify the truth of the superior action must first be inhibited or rendered impotent, and it must be done by our own free choice. A continual and always repeated refusal of the impulsions and falsehoods of the lower nature is asked from us and an insistent support to the Truth as it grows in our parts: for the progressive settling into our nature and final perfection of the incoming informing Light, Purity and Power needs for its development and sustenance our free acceptance of it and our stubborn rejection of all that is contrary to it, inferior or incompatible.
26:In the first movement of self-preparation, the period of personal effort, the method we have to use is this concentration of the whole being on the Divine that it seeks and, as its corollary, this constant rejection, throwing out, katharsis, of all that is not the true Truth of the Divine. An entire consecration of all that we are, think, feel and do will be the result of this persistence. This consecration in its turn must culminate in an integral self-giving to the Highest; for its crown and sign of completion is the whole nature's all-comprehending absolute sur render. In the second stage of the Yoga, transitional between the human and the divine working, there will supervene an increasing purified and vigilant passivity, a more and more luminous divine response to the Divine Force, -- but not to any other; and there will be as a result the growing inrush of a great and conscious miraculous working from above. In the last period there is no effort at all, no set method, no fixed sadhana; the place of endeavour and Tapasya will be taken by a natural, simple, powerful and happy disclosing of the flower of the Divine out of the bud of a purified and perfected terrestrial nature. These are the natural successions of the action of the Yoga.
1.02 - Skillful Means, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
None of the rvakas and pratyekabuddhas may be capable of understanding it. Why is this? The buddhas have closely attended innumerable hundreds of thousands of myriads of kois of other buddhas. They have exhaustively carried out practices with courage and persistence under uncountable numbers of buddhas, their names becoming universally renowned. They have perfected this profound and unprecedented Dharma, and their intention in adapting their explanations to what is appropriate is difficult to understand.
O riputra! After attaining buddhahood I expounded the teaching extensively with various explanations and illustrations, and with skillful means (upya) led sentient beings to rid themselves of their attachments.
1.02 - Substance Is Eternal, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
Or rend the mighty mountains with their hands,
Or conquer Time with length of days, if not
--
Unseen, and swamp huge ships and rend the clouds,
Or, eddying wildly down, bestrew the plains
--
And hurl to ground with still renewed assault,
Or sometimes in their circling vortex seize
1.02 - The 7 Habits An Overview, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
Habit 7 is the habit of renewal -- a regular, balanced renewal of the four basic dimensions of life. It circles and embodies all the other habits. It is the habit of continuous improvement that creates the upward spiral of growth that lifts you to new levels of understanding and living each of the habits as you come around to them on a progressively higher plane.
The diagram on the next page is a visual representation of the sequence and the interdependence of the Seven Habits, and will be used throughout this book as we explore both the sequential relationship between the habits and also their synergy -- how, in relating to each other, they create bold new forms of each other that add even more to their value. Each concept or habit will be highlighted as it is introduced.
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The seventh habit, if deeply internalized, will renew the first six and will make you truly independent and capable of effective interdependence. Through it, you can charge your own batteries.
Whatever your present situation, I assure you that you are not your habits. You can replace old patterns of self-defeating behavior with new patterns, new habits of effectiveness, happiness, and trust-based relationships.
1.02 - The Age of Individualism and Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The individualistic age of Europe was in its beginning a revolt of reason, in its culmination a triumphal progress of physical Science. Such an evolution was historically inevitable. The dawn of individualism is always a questioning, a denial. The individual finds a religion imposed upon him which does not base its dogma and practice upon a living sense of ever verifiable spiritual Truth, but on the letter of an ancient book, the infallible dictum of a Pope, the tradition of a Church, the learned casuistry of schoolmen and Pundits, conclaves of ecclesiastics, heads of monastic orders, doctors of all sorts, all of them unquestionable tribunals whose sole function is to judge and pronounce, but none of whom seems to think it necessary or even allowable to search, test, prove, inquire, discover. He finds that, as is inevitable under such a regime, true science and knowledge are either banned, punished and persecuted or else rendered obsolete by the habit of blind reliance on fixed authorities; even what is true in old authorities is no longer of any value, because its words are learnedly or ignorantly repeated but its real sense is no longer lived except at most by a few. In politics he finds everywhere divine rights, established privileges, sanctified tyrannies which are evidently armed with an oppressive power and justify themselves by long prescription, but seem to have no real claim or title to exist. In the social order he finds an equally stereotyped reign of convention, fixed disabilities, fixed privileges, the self-regarding arrogance of the high, the blind prostration of the low, while the old functions which might have justified at one time such a distribution of status are either not performed at all or badly performed without any sense of obligation and merely as a part of caste pride. He has to rise in revolt; on every claim of authority he has to turn the eye of a resolute inquisition; when he is told that this is the sacred truth of things or the comm and of God or the immemorial order of human life, he has to reply, But is it really so? How shall I know that this is the truth of things and not superstition and falsehood? When did God comm and it, or how do I know that this was the sense of His comm and and not your error or invention, or that the book on which you found yourself is His word at all, or that He has ever spoken His will to mankind? This immemorial order of which you speak, is it really immemorial, really a law of Nature or an imperfect result of Time and at present a most false convention? And of all you say, still I must ask, does it agree with the facts of the world, with my sense of right, with my judgment of truth, with my experience of reality? And if it does not, the revolting individual flings off the yoke, declares the truth as he sees it and in doing so strikes inevitably at the root of the religious, the social, the political, momentarily perhaps even the moral order of the community as it stands, because it stands upon the authority he discredits and the convention he destroys and not upon a living truth which can be successfully opposed to his own. The champions of the old order may be right when they seek to suppress him as a destructive agency perilous to social security, political order or religious tradition; but he stands there and can no other, because to destroy is his mission, to destroy falsehood and lay bare a new foundation of truth.
But by what individual faculty or standard shall the innovator find out his new foundation or establish his new measures? Evidently, it will depend upon the available enlightenment of the time and the possible forms of knowledge to which he has access. At first it was in religion a personal illumination supported in the West by a theological, in the East by a philosophical reasoning. In society and politics it started with a crude primitive perception of natural right and justice which took its origin from the exasperation of suffering or from an awakened sense of general oppression, wrong, injustice and the indefensibility of the existing order when brought to any other test than that of privilege and established convention. The religious motive led at first; the social and political, moderating itself after the swift suppression of its first crude and vehement movements, took advantage of the upheaval of religious reformation, followed behind it as a useful ally and waited its time to assume the lead when the spiritual momentum had been spent and, perhaps by the very force of the secular influences it called to its aid, had missed its way. The movement of religious freedom in Europe took its stand first on a limited, then on an absolute right of the individual experience and illumined reason to determine the true sense of inspired Scripture and the true Christian ritual and order of the Church. The vehemence of its claim was measured by the vehemence of its revolt from the usurpations, pretensions and brutalities of the ecclesiastical power which claimed to withhold the Scripture from general knowledge and impose by moral authority and physical violence its own arbitrary interpretation of Sacred Writ, if not indeed another and substituted doctrine, on the recalcitrant individual conscience. In its more tepid and moderate forms the revolt engendered such compromises as the Episcopalian Churches, at a higher degree of fervour Calvinistic Puritanism, at white heat a riot of individual religious judgment and imagination in such sects as the Anabaptist, Independent, Socinian and countless others. In the East such a movement divorced from all political or any strongly iconoclastic social significance would have produced simply a series of religious reformers, illumined saints, new bodies of belief with their appropriate cultural and social practice; in the West atheism and secularism were its inevitable and predestined goal. At first questioning the conventional forms of religion, the mediation of the priesthood between God and the soul and the substitution of Papal authority for the authority of the Scripture, it could not fail to go forward and question the Scripture itself and then all supernaturalism, religious belief or suprarational truth no less than outward creed and institute.
For, eventually, the evolution of Europe was determined less by the Reformation than by the renascence; it flowered by the vigorous return of the ancient Graeco-Roman mentality of the one rather than by the Hebraic and religio-ethical temperament of the other. The renascence gave back to Europe on one hand the free curiosity of the Greek mind, its eager search for first principles and rational laws, its delighted intellectual scrutiny of the facts of life by the force of direct observation and individual reasoning, on the other the Romans large practicality and his sense for the ordering of life in harmony with a robust utility and the just principles of things. But both these tendencies were pursued with a passion, a seriousness, a moral and almost religious ardour which, lacking in the ancient Graeco-Roman mentality, Europe owed to her long centuries of Judaeo-Christian discipline. It was from these sources that the individualistic age of Western society sought ultimately for that principle of order and control which all human society needs and which more ancient times attempted to realise first by the materialisation of fixed symbols of truth, then by ethical type and discipline, finally by infallible authority or stereotyped convention.
Manifestly, the unrestrained use of individual illumination or judgment without either any outer standard or any generally recognisable source of truth is a perilous experiment for our imperfect race. It is likely to lead rather to a continual fluctuation and disorder of opinion than to a progressive unfolding of the truth of things. No less, the pursuit of social justice through the stark assertion of individual rights or class interests and desires must be a source of continual struggle and revolution and may end in an exaggerated assertion of the will in each to live his own life and to satisfy his own ideas and desires which will produce a serious malaise or a radical trouble in the social body. Therefore on every individualistic age of mankind there is imperative the search for two supreme desiderata. It must find a general standard of Truth to which the individual judgment of all will be inwardly compelled to subscribe without physical constraint or imposition of irrational authority. And it must reach too some principle of social order which shall be equally founded on a universally recognisable truth of things; an order is needed that will put a rein on desire and interest by providing at least some intellectual and moral test which these two powerful and dangerous forces must satisfy before they can feel justified in asserting their claims on life. Speculative and scientific reason for their means, the pursuit of a practicable social justice and sound utility for their spirit, the progressive nations of Europe set out on their search for this light and this law.
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For this discovery by individual free-thought of universal laws of which the individual is almost a by-product and by which he must necessarily be governed, this attempt actually to govern the social life of humanity in conscious accordance with the mechanism of these laws seems to lead logically to the suppression of that very individual freedom which made the discovery and the attempt at all possible. In seeking the truth and law of his own being the individual seems to have discovered a truth and law which is not of his own individual being at all, but of the collectivity, the pack, the hive, the mass. The result to which this points and to which it still seems irresistibly to be driving us is a new ordering of society by a rigid economic or governmental Socialism in which the individual, deprived again of his freedom in his own interest and that of humanity, must have his whole life and action determined for him at every step and in every point from birth to old age by the well-ordered mechanism of the State.1 We might then have a curious new version, with very important diffe rences, of the old Asiatic or even of the old Indian order of society. In place of the religio-ethical sanction there will be a scientific and rational or naturalistic motive and rule; instead of the Brahmin Shastrakara the scientific, administrative and economic expert. In the place of the King himself observing the law and compelling with the aid and consent of the society all to tread without deviation the line marked out for them, the line of the Dharma, there will stand the collectivist State similarly guided and empowered. Instead of a hierarchical arrangement of classes each with its powers, privileges and duties there will be established an initial equality of education and opportunity, ultimately perhaps with a subsequent determination of function by experts who shall know us better than ourselves and choose for us our work and quality. Marriage, generation and the education of the child may be fixed by the scientific State as of old by the Shastra. For each man there will be a long stage of work for the State superintended by collectivist authorities and perhaps in the end a period of liberation, not for action but for enjoyment of leisure and personal self-improvement, answering to the Vanaprastha and Sannyasa Asramas of the old Aryan society. The rigidity of such a social state would greatly surpass that of its Asiatic forerunner; for there at least there were for the rebel, the innovator two important concessions. There was for the individual the freedom of an early Sannyasa, a renunciation of the social for the free spiritual life, and there was for the group the liberty to form a sub-society governed by new conceptions like the Sikh or the Vaishnava. But neither of these violent departures from the norm could be tolerated by a strictly economic and rigorously scientific and unitarian society. Obviously, too, there would grow up a fixed system of social morality and custom and a body of socialistic doctrine which one could not be allowed to question practically, and perhaps not even intellectually, since that would soon shatter or else undermine the system. Thus we should have a new typal order based upon purely economic capacity and function, guakarma, and rapidly petrifying by the inhibition of individual liberty into a system of rationalistic conventions. And quite certainly this static order would at long last be broken by a new individualist age of revolt, led probably by the principles of an extreme philosophical Anarchism.
On the other hand, there are in operation forces which seem likely to frustrate or modify this development before it can reach its menaced consummation. In the first place, rationalistic and physical Science has overpassed itself and must before long be overtaken by a mounting flood of psychological and psychic knowledge which cannot fail to compel quite a new view of the human being and open a new vista before mankind. At the same time the Age of Reason is visibly drawing to an end; novel ideas are sweeping over the world and are being accepted with a significant rapidity, ideas inevitably subversive of any premature typal order of economic rationalism, dynamic ideas such as Nietzsches Will-to-live, Bergsons exaltation of Intuition above intellect or the latest German philosophical tendency to acknowledge a suprarational faculty and a suprarational order of truths. Already another mental poise is beginning to settle and conceptions are on the way to apply themselves in the field of practice which promise to give the succession of the individualistic age of society not to a new typal order, but to a subjective age which may well be a great and momentous passage to a very diffe rent goal. It may be doubted whether we are not already in the morning twilight of a new period of the human cycle.
1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
One must know how to renounce immediate success in or-
der to create the new world, the supramental world in its
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surely the mightiest act of renunciation in spiritual history.
No new edition of the old fiasco
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ports were very positive, to be followed by renewed obsta-
cles and tremendous resistance soon after. But in spite of
1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
That ascension has already been effected by the Ancients, the human forefa thers, and the spirits of these great Ancestors still assist their offspring; for the new dawns repeat the old and lean forward in light to join the dawns of the future. Kanwa, Kutsa, Atri, Kakshiwan, Gotama, Shunahshepa have become types of certain spiritual victories which tend to be constantly repeated in the experience of humanity. The seven sages, the Angirasas, are waiting still and always, ready to chant the word, to rend the cavern, to find the lost herds, to recover the hidden Sun. Thus the soul is a battlefield full of helpers and hurters, friends and enemies. All this lives, teems, is personal, is conscious, is active.
We create for ourselves by the sacrifice and by the word shining seers, heroes to fight for us, child ren of our works. The Rishis and the Gods find for us our luminous herds; the Ribhus fashion by the mind the chariots of the gods and their horses and their shining weapons. Our life is a horse that neighing and galloping bears us onward and upward; its forces are swift-hoofed steeds, the liberated powers of the mind are wide-winging birds; this mental being or this soul is the upsoaring Swan or the Falcon that breaks out from a hundred iron walls and wrests from the jealous guardians of felicity the wine of the Soma. Every shining godward Thought that arises from the secret abysses of the heart is a priest and a creator and chants a divine hymn of luminous realisation and puissant fulfilment. We seek for the shining gold of the Truth; we lust after a heavenly treasure.
1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
because spontaneously, in their very physical substance, without the least "thought" or even "faith," Indians sink their roots very deeply into other worlds; they do not altogether belong here. In them, these other worlds rise constantly to the surface; at the least touch the veil is rent, remarks Sri Aurobindo. This physical world, which for us is so real and absolute and unique, seems to them but one way of living among many others, one modality of the total existence among many others; in other words, a small chaotic, agitated, and rather painful frontier on the margin of immense continents which lie behind,
unexplored.16 This substantial diffe rence between Indians and other peoples appears most strikingly in their art, as it does also in Egyptian art (and, we assume without knowing it, in the art of Central America). If we leave behind our light and open cathedrals that soar high like a triumph of the divine thought in man suddenly to find 16
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Finally there is an incarnation of God in a human being, who possesses the same qualities of character as the personal God, but who exhibits them under the limitations necessarily imposed by confinement within a material body born into the world at a given moment of time. For Christians there has been and, ex hypodiesi, can be but one such divine incarnation; for Indians there can be and have been many. In Christendom as well as in the East, contemplatives who follow the path of devotion conceive of, and indeed directly perceive the incarnation as a constantly renewed fact of experience. Christ is for ever being begotten within the soul by the Father, and the play of Krishna is the pseudo-historical symbol of an everlasting truth of psychology and metaphysics the fact that, in relation to God, the personal soul is always feminine and passive.
Mahayana Buddhism teaches these same metaphysical doctrines in terms of the Three Bodies of Buddha the absolute Dharmakaya, known also as the Primordial Buddha, or Mind, or the Clear Light of the Void; the Sambhogakaya, corresponding to Isvara or the personal God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; and finally the Nirmanakaya, the material body, in which the Logos is incarnated upon earth as a living, historical Buddha.
1.02 - The Refusal of the Call, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
His flowering world becomes a wastel and of dry stones and his life feels meaninglesseven though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire of renown.
Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his Minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration.
1.02 - The Stages of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
requires in his soul nature the force which is only developed in the courageous and the fearless. For in penetrating to the higher mysteries he will see things which are concealed from ordinary humanity by the illusion of the senses. If the physical senses do not allow us to perceive the higher truth, they are for this very reason our benefactors. Things are thereby hidden from us which, if realized without due preparation, would throw us into unutterable consternation, and the sight of which would be unendurable. The student must be fit to endure this sight. He loses certain supports in the outer world which he owes to the very illusion surrounding him. It is truly and literally as if the attention of someone were called to a danger which had threatened him for a long time, but of which he knew nothing. Hitherto he felt no fear, but now that he knows, he is overcome by fear, though the danger has not been rendered greater by his knowing it.
The forces at work in the world are both destructive and constructive; the destiny of manifested beings is birth and death. The seer is to behold the working of these forces and the march of destiny. The veil enshrouding the spiritual eyes
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If the candidate is found fit for the foregoing experiences, he is then given what is called symbolically the draught of forgetfulness. This means that he is initiated into the secret knowledge that enables him to act without being continually disturbed by the lower memory. This is necessary for the initiate, for he must have full faith in the immediate present. He must be able to destroy the veil of memory which envelops man every moment of his life. If we judge something that happens to us today according to the experience of yesterday, we are exposed to a multitude of errors. Of course this does not mean that experience gained in life should be renounced. It should always be kept in mind as clearly as possible. But the initiate must have the ability to judge every new experience wholly according to what is inhe rent in it, and let it react upon him, unobscured
p. 96
1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
Restricting ourselves here primarily to the art of the Christian era, we can distinguish two major self-contained epochs among the many artistic styles, followed today by an incipient third. The first encompasses the era up to the renaissance, the other, now coming to a close, extends up to the present. The decisive and distinguishing characteristic of these epochs is the respective absence or presence of perspective; consequently we shall designate the first era as the "unperspectival," the second as the "perspectival," and the cur rently emerging epoch as the "aperspectival."'
As we shall see, these designations are valid not only with respect to art history, but also to aesthetics, cultural history, and the history of the psyche and the mind. The achievement of perspective indicates man's discovery and consequent coming to awa reness of space, whereas the unrealized perspective indicates that space is dormant in man and that he is not yet awakened to it. Moreover, the unperspectival world suggests a state in which man lacks self-identity: he belongs to a unit, such as a tribe or communal group, where the emphasis is not yet on the person but on the impersonal, not an the "I" but on the communal group, the qualitative mode of the collective. The illuminated manuscripts and gilt ground of early Romanesque painting depict theunperspectival world that retained the prevailing constitutive elements of Mediterranean antiquity. Not until the Gothic, the forerunner of the renaissance was there a shift in emphasis. Before that space is not yet our depth-space, rather a cavern (and vault), or simply an in-between space; in both instances it is undiffe rentiated space. This situation bespeaks for us a hardly conceivable enclosure in the world, an intimate bond between outer and inner suggestive of a correspondence only faintly discernible between soul and nature. This condition was gradually destroyed by the expansion and growing st rength of Christianity whose teaching of detachment from nature transforms this destruction into an act of liberation.
Man's lack of spatial awa reness is attended by a lack of ego-consciousness, since in order to objectify and qualify space, a self-conscious "I" is required that is able to stand opposite or confront space, as well as to depict or represent it by projecting it out of his soul or psyche. In this light, Worringer's statements regarding the lack of all space consciousness in Egyptian art are perfectly valid: "Only in the rudimentary form of prehistorical space and cave magic does space have a role in Egyptian architecture . . . . The Egyptians were neutral and indiffe rent toward space . . . . They were not even potentially aware of spatiality. Their experience was not trans-spatial but pre-spatial; . . . their culture of oasis cultivation was spaceless . . . . Their culture knew only spatial limitations and enclosures in architecture but no inwardness or interiority as such. Just as their engraved reliefs lacked shadow depth, so too was their architecture devoid of special depth. The third dimension, that is the actual dimension of life's tension and polarity, was experience not as a quality but as a mere quantity. How then was space, the moment of depth-seeking extent, to enter their awa reness as an independent quality apart from all corporality? . . . The Egyptians lacked utterly any spatial consciousness."
Despite, or indeed because of, Euclidean geometry, there is no evidence of an awa reness of qualitative and objectified space in early antiquity or in the epoch preceding the renaissance.
This has been indirectly confirmed by von Kaschnitz-Weinberg, who has documented two opposing yet complementary structural elements of ancient art as it emerged from the Megalithic (stone) age. The first, Dolmen architecture, entered the Mediterranean region primarily from Northern and Western Europe and was especially influential on Greek architecture. It is phallic in nature and survives in the column architecture in Greece, as in the Par thenon. Space is visible here simply as diastyle or the intercolumnar space, whose structure is determined by the vertical posts and the horizontal lintels and corresponds to Euclidean cubic space.
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Understood in this light, it is not surprising that around the time of Christ the world of late antiquity shows distinct signs of incipient change. The boldness and incisive nature of this change is evident when we examine the renaissance era that begins around 1250 A.D. and incorporates stylistic elements that first appear around the time of Christ. We refer, of course, to the first intimations of a perspectival conception of space found in the murals of Pompeii.
Besides their first suggestions of landscape painting, the murals are the first examples of what has come to be known as the "still life," i.e., the objectification of nature already expressed in the Roman garden designs of the same period and heralded by the pastoral scenes of late Bucolic poetry such as Virgil's Ecloges. It was principally by incorporating these novel elements of ancient culture and realizing their implications that the renaissance was able to create the three-dimensional perspectival world from a two-dimensional and unperspectival culture.
2. The Perspectival World
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The conception of man as subject is based an a conception of the world and the environment as an object. It is in the paintings of Giotto that we See first expressed, however tentatively, the objectified, external world. Early Sienese art, particularly miniature painting, reveals a yet spaceless, self-contained, and depthless world significant for its symbolic content and not for what we would today call its realism. These "pictures" of an unperspectival era are, as it were, painted at night when objects are without shadow and depth. Here darkness has swallowed space to the extent that only the immaterial, psychic component could be expressed. But in the work of Giotto, the latent space hitherto dormant in the night of collective man's unconscious is visualized; the first renderings of space begin to appear in painting signalling an incipient perspectivity. A new psychic awa reness of space, objectified or externalized from the psyche out into the world, begins a consciousness of space whose element of depth becomes visible in perspective.
This psychic inner-space breaks forth at the very moment that the Troubadours are writing the first lyric "I"-Poems, the first personal poetry that suddenly opens an abyss between man, as poet, and the world or nature (1250 A.D.). Concur rently at the University of Paris, Thomas Aquinas, following the thought of his teacher Albertus Magnus, asserts the validity of Aristotle, thereby initiating the rational displacement of the predominantly psychic-bound Platonic world.
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We shall examine the question of time in detail later in our discussion; here we wish to point out that there is a forgotten but essential interconnection between time and the psyche. The closed horizons of antiquity's celestial cave-like vault express a soul not yet awakened to spatial time-consciousness and temporal quantification. The "heaven of the heart" mentioned by Origen was likewise a self-contained inner heaven first exteriorized into the heavenly landscapes of the frescoes by the brothers Ambrogio and Pietro Lo renzetti in the church of St. Francesco in Assisi (ca. 1327-28). One should note that these early renderings of landscape and sky, which include a realistic rather than symbolic astral-mythical moon, are not merely accidental pictures with nocturnal themes. In contrast to the earlier vaulted sky, the heaven of these frescoes is no longer an enclosure; it is now rendered from the vantage point of the artist and expresses the incipient perspectivity of a confrontation with space, rather than an unperspectival immersion or inhe rence in it. Man is henceforth not just in the world but begins to possess it; no longer possessed by heaven, he becomes a conscious possessor if not of the heavens, at least of the earth. This shift is, of course, a gain as well as a loss.
There is a document extant that unforgettably mirrors this gain and loss, this sur render and beginning; in a few sentences it depicts the struggle of a man caught between two worlds. We refer to the remarkable letter of the thirty-two year old Petrarch to Francesco Dionigidi Borgo San Sepolcro in 1336 (the first letter of his Familiari, vol. 4), in which he describes his ascent of Mount Ventoux. For his time, his description is an epochal event and signifies no less than the discovery of landscape: the first dawning of an awa reness of space that resulted in a fundamental alteration of European man's attitude in and toward the world.
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"Yesterday I climbed the highest mountain of our region," he begins the letter, "motivated solely by the wish to experience its renowned height. For many years this has been in my soul and, as you well know, I have roamed this region since my childhood. The mountain, visible from far and wide, was nearly always present before me; my desire gradually increased until it became so intense that I resolved to yield to it, especially after having read Livy's Roman history the day before. There I came upon his description of the ascent of Philip, King of Macedonia, on Mount Haemus in Thessalia, from whose summit two seas, the Adriatic as well as the Pontus Euxinus, are said to be visible."
The significance of Philip's ascent cannot be compared to Petrarch's because Livy's emphasis is on the sea, while the land - not yet a landscape - is not mentioned at all. The refe rence to the sea can be understood as an indication that in antiquity man's experience of the soul was symbolized by the sea, and not by space (as we shall see further on in our discussion). The famous ascents undertaken by such Romans as Hadrian, Strabo, and Lucilius were primarily for administrative and practical, not for aesthetic purposes. As an administrative reformer, Hadrian had climbed MountAetna in order to survey the territory under his jurisdiction, while the fugitive Lucilius, the friend of Seneca, had been motivated by purely practical reasons.
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The transition mirrored in Petrarch's letter of six hundred years ago was primarily an unprecedented extension of man's image of the world. The event that Petrarch describes in almost prophetic terms as "certainly of benefit to himself and many others" inaugurates a new realistic, individualistic, and rational understanding of nature. The freer treatment of space and landscape is already manifest in the work of AmbrogioLo renzetti and Giotto; but although Giotto's landscape with its hill motifs, for example, is still a predominantly symbolic representation of Umbrian nature, his treatment represents a decided shift away from the unperspectival world. This shift is continued by his app rentices, FraAngelico and Masolino, and later by Paolo Uccello and the brothers Limbourg (in the Trs riches heuresduDuc de Berry), who elaborate perspectival painting with ever greater detail. What Giotto merely anticipated, namely the establishment of a clear contour of man, is first achieved by Masaccio. It is a characteristic also expressed in Andrea Pisano'sreliefs, particularly in his "Astronomer's relief" on the campanile in Flo rence, and notably evident in the works of Donatello. We must also remember Lo renzo Ghiberti, whose early Bronze relief, the "Sacrifice of Isaac"(1401-02),is a remarkably au thentic rendering of free, open, and unenclosed space.
To the extent that a relief is able to convey spatiality, this relief depicts a space where neither the transcendental gold illumination nor its complement, the darkness of the all-encompassing cavern, are present but rather one where man is able to breath freely.
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In the third decade of the fifteenth century, CenninoCennini wrote his celebrated Trattatadellapittura, the first theoretical treatise an art. The various investigations that had preceded his work, notably those by the friars of MountAthos, Heraclius and Theophilus, had been mere formularies. But Cennini, proceeding from a defense of Giotto's style, offers advice on techniques, suggestions for diffe rentiating man from space, and instructions an rendering mountains and space by the use of gradations and shadings of color, thereby anticipating in principle the "aerial and colorperspectivity" of Leonardo da Vinci.
About the same time, the brothers van Eyck began to bring increasing clarity and force to the perspectival technique of their painting, while a plethora of attempts at perspective by various other masters points up the need for spatializationon the one hand, and the difficulty of rendering it on the other. Numerous works by these frequently overlooked minor masters bear witness to the unprecedented inner struggle that occurred in artists of that generation of the fifteenth century during their attempts to master space. Their struggle is appa rent from the perplexed and chaotic ventures into a perspectival technique which are replete with reversed, truncated, or partial perspective and other unsuccessful experiments. Such examples by the minor masters offer a t renchant example of the decisive process manifest by an increased spatial awa reness: the artist's inner compulsion to render space which is only incompletely grasped and only gradually emerges out of his soul toward awa reness and clear objectivation and his tenacity in the face of this problem because, however dimly, he has already perceived space.
This overwhelming new discovery and encounter, this elemental irruption of the third dimension and transformation of Euclidean plane surfaces, is so disorienting that it at first brought about an inflation and inundation by space. This is clearly evident in the numerous experimental representations of perspective. We will have occasion to note a parallel confusion and disorder in the painting of the period alter1800when we consider the new dimension of emergent consciousness in our own day. But whereas the preoccupation of the Early renaissance was with the concretion of space, our epoch is concerned with the concretion of time. And our fundamental point of departure, the attempt to concretize time and thus realize and become conscious of the fourth dimension, furnishes a means whereby we may gain an all-encompassing perception and knowledge of our epoch.
The early years of the renaissance, which one might even characterize as being dramatic, are the source of further writings in the wake of Cennini's treatise. Of equally epochal importance are the three volumes of Leon Battista Alberti'sDellapittura of 1436,which, besides a theory of proportions and anatomy based anVitruvius, contain a first systematic attempt at a theory of perspectival construction (the chapter "Della prospettiva"). Earlier, Brunelleschi had achieved a perspectival construction in his dome for the cathedral of Flo rence, and Manetti justifiably calls him the "founder of perspectival drawing." But it was Alberti who first formulated an epistemological description of the new manner of depiction, stated, still in very general terms, in the words: "Accordingly, the painting is a slice through the visual pyramid corresponding to a particular space or interval with its Center and specific hues rendered an a given surface by lines and colors." What Vitruvius in his Architettura still designated as "scenografia" has become for Alberti a "prospettiva", a clearly depicted visual pyramid.
Some dozen years later, the three Commentarii of Lo renzo Ghiberti also treat of this same perspective; but despite his attempt to remain within the tradition, his treatises describe in a novel way not only perspective but also anatomy and a theory of drawing (teorica del disegno). It is significant that he corrects his principal model, Vitruvius, by inserting a chapter an "perspective" where Vitruvius would have included a chapter an the "knowledge of rules," and consequently intentionally 'elevates perspectivity to a basic axiom of his time.
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It is, of course, considered disreputable today to trace or uncover subtle linguistic relationships that exist, for example, between the terms "eight" (acht) and "night" (Nacht). Eventhough language points to such relationships and interconnections, present-day man carefully avoids them, so as to keep them from bothering his conscience. Yet despite this, the things speak for themselves regardless of our attempts to denature them, and their roots remain as long as the word remains that holds them under its spell. It will be necessary, for instance, to discuss in Part Two the significance of the pivotal and ancient word "muse," whose multifarious background of meanings vividly suggests a possible aperspectivity. Here we would only point to the illumination of the nocturnal-unperspectival world which takes place when perspective is enthroned as the eighth art. The old, seven-fold, simple planetary cavern space is suddenly flooded by the light of human consciousness and is rendered visible, as it were, from outside.
This deepening of space by illumination is achieved by perspective, the eighth art. In the Western languages, the n-less "eight," an unconscious expression of wakefulness and illumination, stands in opposition to the n-possessing and consequently negatively-stressed "night." There are numerous examples: German acht-Nacht; F rench huit-nuit; English eightnight; Italian otto-notte; Spanish ocho-noche; Latinocto-nox (noctu); Greekochto-nux (nukto).
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Let us, however, return to the question of perspectivity. We have noted that perspective is the pre-eminent expression of the emergent consciousness of fifteenth-century European man, the palpable expression of his objectivation of spatial awa reness. Besides illuminating space, perspective brings it to man's awa reness and lends man his own visibility of himself. We have also noted that in the paintings of Giotto and Masaccio this evident perception of man comes to light for the first time. Yet this very same perspective whose study and gradual acquisition were a major preoccupation for renaissance man not only extends his image of the world achieving spatialization but also narrows his vision - a consequence that still afflicts us today.
Perspectival vision and thought confine us within spatial limitations. Elsewhere we have alluded to the antithesis inhe rent in perspective: it locates and determines the observer as well as the observed. The positive result is a concretion of man and space; the negative result is the restriction of man to a limited segment where he perceives only one sector of reality.
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This example again suggests to what extent perspective is the most tangible expression of an entire epoch. The basic concern of perspective, which it achieves, is to "look through" space and thereby to perceive and grasp space rationally. The very word "perspective" conveys this intent, as Drer suggests: "Besides, perspectiva is a Latin term meaning `seeing through." It is a "seeing through" of space and thus a coming to awa reness of space. It is irrelevant here whether we accept Drers interpretation and translate perspicere (from which perspectiva derives) in his sense as "seeing through," or render it, with Panofsky, as "seeing clearly." Both interpretations point to the same thing. The emergent awa reness of distantiating space presupposes a clear vision; and this heightening of awa reness is accompanied by an increase of personal or ego-consciousness.
This brings us back to our thesis about the antithetical nature of perspective; it locates the observer as well as the observed. Panofsky too underscores this dualistic, antithetical character: "The history of perspective [may be] considered equally as a triumph of the Sense of reality with its detachment and objectivation, and as a triumph of human striving for power with its negation of distances, just as it can be Seen as a process of establishing and systematization of the external world and an expansion of the ego sphere." Let us for now postpone a discussion of his critical term "power expansion," although he has here noted an essential aspect of perspectival man, and turn back to Leonardo da Vinci on whom Drer (as Heinrich Wlfflin points out) indirectly based his understanding.
With Leonardo the perspectival means and techniques attain their perfection. His Trattatodella Pittura (a collection of his writings assembled by others after his death based on a mid-sixteenth-century compilation known as the Codex Vaticanus Urbinas 1270) is the first truly scientific and not merely theoretical description of all possible types of perspective. It is the first detailed discussion of light as the visible reality of our eyes and not, as was previously believed, as a symbol of the divine spirit. This emergent illumination dispels any remaining obscurities surrounding perspective, and reveals Leonardo as the courageous discoverer of aerial and color, as opposed to linear, perspective. Whereas linear perspective created the perspectival illusion on a plane surface by the projections of technical drafting, aerial and color perspective achieve their comprehension and rendering of space by techniques of gradation of color and hue, by the use of shadow, and by the chromatic treatment of the horizon.
Above and beyond this Leonardos establishment of the laws of perspective is significant in that it made technical drafting feasible and thereby initiated the technological age. This concluded a process which had required centuries before it entered human consciousness and effected a fundamental transformation of man's world. It is only after Leonardo that the unperspectival world finally passes out of its dream-like state, and the perspectival world definitely enters awa reness. Having attempted to show the initial thrust toward awa reness of space documented in Petrarch's letter, and to account for the process of painful withdrawal from traditional perceptions, we would here like to indicate the nature of Leonardos decisive development, for it was he who fully realized Petrarch's discovery.
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Aretino's reproach, as well as Agrippa's more pointed remark, both of which characterize the unperspectival world and its mode of expression as "deformity" and "false vision", demonstrate clearly that space had already entered consciousness and become accepted at the outset of the sixteenth century. Having achieved and secured the awa reness of space, man in the sixteenth century is overcome by a kind of intoxication with it. This perspectival intoxication with space is clearly evident, for example, in Altdorfer's interiors and in the many depictions of church interiors by the Netherlandic masters that have an almost jubilant expression. It is this jubilation that silences the voice of those who still attempted to preserve the old attitude toward the world. The silencing of objections was facilitated to a considerable degree by the fact that Petrarch's experience of landscape and space, as well as Leonardo's application and theory of perspective, had become common property and were evident in the increasing prevalence of landscape painting throughout Europe. We shall only mention a few of the great European masters who repeatedly took up the question of the perception and depiction of space in landscape: Altdorfer, van Goyen; Poussin, Claude Lorrain; Ruysdael, Magnasco; Watteau, Constable, Corot, Caspar David Friedrich; Millet, Courbert;Manet,Monet, renoir, and finally, van Gogh and Rousseau.
Space is the insistent concern of this era. In underscoring this assertion, we have relied only on the testimony of its most vivid manifestation, the discovery of perspective. We did, however, mention in passing that at the very moment when Leonardo discovers space and solves the problem of perspective, thereby creating the possibility for spatial objectification in painting, other events occur which parallel his discovery. Copernicus, for example, shatters the limits of the geocentric sky and discovers heliocentric space; Columbus goes beyond the encompassing Oceanos and discovers earth's space: Vesalius, the first major anatomist, bursts the confines of Galen's ancient doctrines of the human Body and discovers the body's space; Harvey destroys the precepts of Hippocrates' humoral medicine and reveals the circulatory system. And there is Kepler, who by demonstrating the elliptical orbit of the planets, overthrows antiquity's unperspectival world-image of circular and flat surfaces (a view still held by Copernicus) that dated back to Ptolemy's conception of the circular movement of the planets.
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In this drawing, however, space and body have become transpa rent. In this sense the drawing is neither unperspectival, i.e. a two-dimensional rendering of a surface in which the body is imprisoned, nor is it perspectival, i.e., a three-dimensional visual sector cut out of reality that surrounds the figure with breathing space. The drawing is "aperspectival" in our sense of the term; time is no longer spatialized but integrated and concretized as a fourth dimension. By this means it renders the whole visible to insight, a whole which becomes visible only because the previously missing component, time, is expressed in an intensified and valid form as the present. It is no longer the moment, or the "twinkling of the eye" - time viewed through the organ of sight as spatialized time - but the pure present, the quintessence of time that radiates from this drawing.
Every body, to the extent that it is conceived spatially, is nothing but solidified, crystallized, substantivated, and materialized time that requires the formation and solidification of space in order to unfold. Space represents a field of tension; and because of its latent energy, it is an agent of the critical or acute energy of time. Thus both energetic principles, the latency of space as well as the acuteness of time, are mutually dependent. When we formulate this thought in advance of our discussion, it is to emphasize the basic import that we accord to the present, for both space and time exist for the perceptual capacities of our body only in the present via presentiation. The presentiation or making present evident in Picassos drawing was possible only after he was able to actualize, that is, bring to consciousness, all of the temporal structures of the past latent in himself (and in each of us) during the course of his preceding thirty years of painting in a variety of earlier styles.
This process was unique and original with Picasso. By drawing on his primitive, magic inheritance (his Negroid period), his mythical heritage (his Hellenistic-archaistic period), and his classicistic, rationally-accentuated formalist phase (his Ingres period), Picasso was able to achieve the concretion of time (or as we would like to designate this new style which he and his contemporaries introduced in painting, "temporic concretion"). Such temporic concretion is not just a basic characteristic of this particular drawing, but is in fact generally valid: Only where time emerges as pure present and is no longer divided into its three phases of past, present and future, is it concrete. To the extent that Picasso from the outset reached out beyond the present, incorporating the future into the present of his work, he was able to "presentiate" or make present the past. Picasso brought to the awa reness of the present everything once relegated to the dormancy of forgetfulness, as well as everything still latent as something yet to come; and this temporal wholeness realized in spatiality and rendered visible and transpa rent in a depiction of a human form, is the unique achievement of this temporic artist.
We shall in consequence designate as "temporic" artists those painters of the two major artistic generations since 1880 (i.e., following the classicistic, romantic and naturalistic movements) who were engaged - doubtless unintentionally in concretizing time. From this point of view, all of the attempts by the various "movements" - expressionism, cubism, surrealism, and even tachism - show as their common trait this struggle to concretize and realize time. Understandably, such experimentation resulted in numerous faulty solutions; but as we noted earlier, such faults were equally unavoidable during the search for perspective and spatial realization.
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Among the portraits to which we refer are several executed since 1918 in which Picasso shows the figure simultaneously "full face" and "profile," in utter disregard of aesthetic conventions (fig.2). What at first glance appears to be distorted or dislocated, as for example the eyes, is actually a complementary overlapping of temporal factors and spatial sectors, audaciously rendered simultaneously and conspatially on the pictorial surface. In this manner, the figure achieves its concrete character of wholeness and presence, nourished not by the psychistic demand for beauty but by the concretion of time.
In the drawing of fig.1, as well as in the portraits, the unimaginable and the truly unrepresentable become evident; its structures rendered transpa rent, time becomes visible in its proper and most unique medium, the human body (or the head).
This type of temporic portrait does not represent merely a willful or fortuitous playfulness of Picasso's style, but rather reflects his specific need to express and shape the uncontainable emergence of concrete time. This is evident from his early incomplete solutions, as well as from similar portraits by Braque done independently during the same period. Two of Picasso's paintings, Harlequin with a Guitar of 1918 and 1924, as well as his two major works of 1925,
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Instead of presenting a temporal moment, the picture renders an enduring, indeed eternal present. The shadows that appear among the gradations of hue were not the result of the specific spatial-temporal position of the sun, as in the landscapes of Watteau or Poussin, where one can ascertain the specific park, the particular year, month, indeed the specific day, the very hour, and, from the outline of the shadows, the very second, the exact temporal moment in space.
In Picasso's roof the dislocation and layered arrangement of the shadows mirror the natural movement of time; he has rendered the landscape by audaciously incorporating all of the changes of illumination (visible in the shifts of shadow and shading), the temporal motions brought on by the altered positions of the sun during the time when he was painting. This capturing of the present as it affects nature could not have been bolder, precisely because of its simplicity. What is here visible in this unique painting is not the spatializing temporal moment. It is the present emerging in its transpa rent entirety - the present corresponding in its indispensable accidentals to our notion of eternity; for neither can be conceptualized or imagined. In Picasso's paintings both the present and the eternity are rendered transpa rent and thus ever-present, evident, and concrete.
Aperspectivity, through which it is possible to grasp and express the new emerging consciousness structure, cannot be perceived in all its consequences be they positive or negative unless certain still valid concepts, attitudes, and forms of thought are more closely scrutinized and clarified. Otherwise we commit the error of expressing the "new" with old and inadequate means of statement. We will, for example, have to furnish evidence that the concretion of time is not only occurring in the previously cited examples from painting, but in the natural sciences and in literature, poetry, music, sculpture, and various other areas. And this we can do only after we have worked out the new forms and modes necessary for an understanding of aperspectivity.
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Let us again look at our example of the fusion of time and the psyche: as long as time is dredged up from oblivion and thrust into visibility in bits and pieces, our preoccupation with the past aspect of time will bring on further chaos and disintegration. But the moment we are successful, like Picasso, in wresting past "time" - that is latently present time - from oblivion via its appropriate structure and means of expression, and render it visibly anew and thus present, then the importance we accord to the earlier times and their diverse structures of consciousness will become appa rent in the development of aperspectivity.
If we fail to recognize this still potent past legacy, it may at any time become critical and threaten to overwhelm us; and this would prevent us from perceiving the new with the requisite vigilance and detachment.
1.02 - The Two Negations 1 - The Materialist Denial, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
10:But, first, it is well that we should recognise the enormous, the indispensable utility of the very brief period of rationalistic Materialism through which humanity has been passing. For that vast field of evidence and experience which now begins to reopen its gates to us, can only be safely entered when the intellect has been severely trained to a clear austerity; seized on by unripe minds, it lends itself to the most perilous distortions and misleading imaginations and actually in the past encrusted a real nucleus of truth with such an accretion of perverting superstitions and irrationalising dogmas that all advance in true knowledge was rendered impossible. It became necessary for a time to make a clean sweep at once of the truth and its disguise in order that the road might be clear for a new departure and a surer advance. The rationalistic tendency of Materialism has done mankind this great service.
11:For the faculties that transcend the senses, by the very fact of their being immeshed in Matter, missioned to work in a physical body, put in harness to draw one car along with the emotional desires and nervous impulses, are exposed to a mixed functioning in which they are in danger of illuminating confusion rather than clarifying truth. Especially is this mixed functioning dangerous when men with unchastened minds and unpurified sensibilities attempt to rise into the higher domains of spiritual experience. In what regions of unsubstantial cloud and semibrilliant fog or a murk visited by flashes which blind more than they enlighten, do they not lose themselves by that rash and premature adventure! An adventure necessary indeed in the way in which Nature chooses to effect her advance, - for she amuses herself as she works, - but still, for the Reason, rash and premature.
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13:In emerging, therefore, out of the materialistic period of human Knowledge we must be careful that we do not rashly condemn what we are leaving or throw away even one tittle of its gains, before we can summon perceptions and powers that are well grasped and secure, to occupy their place. Rather we shall observe with respect and wonder the work that Atheism has done for the Divine and admire the services that Agnosticism has rendered in preparing the illimitable increase of knowledge. In our world error is continually the handmaid and pathfinder of Truth; for error is really a half-truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal. Well, if it could always be, as it has been in the great period we are leaving, the faithful handmaid, severe, conscientious, clean-handed, luminous within its limits, a half-truth and not a reckless and presumptuous aberration.
14:A certain kind of Agnosticism is the final truth of all knowledge. For when we come to the end of whatever path, the universe appears as only a symbol or an appearance of an unknowable Reality which translates itself here into diffe rent systems of values, physical values, vital and sensational values, intellectual, ideal and spiritual values. The more That becomes real to us, the more it is seen to be always beyond defining thought and beyond formulating expression. "Mind attains not there, nor speech."3 And yet as it is possible to exaggerate, with the Illusionists, the unreality of the appearance, so it is possible to exaggerate the unknowableness of the Unknowable. When we speak of It as unknowable, we mean, really, that It escapes the grasp of our thought and speech, instruments which proceed always by the sense of diffe rence and express by the way of definition; but if not knowable by thought, It is attainable by a supreme effort of consciousness. There is even a kind of Knowledge which is one with Identity and by which, in a sense, It can be known. Certainly, that Knowledge cannot be reproduced successfully in the terms of thought and speech, but when we have attained to it, the result is a revaluation of That in the symbols of our cosmic consciousness, not only in one but in all the ranges of symbols, which results in a revolution of our internal being and, through the internal, of our external life. Moreover, there is also a kind of Knowledge through which That does reveal itself by all these names and forms of phenomenal existence which to the ordinary intelligence only conceal It. It is this higher but not highest process of Knowledge to which we can attain by passing the limits of the materialistic formula and scrutinising Life, Mind and Supermind in the phenomena that are characteristic of them and not merely in those subordinate movements by which they link themselves to Matter.
1.02 - The Ultimate Path is Without Difficulty, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
Chi and ching, rendered in this instance as 'mentality and
perspective,' are very common technical terms, to be met with
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which cannot be rendered conveniently in a single English ex
pression.
1.02 - THE WITHIN OF THINGS, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
a rent. This is enough to ensure that, in one degree or another,
this ' interior ' should obtrude itself as existing everywhere in
1.02 - What is Psycho therapy?, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
thus render him innocuous. An anchylosed knee, an amputated foot, a long-
drawn-out phthisis, are in every respect preferable to a severe neurosis.
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already done much to complicate the method, it is rendered even more
exacting, rather than simplified, by further individualization, which
1.02 - Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of king Tching-thang to this effect: renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again. I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homers requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly-acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the airto a higher life than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light. That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again what noble life it can make. All memorable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, All intelligences awake with the morning. Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the child ren of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.
Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed something.
1.031 - Intense Aspiration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
In the external change that we bring about, which is the first step in vairagya, as people generally understand it, we leave the homestead and go to Badrinath or Uttarkashi, or somewhere. This initial step that we regard as vairagya or renunciation is to be converted into an internal discipline and change of attitude, for which proper guidance is necessary. Everything is a system of thinking, a change in the attitude of consciousness, and even the first step that we take is only towards that end. Unless there is a corresponding transformation inside, external movements have no meaning. If proper care is taken, an external discipline has some effect upon the internal character. But proper care has to be taken; we have to be very vigilant, and we cannot be vigilant if we give a long rope to our old ways of thinking. We can change anything, but our ways of thinking cannot change, because that is a part of us part of our nature.
What we should do is, together with our effort at change of physical atmosphere, also try to bring about a gradual change in our internal atmosphere by resorting to certain spiritual disciplines, such as the utilisation of the time on hand for certain definite chosen purposes. When we live in a particular place we have left our homes and have come to Uttarkashi, for instance how do we use our time? Do we go about from place to place, chatting? Then we should go back to our home and stay there. Why do we come to Uttarkashi? We have to utilise the time for a purpose which is more intimate to the object on hand than the way in which we lived earlier. Generally, people take to mantra purascharana a disciplined type of chanting of the mantra that has been given to them by their Guru and sacred study of scriptures, such as the Srimad Bhagavata or the Ramayana, or any other holy text which is conducive to pinpointing the mind on the liberation of the soul, which is the ultimate objective.
10.33 - On Discipline, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But obedience to a person is in the last analysis a symbolsymbol of obedience to a principle. The person signifies and embodies a principle, a law to which we render our obedience. In normal life it is these principles or laws that demand our obedience. These laws or rules are meant for the welfare of collective living and therefore individuals are expected to restrain or forego their personal impulses, their so-called liberties in order to live together in harmony. Discipline is meant exactly to control one's personal idiosyncrasies, place them under the yoke of the common collective law. All laws or rules that make for a harmonious collective living, that is, social or national welfare, are limbs of discipline. By submitting himself to such a process of self-abnegation the individual gains in self-control and self-mastery. But there are rules and rules, laws and laws. For that depends on the ideal or the purpose set before oneself. If the purpose is narrow, limited, superficial, the rules are necessarily likewise, and although effective in a particular field, they have a restricting, even deadening effect on the consciousness of the individual. If discipline means obedience, the obedience must be to a larger and higher law, and the perfect discipline will come only from obedience to the highest law.
The heart of discipline then is the effort to surmount oneself. Instead of a lower self following the law of an inferior consciousness one is to rise to a higher level of consciousness and a greater law of being. Discipline thus is only another term for tapasy, replacing the lower law gradually by a higher and higher law.
10.34 - Effort and Grace, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The whole problem is there: how to make the God-light stay here, stay here for ever. The higher light does come down, but fitfully, one is never certain of it. For it is as it were, "a scout in a reconnaissance from the sun." Here then is this special utility of personal effort, the service it can render,to do the dredging, salvaging work. Personal effort with the ego-sense has been put there to find out and note the barriers and pitfalls, the faults and fissures in the human system, to overcome, remedy and correct them as far as possible. The human receptacle is normally impure and obscure, resistant and recalcitrant: the personal will and endeavour has to be called in to labour, to level and smoo then the field, brea the into it air and light. That is the work of the individual will, to make of the dhr a strong base, strong and capacious, to receive and hold the descent. The temple is to be made clean and pure and inviting so that when the deity arrives he will find a happy home for a permanent dwelling.
It must be noted however, in the last account the personal effort for self-purification and self-preparation is not altogether personal and mere effort; it is, as I have said, always supported and inspired by the secret presence and pressure of the higher Influence.
1.03 - A Parable, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
And renounced household life
Until he obtained the path
--
He will renounce household life
And attain the path of the Buddha.
1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
the renovelization of the environment: sufficient challenge posed to the integrity of a previous
personality disrupts its structure, freeing phenomena previously adapted to from the grasp of familiar
--
derive sufficient reward, protection from punishment, provision of hope, and alleviation of threat to render
the demands of group maintenance bearable. Furthermore, the group solution must appear ideal in
--
capacity for subservience to traditional order has been rendered subordinate to his capacity to function as
the process that mediates between order and chaos. Each properly-socialized individaul therefore comes
1.03 - A Sapphire Tale, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Suddenly a bird's song rings out clear and joyful; all uneasiness vanishes. Liane knows that the forest is friendly - if there are beings in the trees, they cannot wish her harm. She is seized by an emotion of great sweetness, all appears beautiful and good to her, and tears come to her eyes. Never has her hope been so ardent at the thought of the beloved stranger; it seems to her that the trees quivering in the breeze, the moss rustling beneath her feet, the bird renewing its melody - all speak to her of the One whom she awaits. At the idea that perhaps she is going to meet him she stops short, trembling, pressing her hands against her beating heart, her eyes closed to savour to the full the exquisite emotion; and now the sensation grows more and more intense until it is so precise that Liane opens her eyes, sure of a presence. Oh, wonder of wonders! He is there, he, he in truth as she has seen him in her dream ... more handsome than men usually are. - It was Meotha.
With a look they have recognised each other; with a look they have told each other of the long waiting and the supreme joy of rediscovery; for they have known each other in a distant past, now they are sure of it.
1.03 - BOOK THE THIRD, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Take the cool morning to renew the chace."
They all consent, and in a chearful train
--
Then rends his garment off, and beats his breast:
His naked bosom redden'd with the blow,
--
Then might the Thebans perish with renown:
But now a beardless victor sacks the town;
1.03 - Invocation of Tara, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
The practitioner also renews the will to attain
awakening for the benefit all beings suffering in
--
suffering is the constant renewal of all our desires and
prays for the absence of needs to be bom within
1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
At present what I am doing is the Supramental Yoga. Man, as constituted at present, is a very imperfect manifestation of the Divine he is very crude. It is so because man is living in an envelope of ignorance in Mind, Life and Body so that he is not conscious of the Reality that is beyond Mind. The Supramental Power is above the Mind. What I am trying to do at present is to call down the Higher Power to govern Mind, Life and Body. The object of this Yoga is not the service of humanity, or the ordinary perfection of man but the evolution of the Supramental Power in the cyclic evolution of the Spirit in the material universe. What one has to do is to rend the veil the thick veil that divides the Mind from the Supermind. That work a man cannot do by himself.
Athavale: Then where is the place for the use of will?
--
Sri Aurobindo: You need not do it now; it is a thing guaranteed. But you cannot make even that a condition for entering this Yoga. It is a high adventure, as I told you. It is not like the other yogic systems where you get some touch of the Higher Reality and leave the rest untransformed. My Yoga makes demands that have to be met, it is a radical transition from the present state of human consciousness. We accept life but that does not mean that in this Yoga there is no renunciation. It only means we do not annul any of the faculties of the human being. What we put forth is not something mental, vital or physical but that which comes from the Supramental.
Athavale: I would do as you suggest; but at present I do not know any working higher than the Mind. What is to be done till then?
1.03 - On exile or pilgrimage, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Exile means that we leave forever everything in our own country that prevents us from reaching the goal of the religious life. Exile means modest manners, wisdom which remains unknown, prudence not recognized as such by most, a hidden life, an invisible intention, unseen meditation, desire for humiliation, longing for hardship, constant determination to love God, abundance of charity, renunciation of vainglory, depth of silence.
Those who have come to love the Lord are at first unceasingly and greatly disturbed by this thought, as if burning with divine fire. I speak of separation from their own, undertaken by the lovers of perfection so that they may live a life of hardship and simplicity. But great and praiseworthy as this is, yet it requires great discretion; for not every kind of exile, carried to extremes, is good.
--
after his renunciation will certainly either fall into their traps or will defile his heart by thinking about them; or if he is not defiled himself yet by condemning those who are defiled, he too will himself be defiled.
Concerning dreams that beginners have
1.03 - Preparing for the Miraculous, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
ce quon doit faire, ses rendez-vous, ses dpenses, etc. which
means small notebook in which one enters day by day
1.03 - Questions and Answers, #Book of Certitude, #unset, #Zen
ANSWER: Should affection be renewed between the couple during their year of patience, the marriage tie is valid, and what is commanded in the Book of God must be observed; but once the year of patience hath been completed and that which is decreed by God taketh place, a further period of waiting is not required. Sexual intercourse between husb and and wife is forbidden during their year of patience, and whoso committeth this act must seek God's forgiveness, and, as a punishment, render to the House of Justice a fine of nineteen mithqals of gold.
12. QUESTION: Should antipathy develop between a couple after the Marriage Verses have been read and the dowry paid, may divorce take place without observance of the year of patience?
--
ANSWER: The starting-point for computation is the day the couple part, and if, therefore, they have separated a year before the husband's departure, and if the fragrance of affection hath not been renewed between the couple, divorce may take place. Otherwise the year must be counted from the day of his departure, and the conditions set forth in the Kitab-i-Aqdas observed.
20. QUESTION: Concerning the age of maturity with respect to religious duties.
--
40. QUESTION: If during the year of patience the fragrance of affection be renewed, only to be succeeded by antipathy, and the couple waver between affection and aversion throughout the year, and the year endeth in antipathy, can divorce take place or not?
ANSWER: In each case at any time antipathy occurreth, the year of patience beginneth on that day, and the year must run its full course.
--
62. QUESTION: If, for another purpose, one hath performed ablutions, and the time of obligatory prayer arriveth, are these ablutions sufficient or must they be renewed?
ANSWER: These same ablutions are sufficient, and there is no need for them to be renewed.
63. QUESTION: In the Kitab-i-Aqdas obligatory prayer hath been enjoined, consisting of nine rak'ahs, to be performed at noon, in the morning and the evening, but the Tablet of Obligatory Prayers+F1 appeareth to differ from this.
--
ANSWER: Ablutions are connected with the Obligatory Prayer for which they are performed, and must be renewed for each prayer.
67. QUESTION: Concerning the long Obligatory Prayer, it is required to stand up and "turn unto God". This seemeth to indicate that it is not necessary to face the Qiblih; is this so or not?
--
ANSWER: It is unnecessary to renew the ablutions.
78. QUESTION: Concerning clothes and jewellery which a husb and may have purchased for his wife: are these to be distributed, after his death, amongst his heirs, or are they specially for the wife?
--
ANSWER: The renewal of ablutions is unnecessary.
87. QUESTION: Concerning the dowry for village-dwellers which is to be of silver: is it the bride or bridegroom who is intended or both of them? And what is to be done if one is a city-dweller and the other a village-dweller?
--
ANSWER: If consultation among the first group of people assembled endeth in disagreement, new people should be added, after which persons to the number of the Greatest Name, or fewer or more, shall be chosen by lot. Whereupon the consultation shall be renewed, and the outcome, whatever it is, shall be obeyed. If, however, there is still disagreement, the same procedure should be repeated once more, and the decision of the majority shall prevail. He, verily, guideth whomsoever He pleaseth to the right way.
100. QUESTION: Concerning inheritance.
1.03 - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of The Gita, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What then are the lines of Karmayoga laid down by the Gita? Its key principle, its spiritual method, can be summed up as the union of two largest and highest states or powers of consciousness, equality and oneness. The kernel of its method is an unreserved acceptance of the Divine in our life as in our inner self and spirit. An inner renunciation of personal desire leads to equality, accomplishes our total sur render to the Divine, supports a delivery from dividing ego which brings us oneness.
But this must be a oneness in dynamic force and not only in static peace or inactive beatitude. The Gita promises us freedom for the spirit even in the midst of works and the full energies of Nature, if we accept subjection of our whole being to that which is higher than the separating and limiting ego. It proposes an integral dynamic activity founded on a still passivity; a largest possible action irrevocably based on an immobile calm is its secret, - free expression out of a supreme inward silence.
--
Equality, renunciation of all desire for the fruit of our works, action done as a sacrifice to the supreme Lord of our nature and of all nature, - these are the three first Godward approaches in the Gita's way of Karmayoga.
1.03 - Supernatural Aid, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
Maymunah, daughter of Al-Dimiryat, a renowned king of the
J i n n . And as Kamar al-Zaman continued sleeping till the first
1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
speak, so you may on homoeopathic principles render people blind,
deaf and dumb by the use of dead men's bones or anything else that
--
in a candlestick, it rendered motionless all persons to whom it was
presented; they could not stir a finger any more than if they were
--
outlook on the world. This is no small service rendered to humanity.
And when we remember further that in another direction magic has
1.03 - Tara, Liberator from the Eight Dangers, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
imprints, rendering them impotent. Thus, anger scorches not only the victim of our destructive deedsano ther living being but also the perpetratorourselves.
Patience, the ability to remain internally calm when confronting harm
1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The art, music and literature of the world, always a sure index of the vital tendencies of the age, have also undergone a profound revolution in the direction of an ever-deepening sub jectivism. The great objective art and literature of the past no longer commands the mind of the new age. The first tendency was, as in thought so in literature, an increasing psychological vitalism which sought to represent penetratingly the most subtle psychological impulses and tendencies of man as they started to the surface in his emotional, aesthetic and vitalistic cravings and activities. Composed with great skill and subtlety but without any real insight into the law of mans being, these creations seldom got behind the reverse side of our surface emotions, sensations and actions which they minutely analysed in their details but without any wide or profound light of knowledge; they were perhaps more immediately interesting but ordinarily inferior as art to the old literature which at least seized firmly and with a large and powerful mastery on its province. Often they described the malady of Life rather than its health and power, or the riot and revolt of its cravings, vehement and therefore impotent and unsatisfied, rather than its dynamis of self-expression and self-possession. But to this movement which reached its highest creative power in Russia, there succeeded a turn towards a more truly psychological art, music and literature, mental, intuitional, psychic rather than vitalistic, departing in fact from a superficial vitalism as much as its predecessors departed from the objective mind of the past. This new movement aimed like the new philo sophic Intuitionalism at a real rending of the veil, the seizure by the human mind of that which does not overtly express itself, the touch and penetration into the hidden soul of things. Much of it was still infirm, unsubstantial in its grasp on what it pursued, rudimentary in its forms, but it initiated a decisive departure of the human mind from its old moorings and pointed the direction in which it is being piloted on a momentous voyage of discovery, the discovery of a new world within which must eventually bring about the creation of a new world without in life and society. Art and literature seem definitely to have taken a turn towards a subjective search into what may be called the hidden inside of things and away from the rational and objective canon or motive.
Already in the practical dealing with life there are advanced progressive tendencies which take their inspiration from this profounder subjectivism. Nothing indeed has yet been firmly accomplished, all is as yet tentative initiation and the first feeling out towards a material shape for this new spirit. The dominant activities of the world, the great recent events such as the enormous clash of nations in Europe and the stirrings and changes within the nations which preceded and followed it, were rather the result of a confused half struggle half effort at accommodation between the old intellectual and materialistic and the new still superficial subjective and vitalistic impulses in the West. The latter unenlightened by a true inner growth of the soul were necessarily impelled to seize upon the former and utilise them for their unbridled demand upon life; the world was moving towards a monstrously perfect organisation of the Will-to-live and the Will-to-power and it was this that threw itself out in the clash of War and has now found or is finding new forms of life for itself which show better its governing idea and motive. The Asuric or even Rakshasic character of the recent world-collision was due to this formidable combination of a falsely enlightened vitalistic motive-power with a great force of servile intelligence and reasoning contrivance subjected to it as instrument and the genius of an accomplished materialistic Science as its Djinn, its giant worker of huge, gross and soulless miracles. The War was the bursting of the explosive force so created and, even though it strewed the world with ruins, its after results may well have prepared the collapse, as they have certainly produced a disintegrating chaos or at least poignant disorder, of the monstrous combination which produced it, and by that salutary ruin are emptying the field of human life of the principal obstacles to a truer development towards a higher goal.
1.03 - The Desert, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
5:3). In a number of Christian communities, members talce a vow of poverty. In I934, Jung wrote: "Just as in Christianity the vow of worldly poverty turned the mind away from the riches of this earth, so spiritual poverty seeks to renounce the false riches of the spirit in order to withdraw not only from the sorry remnants-which today call themselves the protestant 'churches' of a great past, but also from all the allurements of exotic aromas; in order, finally; to turn back to itself, where, in the cold light of consciousness, the blank bar renness of the world reaches to the very stars" ("On the archetypes of the collective unconscious," CW 9, I, 29).
80. The Draft continues: "This, too, is an image of the ancients, that they lived in things symbolically: they renounced wealth in order to have a share of the voluntary poverty of their souls. Therefore I had to grant my soul my most extreme poverty and need. And the scorn of my cleverness rose up against this" (P.47)
The Red Book
1.03 - The Divine and Man, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The individual existence is a canticle perpetually renewed, that the universe offers to the inconceivable splendour of the Divine.
29 November 1954
1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
planation, since it renders discussion unnecessary; but an inade-
quate one, since it purports to settle, by invoking the subjective side
--
ality which we thought we must renounce.
Nor is this all.
--
without rendering it "incohe rent," or without having to readjust
the distribution and history of the whole around it. To accommo-
1.03 - The Human Disciple, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He who guides from behind the veil all our thought and action and heart's seeking even as He directs from behind the veil of visible and sensible forms and forces and tendencies the great universal action of the world which He has manifested in His own being. All the strife of our upward endeavour and seeking finds its culmination and ceases in a satisfied fulfilment when we can rend the veil and get behind our appa rent self to this real
Self, can realise our whole being in this true Lord of our being, can give up our personality to and into this one real Person, merge our ever-dispersed and ever-converging mental activities into His plenary light, offer up our errant and struggling will and energies into His vast, luminous and undivided Will, at once renounce and satisfy all our dissipated outward-moving desires and emotions in the plenitude of His self-existent Bliss.
This is the world-Teacher of whose eternal knowledge all other highest teaching is but the various reflection and partial word, this the Voice to which the hearing of our soul has to awaken.
--
The rest of Arjuna's questions and utterances proceed from the same temperament and character. When he is told that once the soul-state is assured there need be no appa rent change in the action, he must act always by the law of his nature, even if the act itself seem faulty and deficient compared with that of another law than his own, he is troubled. The nature! but what of this sense of sin in the action with which he is preoccupied? is it not this very nature which drives men as if by force and even against their better will into sin and guilt? His practical intelligence is baffled by Krishna's assertion that it was he who in ancient times revealed to Vivasvan this Yoga, since lost, which he is now again revealing to Arjuna, and by his demand for an explanation he provokes the famous and oft-quoted statement of Avatarhood and its mundane purpose. He is again perplexed by the words in which Krishna continues to reconcile action and renunciation of action and asks once again for a decisive statement of that which is the best and highest, not this "mingled" word. When he realises fully the nature of the Yoga which he is bidden to embrace, his pragmatic nature accustomed to act from mental will and prefe rence and desire is appalled by its difficulty and he asks what is the end of the soul which attempts and fails, whether it does not lose both this life of human activity and thought and emotion which it has left behind and the Brahmic consciousness to which it aspires and falling from both perish like a dissolving cloud?
When his doubts and perplexities are resolved and he knows that it is the Divine which must be his law, he aims again and always at such clear and decisive knowledge as will guide him practically to this source and this rule of his future action. How
--
is the Divine to be distinguished among the various states of being which constitute our ordinary experience? What are the great manifestations of its self-energy in the world in which he can recognise and realise it by meditation? May he not see even now the divine cosmic Form of That which is actually speaking to him through the veil of the human mind and body? And his last questions demand a clear distinction between renunciation of works and this subtler renunciation he is asked to prefer; the actual diffe rence between Purusha and Prakriti, the Field and the Knower of the Field, so important for the practice of desireless action under the drive of the divine Will; and finally a clear statement of the practical operations and results of the three modes of Prakriti which he is bidden to surmount.
To such a disciple the Teacher of the Gita gives his divine teaching. He seizes him at a moment of his psychological development by egoistic action when all the mental, moral, emotional values of the ordinary egoistic and social life of man have collapsed in a sudden bankruptcy, and he has to lift him up out of this lower life into a higher consciousness, out of ignorant attachment to action into that which transcends, yet originates and orders action, out of ego into Self, out of life in mind, vitality and body into that higher nature beyond mind which is the status of the Divine. He has at the same time to give him that for which he asks and for which he is inspired to seek by the guidance within him, a new Law of life and action high above the insufficient rule of the ordinary human existence with its endless conflicts and oppositions, perplexities and illusory certainties, a higher Law by which the soul shall be free from this bondage of works and yet powerful to act and conquer in the vast liberty of its divine being. For the action must be performed, the world must fulfil its cycles and the soul of the human being must not turn back in ignorance from the work it is here to do. The whole course of the teaching of the Gita is determined and directed, even in its widest wheelings, towards the fulfilment of these three objects.
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
To become conscious of Itself, or to render itself com- prehensible to itself, Ain becomes rp pH Ain Soph
(Infinity), and still further ms rpo ps Ain Soph Aour,
--
At the outset of the comparative study that is here being presented, the basic implication of this method of classifica- tion of the correspondences selected from comparative religions and philosophy should be thoroughly grasped. In this instance, all of the four things mentioned above possess a certain quality or set of attri butes of a similar nature, which renders them in harmony with the filing jacket to which they have been attri buted. There is an underlying connection which associates them with the number 5.
This idea must be kept in mind throughout if any benefit is to be derived from the Qabalah, and all confusion banished at the beginning.
1.03 - The Syzygy - Anima and Animus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
monthly rent, that could outweigh the mystic awe of the hieros
gamos? Or the star-crowned woman whom the dragon pursues,
--
fore, is either directly verifiable or at least rendered probable
by the facts. At the same time, I am fully aware that we are dis-
1.03 - The Two Negations 2 - The Refusal of the Ascetic, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
10:And yet the question cannot be solved by logic arguing on the data of our ordinary physical existence; for in those data there is always a hiatus of experience which renders all argument inconclusive. We have, normally, neither any definitive experience of a cosmic mind or supermind not bound up with the life of the individual body, nor, on the other hand, any firm limit of experience which would justify us in supposing that our subjective self really depends upon the physical frame and can neither survive it nor enlarge itself beyond the individual body. Only by an extension of the field of our consciousness or an unhoped-for increase in our instruments of knowledge can the ancient quarrel be decided.
11:The extension of our consciousness, to be satisfying, must necessarily be an inner enlargement from the individual into the cosmic existence. For the Witness, if he exists, is not the individual embodied mind born in the world, but that cosmic Consciousness embracing the universe and appearing as an immanent Intelligence in all its works to which either world subsists eternally and really as Its own active existence or else from which it is born and into which it disappears by an act of knowledge or by an act of conscious power. Not organised mind, but that which, calm and eternal, broods equally in the living earth and the living human body and to which mind and senses are dispensable instruments, is the Witness of cosmic existence and its Lord.
--
17:It is this revolt of Spirit against Matter that for two thousand years, since Buddhism disturbed the balance of the old Aryan world, has dominated increasingly the Indian mind. Not that the sense of the cosmic illusion is the whole of Indian thought; there are other philosophical statements, other religious aspirations. Nor has some attempt at an adjustment between the two terms been wanting even from the most extreme philosophies. But all have lived in the shadow of the great Refusal and the final end of life for all is the garb of the ascetic. The general conception of existence has been permeated with the Buddhistic theory of the chain of Karma and with the consequent antinomy of bondage and liberation, bondage by birth, liberation by cessation from birth. Therefore all voices are joined in one great consensus that not in this world of the dualities can there be our kingdom of heaven, but beyond, whether in the joys of the eternal Vrindavan4 or the high beatitude of Brahmaloka,5 beyond all manifestations in some ineffable Nirvana6 or where all separate experience is lost in the featureless unity of the indefinable Existence. And through many centuries a great army of shining witnesses, saints and teachers, names sacred to Indian memory and dominant in Indian imagination, have borne always the same witness and swelled always the same lofty and distant appeal, - renunciation the sole path of knowledge, acceptation of physical life the act of the ignorant, cessation from birth the right use of human birth, the call of the Spirit, the recoil from Matter.
18:For an age out of sympathy with the ascetic spirit - and throughout all the rest of the world the hour of the Anchorite may seem to have passed or to be passing - it is easy to attribute this great t rend to the failing of vital energy in an ancient race tired out by its burden, its once vast share in the common advance, exhausted by its many-sided contri bution to the sum of human effort and human knowledge. But we have seen that it corresponds to a truth of existence, a state of conscious realisation which stands at the very summit of our possibility. In practice also the ascetic spirit is an indispensable element in human perfection and even its separate affirmation cannot be avoided so long as the race has not at the other end liberated its intellect and its vital habits from subjection to an always insistent animalism.
19:We seek indeed a larger and completer affirmation. We perceive that in the Indian ascetic ideal the great Vedantic formula, "One without a second", has not been read sufficiently in the light of that other formula equally imperative, "All this is the Brahman". The passionate aspiration of man upward to the Divine has not been sufficiently related to the descending movement of the Divine leaning downward to embrace eternally Its manifestation. Its meaning in Matter has not been so well understood as Its truth in the Spirit. The Reality which the Sannyasin seeks has been grasped in its full height, but not, as by the ancient Vedantins, in its full extent and comprehensiveness. But in our completer affirmation we must not minimise the part of the pure spiritual impulse. As we have seen how greatly Materialism has served the ends of the Divine, so we must acknowledge the still greater service rendered by Asceticism to Life. We shall preserve the truths of material Science and its real utilities in the final harmony, even if many or even if all of its existing forms have to be broken or left aside. An even greater scruple of right preservation must guide us in our dealing with the legacy, however actually diminished or depreciated, of the Aryan past.
1.03 - The Uncreated, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
They are far from being the affirmations for which we take them; they are only negations which mark the most distant limits of our comprehension, the boundaries of our mental horizon. They are the halting-place of our search, not its point of arrival; they are the subterfuge by which we suppress the problem which we have failed to resolve. Far from elucidating the mystery, they render it yet more profound if we try to give to the words we use a positive significance. For if the notion of an Absolute, an Infinite, an Eternal beyond Time were not in itself negative, it would still be a negation when set against the relativities of Time and Space.
But it is not in a negation that we shall discover the positive relation of cause, nor is it in the antinomy of opposites that we can find the secret of the Beginning.
1.03 - To Layman Ishii, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
forked lightning of the Dragon Gate.g They enter realization at the utterance of a single word. They attain cessation at the sound of a single shout. If those who call themselves teachers all behave like dead otters2 and those who call themselves students all behave like dumb sheep,3 the halls of Zen throughout the land, training grounds where Buddhas are singled out, will be rendered utterly useless
-they'll be no better than coffins for the dead-and the assertions of the perverse silent-illumination
--
Hakuin's building and publishing projects. Most of the half-dozen or so other letters that Hakuin wrote Ishii are expressions of gratitude for donations and gifts received, or services rendered. In one letter, Hakuin thanks Ishii for a large supply of cut tobacco that Ishii had sent to fuel Hakuin's wellknown pipe habit. A long verse Hakuin sent Ishii, one of the most remarkable pieces in the Poison
Blossoms collection, is an expression of thanks for two large boulders Ishii had donated to the Shinji gardens. The verse is filled with vivid images describing the progress of the unwieldy objects as they are rafted down from the foothills of Mount Fuji, landed on the coast near Hara village, then manhandled overl and to Shin-ji, making us feel the excitement and impatience Hakuin experienced as he awaited their arrival (a translation is found in The Religious Art of Zen Master Hakuin, 129-
1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "But you don't belong to that class. Mere pundits are like diseased fruit that becomes hard and will not ripen at all. Such fruit has neither the freshness of green fruit nor the flavour of ripe. Vultures soar very high in the sky, but their eyes are fixed on rotten carrion on the ground. The book-learned are reputed to be wise, but they are attached to 'woman and gold'. Like the vultures, they are in search of carrion. They are attached to the world of ignorance. Compassion, love of God, and renunciation are the glories of true knowledge."
Vidyasagar listened to these words in silence. The others, too, gazed at the Master and were attentive to every word he said.
--
Living beings, the universe, mind, intelligence, love, renunciation, knowledge - all these are the manifestations of His power. (With a laugh) If an aristocrat has neither house nor property, or if he has been forced to sell them, one doesn't call him an aristocrat any more. (All laugh.) God is endowed with the six supernatural powers. If He were not who would obey Him? (All laugh.)
Diffe rent manifestations of God's power
--
"What is the significance of the Gita? It is what you find by repeating the word ten times. It is then reversed into 'tagi', which means a person who has renounced everything for God. And the lesson of. the Gita is: 'O man, renounce everything and seek God alone.' Whether a man is a monk or a householder, he has to shake off all attachment from his mind.
"Chaitanyadeva set out on a pilgrimage to southern India. One day he saw a man reading the Gita. Another man, seated at a distance, was listening and weeping. His eyes were swimming in tears. Chaitanyadeva asked him, 'Do you understand all this?'
--
(To Vidyasagar) "The activities that you are engaged in are good. It is very good if you can perform them in a selfless spirit, renouncing egotism, giving up the idea that you are the doer. Through such action one develops love and devotion to God, and ultimately realizes Him.
"The more you come to love God, the less you will be inclined to perform action. When the daughter-in-law is with child, her mother-in-law gives her less work to do. As time goes by she is given less and less work. When the time of delivery nears, she is not allowed to do any work at all, lest it should hurt the child or cause difficulty at the time of birth.
1.04 - ADVICE TO HOUSEHOLDERS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "With the realization of Satchidananda one goes into samdhi. Then duties drop away. Suppose I have been talking about the ostad and he arrives. What need is there of talking about him then? How long does the bee buzz around? So long as it isn't sitting on a flower. But it will not do for the sadhaka to renounce duties. He should perform his duties, such as worship, japa, meditation, prayer, and pilgrimage.
"If you see someone engaged in reasoning even after he has realized God, you may liken him to a bee, which also buzzes a little even while sipping honey from a flower."
--
"Sometimes I used to assume a rajasic mood in order to practise renunciation. Once I had the desire to put on a gold-embroidered robe, wear a ring on my finger, and smoke a hubble-bubble with a long pipe. Mathur Babu procured all these things for me. I wore the gold-embroidered robe and said to myself after a while, 'Mind! This is what is called a gold-embroidered robe.' Then I took it off and threw it away. I couldn't stand the robe any more. Again I said to myself, 'Mind! This is called a shawl, and this a ring, and this, smoking a hubble-bubble with a long pipe.' I threw those things away once for all, and the desire to enjoy them never arose in my mind again."
It was almost dusk. The Master and M. stood talking alone near the door on the southeast verandah.
--
MASTER: "All, without exception, perform work. Even to chant the name and glories of God is work, as is the meditation of the non-dualist on 'I am He'. Breathing is also an activity. There is no way of renouncing work altogether. So do your work, but sur render the result to God."
God and worldly duties
--
Haladhri replied, 'What is the use of seeing a mere human body, which is no better than a cage of clay?' Haladhri was a student of the Gita and Vedanta philosophy, and therefore referred to the holy man as a mere 'cage of clay'. I repeated this to Krishnakishore. With great anger he said: 'How impudent of Haladhri to make such a remark! How can he ridicule as a "cage of clay" the body of a man who constantly thinks of God, who meditates on Rama, and has renounced all for the sake of the Lord? Doesn't he know that such a man is the embodiment of Spirit?' He was so upset by Haladhri's remarks that he would turn his face away from him whenever he met him in the temple garden, and stopped speaking to him.
"Once Krishnakishore asked me, 'Why have you cast off the sacred thread?' In those days of God-vision I felt as if I were passing through the great storm of win, and everything had blown away from me. No trace of my old self was left. I lost all consciousness of the world. I could hardly keep my cloth on my body, not to speak of the sacred thread! I said to Krishnakishore, 'Ah, you will understand if you ever happen to be as intoxicated with God as I was.'
--
At Thy beloved feet I shall renounce my life
And so at last shall gain life's goal;
--
MASTER: "Bhakti, love of God, is the essence of all spiritual discipline. Through love one acquires renunciation and discrimination naturally."
Disciplines of Tantra
--
Na rendra and his friends came down from their seats on the raised platform of the Panchavati and stood near the Master. He returned to his room with them. The Master continued: "When you plunge in the water of the ocean, you may be attacked by alligators. But they won't touch you if your body is smeared with turmeric. There are no doubt six alligators - lust, anger, avarice, and so on - within you, in the 'heart's fathomless depths'. But protect yourself with the turmeric of discrimination and renunciation, and they won't touch you.
Futility of mere lecturing
--
"First of all invoke the Deity, and then give lectures to your heart's content. First of all dive deep. Plunge to the bottom and gather up the gems. Then you may do other things. But nobody wants to plunge. People are without spiritual discipline and prayer, without renunciation and dispassion. They learn a few words and immediately start to deliver lectures. It is difficult to teach others. Only if a man gets a comm and from God, after realizing Him, is he entitled to teach."
Thus conversing, the Master came to the west end of the verandah. M stood by his side. Sri Ramakrishna had repeated again and again that God cannot be realized without discrimination and renunciation. This made M. extremely worried. He had married and was then a young man of twenty-eight, educated in college in the Western way. Having a sense of duty, he asked himself, "Do discrimination and dispassion mean giving up 'woman and gold'?" He was really at a loss to know what to do.
M. (to the Master): "What should one do if one's wife says: 'You are neglecting me. I shall commit suicide?' "
1.04 - A Leader, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have told them that for a nation to win its freedom, it must first of all deserve it, make itself worthy of it, prepare itself to be able to enjoy it. This is not the case in Russia, and we shall have much to do to educate the masses and pull them out of their torpor; but the sooner we set to the task, the sooner we shall be ready for renewed action.
I have been able to make my friends understand these things; they trusted me and we began to study. That is how we came to read your books. And now I have come to ask your help in adapting your ideas to our present situation and with them to draw up a plan of action, and also write a small pamphlet which will become our new weapon and which we shall use to spread these beautiful thoughts of solidarity, harmony, freedom and justice among the people.
--
But as you were telling us in the beginning, I replied, since you have yourselves been forced to recognise that this open struggle, this struggle of desperate men, although certainly not without an intrepid greatness, is at the same time vain and foolish in its recklessness, you should renounce it for a time, fade into the shadows, prepare yourselves in silence, gather your st rength, form yourselves into groups, become more and more united, so as to conquer on the auspicious day, helped by the organising intelligence, the all-powerful lever which, unlike violence, can never be defeated.
Put no more weapons in the hands of your adversaries, be irreproachable before them, set them an example of courageous patience, of uprightness and justice; then your triumph will be near at hand, for right will be on your side, integral right, in the means as in the goal.
1.04 - Body, Soul and Spirit, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
[paragraph continues] In this way he enlightens himself regarding the outside world. The child that has burnt itself thinks it over, and reaches the thought "fire burns." Also man does not follow blindly his impulses, instincts, passions; his thought over them brings about the opportunity by which he can gratify them. What one calls material civilization moves entirely in this direction. It consists in the services which thinking renders to the sentient-soul. Immeasureable quantities of thought-power are directed to this end. It is thought-power that has built ships, railways, telegraphs, telephones; and by far the greatest proportion of all this serves only to satisfy the needs of the sentient-soul. Thought-force permeates the sentient-soul in a similar way to that in which the life-force permeates the physical body. Life-force connects the physical body with forefa thers and descendants, and thus brings it under a system of laws with which the purely mineral body is in no way concerned. In the same way thought-force brings the soul under a system of laws to which it does not belong as mere sentient-soul. Through the sentient-soul man is related to the animals.
p. 35
1.04 - BOOK THE FOURTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Swell up in sounds confus'd, and rend the skies.
Come, Bacchus, come propitious, all implore,
--
Thus they their vain petition did renew
'Till night, and then they softly sigh'd adieu.
--
The veil first gather'd, tho' all rent it lay:
The veil all rent yet still it self endears,
He kist, and kissing, wash'd it with his tears.
--
Too certain of her fate, they rend the skies
With piteous shrieks, and lamentable cries.
--
The transformation was again renew'd,
And, like the husband, chang'd the wife they view'd.
--
Each in the deathless grandson liv'd renown'd.
Thro' conquer'd India Bacchus nobly rode,
--
But she had deepest cause to rend the skies.
Weeping, to her they cling; no sign appears
1.04 - Communion, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
in face of the nameless changes destined to renew
my being may be turned into an overflowing joy at
1.04 - Descent into Future Hell, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
Blood shone at me from the red light of the crystal, and when I picked it up to discover its mystery; there lay the horror uncovered before me: in the depths of what is to come lay murder. The blond hero lay slain. The black beetle is the death that is necessary for renewal; and so thereafter, a new sun glowed, the sun of the depths, full of riddles, a sun of the night. And as the rising sun of spring
The Red Book
--
The time is still not ripe. But through this blood sacrifice, it should ripen. So long as it is possible to murder the brother instead of oneself the time is not ripe. Frightful things must happen until men grow ripe. But anything else will not ripen humanity. Hence all this that takes place in these days must also be, so that the renewal can come. Since the source of blood that follows the shrouding of the sun is also the source of the new life. 96
As the fate of the peoples is represented to you in events, so will it happen in your heart. If the hero in you is slain, then the sun of the depths rises in you, glowing from afar, and from a dreadful place. But all the same, everything that up till now seemed to be dead in you will come to life, and will change into poisonous serpents that will cover the sun, and you will fall into night and
--
[London: Penguin, 1986], p. 46, line 244). Socrates distinguished four types of divine madness: (I) inspired divination, such as by the prophetess at Delphi; (2) instances in which individuals, when ancient sins have given rise to troubles, have prophesied and incited to prayer and worship; (3) possession by the Muses, since the technically skilled untouched by the madness of the Muses will never be a good poet; and (4) the lover. In the renaissance, the theme of divine madness was talcen up by the Neoplatonists such as Ecino and by humanists such as Erasmus. Erasmus's discussion is particularly important, as it fuses the classical Platonic conception with Christianity.
For Erasmus, Christianity was the highest type of inspired madness. Like Plato, Erasmus
1.04 - Feedback and Oscillation, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
tem may be rendered linear again by a new choice of the inde-
pendent variable. Another very significant diffe rence between
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Every individual being, from the atom up to the most highly organized of living bodies and the most exalted of finite minds may be thought of, in ren Gunons phrase, as a point where a ray of the primordial Godhead meets one of the diffe rentiated, creaturely emanations of that same Godheads creative energy. The creature, as creature, may be very far from God, in the sense that it lacks the intelligence to discover the nature of the divine Ground of its being. But the creature in its eternal essenceas the meeting place of creatureliness and primordial Godheadis one of the infinite number of points where divine Reality is wholly and eternally present. Because of this, rational beings can come to the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground, non-rational and inanimate beings may reveal to rational beings the fulness of Gods presence within their material forms. The poets or the painters vision of the divine in nature, the worshippers awa reness of a holy presence in the sacrament, symbol or imagethese are not entirely subjective. True, such perceptions cannot be had by all perceivers, for knowledge is a function of being; but the thing known is independent of the mode and nature of the knower. What the poet and painter see, and try to record for us, is actually there, waiting to be apprehended by anyone who has the right kind of faculties. Similarly, in the image or the sacramental object the divine Ground is wholly present. Faith and devotion prepare the worshippers mind for perceiving the ray of Godhead at its point of intersection with the particular fragment of matter before him. Incidentally, by being worshipped, such symbols become the centres of a field of force. The longings, emotions and imaginations of those who kneel and, for generations, have knelt before the shrine create, as it were, an enduring vortex in the psychic medium, so that the image lives with a secondary, inferior divine life projected on to it by its worshippers, as well as with the primary divine life which, in common with all other animate and inanimate beings, it possesses in virtue of its relation to the divine Ground. The religious experience of sacramentalists and image worshippers may be perfectly genuine and objective; but it is not always or necessarily an experience of God or the Godhead. It may be, and perhaps in most cases it actually is, an experience of the field of force generated by the minds of past and present worshippers and projected on to the sacramental object where it sticks, so to speak, in a condition of what may be called second-hand objectivity, waiting to be perceived by minds suitably attuned to it. How desirable this kind of experience really is will have to be discussed in another section. All that need be said here is that the iconoclasts contempt for sacraments and symbols, as being nothing but mummery with stocks and stones is quite unjustified.
The workmen still in doubt what course to take,
--- Grep of noun ren
algren
barren
blocadren
bren
brethren
cactus wren
carl clinton van doren
carl van doren
carolina wren
church of the brethren
dairen
earl warren
genus siren
house wren
jenny wren
karen
long-billed marsh wren
loren
marsh wren
martin van buren
nelson algren
new zealand wren
pesantren
prayer of azariah and song of the three children
president van buren
rabbit warren
renaissance
renaissance man
renal artery
renal calculus
renal colic
renal corpuscle
renal cortex
renal disorder
renal failure
renal insufficiency
renal lithiasis
renal pelvis
renal vein
renascence
renata tebaldi
render
rendering
rendezvous
rendition
rene-robert cavelier
rene antoine ferchault de reaumur
rene descartes
rene magritte
renegade
renegade state
renege
renewable resource
renewal
reniform leaf
renin
rennet
rennin
reno
renoir
renouncement
renovation
renovator
renown
rensselaerite
rent
rent-a-car
rent-rebate
rent-roll
rent collector
rental
rental collection
rental income
rente
renter
rentier
renting
renunciation
robert penn warren
rock wren
ruby-crowned wren
sedge wren
short-billed marsh wren
sir christopher wren
siren
sophia loren
van buren
van doren
voltaren
warren
winter wren
wren
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