classes ::: elements in the yoga, movement, injunction, noun,
children :::
branches ::: Sacrifice, sacrifice

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object:Sacrifice
object:the Sacrifice
class:elements in the yoga
class:movement
class:injunction
word class:noun

  INTRODUCTION TO OFFERING
  often i dont know what to do, but still when i think of offering, i realize anything will do if i want to offer it and thus am satisfied with sitting(MEDITATION) for if i am sitting then i can figure out what will come next from there easily
  WHAT TO OFFER
  everything, offer alll that i do, think, feel, desire and am, what i eat, thing i give up: renunciation/rejection?, impulses, is this an offering? The moment? Breathing is bare basic offer? awareness is first step, that all is sacrifice? basic or easy things like laundry, clean room, dishes, garbage,
  HOW TO OFFER
  first step is to be aware if one is offering or wanting to offer. offer for x amount per day?, is it better to do nothing rather then something and it not be an offering?
  without attachment to the fruit of the action,
  how would you do something for God? the best you could? that is how you offer.

  REMEMBER AND OFFER
  When we are concentrated in mental movements or intellectual pursuits, why do we sometimes forget or lose touch with the Divine?
You lose it because your consciousness is still divided. The Divine has not settled in your mind; you are not wholly consecrated to the Divine Life. Otherwise you could concentrate to any extent upon such things and still you would have the sense of being helped and supported by the Divine.
   In all pursuits, intellectual or active, your one motto should be, "Remember and Offer." Let whatever you do be done as an offering to the Divine. And this too will be an excellent discipline for you; it will prevent you from doing many foolish and useless things.
  QUESTIONS
  to ask how to i offer? is itself offering. because its intending to offer. which may be the main piece of it.
  praying for the vision to offer, and strength to do so?
  see ascent of the sacrifice for this?
  NOTES
  INJUNCTIONS; sit, study, pray, write, sun salutations, meetup, website, God's Will , exercise.
  nothing but sacrifice. reject. dont do things as an offering.
  SUCCESSFUL OFFERING
  if it is an offering then will there be equality as to the result? for if it is done for the ego or desire then there is attachment to the result.
  1 minute of offering per day? 1 hour of offering per day?
  progress: progress in different areas?
  in elements? in attributes? in injunctions? in the way? in purpose?
  practices.. injunctions, repetitions or sets?
  if i did 30 minutes of offering a day for a month, increasing by 30 minutes a month, in 32 months i would be doing 16 hours a day (all waking time) i would be able to offer everything i do, which is a good start to all i think, feel and am.
The transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life must be its central purpose. The means towards this supreme end is a self-giving of all our nature to the Divine. Everything must be given to the Divine within us, to the universal All and to the transcendent Supreme. An absolute concentration of our will, our heart and our thought on that one and manifold Divine, an unreserved self-consecration of our whole being to the Divine alone - this is the decisive movement, the turning of the ego to That which is infinitely greater than itself, its self-giving and indispensable surrender.
see also ::: The Altar



see also ::: The_Altar

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO

The_Altar

AUTH

BOOKS
A_Treatise_on_Cosmic_Fire
DND_DM_Guide_5E
Enchiridion_text
Epigrams_from_Savitri
Essays_On_The_Gita
Guru_Bhakti_Yoga
Heart_of_Matter
Letters_On_Yoga
Letters_On_Yoga_I
Liber_ABA
Life_without_Death
Modern_Man_in_Search_of_a_Soul
On_Belief
Plotinus_-_Complete_Works_Vol_01
Process_and_Reality
Questions_And_Answers_1929-1931
Questions_And_Answers_1950-1951
Questions_And_Answers_1953
Savitri
The_Bible
The_Book_of_Light
The_Divine_Companion
The_Divine_Milieu
The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh
The_Essential_Songs_of_Milarepa
The_Golden_Bough
The_Imitation_of_Christ
The_Odyssey
The_Power_of_Myth
The_Republic
The_Seals_of_Wisdom
The_Synthesis_Of_Yoga
The_Tarot_of_Paul_Christian
The_Use_and_Abuse_of_History
The_Way_of_Perfection
The_Wit_and_Wisdom_of_Alfred_North_Whitehead
The_Yoga_Sutras
Three_Books_on_Occult_Philosophy
Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra
Toward_the_Future
Vishnu_Purana

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1.04_-_The_Sacrifice_the_Triune_Path_and_the_Lord_of_the_Sacrifice
1.05_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_-_The_Psychic_Being
1.06_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_2_The_Works_of_Love_-_The_Works_of_Life
1.11_-_Works_and_Sacrifice
1.12_-_The_Significance_of_Sacrifice
1.13_-_The_Lord_of_the_Sacrifice
1.26_-_Sacrifice_of_the_Kings_Son
1929-08-04_-_Surrender_and_sacrifice_-_Personality_and_surrender_-_Desire_and_passion_-_Spirituality_and_morality
1951-04-14_-_Surrender_and_sacrifice_-_Idea_of_sacrifice_-_Bahaism_-_martyrdom_-_Sleep-_forgetfulness,_exteriorisation,_etc_-_Dreams_and_visions-_explanations_-_Exteriorisation-_incidents_about_cats
1956-02-29_-_Sacrifice,_self-giving_-_Divine_Presence_in_the_heart_of_Matter_-_Divine_Oneness_-_Divine_Consciousness_-_All_is_One_-_Divine_in_the_inconscient_aspires_for_the_Divine
1956-03-07_-_Sacrifice,_Animals,_hostile_forces,_receive_in_proportion_to_consciousness_-_To_be_luminously_open_-_Integral_transformation_-_Pain_of_rejection,_delight_of_progress_-_Spirit_behind_intention_-_Spirit,_matter,_over-simplified
1.jr_-_Sacrifice_your_intellect_in_love_for_the_Friend
1.jr_-_This_love_sacrifices_all_souls,_however_wise,_however_awakened
1.rmr_-_Sacrifice
3.12_-_Of_the_Bloody_Sacrifice
4.01_-_THE_HONEY_SACRIFICE

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
00.03_-_Upanishadic_Symbolism
00.05_-_A_Vedic_Conception_of_the_Poet
0.00_-_INTRODUCTION
0.00_-_The_Book_of_Lies_Text
0.00_-_THE_GOSPEL_PREFACE
0.00_-_The_Wellspring_of_Reality
0.02_-_The_Three_Steps_of_Nature
0.03_-_The_Threefold_Life
0.04_-_The_Systems_of_Yoga
0.09_-_Letters_to_a_Young_Teacher
01.01_-_The_Symbol_Dawn
01.02_-_The_Issue
01.03_-_Mystic_Poetry
01.03_-_Yoga_and_the_Ordinary_Life
01.04_-_The_Secret_Knowledge
01.05_-_The_Nietzschean_Antichrist
01.06_-_On_Communism
01.08_-_A_Theory_of_Yoga
0.10_-_Letters_to_a_Young_Captain
0_1956-10-07
0_1959-05-25
0_1961-01-24
0_1961-04-29
0_1961-09-23
0_1961-10-30
0_1962-05-27
0_1963-02-15
0_1963-08-10
0_1964-01-25
0_1964-07-28
0_1965-10-16
0_1965-11-27
0_1966-12-07
0_1967-08-12
0_1968-06-22
0_1969-10-11
0_1970-08-05
0_1970-10-28
0_1972-03-29a
02.01_-_A_Vedic_Story
02.01_-_The_World-Stair
02.02_-_Rishi_Dirghatama
02.03_-_The_Glory_and_the_Fall_of_Life
02.04_-_The_Kingdoms_of_the_Little_Life
02.04_-_The_Right_of_Absolute_Freedom
02.05_-_Federated_Humanity
02.05_-_The_Godheads_of_the_Little_Life
02.06_-_Boris_Pasternak
02.06_-_The_Kingdoms_and_Godheads_of_the_Greater_Life
02.11_-_New_World-Conditions
02.12_-_The_Heavens_of_the_Ideal
03.01_-_Humanism_and_Humanism
03.03_-_The_House_of_the_Spirit_and_the_New_Creation
03.05_-_The_Spiritual_Genius_of_India
03.06_-_Divine_Humanism
03.06_-_Here_or_Otherwhere
03.06_-_The_Pact_and_its_Sanction
03.10_-_Hamlet:_A_Crisis_of_the_Evolving_Soul
03.16_-_The_Tragic_Spirit_in_Nature
03.17_-_The_Souls_Odyssey
04.01_-_The_Birth_and_Childhood_of_the_Flame
04.02_-_The_Growth_of_the_Flame
04.03_-_Consciousness_as_Energy
05.01_-_Man_and_the_Gods
05.01_-_Of_Love_and_Aspiration
05.02_-_Gods_Labour
05.06_-_The_Role_of_Evil
05.07_-_Man_and_Superman
06.02_-_The_Way_of_Fate_and_the_Problem_of_Pain
06.11_-_The_Steps_of_the_Soul
06.13_-_Body,_the_Occult_Agent
06.23_-_Here_or_Elsewhere
06.35_-_Second_Sight
07.01_-_The_Joy_of_Union;_the_Ordeal_of_the_Foreknowledge
07.02_-_The_Parable_of_the_Search_for_the_Soul
07.03_-_The_Entry_into_the_Inner_Countries
07.05_-_The_Finding_of_the_Soul
08.10_-_Are_Not_Dogs_More_Faithful_Than_Men?
09.02_-_The_Journey_in_Eternal_Night_and_the_Voice_of_the_Darkness
09.05_-_The_Story_of_Love
1.002_-_The_Heifer
10.03_-_The_Debate_of_Love_and_Death
10.04_-_The_Dream_Twilight_of_the_Earthly_Real
1.005_-_The_Table
1.00_-_Preliminary_Remarks
1.00_-_The_way_of_what_is_to_come
10.13_-_Go_Through
1.01_-_Adam_Kadmon_and_the_Evolution
1.01_-_BOOK_THE_FIRST
1.01_-_Economy
1.01_-_Foreward
1.01_-_How_is_Knowledge_Of_The_Higher_Worlds_Attained?
1.01_-_Isha_Upanishad
1.01_-_Maitreya_inquires_of_his_teacher_(Parashara)
1.01_-_On_renunciation_of_the_world
1.01_-_Our_Demand_and_Need_from_the_Gita
1.01_-_Principles_of_Practical_Psycho_therapy
1.01_-_The_Cycle_of_Society
1.01_-_The_Divine_and_The_Universe
1.01_-_The_Ego
1.01_-_The_Four_Aids
1.01_-_The_Ideal_of_the_Karmayogin
1.01_-_The_King_of_the_Wood
1.01_-_The_Offering
10.21_-_Short_Notes_-_4-_Ego
10.23_-_Prayers_and_Meditations_of_the_Mother
10.24_-_Savitri
10.27_-_Consciousness
10.29_-_Gods_Debt
1.02_-_MAPS_OF_MEANING_-_THREE_LEVELS_OF_ANALYSIS
1.02_-_On_the_Service_of_the_Soul
1.02_-_Prayer_of_Parashara_to_Vishnu
1.02_-_Priestly_Kings
1.02_-_Self-Consecration
1.02_-_Taras_Tantra
1.02_-_The_7_Habits__An_Overview
1.02_-_The_Child_as_growing_being_and_the_childs_experience_of_encountering_the_teacher.
1.02_-_The_Development_of_Sri_Aurobindos_Thought
1.02_-_The_Divine_Teacher
1.02_-_The_Doctrine_of_the_Mystics
1.02_-_THE_NATURE_OF_THE_GROUND
1.02_-_The_Refusal_of_the_Call
1.02_-_The_Three_European_Worlds
10.36_-_Cling_to_Truth
1.037_-_The_Aligners
1.03_-_APPRENTICESHIP_AND_ENCULTURATION_-_ADOPTION_OF_A_SHARED_MAP
1.03_-_BOOK_THE_THIRD
1.03_-_Hymns_of_Gritsamada
1.03_-_Meeting_the_Master_-_Meeting_with_others
1.03_-_Physical_Education
1.03_-_Self-Surrender_in_Works_-_The_Way_of_The_Gita
1.03_-_Sympathetic_Magic
1.03_-_THE_GRAND_OPTION
1.03_-_The_Syzygy_-_Anima_and_Animus
1.03_-_VISIT_TO_VIDYASAGAR
1.04_-_A_Leader
1.04_-_Body,_Soul_and_Spirit
1.04_-_BOOK_THE_FOURTH
1.04_-_Descent_into_Future_Hell
1.04_-_Hymns_of_Bharadwaja
1.04_-_Magic_and_Religion
1.04_-_Narayana_appearance,_in_the_beginning_of_the_Kalpa,_as_the_Varaha_(boar)
1.04_-_On_blessed_and_ever-memorable_obedience
1.04_-_Sounds
1.04_-_THE_APPEARANCE_OF_ANOMALY_-_CHALLENGE_TO_THE_SHARED_MAP
1.04_-_The_Conditions_of_Esoteric_Training
1.04_-_The_Core_of_the_Teaching
1.04_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda
1.04_-_The_Paths
1.04_-_The_Sacrifice_the_Triune_Path_and_the_Lord_of_the_Sacrifice
1.04_-_THE_STUDY_(The_Compact)
1.04_-_What_Arjuna_Saw_-_the_Dark_Side_of_the_Force
1.05_-_Christ,_A_Symbol_of_the_Self
1.05_-_Hymns_of_Bharadwaja
1.05_-_Morality_and_War
1.05_-_On_the_Love_of_God.
1.05_-_Ritam
1.05_-_Solitude
1.05_-_The_Activation_of_Human_Energy
1.05_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_-_The_Psychic_Being
1.05_-_The_Belly_of_the_Whale
1.05_-_THE_HOSTILE_BROTHERS_-_ARCHETYPES_OF_RESPONSE_TO_THE_UNKNOWN
1.05_-_The_Magical_Control_of_the_Weather
1.05_-_The_True_Doer_of_Works
1.05_-_Vishnu_as_Brahma_creates_the_world
1.06_-_Agni_and_the_Truth
1.06_-_BOOK_THE_SIXTH
1.06_-_Hymns_of_Parashara
1.06_-_Magicians_as_Kings
1.06_-_Man_in_the_Universe
1.06_-_Of_imperfections_with_respect_to_spiritual_gluttony.
1.06_-_ON_THE_PALE_CRIMINAL
1.06_-_On_Thought
1.06_-_Origin_of_the_four_castes
1.06_-_Psychic_Education
1.06_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_2_The_Works_of_Love_-_The_Works_of_Life
1.06_-_The_Desire_to_be
1.06_-_The_Four_Powers_of_the_Mother
1.06_-_THE_MASTER_WITH_THE_BRAHMO_DEVOTEES
1.06_-_The_Objective_and_Subjective_Views_of_Life
1.06_-_The_Sign_of_the_Fishes
1.07_-_BOOK_THE_SEVENTH
1.07_-_Hymn_of_Paruchchhepa
1.07_-_Incarnate_Human_Gods
1.07_-_Note_on_the_word_Go
1.07_-_Production_of_the_mind-born_sons_of_Brahma
1.07_-_THE_MASTER_AND_VIJAY_GOSWAMI
1.07_-_The_Three_Schools_of_Magick_2
1.089_-_The_Levels_of_Concentration
1.08_-_BOOK_THE_EIGHTH
1.08_-_Departmental_Kings_of_Nature
1.08_-_Origin_of_Rudra:_his_becoming_eight_Rudras
1.08_-_The_Four_Austerities_and_the_Four_Liberations
1.08_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.08_-_The_Historical_Significance_of_the_Fish
1.08_-_THE_MASTERS_BIRTHDAY_CELEBRATION_AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.094_-_Understanding_the_Structure_of_Things
1.09_-_BOOK_THE_NINTH
1.09_-_Equality_and_the_Annihilation_of_Ego
1.09_-_Legend_of_Lakshmi
1.09_-_Saraswati_and_Her_Consorts
1.09_-_SELF-KNOWLEDGE
1.09_-_SKIRMISHES_IN_A_WAY_WITH_THE_AGE
1.09_-_The_Secret_Chiefs
1.09_-_The_Worship_of_Trees
1.1.01_-_Certitudes
1.1.01_-_Seeking_the_Divine
11.01_-_The_Eternal_Day__The_Souls_Choice_and_the_Supreme_Consummation
1.1.02_-_The_Aim_of_the_Integral_Yoga
1.1.04_-_Philosophy
1.108_-_Plenty
1.10_-_BOOK_THE_TENTH
1.10_-_GRACE_AND_FREE_WILL
1.10_-_Laughter_Of_The_Gods
1.10_-_Life_and_Death._The_Greater_Guardian_of_the_Threshold
1.10_-_The_descendants_of_the_daughters_of_Daksa_married_to_the_Rsis
1.10_-_The_Image_of_the_Oceans_and_the_Rivers
1.10_-_THE_MASTER_WITH_THE_BRAHMO_DEVOTEES_(II)
1.10_-_The_Methods_and_the_Means
1.10_-_Theodicy_-_Nature_Makes_No_Mistakes
1.10_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.10_-_THINGS_I_OWE_TO_THE_ANCIENTS
1.11_-_BOOK_THE_ELEVENTH
1.11_-_Correspondence_and_Interviews
1.11_-_FAITH_IN_MAN
1.11_-_Legend_of_Dhruva,_the_son_of_Uttanapada
1.11_-_ON_THE_NEW_IDOL
1.11_-_The_Influence_of_the_Sexes_on_Vegetation
1.11_-_The_Kalki_Avatar
1.11_-_The_Master_of_the_Work
1.11_-_The_Second_Genesis
1.11_-_The_Seven_Rivers
1.11_-_WITH_THE_DEVOTEES_AT_DAKSHINEWAR
1.11_-_Works_and_Sacrifice
1.12_-_BOOK_THE_TWELFTH
1.1.2_-_Commentary
1.12_-_Dhruva_commences_a_course_of_religious_austerities
1.12_-_God_Departs
1.12_-_Love_The_Creator
1.12_-_The_Herds_of_the_Dawn
1.12_-_The_Sacred_Marriage
1.12_-_The_Significance_of_Sacrifice
1.12_-_The_Sociology_of_Superman
1.12_-_The_Superconscient
1.12_-_TIME_AND_ETERNITY
1.13_-_BOOK_THE_THIRTEENTH
1.13_-_Conclusion_-_He_is_here
1.13_-_Dawn_and_the_Truth
1.13_-_Posterity_of_Dhruva
1.13_-_THE_HUMAN_REBOUND_OF_EVOLUTION_AND_ITS_CONSEQUENCES
1.13_-_The_Kings_of_Rome_and_Alba
1.13_-_The_Lord_of_the_Sacrifice
1.14_-_Descendants_of_Prithu
1.14_-_FOREST_AND_CAVERN
1.14_-_IMMORTALITY_AND_SURVIVAL
1.14_-_The_Principle_of_Divine_Works
1.14_-_The_Structure_and_Dynamics_of_the_Self
1.14_-_The_Succesion_to_the_Kingdom_in_Ancient_Latium
1.15_-_Index
1.15_-_LAST_VISIT_TO_KESHAB
1.15_-_The_Possibility_and_Purpose_of_Avatarhood
1.15_-_The_Suprarational_Good
1.15_-_The_Transformed_Being
1.15_-_The_world_overrun_with_trees;_they_are_destroyed_by_the_Pracetasas
1.15_-_The_Worship_of_the_Oak
1.16_-_PRAYER
1.16_-_The_Suprarational_Ultimate_of_Life
1.17_-_Legend_of_Prahlada
1.17_-_Practical_rules_for_the_Tragic_Poet.
1.17_-_The_Burden_of_Royalty
1.17_-_The_Seven-Headed_Thought,_Swar_and_the_Dashagwas
1.17_-_The_Transformation
1.18_-_ON_LITTLE_OLD_AND_YOUNG_WOMEN
1.18_-_The_Divine_Worker
1.18_-_THE_HEART_OF_THE_PROBLEM
1.18_-_The_Human_Fathers
1.18_-_The_Perils_of_the_Soul
1.19_-_Dialogue_between_Prahlada_and_his_father
1.19_-_Tabooed_Acts
1.19_-_THE_MASTER_AND_HIS_INJURED_ARM
1.19_-_The_Victory_of_the_Fathers
1.201_-_Socrates
1.2.01_-_The_Call_and_the_Capacity
12.01_-_This_Great_Earth_Our_Mother
1.2.02_-_Qualities_Needed_for_Sadhana
12.09_-_The_Story_of_Dr._Faustus_Retold
1.20_-_Death,_Desire_and_Incapacity
1.20_-_Equality_and_Knowledge
1.20_-_Tabooed_Persons
1.20_-_TANTUM_RELIGIO_POTUIT_SUADERE_MALORUM
1.20_-_The_Hound_of_Heaven
1.21_-_Families_of_the_Daityas
1.21_-_IDOLATRY
1.21_-_Tabooed_Things
1.22__-_Dominion_over_different_provinces_of_creation_assigned_to_different_beings
1.22_-_ON_THE_GIFT-GIVING_VIRTUE
1.23_-_Conditions_for_the_Coming_of_a_Spiritual_Age
1.240_-_Talks_2
1.24_-_Necromancy_and_Spiritism
1.24_-_RITUAL,_SYMBOL,_SACRAMENT
1.24_-_The_Killing_of_the_Divine_King
1.25_-_On_the_destroyer_of_the_passions,_most_sublime_humility,_which_is_rooted_in_spiritual_feeling.
1.25_-_Temporary_Kings
1.26_-_Sacrifice_of_the_Kings_Son
1.28_-_On_holy_and_blessed_prayer,_mother_of_virtues,_and_on_the_attitude_of_mind_and_body_in_prayer.
1.2_-_Katha_Upanishads
1.300_-_1.400_Talks
1.31_-_Adonis_in_Cyprus
1.31_-_Is_Thelema_a_New_Religion?
1.32_-_The_Ritual_of_Adonis
1.33_-_The_Gardens_of_Adonis
1.3.4.01_-_The_Beginning_and_the_End
1.3.4.02_-_The_Hour_of_God
1.34_-_The_Myth_and_Ritual_of_Attis
1.35_-_Describes_the_recollection_which_should_be_practised_after_Communion._Concludes_this_subject_with_an_exclamatory_prayer_to_the_Eternal_Father.
1.36_-_Human_Representatives_of_Attis
1.37_-_Oriential_Religions_in_the_West
1.38_-_Woman_-_Her_Magical_Formula
1.39_-_Prophecy
1.39_-_The_Ritual_of_Osiris
1.3_-_Mundaka_Upanishads
1.40_-_The_Nature_of_Osiris
1.439
1.43_-_Dionysus
1.44_-_Demeter_and_Persephone
1.45_-_The_Corn-Mother_and_the_Corn-Maiden_in_Northern_Europe
1.45_-_Unserious_Conduct_of_a_Pupil
1.46_-_Selfishness
1.46_-_The_Corn-Mother_in_Many_Lands
1.47_-_Lityerses
1.48_-_The_Corn-Spirit_as_an_Animal
1.49_-_Ancient_Deities_of_Vegetation_as_Animals
1.49_-_Thelemic_Morality
15.07_-_Souls_Freedom
1.50_-_Eating_the_God
1.52_-_Killing_the_Divine_Animal
1.53_-_The_Propitation_of_Wild_Animals_By_Hunters
1.54_-_Types_of_Animal_Sacrament
1.55_-_The_Transference_of_Evil
1.56_-_The_Public_Expulsion_of_Evils
1.57_-_Public_Scapegoats
1.58_-_Human_Scapegoats_in_Classical_Antiquity
1.59_-_Killing_the_God_in_Mexico
1.62_-_The_Fire-Festivals_of_Europe
1.64_-_The_Burning_of_Human_Beings_in_the_Fires
1.65_-_Balder_and_the_Mistletoe
1.67_-_The_External_Soul_in_Folk-Custom
1.69_-_Original_Sin
17.01_-_Hymn_to_Dawn
17.02_-_Hymn_to_the_Sun
17.03_-_Agni_and_the_Gods
17.04_-_Hymn_to_the_Purusha
17.05_-_Hymn_to_Hiranyagarbha
17.06_-_Hymn_of_the_Supreme_Goddess
17.08_-_Last_Hymn
18.05_-_Ashram_Poets
19.08_-_Thousands
1914_08_04p
1914_08_05p
1917_04_07p
1929-06-02_-__Divine_love_and_its_manifestation_-_Part_of_the_vital_being_in_Divine_love
1929-06-09_-_Nature_of_religion_-_Religion_and_the_spiritual_life_-_Descent_of_Divine_Truth_and_Force_-_To_be_sure_of_your_religion,_country,_family-choose_your_own_-_Religion_and_numbers
1929-08-04_-_Surrender_and_sacrifice_-_Personality_and_surrender_-_Desire_and_passion_-_Spirituality_and_morality
1951-01-08_-_True_vision_and_understanding_of_the_world._Progress,_equilibrium._Inner_reality_-_the_psychic._Animals_and_the_psychic.
1951-01-11_-_Modesty_and_vanity_-_Generosity
1951-03-24_-_Descent_of_Divine_Love,_of_Consciousness_-_Earth-_a_symbolic_formation_-_the_Divine_Presence_-_The_psychic_being_and_other_worlds_-_Divine_Love_and_Grace_-_Becoming_consaious_of_Divine_Love_-_Finding_ones_psychic_being_-_Responsibility
1951-03-26_-_Losing_all_to_gain_all_-_psychic_being_-_Transforming_the_vital_-_physical_habits_-_the_subconscient_-_Overcoming_difficulties_-_weakness,_an_insincerity_-_to_change_the_world_-_Psychic_source,_flash_of_experience_-_preparation_for_yoga
1951-04-14_-_Surrender_and_sacrifice_-_Idea_of_sacrifice_-_Bahaism_-_martyrdom_-_Sleep-_forgetfulness,_exteriorisation,_etc_-_Dreams_and_visions-_explanations_-_Exteriorisation-_incidents_about_cats
1953-11-04
1953-12-09
1954-03-03_-_Occultism_-_A_French_scientists_experiment
1954-06-23_-_Meat-eating_-_Story_of_Mothers_vegetable_garden_-_Faithfulness_-_Conscious_sleep
1954-12-22_-_Possession_by_hostile_forces_-_Purity_and_morality_-_Faith_in_the_final_success_-Drawing_back_from_the_path
1956-02-29_-_Sacrifice,_self-giving_-_Divine_Presence_in_the_heart_of_Matter_-_Divine_Oneness_-_Divine_Consciousness_-_All_is_One_-_Divine_in_the_inconscient_aspires_for_the_Divine
1956-03-07_-_Sacrifice,_Animals,_hostile_forces,_receive_in_proportion_to_consciousness_-_To_be_luminously_open_-_Integral_transformation_-_Pain_of_rejection,_delight_of_progress_-_Spirit_behind_intention_-_Spirit,_matter,_over-simplified
1956-04-18_-_Ishwara_and_Shakti,_seeing_both_aspects_-_The_Impersonal_and_the_divine_Person_-_Soul,_the_presence_of_the_divine_Person_-_Going_to_other_worlds,_exteriorisation,_dreams_-_Telling_stories_to_oneself
1956-05-30_-_Forms_as_symbols_of_the_Force_behind_-_Art_as_expression_of_contact_with_the_Divine_-_Supramental_psychological_perfection_-_Division_of_works_-_The_Ashram,_idle_stupidities
1956-08-15_-_Protection,_purification,_fear_-_Atmosphere_at_the_Ashram_on_Darshan_days_-_Darshan_messages_-_Significance_of_15-08_-_State_of_surrender_-_Divine_Grace_always_all-powerful_-_Assumption_of_Virgin_Mary_-_SA_message_of_1947-08-15
1956-09-26_-_Soul_of_desire_-_Openness,_harmony_with_Nature_-_Communion_with_divine_Presence_-_Individuality,_difficulties,_soul_of_desire_-_personal_contact_with_the_Mother_-_Inner_receptivity_-_Bad_thoughts_before_the_Mother
1957-01-02_-_Can_one_go_out_of_time_and_space?_-_Not_a_crucified_but_a_glorified_body_-_Individual_effort_and_the_new_force
1957-11-13_-_Superiority_of_man_over_animal_-_Consciousness_precedes_form
1958-03-19_-_General_tension_in_humanity_-_Peace_and_progress_-_Perversion_and_vision_of_transformation
1960_06_03
1960_06_16
1969_12_13
1970_03_02
1970_03_03
1.ac_-_A_Birthday
1.ac_-_On_-_On_-_Poet
1.ac_-_The_Garden_of_Janus
1.ac_-_The_Priestess_of_Panormita
1.ac_-_The_Wizard_Way
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_XI_The_Story_of_the_Flood
1.bs_-_You_alone_exist-_I_do_not,_O_Beloved!
1f.lovecraft_-_Ashes
1f.lovecraft_-_At_the_Mountains_of_Madness
1f.lovecraft_-_Discarded_Draft_of
1f.lovecraft_-_Medusas_Coil
1f.lovecraft_-_Out_of_the_Aeons
1f.lovecraft_-_Sweet_Ermengarde
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Alchemist
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Call_of_Cthulhu
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Dream-Quest_of_Unknown_Kadath
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Dreams_in_the_Witch_House
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Dunwich_Horror
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Haunter_of_the_Dark
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Horror_at_Red_Hook
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Horror_in_the_Museum
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Last_Test
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Man_of_Stone
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Mound
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Shadow_over_Innsmouth
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Thing_on_the_Doorstep
1f.lovecraft_-_Through_the_Gates_of_the_Silver_Key
1f.lovecraft_-_Under_the_Pyramids
1.fs_-_Resignation
1.fs_-_The_Eleusinian_Festival
1.fs_-_To_A_World-Reformer
1.jk_-_Endymion_-_Book_II
1.jk_-_Endymion_-_Book_III
1.jk_-_Endymion_-_Book_IV
1.jk_-_Epistle_To_John_Hamilton_Reynolds
1.jk_-_Hyperion,_A_Vision_-_Attempted_Reconstruction_Of_The_Poem
1.jk_-_I_Stood_Tip-Toe_Upon_A_Little_Hill
1.jk_-_Lamia._Part_I
1.jk_-_Lines_On_Seeing_A_Lock_Of_Miltons_Hair
1.jk_-_Ode_On_A_Grecian_Urn
1.jk_-_Ode_To_Psyche
1.jk_-_Otho_The_Great_-_Act_V
1.jk_-_Sleep_And_Poetry
1.jlb_-_History_Of_The_Night
1.jr_-_Sacrifice_your_intellect_in_love_for_the_Friend
1.jr_-_This_love_sacrifices_all_souls,_however_wise,_however_awakened
1.jwvg_-_In_A_Word
1.jwvg_-_Prometheus
1.jwvg_-_The_Visit
1.lla_-_What_is_worship?_Who_are_this_man
1.lla_-_Your_way_of_knowing_is_a_private_herb_garden
1.pbs_-_Adonais_-_An_elegy_on_the_Death_of_John_Keats
1.pbs_-_Epipsychidion
1.pbs_-_Homers_Hymn_To_Castor_And_Pollux
1.pbs_-_Hymn_To_Mercury
1.pbs_-_Lines_Written_Among_The_Euganean_Hills
1.pbs_-_Ode_To_Naples
1.pbs_-_Queen_Mab_-_Part_VII.
1.pbs_-_The_Cyclops
1.pbs_-_The_Daemon_Of_The_World
1.pbs_-_The_Revolt_Of_Islam_-_Canto_I-XII
1.pbs_-_To_Coleridge
1.pbs_-_To_Death
1.pbs_-_To--_Oh!_there_are_spirits_of_the_air
1.poe_-_Sancta_Maria
1.rb_-_Paracelsus_-_Part_I_-_Paracelsus_Aspires
1.rb_-_Sordello_-_Book_the_Third
1.rmd_-_Raga_Basant
1.rmr_-_Sacrifice
1.rt_-_Dream_Girl
1.rt_-_This_Dog
1.rwe_-_In_Memoriam
1.rwe_-_May-Day
1.rwe_-_Quatrains
1.rwe_-_The_Adirondacs
1.shvb_-_Columba_aspexit_-_Sequence_for_Saint_Maximin
1.shvb_-_O_Euchari_in_leta_via_-_Sequence_for_Saint_Eucharius
1.snk_-_In_Praise_of_the_Goddess
1.srh_-_The_Royal_Song_of_Saraha_(Dohakosa)
1.tm_-_The_Sowing_of_Meanings
1.wby_-_Easter_1916
1.wby_-_From_A_Full_Moon_In_March
1.wby_-_Parnells_Funeral
1.whitman_-_Salut_Au_Monde
1.ww_-_2-_The_White_Doe_Of_Rylstone,_Or,_The_Fate_Of_The_Nortons
1.ww_-_3-_The_White_Doe_Of_Rylstone,_Or,_The_Fate_Of_The_Nortons
1.ww_-_An_Evening_Walk
1.ww_-_Artegal_And_Elidure
1.ww_-_A_Whirl-Blast_From_Behind_The_Hill
1.ww_-_Book_Ninth_[Residence_in_France]
1.ww_-_Book_Tenth_{Residence_in_France_continued]
1.ww_-_By_Moscow_Self-Devoted_To_A_Blaze
1.ww_-_Character_Of_The_Happy_Warrior
1.ww_-_Guilt_And_Sorrow,_Or,_Incidents_Upon_Salisbury_Plain
1.ww_-_Laodamia
1.ww_-_Occasioned_By_The_Battle_Of_Waterloo_February_1816
1.ww_-_Ode_to_Duty
1.ww_-_Oer_The_Wide_Earth,_On_Mountain_And_On_Plain
1.ww_-_Siege_Of_Vienna_Raised_By_Jihn_Sobieski
1.ww_-_The_Excursion-_IX-_Book_Eighth-_The_Parsonage
1.ww_-_The_Excursion-_V-_Book_Fouth-_Despondency_Corrected
1.ww_-_The_Excursion-_X-_Book_Ninth-_Discourse_of_the_Wanderer,_and_an_Evening_Visit_to_the_Lake
1.ww_-_The_Morning_Of_The_Day_Appointed_For_A_General_Thanksgiving._January_18,_1816
1.ww_-_The_Recluse_-_Book_First
1.ww_-_Vaudracour_And_Julia
20.04_-_Act_II:_The_Play_on_Earth
2.01_-_Habit_1__Be_Proactive
2.01_-_Mandala_One
2.01_-_The_Attributes_of_Omega_Point_-_a_Transcendent_God
2.01_-_The_Mother
2.01_-_The_Object_of_Knowledge
2.01_-_The_Road_of_Trials
2.01_-_The_Two_Natures
2.01_-_The_Yoga_and_Its_Objects
2.02_-_Habit_2__Begin_with_the_End_in_Mind
2.02_-_Indra,_Giver_of_Light
2.02_-_On_Letters
2.02_-_The_Ishavasyopanishad_with_a_commentary_in_English
2.02_-_The_Synthesis_of_Devotion_and_Knowledge
2.03_-_Indra_and_the_Thought-Forces
2.03_-_Karmayogin__A_Commentary_on_the_Isha_Upanishad
2.03_-_ON_THE_PITYING
2.03_-_THE_ENIGMA_OF_BOLOGNA
2.03_-_THE_MASTER_IN_VARIOUS_MOODS
2.03_-_The_Mother-Complex
2.03_-_The_Supreme_Divine
2.04_-_ADVICE_TO_ISHAN
2.04_-_Agni,_the_Illumined_Will
2.04_-_On_Art
2.04_-_Positive_Aspects_of_the_Mother-Complex
2.04_-_The_Scourge,_the_Dagger_and_the_Chain
2.04_-_The_Secret_of_Secrets
2.05_-_The_Divine_Truth_and_Way
2.05_-_Universal_Love_and_how_it_leads_to_Self-Surrender
2.05_-_VISIT_TO_THE_SINTHI_BRAMO_SAMAJ
2.06_-_The_Wand
2.06_-_WITH_VARIOUS_DEVOTEES
2.06_-_Works_Devotion_and_Knowledge
2.07_-_The_Cup
2.07_-_The_Supreme_Word_of_the_Gita
2.08_-_God_in_Power_of_Becoming
2.08_-_The_Branches_of_The_Archetypal_Man
2.09_-_Human_representations_of_the_Divine_Ideal_of_Love
2.09_-_THE_MASTERS_BIRTHDAY
2.0_-_THE_ANTICHRIST
2.1.02_-_Love_and_Death
2.10_-_THE_MASTER_AND_NARENDRA
2.10_-_The_Vision_of_the_World-Spirit_-_Time_the_Destroyer
2.11_-_The_Guru
2.1.1_-_The_Nature_of_the_Vital
2.11_-_THE_TOMB_SONG
2.11_-_The_Vision_of_the_World-Spirit_-_The_Double_Aspect
2.12_-_ON_SELF-OVERCOMING
2.12_-_The_Way_and_the_Bhakta
2.13_-_On_Psychology
2.14_-_The_Origin_and_Remedy_of_Falsehood,_Error,_Wrong_and_Evil
2.14_-_The_Passive_and_the_Active_Brahman
2.14_-_The_Unpacking_of_God
2.15_-_The_Cosmic_Consciousness
2.16_-_The_Magick_Fire
2.1.7.08_-_Comments_on_Specific_Lines_and_Passages_of_the_Poem
2.17_-_December_1938
2.18_-_January_1939
2.19_-_Out_of_the_Sevenfold_Ignorance_towards_the_Sevenfold_Knowledge
2.2.01_-_Work_and_Yoga
2.21_-_IN_THE_COMPANY_OF_DEVOTEES_AT_SYAMPUKUR
2.21_-_The_Order_of_the_Worlds
2.2.1_-_The_Prusna_Upanishads
2.21_-_Towards_the_Supreme_Secret
2.2.2_-_The_Mandoukya_Upanishad
2.22_-_THE_MASTER_AT_COSSIPORE
2.22_-_The_Supreme_Secret
2.22_-_Vijnana_or_Gnosis
2.23_-_The_Core_of_the_Gita.s_Meaning
2.2.4_-_Taittiriya_Upanishad
2.24_-_The_Evolution_of_the_Spiritual_Man
2.24_-_THE_MASTERS_LOVE_FOR_HIS_DEVOTEES
2.24_-_The_Message_of_the_Gita
2.25_-_AFTER_THE_PASSING_AWAY
2.27_-_The_Gnostic_Being
2.3.07_-_The_Vital_Being_and_Vital_Consciousness
2.3.1_-_Ego_and_Its_Forms
2.3.1_-_Svetasvatara_Upanishad
2.3.2_-_Desire
2.4.01_-_Divine_Love,_Psychic_Love_and_Human_Love
2.4.1_-_Human_Relations_and_the_Spiritual_Life
26.09_-_Le_Periple_d_Or_(Pome_dans_par_Yvonne_Artaud)
29.06_-_There_is_also_another,_similar_or_parallel_story_in_the_Veda_about_the_God_Agni,_about_the_disappearance_of_this
2_-_Other_Hymns_to_Agni
30.02_-_Greek_Drama
3.00.2_-_Introduction
3.01_-_Proem
3.01_-_THE_BIRTH_OF_THOUGHT
3.02_-_King_and_Queen
3.02_-_Mysticism
3.02_-_The_Psychology_of_Rebirth
3.02_-_The_Soul_in_the_Soul_World_after_Death
3.03_-_On_Thought_-_II
3.03_-_The_Ascent_to_Truth
3.04_-_The_Way_of_Devotion
3.05_-_SAL
3.06_-_Thought-Forms_and_the_Human_Aura
3.07_-_The_Ananda_Brahman
3.07_-_The_Formula_of_the_Holy_Grail
3.08_-_The_Mystery_of_Love
3.08_-_The_Thousands
3.09_-_The_Return_of_the_Soul
3.1.01_-_The_Problem_of_Suffering_and_Evil
31.02_-_The_Mother-_Worship_of_the_Bengalis
3.11_-_Spells
3.12_-_Of_the_Bloody_Sacrifice
3.12_-_ON_OLD_AND_NEW_TABLETS
3.16_-_THE_SEVEN_SEALS_OR_THE_YES_AND_AMEN_SONG
3.18_-_Of_Clairvoyance_and_the_Body_of_Light
31_Hymns_to_the_Star_Goddess
3.2.01_-_On_Ideals
3.2.02_-_The_Veda_and_the_Upanishads
3.2.05_-_The_Yoga_of_the_Bhagavad_Gita
32.06_-_The_Novel_Alchemy
3.2.08_-_Bhakti_Yoga_and_Vaishnavism
3.2.4_-_Sex
3.3.01_-_The_Superman
33.02_-_Subhash,_Oaten:_atlas,_Russell
33.04_-_Deoghar
33.05_-_Muraripukur_-_II
33.10_-_Pondicherry_I
33.17_-_Two_Great_Wars
33.18_-_I_Bow_to_the_Mother
3.3.1_-_Agni,_the_Divine_Will-Force
3.4.01_-_Evolution
34.01_-_Hymn_To_Indra
34.02_-_Hymn_To_All-Gods
34.03_-_Hymn_To_Dawn
3.4.03_-_Materialism
34.04_-_Hymn_of_Aspiration
34.06_-_Hymn_to_Sindhu
34.09_-_Hymn_to_the_Pillar
34.10_-_Hymn_To_Earth
35.06_-_Who_Seeks_Holy_Places?
3-5_Full_Circle
3.6.01_-_Heraclitus
36.07_-_An_Introduction_To_The_Vedas
36.08_-_A_Commentary_on_the_First_Six_Suktas_of_Rigveda
36.09_-_THE_SIT_SUKTA
37.04_-_The_Story_Of_Rishi_Yajnavalkya
37.06_-_Indra_-_Virochana_and_Prajapati
37.07_-_Ushasti_Chakrayana_(Chhandogya_Upanishad)
3.7.2.03_-_Mind_Nature_and_Law_of_Karma
3.7.2.04_-_The_Higher_Lines_of_Karma
38.02_-_Hymns_and_Prayers
3.8.1.02_-_Arya_-_Its_Significance
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations
4.01_-_Prayers_and_Meditations
4.01_-_THE_HONEY_SACRIFICE
4.01_-_The_Principle_of_the_Integral_Yoga
4.02_-_BEYOND_THE_COLLECTIVE_-_THE_HYPER-PERSONAL
4.03_-_The_Meaning_of_Human_Endeavor
4.03_-_THE_TRANSFORMATION_OF_THE_KING
4.04_-_Conclusion
4.04_-_THE_REGENERATION_OF_THE_KING
4.05_-_THE_DARK_SIDE_OF_THE_KING
4.06_-_THE_KING_AS_ANTHROPOS
4.08_-_THE_RELIGIOUS_PROBLEM_OF_THE_KINGS_RENEWAL
4.0_-_NOTES_TO_ZARATHUSTRA
4.11_-_THE_WELCOME
4.15_-_Soul-Force_and_the_Fourfold_Personality
4.2.4.03_-_The_Psychic_Fire
4.2.5_-_Dealing_with_Depression_and_Despondency
4.2_-_Karma
4.41_-_Chapter_One
4.43_-_Chapter_Three
5.1.01.2_-_The_Book_of_the_Statesman
5.1.01.3_-_The_Book_of_the_Assembly
5.1.01.4_-_The_Book_of_Partings
5.1.01.5_-_The_Book_of_Achilles
5.1.01.8_-_The_Book_of_the_Gods
5.1.01.9_-_Book_IX
5.1.02_-_Ahana
5.1.02_-_The_Gods
5.2.01_-_The_Descent_of_Ahana
5.2.03_-_The_An_Family
5.4.01_-_Notes_on_Root-Sounds
5_-_The_Phenomenology_of_the_Spirit_in_Fairytales
6.04_-_THE_MEANING_OF_THE_ALCHEMICAL_PROCEDURE
6.07_-_Myself_and_My_Creed
6.08_-_THE_CONTENT_AND_MEANING_OF_THE_FIRST_TWO_STAGES
6.0_-_Conscious,_Unconscious,_and_Individuation
7.02_-_Courage
7.04_-_Self-Reliance
7.05_-_Patience_and_Perseverance
7.09_-_Right_Judgement
7.4.03_-_The_Cosmic_Dance
9.99_-_Glossary
Aeneid
Appendix_4_-_Priest_Spells
Blazing_P2_-_Map_the_Stages_of_Conventional_Consciousness
Blazing_P3_-_Explore_the_Stages_of_Postconventional_Consciousness
BOOK_I._-_Augustine_censures_the_pagans,_who_attributed_the_calamities_of_the_world,_and_especially_the_sack_of_Rome_by_the_Goths,_to_the_Christian_religion_and_its_prohibition_of_the_worship_of_the_gods
BOOK_II._-_A_review_of_the_calamities_suffered_by_the_Romans_before_the_time_of_Christ,_showing_that_their_gods_had_plunged_them_into_corruption_and_vice
BOOK_III._-_The_external_calamities_of_Rome
BOOK_II._--_PART_I._ANTHROPOGENESIS.
BOOK_II._--_PART_III._ADDENDA._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_I._--_PART_II._THE_EVOLUTION_OF_SYMBOLISM_IN_ITS_APPROXIMATE_ORDER
BOOK_IV._-_That_empire_was_given_to_Rome_not_by_the_gods,_but_by_the_One_True_God
BOOK_IX._-_Of_those_who_allege_a_distinction_among_demons,_some_being_good_and_others_evil
Book_of_Exodus
Book_of_Genesis
Book_of_Imaginary_Beings_(text)
Book_of_Psalms
BOOK_VIII._-_Some_account_of_the_Socratic_and_Platonic_philosophy,_and_a_refutation_of_the_doctrine_of_Apuleius_that_the_demons_should_be_worshipped_as_mediators_between_gods_and_men
BOOK_VII._-_Of_the_select_gods_of_the_civil_theology,_and_that_eternal_life_is_not_obtained_by_worshipping_them
BOOK_VI._-_Of_Varros_threefold_division_of_theology,_and_of_the_inability_of_the_gods_to_contri_bute_anything_to_the_happiness_of_the_future_life
BOOK_V._-_Of_fate,_freewill,_and_God's_prescience,_and_of_the_source_of_the_virtues_of_the_ancient_Romans
BOOK_XII._-_Of_the_creation_of_angels_and_men,_and_of_the_origin_of_evil
BOOK_XIX._-_A_review_of_the_philosophical_opinions_regarding_the_Supreme_Good,_and_a_comparison_of_these_opinions_with_the_Christian_belief_regarding_happiness
BOOK_X._-_Porphyrys_doctrine_of_redemption
BOOK_XVIII._-_A_parallel_history_of_the_earthly_and_heavenly_cities_from_the_time_of_Abraham_to_the_end_of_the_world
BOOK_XVII._-_The_history_of_the_city_of_God_from_the_times_of_the_prophets_to_Christ
BOOK_XVI._-_The_history_of_the_city_of_God_from_Noah_to_the_time_of_the_kings_of_Israel
BOOK_XV._-_The_progress_of_the_earthly_and_heavenly_cities_traced_by_the_sacred_history
BOOK_XXII._-_Of_the_eternal_happiness_of_the_saints,_the_resurrection_of_the_body,_and_the_miracles_of_the_early_Church
BOOK_XXI._-_Of_the_eternal_punishment_of_the_wicked_in_hell,_and_of_the_various_objections_urged_against_it
BOOK_XX._-_Of_the_last_judgment,_and_the_declarations_regarding_it_in_the_Old_and_New_Testaments
BS_1_-_Introduction_to_the_Idea_of_God
COSA_-_BOOK_I
COSA_-_BOOK_III
COSA_-_BOOK_IV
COSA_-_BOOK_IX
COSA_-_BOOK_V
COSA_-_BOOK_VI
COSA_-_BOOK_VII
COSA_-_BOOK_VIII
COSA_-_BOOK_X
COSA_-_BOOK_XI
COSA_-_BOOK_XII
Cratylus
Deutsches_Requiem
Emma_Zunz
ENNEAD_01.04_-_Whether_Animals_May_Be_Termed_Happy.
Epistle_to_the_Romans
Euthyphro
Gorgias
Guru_Granth_Sahib_first_part
Ion
I._THE_ATTRACTIVE_POWER_OF_GOD
Liber_111_-_The_Book_of_Wisdom_-_LIBER_ALEPH_VEL_CXI
Liber_46_-_The_Key_of_the_Mysteries
Liber_71_-_The_Voice_of_the_Silence_-_The_Two_Paths_-_The_Seven_Portals
LUX.02_-_EVOCATION
LUX.06_-_DIVINATION
Meno
MMM.02_-_MAGIC
Partial_Magic_in_the_Quixote
Phaedo
Prayers_and_Meditations_by_Baha_u_llah_text
r1913_12_28
r1914_03_28
Sayings_of_Sri_Ramakrishna_(text)
SB_1.1_-_Questions_by_the_Sages
Symposium_translated_by_B_Jowett
Tablets_of_Baha_u_llah_text
Talks_026-050
Talks_500-550
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_2
The_Act_of_Creation_text
The_Book_of_Certitude_-_P1
The_Book_of_Certitude_-_P2
The_Book_of_Joshua
The_Book_of_the_Prophet_Isaiah
The_Circular_Ruins
The_Coming_Race_Contents
The_Dwellings_of_the_Philosophers
The_Epistle_of_Paul_to_the_Ephesians
The_Epistle_of_Paul_to_the_Philippians
the_Eternal_Wisdom
The_First_Epistle_of_Paul_to_the_Corinthians
The_First_Epistle_of_Peter
The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths_2
The_Gospel_According_to_John
The_Gospel_According_to_Luke
The_Gospel_According_to_Mark
The_Gospel_According_to_Matthew
The_Letter_to_the_Hebrews
The_Logomachy_of_Zos
The_Pythagorean_Sentences_of_Demophilus
The_Revelation_of_Jesus_Christ_or_the_Apocalypse
The_Riddle_of_this_World
The_Second_Epistle_of_Paul_to_Timothy
The_Theologians
Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra_text
Verses_of_Vemana

PRIMARY CLASS

elements_in_the_yoga
injunction
movement
SIMILAR TITLES
Law of Sacrifice
Sacrifice
sacrifice
the Priest of the Sacrifice

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

Sacrifice: A ceremonial offering to a god, demon or other superhuman or supernatural being.

Sacrifice ::: (Latin, perform a sacred act) A general term for the giving up of things of value for religious purposes, such as (1) liturgical sacrifices of animal life or of other valuables (grain, wine, etc.), and (2) personal sacrifices of time or money or talents or potential (e.g., taking holy orders). In classical Christianity, the death of Jesus is interpreted as a sacrifice for sin on behalf of humankind. Islam retains a liturgical use of animal sacrifice especially in connection with the hajj (see also calendar).

Sacrifice ratio - The number of percentage points of annual output lost in the process of reducing inflation by 1 percentage point.

Sacrifice The performance of sacred rites, but with the more restricted sense of ceremonies of invocation, communion, or propitiation between man and gods. Scholars, in studying these universal rites, are at a loss to find an essential significance by which to gather them all into one class, and as to which to include and which to exclude from such a class. Sacrifices may take the form of a meal offered to the gods or shared with them, an oblation of first fruits of the harvest or flocks, or a propitiation or act of atonement. The Romans dedicated a portion of food or a libation to the lares or other deities; the Hebrews offered the first fruits of the harvest or the yearlings of the flock. The word also has the meaning of an act of self-dedication for a noble cause.

Sacrifice ::: The true essence of sacrifice is not self-immolation, it is self-giving; its object not self-effacement, but self-fulfilment; its method not self-mortification, but a greater life, not selfmutilation, but a transformation of our natural human parts into divine members, not self-torture, but a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 109


sacrifice :::Sacrifice means an inner offering to the Divine and the real spiritual sacrifice is a very joyful thing.” Letters on Yoga

sacrificed ::: given up or offered for the sake of others.

sacrificed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Sacrifice

SACRIFICE. ::: Does noi so mucb 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 yajna.

sacrifice ::: gold tongue of sacrifice

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).

sacrifice ::: n. --> The offering of anything to God, or to a god; consecratory rite.
Anything consecrated and offered to God, or to a divinity; an immolated victim, or an offering of any kind, laid upon an altar, or otherwise presented in the way of religious thanksgiving, atonement, or conciliation.
Destruction or surrender of anything for the sake of something else; devotion of some desirable object in behalf of a higher


sacrificer ::: n. --> One who sacrifices.

sacrifices. [Rf. Levi, Transcendental Magic, p. 307.]


TERMS ANYWHERE

1. The expenditure of something, such as time or labour, necessary for the attainment of a goal. Also fig. **2. The price paid or required for acquiring, producing, or maintaining something, usually measured in money, time, or energy; expense or expenditure; outlay. 3. **Suffering or sacrifice; loss; penalty.

5) Yecidah (&

Abhijit (Sanskrit) Abhijit [from abhi towards + the verbal root ji to conquer] Sometimes Abhijita. As a noun, a soma sacrifice, a lunar mansion, the principal star in the constellation Lyra, a name of Vishnu, etc. As an adjective, victorious, also referring to one born under the constellation Abhijit.

  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.

According to popular tale, Fenris grew so rapidly that the gods became alarmed lest he devour the sun prematurely and tried repeatedly to restrain him with heavy chains with no success. The dwarfs forged a magic thread, Gleipnir (lissom bond), with which the gods bound the wolf, but only when one of the gods, Tyr (Mars), agreed to hold his hand in its jaws. Tyr sacrificed his hand, so that Fenris would be harmless until the end of the cycle.

Adbhuta-Brahmana (Sanskrit) Adbhuta-brāhmaṇa [from adbhuta wonderful, marvelous + brāhmaṇa portion of the Vedas treating of ritual, prayer, sacrifices, and mantra] One of the eight Brahmanas belonging to the Sama-Veda, dealing with omens, auguries, and extraordinary wonders.

Adhiyajna (Sanskrit) Adhiyajña [from adhi above, paramount + the verbal root yaj to consecrate, offer, sacrifice] Paramount sacrifice or sacrifice from above; synonymous with the cosmic Logos which, by coming into manifestation, “sacrifices” itself for the benefit of all sentient beings, thereby giving an opportunity to the waiting hosts of monads to undergo their own evolutionary course as they live and move and have their being within the Logos.

adhiyajna ::: the cosmic principle of works and sacrifice; the secret Divine who receives the sacrifice.

adhiyajna. ::: the primal sacrifice; supreme sacrifice

adhvarasya pesah ::: the form of the pilgrim-sacrifice. [RV 7.42.1 ]

adhvara ::: travelling, moving; a word for sacrifice, really an adjective, the full phrase is adhvara yajna. [Ved.]

adhvara yajna (Adhwara Yajna) ::: the sacrifice that travels or is a travel to the home of the godheads. [Ved.]

adhvaryu (Adhwaryu) ::: the conductor of the sacrifice; a priest of the pilgrim-sacrifice. [Ved.]

"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*

“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

AGNI. ::: Fire; Fire of Sacrifice; the Fire-God; Flame of Divine Force; illumined will; Divine Will; Fire of human aspiration; flame of purification or transformation in the psychic being; psychic fire.
The psychic fire is the fire of aspiration, purification and Tapasya.
Without Agni the sacrificial flame cannot bum on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with Knowledge. This conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality, a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and brings back in return their force and light and joy into our humanity.
Agni and colours ::: the principle of Fire can manifest all the colours and the pure white fire is that which contains in itself all the colours.


Agnihotra (Sanskrit) Agnihotra [from agni fire + hotra oblation from the verbal root hu to sacrifice] Fire offering; an important Vedic sacrifice to Agni, consisting of milk, oil, and sour gruel, which the head of the family is expected to observe twice a day, before sunrise and after sunset. The priest who kindles the sacred fire is called agnihotri, also agnidhra.

“Agni is the leader of the sacrifice and protects it in the great journey against the powers of darkness. The knowledge and purpose of this divine Puissance can be entirely trusted; he is the friend and lover of the soul and will not betray it to evil gods. Even for the man sitting far off in the night, enveloped by the darkness of the human ignorance, this flame[Agni] is a light which, when it is perfectly kindled and in proportion as it mounts higher and higher, enlarges itself into the vast light of the Truth. Flaming upward to heaven to meet the divine Dawn, it rises through the vital or nervous mid-world and through our mental skies and enters at last the Paradise of Light, its own supreme home above where joyous for ever in the eternal Truth that is the foundation of the sempiternal Bliss the shining Immortals sit in their celestial sessions and drink the wine of the infinite beatitude.” The Secret of the Veda

Agnishtoma (Sanskrit) Agniṣṭoma [from agni fire + stoma praise, a hymn from the verbal root stu to praise, eulogize] Praise of Agni, fire; an ancient Vedic ceremony or sacrifice performed by a Brahmin desirous of obtaining svarga (heaven), who himself maintained the sacred fire. The offering to Indra and other deities was the soma. The ceremonies continued for five days, with 16 priests officiating. Although in later times it may have become merely a matter of form, originally the agnishtoma was connected with the initiation rites of the soma Mysteries.

Agnishvatta (Sanskrit) Agniṣvātta [from agni fire + the verbal root svad to sweeten, taste] Tasted or sweetened by fire; one of the higher of the seven classes of pitris or progenitors spoken of in the Puranas as those “devoid of fire.” They are thus popularly represented as grihasthas or householders who in previous births failed to keep up their domestic fires and to offer burnt sacrifices, etc. In contrast, the pitris “possessed” of fire are the barhishads, those who kept up their household fires (cf VP 1:10).

*[Agni]. Sri Aurobindo: "Agni is the leader of the sacrifice and protects it in the great journey against the powers of darkness. The knowledge and purpose of this divine Puissance can be entirely trusted; he is the friend and lover of the soul and will not betray it to evil gods. Even for the man sitting far off in the night, enveloped by the darkness of the human ignorance, this flame[Agni] is a light which, when it is perfectly kindled and in proportion as it mounts higher and higher, enlarges itself into the vast light of the Truth. Flaming upward to heaven to meet the divine Dawn, it rises through the vital or nervous mid-world and through our mental skies and enters at last the Paradise of Light, its own supreme home above where joyous for ever in the eternal Truth that is the foundation of the sempiternal Bliss the shining Immortals sit in their celestial sessions and drink the wine of the infinite beatitude.” *The Secret of the Veda

agnus dei ::: --> A figure of a lamb bearing a cross or flag.
A cake of wax stamped with such a figure. It is made from the remains of the paschal candles and blessed by the Pope.
A triple prayer in the sacrifice of the Mass, beginning with the words "Agnus Dei."


Agnus Dei (Latin) [from agnus lamb + deus god] Lamb of God; originating in the New Testament: “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). It is applied to various emblems, cakes, anthems, etc., used in the services of the orthodox Christian churches. As a lamb was sacrificed and partaken of in the Jewish feast of the Passover, John said in effect: behold the true divine Paschal Lamb. However, the original idea that impurity is burnt out by the divine fire from the radiant source within each person was perverted, both in the case of agni and the Lamb of God, into the idea of vicarious atonement (cf SD 2:383).

ah. (sapta hotráh) ::: the seven sacrificial energies or "Ladies of the offering", the powers of "the human sacrifice which has a sevenfold energy of its action because there is a sevenfold principle in our being which has to be fulfilled in its integral perfection".

ah. ::: unmanifested energies of the sacrifice. [R . g Veda 4.48.1]

Aja (Sanskrit) Aja [from a not + the verbal root jan to be born, produced] Unborn; title given to many of the primordial gods. In the Rig-Veda, the equivalent of the First Logos, which is a radiation or first manifestation on the plane of illusion of the cosmic One — the Absolute or cosmic paramatman. The Purusha-Sukta or Hymn of Man (RV 10:90) states that the thousand-headed Purusha is dismembered at the foundation of the world so that from his remains the universe might arise. This is the foundation of the later Christian symbol of the sacrificial lamb, for there is here a play on words: Aja the “unborn” — Purusha or manvantaric spirit — may also be derived from the verbal root aj (to drive, propel), whose meanings include a he-goat, a ram, and the sign Aries. Spirit disappears — dies, metaphorically — the more it becomes involved in cosmic matter, and hence the sacrifice of the unborn, the lamb, or the ram (cf TBL 56).

Akedah (also Aqedah or Akedat) Yitzhak ::: (Heb. Binding or The Binding of Isaac) In Genesis 22, God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Though Abraham makes all the preparations to do so by binding Isaac upon an altar, at the last minute God sends down an angel to stop him and sacrifice a ram in Isaac's place.

aliturgical ::: a. --> Applied to those days when the holy sacrifice is not offered.

All your life must be an offering and a sacrifice to the Supreme ; your only object in action shall be to serve, to receive, to fulfil, to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her wor^. You must grow in the divine consciousness till there is no difference between your will and hers, no motive except her impulsion in you, no action that is not her conscious notion in you and through you.

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.

Altar: Any place set aside for communicating with a god, with supernatural entities, or with the dead, by means of sacrifices or offerings.

Altar [from Latin altare from altus high] Usually an elevation of earth, stone, or wood for the worshiper to kneel on, or for the offering of sacrifices, or as the pedestal of an invisible divinity or its statue. In the Old Testament it appears as part of the furniture of the Jewish tabernacle, that sacred shrine of the Deity. This altar has horns at each end, which is said to symbolize the fecund cow — in common with the ideas of Hindus and ancients Egyptians — which again represents Mother Nature; so the connection with the Holy of Holies, which stands for the great Mother, resurrection, and birth, is apparent. In general the altar is the earthly throne or supposed seat of a deity; and its familiar metaphorical use suggests both this and also the idea of sacrifice. The altar has been taken over by Christendom, where it has become the communion table. It also has the idea of refuge and sanctuary, for it was commonly so used both with the Hebrews and the Classical ancients.

altar ::: n. --> A raised structure (as a square or oblong erection of stone or wood) on which sacrifices are offered or incense burned to a deity.
In the Christian church, a construction of stone, wood, or other material for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist; the communion table.


Although advancing steadily in spirituality and upwards towards a lower nirvana, and therefore evolving on a path which is not only not harmful to humanity and others, but in a sense is even passively beneficial, the Pratyeka Buddha, precisely because his thoughts are involved in spiritual freedom and benefits for himself, is really enwrapped in a spiritual selfishness; and hence in the intuitive, albeit popular, consideration of Northern Buddhism is called by such names as the Solitary or the Rhinoceros — applied in contrast to the Buddhas of Compassion, whose entire effort is to merge the individual into the universal, to expand their sympathies to include all that is, to follow the path of immortality (amrita), which is self-identification without loss of individuality with all that is. When the sacrifice of the lower personal and inferior self, with all its hoard of selfish thought and impulses, for the sake of bringing into full and unfettered activity the ineffable glorious faculties and powers and functions of the higher nature — not for the purpose of selfish personal advancement, but in order to become a helper of all that is — the consequence is that as time passes, the disciple so living and dedicating himself finds himself becoming the very incarnation of his inner divinity. He becomes, as it were, a man-god on earth. This, however, is not the objective, for holding such an objective as the goal to be attained would be in itself a proof that selfishness still abides in the nature.

Ambarvales, Ambarvalia (Latin) Italian festivals in honor of Ceres held at Rome on May 29, when the fields were blessed; in rural areas, the people walked three times round their fields following a hog, ram, and bull which were then sacrificed after a prayer for fruitfulness to Ceres (originally to Mars). Its rituals with cake, wine, water, and chalice were identical with and the origin of those of the Christian mass (BCW 11:100).

Amrita-yana (Sanskrit) Amṛta-yāna [from a not + mṛta dead from the verbal root mṛ to die + yāna path, vehicle] The path of immortality; in The Voice of the Silence the path followed by the Buddhas of Compassion or of Perfection. It is the “secret path,” the arya (noble) path of the heart doctrine of esoteric wisdom. The Buddhas of Compassion instead of donning the dharmakaya vesture and then entering nirvana, as the Pratyeka Buddhas do, give up nirvana and assume the nirmanakaya robe, thus enabling them to work directly for all beings less evolved than they; and because of this great individual sacrifice, the nirmanakaya condition is in one sense the holiest of the trikaya (three vestures). The amrita-yana is thus a lofty spiritual pathway, and leads to the ineffable glories of self-conscious immortality in the cosmic manvantaric “eternity.”

Amsumat, Amsuman (Sanskrit) Aṃśumat, Aṃśumān [from aṃśu filament, ray of light] As an adjective, threadlike or filamentoid, luminous as the sun and moon; also rich in soma plants and soma juice. As a noun, Amsuman is a prince of the solar race, son of Asamanjas, and grandson of King Sagara whose 60,000 sons were consumed by the glance of Kapila’s “eye.” Their remains were discovered by Amsuman who brought back to earth the horse which had been abducted from Sagara during the Asvamedha sacrifice (cf SD 2:570).

Angel of Priesthoods and Sacrifices—

Angirasas (Sanskrit) Aṅgirasa-s [from aṅg to go, move tortuously] The descendants of Angiras through his son, Agni; a name occurring in Vedic hymns addressed to luminous deities, and later extended to all phenomena connected with light. Specifically, the hymns of the Atharva-Veda are called Angirasa, as are those priests who recite them and perform the sacrifices according to the Atharva-vedic rules. “ ‘Angirases’ was one of the names of the Dhyanis, or Devas instructors (‘guru-deva’), of the late Third, the Fourth, and even of the Fifth Race Initiates” (SD 2:605n).

Anna (Sanskrit) Anna [from the verbal root ad to eat, consume] Edible; food or victuals, boiled rice. Also food in a mystical sense: the lowest manifestation or body of Brahman, the supreme spirit, which manifestation is looked upon as “food” by the entities living therein, who thus feed mystically upon the body of their progenitor. Hence the word also occasionally means earth and water. “Beings are generated by food (anna); food is produced by rain; rain comes from sacrifice (yajna), and sacrifice is born of works (karma)” (BG 3:14; cf Taittiriya Upanishad 2:2).

Antahkarana (Sanskrit) Antaḥkaraṇa [from antar interior, within + karaṇa sense organ] Interior organ or instrument; defined variously as the seat of thought and feeling, the thinking faculty, the heart, mind, soul, and conscience. In Vedanta philosophy, it is looked upon as a fourfold inner instrument or intermediary between spirit and body, with mind being the go-between or bridge. One could say that there are several antahkaranas in the human septenary constitution: one for every path or bridge between any two monadic centers. Man is a unity in diversity, and the antahkaranas are the links of vibrating consciousness-substance uniting these various centers (cf OG 5). Blavatsky describes it as “the path that lies between thy Spirit and thy self, the highway of sensations, the rude arousers of Ahankara” (the sense of egoity); and that when the two have merged into the One and the personal sacrificed to self impersonal, then the antahkarana vanishes because no longer useful as a functioning bridge between the two. Further, the antahkarana is “the lower Manas, the Path of communication or communion between the personality and the higher Manas or human Soul. At death it is destroyed as a Path or medium of communication, and its remains survive in a form as the Kamarupa — the ‘shell’ ” (VS 56, 88-9).

Anthropomancy: The ancient art of divination by examining the intestines of a dead person—specifically, of a human sacrifice.

Anugita (Sanskrit) Anugītā [from anu after, alongside + gītā sung, chanted, song from the verbal root gai to sing, intone] After-song; chapters 16-92 of the Asvamedhika-parvan, 14th book of the Mahabharata that deals with the asvamedha (horse sacrifice) conducted by Yudhishthira, a rite that stems from the Vedic period.

A pupil of late followers of Hegel, he emphasized the unity of spirit which he recognized in the pure act. His philosophy is therefore called actualism. He is responsible for the philosophic theory of Fascism with the conception of the Ethic State to which the individual must be totally sacrificed.

Aries (The Ram): The first sign of the zodiac. Its symbol () represents the head and horns of the ram. In astrology, it is a symbol of offensive power—a weapon of the gods, hence an implement of the will. The Babylonians sacrificed rams during the period when the Sun occupied this sign, which occurs annually from March 21 to April 20. Astrologically and astronomically it is the first thirty-degree arc beginning at the point of the Spring Equinox. It is the “leading” quality of the element Fire: positive, diurnal, movable, dry, hot, fiery, choleric and violent. Ruler: Mars. Exaltation: Sun. Detriment: Venus. Fall: Saturn. Symbolic interpretation: Sprouting seed; fire in eruption; a fountain of water; a ram’s horns.

Aruspicy: An ancient method of divination by examining the entrails of human or animal sacrifices. (Also called haruspicy.)

aruspicy ::: n. --> Prognostication by inspection of the entrails of victims slain sacrifice.

arya (Aryan) ::: the good and noble man; the fighter; he who strives and overcomes all outside him and within him that stands opposed to the human advance; he who does the work of sacrifice, finds the sacred word of illumination, desires the gods and increases them and is increased by them into the largeness of the true existence; he is the warrior of the light and the traveller to the Truth.

Aryaman ::: [Ved.]: the Aspirer; the aspiring power and action of the Truth; the Force of sacrifice, aspiration, battle, journey towards perfection and light and celestial bliss by which the path is created, travelled, pursued beyond all resistance and obscuration to its luminous and happy goal. [Later]: the chief of the Fathers [pitrs]. ::: Aryama [nominative]

A second meaning as a noun is one of the portions of Vedic literature containing rules for the proper chanting and usage of the mantras or hymns at sacrifices, and explanations in detail of what these sacrifices are, illustrated by legends and old stories. These Brahmanas are “pre-eminently occult works, hence used purposely as blinds. They were allowed to survive for public use and property only because they were and are absolutely unintelligible to the masses. Otherwise they would have disappeared from circulation as long ago as the days of Akbar” (SD 1:68). Though the Brahmanas are the oldest scholastic treatises on the primitive hymns, they themselves require a key for a proper understanding of them which Orientalists have hitherto failed to secure. Since the time of Gautama Buddha, the keys to the Brahmanical secret code have been in the possession of initiates alone, who guard their treasure with extreme and jealous care. There are indeed few, if any, individuals of the present-day Brahmanical cast in India who are even conscious that such keys exists; although no small number of them, possibly, have intimations or intuitions that a secret wisdom has been lost which is uniformly understood to have been in the possession of the ancient Indian rishis.

As the progenitor of real physical man, Daksha was son of the Prachetasas and Marisha, the first of the “egg-born.” He “establishes the era of men engendered by sexual intercourse. But this mode of procreation did not occur suddenly, as one may think, and required long ages before it became the one ‘natural’ way. Therefore, his sacrifice to the gods is shown as interfered with by Siva, the destroying deity, evolution and progress personified, . . . Virabhadra, ‘abiding in the region of the ghosts (etherial men). . . . created from the pores of the skin (Romakupas), powerful Raumas, (or Raumyas).’ Now, however mythical the allegory, the Mahabharata, which is history as much as is the Iliad, shows the Raumyas [hairy ones] and other races, as springing in the same manner from the Romakupas, hair or skin pores. . . .

asus.e mayas (dasushe mayas) ::: bliss for the giver (of the sacrifice).[R . g Veda 1.93.1]

asutosa (Ashutosha) ::: [the swiftly placated (with sacrifice and effort), an epithet of Rudra-siva], the refuge of men.

asvamedha (Ashwamedha) ::: the offering of the horse. [Ved.]: the offering of the Life-Power with all its impulses, desires, enjoyments to the divine existence. [Later]: [a great sacrifice performed by an imperial sovereign and sometimes used as a means of empire-building.]

Asvamedha (Sanskrit) Aśvamedha [from aśva horse + medha the sacrifice of an animal, oblation] The horse sacrifice; an ancient Brahmanical ceremony, going back to the Vedic period. Its greatest prominence occurred during the era described in the Asvamedhika-parva of the Mahabharata. Kings alone were permitted to perform the sacrifice, and the proponent was considered for the time being a king of kings. A horse of particular color, selected and consecrated by ceremonies, was permitted to wander wherever it wished for a year. The king performing the sacrifice, or his representative, followed the horse with an armed escort, and every ruler of the region so entered was obligated to submit to the entering king or do battle with him. If the liberator of the horse proved successful in subjugating all the rulers encountered, he returned followed by the vanquished kings (if unsuccessful he was derided and the ceremony relinquished) and the concluding sacrifice, either actual or figurative, was performed with great celebration. The Asvamedha also is mentioned in the Ramayana.

Aten (Egyptian) Ȧten. The disk of the sun and its vivifying, light-giving beams. Extended during the 18th dynasty to become the basis of a new religion under Amenhetep III and his son Amenhetep IV. They endeavored to arouse a more devotional feeling in the life of the Egyptians in opposition to the rigorous formalistic worship prescribed by the priests of the time, with its animal sacrifices and rigid ceremonialism, stressing the most material aspect of the gods as represented in the popular mythology. Incense and flowers decked altars, instead of blood sacrifices; joyousness pervaded the new capital city, while architects and painters created new ideas in their works. However, his successor Tut-ankh-Amen, reinstated the worship of Amen-Ra under the direction of the priests. The worship of Amen or Ammon was an idea in conception far older than and philosophically and mystically superior to the conceptions which clustered about the newer worship of Aten. This newer worship, with the ideas woven into its meaning by the monarch and his wife, was not only a reform when contrasted with the rigid ritualism into which the worship of Amen had degenerated, but actually was an attempt to infill the minds of the Egyptian people with the joyousness of the solar orb itself as the vehicle of the recondite, secret, and highly mystical Amen, abstract and highly philosophical. This illustrates how a noble worship can become ritualistic and empty, and how a more sensuous but more joyous worship can be used in a revivalistic sense to awaken a new religious devotion in the hearts of the multitude.

Atomism, psychological: See Psychological Atomism. Atonement: Religious act of expressing consciousness of one's sins, penitence, reconciliation, giving satisfaction. Specifically, a theological doctrine meaning the reconciliation between God and man who had sinned against God, hence given offense to Him. This was effected through the Incarnation of Christ, the Son of God, His sufferings and death on the cross, who consequently is the Saviour and Redeemer of the human race. This voluntary death and vicarious sacrifice constituted a full reparation for the sins of humanity and satisfied the debt to divine justice, thus making it again possible for men to attain eternal happiness in heaven. -- J.J.R.

Atonement Reconciliation brought about by a re-formation of the lower, so that it may become at one with the higher. Hence a number of Occidental mystics refer to the processes of atonement involving the foregoing idea as at-one-ment. In its best sense atonement means the becoming at one between the human ego and its spiritual counterpart, where the life or vitality of the lower personal man is offered up as a sacrifice, willing and utterly joyful, to the higher self. Thus the life which the hierophant is enjoined to offer is not his physical life, but the undesirable and imperfect life of his lower self, the selfish personality. The custom of sacrificing helpless animals — a custom protested against by Gautama Buddha in particular — is but an instance of the way in which lofty spiritual teachings or initiatory ceremonies can degenerate into repellent or cruel rites. Nevertheless, “the atonements by blood — blood-covenants and blood transferences from gods to men, and by men, as sacrifices to the gods — are the first keynote struck in every cosmogony and theogony; soul, life and blood were synonymous words in every language . . . The mystic meaning of the injunction, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves’ [John 6:53] . . . [has] to be interpreted with the help of three keys — one opening the psychic door, the second that of physiology, and the third that which unlocks the mystery of terrestrial being, by unveiling the inseparable blending of theogony with anthropology” (BCW 8:181-2).

a total and supreme sacrifice.

Azazel (Hebrew) ‘Azā’zēl [from ‘azāz to be firm, strong, powerful (or from ‘ēz goat) + ‘ēl divinity, god] Also Azaziel, Azazyel. God of victory; equivalent of Greek Prometheus, he was chief of the ’ishin (Chaldean) or ’ishim (Hebrew), men-spirits who, according to the Zohar, mixed themselves with mortal men, having come to earth to do so (Genesis 6:2-4). The ’ishin are chained on a mountain in the desert, which means that they undergo descent into material life and confinement in incarnation. Azazel and the six other ’ishin teach humankind to make weapons and utensils, and impart the knowledge of various other arts. These seven were the first instructors of the fourth root-race. The story is a form of the universal myth which represents the descent of the manasaputras and, as usual, the god of might or victory has been turned into a god of evil, his benefits into seductions, and his chivalrous sacrifice into a rebellion. He was, like Baphomet, turned into a goat — the scapegoat of the Old Testament, whose name in the Hebrew is Azazel. The goat in ancient animal symbology signified regeneration and reproductive power, hence strength, might.

Baresma(n) (Avestan), Barsum (Pahlavi), Barsam (Persian) [from the verbal root bares to grow upright] A wand of the Magi, who were instructed in the Vendidad to go to the tree “that is beautiful, high-growing, and mighty amongst the high-growing trees,” and after an invocation, to cut off a twig, “long as a plowshare, thick as a barley-corn. The faithful one, holding it in his left hand, shall not leave off keeping his eyes upon it, whilst he is offering up the sacrifice to Ahura-Mazda and to the Amesha-Spentas.” To this day the Parsis use the baresman, but have replaced the twigs of the scared tree with brass wires.

barhih. ::: in the Veda, the seat of sacred grass on which the gods are invited to sit at the sacrifice.

Because of the function of the human organs of generation, even from ancient times these organs were considered with reverential awe as being the representatives of the creative or productive abstract forces of nature; and so greatly was the creative function held among the ancients that marriage and its functions were invariably considered to be a religious rite. Hence the presence of zachar or sacr in such words as sacrament and sacrifice, always with the religious meaning, has prevailed to our own days. The archaic symbology of the separation of the sexes was represented by a horizontal line, crossed by a perpendicular, surrounded by a circle: with the Hebrews, however, this became degraded into the purely phallic meaning of the sacr and n’cabvah (zachar and neqebah).

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

Bel has been associated with the Phoenician Baal, the supreme god of the Canaanites, conceived also as the protective power of generation and fertility, connected with the moon. His female counterpart, Ashtoreth (Astarte, Ishtar) was considered as the receptive goddess, also a lunar divinity. In later times the rites connected with these deities became degraded into licentious orgies; sacrifices were made, apparently even human sacrifices, but at one time Ba‘al was worshiped as a sun god.

bhoktaram yajnatapasam ::: enjoyer of sacrifice and tapasya (askesis). [Gita 5.29]

bhoktaram yajnatapasam sarvabhutamahesvaram ::: enjoyer of sacrifice and askesis, great Lord of all beings. [cf. Gita 5.29]

Brahmana(Sanskrit) ::: A word having several meanings in Hindu sacred literature. Brahmana is both noun andadjective, as noun signifying a member of the first of the four Vedic classes, and as adjective signifyingwhat belongs to a Brahmana or what is Brahmanical. Secondly, it signifies one of the portions of theVedic literature, containing rules for the proper usage of the mantras or hymns at sacrifices, explanationsin detail of what these sacrifices are, illustrated by legends and old stories.Another adjective with closely similar meaning is Brahma. An old-fashioned English way of spellingBrahmana is Brahmin.

Brahmanas ::: [the portion of the Veda, distinct from its mantra (hymnal) portion, which contains rules for the employment of the mantras at various sacrifices, and also detailed explanations of the origin and meaning of the mantras and numerous old legends].

Brahmanic Hinduism: That stage of Hinduism represented in the literature known as the Brahmanas, the period of change from Vedic Hinduism (q.v.) to a thoroughly cosmological, ritualistic and mystic creed, in which priests, sacrifices and magic practices played an important part.

Brihaspati (Sanskrit) Bṛhaspati [from bṛh prayer + pati lord] Sometimes Vrihaspati. A Vedic deity, corresponding to the planet Jupiter, commonly translated lord of prayer, the personification of exoteric piety and religion, but mystically the name signifies lord of increase, of expansion, growth. He is frequently called Brahmanaspati, both names having a direct significance with the power of sound as uttered in mantras or prayer united with positive will. He is regarded in Hindu mythology as the chief offerer of prayers and sacrifices, thus representing the Brahmin or priestly caste, being the Purohita (family priest) of the gods, among other things interceding with them for mankind. He has many titles and attributes, being frequently designated as Jiva (the living), Didivis (the bright or golden-colored). In later times he became the god of exoteric knowledge and eloquence — Dhishana (the intelligent), Gish-pati (lord of invocations). In this aspect he is regarded as the son of the rishi Angiras, and hence bears the patronymic Angirasa, and the husband of Tara, who was carried off by Soma (the moon). Tara is

Brother(s) of the Shadow ::: A term given in occultism and especially in modern esotericism to individuals, whether men or women,who follow the path of the shadows, the left-hand path. The term "shadow" is a technical expression andsignifies more than appears on the surface: i.e., the expression is not to be understood of individuals wholive in actual physical obscurity or actual physical shadows, which literalism would be simply absurd;but applies to those who follow the path of matter, which from time immemorial in the esoteric schoolsin both Orient and Occident has frequently been called shadow or shadows. The term originally arose,without doubt, in the philosophical conception of the word maya, for in early Oriental esotericism maya,and more especially maha-maya, was a term applied in one of its many philosophical meanings to thatwhich was contrary to and, indeed, in one sense a reflection of, light. Just as spirit may be considered tobe pure energy, and matter, although essentially crystallized spirit, may be looked upon as the shadowworld or vehicular world in which the energy or spirit or pure light works, just so is maya, as the garmentor expression or sakti of the divine energy, the vehicle or shadow of the divine side of nature, in otherwords its negative or nether pole, as light is the upper or positive pole.The Brothers of the Shadow are therefore those who, being essentially of the nature of matter,instinctively choose and follow the path along which they are most strongly drawn, that is, the path ofmatter or of the shadows. When it is recollected that matter is but a generalizing term, and that what thisterm comprises actually includes an almost infinite number of degrees of increasing ethereality from thegrossest physical substance, or absolute matter, up to the most ethereal or spiritualized substance, weimmediately see the subtle logic of this technical term -- shadows or, more fully, the Path of theShadows, hence the Brothers of the Shadow.They are the so-called black magicians of the Occident, and stand in sharp and notable contrast with thewhite magicians or the Sons of Light who follow the pathway of self-renunciation, self-sacrifice,self-conquest, perfect self-control, and an expansion of the heart and mind and consciousness in love andservice for all that lives. (See also Right-hand Path)The existence and aims of the Brothers of the Shadow are essentially selfish. It is commonly, buterroneously, supposed that the Brothers of the Shadow are men and women always of unpleasant ordispleasing personal appearance, and no greater error than this could possibly be made. Multitudes ofhuman beings are unconsciously treading the path of the shadows and, in comparison with thesemultitudes, it is relatively only a few who self-consciously lead and guide with subtle and nefastintelligence this army of unsuspecting victims of maya. The Brothers of the Shadow are often highlyintellectual men and women, frequently individuals with apparent great personal charm, and to theordinary observer, judging from their conversation and daily works, are fully as well able to "quotescripture" as are the Angels of Light!

Sacrifice: A ceremonial offering to a god, demon or other superhuman or supernatural being.

Sacrifice ::: (Latin, perform a sacred act) A general term for the giving up of things of value for religious purposes, such as (1) liturgical sacrifices of animal life or of other valuables (grain, wine, etc.), and (2) personal sacrifices of time or money or talents or potential (e.g., taking holy orders). In classical Christianity, the death of Jesus is interpreted as a sacrifice for sin on behalf of humankind. Islam retains a liturgical use of animal sacrifice especially in connection with the hajj (see also calendar).

Sacrifice ratio - The number of percentage points of annual output lost in the process of reducing inflation by 1 percentage point.

Sacrifice The performance of sacred rites, but with the more restricted sense of ceremonies of invocation, communion, or propitiation between man and gods. Scholars, in studying these universal rites, are at a loss to find an essential significance by which to gather them all into one class, and as to which to include and which to exclude from such a class. Sacrifices may take the form of a meal offered to the gods or shared with them, an oblation of first fruits of the harvest or flocks, or a propitiation or act of atonement. The Romans dedicated a portion of food or a libation to the lares or other deities; the Hebrews offered the first fruits of the harvest or the yearlings of the flock. The word also has the meaning of an act of self-dedication for a noble cause.

Sacrifice ::: The true essence of sacrifice is not self-immolation, it is self-giving; its object not self-effacement, but self-fulfilment; its method not self-mortification, but a greater life, not selfmutilation, but a transformation of our natural human parts into divine members, not self-torture, but a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 109


Buddha of Compassion One who, having gained the right to nirvana, renounces it to return to help all living beings. “They are men who have raised themselves from humanity into quasi-divinity; and this is done by letting the light imprisoned within, the light of the inner god, pour forth and manifest itself through the humanity of the man, through the human soul of the man. Through sacrifice and abandoning of all that is mean and wrong, ignoble and paltry and selfish: through opening up the inner nature so that the god within may shine forth; in other words, through self-directed evolution, they have raised themselves from mere manhood into becoming god-men, man-gods — human divinities.

Buddha(s) of Compassion ::: One who, having won all, gained all -- gained the right to kosmic peace and bliss -- renounces it so thathe may return as a Son of Light in order to help humanity, and indeed all that is.The Buddhas of Compassion are the noblest flowers of the human race. They are men who have raisedthemselves from humanity into quasi-divinity; and this is done by letting the light imprisoned within, thelight of the inner god, pour forth and manifest itself through the humanity of the man, through the humansoul of the man. Through sacrifice and abandoning of all that is mean and wrong, ignoble and paltry andselfish; through opening up the inner nature so that the god within may shine forth; in other words,through self-directed evolution, they have raised themselves from mere manhood into becominggod-men, man-gods -- human divinities.They are called Buddhas of Compassion because they feel their unity with all that is, and therefore feelintimate magnetic sympathy with all that is, and this is more and more the case as they evolve, untilfinally their consciousness blends with that of the universe and lives eternally and immortally, because itis at one with the universe. "The dewdrop slips into the shining sea" -- its origin.Feeling the urge of almighty love in their hearts, the Buddhas of Compassion advance forever steadilytowards still greater heights of spiritual achievement; and the reason is that they have become thevehicles of universal love and universal wisdom. As impersonal love is universal, their whole natureexpands consequently with the universal powers that are working through them. The Buddhas ofCompassion, existing in their various degrees of evolution, form a sublime hierarchy extending from theSilent Watcher on our planet downwards through these various degrees unto themselves, and evenbeyond themselves to their chelas or disciples. Spiritually and mystically they contrast strongly withwhat Asiatic occultism, through the medium of Buddhism, has called the Pratyeka Buddhas.

buy ::: v. t. --> To acquire the ownership of (property) by giving an accepted price or consideration therefor, or by agreeing to do so; to acquire by the payment of a price or value; to purchase; -- opposed to sell.
To acquire or procure by something given or done in exchange, literally or figuratively; to get, at a cost or sacrifice; to buy pleasure with pain.


Calendar ::: In general, Christianity operates on a "solar" calendar based on the relationship between the sun and the earth (365.25 days per year). The main Christian observances are Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. The Islamic calendar is "lunar," based on the relationship of earth and moon (354 days in a year). Thus, every 100 solar years are equal to about 103 lunar years. Muslim calendric observances include fasting during the month of Ramadan, followed by the feast of fast breaking (id al-fitr), and the time for pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) and associated practices such as the Feast of Sacrifice. Judaism follows a lunar calendar adjusted every three years or so to the solar cycle (by adding a second 12th month)—thus “lunisolar.” The oldest Jewish annual observances are Passover/Pesach, Shavuot, Yom Kippur and Sukkot; other ancient celebrations include Rosh Ha-Shana, Simhat Torah, Hanukkah and Purim. See also B.C.E., CE.

Chhinnamasta Tantrika (Sanskrit) Chinnamastā Tāntrika [from chinna severed + masta head] Buddhist tantric sect named for the goddess Chhinnamasta, represented with a decapitated head. In their highest initiation, the adept “must ‘cut off his own head with the right hand, holding it in the left.’ Three streams of blood gush out from the headless trunk. One of these is directed into the mouth of the decapitated head . . .; the other is directed toward the earth as an offering of the pure, sinless blood to mother Earth; and the third gushes toward heaven, as a witness for the sacrifice of ‘self-immolation.’ Now, this had a profound Occult significance which is known only to the initiated . . .” (BCW 4:265-6).

children were sacrificed. He has been equated with

Chitta-riddhi-pada (Sanskrit) Citta-ṛddhi-pāda [from citta intelligence, thought, memory + ṛddhi supernormal power + pāda step, inspiring ray] In raja yoga, the step of renunciation of the lower memory, in the attainment of supernormal faculty or power. “The third condition of the mystic series which leads to the acquirement of adeptship; i.e., the renunciation of physical memory, and of all thoughts connected with worldly or personal events in one’s life — benefits, personal pleasures or associations. Physical memory has to be sacrificed, and recalled by will power only when absolutely needed” (TG 324).

Christianity, in addition to a great many so-called pagan ideas, also inherited and adapted Jewish sacrificial ideas, but the word became limited to the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world, and the sacrifice by man of his personal desires to the behests of his divinity. The true origin of the Christian atonement is in the Mysteries, when the hierophant offered his pure and sinless life as a sacrifice for his race to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin (IU 2:42). The general sense in theosophy is that of sacrificing one’s temporal interests to a lofty ideal.

COMMUNION (inner) ::: This is not to be confined to an excepuonal nearness and adorauon when we retire qoite info ourselves away from our normal preoccupations, nor is it to be sought by a putting away of our human activities All our thoughts, impiilses feclines, actions have to be referred to Him for His sanction or disallowance, or tf we cannot yet reach this point, to be offered to Him m our sacrifice of aspirauon, so that

competitive altruism: (also called 'costly signalling theory') the concept that individuals will make large public sacrifices if they believe there is a long-term personal benefit.

constant linear velocity "storage" (CLV) A way of controlling the rotation of the {disks} in a {disk drive} in which the {linear velocity} of the disk surface relative to the {read/write heads} is kept constant. In order to achieve constant linear velocity, the disk must rotate faster (at a higher {angular velocity}) when reading or writing tracks closer to the centre. Having a constant linear read/write speed along the track means that the electrical signal to and from the heads has a constant {data rate} (bits per second), thus simplifying the timing of the drive electronics somewhat. However, rotating at less than the maximum possible rate sacrifices some potential performance compared to the alternative, {constant angular velocity}. Also, varying the rate causes more vibration and consumes more energy. (2014-07-27)

Cost - 1. the sacrifice, measured by the price paid, to acquire, produce, or main­tain goods or services. Prices paid for materials, labour, and factory overhead in the manufacture of goods are costs. Or 2. an asset. The term cost is often used when referring to the valuation of a good or service acquired. When it is used in this sense, a cost is an asset. The concepts of cost and expense are often used interchangeably. When the benefits of the acquisition of the goods or services expire, the cost becomes an expense or loss. An expense is a cost with expired benefits. A loss is an expense (expired cost) with no related benefit.

credited with preventing the sacrifice of Isaac,

crithomancu ::: n. --> A kind of divination by means of the dough of the cakes offered in the ancient sacrifices, and the meal strewed over the victims.

Daitya(s), Daiteya(s) (Sanskrit) Daitya-s, Daiteya-s Descendants of Diti. If Aditi is understood as mulaprakriti, or virtually cosmic space, so Diti, the nether pole of the former, may be understood as the aggregate of the prakritis. Cosmically, daityas are titans, often called asuras, whose role is that of urgers of evolutionary progress for all things, as contrasted with the incomparably slower, but unceasing, evolutionary inertia of the vast cosmic powers. Terrestrially, they are the titans and giants of the fourth root-race. According to the Hindu Puranas, these daityas are demons and enemies of the ceremonial sacrifice and ritualistic ceremonies; but according to the secret meaning hid under these stories, some of the daityas were the forwards-looking and impulse-providing intellectual entities striving against the inertia or deadweight of human nature.

dasagvas (Dashagwas) ::: those who sacrifice for ten months; seers of the ten rays who enter with Indra into the cave of the panis and recover the lost herds. [Ved.]

Dattoli (Sanskrit) Dattoli One name of Agastya, a sage of the first manvantara, in his former birth as the son of the progenitor of the rakshasas. Variants are Dattotti, Dattoi, Dattali, Dattotri, Dattobhri, Dambhobhi, and Dhambholi. These “seven variants have each a secret sense, and refer in the esoteric comments to various ethnological classifications, and also to physiological and anthropological mysteries of the primitive races. For, surely, the Rakshasas are not demons, but simply the primitive and ferocious giants, the Atlanteans, who were scattered on the face of the globe as the Fifth Race is now. Vasishta is a warrant to this, if his words addressed to Parasara, who attempted a bit of jadoo (sorcery), which he calls ‘sacrifice,’ for the destruction of the Rakshasas, mean anything. For he says, ‘Let no more of these unoffending “Spirits of Darkness” be destroyed’ . . .” (SD 2:232n).

Dikshita (Sanskrit) Dīkṣita [past participle of the verbal root dīkṣ to consecrate or dedicate oneself] Consecrated, initiated; to dedicate oneself in training for initiation, which is exoterically alluded to in Hindu works as training for the performance of the soma sacrifice; hence as a noun, an initiate.

Dionysian mysteries: The ancient Greek mystery cult, originating in Phrygia, observed at various places by migratory groups of adherents. Originally, the rites were highly orgiastic in character; the devotees imbibed the sacred wine, ate the raw flesh of the sacrificed animal and drank its warm blood, and went into a frenzy of ecstasy, believed to be inspired by the presence of the deity within them. (Cf. Orphic mysteries.)

divine life ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A life of gnostic beings carrying the evolution to a higher supramental status might fitly be characterised as a divine life; for it would be a life in the Divine, a life of the beginnings of a spiritual divine light and power and joy manifested in material Nature.” *The Life Divine ::: "The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man"s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.” The Life Divine

“ . . . Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. The Synthesis of Yoga

Divine sacrifice is the descent of the Divine into the obscurity of the unconsciousness.

Ebionites, Ebionism ::: A Judeo-Christian sect (or category) in the 2nd-4th centuries CE; accepted much of Mosaic Torah (circumcision, sabbath, etc.) but rejected sacrifices; accepted Jesus/Joshua as messiah but not his divinity; some Ebionites opposed the doctrines of Paul.

eighty-twenty rule "programming" The program-design version of the law of diminishing returns. The 80/20 rule says that roughly 80% of the problem can be solved with 20% of the effort that it would take to solve the whole problem. For example, parsing {e-mail addresses} in "From:" lines in e-mail messages is notoriously difficult if you follow the RFC 2822 specification. However, about 60% of actual "From:" lines are in the format "From: Their Name "user@host"", with a far more constrained idea of what can be in "user" or "host" than in RFC 2822. Another 25% just add double-quotes around "Their Name". Matching just those two patterns would thus cover 85% of "From:" lines, with a tiny portion of the code required to fully implement RFC2822. (Adding support for "From: user@host" and "From: user@host (Their Name) " brings coverage to almost 100%, leaving only really baroque things that RFC-2822 permits, like "From: Pete(A wonderful \) chap) "pete(his account)@silly.test(his host)" or the like.) It is an eternal question whether too much attention is paid to the 80/20 rule (leading to systems that are irrevocably broken for "unusual" cases), or too little (leading to systems that sacrifice usability in the typical case, just so that rare cases can work properly). Compare: {KISS Principle} (2003-11-17)

eighty-twenty rule ::: (programming) The program-design version of the law of diminishing returns. The 80/20 rule says that roughly 80% of the problem can be solved with 20% of the effort that it would take to solve the whole problem.For example, parsing e-mail addresses in From: lines in e-mail messages is notoriously difficult if you follow the RFC 2822 specification. However, about those two patterns would thus cover 85% of From: lines, with a tiny portion of the code required to fully implement RFC2822.(Adding support for From: and From: (Their Name) brings coverage to almost 100%, leaving only really baroque things that RFC-2822 permits, like From: Pete(A wonderful \) chap) pete(his account)@silly.test(his host) or the like.)It is an eternal question whether too much attention is paid to the 80/20 rule (leading to systems that are irrevocably broken for unusual cases), or too little (leading to systems that sacrifice usability in the typical case, just so that rare cases can work properly).Compare: KISS Principle(2003-11-17)

ESSENTIAL QUALITIES Twelve qualities, manifestations of causal consciousness and will, which the monad must acquire 100 per cent in order to pass to the essential kingdom, the fifth natural kingdom. They sum up all positive human qualities, also those that are possible only at the stages of humanity and ideality. Their true content, therefore, is inaccessible to lower consciousness, and information given about them will unfailingly be emotionalized.

Tentatively, the following symbolical keywords have been used about them: 1) Trust in life, 2) Trust in self, 3) Obedience to law, 4) Uprightness, 5) Impersonality, 6)
Willingness to sacrifice, 7) Faithfulness, 8) Reticence, 9) Joy in life, 10) Purpose, 11)
Wisdom, 12) Unity. (K 1.34.23, 7.23.3)


Every avatara repeats in the small the primordial history of the cosmic Logos: the divinity sacrificing itself for the sake of all the hierarchies within it. This is the sacrifice which took place “before the beginning of the world,” the core of the mythologic story of the Christos, the Logos or cosmic Word incarnate as man.

expiation ::: n. --> The act of making satisfaction or atonement for any crime or fault; the extinguishing of guilt by suffering or penalty.
The means by which reparation or atonement for crimes or sins is made; an expiatory sacrifice or offering; an atonement.
An act by which the treats of prodigies were averted among the ancient heathen.


expiatory ::: a. --> Having power, or intended, to make expiation; atoning; as, an expiatory sacrifice.

fair-weather ::: a. --> Made or done in pleasant weather, or in circumstances involving but little exposure or sacrifice; as, a fair-weather voyage.
Appearing only when times or circumstances are prosperous; as, a fair-weather friend.


Fallen Angels Those cosmic entities or dhyanis of various classes who in the course of their evolution descended into matter in order to form and inform the lower worlds. In doing so they rebelled in a purely mystical sense against spirit or heaven, asserting individual free will and divine love. Their act is in part one of compassion and self-sacrifice, and they are eventually saved, while they carry the cycle of evolution along the ascending arc. Christian theology has interpreted this into the legend of the fallen angles, whose rebellion against God is a crime, who are the eternal enemies of God and mankind, and who are in consequence doomed to final destruction. The myth in its original form has many variants, as in the story of Prometheus, Bahak-Zivo, the Dragon of Revelation, the kumaras, etc.

Faustian bargain: To agree to a sacrifice in exchange for knowledge. From the legend of Faust. He exchanged his soul for knowledge.

februation ::: n. --> Purification; a sacrifice.

Fedayeen ::: (Arabic. Self-sacrificers) Palestinian militants who carried out attacks on Israel during the 1950's and 1960's from across the Jordanian and Egyptian borders.

gambit ::: n. --> A mode of opening the game, in which a pawn is sacrificed to gain an attacking position.

gata-sangasya muktasya jnanavasthitacetasah yajnayacaratah karma samagram praviliyate ::: [all the works of the liberated man, freed from attachment, with mind, heart and spirit (cetas) firmly founded in self-knowledge who acts for the sake of sacrifice are dissolved]. [Gita 4.23]

  “Gautama, the Buddha, would not have been a mortal man, had he not passed through hundreds and thousands of births previous to his last. Yet the detailed account of these, and the statement that during them he worked his way up through every stage of transmigration from the lowest animate and inanimate atom and insect, up to the highest — or man, contains simply the well-known occult aphorism: ‘a stone becomes a plant, a plant an animal, and an animal a man.’ Every human being who has ever existed, has passed through the same evolution. But the hidden symbolism in the sequence of these re-births (jataka) contains a perfect history of the evolution on this earth, pre and post human, and is a scientific exposition of natural facts. One truth not veiled but bare and open is found in their nomenclature, viz., that as soon as Gautama had reached the human form he began exhibiting in every personality the utmost unselfishness, self-sacrifice and charity” (TG 65).

gehenna ::: n. --> The valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem, where some of the Israelites sacrificed their children to Moloch, which, on this account, was afterward regarded as a place of abomination, and made a receptacle for all the refuse of the city, perpetual fires being kept up in order to prevent pestilential effluvia. In the New Testament the name is transferred, by an easy metaphor, to Hell.

Gehenna: The word is derived from the Hebrew Ge Hinnom, the Valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem, where the ancient Israelites sacrificed children to the god Moloch; in later times, the valley was regarded as a place of refuse, where fires were kept continually burning to prevent pestilence. The name Gehenna was adopted for the “bottomless pit” of eternal fire where the wicked are thrust after death and punished and tormented forever.

Gei’ Hinnom (Hebrew) Gēi’ Hinnōm Also Gai-hinnom. The valley of Hinnom, generally rendered as by the Greek Gehenna, situated south of Jerusalem, in which was Tophet where children were at one time sacrificed to Moloch (2 Kings 23:10). Later the place was used as a crematorium for the refuse of the city, perpetual fires being kept for that purpose. In the Bible it is translated as hell or hell of fire, but the Hebrew word bears no such interpretation. The Greek Gehenna “is identical with the Homeric Tartarus” (IU 2:507).

god ::: a. & n. --> Good. ::: n. --> A being conceived of as possessing supernatural power, and to be propitiated by sacrifice, worship, etc.; a divinity; a deity; an object of worship; an idol.
The Supreme Being; the eternal and infinite Spirit, the


Golden Fleece In Greek mythology, the fleece of a ram sent by the gods to save Phrixus and Helle, son and daughter of Athamas and Nephele, from their stepmother Ino. Flying through the air, it bore them towards Asia Minor. Helle drowned in the sea (at the Hellespont), but Phrixus arrived at Colchis. There he sacrificed the ram to Zeus and presented the fleece to king Aeetes, who hung it in a grove of Ares. Later, a generation before the Trojan War, Jason and the Argonauts brought the fleece back to Greece with the aid of Aeetes’ daughter Medea.

Great Sacrifice, Renunciation. See WATCHER; WONDROUS BEING

Grhya-sutras: The “House Books” of Hinduism, teaching and expounding the rites for the critical points of life, from birth to death, and the family sacrifices.

Grihastha (Sanskrit) Gṛhastha [from gṛha house, home + sthā to station oneself, stand] A householder; the second state or period in the religious life of a Brahmin, as enumerated in the Laws of Manu. He was supposed to perform the duties of the master of a house and father of a family, after having finished a preliminary course of studies and investiture with the sacred thread. He continued the reading and teaching of the Vedas, likewise making and assisting in sacrifices.

Hagiga 12b, Michael is the archistratege of the 4th Heaven. Here he “offers up daily sacrifice.”

Haoma (Avestan) Hūm (Pahlavi) Homa (Persian) The Tree of Life; there are two haomas: the yellow or golden earthly haoma, which when prepared and used as an offering for sacrifice is the king of healing plants, the most sacred and powerful of all the offerings prescribed in the Mazdean scriptures. This haoma is equivalent to the Hindu soma — the sacred drink used in the temples, and is said to endow he who drinks it with the property of mind.

hecatomb ::: n. --> A sacrifice of a hundred oxen or cattle at the same time; hence, the sacrifice or slaughter of any large number of victims.

Hepatoscopy: A form of divination, by studying the liver of a sacrificed sheep, practiced among the Babylonians, Etruscans, Hittites, etc., based on the assumption that the seat of life is in the liver, and that the structure of the world and the fortune of the individual may be traced on the liver of the animal.

hero ::: 1. One who is distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility, fortitude, etc. 2. A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) hero"s, heroes.

hieromancy ::: n. --> Divination by observing the objects offered in sacrifice.

hieroscopy ::: n. --> Divination by inspection of entrails of victims offered in sacrifice.

Hiram Abif is a type-figure of all the saviors of humanity who sacrificed themselves for the salvation of mankind, a direct human representative of its prototype among the divinities, such as Odin and Visvakarman, the builder and artificer of the gods. Hiram Abif is also the type-figure of the individual’s inner god, crucified upon the cross of material existence.

Holocaust ::: Madhav: “Holocaust—this profound sacrifice of the soul, the soul of the ‘burdened great’, those who sacrifice their celestial status and accept to undergo the yoke of Fate and Death. Their holocaust, chosen sacrifice, is not a sacrifice imposed by their karma for they have no karma, but a self-chosen sacrifice in furtherance of God’s work.” Sat-Sang Talk, 25/8/91

holocaust ::: n. --> A burnt sacrifice; an offering, the whole of which was consumed by fire, among the Jews and some pagan nations.
Sacrifice or loss of many lives, as by the burning of a theater or a ship. [An extended use not authorized by careful writers.]


HOLOCAUST OF THE DIVINE. ::: The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser tnple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nafure-b^y and Nature-force, and they exist because moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was fbere «i 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 assimilate it ; avoid self-dispersion and all externalising of the consciousness.

holocaust: The contemporary meaning of this term refers to the genocide of European Jews during the Second World War. This occurred in Nazi concentration camps. Classically the term also refers to the sacrifices offered to Greek gods through burning.

holocaust ::: “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

homa &

host ::: n. --> The consecrated wafer, believed to be the body of Christ, which in the Mass is offered as a sacrifice; also, the bread before consecration.
An army; a number of men gathered for war.
Any great number or multitude; a throng.
One who receives or entertains another, whether gratuitously or for compensation; one from whom another receives food, lodging, or entertainment; a landlord.


hotr (Hotri) ::: the priest of the sacrifice, he who calls and brings the gods and gives them the offering. [Ved.] ::: hota [nominative]

Hotri (Sanskrit) Hotṛ An offerer of an oblation with fire, or burnt offering; hence a sacrificer, a priest. As used in the Rig-Veda, one of the four kinds of officiating priests at a sacrifice: he who invokes the gods by reciting the mantras from the Rig-Veda. In the Anugita the plural is used symbolically for the seven senses, which are represented as being seven priests: “the senses supply the fire of mind (i.e., desire) with the oblations of external pleasures.” Thus these seven are the causes of emancipation (cf TG 146).

human ::: a. --> Belonging to man or mankind; having the qualities or attributes of a man; of or pertaining to man or to the race of man; as, a human voice; human shape; human nature; human sacrifices. ::: n. --> A human being.

human mind and body and the remoulding of their inner life into the divine image, — what the Vedic seers called the birth of the Son by the sacrifice. It is in fact by a continual sacrifice or offering, a sacrifice of adoration and aspiration, of works, of thought and knowledge, of the mounting flame of the Godward will 'that we build ourselves into the being of this Infinite.

Human sacrifice: The ceremonial killing of a human being as an offering to a god or for other mystical or magical purposes.

Ida or Ila (Sanskrit) Iḍā, Iḷā Refreshment, flow; the goddess of sacred speech, similar to Vach; in the Rig-Veda called the instructress of Manu, instituting the rules for the performing of sacrifices. The Satapatha-Brahmana represents Ida as arising from a sacrifice which Manu had performed for the purpose of obtaining offspring. Although claimed by the gods Mitra and Varuna, she became the wife of Manu, giving birth to the race of manus. In the Puranas, she is daughter of Vaivasvata-Manu, wife of Budha (wisdom), and mother of Pururavas. In some accounts she is born a woman, becomes a man named Sudyumna, then rebecomes a woman before finally becoming a man again. This refers to the androgynous third root-race, as well as to the later part of the second root-race.

Idol: An image or representation of a supernatural being, in which the latter is believed to have his seat or abode, and before which sacrifices and other acts and rituals of worship are performed.

idolatrous ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to idolatry; partaking of the nature of idolatry; given to idolatry or the worship of false gods; as, idolatrous sacrifices.
Consisting in, or partaking of, an excessive attachment or reverence; as, an idolatrous veneration for antiquity.


immolate ::: v. t. --> To sacrifice; to offer in sacrifice; to kill, as a sacrificial victim.

immolation ::: n. --> The act of immolating, or the state of being immolated, or sacrificed.
That which is immolated; a sacrifice.


immolator ::: n. --> One who offers in sacrifice; specifically, one of a sect of Russian fanatics who practice self-mutilatio and sacrifice.

Implicit costs - Costs which do not involve a direct payment of money to a third party, but which nevertheless involve a sacrifice of some alternative.

In a more restricted sense, svadha is also the sacrificial offering or oblation made to each god, and is thus allegorically represented as a daughter of Daksha and wife of at least one class of the pitris, the agnishvattas and the kumaras. A svadha was therefore considered the highest form of benediction at a sacrifice, the inmost meaning being that one’s own essence is laid on the altar of self-abnegations to the good of all. The inmost self is “placed” or “fixed” in its own vitality, which becomes the carrier, supporter, and maintainer of the inner spiritual power.

Increasing opportunity costs of production - When additional production of one good involves ever increasing sacrifices of another.

incruental ::: a. --> Unbloody; not attended with blood; as, an incruental sacrifice.

inferiae ::: n. pl. --> Sacrifices offered to the souls of deceased heroes or friends.

In his capacity as Allfather, Odin “hung nine nights in the windtorn tree pierced by a spear,” in order to “raise runes of wisdom” from the nether worlds: the cosmic spirit sacrificed “my self to my Self above me in the tree” to gain universal experience.

In human beings the pranic life-currents become impregnated with the manasic quality conferred by the agnishvattas. The lower elements of kama-prana are used in the blood offerings and sacrifices of voodoo rites and other forms of black magic:

INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.

Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.

Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.

Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.

Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.

In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.

There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.

Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.

Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.

Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.

The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.

Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.

Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.

Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.

Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.

Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.

Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.

By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.

The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.

Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.

The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.

Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.

Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.

Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.

The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.

This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.

Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.

Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.

The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.

Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.

It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.

If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.

(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.

(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.

Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.

It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.

Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.


  “In the Dwapara Yuga righteousness was diminished by a half. The Veda became fourfold. Some men studied four Vedas, other three, others two, others one, and some none at all. Ceremonies were celebrated in a great variety of ways. From the decline of goodness only few men adhered to truth. When men had fallen away from goodness, many diseases, desires, and calamities, caused by destiny, assailed them, by which they were severely afflicted and driven to practise austerities. Others desiring heavenly bliss offered sacrifices. Thus men declined through unrighteousness” (abridged by Muir, 1:144)

In the earlier third root-races, the Sons of Wisdom produced by kriyasakti a progeny called the Sons of Ad, Sons of the Fire-mist, or Sons of Will and Yoga. This was not a race, but “at first a wondrous Being, called the ‘Initiator,’ and after him a group of semi-divine and semi-human beings. ‘Set apart’ in Archaic genesis for certain purposes, they are those in whom are said to have incarnated the highest Dhyanis, ‘Munis and Rishis from previous Manvantaras’ — to form the nursery for future human adepts, on this earth and during the present cycle” (SD 1:207). This Wondrous Being, who descended in the early part of the Third Age, is the tree from which have come the great historically known sages and hierophants, and it holds spiritual sway over the initiated adepts. “He is the ‘Initiator,’ called the ‘great sacrifice.’ For, sitting at the threshold of light, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness, which he will not cross, nor will he quit his post till the last day of this life-cycle. Why does the solitary Watcher remain at his self-chosen post? Why does he sit by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, of which he drinks no longer, as he has naught to learn which he does not know . . .? Because the lonely, sore-footed pilgrims on their way back to their home are never sure to the last moment of not losing their way in this limitless desert of illusion and matter called Earth-Life. Because he would fain show the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a voluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. Because, in short, he has sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, though but a few Elect may profit by the great sacrifice” (SD 1:208).

In the Edda, Tyr is represented as having had one hand torn off by the wolf Fenris, a sacrifice he willingly made for the perpetuation of life.

In the first case, the hierophant could either offer his pure life “as a sacrifice for his race to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin,” or an animal victim. This last is a blind, for no initiate of the right-hand path ever sacrificed the life of an animal or any life. The sacrifice performed is the complete conquest of the lower, animal nature, either in this or a lower degree; hence the alternative. The sacrifice of their lives “depended entirely on their own will. At the last moment of the solemn ‘new birth,’ the initiator passed ‘the word’ to the initiated, and immediately after that the latter had a weapon placed in his right hand, and was ordered to strike. This is the true origin of the Christian dogma of atonement” (IU 2:42). Blavatsky mentions a widespread superstition among the Slavs and Russians that a magician or wizard cannot die before he has passed the word to a successor, which she traces to the ancient Mysteries.

In the Mahabharata Hanuman, the learned monkey chief, gives a description of the treta yuga: “In the Treta Yuga sacrifice commenced, righteousness decreased by one-fourth; men adhered to truth, and were devoted to a righteousness dependent on ceremonies. Sacrifices prevailed with holy acts and a variety of rites. Men acted with an object in view, seeking after reward for their rites and their gifts, and were no longer disposed to austerities and to liberality from a simple feeling of duty” (abridgment by Muir 1:144). See also SATYA YUGA

In theosophical writings, advanced students of occultism who have acquired some knowledge and use of spiritual powers but misuse them for selfish purposes are called black magicians, Brothers of the Shadow, followers of the left-hand path, or sometimes dugpas. In their highest class they are adepts in spiritual evil. Whenever the forces of nature are used for selfish purposes, such misuse by anyone marks such person as a black magician, whether conscious or unconscious. Those who follow the pathway of self-renunciation, self-sacrifice, self-conquest, and an expansion of the heart, mind, and consciousness in love and service for all that lives are called white magicians or Sons of Light.

In the Rig-Veda, Visvakarman is said to sacrifice himself to himself. This refers, among other things, to the fact that when manvantara opens, in order for its vast content of worlds and hierarchies to appear, the originating entities must — because of karmic mandate or impulse — themselves form the beginnings of things from themselves, thus sacrificing themselves to themselves so that the cosmos may appear in manifestation. Another significance of the statement is the reference to the spiritual resurrection at the end of the manvantara or, in the case of man, to the choice to be spiritual rather than material, to rise self-consciously from material existence into the one Life. “Then he ascends into heaven indeed; where, plunged into the incomprehensible absolute Being and Bliss of Paranirvana, he reigns unconditionally, and whence he will re-descend again at the next ‘coming,’ which one portion of humanity expects in its dead-letter sense as the second advent, and the other as the last ‘Kalki Avatar’ ” (SD 1:268).

  "In the spiritual sense, however, sacrifice has a different meaning — it does not so much indicate giving up what is held dear as an offering of oneself, one"s being, one"s mind, heart, will, body, life, actions to the Divine. It has the original sense of ‘making sacred" and is used as an equivalent of the word yajna. When the Gita speaks of the ‘sacrifice of knowledge", it does not mean a giving up of anything, but a turning of the mind towards the Divine in the search for knowledge and an offering of oneself through it. It is in this sense, too, that one speaks of the offering or sacrifice of works. The Mother has written somewhere that the spiritual sacrifice is joyful and not painful in its nature. On the spiritual path, very commonly, if a seeker still feels the old ties and responsibilities strongly he is not asked to sever or leave them, but to let the call in him grow till all within is ready. Many, indeed, come away earlier because they feel that to cut loose is their only chance, and these have to go sometimes through a struggle. But the pain, the struggle, is not the essential character of this spiritual self-offering.” Letters on Yoga

“In the spiritual sense, however, sacrifice has a different meaning—it does not so much indicate giving up what is held dear as an offering of oneself, one’s being, one’s mind, heart, will, body, life, actions to the Divine. It has the original sense of ‘making sacred’ and is used as an equivalent of the word yajna. When the Gita speaks of the ‘sacrifice of knowledge’, it does not mean a giving up of anything, but a turning of the mind towards the Divine in the search for knowledge and an offering of oneself through it. It is in this sense, too, that one speaks of the offering or sacrifice of works. The Mother has written somewhere that the spiritual sacrifice is joyful and not painful in its nature. On the spiritual path, very commonly, if a seeker still feels the old ties and responsibilities strongly he is not asked to sever or leave them, but to let the call in him grow till all within is ready. Many, indeed, come away earlier because they feel that to cut loose is their only chance, and these have to go sometimes through a struggle. But the pain, the struggle, is not the essential character of this spiritual self-offering.” Letters on Yoga

  “In the Vayu Purana’s account of Daksha’s sacrifice, moreover, it is said to have taken place in the presence of creatures born from the egg, from the vapour, vegetation, pores of the skin, and, finally only, from the womb.

"It is only divine Love which can bear the burden I have to bear, that all have to bear who have sacrificed everything else to the one aim of uplifting earth out of its darkness towards the Divine.” On Himself

“It is only divine Love which can bear the burden I have to bear, that all have to bear who have sacrificed everything else to the one aim of uplifting earth out of its darkness towards the Divine.” On Himself

  “It is this dhyani-buddha of our fourth round, our Father in Heaven, who is the Wondrous Being, the Great Initiator, the Sacrifice, . . . The Ray running through all our individual being, from which we draw our spiritual life and spiritual sustenance, comes direct to us from this hierarchical Wondrous Being in whom we all are rooted. He to us, psychologically and spiritually, holds exactly the same place that the human ego, the man-ego, holds to the innumerable multitudes of elemental entities which compose his body . . .” (Fund 237-8).

Jagannatha (Sanskrit) Jagannātha [from jagat world + nātha protector, lord] World protector, governor or lord of the world; title of Vishnu and Krishna, especially in his avataric manifestation from Vishnu; also of Rama, a previous avatara. “This deity is worshipped equally by all the sects of India. . . . He is the god of the Mysteries, and his temples, which are most numerous in Bengal, are all of a pyramidal form” (IU 2:301). Applied specifically to the idol of Vishnu-Krishna at Puri in Orissa, Bengal, which is drawn through the street in a huge vehicle, under the wheels of which devotees were supposed to allow themselves to be crushed — the modern English form is Juggernaut, meaning any law, custom, or belief that demands blind devotion and ruthless sacrifice.

Jhumur: “The soul has made this sacrifice of entering into darkness and now it has to pay the price of pain and suffering and work its way up. But each time it makes some kind of forward progress, more darkness, constantly more unconscious movements, imperfections, pile up. One might say the price that the spirit has to pay for having made this daring descent keeps on going up. It is like a very long journey and she [Savitri] has come to strike that out.”

jnana-yajnena yajanto mam upasate ::: [they, sacrificing with the sacrifice of knowledge, worship Me]. [Gita 9.15]

karma yoga. ::: the yoga of action chosen primarily by those of an outgoing nature; the yoga of selfless devotion of all inner and outer activities as a sacrifice to the Lord; selfless service to God without any intention for gain or reward; one of the four paths of yoga

kratu ::: action, work, sacrifice; the effective power behind action represented in the mental consciousness by the will. [Ved.]

Kratudvish (Sanskrit) Kratudviṣ In Hindu mythology, an enemy of all ritualistic and ceremonial worship and exoteric sham; the spiritual beings which represented, in their human aspect, the adepts of esoteric wisdom in opposition to the multitude who followed exoteric and popular religious forms, mummeries, and sacrifices. The kratusvishas were often called the asuras, daityas, danavas, kinnaras, etc., who fought against Brihaspati, the prototype of exoteric and ritualistic worship in the Tarakamaya (war in heaven). All the kratudvishas are represented as being yogis and ascetics of great spiritual and intellectual power.

kratu. ::: sacrifice; action

laborious ::: a. --> Requiring labor, perseverance, or sacrifices; toilsome; tiresome.
Devoted to labor; diligent; industrious; as, a laborious mechanic.


laver ::: n. --> A vessel for washing; a large basin.
A large brazen vessel placed in the court of the Jewish tabernacle where the officiating priests washed their hands and feet.
One of several vessels in Solomon&


levite ::: n. --> One of the tribe or family of Levi; a descendant of Levi; esp., one subordinate to the priests (who were of the same tribe) and employed in various duties connected with the tabernacle first, and afterward the temple, such as the care of the building, bringing of wood and other necessaries for the sacrifices, the music of the services, etc.
A priest; -- so called in contempt or ridicule.


libation ::: n. --> The act of pouring a liquid or liquor, usually wine, either on the ground or on a victim in sacrifice, in honor of some deity; also, the wine or liquid thus poured out.

Li: Propriety; code of proper conduct; rules of social contact; good manners; etiquett; mores; rituals; rites; ceremonials. In Confucius, it aims at true manhood (jen) through self-mastery, and central harmony (ho). "Propriety regulates and refines human feelings, giving them due allowance, so as to keep the people within bounds." It is "to determine human relationships, to settle suspicions and doubts, to distinguish similarity and difference, and to ascertain right and wrong." "The rules of propriety are rooted in Heaven, have their correspondences in Earth, and are applicable to spiritual beings." "Music unites, while rituals differentiate. . . . Music comes from the inside, while rituals come from the outside. Because music comes from the inside, it is characterized by quiet and calm. And because rituals come from the outside, they are characterized by formalism. . . . Truly great music shares the principles of harmony with the universe, and truly great ritualism shares the principles of distinction with the universe. Through the principles of harmony, order is restored in the physical world, and through the principles of distinction, we are enabled to offer sacrifices to Heaven and Earth. . . . Music expresses the harmony of the universe, while rituals express the order of the universe. Through harmony all things are influenced, and through order all things have a proper place. Music rises from Heaven, while rituals are patterned on Earth. . . ." (Early Confucianism.) "The code of propriety has three sources: Heaven and Earth gave birth to it -- this is a source; our ancestors made it fit the situation -- this is a source; the princes and teachers formed it -- this is a source." (Hsun Tzu, c 335-c 238 B.C.) -- W.T.C.

lustration ::: n. --> The act of lustrating or purifying.
A sacrifice, or ceremony, by which cities, fields, armies, or people, defiled by crimes, pestilence, or other cause of uncleanness, were purified.


mactation ::: n. --> The act of killing a victim for sacrifice.

maghoni (Dakshina maghoni) ::: Daks.in.a (the Vedic goddess . in.a maghoni "whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion") in her plenitude; "the discernment in its fullness". [R.g Veda 2.11.21, etc.]

Magi once sacrificed to Ahriman. He is coeval

magnanimity ::: n. --> The quality of being magnanimous; greatness of mind; elevation or dignity of soul; that quality or combination of qualities, in character, which enables one to encounter danger and trouble with tranquility and firmness, to disdain injustice, meanness and revenge, and to act and sacrifice for noble objects.

Mahaguru (Sanskrit) Mahāguru [from mahā great + guru teacher] The great teacher; a name of the great initiator or awakener of the spiritual nature in man, also called the Great Being or Great Sacrifice.

Manasaputra(s)(Sanskrit) ::: This is a compound word: manas, "mind," putra, "son" -- "sons of mind." The teaching is thatthere exists a Hierarchy of Compassion, which H. P. Blavatsky sometimes called the Hierarchy of Mercyor of Pity. This is the light side of nature as contrasted with its matter side or shadow side, its night side.It is from this Hierarchy of Compassion that came those semi-divine entities at about the middle periodof the third root-race of this round, who incarnated in the semi-conscious, quasi-senseless men of thatperiod. These advanced entities are otherwise known as the solar lhas as the Tibetans call them, the solarspirits, who were the men of a former kalpa, and who during the third root-race thus sacrificedthemselves in order to give us intellectual light -- incarnating in those senseless psychophysical shells inorder to awaken the divine flame of egoity and self-consciousness in the sleeping egos which we thenwere. They are ourselves because belonging to the same spiritray that we do; yet we, more strictlyspeaking, were those halfunconscious, half-awakened egos whom they touched with the divine fire oftheir own being. This, our "awakening," was called by H. P. Blavatsky, the incarnation of themanasaputras, or the sons of mind or light. Had that incarnation not taken place, we indeed should havecontinued our evolution by merely "natural" causes, but it would have been slow almost beyondcomprehension, almost interminable; but that act of self-sacrifice, through their immense pity, theirimmense love, though, indeed, acting under karmic impulse, awakened the divine fire in our own selves,gave us light and comprehension and understanding. From that time we ourselves became "sons of thegods," the faculty of self-consciousness in us was awakened, our eyes were opened, responsibilitybecame ours; and our feet were set then definitely upon the path, that inner path, quiet, wonderful,leading us inwards back to our spiritual home.The manasaputras are our higher natures and, paradoxical as it is, are more largely evolved beings thanwe are. They were the spiritual entities who "quickened" our personal egos, which were thus evolved intoself-consciousness, relatively small though that yet be. One, and yet many! As you can light an infinitenumber of candles from one lighted candle, so from a spark of consciousness can you quicken andenliven innumerable other consciousnesses, lying, so to speak, in sleep or latent in the life-atoms.These manasaputras, children of mahat, are said to have quickened and enlightened in us themanas-manas of our manas septenary, because they themselves are typically manasic in their essentialcharacteristic or svabhava. Their own essential or manasic vibrations, so to say, could cause that essenceof manas in ourselves to vibrate in sympathy, much as the sounding of a musical note will causesympathetic response in something like it, a similar note in other things. (See also Agnishvattas)

Marginal disutility of work - The extra sacrifice or hardship to a worker of working an extra unit ( time in any given time period (e.g. an extra hour. per day).

martyr ::: n. --> One who, by his death, bears witness to the truth of the gospel; one who is put to death for his religion; as, Stephen was the first Christian martyr.
Hence, one who sacrifices his life, his station, or what is of great value to him, for the sake of principle, or to sustain a cause. ::: v. t.


martyr ::: one who makes great sacrifices or suffers much, even death, in order to further a belief, cause, or principle.

mass ::: n. --> The sacrifice in the sacrament of the Eucharist, or the consecration and oblation of the host.
The portions of the Mass usually set to music, considered as a musical composition; -- namely, the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei, besides sometimes an Offertory and the Benedictus.
A quantity of matter cohering together so as to make one body, or an aggregation of particles or things which collectively make


Messirut Hanefesh (Ultimate devotion) ::: A major Gus Emunim virtue which implies one's readiness to make immense personal sacrifices.

Metaphors such as woman and mother are always symbolical when referring to motherhood, and have no associations with physical sex, for “esotericism ignores both sexes. Its highest Deity is sexless as it is formless, neither Father nor Mother; and its first manifested beings, celestial and terrestrial alike, become only gradually androgynous and finally separate into distinct sexes” (SD 1:136n). This was clearly understood originally, so that there was no degrading or misinterpreting of these figures of speech. With descending cycles, however, humanity’s religious conceptions equally materialized: the key ideas having been forgotten or lost, abstractions became concreted into materializations, a masculine Creator or feminine Creatrix were then placed at the summit of the various pantheons, and early religious philosophy — which was as scientific as it was religious and philosophical — cast upon the background of the spatial universe images of human surroundings and way of life; so that the deities in the mythologies finally became human images, more powerful but equally swayed by passion, driven by impulse, and restricted by these even as human beings are. Such projection of human attributes into the cosmic spaces led to a still more materialized visioning of the divinities, so that the feminine or productive characteristics of nature in the popular religious mythologies finally gave way before the masculine, and the earlier, essentially beautiful idea of the mother of nature was swallowed up in the purely masculine traits of national divinities, many of them distinctly male and evil, such as the Jewish Jehovah, who waxed wroth and smelt the sweet savor of burnt sacrifices, or again the Greek Zeus swayed by ignoble passions.

Mincha(h) ::: (from Heb. for afternoon sacrifice). Afternoon prayers in Jewish synagogue.

missa ::: n. --> The service or sacrifice of the Mass.

Mithras (Greek) Mithra, Mitra (Avestan) [from Avestan Mithra from mith, myth light + ra subjective form] Ancient Persian deity; Yusti translates Mithra as the medium between the two lights: the invisible and the visible. Therefore, Mithra means the latent potential ability of understanding and the developing force in nature. It is the hidden beingness, the mysterious force of growth and the invisible light; philosophically, the latent power of cognition; astrologically, the source of the light of the heavens; and mystically, the creative force of love. Ahura-Mazda says: “I have created Mithra as worthy of sacrifice, as worthy of glorification, as I, Ahura-Mazda, am myself.” In late Persian times he became the god of the sun and of truth and faith. He punishes the Mithra-druj (he who lies to Mithra). He is represented as a judge in hell, in company with Rashnu (the true one, the god of truth) — who is an aspect of Mithra in his moral character. The Sanskrit Mitra in the Vedas is the god of light and friendship.

molech ::: n. --> The fire god of the Ammonites, to whom human sacrifices were offered; Moloch.

Moloch: A pagan Semitic deity, to whom children were sacrificed in fire.

Moloch (Hebrew) Molekh Royal, king — another form of the more usual melekh; an idol of the Moabites and the Ammonites, also called Milcom, to which Jews after the time of Solomon are said to have sacrificed infants. Some scholars suggest that the Hebrews looked upon Moloch as the title of Yahweh or Yihweh (Jehovah). Even when occurring in the Bible the rendering is “the Molech,” and the idea is that of dedication — “to make one’s son or daughter pass through fire to (the) Molech” (2 King 23:10); and Jeremiah seems to indicate that immolation was practiced. Nothing of such a practice has been discovered in the ancient Assyrian or Babylonian empires, but ancient Greek writers have suggested that the Phoenicians had such a custom. Diodorus (19:14) mentions a Carthaginian idol made of brass into which children were placed, and compares it to the child-eating Kronos. Blavatsky suggests that the Moloch of the Ammonites was the King of the Hosts of Heaven, the sun (SD 1:397); and there was undoubtedly some such connection, yet antiquity has identified Kronos with the planet Saturn, which was held in reverence by all the ancient Shemitic peoples, the Jews included.

moloch ::: n. --> The fire god of the Ammonites in Canaan, to whom human sacrifices were offered; Molech. Also applied figuratively.
A spiny Australian lizard (Moloch horridus). The horns on the head and numerous spines on the body give it a most formidable appearance.


Mum :::
A mum is a blemish, particularly in regard to priests and animals designated for ritual sacrifice.


My Favourite Toy Language ::: (jargon, language) (MFTL) Describes a talk on a programming language design that is heavy on syntax (with lots of BNF), sometimes even talks about and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any conceptual content. Well, it was a typical MFTL talk.2. A language about which the developers are passionate (often to the point of prosyletic zeal) but no one else cares about. Applied to the language by those outside the originating group. He cornered me about type resolution in his MFTL.The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away from contamination by lesser compiler?. On the other hand, a language that *cannot* be used to write its own compiler is beneath contempt.Doug McIlroy once proposed a test of the generality and utility of a language and the operating system under which it is compiled: Is the output of a Fortran to have worked only under modern systems which lack OS-supported and -imposed file types.See break-even point, toolsmith. (1995-03-07)

My Favourite Toy Language "jargon, language" (MFTL) Describes a talk on a {programming language} design that is heavy on {syntax} (with lots of {BNF}), sometimes even talks about {semantics} (e.g. {type systems}), but rarely, if ever, has any content (see {content-free}). More broadly applied to talks - even when the topic is not a programming language --- in which the subject matter is gone into in unnecessary and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any conceptual content. "Well, it was a typical MFTL talk". 2. A language about which the developers are passionate (often to the point of prosyletic zeal) but no one else cares about. Applied to the language by those outside the originating group. "He cornered me about type resolution in his MFTL." The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away from contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it in itself. Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is "Has it been used for anything besides its own compiler?". On the other hand, a language that *cannot* be used to write its own compiler is beneath contempt. {Doug McIlroy} once proposed a test of the generality and utility of a language and the {operating system} under which it is compiled: "Is the output of a {Fortran} program acceptable as input to the Fortran compiler?" In other words, can you write programs that write programs? Alarming numbers of (language, OS) pairs fail this test, particularly when the language is Fortran. Aficionados are quick to point out that {Unix} (even using Fortran) passes it handily. That the test could ever be failed is only surprising to those who have had the good fortune to have worked only under modern systems which lack OS-supported and -imposed "file types". See {break-even point}, {toolsmith}. (1995-03-07)

Nahash (Hebrew) Nāḥāsh [from nāḥash to whisper, hiss, prognosticate, practice divination] Serpent; a constellation — the serpent or dragon in the northern quarter of the heavens; also a city. In the Bible, the name of two Ammonite kings (1, 2 Sam). Used by Western Qabbalists for the Evil One, supposedly meaning the “deprived,” referring to the serpent of the creation story as being deprived of limbs; but Blavatsky holds that this interpretation is erroneous, for “the Fire-Devas, the Rudras, and the Kumaras, the ‘Virgin-Angels,’ (to whom Michael and Gabriel, the Archangels, both belong), the divine ‘Rebels’ — called by the all-materializing and positive Jews, the Nahash or ‘Deprived’ — preferred the curse or incarnation and the long cycles of terrestrial existence and rebirths, to seeing the misery (even if unconscious) of the beings (evolved as shadows out of their Brethren) through the semi-passive energy of their too spiritual Creators. . . . This voluntary sacrifice of the Fiery Angels, whose nature was Knowledge and Love, was construed by the exoteric theologies into a statement that shows ‘the rebel angels hurled down from heaven into the darkness of Hell’ — our Earth” (SD 2:246). See also BRAZEN SERPENT

navagvas (Navagwas) ::: those who sacrificed for nine months of the year; seers of the nine cows or nine rays who institute the search for the herds of the Sun and the march of Indra to battle with the panis. [Ved.]

Nereus, Nereids Nereus pertains to the enclosed seas near Greece, in contradistinction to the ocean and the fresh waters. He is a later variant of Poseidon, the former ruling the sea in Atlantean times, the latter taking his place with the fifth root-race. The Nereids, the fifty daughters of Nereus, belong to the class of nature spirits presiding over water and recognized by various propitiatory rites. Like water spirits in general, they were beautiful maidens. Goats were sacrificed to them — a sign of their connection with the mysterious sign Capricorn.

nianifesiing Divine, is the complete result of the integral Yoga, the goal of its triple Path and the fruit of its triple sacrifice,

Nirmanakaya(Sanskrit) ::: A compound of two words: nirmana, a participle meaning "forming," "creating"; kaya, a wordmeaning "body," "robe," "vehicle"; thus, nirmanakaya means "formed-body." A nirmanakaya, however,is really a state assumed by or entered into by a bodhisattva -- an individual man made semi-divine who,to use popular language, instead of choosing his reward in the nirvana of a less degree, remains on earthout of pity and compassion for inferior beings, clothing himself in a nirmanakayic vesture. When thatstate is ended the nirmanakaya ends.A nirmanakaya is a complete man possessing all the principles of his constitution except the linga-sariraand its accompanying physical body. He is one who lives on the plane of being next superior to thephysical plane, and his purpose in so doing is to save men from themselves by being with them, and bycontinuously instilling thoughts of self-sacrifice, of self-forgetfulness, of spiritual and moral beauty, ofmutual help, of compassion, and of pity.Nirmanakaya is the third or lowest, exoterically speaking, of what is called in Sanskrit trikaya or "threebodies." The highest is the dharmakaya, in which state are the nirvanis and full pratyeka buddhas, etc.;the second state is the sambhogakaya, intermediate between the former and, thirdly, the nirmanakaya.The nirmanakaya vesture or condition enables one entering it to live in touch and sympathy with theworld of men. The sambhogakaya enables one in that state to be conscious indeed to a certain extent ofthe world of men and its griefs and sorrows, but with little power or impulse to render aid. Thedharmakaya vesture is so pure and holy, and indeed so high, that the one possessing the dharmakaya orwho is in it, is virtually out of all touch with anything inferior to himself. It is, therefore, in thenirmanakaya vesture if not in physical form that live and work the Buddhas of Compassion, the greatestsages and seers, and all the superholy men who through striving through ages of evolution bring forthinto manifestation and power and function the divinity within. The doctrine of the nirmanakayas is one ofthe most suggestive, profound, and beautiful teachings of the esoteric philosophy. (See also Dharmakaya,Sambhogakaya)

Nirmanakaya (Sanskrit) Nirmāṇakāya [from nirmāṇa forming, creating + kāya body, robe, vehicle] Appearance body; the lowest of the trikaya, followed by sambhogakaya and dharmakaya. A state assumed by a bodhisattva who, instead of entering nirvana, remains on earth to help inferior beings. “A Nirmanakaya is a complete man possessing all the principles of his constitution except the Linga-sarira, and its accompanying physical body. He is one who lives on the plane of being next superior to the physical plane, and his purpose in so doing is to save men from themselves by being with them, and by continuously instilling thoughts of self-sacrifice, of self-forgetfulness, of spiritual and moral beauty, of mutual help, of compassion, and of pity” (OG 114). Beings in this state make a wall of protection around mankind, which shields humanity from evils.

nityakarma ::: (in traditional Hinduism) daily ritual, "the Vedic rule, the routine of ceremonial sacrifice, daily conduct and social duty"; the routine of daily activities, a routine that "is ritam & necessary for karma, only it must be ritam of the brihat, part of the infinite, not narrow & rigid, a flexible instrument, not a stiff & unpliant bondage".

nityakarma ::: regular works (of sacrifice, ceremonial and the daily rule of Vedic living).

Niyama: Sanskrit for restraint or self-culture; the second prerequisite in the study and practice of Yoga. The classic text Ha-thayogapradipika lists ten rules of inner control (niyamas), viz., penance, contentment, belief in God, charity, adoration of God, hearing discourses on the principles of religion, modesty, intellect, meditation, and sacrifice. (Cf. yama.)

oblation ::: n. --> The act of offering, or of making an offering.

Anything offered or presented in worship or sacred service; an offering; a sacrifice.
A gift or contribution made to a church, as for the expenses of the eucharist, or for the support of the clergy and the poor.


Odin (Icelandic, Scandinavian) [from Wodan from odr cosmic mind; cf Greek nous, Sanskrit mahat] As a god, foremost of the aesir in Norse mythology; as a human being, the founder of the ancient Norse religion. Odin is the Great Sacrifice of our world system, hung or mounted on the Tree of Life throughout its duration, seeking runes of wisdom in the material worlds, “raising them with song” and at the end of time falling once more from the tree. He is said to have given one eye as forfeit to the matter-giant Mimer for the privilege of partaking of Mimer’s well of wisdom: experience in material life. Thus matter receives a part of divine vision during the god’s imbodiment.

offering burnt sacrifices on the threshing-floor of

offering ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Offer ::: n. --> The act of an offerer; a proffering.
That which is offered, esp. in divine service; that which is presented as an expiation or atonement for sin, or as a free gift; a sacrifice; an oblation; as, sin offering.


offer ::: v. t. --> To present, as an act of worship; to immolate; to sacrifice; to present in prayer or devotion; -- often with up.
To bring to or before; to hold out to; to present for acceptance or rejection; as, to offer a present, or a bribe; to offer one&


of fire to whom children were sacrificed. Solomon

of Hagar (Genesis 16); the sacrifice of Isaac

OM is the symbol of the triple Brahman, the outward-looking, the inward or subtle and the superconscient causal Purusha. Each letter A, U, M indicates one of these three in ascending order and the syllable as a whole brings out the fourth state, Turiya, which rises to the Absolute. OM is the initiating syllable pronounced at the outset as a benedictory prelude and sanction to all act of sacrifice, all act of giving and all act of askesis; it is a reminder that our work should be made an expression of the triple Divine in our inner being and turned towards him in the idea and motive.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 19, Page: 491


One of the principal tenets of Mithraism was that a struggle between good and evil is continually going on in the world, and that this dualistic interworking and intermingling of cosmic and terrestrial forces is also occurring within every man and woman; each one has the power to aid in this conflict so that the good shall ultimately triumph. This is achieved by means of self-sacrifice and probation, and Mithras is ever ready to make the mystic sacrifice whereby the good may triumph. “The Persian Mithra, he who drove out of heaven Ahriman, is a kind of Messiah who is expected to return as the judge of men, and is a sin-bearing god who atones for the iniquities of mankind. As such, however, he is directly connected with the highest Occultism, the tenets of which were expounded during the Mithraic Mysteries which thus bore his name” (TG 216). Origen refers to the Mithraic teaching of the seven heavens, each of which was ascended by means of a ladder — representing the different stages or planes of the heavens — over which ruled the highest or most spiritual realm of nature. Celsus mentions their teaching concerning the seven sacred planets.

  One who is distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility, fortitude, etc. 2. A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) hero’s, heroes.

one who saves or delivers from sin and its consequences by means of a sacrifice offered for the sinner. world-redeemer"s.

on the satisfaction of cgo-dcsire or on the eating up of the fuel it embraces. It is a while flame, not a red one ; but white heat is not inferior to the red variety in its ardour. It is true that the psychic love does not usually get its full play in human rela- tions and human nature ; it finds the fullness of -its fire and ecstasy more easily when it is lifted towards the Divine. In the human relation the psychic love gets mixed up with other ele- ments which seek at once to use it and overshadow it. It gels an outlet for its o^vn full intensities only at rare moments. Other- wise it comes in only as an element, but even so it contributes all the higher things in a love fundamentally vital-— all the finer sweetness, tenderness, fidelity, self-giving, self-sacrifice, rcachings of soul to soul, idealising sublimations that lift up human love beyond itself, come from the psychic. If it could dominate and govern and transmute the other elements, mental, vital, phj-sieal, of human love, then love could be on the earth some reflection or preparation of the real thing, an integral union of the soul and its instruments in a dual life.

orgies ::: n. pl. --> A sacrifice accompanied by certain ceremonies in honor of some pagan deity; especially, the ceremonies observed by the Greeks and Romans in the worship of Dionysus, or Bacchus, which were characterized by wild and dissolute revelry.
Drunken revelry; a carouse. ::: pl.


Osiris: The most widely worshipped god of ancient Egypt, god of the dead, husband of Isis, father of Horus. He was worshipped also as the great Creator. His cult included human sacrifices, for which in later periods animal sacrifices were permitted to be substituted. His death and resurrection was the central theme of the Isis-Osiris mysteries.

passover ::: n. --> A feast of the Jews, instituted to commemorate the sparing of the Hebrews in Egypt, when God, smiting the firstborn of the Egyptians, passed over the houses of the Israelites which were marked with the blood of a lamb.
The sacrifice offered at the feast of the passover; the paschal lamb.


Penetration pricing – A method of pricing a standard product. It sets a low initial price for a product in order to gain quick acceptance in a broad portion of the market. It calls for a sacrifice of short-term profits in order to establish a certain amount of market share.

Porthos: (metaplot) Properly known as Archmaster Porthos, this Hermetic wizard was supposedly the most powerful mage alive. Porthos was more than slightly insane, and though he wasn’t quite a Marauder, that insanity pained him greatly. In spite of it, Porthos spoke up for, and inspired, younger Tradition mages. Believed killed on Nov. 10, 1997, by the destruction of Doissetep, which he supposedly contained through a massive act of self-sacrifice. (See Ascension Warrior, Fragile Path.)

Pranagnihotra (Sanskrit) Prāṇāgnihotra [from prāṇa breath, life current + agni fire + hotra sacrifice] Sacrificing the fire of the vital currents; referring to one of the forms of yoga practiced by a Hindu sect. Also the name of a minor Upanishad.

Priest ::: A functionary usually associated, in antiquity, with temples and their rites (including sacrifice). In classical Christianity, the office of priest was developed (see ordination, clergy) in connection with the celebration of the mass and Eucharist, and with celibacy as an important qualification (especially in Roman Catholicism). See also kohen.

priest ::: n. --> A presbyter elder; a minister
One who is authorized to consecrate the host and to say Mass; but especially, one of the lowest order possessing this power.
A presbyter; one who belongs to the intermediate order between bishop and deacon. He is authorized to perform all ministerial services except those of ordination and confirmation.
One who officiates at the altar, or performs the rites of sacrifice; one who acts as a mediator between men and the divinity or


propitiation ::: n. --> The act of appeasing the wrath and conciliating the favor of an offended person; the act of making propitious.
That which propitiates; atonement or atoning sacrifice; specifically, the influence or effects of the death of Christ in appeasing the divine justice, and conciliating the divine favor.


Propitiation: The attempt by act or intent of gaining the favor of a god, demon, spirit, etc., removing one’s guilt and the divine displeasure. Such acts have taken on innumerable forms: sacrifice of precious possessions, even of human life, of animals, by pilgrimages, tithing, self-imposed asceticism of one kind or another, fastings, rituals, tortures, contrition, etc.

Propitiation: The attempt by act or intent of gaining the favor of a god, removing one's guilt and the divine displeasure. Such acts have taken on innumerable forms: sacrifice of precious possessions, even of human life, of animals, by pilgrimages, tithing, self-imposed asceticism of one kind or another, fastings, rituals, tortures, contrition, etc. The substitution of some one else as an act of voluntary propitiation has found classic expression in Christian tradition in the estimation of Jesus' life and death as the supreme Ransom, Substitute and Mediator. -- V.F.

propitiatory ::: a. --> Having the power to make propitious; pertaining to, or employed in, propitiation; expiatory; as, a propitiatory sacrifice. ::: n. --> The mercy seat; -- so called because a symbol of the propitiated Jehovah.

protomartyr ::: n. --> The first martyr; the first who suffers, or is sacrificed, in any cause; -- applied esp. to Stephen, the first Christian martyr.

purchase ::: v. t. --> To pursue and obtain; to acquire by seeking; to gain, obtain, or acquire.
To obtain by paying money or its equivalent; to buy for a price; as, to purchase land, or a house.
To obtain by any outlay, as of labor, danger, or sacrifice, etc.; as, to purchase favor with flattery.
To expiate by a fine or forfeit.
To acquire by any means except descent or inheritance.


purusa-yajna (Purusha-Yajna) ::: the sacrifice of the purusa.

Quetzalcoatl, Quetzocohuatl (Toltec, Nahautl?) The name of a great teacher, according to the traditions of the Toltecs, who came to them from Tullan or Yucatan and dwelt for twenty years among the people, teaching them to follow a virtuous life, to cease all wars and violent deeds of any kind, to abolish human and animal sacrifices and instead to give offerings of bread and flowers. He taught the people, likewise, the art of picture-writing and the science of the calendar and the artistry of the workers in metals for which Cholula later became famed.

quixotism ::: n. --> That form of delusion which leads to extravagant and absurd undertakings or sacrifices in obedience to a morbidly romantic ideal of duty or honor, as illustrated by the exploits of Don Quixote in knight-errantry.

rajasuya ::: [a great sacrifice performed sometimes on the occasion of the coronation of a king by himself and his tributary princes].

REAPING, THE LAW OF The law of reaping says that all the good and evil we have initiated in thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds are returned to us with the same effect. Every consciousness manifestation has an effect in manifold ways and entails either good or bad sowing which will ripen and be reaped some time. K 1.41.13

If man lives in accordance with the laws of life, his development will progress as rapidly as possibly, without friction, harmoniously, with the greatest possible degree of happiness. But every mistake as to the laws of life (known or unknown ones) entails consequences calculated eventually (the number of incarnations is up to him) to teach the individual to discover the laws and apply them correctly. If he has caused suffering to other beings, he is himself to experience the same measure of suffering. This is the law of uncompromising justice which no arbitrary grace can free him from.

It is part of man&


Redeemer [from Latin redimo buy back] Usually applied by Christians to Jesus Christ as the Son of God who came to earth and “sacrificed himself as a propitiation for our sins.” Prometheus, Dionysos, and other equivalents, are called redeemers; for they are types of the redeeming power in man himself. The good serpent Agathodaimon is another name for the cosmic redeemer; Lucifer the Light-bringer, our tempter and at the same time our illuminator, is our inner redeemer, as was the mystic serpent who withstood the Jewish Lord God in Eden.

Redemption The Christian teaching that man may be delivered from sin and its consequences by the sacrifice allegedly made by Jesus Christ. It includes the ideas of atonement, justification, regeneration, sanctification, and salvation. See also REDEEMER

Red voodoo sect: That sect of the voodoo cult which practices human sacrifice.

remunerate ::: v. t. --> To pay an equivalent to for any service, loss, expense, or other sacrifice; to recompense; to requite; as, to remunerate men for labor.

Ribhu (Sanskrit) Ṛbhu Clever, skillful, inventive; applied to Indra, Agni, and the adityas in the Rig-Veda. As a noun, an artist, smith, builder. Also the name of three semi-divine beings, Ribhu, Vaja, and Vibhvan, the name of the first being applied to the three; “thought by some to represent the three seasons of the year, and celebrated for their skill as artists; they are supposed to dwell in the solar sphere, and are the artists who formed the horses of Indra, the carriage of the Asvins, and the miraculous cow of Brihaspati; they made their parents young, and performed other wonderful works; they are supposed to take their ease and remain idle for twelve days (the twelve intercalary days of the winter solstice) every year in the house of the Sun. (Agohya); after which they recommence working; when the gods heard of their skill, they sent Agni to them with the one cup of their rival Tvashtri, the artificer of the gods, bidding the Ribhus construct four cups from it; when they had successfully executed this task, the gods received the Ribhus amongst themselves and allowed them to partake of their sacrifices; they appear generally as accompanying Indra, especially at the evening sacrifice” (M-Wms Dict). In the Puranas, Ribhu is a son of Brahman, while Sankaracharya’s guru enumerates him as one of the seven kumaras (SD 1:457).

ritual ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to rites or ritual; as, ritual service or sacrifices; the ritual law. ::: n. --> A prescribed form of performing divine service in a particular church or communion; as, the Jewish ritual.
Hence, the code of ceremonies observed by an organization;


rtvij (Ritwik) ::: he who sacrifices in right order and right season. [Ved.]

sacrificable ::: a. --> Capable of being offered in sacrifice.

sacrifical ::: a. --> Employed in sacrifice.

sacrificant ::: n. --> One who offers a sacrifice.

sacrificantone who offers up as a sacrifice (oneself, something, etc.).

sacrificator ::: n. --> A sacrificer; one who offers a sacrifice.

sacrificatory ::: n. --> Offering sacrifice.

sacrifice :::Sacrifice means an inner offering to the Divine and the real spiritual sacrifice is a very joyful thing.” Letters on Yoga

sacrificed ::: given up or offered for the sake of others.

sacrificed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Sacrifice

SACRIFICE. ::: Does noi so mucb 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 yajna.

sacrifice ::: gold tongue of sacrifice

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).

sacrifice ::: n. --> The offering of anything to God, or to a god; consecratory rite.
Anything consecrated and offered to God, or to a divinity; an immolated victim, or an offering of any kind, laid upon an altar, or otherwise presented in the way of religious thanksgiving, atonement, or conciliation.
Destruction or surrender of anything for the sake of something else; devotion of some desirable object in behalf of a higher


sacrificer ::: n. --> One who sacrifices.

sacrifices. [Rf. Levi, Transcendental Magic, p. 307.]

sacrificial ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to sacrifice or sacrifices; consisting in sacrifice; performing sacrifice.

sacrificial ::: pertaining to or connected with sacrifice.

sacrificing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Sacrifice

Sadhya (Sanskrit) Sādhya [from the verbal root sādh to finish, complete, subdue, master] To be fulfilled, completed, attained; to be mastered, won, subdued. As a plural noun, a class of the gana-devatas (divine beings), specifically the jnana-devas (gods of wisdom). In the Satapatha-Brahmana of the Rig-Veda their world is said to be above the sphere of the gods, while Yaska (Nirukta 12:41) gives their locality as in Bhuvarloka. In The Laws of Manu (3:195), the sadhyas are represented as the offspring of the pitris called soma-sads who are offspring of Viraj; hence they are children of the lunar ancestors (pitris), evolved after the gods and possessing natures more fully unfolded; while in the Puranas they are the sons of Sadhya (a daughter of Daksha) and Dharma — hence called sadhyas — given variously as 12 or 17 in number. These various manners of describing the ancestry of the sadhyas originated in different ways of envisioning their origin. In later mythology they are superseded by the siddhas, the difference between sadhyas and siddhas being in many respects slight. Their mythological names are given as Manas, Mantri, Prana, Nara, Pana, Vinirbhaya, Naya, Dansa, Narayana, Vrisha, and Trabhu. Two of the names are two of the theosophic seven human principles — manas and prana; while Nara and Narayan, are other aspects of man, human or cosmic. Blavatsky terms the sadhyas divine sacrificers, “the most occult of all” the classes of the dhyanis (SD 2:605) — the reference being to the manasaputras, those intellectual beings who sacrificed themselves in order to quicken the fires of human intelligence during the third root-race. “The names of the deities of a certain mystic class change with every Manvantara” (SD 2:90); thus they are called ajitas, tushitas, satyas, haris, vaikuntas, adityas, and rudras. The key to the various names given to these higher beings lies in the composite nature of each one of them. In every manvantara and in each minor cycle of a manvantara, every being unfolds another aspect of itself, just as mankind unfolds new but latent powers and senses in each age. Special names were often given to each of the sevenfold, tenfold, or twelvefold aspects of these high beings.

Sama-Veda (Sanskrit) Sāma-veda The Veda of chants (samans); one of the three principal Vedas. Many of the hymns of the Rig-Veda are found in the Sama-Veda, modified so as to be better adapted for chanting, especially during the ceremonies of the soma sacrifices. The rhythms to be chanted to the arrangement of verses found in the Sama-Veda are given in a special treatise.

samaveda. ::: the third of the four Vedas, dating from 1700 BC, consisting of hymns, portions of hymns, and detached verses to be sung &

Sarvada (Sanskrit) Sarvada [from sarva all + the verbal root dā to give] He who gives all, the all-sacrificing; title of Buddha, who in a former birth sacrificed everything to save others. Also a title of Siva.

sarvagatam yajne pratisthitam ::: all-pervading, established in the sacrifice. [Gita 3.15]

Sarva-medha (Sanskrit) Sarvamedha [from sarva all, whole, universal + medha sacrifice] The universal sacrifice, spoken of in the Rig-Veda as being performed by Visvakarman, the cosmic architect or demiurge. It is a ten days’ sacrificial ceremony — the ten having reference not only to the ten cosmic planes, but to other decads in the universe, such as the ten primordial conscious forces, etc.

Sattra (Sanskrit) Sattra A great soma sacrifice or a sacrificial session, which lasted one year and was based upon the revolution of the sun in its yearly course. Also, refuge, asylum, or place of sanctuary, which in ancient conceptions were supposed to be brought into being by mystical sacrifice.

Seder V, Kodashim (holy things), 11 tractates: sacrifices, slaughter of animals, ritual dietetics, first born animals, vows, excommunication, sacrilege, temple architecture and rituals.

self-abnegation ::: n. --> Self-denial; self-renunciation; self-sacrifice.

self-denial ::: n. --> The denial of one&

self-devotion ::: n. --> The act of devoting one&

self-renunciation ::: n. --> The act of renouncing, or setting aside, one&

self-sacrifice ::: n. --> The act of sacrificing one&

Semichah (&

 Sheini (&

shintiism ::: n. --> One of the two great systems of religious belief in Japan. Its essence is ancestor worship, and sacrifice to dead heroes.

Shruti: “The sanctum sanctorum of the consciousness where the truth resides. It is the representation of the Divine within us, the space we enter when we have left the corridors of time and space, where the leader of the sacrifice, Agni, resides. The words describe the beauty of that space we enter when we leave all else behind.”

Sisupala (Sanskrit) Śiśupāla Child-protector; a son of Damaghosha (King of Chedi), Krishna’s great enemy, slain by him at the sacrifice of Yudhishthira. The Vishnu-Purana states that Sisupala was in a former existence the unrighteous but valiant monarch of the daityas, Hiranyakasipu, who was killed by the avatara Nara-simha (the man-lion). He was next the ten-headed Ravana, the giant king of Lanka, and was killed by Rama. After this he was born as Sisupala. “This parallel evolution of Vishnu (spirit) with a Daitya, as men, may seem meaningless, yet it gives us the key not only to the respective dates of Rama and Krishna, but even to a certain psychological mystery” (SD 2:225n).

Sita (Sanskrit) Sītā A furrow; Rama’s wife, so named because she is fabled to have sprung from a furrow made by King Janaka while plowing the ground to prepare it for a sacrifice instituted by him to obtain progeny. She was considered an avatara of Lakshmi, Vishnu’s consort in the heaven-world. In the Ramayana she is exiled with her husband, stolen by Ravana of Lanka, and finally rescued.

soma1 ::: the "mystic wine" of the Vedic sacrifice, "the wine of delight [ananda], the wine of immortality [amr.ta]"; an "ecstatic subtle liquor of delight" which is felt physically like "wine [madira] flowing through the system"; ananda on the mental plane, a "beatitude . . . inseparable from the illumined state of the being"; sometimes identified with candra1, the moon, as a symbol of the "intuitive mind-orb".

soma ::: the plant which yielded the mystic wine for the Vedic sacrifice; the wine itself, which represents the intoxication of the ananda, the divine delight of being; Soma: the Lord of this wine of delight and immortality, the representative deity of the beatitude.

Spodomancy: Divination by examining the ashes of a sacrifice for omens.

Sri Aurobindo: "Sacrifice means an inner offering to the Divine and the real spiritual sacrifice is a very joyful thing.” *Letters on Yoga

Sri Aurobindo: " . . . Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. The Synthesis of Yoga

Sri Aurobindo: “So too when the seer of the house of Atri cries high to Agni, ‘O Agni, O Priest of the offering, loose from us the cords,’ he is using not only a natural, but a richly-laden image. He is thinking of the triple cord of mind, nerves and body by which the soul is bound as a victim in the great world-sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Purusha; he is thinking of the force of the divine Will already awakened and at work within him, a fiery and irresistible godhead that shall uplift his oppressed divinity and cleave asunder the cords of its bondage; he is thinking of the might of that growing Strength and inner Flame which receiving all that he has to offer carries it to its own distant and difficult home, to the high-seated Truth, to the Far, to the Secret, to the Supreme.” The Secret of the Veda

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

Sudyumna (Sanskrit) Sudyumna The beautifully resplendent one; Ila or Ida, when during her repetitive changes of sex the male character was in evidence. Ila was the fair daughter of Vaivasvata-Manu, who sprang from his sacrifice when he was left alone after the flood. An androgynous creature, being one month a male and the next month a female, she is related to the moon. In another sense this Puranic allegory has direct reference to the androgynous early third root-race.

Sufi, Sufi, Sufiism [from Arab suf wool; sufi he who wears woolen garments] A school of thought that emphasizes the superiority of the soul as opposed to the body. A Sufi wears harsh, raw woolen garments constantly irritating his skin to remind him that the body is the part which prevents the soul from attaining higher goals. The first public pronouncement of mysticism in Moslem lands is attributed to Rabi‘a, who lived in the 1st century of the Hejira (622 AD) and expounded the theory of divine love: God is love, and everything on earth must be sacrificed in order eventually to attain union with God. However even before the time of Mohammed there were two principal schools of Arabic thought: the Meshaiuns (the walkers), who later became the metaphysicians after the appearance of the Koran, and the Ishrachiuns (the contemplators) who became affiliated with the Sufis. The Sufis, in fact, put an esoteric interpretation on the Koran, as well as the collected saying of Mohammed, the Sufi movement representing an infiltration into the rigidity of Islamic doctrine of the pre-Islamic mystical or quasi-occult stream of thought, especially from Persia. Blavatsky states that the Sufis acquired their “proficient knowledge in astrology, medicine, and the esoteric doctrine of the ages” from the descendants of the Magi” (IU 2:306).

sukratu ::: perfect in power (for the sacrifice) . [Ved.]

sukrtam u lokam ::: the other world to which those who do well the works of sacrifice attain. [Ved.]

Sunahsepha (Sanskrit) Śunaḥśepha In ancient Hindu legend, for instance in the Ramayana, the son of the sage Richika, corresponding in some ways with the Hebrew Isaac. His father “sold him for one hundred cows to King Ambarisha, for a sacrifice and ‘burnt offering’ to Varuna, as a substitute for the kings’ son Rohita, devoted by his father to the god. When already stretched on the altar Sunasepha is saved by Rishi Visvamitra, who calls upon his own hundred sons to take the place of victim, and upon their refusal degrades them to the condition of Chandalas. After which the Sage teaches the victim a mantram the repetition of which brings the gods to his rescue; he then adopts Sunasepha for his elder son” (TG 313).

Suttee therefore has been confused by the West as the custom of the burning of widows itself; but the word really means the widow herself who, because of her great virtue in unfailing fidelity to her one husband, prefers to sacrifice her life on the funeral pyre rather than to live on earth alone after his death. The custom is not commanded or even approved by Vedic or other Hindu scriptural authority, but on the contrary is, indirectly if not directly, forbidden. How the custom ever arose is still obscure, but may be ascribed to a mixture of priestcraft and unreasoning sentimental and religious devotion on the part of the ignorant masses.

tabernacle ::: n. --> A slightly built or temporary habitation; especially, a tent.
A portable structure of wooden framework covered with curtains, which was carried through the wilderness in the Israelitish exodus, as a place of sacrifice and worship.
Hence, the Jewish temple; sometimes, any other place for worship.
Figuratively: The human body, as the temporary abode of


tapoyajna ::: [sacrifice of tapas]; austerity of self-discipline and energy of the soul directed to some high aim.

Tarakajit (Sanskrit) Tārakajit Conqueror of Taraka, name given to the Hindu god of war, Karttikeya, because he conquered Taraka, a daitya whose austerities had made him formidable to the gods — the daityas being those early beings or races who, because of their developing intellectual powers, were found to be identical with the asuras, who were opposed to the more or less passive spiritual forces — devas or suras. In another sense, because of this developing intellectuality, the daityas, somewhat like the Greek titans or giants, were the opponents of the gods of mere ritualistic or scholastic theory, and hence the enemies of puja (ritualistic sacrifices).

Tehmi: “Satchitananda. In the previous line it is the holocaust of the Purusha . By that sacrifice heaven comes down to us.”

tephramancy ::: n. --> Divination by the ashes of the altar on which a victim had been consumed in sacrifice.

The Abraham-and-Isaac sacrifice episode

The Abraham-and-Isaac sacrifice episode with the angel (identified as Tadhiel) holding back the knife. 282

The antithesis of these lofty ideas underlies the widespread prevalence of blood rites. In fact, the many blood ceremonials which mark and mar the records of so many peoples are often gross, cruel, and perverted, violating the sacredness of life by offering animal and human sacrifices. Several groups regard blood as one of the essential elements used in their numerous forms of initiations, oblations, invocations to ancestors and to spirits of various kinds. Their fixed belief that the demons or spirits invoked by these ceremonies are harmful if not propitiated, but will be gratified and nourished by the immaterial essence, savor, or fumes of the foods, alcohols, and blood offerings is not without some basis of fact; for the earth-bound kama-rupic entities and astral elementaries are attracted by, and do abstract the impalpable kama-pranic life-force from, the fumes and emanations of such offerings. These beliefs are consistent with much in the tribal customs and rites which attracts and revivifies evil entities in their own astral atmosphere. Customs like poison ordeals for so-called witches, and evil use of nature forces for injuring or destroying personal enemies, added to frequent evocations, make a vicious circle of cause and effect.

"The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man"s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.” The Life Divine

“The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man’s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.” The Life Divine

  “The ‘BEING’ . . . is the Tree from which, in subsequent ages, all the great historically known Sages and Hierophants, such as the Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., etc., have branched off. As objective man, he is the mysterious (to the profane — the ever invisible) yet ever present Personage about whom legends are rife in the East, especially among the Occultists and the students of the Sacred Science. It is he who changes form, yet remains ever the same. And it is he again who holds spiritual sway over the initiated Adepts throughout the whole world. He is, as said, the ‘Nameless One’ who has so many names, and yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is the ‘Initiator,’ called the ‘Great sacrifice.’ For, sitting at the threshold of light, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness, which he will not cross; nor will he quit his post till the last day of this life-cycle. . . . Because he would fain show the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a voluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. . . .

  “The ‘Being’ just referred to, which has to remain nameless, is the Tree from which, in subsequent ages, all the great historically known Sages and Hierophants, such as the Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., etc., have branched off. As objective man, he is the mysterious (to the profane — the ever invisible) yet ever present Personage about whom legends are rife in the East, especially among the Occultists and the students of the Sacred Science. It is he who changes form, yet remains ever the same. And it is he again who holds spiritual sway over the initiated Adepts throughout the whole world. He is, as said, the ‘Nameless One’ who has so many names, and yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is the ‘Initiator,’ called the ‘great sacrifice.’ For, sitting at the threshold of light, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness, which he will not cross; nor will he quit his post till the last day of this life-cycle” (SD 1:207-8).

“The Demons, so called in the Puranas, are very extraordinary devils when judged from the standpoint of European and orthodox views about these creatures, since all of them — Danavas, Daityas, Pisachas, and the Rakshasas — are represented as extremely pious, following the precepts of the Vedas, some of them even being great Yogis. But they oppose the clergy and Ritualism, sacrifices and forms — just what the full-blown Yogins do to this day in India — and are no less respected for it, though they are allowed to follow neither caste nor ritual; hence all those Puranic giants and Titans are called Devils” (SD 1:415).

The ethical teachings of the Bhagavad Gita (q.v.). of the various religio-philosophical groups, of the Buddhists and Jainas of Greater India, are high; but if such ideals have not been attained generally in practice, or even if repulsive and cruel rituals and linga worship are prevalent, such phenomena are understandable if we consider the 340 millions of teeming humanity within the fold of Hinduism, from aborigines to a Gandhi, Tagore, and Sir Raman. Treatises dealing with practical morality are very numerous. They may be classed into those of a purely religious leaning among which we might count all religio-philosophical literature of the Vedic and non-Vedic tradition, including drama and epic literature, and those that deal specifically with practices of the nature of self-culture (cf. Yoga), religious observances (sacrifice, priest-craft, rites, ceremonies, etc.), household affairs and duties (Grhyasutras), and the science of polity and government (Arthasastras). -- K.F.L..

The influence of Kant has penetrated more deeply than that of any other modern philosopher. His doctrine of freedom became the foundation of idealistic metaphysics in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, but not without sacrifice of the strict critical method. Schopenhauer based his voluntarism on Kant's distinction between phenomena and things-in-themselves. Lotze's teleological idealism was also greatly indebted to Kant. Certain psychological and pragmatic implications of Kant's thought were developed by J. F. Fries, Liebmann, Lange, Simmel and Vaihinger. More recently another group in Germany, reviving the critical method, sought a safe course between metaphysics and psychology; it includes Cohen, Natorp, Riehl, Windelband, Rickert, Husserl, Heidegger, and E. Cassirer. Until recent decades English and American idealists such as Caird, Green, Bradley, Howison, and Royce, saw Kant for the most part through Hegel's eyes. More recently the study of Kant's philosophy has come into its own in English-speaking countries through such commentaries as those of N. K. Smith and Paton. In France the influence of Kant was most apparent in Renouvier's "Phenomenism". -- O.F.K.

The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or preference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Sbakti, Shraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments. The Self that is quiescent, at rest, vacant of things and happenings is n support and background to existence, a silent channel or a hypostasis of something Supreme ::: it is not itself the one entirely real existence, not itself the Supreme. The Eternal, the Supreme is the Lord and the all-originating Spirit. Superior to all activi- ties and not bound by any of them, it is the source, sanction, material, efficient power, master of all activities. All activities proceed from this supreme Self and are determined by it ; all are its operations, processes of its own conscious force and not ot something alien to Self, some power other than this Spirit.

The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or
   reference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Sraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments. The Self that is quiescent, at rest, vacant of things and happenings is a support and background to existence, a silent channel or a hypostasis of something Supreme: it is not itself the one entirely real existence, not itself the Supreme. The Eternal, the Supreme is the Lord and the all-originating Spirit. Superior to all activities and not bound by any of them, it is the source, sanction, material, efficient power, master of all activities. All activities proceed from this supreme Self and are determined by it; all are its operations, processes of its own conscious force and not of something alien to Self, some power other than the Spirit. In these activities is expressed the conscious Will or Shakti of the Spirit moved to manifest its being in infinite ways, a Will or Power not ignorant but at one with its own self-knowledge and its knowledge of all that it is put out to express. And of this Power a secret spiritual will and soul-faith in us, the dominant hidden force of our nature, is the individual instrument, more nearly in communication with the Supreme, a surer guide and enlightener, could we once get at it and hold it, because profounder and more intimately near to the Identical and Absolute than the surface activities of our thought powers. To know that will in ourselves and in the universe and follow it to its divine finalities, whatever these may be, must surely be the highest way and truest culmination for knowledge as for works, for the seeker in life and for the seeker in Yoga.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 289-90


  "The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or preference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Sraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments.” *The Synthesis of Yoga

“The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or preference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Sraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments.” The Synthesis of Yoga

Theophagy: Literally, eating the god. The practice, found in a great many primitive religions and in the esoteric mysteries (“mystery religious”), of eating the flesh of a sacrifice or sacred animal in whose flesh the god is believed to dwell, in order to absorb supernatural power.

theorica ::: n. pl. --> Public moneys expended at Athens on festivals, sacrifices, and public entertainments (especially theatrical performances), and in gifts to the people; -- also called theoric fund.

There are two kinds of nirmanakayas: the natural is the condition of a high initiate who reaches a stage of bliss second only to nirvana; the assumed is the self-sacrifice of one who voluntarily gives up the absolute nirvana in order to help and guide humanity. The nirmanakaya, then,

“These advanced entities are otherwise known as the Solar Lhas, as the Tibetans call them, the solar spirits, who were the men of a former kalpa, and who during the third Root-race thus sacrifice themselves in order to give us intellectual light — incarnating in those senseless psycho-physical shells in order to awaken the divine flame of egoity and self-consciousness in the sleeping egos which we then were. They are ourselves because belonging to the same spirit-ray that we do; yet we, more strictly speaking, were those half-unconscious, half-awakened egos whom they touched with the divine fire of their own being. This, our ‘awakening,’ was called by H. P. Blavatsky, the incarnation of the Manasaputras, or the Sons of Mind or Light. Had that incarnation not taken place, we indeed should have continued our evolution by merely ‘natural’ causes, but it would have been slow almost beyond comprehension, almost interminable; but that act of self-sacrifice, through their immense pity, their immense love, though, indeed, acting under Karmic impulse, awakened the divine fire in our own selves, gave us light and comprehension and understanding; and from that time we ourselves became ‘Sons of the Gods,’ the faculty of self-consciousness in us was awakened, our eyes were opened, responsibility became ours; and our feet were set then definitely upon the path, that inner path, quiet, wonderful, leading us inwards back to our spiritual home. . . .

These kumaras are sometimes also called rudras, adityas, gandharvas, asuras, maruts, and vedhas. The seven kumaras — both as groups and as aggregated individuals — are intimately connected with the dhyani-buddhas who watch over the seven rounds of our planetary chain. The four groups of kumaras generally spoken of are connected equally intimately with the four celestial bodhisattvas of the four globes of our round, and by correspondence with the four completed root-races of our earth. They are identical with the angels of the seven planets, and their name shows their connection with the constellation Makara or Capricorn. Makara is connected with the birth of the spiritual microcosm, and the death or dissolution of the physical universe (its passage into the realm of the spiritual) as are the kumaras. Mara is the god of darkness, the Fallen one, and death, i.e., death of every physical thing; but through the karmic lessons learned also the quickener of the birth of the spiritual. The kumaras are connected also with the sage Narada. An allegory in the Puranas says that the kumaras, the first progeny of Brahma, were without desire or passion, inspired with the holy wisdom, and undesirous of progeny. They refused to create, but were compelled later on to complete divine man by incarnating in him. The barhishads or lunar pitris formed the “senseless” astral-physical humanity of the early root-races. Those beings possessing the living spiritual fire were the agnishvattas or solar pitris. The sons of Brahma, the kumaras, being originally themselves unconscious (in our sense) could be of no use in supplying the mental and kamic principles, as they did not possess them: they had attained no individual karmic elevation in merit of their own as had the agnishvattas. The perfection of the kumaras was passive and negative (nirguna). The kumaras eventually “sacrifice” themselves by incarnating in mankind, thus corresponding to the manasaputras and fallen angels cast into hell (material spheres, our earth).

"The true essence of sacrifice is not self-immolation, it is self-giving; its object not self-effacement, but self-fulfilment; its method not self-mortification, but a greater life, not self-mutilation, but a transformation of our natural human parts into divine members, not self-torture, but a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda.” The Synthesis of Yoga

“The true essence of sacrifice is not self-immolation, it is self-giving; its object not self-effacement, but self-fulfilment; its method not self-mortification, but a greater life, not self-mutilation, but a transformation of our natural human parts into divine members, not self-torture, but a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda.” The Synthesis of Yoga

The union has a threefold character. There is a union in spiritual essence, by identity; there is a union by the indwelling of our soul in this highest Being and Consciousness; there is a dynamic union of likeness or oneness of nature between That and our instrumental being here. The first is the liberation from the Ignorance and identification with the Real and Eternal, moksa, sayujya, which is the characteristic aim of the Yoga of Knowledge. The second, the dwelling of the soul with or in the Divine, samıpya, salokya, is the intense hope of all Yoga of love and beatitude. The third, identity in nature, likeness to the Divine, to be perfect as That is perfect, is the high intention of all Yoga of power and perfection or of divine works and service. The combined completeness of the three together, founded here on a multiple Unity of the self-manifesting Divine, is the complete result of the integral Yoga, the goal of its triple Path and the fruit of its triple sacrifice.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 131


The various forms of yoga from the standpoint of theosophy when properly understood are not distinct, separable means of attaining union with the god within; and it is a divergence of the attention into one or several of these forms to the exclusion of others that has brought about so much mental confusion and lack of success even in those who are more or less skilled. Every one of these forms of yoga, with the probable exception of the lower forms of hatha yoga, should be practiced concurrently by the one who has set his heart and mind upon spiritual success. Thus one should carefully watch and control his acts, acting and working unselfishly; he should live so that his daily customs distract attention as little as possible away from the spiritual purpose; his heart coincidentally should be filled with devotion and love for all things; and he should cultivate, all at the same time, his will, his capacity for self-sacrifice and self-devotion to a noble cause, and his ability to stand firm and undaunted in the face of difficulties whatever they may be; and, finally, in addition and perhaps most importantly, he should do everything in his power to cultivate his intuition and intellectual faculties, exercising not merely his ratiocinative mind, but the higher intuitive and nobly intellectual parts. Combining all these he is following the chela path and is using all the forms of yoga in the proper way. Yet the chela will never obtain his objective if his practice of yoga is followed for his own individual advancement. He will never reach higher than the superior planes of the astral world even in consciousness; but when his whole being follows this yoga as thus outlined with a desire to lay his life and all he is on the altar of service to the world, he is then indeed on the path.

The Wondrous Being or hierarch manifests in three forms, the highest being in direct spiritual intercommunion with cosmic adi-buddha, and this highest aspect or form is the dharmakaya state in which, at least in the inferior portions of it, the dhyani-buddha abides; the second form or state is that of the dhyani-bodhisattva, who is in the sambhogakaya state in direct intercommunion with the lower part of the dhyani-buddha just above it in abstruse power and consciousness; the third and lowest form or aspect, yet in one sense the highest morally on account of the immense, willing self-sacrifice involved, is the manusha-buddha who lives and works in the nirmanakaya state.

  ” ‘The Yajna,’ say the Brahmans, ‘exists from eternity, for it proceeded from the Supreme, in whom it lay dormant from no beginning.’ It is the key to the Trai-Vidya, the thrice sacred science contained in the Rig-Veda verses, which teaches the Yajna or sacrificial mysteries. As Haug states in his Introduction to the Aitareya Brahmana — the Yajna exists as an invisible presence at all times, extending from the Ahavaniya or sacrificial fire to the heavens, forming a bridge or ladder by means of which the sacrificer can communicate with the world of devas, ‘and even ascend when alive to their abodes.’ It is one of the forms of Akasa, within which the mystic Word (or its underlying ‘Sound’) calls it into existence. Pronounced by the Priest-Initiate or Yogi, this Word receives creative powers, and is communicated as an impulse on the terrestrial plane through a trained Will-power” (TG 375).

Thoth, Thot (Greek) Tehuti (Egyptian) Teḥuti. Egyptian god of wisdom, equivalent to the Greek Hermes, Thoth was often represented as an ibis-headed deity, and also with a human head, especially in his aspect of Aah-Tehuti (the moon god), and as the god of Mendes he is depicted as bull-headed. Although best known in his character of the scribe or recorder of the gods, holding stylus and tablet, this is but another manner of showing that Thoth is the god of wisdom, inventor of science and learning; thus to him is attributed the establishment of the worship of the gods and the hymns and sacrifices, and the author of every work on every branch of knowledge both human and divine. He is described in the texts as “self-created, he to whom none hath given birth; the One; he who reckons in heaven, the counter of the stars; the enumerator and measurer of the earth [cosmic space] and all that is contained therein: the heart of Ra cometh forth in the form of the god Tehuti” — for he represents the heart and tongue of Ra, reason and the mental powers of the god and the utterer of speech. It has been suggested that Thoth is thus the equivalent of the Platonic Logos. Many are his epithets: his best known being “thrice greatest” — in later times becoming Hermes Trismegistus.

Thunderer ::: An epithet for Jupiter or the Deity. Jupiter (Latin: Iuppiter; /ˈjʊpɪtɛr/; genitive case: Iovis; /ˈjɔːvɪs/) or Jove is the king of the gods and the god of sky and thunder in myth. Jupiter was the chief deity of Roman state religion throughout the Republican and Imperial eras, until Christianity became the dominant religion of the Empire. In Roman mythology, he negotiates with Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, to establish principles of Roman religion such as sacrifice.

Tiryaksrotas (Sanskrit) Tiryaksrotas [from tiryak horizontal, lying crosswise, crooked + srotas stream, current] Those animals in which the digestive canals are involved or crooked; according to the Puranas, the fifth of the seven creations of living beings by Brahma, the creation of sacred animals. “The esoteric meaning of the expression ‘animals’ is the germs of all animal life including man. Man is called a sacrificial animal, and an animal that is the only one among animal creation who sacrifices to the gods. Moreover, by the ‘sacred animals,’ the 12 signs of the zodiac are often meant in the sacred texts . . .” (SD 1:446n).

Tophet (Hebrew) Tofeth An abhorrence, that which causes loathing; a place in the valley of Ben Hinnom (called Gehenna), near Jerusalem, celebrated for the worship of Moloch, where fires were kept burning and human sacrifices were at one time said to have been offered (Jer 7:31). “The locality is thus the prototype of the Christian Hell, the fiery Gehenna of endless woe” (TG 335). Its occult meaning was virtually identic with that of the Gehenna or Avichi, and was the type on earth of the ultimate condition of those who through a course of earth-lives have deliberately chosen evil as their god.

:::   "To what gods shall the sacrifice be offered? Who shall be invoked to manifest and protect in the human being this increasing godhead?

“To what gods shall the sacrifice be offered? Who shall be invoked to manifest and protect in the human being this increasing godhead?

triple cord of mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "So too when the seer of the house of Atri cries high to Agni, ‘O Agni, O Priest of the offering, loose from us the cords," he is using not only a natural, but a richly-laden image. He is thinking of the triple cord of mind, nerves and body by which the soul is bound as a victim in the great world-sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Purusha; he is thinking of the force of the divine Will already awakened and at work within him, a fiery and irresistible godhead that shall uplift his oppressed divinity and cleave asunder the cords of its bondage; he is thinking of the might of that growing Strength and inner Flame which receiving all that he has to offer carries it to its own distant and difficult home, to the high-seated Truth, to the Far, to the Secret, to the Supreme.” *The Secret of the Veda

Twenty generations later, another king of the same name reigned at Videha, famed for his good works, knowledge, and sanctity, also called Siradhvaja (he of the plow-banner) for, as related in the Ramayana, when the king was preparing the ground for a sacrifice for obtaining offspring, a maiden, Sita, sprang up ready formed from the furrow which he had made with his plow. Through his righteous life he became a Brahmin and one of the Rajarshis — referred to in the Bagavad-Gita (ch 3). It is also related that he and his preceptor-adviser, Yajnavalkya, prepared the way for the Buddha.

Tzadik Nistar (&

vacuna ::: n. --> The goddess of rural leisure, to whom the husbandmen sacrificed at the close of the harvest. She was especially honored by the Sabines.

Valhalla (Scandinavian) Valholl (Icelandic) [from val choice, death + hall, holl hall] In Norse mythology, the hall of the chosen or of the slain where Odin’s heroes, the One-harriers, are brought by the Valkyries at the end of each day’s battles to feast with Ropt, the maligned or misunderstood god (Odin). “The hall of the chosen glows golden in Gladhome,” one of the superior “shelves” or ethereal planes which are closely related to our planet earth. The walls of Valhalla are built of the spears of the warriors, it is roofed with their shields, while inside the hall “the benches are strewn with byrnies.” Over the entrance door are transfixed the wolf (bestiality) and the eagle (pride). All of these are symbolic of the sacrifice of properties that have been relinquished by Odin’s chosen warriors, for these represent, in the Norse tales, the initiated adepts who have elected to serve the cause of universality and aid the progress of human evolution. Abandoning progressively all weapons of offense, then of defense, and finally all personal protection, exemplifies the universal service of the chosen.

“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

Vedas, dating from between 1400-1000 BC, consisting of formulas &

Vedic Religion: Or the Religion of the Vedas (q.v.). It is thoroughly cosmological, inspirational and ritualistic, priest and sacrifice playing an important role. It started with belief in different gods, such as Indra, Agni, Surya, Vishnu, Ushas, the Maruts, usually interpreted as symbolizing the forces of nature, but with the development of Hinduism it deteriorated into a worship of thousands of gods corresponding to the diversification of function and status in the complex social organism. Accompanying there was a pronounced tendency toward magic even in Vedic times, while the more elevated thoughts which have found expression in magnificent praises of the one or the other deity finally became crystallized in the philosophic thought of the Upanishads (q.v.). There is a distinct break, however, between Vedic culture with its free and autochthonous religious consciousness and the rigidly caste and custom controlled religion as we know it in India today, as also the religion of bhakti (q.v.). -- K.F.L.

verbenate ::: v. t. --> To strew with verbena, or vervain, as in ancient sacrifices and rites.

\Vhile this transformation is being done it is more than ever necessary to keep yourself free from all taint of the perversions of the ego. Let no demand or insistence creep in to stain the purity of the self-giving and the sacrifice. There must be no attachment to the work or the result, no laying doNvn of condi- tions, no claim to possess the Power that should possess you, no pride of the instrument, no vani^’ or arrogance. Nothing in the mind or in the vital or physical parts should be suffered to distort to its own use or seize for its own personal and separate satisfaction the greatness of the forces that are acting through you. Let your faith, your sincerity, your purity of aspiration be absolute and pervasive of all the planes and layers of the being ; then every disturbing element and distorting influence will pro- gressively fall away from your nature.

vibhuti. ::: sacred ash from a fire sacrifice; manifestations of divine power or glory; prosperity; splendor; greatness; quality of all-pervasiveness

Vicarious Atonement In Christian theology, the idea that God accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as a substitution for the guilt incurred by man at the Fall, and that mankind will consequently escape punishment, provided that they accept by faith Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. The idea that by an atoning for evil done or sin committed, one undoes the past — broadened by Christian theology to include the doctrine of the vicarious atonement by some great spiritual being for the sins of others — is a theory rejected by the theosophic philosophy. To those who believe the Christian doctrine that every person was born into this world burdened with inevitable doom through Adam’s sin, such a compensatory doctrine seems to be necessary; but it discourages people’s faith in their own innate divinity and in their power thereby to effect their own spiritual and moral salvation, and violates our sense of justice by offering a way of avoiding the consequences of our own bad actions — which avoidance of sin already incurred is distinctly denied in several places in the New Testament where the ancient theosophical doctrine of karma is taught that as a man sows, that (and not something else) must he invariably reap. Vicarious atonement may be a distorted doctrine of reconciliation, in Christian notion reconciliation between God and man; also of the idea that the spiritual monad in man takes on itself the consequences for actions or “sins” committed by the less evolved human monad. Every human being is raised by the sacrifice made by the Christos within himself, so that whoever believes in and conforms his acts to his own spiritual nature, is “saved.”

vicarious ::: prep. --> Of or pertaining to a vicar, substitute, or deputy; deputed; delegated; as, vicarious power or authority.
Acting of suffering for another; as, a vicarious agent or officer.
Performed of suffered in the place of another; substituted; as, a vicarious sacrifice; vicarious punishment.
Acting as a substitute; -- said of abnormal action which replaces a suppressed normal function; as, vicarious hemorrhage


victim ::: 1. One who is harmed or killed by another. 2. One who is harmed by or made to suffer from an act, circumstance, agency, or condition. 3. A living creature slain and offered as a sacrifice during a religious rite. 4. One who is deceived or cheated, as by his or her own emotions or ignorance, by the dishonesty of others, or by some impersonal agency. victim"s, victims.

victimate ::: v. t. --> To make a victim of; to sacrifice; to immolate.

victim ::: n. --> A living being sacrificed to some deity, or in the performance of a religious rite; a creature immolated, or made an offering of.
A person or thing destroyed or sacrificed in the pursuit of an object, or in gratification of a passion; as, a victim to jealousy, lust, or ambition.
A person or living creature destroyed by, or suffering grievous injury from, another, from fortune or from accident; as, the


Virabhadra (Sanskrit) Vīrabhadra Heroically beneficent or benevolent; an avatara of Siva, the patron of occult study and achievement. Ancient Indian myth represents him as a monster to human vision, being a thousand-headed and thousand-armed entity born of the breath of Siva-Rudra — Siva under his form of Rudra, and therefore the great destroyer because regenerator. In the Mahabharata, Siva commissions this entity “to destroy the sacrifice prepared by Daksha. Then Virabhadra, ‘abiding in the region of the ghosts (ethereal men). . . . created from the pores of the skin (Romakupas), powerful Raumas, (or Raumyas)’ ” (SD 2:182-3). This allegory refers in human history to the evolution of the “sweat-born” or second root-race and the destruction of the remnants of the first root-race.

voodooism ::: n. --> A degraded form of superstition and sorcery, said to include human sacrifices and cannibalism in some of its rites. It is prevalent among the negroes of Hayti, and to some extent in the United States, and is regarded as a relic of African barbarism.

was about to sacrifice his son Isaac. [Rf. de Bles,

Western Wall or The Kotel ::: The only remaining structure from the second temple left standing after the Roman destruction. Since the Jews are considered to be in a state of “ritual impurity” until certain special sacrifices can be brought (notably the ashes of the red heifer), some authorities hold religious Jews are forbidden to set foot on the actual site of the temple and this is the closest they can come to praying at the temple site. Others hold, however, that Jews may ascend the Temple Mount compound and are only forbidden to enter certain areas inside it.

White voodoo sect: That sect of the voodoo cult which countenances only the sacrifice of white fowls and goats, but forbids human sacrifice.

would not sacrifice to the pagan deity. In Waite,

yajamana ::: the giver of the sacrifice (the doer of the action) .

yajanti avidhipurvakam ::: they sacrifice not in the true order. [Gita 9.23]

yajata, yajatra ::: a power of the sacrifice; master of sacrifice. [Ved.]

yajnam brhantam asathe ::: [they attain to or enjoy a mighty sacrifice]. [Ved.]

yajnartham ::: [for the sake of sacrifice].

yajna ::: sacrifice; action consecrated to the gods, works; the Master of Works.

yajña ::: sacrifice.

Yajna: Sanskrit for sacrifice, a Vedic institution which became philosophically interpreted as the self-sacrifice of the Absolute One which, by an act of self-negation (nisedha-vyapara) became the Many.

Yajna (Sanskrit) Yajña In Vedic literature, worship, devotion, prayer, praise; in post-Vedic literature, an act of worship or devotion, an oblation, sacrifice, also sacrifice personified or fire.

Yajna: (Skr.) Sacrifice, a Vedic (q.v.) institution which became philosophically interpreted as the self-sacrifice of the Absolute One which, by an act of self-negation (nisedha-vyapara) became the Many. -- K.F.L.

yajna &

Yajna-vidya (Sanskrit) Yajña-vidyā [from yajña sacrifice + vidyā knowledge] The knowledge or science of sacrificial rites. These religious rites are performed by the Brahmins to produce certain results, although the esoteric significance of the true yajna has been lost sight of. The four vidyas are yajna-vidya, maha-vidya (the great magic knowledge, now degenerated into Tantric worship), guhya-vidya (the science of mantras, etc.), and atma-vidya (true spiritual and divine wisdom), the last of which contains the keys to the other three.

Yajus (Sanskrit) Yajus A sacrificial prayer or formula, also particular mantras muttered in a special manner at a sacrifice, distinguished from the rich and saman verses also recited at sacrifices.

yajyu ::: the sacrificer. [Ved.]

yogayajna ::: [sacrifice of yoga; yogic sacrifice].

yuga yajniya ::: the age of sacrifice.



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1:Worship without sacrifice. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
2:Proceed with humility and sacrifice. ~ Quetzalcoatl,
3:Sacrifice that causes pain is no sacrifice at all. True sacrifice is joy-giving and uplifting." ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
4:Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grew.
   ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude,
5:No one knows the immensity of the sacrifice which God makes when he incarnates himself. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
6:A mutual giving and receiving is the law of Life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Lord of the Sacrifice,
7:Her acts became gestures of sacrifice.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Growth of the Flame,
8:I began to understand that the love of the sacred heart without a spirit of sacrifice is but empty illusion. ~ Bl. Maria Droste zu Vischering,
9:To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. ~ proverbs XXL 3, the Eternal Wisdom
10:One cannot shape the world without being reshaped in the process. Each gain of power requires its own sacrifice.
   ~ Phil Hine, Condensed Chaos,
11:The ultimate sacrifice is to curb your desires and surrender the ego." ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path
12:If you already have a person's love no sacrifice can be too much to give for it; but any sacrifice is too great to buy it for you. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
13:Regard the nation as a necessary unit but no more in a common humanity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Doctrine of Sacrifice,
14:The nation must exist before it can sacrifice its interests for a higher good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Doctrine of Sacrifice,
15:Life is not entirely real until it opens into the sense of the infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Lord of the Sacrifice,
16:God prepares, but He does not hasten the ripening of the fruit before its season. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Doctrine of Sacrifice,
17:In death the Word made a spotless sacrifice and oblation of the body he had taken. By dying for others, he immediately banished death for all mankind. ~ Saint Athanasius,
18:The Lord communicates with us as we break free of our attachment to the senses, sacrifice our own will and build our lives in humility." ~ Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina,
19:Nobody can become more than human if he refuses to make a sacrifice of his ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Nature of the Vital,
20:Charity is the affection that impels us to sacrifice ourselves to humankind as if it were one being with us. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom
21:Man ordinarily offers his sacrifice openly or under a disguise to his own ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Fullness of Spiritual Action,
22:The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe,
23:Offer, first, all your actions as a sacrifice to the Highest and the One in you and to the Highest and the One in the world; ~ Sri Aurobindo, (CWSA 19),
24:The soul offers herself in sacrifice to God as the beginning of her creation and as the end of her beatification ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.85.2).,
25:Why is it that people are fed at religious feasts? It is the same as offering a sacrifice to God, who is the Living Fire in all creatures. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
26:As far as we are concerned, Christ's immolation on our behalf takes place when we become aware of this grace and understand the life conferred on us by this sacrifice. ~ Pseudo-Chrysostom,
27:A devotee of the tamasic type offers goats and other animals as sacrifice. Difference of nature makes all the difference in acts of worship. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
28:It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ideal of the Karmayogin,
29:Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux,
30:Scripture records her giving birth, and says: She wrapped him in swaddling clothes. Her breasts, which fed him, were called blessed. Sacrifice was offered because the child was her firstborn. ~ Athanasius,
31:Only the Divine will matter, the Divine alone will be the one need of the whole being; ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 146, [T5],
32:The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge,
33:The consecration of this sacrament, and the acceptance of this sacrifice, and its fruits, proceed from the power of the cross of Christ ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.83.5ad3).,
34:It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice,
Offered by God's martyred body for the world; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
35:A sole thing the Gods
Demand from all men living, sacrifice:
Nor without this shall any crown be grasped. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,
36:Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,
37:We cannot affirm our being rightly without sacrifice or without self-giving to something larger than our ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil,
38:A society that pursues liberty as its ideal is unable to achieve equality; a society that aims at equality will be obliged to sacrifice liberty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Religion of Humanity,
39:However much their systems of philosophy and religion may differ, all mankind stand in reverence and awe before the man who is ready to sacrifice himself for others. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. I. 86),
40:In whatever form and with whatever spirit we approach him, in that form and with that spirit he receives the sacrifice. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, [T5],
41:The advance of humanity is a steady progress and there is no great gain in rushing positions far ahead, while important points in the rear are uncaptured. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Doctrine of Sacrifice,
42:Only the Eternal's strength in us can dare
To attempt the immense adventure of that climb
And the sacrifice of all we cherish here. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Heavens of the Ideal,
43:Compose your mind and fix it on God. Say to your mind: "Plunge into the ocean of God." Make the best use of this Divine grace. Do not sacrifice the infinite bliss of God for the sake of the ephemeral pleasures of the world. ~ SWAMI BRAHMANANDA,
44:Thus seeing the supreme Spirit equally in all beings and all beings in the supreme Spirit, he, offering his soul in sacrifice, identifies himself with the Being who shines in his own splendour. ~ Manu, the Eternal Wisdom
45:We offer to You O Lord, this awesome and unbloody sacrifice, beseeching You to deal with us not according to our sins, and not to render to us according to our iniquities, but according to Your great mercy and love. ~ Anaphora of the Liturgy of St. James,
46:In a veiled Nature's hallowed secrecies
It burns for ever on the altar Mind,
Its priests the souls of dedicated gods,
Humanity its house of sacrifice. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Heavens of the Ideal,
47:The Good Shepherd came in search of the straying sheep to the mountains and hills on which you used to offer sacrifice. When he found it, he took it on the shoulders that bore the wood of the cross, and led it back to the life of heaven. ~ Gregory of Nazianzen,
48:The Scourge keeps the aspiration keen; the Dagger expresses the determination to sacrifice all; and the Chain restricts and wandering.
   ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, Part II, The Scourge, the Dagger, and the Chain,
49:On the Lord's Day . . . gather together, break bread and offer the Eucharist, after confessing your transgressions so that your sacrifice may be pure. Let no one who has a quarrel with his neighbor join you until he is reconciled, lest our sacrifice be defiled ~ Didache).,
50:The sacrifice and the divine return for our sacrifice then become a gladly accepted means towards our last perfection; for it is recognised now as the road to the fulfilment in us of the eternal purpose.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
51:170. A magnificent temple towers to heaven by the Eternal Bridge.
Priests rival in its halls the sermons of rocks and streams.
I, for one, would gladly sacrifice my brows for my brethren,
But I fear I might aggravate the war, already rank as weeds. ~ Taigu Ryokan,
52:The small number of souls, who hidden, will preserve the treasures of the Faith and practise virtue will suffer a cruel, unspeakable and prolonged martyrdom. Many will succumb to death from the violence of their sufferings and those who sacrifice." ~ Our Lady of Good Success,
53:the recipient of the sacrifice :::
   Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
54:But it is not only the martyrs who share in his passion by their glorious courage; the same is true, by faith, of all who are reborn through baptism. That is why we are to celebrate the Lord's paschal sacrifice with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. ~ Saint Leo the Great,
55:Yearning that claimed all time for its date and all life for its fuel,
All that we wonder at gazing back when the passion has fallen,
Labour blind and vain expense and sacrifice wasted ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
56:9. Gods three thousand and three hundred and thirty and nine waited upon the Fire. They anointed him with streams of the clarity, they spread for him the seat of sacrifice, and seated him within as priest of the call.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns To The Mystic Fire,
57:He watched in the alchemist radiance of her suns
The crimson outburst of one secular flower
On the tree-of-sacrifice of spiritual love. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,
58:· Apr 23, 202 ~ "The heavenly sacrifice, instituted by Christ, is the most gracious legacy of his new covenant. The night he was delivered up to be crucified, he left us this gift as a pledge of his abiding presence. This sacrifice is our sustenance on life's journey." -St. Gaudentius of Brescia,
59:The sacrifice of the New Law, the Eucharist, contains Christ Himself, the Author of our Sanctification: for He sanctified "the people by His own blood" ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Heb. 13:12) ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.101.4ad2),
60:It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice,
Offered by God's martyred body for the world;
Gethsemane and Calvary are his lot,
He carries the cross on which man's soul is nailed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
61:Be firm, steady, & steadfast. People will mock at you; be silent. People will insult you; be silent. People will spread evil rumours about you; be silent. Stick to the spiritual path. Do not swerve. Seek the truth wherever it may lead you to, & whatever be the cost and sacrifice ~ Swami Sivananda Saraswati,
62:Day came, priest of a sacrifice of joy
Into the worshipping silence of her world;
He carried immortal lustre as his robe,
Trailed heaven like a purple scarf and wore
As his vermilion caste-mark a red sun. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,
63:the demand on us :::
   This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and devoted self-giving to the Eternal.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
64:Imperishable, a tongue of sacrifice,
It flamed unquenched upon the central hearth
Where burns for the high houselord and his mate
The homestead's sentinel and witness fire
From which the altars of the gods are lit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,
65:In general the city of the ungodly is not ruled by God and is not obedient to him in offering sacrifice only to him, and in that city, as a consequence, the soul does not rightly and faithfully rule the body, nor does reason the vices. And so it lacks true justice. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
66:fruits of the sacrifice :::
   The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [109],
67:The power of Love supramentalised can take hold of all living relations without hestitation or danger and turn them Godwards delivered from their crude, mixed and petty human settings and sublimated into the happy material of a divine life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 169,
68:Men must sow earth with their hearts and their tears that their country may prosper;
Earth who bore and devours us that life may be born from our remnants.
Then shall the Sacrifice gather its fruits when the war-shout is silent,
Nor shall the blood ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
69:One must learn to hear and follow the voice of the inmost soul, the direction of the Guru, the command of the Master, the working of the Divine Mother. Whoever clings to the desires and weaknesses of the flesh, the cravings and passions of the vital in it ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - II,
70:362. Limit not sacrifice to the giving up of earthly goods or the denial of some desires and yearnings, but let every thought and every work and every enjoyment be an offering to God within thee. Let thy steps walk in thy Lord, let thy sleep and waking be a sacrifice to Krishna.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma, [T1],
71:Esoterically, the Hanged Man is the human spirit which is suspended from heaven by a single thread. Wisdom, not death, is the reward for this voluntary sacrifice during which the human soul, suspended above the world of illusion, and meditating upon its unreality, is rewarded by the achievement of self-realization. ~ Manly P Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages,
72:When the vital joins in the love for the Divine, it brings into it heroism, enthusiasm, intensity, absoluteness, exclusiveness, the spirit of self-sacrifice, the total and passionate self-giving of all the nature. It is the vital passion for the Divine that creates the spiritual heroes, conquerors or martyrs.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,
73:Afflicted by his harsh divinity,
   Bound to his throne, he waited unappeased
   The daily oblation of her unwept tears.
   All the fierce question of man's hours relived.
   The sacrifice of suffering and desire
   Earth offers to the immortal Ecstasy
   Began again beneath the eternal Hand.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,
74:... In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. ...
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Sacrifice and the Lord of the Sacrifice [112] [T1],
75:Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice,
Calling the powers of a bright hemisphere,
We shall shed the discredit of our mortal state,
Make the abysm a road for Heaven's descent,
Acquaint our depths with the supernal Ray
And cleave the darkness ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,
76: 11. O Divine Fire, thou art Aditi, the indivisible Mother to the giver of the sacrifice; thou art Bharati, voice of the offering, and thou growest by the word. Thou art Ila of the hundred winters wise to discern; O Master of the Treasure, thou art Saraswati who slays the python adversary. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, 1.03 - Hymns_of_Gritsamada,
77:three first approaches of Karma Yoga :::
   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.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [105],
78:The story of Christ, as it has been told, is the concrete and dramatic enactment of the divine sacrifice: the Supreme Lord, who is All-Light, All-Knowledge, All-Power, All-Beauty, All-Love, All-Bliss, accepting to assume human ignorance and suffering in matter, in order to help men to emerge from the falsehood in which they live and because of which they die.
   ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, 16 June 1960,
79:[the nature of the psychic being :::
   It is the very nature of the soul or the psychic being to turn towards the Divine Truth as the sunflower to the sun; it accepts and clings to all that is divine or progressing towards divinity and draws back from all that is a perversion or a denial of it, from all that is false and undivine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, [T2],
80:Self-knowledge
A man capable of self-sacrifice, whatever his other sins, has left the animal behind him; he has the stuff in him of a future and higher humanity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin: The Doctrine of Sacrifice
Self-Sacrifice
The pure action of sense is a spiritual action and pure sense is itself a power of the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Sense,
81:...the conception of a Truth-consciousness supramental and divine, the invocation of the gods as powers of the Truth to raise man out of the falsehoods of the mortal mind, the attainment in and by this Truth of an immortal state of perfect good and felicity and the inner sacrifice and offering of what one has and is by the mortal to the Immortal as the means of the divine consummation.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret Of The Veda, [68],
82:Knowing the elements, knowing the worlds, knowing all the regions and the spaces, adoring the first-born Word, understanding heaven, earth and air to be only He, knowing that the worlds, discovering that Space and the solar orb are He alone, he sees this supreme Being, he becomes that Being, he is identified in union with Him and completes this vast and fertile web of solemn sacrifice. ~ The Upanishad of the Universal Sacrifice, the Eternal Wisdom
83:There is first a central change of the consciousness and a growing direct experience, vision, feeling of the Supreme and the cosmic existence, the Divine in itself and the Divine in all things; the mind will be taken up into a growing preoccupation with this first and foremost and will feel itself heightening, widening into a more and more illumined means of expression of the one fundamental knowledge.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Yoga of Divine Works, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1 [T1],
84:it is better to wander :::
   it is a deeper and more seldom heard call; yet to follow it when heard is wisest : even, it is better to wander at the call of ones soul than to go apparently straight with the reason and the outward moral mentoR But It is only when the life turns towards the Divine that the soul can truly come forward and impose its power on the outer members; for, itself a spark of the Divine, to grow in flame towards the Divine is its true life and its very reason of existence.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1,
85:If you want to be a true doer of divine works, your first aim must be to be totally free from all desire and self-regarding ego. All your life must be an offering and a sacrifice to the Supreme; your only object in action shall be to serve, to receive, to fulfil, to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her works. You must grow in the divine consciousness till there is no difference between your will and hers, no motive except her impulsion in you, no action that is not her conscious action in you and through you.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
86:Evil will never cease to exist until selfishness and greed are overcome as factors in dictating the attitudes of men. It is the common thing for the concrete mind to sacrifice the eternal to the temporal. Man, concentrating upon the limited area of the known, loses sight of the effect of his actions upon the limitless area of the unknown. Shortsightedness, consequently, is the cause of endless misery. Moral shortsightedness results in vice, philosophical shortsightedness in materialism, religious shortsightedness in bigotry, rational short-sightedness in fanaticism. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics,
87:Arjuna and Krishna, this human and this divine, stand together not as seers in the peaceful hermitage of meditation, but as fighter and holder of the reins in the midst of the hurtling shafts, in the chariot of battle. The Teacher of the Gita is therefore not only the God in man who unveils himself in the word of knowledge, but the God in man who moves our whole world of action, by and for whom all our humanity exists and struggles and labours, towards whom all human life travels and progresses. He is the secret Master of works and sacrifice and the Friend of the human peoples.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays On The Gita,
88:In reality, thought is only a scout and pioneer; it can guide but not command or effectuate. The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or preference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Sraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
89:sacrifice, the redeeming principle :::
   The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising principle, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul, submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 106,
90:It may yet be said that a logical succession of the states of progress would be very much in this order. First, there is a large turning in which all the natural mental activities proper to the individual nature are taken up or referred to a higher standpoint and dedicated by the soul in us, the psychic being, the priest of the sacrifice, to the divine service; next, there is an attempt at an ascent of the being and a bringing down of the Light and Power proper to some new height of consciousness gained by its upward effort into the whole action of the knowledge.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent Of The Sacrifice - I, [T1],
91:the lord of the sacrifice and the measure of our works :::
   The Divine, the Eternal is the Lord of our sacrifice of works and union with him in all our being and consciousness and in its expressive instruments is the one object of the sacrifice; the steps of the sacrifice of works must therefore be measured, first, by the growth in our nature of something that brings us nearer to the Divine Nature, but secondly also by an experience of the Divine, his presence, his manifestation to us, an increasing closeness and union with that Presence.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Sacrifice, The Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice,
92:There is a period, more or less prolonged, of internal effort and struggle in which the individual will has to reject the darkness and distortions of the lower nature and to put itself resolutely or vehemently on the side of the divine Light. The mental energies, the heart's emotions, the vital desires, the very physical being have to be compelled into the right attitude or trained to admit and answer to the right influences. It is only then, only when this has been truly done, that the surrender of the lower to the higher can be effected, because the sacrifice has become acceptable.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 61, [T0],
93:the inability to know :::
   In sum, it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supramental Truth-consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience - or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-consciousness is reached above us or born within us.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, The Works of Knowledge - The Psychic Being,
94:If a division of works has to be made, it is between those that are nearest to the heart of the sacred flame and those that are least touched or illumined by it because they are more at a distance, or between the fuel that burns strongly or brightly and the logs that if too thickly heaped on the altar may impede the ardour of the fire by their damp, heavy and diffused abundance. But otherwise, apart from this division, all activities of knowledge that seek after or express Truth are in themselves rightful materials for a complete offering ; none ought necessarily to be excluded from the wide framework of the divine life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 141,
95:For it exists already as an all-revealing and all-guiding Truth of things which watches over the world and attracts mortal man, first without the knowledge of his conscious mind, by the general march of Nature, but at last consciously by a progressive awakening and self-enlargement, to his divine ascension. The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man's real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,
96:... All the works of mind and intllect must be first heightened and widened, then illumined, lifted into the domain of a higher Intelligence, afterwards translated into workings of a greater non-mental Intuition, these again transformed into the dynamic outpourings of the Overmind radiance, and those transfigured into the full light and sovereignty of the supramental Gnosis. It is this that the evolution of consciousness in the world carries prefigured but latent in its seed and in the straining tense intention of its process; nor can that process, that evolution cease till it has evolved the instruments of a perfect in place of its now imperfect manifestation of the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 149,
97:It is not one's self, but the band of the spirit's inner enemies that we have to discourage, expel, slay upon the altar of the growth of the spirit; these can be ruthlessly excised, whose names are desire, wrath, inequality, greed, attachment to outward pleasures and pains, the cohort of usurping demons that are the cause of the soul's errors and sufferings. These should be regarded not as part of oneself but as intruders and perverters of our self's real and diviner nature; these have to be sacrificed in the harsher sense of the word, whatever pain in going they may throw by reflection on the consciousness of the seeker.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [108-109],
98:the threefold character of the union :::
   The first is the liberation from the Ignorance and identification with the Real and Eternal, moksa, sayujya, which is the characteristic aim of the Yoga of Knowledge. The second, the dwelling of the soul with or in the Divine, samipya, salokya, is the intense hope of all Yoga of love and beatitude, The third, identity in nature, likeness to the Divine, to be perfect as That is perfect, is the highest intention of all Yoga of power and perfection or of divine works and service. The combined completeness of the three together, founded here on a multiple Unity of the self-manifesting Divine, is the complete result of the integral Yoga, the goal of its triple Path and the fruit of its triple sacrifice.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
99:The Gita replies with its third great secret of the divine life. All action must be done in a more and more Godward and finally a God-possessed consciousness; our works must be a sacrifice to the Divine and in the end a surrender of all our being, mind, will, heart, sense, life and body to the One must make God-love and God-service our only motive. This transformation of the motive force and very character of works is indeed its master idea; it is the foundation of its unique synthesis of works, love and knowledge. In the end not desire, but the consciously felt will of the Eternal remains as the sole driver of our action and the sole originator of its initiative.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [104-105],
100:three paths as one :::
   We can see also that in the integral view of things these three paths are one. Divine Love should normally lead to the perfect knowledge of the Beloved by perfect intimacy, thus becoming a path of Knowledge, and to divine service, thus becoming a path of Works. So also should perfect Knowledge lead to perfect Love and Joy and a full acceptance of the works of That which is known; dedicated Works to the entire love of the Master of the Sacrifice and the deepest knowledge of His ways and His being. It is in the triple path that we come most readily to the absolute knowledge, love and service of the One in all beings and in the entire cosmic manifestation.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga,
101:The full recognition of this inner Guide, Master of the Yoga, lord, light, enjoyer and goal of all sacrifice and effort, is of the utmost importance in the path of integral perfection. It is immaterial whether he is first seen as an impersonal Wisdom, Love and Power behind all things, as an Absolute manifesting in the relative and attracting it, as one's highest Self and the highest Self of all, as a Divine Person within us and in the world, in one of his-or her-numerous forms and names or as the ideal which the mind conceives. In the end we perceive that he is all and more than all these things together. The mind's door of entry to the conception of him must necessarily vary according to the past evolution and the present nature.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 62,
102:Apotheosised, transfigured by wisdom's touch,
   Her days became a luminous sacrifice;
   An immortal moth in happy and endless fire,
   She burned in his sweet intolerable blaze.
   A captive Life wedded her conqueror.
   In his wide sky she built her world anew;
   She gave to mind's calm pace the motor's speed,
   To thinking a need to live what the soul saw,
   To living an impetus to know and see.
   His splendour grasped her, her puissance to him clung;
   She crowned the Idea a king in purple robes,
   Put her magic serpent sceptre in Thought's grip,
   Made forms his inward vision's rhythmic shapes
   And her acts the living body of his will.
   A flaming thunder, a creator flash,
   His victor Light rode on her deathless Force;
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,
103:You have spoken much today of my self-sacrifice and devotion to my country. I have heard that kind of speech ever since I came out of jail, but I hear it with embarrassment, with something of pain. For I know my weakness, I am a prey to my own faults and backslidings. I was not blind to them before and when they all rose up against me in seclusion, I felt them utterly. I knew them that I the man was a man of weakness, a faulty and imperfect instrument, strong only when a higher strength entered into me. Then I found myself among these young men and in many of them I discovered a mighty courage, a power of self-effacement in comparison with which I was simply nothing. I saw one or two who were not only superior to me in force and character, - very many were that, - but in the promise of that intellectual ability on which I prided myself. ~ ?,
104:It is the Divine in the inconscient who aspires for the Divine in the consciousness. That is to say, without the Divine there would be no aspiration; without the consciousness hidden in the inconscient, there would be no possibility of changing the inconscience to consciousness. But because at the very heart of the inconscient there is the divine Consciousness, you aspire, and necessarily - this is what he says - automatically, mechanically, the sacrifice is made. And this is why when one says, "It is not you who aspire, it is the Divine, it is not you who make progress, it is the Divine, it is not you who are conscious, it is the Divine" - these are not mere words, it is a fact. And it is simply your ignorance and your unconsciousness which prevent you from realising it. (Meditation) ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956,
105:All true Truth of love and of the works of love the psychic being accepts in their place: but its flame mounts always upward and it is eager to push the ascent from lesser to higher degrees of Truth, since it knows that only by the ascent to a highest Truth and the descent of that highest Truth can Love be delivered from the cross and placed upon the throne; for the cross is the sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns it into a stake of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1,
106:This Dog
   Every morning this dog, very attached to me,
   Quietly keeps sitting near my seat
   Till touching its head
   I recognize its company.
   This recognition gives it so much joy
   Pure delight ripples through its entire body.
   Among all dumb creatures
   It is the only living being
   That has seen the whole man
   Beyond what is good or bad in him
   It has seen
   For his love it can sacrifice its life
   It can love him too for the sake of love alone
   For it is he who shows the way
   To the vast world pulsating with life.
   When I see its deep devotion
   The offer of its whole being
   I fail to understand
   By its sheer instinct
   What truth it has discovered in man.
   By its silent anxious piteous looks
   It cannot communicate what it understands
   But it has succeeded in conveying to me
   Among the whole creation
   What is the true status of man.
   ~ Rabindranath Tagore,
107:the soul alone ensures sincerity :::
   It is here that the emergence of the secret psychic being in us as the leader of the sacrifice is of the utmost importance; for this inmost being alone can bring with it the full power of the spirit in the act, the soul in the symbol. It alone can assure, even while the spiritual consciousness is incomplete, the perennial freshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol and prevent it from becoming a dead form or a corrupted and corrupting magic; it alone can preserve for the act its power with its significance. All the other members of our being, mind, life-force, physical or body consciousness, are too much under the control of the Ignorance to be a sure instrumentation and much less can they be a guide or the source of an unerring impulse. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 166,
108:   There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distri bute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, 1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics,
109:He found the vast Thought with seven heads that is born of the Truth; he created some fourth world and became universal. . . .
The Sons of Heaven, the Heroes of the Omnipotent, thinking the straight thought, giving voice to the Truth, founded the plane of illumination and conceived the first abode of the Sacrifice. . . . The Master of Wisdom cast down the stone defences and called to the Herds of Light, . . . the herds that stand in the secrecy on the bridge over the Falsehood between two worlds below and one above; desiring Light in the darkness, he brought upward the Ray-Herds and uncovered from the veil the three worlds; he shattered the city that lies hidden in ambush, and cut the three out of the Ocean, and discovered the Dawn and the Sun and the Light and the Word of Light. Rig Veda.2 ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge,
110:the best we can conceive as the thing to be done :::
   The work itself is at first determined by the best light we can command in our ignorance. It is that which we conceive as the thing that should be done. And whether it be shaped by our sense of duty, by our feeling for our fellow-creatures, by our idea of what is for the good of others or the good of the world or by the direction of one whom we accept as a human Master, wiser than ourselves and for us the representative of that Lord of all works in whom we believe but whom we do not yet know, the principle is the same. The essential of the sacrifice of works must be there and the essential is the surrender of all desire for the fruit of our works, the renunciation of all attachment to the result for which yet we labour. For so long as we work with attachment to the result, the sacrifice is offered not to the Divine, but to our ego...
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Equality and the Annihilation of Ego,
111:There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine. Our sacrifice is not a giving without any return or any fruitful acceptance from the other side; it is an interchange between the embodied soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit. For even though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep within us that a marvellous return is inevitable. The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [109],
112:O King, thy fate is a transaction done
At every hour between Nature and thy soul
With God for its foreseeing arbiter.
Fate is a balance drawn in Destiny's book.
Man can accept his fate, he can refuse.
Even if the One maintains the unseen decree
He writes thy refusal in thy credit page:
For doom is not a close, a mystic seal.
Arisen from the tragic crash of life,
Arisen from the body's torture and death,
The spirit rises mightier by defeat;
Its godlike wings grow wider with each fall.
Its splendid failures sum to victory.
O man, the events that meet thee on thy road,
Though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief,
Are not thy fate, - they touch thee awhile and pass;
Even death can cut not short thy spirit's walk:
Thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate.
On the altar throwing thy thoughts, thy heart, thy works,
Thy fate is a long sacrifice to the gods
Till they have opened to thee thy secret self
And made thee one with the indwelling God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 06:02 The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
113:The triple way takes for its chosen instruments the three main powers of the mental soul-life of the human being. Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision and it makes them by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of a Goddirected seeking its means for the greatest knowledge and the greatest vision of all, God-knowledge and God-vision. Its aim is to see, know and be the Divine. Works, action selects for its instrument the will of the doer of works; it makes life an offering of sacrifice to the Godhead and by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of subjection to the divine Will a means for contact and increasing unity of the soul of man with the divine Master of the universe. Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic powers of the soul and by turning them all Godward in a perfect purity, intensity, infinite passion of seeking makes them a means of God-possession in one or many relations of unity with the Divine Being. All aim in their own way at a union or unity of the human soul with the supreme Spirit.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 610 [T3],
114:Anyway, in instances of this kind, I think it is people's faith, above all, which saves them. When they have performed their little ceremony properly, they feel confident, "Oh! now it will be over, for she is satisfied." And because they feel confident, it helps them to react and the illness disappears. I have seen this very often in the street. There might be a small hostile entity there, but these are very insignificant things.
   In other cases, in some temples, there are vital beings who are more or less powerful and have made their home there. But what Sri Aurobindo means here is that there is nothing, not even the most anti-divine force, which in its origin is not the Supreme Divine. So, necessarily, everything goes back to Him, consciously or unconsciously. In the consciousness of the one who makes the offering it does not go to the Divine: it goes to the greater or smaller demon to whom he turns. But through everything, through the wood of the idol or even the ill-will of the vital adversary, ultimately, all returns to the Divine, since all comes from Him. Only, the one who has made the offering or the sacrifice receives but in proportion to his own consciousness... ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956,
115:the first necessity :::
   An entire self-consecration, a complete equality, an unsparing effacement of the ego, a transforming deliverance of the nature from its ignorant modes of action are the steps by which the surrender of all the being and nature to the Divine Will can be prepared and achieved, -- a self-giving true, total and without reserve. The first necessity is an entire spirit of self-consecration in our works; it must become first the constant will, then the ingrained need in all the being, finally its automatic but living and conscious habit, the self-existent turn to do all action as a sacrifice to the Supreme and to the veiled Power present in us and in all beings and in all the workings of the universe. Life is the altar of this sacrifice, works are our offerings; a transcendent and universal Power and Presence as yet rather felt or glimpsed than known or seen by us is the Deity to whom they are offered. This sacrifice, this self-consecration has two sides to it; there is the work itself and there is the spirit in which it is done, the spirit of worship to the Master of Works in all that we see, think and experience.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Equality and the Annihilation of Ego,
116:the three results of effective practice: devotion, the central liberating knowledge and purification of ego; :::
   ...it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible;.. There is bound up a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our through, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved conscecration to the Divine of the totality of our being....
   ...next, the practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward remembrance of the one central liberating knowledge, ... In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. ...
   Lastly, the practice of this Yoga of sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism, casting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed, its presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine; all must be directed towards the Divine.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Sacrifice, The Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [T1],
117:Because I have called, and ye refused . . . I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you." "For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them."

Time Jesum transeuntem et non revertentem: "Dread the passage of Jesus, for he does not return."

The myths and folk tales of the whole world make clear that the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one's own interest. The future is regarded not in terms of an unremitting series of deaths and births, but as though one's present system of ideals, virtues, goals, and advantages were to be fixed and made secure. King Minos retained the divine bull, when the sacrifice would have signified submission to the will of the god of his society; for he preferred what he conceived to be his economic advantage. Thus he failed to advance into the liferole that he had assumed-and we have seen with what calamitous effect. The divinity itself became his terror; for, obviously, if one is oneself one's god, then God himself, the will of God, the power that would destroy one's egocentric system, becomes a monster. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces,
118:From above to below, the sefirot depict the drama of emanation, the transition from Ein Sof to creation. In the words of Azriel of Gerona, "They constitute the process by which all things come into being and pass away." From below to above, the sefirot constitute a ladder of ascent back to the One. The union of Tif'eret and Shekhinah gives birth to the human soul, and the mystical journey begins with the awareness of this spiritual fact of life. Shekhinah is the opening to the divine: "One who enters must enter through this gate." Once inside, the sefirot are no longer an abstract theological system; they become a map of consciousness. The mystic climbs and probes, discovering dimensions of being. Spiritual and psychological wholeness is achieved by meditating on the qualities of each sefirah, by imitating and integrating the attributes of God. "When you cleave to the sefirot, the divine holy spirit enters into you, into every sensation and every movement." But the path is not easy. Divine will can be harsh: Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac in order to balance love with rigor. From the Other Side, demonic forces threaten and seduce. [The demonic is rooted in the divine]. Contemplatively and psychologically, evil must be encountered, not evaded. By knowing and withstanding the dark underside of wisdom, the spiritual seeker is refined.~ Daniel C Matt, The Essential Kabbalah, 10,
119:38 - Strange! The Germans have disproved the existence of Christ; yet his crucifixion remains still a greater historic fact than the death of Caesar. - Sri Aurobindo.

To what plane of consciousness did Christ belong?

In the Essays on the Gita Sri Aurobindo mentions the names of three Avatars, and Christ is one of them. An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth.

I heard Sri Aurobindo himself say that Christ was an emanation of the Lord's aspect of love.

The death of Caesar marked a decisive change in the history of Rome and the countries dependent on her. It was therefore an important event in the history of Europe.

But the death of Christ was the starting-point of a new stage in the evolution of human civilisation. This is why Sri Aurobindo tells us that the death of Christ was of greater historical significance, that is to say, it has had greater historical consequences than the death of Caesar. The story of Christ, as it has been told, is the concrete and dramatic enactment of the divine sacrifice: the Supreme Lord, who is All-Light, All-Knowledge, All-Power, All-Beauty, All-Love, All-Bliss, accepting to assume human ignorance and suffering in matter, in order to help men to emerge from the falsehood in which they live and because of which they die.

16 June 1960 ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.61-62),
120:Last, there is to be considered the recipient of the sacrifice and the manner of the sacrifice. The sacrifice may be offered to others or it may be offered to divine Powers; it may be offered to the cosmic All or it may be offered to the transcendent Supreme. The worship given may take any shape from the dedication of a leaf or flower, a cup of water, a handful of rice, a loaf of bread, to consecration of all that we possess and the submission of all that we are. Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient. For the Supreme who transcends the universe, is yet here too, however veiled, in us and in the world and in its happenings; he is there as the omniscient Witness and Receiver of all our works and their secret Master. All our actions, all our efforts, even our sins and stumblings and sufferings and struggles are obscurely or consciously, known to us and seen or else unknown and in a disguise, governed in their last result by the One. All is turned towards him in his numberless forms and offered through them to the single Omnipresence. In whatever form and with whatever spirit we approach him, in that form and with that spirit he receives the sacrifice.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [109-110],
121:the one entirely acceptable sacrifice :::
   And the fruit also of the sacrifice of works varies according to the work, according to the intention in the work and according to the spirit that is behind the intention. But all other sacrifices are partial, egoistic, mixed, temporal, incomplete, - even those offered to the highest Powers and Principles keep this character: the result too is partial, limited, temporal, mixed in its reactions, effective only for a minor or intermediate purpose. The one entirely acceptable sacrifice is a last and highest and uttermost self-giving, - it is that surrender made face to face, with devotion and knowledge, freely and without any reserve to One who is at once our immanent Self, the environing constituent All, the Supreme Reality beyond this or any manifestation and, secretly, all these together, concealed everywhere, the immanent Transcendence. For to the soul that wholly gives itself to him, God also gives himself altogether. Only the one who offers his whole nature, finds the Self. Only the one who can give everything, enjoys the Divine All everywhere. Only a supreme self-abandonment attains to the Supreme. Only the sublimation by sacrifice of all that we are, can enable us to embody the Highest and live here in the immanent consciousness of the transcendent Spirit.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [110],
122:If the spirit of divine love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a sweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle. The indispensable surrender of all our will and works and activities to the Supreme is indeed only perfect and perfectly effective when it is a surrender of love. All life turned into this cult, all actions done in the love of the Divine and in the love of the world and its creatures seen and felt as the Divine manifested in many disguises become by that very fact part of an integral Yoga.
   It is the inner offering of the heart's adoration, the soul of it in the symbol, the spirit of it in the act, that is the very life of the sacrifice. If this offering is to be complete and universal, then a turning of all our emotions to the Divine is imperative. This is the intensest way of purification for the human heart, more powerful than any ethical or aesthetic catharsis could ever be by its half-power and superficial pressure. A psychic fire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon it. In that fire all the emotions are compelled to cast off their grosser elements and those that are undivine perversions are burned away and the others discard their insufficiencies, till a spirit of largest love and a stainless divine delight arises out of the flame and smoke and frankincense. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 165, [T2],
123:the psychic being :::
   ... it is in the true invisible heart hidden in some luminous cave of the nature: there under some infiltration of the divine Light is our soul, a silent inmost being of which few are even aware; for if all have a soul, few are conscious of their true soul or feel its direct impulse. There dwells the little spark of the Divine which supports this obscure mass of our nature and around it grows the psychic being, the formed soul or the real Man within us. It is as this psychic being in him grows and the movements of the heart reflect its divinations and impulsions that man becomes more and more aware of his soul, ceases to be a superior animal, and, awakening to glimpses of the godhead within him, admits more and more its intimations of a deeper life and consciousness and an impulse towards things divine. It is one of the decisive moments of the integral Yoga when this psychic being liberated, brought out from the veil to the front, can pour the full flood of its divinations, seeings and impulsions on the mind, life and body of man and begin to prepare the upbuilding of divinity in the earthly nature.
   As in the works of knowledge, so in dealing with the workings of the heart, we are obliged to make a preliminary distinction between two categories of movements, those that are either moved by the true soul or aid towards its liberation and rule in the nature and those that are turned to the satisfaction of the unpurified vital nature.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 150,
124:the ruthless sacrifice ::: The vulgar conception of sacrifice is an act of painful self-immolation, austere self-mortification, difficult self-effacement; this kind of sacrifice may go even as far as self-mutilation and self-torture. These things may be temporarily necessary in man's hard endeavor to exceed his natural self; if the egoism in his nature is violent and obstinate, it has to be met sometimes by an answering strong internal repression and counterbalancing violence. But the Gita discourages any excess of violence done to oneself; for the self within is really the Godhead evolving, it is Krishna, the Divine; it has not to be troubled and tortured as the Titans of the world trouble and torture it, but to be increased, fostered, cherished, luminously opened to a divine light and strength and joy and wideness. It is not one's self, but the band of the spirit's inner enemies that we have to discourage, expel, slay upon the alter of the growth of the spirit; these can be ruthlessly excised, whose names are desire, wrath, inequality, greed, attachment to outward pleasures and pains, the cohort of usurping demons that are the cause of the soul's errors and sufferings. These should be regarded not as part of oneself but as intruders and perverters of our self's real and diviner nature; these have to be sacrificed in the harsher sense of the word, whatever pain in going they may thrown by reflection on the consciousness of the seeker.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Sacrifice, The Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice,
125:need for the soul's spiritualization :::
   And yet even the leading of the inmost psychic being is not found sufficient until it has succeeded in raising itself out of this mass of inferior Nature to the highest spiritual levels and the divine spark and flame descended here have rejoined themselves to their original fiery Ether. For there is there no longer a spiritual consciousness still imperfect and half lost to itself in the thick sheaths of human mind, life and body, but the full spiritual consciousness in its purity, freedom and intense wideness. There, as it is the eternal Knower that becomes the Knower in us and mover and user of all knowledge, so it is the eternal All-Blissful who is the Adored attracting to himself the eternal divine portion of his being and joy that has gone out into the play of the universe, the infinite Lover pouring himself out in the multiplicity of his own manifested selves in a happy Oneness. All Beauty in the world is there the beauty of the Beloved, and all forms of beauty have to stand under the light of that eternal Beauty and submit themselves to the sublimating and transfiguring power of the unveiled Divine Perfection. All Bliss and Joy are there of the All-Blissful, and all inferior forms of enjoyment, happiness or pleasure are subjected to the shock of the intensity of its floods or currents and either they are broken to pieces as inadequate things under its convicting stress or compelled to transmute themselves into the forms of the Divine Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 168,
126:scope and aim of the works of sacrifice :::
   Into the third and last category of the works of sacrifice can be gathered all that is directly proper to the Yoga of works; for here is its field of effectuation and major province. It covers the entire range of lifes more visible activities; under it fall the multiform energies of the Will-to-Life throwing itself outward to make the most of material existence. It is here that an ascetic or other-worldly spirituality feels an insurmountable denial of the Truth which it seeks after and is compelled to turn away from terrestrial existence, rejecting it as for ever the dark playground of an incurable Ignorance. Yet it is precisely these activities that are claimed for a spiritual conquest and divine transformation by the integral Yoga. Abandoned altogether by the more ascetic disciplines, accepted by others only as a field of temporary ordeal or a momentary, superficial and ambiguous play of the concealed spirit, this existence is fully embraced and welcomed by the integral seeker as a field of fulfilment, a field for divine works, a field of the total self-discovery of the concealed and indwelling Spirit. A discovery of the Divinity in oneself is his first object, but a total discovery too of the Divinity in the world behind the apparent denial offered by its scheme and figures and, last, a total discovery of the dynamism of some transcendent Eternal; for by its descent this world and self-will be empowered to break their disguising envelopes and become divine in revealing form and manifesting process as they now are secretly in their hidden essence.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 169,
127:35 - Men are still in love with grief; when they see one who is too high for grief or joy, they curse him and cry, "O thou insensible!" Therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem.

36 - Men are in love with sin; when they see one who is too high for vice or virtue, they curse him and cry, "O thou breaker of bonds, thou wicked and immoral one!" Therefore Sri Krishna does not live as yet in Brindavan.(5)
- Sri Aurobindo

I would like to have an explanation of these two aphorisms.

When Christ came upon earth, he brought a message of brotherhood, love and peace. But he had to die in pain, on the cross, so that his message might be heard. For men cherish suffering and hatred and want their God to suffer with them. They wanted this when Christ came and, in spite of his teaching and sacrifice, they still want it; and they are so attached to their pain that, symbolically, Christ is still bound to his cross, suffering perpetually for the salvation of men.

As for Krishna, he came upon earth to bring freedom and delight. He came to announce to men, enslaved to Nature, to their passions and errors, that if they took refuge in the Supreme Lord they would be free from all bondage and sin. But men are very attached to their vices and virtues (for without vice there would be no virtue); they are in love with their sins and cannot tolerate anyone being free and above all error.

That is why Krishna, although immortal, is not present at Brindavan in a body at this moment.
3 June 1960

(5 The village where Shri Krishna Spent His Childhood, and where He danced with Radha and other Gopis.) ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.59-60,
128:...that personality, like consciousness, life, soul is not a brief-lived stranger in an impersonal Eternity, but contains the very meaning of existence. This fine flower of the cosmic Energy carries in it a forecast of the aim and a hint of the very motive of the universal labour. As an occult vision opens in him, he becomes aware of worlds behind in which consciousness and personality hold an enormous place and assume a premier value; even here in the material world to this occult vision the inconscience of Matter fills with a secret pervading consciousness, its inanimation harbours a vibrant life, its mechanism is the device of an indwelling Intelligence, God and soul are everywhere. Above all stands an infinite conscious Being who is variously self-expressed in all these worlds; impersonality is only a first means of that expression. It is a field of principles and forces, an equal basis of manifestation; but these forces express themselves through beings, have conscious spirits at their head and are the emanation of a One Conscious Being who is their sorce. A multiple innumberable personality expressing that One is the very sense and central aim of the manifestation and if now personality seems to be narrow, fragmentary, restrictive, it is only because it has not opened to its source or flowered into its own divine truth and fullness packing itself with the universal and the infinite. Thus the world-creation is no more an illusion, a fortuitous mechanism, a play that need not have happened, a flux without consequence; it is an intimate dynamism of the conscious and living Eternal.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice and the Lord of the Sacrifice, 127,
129:The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the mental being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijnana and which we may term the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or supermind where the One and the Many meet and our being is freely open to the revealing light of the divine Truth and the inspiration of the divine Will and Knowledge. If we can break down the veil of the intellectual, emotional, sensational mind which our ordinary existence has built between us and the Divine, we can then take up through the Truth-mind all our mental, vital and physical experience and offer it up to the spiritual -- this was the secret or mystic sense of the old Vedic "sacrifice" -- to be converted into the terms of the infinite truth of Sachchidananda, and we can receive the powers and illuminations of the infinite Existence in forms of a divine knowledge, will and delight to be imposed on our mentality, vitality, physical existence till the lower is transformed into the perfect vessel of the higher. This was the double Vedic movement of the descent and birth of the gods in the human creature and the ascent of the human powers that struggle towards the divine knowledge, power and delight and climb into the godheads, the result of which was the possession of the One, the Infinite, the beatific existence, the union with God, the Immortality. By possession of this ideal plane we break down entirely the opposition of the lower and the higher existence, the false gulf created by the Ignorance between the finite and the Infinite, God and Nature, the One and the Many, open the gates of the Divine, fulfil the individual in the complete harmony of the cosmic consciousness and realise in the cosmic being the epiphany of the transcendent Sachchidananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 2.15,
130:A supreme divine Love is a creative Power and, even though it can exist in itself silent and unchangeable, yet rejoices in external form and expression and is not condemned to be a speechless and bodiless godhead. It has even been said that creation itself was an act of love or at least the building up of a field in which Divine Love could devise its symbols and fulfil itself in act of mutuality and self-giving, and, if not the initial nature of creation, this may well be its ultimate object and motive. It does not so appear now because, even if a Divine Love is there in the world upholding all this evolution of creatures, yet the stuff of life and its action is made up of an egoistic formation, a division, a struggle of life and consciousness to exist and survive in an apparently indifferent, inclement or even hostile world of inanimate and inconscient Matter. In the confusion and obscurity of this struggle all are thrown against each other with a will in each to assert its own existence first and foremost and only secondarily to assert itself in others and very partially for others; for even man's altruism remains essentially egoistic and must be so till the soul finds the secret of the divine Oneness. It is to discover that at its supreme source, to bring it from within and to radiate it out up to the extreme confines of life that is turned the effort of the Yoga. All action, all creation must be turned into a form, a symbol of the cult, the adoration, the sacrifice; it must carry something that makes it bear in it the stamp of a dedication, a reception and translation of the Divine Consciousness, a service of the Beloved, a self-giving, a surrender. This has to be done wherever possible in the outward body and form of the act; it must be done always in its inward emotion and an intentsity that shows it to be an outflow from the soul towards the Eternal.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 164,
131:When a corner of Maya, the illusion of individual life, is lifted before the eyes of a man in such sort that he no longer makes any egoistic difference between his own person and other men, that he takes as much interest in the sufferings of others as in his own and that he becomes succourable to the point of devotion, ready to sacrifice himself for the salvation of others, then that man is able to recognise himself in all beings, considers as his own the infinite sufferings of all that lives and must thus appropriate to himself the sorrow of the world. No distress is alien to him. All the torments which he sees and can so rarely soften, all the torments of which he hears, those even which it is impossible for him to conceive, strike his spirit as if he were himself the victim. Insensible to the alternations of weal and woe which succeed each other in his destiny, delivered from all egoism, he penetrates the veils of the individual illusion : all that lives, all that suffers is equally near to his heart. He conceives the totality of things, their essence, their eternal flux, the vain efforts, the internal struggles and sufferings without end ; he sees to whatever side he turns his gaze man who suffers, the animal who suffers and a world that is eternally passing away. He unites himself henceforth to the sorrows of the world as closely as the egoist to his own person. How can he having such a knowledge of the world affirm by incessant desires his will to live, attach himself more and more to life and clutch it to him always more closely ? The man seduced by the illusion of individual life, a slave of his egoism, sees only the things that touch him personally and draws from them incessantly renewed motives to desire and to will : on the contrary one who penetrates the essence of things and dominates their totality, elevates himself to a state of voluntary renunciation, resignation and true tranquillity. ~ Schopenhauer, the Eternal Wisdom
132:I know some individuals who make this their daily practice: starting at the beginning and reading a canto or half a canto every day till they reach the end and then starting at the beginning again, and in that way they have gone through the whole of Savitri many times. When this is done in groups there's really no doubt that by this going through the whole soundbody of the epic from beginning to end aloud, there must be built up a very strong force field of vibrations. It is definitely of benefit to the people who participate in it. But again I would say that the effect or benefit of this sacrifice will be richer to the extent that the reading is done with understanding and above all with soul surrender. It shouldn't become a mere ritual.
Sri Aurobindo's mantric lines, repeated one after the other, will always have their power; but the power will be much greater if the mind can participate, and the will and the heart.
I have also heard of some groups who select one line that seems to have a particular mantric power and then within the group they chant that line many, many times. They concentrate on that one special line, and try to take its vibrations deep into themselves. Again I am sure that this is very beneficial to those who practice it.
In that way the words enter very deeply into the consciousness. There they resonate and do their work, and perhaps not just the surface meaning but the deeper meaning and the deeper vibrations may reveal their full depth to those who undertake this exercise if it is done with self-dedication, with a true aspiration to internalise the heart of the meaning, not just as a mere repetition.
At another end of the spectrum of possible approaches to Savitri, we can say there would be the aesthetic approach, the approach of enjoying it for its poetic beauty. I met a gentleman a couple of months ago, who told me, "We have faith in Sri Aurobindo, but it is so difficult to understand his books. We tried with The Life Divine, we tried with The Synthesis of Yoga but we found them so difficult. ~ collab summer & fall 2011,
133:the spiritual force behind adoration :::
   All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendor appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter this image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, The Works of Love - The Works of Life, 159,
134:The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic presence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 138,
135:requirements for the psychic :::
   At a certain stage in the Yoga when the mind is sufficiently quieted and no longer supports itself at every step on the sufficiency of its mental certitudes, when the vital has been steadied and subdued and is no longer constantly insistent on its own rash will, demand and desire, when the physical has been sufficiently altered not to bury altogether the inner flame under the mass of its outwardness, obscurity or inertia, an inmost being hidden within and felt only in its rare influences is able to come forward and illumine the rest and take up the lead of the sadhana. Its character is a one-pointed orientation towards the Divine or the Highest, one-pointed and yet plastic in action and movement; it does not create a rigidity of direction like the one-pointed intellect or a bigotry of the regnant idea or impulse like the one-pointed vital force; it is at every moment and with a supple sureness that it points the way to the Truth, automatically distinguishes the right step from the false, extricates the divine or Godward movement from the clinging mixture of the undivine. Its action is like a searchlight showing up all that has to be changed in the nature; it has in it a flame of will insistent on perfection, on an alchemic transmutation of all the inner and outer existence. It sees the divine essence everywhere but rejects the mere mask and the disguising figure. It insists on Truth, on will and strength and mastery, on Joy and Love and Beauty, but on a Truth of abiding Knowledge that surpasses the mere practical momentary truth of the Ignorance, on an inward joy and not on mere vital pleasure, -- for it prefers rather a purifying suffering and sorrow to degrading satisfactions, -- on love winged upward and not tied to the stake of egoistic craving or with its feet sunk in the mire, on beauty restored to its priesthood of interpretation of the Eternal, on strength and will and mastery as instruments not of the ego but of the Spirit. Its will is for the divinisation of life, the expression through it of a higher Truth, its dedication to the Divine and the Eternal.
   But the most intimate character of the psychic is its pressure towards the Divine through a sacred love, joy and oneness. It is the divine Love that it seeks most, it is the love of the Divine that is its spur, its goal, its star of Truth shining over the luminous cave of the nascent or the still obscure cradle of the new-born godhead within us.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1,
136:Mother, suffering comes from ignorance and pain, but what is the nature of the suffering and pain the Divine Mother feels for her children-the Divine Mother in Savitri?

It is because she participates in their nature. She has descended upon earth to participate in their nature. Because if she did not participate in their nature, she could not lead them farther. If she remained in her supreme consciousness where there is no suffering, in her supreme knowledge and consciousness, she could not have any contact with human beings. And it is for this that she is obliged to take on the human consciousness and form, it is to be able to enter into contact with them. Only, she does not forget: she has adopted their consciousness but she remains in relation with her own real, supreme consciousness. And thus, by joining the two, she can make those who are in that other consciousness progress. But if she did not adopt their consciousness, if she did not suffer with their sorrow, she could not help them. Hers is not a suffering of ignorance: it is a suffering through identity. It is because she has accepted to have the same vibrations as they, in order to be able to enter into contact with them and pull them out of the state they are in. If she did not enter into contact with them, she would not be felt at all or no one could bear her radiance.... This has been said in all kinds of forms, in all kinds of religions, and they have spoken very often of the divine Sacrifice, but from a certain point of view it is true. It is a voluntary sacrifice, but it is true: giving up a state of perfect consciousness, perfect bliss, perfect power in order to accept the state of ignorance of the outer world so as to pull it out of that ignorance. If this state were not accepted, there would be no contact with it. No relation would be possible. And this is the reason of the incarnations. Otherwise, there would be no necessity. If the divine consciousness and divine force could work directly from the place or state of their perfection, if they could work directly on matter and transform it, there would be no need to take a body like man's. It would have been enough to act from the world of Truth with the perfect consciousness and upon consciousness. In fact that acts perhaps but so slowly that when there is this effort to make the world progress, make it go forward more rapidly, well, it is necessary to take on human nature. By taking the human body, one is obliged to take on human nature, partially. Only, instead of losing one's consciousness and losing contact with the Truth, one keeps this consciousness and this Truth, and it is by joining the two that one can create exactly this kind of alchemy of transformation. But if one did not touch matter, one could do nothing for it. ~ The Mother, Question And Answers,
137:It is then by a transformation of life in its very principle, not by an external manipulation of its phenomena, that the integral Yoga proposes to change it from a troubled and ignorant into a luminous and harmonious movement of Nature. There are three conditions which are indispensable for the achievement of this central inner revolution and new formation; none of them is altogether sufficient in itself, but by their united threefold power the uplifting can be done, the conversion made and completely made. For, first, life as it is is a movement of desire and it has built in us as its centre a desire-soul which refers to itself all the motions of life and puts in them its own troubled hue and pain of an ignorant, half-lit, baffled endeavour: for a divine living, desire must be abolished and replaced by a purer and firmer motive-power, the tormented soul of desire dissolved and in its stead there must emerge the calm, strength, happiness of a true vital being now concealed within us. Next, life as it is is driven or led partly by the impulse of the life-force, partly by a mind which is mostly a servant and abettor of the ignorant life-impulse, but in part also its uneasy and not too luminous or competent guide and mentor; for a divine life the mind and the life-impulse must cease to be anything but instruments and the inmost psychic being must take their place as the leader on the path and the indicator of a divine guidance. Last, life as it is is turned towards the satisfaction of the separative ego; ego must disappear and be replaced by the true spiritual person, the central being, and life itself must be turned towards the fulfilment of the Divine in terrestrial existence; it must feel a Divine Force awaking within it and become an obedient instrumentation of its purpose.
   There is nothing that is not ancient and familiar in the first of these three transforming inner movements; for it has always been one of the principal objects of spiritual discipline. It has been best formulated in the already expressed doctrine of the Gita by which a complete renouncement of desire for the fruits as the motive of action, a complete annulment of desire itself, the complete achievement of a perfect equality are put forward as the normal status of a spiritual being. A perfect spiritual equality is the one true and infallible sign of the cessation of desire, - to be equal-souled to all things, unmoved by joy and sorrow, the pleasant and the unpleasant, success or failure, to look with an equal eye on high and low, friend and enemy, the virtuous and the sinner, to see in all beings the manifold manifestation of the One and in all things the multitudinous play or the slow masked evolution of the embodied Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 176,
138:root of the falsification and withdrawl of divine love :::
   At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Nature-forces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind's and the life's falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind's ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 166,
139:- for every well-made and significant poem, picture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression or world-expression, - all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation. But the Yogin has to see that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge.
   For all must be done as a sacrifice, all activities must have the One Divine for their object and the heart of their meaning. The Yogin's aim in the sciences that make for knowledge should be to discover and understand the workings of the Divine Consciousness-Puissance in man and creatures and things and forces, her creative significances, her execution of the mysteries, the symbols in which she arranges the manifestation. The Yogin's aim in the practical sciences, whether mental and physical or occult and psychic, should be to enter into the ways of the Divine and his processes, to know the materials and means for the work given to us so that we may use that knowledge for a conscious and faultless expression of the spirit's mastery, joy and self-fulfilment. The Yogin's aim in the Arts should not be a mere aesthetic, mental or vital gratification, but, seeing the Divine everywhere, worshipping it with a revelation of the meaning of its own works, to express that One Divine in ideal forms, the One Divine in principles and forces, the One Divine in gods and men and creatures and objects. The theory that sees an intimate connection between religious aspiration and the truest and greatest Art is in essence right; but we must substitute for the mixed and doubtful religious motive a spiritual aspiration, vision, interpreting experience. For the wider and more comprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the hidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from that high motive. The Yogin's distinction from other men is this that he lives in a higher and vaster spiritual consciousness; all his work of knowledge or creation must then spring from there: it must not be made in the mind, - for it is a greater truth and vision than mental man's that he has to express or rather that presses to express itself through him and mould his works, not for his personal satisfaction, but for a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 142 [T4],
140:Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered. Then he spoke thus: Man is a rope stretched between animal and overman - a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous trembling and stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going. I love those who know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers. I love the great despisers, because they are the great reverers, and arrows of longing for the other shore. I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the overman may some day arrive. I love him who lives in order to know, and seeks to know in order that the overman may someday live. Thus he seeks his own down-going. I love him who works and invents, that he may build a house for the overman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus he seeks his own down-going. I love him who loves his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing. I love him who reserves no drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be entirely the spirit of his virtue: thus he walks as spirit over the bridge. I love him who makes his virtue his addiction and destiny: thus, for the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no more. I love him who does not desire too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for ones destiny to cling to. I love him whose soul squanders itself, who wants no thanks and gives none back: for he always gives, and desires not to preserve himself. I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favor, and who then asks: Am I a dishonest player? - for he is willing to perish. I love him who scatters golden words in front of his deeds, and always does more than he promises: for he seeks his own down-going. I love him who justifies those people of the future, and redeems those of the past: for he is willing to perish by those of the present. I love him who chastens his God, because he loves his God: for he must perish by the wrath of his God. I love him whose soul is deep even in being wounded, and may perish from a small experience: thus goes he gladly over the bridge. I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going. I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the entrails of his heart; his heart, however, drives him to go down. I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark cloud that hangs over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, and perish as heralds. Behold, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is called overman.
   ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
141:There is one fundamental perception indispensable towards any integral knowledge or many-sided experience of this Infinite. It is to realise the Divine in its essential self and truth unaltered by forms and phenomena. Otherwise we are likely to remain caught in the net of appearances or wander confusedly in a chaotic multitude of cosmic or particular aspects, and if we avoid this confusion, it will be at the price of getting chained to some mental formula or shut up in a limited personal experience. The one secure and all-reconciling truth which is the very foundation of the universe is this that life is the manifestation of an uncreated Self and Spirit, and the key to life's hidden secret is the true relation of this Spirit with its own created existences. There is behind all this life the look of an eternal Being upon its multitudinous becomings; there is around and everywhere in it the envelopment and penetration of a manifestation in time by an unmanifested timeless Eternal. But this knowledge is valueless for Yoga if it is only an intellectual and metaphysical notion void of life and barren of consequence; a mental realisation alone cannot be sufficient for the seeker. 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. This infinite and eternal Self of things is an omnipresent Reality, one existence everywhere; it is a single unifying presence and not different in different creatures; it can be met, seen or felt in its completeness in each soul or each form in the universe. For its infinity is spiritual and essential and not merely a boundlessness in Space or an endlessness in Time; the Infinite can be felt in an infinitesimal atom or in a second of time as convincingly as in the stretch of the aeons or the stupendous enormity of the intersolar spaces. The knowledge or experience of it can begin anywhere and express itself through anything; for the Divine is in all, and all is the Divine.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice,
142:It is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over the vast life around it. The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates, presents us with always newer and greater powers of vision, ideation, perception and newer and greater life-motives, enlarges and newmodels increasingly the soul and its instruments, confronts us with every imperfection in order to convict and destroy it, opens to a greater perfection, does in a brief period the work of many lives or ages so that new births and new vistas open constantly within us. Expansive in her action, she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working, separate from within the truth and falsehood of our perceptions, enlarge their field, extend and illumine their significance, become master of our own minds and active to shape the movements of Mind in the world around us. We begin to perceive the flow and surge of the universal life-forces, detect the origin and law of our feelings, emotions, sensations, passions, are free to accept, reject, new-create, open to wider, rise to higher planes of Life-Power. We begin to perceive too the key to the enigma of Matter, follow the interplay of Mind and Life and Consciousness upon it, discover more and more its instrumental and resultant function and detect ultimately the last secret of Matter as a form not merely of Energy but of involved and arrested or unstably fixed and restricted consciousness and begin to see too the possibility of its liberation and plasticity of response to higher Powers, its possibilities for the conscious and no longer the more than half-inconscient incarnation and self-expression of the Spirit. All this and more becomes more and more possible as the working of the Divine Shakti increases in us and, against much resistance or labour to respond of our obscure consciousness, through much struggle and movement of progress and regression and renewed progress necessitated by the work of intensive transformation of a half-inconscient into a conscious substance, moves to a greater purity, truth, height, range. All depends on the psychic awakening in us, the completeness of our response to her and our growing surrender. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 183,
143:There's an idea in Christianity of the image of God as a Trinity. There's the element of the Father, there's the element of the Son, and there's the element of the Holy Spirit. It's something like the spirit of tradition, human beings as the living incarnation of that tradition, and the spirit in people that makes relationship with the spirit and individuals possible. I'm going to bounce my way quickly through some of the classical, metaphorical attributes of God, so that we kind of have a cloud of notions about what we're talking about, when we return to Genesis 1 and talk about the God who spoke chaos into Being.

There's a fatherly aspect, so here's what God as a father is like. You can enter into a covenant with it, so you can make a bargain with it. Now, you think about that. Money is like that, because money is a bargain you make with the future. We structured our world so that you can negotiate with the future. I don't think that we would have got to the point where we could do that without having this idea to begin with. You can act as if the future's a reality; there's a spirit of tradition that enables you to act as if the future is something that can be bargained with. That's why you make sacrifices. The sacrifices were acted out for a very long period of time, and now they're psychological. We know that you can sacrifice something valuable in the present and expect that you're negotiating with something that's representing the transcendent future. That's an amazing human discovery. No other creature can do that; to act as if the future is real; to know that you can bargain with reality itself, and that you can do it successfully. It's unbelievable.

It responds to sacrifice. It answers prayers. I'm not saying that any of this is true, by the way. I'm just saying what the cloud of ideas represents. It punishes and rewards. It judges and forgives. It's not nature. One of the things weird about the Judeo-Christian tradition is that God and nature are not the same thing, at all. Whatever God is, partially manifest in this logos, is something that stands outside of nature. I think that's something like consciousness as abstracted from the natural world. It built Eden for mankind and then banished us for disobedience. It's too powerful to be touched. It granted free will. Distance from it is hell. Distance from it is death. It reveals itself in dogma and in mystical experience, and it's the law. That's sort of like the fatherly aspect.

The son-like aspect. It speaks chaos into order. It slays dragons and feeds people with the remains. It finds gold. It rescues virgins. It is the body and blood of Christ. It is a tragic victim, scapegoat, and eternally triumphant redeemer simultaneously. It cares for the outcast. It dies and is reborn. It is the king of kings and hero of heroes. It's not the state, but is both the fulfillment and critic of the state. It dwells in the perfect house. It is aiming at paradise or heaven. It can rescue from hell. It cares for the outcast. It is the foundation and the cornerstone that was rejected. It is the spirit of the law.

The spirit-like aspect. It's akin to the human soul. It's the prophetic voice. It's the still, small voice of conscience. It's the spoken truth. It's called forth by music. It is the enemy of deceit, arrogance, and resentment. It is the water of life. It burns without consuming. It's a blinding light.

That's a very well-developed set of poetic metaphors. These are all...what would you say...glimpses of the transcendent ideal. That's the right way of thinking about it. They're glimpses of the transcendent ideal, and all of them have a specific meaning. In part, what we're going to do is go over that meaning, as we continue with this series. What we've got now is a brief description, at least, of what this is. ~ Jordan Peterson, Biblical Series, 1,
144::::
   As an inner equality increases and with it the sense of the true vital being waiting for the greater direction it has to serve, as the psychic call too increases in all the members of our nature, That to which the call is addressed begins to reveal itself, descends to take possession of the life and its energies and fills them with the height, intimacy, vastness of its presence and its purpose. In many, if not most, it manifests something of itself even before the equality and the open psychic urge or guidance are there. A call of the veiled psychic element oppressed by the mass of the outer ignorance and crying for deliverance, a stress of eager meditation and seeking for knowledge, a longing of the heart, a passionate will ignorant yet but sincere may break the lid that shuts off that Higher from this Lower Nature and open the floodgates. A little of the Divine Person may reveal itself or some Light, Power, Bliss, Love out of the Infinite. This may be a momentary revelation, a flash or a brief-lived gleam that soon withdraws and waits for the preparation of the nature; but also it may repeat itself, grow, endure. A long and large and comprehensive working will then have begun, sometimes luminous or intense, sometimes slow and obscure. A Divine Power comes in front at times and leads and compels or instructs and enlightens; at others it withdraws into the background and seems to leave the being to its own resources. All that is ignorant, obscure, perverted or simply imperfect and inferior in the being is raised up, perhaps brought to its acme, dealt with, corrected, exhausted, shown its own disastrous results, compelled to call for its own cessation or transformation or expelled as worthless or incorrigible from the nature. This cannot be a smooth and even process; alternations there are of day and night, illumination and darkness, calm and construction or battle and upheaval, the presence of the growing Divine Consciousness and its absence, heights of hope and abysses of despair, the clasp of the Beloved and the anguish of its absence, the overwhelming invasion, the compelling deceit, the fierce opposition, the disabling mockery of hostile Powers or the help and comfort and communion of the Gods and the Divine Messengers. A great and long revolution and churning of the ocean of Life with strong emergences of its nectar and its poison is enforced till all is ready and the increasing Descent finds a being, a nature prepared and conditioned for its complete rule and its all-encompassing presence. But if the equality and the psychic light and will are already there, then this process, though it cannot be dispensed with, can still be much lightened and facilitated: it will be rid of its worst dangers; an inner calm, happiness, confidence will support the steps through all the difficulties and trials of the transformation and the growing Force profiting by the full assent of the nature will rapidly diminish and eliminate the power of the opposing forces. A sure guidance and protection will be present throughout, sometimes standing in front, sometimes working behind the veil, and the power of the end will be already there even in the beginning and in the long middle stages of the great endeavour. For at all times the seeker will be aware of the Divine Guide and Protector or the working of the supreme Mother-Force; he will know that all is done for the best, the progress assured, the victory inevitable. In either case the process is the same and unavoidable, a taking up of the whole nature, of the whole life, of the internal and of the external, to reveal and handle and transform its forces and their movements under the pressure of a diviner Life from above, until all here has been possessed by greater spiritual powers and made an instrumentation of a spiritual action and a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 179,
145:The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching the divine Being. In an ordinary Yoga one main power of being or one group of its powers is made the means, vehicle, path. In a synthetic Yoga all powers will be combined and included in the transmuting instrumentation.
   In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified, heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened, concentrated by Asana and Pranayama. This concentration of powers is then directed towards that physical centre in which the divine consciousness sits concealed in the human body. The power of Life, Nature-power, coiled up with all its secret forces asleep in the lowest nervous plexus of the earth-being,-for only so much escapes into waking action in our normal operations as is sufficient for the limited uses of human life,-rises awakened through centre after centre and awakens, too, in its ascent and passage the forces of each successive nodus of our being, the nervous life, the heart of emotion and ordinary mentality, the speech, sight, will, the higher knowledge, till through and above the brain it meets with and it becomes one with the divine consciousness.
   In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. our ordinary mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed towards the divine Being, then by a summary process of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated into a higher power of its upward action, the mind, supported and strengthened by this greater action and concentration of the body and life upon which it rests, is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration, gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects, the one temporal, the other eternal,are gained by this discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will, deep light of reception, powerful light of thought-radiation which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult powers around which there has been woven so much quite dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the one final end and the one all-important gain is that the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance, can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the soul be made free to unite with the divine Being.
   The triple way takes for its chosen instruments the three main powers of the mental soul-life of the human being. Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision and it makes them by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of a Goddirected seeking its means for the greatest knowledge and the greatest vision of all, God-knowledge and God-vision. Its aim is to see, know and be the Divine. Works, action selects for its instrument the will of the doer of works; it makes life an offering of sacrifice to the Godhead and by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of subjection to the divine Will a means for contact and increasing unity of the soul of man with the divine Master of the universe. Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic powers of the soul and by turning them all Godward in a perfect purity, intensity, infinite passion of seeking makes them a means of God-possession in one or many relations of unity with the Divine Being. All aim in their own way at a union or unity of the human soul with the supreme Spirit.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,
146:The recurring beat that moments God in Time.
Only was missing the sole timeless Word
That carries eternity in its lonely sound,
The Idea self-luminous key to all ideas,
The integer of the Spirit's perfect sum
That equates the unequal All to the equal One,
The single sign interpreting every sign,
The absolute index to the Absolute.

There walled apart by its own innerness
In a mystical barrage of dynamic light
He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
As if from Matter's plinth and viewless base
To a top as viewless, a carved sea of worlds
Climbing with foam-maned waves to the Supreme
Ascended towards breadths immeasurable;
It hoped to soar into the Ineffable's reign:
A hundred levels raised it to the Unknown.
So it towered up to heights intangible
And disappeared in the hushed conscious Vast
As climbs a storeyed temple-tower to heaven
Built by the aspiring soul of man to live
Near to his dream of the Invisible.
Infinity calls to it as it dreams and climbs;
Its spire touches the apex of the world;
Mounting into great voiceless stillnesses
It marries the earth to screened eternities.
Amid the many systems of the One
Made by an interpreting creative joy
Alone it points us to our journey back
Out of our long self-loss in Nature's deeps;
Planted on earth it holds in it all realms:
It is a brief compendium of the Vast.
This was the single stair to being's goal.
A summary of the stages of the spirit,
Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies
Refashioned in our secret air of self
A subtle pattern of the universe.
It is within, below, without, above.
Acting upon this visible Nature's scheme
It wakens our earth-matter's heavy doze
To think and feel and to react to joy;
It models in us our diviner parts,
Lifts mortal mind into a greater air,
Makes yearn this life of flesh to intangible aims,
Links the body's death with immortality's call:
Out of the swoon of the Inconscience
It labours towards a superconscient Light.
If earth were all and this were not in her,
Thought could not be nor life-delight's response:
Only material forms could then be her guests
Driven by an inanimate world-force.
Earth by this golden superfluity
Bore thinking man and more than man shall bear;
This higher scheme of being is our cause
And holds the key to our ascending fate;

It calls out of our dense mortality
The conscious spirit nursed in Matter's house.
The living symbol of these conscious planes,
Its influences and godheads of the unseen,
Its unthought logic of Reality's acts
Arisen from the unspoken truth in things,
Have fixed our inner life's slow-scaled degrees.
Its steps are paces of the soul's return
From the deep adventure of material birth,
A ladder of delivering ascent
And rungs that Nature climbs to deity.
Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godhead's fall.
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state;
Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness
Divinity's lapse from its own splendours wove
The many-patterned ground of all we are.
An idol of self is our mortality.
Our earth is a fragment and a residue;
Her power is packed with the stuff of greater worlds
And steeped in their colour-lustres dimmed by her drowse;
An atavism of higher births is hers,
Her sleep is stirred by their buried memories
Recalling the lost spheres from which they fell.
Unsatisfied forces in her bosom move;
They are partners of her greater growing fate
And her return to immortality;
They consent to share her doom of birth and death;
They kindle partial gleams of the All and drive
Her blind laborious spirit to compose
A meagre image of the mighty Whole.
The calm and luminous Intimacy within
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,
147:All Yoga is a turning of the human mind and the human soul, not yet divine in realisation, but feeling the divine impulse and attraction in it, towards that by which it finds its greater being. Emotionally, the first form which this turning takes must be that of adoration. In ordinary religion this adoration wears the form of external worship and that again develops a most external form of ceremonial worship. This element is ordinarily necessary because the mass of men live in their physical minds, cannot realise anything except by the force of a physical symbol and cannot feel that they are living anything except by the force of a physical action. We might apply here the Tantric gradation of sadhana, which makes the way of the pasu, the herd, the animal or physical being, the lowest stage of its discipline, and say that the purely or predominantly ceremonial adoration is the first step of this lowest part of the way. It is evident that even real religion, - and Yoga is something more than religion, - only begins when this quite outward worship corresponds to something really felt within the mind, some genuine submission, awe or spiritual aspiration, to which it becomes an aid, an outward expression and also a sort of periodical or constant reminder helping to draw back the mind to it from the preoccupations of ordinary life. But so long as it is only an idea of the Godhead to which one renders reverence or homage, we have not yet got to the beginning of Yoga. The aim of Yoga being union, its beginning must always be a seeking after the Divine, a longing after some kind of touch, closeness or possession. When this comes on us, the adoration becomes always primarily an inner worship; we begin to make ourselves a temple of the Divine, our thoughts and feelings a constant prayer of aspiration and seeking, our whole life an external service and worship. It is as this change, this new soul-tendency grows, that the religion of the devotee becomes a Yoga, a growing contact and union. It does not follow that the outward worship will necessarily be dispensed with, but it will increasingly become only a physical expression or outflowing of the inner devotion and adoration, the wave of the soul throwing itself out in speech and symbolic act.
   Adoration, before it turns into an element of the deeper Yoga of devotion, a petal of the flower of love, its homage and self-uplifting to its sun, must bring with it, if it is profound, an increasing consecration of the being to the Divine who is adored. And one element of this consecration must be a self-purifying so as to become fit for the divine contact, or for the entrance of the Divine into the temple of our inner being, or for his selfrevelation in the shrine of the heart. This purifying may be ethical in its character, but it will not be merely the moralist's seeking for the right and blameless action or even, when once we reach the stage of Yoga, an obedience to the law of God as revealed in formal religion; but it will be a throwing away, katharsis, of all that conflicts whether with the idea of the Divine in himself or of the Divine in ourselves. In the former case it becomes in habit of feeling and outer act an imitation of the Divine, in the latter a growing into his likeness in our nature. What inner adoration is to ceremonial worship, this growing into the divine likeness is to the outward ethical life. It culminates in a sort of liberation by likeness to the Divine,1 a liberation from our lower nature and a change into the divine nature.
   Consecration becomes in its fullness a devoting of all our being to the Divine; therefore also of all our thoughts and our works. Here the Yoga takes into itself the essential elements of the Yoga of works and the Yoga of knowledge, but in its own manner and with its own peculiar spirit. It is a sacrifice of life and works to the Divine, but a sacrifice of love more than a tuning of the will to the divine Will. The bhakta offers up his life and all that he is and all that he has and all that he does to the Divine. This surrender may take the ascetic form, as when he leaves the ordinary life of men and devotes his days solely to prayer ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Way of Devotion, 571 [T1],
148:It is natural from the point of view of the Yoga to divide into two categories the activities of the human mind in its pursuit of knowledge. There is the supreme supra-intellectual knowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in its transcendence or tries to penetrate by intuition, contemplation, direct inner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature; there is the lower science which diffuses itself in an outward knowledge of phenomena, the disguises of the One and Infinite as it appears to us in or through the more exterior forms of the world-manifestation around us. These two, an upper and a lower hemisphere, in the form of them constructed or conceived by men within the mind's ignorant limits, have even there separated themselves, as they developed, with some sharpness.... Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at least intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes intellectualising spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus the discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of ultimate Truth as its province. But even when it did not separate itself on rarefied metaphysical heights from the knowledge that belongs to the practical world and the pursuit of ephemeral objects, intellectual Philosophy by its habit of abstraction has seldom been a power for life. It has been sometimes powerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake without any ulterior utility or object, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in a mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or acrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient Philosophy in Europe was more dynamic, but only for the few; in India in its more spiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life of the race.... Religion did not attempt, like Philosophy, to live alone on the heights; its aim was rather to take hold of man's parts of life even more than his parts of mind and draw them Godwards; it professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital and material human existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower to the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth obedient to Heaven. It has to be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of making Heaven a sanction for Earth's desires; for, continually, the religious idea has been turned into an excuse for the worship and service of the human ego. Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual experience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous compromises with life: in attempting to satisfy the thinking mind, it more often succeeded in oppressing or fettering it with a mass of theological dogmas; while seeking to net the human heart, it fell itself into pits of pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism; in the act of annexing the vital nature of man to dominate it, it grew itself vitiated and fell a prey to all the fanaticism, homicidal fury, savage or harsh turn for oppression, pullulating falsehood, obstinate attachment to ignorance to which that vital nature is prone; its desire to draw the physical in man towards God betrayed it into chaining itself to ecclesiastic mechanism, hollow ceremony and lifeless ritual. The corruption of the best produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil. At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence against this downward gravitation, Religion was driven to cut existence into two by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite categories, the spiritual and the worldly, religious and mundane, sacred and profane; but this defensive distinction itself became conventional and artificial and aggravated rather than healed the disease.... On their side Science and Art and the knowledge of Life, although at first they served or lived in the shadow of Religion, ended by emancipating themselves, became estranged or hostile, or have even recoiled with indifference, contempt or scepticism from what seem to them the cold, barren and distant or unsubstantial and illusory heights of unreality to which metaphysical Philosophy and Religion aspire. For a time the divorce has been as complete as the one-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to end in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual knowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind's horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment. A sterile agnosticism awaits us above the brilliant phosphorescence of a half-knowledge that is still the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1,
149:[an Integral conception of the Divine :::
   But on that which as yet we know not how shall we concentrate? And yet we cannot know the Divine unless we have achieved this concentration of our being upon him. A concentration which culminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are aware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge. It is not enough to devote ourselves by the reading of Scriptures or by the stress of philosophical reasoning to an intellectual understanding of the Divine; for at the end of our long mental labour we might know all that has been said of the Eternal, possess all that can be thought about the Infinite and yet we might not know him at all. This intellectual preparation can indeed be the first stage in a powerful Yoga, but it is not indispensable : it is not a step which all need or can be called upon to take. Yoga would be impossible, except for a very few, if the intellectual figure of knowledge arrived at by the speculative or meditative Reason were its indispensable condition or a binding preliminary. All that the Light from above asks of us that it may begin its work is a call from the soul and a sufficient point of support in the mind. This support can be reached through an insistent idea of the Divine in the thought, a corresponding will in the dynamic parts, an aspiration, a faith, a need in the heart. Any one of these may lead or predominate, if all cannot move in unison or in an equal rhythm. The idea may be and must in the beginning be inadequate; the aspiration may be narrow and imperfect, the faith poorly illumined or even, as not surely founded on the rock of knowledge, fluctuating, uncertain, easily diminished; often even it may be extinguished and need to be lit again with difficulty like a torch in a windy pass. But if once there is a resolute self-consecration from deep within, if there is an awakening to the soul's call, these inadequate things can be a sufficient instrument for the divine purpose. Therefore the wise have always been unwilling to limit man's avenues towards God; they would not shut against his entry even the narrowest portal, the lowest and darkest postern, the humblest wicket-gate. Any name, any form, any symbol, any offering has been held to be sufficient if there is the consecration along with it; for the Divine knows himself in the heart of the seeker and accepts the sacrifice.
   But still the greater and wider the moving idea-force behind the consecration, the better for the seeker; his attainment is likely to be fuller and more ample. If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all onesided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula. The dynamic conception or impelling sense with which our Yoga can best set out would be naturally the idea, the sense of a conscious all-embracing but all-exceeding Infinite. Our uplook must be to a free, all-powerful, perfect and blissful One and Oneness in which all beings move and live and through which all can meet and become one. This Eternal will be at once personal and impersonal in his self-revelation and touch upon the soul. He is personal because he is the conscious Divine, the infinite Person who casts some broken reflection of himself in the myriad divine and undivine personalities of the universe. He is impersonal because he appears to us as an infinite Existence, Consciousness and Ananda and because he is the fount, base and constituent of all existences and all energies, -the very material of our being and mind and life and body, our spirit and our matter. The thought, concentrating on him, must not merely understand in an intellectual form that he exists, or conceive of him as an abstraction, a logical necessity; it must become a seeing thought able to meet him here as the Inhabitant in all, realise him in ourselves, watch and take hold on the movement of his forces. He is the one Existence: he is the original and universal Delight that constitutes all things and exceeds them: he is the one infinite Consciousness that composes all consciousnesses and informs all their movements; he is the one illimitable Being who sustains all action and experience; his will guides the evolution of things towards their yet unrealised but inevitable aim and plenitude. To him the heart can consecrate itself, approach him as the supreme Beloved, beat and move in him as in a universal sweetness of Love and a living sea of Delight. For his is the secret Joy that supports the soul in all its experiences and maintains even the errant ego in its ordeals and struggles till all sorrow and suffering shall cease. His is the Love and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is drawing all things by their own path towards his happy oneness. On him the Will can unalterably fix as the invisible Power that guides and fulfils it and as the source of its strength. In the impersonality this actuating Power is a self-illumined Force that contains all results and calmly works until it accomplishes, in the personality an all wise and omnipotent Master of the Yoga whom nothing can prevent from leading it to its goal. This is the faith with which the seeker has to begin his seeking and endeavour; for in all his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the Unseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will be transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 82-83 [T1],
150:To what gods shall the sacrifice be offered? Who shall be invoked to manifest and protect in the human being this increasing godhead?

Agni first, for without him the sacrificial flame cannot burn on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with Knowledge. This conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality, a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and brings back in return their force and light and joy into our humanity.

Indra, the Puissant next, who is the power of pure Existence self-manifested as the Divine Mind. As Agni is one pole of Force instinct with knowledge that sends its current upward from earth to heaven, so Indra is the other pole of Light instinct with force which descends from heaven to earth. He comes down into our world as the Hero with the shining horses and slays darkness and division with his lightnings, pours down the life-giving heavenly waters, finds in the trace of the hound, Intuition, the lost or hidden illuminations, makes the Sun of Truth mount high in the heaven of our mentality.

Surya, the Sun, is the master of that supreme Truth, - truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of process and act and movement and functioning. He is therefore the creator or rather the manifester of all things - for creation is out-bringing, expression by the Truth and Will - and the father, fosterer, enlightener of our souls. The illuminations we seek are the herds of this Sun who comes to us in the track of the divine Dawn and releases and reveals in us night-hidden world after world up to the highest Beatitude.

Of that beatitude Soma is the representative deity. The wine of his ecstasy is concealed in the growths of earth, in the waters of existence; even here in our physical being are his immortalising juices and they have to be pressed out and offered to all the gods; for in that strength these shall increase and conquer.

Each of these primary deities has others associated with him who fulfil functions that arise from his own. For if the truth of Surya is to be established firmly in our mortal nature, there are previous conditions that are indispensable; a vast purity and clear wideness destructive of all sin and crooked falsehood, - and this is Varuna; a luminous power of love and comprehension leading and forming into harmony all our thoughts, acts and impulses, - this is Mitra; an immortal puissance of clear-discerning aspiration and endeavour, - this is Aryaman; a happy spontaneity of the right enjoyment of all things dispelling the evil dream of sin and error and suffering, - this is Bhaga. These four are powers of the Truth of Surya. For the whole bliss of Soma to be established perfectly in our nature a happy and enlightened and unmaimed condition of mind, vitality and body are necessary. This condition is given to us by the twin Ashwins; wedded to the daughter of Light, drinkers of honey, bringers of perfect satisfactions, healers of maim and malady they occupy our parts of knowledge and parts of action and prepare our mental, vital and physical being for an easy and victorious ascension.

Indra, the Divine Mind, as the shaper of mental forms has for his assistants, his artisans, the Ribhus, human powers who by the work of sacrifice and their brilliant ascension to the high dwelling-place of the Sun have attained to immortality and help mankind to repeat their achievement. They shape by the mind Indra's horses, the chariot of the Ashwins, the weapons of the Gods, all the means of the journey and the battle. But as giver of the Light of Truth and as Vritra-slayer Indra is aided by the Maruts, who are powers of will and nervous or vital Force that have attained to the light of thought and the voice of self-expression. They are behind all thought and speech as its impellers and they battle towards the Light, Truth and Bliss of the supreme Consciousness.

There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy.

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 development of all these godheads is necessary to our perfection. And that perfection must be attained on all our levels, - in the wideness of earth, our physical being and consciousness; in the full force of vital speed and action and enjoyment and nervous vibration, typified as the Horse which must be brought forward to upbear our endeavour; in the perfect gladness of the heart of emotion and a brilliant heat and clarity of the mind throughout our intellectual and psychical being; in the coming of the supramental Light, the Dawn and the Sun and the shining Mother of the herds, to transform all our existence; for so comes to us the possession of the Truth, by the Truth the admirable surge of the Bliss, in the Bliss infinite Consciousness of absolute being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, The Doctrine of the Mystics,
151:Depression, unless one has a strong will, suggests, "This is not worth while, one may have to wait a lifetime." As for enthusiasm, it expects to see the vital transformed overnight: "I am not going to have any difficulty henceforth, I am going to advance rapidly on the path of yoga, I am going to gain the divine consciousness without any difficulty." There are some other difficulties.... One needs a little time, much perseverance. So the vital, after a few hours - perhaps a few days, perhaps a few months - says to itself: "We haven't gone very far with our enthusiasm, has anything been really done? Doesn't this movement leave us just where we were, perhaps worse than we were, a little troubled, a little disturbed? Things are no longer what they were, they are not yet what they ought to be. It is very tiresome, what I am doing." And then, if one pushes a little more, here's this gentleman saying, "Ah, no! I have had enough of it, leave me alone. I don't want to move, I shall stay in my corner, I won't trouble you, but don't bother me!" And so one has not gone very much farther than before.
   This is one of the big obstacles which must be carefully avoided. As soon as there is the least sign of discontentment, of annoyance, the vital must be spoken to in this way, "My friend, you are going to keep calm, you are going to do what you are asked to do, otherwise you will have to deal with me." And to the other, the enthusiast who says, "Everything must be done now, immediately", your reply is, "Calm yourself a little, your energy is excellent, but it must not be spent in five minutes. We shall need it for a long time, keep it carefully and, as it is wanted, I shall call upon your goodwill. You will show that you are full of goodwill, you will obey, you won't grumble, you will not protest, you will not revolt, you will say 'yes, yes', you will make a little sacrifice when asked, you will say 'yes' wholeheartedly."
   So we get started on the path. But the road is very long. Many things happen on the way. Suddenly one thinks one has overcome an obstacle; I say "thinks", because though one has overcome it, it is not totally overcome. I am going to take a very obvious instance, of a very simple observation. Someone has found that his vital is uncontrollable and uncontrolled, that it gets furious for nothing and about nothing. He starts working to teach it not to get carried away, not to flare up, to remain calm and bear the shocks of life without reacting violently. If one does this cheerfully, it goes quite quickly. (Note this well, it is very important: when you have to deal with your vital take care to remain cheerful, otherwise you will get into trouble.) One remains cheerful, that is, when one sees the fury rise, one begins to laugh. Instead of being depressed and saying, "Ah! In spite of all my effort it is beginning all over again", one begins to laugh and says, "Well, well! One hasn't yet seen the end of it. Look now, aren't you ridiculous, you know quite well that you are being ridiculous! Is it worthwhile getting angry?" One gives it this lesson cheerfully. And really, after a while it doesn't get angry again, it is quiet - and one relaxes one's attention. One thinks the difficulty has been overcome, one thinks a result has at last been reached: "My vital does not trouble me any longer, it does not get angry now, everything is going fine." And the next day, one loses one's temper. It is then one must be careful, it is then one must not say, "Here we are, it's no use, I shall never achieve anything, all my efforts are futile; all this is an illusion, it is impossible." On the contrary, one must say, "I wasn't vigilant enough." One must wait long, very long, before one can say, "Ah! It is done and finished." Sometimes one must wait for years, many years....
   I am not saying this to discourage you, but to give you patience and perseverance - for there is a moment when you do arrive. And note that the vital is a small part of your being - a very important part, we have said that it is the dynamism, the realising energy, it is very important; but it is only a small part. And the mind!... which goes wandering, which must be pulled back by all the strings to be kept quiet! You think this can be done overnight? And your body?... You have a weakness, a difficulty, sometimes a small chronic illness, nothing much, but still it is a nuisance, isn't it? You want to get rid of it. You make efforts, you concentrate; you work upon it, establish harmony, and you think it is finished, and then.... Take, for instance, people who have the habit of coughing; they can't control themselves or almost can't. It is not serious but it is bothersome, and there seems to be no reason why it should ever stop. Well, one tells oneself, "I am going to control this." One makes an effort - a yogic effort, not a material one - one brings down consciousness, force, and stops the cough. And one thinks, "The body has forgotten how to cough." And it is a great thing when the body has forgotten, truly one can say, "I am cured." But unfortunately it is not always true, for this goes down into the subconscient and, one day, when the balance of forces is not so well established, when the strength is not the same, it begins again. And one laments, "I believed that it was over! I had succeeded and told myself, 'It is true that spiritual power has an action upon the body, it is true that something can be done', and there! it is not true. And yet it was a small thing, and I who want to conquer immortality! How will I succeed?... For years I have been free from this small thing and here it is beginning anew!" It is then that you must be careful. You must arm yourself with an endless patience and endurance. You do a thing once, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times if necessary, but you do it till it gets done. And not done only here and there, but everywhere and everywhere at the same time. This is the great problem one sets oneself. That is why, to those who come to tell me very light-heartedly, "I want to do yoga", I reply, "Think it over, one may do the yoga for a number of years without noticing the least result. But if you want to do it, you must persist and persist with such a will that you should be ready to do it for ten lifetimes, a hundred lifetimes if necessary, in order to succeed." I do not say it will be like that, but the attitude must be like that. Nothing must discourage you; for there are all the difficulties of ignorance of the different states of being, to which are added the endless malice and the unbounded cunning of the hostile forces in the world.... They are there, do you know why? They have been.... ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951,
152:This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings. Our commonest or most grossly material actions must assume this sublimated character; when we eat, we should be conscious that we are giving our food to that Presence in us; it must be a sacred offering in a temple and the sense of a mere physical need or self-gratification must pass away from us. In any great labour, in any high discipline, in any difficult or noble enterprise, whether undertaken for ourselves, for others or for the race, it will no longer be possible to stop short at the idea of the race, of ourselves or of others. The thing we are doing must be consciously offered as a sacrifice of works, not to these, but either through them or directly to the One Godhead; the Divine Inhabitant who was hidden by these figures must be no longer hidden but ever present to our soul, our mind, our sense. The workings and results of our acts must be put in the hands of that One in the feeling that that Presence is the Infinite and Most High by whom alone our labour and our aspiration are possible. For in his being all takes place; for him all labour and aspiration are taken from us by Nature and offered on his altar. Even in those things in which Nature is herself very plainly the worker and we only the witnesses of her working and its containers and supporters, there should be the same constant memory and insistent consciousness of a work and of its divine Master. Our very inspiration and respiration, our very heart-beats can and must be made conscious in us as the living rhythm of the universal sacrifice.
   It is clear that a conception of this kind and its effective practice must carry in them three results that are of a central importance for our spiritual ideal. It is evident, to begin with, that, even if such a discipline is begun without devotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible; for it must deepen naturally into the completest adoration imaginable, the most profound God-love. There is bound up with it a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our thought, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved consecration to the Divine of the totality of our being. Now these implications of the Yoga of works are also of the very essence of an integral and absolute Bhakti. The seeker who puts them into living practice makes in himself continually a constant, active and effective representation of the very spirit of self-devotion, and it is inevitable that out of it there should emerge the most engrossing worship of the Highest to whom is given this service. An absorbing love for the Divine Presence to whom he feels an always more intimate closeness, grows upon the consecrated worker. And with it is born or in it is contained a universal love too for all these beings, living forms and creatures that are habitations of the Divine - not the brief restless grasping emotions of division, but the settled selfless love that is the deeper vibration of oneness. In all the seeker begins to meet the one Object of his adoration and service. The way of works turns by this road of sacrifice to meet the path of Devotion; it can be itself a devotion as complete, as absorbing, as integral as any the desire of the heart can ask for or the passion of the mind can imagine.
   Next, the practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward remembrance of the one central liberating knowledge, and a constant active externalising of it in works comes in too to intensify the remembrance. In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. A memory, a self-dynamising meditation of this kind, must and does in its end turn into a profound and uninterrupted vision and a vivid and all-embracing consciousness of that which we so powerfully remember or on which we so constantly meditate. For it compels a constant reference at each moment to the Origin of all being and will and action and there is at once an embracing and exceeding of all particular forms and appearances in That which is their cause and upholder. This way cannot go to its end without a seeing vivid and vital, as concrete in its way as physical sight, of the works of the universal Spirit everywhere. On its summits it rises into a constant living and thinking and willing and acting in the presence of the Supramental, the Transcendent. Whatever we see and hear, whatever we touch and sense, all of which we are conscious, has to be known and felt by us as That which we worship and serve; all has to be turned into an image of the Divinity, perceived as a dwelling-place of his Godhead, enveloped with the eternal Omnipresence. In its close, if not long before it, this way of works turns by communion with the Divine Presence, Will and Force into a way of Knowledge more complete and integral than any the mere creature intelligence can construct or the search of the intellect can discover.
   Lastly, the practice of this Yoga of sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism, casting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed, its presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine; all must be directed towards the Divine. Nothing must be attempted for ourselves as a separate existence; nothing done for others, whether neighbours, friends, family, country or mankind or other creatures merely because they are connected with our personal life and thought and sentiment or because the ego takes a preferential interest in their welfare. In this way of doing and seeing all works and all life become only a daily dynamic worship and service of the Divine in the unbounded temple of his own vast cosmic existence. Life becomes more and more the sacrifice of the eternal in the individual constantly self-offered to the eternal Transcendence. It is offered in the wide sacrificial ground of the field of the eternal cosmic Spirit; and the Force too that offers it is the eternal Force, the omnipresent Mother. Therefore is this way a way of union and communion by acts and by the spirit and knowledge in the act as complete and integral as any our Godward will can hope for or our soul's strength execute.
   It has all the power of a way of works integral and absolute, but because of its law of sacrifice and self-giving to the Divine Self and Master, it is accompanied on its one side by the whole power of the path of Love and on the other by the whole power of the path of Knowledge. At its end all these three divine Powers work together, fused, united, completed, perfected by each other.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [111-114],

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Who amongst us lives without sacrifice? ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove
2:No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
3:to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove
4:With great victory comes great sacrifice. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove
5:The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
6:Great achievement always requires great sacrifice. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove
7:Blood streams in sacrifice; yet anguish finds no cure. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
8:Sacrifice everything, and give up nothing. ~ jonathan-lockwood-huie, @wisdomtrove
9:Let us sacrifice one day to gain perhaps a whole life. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove
10:I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove
11:The glory of God always comes at the sacrifice of self. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
12:Wherever there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
13:Curiosity is a mistress whose slaves decline no sacrifice. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove
14:Security is worthless if you have to sacrifice growth to get it ~ steve-pavlina, @wisdomtrove
15:In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
16:A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
17:I sacrifice to no god save myself - And to my belly, greatest of deities. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
18:Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
19:where would the shout of love begin, if not from the summit of sacrifice? ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove
20:If we succeed without sacrifice, it's because someone sacrificed for us. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove
21:Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove
22:Self-sacrifice, not self-assertion, is the law of the highest universe. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
23:If I do not participate in the sacrifice, it is as if I did not sacrifice at all. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
24:Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
25:Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
26:The story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac are nowhere in any other tradition. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
27:Christians call it the "Sacrifice of Isaac," and Jews call it the "Binding of Isaac." ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
28:However weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove
29:I think [Sacrifice of Isaac] is the most important event in the Bible except for Sinai. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
30:The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness. ~ arthur-schopenhauer, @wisdomtrove
31:The story [of the Sacrifice of Isaac ] is much more a part of theology than of history. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
32:There is nothing that love cannot achieve, and there is nothing that love cannot sacrifice. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove
33:When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove
34:The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove
35:The sound man, immune as to a sacrifice of straw dogs, faces the passing human generations. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
36:Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove
37:The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
38:Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove
39:In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove
40:Never sacrifice happiness for the sake of achievement. The real key to life is to happily achieve ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove
41:The peculiar doctrine of Christianity is that of a universal sacrifice and perpetual propitiation. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
42:Art can compel people freely, gladly, and spontaneously to sacrifice themselves in the service of man. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
43:Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.   ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove
44:No man gives anything acceptable to God until has has first given himself in love and sacrifice. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
45:It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
46:When you give to others to the degree that you sacrifice yourself, you make the other person a thief. ~ lyania-vanzant, @wisdomtrove
47:Nothing that man can present to God by way of sacrifice can ever purchase the blessing of forgiveness. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
48:Brilliant results don't just show up by chance. The finest things in life take patience, focus and sacrifice. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove
49:No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
50:The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove
51:When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove
52:Doing less is not being lazy. Don't give in to a culture that values personal sacrifice over personal productivity. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove
53:Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, "Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
54:When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
55:In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove
56:The heart of the gospel is redemption, and the essence of redemption is the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
57:In our age, self-indulgence and self-destruction, rather than self-sacrifice, are the foundations for new heroic myths. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove
58:Hallow the body as a temple to comeliness and sanctify the heart as a sacrifice to love; love recompenses the adorers. ~ kahlil-gibran, @wisdomtrove
59:I believe the moment of birth Is when we have knowledge of death I believe the season of birth Is the season of sacrifice. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove
60:Mental toughness is Spartanism, with all its qualities of self-denial, sacrifice, dedication, fearlessness, and love. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove
61:Resolve to pay any price or make any sacrifice to get into the top ten percent of your field. That payoff is incredible! ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove
62:Team spirit means you are willing to sacrifice personal considerations for the welfare of all. That defines a team player. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove
63:The free world knows, out of the bitter wisdom of experience, that vigilance and sacrifice are the price of liberty. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove
64:Football is like life - it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove
65:If France is to be judged, judge her not by the effects of her defeat but by her readiness to sacrifice herself. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove
66:A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self indulgence. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove
67:When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove
68:When I was an animal I evolved through selfishness. Now that I am a man my evolution can be achieved only through self-sacrifice. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove
69:The spiritual path is very, very easy for a man of determination, patience, endurance, self-sacrifice, dispassion and a strong will. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove
70:Football is like life - it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove
71:The greatest things in life all require commitment, sacrifice, some struggle and hardship. It's not easy. But absolutely worth it. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove
72:I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
73:Our civilization survives in the complacency of cowardly or malignant minds - a sacrifice to the vanity of aging adolescents. ~ albert-camus, @wisdomtrove
74:That crafty kindness which inveigles me to sacrifice principle is the serpent in the grass - deadly to the incautious wayfarer. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
75:To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove
76:I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail... because he has a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove
77:When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove
78:If you want to make people believe in imaginary entities such as gods and nations, you should make them sacrifice something valuable. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove
79:A King should sacrifice the best affections of his heart for the good of his country; no sacrifice should be above his determination. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
80:There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
81:Marriage is not a simple love affair, it's an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove
82:When people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
83:Q:  What about sacrifice? M: Share willingly and gladly all you have with whoever needs - don't invent self-inflicted cruelties. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove
84:Either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
85:True love grows by sacrifice and the more thoroughly the soul rejects natural satisfaction the stronger and more detached its tenderness becomes. ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove
86:What keeps so many people back is simply unwillingness to pay the price, to make the exertion, the effort to sacrifice their ease and comfort. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove
87:A human being has many divine qualities. But there has never been another unparalleled divine quality like man's self-sacrifice, nor can there ever be. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove
88:Never let someone’s opinion become your reality. Never sacrifice who you are because someone else has a problem with it. Love who you are inside and out. ~ les-brown, @wisdomtrove
89:Thanksgiving speaks in clear, crisp tones of forgotten terms, like integrity - bravery - respect - freedom - discipline - sacrifice - godliness. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove
90:As we give, so shall we receive. Service does not mean self-sacrifice. It means giving the needs of another person the same priority as our own. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove
91:Freedom has always been an expensive thing. History is fit testimony to the fact that freedom is rarely gained without sacrifice and self-denial. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
92:Sentimentality is a basking in feelings that in reality you don't take seriously enough to make the slightest sacrifice to or ever translate into action. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove
93:When God becomes a Man and lives as a creature among His own creatures in Palestine, then indeed His life is one of supreme self-sacrifice and leads to Calvary. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
94:I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove
95:Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don’t ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
96:For the born traveller, travelling is a besetting vice. Like other vices, it is imperious, demanding its victim's time, money, energy and the sacrifice of comfort. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove
97:Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself. In physics we are generally content to sacrifice before the lesser shrine of Plausibility. ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove
98:Where else, in a non-totalitarian country, but in the political profession is the individual expected to sacrifice all-including his own career-for the national good? ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove
99:There is no yajna (sacrifice) greater than spinning calculated to bring peace to the troubled spirit, to soothe the distracted student's mind, to spiritualize his life. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove
100:The very purpose of Christ's coming into the world was that He might offer up His life as a sacrifice for the sins of men. He came to die.  This is the heart of Christmas. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove
101:I am afraid of people with too much charm. They devour you. In the end you are made a sacrifice to the exercise of their fascinating gift and their insincerity. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove
102:Hearts are like tapers, which at beauteous eyes Kindle a flame of love that never dies; And beauty is a flame, where hearts, like moths, Offer themselves a burning sacrifice. ~ omar-khayyam, @wisdomtrove
103:The determined scholar and the man of virtue will not seek to live at the expense of injuring their virtue. They will even sacrifice their lives to preserve their virtue complete. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
104:We must plunge heart and soul and body into the work. And until we are ready to sacrifice everything else to one Idea and to one alone, we never, never will see the Light. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
105:Do you know something? The minute that blood sacrifice was accepted, Jesus was the first human being that was ever born again. Now that was real - it happened when he was in Hell. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove
106:It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter‚ nothing can justify that sacrifice. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove
107:The way I understand gifts is that the giver must make a sacrifice, create an uneven exchange, bring himself closer to the recipient, create change and do it all with the right spirit. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove
108:In order to succeed, this group will need a singleness of purpose, they will need a dedication, and they will have to convince all of their prospects of the willingness to sacrifice. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove
109:Life does not require you to sacrifice or compromise your joy to get what you want. Joy is what you want, so when you choose in harmony with it, you are fulfilling your purpose in living. ~ alan-cohen, @wisdomtrove
110:the great lack of parity between husbands and wives has always been spawned by the disproportionate degree of self-sacrifice that women are willing to make on behalf of those they love. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove
111:In times of danger large groups rise to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, courage and sacrifice . . . Mankind will be refashioned and history rewritten when this law is understood and obeyed. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove
112:If you make a determination that [story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac] is not historical, do you throw it away? I don't think we can say whether it's precisely, scientifically historical. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
113:Our lives laid down in war and peace may not Be found acceptable in Heaven's sight. And that they may be is the only prayer Worth praying. May my sacrifice Be found acceptable in Heaven's sight. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove
114:Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
115:Sacrifice does not mean that, by giving, we lose something. We sacrifice our limited self to our highest and largest Self, and at that time we immediately become the largest and the highest Self. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove
116:I would step in the way of a bullet if it were aimed at my husband. It is not self-sacrifice to die protecting that which you value: If the value is great enough, you do not care to exist without it. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
117:The offering of [the body] is called a spiritual sacrifice because it is freely sacrificed through the Spirit, the Christian being uninfluenced by the constrainst of the Low or the fear of hell. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove
118:I also ache at that thought your majesty... But if they do not offer the sacrifice in blood now, we will all pay dearly with added gallons later. So if some most die it is in a worthy cause. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove
119:I am not the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds, I am not a sacrifice on their altars. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
120:In his life Christ is an example showing us how to live in his death he is a sacrifice satisfying our sins in his resurrection a conqueror in his ascension a king in his intercession a high priest. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove
121:Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
122:OUR leaders have asked for shared sacrifice. But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove
123:War is not merely justifiable, but imperative upon honorable men, upon an honorable nation, where peace can only be obtained by the sacrifice of conscientious conviction or of national welfare. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove
124:Charity is that rational and constant affection which makes us sacrifice ourselves to the human race, as if we were united with it, so as to form one individual, partaking equally in its adversity and prosperity. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
125:Nothing is gained except by sacrifice... . Do not degrade it to the level of the brutes... . Make yourselves decent men! ... Be chaste and pure! ... There is no other way. Did Christ find any other way? ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
126:We should never let ambition cause us to sacrifice our integrity or diminish our efforts in other areas. However, we need to remember that we never reach a serious goal unless we have the intention of doing so. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove
127:The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove
128:The priest, realistically considered, is the most immoral of men, for he is always willing to sacrifice every other sort of good to the one good of his arcanum - the vague body of mysteries that he calls the truth. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
129:Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
130:There are men who are possessed by an urge so strong to do some particular thing that they can't help themselves, they've got to do it. They're prepared to sacrifice everything to satisfy their yearning. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove
131:Of all the gods, Death only craves not gifts: Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed By hymns of praise. From him alone of all The powers of heaven Persuasion holds aloof. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove
132:The only moral virtue of war is that it compels the capitalist system to look itself in the face and admit it is a fraud. It compels the present society to admit that it has no morals it will not sacrifice for gain. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove
133:Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes, by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns, because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illuminated. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove
134:A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, and must empty ourselves. Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love than in your weakness. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
135:Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set. Everyone can reach this love through meditation, spirit of prayer, and sacrifice, by an intense inner life. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
136:Sports allow men to build up situations of emergency. What he then demands of himself is unnecessary achievement - and unnecessary sacrifice. He artificially creates the tension that he has been spared by affluent society. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove
137:When you pray, pray so that you may know Him. When you seek to simplify, do it as a means of knowing Him more. When you surrender, or behave with humility or sacrifice, do it with the sole purpose in mind to know Him. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove
138:If you would cure anger, do not feed it. Say to yourself: &
139:The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove
140:An individualist is a man who says: &
141:It's no laughing matter being a Republican in these perilous times. Anyone can be a Republican when the stock market is up, but when stocks are selling for no more than they're worth, I tell you, being a Republican - it's a sacrifice. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove
142:In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove
143:Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
144:The only honorable, desirable kind of fear that shouldn't be feared is the fear of harm on a loved one. It's the kind of fear that leads to self-sacrifice and the kind of fear where you would truly jump in front of a bus to save another. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove
145:In its original Latin form, sacrifice means to make sacred or to make holy. I wholeheartedly believe that when we are fully engaged in parenting, regardless of how imperfect, vulnerable, and messy it is, we are creating something sacred. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove
146:Football is a great deal like life in that it teaches that work, sacrifice, perseverance, competitive drive, selflessness, and respect for authority are the price each and every one of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove
147:There are three things an athlete must do. You must be in physical condition ... You must execute properly and quickly the fundamentals ... and you must have eagerness to sacrifice personal interests or glory for the welfare of the team. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove
148:As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it, we will not surrender for it - now or ever. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
149:To me an Indian is one who has got a Vedantic brain which probes deep and soars high; an Islamic body that is vibrant and valiant; a Buddhistic heart overflowing with compassion and kindness and Christian limbs of service and sacrifice. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
150:What was the self-sacrifice?" I jettisoned half of a much-loved and I think irreplaceable pair of shoes." Why was that self-sacrifice?" Because they were mine!" said Ford, crossly. I think we have different value systems." Well mine's better. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove
151:Ahimsa is not mere negative non-injury. It is positive, cosmic love. It is the development of a mental attitude in which hatred is replaced by love. Ahimsa is true sacrifice. Ahimsa is forgiveness. Ahimsa is Sakti (power). Ahimsa is true strength. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove
152:Cheerfulness is a sign of a generous and mortified person who forgetting all things, even herself, tries to please her God in all she does for souls. Cheerfulness is often a cloak which hides a life of sacrifice and a continual union with God. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
153:During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove
154:Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove
155:The men and women who have the right ideals . . . are those who have the courage to strive for the happiness which comes only with labor and effort and self-sacrifice, and those whose joy in life springs in part from power of work and sense of duty. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove
156:The true courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state, so that the individual counts as only one amongst many. The important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove
157:The higher nature in man always seeks for something which transcends itself and yet is its deepest truth; which claims all its sacrifice, yet makes this sacrifice its own recompense. This is man's dharma, man's religion, and man's self is the vessel. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove
158:Joy must be one of the pivots of our life. It is the token of a generous personality. Sometimes it is also a mantle that clothes a life of sacrifice and self-giving. A person who has this gift often reaches high summits. He or she is like sun in a community. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
159:It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
160:Adhere To - Faith, Unity, Sacrifice. Avoid - Back-biting, Falsehood and Crookedness. Admire - Frankness, Honesty, and Large-heartedness. Control - Tongue, Temper, and Tossing of the mind. Cultivate - Cosmic Love, Forgiveness and Patience. Hate - Lust, Anger, and Pride. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove
161:Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say, &
162:Sometimes we believe that happiness is not possible in the here and now, that we need a few more conditions to be happy. So we run toward the future to get the conditions we think are missing. But by doing so we sacrifice the present moment; we sacrifice true life. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove
163:Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It's a state of mind-you could call it character in action. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove
164:And let us never forget that in honoring our flag, we honor the American men and women who have courageously fought and died for it over the last 200 years, patriots who set an ideal above any consideration of self. Our flag flies free today because of their sacrifice. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
165:Character is the direct result of mental attitude. I believe that character is higher than the intellect. I believe that leadership is in sacrifice, in self-denial, in humility and in the perfectly disciplined will. This is the distinction between great and little men. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove
166:We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say we will not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
167:It is always for greater joy that you give up the lesser. This is practical religion-the attainment of freedom, renunciation. Renounce the lower so that you may get the higher. Renounce! Renounce! Sacrifice! Give up! Not for zero. Not for nothing. But to get the higher. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
168:Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires... . Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. There is a limit to how much you should have to bear. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
169:War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view &
170:A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove
171:Pride counterbalances all our miseries, for it either hides them, or, if it discloses them, boasts of that disclosure. Pride has such a thorough possession of us, even in the midst of our miseries and faults, that we are prepared to sacrifice life with joy, if it may but be talked of. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
172:The selfless love that we give to others, to the point of being willing to sacrifice our lives for them, is all the proof I need that human beings are not mere animals of self-interest. We carry within us a divine spark, and if we chose to recognize it, our lives have dignity, meaning, hope. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove
173:I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breathe air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I've given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way I can want you to love me. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
174:Mental toughness is many things. It is humility because it behooves all of us to remember that simplicity is the sign of greatness and meekness is the sign of true strength. Mental toughness is spartanism with qualities of sacrifice, self-denial, dedication. It is fearlessness, and it is love. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove
175:No religion is absolutely perfect. Yet not only do we fight for religion, but also are we often willing to sacrifice our lives for it. And what we hopelessly fail to do is to live it. A true religion is that which has no caste, no creed, no colour. It is but an all-uniting and all-pervading embrace. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove
176:[... ] it is right to be kind and even sacrifice ourselves to people who need kindness and lie in our way - otherwise, besides failing to help them, we run into the aridity of self-development. To seek for recipients of one's goodness, to play the Potted Jesus leads to the contray the Christian danger. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove
177:Work, my children, work with your whole heart and soul! That is the thing. Mind not the fruit of work. What if you go to hell working for others? That is worth more than to gain heaven by seeking your own salvation... Sri Ramakrishna came and gave his life for the world. I will also sacrifice my life. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
178:It was not to save a nation that Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac, nor to appease angry gods... Then why does Abraham do it? For God's sake... He does it for the sake of God because God demands proof of his faith... He was not justified by being virtuous, but by being an individual submitted to God in faith. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
179:Every honor is appropriate for the courageous Americans who made the supreme sacrifice for our Nation at Pearl Harbor and in the many battles that followed in World War II. Their sacrifice was for a cause, not for conquest; for a world that would be safe for future generations. Their devotion must never be forgotten. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
180:Jesus no doubt fits his teaching into the late-Jewish messianic dogma. But he does not think dogmatically. He formulates no doctrine. He is far from judging any man's belief by reference to any standard of dogmatic correctness. Nowhere does he demand of his hearers that they shall sacrifice thinking to believing. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove
181:I have often felt as though I had inherited all the defiance and all the passions with which our ancestors defended their Temple and could gladly sacrifice my life for one great moment in history. And at the same time I always felt so helpless and incapable of expressing these ardent passions even by a word or a poem. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove
182:True art and true science possess two unmistakable marks: the first, an inward mark, which is this, that the servitor of art and science will fulfil his vocation, not for profit but with self- sacrifice; and the second, an external sign, his productions will be intelligible to all the people whose welfare he has in view. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
183:The heart of the gospel is redemption, and the essence of redemption is the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ. They who preach this truth preach the gospel in whatever else they may be mistaken; but they who preach not the atonement, whatever else they declare, have missed the soul and substance of the divine message. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
184:As the amount of inputs go up, as the number of people and ideas that clamor for attention continue to increase, we do what people always do: we rely on the familiar, the trusted and the personal. The incredible surplus of digital data means that human actions, generosity and sacrifice are more important than they ever were before. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove
185:Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements that anyone can best serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his own, yet, so long as the world is in that imperfect state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest virtue which can be found in man. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove
186:All the stories and descriptions of that time without exception peak only of the patriotism, self-sacrifice, despair, grief, and heroism of the Russians. But in reality it was not like that... The majority of the people paid no attention to the general course of events but were influenced only by their immediate personal interests. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
187:You nourish your minds by reading books. There is no good in doing that unless you hold it also as a sacrifice to the whole world. For the whole world is one; you are rated a very insignificant part of it, and therefore it is right for you that you should serve your millions of brothers rather than aggrandise this little self ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
188:Whatever you have received more than others-in health, in talents, in ability, in success, in a pleasant childhood, in harmonious conditions of home life-all this you must not take to yourself as a matter of course. In gratitude for your good fortune, you must remember in return some sacrifice of your own life for another life. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove
189:The Democrats say that the United States has had its days in the sun, that our nation has passed its zenith. They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems, that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities. My fellow citizens, I utterly reject that view. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
190:In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are at its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of people be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved integrity. Do not lose your knowledge that our proper estate is an upright posture, ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
191:Consequently, the truth of God lives in our souls more by the power of superior moral courage than by the light of an eminent intelligence. Indeed, spiritual intelligence itself depends on the fortitude and patience with which we sacrifice ourselves for the truth, as it is communicated to our lives concretely in the providential will of God ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
192:We remember those who were called upon to give all a person can give, and we remember those who were prepared to make that sacrifice if it were demanded of them in the line of duty, though it never was. Most of all, we remember the devotion and gallantry with which all of them ennobled their nation as they became champions of a noble cause. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
193:Behave when away from home as though you were in the presence of an honored guest. Employ the people as though you were assisting at an important sacrifice. Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no feelings of opposition to you, whether it is the affairs of a state that you are handling or the affairs of a family. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
194:The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we - in a less final, less heroic way - be willing to give of ourselves. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
195:For my part, I love to stand foot to foot with an honest foeman. To open warfare, bold and true hearts raise no objection but the ground of quarrel; it is covert enmity which we have most cause to fear, and best reason to loathe. That crafty kindness which inveigles me to sacrifice principle is the serpent in the grass - deadly to the incautious wayfarer. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
196:One thing is certain: the humility of faith, if it is followed by the proper consequences-by the acceptance of the work and sacrifice demanded by our providential task-will do far more to launch us into the full current of historical reality than the pompous rationalizations of politicians who think they are somehow the directors and manipulators of history. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
197:Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to "society," to the tribe, the state, the nation) and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force - and statism has always been the poltical corollary of collectivism. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
198:See, see Who God is, see the glory of God, going up to Him out of this incomprehensible and infinite Sacrifice in which all history begins and ends, all individual lives begin and end, in which every story is told, and finished, and settled for joy or for sorrow: the one point of reference for all the truths that are outside of God, their center, their focus: Love. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
199:He [the writer] must, teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and compassion and sacrifice. See Poets & Writers ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove
200:When we spend our lives waiting until we’re perfect or bulletproof before we walk into the arena, we ultimately sacrifice relationships and opportunities that may not be recoverable, we squander our precious time, and we turn our backs on our gifts, those unique contributions that only we can make. Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don’t exist in the human experience. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove
201:A soft, easy life is not worth living, if it impairs the fibre of brain and heart and muscle. We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage... For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove
202:The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man's real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would only be an insect crawling among the ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove
203:You must give what will cost you something. This, then, is not just giving what you can live without but what you can't live without or don't want to live without, something you really like. Then your gift becomes a sacrifice, which will have value before God. Any sacrifice is useful if it is done out of love. This giving until it hurts - this sacrifice - is what I call love in action. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
204:There are two merits that glorify a person: being courageous for a man and being virtuous for a woman. Besides these two, there is another merit that glorifies both man and woman: so much loving the homeland to an extent with being ready to sacrifice his/her life, if needed. Turks are such courageous and virtuous people. That is why you can kill a Turk but you can never defeat them. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
205:The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove
206:Those who live as though God sets the rules are not going by their own rules. That is the self-sacrifice, or selflessness, that peace more often than not requires. Those who insist on going by their own rules cannot make that sacrifice. They are the steady adherents of (global) conflict because they are forever fighting both themselves and others to do whatever they think that they want to do. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove
207:Then from the world all spirituality will be extinct, all moral perfection will be extinct, all sweet-souled sympathy for religion will be extinct, all ideality will be extinct; and in its place will reign the duality of lust and luxury as the male and female deities, with money as its priest, fraud, force, and competition its ceremonies, and the human soul its sacrifice. Such a thing can never be. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
208:You never hear Jesus say in Pilate's judgement hall one word that would let you imagine that He was sorry that He had undertaken so costly a sacrifice for us. When His hands are pierced, when He is parched with fever, His tongue dried up like a shard of pottery, when His whole body is dissolved into the dust of death, you never hear a groan or a shriek that looks like Jesus is going back on His commitment. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
209:Reverence for life . . . does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone, even if he is very useful . . . the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many. . . . It refuses to let the business man imagine that he fulfills all legitimate demands in the course of his business activities. It demands from all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove
210:Who is Jesus to me? Jesus is the Word made Flesh. Jesus is the Bread of Life. Jesus is the Victim offered for our sins on the cross. Jesus is the sacrifice offered at holy Mass for the sins of the world and for mine. Jesus is the Word - to be spoken. Jesus is the Truth - to be told. Jesus is the Way - to be walked. Jesus is the Light - to be lit. Jesus is the Life - to be lived. Jesus is the Love - to be loved ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
211:... we sacrifice other species to our own not because our own has any objective metaphysical privilege over others, but simply because it is ours. It may be very natural to have this loyalty to our own species, but let us hear no more from the naturalists about the "sentimentality" of anti-vivisectionists. If loyalty to our own species - preference for man simply because we are men - is not sentiment, then what is? ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
212:It turns out that the men who ultimately, who unpretentiously value peace are willing to sacrifice their own peace of mind in order to render it. The question is, &
213:If there is one tendency of the day which more than any other is unhealthy and undesirable, it is the tendency to deify mere "smartness," unaccompanied by a sense of moral accountability. We shall never make our republic what it should be until as a people we thoroughly understand and put in practice the doctrine that success is abhorrent if attained by the sacrifice of the fundamental principles of morality. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove
214:You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream - the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
215:If man had his way, the plan of redemption would be an endless and bloody conflict. In reality, salvation was bought not by Jesus fist, but by His nail-pierced hands; not by muscle but by love; not by vengeance but by forgiveness; not by force but by sacrifice. Jesus Christ our Lord surrendered in order that He might win; He destroyed His enemies by dying for them and conquered death by allowing death to conquer Him. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
216:For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
217:Of all the statist violations of individual rights in a mixed economy, the military draft is the worst. It is an abrogation of rights. It negates man &
218:Satan frequently steals the will of God from us due to reasoning. The Lord may direct us to do a certain thing, but if it does not make sense - if it is not logical - we may be tempted to disregard it. What God leads a person to do does not always make logical sense to his mind. His spirit may affirm it and His mind reject it, especially if it would be out of the ordinary or unpleasant or if it would require personal sacrifice or discomfort. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove
219:Passionate attachment to another nation produces a variety of evils... the illusion of common interests where no real common interests exist; adopting the enmities of the other; and participation in the quarrels and wars of the other without any justification. Still another evil is that such a passionate attachment gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens the facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove
220:I always asked for forgiveness for my sins right away but I never accepted it until I felt right that I had suffered enough to pay for it. God revealed to me what I was doing how much unnecessary pain I was causing myself. He even showed me that what I was doing was an insult to Jesus that in essence I was saying Lord the sacrifice of Your life and blood was good but not good enough. I must add my work of feeling guilty before I can be forgiven. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove
221:Needless to say, under either system [socialism or fascism], the inequalities of income and standard of living are greater than anything possible under a free economy - and a man's position is determined, not by his productive ability and achievement, but by political pull and force. Under both systems, sacrifice is invoked as a magic, omnipotent solution in any crisis - and "the public good" is the altar on which victims are immolated. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
222:Freedom is as frightening now as it was thousands of years ago. It will always require a willingness to sacrifice what is most familiar for what is most true.  To be free we may need to act from integrity, on trust, sometimes for a very long time.  Few of us will reach our promised land in a day.  But perhaps the most important part of the story is that God does not delegate this task.  Whenever anyone moves toward freedom, God Himself is there. ~ rachel-naomi-remen, @wisdomtrove
223:[It is appropriate that the Body and Blood of Christ be truly present in this Sacrament] because of the perfection of the New Covenant. The sacrifices of the Old Covenant contained the true sacrifice of Christ's Passion only in symbol... .Therefore it was necessary that the sacrifice of the New Covenant, instituted by Christ, have something more, namely, that it contain Christ Himself who has suffered and contain Him not only in symbol but in reality. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove
224:[It is appropriate that the Body and Blood of Christ be truly present in this Sacrament] because of the perfection of the New Covenant. The sacrifices of the Old Covenant contained the true sacrifice of Christ's Passion only in symbol... .Therefore it was necessary that the sacrifice of the New Covenant, instituted by Christ, have something more, namely, that it contain Christ Himself who has suffered and contain Him not only in symbol but in reality. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove
225:Your honors here may serve you for a time, as it were for an hour, but they will be of no use to you beyond this world. Nobody will have heard a word of your honors in the other life. Your glory, your shame, your ambitions, and all the treasures for which you push hard and sacrifice much will be like wreaths of smoke. For these things, which you mostly seek, and for which you spend your life only tarry with you while you are on this side of the flood. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
226:My mother has made choices in her life, as we all must, and she is at peace with them. I can see her peace. She did not cop out on herself. The benefits of her choices are massive-a long, stable marriage to a man she still calls her best friend; a family that has extended now into grandchildren who adore her; a certainty in her own strength. Maybe some things were sacrificed, and my dad made his sacrifices, too-but who amongst us lives without sacrifice? ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove
227:Adults look upon a child as something empty that is to be filled through their own efforts, as something inert and helpless for which they must do everything, as something lacking an inner guide and in constant need of inner direction. . . . An adult who acts in this way, even though he may be convinced that he is filled with zeal, love, and a spirit of sacrifice on behalf of his child, unconsciously suppresses the development of the child's own personality. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove
228:Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don't give much thought to yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow, live in the moment, and trust that your existence has meaning even when the world seems to be all blind chance and chaos. When life lands a hammer blow in your face, do your best to respond to the hammer as if it had been a cream pie. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove
229:In most cases an act of unwelcome sex is no more bother than being vaccinated, so there's no point going on about it as if it werea fate worse than death. With skill and good manners you can avoid having to make the sacrifice, but should you find yourself in a compromising situation largely of your own making, you should stop defending your virtue and start worrying about your maturity. It will give you something to think about while the savage pumper bangs away. ~ quentin-crisp, @wisdomtrove
230:Together, let us make this a new beginning. Let us make a commitment to care for the needy, to teach our children the values and the virtues handed down to us by our families, to have the courage to defend those values and the willingess to sacrifice for them. Let us pledge to restore, in our time, the American spirit of voluntary service, of cooperation, of private and community initiative, a spirit that flows like a deep and mighty river through the history of our nation. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
231:I am delighted to have you play football. I believe in rough, manly sports. But I do not believe in them if they degenerate into the sole end of any one's existence. I don't want you to sacrifice standing well in your studies to any over-athleticism; and I need not tell you that character counts for a great deal more than either intellect or body in winning success in life. Athletic proficiency is a mighty good servant, and like so many other good servants, a mighty bad master. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove
232:The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and to withdraw his activities from effective control. Since it is impossible to count on enough moral goodwill among those who possess irresponsible power to sacrifice it for the good of the whole, it must be destroyed by coercive methods and these will always run the peril of introducing new forms of injustice in place of those abolished. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove
233:So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove
234:I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of all things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a sacrifice on their alters. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
235:When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
236:To the man who is truly ethical all life is sacred, including that which from the human point of view seems lower in the scale. He makes distinctions only as each case comes before him, and under the pressure of necessity, as, for example, when it falls to him to decide which of two lives he must sacrifice in order to preserve the other. But all through this series of decisions he is conscious of acting on subjective grounds and arbitrarily, and knows that he bears the responsibility for the life which is sacrificed. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove
237:Therefore, doing the Stations of the Cross was still more laborious than consoling, and required a sacrifice. It was much the same with all my devotions. They did not come easily or spontaneously, and they very seldom brought with them any strong sensible satisfaction. Nevertheless the work of performing them ended in a profound and fortifying peace: a peace that was scarcely perceptible, but which deepened and which, as my passions subsided, became more and more real, more and more sure, and finally stayed with me permanently. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
238:[The Book of the Law]was lost for so many years. And then Josiah decided to celebrate Passover. The text says that "The Passover sacrifice had not been offered in that way ... during the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah" [2 Kings 23:22]. What do you mean? Not in the days of David and Solomon? Never before? And what of the days of the prophets? What happened? That's what I'm anguishing over. If the Book of the Law could be forgotten for so many years, who knows what was done to it during those years? Maybe it was lost later, too. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
239:You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove
240:I was always embarresed by the words &
241:There is a relentless search for the factual and this quest often lacks warmth or reverence. At a certain stage in our life we may wake up to the urgency of life, how short it is. Then the quest for truth becomes the ultimate project. We can often forage for years in the empty fields of self-analysis and self-improvement and sacrifice much of our real substance for specks of cold, lonesome factual truth. The wisdom of the tradition reminds us that if we choose to journey on the path of truth, it then becomes a sacred duty to walk hand in hand with beauty. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove
242:Even time is a concept. In reality we are always in the eternal present. The past is just a memory, the future just an image or thought. All our stories about past and future are only ideas, arising in the moment. Our modern culture is so tyrannized by goals, plans, and improvement schemes that we constantly live for the future. But as Aldous Huxley reminded us in his writings, "An idolatrous religion is one in which time is substituted for eternity... the idea of endless progress is the devil's work, even today demanding human sacrifice on an enormous scale. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove
243:Thou shall love the Lord with thy whole heart, soul, and mind. This is the commandment of the Great God, and he cannot command the impossible. Love is a fruit in season at all times and within reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set. Everyone can reach this love through meditation, spirit of prayer, and sacrifice by an intense inner life. There is no limit because God is love, love is God, God's love is infinite. But part is to love and to give until it hurts. That's why it is not how much you do, but how much love you put into the action. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
244:Of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important. This sense, as Mackintosh remarks, "has a rightful supremacy over every other principle of human action"; it is summed up in that short but imperious word "ought," so full of high significance. It is the most noble of all the attributes of man, leading him without a moment's hesitation to risk his life for that of a fellow-creature; or after due deliberation, impelled simply by the deep feeling of right or duty, to sacrifice it in some great cause. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove
245:The real trouble is that &
246:A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle... Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account; the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it and we must in a great measure, change the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. No institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these maxims can succeed. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove
247:Now he realized the truth: that sacrifice was no purchase of freedom. It was like a great elective office, it was like an inheritance of power - to certain people at certain times an essential luxury, carrying with it not a guarantee but a responsibility, not a security but an infinite risk. Its very momentum might drag him down to ruin - the passing of the emotional wave that made it possible might leave the one who made it high and dry forever on an island of despair... Sacrifice by its very nature was arrogant and impersonal; sacrifice should be eternally supercilious. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove
248:We must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors. As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; We will not surrender for it, now or ever. We are Americans. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
249:I'm sure everyone feels sorry for the individual who has fallen by the wayside or who can't keep up in our competitive society, but my own compassion goes beyond that to those millions of unsung men and women, who get up every morning, send the kids to school, go to work, try to keep up the payments on their house, pay exorbitant taxes to make possible compassion for the less fortunate, and as a result have to sacrifice many of their own desires and dreams and hopes. Government owes them something better than always finding a new way to make them share the fruit of their toils with others. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
250:Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation."A beggar cannot renounce wealth," Master would say. "If a man laments: &
251:If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful, what have you given her? It's no more than a fact and it has cost you nothing. But if you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty. To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She's earned it, it's a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake - and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
252:Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Sacrifice is joy. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
2:The Sacrifice of Isaac ~ Anonymous,
3:True sacrifice is painless. ~ Jess Walter,
4:alive because of their sacrifice ~ Anonymous,
5:True love requires sacrifice. ~ Francis Chan,
6:Perfection comes at a sacrifice, ~ Kevin Kwan,
7:Courage.
Hope.
Sacrifice. ~ Rick Riordan,
8:Resolution demands a sacrifice. ~ Stephen King,
9:All things come with a sacrifice. ~ Morgan Rice,
10:Love is all about sacrifice, ~ David Staniforth,
11:Marriage is one long sacrifice. ~ Edith Wharton,
12:True success requires sacrifice. ~ Rick Riordan,
13:Sacrifice life to truth. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau,
14:We all must sacrifice for love ~ Cassandra Clare,
15:Many Tibetans sacrifice their lives. ~ Dalai Lama,
16:Sometimes, sacrifice is necessary. ~ Julie Kagawa,
17:When you love someone, you sacrifice. ~ Kiera Cass,
18:Love is worth the ultimate sacrifice. ~ Nicola Yoon,
19:our sacrifice did have a meaning. ~ Viktor E Frankl,
20:Nothing is won without sacrifice. ~ Leslie Charteris,
21:...there is power in self-sacrifice. ~ Veronica Roth,
22:What would you sacrifice for power? ~ Kiersten White,
23:Life is pain, and loss, and sacrifice. ~ Jay Kristoff,
24:Sacrifice is a form of bargaining. ~ Holbrook Jackson,
25:Sacrifice was nine tenths of parenting. ~ Zadie Smith,
26:There is no change without sacrifice. ~ Gloria Allred,
27:The sacrifice of Diogenes to all the gods. ~ Diogenes,
28:Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice. ~ Eric Hoffer,
29:Everything I got, I'm willing to sacrifice ~ Ray Lewis,
30:It's B.Y.O.S. Bring Your Own Sacrifice. ~ Kresley Cole,
31:There is no reward without sacrifice. ~ Carlson Gracie,
32:Behold, x to obey is better than sacrifice, ~ Anonymous,
33:There is no generosity without sacrifice. ~ Henry James,
34:Desire is craving enough to sacrifice for ~ Myles Munroe,
35:If you sacrifice early, you'll win late. ~ Charles Haley,
36:No revolution succeeds without sacrifice. ~ Diana Palmer,
37:Sacrifice is total nonpresence of the I. N ~ Yogi Bhajan,
38:As often as we do good, we sacrifice. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
39:scheme which requires such a sacrifice. But ~ Ron Chernow,
40:If there’s no sacrifice, there’s no love. ~ Hanif Kureishi,
41:Only through sacrifice can Genesis survive. ~ Claudia Gray,
42:The Mother asks the sacrifice of love. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
43:Turning pro is free, but it demands sacrifice. ~ Anonymous,
44:Beware of those who talk about sacrifice. ~ Muriel Rukeyser,
45:I don't like to use the word sacrifice. ~ William J Clinton,
46:There's no generosity without some sacrifice. ~ Henry James,
47:To long a sacrifice can make a stone of a heart ~ W B Yeats,
48:Who amongst us lives without sacrifice? ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
49:Achieving goals without sacrifice is a myth. ~ Darius Foroux,
50:All great works must begin with a sacrifice. ~ Grady Hendrix,
51:It isn't sacrifice if you love what you're doing. ~ Mia Hamm,
52:Love requires sacrifice, but it's worth it ~ Nicholas Sparks,
53:Love without sacrifice is like theft ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
54:Sacred or not, sacrifice is an ugly business. ~ Mason Cooley,
55:Sacrifice was necessary, but I would be free. ~ Julie Kagawa,
56:His death, my pain. Sacrifice is always shared ~ Heidi Heilig,
57:Love without sacrifice is like theft. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
58:No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice. ~ C S Lewis,
59:Reason, I sacrifice you to the evening breeze. ~ Aime Cesaire,
60:Self Sacrifice Kills the person who sacrifices ~ Louise L Hay,
61:That's what love is, Ben. Love is sacrifice. ~ Colleen Hoover,
62:to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
63:valet and your werewolf made a sacrifice of me. ~ K J Charles,
64:Without sacrifice, true love is incomprehensible. ~ Toba Beta,
65:A sacrifice is best refuted by accepting it ~ Wilhelm Steinitz,
66:Die as a sacrifice is more worthy then a suicide ~ Mitch Albom,
67:Sacrifice is a demonstration of pure love. ~ M Russell Ballard,
68:To save a friend, you would sacrifice the world ~ Rick Riordan,
69:Veganism is not a "sacrifice." It is a joy. ~ Gary L Francione,
70:We have a master who deserves radical sacrifice. ~ David Platt,
71:With great victory comes great sacrifice. ~ Theodore Roosevelt,
72:Everything eaten is killed. Every meal is a sacrifice. ~ Adi Da,
73:I always try to sacrifice my body for the team. ~ Troy Polamalu,
74:Anything for the truth. No sacrifice is too great. ~ Paul Auster,
75:God accepts the sacrifice of the pure in heart. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
76:The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral. ~ Ayn Rand,
77:When love is involved no sacrifice is too great. ~ David Eddings,
78:Great achievement always requires great sacrifice. ~ Robin Sharma,
79:Self interest feeds more people than self sacrifice. ~ James Cook,
80:take Buddha. The central idea [is] sacrifice. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
81:... to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
82:Why does love always seem to require sacrifice? ~ Nicholas Sparks,
83:Blood streams in sacrifice; yet anguish finds no cure. ~ Euripides,
84:Everyone wants to be worth a little sacrifice. ~ Kristen Heitzmann,
85:We often forget that growth requires sacrifice. ~ Alberto Villoldo,
86:With the power of conviction, there is no sacrifice. ~ Pat Benatar,
87:And not actually the great sacrifice that I’m making ~ Marian Keyes,
88:Do not sacrifice one kind of strength for another. ~ Mary E Pearson,
89:Humble because of knowledge; mighty by sacrifice. ~ Rudyard Kipling,
90:We value the most what we must sacrifice to have. I ~ Tiffany Reisz,
91:You made a sacrifice. And heaven rewarded you. ~ Melissa de la Cruz,
92:Dream big, sacrifice all, and you will enjoy victory. ~ Henry Cejudo,
93:Good luck is a sham. True success requires sacrifice. ~ Rick Riordan,
94:I'd confused need with love and love with sacrifice. ~ Gail Caldwell,
95:I do not look upon my life as a sacrifice at all. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi,
96:I tried self-sacrifice a couple of times in my youth. ~ Mason Cooley,
97:Let us sacrifice one day to gain perhaps a whole life. ~ Victor Hugo,
98:There is but on virtue--the eternal sacrifice of self. ~ George Sand,
99:"Don't sacrifice who you could be for who you are." ~ Jordan Peterson,
100:Executions are a form of human sacrifice, after all, ~ Charles Stross,
101:I couldn't sacrifice my heart for a publicity stunt. ~ Kim Kardashian,
102:I do not sacrifice, but lend myself to business. ~ Seneca the Younger,
103:If you sacrifice liberty for security, you will lose both. ~ Ron Paul,
104:It is impossible to love deeply without sacrifice. ~ Elisabeth Elliot,
105:Only through service and sacrifice can you become great. ~ Jon Gordon,
106:Peace is not to be purchased by the sacrifice of truth. ~ John Calvin,
107:Sometimes you sacrifice legibility to increase impact. ~ Herb Lubalin,
108:There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice. ~ Nadine Gordimer,
109:The sacrifice always has to be greater than the dream. ~ Henry Cejudo,
110:What in life is worth a sacrifice, if not love? -Bryn ~ Andrea Cremer,
111:Everything eaten is killed. Every meal is a sacrifice. ~ Adi Da Samraj,
112:How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization! ~ Eric Hoffer,
113:How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization? ~ Eric Hoffer,
114:I sacrifice everything to the music of the words. ~ Patrick Chamoiseau,
115:It's a fallen world. We eat and sacrifice in the process. ~ Dan Barber,
116:Mankind deserves sacrifice - but not of mankind. ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec,
117:Commit to a career built on sacrifice, not compromise. ~ DeVon Franklin,
118:Don't cheapen Jesus's sacrifice by trying to pay him back ~ Judah Smith,
119:"Don't sacrifice who you could be for who you are." ~ Jordan B Peterson,
120:Don't sacrifice yourself for me. I will not be grateful. ~ Mason Cooley,
121:If you want to rule, you have to sacrifice a few things. ~ Cameron Jace,
122:Nothing worthwhile is gained without sacrifice. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,
123:You said it was a sacrifice. Coming from me, it's a gift. ~ Becky Allen,
124:I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice. ~ Jane Austen,
125:In wartime, people willing to sacrifice liberty for security. ~ Ron Paul,
126:So many suffer so much while so few sacrifice so little. ~ Robert Pierce,
127:the Bush family’s proclivity for mock human sacrifice. What ~ Jon Ronson,
128:It is easier to sacrifice great than little things. ~ Michel de Montaigne,
129:Lies like that are not a sin, they are a sacrifice. ~ Ann Marie MacDonald,
130:There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice. ~ James Allen,
131:The sacrifice of pleasures is of course itself a pleasure. ~ Muriel Spark,
132:When we idealize the real, we sacrifice to artistic fancy. ~ Henry Fuseli,
133:Austerity pleased her—it gave her the comfort of sacrifice. ~ John le Carr,
134:Price ain't merely about numbers. It's a satisfying sacrifice. ~ Toba Beta,
135:Was it ever right to sacrifice one's truth for expedience? ~ Sue Monk Kidd,
136:With no loss or sacrifice, we can't appreciate what we have. ~ Mitch Albom,
137:Don't sacrifice the permanent on the altar of the immediate. ~ Bob Jones Sr,
138:It is better to sacrifice everything than to live in slavery! ~ Ho Chi Minh,
139:Strength requires sacrifice. All weakness carries its cost. ~ Mark Lawrence,
140:Wherever there is animal worship there is human sacrifice. ~ G K Chesterton,
141:You who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; you ~ Robin S Sharma,
142:Believe me, Cinder. You are a sacrifice I will never regret. ~ Marissa Meyer,
143:He must desire the scent of the smoke of their sacrifice. ~ Philippa Gregory,
144:Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! ~ Bill Murray,
145:Prayer and sacrifice can touch souls better than words. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux,
146:some people would sacrifice their biggest love for a bigger hate. ~ Amy Lane,
147:There is nothing fruitful except sacrifice. ~ Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire,
148:You don't have to sacrifice who you are to follow your beliefs. ~ Bryan Clay,
149:A great leader will never sacrifice the people for the numbers. ~ Simon Sinek,
150:at some personal sacrifice. ~ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints,
151:Beauty means the agony of sacrifice and the end of agony ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
152:Curiosity is a mistress whose slaves decline no sacrifice. ~ William Faulkner,
153:Hard work, sacrifice and focus will never show up in tests. ~ Lance Armstrong,
154:Love isn’t only passion and joy. It’s also sacrifice. ~ Cynthia Leitich Smith,
155:Power means happiness; power means hard work and sacrifice. ~ Beyonce Knowles,
156:Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
157:Whatever you do,
never sacrifice what makes you happy. ~ Sahndra Fon Dufe,
158:Who will sacrifice nothing, and enjoy all, is a fool. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater,
159:duty,sacrifice, they mean something.
Eat bitter taste sweet ~ Rick Riordan,
160:Here is my sacrifice: my hummingbird landing in a stranger’s palm. ~ Ada Limon,
161:If the cause isn't for love, then it isn't worth the sacrifice. ~ Claudia Gray,
162:Leading a nation requires sacrifice; justice is the first one. ~ M F Moonzajer,
163:No principle is worth the sacrifice of a single human being. ~ Daniel Berrigan,
164:Self-sacrifice usually contains an unspoken demand for payment. ~ Mason Cooley,
165:Sometimes you have to sacrifice your queen to capture the king. ~ Aimee Carter,
166:Style disdains comfort and is always ready to sacrifice virtue. ~ Mason Cooley,
167:That is the nature of Shadowhunters. Foolsih self-sacrifice. ~ Cassandra Clare,
168:the constant sacrifice of short-term desires for long-term goals. ~ Tim Tigner,
169:When it comes to love, it's always worth the sacrifice. Always. ~ Harper Sloan,
170:When it comes to love, it’s always worth the sacrifice. Always. ~ Harper Sloan,
171:Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice. ~ Boris Pasternak,
172:I’d sacrifice this life and every life I have coming for you. ~ Nicole Williams,
173:I need to offer a sacred water sacrifice at the porcelain altar. ~ Pawan Mishra,
174:It doesn't do to sacrifice for people unless they want you to. ~ Larry McMurtry,
175:People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve. ~ Tom Robbins,
176:Power comes with a price. It's a burden. It demands sacrifice. ~ Drew Karpyshyn,
177:Sacrifices made for love are fine, unless the sacrifice is you. ~ Kellie Elmore,
178:Security is worthless if you have to sacrifice growth to get it ~ Steve Pavlina,
179:Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
180:self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
181:That’s what love is – sacrifice. Sacrificing everything ... ~ Alastair Reynolds,
182:I'm an athlete who's very determined and I understand sacrifice. ~ Allyson Felix,
183:Politics requires sacrifice. The sacrifice of others, of course. ~ Michael Dobbs,
184:you should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are. ~ Jordan Peterson,
185:Free will comes with sacrifice. And sometimes with heartache. ~ Miranda Kenneally,
186:In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone. ~ Ayn Rand,
187:I will not take by sacrifice what I can achieve by strategy. ~ William Manchester,
188:Sacrifice is never easy or it is no true sacrifice. - Stannis ~ George R R Martin,
189:She had sacrificed her love, but he would not sacrifice his. ~ Melissa de la Cruz,
190:Sometimes the sacrifice of love costs too much to pay by yourself. ~ Shelly Crane,
191:To be honest with you, I never looked at soccer as a sacrifice. ~ Brandi Chastain,
192:acted, however, with great efficiency and self-sacrifice. But ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
193:A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves. ~ Mother Teresa,
194:I'll sacrifice a little skin to watch you come under me, beautiful. ~ Anne Calhoun,
195:It’s not easy to sacrifice your anger, your sense of being wronged. ~ Piper Kerman,
196:I wasn't gonna put my balls up on the table just to sacrifice for change. ~ Redman,
197:May we understand that joy is not a sin, sacrifice is not a virtue. ~ Paulo Coelho,
198:Prayer and sacrifice can touch souls better than words. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux,
199:Sacrifice, by its nature, was predicated on giving, not receiving. ~ Kate Atkinson,
200:The spirit of self-sacrifice creates trust in the power of love. ~ Morihei Ueshiba,
201:Those things that are precious are saved only by sacrifice. ~ David Kenyon Webster,
202:values of Christianity—sacrifice, redemption, forgiveness—because ~ Paul Kalanithi,
203:Wherever there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
204:you should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are. ~ Jordan B Peterson,
205:If love is without sacrifice, it is selfish. -Sadhu Vaswani   BRENT ~ Aleatha Romig,
206:I'm not going to sacrifice my mental health to have the perfect body. ~ Demi Lovato,
207:Love is sacrifice. Love sacrifices itself for its neighbor. ~ Thaddeus of Vitovnica,
208:Never sacrifice your family. They are the most important thing in life. ~ James May,
209:Sacrifice is nothing other than the production of sacred things. ~ Georges Bataille,
210:She told me to tell you love is not a feeling. It's a sacrifice. ~ Jennifer Clement,
211:Sorry, I was awash in the nobility of sacrifice. What were you saying? ~ John Green,
212:The only sacrifice that costs you nothing is staring at ugly girls. ~ M F Moonzajer,
213:Women's rights must not be the sacrifice by which peace is achieved. ~ Fawzia Koofi,
214:You show up. You wait. You give. You sacrifice. You love anyway. ~ Susan May Warren,
215:All real, life-changing love is costly, substitutionary sacrifice ~ Timothy J Keller,
216:A man who would sacrifice freedom for security deserves neither. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
217:I want to show what hard work and dedication and sacrifice can achieve. ~ Tito Ortiz,
218:You live in a dangerous place when you sacrifice integrity for security. ~ Amy Grant,
219:A life of sacrifice is the pinnacle of art, and is full of true joy. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
220:All great things worth having require great sacrifice worth giving. ~ Paullina Simons,
221:I sacrifice to no god save myself - And to my belly, greatest of deities. ~ Euripides,
222:Non-co-operation means nothing less than training in self-sacrifice. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
223:(Passion always looks like sacrifice to people who are not in love.) ~ Kris Vallotton,
224:Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. ~ Thomas Merton,
225:Sacrifice really means giving up something good for something better. ~ Stephen Covey,
226:I cant pretend to be objective when it comes to service or sacrifice. ~ Martha Raddatz,
227:It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
228:It is fair to judge peoples by the rights they will sacrifice most for. ~ Clarence Day,
229:Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious ~ Ayn Rand,
230:settling for the present, you sacrifice the potential of the future. ~ Juliette Harper,
231:Well, it turns out a hero's lot is not glory or reward, but sacrifice. ~ Pittacus Lore,
232:You can only become great at something you are willing to sacrifice for ~ Maya Angelou,
233:Sometimes we fight, and other times we sacrifice, all in the name of love. ~ Terri Reid,
234:where would the shout of love begin, if not from the summit of sacrifice? ~ Victor Hugo,
235:You can sacrifice and not love. But you cannot love and not sacrifice. ~ Kris Vallotton,
236:You don't sacrifice your individuality; you sacrifice a lot of freedom. ~ Michael Caine,
237:And God sees your sacrifice, if no man does. That, young man, is heroism. ~ Brian Godawa,
238:Good intentions are not enough; commitment and sacrifice are necessary. ~ Laurence Boldt,
239:It is a tremendous sacrifice to run for political office in America today. ~ Roger Ailes,
240:Sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favor of which you dont ~ Ayn Rand,
241:Since he has nothing, since he is nothing, he can sacrifice everything. ~ Julia Kristeva,
242:Still stands thine ancient sacrifice - An humble and a contrite heart. ~ Rudyard Kipling,
243:To sacrifice the world to paradise is to let slip the prey for the shadow. ~ Victor Hugo,
244:You cannot compensate by sacrifice what you lose through disobedience ~ Edwin Louis Cole,
245:America needs young people to be inspired to choose sacrifice over greed. ~ Jesse Jackson,
246:If you don't sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice ~ Anonymous,
247:Let us sacrifice our today so that our children can have a better tomorrow. ~ Abdul Kalam,
248:Marriage involves compromise, sacrifice, and—on occasion—a bit of suffering. ~ Lynn Toler,
249:The only religion that still demands human sacrifice is nationalism. ~ Kenneth E Boulding,
250:All of our energy should be in sacrifice and services. Suffering, at least. ~ Richard Gere,
251:Be resolute, fear no sacrifice, and surmount every difficulty to win victory. ~ Mao Zedong,
252:Every day here is a challenge, a privilege, a sacrifice, and a frustration. ~ Sally Thorne,
253:History is apt to judge harshly those who sacrifice tomorrow for today. ~ Harold MacMillan,
254:How do you become an adult in a society that doesn’t ask for sacrifice? ~ Sebastian Junger,
255:I felt a surge of anger at her for disregarding my noble self-sacrifice. I ~ Bella Forrest,
256:Love is harsh, and it consumes. And more than anything, it demands sacrifice. ~ Tim Lebbon,
257:QUOTES BOUQUET: Three Things You Should Never Sacrifice: Family, Heart And Dignity ~ Adnan,
258:Sacrifice and the agreement to sacrifice had written human history in blood. ~ Dan Simmons,
259:The prime role of a leader is to offer an example of courage and sacrifice. ~ Regis Debray,
260:To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. ~ proverbs XXL 3,
261:if we cannot sacrifice anything for our family, then we cannot love anyone. ~ Ajay K Pandey,
262:Sacrifice to me is something you do without expecting something in return. ~ Marilyn Manson,
263:Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing. ~ George Bernard Shaw,
264:Self-sacrifice, not self-assertion, is the law of the highest universe. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
265:Sometimes in order to save a relationship, you have to sacrifice it first. ~ Colleen Hoover,
266:That is what revolutionaries do. We sacrifice ourselves to save others. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen,
267:The sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
268:When we’re young, we take so casually every sacrifice offered by the old. ~ Wallace Stegner,
269:You give up a lot when you enter the years of parenting. It's a sacrifice. ~ Alexis Denisof,
270:A poor way to repay them — gambling their sacrifice for a bag of magic tricks. ~ J K Rowling,
271:Don't sacrifice your political convictions for the convenience of the hour. ~ Edward Kennedy,
272:Her acts became gestures of sacrifice.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Growth of the Flame,
273:I just keep thinking how lucky I am that I haven't had to sacrifice anything. ~ Karlie Kloss,
274:Oaths are the counterfeit money with which we pay the sacrifice of love. ~ Ninon de L Enclos,
275:Self-sacrifice is essential to leadership. You will give, give all the time. ~ Napoleon Hill,
276:The State is the sum total of the sacrifice, on its behalf, of its members. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
277:always put yourself first. sacrifice at your own discretion.-coven rule #1. ~ Amanda Lovelace,
278:Don't ask me to sacrifice the hope of the living for the comfort of the dead. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
279:If I do not participate in the sacrifice, it is as if I did not sacrifice at all. ~ Confucius,
280:I recognised a soul that revelled in the flame and excitement of sacrifice. ~ Charlotte Bront,
281:I suspect you knew: to live is to be irradiated. It is a sacrifice, this life. ~ Ander Monson,
282:Let her believe in virtue, but let her sacrifice it for my sake; ~ Pierre Choderlos de Laclos,
283:Lonely? Give it to Jesus. The loneliness itself is material for sacrifice. ~ Elisabeth Elliot,
284:Most things worth having require some sacrifice, usually more than you expect. ~ Albert Ellis,
285:the only life you have the right to sacrifice for the greater good is your own. ~ Brent Weeks,
286:3 Doing what is righteous and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.  ~ Anonymous,
287:I would burn a thousand villages, sacrifice a thousand lives to keep you safe. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
288:Sometimes I feel that by not marrying, I made too great a sacrifice to my work. ~ Nikola Tesla,
289:The Philippines has no policy that demands sacrifice of human lives. ~ Gloria Macapagal Arroyo,
290:There is no sense to a sacrifice after you come to feel that it is a sacrifice. ~ Stefan Zweig,
291:Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
Oh, when may it suffice? ~ W B Yeats,
292:Combinations with a queen sacrifice are among the most striking and memorable. ~ Anatoly Karpov,
293:In everyday things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty. ~ James Anthony Froude,
294:Sacrifice is the ecstasy of giving the best we have to the One we love most. ~ J Oswald Sanders,
295:Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. ~ Ayn Rand,
296:The more he understood that sometimes staying free required unimaginable sacrifice. ~ Yaa Gyasi,
297:You don't have love without sacrifice; you can't have sacrifice without love. ~ Karen Kingsbury,
298:But the only bad thing about hanging onto the past was the sacrifice of the future. ~ James Hunt,
299:He who can at all times sacrifice pleasure to duty approaches sublimity. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater,
300:It is Christ living in the soul by faith that makes the body a living sacrifice, ~ Matthew Henry,
301:Religions—most of them, anyway—had promoted self-effacement, sacrifice, restraint. ~ Nancy Kress,
302:Sacrifice is at the heart of repentance. Without deeds, your apology is worthless. ~ Bryan Davis,
303:Sacrifice is romantic until the only payoff is a broken heart and endless pain. ~ Deborah Bladon,
304:The totality of love is just three simple acts; devotion, loyalty and sacrifice. ~ M F Moonzajer,
305:We must look to the cross, to the ultimate sacrifice, the true source of hope. ~ Karen Kingsbury,
306:Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience. ~ Samuel Johnson,
307:I don't believe in virgin sacrifice. It encourages promiscuity at an early age ~ Adrianne Ambrose,
308:If the person who says they love you is unwilling to sacrifice for you it ain't love. ~ Mark Hart,
309:Once you sacrifice your rights, it's hard to get those rights protected again. ~ Dianne Feinstein,
310:The story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac are nowhere in any other tradition. ~ Elie Wiesel,
311:Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice? ~ William Butler Yeats,
312:A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, a bad man survives but loses his soul. ~ John le Carre,
313:Every job will demand some sacrifice. The key is to avoid unnecessary sacrifice. ~ Sheryl Sandberg,
314:Human sacrifice empowered the gods with the spiritual life source of their victims. ~ Brian Godawa,
315:It's a real thing, glory. But it pales in comparison to what we sacrifice for it. ~ Erika Johansen,
316:It's Not sacrifice if it's someone else's life you're giving away, it's just evil. ~ Veronica Roth,
317:No sacrifice is too big; no action is too low if it leads you to defeat your enemy. ~ River Jordan,
318:Sacrificers are not the ones to pity. The ones to pity are those they sacrifice. ~ Elizabeth Bowen,
319:Those who are ready to sacrifice freedom for security ultimately will lose both. ~ Abraham Lincoln,
320:Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. —William Butler Yeats ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton,
321:when confession and sacrifice are done, it is as if the wrongdoing never occurred. ~ Carlene Havel,
322:A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates innovation and encourages perseverance. ~ Gary Hamel,
323:Anything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. Makes you predictable, makes you weak. ~ Mark Lawrence,
324:Christians call it the "Sacrifice of Isaac," and Jews call it the "Binding of Isaac." ~ Elie Wiesel,
325:God doesn’t call us to sacrifice our sanity; He calls us to sacrifice our selfishness. ~ Beth Moore,
326:In a world of regret, sacrifice and hardship, laughter and music are medicine. ~ Immortal Technique,
327:Metaphor is ritual sacrifice. It kills the look-alike. No, metaphor is homeopathy. ~ Rae Armantrout,
328:Obedience is the true holocaust which we sacrifice to God on the altar of our hearts. ~ Philip Neri,
329:Through it all I have learned that parenting is basically a life of self sacrifice. ~ Stephen Covey,
330:To become formally integrated into a society, one must offer it a blood sacrifice. ~ Thomas Ligotti,
331:Dear Lord, I am offering You the sacrifice of trust tonight. Give me Your peace, I pray. ~ Anonymous,
332:It’s a beauty one isn’t born with, but must fight to construct at great sacrifice. ~ Leslie Feinberg,
333:No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt. ~ Max Beerbohm,
334:or as Sayana interprets it, "by sacrifice lasting for a year". ~ Sri AurobindoThe Secret of the Veda,
335:Parenthood involves massive sacrifice: money, attention, time and emotional energy. ~ Jonathan Sacks,
336:Prayer joined to sacrifice constitutes the most powerful force in human history. ~ Pope John Paul II,
337:Real love understands about love and sacrifice and is willing to live accordingly. ~ Karen Kingsbury,
338:This class has always to sacrifice a part of itself in order not to be wholly destroyed. ~ Karl Marx,
339:Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind. ~ Eric Hoffer,
340:When you sacrifice, you force others to sacrifice. It's an extremely powerful weapon. ~ Cesar Chavez,
341:Do something, Jayne! Use the Green! Offer it your virgin sacrifice! Flash it your boobs! ~ Elle Casey,
342:Faith, without action, is no faith at all. Love, without sacrifice, is no love at all. ~ John Hendrix,
343:In ancient times they sacrificed the virgins. Men were not about to sacrifice the sluts! ~ Bill Maher,
344:I think [Sacrifice of Isaac] is the most important event in the Bible except for Sinai. ~ Elie Wiesel,
345:It is not worth it to sacrifice the interest of the country for the sake of my son. ~ Chiang Kai shek,
346:Love is not possible without sacrifice, and sacrifice is not possible without love. ~ Karen Kingsbury,
347:My mom lived by herself with two kids. Sacrifice was the name of the game at our house. ~ Victor Cruz,
348:Self sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
349:So he lay there, spread out on the rug like a sacrifice, everything forgotten except Tom. ~ S E Jakes,
350:The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
351:The story [of the Sacrifice of Isaac ] is much more a part of theology than of history. ~ Elie Wiesel,
352:You have been saved through a dying sacrifice, so you are free to be a living one. ~ Timothy J Keller,
353:Better a dry morsel and quietness therewith than a house full of sacrifice and strife. ~ Frank Herbert,
354:But Calvin is no kind and loving god! He's one of the old gods! He demands sacrifice! ~ Bill Watterson,
355:Don't, to gain general and useless attention, sacrifice the attention that you want ~ Claude C Hopkins,
356:Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of energy. I never paid such a price. ~ Nikola Tesla,
357:[H]owever weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties. ~ Alexander Hamilton,
358:I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love   To spite a raven’s heart within a dove. ~ William Shakespeare,
359:Out of the depths of sorrow and sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind. ~ Winston Churchill,
360:The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil. ~ Voltaire,
361:The most cognitively brilliant people usually have had to sacrifice their emotional selves. ~ Ruby Wax,
362:The thing that we have going for us is that people are willing to sacrifice themselves. ~ Cesar Chavez,
363:The value of a sentiment is the amount of sacrifice you are prepared to make for it. ~ John Galsworthy,
364:A Christian makes his body a sacrifice to God, though he does not give it to be burned. ~ Matthew Henry,
365:Anything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. Makes you predictable, makes you weak.” We ~ Mark Lawrence,
366:I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’[39] For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. ~ Anonymous,
367:I guess sacrifice inspires my vulnerability, sacrifice and just having good people around me. ~ SonReal,
368:It is for women to come forward and choose the path of sacrifice for serving the nation. ~ Rahul Gandhi,
369:No individual or people can achieve anything without industry suffering, and sacrifice. ~ Fatima Jinnah,
370:Right now, I am a football player and I will sacrifice whatever is necessary to be the best. ~ J J Watt,
371:Sometimes God needs a sacrifice. Sometimes the road is complicit. No life is sacrosanct. ~ Ellen Datlow,
372:There can be no greater sacrifice than that a man lay down his lifestyle for others. And ~ P J O Rourke,
373:What would friendship entail?

Well, on Wednesdays, we sacrifice a cat to Satan ~ Roshani Chokshi,
374:Beneath every society where self-interest pays off, lies a foundation of self-sacrifice. ~ Roger Scruton,
375:Don’t be so quick to steal away what that sacrifice meant by insisting it was your fault. ~ Terry Brooks,
376:Don't sacrifice your spirit for wealth. Grow your wealth by first growing your spirit. ~ Robert Kiyosaki,
377:Faith ventures and hazards . . . counting the costs and delighting in the sacrifice. ~ John Henry Newman,
378:How often in life do people make that awful sacrifice, that murder of possibilities? ~ Andrew Sean Greer,
379:I flung up my common sense into the air and held my imaginary ovaries out in sacrifice. ~ Mariana Zapata,
380:If you want to win, you have to sacrifice and do what makes the team work most efficiently. ~ Chris Bosh,
381:I think there's no sacrifice too great for family, whether it's career, singing, whatever. ~ Anita Baker,
382:The American political system is not good at trading sacrifice now to prevent crises later. ~ Ezra Klein,
383:There is nothing that love cannot achieve, and there is nothing that love cannot sacrifice. ~ Meher Baba,
384:To obey,” even in the slightest and smallest thing, “is better than sacrifice, ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
385:True worship has less to do with offering sacrifices than with being a sacrifice ourselves. ~ Mike Mason,
386:All paths lead to death,
our premature sacrifice for future spawn

(from Elixir) ~ Bryan Murphy,
387:Collectivism requires self-sacrifice, the subordination of one's interests to those of others. ~ Ayn Rand,
388:fact: when the Bible speaks about healing, referring to the atoning sacrifice of Christ in ~ Derek Prince,
389:I have worshipped woman as the living embodiment of the spirit of service and sacrifice. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
390:In the end it all came down to companionship, to friendship, to sacrifice, to compromise. ~ Richard Russo,
391:My prayer, my sacrifice, my life and my death is all for Allah, The Lord of The Worlds. ~ Louis Farrakhan,
392:Refusing to feel hurt also meant she numbed herself to joy, but the sacrifice was worth it. ~ Susan Wiggs,
393:Self-sacrifice which denies common sense is not a virtue. It's a spiritual dissipation. ~ Margaret Deland,
394:The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice. ~ Bill Gates,
395:…victory that comes from the sacrifice on an innocent isn’t a victory. It’s the end of us. ~ Claudia Gray,
396:When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
397:You don't need to say any special incantation or sacrifice a stray cat or something first? ~ Kevin Hearne,
398:A nation which makes the final sacrifice for life and freedom does not get beaten. ~ Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
399:And that's my point: all great things worth having require great sacrifice worth giving. ~ Paullina Simons,
400:Because love was not the answer to every question. Because real love meant sacrifice. ~ Melissa de la Cruz,
401:But my eagerness to sacrifice little children in order to save mankind is wearing thin. ~ Orson Scott Card,
402:For me the present is merged in eternity. I may not sacrifice the latter for the present. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
403:I'm not prepared to sacrifice my being engaged in the world for just any relationship. ~ Loreena McKennitt,
404:My favorite love scenes in movies don't involve passion, they involve nobility or sacrifice. ~ Roger Ebert,
405:Our rule is the works of mercy... It is the way of sacrifice, worship, a sense of reverence. ~ Dorothy Day,
406:People determined to survive are willing to sacrifice anything to achieve that end. Captors ~ Daniel Black,
407:Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge for Satan. ~ John Bunyan,
408:Sacrifice and neon lights, Slaveships don't wait, Love many, trust few, And don't be late... ~ Tom Morello,
409:That happens with parents sometimes. We don’t see what they sacrifice until they are gone. ~ Shannon Mayer,
410:The pilgrims chant with every minute subtracted from their lives. This is their sacrifice. ~ Alan Lightman,
411:The sacrifice of personal existence is necessary to secure the preservation of the species. ~ Adolf Hitler,
412:The sacrifice that Christianity asks of us is not ultimately a sacrifice of the intellect. ~ Marcus J Borg,
413:They paint you red before they sacrifice you. It's a different religion from ours - I think. ~ Ringo Starr,
414:This is the sacrifice: the endless possibility that is offered up on the altar of the form. ~ Martin Buber,
415:Whether we call it sacrifice, or poetry, or adventure, it is always the same voice that calls. ~ Aristotle,
416:Because I know that I am not my own master, I offer my heart as a true sacrifice to the Lord. ~ John Calvin,
417:But marriage is one long sacrifice.... Chapter 21, Medora Manson speaking to Newland Archer ~ Edith Wharton,
418:Civilisation required a contribution – or a sacrifice, if that’s what you wanted to call it. ~ Stephen King,
419:Daniel: "Not so long that I forgot that you're worth everything. Every sacrifice. Every pain. ~ Lauren Kate,
420:Great churches aren't built on the gifts or talents of a few, but on the sacrifice of many. ~ Brian Houston,
421:Humanity has always been disturbingly happy to sacrifice its future on the alter of right now. ~ Mira Grant,
422:I am not someone who sacrifice all for the cinema, my life will be always more important. ~ Natalie Portman,
423:I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. Romans 12:1 ~ Beth Moore,
424:Love is giving up your needs for the sake of someone else, in some other words its sacrifice ~ Isaac Hanson,
425:Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice. ~ Woodrow Wilson,
426:momentary life has its rights, and is not bound to sacrifice itself constantly to the future. ~ Victor Hugo,
427:No, I do not want to sacrifice four days for two games. My time is too valuable to do that ~ Anatoly Karpov,
428:Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel,
429:Sometimes in this life it is necessary to sacrifice oneself for the good of others . - Mam ~ Joseph Delaney,
430:The best things in life don't come easy, but those things are the ones worth the sacrifice. ~ Adriana Locke,
431:The best things in life don’t come easy, but those things are the ones worth the sacrifice. ~ Adriana Locke,
432:The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. ~ T S Eliot,
433:we want to get our dreams, we need to sacrifice everything that we have in order to reach it. ~ John Rogers,
434:Women hold all the power. They should use it like a whip, not offer it up like a sacrifice. ~ Tarryn Fisher,
435:A pencil in my hand, its secret life / is charcoal, the wood already burnt, / a sacrifice. ~ Marianne Boruch,
436:Clocks indeed must have their sacrifice: what is death but an offering to time and eternity? ~ Truman Capote,
437:Giving is normal and anybody can give but to sacrifice during giving is the matter! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah,
438:Good luck is a sham. The wheel of fortune is a Ponzi scheme. True success requires sacrifice. ~ Rick Riordan,
439:If you win without sacrifice you enjoy it but it's more satisfying when you have struggled. ~ Andres Iniesta,
440:I haven't had a family, but I don't think of that as a sacrifice: my dancers are my family. ~ Judith Jamison,
441:I see neither bravery nor sacrifice in destroying life or property, for offense or defense. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
442:Never sacrifice your life for anything! Sacrifice everything for life! Life is the ultimate goal. ~ Rajneesh,
443:There are thousands of folklore, but in every case the sacrifice must have been kept up. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
444:The sound man, immune as to a sacrifice of straw dogs, faces the passing human generations. ~ Frederick Lenz,
445:what makes a warrior is not a weapon, a uniform, or a unit, but a cause worthy of sacrifice. ~ Eric Greitens,
446:A man willing to sacrifice his life for you is more than worth admiring. He's worth loving. ~ Jessica R Patch,
447:Every act is an act of self sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. ~ G K Chesterton,
448:Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness. ~ Napoleon Hill,
449:How can you call it a sacrifice when you choose to do something because you believe in it? ~ Aung San Suu Kyi,
450:In life's work, bliss and sacrifice are two sides of the same coin, complementary opposites. ~ Laurence Boldt,
451:I think that the good and the great are only separated by the willingness to sacrifice. ~ Kareem Abdul Jabbar,
452:The idea of redemption is always good news, even if it means sacrifice or some difficult times. ~ Patti Smith,
453:There is no decision that we can make that doesn't come with some sort of balance or sacrifice. ~ Simon Sinek,
454:We who would seek new land must be willing to sacrifice the sight of shore for a long, long time. ~ Andr Gide,
455:Effective leaders sacrifice much that is good in order to dedicate themselves to what is best ~ John C Maxwell,
456:Faith ventures and hazards . . . counting the costs and delighting in the sacrifice. ~ Saint John Henry Newman,
457:In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy choice. ~ Richard Bach,
458:It is good to have many strengths, Natiya...Do not sacrifice one kind of strength for another ~ Mary E Pearson,
459:I would never sacrifice my individual beliefs as a citizen to my corporate responsibilities. ~ George W Romney,
460:People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve. (Bernard Mickey Wrangle, p 99) ~ Tom Robbins,
461:Sacrifice only means something when you’re willing to give up everything for a greater purpose. ~ Dannika Dark,
462:(“ ‘Sacrifice,’ ” Sylvie said, “is a word that makes people feel noble about slaughter.”) But, ~ Kate Atkinson,
463:Selfish— a judgment readily passed by those who have never tested their own power of sacrifice. ~ George Eliot,
464:The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. ~ Ayn Rand,
465:The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice,' but integrity. ~ Ayn Rand,
466:Without sacrifice, nothing good can grow. Without death, there can be no rebirth." -Der Erlkonig ~ S Jae Jones,
467:Yes, he had the heart to sacrifice his daughter, to bless the war that avenge the loss of a woman. ~ Aeschylus,
468:And what she loved about Lydia’s play: that it gets at this idea that true sacrifice is painless. ~ Jess Walter,
469:As so often happens in computer science, we’re willing to sacrifice efficiency for generality. ~ Pedro Domingos,
470:Being selfish to me means that you have to look out for yourself and you don't have to sacrifice. ~ Herbie Mann,
471:If you can’t learn to sacrifice the small things, you’ll never get the thing you’re after.” I ~ Zoraida C rdova,
472:It's a great sacrifice to do what I'm doing. I'm not having fun at all...What a brutal job! ~ Silvio Berlusconi,
473:Love, after all, is the ingredient that separates a sacrifice from ordinary, everyday butchery. ~ Arundhati Roy,
474:Never, ever, sacrifice what you want the most, for what you want the most at that moment. ~ James A Owen,
475:Sacrifice that causes pain is no sacrifice at all. True sacrifice is joy-giving and uplifting. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
476:The fact that he was willing to sacrifice his own face in order to keep mine from getting bashed in ~ Meg Cabot,
477:The magnitude of a progress is gauged by the greatness of the sacrifice that it requires. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
478:Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,
479:A dream cannot become reality without vision and sacrifice. But in order to dream, one must sleep. ~ Johan Twiss,
480:He decided that for an ounce of that laughter, he could sacrifice an entire lifetime of happiness. ~ Faraaz Kazi,
481:If you feel very deeply about something, it's not possible to sacrifice your integrity about that. ~ Trevor Nunn,
482:I'm so proud of them, that they're ready to sacrifice their own lives to try to save all of us. ~ Jake Adelstein,
483:In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice. ~ Richard Bach,
484:It doesn’t do to sacrifice for people unless they want you to,” Clara said. “It’s just a waste. ~ Larry McMurtry,
485:I would far rather that India perished than that she won Her freedom at the sacrifice of truth. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
486:Never sacrifice happiness for the sake of achievement. The real key to life is to happily achieve ~ Robin Sharma,
487:Priests are set up by the pope and his followers to sacrifice Christ, not to teach the people. But ~ John Calvin,
488:Sometimes you have to know what you're willing to sacrifice to be the person you are meant to be. ~ Erik Tomblin,
489:The essential fact of Christianity is that God thought all men worth the sacrifice of his son. ~ William Barclay,
490:We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty. ~ William Graham Sumner,
491:when wealth is your god, weapons are your sacrament, and your own children are your sacrifice— ~ Brian D McLaren,
492:With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have ~ Mitch Albom,
493:A mutual giving and receiving is the law of Life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Lord of the Sacrifice,
494:Arise, my soul, arise; shake off thy guilty fears; The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears: ~ Charles Wesley,
495:Don't be too hard on me. Everyone has to sacrifice at the altar of stupidity from time to time. ~ Albert Einstein,
496:How can you be smug? YOU’RE TIED TO A TABLE LIKE A DAMN SACRIFICE! I don’t appreciate your tone. ~ Suzanne Wright,
497:It’s all about sacrifice,” I whispered.  “Right?  It’s not what we want anymore but what she needs. ~ Shay Savage,
498:Patient perseverance in well doing is infinitely harder than a sudden and impulsive self-sacrifice. ~ Horace Mann,
499:Sacrifice, by its nature, was predicated on giving, not receiving. “ ‘Sacrifice,’ ” he remembered ~ Kate Atkinson,
500:There is pain and sacrifice in everyone's world. That's why, when I was dancing, I had no pain. ~ Suzanne Farrell,
501:To be a mother, a housewife, never cost me any sacrifice - I savored every minute of those years. ~ Indira Gandhi,
502:Yet perhaps no sacrifice is wholly useless which proves there are men who prefer honour to life. ~ James G Frazer,
503:Anywhere, anytime, I'd sacrifice the finest nuance for a laugh, the most elegant trope for a smile. ~ Edward Abbey,
504:A team will always appreciate a great individual if he's willing to sacrifice for the group. ~ Kareem Abdul Jabbar,
505:Every opportunity worth pursuing comes with a price tag. Either sweat or sacrifice. Sometimes both. ~ Nicole Deese,
506:Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for a short-term reward. ~ Michael Lewis,
507:Freedom is a right ultimately defended by the sacrifice of America's servicemen and women. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger,
508:Great women belong to history and to self-sacrifice, not to the annals of a stage, however dignified. ~ Leigh Hunt,
509:He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much. ~ James Allen,
510:Honer and self sacrifice. Death does not diminish these qualities in a soldier. We shall remember. ~ Eric S Nylund,
511:human being’s moral integrity begins when he is prepared to sacrifice his life for his convictions. ~ Eric Metaxas,
512:I love her. More than I thought I was capable of, and I would sacrifice my life for her happiness. ~ Katie McGarry,
513:I wont write any wicked slanders against anybody, unless by refraining I should sacrifice a good joke. ~ Anonymous,
514:Knowing I would die for you, how would you live if you were worthy of that sacrifice? Live that way. ~ Brent Weeks,
515:Life is only a long and bitter suicide, and faith alone can transform this suicide into a sacrifice. ~ Franz Liszt,
516:Q. 917. {263} What is the Mass? A. The Mass is the unbloody sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ. ~ Anonymous,
517:Real love, well, it means sacrifice. It means thinking of the other person's needs before your own. ~ Gemma Malley,
518:Seattle is for people who love culture, but refuse to sacrifice their wild nature to attain it. ~ Kimberly Kinrade,
519:Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. ~ Rick Warren,
520:The brave men who died in Vietnam, more than 100% of which were black, were the ultimate sacrifice. ~ Marion Barry,
521:The only question to ask yourself is, how much are you willing to sacrifice to achieve this success. ~ Larry Flynt,
522:The only question to ask yourself is, how much are you willing to sacrifice to achieve this success? ~ Larry Flynt,
523:The sacrifice is usually chained to the rock. She does not usually dance out to meet her monster. ~ Alexander Chee,
524:The terrible sacrifice offered to Kali in the name of religion enhanced my desire to know Bengali ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
525:To venture upon an undertaking of any kind, even the most insignificant, is to sacrifice to envy. ~ Emile M Cioran,
526:A woman's mink coat represents the sacrifice of a lot of little animals, including her husband. ~ Mignon McLaughlin,
527:be brave enough to love the people around you, even if it looks like sacrifice and feels like loss. ~ Annie F Downs,
528:Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
529:Imam Hussain's sacrifice is for all groups and communities, an example of the path of rightousness. ~ Edward Gibbon,
530:It is never necessary to give up yourself to help another.  We sacrifice many things, but not that.  ~ Debora Geary,
531:Men, and pigs, are hard on women who sacrifice their virtue, especially for love." Mattis Tannhouser ~ Tim Willocks,
532:The most important thing is this: to sacrifice what you are now for what you can become tomorrow. ~ Shannon L Alder,
533:The observance of communal traditions involves a constant sacrifice of the individual to the state. ~ Kakuz Okakura,
534:The peculiar doctrine of Christianity is that of a universal sacrifice and perpetual propitiation. ~ Samuel Johnson,
535:The real achievers are those who, in the dreary pit of sacrifice, still smile up at the goal. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,
536:There's no limit to what I wouldn't do for you. Just ask and it will be done, no matter the sacrifice. ~ Sandi Lynn,
537:The solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. ~ Abraham Lincoln,
538:those times i burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. we all burn things we love. i love my guitar ~ Jimi Hendrix,
539:To be vital, faith must be accompanied by self sacrifice and unselfish, constructive action. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous,
540:Why you keep telling me to be careful, Old man ?
Your stupidity doesn't deserve my sacrifice, Kiddo. ~ Toba Beta,
541:Withhold no sacrifice, grudge no toil, seek no sordid gain, fear no foe. All will be well.”15 ~ Winston S Churchill,
542:Art can compel people freely, gladly, and spontaneously to sacrifice themselves in the service of man. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
543:Be less than what you are so that you can become more.”
― Joseph Delaney, The Spook's Sacrifice ~ Joseph Delaney,
544:Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice. ~ Aldous Huxley,
545:For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,         the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. ~ Anonymous,
546:It comes as second nature to men to sacrifice themselves, and their women to let them do it. ~ Lucy Lady Duff Gordon,
547:It wasn't necessary to win for the story to be great, it was only necessary to sacrifice everything. ~ Donald Miller,
548:I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
549:Now I ask you to make your sacrifice. Take a gamble. I took the plunge and I'm glad of it. ~ Gloria Macapagal Arroyo,
550:Sacrifice was no purchase of freedom. Sacrifice by its very nature was arrogant and impersonal. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
551:When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings. ~ Jonathan Swift,
552:Christian giving is to be marked by self-sacrifice and self-forgetfuln ess, not by self-congratula tion. ~ John Stott,
553:I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you; I will praise your name, O Lord, for it is good. (Ps. 54:6) ~ Beth Moore,
554:Make the atoning sacrifice for your own sin, and then your heart will be prepared to atone for others. ~ Mesu Andrews,
555:Racing is a great mania to which one must sacrifice everything, without reticence, without hesitation. ~ Enzo Ferrari,
556:Sacrifice is the very essence of religion; ... Without sacrifice there is no true worship of God. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,
557:The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. ~ E Lockhart,
558:You have to be willing to work harder and sacrifice more than most to become one of the top fighters. ~ Travis Browne,
559:If you obsess about the next, you will miss what you need in the now and ultimately, sacrifice the next. ~ Ken Coleman,
560:Jesus' blood was shed for us all; what remains is for us to accept His sacrifice in faith and obedience. ~ Kenneth Boa,
561:No sacrifice which a lover would make for his beloved is too great for us to make for our enemy. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
562:That he would sacrifice himself for me... blows my mind.
Makes me realize just how much he loves me ~ Monica Murphy,
563:the ‘right choice’ is often the difficult one – the one that involves some sacrifice of our pleasure. ~ Dalai Lama XIV,
564:When you give to others to the degree that you sacrifice yourself, you make the other person a thief. ~ Iyanla Vanzant,
565:Why was it always the woman who had to sacrifice for love? Just once, couldn’t a guy do it instead? ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,
566:America is a country born from semi-mythologized blood, glory and acts of selfless patriotic sacrifice. ~ Henry Rollins,
567:Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for a short-term reward. What ~ Michael Lewis,
568:In the case of the Catholic Church, it's hard to understand how they so willfully sacrifice the children. ~ Alex Gibney,
569:I would rather be alone with dignity than in a relationship that requires me to sacrifice my self respect. ~ Mandy Hale,
570:Promise me you won’t sacrifice your happiness for something so cheap as acceptance. Find your courage. ~ Scott Wilbanks,
571:Study the lives of our great women, who were models of patience, fortitude, compassion and sacrifice. ~ Sathya Sai Baba,
572:The biggest sacrifice to me is to not be in an atmosphere where I can keep writing and moving forward. ~ Trey Anastasio,
573:The culture of the Epic Fail, in its rituals of comic sacrifice, is a culture of sublimated predation. ~ Mark O Connell,
574:The desire to sacrifice an entire lifetime to the noblest of ideals serves no purpose if one works alone. ~ Che Guevara,
575:The Japanese see self-assertion as immoral and self- sacrifice as the sensible course to take in life. ~ Akira Kurosawa,
576:As I grew older, I found I could surrender my own comfort so effortlessly it didn't qualify as sacrifice. ~ Lori Lansens,
577:At times, I wear it in tribute to their sacrifice. Other times, I wear it because it goes with this skirt. ~ Derek Landy,
578:Because I don’t know whether honesty is better than happiness. Do we sacrifice honesty in order to be happy? ~ Anonymous,
579:Charity is the affection that impels us to sacrifice ourselves to humankind as if it were one being with us. ~ Confucius,
580:Don't sacrifice what you want most for what you want now. Write down what you want most and see it often. ~ Peter Vidmar,
581:If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married. ~ Katharine Hepburn,
582:I never know why self-sacrifice is noble. Why is it better to sacrifice oneself than someone else? ~ Ivy Compton Burnett,
583:It is a coal from God's altar must kindle our fire; and without fire, true fire, no acceptable sacrifice. ~ William Penn,
584:It is never necessary to give up yourself to help another.  We sacrifice many things, but not that.  Hold ~ Debora Geary,
585:Love will sacrifice more to others than friendship, but then it exacts more from them. ~ Fulke Greville 1st Baron Brooke,
586:Maybe you actually do need to face obstacles with someone to know that they're the one you'd sacrifice for. ~ Alex Flinn,
587:My philosophy is, don't take no for an answer and be willing to sacrifice your entire project for freedom. ~ Tim Robbins,
588:My Swaraj will be not be a result of murder of others but a voluntary act of continuous self-sacrifice. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
589:Perhaps love was worth any and all sacrifice, but that love was of no comfort to those who were sacrificed. ~ Megan Derr,
590:Sacrifice self to bless one another, even as God has blessed you. Forget self in laboring for mankind. ~ Mary Baker Eddy,
591:sacrifice' was often a cloak for many actions that did not always stem from the highest motives. ~ Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit,
592:The time I burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar. ~ Jimi Hendrix,
593:To become a better you, be willing to make the needed sacrifice. Don’t spend your money on luxuries. ~ Israelmore Ayivor,
594:To persist with a goal, you must treasure the dream more than the costs of sacrifice to attain it. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,
595:We protest solemnly in the face of mankind, that we desire peace at any sacrifice, save that of honor. ~ Jefferson Davis,
596:When you forgive, somewhere you sacrifice a part of your own existence, your respect, your dignity, yourself. ~ Om Swami,
597:By thetest of our faith thehighest standard ofcivilization is the readiness to sacrifice for others. ~ David Lloyd George,
598:Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
599:For every gain there is a sacrifice, and the removal of the parasite sometimes entails removal of the host. ~ Luke Davies,
600:Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it. ~ Germaine Greer,
601:God's glory in our lives has little to do with our sacrifice and everything to do with our surrender. ~ Alisa Hope Wagner,
602:In a culture where profit has become the true God, self-sacrifice can seem incomprehensible rather than noble. ~ Starhawk,
603:It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,
604:Love means giving yourself to the person you love,being willing to sacrifice everything,even your pride ~ Elaine Barbieri,
605:Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
606:Nothing that man can present to God by way of sacrifice can ever purchase the blessing of forgiveness. ~ Charles Spurgeon,
607:...People do belong to each other. Once you make a sacrifice for someone, you own part of his or her soul. ~ Jodi Picoult,
608:We weren't lucky enough to sacrifice our lives for our country, but at least we can live for our country! ~ Narendra Modi,
609:For human nature is strange: the less we are inclined to self-sacrifice, the more we insist on it in other ~ Boles aw Prus,
610:Glory is sacrifice, glory is exhaustion, glory is having nothing left to give. Almost. It is death by living. ~ N D Wilson,
611:once the ruler is no longer willing to be the sacrifice for his people, he becomes not a leader but a leech, ~ Tana French,
612:Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. ~ Mitch Albom,
613:Success takes an investment in time, dedication, and sacrifice. This is true education. It is a process. ~ Robert Kiyosaki,
614:The extent of our sacrifice coupled with the depth of our joy displays the worth we put on the reward of God. ~ John Piper,
615:there’s something about standing on the top of a mountain you personally climbed at great sacrifice. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde,
616:When you know who matters most to you, giving things up, even yourself, doesn't really feel like a sacrifice. ~ Kiera Cass,
617:When you know who matters most to you, giving things up, even yourself, doesn’t really feel like a sacrifice. ~ Kiera Cass,
618:When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve. Ernest Hemingway ~ Emily T Wierenga,
619:A painless lesson is one without any meaning, one who does not sacrifice anything cannot achieve anything. ~ Hiromu Arakawa,
620:Every good marriage must be a friendship between two people who are willing to sacrifice for the other person. ~ Jim George,
621:If I were over full of pity for the cow, I should sacrifice my life to save her but not take my brother's. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
622:Jesus Christ is both the only price and sacrifice by which eternal redemption is obtained for believers. ~ Jonathan Edwards,
623:Mother Teresa said that for a sacrifice to be real, it must cost, must hurt, and we must empty ourselves, ~ Hilary Davidson,
624:No war can be won without young men dying. Those things which are precious are saved only by sacrifice. ~ Stephen E Ambrose,
625:Our nation owes a debt to its fallen heroes that we can never fully repay, but we can honor their sacrifice. ~ Barack Obama,
626:Rather, the language of divine agency here emphasizes the theme of God’s grace: God provided the sacrifice. ~ Marcus J Borg,
627:Sacrifice,’ ” he remembered Sylvie saying, “is a word that makes people feel noble about slaughter.” “These ~ Kate Atkinson,
628:You have to be willing to sacrifice as much to prevent war, as soldiers are willing to sacrifice to wage war. ~ Jodie Evans,
629:According to Christ, then, the truest kind of leadership demands service, sacrifice, and selflessness. ~ John F MacArthur Jr,
630:A race that rejected the idea of personal sacrifice would surely be erased from time's records before long. ~ Salman Rushdie,
631:As an act of goodwill you must sacrifice all the futures you might have for the one that he designs for you. ~ Dexter Palmer,
632:Brilliant results don't just show up by chance. The finest things in life take patience, focus and sacrifice. ~ Robin Sharma,
633:It did seem unjust that Jane, who was by far the abler of the two, should sacrifice her career for Mark’s. ~ Karen Armstrong,
634:Jesus did not ask us to believe that his death was a blood sacrifice, that he was going to die for our sins. ~ Robert W Funk,
635:One cannot shape the world without being reshaped in the process. Each gain of power requires its own sacrifice. ~ Phil Hine,
636:the nation’s transition from a culture molded by sacrifice and hard work to a bunch of cranky, unobliged brats. ~ Tim Dorsey,
637:Well, you have the right to make a sacrifice of yourself, but I'll be damned if I'll let you sacrifice me! ~ Georgette Heyer,
638:A country's greatness lies in its undying ideals of love and sacrifice that inspire the mothers of the race. ~ Sarojini Naidu,
639:But the kind of love that God created and demonstrated is a costly one because it involves sacrifice and presence. ~ Bob Goff,
640:Chinese have a bigger sense of self-sacrifice. Americans are about self-enjoyment, not self-sacrifice,” he’d ~ Jennifer 8 Lee,
641:Every journey starts with the first step, and the first step down the Dark path is choosing self over sacrifice. ~ C L Wilson,
642:How it is that Bengal with all its knowledge, intelligence, sacrifice, and emotion tolerates this slaughter? ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
643:If Communion has become boring for us now, it could be that we’ve lost sight of the value of Jesus’ sacrifice. ~ Francis Chan,
644:it takes as long as three generations of hard work, three generations of sacrifice to correct the wrong! ~ Eric Jerome Dickey,
645:I wouldn't want to sacrifice the last years that I have of being youthful in this business to have kids. ~ Michelle Rodriguez,
646:No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology. ~ Ronald Reagan,
647:Prepare thy soul calmly to obey; such offering will be more acceptable to God than every other sacrifice. ~ Pietro Metastasio,
648:She might be the only girl I've ever met who still hasn't learned to sacrifice bodily comfort for fashion's sake. ~ Tim Tharp,
649:The Eucharist is a never-ending sacrifice. It is the Sacrament of love, the supreme love, the act of love. ~ Katharine Drexel,
650:The important thing is this: to be ready at any moment to sacrifice what you are for what you could become. ~ Charles Dickens,
651:This was the thing about life—nothing was ever perfect, and to gain one thing you often had to sacrifice another. ~ I T Lucas,
652:Those who sacrifice essential liberty for temporary safety are not deserving of either liberty or safety. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
653:We can only sacrifice so much of ourselves in a relationship before there's nothing left to love or be loved. ~ Tiffany Reisz,
654:We can only sacrifice so much of ourselves in a relationship before there’s nothing left to love or be loved. ~ Tiffany Reisz,
655:who care. They are those who, while they love the altar and delight in the sacrifice, are yet unable to reconcile ~ A W Tozer,
656:Abel is commended here in Hebrews 11 not because he gave an animal but because he offered his sacrifice by faith. ~ R C Sproul,
657:But the standard churchy spirituality doesn't require any real action, courage, or sacrifice from its attendees. ~ Alan Hirsch,
658:Freedom is secured every day by our men and women in uniform. We must build a future worthy of their sacrifice. ~ Nancy Pelosi,
659:It's the sacrifice I'm not willing to make right now to leave my children because I felt it wasn't only my choice. ~ Joan Chen,
660:Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grew.
   ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude,
661:Because I don’t know whether honesty is better than happiness. Do we sacrifice honesty in order to be happy? ~ Samantha Shannon,
662:But what desires can always be satisfied despite external circumstances? What are they? Love, self-sacrifice.' He ~ Leo Tolstoy,
663:Conscience represents a fetich to which good people sacrifice their own happiness, bad people their neighbors'. ~ Ellen Glasgow,
664:I just don't want to be famous. I feel like there's a lot of sacrifice in that I'm not really willing to make. ~ Missy Peregrym,
665:I'm lucky. I've worked with extremely talented women who won't sacrifice comedy to make themselves look better. ~ Heather Burns,
666:India is a civilization where the principle and philosophy of sacrifice is ingrained as part of our upbringing. ~ Narendra Modi,
667:I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux,
668:Jesus was the temple to end all temples, the priest to end all priests, & the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. ~ Timothy Keller,
669:Love is supposed to be about sacrifice, but since I’d been with Charlie, I’d learned it was also about greed. ~ Adrienne Wilder,
670:Regard the nation as a necessary unit but no more in a common humanity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Doctrine of Sacrifice,
671:Selfless love is the elevator that leads you up the great heights of sacrifice to prove your depth of sincerity. ~ Shubha Vilas,
672:[...] the kind of love that God created and demonstrated is a costly one because it involves sacrifice and presence. ~ Bob Goff,
673:The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind. ~ John Stuart Mill,
674:There are some sacrifices greater than love. And some loves greater than any sacrifice. Tommy’s greater than both. ~ Jay McLean,
675:The willingness of God to sacrifice his Son to reconcile us to himself is a demonstration of his love for us. ~ Robert Jeffress,
676:When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship. ~ Joseph Campbell,
677:You aren't going to find anybody that's going to be successful without making a sacrifice and without perseverance. ~ Lou Holtz,
678:a fallen angel thrown out of paradise for refusing to sacrifice his ideals in a world that rewarded compromise. ~ Steven Konkoly,
679:Brotherhood means laying down your life for somebody, really willing to sacrifice yourself for somebody else. ~ Tim Hetherington,
680:Everyone must, from time to time, make a sacrifice on the altar of stupidity, to please the deity and mankind. ~ Walter Isaacson,
681:For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice. ~ John Burroughs,
682:Glory is sacrifice, glory is exhaustion, glory is having nothing left to give.
Almost.
It is death by living. ~ N D Wilson,
683:He is no Socialist who will not sacrifice his Fatherland for the triumph of the Social Revolution.’—LENIN. ~ Winston S Churchill,
684:In time, Radha became a goddess in her own right, the symbol of sacrifice, surrender and unconditional love. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
685:It is not always convenient or comfortable, and sometimes worship is a sheer act of the will--a willing sacrifice. ~ Rick Warren,
686:Liberty and love These two I must have. For my love I’ll sacrifice My life. For liberty I’ll sacrifice My love. ~ Barbara Demick,
687:Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, "Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces. ~ Plutarch,
688:All vital praying makes a drain on a man's vitality. True intercession is a sacrifice, a bleeding sacrifice. ~ John Henry Jowett,
689:Being a ruler is, contrary to popular notions, a calling of self-sacrifice. That is, if one wants to be a good ruler. ~ S D Smith,
690:Despising anything that was easy to achieve because if no sacrifice was involved, it obviously isn't worth having. ~ Paulo Coelho,
691:Doing less is not being lazy. Don't give in to a culture that values personal sacrifice over personal productivity. ~ Tim Ferriss,
692:Follow your passion, be prepared to work hard and sacrifice, and, above all, don't let anyone limit your dreams. ~ Donovan Bailey,
693:I am not in the position to sacrifice the essentials of life in the hope of acquiring the luxuries." -Pushkin ~ Alexander Pushkin,
694:Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never decide to cease to exist. ~ Orson Scott Card,
695:That’s what sacrifice is—beauty and tragedy. It’s pain and suffering for something or someone you love.   And ~ Michelle Leighton,
696:The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cats teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
697:There is no feeling in this world to be compared with self-reliance--do not sacrifice that to anything else. ~ John D Rockefeller,
698:The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training - sacrifice. ~ Douglas MacArthur,
699:When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed ~ Ayn Rand,
700:Crowd was to be pleased. Crowd was to be worshipped and feared. Ultimately, Crowd was to be made sacrifice unto. ~ Richard Bachman,
701:Forgiveness is a sacrifice. You're giving up being right about something, whether you're right or wrong about it. ~ Jeffrey Pierce,
702:If thinking is your fate, revere this fate with divine honour and sacrifice to it the best, the most beloved ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
703:our age, self-indulgence and self-destruction, rather than self-sacrifice, are the foundations for new heroic myths. ~ Dean Koontz,
704:Our sacrifice is greater than his," cried Rilla passionately. "Our boys give only themselves. We give them. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery,
705:Saddest of all are the woman who were brought up to believe that self-sacrifice is the highest female virtue. ~ Jeanette Winterson,
706:So think before you complain, especially about things that require some sacrifice. Complaining is the sign of a loser. ~ Lou Holtz,
707:The important thing is this: to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,
708:There’s a sacrifice to be made, and you have to choose the victim: yourself or those around you.” In ~ Natalia Sanmart n Fenollera,
709:The white girl becomes the highest sacrifice, the virgin martyr, particularly to that most unholy idol of narrative. ~ Alice Bolin,
710:Because of their sacrifice, you must escape. If you don’t, everything up until now will have been in vain.” “But ~ Charles Belfoure,
711:Every gift we offered was a genuine gift, because it represented a sacrifice and it answered a need, a desire or a dream ~ Kim Th y,
712:Good words are a vain benevolence that demand no sacrifice and are more appreciated than real acts of kindness. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
713:My father had many, many veterans over to the house, and the older I got the more I appreciated their sacrifice. ~ Steven Spielberg,
714:Right. You're Kali. Of course you're planning a rescue mission. Stupid self-sacrifice is kind of your thing. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes,
715:The heart of the gospel is redemption, and the essence of redemption is the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ. ~ Charles Spurgeon,
716:This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson,
717:An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life. ~ Jose Marti,
718:Anyone can give away something expensive, but only those who understand sacrifice can give away something valuable. ~ Kris Vallotton,
719:Capitalism is based on individual rights - not on the sacrifice of the individual to the 'public good' of the collective. ~ Ayn Rand,
720:Every gift we offered was a genuine gift, because it represented a sacrifice and it answered a need, a desire or a dream. ~ Kim Th y,
721:Good Soldiers don't sacrifice the cause for love - Lucas
If the cause isn't love then it isn't worth the sacrifice ~ Claudia Gray,
722:how often did people sacrifice the present for the future? And how wise was that when there might not be a future? ~ L E Modesitt Jr,
723:Political rhetoric alone does not build a nation unless it is backed by the power of sacrifice, toil and virtue. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam,
724:Sacrifice is the first element of religion, and resolves itself in theological language into the love of God. ~ James Anthony Froude,
725:The Charkha is the symbol of sacrifice, and sacrifice is essential for the establishment of the image of the deity. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
726:There's only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God. ~ Aldous Huxley,
727:But Christ offered himself as a sacrifice for men’s eternal redemption and he alone officiated in that priestly act. He ~ John Calvin,
728:Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps. ~ Vladimir Lenin,
729:Charity requires sacrifice, and members of Congress could set a good example of charity by giving up their pay increase. ~ Tom Coburn,
730:Christ, having sacrificed himself once, is to eternity a certain and valid sacrifice for the sins of all faithful. ~ Huldrych Zwingli,
731:[Connor, prepared to sacrifice himself to save Sarah]
God, I pray, give me the strength to live the next hour well. ~ Pamela Clare,
732:Doing less is not being lazy. Don't give in to a culture that values personal sacrifice over personal productivity. ~ Timothy Ferriss,
733:I believe the moment of birth Is when we have knowledge of death I believe the season of birth Is the season of sacrifice ~ T S Eliot,
734:In our age, self-indulgence and self-destruction, rather than self-sacrifice, are the foundations for new heroic myths. ~ Dean Koontz,
735:In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. ~ Viktor E Frankl,
736:In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. ~ Viktor E Frankl,
737:I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux,
738:let man fear woman when she loves. then she bears every sacrifice and every other thing she accounts valueless. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
739:Let man fear woman when she loves: then she makes any sacrifice, and everything else seems without value to her ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
740:living a life rich with accomplishment and contribution did not have to come through the sacrifice of peace of mind. ~ Robin S Sharma,
741:Tell the sun and the stars hello for me. And be strong. This may not be the last sacrifice you must make to stop Gaea. ~ Rick Riordan,
742:We grew up poor but they made sacrifices for me. I had to make sacrifices for them. My life was the biggest sacrifice. ~ Karina Halle,
743:When you do well, you think it’s worth it. When you sacrifice so much and you finally do well, it feels really good. ~ John C Maxwell,
744:You must find something that you deeply love and are passionate about and are willing to sacrifice a lot to achieve. ~ Howard Schultz,
745:Another hidden sacrifice, one of great spiritual beauty and of powerful efficacy in the healing of human sorrows, is the ~ James Allen,
746:But my father told me, and my grandmother told him, whenever you try to change something, you sacrifice something else. ~ Heidi Heilig,
747:Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it. ~ Simone de Beauvoir,
748:Hallow the body as a temple to comeliness and sanctify the heart as a sacrifice to love; love recompenses the adorers. ~ Khalil Gibran,
749:He'd sacrifice even his sanity for her. If it came down to it, he'd let her break his heart.

Because he loved her. ~ Becky Wade,
750:He is the sacrificial flame by which we are enabled to offer our whole souls as a living sacrifice unto God. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
751:Human nature defeats me sometimes, how greed and spite can lurk so divisively around the utmost courage and sacrifice. ~ Jennifer Ryan,
752:I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone. ~ Silvio Berlusconi,
753:I believe the moment of birth Is when we have knowledge of death I believe the season of birth Is the season of sacrifice. ~ T S Eliot,
754:I don't care if I get kicked out of every rich kid club on the planet. I will never sacrifice my integrity as a DJ...ever. ~ DJ Shadow,
755:Leaders volunteer to go first into danger. Their willingness to sacrifice for us is the reason we're inspired to follow. ~ Simon Sinek,
756:Mental toughness is Spartanism, with all its qualities of self-denial, sacrifice, dedication, fearlessness, and love. ~ Vince Lombardi,
757:Q. 920. {265} Is the Mass the same sacrifice as that of the Cross? A. The Mass is the same sacrifice as that of the Cross. ~ Anonymous,
758:Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else. ~ Mitch Albom,
759:Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else. ~ Mitch Albom,
760:The nation must exist before it can sacrifice its interests for a higher good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Doctrine of Sacrifice,
761:This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values.... ~ Laurie Halse Anderson,
762:True Christianity is a life of sacrifice. It requires that in everything we live for the Lord and others, not ourselves. ~ Rick Joyner,
763:We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage. ~ Theodore Roosevelt,
764:We sacrifice to dress till household joys and comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry, and keeps our larder lean. ~ William Cowper,
765:You must sacrifice every thought, every ideology for the good of the nation and for the serenity of our fatherhood. ~ Francisco Franco,
766:Your attitude of serving the Lord can transform even the most menial of tasks into a magnificent sacrifice of love. ~ Elizabeth George,
767:I do not say that I could never be persuaded to sacrifice my reputation to passion- only that it would take a great deal. ~ Jude Morgan,
768:In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself. ~ Henry A Wallace,
769:I've always believed that you can be whatever you want to be if you are willing to sacrifice and dedicate yourself. ~ Sugar Ray Leonard,
770:Sacrifice must be weighed by the pain of what is surrendered, and this alone was the true measure of a virtue’s worth. ~ Steven Erikson,
771:That is love, to give away everything, to sacrifice everything, without the slightest desire to get anything in return.3 ~ Albert Camus,
772:The essence of positioning is sacrifice. You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position. ~ Al Ries,
773:The most powerful magic of all is choice, and of that power, the strongest choice anyone can make is an act of sacrifice. ~ Sara Raasch,
774:There's a particular kind of suffering to be experienced when you love something greater than yourself. A tender sacrifice. ~ Lang Leav,
775:There will be no honor to my sacrifice. Women who have filled the role of temptress have always been looked down upon. ~ Laura Thalassa,
776:The way to goodness," Borden had said, "is one of sacrifice. He who sacrifices will have it a hundred times returned. ~ Michelle Hoover,
777:We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage. ~ William Howard Taft,
778:We shall not lightly talk about sacrifice until we are driven to the last extremity which makes sacrifice inevitable. ~ Chiang Kai shek,
779:When she lost him, she lost not only her only child but all those decades of sacrifice—she lost her identity and her hope. ~ Jeff Hobbs,
780:When we fritter away our one and only life doing things that don’t really matter, we sacrifice the things that do matter. ~ Bill Hybels,
781:You have to stop giving things away. You didn’t sacrifice your mind. Start choosing to keep your thoughts your own. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,
782:A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self indulgence. ~ W Somerset Maugham,
783:If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted. ~ Miles Davis,
784:In order to become prosperous, a person must initially work very hard, so he or she has to sacrifice a lot of leisure time. ~ Dalai Lama,
785:In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. Of ~ Viktor E Frankl,
786:It looks like a typical voodoo sacrifice. (Fang)
Well, slap my ass and call me Sally if you’re not bright. (Thorn) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,
787:Just keep being true to yourself, if you're passionate about something go for it. Don't sacrifice anything, just have fun. ~ Blake Lewis,
788:Life is not entirely real until it opens into the sense of the infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Lord of the Sacrifice,
789:There is a particular kind of suffering to be experienced when you love something greater than yourself. A tender sacrifice. ~ Lang Leav,
790:God prepares, but He does not hasten the ripening of the fruit before its season. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Doctrine of Sacrifice,
791:I don't know of a great artist who did not sacrifice and thereby have to wrestle with the depths of loneliness and sadness. ~ Cornel West,
792:The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice. ~ Barack Obama,
793:There is no question that engagement requires sacrifice, but that's what we signed up for when we decided to become parents. ~ Bren Brown,
794:Today I shall give myself in sacrifice and work; for tomorrow I will have nothing to give and there will be none to receive. ~ Og Mandino,
795:. . . a man's sacrifice is a surrender of his sacred independence: he becomes more consciously related to woman. P. 126 ~ Carl Gustav Jung,
796:... any citizen should be willing to give all that he has to give his country in work or sacrifice in times of crisis. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt,
797:But no man would sacrifice his honor for the one he loves."

"It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done. ~ Henrik Ibsen,
798:but some people cannot be fixed. Or if they can be, it's only by love and sacrifice so great that it destroys the giver. ~ Cassandra Clare,
799:Capitalism is not a human being. Capitalism is a Moloch, a god, a god of bloody sacrifice that sees human beings as ants ~ Terence McKenna,
800:Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it. ~ J M Barrie,
801:Happiness - in part at least - the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice waht we want for what we want eventually ~ Stephen R Covey,
802:I always feel that one ought to give men the opportunity for self-sacrifice; their natures are so much less noble than ours. ~ Barbara Pym,
803:Lawyers are very, very good at keeping you out of prison, but they will sacrifice your reputation and credibility to do so. ~ Barney Frank,
804:Self-denial is simply a method by which arrests his progress, and self-sacrifice a survival of the mutilation of the savage. ~ Oscar Wilde,
805:The free world knows, out of the bitter wisdom of experience, that vigilance and sacrifice are the price of liberty. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower,
806:To be free, to be happy and to be fruitful, can only be attained through sacrifice of many common but overestimated things. ~ Robert Henri,
807:Because love was not the answer to every question. Because real love meant sacrifice. Sometimes love means letting go. ~ Melissa de la Cruz,
808:But vulnerability is the leading edge of truth. Being wiling to sacrifice a false life is the only way to live a true one. ~ Charles M Blow,
809:Football is like life - it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority. ~ Vince Lombardi,
810:Great leaders are willing to sacrifice the numbers to save the people. Poor leaders sacrifice the people to save the numbers. ~ Simon Sinek,
811:He'd sacrifice much for her. He'd do anything she asked of him. He'd pay any price, except one.
The price of giving her up. ~ Becky Wade,
812:If France is to be judged, judge her not by the effects of her defeat but by her readiness to sacrifice herself. ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery,
813:I was spent without compromise, sated without sacrifice, completely and totally head-over-heels in love. And it was delicious. ~ Amy Harmon,
814:Our unconscious ideals cause us to sacrifice our true lives to a beautiful chimera, a haunting dream, a compelling illusion. ~ Stephen Cope,
815:Poetry is enthusiasm with wings of fire; it is the angel of high thoughts, that inspires us with the power of sacrifice. ~ Giuseppe Mazzini,
816:Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else.” The ~ Mitch Albom,
817:The blind willingness to sacrifice people to truth, however, has always been the danger of an ethics abstracted from life. ~ Carol Gilligan,
818:Until you have enough money accumulated, sacrifice luxury. Sacrifice TV, time out, and even time with your family and friends. ~ Ryan Blair,
819:What pleases the LORD more: burnt offerings and sacrifices or obedience to his voice? It is better to obey than to sacrifice. ~ Rick Warren,
820:You cannot throw words like heroism and sacrifice and nobility and honor away without abandoning the qualities they express. ~ Marya Mannes,
821:You learned in school that you have pencils and paper only because the trees gave themselves in unconditional sacrifice. ~ Edwidge Danticat,
822:God felt sorry for actors, so he gave them a place in the sun and a lot of money. All they had to sacrifice was their talent. ~ Claude Rains,
823:I had come to realize that you must do what you must for your children, even it if called for the sacrifice of your very soul. ~ Lynn Cullen,
824:In the wilderness, I found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD... And I have made my sacrifice accordingly. ~ Timothy Findley,
825:It was a defeat, resorting to crude threats in a game of subtlety, but sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the war. ~ Mark Lawrence,
826:It was a knife of an idea, a cruel instrument of sacrifice, but also one of great beauty, silvery, curved, dancing with light. ~ Peter Carey,
827:It was a scene from before civilisation, or after it, beyond the apocalypse. A ceremony of victory, or initiation, or sacrifice. ~ Matt Haig,
828:One piece at a time, you are building a legacy. A brand. A reputation. It’s worth a little sacrifice, a little sweat. Isn’t it? ~ Jeff Goins,
829:Our civilization survives in the complacency of cowardly or malignant minds -- a sacrifice to the vanity of aging adolescents ~ Albert Camus,
830:Peace can endure only so long as humanity really insists upon it, and is willing to work for it and sacrifice for it. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt,
831:Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest. ~ Henri Fr d ric Amiel,
832:Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel,
833:Sleep is for the weak! Real A players only need four to five hours! Great accomplishments require great sacrifice! Bull. Shit. ~ Jason Fried,
834:Soldiers who always remain faithful to their nation, who are always prepared to sacrifice their lives, are invincible. ~ Subhas Chandra Bose,
835:To want someone so desperately that you would sacrifice anything, actual human lives, possibly your own soul, to have it. ~ Rachel Van Dyken,
836:Why would a god sacrifice her life if she was God? Just show real power and send an army of angels and there'd be no debate. ~ Peter Tieryas,
837:you are there to meet the needs of others. You are there to serve others. You are there to give. You are there to sacrifice. ~ Thom S Rainer,
838:Being an artist is not easy - I have always said that to the students I have taught over the years. It's a huge sacrifice. ~ Marina Abramovic,
839:Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another - too often ending in the loss of both. ~ Tryon Edwards,
840:Every choice entails giving something up, and the courage required to make that sacrifice depends on how much you want something. ~ Yoav Blum,
841:She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love, not misplace disgust for another person's genetics. ~ Veronica Roth,
842:The extreme self-sacrifice characteristic of group-selected species such as ants and bees can often be found among soldiers. ~ Jonathan Haidt,
843:The most important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. —CHARLES DUBOIS ~ David Simpson,
844:A big sacrifice is coming, and you won't have the courage to make it. That will cost you dearly. It will cost the world dearly. ~ Rick Riordan,
845:Do you know what fascinated him about Christianity? The elaborate rituals of sacrifice and the symbolic re-enactments of violence. ~ Rawi Hage,
846:Dreams do come true, if we only wish hard enough, You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it. ~ James M Barrie,
847:No world exists without sacrifice.
Do we not realize that we call this hell where ash floats upon a sea of blood,
the world ~ Tite Kubo,
848:The law of sacrifice postulates that we need to give in order to receive ... Cosmic Ordering says, receive before you give. ~ Stephen Richards,
849:The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice. ~ Emma Goldman,
850:The world values power, comfort, success, and recognition. Jesus frees us to value grief, sacrifice, weakness, and exclusion. ~ Timothy Keller,
851:To preserve one notion of goodness and righteousness you destroy another. To uphold one principle you sacrifice another. ~ Krishna Udayasankar,
852:We shouldn’t sacrifice our principles to pursue a shrinking pool of voters who look more to the past than the future. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton,
853:Every sacrifice I make is for the good of my Clan—and for the other Clans around the lake. Even if that means sacrificing myself. ~ Erin Hunter,
854:football is like life - it requires perserverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority. ~ Vince Lombardi Jr,
855:If fighting for the legislatures meant a sacrifice of truth and nonviolence, democracy would not be worth a moment's purchase. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
856:I have no sympathy for those who, under any pressure of circumstances, sacrifice their heart's-love for legal prostitution. ~ Harriet Martineau,
857:In this life we get only those things for which we hunt, for which we strive, and for which we are willing to sacrifice. ~ George Matthew Adams,
858:I think that the present is worth attention, one shouldn't sacrifice it to future conceptions of, of this future or that future. ~ Tom Stoppard,
859:Nobody can become more than human if he refuses to make a sacrifice of his ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Nature of the Vital,
860:Our only concern should be to keep the fight [for souls] aggressive and to win victory regardless of cost or sacrifice. ~ Samuel Marinus Zwemer,
861:She had to teach herself not to feel. Refusing to feel hurt also meant she numbed herself to joy, but the sacrifice was worth it. ~ Susan Wiggs,
862:Some people talk about illogical things like love.. But then they can rationally sacrifice their relatives. - Sebastian Michaelis ~ Yana Toboso,
863:Sometimes it feels like life’s about understanding how much opposites meet. Kill to cure, poison to immunize, sacrifice to save. ~ Megan Abbott,
864:The essence of positioning is sacrifice. You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position. Nyquil, ~ Al Ries,
865:The righteous men who eat the residue of the sacrifice are freed from all sin, but the wicked who cook for themselves eat sin. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
866:Those who love their lives too much eventually lose it. While those who are ready to sacrifice their lives for others gain it. ~ Sunday Adelaja,
867:When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. ~ Edmund Burke,
868:When I was an animal I evolved through selfishness. Now that I am a man my evolution can be achieved only through self-sacrifice. ~ Sri Chinmoy,
869:Achan gritted his teeth and recalled Sir Eagan's words. Love was not taking because you wanted, he'd said. Love was sacrifice. ~ Jill Williamson,
870:Behind every story of inspiration is a story of training, practice, discipline, and sacrifice. You must be willing to pay the price, ~ T R Ragan,
871:I could heal him, but he would ruin me. I would make that sacrifice without question, simply because he needed me, and I loved him. ~ Staci Hart,
872:If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice? ~ David Livingstone,
873:Melt down the fat. Cut the cosmetics and coloratura. The classic rule of good journalism: honor the verb, sacrifice the adjective. ~ Elie Wiesel,
874:Nor shall any partake of the benefit of Christ's sacrifice, or feast upon it, who are not first circumcised in heart, Col. 2:11. ~ Matthew Henry,
875:One cannot shape the world without being reshaped in the process. Each gain of power requires its own sacrifice.
   ~ Phil Hine, Condensed Chaos,
876:steps necessary to promote the development and maintenance of expertise almost always entails a sacrifice of speed and productivity. ~ Anonymous,
877:There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn,
878:This girl, when she became a woman, would risk all, sacrifice all, overlook and endure all in order to be one with her beloved. ~ Susan Vreeland,
879:VAMPIRE ACADEMY: Rose- See something you like? Dimitri- Get dressed. LAST SACRIFICE: Rose- See something you like? Dimitri- Lots ~ Richelle Mead,
880:Children are, by their very nature, selfish, and they’re allowed to be. Sacrifice and self-restraint take time to develop and grow. ~ Kate Hewitt,
881:Don't love it so well, Clark, or it may be taken from you. Oh, dear boy, pray that whatever your sacrifice may be, it be not that. ~ Willa Cather,
882:For the courage of self-sacrifice, woman is any time superior to man, as I believe man is to woman for the courage of the brute. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
883:it was a kind of magic, like her little fires; a sacrifice that somehow stilled the dark gods that hunted for his soul. Better ~ Orson Scott Card,
884:Sacrifice is giving away what it hurts to give. Sacrifice is not giving according to your ability; it’s giving beyond your ability. ~ David Platt,
885:Such rulers were adored by the citizens they protected, but often their families had to bear the brunt of sacrifice. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni,
886:The greatest things in life all require commitment, sacrifice, some struggle and hardship. It's not easy. But absolutely worth it. ~ Robin Sharma,
887:There’s only so much you can watch someone sacrifice before you realize they’re changing who they are for you, and not in a good way. ~ Anonymous,
888:We'll organize workers in this movement as long as we're willing to sacrifice. The moment we stop sacrificing, we stop organizing. ~ Cesar Chavez,
889:When a poor man gives something, that is a sacrifice indeed. When a rich man gives something, it hardly rises to the same level. ~ David Baldacci,
890:13[†]Go and learn  i what this means,  j ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For  k I came not to call the righteous,  l but sinners. ~ Anonymous,
891:15 ‡ Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice† of praise—the fruit of lips† that openly profess his name. ~ Anonymous,
892:He probably had a panda to sacrifice or children to terrorize.” Vera snorted. “A panda?” I shrugged. “He’s just that mean.” She ~ Rachel Higginson,
893:If there were more than one path to salvation then it would totally negate Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, his life, his teachings. ~ Josh McDowell,
894:It was in the nature of this sacrifice that it should appear to be pointless in the normal world, the world of material success. ~ Viktor E Frankl,
895:I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
896:Lasting goal achievement requires lots of time, hard work, sacrifice & dedication to a process that is maintained over years. ~ Marshall Goldsmith,
897:Only be with somebody if they make you feel like the best version of yourself. You can't sacrifice yourself for anybody, you know? ~ Ariana Grande,
898:Only through the Sacrifice it is possible for an inferior energy to be transformed into energy of a superior and different type. ~ Samael Aun Weor,
899:Pricing low is shortsighted, because someone else is always willing to sacrifice more profit margin and drive you both bankrupt. ~ Timothy Ferriss,
900:Reforming is about curbing government power. It is a self-imposed revolution; it will require real sacrifice, and it will be painful. ~ Li Keqiang,
901:That crafty kindness which inveigles me to sacrifice principle is the serpent in the grass - deadly to the incautious wayfarer. ~ Charles Spurgeon,
902:The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows. They are polluted off'rings, more abhorred! Than spotted livers in the sacrifice. ~ William Shakespeare,
903:What are you doing this weekend to improve your financial situation? Sacrifice made today goes a long way for a better tomorrow. ~ Robert Kiyosaki,
904:When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? ~ W Somerset Maugham,
905:For the butterfly, mating and propagation involve the sacrifice of life, for the human being, the sacrifice of beauty. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
906:Helmer: But no man would sacrifice his honour for the one he loves.
Nora: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done. ~ Henrik Ibsen,
907:Join a company of young men and women who have made a covenant by sacrifice to turn a nation through united massive fasting and prayer. ~ Lou Engle,
908:Nothing of spiritual significance comes without sacrifice. Your spirituality will always be measured by the size of your sacrifice. ~ Jerry Falwell,
909:Nothing reveals character more than self-sacrifice. So the highest knowledge we have of God is through the gift of His Son. ~ William Torrey Harris,
910:People who like you only for what you can give them are rarely steadfast friends, and not often worth what you sacrifice to keep them. ~ Sarah Fine,
911:Sometimes you must sacrifice yourself on the altar of effort to be reminded of what and who you could become if you applied yourself. ~ Mark Twight,
912:The willing sacrifice of the innocents is the most powerful retort to insolent tyranny that has yet to be conceived by God or man. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
913:Again, during a sacrifice, the augur Spurinna warned Caesar that the danger threatening him would not come later than the Ides of March. ~ Suetonius,
914:a touchy-feely vision of our society that places individual self-expression and rights over self-sacrifice and adult responsibility. ~ Bill O Reilly,
915:Everybody in America has to be part of a shared sacrifice to create opportunity for greatness again for our people and our country. ~ Chris Christie,
916:God's response to the belittlement of his name, from the beginning of time, has been the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on a Roman cross. ~ Matt Chandler,
917:Humility, reverence, compassion, forbearance, sacrifice and self-control are the qualities that reveal the outcome of the true education. ~ Sai Baba,
918:If you resist it a whole month, offer God a sacrifice, because the vice begins to weaken from day one, until it is wiped out altogether. ~ Epictetus,
919:Our people sacrifice a lot for their country, including their lives. None of them should have to sacrifice their integrity as well. ~ Michael Mullen,
920:Pain is frightening when it shows its real face, but it's seductive when it comes disguised as sacrifice or self-denial.Or cowardice. ~ Paulo Coelho,
921:Success depends on how much you are willing to sacrifice, how much you are willing to alter your everyday life for a particular goal. ~ Bela Karolyi,
922:the old ego will always prefer an economy of merit and sacrifice to any economy of grace and unearned love, where we have no control. ~ Richard Rohr,
923:There’s only so much you can watch someone sacrifice before you realize they’re changing who they are for you, and not in a good way. ~ Leisa Rayven,
924:The saints, who are living sacrifices to God, must have salt in themselves, for every sacrifice must be salted with salt (Mark 9:49, ~ Matthew Henry,
925:To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness. ~ Hermann Hesse,
926:We live at the edge of the world, so we live on the edge. Kiwis will always sacrifice money and security for adventure and challenge. ~ Lucy Lawless,
927:We live vicariously through stories, because our own lives provide so few opportunities for high-stakes adventure and noble sacrifice. ~ Sarah Cross,
928:Well, there was a time when we used to sacrifice goats, but then we all became vegans, so we've been sacrificing tofu before the shows! ~ Jared Leto,
929:What seems like sacrifice becomes instead a kind of nourishment because dispensing grace enriches the giver as well as the receiver. ~ Philip Yancey,
930:Without sacrifice, there is no freedom. Without freedom, there is no life. God bless them who give their all for us.” From Dark Rising. ~ Greig Beck,
931:Your parents gave their lives to keep you alive, Harry. A poor way to repay them - gambling their sacrifice for a bag of magic tricks. ~ J K Rowling,
932:Don’t sacrifice yourself too much, because if you sacrifice too much there’s nothing else you can give and nobody will care for you. ~ Karl Lagerfeld,
933:I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail...because he has a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. ~ William Faulkner,
934:It is nonviolent non-co-operation which evokes the highest spirit of self-sacrifice that will wean one from the error of one's ways. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
935:It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration; not the gift, but the giving. ~ John Ruskin,
936:I would sacrifice 1,000 yards rushing to win a Super Bowl. But I want to be the first back to have back-to-back 2,000-yard seasons. ~ Adrian Peterson,
937:Man ordinarily offers his sacrifice openly or under a disguise to his own ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Fullness of Spiritual Action,
938:That is why your sacrifice was all the more difficult. You chose to be a hero not through enchantment but through your own manhood. ~ Lloyd Alexander,
939:The law of sacrifice is uniform throughout the world. To be effective it demands the sacrifice of the bravest and the most spotless. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
940:The moral is simple: when it comes to money, Russians will gladly—gleefully, even—sacrifice their own success to screw their neighbor. ~ Bill Browder,
941:The sacrifice to Legba was completed; the Master of the Crossroads had taken the loas' mysterious routes back to his native Guinea. ~ Jacques Roumain,
942:The work that leads to a doctor's degree is a constant temptation to sacrifice one's growth as a man to one's growth as a specialist. ~ William James,
943:When you are small and weak and poor there are times when your soul seems no big sacrifice to be big and wild and famous and free. But ~ Felix Gilman,
944:Abraham came not to sacrifice, but to know once and for all whether this God was a god to be trusted and obeyed. No other test would do. ~ Dan Simmons,
945:Are you ready to sacrifice to end world hunger? To sacrifice to end colonialism? To end neo-colonialism? To end racism? To end sexism? ~ Assata Shakur,
946:Christ’s sacrifice satisfied the Father’s anger so that, as his child, you will receive his discipline but need not fear his wrath. ~ Paul David Tripp,
947:Hitlerites are blood and soil worshipers, human sacrifice mystics out of the dark forests of Germany before the dawn of civilization. ~ Upton Sinclair,
948:I'm not going to sacrifice love, real love, for any *%@$n' war or any friend, or any business, because in the end you're alone at night. ~ John Lennon,
949:There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
950:. . . as people serve, they grow in capacity. The time and effort is not a sacrifice because there is returned more than is given. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,
951:In recent years we have seen a great deal of bravery and self-sacrifice, but civil courage hardly anywhere, even among ourselves. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
952:In the midst of all the candy and commercialism, let's not lose sight of the true meaning of Halloween: tree worship and animal sacrifice. ~ Dana Gould,
953:My key interest in choosing scripts is character-driven stories, because there are so many stories that sacrifice character for plot. ~ Lasse Hallstrom,
954:Sense of sacrifice is good but only if you’re sacrificing your own life; once you sacrifice another’s life you’ve overstepped the mark. ~ Roger Scruton,
955:The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe,
956:The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement. ~ Christopher Hitchens,
957:These actions can lead to the martyr syndrome, in which people sacrifice their own desires to arouse feelings of pity or guilt in others. ~ Henry Cloud,
958:You get rich because you do things most people will not do. Success requires sacrifice. You must be willing to make those sacrifices. ~ Robert Kiyosaki,
959:Change comes with sacrifice... When you want to make a change you must be prepared to make a sacrifice of escaping the comfort zone! ~ Israelmore Ayivor,
960:entire being, you would do anything for them, suffer through anything, sacrifice and compromise and do whatever possible to make it work. ~ Elle Kennedy,
961:If you already have a person's love no sacrifice can be too much to give for it; but any sacrifice is too great to buy it for you. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
962:I guess the sacrifice of my dignity is the only thing that will save us now. The things I endure for love. The Fates laugh at my torment. ~ Julie Kagawa,
963:In Physicia Baal is still worshiped as Bolus, and as Belly he is adored and served with abundant sacrifice by the priests of Guttledom. ~ Ambrose Bierce,
964:Love should never be viewed as a competition. Love requires compromise and sacrifice. There's no place for ego in a marriage.~pg. 357 ~ Susan Anne Mason,
965:Offer, first, all your actions as a sacrifice to the Highest and the One in you and to the Highest and the One in the world; ~ Sri Aurobindo, (CWSA 19),
966:Sacrifice. The hardest part isn’t giving your life for the cause, it’s knowing what your sacrifice and decisions will do to those you love. ~ A G Riddle,
967:That kind of devotion, that kind of sacrifice, came from a deeply selfless soul. It came from someone who loved hard and loved forever. ~ Dakota Cassidy,
968:That's the thing. Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else. ~ Mitch Albom,
969:The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge. ~ Tony Blair,
970:The church the Bible described is exciting and adventurous and wrought with sacrifice. It cost believers everything, and they still came. ~ Jen Hatmaker,
971:The spirit, alas, is not the same thing as the consciousness and one may lose–sacrifice– the first and still be burdened with the second. ~ Fritz Leiber,
972:The treason of which I stand convicted loses all its guilt, has been sanctified as a duty, and will be ennobled as a sacrifice. ~ Thomas Francis Meagher,
973:To commit suicide is easy. To live without a god is more difficult. The drunkenness of triumph is greater than the drunkenness of sacrifice. ~ Anais Nin,
974:To commit suicide is easy. To live without a god is more difficult. The drunkenness of triumph is greater than the drunkenness of sacrifice. ~ Ana s Nin,
975:Torture at night, human sacrifice in the morning, healthy exercise at noon. What could possibly be on the schedule for the evening? ~ Sarah Rees Brennan,
976:We are telling veterans they must sacrifice to pay for the pet projects and contracts to campaign donors of powerful members of Congress. ~ Nick Lampson,
977:What my mother left unsaid: I’ll keep working, supporting us all, while you try to live your dream. Her sacrifice remained unacknowledged. ~ Jesmyn Ward,
978:Without whining and without making myself a tragic figure, there is no replacement for the loss of your privacy. It's a huge sacrifice. ~ David Duchovny,
979:You'd be forgiven for thinking that climate change means we'll have to sacrifice our creature comforts. But it doesn't have to be that way. ~ Mark Lynas,
980:First John 4:10 says, “This is real love—not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. ~ Joel Osteen,
981:Frankl observed, “In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.” * ~ Gretchen Rubin,
982:If you already have a person's love no sacrifice can be too much to give for it; but any sacrifice is too great to buy it for you. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
983:I'm investigating people who sacrifice trained killers to dark gods.
Perfect, it will keep him occupied.
In what capacity?
Bait. ~ Ilona Andrews,
984:It is very difficult also to sacrifice one's suffering. A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering. ~ G I Gurdjieff,
985:Love is sacrifice. When you're willing to give up the things that mean the most to you just to see someone else happy, that's real love. ~ Colleen Hoover,
986:Note to self,” Blazer said. “On future missions, don’t let the person with all the powerful magical tools sacrifice himself to dragons. ~ Lindsay Buroker,
987:Patriots is quite simple; there's seven continents in the world, if you had to sacrifice one continent and make it six would you do it? ~ Sam Worthington,
988:The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us. we ought, for so dear a stake, to sacrifice every attachment & every enmity. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
989:The time spent on family is not a sacrifice. You are living a life with choices; when you make the right ones, you have a good life. ~ Laura Schlessinger,
990:Your approval before God is woven into the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, not what other men and women think about you. ~ Matt Chandler,
991:A King should sacrifice the best affections of his heart for the good of his country; no sacrifice should be above his determination. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte,
992:A pantheist's god is a passive god, but omnipresent God is Beauty who demands worship, passion, and the sacrifice of a life, for He owns it. ~ Ann Voskamp,
993:As she points out, leaving behind the rush-hour commute, corporate politics, and a relentless BlackBerry that never slept was no sacrifice. ~ Irene Hannon,
994:But repaying a debt
means giving up things.
Making sacrifices.
If I sacrifice my heart
for Jackson,
will I be dead
too? ~ Lisa Schroeder,
995:Christianity and Islam were willing to accept rewards in heaven for their sacrifice,” said Valentine. “Then they were all selfish pigs, ~ Orson Scott Card,
996:I destroyed that doll, hoping the sacrifice would somehow reverse time and bring my father back. I was a mad scientist and an angry child. ~ Walter Mosley,
997:I was determined to achieve the total freedom that our history lessons taught us we were entitled to, no matter what the sacrifice. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter,
998:The day that man forgets that love is identical with sacrifice, he will ask how a God of love could demand mortification and self-denial. ~ Fulton J Sheen,
999:The spiritual path is very, very easy for a man of determination, patience, endurance, self-sacrifice, dispassion and a strong will. ~ Sivananda Saraswati,
1000:02 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour. ~ Anonymous,
1001:How do you become an adult in a society that doesn’t ask for sacrifice? How do you become a man in a world that doesn’t require courage? ~ Sebastian Junger,
1002:People who live in the past sacrifice their lives in vain. The past offers one set of data, but not necessarily the one that matters most. ~ Bruce Kasanoff,
1003:So far as I am concerned I have no doctrinaire belief in free speech. In the interest of the war it is necessary to sacrifice some of it. ~ Walter Lippmann,
1004:The Christian teaching does not offer a choice between fulfillment and sacrifice but rather mutual fulfillment through mutual sacrifice. ~ Timothy J Keller,
1005:There is power within great sacrifice, within noble deeds. There are moments... brief, shining moments when the impossible becomes possible. ~ Kelly Keaton,
1006:To make a real independent film where the filmmaker is in charge creatively, one must sacrifice personal, financial, and physical well-being. ~ Mark Polish,
1007:As it turns out, I'm in need of a healthy female sacrifice. I'd planned on luring her into trusting me first, but if you're ready now... ~ Becca Fitzpatrick,
1008:God always asks for a sacrifice. His hands are bloody with it. Why? I can’t say. I’m not a very smart man. P’raps we brought it on ourselves. ~ Stephen King,
1009:I knew that if the feat was accomplished it must be at a most fearful sacrifice of as brave and gallant soldiers as ever engaged in battle. ~ John Bell Hood,
1010:It breaks my heart when couples focus more on being wed than being married. Two become one doesn't happen without work, humility, and sacrifice. ~ Mark Hart,
1011:It is one of the paradoxes of the Christian life that the more we give, the more we receive; the more we sacrifice, the more God blesses. ~ Warren W Wiersbe,
1012:Obedience is a penance of reason, and, on that account, a sacrifice more acceptable than all corporal penances and mortifications. ~ Saint John of the Cross,
1013:Only the individual can decide what level of risk she can tolerate and what level of freedom she's willing to sacrifice for the sake of safety. ~ Park Dietz,
1014:Self-sacrifice of one innocent man is a million times more potent than the sacrifice of a million men who die in the act of killing others. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
1015:So the question becomes, Daughter of the Dragon, what will you sacrifice? What will you let be taken away so that you, too, can have power? ~ Kiersten White,
1016:The gospel alone liberates you to live a life of scandalous generosity, unrestrained sacrifice, uncommon valor, and unbounded courage. ~ Tullian Tchividjian,
1017:The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality. ~ Florence Nightingale,
1018:Tsze-kung wished to dispense with the sacrifice of a sheep for the New Moon ceremony. The Master said, "You love the sheep; I love the ceremony. ~ Confucius,
1019:When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” —EDMUND BURKE ~ Brad Thor,
1020:A nation that is capable of limitless sacrifice is capable of rising to limitless heights. The purer the sacrifice the quicker the progress. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
1021:A nation will not count the sacrifice it makes, if it supposes it is engaged in a struggle for its fame, its influence and its existence. ~ Benjamin Disraeli,
1022:And that was why she would win in the end. Because she would offer up everything on the altar of sacrifice, so long as she kept her country. ~ Kiersten White,
1023:As much as I loved my band and the life that I was leading, I’d sacrifice it all to make the two people I loved most in the world happy again. ~ Lesley Jones,
1024:but for a man to constantly do good without caring for the approbation of his fellow men is indeed the highest sacrifice man can perform. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
1025:Don't sacrifice your life to work and ideals. The most important things in life are human relations. I found that out too late. ~ Katharine Susannah Prichard,
1026:Even more real than the disaster that has befallen our brothers and sisters must be our own willingness to sacrifice and help with the healing. ~ Debra L Lee,
1027:Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually. ~ Stephen Covey,
1028:I cry, sometimes, because I'm not 20 years younger, and I'm not healthy. But if I were, I would even sacrifice my writing to enter politics. ~ Oriana Fallaci,
1029:If we successful, we will enter into the history of mountaineering, we will have the opportunity to its success to sacrifice our colleagues. ~ Jerzy Kukuczka,
1030:Love and sacrifice are closely linked, like the sun and the light. We cannot love without suffering and we cannot suffer without love. ~ Gianna Beretta Molla,
1031:Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. ~ Mitch Albom,
1032:The birth of information theory came with its ruthless sacrifice of meaning—the very quality that gives information its value and its purpose. ~ James Gleick,
1033:The fact that there are bigger injustices and wrongs doesn't make it right to sacrifice an innocent monkey. It doesn't alter the case at all. ~ Brigid Brophy,
1034:There are moments in the life of every man when the impulse attacks him to sacrifice his future to the alluring gratification of the present. ~ P G Wodehouse,
1035:There is a limit to one's capacity for rows, you know. There comes a time when you're only too ready to sacrifice something for a quiet life. ~ Josephine Tey,
1036:The thing people really hate remembering, even as they celebrate a guy nailed to wood: all Gods demand a sacrifice. They're so fucking hungry. ~ Sarah Langan,
1037:This sacrifice, which saved his life, reminded him again that the evil of this world could be put to rout by the will of a single human being. ~ Andre Makine,
1038:You will come to know that what appears today to be a sacrifice will prove instead to be the greatest investment that you will ever make. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,
1039:Don't they look like ancient island princesses, marked out for sacrifice? Sent away for the sake of the islanders, to be given to the sea? ~ Caroline B Cooney,
1040:How many times would you do it, you think? How many times would you sacrifice yourself for good?”

“Every time,” I answer automatically. ~ Suzanne Young,
1041:I kill a sofa for you and you go and sit in a chair?” Skulduggery asked. “I don’t think you appreciate the sacrifice that has been made for you. ~ Derek Landy,
1042:Its tempting to work more than 60 hours a week and sacrifice sleep, not move, and eat bad foods as they are convenient. But this comes with a cost. ~ Tom Rath,
1043:I would sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina ... but for that peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice sovereignty. ~ Alija Izetbegovic,
1044:Look on the bright side," said Simon, "If they need a human sacrifice, you can always offer me. I'm not sure the rest of you qualify anyway. ~ Cassandra Clare,
1045:Love is a verb. Love – the feeling – is the fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. ~ Stephen Covey,
1046:Marriage is not a simple love affair, it's an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one. ~ Joseph Campbell,
1047:Marriage is not a simple love affair, it’s an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one. ~ Joseph Campbell,
1048:No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn't sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours' writing. Nothing. ~ J K Rowling,
1049:Sacrifice may be a flower that virtue will pluck on its road, but it was not to gather this flower that virtue set forth on its travels. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck,
1050:The Egyptians would sacrifice red-headed men on the tomb of Osiris because red was the colour associated with Set, the Egyptian version of Satan. ~ David Icke,
1051:and I will say to you, rude as it may seem, `My brother, you sacrifice greatly to pride; you may be above others, but above you there is God. ~ Alexandre Dumas,
1052:Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually. ~ Stephen R Covey,
1053:I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion. ~ Mia Hamm,
1054:Make some sacrifice for your art and you will be repaid, but ask of art to sacrifice herself for you and a bitter disappointment may come to you. ~ Oscar Wilde,
1055:The people of Iraq realize that a stable, successful, democratic Iraq can only come about if average Iraqis are willing to sacrifice to build it. ~ John Ensign,
1056:. . . we see the theme of sacrifice or death of the hero as a necessary cure for hybris . . . the pride that has over-reached itself. P. 107 ~ Carl Gustav Jung,
1057:A woman of generous character will sacrifice her life a thousand times over for her lover, but will break with him for ever over a question of pride. ~ Stendhal,
1058:Every moral act of love, of mercy, and of sacrifice brings to pass the end of the world where hatred, cruelty, and selfishness reign supreme. ~ Nikolai Berdyaev,
1059:Most of the time you will fail, but you will also occasionally succeed. Those occasional successes make all the hard work and sacrifice worthwhile. ~ Dean Kamen,
1060:People with passion are people who will destroy - for a man's passion is not true until he proves how much he's willing to sacrifice for it. ~ Brandon Sanderson,
1061:Play interests me very much," said Hermann: "but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous. ~ Alexander Pushkin,
1062:Raising or caring for children requires sacrifice and service, which, I believe, heals us from the destructive forces of self-centeredness. ~ Richard Paul Evans,
1063:Sacrifice by its very nature was arrogant and impersonal; sacrifice should be eternally supercilious. Weep not for me but for thy children. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
1064:There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,
1065:You do not have to sacrifice the integrity of your art for a respectable income. You just need to create a great experience and charge enough. ~ Timothy Ferriss,
1066:A sole thing the Gods
Demand from all men living, sacrifice:
Nor without this shall any crown be grasped. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,
1067:Her mouth was a gash of red, like the torn-open stomach of a sacrifice, bloody and oracular. Behind it her teeth shone sharp and white as bone. ~ Madeline Miller,
1068:How do you become an adult in a society that doesn’t ask for sacrifice? How do you become a man in a world that doesn’t require courage? Those ~ Sebastian Junger,
1069:In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice... No one can live in the light all the time. ~ Libba Bray,
1070:In the morning You hear my voice, O Lord; in the morning I prepare [a prayer, a sacrifice] for You and watch and wait [for You to speak to my heart]. ~ Anonymous,
1071:I think it was clear to all of us what your plan was. To sacrifice yourself in the arena so that Katniss Everdeen and your child could survive. ~ Suzanne Collins,
1072:I tried to think of a vice I want to sacrifice, and ended up reasoning that I need my bad habits, desperately, just to coax myself through each day. ~ Sara Baume,
1073:No one had to order an American to save the oppressed. It’s part of their nature to see others live free, even at the sacrifice of their own lives. ~ Richard Fox,
1074:the number-one thing that you will have to sacrifice to be great, to achieve what you are capable of, and to execute your plans, is your comfort. ~ Brian P Moran,
1075:We can hug our hurts and make a shrine out of our sorrows or we can offer them to God as a sacrifice of praise. The choice is ours. —RICHARD EXLEY ~ Carol J Kent,
1076:When people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,
1077:Wherever and whenever Jesus Christ is proclaimed as our sacrifice for sin and sickness, physical healing as well as spiritual salvation will result. ~ T L Osborn,
1078:A man is never an individual unless he is possessed by a desire so deep that it is deeper than life, so deep that he is ready to sacrifice his life for it. ~ Osho,
1079:And we will cause it to be well-made, this Sacrifice. You, young and never loving; I, old and never loved. Such a Song the Sea will never have seen. ~ Diane Duane,
1080:A person's life story is equal to what they have plus what they want most in the world, minus what they're actually willing to sacrifice for it. ~ Craig Clevenger,
1081:A person’s life story is equal to what they have plus what they want most in the world, minus what they’re actually willing to sacrifice for it. ~ Craig Clevenger,
1082:As for the deaths of the Valkyries—that was a sacrifice they willingly made. Do not dishonor them by feeling guilt. You cannot prevent every death, ~ Rick Riordan,
1083:Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not "given", it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi,
1084:Dying of grief is the ultimate sacrifice, but it is not evolutionarily feasible. If grief were that overwhelming, a species would simply be erased. ~ Jodi Picoult,
1085:Either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
1086:have come to us perhaps only to see whether here he could sacrifice all or only “two roubles,” and in the monastery he met this elder. I must ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
1087:In order to live free and happily,    you must sacrifice       boredom.                    It is not always an easy                       sacrifice ~ Richard Bach,
1088:Nothing of the greater good comes without struggle and sacrifice in equal measure, be you man or woman, and in this way are we freed from tyranny. ~ Kathleen Kent,
1089:Oh, my child, can you not see? You must let go of yourself. For if a seed wishes to live, it must sacrifice itself and grow outward, not inward. ~ Seth Adam Smith,
1090:Political rhetoric alone does not build a nation unless it is backed by the power of sacrifice, toil and virtue. That is true nation-building. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam,
1091:So while God gives the husband a position of leadership in relationship to his wife, He also requires the price of self-sacrifice from him. The ~ Stormie Omartian,
1092:The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed. ~ John Shelby Spong,
1093:Your fatal flaw is personal loyalty, Percy. You do not know when it is time to cut your losses. To save a friend, you would sacrifice the world. In ~ Rick Riordan,
1094:Bear the pain of longing silently, my heart

for this is the cure.

The ultimate sacrifice is to curb your desires

and surrender the ego. ~ Rumi,
1095:Dying is easy. Anyone can throw themselves onto the pyre and rest a happy martyr. Enduring the suffering that comes with sacrifice is the real test. ~ Jay Kristoff,
1096:Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give, And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live! ~ William Wordsworth,
1097:It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice,
Offered by God’s martyred body for the world; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
1098:It is not a sacrifice, it's a choice. If you choose to do something, then you shouldn't say it's a sacrifice, because nobody forced you to do it ~ Aung San Suu Kyi,
1099:Remember that life is neither pain nor pleasure; it is serious business, to be entered upon with courage and in a spirit of self-sacrifice. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville,
1100:She must disappear for a time from the human surface,
And sacrifice everything for this,
To recreate herself from the depths of her world. ~ David Foenkinos,
1101:The older Jo got, the more he understood about the woman called Ma. The more he understood that sometimes staying free required unimaginable sacrifice. ~ Yaa Gyasi,
1102:They opened my mind to realities I didn’t know existed. They forced me to be resilient, to sacrifice, to see how little I knew, and also how much. ~ Cheryl Strayed,
1103:Distance cannot kill this relationship. Time cannot breakdown anything we have. This is a relationship that I am ready to sacrifice and stand up for. ~ Janis Joplin,
1104:either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it... ~ Leo Tolstoy,
1105:I don't think I've ever been personally fulfilled performing. It's kind of a challenging thing; it's more of a sacrifice for the people that I love. ~ Vince Staples,
1106:I think I should be in mourning. Many brain cells were lost in the creation of that orgasm."

Trixie chuckled. "I appreciate their sacrifice. ~ Jocelynn Drake,
1107:I've already had to wait so long." "How long?" Luce asked. "Not so long that I've forgotten that you're worth everything. Every sacrifice. Every pain. ~ Lauren Kate,
1108:Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection admits a sacrifice. ~ Luc de Clapiers,
1109:people are sometimes willing to sacrifice the pleasure they get from a particular consumption experience in order to project a certain image to others. ~ Dan Ariely,
1110:What keeps so many people back is simply unwillingness to pay the price, to make the exertion, the effort to sacrifice their ease and comfort. ~ Orison Swett Marden,
1111:What nobility of feeling! To sacrifice your own pleasure to preserve the comfort of others! It is a thing, I confess, that would never occur to me. ~ Susanna Clarke,
1112:Woman, I hold, is the personification of self-sacrifice, but unfortunately today she does not realise what a tremendous advantage she has over man. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
1113:A human being has many divine qualities. But there has never been another unparalleled divine quality like man's self-sacrifice, nor can there ever be. ~ Sri Chinmoy,
1114:A purely materialistic art would be like a tree which is expected to bear fruit without flowering and to sacrifice grace and beauty for mere utility ~ Haile Selassie,
1115:As governor, when I visited our troops in Kuwait and Iraq, I served them Thanksgiving dinner. It was a small gesture compared to their sacrifice. ~ Jennifer Granholm,
1116:Commitment isn’t measured by our belief itself or the depth of conviction regarding the belief, but by what we’re willing to sacrifice to obtain it, ~ Scott Hildreth,
1117:Deep in the marrow of our religion is the conviction that loss and sacrifice are noble. To surrender something is the highest proof of Christian duty. ~ Ian Caldwell,
1118:Each individual should work for himself. People will not sacrifice themselves for the company. They come to work at the company to enjoy themselves. ~ Soichiro Honda,
1119:Good is never accomplished except at the cost of those who do it, truth never breaks through except through the sacrifice of those who spread it. ~ John Henry Newman,
1120:He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much; he who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly. ~ James Allen,
1121:He who would accomplish little need sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much. He who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly. ~ James Allen,
1122:how she will flourish and grow and blossom into a brilliant young woman with a life full of endless possibilities because of the sacrifice I made. ~ Samantha Christy,
1123:I emphasize that I am full of ambition and hope and of full charm of life. But I can renounce all at the time of need, and that is the real sacrifice. ~ Bhagat Singh,
1124:If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out. ~ Ross Perot,
1125:It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ideal of the Karmayogin,
1126:Let us ask God to make us true in our love, to make us sacrificial beings, for it seems to me that sacrifice is only love put into action. ~ Elizabeth of the Trinity,
1127:People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. ~ David Livingstone,
1128:[S]ince humans find it hard to give up a pleasure already experienced, such a sacrifice might come easier if another pleasure was offered in replacement. ~ Peter Gay,
1129:The raising of wages excites in the worker the capitalist's mania to get rich, which he, however, can only satisfy by the sacrifice of his mind and body. ~ Karl Marx,
1130:As we give, so shall we receive. Service does not mean self-sacrifice. It means giving the needs of another person the same priority as our own. ~ Marianne Williamson,
1131:Courage, sacrifice, determination, commitment, toughness, heart, talent, guts. That's what little girls are made of; the heck with sugar and spice. ~ Bethany Hamilton,
1132:I have enormous respect for anyone who would offer to sacrifice their life to defend my right to live. Is there any greater gift one can give another? ~ Michael Moore,
1133:Life is a game...play it.
Life is a challenge...meet it.
Life is a dream...realize it.
Life is a sacrifice...offer it.
Life is love...enjoy it. ~ Sai Baba,
1134:Loyalty and devotion lead to bravery. Bravery leads to the spirit of self-sacrifice. The spirit of self-sacrifice creates trust in the power of love ~ Morihei Ueshiba,
1135:So sacrifice some of your darlings for the greater good. Cut your ambition in half. You’re better off with a kick-ass half than a half-assed whole. Most ~ Jason Fried,
1136:The republic stands for truth and honour. For all that is noblest in our race. By truth and honour, principle and sacrifice alone will Ireland be free. ~ Liam Mellows,
1137:The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.' 'What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow. 'Their time, mostly,' said Lucy. 'Sometimes each other. ~ Neil Gaiman,
1138:This gift cannot be worked for, earned, or achieved. It’s not dependent on our merit or effort but solely on Christ’s generous sacrifice on our behalf. ~ Randy Alcorn,
1139:Whatever your goal is: dedicate yourself to it and it's going to be a lot of sacrifice, but if you love what you want to do, it shouldn't be a problem. ~ Derrick Rose,
1140:would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much; he who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly. VISIONS ~ James Allen,
1141:Loyalty and devotion lead to bravery. Bravery leads to the spirit of self-sacrifice. The spirit of self-sacrifice creates trust in the power of love. ~ Morihei Ueshiba,
1142:My whole strength lies in prayer and sacrifice, these are my invincible arms; they can move hearts far better than words, I know it by experience. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux,
1143:My whole strength lies in prayer and sacrifice, these are my invincible arms; they can move hearts far better than words, I know it by experience. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux,
1144:Play on, when you're losing the game. Play on, cuz you're going to make mistakes. It's always worth the sacrifice, even when you think you're wrong. ~ Carrie Underwood,
1145:Take here the grand secret; if not of pleasing all, yet of displeasing none, and court mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater,
1146:We must make humility the chief thing we admire in Him, the chief thing we ask of Him, and the one thing for which we sacrifice all else. (See Note B.) ~ Andrew Murray,
1147:Life is a song-sing it. Life is a game-play it. Life is a challenge-meet it. Life is a dream-realize it. Life is a sacrifice-offer it. Life is love-enjoy it. ~ Sai Baba,
1148:Once your faith persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares absurd, beware, lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life. ~ Voltaire,
1149:Passion is not what gives you bliss or makes you happy 24/7, but what you're willing to suffer for, what you genuinely believe to be worth the sacrifice. ~ Justine Musk,
1150:Sacrifice is a state of mind in which our thoughts turn with longing [toward Heaven, the Ancestors], It is the supreme expression of loyalty, love, and respect. ~ Xunzi,
1151:When you love someone completely, you'll do anything to protect them, even if you sacrifice your soul. Because if you don't, you destroy your soul anyway. ~ Joey W Hill,
1152:Where do you learn how to act? Not at church. America is a lot more like pagan Rome than we think. We still sacrifice to objects to gain our social goals. ~ Dave Hickey,
1153:With courage and character, American soldiers continue to put themselves on the line to defend our freedom, and so many have paid the ultimate sacrifice. ~ Dan Lipinski,
1154:Be willing for purpose; it pays huge returns on investment. And along the journey, those who dis your willing sacrifice(s) will ponder their own foolishness. ~ T F Hodge,
1155:Children were meant to be gifts. The physical manifestation of love between a man and a woman. And for that love all manner of sacrifice could be borne. ~ Steven Erikson,
1156:Freedom has always been an expensive thing. History is fit testimony to the fact that freedom is rarely gained without sacrifice and self-denial. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,
1157:Here again, there is no tabulation; for us it is left to sacrifice literary charm, and even some accuracy, in order to bring out the one great point. ~ Aleister Crowley,
1158:Love should never be viewed as a competition. Love requires compromise and sacrifice. There's no place for ego in a marriage.~ Susan Anne Masonpg. 357 ~ Susan Anne Mason,
1159:Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,
1160:Relationships are hard regardless! But I think they feed the artist: relationships, children, life, family - it all feeds the artist. Loss. Joy. Sacrifice. ~ Kathy Baker,
1161:Sentimentality is a basking in feelings that in reality you don't take seriously enough to make the slightest sacrifice to or ever translate into action. ~ Hermann Hesse,
1162:The birth of information theory came with its ruthless sacrifice of meaning—the very quality that gives information its value and its purpose. Introducing ~ James Gleick,
1163:the image of those widmestern storms that rip up the world as you know it, and leave, like a sacrifice, a rainbow to make you forget what has come before. ~ Jodi Picoult,
1164:The word worship is defined by glory and thanksgiving. We are worshiping when we give glory to something. Whatever we give glory to, we sacrifice for. ~ Jefferson Bethke,
1165:This is about your survival. Survival means you continue no matter the cost, no matter the sacrifice. So stop wasting breath, get back on your feet, and move. ~ J R Ward,
1166:True love grows by sacrifice and the more thoroughly the soul rejects natural satisfaction the stronger and more detached its tenderness becomes. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila,
1167:When service members are discharged, we should express our gratitude for their profound personal sacrifice, not hand them a bill for their hospital food. ~ Barbara Boxer,
1168:When the industrial colonialists and the politicians agree to sacrifice a region to a single economic goal, they inevitably sacrifice the people as well. ~ Wendell Berry,
1169:You have got to want to be the best before you can even begin to reach for that goal, and you have got to be prepared to sacrifice a lot to get there. ~ Billie Jean King,
1170:You might have Bible verses on the wall in every room of the house and yet the unspoken rituals reinforce self-centeredness rather than sacrifice. Thus ~ James K A Smith,
1171:...Age gave her the peace, at least, to live inside that moment like a poet - to not sacrifice the beauty to the anxiety of What Next, but to just observe. ~ Shannon Hale,
1172:A job is a sacrifice. Following an interest - that's a contribution. And we're here on the planet, not to sacrifice ourselves, but to make a contribution. ~ Robert Holden,
1173:And it rained a fever. And it rained a silence. And it rained a sacrifice. And it rained a miracle. And it rained sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem. ~ Tom Robbins,
1174:As is typically the case in large-batch development, both groups had been willing to sacrifice the team’s ability to learn in order to work more “efficiently. ~ Eric Ries,
1175:Children were meant to be gifts. The physical manifestation of love between a man and a woman. And for that love, all manner of sacrifice could be borne. ~ Steven Erikson,
1176:Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. We sacrifice conversation for mere connection. ~ Sherry Turkle,
1177:If you don't believe God has forgiven you, you are actually saying that God needs to do more for your forgiveness, and that Jesus' sacrifice was not enough. ~ Jud Wilhite,
1178:It's a hard concept for me to wrap my head around to completely sacrifice any sort of love in your life, to never experience that on a personal level. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio,
1179:I've already had to wait so long."
"How long?" Luce asked.
"Not so long that I've forgotten that you're worth everything. Every sacrifice. Every pain. ~ Lauren Kate,
1180:The loneliness of Prometheus on the rock or of Christ on the cross is the sacrifice they have to endure for having brought fire and redemption to mankind. ~ Erich Neumann,
1181:To be ruthless requires belief that our life on earth is but a brief prelude to an afterlife, or a temporary sacrifice before some utopia can be instituted. ~ Eric Hoffer,
1182:When survival is touted as an aspiration, sacrifice becomes a virtue. But a hero is not a person who suffers. A suffering person is a person who suffers. ~ Sarah Kendzior,
1183:You can't predict how much time you will get to embrace your opportunity. You have to go after it with everything you have in you, sacrifice and believe. ~ DeeDee Trotter,
1184:For the world to become a better place, someone has to pay a price, I think it's glorious to sacrifice for the sake of social progress and fighting injustice. ~ Xu Zhiyong,
1185:God can't force his children to become like him. It's something they have to want, a blessing they have to fight for and be willing to sacrifice to attain. ~ Chris Stewart,
1186:Good is never accomplished except at the cost of those who do it, truth never breaks through except through the sacrifice of those who spread it. ~ Saint John Henry Newman,
1187:Hours of crisis often call for sacrifice. In matters of consequence, when have doubt and fear given the best advice? Why not heed faith, courage, and honor? ~ Brandon Mull,
1188:I didn’t like general surgery and I wanted to get out. I disliked general surgery so much I was willing to sacrifice trying for a position in the neurosurgery ~ Ben Carson,
1189:If we sacrifice everything for a cause, we tend to become a spokesperson instead of a lover, an organizer instead of a wife, a mouthpiece instead of a mother. ~ Amy Harmon,
1190:Love is the crazy, mad, and perhaps ridiculous gesture of saying yes to life, of seeing it as worthy of our embrace and even worthy of our total sacrifice. ~ Peter Rollins,
1191:The genius of most men lay in finding reasons after their actions. The heart was ever self-serving, especially when the beliefs served involved sacrifice. ~ R Scott Bakker,
1192:There are great disciplines from being a sportsman that you can transfer into being an artist. The preparation, the sacrifice, the constant desire to improve. ~ Matt Smith,
1193:There is no place for selfishness-and no place for fear! Do not be afraid, then, when love makes demands. Do not be afraid when love requires sacrifice ~ Pope John Paul II,
1194:VAMPIRE ACADEMY:

Rose- See something you like?
Dimitri- Get dressed.

LAST SACRIFICE:

Rose- See something you like?
Dimitri- Lots ~ Richelle Mead,
1195:All the functions of the Temple – festival, presence, priesthood, and now sacrifice – have devolved onto Jesus. This is the heart of John’s ‘high Christology’. ~ Tom Wright,
1196:Human sacrifice is much in vogue right now. The Republican right thinks that people who get on its nerves, especially women, should be sent to the stake. . . ~ Mary McGrory,
1197:Love isn't found in words, Kate. It's found in quiet moments, a look, a sigh, a smile, a gladness." She sighed. "And very often, it's shown with sacrifice. ~ Lorraine Heath,
1198:Sacrifice! That is what it means to be alive. To really love, you must be a part of something greater than yourself. Do for other s before you do for yourself. ~ Elle Casey,
1199:Then she fell into that rapture of self-sacrifice, identifying herself with a God who was sacrificed, which gives to so many human souls their deepest bliss. ~ D H Lawrence,
1200:The recklessness with which we sacrifice our sense of decency to maximize profit in the factory farming process sets a pattern for cruelty to our own kind. ~ Jonathan Kozol,
1201:The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.'
'What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow.
'Their time, mostly,' said Lucy. 'Sometimes each other. ~ Neil Gaiman,
1202:The ultimate test of a man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard. ~ Gaylord Nelson,
1203:Throughout the history of our young nation, we have seen our military go bravely into battle, armed with courage and willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. ~ John M McHugh,
1204:When God becomes a Man and lives as a creature among His own creatures in Palestine, then indeed His life is one of supreme self-sacrifice and leads to Calvary. ~ C S Lewis,
1205:A man's life is worth much more than any sacrifice, no matter how great. For the greatest, the most just, the noblest cause on earth is the right to live... ~ Yasmina Khadra,
1206:But not in this world: things wore out, and you lost them in a thousand ways, preposterous and unconnected with any notion of devotion, martyrdom, sacrifice ~ William Gaddis,
1207:He saw himself and his fathers crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days.. ~ Chinua Achebe,
1208:He who strays from tradition becomes a
sacrifice to the extraordinary; he who remains in tradition is its
slave. Destruction follows in any case. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1209:He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much; he who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly. VISIONS ~ James Allen,
1210:... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but itcan not do without that life. ~ Emma Goldman,
1211:I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either. ~ Edmund Burke,
1212:My whole strength lies in prayer and sacrifice, these are my invincible arms; they can move hearts far better than words, I know it by experience. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux,
1213:Nobility and self-sacrifice sound wonderful in theory, but now he’s seen how it feels. A dead hero is still dead at the end of the day, and you’re still alone. ~ Ann Aguirre,
1214:Not all were joyful tales; we needed to acknowledge that love was not just kisses, smiles, and fulfillment, but also sacrifice, compromise, and hard work. ~ Juliet Marillier,
1215:Nothing doing. I've no doubt you think I should look noble as a sacrifice. But I've never wanted to look noble, and I won't be made to. -- Neville Fletcher ~ Georgette Heyer,
1216:The enemies of the country and of freedom of the people have always denounced as bandits those who sacrifice themselves for the noble causes of the people. ~ Emiliano Zapata,
1217:The real joy of writing lies in the opportunity of being able to sacrifice a whole chapter for a single sentence, a complete sentence for a single word... ~ Jean Baudrillard,
1218:This is a truth: when you sacrifice your life, you must make fullest use of your weaponry. It is false not to do so, and to die with a weapon yet undrawn. ~ Miyamoto Musashi,
1219:All events of wealth are precluded by process, a backstory of trial, risk, hard work, and sacrifice. If you try to skip process, you’ll never experience events. ~ M J DeMarco,
1220:And somewhere in between then and now irony slipped its way into my vocabulary. Laughter became the antidote for guilt. Sacrifice grew to be a Band-Aid for shame. ~ Sarah Kay,
1221:Art, not unlike raising children... may entail much sacrifice and periods of despair, but, with luck, the effort will produce something that outlives you. ~ Michael Kimmelman,
1222:Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense, and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth ~ Eric Hoffer,
1223:Every day another miracle
Only death will tear us apart
To sacrifice a life for yours
I'd be the blood of the Lazarus heart
The blood of the Lazarus heart ~ Sting,
1224:If Holy Thursday, moreover, is what transforms Good Friday from an execution to a sacrifice, then Easter Sunday is what transforms the sacrifice into a sacrament: ~ Anonymous,
1225:No one has ever been willing to sacrifice themselves for me.” “Elle.” The tone of Severin’s voice dragged Elle eyes up so they met his. “I will always protect you. ~ K M Shea,
1226:Retreat itself is often a plan of resistance and may be a precursor of great bravery and sacrifice. Every retreat is not cowardice which implies fear to die. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
1227:This is truth: When you sacrifice your life, you must make fullest use of your weaponry. It is false not to do so, and to die with a weapon as yet undrawn. ~ Miyamoto Musashi,
1228:A college degree is the key to realizing the American dream, well worth the financial sacrifice because it is supposed to open the door to a world of opportunity. ~ Dan Rather,
1229:Alec wondered what would happen if he made a sacrifice to the dark demon gods of this world in exchange for not being constantly reminded that he was single. ~ Cassandra Clare,
1230:And you seen enough horror movies to know the black dude don’t ever make it to the end.” “We all appreciate your sacrifice, TJ.” “Fuck you.” He laughed. So did I. ~ David Wong,
1231:If we love someone very much, we know that even if we give him the most valuable thing we have, we know not to expect harm from him. This is what a sacrifice is. ~ Orhan Pamuk,
1232:Sometimes you have to sacrifice because you see what the end goal is. When you have a dream and you want to get it done, you can't wait on other people. ~ Reagan Gomez Preston,
1233:The call of Christ is a call to live a life of sacrifice and loss and suffering--a life that would be foolish to live if there were no resurrection from the dead. ~ John Piper,
1234:The charge of the Light Brigade was forever memorialized as a moment of glorious sacrifice, as needless slaughters ordered by shortsighted generals so often are. ~ Julia Baird,
1235:There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are obedience, endeavour, honesty, order, cleanliness, sobriety, truthfulness, sacrifice, and love of the fatherland. ~ Adolf Hitler,
1236:Acts of sacrifice and decency without regard to what's in it for you create a ripple effect. Ones that lift up families and communities, that spread opportunity. ~ Barack Obama,
1237:Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don’t ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul. ~ Ayn Rand,
1238: Carley saw two forces in life--the destructive and constructive. On the one side greed, selfishness, materialism: on the other generosity, sacrifice, and idealism. ~ Zane Grey,
1239:I should not have cared to see it as an act of self-sacrifice even if it had been one; for there is nothing clever in self-sacrifice, nothing to pride oneself on. ~ L P Hartley,
1240:People readily demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice their safety and survival for the sake of something beyond themselves, such as family, country, or justice. ~ Atul Gawande,
1241:The test of the submissive mind is not just how much we are willing to take in terms of suffering, but how much we are willing to give in terms of sacrifice. ~ Warren W Wiersbe,
1242:Usually greatness is achieved alone and takes an incredible sacrifice. Those who achieve greatness lose much in the process, which is why few actually obtain it. ~ Sarah Noffke,
1243:When we consider the promises of Christ, risking everything we are and everything we have for His sake is no longer a matter of sacrifice. It's just common sense. ~ David Platt,
1244:You didn't get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. ~ Mitch Albom,
1245:Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it. ~ Edward Snowden,
1246:Democratism and its allied herd movements, while remaining loyal to the principle of equality and identity, will never hesitate to sacrifice liberty. ~ Erik von Kuehnelt Leddihn,
1247:I believe the prayers of 30 years ago are not lost. We may not see the results of our labour or sacrifice immediately, but in due time they will produce much fruit. ~ T B Joshua,
1248:I don’t want to die, Arlen, but I would lay down my life for any of these men, or they for me. That’s a real thing, sacrifice, but you will never understand it. ~ Erika Johansen,
1249:My family's great and everybody's happy and healthy and my career is good. But personally, I had to sacrifice a lot in my own personal life. And I regret that. ~ Darren Shahlavi,
1250:Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days. ~ Nelson Mandela,
1251:self-sacrifice is one of a woman's seven deadly sins (along with self-abuse, self-loathing, self-deception, self-pity, self-serving, and self-immolation). ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach,
1252:Students of cunning have consumed their hearts and learned only tricks; they've thrown away real riches: patience, self-sacrifice, generosity. Rich thought opens the way. ~ Rumi,
1253:Take an act of magnanimity that is difficult, quiet, muted, without splendour, where you’re slandered, where there’s much sacrifice and not a drop of glory. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
1254:The biggest hindrance to the missionary task is self. Self that refuses to die. Self that refuses to sacrifice. Self that refuses to give. Self that refuses to go. ~ Thomas Hale,
1255:The sacrifice of selfish privacy which is daily demanded of us is daily repaid a hundredfold in the true growth of personality which the life of the Body encourages. ~ C S Lewis,
1256:Traveling is the great true love of my life...I have always felt that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love of travel. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
1257:You can deny any sacrifice by claiming that it made the sufferer feel so good to do it that it really wasn’t a sacrifice at all, but just another selfish act. ~ Orson Scott Card,
1258:And I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all; the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions. ~ Orson Scott Card,
1259:It is not tolerable, it is not possible, that from so much death, so much sacrifice and ruin, so much heroism, a greater and better humanity shall not emerge. ~ Charles de Gaulle,
1260:It's a special club. It's got history. When I slip on the Manchester United shirt, it's like I'm wearing its past. So you have to sacrifice yourself for this club. ~ Patrice Evra,
1261:Love says: I've seen the ugly parts of you, and I'm staying. Our culture doesn't love love; It loves the idea of love. It wants the emotion without the sacrifice. ~ Matt Chandler,
1262:My generation is the most fatherless and insecure generation that’s ever lived, and we are willing to sacrifice everything if we just can be told we are loved. ~ Jefferson Bethke,
1263:Only the Divine will matter, the Divine alone will be the one need of the whole being; ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 146, [T5], #index,
1264:Sacrifice is the first element of religion, and resolves itself in theological language into the love of God. ~ James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects. Sea Studies,
1265:The vicious character of sin is brought out by the words "who gave himself for our sins." So vicious is sin that only the sacrifice of Christ could atone for sin. ~ Martin Luther,
1266:They may brag about the nights they won, the money they took from the casino, but they treasure, secretly treasure, the times they lost. It’s a sacrifice, of sorts. ~ Neil Gaiman,
1267:we have already received the most treasured gift, the most amazing sacrifice of all. What God gave, His most prized possession—the most prized possession—His Son. ~ Renee Andrews,
1268:You know what makes me feel down? The way you keep promising to live some kind of a life, then sacrifice yourself to every waif and stray who comes across your path. ~ Jojo Moyes,
1269:Certain things need not be said, and there’s nothing, not a whisper, prayer, not a sacrifice, not a payment of any price, that would change what’s about to happen. ~ Alice Hoffman,
1270:For the born traveller, travelling is a besetting vice. Like other vices, it is imperious, demanding its victim's time, money, energy and the sacrifice of comfort. ~ Aldous Huxley,
1271:I'm a workaholic because I don't want to not work. When you come from basically nothing and you have so much good things happening for you sometimes you have to sacrifice. ~ Nelly,
1272:It is at times like this that I have the sense… the slightest sense… of what a sacrifice it must have been for the Son of God to condescend to become the Son of Man. ~ Dan Simmons,
1273:Not in purity or in holiness merely, for in Paradise man was holy, and he shall be holy when redeemed through the sacrifice of Christ and made an heir of heaven. ~ Matthew Simpson,
1274:One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying. ~ Joan of Arc,
1275:She was in breach of that feminine law that states that no weakness may be shown by a woman to another woman without a sacrifice of equal value being made in return. ~ Zadie Smith,
1276:That freedom can never be attained by a nation without suffering and sacrifice has been amply borne out by the recent tragic happenings in this subcontinent. ~ Muhammad Ali Jinnah,
1277:Virtue became less the harsh and martial self-sacrifice of antiquity and more the modern willingness to get along with others for the sake of peace and prosperity. ~ Gordon S Wood,
1278:We compromise too easily when life becomes difficult. Most sacrifice individuality and integrity without a fight, although arrogance prevents seeing this truth. ~ Brendon Burchard,
1279:We now come to the grand law of the system in which we are placed, as it has been developed by the experience of our race, and that, in one word, is SACRIFICE! ~ Catharine Beecher,
1280:All art is, indeed, a monotony in external things for the sake of an interior variety, a sacrifice of gross effects to subtle effects, an asceticism of the imagination. ~ W B Yeats,
1281:Annoyance has an unfortunate effect on one’s literary style; phrases like “work my fingers to the bone” and “sacrifice my own inclinations to the needs of others ~ Elizabeth Peters,
1282:A sacrifice ever remembered.
Never forgotten.
Another day we live.
A sacrifice for you. Only for you.
And so shall it be,
For evermore.
Paviamma ~ Mary E Pearson,
1283:A true dreamer must be prepared to make any sacrifice for his dream. Even if it means sacrificing himself. The dream must be everything. (The Cardinal to Capac Raimi) ~ Darren Shan,
1284:Everybody in America is going to have to sacrifice to help us rebuild the Gulf Coast. Every government program, every individual, we are all going to have to sacrifice ~ Tom Coburn,
1285:How should an autonomous vehicle’s algorithm weigh the life of its owner? Should your self-driving car sacrifice your own life to save the lives of three other people? ~ Kai Fu Lee,
1286:I do not appeal to you to screw up your courage and sacrifice for Christ. I appeal to you to renounce all you have to obtain life that satisfies your deepest longings. ~ John Piper,
1287:I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity. ~ Oscar Wilde,
1288:In some cases, in order to protect global issues some sacrifice for national interest is worth it in the long run. Global warming, these things, they suffer everybody. ~ Dalai Lama,
1289:In the best stories, the heroes always give their lives, for honour, duty, sacrifice and the glory of the empire. Anything less and it is not much of a story at all. ~ Julie Kagawa,
1290:Life is a song - sing it. Life is a game - play it. Life is a challenge - meet it. Life is a dream - realize it. Life is a sacrifice - offer it. Life is love - enjoy it. ~ Sai Baba,
1291:Perhaps the most defining characteristic of a superhero is a willingness to sacrifice for the good of others, even to the point of laying down his or her own life. ~ Rachel Hawkins,
1292:Prosperity or egalitarianism -- you have to choose. I favor freedom -- you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa,
1293:The same is true of the rich and the lazy. If they do not work but rely on the labor of others, they cannot be good either, no matter how much they pray or sacrifice. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
1294:A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn't really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it. ~ Terry Pratchett,
1295:Him…. If we love someone very much, we know that even if we give him the most valuable thing we have, we know not to expect harm from him. This is what a sacrifice is. ~ Orhan Pamuk,
1296:I am afraid of people with too much charm. They devour you. In the end you are made a sacrifice to the exercise of their fascinating gift and their insincerity. ~ W Somerset Maugham,
1297:If ever there was a cause, if ever there can be a cause, worthy to be upheld by all of toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of Education. ~ Horace Mann,
1298:Jesus offered Himself as the perfect, final sacrifice for sin (Heb. 10:1–18). Therefore, we must not try to atone for our sins, but rest only in the sacrifice of Christ. ~ Anonymous,
1299:Life is a song-sing it
Life is a game-play it
Life is a challenge-meet it
Life is a dream-realize it
Life is a sacrifice-offer it
Life is love-enjoy it... ~ Sai Baba,
1300:Love is a verb. Love – the feeling – is the fruit of love the verb or our loving actions. So love her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. ~ Stephen R Covey,
1301:Love required more than platitudes, nice words, and sex. It required compromise. Sacrifice. Everyday sharing. Making decisions that benefited both people, not just one. ~ Jamie Beck,
1302:The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge,
1303:We take a fancy to something: and scarcely have we thoroughly taken a fancy to it when that tyrant in us calls out: "Give me thatin sacrifice"--and we give it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1304:When test scores go up, we should worry, because of how poor a measure they are of what matters, and what you typically sacrifice in a desperate effort to raise scores. ~ Alfie Kohn,
1305:Why does it always have to be that way? Why do good men always have to sacrifice themselves for others?

Because they believe that the rest of us are worth it. ~ Siri Mitchell,
1306:You’re different,” he said, touching my face.
Of course I was. The man I loved had killed for me. A lot of things became inconsequential after a sacrifice like that. ~ Sylvia Day,
1307:All testify to the coercion and sacrifice which culture imposes on man. To rely on them and deny the decline is to become even more firmly caught in its fatal coils. ~ Theodor Adorno,
1308:Entrepreneurs must love what they do to such a degree that doing it is worth sacrifice and, at times, pain. But doing anything else, we think, would be unimaginable. ~ Howard Schultz,
1309:I think I work hard. I think I dedicate myself to the game and sacrifice a lot of things at a young age, and I know if I continue to do good, what I can get out of it. ~ Derrick Rose,
1310:It is easy to imagine situations where we sacrifice both freedom and safety at the same time: when we enter an abusive relationship or vote for a fascist. Similarly, ~ Timothy Snyder,
1311:It is treason to sacrifice love of truth, intellectual honesty, loyalty to the laws and methods of the mind, to any other interests, including those of one's country. ~ Hermann Hesse,
1312:Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't the will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never cease to exist. ~ Orson Scott Card,
1313:No man wants to marry, Finnula. There are just some women they can’t have any other way, and so it is a sacrifice willingly made in order to attain a particularly choice— ~ Meg Cabot,
1314:Sometimes love was not about winning, but about wise sacrifice and the realiability of friends like Arianne. Friendship, Roland realized, was its very own kind of love. ~ Lauren Kate,
1315:The idea that I hear from the right wing in the last few decades, is that any sort of sacrifice is an affront to my liberty as an American to be a pig the way I want to. ~ Bill Maher,
1316:What? How is dying not the ultimate sacrifice?”
Ian gave a small sadistic smile. “Oh, that’s no sacrifice at all. Leaving this world is usually a relief, I believe. ~ Sarah Noffke,
1317:What nobility of feeling!” he cried. “To sacrifice your own pleasure to preserve the comfort of others! Well, it is a thing, I confess, that would never occur to me. ~ Susanna Clarke,
1318:And so she cut out her heart and offered it as a sacrifice. She would pay whatever price her mother Wallachia demanded.
“Make me prince,” she said without feeling. ~ Kiersten White,
1319:As climbers, we need to sacrifice our comfort, our safety, and arguably our sanity, as a tithe to the mountain...We need the mountains but the mountains do not need us. ~ Lincoln Hall,
1320:Because there’s no such thing as a meaningless sacrifice, Mr. Hill. Because any positive act, no matter how hopeless or insignificant, is ultimately worthwhile. ~ Michael Jan Friedman,
1321:I love something: and scarcely do I love it completely when the tyrant in me says: "I want that in sacrifice." This cruelty is in my entrails. Behold! I am evil. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1322:Life is a song - sing it. Life is a game - play it. Life is a challenge - meet it. Life is a dream - realize it. Life is a sacrifice - offer it. Life is love - enjoy it " . ~ Sai Baba,
1323:Men, not children or servants, tempered and taught to the end; Cleansed of servile panic, slow to dread or despise, Humble because of knowledge, mighty by sacrifice. ~ Rudyard Kipling,
1324:Not all of us are called to die a martyr’s death, but all of us are called to have the same spirit of self-sacrifice and love to the very end as these martyrs had. ~ Richard Wurmbrand,
1325:There is no place less communal in America—no place less cooperative and brotherly, no place with fewer feelings of shared sacrifice—than a rush-hour freeway in Chicago. ~ Nathan Hill,
1326:There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand. I love a broad margin to my life. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
1327:We would willingly, and without remorse, sacrifice not only the present moment, but all the interval (no matter how long) that separates us from any favorite object. ~ William Hazlitt,
1328:Where else, in a non-totalitarian country, but in the political profession is the individual expected to sacrifice all-including his own career-for the national good? ~ John F Kennedy,
1329:You who build these altars now to sacrifice these children , you must not do it anymore. A scheme is not a vision and you never have been tempted by a demon or a god . ~ Leonard Cohen,
1330:An “idealist” was a man who lived for his idea—hence he could not be a businessman—and who was prepared to sacrifice for his idea everything and, especially, everybody. ~ Hannah Arendt,
1331:A sacrifice is not about expecting God to break the bond you have with another person. You make the sacrifice on your own because God is more important than the bond. ~ Shannon L Alder,
1332:But here I was, a demon on vacation, attempting the ultimate sacrifice by giving up my powers and becoming human—and so a beer was just the thing for Dipsophobic Dexter. ~ Jeff Lindsay,
1333:He's thought he was willing to do anything in order to get what he wanted, what was right for his kind. He'd been certain any sacrifice was possible.
He'd been wrong. ~ Linda Howard,
1334:I believe that we are called upon to do things in this life that we would not do in an ideal life. I believe that to reach that ideal, one must be prepared to sacrifice. ~ Jodi Daynard,
1335:If I could I would nail these hands to the edges of stars. I would sacrifice this body to the sky hoping to resurrect as someone spiteful enough to not care about you. ~ Rudy Francisco,
1336:images of sacrifice and piety lined the walls. The ceiling extended high until its surfaces became like the mysteriousness of fog in night’s blackness. Small, ~ M Amanuensis Sharkchild,
1337:There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
1338:This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love. ~ Peter Kreeft,
1339:This pain to remain the same outweigh the pain to change... When you get tired enough is when you begin to want to sacrifice everything inside of you—the fear just leaves ~ Erykah Badu,
1340:You love the word love but you don’t really love and you don’t want to love because love, which is really sacrifice, would prevent you from doing what you want to do. ~ Donna Lynn Hope,
1341:Americans today confuse freedom with not being asked to sacrifice. The fact that you can't have everything you want exactly when you want it has somehow become un-American. ~ Bill Maher,
1342:But what do you want to sacrifice us for?” asked Twoflower. “You hardly know us!” “That’s rather the point, isn’t it? It’s not very good manners to sacrifice a friend. ~ Terry Pratchett,
1343:Democracy, as I understand it, requires me to sacrifice myself for the masses, not to them. Who knows not that if you would save the people, you must often oppose them? ~ John C Calhoun,
1344:However much their systems of philosophy and religion may differ, all mankind stand in reverence and awe before the man who is ready to sacrifice himself for others. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
1345:I’d always known the power balance between us was weighted in Anna’s favor. She had more to sacrifice by being involved with me. I had everything to gain by being with her. ~ Bonnie Dee,
1346:If we citizens do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the alter of crude reality, and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams. ~ Yann Martel,
1347:If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination o the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams. ~ Yann Martel,
1348:If we, citizens do not support our artists, then we sacrifice out imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams. ~ Yann Martel,
1349:I'm not a little woman you need to defend.'
His face hardened. 'That's exactly what you are: you're my little woman and I'm not having you sacrifice yourself for me. ~ Joss Stirling,
1350:It may not seem much when compared to your mortal's gallantry. But for me - self-seeking, arrogant prig that i am - that is the sincerest form of sacrifice. Letting you go. ~ A G Howard,
1351:Most critics, fond of subservient art
still make the whole depend upon a part.
They talk of principles, but notions prize
And all to one loved folly sacrifice. ~ Alexander Pope,
1352:Oh yeah, I mean every fighter has got be dedicated, learn how to sacrifice, know what the devotion is all about, make sure you're paying attention and studying your art. ~ Marvin Hagler,
1353:She said 'life is all we have, and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying. ~ Amy Harmon,
1354:So you make a sacrifice!' he threw special emphasis on the last word. 'Well, so do I. What could be better? We complete in generosity--what an example of family happiness! ~ Leo Tolstoy,
1355:The body without soul is no longer at the sacrifice. At the day of death it come to rebirth. The divine spirit will make the soul rejoice seeing the eternity of the world. ~ Nostradamus,
1356:There is no yajna (sacrifice) greater than spinning calculated to bring peace to the troubled spirit, to soothe the distracted student's mind, to spiritualize his life. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
1357:Christmas means giving. The Father gave his Son, and the Son gave his life. Without giving there is no true Christmas, and without sacrifice there is no true worship. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,
1358:He who strays from the customary becomes a sacrifice to the extraordinary; he who keeps to the customary becomes its slave. He iscondemned to perish in either case. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1359:If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams. ~ Yann Martel,
1360:If you can really do all things from a true heart, in truth and in Spirit, as a living sacrifice unto God, you shall really see and hear Heaven clapping for you! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah,
1361:If you simply write him off as the god of sacrifice and nothing more, then you are way off the mark. He's got more courage, integrity, and heart than anyone I've ever met. ~ Lisa Kessler,
1362:I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk when we remember the great sacrifice which he made who left His Father's throne on high to give Himself for us. ~ David Livingstone,
1363:I was raised to believe that God speaks in the language of sacrifice," he told me, "You are expected to sacrifice because it is the measure of the depth of your belief... ~ Neil Abramson,
1364:Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux,
1365:Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux,
1366:Sacrifice. That’s when you know you love someone, when you’re willing to give up something you want for something you need. I need her, her happiness, her smiles, touch, love ~ Ker Dukey,
1367:So make it your aim and lifelong habit, when you see someone who's serving, to be reminded of the sacrifice of the Savior, for apart from His sacrifice there is no serving. ~ C J Mahaney,
1368:Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2And  k walk in love,  l as Christ loved us and  m gave himself up for us, a  n fragrant  o offering and sacrifice to God. ~ Anonymous,
1369:A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
1370:Back then she’d been unfairly treated, but at least she’d been safe. There had been injustice, but she’d been in love. Did that make it okay? Which sacrifice made more sense? ~ Hugh Howey,
1371:I have a way of life that I don't change just because I am a president. I earn more than I need, even if it's not enough for others. For me, it is no sacrifice, it's a duty. ~ Jose Mujica,
1372:In the military, they give medals for people who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may survive. In business, we give bonuses to people who sacrifice others. ~ Simon Sinek,
1373:Much has been accomplished during the last year in the campaign against terrorism. This struggle will require vigilance, perseverance and sacrifice for many years to come. ~ Paul Cellucci,
1374:My mother's one idea was to sacrifice her life to her children and she had done nothing else since the death of my father. We wished that she had married again instead. ~ Peggy Guggenheim,
1375:Our problem is that we don't have enough people in America, including black people, who are progressive and willing to sacrifice their popularity in order to tell the truth. ~ Cornel West,
1376:Saul fell upon his sword to avoid suffering. Jesus stretched himself upon the cross to take away ours.
Saul's suicide cheated his enemies. Jesus' sacrifice cheated death. ~ Lisa Bevere,
1377:The very purpose of Christ's coming into the world was that He might offer up His life as a sacrifice for the sins of men. He came to die. This is the heart of Christmas. ~ Billy Graham,
1378:This was exactly why they'd failed: never being satisfied with what a person had to give, always expecting so much sacrifice that you had to hate yourself for anything less. ~ Sonya Huber,
1379:We cannot be filled with the Spirit until we are prepared to yield ourselves to be led by the Lord Jesus—to forsake and sacrifice everything for this pearl of great price. ~ Andrew Murray,
1380:Am I a man? To want you so badly that nothing else matters? To see you, and know I would sacrifice honor or family or life itself to lie wi' you, even though ye'd left me? ~ Diana Gabaldon,
1381:At some time, every Negro in the armed services asks himself what he is getting for the supreme sacrifice he is called upon to make.” —Pittsburgh Courier, November 9, 1944 ~ Steve Sheinkin,
1382:Could you start the water boiling? I got that fresh pasta you like. After dinner, though, I've got to get down to the temple. We're going to sacrifice a few virgins, you know, ~ Alan Ryker,
1383:Greed can be very dangerous because you sacrifice your soul for the sake of something material, and then you start sacrificing people in order to keep that which is material. ~ Eartha Kitt,
1384:It is more satisfying to sacrifice oneself for the poor victim than to enable the other to overcome their victim status and perhaps become even more succesfull than ourselves ~ Slavoj i ek,
1385:Let us here observe, that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things, never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation. ~ Joseph Smith Jr,
1386:My beautiful soul,"he murmured and caressed my cheek."When you have the ultimate selfless sacrifice it paid my wrong.You proved to be worthy of my devotion.Of Death's...love. ~ Abbi Glines,
1387:The student who deceives himself into thinking that he is giving his life like an ascetic in the spirit of sacrifice for art, is the victim of a deplorable species of egotism. ~ Alma Gluck,
1388:Think about the animals used in product testing. Think about the monkeys shot into space. Without their death, their pain, without their sacrifice, we would have nothing. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,
1389:About sacrifice and the offering of sacrifices, sacrificial animals think quite differently from those who look on: but they have never been allowed to have their say. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1390:All over the world, belief in the supernatural has authorised the sacrifice of people to propitiate bloodthirsty gods, and the murder of witches for their malevolent powers. ~ Steven Pinker,
1391:A straight fight in an equal battle takes some bravery, but braver is he who, knowing that he would have to sacrifice ninety-five as against five of the enemy, faces death. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
1392:Forgiveness requires a sacrifice of pride. A humbling of the spirit. An increase of selfless love. A time when you allow others' feelings to be more important than your own. ~ Ann H Gabhart,
1393:From what I've seen, love isn't about mutual respect. It's more concerns with control than sacrifice. And I wonder whether it's better or worse when love finally walks away. ~ Ellen Hopkins,
1394:Hearts are like tapers, which at beauteous eyes Kindle a flame of love that never dies; And beauty is a flame, where hearts, like moths, Offer themselves a burning sacrifice. ~ Omar Khayyam,
1395:In myths the warrant of grace was the acceptance of sacrifice; it is this acceptance that love, the re-enactment of sacrifice, beseeches if it is not to feel under a curse. ~ Theodor Adorno,
1396:It is more satisfying to sacrifice oneself for the poor victim than to enable the other to overcome their victim status and perhaps become even more succesfull than ourselves ~ Slavoj Zizek,
1397:Lenin could assert that he was willing to sacrifice millions for what now, thanks to the imperialist war, looked more than ever like a just cause: peace and social justice. ~ Stephen Kotkin,
1398:Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross. ~ William Barclay,
1399:Only by acknowledging the success and sacrifice made by those who came before us, can we fully understand what we must do to ensure the liberty of those who will succeed us. ~ Yvette Clarke,
1400:Only the Eternal’s strength in us can dare
To attempt the immense adventure of that climb
And the sacrifice of all we cherish here. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Heavens of the Ideal,
1401:The developing science departs at the same time more and more from its original scope and purpose and threatens to sacrifice its earlier unity and split into diverse branches. ~ Felix Klein,
1402:There was no sacrifice in acting for me, even when I was starving in New York. I went three days without eating. Charlie Bronson and I sold blood for $5 so that we could eat. ~ Jack Klugman,
1403:The willingness to sacrifice on the part of workers and members is perhaps the key practical index of whether you have become a movement or have become institutionalized. ~ Timothy J Keller,
1404:This necklace has cost two very fine men their lives. At times I wear it in tribute to their sacrifice. Other times, I wear it because it goes with this skirt, - China Sorrows ~ Derek Landy,
1405:We think we want ease and comfort, and of course we do from time to time, but there is something inside us that longs for some calling that requires dedication and sacrifice. ~ David Brooks,
1406:When we are young we sacrifice our health for wealth. But when we become old and wise, we become willing to sacrifice every bit of our wealth for just a day of good health. ~ Robin S Sharma,
1407:As any car freak will tell you, the old models are the most beautiful, even if they aren't the most efficient. People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve. ~ Tom Robbins,
1408:Brown made a claim that possibly hit a little too close to home. 'Money is this man's god,' the handbill read, 'and to get enough of it, he would sacrifice his country. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick,
1409:It's like a gay man being married to a straight woman. No matter how much he loves her, it's a sacrifice every moment they're together. The sex is secondary to the sacrifice. ~ Tiffany Reisz,
1410:Kids are a huge sacrifice; they change everything - but I'm ready to work for things of greater importance than going out to meet someone for dinner at 10 o'clock at night. ~ Katherine Heigl,
1411:My only mistake was in waiting too long to be rid of you", Adri said, running the washcloth between her fingers. "Believe me, Cinder. You are a sacrifice I will never regret. ~ Marissa Meyer,
1412:Nature can’t evolve a species that hasn’t a will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never decide to cease to exist. ~ Orson Scott Card,
1413:Without socially positive opportunities to exercise our autonomy, we tend toward self-promotion over self-sacrifice and fixate on personal gain over collective prosperity. ~ Douglas Rushkoff,
1414:If I am good, people compliments me that my voice is like a CD, but whenever my voice condition is not as well and do some mistakes....I tend to sacrifice myself for my next album. ~ Park Bom,
1415:In both cases, women are expected to sacrifice their comfort and freedom to service the requirements of male sexuality: either to repress or to stimulate the male sex urge. ~ Geraldine Brooks,
1416:It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately. ~ John Ruskin,
1417:Let Riko be King ... Most coveted, most protected. he'll sacrifice every piece he has to protect his throne. Whatever. Me? ... I'm going to be the deadliest piece on the board. ~ Nora Sakavic,
1418:Let Riko be King, most coveted, most protected. He’ll sacrifice every piece he has to protect his throne. Whatever. Me? I’m going to be the deadliest piece on the board. Queen. ~ Nora Sakavic,
1419:People want to be part of something larger than themselves. They want to be part of something they're really proud of, that they'll fight for, sacrifice for, that they trust. ~ Howard Schultz,
1420:The determined scholar and the man of virtue will not seek to live at the expense of injuring their virtue. They will even sacrifice their lives to preserve their virtue complete. ~ Confucius,
1421:We must plunge heart and soul and body into the work. And until we are ready to sacrifice everything else to one Idea and to one alone, we never, never will see the Light. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
1422:I didn't want to be the monster! I didn't want to kill this room full of harmless children! I didn't want to lose everything I'd gained in a lifetime of sacrifice and denial! ~ Stephenie Meyer,
1423:I have seen him watching you. You and your bare feet and ocean eyes, you have become the island to him, Morgen. He would sacrifice to you, apple-keeper, healer, wind-whisperer. ~ Tessa Gratton,
1424:In the end, the British sacrificed her Empire to stop the Germans, Japanese and Italians from keeping theirs. Did not that sacrifice alone expunge all the Empire's other sins? ~ Niall Ferguson,
1425:It's how the English run their courts. They sacrifice innocents, thinking to keep evil at bay, and call it a kind of justice. But they are no more just than this pole is a man. ~ Kathleen Kent,
1426:It was not a religion that attacked us that September day. It was al-Qaeda. We will not sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust. ~ Barack Obama,
1427:Life is a song- sing it!
Life is a game- play it!
Life is a challenge - meet it!
Life is a dream -realize it!
Life is a sacrifice - offer it!
Life is love - enjoy it! ~ Sai Baba,
1428:Love, son, is not manifest in the gift of gadgets or coddling foods or rooms of one’s own. Love shows itself in discipline and example and sacrifice—even giving up one’s life. ~ Jeffery Deaver,
1429:Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux,
1430:No one valued the given heart, no one saw that sacrifice for the precious gift it was. No, just a thing to be grasped, twisted by uncaring hands, then wrung dry and discarded. ~ Steven Erikson,
1431:[regarding the sacrifice] It was all very professionally done, even to a man whose religion consisted mostly of half formed and unanswered questions, it was strangely reassuring. ~ Ruth Downie,
1432:Relationships are about sacrifice and compromise. Sometimes, to have the person you want, you have to give up ideals that are important only because society tells us they are. ~ Helena Hunting,
1433:The dominance of short-term perspectives has led to routine decisions in the markets that sacrifice the long-term buildup of genuine value in pursuit of artificial, short-term gains. ~ Al Gore,
1434:This is not a love story. It is my life, and as such, there is love, loss, war, death, and sacrifice. It's about things that needed to be done and choices made. I regret nothing. ~ Ann Aguirre,
1435:This is not a love story. It is my life, and as such, there is love, loss, war, death, and sacrifice. It’s about things that needed to be done and choices made. I regret nothing. ~ Ann Aguirre,
1436:We call them leaders because they go first, because they take the risk before anybody else does, because they will choose to sacrifice so their people will be safe and protected. ~ Simon Sinek,
1437:What you tell me about in the nights. That is not love. That is only passion and lust. When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
1438:You can not have significance in this life if it is all about you. You get your significance, you find your joy in life through service and sacrifice - it's pure and simple. ~ Paul Tudor Jones,
1439:Although the war in which you fought took place more than half-a-century ago, your courage, your sacrifice and your patriotism reaches through the decades and inspires us today. ~ Mike Ferguson,
1440:Because we're not what we eat. We're what we do, and what we sacrifice, and what we love. And if we choose right more often than we choose wrong, we become who we want to be. ~ Greg Van Eekhout,
1441:I don't think we can do that."
"At these prices you should bring the cow out and have a ritual sacrifice at
the table. Just do it." I handed him the menu. He took it. ~ Laurell K Hamilton,
1442:I have found that being honest is the best technique I can use. Right up front, tell people what you're trying to accomplish and what you're willing to sacrifice to accomplish it. ~ Lee Iacocca,
1443:In painting, you have to destroy in order to gain... you have got to sacrifice something you are quite pleased with in order to get something better. Of course, it's a risk. ~ Graham Sutherland,
1444:it requires a public awakening, establishment of political will, resetting of priorities, sacrifice for the future, and an alliance of governments, businesses, and citizens. ~ Thomas L Friedman,
1445:Joy never comes to those who seek it. In the self-forgetting hour when we are touched by another’s need and sacrifice for it, we suddenly find our soul aflame with glorious joy ~ Fulton J Sheen,
1446:love is a verb. Love—the feeling—is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that? ~ Stephen R Covey,
1447:Love knows no pain, no sacrifice is too much for it; it is an absolute one-pointed state of mind toward the well-being of the other person who is called lover or beloved. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi,
1448:No, Carolyn, you can’t petition PETA to get a waiver from dissecting the frog. The frog’s already dead. It donated itself to science. Don’t let its sacrifice be in vain. -Brandon ~ Abigail Roux,
1449:Numbers do not feel. Do not bleed or weep or hope. They do not know bravery or sacrifice. Love and allegiance. At the very apex of callousness, you will find only ones and zeros. ~ Amie Kaufman,
1450:Spying is a like a game of chess: Sometimes you have to withdraw, sometimes you have to sacrifice one of your pieces to win - preferably a knight rather than a king or queen. ~ John Rhys Davies,
1451:The essence of patriotism lies in a willingness to sacrifice for one's country, just as true greatness finds expression, not in blessings enjoyed, but in good bestowed. ~ William Jennings Bryan,
1452:I poured out a libation on the mountain top … I heaped up wood and cane and cedar and myrtle … When the gods smelled the sweet savour they gathered like flies over the sacrifice ~ Graham Hancock,
1453:I see the Jedi mission as giving up a normal life in exchange for protecting the innocent. It's a life of sacrifice. There are rewards, but also a certain degree of sterility. ~ Alan Dean Foster,
1454:Men grow when inspired by a high purpose, when contemplating vast horizons. The sacrifice of oneself is not very difficult for one burning with the passion for a great adventure. ~ Alexis Carrel,
1455:No matter how much you care for another person, however, you can’t guarantee him a happy life, not with love or money, not with sacrifice. You can only do your best—and pray for him. ~ Anonymous,
1456:…organizations […] that practice human sacrifice […] usually consist of very influential members of high society, people who will never be prosecuted for such horrible actions. ~ Leo Lyon Zagami,
1457:People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now. ~ Nhat Hanh,
1458:The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country. ~ James Otis,
1459:When we are young we sacrifice our health for wealth. But when we become old and wise, we become willing to sacrifice every bit of our wealth for just a day of good health.’ And ~ Robin S Sharma,
1460:If we citizens do not support our artists then we sacrifice our immagination on the altar of cruel reality & we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams." (ppXII) ~ Yann Martel,
1461:I gave up my music because I had received from it all I had to receive. To serve God one must sacrifice the dearest thing, and I sacrificed my music, the dearest thing to me. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,
1462:Life is a song - sing it.
Life is a game - play it.
Life is a challenge - meet it.
Life is a dream - realize it.
Life is a sacrifice - offer it.
Life is love - enjoy it. ~ Sai Baba,
1463:To believe that I could, at twenty-three, sacrifice history and culture for the Absolute was further proof that I had not understood India. My vocation was culture, not sainthood. ~ Mircea Eliade,
1464:2“Therefore you shall sacrifice the Passover to the LORD your God, from the flock and †the herd, in the †place where the LORD chooses to put His name. 3“You shall eat no leavened bread ~ Anonymous,
1465:But only if I believe that my directing talents will improve the material I'd be working on. I want to make sure I don't sacrifice beautiful material on the altar of my direction. ~ Andre Braugher,
1466:Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair. And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice ~ Wallace Stevens,
1467:How do you measure the life of one person against the greater good? Can it ever be the right thing to sacrifice an innocent person? And how do you know what the greater good really is? ~ Amy Engel,
1468:If I have to sacrifice to give you everything you want, if I have to change who I am, whatever I have to do - tell me. It's done. I can't believe I thought I could live without you. ~ Kendall Ryan,
1469:It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice. ~ Tim Ferriss,
1470:Listen, my dear Cors, why don't you forgive God for allowing pain? If He didn't allow it, human courage, bravery, nobility, and self-sacrifice would all be meaningless things. ~ Walter M Miller Jr,
1471:Parenthood offers many lessons in patience and sacrifice. But ultimately, it is a lesson in humility. The very best thing about your life is a short stage in someone else’s story. ~ Michael Gerson,
1472:President Bush is often out there talking about the importance of staying the course, and about the sacrifice, but he has not attended a funeral of a soldier who has fallen in Iraq. ~ Dana Milbank,
1473:The American spirit wears no political label. In service to others and yes, in sacrifice for our country, there are no Republicans; there are no Democrats; there are only Americans. ~ John F Kerry,
1474:In the end a person must lose that which is most precious, that to which one's whole life has been devoted. The treasure is consciousness; it is the ego's final sacrifice to the Self. ~ June Singer,
1475:Lets us not just read the Bible; let us learn it; let us experience it; let us live it distinctively, in truth and in spirit, as a pleasant sacrifice unto the Most High God ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah,
1476:Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen. ~ Suzanne Collins,
1477:Never forget that the most sacred right on this earth is mans right to have the earth to till with his own hands, the most sacred sacrifice the blood that a man sheds for this earth. ~ Adolf Hitler,
1478:One of the things I love most about Martin Luther King is that he was willing to sacrifice his popularity in favor of his integrity. He was an honest man, and he would tell the truth. ~ Cornel West,
1479:People should not have to sacrifice so much of their personal lives, hopes, dreams and goals just to keep up with corporate pressured morebetterfaster. And tomorrow’s workforce won’t. ~ Bill Jensen,
1480:The bold colors of the American flag stood out over her husband’s coffin. Colors of honor. Colors of freedom. Colors of sacrifice. She’d never thought they’d be the colors of death. ~ Lindsay Cross,
1481:The way I understand gifts is that the giver must make a sacrifice, create an uneven exchange, bring himself closer to the recipient, create change and do it all with the right spirit. ~ Seth Godin,
1482:Yellow wakes me up in the morning. Yellow gets me on the bike every day. Yellow has taught me the true meaning of sacrifice. Yellow makes me suffer. Yellow is the reason I'm here. ~ Lance Armstrong,
1483:But let not any one who hath a quarrel with his companion join with you, until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be polluted, for it is that which is spoken of by the Lord. ~ Anonymous,
1484:comedy is a high form of art becaus it brings us more joy than anything else, practically but at the same time, it doesn't get a lot of respect. that's the sacrifice you make to do it. ~ Jim Carrey,
1485:Desperation yields dependency, and dependency yields power. And as you decrease your earthly abilities through sacrifice and embracing less, you’ll see your spiritual fruit increase. ~ Will Davis Jr,
1486:For all the ghosts and corpses that shall never know the breath of our children so long for the sacrifice and endurance of our mothers and the sustained breath of our fathers we live ~ Saul Williams,
1487:For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice - no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service. ~ John Burroughs,
1488:I am ready to sacrifice everything in completing the unfinished agenda of our noble jihad...until there is no bloodshed in Afghanistan and Islam becomes a way of life for our people. ~ Mohammed Omar,
1489:It is our duty to pay for our liberty with our own blood. The freedom that we shall win through our sacrifice and exertions, we shall be able to preserve with our own strength. ~ Subhas Chandra Bose,
1490:It was much easier to obey God when he said, “Fight!” or “Argue!” or “Sacrifice yourself!” But when he said, “Wait!”—that made things hard. Ari was good at that sort of thing. He ~ Randy Ingermanson,
1491: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,
1492:My friends, how desperately we need to be loved and to love. With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others. ~ Chief Dan George,
1493:Sacrifice today for tomorrows betterment, you are willing to pay those payments with pain, because pain is just a message when you are fixing something that’s insufficient in your life. ~ Greg Plitt,
1494:The great, the fundamental need of any nation, any race, is for heroism, devotion, sacrifice; and there cannot be heroism, devotion, or sacrifice in a primarily skeptical spirit. ~ Anna Julia Cooper,
1495:The man who declares that survival at all costs is the end of existence is morally dead, because he’s prepared to sacrifice all other values which give life its meaning. —SIDNEY HOOK ~ Joseph Heller,
1496:God welcomes genuine service, and that is the service of a soul that offers the bare and simple sacrifice of truth; but from false service, the mere display of material wealth, He turns away. ~ Philo,
1497:In order to succeed, this group will need a singleness of purpose, they will need a dedication, and they will have to convince all of their prospects of the willingness to sacrifice. ~ Vince Lombardi,
1498:In this way the sacred mission of the Triple Alliance became translated into a secular mission: to obtain prisoners to sacrifice for the sun, the Alliance had to take over the world. ~ Charles C Mann,
1499:Maybe what I wanted was stupid. Maybe it wasn't even something I could have. But, still it was mine. I didn't think I could sacrifice my dreams, no matter how much my family meant to me. ~ Kiera Cass,
1500:The gospel is not outward rituals and sacrifices, it is a living sacrifice. It is to have the laws of God written in our heart. It is to have a soft, listening, responding heart to God. ~ Leslie Ludy,

IN CHAPTERS [300/753]



  194 Integral Yoga
  124 Poetry
   86 Occultism
   55 Christianity
   36 Philosophy
   34 Fiction
   27 Yoga
   24 Psychology
   17 Hinduism
   14 Mythology
   6 Science
   5 Mysticism
   4 Islam
   4 Education
   4 Baha i Faith
   3 Philsophy
   2 Theosophy
   1 Thelema
   1 Sufism
   1 Kabbalah
   1 Integral Theory
   1 Buddhism
   1 Alchemy


  190 Sri Aurobindo
   78 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   56 The Mother
   49 James George Frazer
   28 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   24 Satprem
   24 Carl Jung
   22 Sri Ramakrishna
   22 Aleister Crowley
   21 H P Lovecraft
   19 William Wordsworth
   17 Vyasa
   15 Friedrich Nietzsche
   13 Percy Bysshe Shelley
   12 John Keats
   11 Ovid
   11 Anonymous
   9 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   9 Aldous Huxley
   7 Plato
   6 A B Purani
   5 Rudolf Steiner
   5 Jorge Luis Borges
   5 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
   5 George Van Vrekhem
   4 Saint John of Climacus
   4 Nirodbaran
   4 Muhammad
   4 Jordan Peterson
   4 Baha u llah
   3 William Butler Yeats
   3 Swami Vivekananda
   3 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   3 Ralph Waldo Emerson
   3 Peter J Carroll
   3 Paul Richard
   3 Joseph Campbell
   3 Henry David Thoreau
   3 Friedrich Schiller
   2 Swami Krishnananda
   2 Saint Hildegard von Bingen
   2 Robert Browning
   2 Rabindranath Tagore
   2 Mahendranath Gupta
   2 Lalla
   2 Jalaluddin Rumi


   49 The Golden Bough
   31 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   25 Essays On The Gita
   21 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   21 Savitri
   21 Lovecraft - Poems
   19 Wordsworth - Poems
   19 City of God
   17 Vishnu Purana
   17 The Bible
   15 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
   14 The Secret Of The Veda
   13 Shelley - Poems
   12 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
   12 Keats - Poems
   11 Metamorphoses
   11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
   11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   10 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
   10 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   10 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   10 Collected Poems
   9 The Perennial Philosophy
   9 Magick Without Tears
   9 Liber ABA
   9 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
   9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   8 Words Of Long Ago
   8 Vedic and Philological Studies
   8 Letters On Yoga II
   7 The Life Divine
   7 Mysterium Coniunctionis
   7 Kena and Other Upanishads
   7 Aion
   6 The Secret Doctrine
   6 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   6 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   6 5.1.01 - Ilion
   5 The Human Cycle
   5 Questions And Answers 1956
   5 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
   5 Preparing for the Miraculous
   5 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
   5 Letters On Yoga IV
   5 Essays Divine And Human
   5 Crowley - Poems
   4 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
   4 The Practice of Psycho therapy
   4 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
   4 The Future of Man
   4 Talks
   4 Quran
   4 On Education
   4 Maps of Meaning
   4 Labyrinths
   4 Agenda Vol 02
   3 Yeats - Poems
   3 Walden
   3 Twilight of the Idols
   3 The Red Book Liber Novus
   3 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
   3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
   3 Schiller - Poems
   3 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
   3 Questions And Answers 1954
   3 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
   3 Prayers And Meditations
   3 Liber Null
   3 Letters On Yoga I
   3 Isha Upanishad
   3 Goethe - Poems
   3 Emerson - Poems
   3 Bhakti-Yoga
   2 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   2 Theosophy
   2 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
   2 The Book of Certitude
   2 Tagore - Poems
   2 Symposium
   2 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   2 Some Answers From The Mother
   2 Record of Yoga
   2 Questions And Answers 1953
   2 On the Way to Supermanhood
   2 Let Me Explain
   2 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
   2 Hymn of the Universe
   2 Faust
   2 Browning - Poems
   2 Agenda Vol 11
   2 Agenda Vol 06
   2 Agenda Vol 05
   2 Agenda Vol 04
   2 Agenda Vol 01
   2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E


00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Ritualistically these four terms are the formulae for oblation to four Deities, Powers or Presences, whom the Sacrificer wishes to please and propitiate in order to have their help and blessing and in order thereby to discharge his dharma or duty of life. Svh is the offering especially dedicated to Agni, the foremost of the Gods, for he is the divine messenger who carries men's offering to the Gods and brings their blessing to men. Vaatkr is the offering to the Gods generally. Hantakr is the offering to mankind, to our kin, an especial form of it being the worship of the guests,sarvadevamayo' tithi. Svadh is the offering to the departed Fathers (Pitris).
   The duty of life consists, it is said, in the repaying of three debts which every man contracts as soon as he takes birth upon earth the debt to the Gods, to Men and to the Ancestors. This threefold debt or duty has, in other terms, reference to the three fields or domains wherein an embodied being lives and moves and to which he must adjust and react rightly -if he is to secure for his life an integral fulfilment. These are the family, society and the world and beyond-world. The Gods are the Powers that rule the world and beyond, they are the forms and forces of the One Spirit underlying the universe, the varied expressions of divine Truth and Reality: To worship the Gods, to do one's duty by them, means to come into contact and to be unitedin being, consciousness and activitywith the universal and spiritual existence, which is the supreme end and purpose of human life. The seconda more circumscribed fieldis the society to which one belongs, the particular group of humanity in which he functions as a limb. The service to society or good citizenship entails the worship of humanity, of Man as a god. Lastly, man belongs to the family, which is the unit of society; and the backbone of the family is the continuous line of ancestors, who are its presiding deity and represent the norm of a living dharma, the ethic of an ideal life.
  --
   With this Sacrifice nourish the Gods, that the Gods may nourish you; thus mutually nourishing ye shall obtain the highest felicity3 is the very secret of the cosmic play, the basis of the spiritual evolution in the universal existence.
   The Gods are the formations or particularisations of the Truth-consciousness, the multiple individualisations of the One spirit. The Pitris are the Divine Fathers, that is to say, souls that once laboured and realised here below, and now have passed beyond. They dwell in another world, not too far removed from the earth, and from there, with the force of their Realisation, lend a more concrete help and guidance to the destiny that is being worked out upon earth. They are forces and formations of consciousness in an intermediate region between Here and There (antarika), and serve to bring men and gods nearer to each other, inasmuch as they belong to both the categories, being a divinised humanity or a humanised divinity. Each fixation of the Truth-consciousness in an earthly mould is a thing of joy to the Pitris; it is the Svadh or food by which they live and grow, for it is the consolidation and also the resultant of their own realisation. The achievements of the sons are more easily and securely reared and grounded upon those of the forefa thers, whose formative powers we have to invoke, so that we may pass on to the realisation, the firm embodiment of higher and greater destinies.
  --
   Indeed, it was to this godhead that Nachiketas turned and he wanted to know of it and find it, when faith seized on his pure heart and he aspired for the higher spiritual life. The very opening hymn of the Rig Veda, too, is addressed to Agni, who is invoked as the vicar seated in the front of the Sacrifice, the giver of the supreme gifts.
   King Yama initiated Nachiketas into the mystery of Fire Worship and spoke of three fires that have to be kindled if one aspires to enter the heaven of immortality.
  --
   Agni in the physical consciousness is calledghapati, for the body is the house in which the soul is lodged and he is its keeper, guardian and lord. The fire in the mental consciousness is called daki; for it is that which gives discernment, the power to discriminate between the truth and the falsehood, it is that which by the pressure of its heat and light cleaves the wrong away from the right. And the fire in the life-force is called havanya; for pra is not only the plane of hunger and desire, but also of power and dynamism, it is that which calls forth forces, brings them into' play and it is that which is to be invoked for the progression of the Sacrifice, for an onward march on the spiritual path.
   Of the three fires one is the upholderhe who gives the firm foundation, the stable house where the Sacrifice is performed and Truth realised; the second is the Knower, often called in the Veda jtaved, who guides and directs; and the third the Doer, the effective Power, the driving Energyvaivnara.
   V. The Five Great Elements
  --
   The Science of the Five Agnis (Fires), as propounded by Pravahan, explains and illustrates the process of the birth of the body, the passage of the soul into earth existence. It describes the advent of the child, the building of the physical form of the human being. The process is conceived of as a Sacrifice, the usual symbol with the Vedic Rishis for the expression of their vision and perception of universal processes of Nature, physical and psychological. Here, the child IS said to be the final fruit of the Sacrifice, the different stages in the process being: (i) Soma, (ii) Rain, (iii) Food, (iv) Semen, (v) Child. Soma means Rasaphysically the principle of water, psychologically the 'principle of delightand symbolises and constitutes the very soul and substance of life. Now it is said that these five principles the fundamental and constituent elementsare born out of the Sacrifice, through the oblation or offering to the five Agnis. The first Agni is Heaven or the Sky-God, and by offering to it one's faith and one's ardent desire, one calls into manifestation Soma or Rasa or Water, the basic principle of life. This water is next offered to the second Agni, the Rain-God, who sends down Rain. Rain, again, is offered to the third Agni, the Earth, who brings forth Food. Food is, in its turn, offered to the fourth Agni, the Father or Male, who elaborates in himself the generating fluid.
   Finally, this fluid is offered to the fifth Agni, the Mother or the Female, who delivers the Child.
  --
   Apart from the question whether the biological phenomenon described is really a symbol and a cloak for another order of reality, and even taking it at its face value, what is to be noted here is the idea of a cosmic cycle, and a cosmic cycle that proceeds through the principle of Sacrifice. If it is asked what there is wonderful or particularly spiritual in this rather naf description of a very commonplace happening that gives it an honoured place in the Upanishads, the answer is that it is wonderful to see how the Upanishadic Rishi takes from an event its local, temporal and personal colour and incorporates it in a global movement, a cosmic cycle, as a limb of the Universal Brahman. The Upanishads contain passages which a puritanical mentality may perhaps describe as 'pornographic'; these have in fact been put by some on the Index expurgatorius. But the ancients saw these matters with other eyes and through another consciousness.
   We have, in modern times, a movement towards a more conscious and courageous, knowledge of things that were taboo to puritan ages. Not to shut one's eyes to the lower, darker and hidden strands of our nature, but to bring them out into the light of day and to face them is the best way of dealing with such elements, which otherwise, if they are repressed, exert an unhealthy influence on the mind and nature. The Upanishadic view runs on the same lines, but, with the unveiling and the natural and not merely naturalisticdelineation of these under-worlds (concerning sex and food), it endows them with a perspective sub specie aeternitatis. The sexual function, for example, is easily equated to the double movement of ascent and descent that is secreted in nature, or to the combined action of Purusha and Prakriti in the cosmic Play, or again to the hidden fount of Delight that holds and moves the universe. In this view there is nothing merely secular and profane, but all is woven into the cosmic spiritual whole; and man is taught to consider and to mould all his movementsof soul and mind and bodyin the light and rhythm of that integral Reality.11
   The central secret of the transfigured consciousness lies, as we have already indicated, in the mystic rite or law of Sacrifice. It is the one basic, fundamental, universal Law that upholds and explains the cosmic movement, conformity to which brings to the thrice-bound human being release and freedom. Sacrifice consists essentially of two elements or processes: (i) The offering or self giving of the lower reality to the higher, and, as a consequence, an answering movement of (ii) the descent of the higher into the lower. The lower offered to the higher means the lower sublimated and integrated into the higher; and the descent of the higher into the lower means the incarnation of the former and the fulfilment of the latter. The Gita elaborates the same idea when it says that by Sacrifice men increase the gods and the gods increase men and by so increasing each other they attain the supreme Good. Nothing is, nothing is done, for its own sake, for an egocentric satisfaction; all, even movements relating to food and to sex should be dedicated to the Cosmic BeingVisva Purusha and that alone received which comes from Him.
   VII. The Cosmic and the Transcendental
  --
   The first boon regards the individual, that is to say, the individual identity and integrity. It asks for the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death brings about. Death, of course, means the dissolution of the body, but it represents also dissolution pure and simple. Indeed death is a process which does not stop with the physical phenomenon, but continues even after; for with the body gone, the other elements of the individual organism, the vital and the mental too gradually fall off, fade and dissolve. Nachiketas wishes to secure from Death the safety and preservation of the earthly personality, the particular organisation of mind and vital based upon a recognisable physical frame. That is the first necessity for the aspiring mortalfor, it is said, the body is the first instrument for the working out of one's life ideal. But man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death lords it over. That is the divine world, the Heaven of the immortals, beyond death and beyond sorrow and grief. It is the hearth secreted in the inner heart where burns the Divine Fire, the God of Life Everlasting. And this is the nodus that binds together the threefold status of the manifested existence, the body, the life and the mind. This triplicity is the structure of name and form built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple cord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within the individual and within the world; he is the Immanent Divine, the cosmic godhead that holds together and marshals all the elements and components, all the principles that make up the manifest universe. He it is that has entered into the world and created facets of his own reality in multiple forms: and it is he that lies secret in the human being as the immortal soul through all its adventure of life and death in the series of incarnations in terrestrial evolution. The adoration and realisation of this Immanent Divinity, the worship of Agni taught by Yama in the second boon, consists in the triple Sacrifice, the triple work, the triple union in the triple status of the physical, the vital and the mental consciousness, the mastery of which leads one to the other shore, the abode of perennial existence where the human soul enjoys its eternity and unending continuity in cosmic life. Therefore, Agni, the master of the psychic being, is called jtaveds, he who knows the births, all the transmigrations from life to life.
   The third boon is the secret of secrets, for it is the knowledge and realisation of Transcendence that is sought here. Beyond the individual lies the universal; is there anything beyond the universal? The release of the individual into the cosmic existence gives him the griefless life eternal: can the cosmos be rolled up and flung into something beyond? What would be the nature of that thing? What is there outside creation, outside manifestation, outside Maya, to use a latter day term? Is there existence or non-existence (utter dissolution or extinctionDeath in his supreme and absolute status)? King Yama did not choose to answer immediately and even endeavoured to dissuade Nachiketas from pursuing the question over which people were confounded, as he said. Evidently it was a much discussed problem in those days. Buddha was asked the same question and he evaded it, saying that the pragmatic man should attend to practical and immediate realities and not, waste time and energy in discussing things ultimate and beyond that have hardly any relation to the present and the actual.

00.05 - A Vedic Conception of the Poet, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The poet is a trinity in himself. A triune consciousness forms his personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara. He has the direct vision, the luminous intelligence, the immediate perception.12 A subtle and profound and penetrating consciousness is his,nigam, pracetas; his is the eye of the Sun,srya caku.13 He secures an increased being through his effulgent understanding.14 In the second place, the Poet is not only Seer but Doer; he is knower as well as creator. He has a dynamic knowledge and his vision itself is power, ncak;15 he is the Seer-Will,kavikratu.16 He has the blazing radiance of the Sun and is supremely potent in his self-Iuminousness.17 The Sun is the light and the energy of the Truth. Even like the Sun the Poet gives birth to the Truth, srya satyasava, satyya satyaprasavya. But the Poet as Power is not only the revealer or creator,savit, he is also the builder or fashioner,ta, and he is the organiser,vedh is personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara, of the Truth.18 As Savita he manifests the Truth, as Tashta he gives a perfected body and form to the Truth, and as Vedha he maintains the Truth in its dynamic working. The effective marshalling and organisation of the Truth is what is called Ritam, the Right; it is also called Dharma,19 the Law or the Rhythm, the ordered movement and invincible execution of the Truth. The Poet pursues the Path of the Right;20 it is he who lays out the Path for the march of the Truth, the progress of the Sacrifice.21 He is like a fast steed well-yoked, pressing forward;22 he is the charger that moves straight and unswerving and carries us beyond 23into the world of felicity.
   Indeed delight is the third and the supremely intimate element of the poetic personality. Dear and delightful is the poet, dear and delightful his works, priya, priyi His hand is dripping with sweetness,kavir hi madhuhastya.24 The Poet-God shines in his pristine beauty and is showering delight.25 He is filled with utter ecstasy so that he may rise to the very source of the luminous Energy.26? Pure is the Divine Joy and it enters and purifies all forms as it moves to the seat of the Immortals.27Indeed this sparkling Delight is the Poet-Seer and it is that that brings forth the creative word, the utterance of Indra.28

0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
   At this time there came to Dakshineswar a youth of sixteen, destined to play an important role in Sri Ramakrishna's life. Hriday, a distant nephew2 of Sri Ramakrishna, hailed from Sihore, a village not far from Kamarpukur, and had been his boyhood friend. Clever, exceptionally energetic, and endowed with great presence of mind, he moved, as will be seen later, like a shadow about his uncle and was always ready to help him, even at the Sacrifice of his personal comfort. He was destined to be a mute witness of many of the spiritual experiences of Sri Ramakrishna and the caretaker of his body during the stormy days of his spiritual practice. Hriday came to Dakshineswar in search of a job, and Sri Ramakrishna was glad to see him.
   Unable to resist the persuasion of Mathur Babu, Sri Ramakrishna at last entered the temple service, on condition that Hriday should be asked to assist him. His first duty was to dress and decorate the image of Kali.
  --
   Durgacharan Nag, also known as Nag Mahashay, was the ideal householder among the lay disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. He was the embodiment of the Master's ideal of life in the world, unstained by worldliness. In spite of his intense desire to become a sannyasi, Sri Ramakrishna asked him to live in the world in the spirit of a monk, and the disciple truly carried out this injunction. He was born of a poor family and even during his boyhood often Sacrificed everything to lessen the sufferings of the needy. He had married at an early age and after his wife's death had married a second time to obey his father's command. But he once said to his wife: "Love on the physical level never lasts. He is indeed blessed who can give his love to God with his whole heart. Even a little attachment to the body endures for several births. So do not be attached to this cage of bone and flesh. Take shelter at the feet of the Mother and think of Her alone. Thus your life here and hereafter will be ennobled." The Master spoke of him as a "blazing light". He received every word of Sri Ramakrishna in dead earnest. One day he heard the Master saying that it was difficult for doctors, lawyers, and brokers to make much progress in spirituality. Of doctors he said, "If the mind clings to the tiny drops of medicine, how can it conceive of the Infinite?" That was the end of Durgacharan's medical practice and he threw his chest of medicines into the Ganges. Sri Ramakrishna assured him that he would not lack simple food and clothing. He bade him serve holy men. On being asked where he would find real holy men, the Master said that the sadhus themselves would seek his company. No sannyasi could have lived a more austere life than Durgacharan.
   --- GIRISH GHOSH
  --
   In spite of the physician's efforts and the prayers and nursing of the devotees, the illness rapidly progressed. The pain sometimes appeared to be unbearable. The Master lived only on liquid food, and his frail body was becoming a mere skeleton. Yet his face always radiated joy, and he continued to welcome the visitors pouring in to receive his blessing. When certain zealous devotees tried to keep the visitors away, they were told by Girish, "You cannot succeed in it; he has been born for this very purpose — to Sacrifice himself for the redemption of others."
   The more the body was devastated by illness, the more it became the habitation of the Divine Spirit. Through its transparency the gods and goddesses began to shine with ever increasing luminosity. On the day of the Kali Puja the devotees clearly saw in him the manifestation of the Divine Mother.
  --
   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."
   The words were tender and touching. Like a mother he caressed Narendra and Rakhal, gently stroking their faces. He said in a half whisper to M., "Had this body been allowed to last a little longer, many more souls would have been illumined." He paused a moment and then said: "But Mother has ordained otherwise. She will take me away lest, finding me guileless and foolish, people should take advantage of me and persuade me to bestow on them the rare gifts of spirituality." A few minutes later he touched his chest and said: "Here are two beings. One is She and the other is Her devotee. It is the latter who broke his arm, and it is he again who is now ill. Do you understand me?" After a pause he added: "Alas! To whom shall I tell all this? Who will understand me?" "Pain", he consoled them again, 'is unavoidable as long as there is a body. The Lord takes on the body for the sake of His devotees."

0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
    study the efficacy of rape, and the Sacrifice of blood, as
    magical formulae. Blood and virginity have always
  --
    it is because such Sacrifices come under the Great Law
    of the Rosy Cross, the giving-up of the individuality,
  --
     Sacrifice that which is dearest to thee unto the
     Infernal Gods!
  --
     to Him he then Sacrifices.
    The first cake, burnt, illustrates the profit drawn

0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  I have made a literal translation, omitting only a few pages of no particular interest to English-speaking readers. Often literary grace has been Sacrificed for the sake of literal translation. No translation can do full justice to the original. This difficulty is all the more felt in the present work, whose contents are of a deep mystical nature and describe the inner experiences of a great seer. Human language is an altogether inadequate vehicle to express supersensuous perception. Sri Ramakrishna was almost illiterate. He never clothed his thoughts in formal language. His words sought to convey his direct realization of Truth. His conversation was in a village patois. Therein lies its charm. In order to explain to his listeners an abstruse philosophy, he, like Christ before him, used with telling effect homely parables and illustrations, culled from his observation of the daily life around him.
  The reader will find mentioned in this work many visions and experiences that fall outside the ken of physical science and even psychology. With the development of modern knowledge the border line between the natural and the supernatural is ever shifting its position. Genuine mystical experiences are not as suspect now as they were half a century ago. The words of Sri Ramakrishna have already exerted a tremendous influence in the land of his birth. Savants of Europe have found in his words the ring of universal truth.

0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
  We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. Advancing science has now discovered that all the known cases of biological extinction have been caused by overspecialization, whose concentration of only selected genes Sacrifices general adaptability. Thus the specialist's brief for pinpointing brevity is dubious. In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual's leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others.
  Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.

0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  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
   annakos.a and pran.akos.a.

0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  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.
  We have to recognise once more that the individual exists not in himself alone but in the collectivity and that individual perfection and liberation are not the whole sense of God's intention in the world. The free use of our liberty includes also the liberation of others and of mankind; the perfect utility of our perfection is, having realised in ourselves the divine symbol, to reproduce, multiply and ultimately universalise it in others.

0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Bhakta seeks and yearns after Bhagavan, Bhagavan also seeks and yearns after the Bhakta.1 There can be no Yoga of knowledge without a human seeker of the knowledge, the supreme subject of knowledge and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of knowledge; no Yoga of devotion without the human God-lover, the supreme object of love and delight and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of spiritual, emotional and aesthetic enjoyment; no Yoga of works without the human worker, the supreme Will, Master of all works and Sacrifices, and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of power and action. However Monistic may be our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity.
  For the contact of the human and individual consciousness with the divine is the very essence of Yoga. Yoga is the union of that which has become separated in the play of the universe with its own true self, origin and universality. The contact may take place at any point of the complex and intricately organised consciousness which we call our personality. It may be effected in the physical through the body; in the vital through the action of
  --
  Love and Joy and a full acceptance of the works of That which is known; dedicated Works to the entire love of the Master of the Sacrifice and the deepest knowledge of His ways and His being. It is in this triple path that we come most readily to the absolute knowledge, love and service of the One in all beings and in the entire cosmic manifestation.
  

0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  spirit he receives the Sacrifice."2 What does this mean?
  It means that all we offer, we necessarily offer to the Supreme,

01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In vain now seemed the splendid Sacrifice.
  2.10
  --
  The Sacrifice of suffering and desire
  Earth offers to the immortal Ecstasy

01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  And hard Sacrifice and tragic consequence.
  3.15

01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The great World-Mother by her Sacrifice||4.47||
   Has made her soul the body of our state;

01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  God and to put the whole being into harmony with the truth of the highest self or the law of the divine nature, to find one's own divine capacities great or small and fulfil them in life as a Sacrifice to the highest or as a true instrument of the divine
  Sakti.

01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Offering his life, a splendour of Sacrifice.
  13.23

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 strength and power, there is also secreted in the core of his heart a sense of the beautiful that illumines his somewhat sombre aspect. For although Nietzsche is by birth a Slavo-Teuton, by culture and education he is pre-eminently Hellenic. His earliest works are on the subject of Greek tragedy and form what he describes as an "Apollonian dream." And to this dream, to this Greek aesthetic sense more than to any thing else he Sacrifices justice and pity and charity. To him the weak and the miserable, the sick and the maimed are a sort of blot, a kind of ulcer on the beautiful face of humanity. The herd that wallow in suffering and relish suffering disfigure the aspect of the world and should therefore be relentlessly mowed out of existence. By being pitiful to them we give our tacit assent to their persistence. And it is precisely because of this that Nietzsche has a horror of Christianity. For compassion gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the world and thus renders that ugliness a necessary and indispensable element of existence. To protect the weak, to sympathise with the lowly brings about more of weakness and more of lowliness. Nietzsche has an aristocratic taste par excellencewhat he aims at is health and vigour and beauty. But above all it is an aristocracy of the spirit, an aristocracy endowed with all the richness and beauty of the soul that Nietzsche wants to establish. The beggar of the street is the symbol of ugliness, of the poverty of the spirit. And the so-called aristocrat, die millionaire of today is as poor and ugly as any helpless leper. The soul of either of them is made of the same dirty, sickly stuff. The tattered rags, the crouching heart, the effeminate nerve, the unenlightened soul are the standing ugliness of the world and they have no place in the ideal, the perfect humanity. Humanity, according to Nietzsche, is made in order to be beautiful, to conceive the beautiful, to create the beautiful. Nietzsche's Superman has its perfect image in a Grecian statue of Zeus cut out in white marble-Olympian grandeur shedding in every lineament Apollonian beauty and Dionysian vigour.
   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.

01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Communism is the synthesis of collectivism and individualism. The past ages of society were characterised more or less by a severe collectivism. In ancient Greece, more so in Sparta and in Rome, the individual had, properly speaking, no separate existence of his own; he was merged in the State or Nation. The individual was considered only as a limb of the collective being, had to live and labour for the common weal. The value attached to each person was strictly in reference to the output that the group to which he belonged received from him. Apart from this service for the general unit the body politicany personal endeavour and achievement, if not absolutely discouraged and repressed, was given a very secondary place of merit. The summum bonum of the individual was to Sacrifice at the altar of the res publica, the bonum publicum. In India, the position and function of the State or Nation was taken up by the society. Here too social institutions were so constituted and men were so bred and brought up that individuality had neither the occasion nor the incentive to express itself, it was a thing that remained, in the Kalidasian phrase, an object for the ear onlysrutau sthita. Those who sought at all an individual aim and purpose, as perhaps the Sannyasins, were put outside the gate of law and society. Within the society, in actual life and action, it was a sin and a crime or at least a gross imperfection to have any self-regarding motive or impulse; personal preference was the last thing to be considered, virtue consisted precisely in sacrificing one's own taste and inclination for the sake of that which the society exacts and sanctions.
   Against this tyranny of the group, this absolute rule of the collective will, the human mind rose in revolt and the result was Individualism. For whatever may be the truth and necessity of the Collective, the Individual is no less true and necessary. The individual has his own law and urge of being and his own secret godhead. The collective godhead derides the individual godhead at its peril. The first movement of the reaction, however, was a run to the other extremity; a stern collectivism gave birth to an intransigent individualism. The individual is sacred and inviolable, cost what it may. It does not matter what sort of individuality one seeks, it is enough if the thing is there. So the doctrine of individualism has come to set a premium on egoism and on forces that are disruptive of all social bonds. Each and every individual has the inherent right, which is also a duty, to follow his own impetus and impulse. Society is nothing but the battle ground for competing individualities the strongest survive and the weakest go to the wall. Association and co-operation are instruments that the individual may use and utilise for his own growth and development but in the main they act as deterrents rather than as aids to the expression and expansion of his characteristic being. In reality, however, if we probe sufficiently deep into the matter we find that there is no such thing as corporate life and activity; what appears as such is only a camouflage for rigorous competition; at the best, there maybe only an offensive and defensive alliancehumanity fights against nature, and within humanity itself group fights against group and in the last analysis, within the group, the individual fights against the individual. This is the ultimate Law-the Dharma of creation.
   Now, what such an uncompromising individualism fails to recognise is that individuality and ego are not the same thing, that the individual may have his individuality intact and entire and yet Sacrifice his ego, that the soul of man is a much greater thing than his vital being. It is simply ignoring the fact and denying the truth to say that man is only a fighting animal and not a loving god, that the self within the individual realises itself only through competition and not co-operation. It is an error to conceive of society as a mere parallelogram of forces, to suppose that it has risen simply out of the struggle of individual interests and continues to remain by that struggle. Struggle is only one aspect of the thing, a particular form at a particular stage, a temporary manifestation due to a particular system and a particular habit and training. It would be nearer the truth to say that society came into being with the demand of the individual soul to unite with the individual soul, with the stress of an Over-soul to express itself in a multitude of forms, diverse yet linked together and organised in perfect harmony. Only, the stress for union manifested itself first on the material plane as struggle: but this is meant to be corrected and transcended and is being continually corrected and transcended by a secret harmony, a real commonality and brotherhood and unity. The individual is not so self-centred as the individualists make him to be, his individuality has a much vaster orbit and fulfils itself only by fulfilling others. The scientists have begun to discover other instincts in man than those of struggle and competition; they now place at the origin of social grouping an instinct which they name the herd-instinct: but this is only a formulation in lower terms, a translation on the vital plane of a higher truth and reality the fundamental oneness and accord of individuals and their spiritual impulsion to unite.
   However, individualism has given us a truth and a formula which collectivism ignored. Self-determination is a thing which has come to stay. Each and every individual is free, absolutely free and shall freely follow his own line of growth and development and fulfilment. No extraneous power shall choose and fix what is good or evil for him, nor coerce and exploit him for its own benefit. But that does not necessarily mean that collectivism has no truth in it; collectivism also, as much as individualism, has a lesson for us and we should see whether we can harmonise the two. Collectivism signifies that the individual should not look to himself alone, should not be shut up in his freedom but expand himself and envelop others in a wider freedom, see other creatures in himself and himself in other creatures, as the Gita says. Collectivism demands that the individual need not and should not exhaust himself entirely in securing and enjoying his personal freedom, but that he can and should work for the salvation of others; the truth it upholds is this that the individual is from a certain point of view only a part of the group and by ignoring the latter it ignores itself in the end.

01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Secondly, there is the line of Substitution. Here the mind does not stand in an antagonistic and protestant mood to combat and repress the impulse, but seeks to divert it into other channels, use it to other purposes which do not demand equal Sacrifice, may even, on the other hand, be considered by the conscious mind as worthy of human pursuit. Thus the energy that normally would seek sexual gratification might find its outlet in the cultivation of art and literature. It is a common thing in novels to find the heroine disappointed in love taking finally to works of charity and beneficence and thus forgetting her disappointment. Another variety of this is what is known as "drowning one's sorrow in drinking."
   Thirdly, there is the line of Sublimationit is when the natural impulse is neither repressed nor diverted but lifted up into a higher modality. The thing is given a new sense and a new value which serve to remove the stigma usually attached to it and thus allow its free indulgence. Instances of carnal love sublimated into spiritual union, of passion transmuted into devotion (Bhakti) are common enough to illustrate the point.

0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  sad. And then, is this not part of the Sacrifice of the
  Supreme spoken of by Sri Aurobindo? Are we worthy of
  this Sacrifice?
  Sweet Mother, at times like this, how should we be?

0 1956-10-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   People say, I gave everything, I Sacrificed everything. In exchange, I expect exceptional conditionseverything should be beautiful, harmonious, easy.
   But the divine vision is global. The people in the Ashram do not want this strike but what about the others? They are ignorant, mean, full of ill will, etc., but in their own way they are following a path, and why should they be deprived of the Grace? By the fact that their action is against the Ashram? It is certainly a Grace.

0 1959-05-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   A love for you might have held me here. And indeed, for you I have devotion, veneration, respect, an attachment, but there has never been this marvelous thing, warm and full, that links one to a being in the same beating of a heart. Through love, I could do all, accept all, endure all, Sacrifice all but I do not feel this love. You cannot give yourself with your head, through a mental decision, yet that is what I have been doing for five years. I have tried to serve you as best I could. But I am at the end of my rope. I am suffocating.
   I have no illusions, and I do not at all suppose that elsewhere my life may at last be fulfilled. No, I know that this whole life is cursed, but it may as well be truly cursed. If the Divine does not want to give me his Love, may he give me his curse. But not this life between two worlds. Or if I am too hardened, may he break me. But not this tepidness, this approximation.

0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   In the Vedas, the panis and dasyus represent beings or forces hidden in subterranean caves who have stolen the 'Riches' or the 'Lights', symbolized by herds of cows. With the help of the gods, the Aryan warrior must recover these lost riches, the 'sun in the darkness,' by igniting the flame of Sacrifice. It is the path of subterranean descent.
   Indra represents the king of the gods, the master of mental power freed from the limitations and obscurities of the physical consciousness.

0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Another thing happened to me in a fishing village near A., on the seashore, where there is a temple dedicated to Kalia terrible Kali. I dont know what happened to her, but she had been buried with only her head sticking out! A fantastic story I knew nothing about it at all. I was going by car from A. to this temple and halfway there a black form, in great agitation, came rushing towards me, asking for my help: Ill give you everything I haveall my power, all the peoples worshipif you help me to become omnipotent! Of course, I answered her as she deserved! I later asked who this was, and they told me that some sort of misfortune had befallen her and she had been buried with only her head above ground. And every year this fishing village has a festival and slaughters thousands of chickensshe likes chicken! Thousands of chickens. They pluck them on the spot (the whole place gets covered with feathers), and then, after offering the blood and making the Sacrifice, the people, naturally, eat them all up. The day I came this had taken place that very morningfea thers littered everywhere! It was disgusting. And she was asking for my help!
   But the curious thing is that these vital beings are aware of what is happening. I knew nothing about any of it, neither the story, nor the being, nor the head sticking out of the ground and she wanted me to get her out of it. They feel the atmosphere. They are awarethey may not be conscious on higher planes, but they are conscious on vital planes, aware of vital power and the vital force it represents. Its like this asura from M.: when I came in he suddenly seemed to tremble on his pedestal; then he left his idol and came to seek my alliance.

0 1961-09-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   What struck me is that he never wanted to write anything else. To write those articles for the Bulletin1 was really a heavy Sacrifice for him. He had said he would complete certain parts of The Synthesis of Yoga,2 but when he was asked to do so, he replied, No, I dont want to go down to that mental level!
   Savitri comes from somewhere else altogether.

0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Nor was it insignificant that fire, Agni, was the core of the Vedic mysteries: Agni, the inner flame, the soul within us (for who can deny that the soul is fire?), the innate aspiration drawing man towards the heights; Agni, the ardent will within us that sees, always and forever, and remembers; Agni, the priest of the Sacrifice, the divine worker, the envoy between earth and heaven (Rig-veda III, 3.2) he is there in the middle of his house (I.70.2). The Fathers who have divine vision set him within as a child that is to be born (IX.83.3). He is the boy suppressed in the secret cavern (V.2.1). He is as if life and the breath of our existence, he is as if our eternal child (I.66.1). O Son of the body (III.4.2), O Fire, thou art the son of heaven by the body of the earth (III.25.1). Immortal in mortals (IV.2. 1), old and outworn he grows young again and again (II.4.5). When he is born he becomes one who voices the godhead: when as life who grows in the mother he has been fashioned in the mother he becomes a gallop of wind in his movement (III.29.11). O Fire, when thou art well borne by us thou becomest the supreme growth and expansion of our being, all glory and beauty are in thy desirable hue and thy perfect vision. O Vastness, thou art the plenitude that carries us to the end of our way; thou art a multitude of riches spread out on every side (II.1.12). O Fire brilliant ocean of light in which is divine vision (III.22.2), the Flame with his hundred treasures O knower of all things born(I.59).
   But the divine fire is not our exclusive privilegeAgni exists not only in man: He is the child of the waters, the child of the forests, the child of things stable and the child of things that move. Even in the stone he is there (I.70.2).

0 1962-05-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   What youre asking of Sujata is nothing short of Sacrifice. Not outwardly, perhaps, but it would be a Sacrifice for her. She would be sacrificing something to you, something very precious. To help you she would have to Sacrifice her own realization. Well, that in itself has a place in the spectrum of realizations.
   I understand.
  --
   But there are a certain number of beingsnot manywho have come back on earth ONLY to take part in a particular work, in a particular way. And outer things, personal and individual things, are virtually Sacrificed to that. Certain faculties, for instance, whose source is the higher entity, faculties that in an ordinary life would result in a measure of power or fame or success or realization, are placed under conditions where their outer effect is subordinated to the needs of a particular work.
   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 arent 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.

0 1963-02-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Offering his life, a splendour of Sacrifice.
   In a thousand ways he serves her royal needs;

0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   This body was built for that purpose, because I remember very well that when the war the First World Warstarted and I offered my body up in Sacrifice to the Lord so that the war would not be in vain, every part of my body, one after another (Mother touches her legs, her arms etc.), or sometimes the same part several times over, represented a battlefield: I could see it, I could feel it, I LIVED it. Every time it was it was very strange, I had only to sit quietly and watch: I would see here, there, there, the whole thing in my body, all that was going on. And while it went on, I would put the concentration of the divine Force there, so that allall that pain, all that suffering, everythingwould hasten the preparation of the earth and the Descent of the Force. And that went on consciously throughout the war.
   The body was built for that purpose.

0 1964-01-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And his intention is clear: to make religion quite real, in the sense that it isnt a myth, it isnt a legendits truly God who came, and so on. So, to him, this is human greatness prostrating itself before the divine Sacrifice.
   There is another photograph in which he is embracing the Patriarch of the Orthodox Churchheretics formerly, now they embrace each other.

0 1964-07-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   He left everything, but he knows darn well that he left everything! Hes very conscious of his Sacrifice, which means that in his consciousness theres no correspondence between what he gave and what he has receivedwhat he gave, as when you stake everything on a future benefit.
   Anyway, hes coming back.

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 1965-11-27, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Then there were the few the rare individualswho are ready to make the necessary effort to prepare themselves for the transformation and to attract the new forces, try to adapt Matter, seek the means of expression and so forth. Those are ready for Sri Aurobindos yoga. They are very few. There are even those who have the sense of Sacrifice and are ready to have a hard and difficult life, as long as it leads them or helps them towards this future transformation. But they should not, they should in no way try to influence others and make them share their own effort: that would be quite unjustnot only unjust, but extremely clumsy because it would alter the universalor at least terrestrialrhythm and movement, and instead of helping, it would cause conflicts and result in chaos.
   But it was so living, so real, that my whole attitude (how can I explain? A passive attitude, which isnt the result of an active will), the whole position taken in the work has changed. And this has brought a peacean absolutely decisive peace and tranquillity and trust. A decisive change. And even, all that in the previous position seemed to be obstinacy, clumsiness, unconsciousness, all sorts of deplorable things, all that has disappeared. It was like a vision of a great universal Rhythm in which each thing takes its own place and everything is just fine. And the effort of transformation limited to a small number becomes something FAR MORE precious and FAR MORE powerful for the realization. Its as if a choice had been made of those who will be the pioneers of the new creation. And all those ideas of spreading [the ideal], of preparing or churning Matterchildishness. Its human agitation.

0 1966-12-07, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   At any rate, because of the immensity of the work to be done, from an outward standpoint it looks like a quite thankless task. But thats only a purely superficial vision. Waves come to me like that from the world, from a whole class of the manifestation, saying, Ah, no! I dont want to bother about that, I just want to live peacefully, as well as I can. Well see once the world has been transformed, then we can start bothering about it. And thats among the most developed classes, the most intellectual, they are like that: Oh, very well, well see when its done. Which means they dont have the spirit of Sacrifice. Thats what Sri Aurobindo says (I keep coming across quotations from Sri Aurobindo all the time), he says that to do the Work one must have the spirit of Sacrifice.
   But its true that, for instance, those few seconds (which come to me now and then and with increasing frequency), if you look at those few seconds calmly, well, theyre worth a great deal of effort. Having that is worth quite a few years of struggle and effort, because that is beyond anything perceptible, comprehensible, even beyond anything possible for life as it is now. Its its unimaginable.

0 1967-08-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   You know, it came to me as a discovery. The whole religion, instead of being seen like this (gesture from below), was seen like that (gesture from above). Here is what I mean: the ordinary idea of Christianity is that the son (to use their language), the son of God came to give his message (a message of love, unity, fraternity and charity) to the earth; and the earth, that is, those who govern, who werent ready, Sacrificed him, and his Father, the supreme Lord, let him be Sacrificed in order that his Sacrifice would have the power to save the world. That is how they see Christianity, in its most comprehensive idea the vast majority of Christians dont understand anything whatsoever, but I mean that among them there may be (perhaps, its possible), among the cardinals for instance who have studied occultism and the deeper symbols of things, some who understand a little better anyway. But according to my vision (Mother points to her note on Christianity), what happened was that in the history of the evolution of the earth, when the human race, the human species, began to question and rebel against suffering, which was a necessity to emerge more consciously from inertia (its very clear in animals, it has become very clear already: suffering was the means to make them emerge from inertia), but man, on the other hand, went beyond that stage and began to rebel against suffering, naturally also to revolt against the Power that permits and perhaps uses (perhaps uses, to his mind) this suffering as a means of domination. So that is the place of Christianity. There was already before it a fairly long earth historywe shouldnt forget that before Christianity, there was Hinduism, which accepted that everything, including destruction, suffering, death and all calamities, are part of the one Divine, the one God (its the image of the Gita, the God who swallows the world and its creatures). There is that, here in India. There was the Buddha, who on the other hand, was horrified by suffering in all its forms, decay in all its forms, and the impermanence of all things, and in trying to find a remedy, concluded that the only true remedy is the disappearance of the creation. Such was the terrestrial situation when Christianity arrived. So there had been a whole period before it, and a great number of people beginning to rebel against suffering and wanting to escape from it like that. Others deified it and thus bore it as an inescapable calamity. Then came the necessity to bring down on earth the concept of a deified, divine suffering, a divine suffering as the supreme means to make the whole human consciousness emerge from Unconsciousness and Ignorance and lead it towards its realization of divine beatitude, but notnot by refusing to collaborate with life, but IN life itself: accepting suffering (the crucifixion) in life itself as a means of transformation in order to lead human beings and the entire creation to its divine Origin.
   That gives a place to all religions in the development from the Inconscient to the divine Consciousness.

0 1968-06-22, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (After a silence) I saw him before he left; there was around him an atmosphere I didnt like. Yes, like a man whos going to Sacrifice himself.
   But he told me he was quite at peace.
  --
   Did he give you any hint of a spirit of Sacrifice? He doesnt look like that, but
   No, I didnt get that impression.

0 1969-10-11, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I wondered if we couldnt publish it too: Men of free minds and free habits are too strong of soul to be the slaves of their party feelings and too robust of mind to submit to any demand for the Sacrifice of their principles on the altar of expediency. It is only in a servile nation unaccustomed to the habits of freemen that party becomes a master and not an instrument.
   This is fine! Where was it?

0 1970-08-05, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The great World-Mother by her Sacrifice
   Has made her soul the body of our state

0 1970-10-28, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The great World-Mother by her Sacrifice
   Has made her soul the body of our state.

0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The young Indian students with whom I discuss your books understand perhaps better than Westerners the reason for all those bloody and apparently useless Sacrifices the torments conflicts and revolts of your heroes condemned to death, the great Hunger that drives them beyond themselves for they know that these are like the contractions of childbirth, and that the thick shell of egoism, routine, conformism, intellectual and sentimental habits must be broken for the inner Divine to transpierce the surface of this life for the Divine is indeed WITHIN man, and life harbors its own hidden justification. Echoing the Upanishad, Sri Aurobindo tells us that The earth is His foothold. He also wrote, God is not only in the still small voice, but in the fire and the whirlwind.
   I think I am correctly interpreting the feeling of my young Indian friends when I say that they see the heroes of your novels as raw mystics, to use Claudels description of Rimbaud. This may seem a surprising attribute, considering your heroes atheism, but that is because we have too often confused mysticism or spirituality with religion, as Sri Aurobindo stresses. One need not believe in a personal, extracosmic God to be a mystic. (That is certainly why religion has from time to time taken upon itself to bum alive all the non-regular mystics.) Here we touch upon a huge confusion rooted in religions. Through their monks, sannyasins and ascetics, religions have shown us a purely contemplative, austere and lifeless side of mysticismindeed those mystics, like the religions they practice, live in a negation of life; they go through this vale of tears with their eyes exclusively fixed on the Beyond. But true mysticism is not so limited as that, it seeks to transform life, to reveal the Absolute hidden in it; it seeks to establish the kingdom of God in man, as Sri Aurobindo wrote, and not the kingdom of a Pope, clergy or sacerdotal class. If the modem world lives in conflict and anguish, if it is torn between being and doing, it is because religion has driven away God from this world, severed him from his creation and flung him back to some distant heaven or empty nirvana, thus denying any possibility of human perfection on this earth and digging an unbridgeable gulf between being and doing, between mystics sunk in their dreams and this world abandoned to the forces of evil, to Satan and all those who consent to get their hands dirty.
  --
   In your reply to the Swedish magazine, you emphasize, The major obstacle to tolerance is not agnosticism but Manichaeism. That is also why religions will never be able to unite humanity, because they have remained Manichaean in their principle, because they are founded on morality, on a sense of good and evil, necessarily varying from one country to the next. Religions will not reconcile men with one another any more than they have reconciled men with themselves, or reconciled their aspiration to be with their need for action and for the same reasons, for in both cases they have dug an abyss between an ideal good, a being they have relegated to heaven, and an evil, a becoming, which reigns supreme in a world where all is vanity. I would like to quote here a passage from Sri Aurobindos Essays on the Gita which throws a clear light on the problem: To put away the responsibility for all that seems to us evil or terrible on the shoulders of a semi-omnipotent Devil, or to put it aside as part of Nature, making an unbridgeable opposition between world-nature and God-Nature, as if Nature were independent of God, or to throw the responsibility on man and his sins, as if he had a preponderant voice in the making of this world or could create anything against the will of God, are clumsily comfortable devices in which the religious thought of India has never taken refuge. We have to look courageously in the face of the reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in his being and that so he has made it. We have to see that Nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures. We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure. It is only when we see with the eye of the complete union and feel this truth in the depths of our being that we can entirely discover behind that mask too the calm and beautiful face of the all-blissful Godhead and in this touch that tests our imperfection the touch of the friend and builder of the spirit in man. The discords of the worlds are Gods discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony.2 I believe that the characters of your books would not be seeking Sacrifice and death so intensely if they did not feel the side of light and joy behind the mask of darkness in which they so passionately lose themselves.
   Sri Aurobindo has constantly stressed that, through progressive evolutionary cycles, humanity must go beyond the purely ethical and religious stage, just as it must go beyond the infrarational and rational stage, in order to reach a new spiritual and suprarational ageotherwise we will simply remain doomed to the upheavals, conflicts and bloody Sacrifices that shake our times, for living according to a code of morality is always a tragedy, as one of the characters in Hope notes.
   The tragedies we are experiencingcommunism, Nazismare not rooted, as the Swedish magazine implies, in the weakening or disappearance of religion, it is religion itself which is the source of the disequilibrium insofar as it is fossilized in dogmas, as it clings to a power it possesses in a human cycle drawing to its close, and as it refuses to open itself to a new deeper notion in man which would at long last reconcile heaven and earth. As a result, men go elsewhere to seek what religion is unable to provide: in communism or any other ism, so great and persistent is their thirst for the Absolute for that? abides under one name or another and that very thirst is the surest sign of a fullness to come.

02.01 - A Vedic Story, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The gods are in a great fix. Where is Agni? How is it that the comrade has disappeared all on a sudden? The Sacrifice the great work has to be undertaken. And he is to be the leader, for he alone can take up the burden. There is no time to be lost, everything is ready for the ceremony to start and just at the moment the one needed most is nowhere. So the gods organise a search party to find out the whereabouts of the runaway god.
   The search party consists of Varuna, Mitra and Yama. We shall presently understand the sense of the selection. They look about here and therein ten directions, it is mentioned and at last spot the defaulting god hiding within a huge thick strong cloak or caul. They hail him and ask him to come out and take up his charge. Agni refuses: he says he is not competent to undertake the burden; indeed that is why he ran away and they must not force him. The gods explain, entreat, encourage Agni. They say and assure him that no harm will come to him, rather he will flourish and prosper and become immortal. He is mighty and he will become almighty as he takes up his work and proceeds with it. Agni accepts in the end and marches out with the gods.
   What does this parable mean? First of all then we must know what Sacrificea Vedic Sacrificeis. Sacrifice symbolises the cosmic labour, the march of the universe towards its goal, the conquest of Light over Darkness, the ascent of manhood to godhead, the flaming rise and progress of consciousness to its supreme expression and embodiment. It is the release out of Inconscience and Unconsciousness to consciousness and finally into the super-consciousness.
   Sacrifice consists essentially in lighting the fire and pouring fuelofferingsinto it so that it may burn always and brighter and brighter. It calls the gods, also, it is said, ascends to them, brings them down here to live among men, in men. It lifts men from the ordinary life and consciousness, takes them to the abode of the gods. In other words its function is to bring down and infuse into the human vessel the godly consciousness and delight and power. Its purpose is to divinise human life. Through the Sacrifice man offers his present possessions, his body and life and mind to the Deity and deities and by this surrender and submission constant and unfailing (namas) he awakens the Divine in him the Agni that is to lead him to the divine consummation.
   Fire then is the energy of consciousness secreted in the heart of things. It is that which moves the creation upward, produces the unfolding evolution that is history, both individual and collective. It is kindled, it increases in volume and strength and purity and effectiveness, as and when a lower element is offered and submitted to a higher reality and this higher reality impinges upon the lower one (which is what the rubbing of the arai or the pressing of the soma symbolises); the limitation is broken, the small enters into and becomes the vast, the crooked is straightened and leng thened out, what was hidden becomes manifest. This is described as the progression of the Sacrifice (adhvaraadvanceon the path). That is also the victorious battle waged against the dark forces of Ignorance. The goal, the purpose is the descent and manifestation of the gods here upon earth in human vehicles.
   But this Fire is not normally available. It is lost, imbedded in the thick petrified folds of unconsciousness and inconscience. Man's soul is not an apparent reality. It has to be found out, called forth, brought to the front. Even so, in the normal consciousness, the soul, the divine fire is a flickering, twinkling, hesitating spark; it is not sure of itself, not certain of its destiny. Yet when the time is ripe and the call comes, the gods, the luminous forces from above descend with all their insistence and meet the hidden godhead: Agni is reminded of his work and destiny which nothing can frustrate or cancel. He has to consent and undertake his sacrificial labour.
  --
   V) Come, O Agni! Man, the mental being, desires to do the Sacrifice, he has made everything ready, and you dwell in obscurity!
   Make easy-going the path that leads to the gods, with a happy mind carry the offering.
  --
   IX) The offerings that precede, the offerings that follow, offerings pure and simpleall forceful, may you enjoy. May this Sacrifice be yours entirely. The four quarters bow down to you, O Agni!
   ***

02.01 - The World-Stair, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
    The great World-Mother by her Sacrifice
    Has made her soul the body of our state;

02.02 - Rishi Dirghatama, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   This sacrificial altar is the extreme end of the earth, this Sacrifice is the nodus of the universe, and this nectar of immortality (Soma) is the energy-flow of the steed and this Brahman is the Word in the supreme heaven.7
   As are the questions so are the answers, equally enigmatic and obscure.

02.03 - The Glory and the Fall of Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Her days became a luminous Sacrifice;
  An immortal moth in happy and endless fire,

02.04 - The Kingdoms of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But vain unending is the Sacrifice,
  The priest an ignorant mage who only makes
  --
  Can bring down heaven by their Sacrifice.
  40.32

02.04 - The Right of Absolute Freedom, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Within the nation all communities must be ready to give and take and settle down amicably. Within humanity too all nations must live the same principle. The days of free competition must be considered as gone for good; instead the rule of collaboration and co-operation has to be adopted (even between past enemies and rivals). In mutual aid and self-limitation lie also the growth and fulfilment of each collective individuality. That is the great Law of Sacrifice enunciated ages ago by Sri Krishna in the Gita"By increasing each other all will attain the Summum Bonum."
   ***

02.05 - Federated Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The present war puts the problem in the most acute way. Shall it be still a nation or shall it be a "commonwealth" that must henceforth be the dynamic unit? Today it is evident, it is a fact established by the sheer force of circumstances that isolated, self-sufficient nations are a thing of the past, even like the tribes of the Hebrews or the clans of the Hittites. A super-nation, that is to say, a commonwealth of nations is the larger unit that Nature is in travail to bring forth and establish. That is the inner meaning of the mighty convulsions shaking and tearing humanity today. The empire of the pastan empire of the Roman type and patternwas indeed in its own way an attempt in the direction of a closely unified larger humanity; but it was a crude and abortive attempt, as Nature's first attempts mostly are. For the term that was omitted in that greater synthesis was self-determination. Centralisation is certainly the secret of a large organic unity, but not over-centralisation; for this means the submission and Sacrifice of all other parts of at! organism to the undue demands and interests of only one organ which is considered as the centre, the metropolis. Such a system dries up in the end the vitality of the organism: the centre, sucking in all nourishment from the outlying members suffers from oedema and the whole eventually decays and disintegrates. That is the lesson the Roman Empire teaches us.
   The autocratic empire is dead and gone: we need not fear its shadow or ghostly regeneration. But the ideal which inspired it in secret and justified its advent and reign is a truth that has still its day. The drive of Nature, of the inner consciousness of humanity was always to find a greater and larger unit for the collective life of mankind. That unit today has to be a federation of free peoples and nations. In the place of nations, several such commonwealths must now form the broad systems of the body politic of human collectivity. That must give the pattern of its texture, the outline of its configuration the shape of things to come. Such unit is no longer a hypothetical proposition, a nebula, a matter of dream and imagination. It has become a practical necessity; first of all, because of the virtual impossibility of any single nation, big or small, standing all by itself alonemilitary and political and economic exigencies demand inescapable collaboration with others, and secondly, because of the still stricter geographical compulsion the speed and ease of communication has made the globe so small and all its parts so interdependent that none can possibly afford to be exclusive and self-centred.

02.05 - The Godheads of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Pity is there and fire-winged Sacrifice,
  And flashes of sympathy and tenderness
  --
  Then kindling the gold tongue of Sacrifice,
  Calling the powers of a bright hemisphere,

02.06 - Boris Pasternak, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   An element of the human tragedy the very central core perhapsis the calvary of the individual. Pasternak's third article of faith is human freedom, the freedom of the individual. Indeed if evolution is to mean progress and growth it must base itself upon that one needful thing. And here is the gist of the problem that faces Pasternak (as Zhivago) in his own inner consciousness and in his outer social life. The problemMan versus Society, the individual and the collective-the private and the public sector in modern jargonis not of today. It is as old as Sophocles, as old as Valmiki. Antigone upheld the honour of the individual against the law of the State and Sacrificed herself for that ideal. Sri Rama on the contrary Sacrificed his personal individual claims to the demand of his people, the collective godhead.
   Pasternak's tragedy runs on the same line. Progress and welfare of the group, of humanity at large is an imperative necessity and the collective personality does move in that direction. But it moves over the sufferings, over the corpses of individuals composing the collectivity. The individuals, in one sense, are indeed the foci, the conscious centres that direct and impel the onward march, but they have something in them which is over and above the dynamism of physical revolution. There is an inner aspiration and preoccupation whose object is other than outer or general progress and welfare. There is a more intimate quest. The conflict is there. The human individual, in one part of his being, is independent and separate from the society in which he lives and in another he is in solidarity with the rest.

02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Or their life a Sacrifice to an idol of Power.
  Or Beauty shines on them like a wandering star;

02.11 - New World-Conditions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   It is a trite saying that one must change with the changing times. But how many can really do so or know even how to do so? In politics, as in life generally (politics is a part of life, the "precipitated" part, one may say in chemical language), the principle is well-known, though often in a pejorative sense, as policy or tactics. Anyhow the policy pays: for it is one of the main lines, if not the main line of action along which lies success in the practical field. And precisely he who cannot change, who does not see the necessity of change, although conditions and circumstances have changed, is known as the ideologist, the doctrinaire, the fanatic. The no-changer does not change with the times: for, according to him, that is the nature of the weather-cock, the time-server. On the contrary, he seeks to impose his ideas (sometimes called ideals), notions, prejudgments and even prejudices upon time and circumstance. Such an endeavour, on most occasions, can have only a modicum of success; and a blind insistence may even lead to disaster. It may not be difficult to modify some surface movements of the oceanic surge of life, but to control and comm and it is quite a different proposition. This, however, is not to say that opportunism, slavery to circumstances should be the order of the day. Not at all. One is not asked to Sacrifice the bed-rock truth and principle and run after the fleeting mode, the momentary need, the passing interest, to follow always the comfortable line of least resistance. But one has to distinguish. There are things of local and transient utility and there are things of abiding value brought up by deeper world-currents in the conditions and circumstances that face us. When such great occasionsgolden opportunities they are calledcome, they come with their own norms, and then it is foolish to force upon them the narrow strait-jacket forms fabricated by our old habits and preconceived notions.
   We talk even today of British Imperialism, of the Shylock nature of the white coloniser and exploiter

02.12 - The Heavens of the Ideal, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Humanity its house of Sacrifice.
  73.25
  --
  And the Sacrifice of all we cherish here.
  73.32

03.01 - Humanism and Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   It is sometimes said that to turn away from the things of human concern, to seek liberation and annihilation in the Self and the Beyond is selfishness, egoism; on the contrary, to Sacrifice the personal delight of losing oneself in the Impersonal so that one may live and even suffer in the company of ordinary humanity in order to succour and serve it is the nobler aim. But we may ask if it is egoism and selfishness to seek delight in one's own salvation beyond, would it be less selfish and egoistic to enjoy the pleasure of living on a level with humanity with the idea of aiding and uplifting it? Indeed, in either case, the truth discovered by Yajnavalkya, to which we have already referred, stands always justified, that it is not for the sake of this or that that one loves this or that but for the sake of the self that one loves this or that.
   The fact of the matter is that here we enter a domain inwhich the notion of egoism or selfishness has no raison dtre. It is only when one has transcended not only selfishness but egoism and sense of individuality that one becomes ready to enter the glory and beatitude of the Self, or Brahman or Shunyam. One may actually and irrevocably pass beyond, or one may return from there (or from the brink of it) to work in and on the worldout of compassion or in obedience to a special call or a higher Will or because of some other thing; but this second course does not mean that one has attained a higher status of being. We may consider it more human, but it is not necessarily a superior realisation. It is a matter of choice of vocation only, to use a mundane phraseology. The Personal and the Impersonal are two co-ordinates of the same supreme Realitysome choose (or are chosen by) the one and others choose (or are chosen by) the other, perhaps as the integral Play or the inscrutable Plan demands and determines, but neither is intrinsically superior to the otheralthough, as I have already said, from an interested human standpoint, one may seem more immediately profitable or nearer than the other; but from that standpoint there may be other truths that are still more practically useful, still closer to the earthly texture of humanity.

03.03 - The House of the Spirit and the New Creation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  As earth upbears all beings' Sacrifice,
  Thrilled with the hidden Transcendent's joy and peace.
  --
  His living, Sacrificed and offered heart
  Absorbed in adoration mystical,

03.05 - The Spiritual Genius of India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   That is not to say that other peoples of the world are soulless, and that India alone may claim to possess the treasure. But no other people has lived so much in and from the soul, none other has Sacrificed so much for the sake of this one thing needful. The soul-consciousness in other nations lies veiled behind the more pressing activities and immediate occupations of the external nature; at the most, what is characteristic in them is the soul, not in its pure and fundamental being, but expressed, and therefore encased and limited, within some particular mode of becoming. In India, on the other hand, the external activities and operations have never altogether swamped or clouded this soul-consciousness; they have been either subjugated to it as minor auxiliaries or totally Sacrificed as obstacles. The Indian's soul is not imbedded in some far-off region of his unconscious nature; he has succeeded in raising it up and bringing it forward to the level of his waking consciousnessas the gold-tusked Divine Boar lifted the Earth out of the dark depths of the primeval deluge to the light of the Day.
   The French, for example, have developed as a people a special characteristic and mental turn that has set its pervading impress upon their culture and civilisation, upon their creations and activities; that which distinguishes them is a fine, clear and subtle, rational, logical, artistic and literary mind. France, it has often been said, is the head of modern Europe. The Indians are not in the same way a predominantly intellectual race, in spite of the mighty giants of intellect India has always produced, and still produces. Nor are they a literary race, although a rich and grandiose literature, unrivalled in its own great qualities, is their patrimony. It was the few, a small minority, almost a closed circle, that formed in India the elite whose interest and achievement lay in this field; the characteristic power, the main life-current of the nation, did not flow this way, but followed a different channel. Among the ancients the Greeks, and among the moderns the French alone, can rightfully claim as their special genius, as the hallmark of their corporate life, a high intellectual and literary culture. It is to this treasure,a serene and yet vigorous and organized rational mind, coupled with a wonderful felicity of expression in speech,that one turns when one thinks of the special gift that modern France and ancient Greece have brought to the heritage of mankind.

03.06 - Divine Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   It is sometimes said that to turn away from the things of human concern, to seek liberation and annihilation in the Self and the Beyond, is selfishness, egoism; on the contrary, to Sacrifice the personal delight of losing oneself in the Impersonal so that one may live and even suffer in the company of ordinary humanity, in order to succour and serve it, is the nobler aim. But one may ask, if it is egoism and selfishness to seek delight in one's own salvation beyond, would it be less selfish and egoistic to enjoy the pleasure of living on a level with humanity with the idea of aiding and uplifting it? Indeed, in either case, the truth discovered by Yajnavalkya, to which we have already referred, stands always justified,that it is not for the sake of this or that thing that one loves this or that thing, but for the sake of the Self that one loves this or that thing.
   The fact of the matter is that here we enter a domain in which the notion of egoism or selfishness has no raison d'tre. It is only when one has transcended not only selfishness, but egoism and all sense of individuality that one becomes ready to step into the glory and beatitude of the Self or Brahman or unyam. One may actually and irrevocably pass beyond, or one may return from there (or from the brink of it) to work in and on the worldout of compassion, or in obedience to a special call or a higher Will, or because of some other thing; but this second course does not mean that one has attained a higher status of being. We may consider it more human, but it is not necessarily a superior realisation. It is a matter of choice of vocation only, to use a mundane figure. The Personal and the Impersonal are two co-ordinates of the same supreme Realitysome choose (or are chosen by) one and others choose (or chosen by) the other, perhaps as the integral Play or the inscrutable Plan demands and determines, but neither is intrinsically superior to the other.

03.06 - Here or Otherwhere, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   But is not The Gita's solution somewhat different? Sri Krishna urges Arjuna to be in the very thick of a deadly fight, not a theoretical or abstract combat, but take a hand in the direst man-slaughter, to do the deed (even like Macbeth) but yogically. Yes, The Gita's position seems to be thatto accept all life integrally, to undertake all necessary work (kartavyam karma) and turn them Godward. The Gita seeks to do it in its own way which consists of two major principles: (1) to do the work, whatever it may be, unattachedwithout any desire for the fruit, simply as a thing that has to be done, and (2) to do it as a Sacrifice, as an offering to the supreme Master of works.
   The question naturally turns upon the nature and the kind of workwhe ther there is a choice and selection in it. Gita speaks indeed of all works, ktsna-karmakt, but does that really mean any and every work that an ignorant man, an ordinary man steeped in the three Gunas does or can do? It cannot be so. For, although all activity, all energy has its source and impetus in the higher consciousness of the Divine, it assumes on the lower ranges indirect, diverted or even perverted formulations and expressions, not because of the inherent falsity of these so-called inferior strata, the instruments, but because of their temporary impurity and obscurity. There are evidently activities and impulsions born exclusively of desire, of attachment and egoism. There are habits of the body, urges of the vital, notions of the mind, there are individual and social functions that have no place in the spiritual scheme, they have to be rigorously eschewed and eliminated. Has not the Gita said, this is desire, this is passion born of the quality of Rajas? . . . There is not much meaning in trying to do these works unattached or to turn them towards the Divine. When you are unattached, when you turn to the Divine, these 'Simply drop away of themselves. Yes, there are social duties and activities and relations that inevitably dissolve and disappear as you move into the life divine. Some are perhaps tolerated for a period, some are occasions for the consciousness to battle and surmount, grow strong and pass beyond. You have to learn to go beyond and new-create your environment.

03.06 - The Pact and its Sanction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The whole difficulty centres upon the question: who rouses whom, and what is the principle that is meant to rouse. There is a slogan that incited the Red Terror of the French Revolution; there is the other one which inspired the Nazis; there is still another one rampant that had the seal and sanction of Stalin and his politburo. These have spread their dark wings and covered the saviour light. On the other hand, the voice of the Vedic Rishi that hymned the community of faith and speech and act, the kindly light that Buddha carried to suffering humanity, the love and Sacrifice of Christ showing and embleming the way of redemption, the saints and sages in our own epoch who have visioned the ideal of human unity in a divine humanity, even secular leaders who labour for "one world", "a brave new world"all point to the other line of growth and development that man can follow and must and shall follow. The choice has to be made and the right direction given. In India today, there are these two voices put against each other and clear in their call: one asks for unity and harmony, wideness and truth, the other its contrary working for separativeness, disintegration, narrowness, and make-believe and falsehood. One must have the courage and the sagacity to fix one's loyalty and adhesion.
   A true covenant there can be only between parties that work for the light, are inspired by the same divine purpose. Otherwise if there is a fundamental difference in the motive, in the soul-impulse, then it is no longer a pact between comrades, but a patchwork of irreconcilable elements. I have spoken of the threefold sanction of the covenant. The sanction from the top initiates, plans and supports, the sanction from the bottom establishes and furnishes the field, but it is the sanction from the mid-region that inspires, executes, makes a living reality of what is no more than an idea, a possibility. On one side are the Elders, the seasoned statesmen, the wise ones; on the other, the general body of mankind waiting to be moved and guided; in between is the army of young enthusiasts, enlightened or illumined (not necessarily young in age) who form the pra, the vital sheath of the body politic. Allby far the largest part of itdepends upon the dreams that the Prana has been initiated and trained to dream.

03.10 - Hamlet: A Crisis of the Evolving Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The angelic Cordelia is a ray that has strayed down from some higher region, to evolve hereafter, not for immediate fruition and fulfilment. It is the Light that shines always even in this naughty world, a spark of the Grace that still relieves the blight that mars an otherwise sinful earth. She is the symbol of a promise or prophecy that will justify itself sometime in the future, but for the moment the burden of the gloom is too much upon her and she is engulfed in it and Sacrificed.
   Hamlet, Act II, Sc. 2.

03.16 - The Tragic Spirit in Nature, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   There runs a pessimistic vein in Nature's movement. Due to the original Inconscience out of which she is built and also because of a habit formed through millenniums it is not possible for her to expect or envisage anything else than decay, death and frustration in the end or on the whole. To every rise there must be a fall, a crest must end in a trough. Nature has not the courage nor the faculty to look for any kind of perfection upon earth. Not that within her realm one cannot or should not try for the good; the noble, even the perfect, but one must be ready to pay the price. Good there is and may be, but it is suffered only on payment of its Danegeld to Evil. That is the law of Sacrifice that seems to be fundamental to Nature's governance.
   The Evil, we have said, is nothing else than the basis of unconsciousness or Inconscience in Nature. It is this which pulls the beingwhatever structure of consciousness can be reared upon itdown to decay and frustration. It is the force of gravitation or inertia. Matter is unconsciousness; the body, formed basically of matter, is unconsciousness too. The natural tendency of Matter is towards disintegration and dissolution; the body, therefore, is mortalbhasmntamidam arram. The scope and range of mortality is measured by the scope and range of unconsciousness. Matter is the most concrete and solid form of unconsciousness; but it casts its shadow upon the higher levels toolife and mind always lie in the penumbra of this original evil.

03.17 - The Souls Odyssey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Man, in his terrestrial body, although fallen, because shrouded and diverted from his central being of light and fire, is yet not, as I have said, wholly forsaken and cut adrift. He always carries within him that radiant core through all the peregrinations of earthly sojourn. And though the frontal consciousness, the physical memory has no contact with it, there is a stream of inner consciousness that continues to maintain the link. That is the silver lining to the dark cloud that envelops and engulfs our normal life. And that is why at timesnot unoften there occurs a crack, a fissure in the crust of our earthly nature of ignorance and a tongue of flame leaps outone or other perhaps of the seven sisters of which the Upanishad speaks. And then a mere man becomes a saint, a seer, a poet, a prophet, a hero. This is the flaming godhead whom we cherish within, Agni, the leader of our progressive life, the great Sacrifice, the child whom we nourish, birth after birth, by all that we experience and do and achieve. To live normally and naturally in that fiery elementlike the legendary Salamanderto mould one's consciousness and being, one's substance and constitution, even the entire cellular organisation into the radiant truth is the goal of man's highest aspiration, the ultimate end of Nature's evolutionary urge and the cycle of rebirth.
   Wordsworth: Ode on the Intimations of Immortality

04.01 - The Birth and Childhood of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A Sacrifice of perfume filled the hours.
  Asocas burned in crimson spots of flame,

04.02 - The Growth of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Her acts became gestures of Sacrifice.
  Invested with a rhythm of higher spheres

04.03 - Consciousness as Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Now this superconsciousness is the true origin of creation, although the apparent and objective creation starts with and is based upon Unconsciousness. All norms and archetypes belong to the superconsciousness; for the sake of material creation they are thrown down or cast as seed into the Unconscious and in this process they undergo a change, a deformation and aberration. All the major themes of dream myths and prehistoric legends which the psychologists claim to have found imbedded in man's subconscient consciousness are in fact echoes and mirages of great spiritualsuperconscientrealities reflected here below. The theme of the Hero of the Dual Mother (Dark and Fair), of Creation and Sacrifice, these are, according to Jung, dramatisations of some fundamental movements and urges in the dark subconscient nature. Jung, however, throws a luminous suggestion in characterising the nature of this vast complex. The general sense, Jung says; is that of a movement forward, of a difficult journey, of a pull backward and downward, of yawning abysses that call, of a light that beckons. It is an effort, a travail of what lies imbedded and suppressed to come out into the open, into the normal consciousness and thus release an unhealthy tension, restore a balance in the individual's system. Modern psychology lays great stress upon the integration of personality. Most of the ills that human nature suffers from, they say, are due to this division or schism in it, a suppressed subconsciousness and an expressed consciousness seeking to express a negation of that subconsciousness. Modern psychology teaches that one should dive into the nether regions and face squarely whatever elements are there, help these to follow their natural bent to come up and see the light of the day. Only thus there can be established a unitary movement, an even consistency and an equilibrium throughout the entire consciousness and being.
   So far so good. But two things are to be taken note of. First of all, the resolution of the normal conflict in man's consciousness, the integration of his personality, is not wholly practicable within the scope of the present nature and the field of the actual forces at play. That can give only a shadow of the true resolution and integration. A conscious envisaging of the conflicting forces, a calm survey of the submerged or side-tracked libidos in their true nature, a voluntary acceptance, of these dark elements as a part of normal human nature, does not automatically make for their sublimation and purification or transformation. The thing is possible only through another force and on another level, by the intervention and interfusion precisely of the superconsciousness. And here comes the second point to note. For it is this superconsciousness towards which all the strife and struggle of the under-consciousness are turned and directed. The yearning and urge in the subconsciousness to move forward, to escape outside into the light does not refer merely to the march towards normal awareness and consciousness: it has a deeper direction and a higher aimit seeks that of which it is an aberration and a deformation, the very origin and source, the height from which it fell.

05.01 - Man and the Gods, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   And the exquisiteness, the special quality of this inner Heart is mostly if not wholly derived from a particular factor of terrestrial evolution. For the journey here is a Sacrifice, a passage through pain and suffering, even through frustration and death. The tears that accompany the mortal being in his calvary of an earthly life serve precisely as a holy unction of purification, give a sweet intensity to all his urges in the progressive march to Resurrection. This is the Immanent Divine who has to be worshipped and realised as much as the Transcendent Divine, if man is to fulfil himself wholly and earth justify its existence.
   The legend of the great ascetic Sankaracharya going straight to the realisation of the Supreme knowledge in Brahman but obliged to come down and enter into another earthly body for the experience of love, even earthly love, in order to complete his realisation is instructive and illustrates our point.
   As the human aspiration is to reach out towards divinity, the gods too at times are not satisfied with their closed divine status. They lean down to help humanity, to bring it up into their consciousness; but also they seek this contact and unification for their own sake, for a change and transformation in themselves; they may seek to rise further in a higher status of consciousness or they may wish to participate in the earthly travail, in the human endeavour. In either case the channel lies through the human consciousness. In the Vedas the gods always look to men, almost depend upon them for their own fulfilment and enrichment. Men ask the gods for wealth and plentymaterial as well as spiritual the gods too ask from men the Sacrifice, the Sacrifice that pours out the substance of the human reality upon which they feed and grow. The Gita speaks of the same covenant the interchange of gifts between the two, each increasing the other and both attaining the highest good.
   Our dark destinies move under vast laws that nothing diverts, nothing softens. Thou canst not have sudden clemencies that disturb the world, O God, Spirit tranquil!Victor Hugo, A Villequier.

05.01 - Of Love and Aspiration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Sacrifice all-but into the radiant fire of Aspiration that flames up to the gods.
   The Heart is the blazing hearth of Aspiration, the divine door that opens into Immortality.

05.02 - Gods Labour, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Divine brings down with himself his shaft of light, and the light, as it spreads, begins to scatter and dissolve the clouds of ignorance. The Divine comes here below and as he formulates and concentrates his consciousness in or as an individualised channel, the power of the consciousness becomes dynamic and concrete and works out the desired change in th material plane. In the descent the Divine has to assume the lower potentials on the inferior levels and this involves an apparent veiling and lessening of his higher and divine degrees. In other words, the Divine in becoming human accepts and embraces in that embodiment all that humanity normally means, its weaknesses and frailties, its obstacles and difficulties, all the ignorance and inconscience. This Sacrifice he has agreed to, has undertaken in order to create out of it a golden body, a radiant matter, a heavenly or divinised earth.
   God made man, the spirit become flesh: this is Grace, the benediction of the Holy One upon the sinful earth. The working of Grace in one of its characteristic movements has been beautifully envisaged in esoteric Christianity. The burden of sin that is to say, of weakness, impurity and ignorancelies so heavy upon man, the force of gravitation is so absolute, that it is divine intervention alone, and in the most physical sense, which can save him. God takes upon himself man's load and relieves him of it: thus freed he can soar up easily and join the company of the Happy in heaven alongside God. This is the ransom paid by God to His Enemy, the vicarious atonement suffered by the Divine, the cross he has to bear when he comes upon this earth, into this vale of tears. I t is said, in terms of human feeling, pity so moved him that he left the happy abode of heaven, came down among men and lived like one of them, sharing their sorrow and pain and, what is divine, taking up the evil into himself, drinking, as it were, out of the poisoned bowl, so that man, frail mortal creature, may escape his doom.

05.06 - The Role of Evil, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   This is the divine miracle that has been vouchsafed to man, the spectacle of the Divine himself becoming an earthly creature, wearing as his own body of flesh and blood this mortal frame of pain and suffering and ignorance, of obscurity and incapacity and falsehood. This is the calvary he has accepted, the Sacrifice of his divinity he agreed to in order that the undivine too may gracefully serve the Divine, be taken up and transmuted into the reality from which it fell, of which it is an aberration.
   The glory and beauty of this gesture one would not like not to have witnessed and experienced and shared.

05.07 - Man and Superman, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Even so mankind, at the crucial parting of the ways, would very naturally look askance at the diminished value of many of its qualities and attri butes in the new status to come. First of all, as it has been pointed out, the intellect and reasoning power will have to surrender and abdicate. The very power by which man has attained his present high status and maintains it in the world has to be Sacrificed for something else called intuition or revelation whose value and efficacy are unknown and have to be rigorously tested. Anyhow, is not the known devil by far and large preferable to the unknown entity? And then the zest of life, peculiar to man, that works through contradictionsdelight and suffering, victory and defeat, war and peace, doubt and knowledge, all the play of light and shade, the spirit of adventure, of combat and struggle and heroic effort, will have to go and give place to something, peaceful and harmonious perhaps but monotonous, insipid, unprogressive. The very character of human life is its passion to battle through, even if it is not always through. For it is often said that the end or goal does not matter, the goal is always something uncertain; it is the way, the means, the immediate action that is of supreme consequence: for it is that that tests man's manhood, gives him the value he may have. And above all man is asked to give up the very thing which he has laboured to build up through millenniums of his terrestrial life, his individuality, his personality, for the demand is that he must lose his ego in order to attain the superhuman status.
   So, the probability is that a large part of humanity will remain wedded to the normal human life. But this does not lessen in any way the value, the tremendous importance of what happens to the other part, may be, not insignificant or inconsiderable. Along with those that doubt and deny, there will be those who believe and affirm, who will stand for divinisation, whatever dehumanisation it may imply.

06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is finished, the dread mysterious Sacrifice,
  Offered by God's martyred body for the world;
  --
  He is the victim in his own Sacrifice.
  The Immortal bound to earth's mortality
  --
  Only by hard Sacrifice is high heaven earned:
  He must face the fight, the pang who would conquer Hell.
  --
  Thy fate is a long Sacrifice to the gods
  Till they have opened to thee thy secret self
  --
  In the passion of her soul of Sacrifice
  Her lonely strength facing the universe,

06.11 - The Steps of the Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The human individual is a very complex being: he is com-posed of innumerable elements, each one of which is an independent entity and has almost a personality. Not only so, the most contradictory elements are housed together. If there is a particular quality or capacity present, the very opposite of it, annulling it, as it were, will be also found along with it and embracing it.. I have seen a man brave, courageous, heroic to the extreme, flinching from no danger, facing unperturbed the utmost peril, the bravest of the brave, truly; and yet I have seen the same man cowering in abject terror, like the last of poltroons, in the presence of certain circumstances. I have seen a most generous man, giving away largely, freely, not counting any expenditure or Sacrifice, without the least care or reservation; the same person I have also found to be the vilest of misers in respect of certain other considerations. I have seen again the most intelligent person, with a clear mind, full of light and understanding, easily comprehending the logic and implication of a topic and yet I have seen him betraying the utmost stupidity of which even an ordinary man without education or intelligence would be incapable. These are not theoretical examples, but I have come across such persons actually in life.
   The complexity arises not only in extension, but also in depth. Man does not live on a single plane but on many planes at the same time. There is a scale of gradation in human consciousness: the higher one rises in the scale the greater the number of elements or personalities that one possesses. Whether one lives mostly or mainly on the physical or vital or mental plane or on any particular section of these planes or on planes above and beyond, there will be accordingly differences in the constitution or psycho-physical make-up of the individual personality. The higher one stands the richer the personality, because it lives not only on its own normal level, but also on all that are below and which it has transcended. The complete or integral man, some occultists say, possesses 365 personalities; indeed it may be much more. (The Vedas speak of the three and thirty-three and thirty-three hundred and thirty-three thousand gods that may be housed in the human vehicle the basic three being evidently the triple status or world of Body, Life and Mind).

06.13 - Body, the Occult Agent, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   A body, in this way, becomes the instrument, a lever for producing mighty changes and creations upon earth. This conception of the occult potency of the body is at the basis of the rite or institution of Sacrifice that was a characteristic feature of the old-world society. Iphigenia was offered as a victim to avert the wrath of the gods and bring victory to the Greeks. Sometimes an animal replaced the human victim and served the same purpose and in the same way. And in a higher senseindeed in the highest sensea body can Sacrifice itself in such a waywholly and integrallyas to bring about a corresponding integral reversal or revaluation in the physical world. A human being that makes of himself a holocaustburns himself out at the altar of the Divinekeeping nothing for his own sake, living for the Divine alone, by calling down the divine will in himself, brings into the earthly life too a divine presence and transformation. A total physical Sacrifice results inevitably into a total expression and embodiment of the Divine in the Physical world.
   ***

06.23 - Here or Elsewhere, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In the same way, there are souls that have emerged out of the fire of earthly life and are enjoying the safety and security of the heavens; but they have been called to come back into the world, add to the experience of the tranquil above the experience of the trouble below. Surely it increases the scope of their consciousness. But to turn upon the world means also to re-enter into ignorance, for this world means ignorance, as it is, it is nothing but ignorance. The role then of one who returns is once more to embrace ignorance, but with a view to bringing into it the light and bliss that he gained from above, permeating the stuff of the present world with the substance of the higher consciousness. It is a Sacrifice demanded of him, thus to abandon the eternal felicity of the high heavens the unbroken union with the Divine above and to enter into the depths of this great perilous world: but this is a privilege too, to bring solace to the afflicted, the transforming light to obscure souls, the radiant energy to inert earth. It is a high privilege for which the luminous soul is thankful: he modestly accepts a gift of grace from the Supreme. He accepts the Ignorance and offers it: he lays it at the feet of the Supreme so that it may be transmuted into lightlight here below. His own role is that of a modest intermediary.
   ***

07.01 - The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Her life the altar, herself the Sacrifice.
  Yet ever they grew into each other more

07.02 - The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Tied like a Sacrifice on the altar of Time,
  O spirit, O immortal energy,

07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Or offered a cold and flameless Sacrifice.
  The sacred Book lay on its sanctified desk

07.05 - The Finding of the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Day came, priest of a Sacrifice of joy
  Into the worshipping silence of her world;

08.10 - Are Not Dogs More Faithful Than Men?, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   You must leave that far behind if you will have the joy of faithfulness, the joy of self-giving, that does not notice at all whether it is properly received or not, whether there is a response or not. Never to wait for a return in exchange for what one does, wait for nothing, not through asceticism or the sense of Sacrifice, but because of the joy of being in that consciousness: that is sufficient, that is much more that what one can receive from anything outside.
   ***

09.02 - The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  To him I have offered hope for Sacrifice
  And gave my longings as a sacrament.

09.05 - The Story of Love, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   One of the highest expressions of love in human beings is the giving of oneself entirely to the person loved. That is to say, to Sacrifice oneself for the motherland, give one's life in defending another person, etc. This may not be the very highest form, but it is already something. From there you have to climb very high up to arrive at the true expression which is on the summit of the ascent. The ultimate expression of love is in the felicity of union.
   That brings us to the symbol of Krishna and Radha. Krishna is he of whom Sri Aurobindo speaks as the divine Flute-player, that is to say, the immanent and universal Divine who is the supreme power of attraction. Radha is the name given to the soul, the psychic personality responding to the call of the Flute-player.

1.002 - The Heifer, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
  67. And recall when Moses said to his people, “God commands you to Sacrifice a heifer.” They said, “Do you make a mockery of us?” He said, “God forbid that I should be so ignorant.”
  68. They said, “Call upon your Lord to show us which one.” He said, “He says she is a heifer, neither too old, nor too young, but in between. So do what you are commanded.”
  --
  229. Divorce is allowed twice. Then, either honorable retention, or setting free kindly. It is not lawful for you to take back anything you have given them, unless they fear that they cannot maintain God's limits. If you fear that they cannot maintain God’s limits, then there is no blame on them if she Sacrifices something for her release. These are God’s limits, so do not transgress them. Those who transgress God’s limits are the unjust.
  230. If he divorces her, she shall not be lawful for him again until she has married another husband. If the latter divorces her, then there is no blame on them for reuniting, provided they think they can maintain God's limits. These are God’s limits; He makes them clear to people who know.

10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Eternity Sacrificed for a moment's bliss:
  Yet for joy and not for sorrow earth was made
  --
  Imperishable, a tongue of Sacrifice,
  It flamed unquenched upon the central hearth

10.04 - The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A Sacrifice of rapture to the One.
  A cosmic vision, a spiritual sense

1.005 - The Table, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
  3. Prohibited for you are carrion, blood, the flesh of swine, and animals dedicated to other than God; also the flesh of animals strangled, killed violently, killed by a fall, gored to death, mangled by wild animals—except what you rescue, and animals Sacrificed on altars; and the practice of drawing lots. For it is immoral. Today, those who disbelieve have despaired of your religion, so do not fear them, but fear Me. Today I have perfected your religion for you, and have completed My favor upon you, and have approved Islam as a religion for you. But whoever is compelled by hunger, with no intent of wrongdoing—God is Forgiving and Merciful.
  4. They ask you what is permitted for them. Say, “Permitted for you are all good things, including what trained dogs and falcons catch for you.” You train them according to what God has taught you. So eat from what they catch for you, and pronounce God’s name over it. And fear God. God is Swift in reckoning.

1.00 - Preliminary Remarks, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  EXISTENCE, as we know it, is full of sorrow. To mention only one minor point: every man is a condemned criminal, only he does not know that date of his execution. This is unpleasant for every man. Consequently every man does everything possible to postpone the date, and would Sacrifice anything that he has if he could reverse the sentence.
  Practically all religions and all philosophies have started thus crudely, by promising their adherents some such reward as immortality.
  --
  The history of Christianity shows precisely the same remarkable fact. Jesus Christ was brought up on the fables to the Old Testament, and so was compelled to ascribe his experiences to Jehovah, although his gentle spirit could have had nothing in common with the monster who was always commanding the rape of virgins and the murder of little children, and whose rites were then, and still are, celebrated by human Sacrifice.1
  Similarly the visions of Joan of Arc were entirely Christian; but she, like all the others we have mentioned, found somewhere the force to do great things. Of course, it may be said that there is a fallacy in the argument; it may be true that all these great people saw God, but it does not follow that every one who sees God will do great things.

1.00 - The way of what is to come, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
    What solitude, what coldness of desolation you lay upon me when you speak such! Reflect on the destruction of being and the streams of blood from the terrible Sacrifice that the depths demand. 14
    But the spirit of the depths said: "No one can or should halt Sacrifice. Sacrifice is not destruction, Sacrifice is the foundation stone of what is to come. Have you not had monasteries? Have not countless thousands gone into the desert? You should carry the monastery in yourself The desert is within you. The desert calls you and draws you back, and if you were fettered to the world of this time with iron, the call of the desert would break all chains. Truly, I prepare you for solitude.
    After this, my humanity remained silent. Something happened to my spirit, however, which I must call mercy.

10.13 - Go Through, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In fact it is to the Divine that the dedication has to be made. Dedication means offering. All works, says the Gita, have to be offered to the Supreme, that is the meaning of Sacrifice, the Sacrifice of works (Karmayajna), all works come from the Divine and they are to go back to Him, that is how they are purified and through them thus purified and elevated, man attains his goal, union with the Supreme. However, not works alone but each and every element of the human beingeven love and passion and all the grosser urgesdo come from the only one Source, the Divine. They become impure and distorted, muddy and poisonous when man seeks to appropriate, that is to say, misappropriate them as his own personal belongings. To give up the sense of ownership is the core of dedication. You are not the possessor, the Divine is the only possessor. In fact, you also do not belong to yourself, you belong to the Divine. That is the ceremony of Sacrifice you have to undertakeinstall the Divinity in all your parts and functions. That is how you purify and divinise your human elements. That is how you go through ignorance and mortality and arrive at knowledge and immortality.
   ***

1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  rushas original creative Sacrifice that produced the cosmos
  itself. More than that, all human activity whether sacred

1.01 - BOOK THE FIRST, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  With Sacrifice ador'd, and publick pray'rs,
  He common temples with his mother shares.

1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
  _institution_, in which the life of the individual is to a great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of the race. But I wish to show at what a Sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage. What mean ye by saying that the poor ye have always with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the childrens teeth are set on edge?
  As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel.
  --
  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.
  Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made. The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme, a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection,to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation, and he employs
  --
  But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen say. I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic enterprises. I have made some Sacrifices to a sense of duty, and among others have Sacrificed this pleasure also. There are those who have used all their arts to persuade me to undertake the support of some poor family in the town; and if I had nothing to do,for the devil finds employment for the idle,I might try my hand at some such pastime as that. However, when I have thought to indulge myself in this respect, and lay their Heaven under an obligation by maintaining certain poor persons in all respects as comfortably as I maintain myself, and have even ventured so far as to make them the offer, they have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor. While my townsmen and women are devoted in so many ways to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at least may be spared to other and less humane pursuits. You must have a genius for charity as well as for any thing else. As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. Probably I should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling to do the good which society demands of me, to save the universe from annihilation; and I believe that a like but infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. But I would not stand between any man and his genius; and to him who does this work, which I decline, with his whole heart and soul and life, I would say,
  Persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it is most likely they will.

1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Veda were not only seers but singers and priests of Sacrifice,
  that their chants were written to be sung at public Sacrifices and
  refer constantly to the customary ritual and seem to call for the
  --
  The Vedic religion was in this account only a worship of NatureGods full of solar myths and consecrated by Sacrifices and a sacrificial liturgy primitive enough in its ideas and contents, and it is these barbaric prayers that are the much vaunted, haloed and apotheosized Veda.
  There can be no doubt that in the beginning there was a worship of the Powers of the physical world, the Sun, Moon, Heaven and Earth, Wind, Rain and Storm etc., the Sacred Rivers and a number of Gods who presided over the workings of Nature.
  --
  Gods meant to induce them to shower on the Sacrificers material
  blessings such as plenty of cows, horses, fighting men, sons, food,
  --
  He is not thinking of the Nature-Power presiding over the outer element of fire or of the fire of the ceremonial Sacrifice. Or he speaks of Saraswati as one who impels the words of Truth and awakes to right thinkings or as one opulent with the thought: Saraswati awakes to consciousness or makes us conscious of the "Great Ocean and illumines all our thoughts." It is surely not the River Goddess whom he is thus hymning but the Power, theRiver if you will, of inspiration, the word of the Truth, bringing its light into our thoughts, building up in us that Truth, an inner knowledge. The Gods constantly stand out in their psychological functions; the Sacrifice is the outer symbol of an inner work, an inner interchange between the gods and men, - man givingwhat he has, the gods giving in return the horses of power, the herds of light, the heroes of Strength to be his retinue, winning for him victory in his battle with the hosts of Darkness, Vritras, Dasyus, Panis. When the Rishi says, "Let us become conscious whether by the War-Horse or by the Word of a Strength beyond men", his words have either a mystic significance or they have no coherent meaning at all. In the portions translated in this book we have many mystic verses and whole hymns which, however mystic, tear the veil off the outer sacrificial images covering the real sense of the Veda. "Thought", says the Rishi, "has nourished for us human things in the Immortals, in the Great Heavens; it is the milch-cow which milks of itself the wealth of many forms" - the many kinds of wealth, cows, horses and the rest for which the Sacrificer prays; evidently this is no material wealth, it is something which Thought, the Thought embodied in the Mantra, can give and it is the result of the same Thought that nourishes our human things in the Immortals, in the Great Heavens. A process of divinisation, and of a bringing down of great and luminous riches, treasures won from the Gods by the inner work of Sacrifice, is hinted at in terms necessarily covert but still for one who knows how to read these secret words, nin.ya vacamsi, sufficiently expressive, kavaye nivacana. Again, Night and Dawn the eternal sisters are like "joyful weaving women weaving the weft of our perfected works into the form of a Sacrifice."
  Again, words with a mystic form and meaning, but there
  --
  character of the Sacrifice, the real meaning of the Cow, of the
  riches sought for, the plenitudes of the Great Treasure.
  --
  to partake when they come to the Sacrifice. Evidently this sense
  of light doubles with that of clarified butter in the symbolism
  of the Sacrifice. The thought or the word expressing the thought
  is compared to pure clarified butter, expressions like dhiyam
  --
  calling on Fire as priest of the Sacrifice to flood the offering with
  a mind pouring ghrita, ghr.taprus.a manasa and so manifest the
  --
  and Light. The word kratu means ordinarily work or Sacrifice
  but it also means intelligence, power or resolution and especially
  --
  power of the Mantra, - to offer to them the gifts of the Sacrifice
  and by that giving secure their gifts, so that by this process we
  --
  the outer Sacrifice in the Veda are used as symbols of the inner
   Sacrifice and self-offering; we give what we are and what we
  --
  this we must build up ourselves in that Truth. Our Sacrifice is a
  journey, a pilgrimage and a battle, - a travel towards the Gods

1.01 - How is Knowledge Of The Higher Worlds Attained?, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
  The recognition that all true teachers of the spiritual life are permeated through and through with this principle will convince all who follow the practical rules proffered to them that they need Sacrifice none of their independence.
  One of the first of these rules can be expressed somewhat in the following words of our language: Provide for yourself moments of inner tranquility, and in these moments learn to distinguish between the essential and the non-essential. It is said advisedly: "expressed in the words of our language." Originally all rules and teachings of spiritual science were expressed in a symbolical sign-language, some understanding of which must be acquired before its whole meaning and scope can be realized. This understanding is dependent on the first steps toward higher knowledge, and these steps result from the exact

1.01 - Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  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.
  --
  14 The word vidhema is used of the ordering of the Sacrifice, the disposal of the offerings to the God and, generally, of the Sacrifice or worship itself. The Vedic namas, internal and external obeisance, is the symbol of submission to the divine Being in ourselves and in the world. Here the offering is that of completest submission and the self-surrender of all the faculties of the lower egoistic human nature to the divine Will-force, Agni, so that, free from internal opposition, it may lead the soul of man through the truth towards a felicity full of the spiritual riches, raye. That state of beatitude is intended, self-content in the principle of pure Love and Joy, which the Vedic initiates regarded as the source of the divine existence in the universe and the foundation of the divine life in the human being. It is the deformation of this principle by egoism which appears as desire and the lust of possession in the lower worlds.

1.01 - Maitreya inquires of his teacher (Parashara), #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  Maitreya said, Master! I have been instructed by you in the whole of the Vedas, and in the institutes of law and of sacred science: through your favour, other men, even though they be my foes, cannot accuse me of having been remiss in the acquirement of knowledge. I am now desirous, oh thou who art profound in piety! to hear from thee, how this world was, and how in future it will be? what is its substance, oh Brahman, and whence proceeded animate and inanimate things? into what has it been resolved, and into what will its dissolution again occur? how were the elements manifested? whence proceeded the gods and other beings? what are the situation and extent of the oceans and the mountains, the earth, the sun, and the planets? what are the families of the gods and others, the Menus, the periods called Manvantaras, those termed Kalpas, and their subdivisions, and the four ages: the events that happen at the close of a Kalpa, and the terminations of the several ages[11]: the histories, oh great Muni, of the gods, the sages, and kings; and how the Vedas were divided into branches (or schools), after they had been arranged by Vyāsa: the duties of the Brahmans, and the other tribes, as well as of those who pass through the different orders of life? All these things I wish to hear from you, grandson of Vaśiṣṭha. Incline thy thoughts benevolently towards me, that I may, through thy favour, be informed of all I desire to know. Parāśara replied, Well inquired, pious Maitreya. You recall to my recollection that which was of old narrated by my father's father, Vaśiṣṭha. I had heard that my father had been devoured by a Rākṣas employed by Visvāmitra: violent anger seized me, and I commenced a Sacrifice for the destruction of the Rākṣasas: hundreds of them were reduced to ashes by the rite, when, as they were about to be entirely extirpated, my grandfather Vaśiṣṭha thus spake to me: Enough, my child; let thy wrath be appeased: the Rākṣasas are not culpable: thy father's death was the work of destiny. Anger is the passion of fools; it becometh not a wise man. By whom, it may be asked, is any one killed? Every man reaps the consequences of his own acts. Anger, my son, is the destruction of all that man obtains by arduous exertions, of fame, and of devout austerities; and prevents the attainment of heaven or of emancipation. The chief sages always shun wrath: he not thou, my child, subject to its influence. Let no more of these unoffending spirits of darkness be consumed. Mercy is the might of the righteous[12].
  Being thus admonished by my venerable grandsire, I immediately desisted from the rite, in obedience to his injunctions, and Vaśiṣṭha, the most excellent of sages, was content with me. Then arrived Pulastya, the son of Brahmā[13], who was received by my grandfather with the customary marks of respect. The illustrious brother of Pulaha said to me; Since, in the violence of animosity, you have listened to the words of your progenitor, and have exercised clemency, therefore you shall become learned in every science: since you have forborne, even though incensed, to destroy my posterity, I will bestow upon you another boon, and, you shall become the author of a summary of the Purāṇas[14]; you shall know the true nature of the deities, as it really is; and, whether engaged in religious rites, or abstaining from their performance[15], your understanding, through my favour, shall be perfect, and exempt from). doubts. Then my grandsire Vaśiṣṭha added; Whatever has been said to thee by Pulastya, shall assuredly come to pass.
  --
  [12]: Sacrifice of Parāśara. The story of Parāśara's birth is narrated in detail in the Mahābhārata (Ādi Parva, s. 176). King Kalmāṣapāda meeting with Sakti, the son of Vaśiṣṭha, in a narrow path in a thicket, desired him to stand out of his way. The sage refused: on which the Rāja beat him with his whip, and Sakti cursed him to become a Rākṣas, a man-devouring spirit. The Rāja in this transformation killed and ate its author, or Sakti, together with all the other sons of Vaśiṣṭha. Sakti left his wife Adriśyantī pregnant, and she gave birth to Parāśara, who was brought up by p. 5 his grandfather. When he grew up, and was informed of his father's death, he instituted a Sacrifice for the destruction of all the Rākṣasas; but was dissuaded from its completion by Vaśiṣṭha and other sages or Atri, Pulastya, Pulaha, and Kratu. The Mahābhārata adds, that when he desisted from the rite, he scattered the remaining sacrificial fire upon the northern face of the Himālaya mountain, where it still blazes forth at the phases of the moon, consuming Rākṣasas, forests, and mountains. The legend alludes possibly to some transhimalayan volcano. The transformation of Kalmāṣapāda is ascribed in other places to a different cause; but he is every where regarded as the devourer of Sakti or Saktri, as the name also occurs. The story is told in the Li
  ga Purāṇa (Pūrvārddha, s. 64) in the same manner, with the addition, conformably to the Saiva tendency of that work, that Parāśara begins his Sacrifice by propitiating Mahādeva. Vaśiṣṭha's dissuasion, and Pulastya's appearance, are given in the very words of our text; and the story concludes, 'thus through the favour of Pulastya and of the wise Vaśiṣṭha, Parāśara composed the Vaiṣṇava (Viṣṇu) Purāṇa, containing ten thousand stanzas, and being the third of the Purāṇa compilations' (Purāṇasanhitā). The Bhāgavata (b. III. s. 8) also alludes, though obscurely, to this legend. In recapitulating the succession of the narrators of part of the Bhāgavata, Maitreya states that this first Purāṇa was communicated to him by his Guru Parāśara, as he had been desired by Pulastya: i. e. according to the commentator, agreeably to the boon given by Pulastya to Parāśara, saying, You shall be a narrator of Purāṇas;. The Mahābhārata makes no mention of the communication of this faculty to Parāśara by Pulastya; and as the Bhāgavata could not derive this particular from that source, it here most probably refers unavowedly, as the Li
  ga does avowedly, to the Viṣṇu Purāṇa.
  --
  [15]: Whether performing the usual ceremonies of the Brahmans, or leading a life of devotion and penance, which supersedes the necessity of rites and Sacrifices.
  [16]: These are, in fact, the brief replies to Maitreya's six questions (p. 3), or, How was the world created? By Viṣṇu. How will it be? At the periods of dissolution it will be in Viṣṇu. Whence proceeded animate and inanimate things? From Viṣṇu. Of what is the substance of the world? Viṣṇu. Into what has it been, and will it again he, resolved? Viṣṇu. He is therefore both the instrumental and material cause of the universe. 'The answer to the "whence" replies to the query as to the instrumental cause: "He is the world" replies to the inquiry as to the material cause.' 'And by this explanation of the agency of the materiality, &c. of Viṣṇu, as regards the universe, (it follows that) all will be produced from, and all will repose in him.' We have here precisely the τὸ πᾶν of the Orphic doctrines, and we might fancy that Brucker was translating a passage from a Purāṇa when he describes them in these words: "Continuisse Jovem (lege Viṣṇum) sive summum ortum in se omnia, omnibus ortum ex se dedisse, omnia ex se genuisse, et ex sua produxisse essentia. Spiritum esse universi qui omnia regit vivificat estque; ex quibus necessario sequitur omnia in eum reditura." Hist. Philos. I. 388. Jamblichus and Proclus also testify that the Pythagorean doctrines of the origin of the material world from the Deity, and its identity with him, were much the same. Cudworth, l. c. p. 348.

1.01 - On renunciation of the world, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
  Let us eagerly run our course as men called by our God and King, lest, since our time is short, we be found in the day of our death without fruit and perish of hunger. Let us please the Lord as soldiers please their king; because we are required to give an exact account of our service after the campaign. Let us fear the Lord not less than we fear beasts. For I have seen men who were going to steal and were not afraid of God, but, hearing the barking of dogs, they at once turned back; and what the fear of God could not achieve was done by the fear of animals. Let us love God at least as much as we respect our friends. For I have often seen people who had offended God and were not in the least perturbed about it. And I have seen how those same people provoked their friends in some trifling matter and then employed every artifice, every device, every Sacrifice, every apology, both personally and through friends and relatives, not sparing gifts, in order to regain their former love.
  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.

1.01 - Our Demand and Need from the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In the Gita there is very little that is merely local or temporal and its spirit is so large, profound and universal that even this little can easily be universalised without the sense of the teaching suffering any diminution or violation; rather by giving an ampler scope to it than belonged to the country and epoch, the teaching gains in depth, truth and power. Often indeed the Gita itself suggests the wider scope that can in this way be given to an idea in itself local or limited. Thus it dwells on the ancient Indian system and idea of Sacrifice as an interchange between gods and men, - a system and idea which have long been practically obsolete in India itself and are no longer real to the general human mind; but we find here a sense so entirely subtle, figurative and symbolic given to the word " Sacrifice" and the conception of the gods is so little local or mythological, so entirely cosmic and philosophical that we can easily accept both as expressive of a practical fact of psychology and general law of Nature and so apply them to the modern conceptions of interchange between life and life and of ethical Sacrifice and self-giving as to widen and deepen these and cast over them a more spiritual aspect and the light of a profounder and more far-reaching Truth. Equally the idea of action according to the Shastra, the fourfold order of society, the allusion to the relative position of the four orders or the comparative spiritual disabilities of Shudras and women seem at first sight local and temporal, and, if they are too much pressed in their literal sense, narrow so much at least of the teaching, deprive it of its universality and spiritual depth and limit its validity for mankind at large. But if we look behind to the spirit and sense and not at the local name and temporal institution, we see that here too the sense is deep and true and the spirit philosophical, spiritual and universal. By Shastra we perceive that the Gita means the law imposed on itself by humanity as a substitute for the purely egoistic action of the natural unregenerate man and a control on his tendency to seek in the satisfaction of his desire the standard and aim of his life. We see too that the fourfold order of society is merely the concrete form of a spiritual truth which is itself independent of the form; it rests on the conception of right works as a rightly ordered
  Our Demand and Need from the Gita

1.01 - Principles of Practical Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  not demand too great a Sacrifice of personality, we should change the sick
  man therapeutically. But when a patient realizes that cure through change
  would mean too great a Sacrifice, then the doctor can, indeed he should,
  give up any wish to change or cure. He must either refuse to treat the

1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If we look at the beginnings of Indian society, the far-off Vedic age which we no longer understand, for we have lost that mentality, we see that everything is symbolic. The religious institution of Sacrifice governs the whole society and all its hours and moments, and the ritual of the Sacrifice is at every turn and in every detail, as even a cursory study of the Brahmanas and Upanishads ought to show us, mystically symbolic. The theory that there was nothing in the Sacrifice except a propitiation of Nature-gods for the gaining of worldly prosperity and of Paradise, is a misunderstanding by a later humanity which had already become profoundly affected by an intellectual and practical bent of mind, practical even in its religion and even in its own mysticism and symbolism, and therefore could no longer enter into the ancient spirit. Not only the actual religious worship but also the social institutions of the time were penetrated through and through with the symbolic spirit. Take the hymn of the Rig Veda which is supposed to be a marriage hymn for the union of a human couple and was certainly used as such in the later Vedic ages. Yet the whole sense of the hymn turns about the successive marriages of Sury, daughter of the Sun, with different gods and the human marriage is quite a subordinate matter overshadowed and governed entirely by the divine and mystic figure and is spoken of in the terms of that figure. Mark, however, that the divine marriage here is not, as it would be in later ancient poetry, a decorative image or poetical ornamentation used to set off and embellish the human union; on the contrary, the human is an inferior figure and image of the divine. The distinction marks off the entire contrast between that more ancient mentality and our modern regard upon things. This symbolism influenced for a long time Indian ideas of marriage and is even now conventionally remembered though no longer understood or effective.
  We may note also in passing that the Indian ideal of the relation between man and woman has always been governed by the symbolism of the relation between the Purusha and Prakriti (in the Veda Nri and Gna), the male and female divine Principles in the universe. Even, there is to some degree a practical correlation between the position of the female sex and this idea. In the earlier Vedic times when the female principle stood on a sort of equality with the male in the symbolic cult, though with a certain predominance for the latter, woman was as much the mate as the adjunct of man; in later times when the Prakriti has become subject in idea to the Purusha, the woman also depends entirely on the man, exists only for him and has hardly even a separate spiritual existence. In the Tantrik Shakta religion which puts the female principle highest, there is an attempt which could not get itself translated into social practice,even as this Tantrik cult could never entirely shake off the subjugation of the Vedantic idea,to elevate woman and make her an object of profound respect and even of worship.

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 Ego, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  might be made the first Sacrifice in the discrim-
  ination of composite natures.

1.01 - The Four Aids, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  16:But still, in the practical development, each of the three stages has its necessity and utility and must be given its time or its place. It will not do, it cannot be safe or effective to begin with the last and highest alone. It would not be the right course, either, to leap prematurely from one to another. For even if from the beginning we recognise in mind and heart the Supreme, there are elements of the nature which long prevent the recognition from becoming realisation. But without realisation our mental belief cannot become a dynamic reality; it is still only a figure of knowledge, not a living truth, an idea, not yet a power. And even if realisation has begun, it may be dangerous to imagine or to assume too soon that we are altogether in the hands of the Supreme or are acting as his instrument. That assumption may introduce a calamitous falsity; it may produce a helpless inertia or, magnifying the movements of the ego with the Divine Name, it may disastrously distort and ruin the whole course of the Yoga. There is a period, more or less prolonged, of internal effort and struggle in which the individual will has to reject the darkness and distortions of the lower nature and to put itself resolutely or vehemently on the side of the divine Light. The mental energies, the heart's emotions, the vital desires, the very physical being have to be compelled into the right attitude or trained to admit and answer to the right influences. It is only then, only when this has been truly done, that the surrender of the lower to the higher can be effected, because the Sacrifice has become acceptable.
  17:The personal will of the Sadhaka has first to seize on the egoistic energies and turn them towards the light and the right; once turned, he has still to train them to recognise that always, always to accept, always to follow that. Progressing, he learns, still using the personal will, personal effort, personal energies, to employ them as representatives of the higher Power and in conscious obedience to the higher Influence. Progressing yet farther, his will, effort, energy become no longer personal and separate, but activities of that higher Power and Influence at work in the individual. But there is still a sort of gulf of distance which necessitates an obscure process of transit, not always accurate, sometimes even very distorting, between the divine Origin and the emerging human current. At the end of the progress, with the progressive disappearance of egoism and impurity and ignorance, this last separation is removed; all in the individual becomes the divine working.
  --
  20:The full recognition of this inner Guide, Master of the Yoga, lord, light, enjoyer and goal of all Sacrifice and effort, is of the utmost importance in the path of integral perfection. It is immaterial whether he is first seen as an impersonal Wisdom, Love and Power behind all things, as an Absolute manifesting in. the relative and attracting it, as one's highest Self and the highest Self of all, as a Divine Person within us and in the world, in one of his -- or her -- numerous forms and names or as the ideal which the mind conceives. In the end we perceive that he is all and more than all these things together- The mind's door of entry to the conception of him must necessarily vary according to the past evolution and the present nature.
  21:This inner Guide is often veiled at first by the very intensity of our personal effort and by the ego's preoccupation with itself and its aims. As we gain in clarity and the turmoil of egoistic effort gives place to a calmer self-knowledge, we recognise the source of the growing light within us. We recognise it retrospectively as we realise how all our obscure and conflicting movements have been determined towards an end that we only now begin to perceive, how even before our entrance into the path of the Yoga the evolution of our life has been designedly led towards its turning point. For now we begin to understand the sense of our struggles and efforts, successes and failures. At last we are able to seize the meaning of our ordeals and sufferings and can appreciate the help that was given us by all that hurt and resisted and the utility of our very falls and stumblings. We recognise this divine leading afterwards, not retrospectively but immediately, in the moulding of our thoughts by a transcendent Seer, of our will and actions by an all-embracing Power, of our emotional life by an all-attracting and all-assimilating Bliss and Love. We recognise it too in a more personal relation that from the first touched us or at the last seizes us; we feel the eternal presence of a supreme Master, Friend, Lover, Teacher. We recognise it in the essence of our being as that develops into likeness and oneness with a greater and wider existence; for we perceive that this miraculous development is not the result of our own efforts; an eternal Perfection is moulding us into its own image. One who is the Lord or Ishwara of the Yogic philosophies, the Guide in the conscious being (caitya guru or antaryamin), the Absolute of the thinker, the Unknowable of the Agnostic, the universal Force of the materialist, the supreme Soul and the supreme shakti, the One who is differently named and imaged by the religions, is the Master of our Yoga.

1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We do not believe that our political salvation can be attained by enlargement of Councils, introduction of the elective principle, colonial self-government or any other formula of European politics. We do not deny the use of some of these things as instruments, as weapons in a political struggle, but we deny their sufficiency whether as instruments or ideals and look beyond to an end which they do not serve except in a trifling degree. They might be sufficient if it were our ultimate destiny to be an outlying province of the British Empire or a dependent adjunct of European civilisation. That is a future which we do not think it worth making any Sacrifice to accomplish.
  We believe on the other hand that India is destined to work out her own independent life and civilisation, to stand in the forefront of the world and solve the political, social, economical and moral problems which Europe has failed to solve, yet the pursuit of whose solution and the feverish passage in that pursuit from experiment to experiment, from failure to failure she calls her progress. Our means must be as great as our ends and the strength to discover and use the means so as to attain the end can only be found by seeking the eternal source of strength in ourselves.
  --
  We say to the individual and especially to the young who are now arising to do India's work, the world's work, God's work, "You cannot cherish these ideals, still less can you fulfil them if you subject your minds to European ideas or look at life from the material standpoint. Materially you are nothing, spiritually you are everything. It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, Sacrifice everything. First therefore become Indians. Recover the patrimony of your forefa thers. Recover the Aryan thought, the Aryan discipline, the
  Essays from the Karmayogin

1.01 - The King of the Wood, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  the human Sacrifices once offered to the Tauric Diana. This rule of
  succession by the sword was observed down to imperial times; for
  --
  water. Women with child used to Sacrifice to Egeria, because she was
  believed, like Diana, to be able to grant them an easy delivery.

1.01 - The Offering, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  rial of my Sacrifice; the only material you desire.
  Once upon a time men took into your temple the

10.21 - Short Notes - 4- Ego, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Vedic Rishis declared the same truth, in their own language and imagery when they said "The Sacrifice is made a Sacrifice through the Sacrifice".
   ***

10.23 - Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   A deep concentration seized on me, and I perceived that I was identifying myself with a single cherry-blossom, then through it with all cherry-blossoms, and as I descended deeper in the consciousness, following a stream of bluish force, I became suddenly the cherry-tree itself, stretching towards the sky like so many arms its innumerable branches laden with their Sacrifice of flowers. Then I heard distinctly this sentence:
   "Thus hast thou made thyself one with the soul of cherry-trees and so thou canst take note that it is the Divine who makes the offering of this flower-prayer to heaven."

10.24 - Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   If man finds no use for the gift she has brought down for him, naturally she will take it back and return it to Him to whom it belongs, for all things belong to the Supreme Lord, even She belongs to Him, as She is one with Him. The Gita says: there is nothing else than the Brahman in the creation the doer, the doing and the deed, all are essentially He. In the Sacrifice that is this moving, acting universe, the offerer, the offering and the offered, each and every element is the Brahmanbrahmrpanam brahma havi.
   This gesture of the Divine Mother teaches us also what should be the approach and attitude of human beings in all their activities. In all our movements we should always remember Him, refer to Him, consider that in the last analysis each and every movement comes from Him and we must always offer them to Him, return them to the/ parent-source from where they come, therein lies freedom, the divine detachment which the individual must possess always in order to be one with Him, feel one's identity with Him.
  --
   This then is the occult, the symbolic sense of the Mother's gesture turning away from man with her gifts and returning to the Divine Himself, and inviting Him as the chief guest of honour upon this earth. Or, in the Vedic image, He is to come as the flaming front and leader of the journeying Sacrifice that is this universal existence.
   We are reminded here of a parallelism in Goethes conception of the role of Satan (the Negative Principle) in human affairs. Satan is not merely a destroying devil, he is a constructive angel. For it is he

10.27 - Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Consciousness essentially is always and everywhere the same. Its own quality is unvarying but in its expression there is growth and development, an increase in intensity and amplitude. The light that your candle gives and the light that comes from the sun are not different in quality but they differ in expression or manifestation, because of the receptacle, the seat or abode of the light. The Vedic fire was lighted on a sacred altar, that is the seat for the God from where to manifest himself. There was a regular ceremony for the preparation of the seat (Barhi) and the value and the success of the Sacrifice depended largely on a proper preparation of the seat. The seat, the basic status also indicates that there is an ascending movement of the Sacrifice. The Sacrifice symbolises consciousness and radiant energy, mounting and travelling upward and forward; the progress or ascent of consciousness means bringing out its inherent potential strength that is behind and within and placing it in front as power of expression. As I have said, if consciousness in matter is like a light of single candle power, on the level of life it becomes a light of multiple candle power and in the mind this multiple power is again multiplied. In this way the consciousness finally attains its solar incandescence on the highest height of the being.
   When we speak of the dimensions of consciousness, it means these different levels or status of ascending expression. They also form according to the mode of expression each one a world of its own. We may compare the mounting consciousness to a growing tree, it is the same sap-substance that appears at the outset as a seed, then as the seed opens out and develops it appears or throws up a stem or trunk and as it proceeds it throws up branches and higher up leaves and then flowers and fruit. Apparently however different and diverse these formulations, they are but expressions of the same sap-substance in the original seed. Even so an original seed-consciousness is the basis and essential reality of all the forms in the material universe.

10.29 - Gods Debt, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   First let us understand the mystery of God's debt to man. We know, in ordinary life a subordinate has a duty towards his superior, the lesser owes a debt to the greater. That is easily understood. Likewise the superior also has a duty to his subordinate, the greater has his duty to the smaller. The child owes a debt to his parents; no less is the debt that the parents owe to the child. The parents not only bring forth the child, but they have to bring him up, nourish, foster, educate and settle him in life. We know also, as the scriptures tell us, that there is a debt man owes to the gods. The paying of the debt is described in the institution of the Sacrifice (yajna). It is through his Sacrifice that man achieves what he has to achieve upon earth. It is the givingof what one is and what one hasto the gods the Sacrifice mounts carrying the offering to the gods. But the Sacrifice is not a mere one-sided movement, the Sacrifice brings from the gods gifts for the manmaterial prosperity and spiritual fulfilment. Man increases himself in this way, but thereby increases the gods also. The offering that man brings in his Sacrificeall his possessionshis earthly possessions, but chiefly his possessions of the inner world, the wealth of his spirit, the virtues of his consciousness all go to the gods and increase them, that is to say, they become more manifest and more powerful upon earth and in earthly existence and in the service of man.
   The Sacrifice going up to the gods as offered by man means the sadhana, the inner discipline that he follows by which he lifts up his being with its mental and vital and physical formulations to their higher and higher potencies upon earth. The dedication of the normal powers and faculties to the gods means purification and release from the bondages of ignorance and egoism. This serves to make the gods living to us, bring them near to our terrestrial life, to our normal consciousness. This is what is meant by increasing the godsman's duty or debt to the gods. In answer there is a corresponding gesture from the gods, with their immortalising reality they dwell in us and fill our being with their godlike qualities, their light, their energy, their delight, their very immortality. Man increases the gods and the gods increase man and by their mutual increasing they attain the supreme increment, the Divine status, so says the Gita.
   Now, we go beyond the gods, to the very origin, God himself, the Supreme. What is the debt that God, the Supreme, the Divine, owes to us human beings? We owe to God everything, our life, our very existence, our soul and substance given to us by him, then how is he indebted to us? What kind of debt he has incurred which he has to pay to his creature, the human being? Primarily because he is the Divine Father, he has to take charge of his own creation, see to its growth and fruition and fulfilment. Indeed that is the role of the Divine in us (and above us and around us): that is his work, the Divine Work. Since he has put us out of his consciousness (for a special experience of growth and development), it is also his work (and duty) to bring us back to him: after a process of self-separation a process of self-integration. Man, so long as he is a separate consciousness has to dedicate, lift up and unify this separative conscious being to the whole being and consciousness. This is how he discharges his debt to the Divine, and the answering grace of the Divine is the clearing of the debt which He owes to His creatures.

1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  man obsessed with power may Sacrifice everything including his family to the attainment of his narrow
  ambition. The empathic consideration of others, a time-consuming business, merely impedes his progress
  --
  profession; (4) perhaps status is not as important as I thought (and might therefore be Sacrificed, to
  appease the angry gods, and restore order to the cosmos). I will become a medical technician; or maybe
  --
  understood in the present day. Mythic imagination, willing to Sacrifice discriminatory clarity for
  inclusive phenomenological accuracy, provided the necessary developmental bridge. The earliest
  --
  unknown. The ubiquitous drama of human Sacrifice, (proto)typical of primordial religious practice, enacted
  the idea that the essence of man was something to be offered up voluntarily to the ravages of nature
  --
  that is loved best must be destroyed that is, Sacrificed in order for the positive aspect of the unknown
  to manifest itself.
  --
  opportunities and ideas that would free her, if she adopted them. The Sacrifice of the thing loved best to
  appease the gods is the embodiment in procedure of the idea that the benevolent aspect of the unknown
  --
  It is ideas of the necessity of Sacrifice that underlie, for example, the well-known but explicitly
  incomprehensible ritual of Christian communion (more accurately, the ritual of the Christian communion
  --
  Ritual Sacrifice was an early (pre-abstract behavioral) variant of the idea of heroism, of belief in
  individual power the acting out of the idea that voluntary exposure to the unknown (or dissolution of the
  --
  of the heroic Sacrifice then came to portray the emergence of the beneficient goddess, capable of
  showering reward upon man, her eternal lover and child.
  --
   and the unwillingness of even modern totalitarians to allow their enemies to make public Sacrifices of
  themselves.

1.02 - On the Service of the Soul, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
  I have had to recognize that I must submit to what I fear; yes, even more, that I must even love what horrifies me. We must learn such from that saint who was disgusted by the plague infections; she drank the pus of plague boils and became aware that it smelled like roses. The acts of the saint were not in vain. 69 In everything regarding your salvation and the attainment of mercy, you are dependent on your soul. Thus no Sacrifice can be too great for you.
  If your virtues hinder you from salvation, discard them, since they have become evil to you. The slave to virtue finds the way as little as the slave to vices. 70 If you believe that you are the master of your soul, then become her servant. If you were her servant, make yourself her master, since she needs to be ruled. These should be your first steps.

1.02 - Prayer of Parashara to Vishnu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  [6]: This is another common title of Viṣṇu, implying supreme, best (Uttama), spirit (Puruṣa), or male, or Sacrifice, or, according to the Mahābh. Mokṣa Dharma, whatever sense Puruṣa may bear.
  [7]: Paramārthatas, 'by or through the real object, or sense; through actual truth.'

1.02 - Priestly Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  offer the Sacrifices which before had been offered by the kings. A
  similar view as to the origin of the priestly kings appears to have
  --
  times. For in Sparta all state Sacrifices were offered by the kings
  as descendants of the god. One of the two Spartan kings held the
  --
  offered public Sacrifices, the details of which were regulated by
  the ritual books. The King of Madagascar was high-priest of the
  --
  king Sacrifices on the mountain tops and regulates the immolation of
  human victims; and the dim light of tradition reveals a similar
  --
  if at all, only by prayer and Sacrifice offered to superhuman and
  invisible beings. Thus kings are often expected to give rain and

1.02 - Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  19:But on that which as yet we know not how shall we concentrate? And yet we cannot know the Divine unless we have achieved this concentration of our being upon him. A concentration which culminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are aware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge. It is not enough to devote ourselves by the reading of Scriptures or by the stress of philosophical reasoning to an intellectual understanding of the Divine; for at the end of our long mental labour we might know all that has been said of the Eternal, possess all that can be thought about the Infinite and yet we might not know him at all. This intellectual preparation can indeed be the first stage in a powerful Yoga, but it is not indispensable : it is not a step which all need or can be called upon to take. Yoga would be impossible, except for a very few, if the intellectual figure of knowledge arrived at by the speculative or meditative Reason were its indispensable condition or a binding preliminary. All that the Light from above asks of us that it may begin its work is a call from the soul and a sufficient point of support in the mind. This support can be reached through an insistent idea of the Divine in the thought, a corresponding will in the dynamic parts, an aspiration, a faith, a need in the heart. Any one of these may lead or predominate, if all cannot move in unison or in an equal rhythm. The idea may be and must in the beginning be inadequate; the aspiration may be narrow and imperfect, the faith poorly illumined or even, as not surely founded on the rock of knowledge, fluctuating, uncertain, easily diminished; often even it may be extinguished and need to be lit again with difficulty like a torch in a windy pass. But if once there is a resolute self-consecration from deep within, if there is an awakening to the soul's call, these inadequate things can be a sufficient instrument for the divine purpose. Therefore the wise have always been unwilling to limit man's avenues towards God; they would not shut against his entry even the narrowest portal, the lowest and darkest postern, the humblest wicket-gate. Any name, any form, any symbol, any offering has been held to be sufficient if there is the consecration along with it; for the Divine knows himself in the heart of the seeker and accepts the Sacrifice.
  20:But still the greater and wider the moving idea-force behind the consecration, the better for the seeker; his attainment is likely to be fuller and more ample. If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all onesided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula. The dynamic conception or impelling sense with which our Yoga can best set out would be naturally the idea, the sense of a conscious all-embracing but all-exceeding Infinite. Our uplook must be to a free, all-powerful, perfect and blissful One and Oneness in which all beings move and live and through which all can meet and become one. This Eternal will be at once personal and impersonal in his self-revelation and touch upon the soul. He is personal because he is the conscious Divine, the infinite Person who casts some broken reflection of himself in the myriad divine and undivine personalities of the universe. He is impersonal because he appears to us as an infinite Existence, Consciousness and Ananda and because he is the fount, base and constituent of all existences and all energies, -the very material of our being and mind and life and body, our spirit and our matter. The thought, concentrating on him, must not merely understand in an intellectual form that he exists, or conceive of him as an abstraction, a logical necessity; it must become a seeing thought able to meet him here as the Inhabitant in all, realise him in ourselves, watch and take hold on the movement of his forces. He is the one Existence: he is the original and universal Delight that constitutes all things and exceeds them: he is the one infinite Consciousness that composes all consciousnesses and informs all their movements; he is the one illimitable Being who sustains all action and experience; his will guides the evolution of things towards their yet unrealised but inevitable aim and plenitude. To him the heart can consecrate itself, approach him as the supreme Beloved, beat and move in him as in a universal sweetness of Love and a living sea of Delight. For his is the secret Joy that supports the soul in all its experiences and maintains even the errant ego in its ordeals and struggles till all sorrow and suffering shall cease. His is the Love and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is drawing all things by their own path towards his happy oneness. On him the Will can unalterably fix as the invisible Power that guides and fulfils it and as the source of its strength. In the impersonality this actuating Power is a self-illumined Force that contains all results and calmly works until it accomplishes, in the personality an all wise and omnipotent Master of the Yoga whom nothing can prevent from leading it to its goal. This is the faith with which the seeker has to begin his seeking and endeavour; for in all his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the Unseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will be transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge.

1.02 - Taras Tantra, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
  thought Atisha. "If I Sacrifice them, I can work to
  benefit beings and spread the doctrine."

1.02 - The 7 Habits An Overview, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
  It's sometimes a painful process. It's a change that has to be motivated by a higher purpose, by the willingness to subordinate what you think you want now for what you want later. But this process produces happiness, "the object and design of our existence." Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to Sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.
  The Maturity Continuum TM

1.02 - The Child as growing being and the childs experience of encountering the teacher., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
  When we read modern books on embryology, botany, or zool- ogy, we feel a sense of despair in finding ourselves immediately forced to plunge into a cold intellectuality. Although the life and the development of nature are not essentially intellectual, we have to deliberately and consciously set aside every artistic ele- ment. Once weve read a book on botany written according to strict scientific rules, our first task as teachers is to rid ourselves of everything we found there. Obviously, we have to assimilate the information about botanical processes, and the Sacrifice of learn- ing from such books is necessary; but in order to educate children between the change of teeth and puberty, we have to eliminate what we found there, transforming everything into artistic, imagi- nal forms through our own artistic activity and sensibility. What- ever lives in our thoughts about nature has to fly on the wings of artistic inspiration and be transformed into images that then come before the soul of the child.
  Artistically shaping our instruction for children between the change of teeth and puberty is all that we should be concerned with in the metamorphosis of education for our time and the near future. If the first period of childhood requires a priestly element in education, the second requires an artistic element. What are we really doing when we educate a person in the second stage of life? The individuality journeying from an earlier earthly life and from the spiritual world is trying gradually to develop and permeate a second self. Our job is to assist in this process; we incorporate what we do with the child as teachers into the forces that inter- wove with spirit and soul to shape the second self with a unique and individual character. Again, the consciousness of this cosmic context needs to act as an enlivening impulse, running through our teaching methods and the everyday conditions of education. We cant contrive what needs to be done; we can only allow it to happen through the influence of the children themselves on their teachers.

1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  Now here he stood after a life of Sacrifice and battle to
  bring the fire to man, the burning sun of the Supermind

1.02 - The Divine Teacher, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Teacher of the Gita is therefore not only the God in man who unveils himself in the word of knowledge, but the God in man who moves our whole world of action, by and for whom all our humanity exists and struggles and labours, towards whom all human life travels and progresses. He is the secret Master of works and Sacrifice and the Friend of the human peoples.

1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  THE IMAGE of this Sacrifice is sometimes that of a journey or voyage; for it travels, it ascends; it has a goal - the vastness, the true existence, the light, the felicity - and it is called upon to discover and keep to the good, the straight and the happy path to the goal, the arduous yet joyful road of the Truth. It has to climb, led by the flaming strength of the divine will, from plateau to plateau as of a mountain, it has to cross as in a ship the waters of existence, traverse its rivers, overcome their deep pits and rapid currents; its aim is to arrive at the far-off ocean of light and infinity.
  And this is no easy or peaceful march; it is for long seasons a fierce and relentless battle. Constantly the Aryan man has to labour and to fight and conquer; he must be a tireless toiler and traveller and a stern warrior, he must force open and storm and sack city after city, win kingdom after kingdom, overthrow and tread down ruthlessly enemy after enemy. His whole progress is a warring of Gods and Titans, Gods and Giants, Indra and the Python, Aryan and Dasyu. Aryan adversaries even he has to face in the open field; for old friends and helpers turn into enemies; the kings of Aryan states whom he would conquer and overpass join themselves to the Dasyus and are leagued against him in supreme battle to prevent his free and utter passing on.
  But the Dasyu is the natural enemy. These dividers, plunderers, harmful powers, these Danavas, sons of the Mother of division, are spoken of by the Rishis under many general appellations. There are Rakshasas; there are Eaters and Devourers, Wolves and Tearers; there are hurters and haters; there are dualisers; there are confiners or censurers. But we are given also many specific names. Vritra, the Serpent, is the grand Adversary; for he obstructs with his coils of darkness all possibility of divine existence and divine action. And even when Vritra is slain by the light, fiercer enemies arise out of him. Shushna afflicts us with his impure and ineffective force, Namuchi fights man by his weaknesses, and others too assail, each with his proper evil. Then there are Vala and the Panis, miser traffickers in the sense-life, stealers and concealers of the higher Light and its illuminations which they can only darken and misuse, - an impious host who are jealous of their store and will not offer Sacrifice to the Gods. These and other personalities - they are much more than personifications - of our ignorance, evil, weakness and many limitations make constant war upon man; they encircle him from near or they shoot their arrows at him from afar or even dwell in his gated house in the place of the Gods and with their shapeless stammering mouths and their insufficient breath of force mar his self-expression. They must be expelled, overpowered, slain, thrust down into their nether darkness by the aid of the mighty and helpful deities.
    1 This excerpt is reproduced from the 1946 edition of Hymns to the Mystic Fire. The complete essay which appeared in the Arya is published in The Secret of the Veda with Selected Hymns, Part Three. - Ed.
  The Vedic deities are names, powers, personalities of the universal Godhead and they represent each some essential puissance of the Divine Being. They manifest the cosmos and are manifest in it. Children of Light, Sons of the Infinite, they recognise in the soul of man their brother and ally and desire to help and increase him by themselves increasing in him so as to possess his world with their light, strength and beauty. The Gods call man to a divine companionship and alliance; they attract and uplift him to their luminous fraternity, invite his aid and offer theirs against the Sons of Darkness and Division. Man in return calls the Gods to his Sacrifice, offers to them his swiftnesses and his strengths, his clarities and his sweetnesses, - milk and butter of the shining Cow, distilled juices of the Plant of Joy, the Horse of the Sacrifice, the cake and the wine, the grain for the GodMind's radiant coursers. He receives them into his being and their gifts into his life, increases them by the hymns and the wine and forms perfectly - as a smith forges iron, says the Veda - their great and luminous godheads.
  All this Vedic imagery is easy to understand when once we have the key, but it must not be mistaken for mere imagery. The Gods are not simply poetical personifications of abstract ideas or of psychological and physical functions of Nature. To the Vedic seers they are living realities; the vicissitudes of the human soul represent a cosmic struggle not merely of principles and tendencies but of the cosmic Powers which support and embody them. These are the Gods and the Demons. On the world-stage and in the individual soul the same real drama with the same personages is enacted.
  To what gods shall the Sacrifice be offered? Who shall be invoked to manifest and protect in the human being this increasing godhead?
  Agni first, for without him the sacrificial flame cannot burn on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with Knowledge. This conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality, a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and brings back in return their force and light and joy into our humanity.
  --
  Indra, the Divine Mind, as the shaper of mental forms has for his assistants, his artisans, the Ribhus, human powers who by the work of Sacrifice and their brilliant ascension to the high dwelling-place of the Sun have attained to immortality and help mankind to repeat their achievement. They shape by the mind Indra's horses, the chariot of the Ashwins, the weapons of the Gods, all the means of the journey and the battle. But as giver of the Light of Truth and as Vritra-slayer Indra is aided by the Maruts, who are powers of will and nervous or vital Force that have attained to the light of thought and the voice of self-expression. They are behind all thought and speech as its impellers and they battle towards the Light, Truth and Bliss of the supreme Consciousness.
  There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the Sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy.
  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.
  --
  We create for ourselves by the Sacrifice and by the word shining seers, heroes to fight for us, children 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.
  The soul of man is a world full of beings, a kingdom in which armies clash to help or hinder a supreme conquest, a house where the gods are our guests and which the demons strive to possess; the fullness of its energies and wideness of its being make a seat of Sacrifice spread, arranged and purified for a celestial session.
  Such are some of the principal images of the Veda and a very brief and insufficient outline of the teaching of the Forefa thers. So understood the Rig Veda ceases to be an obscure, confused and barbarous hymnal; it becomes the high-aspiring Song of Humanity; its chants are episodes of the lyrical epic of the soul in its immortal ascension.

1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  God may be worshipped and contemplated in any of his aspects. But to persist in worshipping only one aspect to the exclusion of all the rest is to run into grave spiritual peril. Thus, if we approach God with the preconceived idea that He is exclusively the personal, transcendental, all-powerful ruler of the world, we run the risk of becoming entangled in a religion of rites, propitiatory Sacrifices (sometimes of the most horrible nature) and legalistic observances. Inevitably so; for if God is an unapproachable potentate out there, giving mysterious orders, this kind of religion is entirely appropriate to the cosmic situation. The best that can be said for ritualistic legalism is that it improves conduct. It does little, however, to alter character and nothing of itself to modify consciousness.
  Things are a great deal better when the transcendent, omnipotent personal God is regarded as also a loving Father. The sincere worship of such a God changes character as well as conduct, and does something to modify consciousness. But the complete transformation of consciousness, which is enlightenment, deliverance, salvation, comes only when God is thought of as the Perennial Philosophy affirms Him to beimmanent as well as transcendent, supra-personal as well as personal and when religious practices are adapted to this conception.

1.02 - The Refusal of the Call, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  The myths and folk tales of the whole world make clear that the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one's own interest. The future is regarded not in terms of an unremitting series of deaths and births, but as though one's present system of ideals, virtues, goals, and advantages were to be fixed and made secure. King Minos retained the divine bull, when the Sacrifice would have signified submission to the will of the god of his society; for he preferred what he conceived to be his economic advantage. Thus he failed to advance into the liferole that he had assumed and we have seen with what calamitous effect. The divinity itself became his terror; for, obviously, if one is oneself one's god, then God himself, the will of God, the power that would destroy one's egocentric system, becomes a monster.
  In the above section, and throughout the following pages, I have made no attempt to exhaust the evidence. To have done so (after the manner, for example, of Frazer, in The Golden Bough) would have enlarged my chapters prodigiously without making the main line of the monomyth any clearer. Instead, I am giving in each section a few striking examples from a number of widely scattered, repre sentative traditions. During the course of the work I shift my sources gradually, so that the reader may savor the peculiar qualities of the various styles. By the time he comes to the last page, he will have reviewed an immense number of mythologies. Should he wish to prove whether all might have been cited for every section of the monomyth, he need only turn to some of the source volumes enumerated in the footnotes and ramble through a few of the multitude of tales.

10.36 - Cling to Truth, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   If you say you are a small creature and yours a smaller light: your consciousness has not the dimensions of a heroic being, your light will be engulfed, swallowed up and lost in the vast and overwhelming gloom around. Yet small as you are, do what you can, the utmost possible for you; do not let your little flame be tarnished by any contrary or unworthy movement in you: be firm, keep it bright and trimmed. The surrounding darkness may engulf it but cannot smother it; for it is the everlasting, the Divine in you. The body, the flesh may not continue but the holy light remains. The outward frame may have to yield or dissolve in a material surrounding that was unreadynot that the inner consciousness was unready. Indeed the passing body releases the light and it adds to the growing light in the earth's atmosphere. That is the central creed of the Christian martyr. The blood of the martyr is the cement of the Church. This truth of martyrdom, the Sacrifice of the faithful was perhaps a necessity at a time when humanity had not risen high enough in consciousness and the earth's atmosphere was more opaque and dull than it is now. The one thing necessary at that stage was an uncompromising living faith, the pure light, the unvacillating flame, a spirit even though small standing against insurmountable odds that was the way, the martyr's way to stand against the adversary. That is why in the process the God-Man Sacrificed himself.
   We are in a somewhat different age under different circumstances. At least our aim is different. We stand firm full square against all temptations, all leaning towards compromise, in the faith and certainty that we shall conquer, we shall not go down but the odds against us shall be pushed back and eliminated. This is the age of Victory.

1.037 - The Aligners, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
  107. And We redeemed him with a great Sacrifice.
  108. And We left with him for later generations.

1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  as it does voluntary Sacrifice of childhood dependency [which is a valid form of adaptation, but
  predicated upon (nondeclarative) assumptions suitable only to the childhood state]. Such transitional rituals
  --
  maintenance of the protective, uniform social structure is solved by the permanent Sacrifice of individual
  diversity to the stability and identity of the group. This solution banishes fear effectively, in the short term,
  --
  attri bution of evil to its effects, and degeneration of traditional skill and learning. This is Sacrifice of the
  Terrible Father, without recognition of the need for his resuscitation and is, therefore, an invitation to the

1.03 - BOOK THE THIRD, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  For living streams, a Sacrifice to Jove.
  O'er the wide plain there rose a shady wood

1.03 - Hymns of Gritsamada, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
    2. O Fire, thine are the call and the offering, thine the purification and the order of the Sacrifice, thine the lustration; thou art the fire-bringer for the seeker of the Truth. The annunciation is thine, thou becomest the pilgrim-rite:1 thou art the priest of the Word and the master of the house in our home.
    3. O Fire, thou art Indra the Bull of all that are and thou art wide-moving2 Vishnu, one to be worshipped with obeisance. O Master of the Word, thou art Brahma, the finder of the Riches: O Fire who sustainest each and all, closely thou companionest the Goddess of the many thoughts.3
  --
    9. O Fire, men worship thee with their Sacrifices as a father and thee that thou mayst be their brother by their achievement of works when thou illuminest the body with thy light. Thou becomest a son to the man who worships thee; thou art his blissful friend and guardest him from the violence of the adversary.
    10. O Fire, thou art the craftsman Ribhu, near to us and to be worshipped with obeisance of surrender; thou hast mastery over the store of the plenitude and the riches. All thy wide shining of light and onward burning is for the gift of the treasure; thou art our instructor in wisdom and our builder of Sacrifice.
    11. O Divine Fire, thou art Aditi, the indivisible Mother to the giver of the Sacrifice; thou art Bharati, voice of the offering, and thou growest by the word. Thou art Ila of the hundred winters wise to discern; O Master of the Treasure, thou art Saraswati who slays the python adversary.
    12. O Fire, when thou art well borne by us thou becomest the supreme growth and expansion of our being, all glory and beauty are in thy desirable hue and thy perfect vision. O Vastness, thou art the plenitude that carries us to the end of our way; thou art a multitude of riches spread out on every side.
  --
    1. Make the Fire that knows all things born to grow by your Sacrifice; worship him with thy offering and thy body and thy speech. Worship in his kindling Fire with whom are his strong delights, the male of the sun-world, the Priest of the Call, the inhabitant of Heaven4 who sits at the chariot yoke in our battles.
    2. The Nights and the Dawns have lowed to thee as the milchcows low towards a calf in their lairs of rest. O Fire of many blessings, thou art the traveller of Heaven through the ages of man and thou shinest self-gathered through his nights.5
  --
    11. Awake, O forceful Fire, one to be voiced by our lauds; for thou art he in whom the luminous seers come to perfect birth and speed on their way. O Fire, thou art the Sacrifice and to thee the Horses of swiftness come there where thou shinest with light in the eternal son and in thy own home.
      7 Or, wake in ourselves a strength of heroes beyond men's scope by the power of the War-Horse or by the Word;
  --
    1. The Fire that was set inward in the earth is kindled and has arisen fronting all the worlds. He has arisen, the purifying Flame, the priest of the call, the wise of understanding, the Ancient of Days. Today let the Fire in the fullness of his powers, a god to the gods do Sacrifice.
    2. Fire who voices the godhead, shines revealing the planes, each and each; high of ray he reveals, each and each, the triple heavens by his greatness. Let him flood the oblation with a mind that diffuses the light and manifest the gods on the head of the Sacrifice.
    3. O Fire, aspired to by our mind, putting forth today thy power do Sacrifice to the gods, O thou who wast of old before aught that is human. Bring to us the unfallen host of the Life-Gods; and you, O Powers, Sacrifice to Indra where he sits on the seat of our altar.
    4. O Godhead, strewn is the seat on this altar, the hero-guardedseat that ever grows, the seat well-packed for the riches,8 anointed with the Light. O all Gods, sit on this altar-seat, sons of the indivisible Mother princes of the treasure, kings of Sacrifice.
    5. May the divine Doors swing open, wide to our call, easy of approach with our prostrations of surrender; may they stretch wide opening into vastnesses, the imperishable Doors purifying the glorious and heroic kind.
  --
    6. Milch-cows, good milkers, pouring out on us may Night and Dawn, the eternal and equal sisters, come like weaving women full of gladness, weaving out the weft that is spun, the weft of our perfected works into a shape of Sacrifice.
    7. The two divine Priests of the call, the first, the full in wisdom and stature, offer by the illumining Word the straight things in us; sacrificing to the Gods in season, they reveal them in light in the navel of the Earth and on the three peaks of Heaven.
  --
    3. As men who would settle in a home bring into it a beloved friend, the Gods have set the Fire in these human peoples. Let him illumine the desire of the billowing nights, let him be one full of discerning mind in the house for the giver of Sacrifice.
    4. Delightful is his growth as if one's own increase, rapturous is his vision as he gallops burning on his way. He darts about his tongue mid the growths of the forest and tosses his mane like a chariot courser.
  --
    1. A conscious Priest of the call is born to us; a father is born to his fathers for their safeguard. May we avail to achieve by Sacrifice the wealth that is for the victor,14 and to rein the Horse of swiftness.
      13 Or, win
  --
    2. The seven rays are extended in this leader of Sacrifice; there is a divine eighth that carries with it the human. The Priest of the purification takes possession of15 That All.
    3. When a man has firmly established this Fire, he echoes the Words of knowledge and comes to16 That: for he embraces all seer-wisdoms as the rim surrounds a wheel.
  --
    7. Himself for his own confirming let the Priest of the rite create the priest; let us take joy of the laud and the Sacrifice, for then it is complete, what we have given.19
    8. Even as one who has the knowledge let him work out the rite for all the lords of the Sacrifice. On thee, O Fire, is this Sacrifice that we have made.
  SUKTA 6
    1. O Fire, mayst thou rejoice in the fuel I bring thee, rejoice in my session of Sacrifice. Deeply lend ear to my words.
    2. O Fire, who art brought to perfect birth, Child of Energy, Impeller of the Horse, we would worship thee with this oblation, we would worship thee with this Word well-spoken.
  --
      19 Or, for then it is complete, we have moved (on the way). Or, let us take full joy of the laud and the Sacrifice; for we have given.
    4. O Wealth-Lord, Wealth-giver, awake, a seer and a Master of Treasures; put away from us the things that are hostile.
  --
    6. O Messenger, O youngest Power, come at our word for him who aspires to thee and craves for thy safeguard; arrive, O Priest of the call, strong for Sacrifice.
    7. O Fire, O seer, thou movest within having knowledge of both the Births;21 thou art like a messenger from a friendly people.22
    8. Come with thy knowledge, O Conscious Fire, and fill us; perform the unbroken order of the Sacrifice. Take thy seat on the sacred grass of our altar.
      20 Or, free from all littleness,
  --
    3. May we worship thee in thy supreme Birth, O Fire; may we worship thee with our chants in the world of thy lower session: I adore with Sacrifice thy native lair from which thou hast arisen. The offerings have been cast into thee when thou wert kindled and ablaze.
    4. O Fire, be strong for Sacrifice, do worship with my oblation; swiftly voice my thought towards the gift of the Treasure. For thou art the wealth-master who hast power over the riches, thou art the thinker of the brilliant Word.
    5. Both kinds of wealth are thine, O potent Godhead and because thou art born from day to day, neither can waste and perish. O Fire, make thy adorer one full of possessions; make him a master of the Treasure and of wealth rich in progeny.
    6. O Fire, shine forth with this force29 of thine in us, one perfect in knowledge, one who worships the Gods and is strong for Sacrifice. Be our indomitable guardian and our protector to take us to the other side; flame in us with thy light, flame in us with thy opulence.
      29 Or, form

1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   But ordinarily, we have not to do philanthropic work from the same motives. Philanthropy has an egoistic motive, however high it may be. We have to look beyond. For instance, we need not start schools for the Depressed Classes in order to serve humanity. We have to work as a Sacrifice to God and we have therefore to go beyond mental ideals and constructions. When men begin work with these mental or ethical motives, they find them to be true and therefore they are not willing to leave them behind and go beyond. We have to take up the work from the yogic point of view. For example, it is necessary to spread our literature because it spreads the new thought. Some men may receive it correctly and some incorrectly. A movement is set up on the universal mental plane. So also in social work the whole frame is shaken by the new thought and in-as-much as it moves men out of the old groove it is useful. But we have to act from the inner motives.
   9 AUGUST 1923
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: They are also in the hands of the Shakti. She knows what fruit to give and what not. When that kind of desirelessness is established you have to go on offering all your actions as a Sacrifice to God. You must realise that it is the Shakti that does the work in yourself and She offers the same as a Sacrifice to the Lord. The more desirelessness in the action, the purer the offering.
   The action and the fruit of action both belong to God, not to us. There should be no insistence on the fruit of good or unselfish action. When this is done then everything becomes easy.
  --
   He should, after giving up this practice, make his mind strong by Karma Yoga. It will require him to give up his desires and his ego. He can do his actions in the spirit of devotion, offering them all as a Sacrifice to God. He can thus practise dedication of all his actions to God and try to see Him in all men and in all happenings. That would be his meditation.
   At present he cannot take up this Yoga because this is a Yoga of self-surrender in which he has to open himself to a Higher Power. But as he has already opened himself to other spirits such a passive state would not be good for him. All sorts of spirits would come and try to take possession of his being. So it is not safe for him to take up this Yoga, apart from other considerations.

1.03 - Physical Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The child should also be taught the taste for cleanliness and hygienic habits. It is important to impress upon the child that he is not more interesting by being ill, rather the contrary. Children should be taught that to be ill is a sign of failing and inferiority, not of virtue or Sacrifice.

1.03 - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of The Gita, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But how then shall we continue to act at all? For ordinarily the human being acts because he has a desire or feels a mental, vital or physical want or need; he is driven by the necessities of the body, by the lust of riches, honours or fame, or by a craving for the personal satisfactions of the mind or the heart or a craving for power or pleasure. Or he is seized and pushed about by a moral need or, at least, the need or the desire of making his ideas or his ideals or his will or his party or his country or his gods prevail in the world. If none of these desires nor any other must be the spring of our action, it would seem as if all incentive or motive power had been removed and action itself must necessarily cease. The Gita replies with its third great secret of the divine life. All action must be done in a more and more Godward and finally a God-possessed consciousness; our works must be a Sacrifice to the Divine and in the end a surrender of all our being, mind, will, heart, sense, life and body to the One must make God-love and God-service our only motive. This transformation of the motive force and very character of works is indeed its master idea; it is the foundation of its unique synthesis of works, love and knowledge. In the end not desire, but the consciously felt will of the Eternal remains as the sole driver of our action and the sole originator of its initiative.
  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 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  with some betel, on the domestic place of Sacrifice. When the
  ceremony is over, word goes about in the village that the woman has
  --
  of the rite by means of prayer and Sacrifice. To put it otherwise,
  magic is here blent with and reinforced by religion.
  --
  Greeks and Romans Sacrificed pregnant victims to the goddesses of
  the corn and of the earth, doubtless in order that the earth might
  --
  India prescribes that when a Sacrifice is offered for victory, the
  earth out of which the altar is to be made should be taken from a

1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  ent Sacrifice that we may hope to attain the high peak of person-
  ality which we thought we must renounce.

1.03 - The Syzygy - Anima and Animus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  compensation for the risks, struggles, Sacrifices that all end in
  disappointment; she is the solace for all the bitterness of life.

1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Of little use are worship, oblations, or Sacrifice.
  Growth of divine love lessens worldly duties
  --
  Of little use are worship, oblations, or Sacrifice.
  If a man comes to love God, he need not trouble himself much about these activities.

1.04 - Body, Soul and Spirit, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  And as it is with the truth, so it is with the truly good. The moral good is independent of inclinations and passions, inasmuch as it does not allow itself to be commanded by them, but commands them. Likes and dislikes, desire and loathing belong to the personal soul of man. Duty stands higher than likes and dislikes. Duty may stand so high in the eyes of a man that he will Sacrifice his life for its sake. And a man stands the higher the more he has ennobled his inclinations, his likes and dislikes, so that, without compulsion or subjection, they themselves obey the recognized duty. The moral good has, like truth, its eternal value in itself, and does not receive it from the sentient-soul.
  In causing the self-existent true and good to come to life in his inner being, man raises himself above the mere sentient-soul. The eternal spirit shines into this soul. A light is kindled in it which is imperishable. In so far as the soul lives in this light, it is a participant of the eternal. It unites its own existence with an eternal existence. What the soul

1.04 - BOOK THE FOURTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  A Sacrifice for Gods up-rose from thence,
  A sweet, delightful tree of frankincense.

1.04 - Descent into Future Hell, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
  How shall I ever walk under your sun if I do not drink the bitter draught of slumber to the lees? Help me so that I do not choke on my own knowledge. The fullness of my knowledge threatens to fall in on me. My knowledge has a thousand voices, an army roaring like lions; the air trembles when they speak, and I am their defenseless Sacrifice. Keep it far from me, science that clever knower, 86 that bad prison master who binds the soul and imprisons it in a lightless cell.
  But above all protect me from the serpent of judgment, which only appears to be a healing serpent, yet in your depths is infernal poison and agonizing death. I want to go down cleansed into your depths with white garments and not rush in like some thief seizing whatever
  --
  Therefore I take part in that murder; the sun of the depths also shines in me after the murder has been accomplished; the thousand serpents that want to devour the sun are also in me. I myself am a murderer and murdered, Sacrificer and Sacrificed. 93 The upwelling blood streams out of me.
  You all have a share in the murder. 94 In you the reborn one will come to be, and the sun of the depths will rise, and a thousand serpents will develop from your dead matter and fall on the sun to choke it. Your blood will stream forth. The peoples demonstrate this at the present time in unforgettable acts, that will be written with blood in unforgettable books for eternal memory. 95
  But I ask you, when do men fall on their brothers with mighty weapons and bloody acts? They do such if they do not know that their brother is themselves. They themselves are Sacrificers, but they mutually do the service of Sacrifice. They must all Sacrifice each other, since the time has not yet come when man puts the bloody knife into himself in order to Sacrifice the one he kills in his brother.
  But whom do people kill? They kill the noble, the brave, the heroes.
  They take aim at these and do not know that with these they mean themselves. They should Sacrifice the hero in themselves, and because they do not know this, they kill their courageous brother.
  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
  --
  Egyptian material. I could not then realize that it was all so archetypal, I need not seek connections. I was able to link the picture up with the sea of blood I had previously fantasized about. / Though I could not then grasp the significance of the hero killed, soon after I had a dream in which Siegfried was killed by myself It was a case of destroying the hero ideal of my efficiency. This has to be Sacrificed in order that a new adaptation can be made; in short, it is connected with the Sacrifice of the superior function in order to get at the libido necessary to activate the inferior functions" (Analytical Psychology, p. 48). (The killing of Siegfried occurs below in ch. 7.) Jung also anonymously cited and discussed this fantasy in his ETH lecture on
  June 14, 1935 (Modern Psychology, vols. 1. and 2, p. 223).
  --
  In Transformation symbolism in the mass, (1942), Jung commented on the motif of the identity of the Sacrificer and the Sacrificed, with particular reference to the visions of Zosimos of
  Panapolis, a natural philosopher and alchemist of the third century. Jung noted: "What I Sacrifice is my egotistical claim, and by doing this I give up myself Every Sacrifice is therefore, to a greater or lesser degree, a self- Sacrifice" (CW II, 397). Cf also the Katha Upanishad, ch. 2, verse
  19. Jung cited the next two verses of the Katha Upanishad on the nature of the self in 1921 (CW

1.04 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2. And now strong for Sacrifice, thou hast taken thy session in
  the seat of aspiration, one aspired to, a flamen of the call, an
  --
  the call has taken up his session, strong for Sacrifice. Pressing
  the knee may we come to thee with obeisance of surrender
  --
  purifying Flame, the Power in the Sacrifice, Fire the Regent
  of the Treasures!

1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  attempt is made to win their favour by prayer and Sacrifice. But
  these cases are on the whole exceptional; they exhibit magic tinged
  --
  offering of Sacrifice, the recitation of prayers, and other outward
  ceremonies. Its aim is to please the deity, and if the deity is one
  --
  good-will of gods or spirits by prayer and Sacrifice, while at the
  same time he had recourse to ceremonies and forms of words which he
  --
  certain number of rites, Sacrifices, prayers, and chants, which the
  god himself had revealed, and which obliged him to do what was
  --
  deity by the soft insinuation of prayer and Sacrifice.
  The conclusion which we have thus reached deductively from a
  --
  but nobody dreams of propitiating gods by prayer and Sacrifice.
  But if in the most backward state of human society now known to us

1.04 - Narayana appearance, in the beginning of the Kalpa, as the Varaha (boar), #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  At the close of the past (or Pādma) Kalpa, the divine Brahmā, endowed with the quality of goodness, awoke from his night of sleep, and beheld the universe void. He, the supreme Nārāyaṇa, the incomprehensible, the sovereign of all creatures, invested with the form of Brahmā, the god without beginning, the creator of all things; of whom, with respect to his name Nārāyaṇa, the god who has the form of Brahmā, the imperishable origin of the world, this verse is repeated, "The waters are called Nārā, because they were the offspring of Nara (the supreme spirit); and as in them his first (Ayana) progress (in the character of Brahmā) took place, he is thence named Nārāyaṇa (he whose place of moving was the waters)[2]." He, the lord, concluding that within the waters lay the earth, and being desirous to raise it up, created another form for that purpose; and as in preceding Kalpas he had assumed the shape of a fish or a tortoise, so in this he took the figure of a boar. Having adopted a form composed of the Sacrifices of the Vedas[3], for the preservation of the whole earth, the eternal, supreme, and universal soul, the great progenitor of created beings, eulogized by Sanaka and the other saints who dwell in the sphere of holy men (Janaloka); he, the supporter of spiritual and material being, plunged into the ocean. The goddess Earth, beholding him thus descending to the subterrene regions, bowed in devout adoration, and thus glorified the god:-
  Prīthivī (Earth).-Hail to thee, who art all creatures; to thee, the holder of the mace and shell: elevate me now from this place, as thou hast upraised me in days of old. From thee have I proceeded; of thee do I consist; as do the skies, and all other existing things. Hail to thee, spirit of the supreme spirit; to thee, soul of soul; to thee, who art discrete and indiscrete matter; who art one with the elements and with time. Thou art the creator of all things, their preserver, and their destroyer, in the forms, oh lord, of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Rudra, at the seasons of creation, duration, and dissolution. When thou hast devoured all things, thou reposest on the ocean that sweeps over the world, meditated upon, oh Govinda, by the wise. No one knoweth thy true nature, and the gods adore thee only in the forms it bath pleased thee to assume. They who are desirous of final liberation, worship thee as the supreme Brahmā; and who that adores not Vāsudeva, shall obtain emancipation? Whatever may be apprehended by the mind, whatever may be perceived by the senses, whatever may he discerned by the intellect, all is but a form of thee. I am of thee, upheld by thee; thou art my creator, and to thee I fly for refuge: hence, in this universe, Mādhavī (the bride of Mādhava or Viṣṇu) is my designation. Triumph to the essence of all wisdom, to the unchangeable, the imperishable: triumph to the eternal; to the indiscrete, to the essence of discrete things: to him who is both cause and effect; who is the universe; the sinless lord of Sacrifice[4]; triumph. Thou art Sacrifice; thou art the oblation; thou art the mystic Omkāra; thou art the sacrificial fires; thou art the Vedas, and their dependent sciences; thou art, Hari, the object of all worship[5]. The sun, the stars, the planets, the whole world; all that is formless, or that has form; all that is visible, or invisible; all, Puruṣottama, that I have said, or left unsaid; all this, Supreme, thou art. Hail to thee, again and again! hail! all hail!
  Parāśara said:-
  --
  The Yogis.-Triumph, lord of lords supreme; Keśava, sovereign of the earth, the wielder of the mace, the shell, the discus, and the sword: cause of production, destruction, and existence. THOU ART, oh god: there is no other supreme condition, but thou. Thou, lord, art the person of Sacrifice: for thy feet are the Vedas; thy tusks are the stake to which the victim is bound; in thy teeth are the offerings; thy mouth is the altar; thy tongue is the fire; and the hairs of thy body are the sacrificial grass. Thine eyes, oh omnipotent, are day and night; thy head is the seat of all, the place of Brahma; thy mane is all the hymns of the Vedas; thy nostrils are all oblations: oh thou, whose snout is the ladle of oblation; whose deep voice is the chanting of the Sāma veda; whose body is the hall of Sacrifice; whose joints are the different ceremonies; and whose ears have the properties of both voluntary and obligatory rites[7]: do thou, who art eternal, who art in size a mountain, be propitious. We acknowledge thee, who hast traversed the world, oh universal form, to be the beginning, the continuance, and the destruction of all things: thou art the supreme god. Have pity on us, oh lord of conscious and unconscious beings. The orb of the earth is seen seated on the tip of thy tusks, as if thou hadst been sporting amidst a lake where the lotus floats, and hadst borne away the leaves covered with soil. The space between heaven and earth is occupied by thy body, oh thou of unequalled glory, resplendent with the power of pervading the universe, oh lord, for the benefit of all. Thou art the aim of all: there is none other than thee, sovereign of the world: this is thy might, by which all things, fixed or movable, are pervaded. This form, which is now beheld, is thy form, as one essentially with wisdom. Those who have not practised devotion, conceive erroneously of the nature of the world. The ignorant, who do not perceive that this universe is of the nature of wisdom, and judge of it as an object of perception only, are lost in the ocean of spiritual ignorance. But they who know true wisdom, and whose minds are pure, behold this whole world as one with divine knowledge, as one with thee, oh god. Be favourable, oh universal spirit: raise up this earth, for the habitation of created beings. Inscrutable deity, whose eyes are like lotuses, give us felicity. Oh lord, thou art endowed with the quality of goodness: raise up, Govinda, this earth, for the general good. Grant us happiness, oh lotus-eyed. May this, thy activity in creation, be beneficial to the earth. Salutation to thee. Grant us happiness, oh lotus-eyed. arāśara said:-
  The supreme being thus eulogized, upholding the earth, raised it quickly, and placed it on the summit of the ocean, where it floats like a mighty vessel, and from its expansive surface does not sink beneath the waters. Then, having levelled the earth, the great eternal deity divided it into portions, by mountains: he who never wills in vain, created, by his irresistible power, those mountains again upon the earth which had been consumed at the destruction of the world. Having then divided the earth into seven great portions or continents, as it was before, he constructed in like manner the four (lower) spheres, earth, sky, heaven, and the sphere of the sages (Maharloka). Thus Hari, the four-faced god, invested with the quality of activity, and taking the form of Brahmā, accomplished the creation: but he (Brahmā) is only the instrumental cause of things to be created; the things that are capable of being created arise from nature as a common material cause: with exception of one instrumental cause alone, there is no need of any other cause, for (imperceptible) substance becomes perceptible substance according to the powers with which it is originally imbued[8].
  --
  [4]: Yajñapati, 'the bestower of the beneficial results of Sacrifices.'
  [5]: Yajñapuruṣa, 'the male or soul of Sacrifice;' explained by Yajñamūrtti, 'the form or personification of Sacrifice;' or Yajñārādhya 'he who is to be propitiated by it.'
  [6]: Varāha Avatāra. The description of the figure of the boar is much more particularly detailed in other Purāṇas. As in the Vāyu: "The boar was ten Yojanas in breadth, a thousand Yojanas high; of the colour of a dark cloud; and his roar was like thunder; his bulk was vast as a mountain; his tusks were white, sharp, and fearful; fire flashed from his eyes like lightning, and he was radiant as the sun; his shoulders were round, flit, and large; he strode along like a powerful lion; his haunches were fat, his loins were slender, and his body was smooth and beautiful." The Matsya P. describes the Varāha in the same words, with one or two unimportant varieties. The Bhāgavata indulges in that amplification which marks its more recent composition, and describes the Varāha as issuing from the nostrils of Brahmā, at first of the size of the thumb, or an inch long, and presently increasing to the stature of an elephant. That work also subjoins a legend of the death of the demon Hiranyākṣa, who in a preceding existence was one of Viṣṇu's doorkeepers, at his palace in Vaikuntha. Having refused admission to a party of Munis, they cursed him, and he was in consequence born as one of the sons of Diti. When the earth, oppressed by the weight of the mountains, sunk down into the waters, Viṣṇu was beheld in the subterrene regions, or Rasātala, by Hiranyākṣa in the act of carrying it off. The demon claimed the earth, and defied Viṣṇu to combat; and a conflict took place, in which Hiranyākṣa was slain. This legend has not been met with in any other Purāṇa, and certainly does not occur in the chief of them, any more than in our text. In the Mokṣa Dherma of the Mahābhārata, e.35, Viṣṇu destroys the demons in the form of the Varāha, but no particular individual is specified, nor does the elevation of the earth depend upon their discomfiture. The Kālikā Upapurāṇa has an absurd legend of a conflict between Śiva as a Sarabha, a fabulous animal, and Viṣṇu as the Varāha, in which the latter suffers himself and his offspring begotten upon earth to be slain.

1.04 - On blessed and ever-memorable obedience, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
  I disputed the matter with that true director, and reminded him of the infirmity of our race, and that the undeserved, or perhaps not undeserved, punishment may make many break away from the flock. Again that temple of wisdom said: A soul attached to the shepherd with love and faith for Christs sake will not leave him even if it were at the price of his blood, and especially if he has received through him the healing of his wounds, for he remembers him who says: Neither angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor any other creature can separate us from the love of Christ.2 But if the soul is not attached, bound and devoted to the shepherd in this way, then I wonder if such a man is not living in this place in vain, for he is united to the shepherd by a hypocritical and false obedience. And truly this great man is not deceived, but he has directed, led to perfection and offered to Christ unblemished Sacrifices.
  1 2 Timothy iv, 2.

1.04 - Sounds, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
  I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to Sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some travellers wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.
  I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.

1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  corresponding impotence to the fertility of the land he rules.... When Sacrificed, the divine king is
  immediately replaced by a successor, and his body is then eaten and his blood drunk in a ritual
  --
  light, and the promise of better things. It is in this manner that the Sacrifice of the revolutionary savior
  redeems and rekindles the cosmos.
  --
  even evil so far as he Sacrifices his crew and ship to it, but evil or revenge are not the point of the quest.
  The whale itself may be only a dumb brute, as the mate says, and even if it were malignantly

1.04 - The Conditions of Esoteric Training, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
   himself with performing them. He will learn to Sacrifice his actions, even his whole being, to the world, however the world may receive his Sacrifice. Readiness for a Sacrifice, for an offering such as this, must be shown by all who would pursue the path of esoteric training.
  6. A sixth condition is the development of a feeling of thankfulness for everything with which man is favored. We must realize that our existence is a gift from the entire universe. How much is needed to enable each one of us to receive and maintain his existence! How much to we not owe to nature and to our fellow human beings! Thoughts such as these must come naturally to all who seek esoteric training, for if the latter do not feel inclined to entertain them, they will be incapable of developing within themselves that all-embracing love which is necessary for the attainment of higher knowledge. Nothing can reveal itself to us which we do not love. And every revelation must fill us with thankfulness, for we ourselves are the richer for it.

1.04 - The Core of the Teaching, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Still, this Lord is the Self in whom all knowledge culminates and the Master of Sacrifice to whom all works lead as well as the
  Lord of Love into whose being the heart of devotion enters, and the Gita preserves a perfectly equal balance, emphasising now knowledge, now works, now devotion, but for the purposes of the immediate trend of the thought, not with any absolute separate preference of one over the others. He in whom all three meet and become one, He is the Supreme Being, the Purushottama.
  --
  European or Europeanised intellect into a thoroughly antique, a thoroughly Oriental and Indian teaching. That which the Gita teaches is not a human, but a divine action; not the performance of social duties, but the abandonment of all other standards of duty or conduct for a selfless performance of the divine will working through our nature; not social service, but the action of the Best, the God-possessed, the Master-men done impersonally for the sake of the world and as a Sacrifice to Him who stands behind man and Nature.
  In other words, the Gita is not a book of practical ethics, but of the spiritual life. The modern mind is just now the European mind, such as it has become after having abandoned not only the philosophic idealism of the highest Graeco-Roman culture from which it started, but the Christian devotionalism of the Middle
  --
  There are in the world, in fact, two different laws of conduct each valid on its own plane, the rule principally dependent on external status and the rule independent of status and entirely dependent on the thought and conscience. The Gita does not teach us to subordinate the higher plane to the lower, it does not ask the awakened moral consciousness to slay itself on the altar of duty as a Sacrifice and victim to the law of the social status. It calls us higher and not lower; from the conflict of the two planes it bids us ascend to a supreme poise above the mainly practical, above the purely ethical, to the Brahmic consciousness. It replaces the conception of social duty by a divine obligation. The subjection to external law gives place to a certain principle of inner self-determination of action proceeding by the soul's freedom from the tangled law of works. And this, as we shall see, - the Brahmic consciousness, the soul's freedom from works and the determination of works in the nature by the Lord within and above us, - is the kernel of the Gita's teaching with regard to action.
  The Gita can only be understood, like any other great work of the kind, by studying it in its entirety and as a developing argument. But the modern interpreters, starting from the great writer Bankim Chandra Chatterji who first gave to the Gita this new sense of a Gospel of Duty, have laid an almost exclusive stress on the first three or four chapters and in those on the idea of equality, on the expression kartavyam karma, the work that is to be done, which they render by duty, and on the phrase "Thou hast a right to action, but none to the fruits of action" which is now popularly quoted as the great word, mahavakya, of the
  --
  Prakriti that acts, foundation of the one, master of the other, the Lord of whom all is the manifestation, who even in our present subjection to Maya sits in the heart of His creatures governing the works of Prakriti, He by whom the armies on the field of Kurukshetra have already been slain while yet they live and who uses Arjuna only as an instrument or immediate occasion of this great slaughter. Prakriti is only His executive force. The disciple has to rise beyond this Force and its three modes or gun.as; he has to become trigun.atta. Not to her has he to surrender his actions, over which he has no longer any claim or "right", but into the being of the Supreme. Reposing his mind and understanding, heart and will in Him, with selfknowledge, with God-knowledge, with world-knowledge, with a perfect equality, a perfect devotion, an absolute self-giving, he has to do works as an offering to the Master of all selfenergisings and all Sacrifice. Identified in will, conscious with that consciousness, That shall decide and initiate the action. This is the solution which the Divine Teacher offers to the disciple.
  What the great, the supreme word of the Gita is, its mahavakya, we have not to seek; for the Gita itself declares it in its last utterance, the crowning note of the great diapason.
  --
  His grace thou shalt attain to the supreme peace and the eternal status. So have I expounded to thee a knowledge more secret than that which is hidden. Further hear the most secret, the supreme word that I shall speak to thee. Become my-minded, devoted to Me, to Me do Sacrifice and adoration; infallibly, thou shalt come to Me, for dear to me art thou. Abandoning all laws of conduct seek refuge in Me alone. I will release thee from all sin; do not grieve."
  The argument of the Gita resolves itself into three great steps by which action rises out of the human into the divine plane leaving the bondage of the lower for the liberty of a higher law.
  First, by the renunciation of desire and a perfect equality works have to be done as a Sacrifice by man as the doer, a Sacrifice to
  Essays on the Gita
   a deity who is the supreme and only Self though by him not yet realised in his own being. This is the initial step. Secondly, not only the desire of the fruit, but the claim to be the doer of works has to be renounced in the realisation of the Self as the equal, the inactive, the immutable principle and of all works as simply the operation of universal Force, of the Nature-Soul, Prakriti, the unequal, active, mutable power. Lastly, the supreme Self has to be seen as the supreme Purusha governing this Prakriti, of whom the soul in Nature is a partial manifestation, by whom all works are directed, in a perfect transcendence, through Nature. To him love and adoration and the Sacrifice of works have to be offered; the whole being has to be surrendered to Him and the whole consciousness raised up to dwell in this divine consciousness so that the human soul may share in His divine transcendence of
  Nature and of His works and act in a perfect spiritual liberty.
  The first step is Karmayoga, the selfless Sacrifice of works, and here the Gita's insistence is on action. The second is
  Jnanayoga, the self-realisation and knowledge of the true nature of the self and the world; and here the insistence is on knowledge; but the Sacrifice of works continues and the path of
  Works becomes one with but does not disappear into the path of
  Knowledge. The last step is Bhaktiyoga, adoration and seeking of the supreme Self as the Divine Being, and here the insistence is on devotion; but the knowledge is not subordinated, only raised, vitalised and fulfilled, and still the Sacrifice of works continues; the double path becomes the triune way of knowledge, works and devotion. And the fruit of the Sacrifice, the one fruit still placed before the seeker, is attained, union with the divine Being and oneness with the supreme divine nature.

1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The immediate or at any rate the earliest known successors of the Rishis, the compilers of the Brahmanas, the writers of theUpanishads give a clear & definite answer to this question.The Upanishads everywhere rest their highly spiritual & deeply mystic doctrines on the Veda.We read in the Isha Upanishad of Surya as the Sun God, but it is the Sun of spiritual illumination, of Agni as the Fire, but it is the inner fire that burns up all sin & crookedness. In the Kena Indra, Agni & Vayu seek to know the supreme Brahman and their greatness is estimated by the nearness with which they touched him,nedistham pasparsha. Uma the daughter of Himavan, the Woman, who reveals the truth to them is clearly enough no natural phenomenon. In the Brihadaranyaka, the most profound, subtle & mystical of human scriptures, the gods & Titans are the masters, respectively, of good and of evil. In the Upanishads generally the word devah is used as almost synonymous with the forces & functions of sense, mind & intellect. The element of symbolism is equally clear. To the terms of the Vedic ritual, to their very syllables a profound significance is everywhere attached; several incidents related in the Upanishads show the deep sense then & before entertained that the Sacrifices had a spiritual meaning which must be known if they were to be conducted with full profit or even with perfect safety. The Brahmanas everywhere are at pains to bring out a minute symbolism in the least circumstances of the ritual, in the clarified butter, the sacred grass, the dish, the ladle. Moreover, we see even in the earliest Upanishads already developed the firm outlines and minute details of an extraordinary psychology, physics, cosmology which demand an ancient development and centuries of Yogic practice and mystic speculation to account for their perfect form & clearness. This psychology, this physics, this cosmology persist almost unchanged through the whole history of Hinduism. We meet them in the Puranas; they are the foundation of the Tantra; they are still obscurely practised in various systems of Yoga. And throughout, they have rested on a declared Vedic foundation. The Pranava, the Gayatri, the three Vyahritis, the five sheaths, the five (or seven) psychological strata, (bhumi, kshiti of the Vedas), the worlds that await us, the gods who help & the demons who hinder go back to Vedic origins.All this may be a later mystic misconception of the hymns & their ritual, but the other hypothesis of direct & genuine derivation is also possible. If there was no common origin, if Greek & Indian separated during the naturalistic period of the common religion supposed to be recorded in the Vedas it is surprising that even the little we know of Greek rites & mysteries should show us ideas coincident with those of Indian Tantra & Yoga.
  When we go back to the Veda itself, we find in the hymns which are to us most easily intelligible by the modernity of their language, similar & decisive indications. The moralistic conception of Varuna, for example, is admitted even by the Europeans. We even find the sense of sin, usually supposed to be an advanced religious conception, much more profoundly developed in prehistoric India than it was in any other old Aryan nation even in historic times. Surely, this is in itself a significant indication. Surely, this conception cannot have become so clear & strong without a previous history in the earlier hymns. Nor is it psychologically possible that a cult capable of so advanced an idea, should have been ignorant of all other moral & intellectual conceptions reverencing only natural forces & seeking only material ends. Neither can there have been a sudden leap filled up only by a very doubtful henotheism, a huge hiatus between the naturalism of early Veda and the transcendentalism of the Vedic Brahmavada admittedly present in the later hymns. The European interpretation in the face of such conflicting facts threatens to become a brilliant but shapeless monstrosity. And is there no symbolism in the details of the Vedic Sacrifice? It seems to me that the peculiar language of the Veda has never been properly studied or appreciated in this connection. What are we to say of the Vedic anxiety to increase Indra by the Soma wine? Of the description of Soma as the amritam, the wine of immortality, & of its forces as the indavah or moon powers? Of the constant sense of the attacks delivered by the powers of evil on the Sacrifice? Of the extraordinary powers already attri buted to the mantra & the Sacrifice? Have the neshtram potram, hotram of the Veda no symbolic significance? Is there no reason for the multiplication of functions at the Sacrifice or for the subtle distinctions between Gayatrins, Arkins, Brahmas? These are questions that demand a careful consideration which has never yet been given for the problems they raise.
  The present essays are merely intended to raise the subject, not to exhaust it, to offer suggestions, not to establish them. The theory of Vedic religion which I shall suggest in these pages, can only be substantiated if it is supported by a clear, full, simple, natural and harmonious rendering of the Veda standing on a sound philological basis, perfectly consistent in itself and proved in hymn after hymn without any hiatus or fatal objection. Such a substantiation I shall one day place before the public. The problem of Vedic interpretation depends, in my view, on three different tests, philological, historic and psychological. If the results of these three coincide, then only can we be sure that we have understood the Veda. But to erect this Delphic tripod of interpretation is no facile undertaking. It is easy to misuse philology. I hold no philology to be sound & valid which has only discovered one or two byelaws of sound modification and for the rest depends upon imagination & licentious conjecture,identifies for instance ethos with swadha, derives uloka from urvaloka or prachetasa from prachi and on the other [hand] ignores the numerous but definitely ascertainable caprices of Pracritic detrition between the European & Sanscrit tongues or considers a number of word-identities sufficient to justify inclusion in a single group of languages. By a scientific philology I mean a science which can trace the origins, growth & structure of the Sanscrit language, discover its primary, secondary & tertiary forms & the laws by which they develop from each other, trace intelligently the descent of every meaning of a word in Sanscrit from its original root sense, account for all similarities & identities of sense, discover the reason of unexpected divergences, trace the deviations which separated Greek & Latin from the Indian dialect, discover & define the connection of all three with the Dravidian forms of speech. Such a system of comparative philology could alone deserve to stand as a science side by side with the physical sciences and claim to speak with authority on the significance of doubtful words in the Vedic vocabulary. The development of such a science must always be a work of time & gigantic labour.
  But even such a science, when completed, could not, owing to the paucity of our records be, by itself, a perfect guide. It would be necessary to discover, fix & take always into account the actual ideas, experiences and thought-atmosphere of the Vedic Rishis; for it is these things that give colour to the words of men and determine their use. The European translations represent the Vedic Rishis as cheerful semi-savages full of material ideas & longings, ceremonialists, naturalistic Pagans, poets endowed with an often gorgeous but always incoherent imagination, a rambling style and an inability either to think in connected fashion or to link their verses by that natural logic which all except children and the most rudimentary intellects observe. In the light of this conception they interpret Vedic words & evolve a meaning out of the verses. Sayana and the Indian scholars perceive in the Vedic Rishis ceremonialists & Puranists like themselves with an occasional scholastic & Vedantic bent; they interpret Vedic words and Vedic mantras accordingly. Wherever they can get words to mean priest, prayer, Sacrifice, speech, rice, butter, milk, etc, they do so redundantly and decisively. It would be at least interesting to test the results of another hypothesis,that the Vedic thinkers were clear-thinking men with at least as clear an expression as ordinary poets have and at least as high ideas and as connected and logical a way of expressing themselvesallowing for the succinctness of poetical formsas is found in other religious poetry, say the Psalms or the Book of Job or St Pauls Epistles. But there is a better psychological test than any mere hypothesis. If it be found, as I hold it will be found, that a scientific & rational philological dealing with the text reveals to us poems not of mere ritual or Nature worship, but hymns full of psychological & philosophical religion expressed in relation to fixed practices & symbolic ceremonies, if we find that the common & persistent words of Veda, words such as vaja, vani, tuvi, ritam, radhas, rati, raya, rayi, uti, vahni etc,an almost endless list,are used so persistently because they expressed shades of meaning & fine psychological distinctions of great practical importance to the Vedic religion, that the Vedic gods were intelligently worshipped & the hymns intelligently constructed to express not incoherent poetical ideas but well-connected spiritual experiences,then the interpreter of Veda may test his rendering by repeating the Vedic experiences through Yoga & by testing & confirming them as a scientist tests and confirms the results of his predecessors. He may discover whether there are the same shades & distinctions, the same connections in his own psychological & spiritual experiences. If there are, he will have the psychological confirmation of his philological results.
  Even this confirmation may not be sufficient. For although the new version may have the immense superiority of a clear depth & simplicity supported & confirmed by a minute & consistent scientific experimentation, although it may explain rationally & simply most or all of the passages which have baffled the older & the newer, the Eastern & the Western scholars, still the confirmation may be discounted as a personal test applied in the light of a previous conclusion. If, however, there is a historical confirmation as well, if it is found that Veda has exactly the same psychology & philosophy as Vedanta, Purana, Tantra & ancient & modern Yoga & all of them indicate the same Vedic results which we ourselves have discovered in our experience, then we may possess our souls in peace & say to ourselves that we have discovered the meaning of Veda; its true meaning if not all its significance. Nor need we be discouraged, if we have to disagree with Sayana & Yaska in the actual rendering of the hymns no less than with the Europeans. Neither of these great authorities can be held to be infallible. Yaska is an authority for the interpretation of Vedic words in his own age, but that age was already far subsequent to the Vedic & the sacred language of the hymns was already to him an ancient tongue. The Vedas are much more ancient than we usually suppose. Sayana represents the scholarship & traditions of a period not much anterior to our own. There is therefore no authoritative rendering of the hymns. The Veda remains its own best authority.
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  (9) But in order that they may help, it is necessary to reinforce them in these lower worlds, which are not their own, by self-surrender, by Sacrifice, by a share in all mans action, strength, being & bliss, and by this mutual help mans being physical, vital, mental, spiritual is kept in a state of perfect & ever increasing force, energy & joy favourable to the development of immortality. This is the process of Yajna, called often Yoga when applied exclusively to the subjective movements & adhwara when applied to the objective. The Vritras, Panis etc of the Bhuvarloka who are constantly preventing mans growth & throwing back his development, have to be attacked and slain by the gods, for they are not entirely immortal. The Sacrifice is largely a battle between evolutionary & reactionary powers.
  (10) A symbolic system of external Sacrifice in which every movement is carefully designed & coordinated to signify the subjective facts of the internal Yajna, aids the spiritual aspirant by moulding his material sheath into harmony with his internal life & by mastering his external surroundings so that there too the conditions & forces may be all favourable to his growth.
  (11) The Yajna has two parts, mantra & tantrasubjective & objective; in the outer Sacrifice the mantra is the Vedic hymn and the tantra the oblation; in the inner the mantra is the meditation or the sacred formula, the tantra the putting forth of the power generated by mantra to bring about some successful spiritual, intellectual, vital or mental activity of which the gods have their share.
  (12) The mantra consists of gayatra, brahma and arka, the formulation of thought into rhythmic speech to bring about a spiritual force or result, the filling of the soul (brahma) with the idea & name of the god of the mantra, the use of the mantra for effectuation of the external object or the activity desired.
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  One of the greatest deities of the Vedic Pantheon is a woman, Gna,a feminine power whether of material or moral nature,whether her functions work in the subjective or the objective. The Hindu religion has always laid an overpowering stress on this idea of the woman in Nature. It is not only in the Purana that the Woman looms so large, not only in the Shakta cult that she becomes a supreme Name. In the Upanishads it is only when Indra, in his search for the mysterious and ill-understood Mastering Brahman, meets with the Woman in the heaven of thingstasminn evakashe striyam ajagama UmamHaimavatim, In that same sky he came to the Woman, Uma, daughter of Himavan,that he is able to learn the thing which he seeks. The Stri, the Aja or unborn Female Energy, is the executive Divinity of the universe, the womb, the mother, the bride, the mould & instrument of all joy & being. The Veda also speaks of the gnah, the Women,feminine powers without whom the masculine are not effective for work & formation; for when the gods are to be satisfied who support the Sacrifice & effect it, vahnayah, yajatrah, then Medhatithi of the Kanwas calls on Agni to yoke them with female mates, patnivatas kridhi, in their activity and enjoyment. In one of his greatest hymns, the twenty-second of the first Mandala, he speaks expressly of the patnir devanam, the brides of the Strong Ones, who are to be called to extend protection, to brea the a mighty peace, to have their share the joy of the Soma wine. Indrani, Varunani, Agnayi,we can recognise these goddesses and their mastering gods; but there are threein addition to Mother Earthwho seem to stand on a different level and are mentioned without the names of their mates if they have any and seem to enjoy an independent power and activity. They are Ila,Mahi&Saraswati, the three goddesses born of Love or born of Bliss, Tisro devir mayobhuvah.
  Saraswati is known to us in the Purana,the Muse with her feet on the thousand leaved lotus of the mind, the goddess of thought, learning, poetry, of all that is high in mind and its knowledge. But, so far as we can understand from the Purana, she is the goddess of mind only, of intellect & imagination and their perceptions & inspirations. Things spiritual & the mightier supra-mental energies & illuminations belong not to her, but to other powers. Well, we meet Saraswati in the Vedas;and if she is the same goddess as our Puranic & modern protectress of learning & the arts, the Personality of the Intellect, then we have a starting pointwe know that the Vedic Rishis had other than naturalistic conceptions & could call to higher powers than the thunder-flash & the storm-wind. But there is a difficultySaraswati is the name of a river, of several rivers in India, for the very name means flowing, gliding or streaming, and the Europeans identify it with a river in the Punjab. We must be careful therefore, whenever we come across the name, to be sure which of these two is mentioned or invoked, the sweet-streaming Muse or the material river.
  The first passage in which Saraswati is mentioned, is the third hymn of the first Mandala, the hymn of Madhuchchhanda Vaisvamitra, in which the Aswins, Indra, the Visve devah and Saraswati are successively invokedapparently in order to conduct an ordinary material Sacrifice? That is the thing that has to be seen,to be understood. What is Saraswati, whether as a Muse or a river, doing at the Soma-offering? Or is she there as the architect of the hymn, the weaver of the Riks?
  The passage devoted to her occupies the three final & culminating verses of the sacred poem. Pavaka nah Saraswati vajebhir vajinivati Yajnam vashtu dhiyavasuh. Chodayitri sunritanam chetanti sumatinam Yajnam dadhe Saraswati. Maho arnas Saraswati prachetayati ketuna Dhiyo visva vi rajati. Now there is here mention in the last verse of a flowing water, arnas, whether sea or river, but this can be no material stream, since plainly the rest of the passage can only refer to a goddess whose functions are subjective. She is dhiyavasuh, stored or rich with understanding, she is the impelling power of truths, she is the awakener of or to right thoughts. She awakens something or brings it forward into consciousness (pra-chetayati) by the perceptive intelligence and she governs or shines through all the movements of the fixing & discerning mind. There are too many words here that do ordinarily & ought here to bear a purely subjective sense for any avoidance of the clear import of the passage. We start then with the conception of Saraswati as a goddess of mind, if not the goddess of mind and we have then to determine what are her functions or activities as indicated in this important passage and for what purpose she has been summoned by the son of Visvamitra to this Sacrifice.
  What exact sense are we to apply to vajebhir vajinivati when it is spoken of a subjective Power? It is a suggestion I shall make and work out hereafter by application to all the hundreds of passages in which the word occurs that vaja in the Veda means a substantial, firm & copious condition of being, well-grounded & sufficient plenty in anything material, mental or spiritual, any substance, wealth, chattels, qualities, psychological conditions.
  Saraswati has the power of firm plenty, vajini, by means of or consisting in many kinds of plenty, copious stores of mental material for any mental activity or Sacrifice. But first of all she is purifying, pavaka. Therefore she is not merely or not essentially a goddess of mental force, but of enlightenment; for enlightenment is the mental force that purifies. And she is dhiyavasu, richly stored with understanding, buddhi, the discerning intellect, which holds firmly in their place, fixes, establishes all mental conceptions. First, therefore she has the purifying power of enlightenment, secondly, she has plenty of mental material, great wealth of mental being; thirdly, she is powerful in intellect, in that which holds, discerns, places. Therefore she is asked, as I take it, to control the Yajnavashtu from Root vash, which bore the idea of control as is evident from its derivatives vasha,vashya & vashin.
  But greater capacities, mightier functions are demanded of Saraswati.Mind and discerning intelligence, however active and well-stored, may give false interpretation and mistaken counsel. But Saraswati at the Sacrifice is chodayitri sunritanam chetanti sumatinam. It is she who gives the impulsion to the truths that appear in the mind, it is she who, herself conscious of right thoughts and just processes of thinking, awakens to them the mental faculties. Therefore, because she is the impelling force behind intellectual Truth, and our awakener to right thinking, she is present at the Sacrifice; she has established and upholds it, yajnam dadhe. This Sacrifice, whatever else it may be, is controlled by mental enlightenment and rich understanding and confirmed in & by truth and right-thinking. Therefore is Saraswati its directing power & presiding goddess.
  But by what power of Saraswatis are falsehood & error excluded and the mind and discerning reason held to truth & right-thinking? This, if I mistake not, is what the Rishi Madhuchchhanda, the drashta of Veda has seen for us in his last and culminating verse. I have said that arnas is a flowing water whether river or sea; for the word expresses either a flowing continuity or a flowing expanse. We may translate it then as the river of Mah or Mahas, and place arnas in apposition with Saraswati. This goddess will then be in our subjective being some principle to which the Vedic thinkers gave the names of Mah and Mahas for it is clear, if the rest of our interpretation is at all correct, that there can be no question of a material stream & arnas must refer to some stream or storehouse of subjective faculty. But there are strong objections to such a collocation. We shall find later that the goddess Mahi and not Saraswati is the objectivising feminine power and divine representative of this Vedic principle Mahas; prachetayati besides demands an object and maho arnas is the only object which the structure of the sentence and the rhythm of the verse will allow. I translate therefore Saraswati awakens by the perceptive intelligence the ocean (or, flowing expanse) of Mahas and governs diversely all the movements (or, all the faculties) of the understanding.
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  We can now understand the intention of the Rishi in his last verse and the greatness of the climax to which he has been leading us. Saraswati is able to give impulsion to Truth and awaken to right thinking because she has access to the Maho Arnas, the great ocean. On that level of consciousness, we are usually it must be remembered asleep, sushupta. The chetana or waking consciousness has no access; it lies behind our active consciousness, is, as we might say, superconscious, for us, asleep. Saraswati brings it forward into active consciousness by means of the ketu or perceptive intelligence, that essential movement of mind which accepts & realises whatever is presented to it. To focus this ketu, this essential perception on the higher truth by drawing it away from the haphazard disorder of sensory data is the great aim of Yogic meditation. Saraswati by fixing essential perception on the satyam ritam brihat above makes ideal knowledge active and is able to inform it with all those plentiful movements of mind which she, dhiyavasu, vajebhir vajinivati, has prepared for the service of the Master of the Sacrifice. She is able to govern all the movements of understanding without exception in their thousand diverse movements & give them the single impression of truth and right thinkingvisva dhiyo vi rajati. A governed & ordered activity of soul and mind, led by the Truth-illuminated intellect, is the aim of the Sacrifice which Madhuchchhanda son of Viswamitra is offering to the Gods.
  For we perceive at once that the yajna here can be no material Sacrifice, no mere pouring out of the Soma-wine on the sacred flame to the gods of rain & cloud, star & sunshine.
  Saraswati is not even here the goddess of speech whose sole function is to inspire & guide the singer in his hymn. In other passages she may be merely Bharati,theMuse. But here there are greater depths of thought & soul-experience. She has to do things which mere speech cannot do. And even if we were to take her here as the divine Muse, still the functions asked of her are too great, there is too little need of all these high intellectual motions, for a mere invitation to Rain&Star Gods to share in a pouring of the Soma-wine. She could do that without all this high intellectual & spiritual labour. Even, therefore, if it be a material Sacrifice whichMadhuchchhanda is offering, its material aspects can be no more than symbolical. Unless indeed the rest of the hymn contradicts the intellectual & spiritual purport which we have discovered in these closing verses, fullon the face of them & accepting the plainest & most ordinary meaning for each single word in themof deep psychological knowledge, moral & spiritual aspiration & a supreme poetical art.
  I do not propose to study the earlier verses of the hymn with the same care as we have expended on the closing dedication to Saraswati,that would lead me beyond my immediate purpose. A rapid glance through them to see whether they confirm or contradict our first results will be sufficient. There are three passages, also of three verses each, consecrated successively to the Aswins, Indra & the Visve Devah. I shall give briefly my own view of these three passages and the gods they invoke.
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  Next, it is to Indra that he turns. I have already said that in my view Indra is the master of mental force. Let us see whether there is anything here to contradict the hypothesis. Indra yahi chitrabhano suta ime tu ayavah, Anwibhis tana putasah. Indrayahi dhiyeshito viprajutah sutavatah Upa brahmani vaghatah. Indrayahi tutujana upa brahmani harivah Sute dadhishwa nas chanah. There are several important words here that are doubtful in their sense, anwi, tana, vaghatah, brahmani; but none of them are of importance for our present purpose except brahmani. For reasons I shall give in the proper place I do not accept Brahma in the Veda as meaning speech of any kind, but as either soul or a mantra of the kind afterwards called dhyana, the object of which was meditation and formation in the soul of the divine Power meditated on whether in an image or in his qualities. It is immaterial which sense we take here. Indra, sings the Rishi, arrive, O thou of rich and varied light, here are these life-streams poured forth, purified, with vital powers, with substance. Arrive, O Indra, controlled by the understanding, impelled forward in various directions to my soul faculties, I who am now full of strength and flourishing increase. Arrive, O Indra, with protection to my soul faculties, O dweller in the brilliance, confirm our delight in the nectar poured. It seems to me that the remarkable descriptions dhiyeshito viprajutah are absolutely conclusive, that they prove the presence of a subjective Nature Power, not a god of rain & tempest, & prove especially a mind-god. What is it but mental force which comes controlled by the understanding and is impelled forward by it in various directions? What else is it that at the same time protects by its might the growing & increasing soul faculties from impairing & corrupting attack and confirms, keeps safe & continuous the delight which the Aswins have brought with them? The epithets chitrabhano, harivas become at once intelligible and appropriate; the god of mental force has indeed a rich and varied light, is indeed a dweller in the brilliance. The progress of the thought is clear. Madhuchchhanda, as a result of Yogic practice, is in a state of spiritual & physical exaltation; he has poured out the nectar of vitality; he is full of strength & ecstasy This is the Sacrifice he has prepared for the gods. He wishes it to be prolonged, perhaps to be made, if it may now be, permanent. The Aswins are called to give & take the delight, Indra to supply & preserve that mental force which will sustain the delight otherwise in danger of being exhausted & sinking by its own fierceness rapidly consuming its material in the soul faculties. The state and the movement are one of which every Yogin knows.
  But he is not content with the inner Sacrifice. He wishes to pour out this strength & joy in action on the world, on his fellows, on the peoples, therefore he calls to the Visve Devah to come, A gata!all the gods in general who help man and busy themselves in supporting his multitudinous & manifold action. They are kindly, omasas, they are charshanidhrito, holders or supporters of all our actions, especially actions that require effort, (it is in this sense that I take charshani, again on good philological grounds), they are to distribute this nectar to all or to divide it among themselves for the action,dasvanso may have either force,for Madhuchchhanda wishes not only to possess, but to give, to distribute, he is dashush. Omasas charshanidhrito visve devasa a gata, daswanso dashushah sutam. He goes on, Visve devaso apturah sutam a ganta turnayah Usra iva swasarani. Visve devaso asridha ehimayaso adruhah, Medham jushanta vahnayah. O you all-gods who are energetic in works, come to the nectar distilled, ye swift ones, (or, come swiftly), like calves to their own stalls,(so at least we must translate this last phrase, till we can get the real meaning, for I do not believe this is the real or, at any rate, the only meaning). O you all-gods unfaltering, with wide capacity of strength, ye who harm not, attach yourselves to the offering as its supporters. And then come the lines about Saraswati. For although Indra can sustain for a moment or for a time he is at present a mental, not an ideal force; it is Saraswati full of the vijnana, of mahas, guiding by it the understanding in all its ways who can give to all these gods the supporting knowledge, light and truth which will confirm and uphold the delight, the mental strength & supply inexhaustibly from the Ocean of Mahas the beneficent & joy-giving action,Saraswati, goddess of inspiration, the flowing goddess who is the intermediary & channel by which divine truth, divine joy, divine being descend through the door of knowledge into this human receptacle. In a word, she is our inspirer, our awakener, our lurer towards Immortality. It is immortality that Madhuchchhandas prepares for himself & the people who do Sacrifice to Heaven, devayantah. The Soma-streams he speaks of are evidently no intoxicating vegetable juices; he calls them ayavah, life-forces; & elsewhere amritam, nectar of immortality; somasah, wine-draughts of bliss & internal well being. It is the clear Yogic idea of the amritam, the divine nectar which flows into the system at a certain stage of Yogic practice & gives pure health, pure strength & pure physical joy to the body as a basis for a pure mental & spiritual vigour and activity.
  We have therefore as a result of a long and careful examination the clear conviction that certainly in this poem of Madhuchchhanda, probably in others of his hymns, perhaps in all we have an invocation to subjective Nature powers, a symbolic Sacrifice, a spiritual, moral & subjective effort & purpose. And if many other suktas in this & other Mandalas confirm the evidence of this third hymn of the Rigveda, shall we not say that here we have the true Veda as the Rishis understood it and that this was the reason why all the ancient thinkers looked on the hymns with so deep-seated a reverence that even after they came to be used merely as ceremonial liturgies at a material Sacrifice, even after the Buddha impatiently flung them aside, the writer of the Gita had to look beyond them & Shankara respectfully put them on the shelf of neglect as useless for spiritual purposes, even after they have ceased to be used and almost to be read, the most spiritual nation on the face of the earth still tenaciously, by a sort of divine instinct, clings to them as its supreme Scriptures & refers back all its spirituality and higher knowledge to the Vedas? Let us proceed and see whether this is not the truest as well as the noblest reading of the riddle the real root of Gods purpose in maintaining this our ancient faith and millennial tradition.
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  We are no longer with Madhuchchhanda Vaiswamitra. It is Medhatithi of the Kanwas who has taken the word, a soul of great clearness & calmness who is full of a sort of vibrating peace. Yet we find the same strain, the same fixed ideas, the same subjective purpose & spiritual aspiration. A few words here & there in my translation may be challenged and given a different meaning. Throughout the Veda there are words like radhas etc to which I have given a sense based on reasons of context & philology but which must be allowed to remain conjectural till I am able to take up publicly the detailed examination of the language & substance of the Rigveda. But we have sumati again and the ever recurring vaja, the dhartara charshaninam, holders of actions, & rayah which certainly meant felicity in the Veda. It is clear from the third verse that Varuna and Indra are called to share in the felicity of the poets soul,that felicity is his material of Sacrifice,anukamam tarpayetham, he says, Delight in it to your hearts content; and again in the seventh shloka he tells them, Vam aham huve chitraya radhase, a phrase which, in view of verse 3, I can only translate I call you for rich and varied ecstasy; for it is evidently meant to describe that felicity, that heart-filling satisfaction which he has already offered in the third sloka. In return he asks them to give victory. Always in the Veda there is the idea of the spiritual battle as well as the outer struggles of life, the battle with the jealous forces of Nature, with Vala, the grudging guardian of light, with the great obscuring dragon Vritra & his hosts, with the thieving Panis, with all the many forces that oppose mans evolution & support limitation and evil. A great many of the words for Sacrifice, mean also war and battle, in Sanscrit or in its kindred tongues.
  Indra and Varuna are called to give victory, because both of them are samrat. The words samrat & swarat have in Veda an ascertained philosophical sense.One is swarat when, having self-mastery & self-knowledge, & being king over his whole system, physical, vital, mental & spiritual, free in his being, [one] is able to guide entirely the harmonious action of that being. Swarajya is spiritual Freedom. One is Samrat when one is master of the laws of being, ritam, rituh, vratani, and can therefore control all forces & creatures. Samrajya is divine Rule resembling the power of God over his world. Varuna especially is Samrat, master of the Law which he follows, governor of the heavens & all they contain, Raja Varuna, Varuna the King as he is often styled by Sunahshepa and other Rishis. He too, like Indra & Agni & the Visvadevas, is an upholder & supporter of mens actions, dharta charshaninam. Finally in the fifth sloka a distinction is drawn between Indra and Varuna of great importance for our purpose. The Rishi wishes, by their protection, to rise to the height of the inner Energies (yuvaku shachinam) and have the full vigour of right thoughts (yuvaku sumatinam) because they give then that fullness of inner plenty (vajadavnam) which is the first condition of enduring calm & perfection & then he says, Indrah sahasradavnam, Varunah shansyanam kratur bhavati ukthyah. Indra is the master-strength, desirable indeed, (ukthya, an object of prayer, of longing and aspiration) of one class of those boons (vara, varyani) for which the Rishis praise him, Varuna is the master-strength, equally desirable, of another class of these Vedic blessings. Those which Indra brings, give force, sahasram, the forceful being that is strong to endure & strong to overcome; those that attend the grace of Varuna are of a loftier & more ample description, they are shansya. The word shansa is frequently used; it is one of the fixed terms of Veda. Shall we translate it praise, the sense most suitable to the ritual explanation, the sense which the finally dominant ritualistic school gave to so many of the fixed terms of Veda? In that case Varuna must be urushansa, because he is widely praised, Agni narashansa because he is strongly praised or praised by men,ought not a wicked or cruel man to be nrishansa because he is praised by men?the Rishis call repeatedly on the gods to protect their praise, & Varuna here must be master of things that are praiseworthy. But these renderings can only be accepted, if we consent to the theory of the Rishis as semi-savage poets, feeble of brain, vague in speech, pointless in their style, using language for barbaric ornament rather than to express ideas. Here for instance there is a very powerful indicated contrast, indicated by the grammatical structure, the order & the rhythm, by the singular kratur bhavati, by the separation of Indra & Varuna who have hitherto been coupled, by the assignment of each governing nominative to its governed genitive and a careful balanced order of words, first giving the master Indra then his province sahasradavnam, exactly balancing them in the second half of the first line the master Varuna & then his province shansyanam, and the contrast thus pointed, in the closing pada of the Gayatri all the words that in their application are common at once to all these four separated & contrasted words in the first line. Here is no careless writer, but a style careful, full of economy, reserve, point, force, and the thought must surely correspond. But what is the contrast forced on us with such a marshalling of the stylists resources? That Indras boons are force-giving, Varunas praiseworthy, excellent, auspicious, what you will? There is not only a pointless contrast, but no contrast at all. No, shansa & shansya must be important, definite, pregnant Vedic terms expressing some prominent idea of the Vedic system. I shall show elsewhere that shansa is in its essential meaning self-expression, the bringing out of our sat or being that which is latent in it and manifesting it in our nature, in speech, in our general impulse & action. It has the connotation of self-expression, aspiration, temperament, expression of our ideas in speech; then divulgation, publication, praiseor in another direction, cursing. Varuna is urushansa because he is the master of wide self-expression, wide aspirations, a wide, calm & spacious temperament, Agni narashansa because he is master of strong self-expression, strong aspirations, a prevailing, forceful & masterful temperament;nrishansa had originally the same sense, but was afterwards diverted to express the fault to which such a temper is prone,tyranny, wrath & cruelty; the Rishis call to the gods to protect their shansa, that which by their yoga & yajna they have been able to bring out in themselves of being, faculty, power, joy,their self-expression. Similarly, shansya here means all that belongs to self-expression, all that is wide, noble, ample in the growth of a soul. It will follow from this rendering that Indra is a god of force, Varuna rather a god of being and as it appears from other epithets, of being when it is calm, noble, wide, self-knowing, self-mastering, moving freely in harmony with the Law of things because it is aware of that Law and accepts it. In that acceptance is his mighty strength; therefore is he even more than the gods of force the king, the giver of internal & external victory, rule, empire, samrajya to his votaries. This is Varuna.

1.04 - The Paths, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  The animal appropriate to Aleph is the Eagle, the king of the birds, since we learn from classical mythology that the Eagle was sacred to Jupiter ; whose Sacrifices, I may add, generally consisted of bulls and cows. Its element is
  Air A, rushing aimlessly hither and thither, always pressing or tending in a downward direction.
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  The Orphic congregations at certain of their holiest secret convocations solemnly partook of the blood of a bull, according to Murray, which bull was, by some mystery, the blood of Dionysius-Zagreus himself, the " Bull of God " slain in Sacrifice for the purification of man. And the
  Msenads of poetry and mythology, among more beautiful proofs of their superhuman character, have always to tear bulls in pieces and taste of the blood. The reader will also recall to mind the fair promise of Lord Dunsany's most interesting story, The Blessing of Pan.

1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice
  author class:Sri Aurobindo
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  The law of Sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising principle, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this Sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance. For with Sacrifice as their companion, says the Gita, the All-Father created these peoples. The acceptance of the law of Sacrifice is a practical recognition by the ego that it is neither alone in the world nor chief in the world. It is its admission that, even in this much fragmented existence, there is beyond itself and behind that which is not its own egoistic person, something greater and completer, a diviner All which demands from it subordination and service. Indeed, Sacrifice is imposed and, where need be, compelled by the universal World-Force; it takes it even from those who do not consciously recognise the law,inevitably, because this is the intrinsic nature of things. Our ignorance or our false egoistic view of life can make no difference to this eternal bedrock truth of Nature. For this is the truth in Nature, that this ego which thinks itself a separate independent being and claims to live for itself, is not and cannot be independent nor separate, nor can it live to itself even if it would, but rather all are linked together by a secret Oneness. Each existence is continually giving out perforce from its stock; out of its mental receipts from Nature or its vital and physical assets and acquisitions and belongings a stream goes to all that is around it. And always again it receives something from its environment gratis or in return for its voluntary or involuntary tri bute. For it is only by this giving and receiving that it can effect its own growth while at the same time it helps the sum of things. At length, though at first slowly and partially, we learn to make the conscious Sacrifice; even, in the end, we take joy to give ourselves and what we envisage as belonging to us in a spirit of love and devotion to That which appears for the moment other than ourselves and is certainly other than our limited personalities. The Sacrifice and the divine return for our Sacrifice then become a gladly accepted means towards our last perfection; for it is recognised now as the road to the fulfilment in us of the eternal purpose.
  But, most often, the Sacrifice is done unconsciously, egoistically and without knowledge or acceptance of the true meaning of the great world-rite. It is so that the vast majority of earth-creatures do it; and, when it is so done, the individual derives only a mechanical minimum of natural inevitable profit, achieves by it only a slow painful progress limited and tortured by the smallness and suffering of the ego. Only when the heart, the will and the mind of knowledge associate themselves with the law and gladly follow it, can there come the deep joy and the happy fruitfulness of divine Sacrifice. The minds knowledge of the law and the hearts gladness in it culminate in the perception that it is to our own Self and Spirit and the one Self and Spirit of all that we give. And this is true even when our self-offering is still to our fellow-creatures or to lesser Powers and Principles and not yet to the Supreme. Not for the sake of the wife, says Yajnavalkya in the Upanishad, but for the sake of the Self is the wife dear to us. This in the lower sense of the individual self is the hard fact behind the coloured and passionate professions of egoistic love; but in a higher sense it is the inner significance of that love too which is not egoistic but divine. All true love and all Sacrifice are in their essence Natures contradiction of the primary egoism and its separative error; it is her attempt to turn from a necessary first fragmentation towards a recovered oneness. All unity between creatures is in its essence a self-finding, a fusion with that from which we have separated, a discovery of ones self in others.
  But it is only a divine love and unity that can possess in the light what the human forms of these things seek for in the darkness. For the true unity is not merely an association and agglomeration like that of physical cells joined by a life of common interests; it is not even an emotional understanding, sympathy, solidarity or close drawing together. Only then are we really unified with those separated from us by the divisions of Nature, when we annul the division and find ourselves in that which seemed to us not ourselves. Association is a vital and physical unity; its Sacrifice is that of mutual aid and concessions. Nearness, sympathy, solidarity create a mental, moral and emotional unity; theirs is a Sacrifice of mutual support and mutual gratifications. But the true unity is spiritual; its Sacrifice is a mutual self-giving, an interfusion of our inner substance. The law of Sacrifice travels in Nature towards its culmination in this complete and unreserved self-giving; it awakens the consciousness of one common self in the giver and the object of the Sacrifice. This culmination of Sacrifice is the height even of human love and devotion when it tries to become divine; for there too the highest peak of love points into a heaven of complete mutual self-giving, its summit is the rapturous fusing of two souls into one.
  This profounder idea of the world-wide law is at the heart of the teaching about works given in the Gita; a spiritual union with the Highest by Sacrifice, an unreserved self-giving to the Eternal is the core of its doctrine. The vulgar conception of Sacrifice is an act of painful self-immolation, austere self-mortification, difficult self-effacement; this kind of Sacrifice may go even as far as self-mutilation and self-torture. These things may be temporarily necessary in mans hard endeavour to exceed his natural self; if the egoism in his nature is violent and obstinate, it has to be met sometimes by an answering strong internal repression and counterbalancing violence. But the Gita discourages any excess of violence done to oneself; for the self within is really the Godhead evolving, it is Krishna, it is the Divine; it has not to be troubled and tortured as the Titans of the world trouble and torture it, but to be increased, fostered, cherished, luminously opened to a divine light and strength and joy and wideness. It is not ones self, but the band of the spirits inner enemies that we have to discourage, expel, slay upon the altar of the growth of the spirit; these can be ruthlessly excised, whose names are desire, wrath, inequality, greed, attachment to outward pleasures and pains, the cohort of usurping demons that are the cause of the souls errors and sufferings. These should be regarded not as part of oneself but as intruders and perverters of our selfs real and diviner nature; these have to be Sacrificed in the harsher sense of the word, whatever pain in going they may throw by reflection on the consciousness of the seeker.
  But the true essence of Sacrifice is not self-immolation, it is self-giving; its object not self-effacement, but self-fulfilment; its method not self-mortification, but a greater life, not self-mutilation, but a transformation of our natural human parts into divine members, not self-torture, but a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda. There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine. Our Sacrifice is not a giving without any return or any fruitful acceptance from the other side; it is an interchange between the embodied soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit. For even though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep within us that a marvellous return is inevitable. The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.
  Last, there is to be considered the recipient of the Sacrifice and the manner of the Sacrifice. The Sacrifice may be offered to others or it may be offered to divine Powers; it may be offered to the cosmic All or it may be offered to the transcendent Supreme. The worship given may take any shape from the dedication of a leaf or flower, a cup of water, a handful of rice, a loaf of bread, to consecration of all that we possess and the submission of all that we are. Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient. For the Supreme who transcends the universe, is yet here too, however veiled, in us and in the world and in its happenings; he is there as the omniscient Witness and Receiver of all our works and their secret Master. All our actions, all our efforts, even our sins and stumblings and sufferings and struggles are obscurely or consciously, known to us and seen or else unknown and in a disguise, governed in their last result by the One. All is turned towards him in his numberless forms and offered through them to the single Omnipresence. In whatever form and with whatever spirit we approach him, in that form and with that spirit he receives the Sacrifice.
  And the fruit also of the Sacrifice of works varies according to the work, according to the intention in the work and according to the spirit that is behind the intention. But all other Sacrifices are partial, egoistic, mixed, temporal, incomplete,even those offered to the highest Powers and Principles keep this character: the result too is partial, limited, temporal, mixed in its reactions, effective only for a minor or intermediate purpose. The one entirely acceptable Sacrifice is a last and highest and uttermost self-giving,it is that surrender made face to face, with devotion and knowledge, freely and without any reserve to One who is at once our immanent Self, the environing constituent All, the Supreme Reality beyond this or any manifestation and, secretly, all these together, concealed everywhere, the immanent Transcendence. For to the soul that wholly gives itself to him, God also gives himself altogether. Only the one who offers his whole nature, finds the Self. Only the one who can give everything, enjoys the Divine All everywhere. Only a supreme self-abandonment attains to the Supreme. Only the sublimation by Sacrifice of all that we are, can enable us to embody the Highest and live here in the immanent consciousness of the transcendent Spirit.
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  This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious Sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings. Our commonest or most grossly material actions must assume this sublimated character; when we eat, we should be conscious that we are giving our food to that Presence in us; it must be a sacred offering in a temple and the sense of a mere physical need or self-gratification must pass away from us. In any great labour, in any high discipline, in any difficult or noble enterprise, whether undertaken for ourselves, for others or for the race, it will no longer be possible to stop short at the idea of the race, of ourselves or of others. The thing we are doing must be consciously offered as a Sacrifice of works, not to these, but either through them or directly to the One Godhead; the Divine Inhabitant who was hidden by these figures must be no longer hidden but ever present to our soul, our mind, our sense. The workings and results of our acts must be put in the hands of that One in the feeling that that Presence is the Infinite and Most High by whom alone our labour and our aspiration are possible. For in his being all takes place; for him all labour and aspiration are taken from us by Nature and offered on his altar. Even in those things in which Nature is herself very plainly the worker and we only the witnesses of her working and its containers and supporters, there should be the same constant memory and insistent consciousness of a work and of its divine Master. Our very inspiration and respiration, our very heart-beats can and must be made conscious in us as the living rhythm of the universal Sacrifice.
  It is clear that a conception of this kind and its effective practice must carry in them three results that are of a central importance for our spiritual ideal. It is evident, to begin with, that, even if such a discipline is begun without devotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible; for it must deepen naturally into the completest adoration imaginable, the most profound God-love. There is bound up with it a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our thought, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved consecration to the Divine of the totality of our being. Now these implications of the Yoga of works are also of the very essence of an integral and absolute Bhakti. The seeker who puts them into living practice makes in himself continually a constant, active and effective representation of the very spirit of self-devotion, and it is inevitable that out of it there should emerge the most engrossing worship of the Highest to whom is given this service. An absorbing love for the Divine Presence to whom he feels an always more intimate closeness, grows upon the consecrated worker. And with it is born or in it is contained a universal love too for all these beings, living forms and creatures that are habitations of the Divinenot the brief restless grasping emotions of division, but the settled selfless love that is the deeper vibration of oneness. In all the seeker begins to meet the one Object of his adoration and service. The way of works turns by this road of Sacrifice to meet the path of Devotion; it can be itself a devotion as complete, as absorbing, as integral as any the desire of the heart can ask for or the passion of the mind can imagine.
  Next, the practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward remembrance of the one central liberating knowledge, and a constant active externalising of it in works comes in too to intensify the remembrance. In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe,this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. A memory, a self-dynamising meditation of this kind, must and does in its end turn into a profound and uninterrupted vision and a vivid and all-embracing consciousness of that which we so powerfully remember or on which we so constantly meditate. For it compels a constant reference at each moment to the Origin of all being and will and action and there is at once an embracing and exceeding of all particular forms and appearances in That which is their cause and upholder. This way cannot go to its end without a seeing vivid and vital, as concrete in its way as physical sight, of the works of the universal Spirit everywhere. On its summits it rises into a constant living and thinking and willing and acting in the presence of the Supramental, the Transcendent. Whatever we see and hear, whatever we touch and sense, all of which we are conscious, has to be known and felt by us as That which we worship and serve; all has to be turned into an image of the Divinity, perceived as a dwelling-place of his Godhead, enveloped with the eternal Omnipresence. In its close, if not long before it, this way of works turns by communion with the Divine Presence, Will and Force into a way of Knowledge more complete and integral than any the mere creature intelligence can construct or the search of the intellect can discover.
  Lastly, the practice of this Yoga of Sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism, casting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed, its presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine; all must be directed towards the Divine. Nothing must be attempted for ourselves as a separate existence; nothing done for others, whether neighbours, friends, family, country or mankind or other creatures merely because they are connected with our personal life and thought and sentiment or because the ego takes a preferential interest in their welfare. In this way of doing and seeing all works and all life become only a daily dynamic worship and service of the Divine in the unbounded temple of his own vast cosmic existence. Life becomes more and more the Sacrifice of the eternal in the individual constantly self-offered to the eternal Transcendence. It is offered in the wide sacrificial ground of the field of the eternal cosmic Spirit; and the Force too that offers it is the eternal Force, the omnipresent Mother. Therefore is this way a way of union and communion by acts and by the spirit and knowledge in the act as complete and integral as any our Godward will can hope for or our souls strength execute.
  It has all the power of a way of works integral and absolute, but because of its law of Sacrifice and self-giving to the Divine Self and Master, it is accompanied on its one side by the whole power of the path of Love and on the other by the whole power of the path of Knowledge. At its end all these three divine Powers work together, fused, united, completed, perfected by each other.
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  The Divine, the Eternal is the Lord of our Sacrifice of works and union with him in all our being and consciousness and in its expressive instruments is the one object of the Sacrifice; the steps of the Sacrifice of works must therefore be measured, first, by the growth in our nature of something that brings us nearer to divine Nature, but secondly also by an experience of the Divine, his presence, his manifestation to us, an increasing closeness and union with that Presence. But the Divine is in his essence infinite and his manifestation too is multitudinously infinite. If that is so, it is not likely that our true integral perfection in being and in nature can come by one kind of realisation alone; it must combine many different strands of divine experience. It cannot be reached by the exclusive pursuit of a single line of identity till that is raised to its absolute; it must harmonise many aspects of the Infinite. An integral consciousness with a multiform dynamic experience is essential for the complete transformation of our nature.
  There is one fundamental perception indispensable towards any integral knowledge or many-sided experience of this Infinite. It is to realise the Divine in its essential self and truth unaltered by forms and phenomena. Otherwise we are likely to remain caught in the net of appearances or wander confusedly in a chaotic multitude of cosmic or particular aspects, and if we avoid this confusion, it will be at the price of getting chained to some mental formula or shut up in a limited personal experience. The one secure and all-reconciling truth which is the very foundation of the universe is this that life is the manifestation of an uncreated Self and Spirit, and the key to lifes hidden secret is the true relation of this Spirit with its own created existences. There is behind all this life the look of an eternal Being upon its multitudinous becomings; there is around and everywhere in it the envelopment and penetration of a manifestation in time by an unmanifested timeless Eternal. But this knowledge is valueless for Yoga if it is only an intellectual and metaphysical notion void of life and barren of consequence; a mental realisation alone cannot be sufficient for the seeker. 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.
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  This is the beginning of a growing spiritual experience which reveals to him more and more that what seemed to him dark incomprehensible Maya was all the time no other than the Consciousness-Puissance of the Eternal, timeless and illimitable beyond the universe, but spread out here under a mask of bright and dark opposites for the miracle of the slow manifestation of the Divine in Mind and Life and Matter. All the Timeless presses towards the play in Time; all in Time turns upon and around the timeless Spirit. If the separate experience was liberative, this unitive experience is dynamic and effective. For he now not only feels himself to be in his soul-substance part of the Eternal, in his essential self and spirit entirely one with the Eternal, but in his active nature an instrumentation of its omniscient and omnipotent Consciousness-Puissance. However bounded and relative its present play in him, he can open to a greater and greater consciousness and power of it and to that expansion there seems to be no assignable limit. A level spiritual and supramental of that Consciousness-Puissance seems even to reveal itself above him and lean to enter into contact, where there are not these trammels and limits, and its powers too are pressing upon the play in Time with the promise of a greater descent and a less disguised or no longer disguised manifestation of the Eternal. The once conflicting but now biune duality of Brahman-Maya stands revealed to him as the first great dynamic aspect of the Self of all selves, the Master of existence, the Lord of the world- Sacrifice and of his Sacrifice.
  On another line of approach another Duality presents itself to the experience of the seeker. On one side he becomes aware of a witness recipient observing experiencing Consciousness which does not appear to act but for which all these activities inside and outside us seem to be undertaken and continue. On the other side he is aware at the same time of an executive Force or an energy of Process which is seen to constitute, drive and guide all conceivable activities and to create a myriad forms visible to us and invisible and use them as stable supports for its incessant flux of action and creation. Entering exclusively into the witness consciousness he becomes silent, untouched, immobile; he sees that he has till now passively reflected and appropriated to himself the movements of Nature and it is by this reflection that they acquired from the witness soul within him what seemed a spiritual value and significance. But now he has withdrawn that ascription or mirroring identification; he is conscious only of his silent self and aloof from all that is in motion around it; all activities are outside him and at once they cease to be intimately real; they appear now mechanical, detachable, endable. Entering exclusively into the kinetic movement, he has an opposite self-awareness; he seems to his own perception a mass of activities, a formation and result of forces; if there is an active consciousness, even some kind of kinetic being in the midst of it all, yet there is no longer a free soul in it anywhere. These two different and opposite states of being alternate in him or else stand simultaneously over against each other; one silent in the inner being observes but is unmoved and does not participate; the other active in some outer or surface self pursues its habitual movements. He has entered into an intense separative perception of the great duality, Soul-Nature, Purusha-Prakriti.
  But as the consciousness deepens, he becomes aware that this is only a first frontal appearance. For he finds that it is by the silent support, permission or sanction of this witness soul in him that this executive nature can work intimately or persistently upon his being; if the soul withdraws its sanction, the movements of Nature in their action upon and within him become a wholly mechanical repetition, vehement at first as if seeking still to enforce their hold, but afterwards less and less dynamic and real. More actively using this power of sanction or refusal, he perceives that he can, slowly and uncertainly at first, more decisively afterwards, change the movements of Nature. Eventually in this witness soul or behind it is revealed to him the presence of a Knower and master Will in Nature, and all her activities more and more appear as an expression of what is known and either actively willed or passively permitted by this Lord of her existence. Prakriti herself now seems to be mechanical only in the carefully regulated appearance of her workings, but in fact a conscious Force with a soul within her, a self-aware significance in her turns, a revelation of a secret Will and Knowledge in her steps and figures. This Duality, in aspect separate, is inseparable. Wherever there is Prakriti, there is Purusha; wherever there is Purusha, there is Prakriti. Even in his inactivity he holds in himself all her force and energies ready for projection; even in the drive of her action she carries with her all his observing and mandatory consciousness as the whole support and sense of her creative purpose. Once more the seeker discovers in his experience the two poles of existence of One Being and the two lines or currents of their energy negative and positive in relation to each other which effect by their simultaneity the manifestation of all that is within it. Here too he finds that the separative aspect is liberative; for it releases him from the bondage of identification with the inadequate workings of Nature in the Ignorance. The unitive aspect is dynamic and effective; for it enables him to arrive at mastery and perfection; while rejecting what is less divine or seemingly undivine in her, he can rebuild her forms and movements in himself according to a nobler pattern and the law and rhythm of a greater existence. At a certain spiritual and supramental level the Duality becomes still more perfectly Two-in-one, the Master Soul with the Conscious Force within it, and its potentiality disowns all barriers and breaks through every limit. Thus this once separate, now biune Duality of Purusha-Prakriti is revealed to him in all its truth as the second great instrumental and effective aspect of the Soul of all souls, the Master of existence, the Lord of the Sacrifice.
  On yet another line of approach the seeker meets another corresponding but in aspect distinct Duality in which the biune character is more immediately apparent,the dynamic Duality of Ishwara-Shakti. On one side he is aware of an infinite and self-existent Godhead in being who contains all things in an ineffable potentiality of existence, a Self of all selves, a Soul of all souls, a spiritual Substance of all substances, an impersonal inexpressible Existence, but at the same time an illimitable Person who is here self-represented in numberless personality, a Master of Knowledge, a Master of Forces, a Lord of love and bliss and beauty, a single Origin of the worlds, a self-manifester and self-creator, a Cosmic Spirit, a universal Mind, a universal Life, the conscious and living Reality supporting the appearance which we sense as unconscious inanimate Matter. On the other side he becomes aware of the same Godhead in effectuating consciousness and power put forth as a self-aware Force that contains and carries all within her and is charged to manifest it in universal Time and Space. It is evident to him that here there is one supreme and infinite Being represented to us in two different sides of itself, obverse and reverse in relation to each other. All is either prepared or pre-existent in the Godhead in Being and issues from it and is upheld by its Will and Presence; all is brought out, carried in movement by the Godhead in power; all becomes and acts and develops by her and in her its individual or its cosmic purpose. It is again a Duality necessary for the manifestation, creating and enabling that double current of energy which seems always necessary for the world-workings, two poles of the same Being, but here closer to each other and always very evidently carrying each the powers of the other in its essence and its dynamic nature. At the same time by the fact that the two great elements of the divine Mystery, the Personal and the Impersonal, are here fused together, the seeker of the integral Truth feels in the duality of Ishwara-Shakti his closeness to a more intimate and ultimate secret of the divine Transcendence and the Manifestation than that offered to him by any other experience.
  --
  In this Duality too there is possible a separative experience. At one pole of it the seeker may be conscious only of the Master of Existence putting forth on him His energies of knowledge, power and bliss to liberate and divinise; the Shakti may appear to him only an impersonal Force expressive of these things or an attribute of the Ishwara. At the other pole he may encounter the World-Mother, creatrix of the universe, putting forth the Gods and the worlds and all things and existences out of her spirit-substance. Or even if he sees both aspects, it may be with an unequal separating vision, subordinating one to the other, regarding the Shakti only as a means for approaching the Ishwara. There results a one-sided tendency or a lack of balance, a power of effectuation not perfectly supported or a light of revelation not perfectly dynamic. It is when a complete union of the two sides of the Duality is effected and rules his consciousness that he begins to open to a fuller power that will draw him altogether out of the confused clash of Ideas and Forces here into a higher Truth and enable the descent of that Truth to illumine and deliver and act sovereignly upon this world of Ignorance. He has begun to lay his hand on the integral secret which in its fullness can be grasped only when he overpasses the double term that reigns here of Knowledge inextricably intertwined with an original Ignorance and crosses the border where spiritual mind disappears into supramental Gnosis. It is through this third and most dynamic dual aspect of the One that the seeker begins with the most integral completeness to enter into the deepest secret of the being of the Lord of the Sacrifice.
  For it is behind the mystery of the presence of personality in an apparently impersonal universeas in that of consciousness manifesting out of the Inconscient, life out of the inanimate, soul out of brute Matter that is hidden the solution of the riddle of existence. Here again is another dynamic Duality more pervading than appears at first view and deeply necessary to the play of the slowly self-revealing Power. It is possible for the seeker in his spiritual experience, standing at one pole of the Duality, to follow Mind in seeing a fundamental Impersonality everywhere. The evolving soul in the material world begins from a vast impersonal Inconscience in which our inner sight yet perceives the presence of a veiled infinite Spirit; it proceeds with the emergence of a precarious consciousness and personality that even at their fullest have the look of an episode, but an episode that repeats itself in a constant series; it arises through experience of life out of mind into an infinite, impersonal and absolute Superconscience in which personality, mind-consciousness, life-consciousness seem all to disappear by a liberating annihilation, Nirvana. At a lower pitch he still experiences this fundamental impersonality as an immense liberating force everywhere. It releases his knowledge from the narrowness of personal mind, his will from the clutch of personal desire, his heart from the bondage of petty mutable emotions, his life from its petty personal groove, his soul from ego, and it allows them to embrace calm, equality, wideness, universality, infinity. A Yoga of works would seem to require Personality as its mainstay, almost its source, but here too the impersonal is found to be the most direct liberating force; it is through a wide egoless impersonality that one can become a free worker and a divine creator. It is not surprising that the overwhelming power of this experience from the impersonal pole of the Duality should have moved the sages to declare this to be the one way and an impersonal Superconscience to be the sole truth of the Eternal.
  --
  Thus reveals himself to the seeker in the progress of the Sacrifice the Lord of the Sacrifice. At any point this revelation can begin; in any aspect the Master of the Work can take up the work in him and more and more press upon him and it for the unfolding of his presence. In time all the Aspects disclose themselves, separate, combine, fuse, are unified together. At the end there shines through it all the supreme integral Reality, unknowable to Mind which is part of the Ignorance, but knowable because self-aware in the light of a spiritual consciousness and a supramental knowledge.
  ***
  This revelation of a highest Truth or a highest Being, Consciousness, Power, Bliss and Love, impersonal and personal at once and so taking up both sides of our own being,since in us also is the ambiguous meeting of a Person and a mass of impersonal principles and forces,is at once the first aim and the condition of the ultimate achievement of the Sacrifice. The achievement itself takes the shape of a union of our own existence with That which is thus made manifest to our vision and experience, and the union has a threefold character. There is a union in spiritual essence, by identity; there is a union by the indwelling of our soul in this highest Being and Consciousness; there is a dynamic union of likeness or oneness of nature between That and our instrumental being here. The first is the liberation from the Ignorance and identification with the Real and Eternal, moka, syujya, which is the characteristic aim of the Yoga of Knowledge. The second, the dwelling of the soul with or in the Divine, smpya, slokya, is the intense hope of all Yoga of love and beatitude. The third, identity in nature, likeness to the Divine, to be perfect as That is perfect, is the high intention of all Yoga of power and perfection or of divine works and service. The combined completeness of the three together, founded here on a multiple Unity of the self-manifesting Divine, is the complete result of the integral Yoga, the goal of its triple Path and the fruit of its triple Sacrifice.
  A union by identity may be ours, a liberation and change of our substance of being into that supreme Spirit-substance, of our consciousness into that divine Consciousness, of our soul-state into that ecstasy of spiritual beatitude or that calm eternal bliss of existence. A luminous indwelling in the Divine can be attained by us secure against any fall or exile into this lower consciousness of the darkness and the Ignorance, the soul ranging freely and firmly in its own natural world of light and joy and freedom and oneness. And since this is not merely to be attained in some other existence beyond but pursued and discovered here also, it can only be by a descent, by a bringing down of the Divine Truth, by the establishment here of the souls native world of light, joy, freedom, oneness. A union of our instrumental being no less than of our soul and spirit must change our imperfect nature into the very likeness and image of Divine Nature; it must put off the blind, marred, mutilated, discordant movements of the Ignorance and put on the inherence of that light, peace, bliss, harmony, universality, mastery, purity, perfection; it must convert itself into a receptacle of divine knowledge, an instrument of divine Will-Power and Force of Being, a channel of divine Love, Joy and Beauty. This is the transformation to be effected, an integral transformation of all that we now are or seem to be, by the joiningYogaof the finite being in Time with the Eternal and Infinite.
  All this difficult result can become possible only if there is an immense conversion, a total reversal of our consciousness, a supernormal entire transfiguration of the nature. There must be an ascension of the whole being, an ascension of spirit chained here and trammelled by its instruments and its environment to sheer Spirit free above, an ascension of soul towards some blissful Super-soul, an ascension of mind towards some luminous Supermind, an ascension of life towards some vast Super-life, an ascension of our very physicality to join its origin in some pure and plastic spirit-substance. And this cannot be a single swift upsoaring but, like the ascent of the Sacrifice described in the Veda, a climbing from peak to peak in which from each summit one looks up to the much more that has still to be done. At the same time there must be a descent too to affirm below what we have gained above: on each height we conquer we have to turn to bring down its power and its illumination into the lower mortal movement; the discovery of the Light for ever radiant on high must correspond with the release of the same Light secret below in every part down to the deepest caves of subconscient Nature. And this pilgrimage of ascension and this descent for the labour of transformation must be inevitably a battle, a long war with ourselves and with opposing forces around us which, while it lasts, may well seem interminable. For all our old obscure and ignorant nature will contend repeatedly and obstinately with the transforming Influence, supported in its lagging unwillingness or its stark resistance by most of the established forces of environing universal Nature; the powers and principalities and the ruling beings of the Ignorance will not easily give up their empire.
  At first there may have to be a prolonged, often tedious and painful period of preparation and purification of all our being till it is ready and fit for an opening to a greater Truth and Light or to the Divine Influence and Presence. Even when centrally fitted, prepared, open already, it will still be long before all our movements of mind, life and body, all the multiple and conflicting members and elements of our personality consent or, consenting, are able to bear the difficult and exacting process of the transformation. And hardest of all, even if all in us is willing, is the struggle we shall have to carry through against the universal forces attached to the present unstable creation when we seek to make the final supramental conversion and reversal of consciousness by which the Divine Truth must be established in us in its plenitude and not merely what they would more readily permit, an illumined Ignorance.
  It is for this that a surrender and submission to That which is beyond us enabling the full and free working of its Power is indispensable. As that self-giving progresses, the work of the Sacrifice becomes easier and more powerful and the prevention of the opposing Forces loses much of its strength, impulsion and substance. Two inner changes help most to convert what now seems difficult or impracticable into a thing possible and even sure. There takes place a coming to the front of some secret inmost soul within which was veiled by the restless activity of the mind, by the turbulence of our vital impulses and by the obscurity of the physical consciousness, the three powers which in their confused combination we now call our self. There will come about as a result a less impeded growth of a Divine Presence at the centre with its liberating Light and effective Force and an irradiation of it into all the conscious and subconscious ranges of our nature. These are the two signs, one marking our completed conversion and consecration to the great Quest, the other the final acceptance by the Divine of our Sacrifice.
  ***
  --
  next chapter: 1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being
  

1.04 - THE STUDY (The Compact), #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
  No Sacrifice shall he repent of ever.
  Nathless a parchment, writ and stamped with care,

1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  the Horse of the Sacrifice. Matter they described by a name
  which means ordinarily food and they said, we call it food

1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  eternity, filiation, par thenogenesis, crucifixion, Lamb Sacrificed
  between opposites, One divided into Many, etc.) undoubtedly
  --
  first Sacrifice in the discrimination of the natures [v\oicpivri   and the Passion came to pass for no other reason than the dis-

1.05 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
    2. And now strong for Sacrifice, thou hast taken thy session in the seat of aspiration, one aspired to, a flamen of the call, an imparter of the impulse. Men, building the godheads, have grown conscious of thee, the chief and first, and followed to a mighty treasure.
    3. In thee awake, they followed after the Treasure as in the wake of one who walks on a path with many possessions, in the wake of the vast glowing visioned embodied Fire that casts its light always and for ever.
  --
    6. Dear and servable is this Fire in men; a rapturous priest of the call has taken up his session, strong for Sacrifice. Pressing the knee may we come to thee with obeisance of surrender when thou flamest alight in the house.
    7. O Fire, we desire thee, the god to whom must rise our cry, we the right thinkers, the seekers of bliss, the builders of the godheads. O Fire, shining with light thou leadest men through the vast luminous world of heaven.
    8. To the seer, the Master of creatures who rules over the eternal generations of peoples, the Smiter, the Bull of those that see, the mover to the journey beyond who drives us, the purifying Flame, the Power in the Sacrifice, Fire the Regent of the Treasures!
    9. O Fire, the mortal has done his Sacrifice and achieved his labour who has worked out the gift of the oblation with the fuel of thy flame and wholly learned the way of the offering by his prostrations of surrender; he lives in thy guard and holds in himself all desirable things.
    10. O Fire, O Son of Force, may we offer to thy greatness that which is great, worshipping thee with the obeisance and the fuel and the offering, the altar and the word and the utterance. For we would work and strive in thy happy right thinking, O Fire.
  --
    2. Men who see aspire to thee with the word and the Sacrifice. To thee comes the all-seeing Horse that crosses the mid-world, the Horse that no wolf tears.
    3. The Men of Heaven with a single joy set thee alight to be the eye of intuition of the Sacrifice when this human being, this seeker of bliss, casts his offering in the pilgrim Rite.
    4. The mortal should grow in riches who achieves the work by the Thought for thee, the great giver; he is in the keeping of the Vast Heaven and crosses beyond the hostile powers and their evil.
  --
    2. He has Sacrificed with Sacrifices, he has achieved his labour by his works, he has given to the Fire whose boons grow ever in opulence. And so there befalls him not the turning away of the Glorious Ones; evil comes not to him nor the insolence of the adversary.
    3. Faultless is thy seeing like the sun's; terrible marches thy thought when blazing with light thou neighest aloud like a force of battle. This Fire was born in the pleasant woodl and and is a rapturous dweller somewhere in the night.
  --
    1. O Son of Force, O priest of the call, even as always in man's forming of the godhead thou Sacrificest with his Sacrifices, Sacrifice so for us to the gods today, O Fire, an equal power to equal powers, one who desires to the gods who desire.
    2. He is wide in his light like a seer of the Day; he is the one we must know and founds an adorable joy. In him is universal life, he is the Immortal in mortals; he is the Waker in the Dawn, our Guest, the Godhead who knows all births that are.
      1 Or, the cry of him in his worship of Sacrifice is like the voice of Heaven;
    3. The heavens seem to praise his giant might; he is robed in lustres and brilliant like the Sun. Ageless the purifying Fire moves abroad and cuts down even the ancient things of the Devourer.2
  --
    2. O Priest of the call, priest with thy many flame-forces,4 in the night and in the light the Lords of Sacrifice cast on thee their treasures. As in earth are founded all the worlds, they founded all happinesses in the purifying Fire.
      4 Or, forms of flame,
  --
    5. When man gives to thee with the Sacrifice and the fuel and with his spoken words and his chants of illumination, he becomes, O Immortal, O Son of Force, a mind of knowledge among mortals and shines with the riches and inspiration and light.
    6. Missioned create that swiftly, O Fire. Force is thine, resist with thy force our confronters. When revealed by thy lights, thou art formulated by our words, rejoice in the far-sounding thought of thy adorer.
  --
    1. Man turns with a new Sacrifice to the Son of Force when he desires the Way and the guard. He arrives in his journeyings to the heavenly priest of the call, the priest shining with light, but black is his march through the forests he tears.
    2. He grows white and thunderous, he stands in a luminous world; he is most young with his imperishable clamouring fires. This is he that makes pure and is full of his multitudes and, even as he devours, goes after the things that are many, the things that are wide.
  --
    2. All they together came to him, a navel knot of Sacrifice, a house of riches, a mighty point of call in the battle. Charioteer of the Works of the way, eye of intuition of the Sacrifice, the Gods brought to birth the universal Godhead.
    3. O Fire, from thee is born the Seer, the Horse and of thee are the Heroes whose might overcomes the adversary. O King, O universal Power, found in us the desirable treasures.
  --
      8 Or, O doer of Sacrifice,
  SUKTA 9
  --
    1. When the pilgrim-rite moves on its way, set in your front the divine, ecstatic Fire, place him in front by your words, the Flame of the good riddance;9 he is the Knower of all things born; his light shines wide, and he shall make easy for us the progressions of the Sacrifice.
    2. O Fire, kindled by man's fires, priest of the call who comest with thy light, priest of the many flame-armies, hearken to the anthem our thoughts strain out pure to the godhead like pure clarified butter,10 even as Mamata chanted to him her paean.
  --
      10 Here we have the clue to the symbol of the "clarified butter" in the Sacrifice; like the others it is used in its double meaning, "clarified butter" or, as we may say, "the light-offering".
    3. He among mortals is fed on inspiration, the illumined who gives with his word to the Fire, the seer whom the Fire of the brilliant illuminations settles by his luminous safeguardings in the conquest of the Pen where are the herds of the Light.
  --
    6. O Fire, yearn to the Sacrifice that the bringer of the offering casts to thee; found the rapture. Hold firm in the Bharadwajas the perfect purification; guard them in their seizing of the riches of the quest.
    7. Scatter all hostile things, increase the revealing Word. May we revel in the rapture, strong with the strength of the Heroes, living a hundred winters.
  --
    1. Missioned and strong to Sacrifice, offer the Sacrifice, Priest of the call; O Fire, put away from us as if by the applied force of the Life-gods all that opposes. Turn in their paths towards our offering Mitra and Varuna and the twin Lords of the journey and Earth and Heaven.
    2. To us thou art our priest of the invocation, harmless and perfect in ecstasy; thou art the god within in mortals that makes the discoveries of knowledge; thou art the carrier with the burning mouth, with the purifying flame of oblation. O Fire, worship with Sacrifice thy own body.
    3. In thee the understanding is full of riches and it desires the gods, the divine births, that the word may be spoken and the Sacrifice done, when the singer, the sage, wisest of the Angirases chants his honey-rhythm in the rite.
    4. He has leaped into radiance and is wise of heart and wide of light; O Fire, Sacrifice to the largeness of Earth and Heaven. All the five peoples lavish the oblation with obeisance of surrender and anoint as the living being Fire the bringer of their satisfactions.
    5. When the sacred grass has been plucked with prostration of surrender to the Fire, when the ladle of the purification full of the light-offering has been set to its labour, when the home has been reached in the house of Earth and the Sacrifice lodged like an eye in the sun, -
    6. O Son of Force, O Fire, kindling with the gods thy fires, Priest of the call, priest with thy many flame-armies, dispense to us the Treasures; shining with light let us charge beyond the sin and the struggle.
  --
    1. In the midmost of the gated house Fire, the Priest of the call, the King of the sacred seat and the whip of swiftness, to Sacrifice to Earth and Heaven! This is the Son of Force in whom is the Truth; he stretches out from afar with his light like the sun.
    2. When a man Sacrifices in thee, O King, O Lord of Sacrifice, when he does well his works in the wise and understanding Fire like Heaven in its all-forming labour, triple thy session; thy speed is as if of a deliverer, when thou comest to give the Sacrifice whose offerings are man's human fullnesses.
    3. A splendour in the forest, most brilliant-forceful is the speed of his journeying; he is like a whip on the path and ever he grows and blazes. He is like a smelter who does hurt to none; he is the Immortal who wakes of himself to knowledge: he cannot be turned from his way mid the growths of the earth.
    4. Fire, the knower of all things born, is hymned by our paeans in the house as if in one that walks on the way. He feeds on the Tree and conquers by our will like a war-horse; this shining Bull is adored by us with Sacrifice like a father.
    5. And now his splendours chant aloud and he hews with ease and walks along the wideness of the earth. He is rapid in his race and in a moment is loosed speeding to the gallop: he is like a thief that runs; his light is seen beyond the desert places.
  --
    4. O Son of Force, the mortal who has reached to the intensity of thee by the word and the utterance and the altar and the Sacrifice, draws to him sufficiency of every kind of wealth, O divine Fire, and walks on the way with his riches.
    5. O Fire, O Son of Force, found for men, that they may grow, happy riches of inspiration with strength of its hero keepers, - many herds, thy creation in thy might, but now a food for the wolf and the foe and the destroyer.
  --
    2. The Fire is the thinker and knower, the Fire is a mightiest disposer of works and a seer. To Fire the priest of the invocation the peoples of men aspire in their Sacrifices.
    3. Of many kinds are they who seek thy safeguard and strive with the foe for his riches; men breaking through the Destroyer seek to overcome his lawless strength by the order of their works.
  --
  knower with his true front and just walk and perfect vision. May he who knows all manifested things13 do Sacrifice
  for us, may Fire voice our offering in the world of the
  --
  the Seer and achieved the intensity of the Sacrifice or its
  ascending movement; thou fillest him with might and riches.
  --
  the Knower. He is strong to Sacrifice and the Truth is in him;
  let him do Sacrifice for gods and mortals.
  14. O Fire, O Light that makest pure, O summoning priest
  of man's Sacrifice, today when thou comest as a doer of
  worship, today when thou growest all-pervading in thy
  greatness and offerest the things of the Truth for Sacrifice,
  today carry with thee our offerings, O ever-youthful Fire,
  --
  let a man set thee within him to Sacrifice to Earth and
  Heaven. Protect us, O King of Riches, in our conquest of
  --
  the presser of the wine rightly on its paths the Sacrifice.
  17. This is that Fire whom the ordainers of works churn out
  --
  the builders of the growing Truth; give to our Sacrifice touch
  on the gods.
  --
  in the Sacrifice thou knowest the tracks of the gods and their
  highways.
  --
  swiftness aspired to thee for a twofold bliss; he has Sacrificed
  in the Sacrifices to the king of Sacrifice.
  (vEmmA vAyA p;z EdvodAsAy s;vt
  --
  come to them; mortals they aspire to the God in the Sacrifice.
   j;qt kAEmn, 8
  8. Bring into Sacrifice thy perfect sight and thy will; rich are
  thy gifts and in thee is the joy of all who desire.
  --
  Fire, Sacrifice to the people of heaven.
  a`n aA yAEh vFty
  --
  and the Sacrifice; sing the illumining verse, chant to the
  Ordainer of works.
  --
  24. O Prince of the Treasure, do worship here with Sacrifice to
  the Two Kings who are ever pure in their works, to the sons
  --
  Heaven, the fire of true Sacrifice.24
  aA t
  --
  24 Or, who worships the Truth with Sacrifice.

1.05 - On the Love of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
  The second test of sincerity is that a man should be willing to Sacrifice his will to God's, should cleave to what brings him nearer to God, and should shun what places him at a distance from God. The fact of a man's sinning is no proof that he does not love God at all, but it proves that he does not love Him with his whole heart. The saint Fudhail said to a certain man, "If any one asks you whether you love God, keep silent; for if you say, 'I do not love Him,' you are an infidel; and if you say, 'I do,' your deeds contradict you."
  The third test is that the remembrance of God should always remain fresh in a man's heart without effort, for what a man loves he constantly remembers, and if his love is perfect he never forgets it. It is possible, however, that, while the love of God does not take the first place in a man's heart, the love of the love of God may, for love is one thing and the love of love another.

1.05 - Ritam, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Who are these upbearing powers? They are apparently the visvadevas, the gods taken generally & in their collective activity. They are described as ghritaprishth manoyujah, richly bright of surface and yoked to mind, which immediately recalls the dhiyam ghritchm sdhant of the second hymn. In both passages mental activity & a rich luminosity of mind are suggested as the preliminary necessity of the Sacrifice; in both we find the progression from this idea to the expression ritvridho. This luminous mental activity perfected, it is to be used for the increase of Truth, of ritam, of the ideal self-revealing knowledge. There is in addition an idea to which we shall have to return, the idea of the male gods & their female powers whose joint godhead is necessary for the effective perfection of the Sacrifice. At present we have to observe only the recurrence of the psychological note in the description of the Sacrifice, this reiteration of the idea of bright & purified mental activity as its condition & increase of ideal Truth as a large & important part of its method or object.
  In the next hymn the word ritam does not occur, but the continual refrain of its strophes is the cognate word ritunpibartun, Medhatithi cries to each of the gods in turn,ritun yajnam sh the .. ritubhir ishyata, pibatam ritun yajnavhas, ritun yajnanr asi. Ritu is supposed to have here & elsewhere its classical & modern significance, a season of the year; the ritwik is the priest who Sacrifices in the right season; the gods are invited to drink the soma according to the season! It may be so, but the rendering seems to me to make all the phrases of this hymn strangely awkward & improbable. Medhatithi invites Indra to drink Soma by the season, Mitra & Varuna are to taste the Sacrifice, this single Sacrifice offered by this son of Kanwa, by the season; in the same single Sacrifice the priests or the gods are to be impelled by the seasons, by many seasons on a single sacrificial occasion! the Aswins are to drink the Soma by the Sacrifice-supporting season! To Agni it is said, by the season thou art leader of the Sacrifice. Are such expressions at all probable or even possible in the mouth of a poet using freely the natural language of his age? Are they not rather the clumsy constructions of the scholar drawn to misinterpret his text by the false clue of a later & inapplicable meaning of the central word ritu? But if we suppose the Sacrifice to be symbolic &, as ritam means ideal truth in general, so ritu to mean that truth in its ordered application, the ideal law of thought, feeling or action, then this impossible awkwardness vanishes & gives place to a natural construction & a lucid & profound significance. Indra is to drink the wine of immortality according to or by the force of the ideal law, by that ideal law Varuna &Mitra are to enjoy the offering of Ananda of the human mind & the human activity, the gods are to be impelled in their functioning ritubhih, by the ideal laws of the truth,the plural used, in the ordinary manner of the Veda, to express the particular actions of the law of truth, the singular its general action. It is the ideal law that supports the human offering of our activities to the divine life above us, ritun yajnavhas; by the force of the law of Truth Agni leads the Sacrifice to its goal.
  In this suggestive & significant hymn packed full of the details of the Vedic sacrificial symbolism we again come across Daksha in close connection with Mitra, Varuna & the Truth.
  --
  O Mitra who upholdest rule of action&Varuna, enjoy Daksha in his unconquerable force, enjoy by the ideal law the Sacrifice.
  Daksha we have supposed to be the viveka, the intuitive discriminating reason which once active is hard to overcome by the powers of ignorance & error; it is again his activity which here also constitutes the essence or the essential condition of the successful Sacrifice; for it is evidently meant that by enjoying or stimulating the activity of Daksha, Daksham ddabham, daksham apasam, Mitra & Varuna are enabled to enjoy the effective activities of men under the law of truth, ritena kratum brihantam, ritun yajnam shthe, activities of right knowledge, right action, right emotion, free from crookedness & ignorance & sin. For it is viveka that helps us to distinguish truth from error, right-doing from wrong-doing, just feeling from false & selfish emotions. Once again it is Mitra & Varuna who preside over & take the enjoyment of Dakshas functioning. The same psychological intention perseveres, the same simple & profound ideas & expressions recur in the same natural association, with the same harmony & fixed relation founded on the eternal truth of human nature & a fine & subtle observation of its psychological faculties & functionings.
  The next reference to Ritam meets us in the twenty-third hymn of the Mandala, the last hymn of the series assigned to Medhatithi Kanwa, and once again it occurs in connection with the great twin powers, Mitra & Varuna.
  --
  We find here both Varuna & Mitra described as ptadakshas; in both the viveka acts pure from all lower & error-haunted functionings and when they manifest themselves in man, jajnn, the intuitive power can work with a faultless justness of discrimination; therefore by truth, by this truth-revealing action of the ideal faculty they increase in us the Truth, raising our thought, action & feeling into a spontaneous conformity with the divine law, devnm vrata. Mitra & Varuna are the lords, possessors & keepers of the ritam jyotih, the true light, and impart it to the man who gives himself to them in the Sacrifice. I shall return to this expression, ritam jyotih in connection with the god Surya and his functions; its sense, found in this context, is sufficiently clear for our present purpose.
  We do not find the word ritam in the hymns that follow and are ascribed to Sunahshepa Ajigarti and Hiranyastupa Angirasa, but the first two hymns of Sunahshepa are addressed mainly or entirely to the god Varuna and we glean from them certain indications which are of considerable interest & importance in connection with Varuna & the Truth. He is hymned by Sunahshepa as the master of wide vision, uruchakshasam, the god of august, boundless & universal knowledge. He has made a wide path for Surya,the Vedic god of ideal knowledge, as I shall suggest,to follow in his journeyings; he has made places for him to set his feet in the unfooted vasts of the infinite. He is hymned also as the punisher of sin and the deliverer from sinKritam chid enah pra mumugdhi asmat. And loose from us the sin we have done. Kshayann asmabhyam Asura prachet rjann ennsi sisrathah kritni, Dwelling in us, O Mighty One, O King, in conscious knowledge, cleave from us the sins of our doing.
  --
  And then, to complete this preliminary foundation of our knowledge of the Ritam, we can go back to a neglected passage of the thirteenth hymn, to a couple of riks in which the secret of the Veda, the true symbolic nature of Vedic ritual & Vedic Sacrifice, start out clearly before the eyes.
    Strinta barhir nushag, ghritaprishtham manshinah,
  --
  Strew the sacrificial seat without flaw or crevice, richly bright of surface, O ye thinkers, where is the tasting of immortality. Let the divine doors swing wide apart for him who increases in the Truth, who is free from attachment, today & now for the Sacrifice.
  We find once more, so fixed are the terms & associations, so persistently coherent is the language of the Veda, ghritaprishtha in connection with mental activity, ghritaprishtham placed designedly before manshinah, just as we find elsewhere ghritaprishth manoyujah, just as we find in the passage from which we started dhiyam ghritchm sdhant. Have we not, then, a right considering this remarkable persistence & considering the rest of the context to suggest & even to infer that the sacrificial seat anointed with the shining ghee is in symbol the fullness of the mind clarified & purified, continuously bright & just in its activity, without flaw or crevice, richly bright of surface & therefore receiving without distortion the messages of the ideal faculty? It is in this clear, pure & rightly ordered state of his thinking & emotional mind that man gets the first taste of the immortal life to which he aspires, yatr mritasya chakshanam, through the joy of the self-fulfilling activity of Gods Truth in him. The condition of his entry into the kingdom of immortality, the kingdom of heaven is that he shall increase ideal truth in him and the condition again of increasing ideal truth is that he shall be unattached, rit vridho asaschatah. For so long as the mind is attached either by wish or predilection, passion or impulse, pre-judgment or impatience, so long as it clings to anything & limits its pure & all-comprehensive wideness of potential knowledge, the wideness of Varuna in it, it cannot attain to the self-effulgent nature of Truth, it can only grope after & grasp portions of Truth, not Truth in itself & in its nature. And so long as it clings to any one thing in wish & enjoyment, it must by the very act shut out others & cannot then embrace the divine vast & all-comprehending love & bliss of the immortal nature which it is, as I shall suggest, the function of Mitra to establish in the human temperament. But when these conditions are fulfilled, the bright-surfaced purified mind widely extended without flaw or crevice as the seat of the gods in their sacrificial activity, the taste of the wine of immortality, the freedom from attachment, the increasing force of ideal Truth in the human being, then it is impossible for the great divine Powers to fling wide open for us the doors of the higher Heavens, the gates of Ananda, the portals of our immortal life. They start wide open on their hinges to receive before the throne of God the Sacrifice & the Sacrificer.
  Truth & purity the Road, divine bliss the gate, the immortal nature the seat & kingdom, this is the formula of Vedic aspiration. Truth the roadPraskanwa the Knwa makes it clear enough in his hymn to the Aswins, the 46th of the MandalaMade was the road of Truth for our going to that other effectively fulfilling shore, seen was the wide-flowing stream of Heaven. It is the heaven of the pure mind of which he speaks; beyond, on its other shore, are the gates divine, the higher heaven, the realms of immortality.
  --
  Varuna & Mitra, the two great Vedic Twins, meet us in their united activity in the first crucial passage of the Veda informed with the clear & unmistakable idea of the Ritam which so largely dominates the thinking of the Vedic sages. Varuna & Mitra again, but this time helped by their companion Aryaman, govern a second passage which we shall find of equal importance in forming our conceptions of the Truth towards which our ancestors lifted so strenuous an aspiration of prayer and Sacrifice. It occurs in the forty-first hymn of the Mandala, a hymn of the Rishi Kanwa son of Ghora to the three children of Aditi, & covers six out of the nine slokas of the hymn. It is fortunately a sufficiently clear & easy hymn, except precisely in the three closing riks with which we are not now concerned; we have to pause only for a moment [at] the word avakhdah, over which Sayana gives himself very unnecessary trouble,for it means clearly a pitfall or an abrupt descent, and the sense of dhtaye, taken by Sayana in the ritualistic significance, for your eating, and by myself, following my hypothesis, in the psychological sense conceded by Sayana in a number of other passages; dhti means literally holding & usually holding in the mind, thinking; it expresses then the fixed action of dh, the thought faculty. Otherwise the only difficulty is in the word toka which the ritualistic commentators interpret invariably in the sense of son, putra.
    Yam rakshanti prachetaso Varuno Mitra Aryam
  --
  I translate, He whom Varuna, Mitra & Aryaman guard, they who see with the conscious mind, can that man at all be crushed? The mortal whom they like a multitude of arms fill with his desires and protect from his hurter, he unhurt grows to completeness in being (or prospers in all his being). In front of these the Kings smite apart their obstacles & smite apart their haters and lead them beyond all sin. Easy to travel & thornless is your path, O sons of Aditi, for him who travels to the Truth; here there is no pitfall in your way. That Sacrifice which you lead, O strong sons of Aditi, (or O Purushas sons of Aditi,) by the straight path, that goes forward to its place in the thought. That mortal moves unoverthrown towards delightful being, yea & to all kind of creation by the self. The rest of the hymn is taken up by certain conditions necessary for the effectivity of the praise of the three great deities whose protection assures this safe & prosperous movement to their worshipper.
  We must consider first whether any valid objection can be offered to this translation; and, if not, what are the precise ideas conveyed by the words & expressions which they render. The word prachetas is one of the fixed recurrent terms of the Veda; & we have corresponding to it another term vichetas. Both terms are rendered by the commentators wise or intelligent. Is prachetas then merely an ornamental or otiose word in this verse? Is it only a partially dispensable & superfluous compliment to the gods of the hymn? Our hypothesis is that the Vedic Rishis were masters of a perfectly well managed literary style founded upon a tradition of sound economy in language & coherence in thought; all of every word in Veda is in its place & is justified by its value in the significance. If so, prachetasah gives the reason why the protection of these gods is so perfectly efficacious. I suppose,as my hypothesis entitles me to suppose,that the Vedic ideas of prachetas & vichetas correspond to the Vedantic idea of prajnana & vijnana to which as words they are exactly equivalent in composition & sense. Prajnana is that knowledge which is aware of, knows & works upon the objects placed before it. Vijnana is the knowledge which comprehends & knows thoroughly in itself all objects of knowledge. The one is the highest faculty of mind, the other is in mind the door to and beyond it the nature of the direct supra-intellectual knowledge, the Ritam & Brihat of the Veda. It is because Varuna, Mitra & Aryama protect the human being with the perfect knowledge of that through which he has to pass, his path, his dangers, his foes, that their protg , however fiercely & by whatever powers assailed, cannot be crushed. At once, it begins to become clear that the protection in that case must, in all probability, be a spiritual protection against spiritual dangers & spiritual foes.
  --
  So far the image has been a double image of a journey & a battle,the goal of the ritam, the journey of the sin-afflicted human being towards the Truth of the divine nature; the thorns, the pitfall, the enemy ambushed in the path; the great divine helpers whose divine knowledge, for they are prachetasah, becomes active in the human mind and conducts us unerringly & unfalteringly on that sublime journey. In the next rik the image of the path is preserved, but another image is associated with it, the universal Vedic image of the Sacrifice. We get here our first clear & compelling indication of the truth which is the very foundation of our hypothesis that the Vedic Sacrifice is only a material symbol of a great psychological or spiritual process. The divine children of Infinity lead1 the Sacrifice on the straight path to the goal of the ritam; under their guidance it progresses to their goal & reaches the gods in their home, pravah sa dhtaye nashat.What is Sacrifice which is itself a traveller, which has a motion in a straight path, a goal in the highest seat of Truth, parasmin dhmann ritasya? If it is not the activities of the human being in us offered as a Sacrifice to the higher & divine being so that human activities may be led up to the divine nature & be established in the divine consciousness, then there is either no meaning in human language or no sense or coherence in the Veda. The Vedic Sacrificer is devayu,devakmah,one who desires the god or the godhead, the divine nature; or devayan, one who is in the process of divinising his human life & being; the Sacrifice itself is essentially devavtih & devattih, manifestation of the divine & the extension of the divine in man. We see also the force of dhtaye. The havya or offering of human faculty, human having, human action, reaches its goal when it is taken up in the divine thought, the divine consciousness & there enjoyed by the gods.
  In return for his offering the gods give to the Sacrificer the results of the divine nature. The mortal favoured by them moves forward unstumbling & unoverthrown, accha gacchati astrita,towards or to what? Ratnam vasu visvam tokam uta tman. This is his goal; but we have seen too that the goal is the ritam. Therefore the expressions ratnam vasu, visvam tokam tman must describe either the nature of the ritam or the results of successful reaching & habitation in the ritam. Toka means son, says the ritualist. I fail to see how the birth of a son can be the supreme result of a mans perfecting his nature & reaching the divine Truth; I fail to see also what is meant by a man marching unoverthrown beyond sin & falsehood towards pleasant wealth & a son. In a great number of passages in the Veda, the sense of son for toka or of either son or grandson for tanaya is wholly inadmissible except by doing gross violence to sense, context & coherence & convicting the Vedic Rishis of an advanced stage of incoherent dementia. Toka, from the root tuch, to cut, form, create (cf tach & twach, in takta, tashta, twashta, Gr. tikto, etekon, tokos, a child) may mean anything produced or created. We shall see, hereafter, that praj, apatyam, even putra are used in the Veda as symbolic expressions for action & its results as children of the soul. This is undoubtedly the sense here. There are two results of life in the ritam, in the vijnana, in the principle of divine consciousness & its basis of divine truth; first ratnam vasu, a state of being the nature of which is delight, for vijnana or ritam is the basis of divine ananda; secondly, visvam tokam uta tman,this state of Ananda is not the actionless Brahmananda of the Sannyasin, but the free creative joy of the Divine Nature, universal creative action by the force of the self. The action of the liberated humanity is not to be like that of the mortal bound, struggling & stumbling through ignorance & sin towards purity & light, originating & bound by his action, but the activity spontaneously starting out of self-existence & creating its results without evil reactions or bondage.
  To complete our idea of the hymn & its significance, I shall give my rendering of its last three slokas,the justification of that rendering or comment on it would lead me far from the confines of my present subject. How, O friends, cries Kanwa to his fellow-worshippers, may we perfect (or enrich) the establishment in ourselves (by the mantra of praise) of Mitra & Aryaman or how the wide form of Varuna? May I not resist with speech him of you who smites & rebukes me while he yet leads me to the godhead; through the things of peace alone may I establish you in all my being. Let a man fear the god even when he is giving him all the four states of being (Mahas, Swar, Bhuvah, Bhuh), until the perfect settling in the Truth: let him not yearn towards evil expression. In other words, perfect adoration & submission to the gods who are leading us in the path, those who are yajnanh, leaders of the Sacrifice, is the condition of the full wideness of Varunas being in us & the full indwelling ofMitra & Aryaman in the principles of the Ananda & the Ritam.
  In this simple, noble & striking hymn we arrive at a number of certainties about the ideas of the Vedic Rishis & usual images of their poetry which are of the last importance to our inquiry. First we see that the ascension or the journey of the human soul to a state of divine Truth is among the chief objects of the prayers & Sacrifices of the Veda. Secondly, we see that this Truth is not merely the simple primitive conception of truth-speaking, but a condition of consciousness consisting in delight & resulting in a perfect spontaneous & free activity in which there is no falsehood or error; it is a state of divine nature, the Vedantic amritam. Thirdly, we see that this activity of self-perfection, the sadhana of modern Yoga, is represented in the Veda under the image of a journey or of a battle or both in one image. It is a struggle to advance beset by pitfalls & difficult passages, assailed & beset by hostile spiritual forces, the enemies, hurters or destroyers. Whenever therefore we have the image of a battle or a journey, we have henceforth the right to enquire whether it is not in every case the symbol of this great spiritual & psychological process. Fourthly we see that the Vedic Sacrifice is in some hymns & may be in all a symbol of the same purport. It is an activity offered to the gods, led by them in this path, directed towards the attainment of the divine Truth-Consciousness & Truth-Life &, presumably, assailed by the same spiritual enemies. Fifthly, we find that words like vasu & tokam, representing the result of the Sacrifice, & usually understood as material wealth & children, are used here, must presumably be used in passages & may, possibly, be used in all in a symbolic sense to express by a concrete figure psychological conceptions like Christs treasure laid up in heaven or the common image of the children of ones brain or of ones works. We have in fact, provided always our conclusions are confirmed by the evidence of other hymns, the decisive clue to the Secret of the Veda.
    Sri Aurobindo wrote the following note at the top of a later page of the manuscript.It would seem to have been intended for insertion here: (nayath nara dity I shall take up the discussion of the proper sense of nara in another context, to avoid useless repetition I omit it here).

1.05 - Solitude, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
  They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify their hearts, and clo the themselves in their holiday garments to offer Sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. They are every where, above us, on our left, on our right; they environ us on all sides.
  We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me. Can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while under these circumstances,have our own thoughts to cheer us? Confucius says truly, Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors.

1.05 - The Activation of Human Energy, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  them accept the restrictions and Sacrifices imposed by a
  certain human selection, of deciding them once and for all

1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being
  subject class:Integral Yoga
  --
     The Ascent of the Sacrifice-1
     THE WORKS OF KNOWLEDGE --
  --
     This then is in its foundations the integral knowledge of the Supreme and Infinite to whom we offer our Sacrifice, and this the nature of the Sacrifice itself in its triple character, -a Sacrifice of works, a Sacrifice of love and adoration, a Sacrifice of knowledge. For even when we speak of the Sacrifice of works by itself, we do not mean the offering only of our outward acts, but of all that is active and dynamic in us; our internal movements no less than our external doings are to be consecrated on the one altar. The inner heart of all work that is made into a Sacrifice is a labour of self-discipline and self-perfection by which we can hope to become conscious and luminous with a Light from above poured into all our movements of mind, heart, will, sense, life and body. An increasing light of divine consciousness will make us close in soul and one by identity in our inmost being and spiritual substance with the Master of the world- Sacrifice, -- the supreme object of existence proposed by the ancient Vedanta; but also it will tend to make us one in our becoming by resemblance to the Divine in our nature, the mystic sense of the symbol of Sacrifice in the sealed speech of the seers of the Veda.
     But if this is to be the character of the rapid evolution from a mental to a spiritual being contemplated by the integral Yoga, a question arises full of many perplexities but of great dynamic importance. How are we to deal with life and works as they now are, with the activities proper to our still unchanged human nature? An ascension towards a greater consciousness, an occupation of our mind, life and body by its powers has been accepted as the outstanding object of the Yoga: but still life here, not some other life elsewhere, is proposed as the immediate field of the action of the Spirit, -- a transformation, not an annihilation of our instrumental being and nature. What then becomes of the present activities of our being, activities of the mind turned towards knowledge and the expression of knowledge, activities of our emotional and sensational parts, activities of outward conduct, creation, production, the will turned towards mastery over men, things, life, the world, the forces of Nature? Are they to be abandoned and to be replaced by some other way of living in which a spiritualised consciousness can find its true expression and figure. Are they to be maintained as they are in their outward appearance, but transformed by an inner spirit in the act or enlarged in scope arid liberated into new forms by a reversal of consciousness such as was seen on earth when man took up the vital activities of the animal to mentalise and extend and transfigure them by the infusion of reason, thinking will, refined emotions, an organised intelligence? Or is there to be an abandonment in part, a preservation only of such of them as can bear a spiritual change and, for the rest, the creation of a new life expressive, in its form no less than in its inspiration and motive-force, of the unity, wideness, peace, joy and harmony of the liberated spirit? It is this problem most of all that has exercised most the minds of those who have tried to trace the paths that lead from the human to the Divine in the long journey of the Yoga.
  --
     In accordance with the triple character of the Sacrifice we may divide works too into a triple order, the works of Knowledge, the works of Love, the works of the Will-in-Life, and see how this more plastic spiritual rule applies to each province and effects the transition from the lower to the higher nature.
     It is natural from the point of view of the Yoga to divide into two categories the activities of the human mind in its pursuit of knowledge. There is the supreme supra-intellectual knowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in its transcendence or tries to penetrate by intuition, contemplation, direct inner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature; there is the lower science which diffuses itself in an outward knowledge of phenomena, the disguises of the One and Infinite as it appears to us in and through the more exterior forms of the world-manifestation around us. These two, an upper and a lower hemisphere, in the form of them constructed or conceived by men within the mind's ignorant limits, have even there separated themselves, as they developed, with some sharpness.... Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at least intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes intellectualising spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus the discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of ultimate Truth as its province. But even when it did not separate itself on rarefied metaphysical heights from the knowledge that belongs to the practical world and the pursuit of ephemeral objects, intellectual Philosophy by its habit of abstraction has seldom been a power for life. It has been sometimes powerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake without any ulterior utility or object, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in a mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or acrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient Philosophy in Europe was more dynamic, but only for the few; in India in its more spiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life of the race.... Religion did not attempt, like Philosophy, to live alone on the heights; its aim was rather to take hold of man's parts of life even more than his parts of mind and draw them Godwards; it professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital and material existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower to the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth obedient to Heaven. It has to be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of making Heaven a sanction for Earth's desires; for continually the religious idea has been turned into an excuse for the worship and service of the human ego. Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual experience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous compromises with life: in attempting to satisfy the thinking mind, it more often succeeded in oppressing or fettering it with a mass of theological dogmas; while seeking to net the human heart, it fell itself into pits of pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism; in the act of annexing the vital nature of man to dominate it, it grew itself vitiated and fell a prey to all the fanaticism, homicidal fury, savage or harsh turn for oppression, pullulating falsehood, obstinate attachment to ignorance to which that vital nature is prone; its desire to draw the physical in man towards God betrayed it into chaining itself to ecclesiastic mechanism, hollow ceremony and lifeless ritual. The corruption of the best produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil. At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence against this downward gravitation. Religion was driven to cut existence into two by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite categories, the spiritual and the worldly, religious and mundane, sacred and profane; but this' defensive distinction itself became conventional and artificial and aggravated rather than healed the disease.... On the other side. Science and Art and the knowledge of life, although at first they served or lived in the shadow of Religion, ended by emancipating themselves, became estranged or hostile, or have even recoiled with indifference, contempt or scepticism from what seem to them the cold, barren and distant or unsubstantial and illusory heights of unreality to which metaphysical Philosophy and Religion aspire. For a time the divorce has been as complete as the one-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to end in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual knowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a Sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind's horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment. A sterile agnosticism awaits us above the brilliant phosphorescence of a half-knowledge that is still the Ignorance.
     A Yoga turned towards an all-embracing realisation of the Supreme will not despise the works or even the dreams, if dreams they are, of the Cosmic Spirit or shrink from the splendid toil and many-sided victory which he has assigned to himself In the human creature. But its first condition for this liberality is that our works in the world too must be part of the Sacrifice offered to the Highest and to none else, to the Divine shakti and to no other Power, in the right spirit and with the right knowledge, by the free soul and not by the hypnotised bondslave of material Nature. If a division of works has to be made, it is between those that are nearest to the heart of the sacred flame and those that are least touched or illumined by it because they are more at a distance, or between the fuel that burns strongly or brightly and the logs that if too thickly heaped on the altar may impede the ardour of the fire by their damp, heavy and diffused abundance. But otherwise, apart from this division, all activities of knowledge that seek after or express Truth are in themselves rightful materials for a complete offering; none ought necessarily to be excluded from the wide framework of the divine life. The mental and physical sciences which examine into the laws and forms and processes of things, those which concern the life of men and animals, the social, political, linguistic and historical and those which seek to know and control the labours and activities by which man subdues and utilises his world and environment, and the noble and beautiful Arts which are at once work and knowledge, -- for every well-made and significant poem, picture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression or world-expressions-all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation. But the Yogin has to see that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge.
     For all must be done as a Sacrifice, all activities must have the One Divine for their object and the heart of their meaning. The Yogin's aim in the sciences that make for knowledge should be to discover and understand the workings of the Divine Consciousness-Puissance in man and creatures and things and forces, her creative significances, her execution of the mysteries, the symbols in which she arranges the manifestation. The Yogin's aim in the practical sciences, whether mental and physical or occult and psychic, should be to enter into the ways of the Divine and his processes, to know the materials and means for the work given to us so that we may use that knowledge for a conscious and faultless expression of the spirit's mastery, joy and self-fulfilment. The Yogin's aim in the Arts should not be a mere aesthetic, mental or vital gratification, but, seeing the Divine everywhere, worshipping it with a revelation of the meaning of its works, to express that One Divine in gods and men and creatures and objects. The theory that sees an intimate connection between religious aspiration and the truest and greatest Art is in essence right; but we must substitute for the mixed and doubtful religious motive a spiritual aspiration, vision, interpreting experience. For the wider and more comprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the hidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from the high motive. The Yogin's distinction from other men is this that he lives in a higher and vaster spiritual consciousness; all his work of knowledge or creation must then spring from there: it must not be made in the mind, -- for it is a greater truth and vision than mental man's that he has to express or rather that presses to express itself through him and mould his works, not for his personal satisfaction, but for a divine purpose.
     At the same time the Yogin who knows the Supreme is not subject to any need or compulsion in these activities; for to him they are neither a duty nor a necessary occupation for the mind nor a high amusement, nor imposed by the loftiest human purpose. He is not attached, bound and limited by any nor has he any personal motive of fame, greatness or personal satisfaction in these works; he can leave or pursue them as the Divine in him wills, but he need not otherwise abandon them in his pursuit of the higher integral knowledge. He will do these things just as the supreme Power acts and creates, for a certain spiritual joy in creation and expression or to help in the holding together and right ordering or leading of this world of God's workings. The Gita teaches that the man of knowledge shall by his way of life give to those who have not yet the spiritual consciousness, the love and habit of all works and not only of actions recognised as pious, religious or ascetic in their character; he should not draw men away from the world-action by his example. For the world must proceed in its great upward aspiring; men and nations must not be led to fall away from even an ignorant activity into a worse ignorance of inaction or to sink down into that miserable disintegration and tendency of dissolution which comes upon communities and peoples when there predominates the tamasic principle, the principle whether of obscure confusion and error or of weariness and inertia. "For I too," says the Lord in the Gita, "have no need to do works, since there is nothing I have not or must yet gain for myself; yet I do works in the world; for if I did not do works, all laws would fall into confusion, the worlds would sink towards chaos and I would be the destroyer of these peoples." The spiritual life does not need, for its purity, to destroy interest in all things except the Inexpressible or to cut at the roots of the Sciences, the Arts and Life. It may well be one of the effects of an integral spiritual knowledge and activity to lift them out of their limitations, substitute for our mind's ignorant, limited, tepid or trepidant pleasure in them a free, intense and uplifting urge of delight and supply a new source of creative spiritual power and illumination by which they can be carried more swiftly and profoundly towards their absolute light in knowledge and their yet undreamed possibilities and most dynamic energy of content and form and practice. The one thing needful must be pursued first and always, but all things else come with it as its outcome and have not so much to be added to us as recovered and reshaped in its self-light and as portions of its self-expressive force.
  --
     How precisely or by what stages this progression and change will take place must depend on the form, need and powers of the individual nature. In the spiritual domain the essence is always one, but there is yet an infinite variety and, at any rate in the integral Yoga, the rigidity of a strict and precise mental rule is seldom applicable; for, even when they walk in the same direction, no two natures proceed on exactly the same lines, in the same series of steps or with quite identical stages of their progress. It may yet be said that a logical succession of the states of progress would be very much in this order. First, there is a large turning in which all the natural mental activities proper to the individual nature are taken up or referred to a higher standpoint and dedicated by the soul in us, the psychic being, the priest of the Sacrifice, to the divine service; next, there is an attempt at an ascent of the being and a bringing down of the Light and Power proper to some new height of consciousness gained by its upward effort into the whole action of the knowledge. Here there may be a strong concentration on the inward central change of the consciousness and an abandonment of a large part of the outward-going mental life or else its relegation to a small and subordinate place. At different stages it or parts of it may be taken up again from time to time to see how far the new inner psychic and spiritual consciousness can be brought into its movements, but that compulsion of the temperament or the nature which, in human beings, necessitates one kind of activity or another and makes it seem almost an indispensable portion of the existence, will diminish and eventually no attachment will be left, no lower compulsion or driving force felt anywhere. Only the Divine will matter, the Divine alone will be the one need of the whole being; if there is any compulsion to activity it will be not that of implanted desire or of force of Nature, but the luminous driving of some greater Consciousness-Force which is becoming more and more the sole motive power of the whole existence. On the other hand, it is possible at any period of the inner spiritual progress that one may experience an extension rather than a restriction of the' activities; there may be an opening of new capacities of mental creation and new provinces of knowledge by the miraculous touch of the Yoga-shakti. Aesthetic feeling, the power of artistic creation in one field or many fields together, talent or genius of literary expression, a faculty of metaphysical thinking, any power of eye or ear or hand or mind-power may awaken where none was apparent before. The Divine within may throw these latent riches out from the depths in which they were hidden or a Force from above may pour down its energies to equip the instrumental nature for the activity or the creation of which it is meant to be a channel or a builder. But, whatever may be the method or the course of development chosen by the hidden Master of the Yoga, the common culmination of this stage is the growing consciousness of him above as the mover, decider, shaper of all the movements of the mind and all the activities of knowledge.
     There are two signs of the transformation of the seeker's mind of knowledge and works of knowledge from the process of the Ignorance to the process of a liberated consciousness working partly, then wholly in the light of the Spirit. There is first a central change of the consciousness and a growing direct experience, vision, feeling of the Supreme and the cosmic existence, the Divine in itself and the Divine in all things; the mind will be taken up into a growing preoccupation with this first and foremost and will feel itself heightening, widening into a more and more illumined means of expression of the one fundamental knowledge. But also the central Consciousness in its turn will take up more and more the outer mental activities of knowledge and turn them into a parcel of itself or an annexed province; it will infuse into them its more au thentic movement and make a more and more spiritualised and illumined mind its instrument in these surface fields, its new conquests, as well as in its own deeper spiritual empire. And this will be the second sign, the sign of a certain completion and perfection, that the Divine himself has become the Knower and all the inner movements, including the activities of what was once a purely human mental action, have become his field of knowledge. There will be less and less individual choice, opinion, preference, less and less of intellectualisation, mental weaving, cerebral galley-slave labour; a Light within will see all that has to be seen, know all that has to be known, develop, create, organise. It will be the inner Knower who will do in the liberated and universalised mind of the individual the works of an all-comprehending knowledge.
  --
     As the light of each of these higher powers is turned upon the human activities of knowledge, any distinction of sacred and profane, human and divine, begins more and more to fade until it is finally abolished as otiose; for whatever is touched and thoroughly penetrated by the Divine Gnosis is transfigured and becomes a movement of its own Light and Power, free from the turbidity and limitations of the lower intelligence. It is not a separation of some activities, but a transformation of them all by the change of the informing consciousness that is the way of liberation, an ascent of the Sacrifice of knowledge to a greater and ever greater light and force. All the works of mind and intellect must be first heightened and widened, then illumined, lifted into the domain of a higher Intelligence, afterwards translated into workings of a greater non-mental Intuition, then again transformed into the dynamic outpourings of the overmind radiance, and these transfigured into the full light and sovereignty of the supramental Gnosis. It is this that the evolution of consciousness in the world carries prefigured but latent in its seed and in the straining tense intention of its process; nor can that process, that evolution cease till it has evolved the instruments of a perfect in place of its now imperfect manifestation of the Spirit.
     If knowledge is the widest power of the consciousness and its function is to free and illumine, yet love is the deepest and most intense and its privilege is to be the key to the most profound and secret recesses of the Divine Mystery. Man, because he is a mental being, is prone to give the highest importance to the thinking mind and its reason and will and to its way of approach and effectuation of Truth and, even, he is inclined to hold that there is no other. The heart with its emotions and incalculable movements is to the eye of his intellect an obscure, uncertain and often a perilous and misleading power which needs to be kept in control by the reason and the mental will and intelligence. And yet there is in the heart or behind it a profounder mystic light which, if not what we call intuition -- for that, though not of the mind, yet descends through the mind -- has yet a direct touch upon Truth and is nearer to the Divine than the human intellect in its pride of knowledge. According to the ancient teaching the seat of the immanent Divine, the hidden Purusha, is in the mystic heart, -- the secret heart-cave, hrdaye gunayam, as the Upanishads put it, -- and, according to the experience of many Yogins, it is from its depths that there comes the voice or the breath of the inner oracle.

1.05 - The Belly of the Whale, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  rocks as a propitiatory Sacrifice, and the great visiting hero
  agreed to rescue her for a price. The monster, in due time, broke
  --
  This is the Sacrifice that King Minos refused when he withheld the bull from
  Poseidon. As Frazer has shown, ritual regicide was a general tradition in the
  --
  king's power for another octennial cycle" (ibid., p. 280). The bull Sacrifice re
  quired of King Minos implied that he would Sacrifice himself, according to the
  pattern of the inherited tradition, at the close of his eight-year term. But he

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  inseparably linked. The fascist Sacrifices his soul, which would enable him to confront change on his own,
  to the group, which promises to protect him from everything unknown. The decadent, by contrast, refuses to
  --
  meaning and his refusal to Sacrifice meaning for security renders existence acceptable, despite its
  tragedy.
  --
  separation from the good mother, and Sacrifice of the primary dependent relationship. Culture moulds the
  maturing personality, offering knowledge but limitation at the same time, as the social world mangles
  --
  of individuality, Sacrifice of the mythic fool abandonment of the simple and insufficient younger
  brother. The group, of course, merely feels that it is doing its duty by insisting upon such Sacrifice;
  believes, with sufficient justification, that it is merely protecting its structure. However, the group is not
  --
  the mythic story of Judas. Judas Sacrifices Christ, the hero, to the authorities of tradition for all the best
  reasons and then destroys himself, in despair:
  --
  suicide, dismemberment, castration ends in the final Sacrifice of masculine consciousness, and in the
  victory of the underworld.
  --
  desire to shirk that responsibility (and the heroic Sacrifice it entails), that constitutes motivation for belief
  in intellectual superiority.] The suffering rebel stance that such adoption allows, as a secondary
  --
  willing to Sacrifice painful freedom for order, and to pretend that his unredeemed misery is meaningless, so
  266
  --
  Tens of millions of innocent people have been dehumanized, enslaved and Sacrificed in these efficient
  disassembly lines, in the course of the last century, to help their oppressors maintain pathological stability
  --
  the cost of substantial intrapsychic damage, dissociation. The lie involved meant Sacrifice of more personal
  experience, more individual possibility, more divine meaning to the group. The inevitable result of such
  --
  A man who has put his faith in what he owns, rather than what he stands for, will be unable to Sacrifice
  what he owns, for what he is; will necessarily choose when the re-emergence of uncertainty forces choice
  --
  comparatively rare, because it requires voluntary Sacrifice of group-fostered certainty, and indefinite
  acceptance of consequent psychological chaos, attendant upon (re)exposure to the unknown. This is
  --
  creativity. Sacrifice of individual creativity, by choice, eventually deprives life of pleasure, of meaning
  but not of anxiety or pain and therefore renders life unbearable. Civilized or historical homo sapiens
  --
  The alchemists lived in a world that had theoretically been redeemed, by the Sacrifice of Christ at
  least from the Christian perspective. But they did not feel redeemed were not satisfied with the present
  --
  necessary when the land is no longer fruitful. Such a Sacrifice which was once a ritual means rejection
  of reliance on a particular pattern of behavioral adaptation and representational presumption; means
  --
  West it is offered up in Sacrifice to the Christ figure.
  By contrast, the aim of the mystical peregrination is to understand all parts of the world, to achieve
  --
  developed. Formal Christianity adopted the position that the Sacrifice of Christ brought history to a close,
  and that belief in that Sacrifice guaranteed redemption. Alchemy rejected that position, in its pursuit of
  what remained unknown. In that (heroic) pursuit the alchemist found himself transformed:
  --
  abandonment of individual interest hence meaning, hence divinity for safety and security; is Sacrifice of
  the individual to appease the Great Mother and Great Father.
  --
  come to Sacrifice his own experience, in the course of development, because its pursuit creates social
  conflict, or exposes individual inadequacy. However, it is only through such conflict that change takes

1.05 - The Magical Control of the Weather, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  occasions as a propitiatory Sacrifice offered to spirits who control
  the showers; but perhaps, as in the Australian and Javanese
  --
  when he remembers that a black victim is Sacrificed to procure rain;
  'it is black, for such is the nature of rain.' In respect of another
  --
  procure rain the Wagogo Sacrifice black fowls, black sheep, and
  black cattle at the graves of dead ancestors, and the rain-maker
  --
  come." The Timorese Sacrifice a black pig to the Earth-goddess for
  rain, a white or red one to the Sun-god for sunshine. The Angoni
  --
  actually Zeus, and caused Sacrifices to be offered to himself as
  such. Near a temple of Mars, outside the walls of Rome, there was
  --
  his course across the sky. Thus the Mexican Sacrifices to the sun
  were magical rather than religious, being designed, not so much to
  --
  their cruel system of human Sacrifices, the most monstrous on
  record, sprang in great measure from a mistaken theory of the solar
  --
  Persians, and Massagetae Sacrificed horses to him. The Spartans
  performed the Sacrifice on the top of Mount Taygetus, the beautiful
  range behind which they saw the great luminary set every night. It

1.05 - The True Doer of Works, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  1:If you want to be a true doer of divine works, your first aim must be to be totally free from all desire and self-regarding ego. All your life must be an offering and a Sacrifice to the Supreme; your only object in action shall be to serve, to receive, to fulfil, to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her works. You must grow in the divine consciousness till there is no difference between your will and hers, no motive except her impulsion in you, no action that is not her conscious action in you and through you.
  2:Until you are capable of this complete dynamic identification, you have to regard yourself as a soul and body created for her service, one who does all for her sake. Even if the idea of the separate worker is strong in you and you feel that it is you who do the act, yet it must be done for her. All stress of egoistic choice, all hankering after personal profit, all stipulation of selfregarding desire must be extirpated from the nature. There must be no demand for fruit and no seeking for reward; the only fruit for you is the pleasure of the Divine Mother and the fulfilment of her work, your only reward a constant progression in divine consciousness and calm and strength and bliss. The joy of service and the joy of inner growth through works is the sufficient recompense of the selfless worker.
  --
  4:While this transformation is being done it is more than ever necessary to keep yourself free from all taint of the perversions of the ego. Let no demand or insistence creep in to stain the purity of the self-giving and the Sacrifice. There must be no attachment to the work or the result, no laying down of conditions, no claim to possess the Power that should possess you, no pride of the instrument, no vanity or arrogance. Nothing in the mind or in the vital or physical parts should be suffered to distort to its own use or seize for its own personal and separate satisfaction the greatness of the forces that are acting through you. Let your faith, your sincerity, your purity of aspiration be absolute and pervasive of all the planes and layers of the being; then every disturbing element and distorting influence will progressively fall away from your nature.
  5:The last stage of this perfection will come when you are completely identified with the Divine Mother and feel yourself to be no longer another and separate being, instrument, servant or worker but truly a child and eternal portion of her consciousness and force. Always she will be in you and you in her; it will be your constant, simple and natural experience that all your thought and seeing and action, your very breathing and moving come from her and are hers. You will know and see and feel that you are a person and power formed by her out of herself, put out from her for the play and yet always safe in her, being of her being, consciousness of her consciousness, force of her force, ananda of her Ananda. When this condition is entire and her supramental energies can freely move you, then you will be perfect in divine works; knowledge, will, action will become sure, simple, luminous, spontaneous, flawless, an outflow from the Supreme, a divine movement of the Eternal.

1.05 - Vishnu as Brahma creates the world, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  Brahmā having created, in the commencement of the Kalpa, various plants, employed them in Sacrifices, in the beginning of the Tretā age. Animals were distinguished into two classes, domestic (village) and wild (forest): the first class contained the cow, the goat, the hog, the sheep, the horse, the ass, the mule: the latter, all beasts of prey, and many animals with cloven hoofs, the elephant, and the monkey. The fifth order were the birds; the sixth, aquatic animals; and the seventh, reptiles and insects[20].
  From his eastern mouth Brahmā then created the Gayatrī metre, the Rig veda, the collection of hymns termed Trivrit, the Rathantara portion of the Sāma veda, and the Agniṣṭoma Sacrifice: from his southern mouth he created the Yajur veda, the Tṛṣṭubh metre, the collection of hymns called Pañcadaśa, the Vrihat Sāma, and the portion of the Sāma veda termed Uktha: from his western mouth he created the Sāma veda, the Jayati metre, the collection of hymns termed Saptadaśa, the portion of the Sāma called Vairūpa, and the Atirātra Sacrifice: and from his northern mouth he created the Ekavinsa collection of hymns, the Aṭharva veda, the Āptoryāmā rite, the Anuṣṭubh metre, and the Vairāja portion of the Sāma veda[21].
  In this manner all creatures, great or small, proceeded from his limbs. The great progenitor of the world having formed the gods, demons, and Pitris, created, in the commencement of the Kalpa, the Yakṣas, Pisācas (goblins), Gandharvas and the troops of Apsarasas the nymphs of heaven, Naras (centaurs, or beings with the limbs of horses and human bodies) and Kinnaras (beings with the heads of horses), Rākṣasas, birds, beasts, deer, serpents, and all things permanent or transitory, movable or immovable. This did the divine Brahmā, the first creator and lord of all: and these things being created, discharged the same functions as they had fulfilled in a previous creation, whether malignant or benign, gentle or cruel, good or evil, true or false; and accordingly as they are actuated by such propensities will be their conduct.

1.06 - Agni and the Truth, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Often the songs of one seer vary in their manner, range from the utmost simplicity to the most curious richness. Or there are risings and fallings in the same hymn; it proceeds from the most ordinary conventions of the general symbol of Sacrifice to a movement of packed and complex thought. Some of the Suktas are plain and almost modern in their language; others baffle us at first by their semblance of antique obscurity. But these differences of manner take nothing from the unity of spiritual experience, nor are they complicated by any variation of the fixed terms and the common formulae. In the deep and mystic style of Dirghatamas Auchathya as in the melodious lucidity of
  Medhatithi Kanwa, in the puissant and energetic hymns of Vishwamitra as in Vasishtha's even harmonies we have the same firm foundation of knowledge and the same scrupulous adherence to the sacred conventions of the Initiates.
  --
  It is here that we find the Sacrifice of the Purusha and the great
  Hymn of the Creation. It is here also that modern scholars think they discover the first origins of the Vedantic philosophy, the
  --
  In this passage we have a series of terms plainly bearing or obviously capable of a psychological sense and giving their colour to the whole context. Sayana, however, insists on a purely ritual interpretation and it is interesting to see how he arrives at it. In the first phrase we have the word kavi meaning a seer and, even if we take kratu to mean work of the Sacrifice, we shall have as a result, "Agni, the priest whose work or rite is that of the seer", a turn which at once gives a symbolic character to the Sacrifice and is in itself sufficient to serve as the seed of a deeper understanding of the Veda. Sayana feels that he has to turn the difficulty at any cost and therefore he gets rid of the sense of seer for kavi and gives it another and unusual significance. He then explains that Agni is satya, true, because he brings about the true fruit of the Sacrifice. Sravas Sayana renders "fame", Agni has an exceedingly various renown. It would have been surely better to take the word in the sense of wealth so as to avoid the incoherency of this last rendering. We shall then have this result for the fifth verse, "Agni the priest, active in the ritual, who is true (in its fruit) - for his is the most varied wealth, - let him come, a god with the gods."
  The Secret of the Veda
  To the sixth Rik the commentator gives a very awkward and abrupt construction and trivial turn of thought which breaks entirely the flow of the verse. "That good (in the shape of varied wealth) which thou shalt effect for the giver, thine is that. This is true, O Angiras," that is to say, there can be no doubt about this fact, for if Agni does good to the giver by providing him with wealth, he in turn will perform fresh Sacrifices to Agni, and thus the good of the Sacrificer becomes the good of the god. Here again it would be better to render, "The good that thou wilt do for the giver, that is that truth of thee, O Angiras," for we thus get at once a simpler sense and construction and an explanation of the epithet, satya, true, as applied to the god of the sacrificial fire. This is the truth of Agni that to the giver of the Sacrifice he surely gives good in return.
  The seventh verse offers no difficulty to the ritualistic interpretation except the curious phrase, "we come bearing the prostration." Sayana explains that bearing here means simply doing and he renders, "To thee day by day we, by night and by day, come with the thought performing the prostration." In the eighth verse he takes r.tasya in the sense of truth and explains it as the true fruit of the ritual. "To thee shining, the protector of the Sacrifices, manifesting always their truth (that is, their inevitable fruit), increasing in thy own house." Again, it would be simpler and better to take r.tam in the sense of Sacrifice and to render, "To thee shining out in the Sacrifices, protector of the rite, ever luminous, increasing in thy own house." The "own house" of Agni, says the commentator, is the place of Sacrifice and this is indeed called frequently enough in Sanskrit, "the house of Agni".
  We see, therefore, that with a little managing we can work out a purely ritual sense quite empty of thought even for a passage which at first sight offers a considerable wealth of psychological significance. Nevertheless, however ingeniously it is effected, flaws and cracks remain which betray the artificiality of the work. We have had to throw overboard the plain sense of kavi which adheres to it throughout the Veda and foist in an unreal rendering. We have either to divorce the two words
  --
  Kratu means in Sanskrit work or action and especially work in the sense of the Sacrifice; but it means also power or strength
  (the Greek kratos) effective of action. Psychologically this power effective of action is the will. The word may also mean mind or intellect and Sayana admits thought or knowledge as a possible sense for kratu. Sravas means literally hearing and from this primary significance is derived its secondary sense, "fame". But, psychologically, the idea of hearing leads up in Sanskrit to another sense which we find in sravan.a, sruti, sruta, - revealed knowledge, the knowledge which comes by inspiration. Dr.s.t.i and sruti, sight and hearing, revelation and inspiration are the two chief powers of that supra-mental faculty which belongs to the old Vedic idea of the Truth, the Ritam. The word sravas is not recognised by the lexicographers in this sense, but it is accepted in the sense of a hymn, - the inspired word of the
  --
  "To thee who shinest out from the Sacrifices (or, who governest the Sacrifices), guardian of the Truth and its illumination, increasing in thy own home."
  The defect of the translation is that we have had to employ one and the same word for satyam and r.tam whereas, as we see in the formula satyam r.tam br.hat, there was a distinction in the
  --
  Who, then, is this god Agni to whom language of so mystic a fervour is addressed, to whom functions so vast and profound are ascribed? Who is this guardian of the Truth, who is in his act its illumination, whose will in the act is the will of a seer possessed of a divine wisdom governing his richly varied inspiration? What is the Truth that he guards? And what is this good that he creates for the giver who comes always to him in thought day and night bearing as his Sacrifice submission and self-surrender? Is it gold and horses and cattle that he brings or is it some diviner riches?
  It is not the sacrificial Fire that is capable of these functions, nor can it be any material flame or principle of physical heat and light. Yet throughout the symbol of the sacrificial Fire is maintained. It is evident that we are in the presence of a mystic symbolism to which the fire, the Sacrifice, the priest are only outward figures of a deeper teaching and yet figures which it was thought necessary to maintain and to hold constantly in front.
  In the early Vedantic teaching of the Upanishads we come across a conception of the Truth which is often expressed by formulas taken from the hymns of the Veda, such as the expression already quoted, satyam r.tam br.hat, - the truth, the right, the vast. This Truth is spoken of in the Veda as a path leading to felicity, leading to immortality. In the Upanishads also it is by the path of the Truth that the sage or seer, Rishi or Kavi, passes beyond. He passes out of the falsehood, out of the mortal
  --
  - it knows all manifestations or phenomena or it possesses all forms and activities of the divine wisdom. Moreover it is repeatedly said that the gods have established Agni as the immortal in mortals, the divine power in man, the energy of fulfilment through which they do their work in him. It is this work which is symbolised by the Sacrifice.
  Psychologically, then, we may take Agni to be the divine will perfectly inspired by divine Wisdom, and indeed one with it,
  --
  This is the obvious sense of the word kavikratuh., he whose active will or power of effectivity is that of the seer, - works, that is to say, with the knowledge which comes by the truth-consciousness and in which there is no misapplication or error. The epithets that follow confirm this interpretation. Agni is satya, true in his being; perfect possession of his own truth and the essential truth of things gives him the power to apply it perfectly in all act and movement of force. He has both the satyam and the r.tam. Moreover, he is citrasravastamah.; from the Ritam there proceeds a fullness of richly luminous and varied inspirations which give the capacity for doing the perfect work. For all these are epithets of Agni as the hotr., the priest of the Sacrifice, he who performs the offering. Therefore it is the power of Agni to apply the Truth in the work (karma or apas) symbolised by the Sacrifice, that makes him the object of human invocation.
  The importance of the sacrificial fire in the outward ritual corresponds to the importance of this inward force of unified Light and Power in the inward rite by which there is communication and interchange between the mortal and the Immortal. Agni is elsewhere frequently described as the envoy, duta, the medium of that communication and interchange.
  We see, then, in what capacity Agni is called to the Sacrifice.
  "Let him come, a god with the gods." The emphasis given to the idea of divinity by this repetition, devo devebhir, becomes intelligible when we recall the standing description of Agni as the god in human beings, the immortal in mortals, the divine guest. We may give the full psychological sense by translating,
  --
  Mind, etc. But in the Veda there is always a distinction between the ordinary human or mental action of these puissances, manus.vat, and the divine. It is supposed that man by the right use of their mental action in the inner Sacrifice to the gods can convert them into their true or divine nature, the mortal can
  Agni and the Truth
  --
  It is a continual self-offering of the human to the divine and a continual descent of the divine into the human which seems to be symbolised in the Sacrifice.
  The state of immortality thus attained is conceived as a state of felicity or bliss founded on a perfect Truth and Right, satyam r.tam. We must, I think, understand in this sense the verse that follows. "The good (happiness) which thou wilt create for the giver, that is that truth of thee, O Agni." In other words, the essence of this truth, which is the nature of Agni, is the freedom from evil, the state of perfect good and happiness which the Ritam carries in itself and which is sure to be created in the mortal when he offers the Sacrifice by the action of Agni as the divine priest. Bhadram means anything good, auspicious, happy and by itself need not carry any deep significance. But we find it in the Veda used, like r.tam, in a special sense. It is described in one of the hymns (V.82) as the opposite of the evil dream (duh.s.vapnyam), the false consciousness of that which is not the Ritam, and of duritam, false going, which means all evil and suffering. Bhadram is therefore equivalent to suvitam, right going, which means all good and felicity belonging to the state of the Truth, the Ritam. It is Mayas, the felicity, and the gods who represent the Truthconsciousness are described as mayobhuvah., those who bring or carry in their being the felicity. Thus every part of the Veda, if properly understood, throws light upon every other part. It is only when we are misled by its veils that we find in it an incoherence.
  In the next verse there seems to be stated the condition of the effective Sacrifice. It is the continual resort day by day, in the night and in the light, of the thought in the human being with submission, adoration, self-surrender, to the divine Will and Wisdom represented by Agni. Night and Day, Naktos.asa, are also symbolical, like all the other gods in the Veda, and the sense seems to be that in all states of consciousness, whether
  The Secret of the Veda
  --
  For whether by day or night Agni shines out in the Sacrifices; he is the guardian of the Truth, of the Ritam in man and defends it from the powers of darkness; he is its constant illumination burning up even in obscure and besieged states of the mind. The ideas thus briefly indicated in the eighth verse are constantly found throughout the hymns to Agni in the Rig Veda.
  Agni is finally described as increasing in his own home. We can no longer be satisfied with the explanation of the own home of Agni as the "fire-room" of the Vedic householder. We must seek in the Veda itself for another interpretation and we find it in the 75th hymn of the first Mandala.
  --
  " Sacrifice for us to Mitra and Varuna, Sacrifice to the gods, to the Truth, the Vast; O Agni, Sacrifice to thy own home."
  Here r.tam br.hat and svam damam seem to express the goal of the Sacrifice and this is perfectly in consonance with the imagery of the Veda which frequently describes the Sacrifice as travelling towards the gods and man himself as a traveller moving towards the truth, the light or the felicity. It is evident, therefore, that the Truth, the Vast and Agni's own home are identical. Agni and other gods are frequently spoken of as being born in the truth, dwelling in the wide or vast. The sense, then, will be in our passage that Agni the divine will and power in man increases in the truth-consciousness, its proper sphere, where false limitations are broken down, urav anibadhe, in the wide and the limitless.
  Thus in these four verses of the opening hymn of the Veda we get the first indications of the principal ideas of the Vedic
  Rishis, - the conception of a Truth-consciousness supramental and divine, the invocation of the gods as powers of the Truth to raise man out of the falsehoods of the mortal mind, the attainment in and by this Truth of an immortal state of perfect good and felicity and the inner Sacrifice and offering of what
  Agni and the Truth

1.06 - BOOK THE SIXTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  Styles it some unknown mystick Sacrifice;
  And such the nature of the hallow'd rite,

1.06 - Hymns of Parashara, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  follow him by his footprints; all the Masters of Sacrifice
  come to thee, O Flame, in the secrecy.
  --
  4. He is the priest of the Sacrifice seated in the son of Man:
  he verily is the lord of these riches. They desire the seed
  --
  to him who prepares for him the Sacrifice with the perfect
  words. O thou who art conscious, guard, as the knower,
  --
  4. The masters of Sacrifice discovered and in their impetuous
  might bore the Vast Earth and Heaven, then the mortal
  --
  6. When the masters of Sacrifice have found hidden in thee
  the thrice seven secret planes, by them they guard with one

1.06 - Magicians as Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  magic for the priestly functions of prayer and Sacrifice. And while
  the distinction between the human and the divine is still

1.06 - Man in the Universe, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2:That luminous Emergence is the dawn which the Aryan forefa thers worshipped. Its fulfilled perfection is that highest step of the world-pervading Vishnu which they beheld as if an eye of vision extended in the purest heavens of the Mind. For it exists already as an all-revealing and all-guiding Truth of things which watches over the world and attracts mortal man, first without the knowledge of his conscious mind, by the general march of Nature, but at last consciously by a progressive awakening and self-enlargement, to his divine ascension. The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man's real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.
  3:This Truth of things that has to emerge out of the phenomenal world's contradictions is declared to be an infinite Bliss and self-conscious Existence, the same everywhere, in all things, in all times and beyond Time, and aware of itself behind all these phenomena by whose intensest vibrations of activity or by whose largest totality it can never be entirely expressed or in any way limited; for it is self-existent and does not depend for its being upon its manifestations. They represent it, but do not exhaust it; point to it, but do not reveal it. It is revealed only to itself within their forms. The conscious existence involved in the form comes, as it evolves, to know itself by intuition, by self-vision, by self-experience. It becomes itself in the world by knowing itself; it knows itself by becoming itself. Thus possessed of itself inwardly, it imparts also to its forms and modes the conscious delight of Sachchidananda. This becoming of the infinite Bliss-Existence-Consciousness in mind and life and body, - for independent of them it exists eternally, - is the transfiguration intended and the utility of individual existence. Through the individual it manifests in relation even as of itself it exists in identity.
  --
  16:For out of these false relations and by their aid the true have to be found. By the Ignorance we have to cross over death. So too the Veda speaks cryptically of energies that are like women evil in impulse, wandering from the path, doing hurt to their Lord, which yet, though themselves false and unhappy, build up in the end "this vast Truth", the Truth that is the Bliss. It would be, then, not when he has excised the evil in Nature out of himself by an act of moral surgery or parted with life by an abhorrent recoil, but when he has turned Death into a more perfect life, lifted the small things of the human limitation into the great things of the divine vastness, transformed suffering into beatitude, converted evil into its proper good, translated error and falsehood into their secret truth that the Sacrifice will be accomplished, the journey done and Heaven and Earth equalised join hands in the bliss of the Supreme.
  17:Yet how can such contraries pass into each other? By what alchemy shall this lead of mortality be turned into that gold of divine Being? But if they are not in their essence contraries? If they are manifestations of one Reality, identical in substance? Then indeed a divine transmutation becomes conceivable.

1.06 - Of imperfections with respect to spiritual gluttony., #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
  2. These persons are most imperfect and unreasonable; for they set bodily penance before subjection and obedience, which is penance according to reason and discretion, and therefore a Sacrifice more acceptable and pleasing to God than any other. But such one-sided penance is no more than the penance of beasts, to which they are attracted, exactly like beasts, by the desire and pleasure which they find therein. Inasmuch as all extremes are vicious, and as in behaving thus such persons41 are working their own will, they grow in vice rather than in virtue; for, to say the least, they are acquiring spiritual gluttony and pride in this way, through not walking in obedience. And many of these the devil assails, stirring up this gluttony in them through the pleasures and desires which he increases within them, to such an extent that, since they can no longer help themselves, they either change or vary or add to that which is commanded them, as any obedience in this respect is so bitter to them. To such an evil pass have some persons come that, simply because it is through obedience that they engage in these exercises, they lose the desire and devotion to perform them, their only desire and pleasure being to do what they themselves are inclined to do, so that it would probably be more profitable for them not to engage in these exercises at all.
  3. You will find that many of these persons are very insistent with their spiritual masters to be granted that which they desire, extracting it from them almost by force; if they be refused it they become as peevish as children and go about in great displeasure, thinking that they are not serving God when they are not allowed to do that which they would. For they go about clinging to their own will and pleasure, which they treat as though it came from God;42 and immediately their directors43 take it from them, and try to subject them to the will of God, they become peevish, grow faint-hearted and fall away. These persons think that their own satisfaction and pleasure are the satisfaction and service of God.

1.06 - ON THE PALE CRIMINAL, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  You do not want to kill, 0 judges and Sacrificers,
  until the animal has nodded? Behold, the pale criminal

1.06 - On Thought, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  One who strives in sincere quest for truth, who is ready, if necessary, to Sacrifice all he had thought until then to be true, in order to draw ever nearer to the integral truth that can be no other than the progressive knowledge of the whole universe in its infinite progression, enters gradually into relation with great masses of deeper, completer and more luminous thoughts.
  After much meditation and contemplation, he comes into direct contact with the great universal current of pure intellectual force, and thenceforth no knowledge can be veiled from him.

1.06 - Origin of the four castes, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  Origin of the four castes: their primitive state. Progress of society. Different kinds of grain. Efficacy of Sacrifice. Duties of men: regions assigned them after death.
  Maitreya said:-
  --
  Formerly, oh best of Brahmans, when the truth-meditating Brahmā was desirous of creating the world, there sprang from his mouth beings especially endowed with the quality of goodness; others from his breast, pervaded by the quality of foulness; others from his thighs, in whom foulness and darkness prevailed; and others from his feet, in whom the quality of darkness predominated. These were, in succession, beings of the several castes, Brahmans, Kṣetriyas, Vaisyas, and Śūdras, produced from the mouth, the breast, the thighs, and the feet of Brahmā[2]. These he created for the performance of Sacrifices, the four castes being the fit instruments of their celebration. By Sacrifices, oh thou who knowest the truth, the gods are nourished; and by the rain which they bestow, mankind are supported[3]: and thus Sacrifices, the source of happiness, are performed by pious men, attached to their duties, attentive to prescribed obligations, and walking in the paths of virtue. Men acquire (by them) heavenly fruition, or final felicity: they go, after death, to whatever sphere they aspire to, as the consequence of their human nature. The beings who were created by Brahmā, of these four castes, were at first endowed with righteousness and perfect faith; they abode wherever they pleased, unchecked by any impediment; their hearts were free from guile; they were pure, made free from soil, by observance of sacred institutes. In their sanctified minds Hari dwelt; and they were filled with perfect wisdom, by which they contemplated the glory of Viṣṇu[4]. After a while (after the Tretā age had continued for some period), that portion of Hari which has been described as one with Kāla (time) infused into created beings sin, as yet feeble though formidable, or passion and the like: the impediment of soul's liberation, the seed of iniquity, sprung from darkness and desire. The innate perfectness of human nature was then no more evolved: the eight kinds of perfection, Rasollāsā and the rest, were impaired[5]; and these being enfeebled, and sin gaining strength, mortals were afflicted with pain, arising from susceptibility to contrasts, as heat and cold, and the like. They therefore constructed places of refuge, protected by trees, by mountains, or by water; surrounded them by a ditch or a wall, and formed villages and cities; and in them erected appropriate dwellings, as defences against the sun and the cold[6]. Having thus provided security against the weather, men next began to employ themselves in manual labour, as a means of livelihood, (and cultivated) the seventeen kinds of useful grain-rice, barley, wheat, millet, sesamum, panic, and various sorts of lentils, beans, and pease[7]. These are the kinds cultivated for domestic use: but there are fourteen kinds which may be offered in Sacrifice; they are, rice, barley, Māṣa, wheat, millet, and sesamum; Priya
  gu is the seventh, and kulattha, pulse, the eighth: the others are, Syāmāka, a sort of panic; Nīvāra, uñcultivated rice; Jarttila, wild sesamum; Gavedukā (coix); Markata, wild panic; and (a plant called) the seed or barley of the Bambu (Venu-yava). These, cultivated or wild, are the fourteen grains that were produced for purposes of offering in Sacrifice; and Sacrifice (the cause of rain) is their origin also: they again, with Sacrifice, are the great cause of the perpetuation of the human race, as those understand who can discriminate cause and effect. Thence Sacrifices were offered daily; the performance of which, oh best of Munis, is of essential service to mankind, and expiates the offences of those by whom they are observed. Those, however, in whose hearts the dross of sin derived from Time (Kāla) was still more developed, assented not to Sacrifices, but reviled both them and all that resulted from them, the gods, and the followers of the Vedas. Those abusers of the Vedas, of evil disposition and conduct, and seceders from the path of enjoined duties, were plunged in wickedness[8]. The means of subsistence having been provided for the beings he had created, Brahmā prescribed laws suited to their station and faculties, the duties of the several castes and orders[9], and the regions of those of the different castes who were observant of their duties. The heaven of the Pitris is the region of devout Brahmans. The sphere of Indra, of Kṣetriyas who fly not from the field. The region of the winds is assigned to the Vaisyas who are diligent in their occupations and submissive. Śūdras are elevated to the sphere of the Gandharvas. Those Brahmans who lead religious lives go to the world of the eighty-eight thousand saints: and that of the seven Ṛṣis is the seat of pious anchorets and hermits. The world of ancestors is that of respectable householders: and the region of Brahmā is the asylum of religious mendicants[10]. The imperishable region of the Yogis is the highest seat of Viṣṇu, where they perpetually meditate upon the supreme being, with minds intent on him alone: the sphere where they reside, the gods themselves cannot behold. The sun, the moon, the planets, shall repeatedly be, and cease to be; but those who internally repeat the mystic adoration of the divinity, shall never know decay. For those who neglect their duties, who revile the Vedas, and obstruct religious rites, the places assigned after death are the terrific regions of darkness, of deep gloom, of fear, and of great terror; the fearful hell of sharp swords, the hell of scourges and of a waveless sea[11].
  Footnotes and references:

1.06 - Psychic Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  When a child makes a mistake, one must see that he confesses it to the teacher or the guardian spontaneously and frankly; and when he has confessed, he should be made to understand with kindness and affection what was wrong in the movement and precaution should be taken to see that he does not repeat it. A fault confessed must be forgiven. The child should be encouraged to think of wrong impulses not as sins or offences but as symptoms of a curable disease, alterable by a steady and sustained effort of the will, - falsehood being rejected and replaced by truth, fear by courage, selfishness by Sacrifice, attachment by renunciation and malice by love.
  Due care should be taken to see that unformed virtues are not rejected as faults. The wildness and recklessness of many young natures are only the over-flowing of excessive strength, greatness and nobility. They should be purified and not discouraged.

1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life
  author class:Sri Aurobindo
  --
  The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2
  The Works of Love - The Works of Life
  IT IS therefore through the Sacrifice of love, works and knowledge with the psychic being as the leader and priest of the Sacrifice that life itself can be transformed into its own true spiritual figure. If the Sacrifice of knowledge rightly done is easily the largest and purest offering we can bring to the Highest, the Sacrifice of love is not less demanded of us for our spiritual perfection; it is even more intense and rich in its singleness and can be made not less vast and pure. This pure wideness is brought into the intensity of the Sacrifice of love when into all our activities there is poured the spirit and power of a divine infinite joy and the whole atmosphere of our life is suffused with an engrossing adoration of the One who is the All and the Highest. For then does the Sacrifice of love attain its utter perfection when, offered to the divine All, it becomes integral, catholic and boundless, and when, uplifted to the Supreme, it ceases to be the weak, superficial and transient movement men call love and becomes a pure and grand and deep uniting Ananda.
  Although it is a divine love for the supreme and universal Divine that must be the rule of our spiritual existence, this does not exclude altogether all forms of individual love or the ties that draw soul to soul in manifested existence. A psychic change is demanded, a divestiture of the masks of the Ignorance, a purification of the egoistic mental, vital and physical movements that prolong the old inferior consciousness; each movement of love, spiritualised, must depend no longer on mental preference, vital passion or physical craving, but on the recognition of soul by soul, - love restored to its fundamental spiritual and psychic essence with the mind, the vital, the physical as manifesting instruments and elements of that greater oneness.
  --
  It is possible, as in a certain high exaggeration of the path of knowledge, to cut here also the knot of the problem, escape the difficulty of uniting the spirit of love with the crudities of the world-action by avoiding it; it is open to us, withdrawing from outward life and action altogether, to live alone with our adoration of the Divine in the heart's silence. It is possible too to admit only those acts that are either in themselves an expression of love for the Divine, prayer, praise, symbolic acts of worship or subordinate activities that may be attached to these things and partake of their spirit, and to leave aside all else; the soul turns away to satisfy its inner longing in the absorbed or the God-centred life of the saint and devotee. It is possible, again, to open the doors of life more largely and to spend one's love of the Divine in acts of service to those around us and to the race; one can do the works of philanthropy, benevolence and beneficence, charity and succour to man and beast and every creature, transfigure them by a kind of spiritual passion, at least bring into their merely ethical appearance the greater power of a spiritual motive. This is indeed the solution most commonly favoured by the religious mind of today and we see it confidently advanced on all sides as the proper field of action of the Godseeker or of the man whose life is founded on divine love and knowledge. But the integral Yoga pushed towards a complete union of the Divine with the earth-life cannot stop short in this narrow province or limit this union within the lesser dimensions of an ethical rule of philanthropy and beneficence. All action must be made in it part of the God-life, our acts of knowledge, our acts of power and production and creation, our acts of joy and beauty and the soul's pleasure, our acts of will and endeavour and struggle and not our acts only of love and beneficent service. Its way to do these things will be not outward and mental, but inward and spiritual, and to that end it will bring into all activities, whatever they are, the spirit of divine love, the spirit of adoration and worship, the spirit of happiness in the Divine and in the beauty of the Divine so as to make all life a Sacrifice of the works of the soul's love to the Divine, its cult of the Master of its existence.
  It is possible so to turn life into an act of adoration to the Supreme by the spirit in one's works; for, says the Gita, "He who gives to me with a heart of adoration a leaf, a flower, a fruit or a cup of water, I take and enjoy that offering of his devotion"; and it is not only any dedicated external gift that can be so offered with love and devotion, but all our thoughts, all our feelings and sensations, all our outward activities and their forms and objects can be such gifts to the Eternal. It is true that the special act or form of action has its importance, even a great importance, but it is the spirit in the act that is the essential factor; the spirit of which it is the symbol or materialised expression gives it its whole value and justifying significance. Or it may be said that a complete act of divine love and worship has in it three parts that are the expressions of a single whole, - a practical worship of the Divine in the act, a symbol of worship in the form of the act expressing some vision and seeking or some relation with the Divine, an inner adoration and longing for oneness or feeling of oneness in the heart and soul and spirit. It is so that life can be changed into worship, - by putting behind it the spirit of a transcendent and universal love, the seeking of oneness, the sense of oneness; by making each act a symbol, an expression of Godward emotion or a relation with the Divine; by turning all we do into an act of worship, an act of the soul's communion, the mind's understanding, the life's obedience, the heart's surrender.
  --
  It is to discover that at its supreme source, to bring it from within and to radiate it out up to the extreme confines of life that is turned the effort of the Yoga. All action, all creation must be turned into a form, a symbol of the cult, the adoration, the Sacrifice; it must carry something that makes it bear in it the stamp of a dedication, a reception and translation of the Divine Consciousness, a service of the Beloved, a self-giving, a surrender. This has to be done wherever possible in the outward body and form of the act; it must be done always in its inward emotion and an intensity that shows it to be an outflow from the soul towards the Eternal.
  In itself the adoration in the act is a great and complete and powerful Sacrifice that tends by its self-multiplication to reach the discovery of the One and make the radiation of the Divine possible. For devotion by its embodiment in acts not only makes its own way broad and full and dynamic, but brings at once into the harder way of works in the world the divinely passionate element of joy and love which is often absent in its beginning when it is only the austere spiritual Will that follows in a struggling uplifting tension the steep ascent, and the heart is still asleep or bound to silence. If the spirit of divine love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a sweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle. The indispensable surrender of all our will and works and activities to the Supreme is indeed only perfect and perfectly effective when it is a surrender of love. All life turned into this cult, all actions done in the love of the Divine and in the love of the world and its creatures seen and felt as the Divine manifested in many disguises become by that very fact part of an integral Yoga.
  It is the inner offering of the heart's adoration, the soul of it in the symbol, the spirit of it in the act, that is the very life of the Sacrifice. If this offering is to be complete and universal, then a turning of all our emotions to the Divine is imperative. This is the intensest way of purification for the human heart, more powerful than any ethical or aesthetic catharsis could ever be by its half-power and superficial pressure. A psychic fire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon it. In that fire all the emotions are compelled to cast off their grosser elements and those that are undivine perversions are burned away and the others discard their insufficiencies, till a spirit of largest love and a stainless divine delight arises out of the flame and smoke and frankincense. It is the divine love which so emerges that, extended in inward feeling to the Divine in man and all creatures in an active universal equality, will be more potent for the perfectibility of life and a more real instrument than the ineffective mental ideal of brotherhood can ever be. It is this poured out into acts that could alone create a harmony in the world and a true unity between all its creatures; all else strives in vain towards that end so long as Divine Love has not disclosed itself as the heart of the delivered manifestation in terrestrial Nature.
  It is here that the emergence of the secret psychic being in us as the leader of the Sacrifice is of the utmost importance; for this inmost being alone can bring with it the full power of the spirit in the act, the soul in the symbol. It alone can assure, even while the spiritual consciousness is incomplete, the perennial freshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol and prevent it from becoming a dead form or a corrupted and corrupting magic; it alone can preserve for the act its power with its significance. All the other members of our being, mind, life-force, physical or body consciousness, are too much under the control of the Ignorance to be a sure instrumentation and much less can they be a guide or the source of an unerring impulse. Always the greater part of the motive and action of these powers clings to the old law, the deceiving tablets, the cherished inferior movements of Nature and they meet with reluctance, alarm or revolt or obstructing inertia the voices and the forces that call and impel us to exceed and transform ourselves into a greater being and a wider Nature. In their major part the response is either a resistance or a qualified or temporising acquiescence; for even if they follow the call, they yet tend - when not consciously, then by automatic habit - to bring into the spiritual action their own natural disabilities and errors. At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Natureforces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of Sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim Sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind's and the life's falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind's ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure.
  And yet even the leading of the inmost psychic being is not found sufficient until it has succeeded in raising itself out of this mass of inferior Nature to the highest spiritual levels and the divine spark and flame descended here have rejoined themselves to their original fiery Ether. For there is there no longer a spiritual consciousness still imperfect and half lost to itself in the thick sheaths of human mind, life and body, but the full spiritual consciousness in its purity, freedom and intense wideness. There, as it is the eternal Knower that becomes the Knower in us and mover and user of all knowledge, so it is the eternal All-Blissful who is the Adored attracting to himself the eternal divine portion of his being and joy that has gone out into the play of the universe, the infinite Lover pouring himself out in the multiplicity of his own manifested selves in a happy Oneness.
  --
  Into the third and last category of the works of Sacrifice can be gathered all that is directly proper to the Yoga of works; for here is its direct field of effectuation and major province.
  It covers the entire range of life's more visible activities; under it fall the multiform energies of the Will-to-Life throwing itself outward to make the most of material existence. It is here that an ascetic or other-worldly spirituality feels an insurmountable denial of the Truth which it seeks after and is compelled to turn away from terrestrial existence, rejecting it as for ever the dark playground of an incurable Ignorance. Yet it is precisely these activities that are claimed for a spiritual conquest and divine transformation by the integral Yoga. Abandoned altogether by the more ascetic disciplines, accepted by others only as a field of temporary ordeal or a momentary, superficial and ambiguous play of the concealed spirit, this existence is fully embraced and welcomed by the integral seeker as a field of fulfilment, a field for divine works, a field of the total self-discovery of the concealed and indwelling spirit. A discovery of the Divinity in oneself is his first object, but a total discovery too of the Divinity in the world behind the apparent denial offered by its scheme and figures and, last, a total discovery of the dynamism of some transcendent Eternal; for by its descent this world and self will be empowered to break their disguising envelopes and become divine in revealing form and manifesting process as they now are secretly in their hidden essence.
  --
  The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2
  171
  --
  It is not possible to cut the difficulty by a splitting up of the works of Sacrifice; we cannot escape it by deciding that we shall
  The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2
  173
  --
  The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2
  175
  --
  These are the conditions and these must be the aims of the divine effectuation of the works of Life and their progressive transformation which is the third element of the triple Sacrifice.
  It is not a rationalisation but a supramentalisation, not a moralising but a spiritualising of life that is the object of the Yoga. It is not a handling of externals or superficial psychological motives that is its main purpose, but a refounding of life and its action on their hidden divine element; for only such a refounding of life can bring about its direct government by the secret Divine Power above us and its transfiguration into a manifest expression of the Divinity, not as now a disguise and a disfiguring mask of the eternal Actor. It is a spiritual essential change of consciousness, not the surface manipulation which is the method of Mind and
  --
  The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2
  177
  --
  The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2
  179
  --
  Spirit. Above all, the psychic being imposes on life the law of the Sacrifice of all its works as an offering to the Divine and the Eternal. Life becomes a call to that which is beyond Life; its every smallest act enlarges with the sense of the Infinite.
  As an inner equality increases and with it the sense of the true vital being waiting for the greater direction it has to serve, as the psychic call too increases in all the members of our nature, That to which the call is addressed begins to reveal itself, descends to take possession of the life and its energies and fills them with the height, intimacy, vastness of its presence and its purpose. In many, if not most, it manifests something of itself even before the equality and the open psychic urge or guidance are there. A call of the veiled psychic element oppressed by the mass of the outer ignorance and crying for deliverance, a stress of eager meditation and seeking for knowledge, a longing of the
  --
  The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2
  181
  --
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  183
  --
  But all this can only constitute a greater inner life with a greater possibility of the outer action and is a transitional achievement; the full transformation can come only by the ascent of the Sacrifice to its farthest heights and its action upon life with the power and light and beatitude of the divine supramental
  Gnosis. For then alone all the forces that are divided and express themselves imperfectly in life and its works are raised to their original unity, harmony, single truth, au thentic absoluteness and entire significance. There Knowledge and Will are one, Love and
  --
  The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2
  185
  --
  The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2
  187

1.06 - The Desire to be, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  From whence could be born the burning heats of love, the very flames of Sacrifice if there were not some brand of egoism to serve for their nourishment?
  Love is the soul of the Infinite; the finite can only rise out of it by opposing to it the contrary principle. But this opposition, however absolute it be, has for its point of support the principle of the Absolute itself and only conceals it under the veil of imperfect relativities. And however gross may be the forms of the partial manifestation, they bear in themselves an essential necessity of perfection. If there is no love that does not contain and consume for its fuel some kind of egoism, equally there is no worst egoism which is not a deformation of love to be transfigured by a progressive evolution into love that is perfect.

1.06 - The Four Powers of the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  6: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 Naturebody 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 through 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
  7:Four great Aspects of the Mother four of her leading Powers and Personalities have stood in front in her guidance of this universe and in her dealings with the terrestrial play. One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness. Another embodies her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force. A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace. The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact perfection in all things. Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, Perfection are their several attributes and it is these powers that they bring with them into the world, manifest in a human disguise in their Vibhutis and shall found in the divine degree of their ascension in those who can open their earthly nature to the direct and living influence of the Mother To the four we give the four great names, Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati.

1.06 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  The Blissful Mother's Lotus Feet are his whole prayer and Sacrifice.
  Who could ever have conceived the power Her name possesses?

1.06 - The Objective and Subjective Views of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  On the other hand, Science investigating life has equally discovered that not only is the individual life best secured and made efficient by association with others and subjection to a law of communal self-development rather than by aggressive self-affirmation, but that actually what Nature seeks to preserve is not the individual but the type and that in her scale of values the pack, herd, hive or swarm takes precedence over the individual animal or insect and the human group over the individual human being. Therefore in the true law and nature of things the individual should live for all and constantly subordinate and Sacrifice himself to the growth, efficiency and progress of the race rather than live for his own self-fulfilment and subordinate the race-life to his own needs. Modern collectivism derives its victorious strength from the impression made upon human thought by this opposite aspect of modern knowledge. We have seen how the German mind took up both these ideas and combined them on the basis of the present facts of human life: it affirmed the entire subordination of the individual to the community, nation or State; it affirmed, on the other hand, with equal force the egoistic self-assertion of the individual nation as against others or against any group or all the groups of nations which constitute the totality of the human race.
  But behind this conflict between the idea of a nationalistic and imperialistic egoism and the old individualistic doctrine of individual and national liberty and separateness, there is striving to arise a new idea of human universalism or collectivism for the race which, if it succeeds in becoming a power, is likely to overcome the ideal of national separatism and liberty as it has overcome within the society itself the ideal of individual freedom and separate self-fulfilment. This new idea demands of the nation that it shall subordinate, if not merge and Sacrifice, its free separateness to the life of a larger collectivity, whether that of an imperialistic group or a continental or cultural unity, as in the idea of a united Europe, or the total united life of the human race.
  The principle of subjectivism entering into human thought and action, while necessarily it must make a great difference in the view-point, the motive-power and the character of our living, does not at first appear to make any difference in its factors. Subjectivism and objectivism start from the same data, the individual and the collectivity, the complex nature of each with its various powers of the mind, life and body and the search for the law of their self-fulfilment and harmony. But objectivism proceeding by the analytical reason takes an external and mechanical view of the whole problem. It looks at the world as a thing, an object, a process to be studied by an observing reason which places itself abstractly outside the elements and the sum of what it has to consider and observes it thus from outside as one would an intricate mechanism. The laws of this process are considered as so many mechanical rules or settled forces acting upon the individual or the group which, when they have been observed and distinguished by the reason, have by ones will or by some will to be organised and applied fully much as Science applies the laws it discovers. These laws or rules have to be imposed on the individual by his own abstract reason and will isolated as a ruling authority from his other parts or by the reason and will of other individuals or of the group, and they have to be imposed on the group itself either by its own collective reason and will embodied in some machinery of control which the mind considers as something apart from the life of the group or by the reason and will of some other group external to it or of which it is in some way a part. So the State is viewed in modern political thought as an entity in itself, as if it were something apart from the community and its individuals, something which has the right to impose itself on them and control them in the fulfilment of some idea of right, good or interest which is inflicted on them by a restraining and fashioning power rather than developed in them and by them as a thing towards which their self and nature are impelled to grow. Life is to be managed, harmonised, perfected by an adjustment, a manipulation, a machinery through which it is passed and by which it is shaped. A law outside oneself,outside even when it is discovered or determined by the individual reason and accepted or enforced by the individual will,this is the governing idea of objectivism; a mechanical process of management, ordering, perfection, this is its conception of practice.
  --
  But still there is the question of the truth of the self, what it is, where is its real abiding-place; and here subjectivism has to deal with the same factors as the objective view of life and existence. We may concentrate on the individual life and consciousness as the self and regard its power, freedom, increasing light and satisfaction and joy as the object of living and thus arrive at a subjective individualism. We may, on the other hand, lay stress on the group consciousness, the collective self; we may see man only as an expression of this group-self necessarily incomplete in his individual or separate being, complete only by that larger entity, and we may wish to subordinate the life of the individual man to the growing power, efficiency, knowledge, happiness, self-fulfilment of the race or even Sacrifice it and consider it as nothing except in so far as it lends itself to the life and growth of the community or the kind. We may claim to exercise a righteous oppression on the individual and teach him intellectually and practically that he has no claim to exist, no right to fulfil himself except in his relations to the collectivity. These alone then are to determine his thought, action and existence and the claim of the individual to have a law of his own being, a law of his own nature which he has a right to fulfil and his demand for freedom of thought involving necessarily the freedom to err and for freedom of action involving necessarily the freedom to stumble and sin may be regarded as an insolence and a chimera. The collective self-consciousness will then have the right to invade at every point the life of the individual, to refuse to it all privacy and apartness, all self-concentration and isolation, all independence and self-guidance and determine everything for it by what it conceives to be the best thought and highest will and rightly dominant feeling, tendency, sense of need, desire for self-satisfaction of the collectivity.
  But also we may enlarge the idea of the self and, as objective Science sees a universal force of Nature which is the one reality and of which everything is the process, we may come subjectively to the realisation of a universal Being or Existence which fulfils itself in the world and the individual and the group with an impartial regard for all as equal powers of its self-manifestation. This is obviously the self-knowledge which is most likely to be right, since it most comprehensively embraces and accounts for the various aspects of the world-process and the eternal tendencies of humanity. In this view neither the separate growth of the individual nor the all-absorbing growth of the group can be the ideal, but an equal, simultaneous and, as far as may be, parallel development of both, in which each helps to fulfil the other. Each being has his own truth of independent self-realisation and his truth of self-realisation in the life of others and should feel, desire, help, participate more and more, as he grows in largeness and power, in the harmonious and natural growth of all the individual selves and all the collective selves of the one universal Being. These two, when properly viewed, would not be separate, opposite or really conflicting lines of tendency, but the same impulse of the one common existence, companion movements separating only to return upon each other in a richer and larger unity and mutual consequence.

1.06 - The Sign of the Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  brothers, Horus and Set, the Sacrificer and the Sacrificed (cf.
  n. 27, on Set's "martyrdom"), who in a sense prefigure the drama
  --
  who is Sacrificed on the "slave's post." 40 But the pair of brothers
  Heru-ur (the "older Horus") and Set are sometimes pictured as
  --
  that ram by the offering whereof was made a complete Sacrifice in typical
  blood . . . who was prefigured thereby but Jesus . . . ?" For the Lamb as
  --
  the form of the old Sacrifice of the seasonal god. Significantly
  enough, Jesus's partner in the ceremony is called Barabbas, "son
  --
  fish and was Sacrificed as a ram, who had fishermen for disciples
  and wanted to make them fishers of men, who fed the multitude

1.07 - BOOK THE SEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  To Sacrifice the most perfidious wife.
  Revenge is swift, but her more active charms
  --
  Before the altars fall, themselves a Sacrifice:
  They fall, while yet their hands the gums contain,

1.07 - Hymn of Paruchchhepa, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2. Thee most powerful for Sacrifice, as givers of Sacrifice may
  we call, the eldest of the Angirases, the Illumined One, call
  --
  eye of intuition of the Sacrifice in its due action; so all men
  follow with pleasure the path of this joyful and joy-giving

1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  and Sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual; and
  magic, which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal, is
  --
  find that Sacrifice and prayer are the resource of the pious and
  enlightened portion of the community, while magic is the refuge of
  --
  sucking the fresh blood of a Sacrificed victim. In the temple of
  Apollo Diradiotes at Argos, a lamb was Sacrificed by night once a
  month; a woman, who had to observe a rule of chastity, tasted the
  --
  of prayer and Sacrifice. Sometimes these human gods are restricted
  to purely supernatural or spiritual functions. Sometimes they
  --
  disease or death. Human Sacrifices were offered to them to avert
  their wrath. There were not many of them, at the most one or two in
  --
  god; only on days when human victims were Sacrificed might ordinary
  people penetrate into the precinct. This human god received more
  --
  their father's will by offering Sacrifice for recovery, but openly
  declared that he had called them to his rest. Issuing from the
  --
  sanctuaries and commanded the people to Sacrifice to them; the
  eighth month was especially dedicated to the kings, and Sacrifices
  were offered to them at the new moon and on the fifteenth of each
  --
  The kings of Egypt were deified in their lifetime, Sacrifices were
  offered to them, and their worship was celebrated in special temples
  --
  occult arts in preference to the newer ritual of Sacrifice and
  prayer; and in time the more sagacious of their number perceive the

1.07 - Note on the word Go, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The next passage to which I shall turn is the eighth verse of the eighth hymn, also to Indra, in which occurs the expression , a passage which when taken in the plain and ordinary sense of the epithets sheds a great light on the nature of Mahi. Sunrita means really true and is opposed to anrita, false for in the early Aryan speech su and s would equally signify, well, good, very; and the euphonic n is of a very ancient type of sandhioriginally, it was probably no more than a strong anuswartraces of which can still be found in Tamil; in the case of su this n euphonic seems to have been dropped after the movement of the literary Aryan tongue towards the modern principle of Sandhi,a movement the imperfect progress of which we see in the Vedas; but by that time the form an, composed of privative a and the euphonic n, had become a recognised alternative form to a and the omission of the n would have left the meaning of words very ambiguous; therefore n was preserved in the negative form, omitted from the affirmative where its omission caused no inconvenience,for to write gni instead of anagni would be confusing, but to write svagni instead of sunagni would create no confusion. In the pair sunrita and anrita it is probable that the usage had become so confirmed, so much of an almost technical phraseology, that confirmed habit prevailed over new rule. The second meaning of the word is auspicious, derived from the idea good or beneficent in its regular action. The Vedic scholars give a third sense, quick, active; but this is probably due to confusion with an originally distinct word derived from the root , to move on rapidly, to be strong, swift, active from which we have to dance, & strong and a number of other derivatives, for although ri means to go, it does not appear that rita was used in the sense of motion or swiftness. In any case our choice (apart from unnecessary ingenuities) lies here between auspicious and true. If we take Mahi in the sense of earth, the first is its simplest & most natural significance.We shall have then to translate the earth auspicious (or might it mean true in the sense observing the law of the seasons), wide-watered, full of cows becomes like a ripe branch to the giver. This gives a clear connected sense, although gross and pedestrian and open to the objection that it has no natural and inevitable connection with the preceding verses. My objection is that sunrita and gomati seem to me to have in the Veda a different and deeper sense and that the whole passage becomes not only ennobled in sense, but clearer & more connected in sense if we give them that deeper significance. Gomatir ushasah in Kutsas hymn to the Dawn is certainly the luminous dawns; Saraswati in the third hymn who as chodayitri sunritanam chetanti sumatinam shines pervading all the actions of the understanding, certainly does so because she is the impeller to high truths, the awakener to right thoughts, clear perceptions and not because she is the impeller of things auspiciousa phrase which would have no sense or appropriateness to the context. Mahi is one of the three goddesses Ila, Saraswati and Mahi who are described as tisro devir mayobhuvah, the three goddesses born of delight or Ananda, and her companions being goddesses of knowledge, children of Mahas, she also must be a goddess of knowledge, not the earth; the word mahi also bears the sense of knowledge, intellect, and Mahas undoubtedly refers in many passages to the vijnana or supra-rational level of consciousness, the fourth Vyahriti of the Taittiriya Upanishad. What then prevents us from taking Mahi, here as there, in the sense of the goddess of suprarational knowledge or, if taken objectively, the world of Mahat? Nothing, except a tradition born in classical times when mahi was the earth and the new Nature-worship theory. In this sense I shall take it. I translate the line For thus Mahi the true, manifest in action, luminous becomes like a ripe branch to the giveror, again in better English, For thus Mahi the perfect in truth, manifesting herself in action, full of illumination, becomes as a ripe branch to the giver. For the Yogin again the sense is clear. All things are contained in the Mahat, derived from the Mahat, depend on theMahat, but we here in the movement of the alpam, have not our desire, are blinded & confined, enjoy an imperfect, erroneous & usually baffled & futile activity. It is only when we regain the movement of the Mahat, the large & uncontracted consciousness that comes from rising to the infinite,it is only then that we escape from this limitation. She is perfect in truth, full of illumination; error and ignorance disappear; she manifests herself virapshi in a wide & various activity; our activities are enlarged, our desires are fulfilled. The connection with the preceding stanzas becomes clear. The Vritras, the great obstructors & upholders of limitation, are slain by the help of Indra, by the result of the yajnartham karma, by alliance with the armed gods in mighty internal battle; Indra, the god within our mental force, manifests himself as supreme and full of the nature of ideal truth from which his greatness weaponed with the vajra, vidyut or electric principle, derives (mahitwam astu vajrine). The mind, instinct with amrita, is then full of equality, samata; it drinks in the flood of activity of all kinds as the sea takes in the rivers. For the condition then results in which the ideal consciousness Mahi is like a ripe branch to the giver, when all powers & expansions of being at once (without obstacle as the Vritras are slain) become active in consciousness as masterful and effective knowledge or awareness (chit). This is the process prayed for by the poet. The whole hymn becomes a consecutive & intelligible whole, a single thought worked out logically & coherently and relating with perfect accuracy of ensemble & detail to one of the commonest experiences of Yogic fulfilment. In both these passages the faithful adherence to the intimations of language, Vedantic idea & Yogic experience have shed a flood of light, illuminating the obscurity of the Vedas, bringing coherence into the incoherence of the naturalistic explanation, close & strict logic, great depth of meaning with great simplicity of expression, and, as I shall show when I take up the final interpretation of the separate hymns, a rational meaning & reason of existence in that particular place for each word & phrase and a faultless & inevitable connection with what goes before & with what goes after. It is worth noticing that by the naturalistic interpretation one can indeed generally make out a meaning, often a clear or fluent sense for the separate verses of the Veda, but the ensemble of the hymn has almost always about it an air bizarre, artificial, incoherent, almost purposeless, frequently illogical and self-contradictoryas in Max Mullers translation of the 39th hymn, Kanwas to the Maruts,never straightforward, self-assured & easy. One would expect in these primitive writers,if they are primitive,crudeness of belief perhaps, but still plainness of expression and a simple development of thought. One finds instead everything tortuous, rugged, gnarled, obscure, great emptiness with great pretentiousness of mind, a labour of diction & development which seems to be striving towards great things & effecting a nullity. The Vedic singers, in the modern version, have nothing to say and do not know how to say it. I Sacrifice, you drink, you are fine fellows, dont hurt me or let others hurt me, hurt my enemies, make me safe & comfortablethis is practically all that the ten Mandalas have to say to the gods & it is astonishing that they should be utterly at a loss how to say it intelligibly. A system which yields such results must have at its root some radical falsity, some cardinal error.
  I pass now to a third passage, also instructive, also full of that depth and fine knowledge of the movements of the higher consciousness which every Yogin must find in the Veda. It is in the 9th hymn of the Mandala and forms the seventh verse of that hymn. Sam gomad Indra vajavad asme prithu sravo brihat, visvayur dhehi akshitam. The only crucial question in this verse is the signification of sravas.With our modern ideas the sentence seems to us to demand that sravas should be translated here fame. Sravas is undoubtedly the same word as the Greek xo (originally xFo); it means a thing heard, rumour, report, & thence fame. If we take it in that sense, we shall have to translate Arrange for us, O universal life, a luminous and solid, wide & great fame unimpaired. I dismiss at once the idea that go & vaja can here signify cattle and food or wealth. A herded & fooded or wealthy fame to express a fame for wealth of cattle & food is a forceful turn of expression we might expect to find in Aeschylus or in Shakespeare; but I should hesitate, except in case of clear necessity, to admit it in the Veda or in any Sanscrit style of composition; for such expressions have always been alien to the Indian intellect. Our stylistic vagaries have been of another kind. But is luminous & solid fame much better? I shall suggest another meaning for sravas which will give as usual a deeper sense to the whole passage without our needing to depart by a hairs breadth from the etymological significance of the words. Sruti in Sanscrit is a technical term, originally, for the means by which Vedic knowledge is acquired, inspiration in the suprarational mind; srutam is the knowledge of Veda. Similarly, we have in Vedic Sanscrit the forms srut and sravas. I take srut to mean inspired knowledge in the act of reception, sravas the thing acquired by the reception, inspired knowledge. Gomad immediately assumes its usual meaning illuminated, full of illumination. Vaja I take throughout the Veda as a technical Vedic expression for that substantiality of being-consciousness which is the basis of all special manifestation of being & power, all utayah & vibhutayahit means by etymology extended being in force, va or v to exist or move in extension and the vocable j which always gives the idea of force or brilliance or decisiveness in action or manifestation or contact. I shall accept no meaning which is inconsistent with this fundamental significance. Moreover the tendency of the old commentators to make all possible words, vaja, ritam etc mean Sacrifice or food, must be rejected,although a justification in etymology might always be made out for the effort. Vaja means substance in being, substance, plenty, strength, solidity, steadfastness. Here it obviously means full of substance, just as gomad full of luminousness,not in the sense arthavat, but with another & psychological connotation. I translate then, O Indra, life of all, order for us an inspired knowledge full of illumination & substance, wide & great and unimpaired. Anyone acquainted with Yoga will at once be struck by the peculiar & exact appropriateness of all these epithets; they will admit him at once by sympathy into the very heart of Madhuchchhandas experience & unite him in soul with that ancient son of Visvamitra. When Mahas, the supra-rational principle, begins with some clearness to work in Yoga, not on its own level, not swe dame, but in the mind, it works at first through the principle of Srutinot Smriti or Drishti, but this Sruti is feeble & limited in its range, it is not prithu; broken & scattered in its working even when the range is wide, not unlimited in continuity, not brihat; not pouring in a flood of light, not gomat, but coming as a flash in the darkness, often with a pale glimmer like the first feebleness of dawn; not supported by a strong steady force & foundation of being, Sat, in manifestation, not vajavad, but working without foundation, in a void, like secondh and glimpses of Sat in nothingness, in vacuum, in Asat; and, therefore, easily impaired, easily lost hold of, easily stolen by the Panis or the Vritras. All these defects Madhuchchhanda has noticed in his own experience; his prayer is for an inspired knowledge which shall be full & free & perfect, not marred even in a small degree by these deficiencies.
  The combination of go & vaja occurs again in the eleventh hymn where the seer writes Purvir Indrasya ratayo na vi dasyanti utayah, yadi vajasya gomatah stotribhyo manhate magham. The former delights of Indra, those first established his (new &larger) expansions of being do not destroy or scatter, when to his praisers he enlarges the mass of their illuminated substance or strength of being. Here again we have Madhuchchhandas deep experience & his fine & subtle knowledge. It is a common experience in Yoga that the ananda and siddhi first established, is destroyed in the effort or movement towards a larger fullness of being, knowledge or delight, and a period of crisis intervenes in which there is a rending & scattering of joy & light, a period of darkness, confusion & trouble painful to all & dangerous except to the strongest. Can these crises, difficulties, perilous conditions of soul be avoided? Yes, says Madhuchchhandas in effect, when you deliver yourself with devotion into the care of Indra, he comes to your help, he removes that limitation, that concentration in detail, in the alpam, the little, that consequent necessity of losing hold of one thing in order to give yourself to another, he increases the magha, the vijnanamay state of mahattwa or relative non-limitation in the finite which shows itself by an increase of fundamental force of being filled with higher illumination. That support of vaja prevents us from falling from what we have gained; there is sufficient substance of being expressed in us to provide for the new utayah without sacrificing the joys already established; there is sufficient luminousness of mind to prevent darkness, obscuration & misery supervening. Thus we see still the same symbolic sense, the same depth, the same experience as true to the Yogin today as to Madhuchchhandas thousands of years ago.

1.07 - Production of the mind-born sons of Brahma, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  ga, Marīci springs from Brahmā's eyes, not Atri, who there proceeds, instead of Pulastya, from his ears. The Vāyu has also another account of their origin, and states them to have sprung from the fires of a Sacrifice offered by Brahmā; an allegorical mode of expressing their probable original, considering them to be in some degree real persons, from the Brahmanical ritual, of which they were the first institutors and observers. The Vāyu P. also states, that besides the seven primitive Ṛṣis, the Prajāpatis are numerous, and specifies Kardama, Kaśyapa, Śeṣa, Vikrānta, Susravas, Bahuputra, Kumāra, Vivaswat, Suchisravas, Prācetasa (Dakṣa), Aṛṣṭanemi, Bahula. These and many others were Prajāpatis. In the beginning of the Mahābhārata (A. P.) we have again a different origin, and first Dakṣa, the son of Pracetas, it is said, had seven sons, after whom the twenty-one Prajāpatis were born, or appeared. According to the commentator, the seven sons of Dakṣa were the allegorical persons Krodha, Tamas, Dama, Vikrita, A
  giras, Kardama, and Aswa; and the twenty-one Prajāpatis, the seven usually specified Marīci and the rest, and the fourteen Manus. This looks like a blending of the earlier and later notions.

1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "There is another kind of bhakti, known as vaidhibhakti, according to which one must repeat the name of God a fixed number of times, fast, make pilgrimages, worship God with prescribed offerings, make so many Sacrifices, and so forth and so on. By continuing such practices a long time one gradually acquires raga-bhakti. God cannot be realized until one has raga-bhakti. One must love God. In order to realize God one must be completely free from worldliness and direct all of one's mind to Him.
  "But some acquire raga-bhakti directly. It is innate in them. They have it from their very childhood. Even at an early age they weep for God. An instance of such bhakti is to be found in Prahlada. Vaidhibhakti is like moving a fan to make a breeze. One needs the fan to make the breeze. Similarly, one practises japa, austerity, and fasting, in order to acquire love of God. But the fan is set aside when the southern breeze blows of
  --
  O Lord, is it ever possible to know Thee without love, However much one may perform worship and Sacrifice?
  "If the devotee but once feels this attachment and ecstatic love for God, this mature devotion and longing, then he sees God in both His aspects, with form and without form."

1.07 - The Three Schools of Magick 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  This School being debased by nature, is not so far removed from conventional religion as either the White or the Yellow. Most primitive fetishistic religions may, in fact, be considered fairly faithful representatives of this philosophy. Where animism holds sway, the "medicine-man" personifies this universal evil, and seeks to propitiate it by human Sacrifice. The early forms of Judaism, and that type of Christianity which we associate with the Salvation Army, Billy Sunday and the Fundamentalists of the back-blocks of America, are sufficiently simple cases of religion whose essence is the propitiation of a malignant demon.
  When the light of intelligence begins to dawn dimly through many fogs upon these savages, we reach a second stage. Bold spirits master courage to assert that the evil which is so obvious, is, in some mysterious way, an illusion. They thus throw back the whole complexity of sorrow to a single cause; that is, the arising of the illusion aforesaid. The problem then assumes a final form: How is that illusion to be destroyed.

1.089 - The Levels of Concentration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  The next sutra, which follows the descriptions given earlier, is tasya bhmiu viniyoga (III.6). The practice of absorption has to be applied to the different stages, or by different stages. The adjustment of thought in samyama is a total reconstitution of the mind, and it has to adapt itself in every way to the nature of the object of samyama. There should not be even the least tinge of personality or self-affirmativeness when this adjustment with the object is called for. We know very well that even to be a good friend, we have to do a lot of Sacrifice. We cannot be an adamant egoist and then be a good friend of anybody, because friendship with anyone implies a capacity to adjust oneself with the living conditions of another person. If we stick to our own guns, we cannot have any friends.
  Hence, this samyama is nothing but an entertainment of utter friendship with the object and not merely friendship, but actual communion with the object. For this purpose, it is necessary to understand the nature of the object. If we do not know our friend, we cannot be a good friend to that person. The body, mind, soul and every type of environment of a person is to be understood very carefully, in every detail, in order that the friendship may be permanent. Likewise, the inner structure of the object physical, subtle, as well as causal has to be grasped very well before samyama is attempted on the object.

1.08 - BOOK THE EIGHTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  Her, whose fond love to thee cou'd Sacrifice
  Her country, and her parent, sacred ties!
  --
  Receive, she said, a sister's Sacrifice;
  A mother's bowels burn: high in her hand,
  --
  Whom to the Gods for Sacrifice they vow:
  Her with malicious zeal the couple view'd;

1.08 - Departmental Kings of Nature, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  marriages, festivals, and Sacrifices in honour of the _Yan_ or
  spirit. On these occasions a special place is set apart for him; and
  --
  To this wondrous brand Sacrifices of buffaloes, pigs, fowls, and
  ducks are offered for rain. It is kept swathed in cotton and silk;

1.08 - Origin of Rudra: his becoming eight Rudras, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  Origin of Rudra: his becoming eight Rudras: their wives and children. The posterity of Bhrigu. Account of Śrī in conjunction with Viṣṇu. Sacrifice of Dakṣa.
  Parāśara said:-
  --
  Śrī, the bride of Viṣṇu, the mother of the world, is eternal, imperishable; in like manner as he is all-pervading, so also is she, oh best of Brahmans, omnipresent. Viṣṇu is meaning; she is speech. Hari is polity (Naya); she is prudence (Nīti). Viṣṇu is understanding; she is intellect. He is righteousness; she is devotion. He is the creator; she is creation. Śrī is the earth; Hari the support of it. The deity is content; the eternal Lakṣmī is resignation. He is desire; Śrī is wish. He is Sacrifice; she is sacrificial donation (Dakṣinā). The goddess is the invocation which attends the oblation; Janārddana is the oblation. Lakṣmī is the chamber where the females are present (at a religious ceremony); Madhusūdana the apartment of the males of the family. Lakṣmī is the altar; Hari the stake (to which the victim is bound). Śrī is the fuel; Hari the holy grass (Kuśa). He is the personified Sāma veda; the goddess, lotus-throned, is the tone of its chanting. Lakṣmī is the prayer of oblation (Svāhā); Vāsudeva, the lord of the world, is the sacrificial fire. Saurī (Viṣṇu) is Śa
  kara (Śiva); and Śrī is the bride of Śiva (Gaurī). Keśava, oh Maitreya, is the sun; and his radiance is the lotus-seated goddess. Viṣṇu is the tribe of progenitors (Pitrigana); Padma. is their bride (Swadhā), the eternal bestower of nutriment. Śrī is the heavens; Viṣṇu, who is one with all things, is wide extended space. The lord of Śrī is the moon; she is his unfading light. She is called the moving principle of the world; he, the wind which bloweth every where. Govinda is the ocean; Lakṣmī its shore. Lakṣmī is the consort of Indra (Indrānī); Madhusūdana is Devendra. The holder of the discus (Viṣṇu) is Yama (the regent of Tartarus); the lotus-throned goddess is his dusky spouse (Dhūmornā). Śrī is wealth; Śridhara (Viṣṇu) is himself the god of riches (Kuvera). Lakṣmī, illustrious Brahman, is Gaurī; and Keśava, is the deity of ocean (Varuna). Śrī is the host of heaven (Devasenā); the deity of war, her lord, is Hari. The wielder of the mace is resistance; the power to oppose is Śrī. Lakṣmī is the Kāṣṭhā and the Kalā; Hari the Nimeṣa and the Muhūrtta. Lakṣmī is the light; and Hari, who is all, and lord of all, the lamp. She, the mother of the world, is the creeping vine; and Viṣṇu the tree round which she clings. She is the night; the god who is armed with the mace and discus is the day. He, the bestower of blessings, is the bridegroom; the lotus-throned goddess is the bride.
  --
  ga, and Vāyu agree with our text in the nomenclature of the Rudras, and their types, their wives, and progeny. The types are those which are enumerated in the Nāndī, p. 59 or opening benedictory verse, of Sakuntalā; and the passage of the Viṣṇu P. was found by Mons. Chezy on the envelope of his copy. He has justly corrected Sir Wm. Jones's version of the term ### 'the Sacrifice is performed with solemnity;' as the word means, 'Brahmane officiant,' 'the Brāhmaṇ who is qualified by initiation (Dīkṣā) to conduct the rite.' These are considered as the bodies, or visible forms, of those modifications of Rudra which are variously named, and which, being praised in them, severally abstain from harming them: ### Vāyu P. The Bhāgavata, III. 12, has a different scheme, as usual; but it confounds the notion of the eleven Rudras, to whom the text subsequently adverts, with that of the eight here specified. These eleven it terms Manyu, Manu, Mahīnasa, Mahān, Siva, Ritadhwaja, Ugraretas, Bhava, Kāla, Vāmadeva, and Dhritavrata: their wives are, Dhī, Dhriti, Rasalomā, Niyut, Sarpī, Ilā, Ambikā, Irāvatī, Swadhā, Dīkṣā, Rudrānī: and their places are, the heart, senses, breath, ether, air, fire, water, earth, sun, moon, and tapas, or ascetic devotion. The same allegory or mystification characterises both accounts.
  [5]: See the story of Dakṣa's Sacrifice at the end of the chapter.
  [6]: The story of Umā's birth and marriage occurs in the Śiva P. and in the Kāśī Khanda of the Skanda P.: it is noticed briefly, and with some variation from the Purāṇas, in the Rāmāyaṇa, first book: it is also given in detail in the Kumāra Sambhava of Kālidāsa.
  --
  "In former times, Dakṣa commenced a holy Sacrifice on the side of Himavān, at the sacred spot Ga
  gadvāra, frequented by the Ṛṣis. The gods, desirous of assisting at this solemn rite, came, with Indra at their head, to Mahādeva, and intimated their purpose; and having received his permission, departed in their splendid chariots to Ga
  --
  kara, this Sacrifice of Dakṣa will not be completed.' Dakṣa spake; I offer, in a golden cup, this entire oblation, which has been consecrated by many prayers, as an offering ever due to the unequalled Viṣṇu, the sovereign lord of all[3].'
  "In the meanwhile, the virtuous daughter of the mountain king, observing the departure of the divinities, addressed her lord, the god of living beings, and said-Umā spake-'Whither, oh lord, have the gods, preceded by Indra, this day departed? Tell me truly, oh thou who knowest all truth, for a great doubt perplexes me.' Maheśvara spake; Illustrious goddess, the excellent patriarch Dakṣa celebrates the Sacrifice of a horse, and thither the gods repair.' Devī spake; Why then, most mighty god, dost thou also not proceed to this solemnity? by what hinderance is thy progress thither impeded?' Maheśvara spake; 'This is the contrivance, mighty queen, of all the gods, that in all Sacrifices no portion should be assigned to me. In consequence of an arrangement formerly devised, the gods allow me, of right, no participation of sacrificial offerings.' Devī spake; 'The lord god lives in all bodily forms, and his might is eminent through his superior faculties; he is unsurpassable, he is unapproachable, in splendour and glory and power. That such as he should be excluded from his share of oblations, fills me with deep sorrow, and a trembling, oh sinless, seizes upon my frame. Shall I now practise bounty, restraint, or penance, so that my lord, who is inconceivable, may obtain a share, a half or a third portion, of the Sacrifice[4]?'
  "Then the mighty and incomprehensible deity, being pleased, said to his bride, thus agitated; and speaking; 'Slender-waisted queen of the gods, thou knowest not the purport of what thou sayest; but I know it, oh thou with large eyes, for the holy declare all things by meditation. By thy perplexity this day are all the gods, with Mahendra and all the three worlds, utterly confounded. In my Sacrifice, those who worship me, repeat my praises, and chant the Rathantara song of the Sāma veda; my priests worship me in the Sacrifice of true wisdom, where no officiating Brahman is needed; and in this they offer me my portion.' Devī spake; 'The lord is the root of all, and assuredly, in every assemblage of the female world, praises or hides himself at will.' Mahādeva spake; 'Queen of the gods, I praise not myself: approach, and behold whom I shall create for the purpose of claiming my share of the rite.'
  "Having thus spoken to his beloved spouse, the mighty Maheśvara created from his mouth a being like the fire of fate; a divine being, with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet; wielding a thousand clubs, a thousand shafts; holding the shell, the discus, the mace, and bearing a blazing bow and battle-axe; fierce and terrific, shining with dreadful splendour, and decorated with the crescent moon; clothed in a tiger's skin, dripping with blood; having a capacious stomach, and a vast mouth, armed with formidable tusks: his ears were erect, his lips were pendulous, his tongue was lightning; his hand brandished the thunderbolt; flames streamed from his hair; a necklace of pearls wound round his neck; a garland of flame descended on his breast: radiant with lustre, he looked like the final fire that consumes the world. Four tremendous tusks projected from a mouth which extended from ear to ear: he was of vast bulk, vast strength, a mighty male and lord, the destroyer of the universe, and like a large fig-tree in circumference; shining like a hundred moons at once; fierce as the fire of love; having four heads, sharp white teeth, and of mighty fierceness, vigour, activity, and courage; glowing with the blaze of a thousand fiery suns at the end of the world; like a thousand undimmed moons: in bulk like Himādri, Kailāsa, or Meru, or Mandara, with all its gleaming herbs; bright as the sun of destruction at the end of ages; of irresistible prowess, and beautiful aspect; irascible, with lowering eyes, and a countenance burning like fire; clothed in the hide of the elephant and lion, and girt round with snakes; wearing a turban on his head, a moon on his brow; sometimes savage, sometimes mild; having a chaplet of many flowers on his head, anointed with various unguents, and adorned with different ornaments and many sorts of jewels; wearing a garland of heavenly Karnikāra flowers, and rolling his eyes with rage. Sometimes he danced; sometimes he laughed aloud; sometimes he stood wrapt in meditation; sometimes he trampled upon the earth; sometimes he sang; sometimes he wept repeatedly: and he was endowed with the faculties of wisdom, dispassion, power, penance, truth, endurance, fortitude, dominion, and self-knowledge.
  "This being, then, knelt down upon the ground, and raising his hands respectfully to his head, said to Mahādeva, 'Sovereign of the gods, command what it is that I must do for thee.' To which Maheśvara replied, Spoil the Sacrifice of Dakṣa.' Then the mighty Vīrabhadra, having heard the pleasure of his lord, bowed down his head to the feet of Prajāpati; and starting like a lion loosed from bonds, despoiled the Sacrifice of Dakṣa, knowing that the had been created by the displeasure of Devī. She too in her wrath, as the fearful goddess Rudrakālī, accompanied him, with all her train, to witness his deeds. Vīrabhadra the fierce, abiding in the region of ghosts, is the minister of the anger of Devī. And he then created, from the pores of his skin, powerful demigods, the mighty attendants upon Rudra, of equal valour and strength, who started by hundreds and thousands into existence. Then a loud and confused clamour filled all the expanse of ether, and inspired the denizens of heaven with dread. The mountains tottered, and earth shook; the winds roared, and the depths of the sea were disturbed; the fires lost their radiance, and the sun grew pale; the planets of the firmament shone not, neither did the stars give light; the Ṛṣis ceased their hymns, and gods and demons were mute; and thick darkness eclipsed the chariots of the skies[5].
  "Then from the gloom emerged fearful and numerous forms, shouting the cry of battle; who instantly broke or overturned the sacrificial columns, trampled upon the altars, and danced amidst the oblations. Running wildly hither and thither, with the speed of wind, they tossed about the implements and vessels of Sacrifice, which looked like stars precipitated from the heavens. The piles of food and beverage for the gods, which had been heaped up like mountains; the rivers of milk; the banks of curds and butter; the sands of honey and butter-milk and sugar; the mounds of condiments and spices of every flavour; the undulating knolls of flesh and other viands; the celestial liquors, pastes, and confections, which had been prepared; these the spirits of wrath devoured or defiled or scattered abroad. Then falling upon the host of the gods, these vast and resistless Rudras beat or terrified them, mocked and insulted the nymphs and goddesses, and quickly put an end to the rite, although defended by all the gods; being the ministers of Rudra's wrath, and similar to himself[6]. Some then made a hideous clamour, whilst others fearfully shouted, when Yajña was decapitated. For the divine Yajña, the lord of Sacrifice, then began to fly up to heaven, in the shape of a deer; and Vīrabhadra, of immeasurable spirit, apprehending his power, cut off his vast head, after he had mounted into the sky[7]. Dakṣa the patriarch, his Sacrifice being destroyed, overcome with terror, and utterly broken in spirit, fell then upon the ground, where his head was spurned by the feet of the cruel Vīrabhadra[8]. The thirty scores of sacred divinities were all presently bound, with a band of fire, by their lion-like foe; and they all then addressed him, crying, 'Oh Rudra, have mercy upon thy servants: oh lord, dismiss thine anger.' Thus spake Brahmā and the other gods, and the patriarch Dakṣa; and raising their hands, they said, 'Declare, mighty being, who thou art.' Vīrabhadra said, 'I am not a god, nor an Āditya; nor am I come hither for enjoyment, nor curious to behold the chiefs of the divinities: know that I am come to destroy the Sacrifice of Dakṣa, and that I am called Vīrabhadra, the issue of the wrath of Rudra. Bhadrakālī also, who has sprung from the anger of Devī, is sent here by the god of gods to destroy this rite. Take refuge, king of kings, with him who is the lord of Umā; for better is the anger of Rudra than the blessings of other gods.'
  "Having heard the words of Vīrabhadra, the righteous Dakṣa propitiated the mighty god, the holder of the trident, Maheśvara. The hearth of Sacrifice, deserted by the Brahmans, had been consumed; Yajña had been metamorphosed to an antelope; the fires of Rudra's wrath had been kindled; the attendants, wounded by the tridents of the servants of the god, were groaning with pain; the pieces of the uprooted sacrificial posts were scattered here and there; and the fragments of the meat-offerings were carried off by flights of hungry vultures, and herds of howling jackals. Suppressing his vital airs, and taking up a posture of meditation, the many-sighted victor of his foes, Dakṣa fixed his eyes every where upon his thoughts. Then the god of gods appeared from the altar, resplendent as a thousand suns, and smiled upon him, and said, 'Dakṣa, thy Sacrifice has been destroyed through sacred knowledge: I am well pleased with thee:' and then he smiled again, and said, 'What shall I do for thee; declare, together with the preceptor of the gods.'
  "Then Dakṣa, frightened, alarmed, and agitated, his eyes suffused with tears, raised his hands reverentially to his brow, and said, 'If, lord, thou art pleased; if I have found favour in thy sight; if I am to be the object of thy benevolence; if thou wilt confer upon me a boon, this is the blessing I solicit, that all these provisions for the solemn Sacrifice, which have been collected with much trouble and during a long time, and which have now been eaten, drunk, devoured, burnt, broken, scattered abroad, may not have been prepared in vain.' 'So let it be,' replied Hara, the subduer of Indra. And thereupon Dakṣa knelt down upon the earth, and praised gratefully the author of righteousness, the three-eyed god Mahādeva, repeating the eight thousand names of the deity whose emblem is a bull."
  Footnotes and references:
  [1]: The Sacrifice of Dakṣa is a legend of some interest, from its historical and archeological relations. It is obviously intended to intimate a struggle between the worshippers of Śiva and of Viṣṇu, in which at first the latter, but finally the former, acquired the ascendancy. It is also a favourite subject of Hindu sculpture, at least with the Hindus of the Śaiva division, and makes a conspicuous figure both at Elephanta and Ellora. A representation of the dispersion and mutilation of the gods and sages by Vīrabhadra, at the former, is published in the Archæologia, VII. 326, where it is described as the Judgment of Solomon! a figure of Vīrabhadra is given by Niebuhr, vol. II. tab. 10: and the entire group in the Bombay Transactions, vol. I. p. 220. It is described, p. 229; but Mr. Erskine has not verified the subject, although it cannot admit of doubt. The groupe described, p. 224, probably represents the introductory details given in our text. Of the Ellora sculptures, a striking one occurs in what Sir C. Malet calls the Doomar Leyna cave, where is "Veer Budder, with eight hands. In one is suspended the slain Rajah Dutz." A. R. VI. 396. And there is also a representation of 'Ehr Budr,' in one of the colonades of Kailas; being, in fact, the same figure as that at Elephanta. Bombay Tr. III. 287. The legend of Dakṣa therefore was popular when those cavern temples were excavated. The story is told in much more detail in several other Purāṇas, and with some variations, which will be noticed: but the above has been selected as a specimen of the style of the Vāyu Purāṇa, and as being a narration which, from its inartificial, obscure, tautological, and uncircumstantial construction, is probably of an ancient date. The same legend, in the same words, is given in the Brāhma P.
  [2]: Or this may he understood to imply, that the original story is in the Vedas; the term being, as usual in such a reference, ###. Ga
  --
  [3]: The Kūrma P. gives also this discussion between Dadhīca and Dakṣa, and their dialogue contains some curious matter. Dakṣa, for instance, states that no portion of a Sacrifice is ever allotted to Śiva, and no prayers are directed to be addressed to him, or to his bride. Dadhīca apparently evades the objection, and claims a share for Rudra, consisting of the triad of gods, as one with the sun, who is undoubtedly hymned by the several ministering priests of the Vedas. Dakṣa replies, that the twelve Ādityas receive special oblations; that they are all the suns; and p. 64 that he knows of no other. The Munis, who overhear the dispute, coñcur in his sentiments. These notions seem to have been exchanged for others in the days of the Padma P. and Bhāgavata, as they place Dakṣa's neglect of Śiva to the latter's filthy practices, his going naked, smearing himself with ashes, carrying a skull, and behaving as if he were drunk or crazed: alluding, no doubt, to the practices of Śaiva mendicants, who seem to have abounded in the days of Śa
  kara Ācārya, and since. There is no discussion in the Bhāgavata, but Rudra is described as present at a former assembly, when his father-in-law censured him before the guests, and in consequence he departed in a rage. His follower Nandī curses the company, and Bhrigu retorts in language descriptive of the Vāmācāris, or left hand worshippers of Śiva. "May all those," he says, "who adopt the worship of Bhava (Śiva), all those who follow the practices of his worshippers, become heretics, and oppugners of holy doctrines; may they neglect the observances of purification; may they be of infirm intellects, wearing clotted hair, and ornamenting themselves with ashes and bones; and may they enter the Śaiva initiation, in which spirituous liquor is the libation."
  [4]: This simple account of Sati's share in the transaction is considerably modified in p. 64 other accounts. In the Kūrma, the quarrel begins with Dakṣa the patriarch's being, as he thinks, treated by his son-in-law with less respect than is his due. Upon his daughter Satī's subsequently visiting him, he abuses her husband, and turns her out of his house. She in spite destroys herself. Śiva, hearing of this, comes to Dakṣa, and curses him to be born as a Kṣetriya, the son of the Pracetasas, and to beget a son on his own daughter. It is in this subsequent birth that the Sacrifice occurs. The Li
  ga and Matsya allude to the dispute between Dakṣa and Sati, and to the latter's putting an end to herself by Yoga. The Padma, Bhāgavata, and Skānda in the Kāsī Khanda, relate the dispute between father and daughter in a like manner, and in more detail. The first refers the death of Sag, however, to a prior period; and that and the Bhāgavata both ascribe it to Yoga. The Kāsī Khanda, with an improvement indicative of a later age, makes Sati throw herself into the fire prepared for the solemnity.

1.08 - The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  It is true that the guru himself is subject to the same rule of silence with regard to what concerns him personally. In Nature everything is in movement; thus, whatever does not move forward is bound to fall back. The guru must progress even as his disciples do, although his progress may not be on the same plane. And for him too, to speak about his experiences is not favourable: the greater part of the dynamic force for progress contained in the experience evaporates if it is put into words. But on the other hand, by explaining his experiences to his disciples, he greatly helps their understanding and consequently their progress. It is for him in his wisdom to know to what extent he can and ought to Sacrifice the one to the other. It goes without saying that no boasting or vainglory should enter into his account, for the slightest vanity would make him no longer a guru but an imposter.
  As for the disciple, I would tell him: In all cases, be faithful to your guru whoever he is; he will lead you as far as you can go. But if you have the good fortune to have the Divine as your guru, there will be no limit to your realisation.

1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Yet the most fundamental and important part of this imperishable Scripture, the actual hymns and mantras of the Sanhitas, has long been a sealed book to the Indian mind, learned or unlearned. The other Vedic books are of minor authority or a secondary formation. The Brahmanas are ritual, grammatical & historical treatises on the traditions & ceremonies of Vedic times whose only valueapart from interesting glimpses of ancient life & Vedantic philosophylies in their attempt to fix and to interpret symbolically the ritual of Vedic Sacrifice. The Upanishads, mighty as they are, only aspire to bring out, arrange philosophically in the language of later thinking and crown with the supreme name of Brahman the eternal knowledge enshrined in the Vedas. Yet for some two thousand years at least no Indian has really understood the Vedas. Or if they have been understood, if Sayana holds for us their secret, the reverence of the Indian mind for them becomes a baseless superstition and the idea that the modern Indian religions are Vedic in their substance is convicted of egregious error. For the Vedas Sayana gives us are the mythology of the Adityas, Rudras,Maruts, Vasus,but these gods of the Veda have long ceased to be worshipped,or they are a collection of ritual & sacrificial hymns, but the ritual is dead & the Sacrifices are no longer offered.
  Are we then to conclude that the reverence for the Vedas & the belief in the continued authority of the Vedas is really no more than an ancient superstition or a tradition which has survived its truth? Those who know the working of the human mind, will be loth to hasten to that conclusion. Great masses of men, great nations, great civilisations have an instinct in these matters which seldom misleads them. In spite of forgetfulness, through every misstatement, surviving all cessation of precise understanding, something in them still remembers their origin and holds fast to the vital truth of their being. According to the Europeans, there is a historical truth at the basis of the old persistent tradition, but a historical truth only, a truth of origin, not of present actuality. The Vedas are the early roots of Indian religion, of Indian civilisation; but they have for a long time past ceased to be their present foundation or their intellectual substance. It is rather the Upanishads & the Puranas that are the living Scriptures of mediaeval and modern Hinduism. But if, as we contend, the Upanishads & the Puranas only give us in other language, later symbols, altered forms of thought the same religious truths that we find differently stated in the Rigveda, this shifting of the immediate point of derivation will make no real difference. The waters we drink are the same whether drawn at their clear mountain sources or on their banks in the anchorites forest or from ghats among the faery temples and fantastic domes of some sacred city.The Hindus belief remains to him unshaken.
  But in the last century a new scholarship has invaded the country, the scholarship of aggressive & victorious Europe, which for the first time denies the intimate connection and the substantial identity of the Vedas & the later Scriptures. We ourselves have made distinctions of Jnanakanda & Karmakanda, Sruti & Smriti, but we have never doubted that all these are branches of a single stock. But our new Western Pandits & authorities tell us that we are in error. All of us from ancient Yajnavalkya to the modern Vaidika have been making a huge millennial mistake. European scholarship applying for the first time the test of a correct philology to these obscure writings has corrected the mistake. It has discovered that the Vedas are of an entirely different character from the rest of our Hindu development. For our development has been Pantheistic or transcendental, philosophical, mystic, devotional, sombre, secretive, centred in the giant names of the Indian Trinity, disengaging itself from Sacrifice, moving towards asceticism. The Vedas are naturalistic, realistic, ritualistic, semi-barbarous, a sacrificial worship of material Nature-powers, henotheistic at their highest, Pagan, joyous and self-indulgent. Brahma & Shiva do not exist for the Veda; Vishnu & Rudra are minor, younger & unimportant deities. Many more discoveries of a startling nature, but now familiar to the most ignorant, have been successfully imposed on our intellects. The Vedas, it seems, were not revealed to great & ancient Rishis, but composed by the priests of a small invading Aryan race of agriculturists & warriors, akin to the Greeks & Persians, who encamped, some fifteen hundred years before Christ, in the Panjab.
  With the acceptance of these modern opinions Hinduism ought by this time to have been as dead among educated men as the religion of the Greeks & Romans. It should at best have become a religio Pagana, a superstition of ignorant villagers. Itis, on the contrary, stronger & more alive, fecund & creative than it had been for the previous three centuries. To a certain extent this unexpected result may be traced to the high opinion in which even European opinion has been compelled to hold the Vedanta philosophy, the Bhagavat Gita and some of the speculationsas the Europeans think themor, as we hold, the revealed truths of the Upanishads. But although intellectually we are accustomed in obedience to Western criticism to base ourselves on the Upanishads & Gita and put aside Purana and Veda as mere mythology & mere ritual, yet in practice we live by the religion of the Puranas & Tantras even more profoundly & intimately than we live by & realise the truths of the Upanishads. In heart & soul we still worship Krishna and Kali and believe in the truth of their existence. Nevertheless this divorce between the heart & the intellect, this illicit compromise between faith & reason cannot be enduring. If Purana & Veda cannot be rehabilitated, it is yet possible that our religion driven out of the soul into the intellect may wither away into the dry intellectuality of European philosophy or the dead formality & lifeless clarity of European Theism. It behoves us therefore to test our faith by a careful examination into the meaning of Purana & Veda and into the foundation of that truth which our intellect seeks to deny [but] our living spiritual experience continues to find in their conceptions. We must discover why it is that while our intellects accept only the truth of Vedanta, our spiritual experiences confirm equally or even more powerfully the truth of Purana. A revival of Hindu intellectual faith in the totality of the spiritual aspects of our religion, whether Vedic, Vedantic, Tantric or Puranic, I believe to be an inevitable movement of the near future.
  --
  Moreover, even their moralised gods were only the superficial & exterior aspect of the Greek religion. Its deeper life fed itself on the mystic rites of Orpheus, Bacchus, the Eleusinian mysteries which were deeply symbolic and remind us in some of their ideas & circumstances of certain aspects of Indian Yoga. The mysticism & symbolism were not an entirely modern development. Orpheus, Bacchus & Demeter are the centre of an antique and prehistoric, even preliterary mind-movement. The element may have been native to Greek religious sentiment; it may have been imported from the East through the Aryan races or cultures of Asia Minor; but it may also have been common to the ancient systems of Greece & India. An original community or a general diffusion is at least possible. The double aspect of exoteric practice and esoteric symbolism may have already been a fundamental characteristic of the Vedic religion. Is it entirely without significance that to the Vedic mind men were essentially manu, thinkers, the original father of the race was the first Thinker, and the Vedic poets in the idea of their contemporaries not merely priests or sacred singers or wise bards but much more characteristically manishis & rishis, thinkers & sages?We can conceive with difficulty such ideas as belonging to that undeveloped psychological condition of the semi-savage to which Sacrifices of propitiation & Nature-Gods helpful only for material life, safety & comfort were all-sufficient. Certainly, also, the earliest Indian writings subsequent to Vedic times bear out these indications. To the writers of the Brahmanas the sacrificial ritual enshrined an elaborate symbolism. The seers of the Upanishad worshipped Surya & Agni as great spiritual & moral forces and believed the Vedic hymns to be effective only because they contained a deep knowledge & a potent spirituality. They may have been in errormay have been misled by a later tradition or themselves have read mystic refinements into a naturalistic text. But also & equally, they may have had access to an unbroken line of knowledge or they may have been in direct touch or in closer touch than the moderns with the mentality of the Vedic singers.
  The decision of these questions will determine our whole view of Vedic religions and decide the claim of the Veda to be a living Scripture of Hinduism. It is of primary importance to know what in their nature and functions were the gods of the Veda. I have therefore made this fundamental question form the sole subject matter of the present volume. I make no attempt here to present a complete or even a sufficient justification of the conclusions which I have been led to. Nor do I present my readers with a complete enquiry into the nature & functions of the Vedic pantheon. Such a justification, such an enquiry can only be effected by a careful philological analysis & rendering of the Vedic hymns and an exhaustive study of the origins of the Sanscrit language. That is a labour of very serious proportions & burdened with numerous difficulties which I have begun and hope one day to complete myself or to leave to others ready for completion. But in the present volume I can only attempt to establish a prima facie [case] for a reconsideration of the whole question. I offer the suggestion that the Vedic creed & thought were not a simple, but a complex, not a barbarous but a subtle & advanced, not a naturalistic but a mystic & Vedantic system.
  --
  On the strength of Sayanas commentary these lines would have to bear in English the following astounding significance. Let the purifying goddess of Speech, equipped by means of food offerings with a ritual full of food, desire (that is to say, up-bear) the Sacrifice, she who is the cause of wealth as a result of the ritual. Sender of pleasant & true sayings and explainer (of this Sacrifice) to the performers of the ritual who have a good intelligence, the goddess of Speech upholds the Sacrifice. The river Saraswati makes known by her action (that is, her stream) much water, she (the Muse) illumines all the ideas of the Sacrificer. Truly, whatever Saraswati may do for the Sacrificer,who does not appear at all in the lines except to the second sight of Sayana,the great scholar does not succeed in illumining our ideas about the sense of the Sukta. The astonishing transition from the Muse to the river & the river to the Muse in a single rik is flagrantly impossible. How does Saraswatis thoughtful provision of much water lead to her illumination of the Sacrificers evidently confused intellect?Why should dhiy in dhiyvasu mean ritual act, and dhiyo in dhiyo vsv ideas? How can desire mean upbear, ritual act mean wealth or action mean a stream of water? What sense can we extract from arnah prachetayati in Sayanas extraordinary combination? If s nritnm expresses speech or thought, why should the parallel expression sumatnm in defiance of rhythm of sound & rhythm of sense, refer to the Sacrificers? I have offered these criticisms not for any pleasure in carping at the great Southern scholar, but to establish by a clear, decisive & typical instance the defects which justify my total rejection of his once supreme authority in Vedic scholarship. Sayana is learned in ritualism, loaded with grammatical lore, a scholar of vast diligence and enormous erudition, but in his mentality literary perception & taste seem either to have been non-existent or else oppressed under the heavy weight of his learning. This and other defects common enough in men of vast learning whose very curiosity of erudition only lead them to prefer a strained to a simple explanation, the isolated suggestions of single words to a regard for the total form & coherence, & recondite, antiquarian or ceremonial allusions to a plain meaning, render his guidance less than useful in the higher matters of interpretation and far from safe in questions of verbal rendering.
  The effectual motive for Sayanas admission of Saraswatis double rle in this Sukta is the expression maho arnas, the great water, of the third rik. Only in her capacity as a river-goddess has Saraswati anything to do with material water; an abundance of liquid matter is entirely irrelevant to her intellectual functions. If therefore we accept arnah in a material sense, the entrance of the river into the total physiognomy of Saraswati is imposed upon us by hard necessity in spite of the resultant incoherence. But if on the other hand, arnah can be shown to bear other than a material significance or intention, then no other necessity exists for the introduction of a deified Aryan river. On the contrary, there is an extraordinary accumulation of expressions clearly intellectual in sense. Pvak, dhiyvasuh, chodayitr snritnm, chetant sumatnm, prachetayati ketun, dhiyo vsv vi rjati are all expressions of this stamp; for they mean respectively purifying, rich in understanding, impeller of truths, awakening to good thoughts, perceives or makes conscious by perception, governs variously all the ideas or mental activities. Even yajnam vashtu and yajnam dadhe refer, plainly, to a figurative moral upholding,if, indeed, upholding be at all the Rishis intention in vashtu. What is left? Only the name Saraswati thrice repeated, the pronoun nah, and the two expressions vjebhir vjinvat and maho arnah. The rest is clearly the substance of a passage full of strong intellectual and moral conceptions. I shall suggest that these two expressions vjebhir vjin vat and maho arnah are no exception to the intellectuality of the rest of the passage. They, too, are words expressing moral or intellectual qualities or entities.
  The word vja, usually rendered by Sayana, food or ghee,a sense which he is swift to foist upon any word which will at all admit that construction, as well as on some which will not admit it,has in other passages another sense assigned to it, strength, bala. It is the latter significance or its basis of substance & solidity which I propose to attach to vja in every line of the Rigveda where it occursand it occurs with an abundant frequency. There are a number of words in the Veda which have to be rendered by the English strength,bala, taras, vja, sahas, avas, to mention only the most common expressions. Can it be supposed that all these vocables rejoice in one identical connotation as commentators and lexicographers would lead us to conclude, and are used in the Veda promiscuously & indifferently to express the same idea of strength? The psychology of human language is more rich and delicate. In English the words strength, force, vigour, robustness differ in their mental values; force can be used in offices of expression to which strength and vigour are ineligible. In Vedic Sanscrit, as in every living tongue, the same law holds and a literary and thoughtful appreciation of its documents, whatever may be the way of the schools, must take account of these distinctions. In the brief list I have given, bala answers to the English strength, taras gives a shade of speed and impetuosity, sahas of violence or force, avas of flame and brilliance, vja of substance and solidity. In the philological appendix to this work there will be found detailed reasons for concluding that strength is in the history of the word vja only a secondary sense, like its other meanings, wealth and food; the basic idea is a strong sufficiency of substance or substantial energy. Vja is one of the great standing terms of the Vedic psychology. All states of being, whether matter, mind or life and all material, mental & vital activities depend upon an original flowing mass of Energy which is in the vivid phraseology of the Vedas called a flood or sea, samudra, sindhu or arnas. Our power or activity in any direction depends first on the amount & substantiality of this stream as it flows into, through or within our own limits of consciousness, secondly, on our largeness of being constituted by the wideness of those limits, thirdly, on our power of holding the divine flow and fourthly on the force and delight which enter into the use of our available Energy. The result is the self-expression, ansa or vyakti, which is the objective of Vedic Yoga. In the language of the Rishis whatever we can make permanently ours is called our holding or wealth, dhanam or in the plural dhanni; the powers which assist us in the getting, keeping or increasing of our dhanni, the yoga, s ti & vriddhi, are the gods; the powers which oppose & labour to rob us of this wealth are our enemies & plunderers, dasyus, and appear under various names, Vritras, Panis, Daityas, Rakshasas, Yatudhanas. The wealth itself may be the substance of mental light and knowledge or of vital health, delight & longevity or of material strength & beauty or it may be external possessions, cattle, progeny, empire, women. A close, symbolic and to modern ideas mystic parallelism stood established in the Vedic mind between the external & the internal wealth, as between the outer Sacrifice which earned from the gods the external wealth & the inner Sacrifice which brought by the aid of the gods the internal riches. In this system the word vja represents that amount & substantial energy of the stuff of force in the dhanam brought to the service of the Sacrificer for the great Jivayaja, our daily & continual life- Sacrifice. It is a substantial wealth, vjavad dhanam that the gods are asked to bring with them. We see then in what sense Saraswati, a goddess purely mental in her functions of speech and knowledge, can be vjebhir vjinvat. Vjin is that which is composed of vja, substantial energy; the plural vj h or vj ni the particular substantialities of various composed. For the rest, to no other purpose can a deity of speech & knowledge be vjebhir vjinvat. In what appropriateness or coherent conceivable sense can the goddess of knowledge be possessed of material wealth or full-stored with material food, ghee & butter, beef & mutton? If it be suggested that Speech of the mantras was believed by these old superstitious barbarians to bring them their ghee & butter, beef & mutton, the answer is that this is not what the language of the hymns expresses. Saraswati herself is said to be vjinvat, possessed of substance of food; she is not spoken of as being the cause of fullness of food or wealth to others.
  This explanation of vjebhir vjinvat leads at once to the figurative sense of maho arnas. Arnas or samudra is the image of the sea, flood or stream in which the Vedic seers saw the substance of being and its different states. Sometimes one great sea, sometimes seven streams of being are spoken of by the Rishis; they are the origin of the seven seas of the Purana. It cannot be doubted that the minds of the old thinkers were possessed with this image of ocean or water as the very type & nature of the flux of existence, for it occurs with a constant insistence in the Upanishads. The sole doubt is whether the image was already present to the minds of the primitive Vedic Rishis. The Europeans hold that these were the workings of a later imagination transfiguring the straightforward material expressions & physical ideas of the Veda; they admit no real parentage of Vedantic ideas in the preexistent Vedic notions, but only a fictitious derivation. I hold, on the contrary, that Vedantic ideas have a direct & true origin & even a previous existence in the religion & psychology of the Vedas. If, indeed, there were no stuff of high thinking or moral sensibility in the hymns of the Vedic sages, then I should have no foundation to stand upon and no right to see this figure in the Vedic arnas or samudra. But when these early minds,early to us, but not perhaps really so primitive in human history as we imagine,were capable of such high thoughts & perceptions as these three Riks bear on their surface, it would be ridiculous to deny them the capacity of conceiving these great philosophical images & symbols. A rich poetic imagery expressing a clear, direct & virgin perception of the facts of mind and being, is not by any means impossible, but rather natural in these bright-eyed sons of the morning not yet dominated in their vision by the dry light of the intellect or in their speech & thought by the abstractions & formalities of metaphysical thinking. Water was to them, let us hold in our hypothesis, the symbol of unformed substance of being, earth of the formed substance. They even saw a mystic identity between the thing symbolised & the symbol.
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  What then is it that Madhuchchhanda, son of Viswamitra, has to say in this Sukta of the goddess of inspiration, speech and knowledge? He does not directly address her, but he assigns to this deity the general control, support and illumination of the Sacrifice he is performing. Let Saraswati he says control our Yajna. The epithets which fill the Rik must express either the permanent & characteristic qualities in her which fit her for this high office of control or the possible & suitable qualities with which he wishes her to be equipped in the performance of that office. First, pvak. She is the great purifier. It is as we shall see not a literary inspiration he invokes, but a divine inspiration, an inspiration of truths and right thoughts and, it may be, right feelings. Saraswati by this inspiration, by this inspired truth & knowledge & right feeling, is asked to purify, first, the mental state of the Yogin; for a mind unpurified cannot hold the light from on high. Knowledge purifies, says the Gita, meaning the higher spiritual knowledge which comes by ruti, divine inspiration; there is nothing in the whole world so pure as knowledge: Saraswati who purifies, Pvak Saraswat. Vjebhir vjin vat. She is full of substantial energy, stored with a great variety in substance of knowledge, chitraravastama, as is said in another hymn of the strong god Agni. The inspiration & resultant knowledge prayed for is not that of any isolated truth or slight awakening, but a great substance of knowledge & a high plenty of inspiration; the mental state has to be filled with this strong & copious substance of Saraswati.Dhiyvasuh. She is rich in understanding. Dh in the Veda is the buddhi, the faculty of reason that understands, discerns & holds knowledge. This inspiration has to be based on a great intellectual capacity which supports & holds the flood of the inspiration. Thus rich, thus strong & plenteous, thus purifying the divine inspiration has to hold & govern the Sacrifice.
  The thought passes on in the eleventh Rik from the prayer to the fulfilment. Yajnam dadhe Saraswat. Saraswati upholds the Yajna; she has accepted the office of governance & already upbears in her strength the action of the Sacrifice. In that action she is Chodayitr unritnm, chetant sumatnm. That great luminous impulse of inspiration in which the truths of being start to light of themselves and are captured and possessed by the mind, that spiritual enlightenment and awakening in which right thoughts & right seeing become spontaneously the substance of our purified mental state, proceed from Saraswati & are already being poured by her into the system, like the Aryan stream into the Indus. Mati means any activity of the mind; right thoughts in the intellect, right feelings in the heart, right perceptions in the sensational mind, sumati may embrace any or all of these associations; in another context, by a different turn of the prefix, it may express kindly thoughts, friendly feelings, happy perceptions.
  In the last Rik the source of this great illumination is indicated. Spiritual knowledge is not natural to the mind; it is in us a higher faculty concealed & sleeping, not active to our consciousness. It is only when the inspiration of a divine enlightenment,Saraswat ketun, in the concrete Vedic language,seizes on that self-luminous faculty & directs a ray of it into our understanding that we receive the high truths, the great illuminations which raise us above our normal humanity. But it is not an isolated illumination with which this son of Viswamitra intends to be satisfied. The position for him is that the human perception & reason, but asleep, sushupta, achetana, on the level of the pure ideal knowledge. He wishes it to awake to the divine knowledge & his whole mental state to be illumined by it. The divine Inspiration has to awaken to conscious activity this great water now lying still & veiled in our humanity. This great awakening Saraswati now in the action of the Sacrifice effects for MadhuchchhandasMaho arnah prachetayati. The instrument is ketu, enlightening perception. With the knowledge that now streams into the mind from the ocean of divine knowledge all the ideas of the understanding in their various & many-branching activity are possessed and illumined. Dhiyo viv vi rjati. She illumines variously or in various directions, or, less probably, she entirely illumines, all the activities of the understanding. This invasion & illumination of his whole mental state by the state of divine knowledge, with its spontaneous manifestation of high truths, right thoughts, right feelings, the ritam jyotih, is the culmination of this Sacrifice of Madhuchchhandas.
  Shall we suppose that a Sacrifice with such a governance, such circumstances & such a crowning experience is the material offering of the Soma wine into a material fire on a material altar? Every expression in the text cries out against such an impossibility. This Sacrifice must be a mental, moral subjective activity of which the Soma-offering is only a material symbol. We see at once that the Gita was not reading a later gloss into the Vedic idea in its description of the many kinds of Yajna in its [fourth] chapter. The modern Yoga and the ancient Yajna are one idea; there is only this difference that the Vedic Rishis regarded all the material & internal riches that came by Yoga as the gift of the gods to be offered to them again so that they may again increase them & supremely enrich our lives with all the boons that they, our friends, helpers, masters of world-evolution are so eager to shower upon us, the vessels & instruments of that evolution. The whole Vedic theory is succinctly stated in two slokas of the Gita. (III.10, 11)
    Sahayajnh prajh srishtw purovcha Prajpatih,
  --
  The Father created of old these peoples with Sacrifice as their companion birth; By this he said, ye shall bring forth; let this be your milker of all chosen desires. Nourish the gods in their being with this; let the gods nourish you in your being. Thus nourishing each other ye shall gain the highest good. We see, nat the same time, the Vedic origin of the central idea in the Gita, the offering of our lives & actions in a perfect Sacrifice to God.
  Greatly has this short passage helped us. It has shown us the true physiognomy of Saraswati as the goddess of inspiration & inspired knowledge & the true nature of the Vedic Yajna; it has fixed the great Vedic terms, vja, dh & ketu; but above all it has given us a firm foundation for a religious & spiritual interpretation of Veda, a brilliant starting point for an inquiry into its truth & its ancient secret. We can now hope to be delivered from the obscuration of Veda by the ritualists & its modern degradation into the document of a primitive & barbarous religion. Its higher & truer sense shows itself in this brief passage like the dim line of land seen on the far horizon.
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  If we are right, as we must now assume, in our interpretation of these three riks, then the conclusion is irresistible that the whole of this third Sukta in the Veda, & not only its closing verses, relates to an activity of moral & mental Sacrifice and the other gods invoked by Madhuchchhandas are equally with Saraswati Powers of subjectiveNature, Indra not the god of rain, but a mental deity, the Aswins not twin stars, or, if stars, then lights of a sublimer heaven, the Visvadevas, gods not of general physical Nature, but supraphysical and in charge of our general subjective or subjective-objective activity. The supposition is inadmissible that the hymn is purely ritual in its body and only in-grafted with a spiritual tail. The physical functions of the gods in the Veda need not be denied; but they must be alien to the thought of Madhuchchhandas in this Sukta,unless as in some hymns of the Veda, there is the slesha or double application to subjective & objective activities. But this is improbable; for in the lines of which Saraswati is the goddess, we have found no reference either open or covert to any material form or function. She is purely the Muse and not at all the material river.
  We must examine, then, the rest of the hymn and by an impartial scrutiny discover whether it yields naturally, without forcing or straining, a subjective significance. If we find that no such subjective significance exists & it is the gods of rain & of stars & of material activities who are invoked, a serious if not a fatal doubt will be cast on the validity of the first step we have gained in our second chapter. Here, too, we must follow the clue by which we arrived at the subjective physiognomy of Saraswati. We must see what is the evidence of the epithets & activities assigned to the several deities of the Sukta.
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  In Sayanas interpretation we find that isho is taken in the sense of food; yuvkavah sut vriktabarhishah in the sense of Soma-offerings poured out, which are mixed with other liquid and for which the strewn grasses where they have been placed, are deprived of their roots. If these interpretations stand, the material nature of the Sacrifice is established. But can they stand? And if they can, are they imperative? The word isho, in the first place, is not bound to this sense of foods; for it cannot in all the passages in which it occurs in the Veda, bear that sense. A single instance is decisive. We find in a hymn of Praskanwa Kanwa to the Aswins, this rik, the sixth in the forty-sixth Sukta of the first mandala:
    Y nah pparad Awin, jyotishmat tamas tirah,
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  Now a brilliant or luminous food, jyotishmat ish, is an absurdity which we certainly shall not accept; nor is there any reason for taking jyotih in any other than its ordinary sense of radiance, lustre. We must, therefore, seek some other significance for ish. It is the nature of the root ish, as of its leng thened form, sh, and the family to which it belongs, to suggest intensity of motion or impulsion physical or subjective and the state or results of such intensity. It means impulse, wish, impulsion; sending, casting, (as in ishu, an arrow or missile), strength, force, mastery; in the verb, it signifies also striving, entreating, favour, assent, liking; in the noun, increase, affluence, or, as applied by the ritualists in the Veda, drink or food. We see, then, that impellent force or strength is the fundamental significance, the idea [of] food only a distant, isolated & late step in the sense-evolution. If we apply this fundamental sense in the rik we have quoted from Praskanwas hymn to the Aswins, we get at once the following clear, straightforward & lucid meaning, The luminous force (force of the Mahas, or vijnana, the true light, ritam jyotih of [I.23.5]) which has carried us, O Aswins, through the darkness to its other shore, in that in us take delight or else that force give to us. Apply the same key-meaning to this first rik of Madhuchchhandas lines to the same deities, we get a result equally clear, straightforward&lucid, O Aswins, swift-footed, much-enjoying lords of bliss, take your pleasure in the forces of the Sacrifice. We have in Praskanwa & Madhuchchhandas the same idea, the same deities, the same prayer, the same subjective function of the gods & subjective purport of the words. We feel firm soil under our feet; a flood of light illumines our steps in these dim fields of Vedic interpretation.
  What is this subjective function of the Aswins? We get it, I think, in the key words chanasyatam, rsthm. Whatever else may be the character of the Aswins, we get from the consonance of the two Rishis this strong suggestion that they are essentially gods of delight. Is there any other confirmation of the suggestion? Every epithet in this first rik testifies strongly to its correctness. The Aswins are purubhuj, much-enjoying; they are ubhaspat, lords of weal or bliss, or else of beauty for ubh may have any of these senses as well as the sense of light; they are dravatpn, their hands dropping gifts, says Sayana, and that agrees well with the nature of gods of delight who pour from full hands the roses of rapture upon mortals, manibus lilia plenis. But dravat usually means in the Veda, swift, running, and pni, although confined to the hands in classical Sanscrit, meant, as I shall suggest, in the old Aryan tongue any organ of action, hand, foot or, as in the Latin penis, the sexual organ. Even so, we have the nature of the Aswins as gods of delight, fully established; but we get in addition a fresh characteristic, the quality of impetuous speed, which is reinforced by their other epithets. For the Aswins are nar, the Strong ones; rudravartan,they put a fierce energy into all their activities; they accept the mantras of the hymn avray dhiy, with a bright-flaming strength of intelligence in the understanding. The idea of bounteous giving, suggested by Sayana in dravatpn and certainly present in that word if we accept pni in its ordinary sense, appears in the dasra of the third rik, O you bounteous ones. Sayana indeed takes dasr in the sense of destroyers; he gives the root das in this word the same force as in dasyu, an enemy or robber; but das can also mean to give, dasma is sometimes interpreted by the scholiasts Sacrificer and this sense of bounteous giving seems to be fixed on the kindred word dasra also, at least when it is applied to the Aswins, by the seventeenth rik of the thirtieth Sukta, unahepas hymn to Indra & the Aswins,
    win, avvaty, ish ytam avray,
  --
  For what functions are they called to the Sacrifice by Madhuchchhanda? First, they have to take delight in the spiritual forces generated in him by the action of the internal Yajna. These they have to accept, to enter into them and use them for delight, their delight and the Sacrificers, yajwarr isho .. chanasyatam; a wide enjoyment, a mastery of joy & all pleasant things, a swiftness in action like theirs is what their advent should bring & therefore these epithets are attached to this action. Then they are to accept the words of the mantra, vanatam girah. In fact, vanatam means more than acceptance, it is a pleased, joyous almost loving acceptance; for vanas is the Latin venus, which means charm, beauty, gratification, and the Sanscrit vanit means woman or wife, she who charms, in whom one takes delight or for whom one has desire. Therefore vanatam takes up the idea of chanasyatam, enlarges it & applies it to a particular part of the Yajna, the mantras, the hymn or sacred words of the stoma. The immense effectiveness assigned to rhythmic Speech & the meaning & function of the mantra in the Veda & in later Yoga is a question of great interest & importance which must be separately considered; but for our present purpose it will be sufficient to specify its two chief functions, the first, to settle, fix, establish the god & his qualities & activities in the Sacrificer,this is the true meaning of the word stoma, and, secondly, to effectualise them in action & creation subjective or objective,this is the true meaning of the words rik and arka. The later senses, praise and hymn were the creation of actual ceremonial practice, and not the root intention of these terms of Veda. Therefore the Aswins, the lords of force & joy, are asked to take up the forces of the Sacrifice, yajwarr isho, fill them with their joy & activity and carry that joy & activity into the understanding so that it becomes avra, full of a bright and rapid strength.With that strong, impetuously rapid working they are to take up the words of the mantra into the understanding and by their joy & activity make them effective for action or creation. For this reason the epithet purudansas is attached to this action, abundantly active or, rather, abundantly creative of forms into which the action of the yajwarr ishah is to be thrown. But this can only be done as the Sacrificer wishes if they are in the acceptance of the mantra dhishny, firm and steady.Sayana suggests wise or intelligent as the sense of dhishnya, but although dhishan, like dh, can mean the understanding & dhishnya therefore intelligent, yet the fundamental sense is firm or steadily holding & the understanding is dh or dhishan because it takes up perceptions, thoughts & feelings & holds them firmly in their places.Vehemence & rapidity may be the causes of disorder & confusion, therefore even in their utmost rapidity & rapture of action & formation the Aswins are to be dhishnya, firm & steady. This discipline of a mighty, inalienable calm supporting & embracing the greatest fierceness of action & intensity of joy, the combination of dhishny & rudravartan , is one of the grandest secrets of the old Vedic discipline. For by this secret men can enjoy the world as God enjoys it, with unstinted joy, with unbridled power, with undarkened knowledge.
  Therefore the prayer to the Aswins concludes: The Soma is outpoured; come with your full bounty, dasr & your fierce intensity, rudravartan. But what Soma? Is it the material juice of a material plant, the bitter Homa which the Parsi priests use today in the ceremonies enjoined by the Zendavesta? Does Sayanas interpretation give us the correct rendering? Is it by a material intoxication that this great joy & activity & glancing brilliance of the mind joined to a great steadfastness is to be obtained? Yuvkavah, says Sayana, means mixed & refers to the mixing of other ingredients in the Soma wine. Let us apply again our usual test. We come to the next passage in which the word yuvku occurs, the fourth rik of the seventeenth Sukta, Medhatithi Kanwas hymn to Indra & Varuna.
  --
  We have reached a subjective sense for yuvku. But what of vriktabarhishah? Does not barhih always mean in the Veda the sacred grass strewn as a seat for the gods? In the Brahmanas is it not so understood and have [we] not continually the expression barhishi sdata? I have no objection; barhis is certainly the seat of the Gods in the Sacrifice, stritam nushak, strewn without a break. But barhis cannot originally have meant Kusha grass; for in that case the singular could only be used to indicate a single grass and for the seat of the Gods the plural barhnshi would have to be used,barhihshu sdata and not barhishi sdata.We have the right to go behind the Brahmanas and enquire what was the original sense of barhis and how it came to mean kusha grass. The root barh is a modified formation from the root brih, to grow, increase or expand, which we have in brihat. From the sense of spreading we may get the original sense of seat, and because the material spread was usually the Kusha grass, the word by a secondary application came to bear also that significance. Is this the only possible sense of barhis? No, for we find it interpreted also as Sacrifice, as fire, as light or splendour, as water, as ether. We find barhana & barhas in the sense of strength or power and barhah or barham used for a leaf or for a peacocks tail. The base meaning is evidently fullness, greatness, expansion, power, splendour or anything having these attri butes, an outspread seat, spreading foliage, the outspread or splendid peacocks tail, the shining flame, the wide expanse of ether, the wide flow of water. If there were no other current sense of barhis, we should be bound to the ritualistic explanation. Even as it is, in other passages the ritualistic explanation may be found to stand or be binding; but is it obligatory here? I do not think it is even admissible. For observe the awkwardness of the expression, sut vriktabarhishah, wine of which the grass is stripped of its roots. Anything, indeed, is possible in the more artificial styles of poetry, but the rest of this hymn, though subtle & deep in thought, is sufficiently lucid and straightforward in expression. In such a style this strained & awkward expression is an alien intruder. Moreover, since every other expression in these lines is subjective, only dire necessity can compel us to admit so material a rendering of this single epithet. There is no such necessity. Barhis means fundamentally fullness, splendour, expansion or strength & power, & this sense suits well with the meaning we have found for yuvkavah. The sense of vrikta is very doubtful. Purified (cleared, separated) is a very remote sense of vrij or vrich & improbable. They can both mean divided, distributed, strewn, outspread, but although it is possible that vriktabarhishah means their fullness outspread through the system or distributed in the outpouring, this sense too is not convincing. Again vrijana in the Veda means strong, or as a noun, strength, energy, even a battle or fight. Vrikta may therefore [mean] brought to its highest strength. We will accept this sense as a provisional conjecture, to be confirmed or corrected by farther enquiry, and render the line The Soma distillings are replete with energy and brought to their highest fullness.
  But to what kind of distillings can such terms be applied? The meaning of Soma & the Vedic ideas about this symbolic wine must be examined by themselves & with a greater amplitude. All we need ask here [is], is there any indication in this hymn itself, that the Soma like everything else in the Sukta is subjective & symbolic? For, if so, our rendering, which at present is clouded with doubt & built on a wide but imperfectly solid foundation, will become firm & established. We have the clear suggestion in the next rik, the first of the three addressed to Indra. Sut ime tw yavah. Our question is answered. What has been distilled? Ime yavah. These life-forces, these vitalities. We shall find throughout the Veda this insistence on the life, vitality,yu or jva; we shall find that the Soma was regarded as a life-giving juice, a sort of elixir of life, or nectar of immortality, something at least that gave increased vitality, established health, prolonged youth. Of such an elixir it may well be said that it is yuvku, full of the force of youth in which the Aswins must specially delight, vriktabarhish, raised to its highest strength & fullness so that the gods who drink of it, become in the man in whom they enter and are seated, increased, vriddha, to the full height of their function and activity,the Aswins to their utmost richness of bounty, their intensest fiery activity. Nectarjuices, they are called, indavah, pourings of delight, yavah, life forces, amritsah, elixirs of immortality.
  --
  The modern naturalistic account of Indra is that he is the god of rain, the wielder of lightning, the master of the thunderbolt. It is as the lightning, we presume, that he is addressed as harivas and chitrabhno, brilliant and of a richly varied effulgence. He comes to the brahmni, the hymnal utterances of the Rishis, in the sense of being called by the prayer to the Sacrifice, and he comes for the sole purpose of drinking the physical Soma wine, by which he is immediately increased,sadyo vriddho ajyathh, says another Sukta,that is, as soon as the Soma offering is poured out, the rains of the monsoon suddenly increase in force. So at least we must understand, if these hymns are to have any precise naturalistic sense. Otherwise we should have to assume that the Rishis sang without attaching any meaning to their words. If, however, we suppose the hymns to Indra to be sung at monsoon offerings, in the rainy months of the year only, we get ideas, imbecile enough, but still making some attempt at sense. On another hypothesis, we may suppose Indra to be one of the gods of light or day slaying Vritra the lord of night & darkness, and also a god of lightning slaying Vritra the lord of the drought. Stated generally, these hypotheses seem plausible enough; systematically stated & supported by Comparative Mythology and some Puranic details their easy acceptance & great vogue is readily intelligible. It is only when we look carefully at the actual expressions used by the Rishis, that they no longer seem to fit in perfectly and great gulfs of no-sense have to be perfunctorily bridged by empirical guesses. A perfect system of naturalistic Veda fails to evolve.
  When we look carefully at the passage before us, we find an expression which strikes one as a very extraordinary phrase in reference to a god of lightning and rain. Indryhi, says Madhuchchhanda, dhiyeshito viprajtah. On any ordinary acceptance of the meaning of words, we have to render this line, Come, O Indra, impelled by the understanding, driven by the Wise One. Sayana thinks that vipra means Brahmin and the idea is that Indra is moved to come by the intelligent sacrificing priests and he explains dhiyeshito, moved to come by our understanding, that is to say, by our devotion. But understanding does not mean devotion and the artificiality of the interpretation is apparent.We will, as usual, put aside the ritualistic & naturalistic traditions and see to what the natural sense of the words themselves leads us. I question the traditional acceptance of viprajta as a compound of vipra & jta; it seems tome clearly to be vi prajtah, driven forward variously or in various directions. I am content to accept the primary sense of impelled for ishita, although, whether we read dhiy ishito with the Padapatha, or dhiy shito, it may equally well mean, controlled by the understanding; but of themselves the expressions impelled & driven forward in various paths imply a perfect control.We have then, Come, O Indra, impelled (or controlled, governed) by the understanding and driven forward in various paths. What is so driven forward? Obviously not the storm, not the lightning, not any force of material Nature, but a subjective force, and, as one can see at a glance, a force of mind. Now Indra is the king of Swar and Swar in the symbolical interpretation of the Vedic terms current in after times is the mental heaven corresponding to the principle of Manas, mind. His name means the Strong. In the Puranas he is that which the Rishis have to conquer in order to attain their goal, that which sends the Apsaras, the lower delights & temptations of the senses to bewilder the sage and the hero; and, as is well known, in the Indian system of Yoga it is the Mind with its snares, sensuous temptations & intellectual delusions which is the enemy that has to be overcome & the strong kingdom that has to be conquered. In this passage Indra is not thought of in his human form, but as embodied in the principle of light or tejas; he is harivas, substance of brightness; he is chitrabhnu, of a rich & various effulgence, epithets not easily applicable to a face or figure, but precisely applicable to the principle of mind which has always been supposed in India to be in its material element made of tejas or pure light.We may conclude, therefore, that in Indra, master of Swarga, we have the divine lord of mental force & power. It is as this mental power that he comes sutvatah upa brahmni vghatah, to the soul-movements of the chanter of the sacred song, of the holder of the nectar-wine. He is asked to come, impelled or controlled by the understanding and driven forward by it in the various paths of sumati & snrit, right thinking & truth. We remember the image in the Kathopanishad in which the mind & senses are compared to reins & horses and the understanding to the driver. We look back & see at once the connection with the function demanded of the Aswins in the preceding verses; we look forward & see easily the connection with the activity of Saraswati in the closing riks. The thought of the whole Sukta begins to outline itself, a strong, coherent and luminous progression of psychological images begins to emerge.
  --
  Brahmni therefore may mean either the soul-activities, as dhiyas means the mental activities, or it may mean the words of the mantra which express the soul. If we take it in the latter sense, we must refer it to the girah of the second rik, the mantras taken up by the Aswins into the understanding in order to prepare for action & creation. Indra is to come to these mantras and support them by the brilliant substance of a mental force richly varied in its effulgent manifestation, controlled by the understanding and driven forward to its task in various ways. But it seems to me that the rendering is not quite satisfactory. The main point in this hymn is not the mantras, but the Soma wine and the power that it generates. It is in the forces of the Soma that the Aswins are to rejoice, in that strength they are to take up the girah, in that strength they are to rise to their fiercest intensity of strength & delight. Indra, as mental power, arrives in his richly varied lustre; yhi chitrabhno. Here says the Rishi are these life-forces in the nectar-wine; they are purified in their minute parts & in their whole extent, for so I understand anwbhis tan ptsah; that is to say the distillings of Ananda or divine delight whether in the body as nectar, [or] in the subjective system as streams of life-giving delight are purified of all that impairs & weakens the life forces, purified both in their little several movements & in the whole extent of their stream. These are phenomena that can easily be experienced & understood in Yoga, and the whole hymn like many in the Veda reads to those who have experience like a practical account of a great Yogic internal movement accurate in its every detail. Streng thened, like the Aswins, by the nectar, Indra is to prepare the many-sided activity supported by the Visve devah; therefore he has to come not only controlled by the understanding, dhishnya, like the Aswins, but driven forward in various paths. For an energetic & many-sided activity is the object & for this there must be an energetic and many-sided but well-ordered action of the mental power. He has to come, thus manifold, thus controlled, to the spiritual activities generated by the Soma & the Aswins in the increasing soul (vghatah) full of the life-giving nectar, the immortalising Ananda, sutvatah. He has to come to those soul-activities, in this substance of mental brilliancy, yhi upa brahmni harivas. He has to come, ttujna, with a protective force, or else with a rapidly striving force & uphold by mind the joy of the Sacrificer in the nectar-offering, the offering of this Ananda to the gods of life & action & thought, sute dadhishwa na chanah. Protecting is, here, the best sense for ttujna. For Indra is not only to support swift & energetic action; that has already been provided for; he has also to uphold or bear in mind and by the power of mind the great & rapid delight which the Sacrificer is about to pour out into life & action, jvayja. The divine delight must not fail us in our activity; hostile shocks must not be allowed to disturb our established pleasure in the great offering. Therefore Indra must be there in his light & power to uphold and to protect.
  We have gained, therefore, another great step in the understanding of the Veda. The figure of the mighty Indra, in his most essential quality & function, begins to appear to us as in a half-luminous silhouette full of suggestions. We have much yet to learn about him, especially his war with Vritra, his thunderbolt & his dealings with the seven rivers. But the central or root idea is fixed. The rest is the outgrowth, foliage & branchings.
  --
  In the ninth rik, I take vahnayah in its natural sense, those who bear or support; it is the application of the general function, charshanidhrit to the particular activity of the Sacrifice, medham jushanta vahnayah. I cannot accept the sense of priest for vahni; it may have this meaning in some passages, but the ordinary significance is clearly fixed by Medhatithis collocation, vahanti vahnayah, in the [fourteenth] sukta; for to suppose such a collocation to have been made without any reference to the common significance of the two words, is to do violence to common sense & to language. In the same rik we have the word asridhah rendered by Sayana, undecaying or unwithering, and ehimysah, in which he takes ehi to be -ha, pervading activity & my in the sense of prajn, intelligence. We have no difficulty in rejecting these constructions. Ehi is a modified form, by gunation, from the root h, and must mean like h, wish, attempt, effort or activity; my from m, to contain or measure (mt, mna) or m, to contain, embrace, comprehend, know, may mean either capacity, wideness, greatness or comprehending knowledge. The sense, therefore, is either that the Visvadevas put knowledge into all their activities or else that they have a full capacity, whether in knowledge or in any other quality, for all activities. The latter sense strikes me as the more natural & appropriate in the context. Sridhah, again, means enemies in the Veda, and asridhah may well mean, not hostile, friendly. It will then be complementary to adruhah,asridhah adruhah, unhostile, unharmful, and the two epithets will form an amplification of omsas, kindly, the first of the characteristics applied to these deities. Yet such a purposeless negative amplification of a strong positive & sufficient epithet is not in the style of the Sukta, of Madhuchchhandas hymns generally or of any Vedic Rishi; nor does it go well with the word ehimysah which inappropriately divides the two companion epithets. Sridh has the sense of enemy from the idea of the shock of assault. The root sri means to move, rush, or assail; sridh gives the additional idea of moving or rushing against some object or obstacle. I suggest then that asridhah means unstumbling, unfailing (cf the English to slide). The sense will then be that the Visvadevas are unstumbling & unfaltering in the effectuation of their activities because they have a full capacity for all activities, and for the same reason they cause no hurt to the work or the human worker. We have a coherent meaning & progression of related ideas and a good reason for the insertion of ehimysah between the two negative epithets asridhah & adruhah.
  We can now examine the functioning of the Visvadevas as they are revealed to us in these three riks of the ancient Veda: Come, says the Rishi, O Visvadevas who in your benignity uphold the activities of men, come, distributing the nectar-offering of the giver. O Visvadevas, swift to effect, come to the nectar-offering, hastening like mornings to the days (or, like lovers to their paramours). O Visvadevas, who stumble not in your work, for you are mighty for all activity and do no hurt, cleave in heart to the Sacrifice & be its upbearers. The sense is clear & simple. The kindly gods who support man in his action & development, are to arrive; they are to give abroad the nectar-offering which is now given to them, to pour it out on the world in joy-giving activities of mind or body, for that is the relation of gods & men, as we see in the Gita, giving out whatever is given to them in an abundant mutual helpfulness. Swiftly have they to effect the many-sided action prepared for them, hastening to the joy of the offering of Ananda as a lover hastens to the joy of his mistress. They will not stumble or fail in any action entrusted to them, for they have full capacity for their great world-functions, nor, for the like reason, will they impair the force of the joy or the strength in the activity by misuse, therefore let them put their hearts into the Sacrifice of action and upbear it by this unfaltering strength. Swiftness, variety, intensity, even a fierce intensity of joy & thought & action is the note throughout, but yet a faultless activity, fixed in its variety, unstumbling in its swiftness, not hurting the strength, light & joy by its fierceness or violent expenditure of energydhishnya, asridhah, adruhah. That which ensures this steadiness & unfaltering gait, is the control of the mental power which is the agent of the action & the holder of the joy by the understanding. Indra is dhiyeshita. But what will ensure the understanding itself from error & swerving? It is the divine inspiration, Saraswati, rich with mental substance & clearness, who will keep the system purified, uphold sovereignly the Yajna, & illumine all the actions of the understanding, by awakening with the high divine perception, daivyena ketun, the great sea of ideal knowledge above. For this ideal knowledge, as we shall see, is the satyam, ritam, brihat; it is wide expansion of being & therefore utmost capacity of power, bliss & knowledge; it is the unobscured light of direct & unerring truth, and it is the unstumbling, unswerving fixity of spontaneous Right & Law.
  We have gathered much from this brief hymn, one of the deepest in thought in the Veda. If our construction is correct, then this at least appears that the Veda is no loose, empty & tawdry collection of vague images & shallow superstitions, but there are some portions of it at least which present a clear, well-knit writing full of meaning & stored with ideas. We have the work of sages & thinkers, rishayah, kavayah, manshinah, subtle practical psychologists & great Yogins, not the work of savage medicine-men evolving out of primitive barbarism the first glimpses of an embryonic culture in the half-coherent fumble, the meaningless ritual of a worship of personified rain, wind, fire, sun & constellations. The gods of the Veda have a clear & fixed personality & functions & its conceptions are founded on a fairly advanced knowledge & theory at least of our subjective nature. Nor when we look at the clearness, fixity & frequently psychological nature of the functions of the Greek gods, Apollo, Hermes, Pallas, Aphrodite, [have we] the right to expect anything less from the ancestors of the far more subtle-minded, philosophical & spiritual Indian nation.

1.08 - The Historical Significance of the Fish, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  was Sacrificed, he is not nearly so irreconcilable with Christ as
  the Antichrist would have to be. The duplication of the Christ-

1.08 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  ADHAR (to the Master): "Sir, I have a question to ask. Is it good to Sacrifice animals before the Deity? It certainly involves killing."
  MASTER: "The sastra prescribes Sacrifice on special occasions. Such Sacrifice is not harmful. Take, for instance, the Sacrifice of a goat on the eighth day of the full or new moon.
  "I am now in such a state of mind that I cannot watch a Sacrifice. Also I cannot eat meat offered to the Divine Mother. Therefore I first touch my finger to it, then to my head, lest She should be angry with me.
  "Again, in a certain state of mind I see God in all beings, even in an ant. At that time, if I see a living being die, I find consolation in the thought that it is the death of the body, the soul being beyond life and death.

1.094 - Understanding the Structure of Things, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  The ignorance present in the mind is due to the very old matter about which we were speaking asmita, egoism. The mind and the egoism are united; they cannot be separated. The ego principle, which is the cohesive force that keeps the mind in a restricted position, prevents its connection with anything else other than that with which the ego is connected, so the mind is completely cut off from the world of objects outside. Inasmuch as the personal notions of the mind, as determined by the principle of the ego, cannot always correspond to the law of things in general, there is disharmony between the subject and the object. This disharmony between the subject and the object is the reason behind the subject having no knowledge of the object. Consequently, there is no control over anything. There is a total helplessness on the part of the subject and a compulsion which the subject feels in respect of everything, because the law of the world presses upon the subject so forcefully to yield to its dictates, in spite of whatever the mind may be thinking according to its whims and fancies. Thus, the reason for the bondage of the jiva, or the subject, is the vehemence of the ego, or the asmita tattva, which will not Sacrifice even a whit of its notions and opinions about things.
  The yoga process here, in this great endeavour known as samyama, attempts to cut at the root of this problem by a direct focusing of the attention of the mind on the very same thing with which it cannot reconcile itself namely, the object. The name object is given to that with which we cannot reconcile ourselves; otherwise, it will not be an object. It will be like us only it will be a subject. It is something different from us and, therefore, we call it an object. It stands outside us because we cannot cope with its ways of working and the manner of its relationship with other things of a similar nature.

1.09 - BOOK THE NINTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  A Sacrifice to vengeful Juno's hate.
  She hears the groaning anguish of my fits,

1.09 - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  1:AN ENTIRE self-consecration, a complete equality, an unsparing effacement of the ego, a transforming deliverance of the nature from its ignorant modes of action are the steps by which the surrender of all the being and nature to the Divine Will can be prepared and achieved, - a self-giving true, total and without reserve. The first necessity is an entire spirit of self-consecration in our works; it must become first the constant will, then the ingrained need in all the being, finally its automatic but living and conscious habit, the self-existent turn to do all action as a Sacrifice to the Supreme and to the veiled Power present in us and in all beings and in all the workings of the universe. Life is the altar of this Sacrifice, works are our offering; a transcendent and universal Power and Presence as yet rather felt or glimpsed than known or seen by us is the Deity to whom they are offered. This Sacrifice, this self-consecration has two sides to it; there is the work itself and there is the spirit in which it is done, the spirit of worship to the Master of Works in all that we see, think and experience.
  2:The work itself is at first determined by the best light we can comm and in our ignorance. It is that which we conceive as the thing that should be done. And whether it be shaped by our sense of duty, by our feeling for our fellow-creatures, by our idea of what is for the good of others or the good of the world or by the direction of one whom we accept as a human Master, wiser than ourselves and for us the representative of that Lord of all works in whom we believe but whom we do not yet know, the principle is the same. The essential of the Sacrifice of works must be there and the essential is the surrender of all desire for the fruit of our works, the renunciation of all attachment to the result for which yet we labour. For so long as we work with attachment to the result, the Sacrifice is offered not to the Divine, but to our ego. We may think otherwise, but we are deceiving ourselves; we are making our idea of the Divine, our sense of duty, our feeling for our fellow-creatures, our idea of what is good for the world or others, even our obedience to the Master a mask for our egoistic satisfactions and preferences and a specious shield against the demand made on us to root all desire out of our nature.
  3:At this stage of the Yoga and even throughout the Yoga this form of desire, this figure of the ego is the enemy against whom we have to be always on our guard with an unsleeping vigilance. We need not be discouraged when we find him lurking within us and assuming all sorts of disguises, but we should be vigilant to detect him in all his masks and inexorable in expelling his influence. The illumining Word of this movement is the decisive line of the Gita, "To action thou hast a right but never under any circumstances to its fruit." The fruit belongs solely to the Lord of all works; our only business with it is to prepare success by a true and careful action and to offer it, if it comes, to the divine Master. Afterwards even as we have renounced attachment to the fruit, we must renounce attachment to the work also; at any moment we must be prepared to change one work, one course or one field of action for another or abandon all works if that is the clear comm and of the Master. Otherwise we do the act not for his sake but for our satisfaction and pleasure in the work, from the kinetic nature's need of action or for the fulfilment of our propensities; but these are all stations and refuges of the ego. However necessary for our ordinary motion of life, they have to be abandoned in the growth of the spiritual consciousness and replaced by divine counterparts: an Ananda, an impersonal and God-directed delight will cast out or supplant the unillumined vital satisfaction and pleasure, a joyful driving of the Divine Energy the kinetic need; the fulfilment of the propensities will no longer be an object or a necessity, there will be instead the fulfilment of the Divine Will through the natural dynamic truth in action of a free soul and a luminous nature. In the end, as the attachment to the fruit of the work and to the work itself has been excised from the heart, so also the last clinging attachment to the idea and sense of ourselves as the doer has to be relinquished; the Divine Shakti must be known and felt above and within us as the true and sole worker.
  4:The renunciation of attachment to the work and its fruit is the beginning of a wide movement towards an absolute equality in the mind and soul which must become all-enveloping if we are to be perfect in the spirit. For the worship of the Master of works demands a clear recognition and glad acknowledgment of him in ourselves, in all things and in all happenings. Equality is the sign of this adoration; it is the soul's ground on which true Sacrifice and worship can be done. The Lord is there equally in all beings, we have to make no essential distinctions between ourselves and others, the wise and the ignorant, friend and enemy, man and animal, the saint and the sinner. We must hate none, despise none, be repelled by none; for in all we have to see the One disguised or manifested at his pleasure. He is a little revealed in one or more revealed in another or concealed and wholly distorted in others according to his will and his knowledge of what is best for that which he intends to become in form in them and to do in works in their nature. All is ourself, one self that has taken many shapes. Hatred and disliking and scorn and repulsion, clinging and attachment and preference are natural, necessary, inevitable at a certain stage: they attend upon or they help to make and maintain Nature's choice in us. But to the Karmayogin they are a survival, a stumbling-block, a process of the Ignorance and, as he progresses, they fall away from his nature. The child-soul needs them for its growth; but they drop from an adult in the divine culture. In the God-nature to which we have to rise there can be an adamantine, even a destructive severity but not hatred, a divine irony but not scorn, a calm, clear-seeing and forceful rejection but not repulsion and dislike. Even what we have to destroy, we must not abhor or fail to recognise as a disguised and temporary movement of the Eternal.
  5:And since all things are the one Self in its manifestation, we shall have equality of soul towards the ugly and the beautiful, the maimed and the perfect, the noble and the vulgar, the pleasant and the unpleasant, the good and the evil. Here also there will be no hatred, scorn and repulsion, but instead the equal eye that sees all things in their real character and their appointed place. For we shall know that all things express or disguise, develop or distort, as best they can or with whatever defect they must, under the circumstances intended for them, in the way possible to the immediate status or function or evolution of their nature, some truth or fact, some energy or potential of the Divine necessary by its presence in the progressive manifestation both to the whole of the present sum of things and for the perfection of the ultimate result. That truth is what we must seek and discover behind the transitory expression; undeterred by appearances, by the deficiencies or the disfigurements of the expression, we can then worship the Divine for ever unsullied, pure, beautiful and perfect behind his masks. All indeed has to be changed, not ugliness accepted but divine beauty, not imperfection taken as our resting-place but perfection striven after, the supreme good made the universal aim and not evil. But what we do has to be done with a spiritual understanding and knowledge, and it is a divine good, beauty, perfection, pleasure that has to be followed after, not the human standards of these things. If we have not equality, it is a sign that we are still pursued by the Ignorance, we shall truly understand nothing and it is more than likely that we shall destroy the old imperfection only to create another: for we are substituting the appreciations of our human mind and desire-soul for the divine values.
  --
  11:Before this labour for the annihilation of desire and the conquest of the soul's equality can come to its absolute perfection and fruition, that turn of the spiritual movement must have been completed which leads to the abolition of the sense of ego. But for the worker the renunciation of the egoism of action is the most important element in this change. For even when by giving up the fruits and the desire of the fruits to the Master of the Sacrifice we have parted with the egoism of rajasic desire, we may still have kept the egoism of the worker. Still we are subject to the sense that we are ourselves the doer of the act, ourselves its source and ourselves the giver of the sanction. It is still the "I" that chooses and determines, it is still the "I" that undertakes the responsibility and feels the demerit or the merit.
  12:An entire removal of this separative ego-sense is an essential aim of our Yoga. If any ego is to remain in us for a while, it is only a form of it which knows itself to be a form and is ready to disappear as soon as a true centre of consciousness is manifested or built in us. That true centre is a luminous formulation of the one Consciousness and a pure channel and instrument of the one Existence. A support for the individual manifestation and action of the universal Force, it gradually reveals behind it the true Person in us, the central eternal being, an everlasting being of the Supreme, a power and portion of the transcendent Shakti.2

1.09 - Legend of Lakshmi, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  Having thus spoken, the Brahman went his way; and the king of the gods, remounting his elephant, returned to his capital Amarāvati. Thenceforward, Maitreya, the three worlds and Śakra lost their vigour, and all vegetable products, plants, and herbs were withered and died; Sacrifices were no longer offered; devout exercises no longer practised; men were no more addicted to charity, or any moral or religious obligation; all beings became devoid of steadiness[4]; all the faculties of sense were obstructed by cupidity; and men's desires were excited by frivolous objects. Where there is energy, there is prosperity; and upon prosperity energy depends. How can those abandoned by prosperity be possessed of energy; and without energy, where is excellence? Without excellence there can be no vigour nor heroism amongst men: he who has neither courage nor strength, will be spurned by all: and he who is universally treated with disgrace, must suffer abasement of his intellectual faculties.
  The three regions being thus wholly divested of prosperity, and deprived of energy, the Dānavas and sons of Diti, the enemies of the gods, who were incapable of steadiness, and agitated by ambition, put forth their strength against the gods. They engaged in war with the feeble and unfortunate divinities; and Indra and the rest, being overcome in fight, fled for refuge to Brahmā, preceded by the god of flame (Hutāśana). When the great father of the universe had heard all that had come to pass, he said to the deities, "Repair for protection to the god of high and low; the tamer of the demons; the causeless cause of creation, preservation, and destruction; the progenitor of the progenitors; the immortal, unconquerable Viṣṇu; the cause of matter and spirit, of his unengendered products; the remover of the grief of all who humble themselves before him: he will give you aid." Having thus spoken to the deities, Brahmā proceeded along with them to the northern shore of the sea of milk; and with reverential words thus prayed to the supreme Hari:-
  --
  The gods, having heard this prayer uttered by Brahmā, bowed down, and cried, "Be favourable to us; be present to our sight: we bow down to that glorious nature which the mighty Brahmā does not know; that which is thy nature, oh imperishable, in whom the universe abides." Then the gods having ended, Vrihaspati and the divine Ṛṣis thus prayed: "We bow down to the being entitled to adoration; who is the first object of Sacrifice; who was before the first of things; the creator of the creator of the world; the undefinable: oh lord of all that has been or is to be; imperishable type of Sacrifice; have pity upon thy worshippers; appear to them, prostrate before thee. Here is Brahmā; here is Trilocana (the three-eyed Śiva), with the Rudras; Puṣā, (the sun), with the Ādityas; and Fire, with all the mighty luminaries: here are the sons of Asvinī (the two Asvinī Kumāras), the Vasus and all the winds, the Sādhyas, the Viśvadevas, and Indra the king of the gods: all of whom bow lowly before thee: all the tribes of the immortals, vanquished by the demon host, have fled to thee for succour."
  Thus prayed to, the supreme deity, the mighty holder of the conch and discus, shewed himself to them: and beholding the lord of gods, bearing a shell, a discus, and a mace, the assemblage of primeval form, and radiant with embodied light, Pitāmahā and the other deities, their eyes moistened with rapture, first paid him homage, and then thus addressed him: "Repeated salutation to thee, who art indefinable: thou art Brahmā; thou art the wielder of the Pināka bow (Śiva); thou art Indra; thou art fire, air, the god of waters, the sun, the king of death (Yama), the Vasus, the Māruts (the winds), the Sādhyas, and Viśvadevas. This assembly of divinities, that now has come before thee, thou art; for, the creator of the world, thou art every where. Thou art the Sacrifice, the prayer of oblation, the mystic syllable Om, the sovereign of all creatures: thou art all that is to be known, or to be unknown: oh universal soul, the whole world consists of thee. We, discomfited by the Daityas, have fled to thee, oh Viṣṇu, for refuge. Spirit of all, have compassion upon us; defend us with thy mighty power. There will be affliction, desire, trouble, and grief, until thy protection is obtained: but thou art the remover of all sins. Do thou then, oh pure of spirit, shew favour unto us, who have fled to thee: oh lord of all, protect us with thy great power, in union with the goddess who is thy strength[6]." Hari, the creator of the universe, being thus prayed to by the prostrate divinities, smiled, and thus spake: "With renovated energy, oh gods, I will restore your strength. Do you act as I enjoin. Let all the gods, associated with the Asuras, cast all sorts of medicinal herbs into the sea of milk; and then taking the mountain Mandara for the churning-stick, the serpent Vāsuki for the rope, churn the ocean together for ambrosia; depending upon my aid. To secure the assistance of the Daityas, you must be at peace with them, and engage to give them an equal portion of the fruit of your associated toil; promising them, that by drinking the Amrita that shall be produced from the agitated ocean, they shall become mighty and immortal. I will take care that the enemies of the gods shall not partake of the precious draught; that they shall share in the labour alone."
  Being thus instructed by the god of gods, the divinities entered into alliance with the demons, and they jointly undertook the acquirement of the beverage of immortality. They collected various kinds of medicinal herbs, and cast them into the sea of milk, the waters of which were radiant as the thin and shining clouds of autumn. They then took the mountain Mandara for the staff; the serpent Vāsuki for the cord; and commenced to churn the ocean for the Amrita. The assembled gods were stationed by Kṛṣṇa at the tail of the serpent; the Daityas and Dānavas at its head and neck. Scorched by the flames emitted from his inflated hood, the demons were shorn of their glory; whilst the clouds driven towards his tail by the breath of his mouth, refreshed the gods with revivifying showers. In the midst of the milky sea, Hari himself, in the form of a tortoise, served as a pivot for the mountain, as it was whirled around. The holder of the mace and discus was present in other forms amongst the gods and demons, and assisted to drag the monarch of the serpent race: and in another vast body he sat upon the summit of the mountain. With one portion of his energy, unseen by gods or demons, he sustained the serpent king; and with another, infused vigour into the gods.
  --
  "I bow down to Śrī, the mother of all beings, seated on her lotus throne, with eyes like full-blown lotuses, reclining on the breast of Viṣṇu. Thou art Siddhi (superhuman power): thou art Swadhā and Svāhā: thou art ambrosia (Sudhā), the purifier of the universe: thou art evening, night, and dawn: thou art power, faith, intellect: thou art the goddess of letters (Sarasvatī). Thou, beautiful goddess, art knowledge of devotion, great knowledge, mystic knowledge, and spiritual knowledge[9]; which confers eternal liberation. Thou art the science of reasoning, the three Vedas, the arts and sciences[10]: thou art moral and political science. The world is peopled by thee with pleasing or displeasing forms. Who else than thou, oh goddess, is seated on that person of the god of gods, the wielder of the mace, which is made up of Sacrifice, and contemplated by holy ascetics? Abandoned by thee, the three worlds were on the brink of ruin; but they have been reanimated by thee. From thy propitious gaze, oh mighty goddess, men obtain wives, children, dwellings, friends, harvests, wealth. Health and strength, power, victory, happiness, are easy of attainment to those upon whom thou smilest. Thou art the mother of all beings, as the god of gods, Hari, is their father; and this world, whether animate or inanimate, is pervaded by thee and Viṣṇu. Oh thou who purifiest all things, forsake not our treasures, our granaries, our dwellings, our dependants, our persons, our wives: abandon not our children, our friends, our lineage, our jewels, oh thou who abidest on the bosom of the god of gods. They whom thou desertest are forsaken by truth, by purity, and goodness, by every amiable and excellent quality; whilst the base and worthless upon whom thou lookest favourably become immediately endowed with all excellent qualifications, with families, and with power. He on whom thy countenance is turned is honourable, amiable, prosperous, wise, and of exalted birth; a hero of irresistible prowess: but all his merits and his advantages are converted into worthlessness from whom, beloved of Viṣṇu, mother of the world, thou avertest thy face. The tongues of Brahmā, are unequal to celebrate thy excellence. Be propitious to me, oh goddess, lotus-eyed, and never forsake me more." Being thus praised, the gratified Śrī, abiding in all creatures, and heard by all beings, replied to the god of a hundred rites (Śatakratu); "I am pleased, monarch of the gods, by thine adoration. Demand from me what thou desirest: I have come to fulfil thy wishes." "If, goddess," replied Indra, "thou wilt grant my prayers; if I am worthy of thy bounty; be this my first request, that the three worlds may never again be deprived of thy presence. My second supplication, daughter of ocean, is, that thou wilt not forsake him who shall celebrate thy praises in the words I have addressed to thee." "I will not abandon," the goddess answered, "the three worlds again: this thy first boon is granted; for I am gratified by thy praises: and further, I will never turn my face away from that mortal who morning and evening shall repeat the hymn with which thou hast addressed me."
  Parāśara proceeded:-

1.09 - Saraswati and Her Consorts, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  "May Bharati come speeding to our Sacrifice and Ila hither awakening our consciousness (or, knowledge or perceptions) in human wise, and Saraswati, - three goddesses sit on this blissful seat, doing well the Work."
  It is clear and will become yet clearer that these three goddesses have closely connected functions akin to the inspirational power of Saraswati. Saraswati is the Word, the inspiration, as
  --
  "Thus Mahi for Indra full of the rays, overflowing in her abundance, in her nature a happy truth, becomes as if a ripe branch for the giver of the Sacrifice."
  The rays in the Veda are the rays of Surya, the Sun. Are we to suppose that the goddess is a deity of the physical Light or are we to translate "go" by cow and suppose that Mahi is full of cows for the Sacrificer? The psychological character of
  Saraswati comes to our rescue against the last absurd supposition, but it negatives equally the naturalistic interpretation. This characterisation of Mahi, Saraswati's companion in the Sacrifice, the sister of the goddess of inspiration, entirely identified with her in the later mythology, is one proof among a hundred others that light in the Veda is a symbol of knowledge, of spiritual illumination. Surya is the Lord of the supreme Sight, the vast
  Light, br.haj jyotih., or, as it is sometimes called, the true Light, r.tam jyotih.. And the connection between the words r.tam and br.hat is constant in the Veda.
  --
  Mahi is full of the rays of this Surya; she carries in her this illumination. Moreover she is sunr.ta, she is the word of a blissful Truth, even as it has been said of Saraswati that she is the impeller of happy truths, codayitr sunr.tanam. Finally, she is viraps, large or breaking out into abundance, a word which recalls to us that the Truth is also a Largeness, r.tam br.hat. And in another hymn, (I.22.10), she is described as varutr dhis.an.a, a widely covering or embracing Thought-power. Mahi, then, is the luminous vastness of the Truth, she represents the Largeness, br.hat, of the superconscient in us containing in itself the Truth, r.tam. She is, therefore, for the Sacrificer like a branch covered with ripe fruit.
  Ila is also the word of the truth; her name has become identical in a later confusion with the idea of speech. As Saraswati is an awakener of the consciousness to right thinkings or right states of mind, cetant sumatnam, so also Ila comes to the Sacrifice awakening the consciousness to knowledge, cetayant.
  She is full of energy, suvra, and brings knowledge. She also is connected with Surya, the Sun, as when Agni, the Will is invoked

1.09 - SELF-KNOWLEDGE, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Spiritual progress is through the growing knowledge of the self as nothing and of the Godhead as all-embracing Reality. (Such knowledge, of course, is worthless if it is merely theoretical; to be effective, it must be realized as an immediate, intuitive experience and appropriately acted upon.) Of one great master of the spiritual life Professor tienne Gilson writes: The displacement of fear by Charity by way of the practice of humilityin that consists the whole of St. Bernards ascesis, its beginning, its development and its term. Fear, worry, anxiety these form the central core of individualized selfhood. Fear cannot be got rid of by personal effort, but only by the egos absorption in a cause greater than its own interests. Absorption in any cause will rid the mind of some of its fears; but only absorption in the loving and knowing of the divine Ground can rid it of all fear. For when the cause is less than the highest, the sense of fear and anxiety is transferred from the self to the causeas when heroic self- Sacrifice for a loved individual or institution is accompanied by anxiety in regard to that for which the Sacrifice is made. Whereas if the Sacrifice is made for God, and for others for Gods sake, there can be no fear or abiding anxiety, since nothing can be a menace to the divine Ground and even failure and disaster are to be accepted as being in accord with the divine will. In few men and women is the love of God intense enough to cast out this projected fear and anxiety for cherished persons and institutions. The reason is to be sought in the fact that few men and women are humble enough to be capable of loving as they should. And they lack the necessary humility because they are without the fully realized knowledge of their own personal nothingness.
  Humility does not consist in hiding our talents and virtues, in thinking ourselves worse and more ordinary than we are, but in possessing a clear knowledge of all that is lacking in us and in not exalting ourselves for that which we have, seeing that God has freely given it us and that, with all His gifts, we are still of infinitely little importance.

1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  to privation, and even to life itself. To be ready to Sacrifice
  men for one's cause, one's self included. Freedom denotes that the
  --
  proceeding._ A woman who loves Sacrifices her honour; a knight of
  knowledge who "loves," Sacrifices perhaps his humanity; a God who
  loved, became a Jew....
  --
  of generations. Great Sacrifices must have been made on the altar
  ol good taste, for its sake many things must have been done, and

1.09 - The Secret Chiefs, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  More largely, one cannot judge how a plan is progressing when one has no precise idea what it is. A soldier is told to "attack;" he may be intended to win through, to cover a general retreat, or to gain time by deliberate Sacrifice. Only the Commander in Chief knows what the order means, or why he issues it; and even he does not know the issue, or whether it will display and justify his military skill and judgment.
  Our business is solely to obey orders: our responsibility ends when we have satisfied ourselves that they emanate from a source which has the right to command.

1.09 - The Worship of Trees, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  offered his prayers, at its roots the victim was Sacrificed, and its
  boughs sometimes served as a pulpit. No wood might be hewn and no
  --
  woodman first offers a Sacrifice of fowls and palm-oil to purge
  himself of the proposed sacrilege. To omit the Sacrifice is an
  offence which may be punished with death. Among the Kangra mountains
  of the Punjaub a girl used to be annually Sacrificed to an old
  cedar-tree, the families of the village taking it in turn to supply
  --
  tree and offered him a Sacrifice. Among the Maraves of Southern
  Africa the burial-ground is always regarded as a holy place where
  --
  sides. The ruder Tonapoo in such a case Sacrifice a human being on
  the roof. This Sacrifice on the roof of a _lobo_ or temple serves
  the same purpose as the smearing of blood on the woodwork of an

1.1.01 - Certitudes, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  To enter into relations with God is Yoga, the highest rapture & the noblest utility. There are relations within the compass of the humanity we have developed. These are called prayer, worship, adoration, Sacrifice, thought, faith, science, philosophy. There are other relations beyond our developed capacity, but within the compass of the humanity we have yet to develop. Those are the relations that are attained by the various practices we usually call Yoga.
  We may not know him as God, we may know him as Nature, our Higher Self, Infinity, some ineffable goal. It was so that Buddha approached Him; so approaches him the rigid Adwaitin. He is accessible even to the Atheist. To the materialist He disguises Himself in matter. For the Nihilist he waits ambushed in the bosom of Annihilation.

1.1.01 - Seeking the Divine, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is a universally accepted principle of the spiritual endeavour that one must be prepared to Sacrifice everything without reserve in order to reach the Divine through a spiritualised consciousness. If self-development on the mental, vital and physical plane is his aim that is another matter - that life is the life of the ego with the soul kept behind undeveloped or half developed.
  Letters on Yoga - II

11.01 - The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I Sacrifice not earth to happier worlds.
  Because there dwelt the Eternal's vast Idea

1.1.02 - The Aim of the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The extreme difficulty of these two aims has never been concealed from the sadhakas; on the contrary, difficulties and dangers have been overemphasised, rather than minimised. If still they choose and persist in this path, it is supposed that they are ready to risk everything, Sacrifice everything, surrender everything in order to achieve this end or help towards its achievement.
  You must get out of certain wrong ideas that you seem to have

1.1.04 - Philosophy, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The man of unalloyed intellect has a very high and difficult function; it is his function to teach men to think clearly and purely. In order to effect that for mankind, to carry reason as far as that somewhat stumbling and hesitating Pegasus will go, he Sacrifices all the bypaths of mental enjoyment, the shady alleys and the moonlit gardens of the soul, in order that he may walk in rare air and a cold sunlight, living highly and austerely on the peaks of his mind and seeking God severely through knowledge.
  He treads down his emotions, because emotion distorts reason and replaces it by passions, desires, preferences, prejudices, prejudgments. He avoids life, because life awakes all his sensational being and puts his reason at the mercy of egoism, of sensational reactions of anger, fear, hope, hunger, ambition, instead of allowing it to act justly and do disinterested work. It becomes merely the paid pleader of a party, a cause, a creed, a dogma, an intellectual faction. Passion and eagerness, even intellectual eagerness, so disfigure the greatest minds that even Shankara becomes a sophist and a word-twister, and even Buddha argues in a circle. The philosopher wishes above all to preserve his intellectual righteousness; he is or should be as careful of his mental rectitude as the saint of his moral stainlessness. Therefore he avoids, as far as the world will let him, the conditions which disturb. But in this way he cuts himself off from experience and only the gods can know without experience. Sieyes said that politics was a subject of which he had made a science.

1.108 - Plenty, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
  2. So pray to your Lord and Sacrifice.
  3. He who hates you is the loser.

1.10 - BOOK THE TENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  Venus these barb'rous Sacrifices view'd
  With just abhorrence, and with wrath pursu'd:

1.10 - GRACE AND FREE WILL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Significantly enough, it is to this second aspect of Reality that primitive minds seem to have been most receptive. The formidable God, to whom Job at last submits, is an unknown mode of Being, whose most characteristic creations are Behemoth and Leviathan. He is the sort of God who calls, in Kierkegaards phrase, for teleological suspensions of morality, chiefly in the form of blood Sacrifices, even human Sacrifices. The Hindu goddess, Kali, in her more frightful aspects, is another manifestation of the same unknown mode of Being. And by many contemporary savages the underlying Ground is apprehended and theologically rationalized as sheer, unmitigated Power, which has to be propitiatively worshipped and, if possible, turned to profitable use by means of a compulsive magic.
  To think of God as mere Power, and not also, at the same time as Power, Love and Wisdom, comes quite naturally to the ordinary, unregenerate human mind. Only the totally selfless are in a position to know experimentally that, in spite of everything, all will be well and, in some way, already is well. The philosopher who denies divine providence, says Rumi, is a stranger to the perception of the saints. Only those who have the perception of the saints can know all the time and by immediate experience that divine Reality manifests itself as a Power that is loving, compassionate and wise. The rest of us are not yet in a spiritual position to do more than accept their findings on faith. If it were not for the records they have left behind, we should be more inclined to agree with Job and the primitives.

1.10 - Laughter Of The Gods, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  The old ide fixe that Sri Aurobindo was an anchorite who did not know how to smile or laugh is by now dead. A new fixed notion may swing to the other extreme that he smiled or laughed too much for a yogi. But a sensible estimate, after a reading of his letters, talks and creative works, will confirm the view that his Yoga instead of drying up the fountain of laughter made it flow like the Ganges. For his consciousness grew as vast as the universe; it sounded the uttermost depths and heights of existence. He read the "wonder-book of Common things" as well as the supernal mysteries of God and found the very rasa which is at the root of things. His love and compassion flowed towards all men and creatures like a life-giving ocean. He said in one of his letters: "It is only divine Love which can bear the burden I have to bear, that all have to bear who have Sacrificed everything else to the one aim of uplifting earth out of its darkness towards the Divine. The Gallio-like 'Je m'en fiche'-ism (I do not care) would not carry me one step; it would certainly not be divine. It is quite another thing that enables me to walk unweeping and unlamenting towards the goal." In his own Ashram which is composed, on the one hand, of unlettered villagers and, on the other, of the intellectual lite, with what patience and forbearance, love and sympathy he, like a grand patriarch, guided and led us all towards the goal! Humour that springs from a heart of sympathy made him smile at our follies and foibles and the numerous eccentricities of our human nature. The readers of Talks with Sri Aurobindo must have observed how Sri Aurobindo threw aside his mantle of gravity and enjoyed with us pure fun and frolic, as if we had been his close playmates. In the preceding chapter we have already touched upon one instance. In the period after the accident to his right leg, when he failed to carry out Dr. Manilal's instructions about hanging the leg, he would exclaim as if out of fear, "Oh, Manilal is coming, I must hang my leg." And one of us, piqued by his fear, would remark, "Sir, you seem to be afraid of Dr. Manilal." When Manilal arrived and enquired about the leg, he replied, "The leg is still hanging."
  Yogis and great men there were, who used to joke with their disciples and friends; but it seems to me that there was always a barrier of awe and reverence between them. And though Sri Aurobindo allowed us to forget that and we cut jokes with him on equal terms, the sense of his being our Guru was there.

1.10 - The Image of the Oceans and the Rivers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Saraswati, the inspiration, is full of her luminous plenitudes, rich in substance of thought. She upholds the Sacrifice, the offering of the mortal being's activities to the divine by awakening his consciousness so that it assumes right states of emotion and right movements of thought in accordance with the Truth from which she pours her illuminations and by impelling in it the rise
  The Image of the Oceans and the Rivers
  --
  Let us note, in passing, that since the wine and the clarified butter are symbolic, the Sacrifice also must be symbolic. In such hymns as this of Vamadeva's the ritualistic veil so elaborately woven by the Vedic mystics vanishes like a dissolving mist before our eyes and there emerges the Vedantic truth, the secret of the Veda.
  Vamadeva leaves us in no doubt as to the nature of the
  --
   transparent to the eye that chooses to see. What he means is that the divine knowledge is all the time flowing constantly behind our thoughts, but is kept from us by the internal enemies who limit our material of mind to the sense-action and senseperception so that though the waves of our being beat on banks that border upon the superconscient, the infinite, they are limited by the nervous action of the sense-mind and cannot reveal their secret. They are like horses controlled and reined in; only when the waves of the light have nourished their strength to the full does the straining steed break these limits and they flow freely towards That from which the Soma-wine is pressed out and the Sacrifice is born.
  Yatra somah. suyate yatra yajno, ghr.tasya dhara abhi tat pavante.

1.10 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "Once the Pandava brothers performed the Rajasuya Sacrifice. All the kings placed Yudhisthira on the royal throne and bowed low before him in homage. But Bibhishana, the King of Ceylon, said, 'I bow down to Narayana and to none else.' At these words the Lord Krishna bowed down to Yudhisthira. Only then did Bibhishana prostrate himself, crown and all, before him.
  "Do you know what devotion to one ideal is like? It is like the attitude of a daughter-in-law in the family. She serves all the members of the family-her brothers-in-law, father-in-law, husband, and so forth-, bringing them water to wash their feet, fetching their towels, arranging their seats, and the like; but with her husb and she has a special relationship.

1.10 - The Methods and the Means, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  All the immense possibilities of divine realisation in the soul cannot get actualised without struggle and without such practice on the part of the aspiring devotee. "The mind must always think of the Lord." It is very hard at first to compel the mind to think of the Lord always, but with every new effort the power to do so grows stronger in us. "By practice, O son of Kunti, and by non-attachment is it attained", says Shri Krishna in the Gita. And then as to sacrificial work, it is understood that the five great Sacrificed (To gods, sages, manes, guests, and all creatures.) (Panchamahyajna) have to be performed as usual.
  Purity is absolutely the basic work, the bed-rock upon which the whole Bhakti-building rests.

1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  great Sacrifice, the descent of the Divine itself into the In-
  conscience to take up the burden of the Ignorance and its

1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The history of the Veda is one of the most remarkable & paradoxical phenomena of human experience. In the belief of the ancient Indians the three Vedas, books believed to be inspired directly from the source of all Truth, books at any rate of an incalculable antiquity and of a time-honoured sanctity, were believed to be the repositories of a divine knowledge. The man who was a Veda knower, Vedavid, had access to the deepest knowledge about God and existence. He knew the one thing that was eternally true, the one thing thoroughly worth knowing. The right possession of the ancient hymns was not supposed to be possible by a superficial reading, not supposed to result directly even from a mastery of the scholastic aids to a right understanding,grammar, language, prosody, astronomy, ritual, pronunciation,but depended finally and essentially on explanation by a fit spiritual teacher who understood the inner sense that was couched in the linguistic forms & figures of the Scriptures. The Veda so understood was held to be the fountain, the bedrock, the master-volume of all true Hinduism; that which accepted not the Veda, was and must be instantly departure from the right path, the true truth. Even when the material & ritualistic sense of the Veda had so much dominated & hidden in mens ideas of it its higher parts that to go beyond it seemed imperative, the reverence for this ancient Scripture remained intact. At the time when the Gita in its modern form was composed, we find this double attitude dominant. There is a strong censure of the formalists, the ritualists, who constantly dispute about the Veda and hold it as a creed that there is no other truth and who apply it only for the acquisition of worldly mastery and enjoyments, but at the same time the great store of spiritual truth in the old sacred writings and their high value are never doubted or depreciated. There is in all the Vedas as much utility to the Brahma-knower as to one who would drink there is utility in a well flooded with water on all its sides. Krishna speaking as God Himself declares I alone am He who is to be known by all the Vedas; I am He who made Vedanta and who know the Veda. The sanctity and spiritual value of the Vedas could not receive a more solemn seal of confirmation. It is evident also from this last passage that the more modern distinction which grew upon the Hindu mind with the fading of Vedic knowledge, the distinction by which the old Rigveda and Sama and Yajur are put aside as ritualistic writings, possessing a value only for ceremonial of Sacrifice, and all search for spiritual knowledge is confined to the Vedanta, was unrecognised & even unknown to the writer of the Gita. To him the Vedas are writings full of spiritual truth; the language of the line Vedaish cha sarvair aham eva vedyo, the significance of the double emphasis in the etymological sense of knowledge in Vedavid, the knower of the book of knowledge as well as in vedair vedyo are unmistakable. Other means of knowledge even more powerful than study of the Vedas the Gita recognises; but in its epoch the Veda even as apart from the Upanishads still held its place of honour as the repository of the high and divine knowledge; it still bore upon it the triple seal of the Brahmavidya.
  When was this traditional honour first lost or at least tarnished and the ancient Scripture relegated to the inferior position it occupies in the thought of Shankaracharya? I presume there can be little doubt that the chief agent in this work of destruction was the power of Buddhism. The preachings of Gautama and his followers worked against Vedic knowledge by a double process. First, by entirely denying the authority of the Veda, laying a violent stress on its ritualistic character and destroying the general practice of formal Sacrifice, it brought the study of the Veda into disrepute as a means of attaining the highest good while at the same time it destroyed the necessity of that study for ritualistic purposes which had hitherto kept alive the old Vedic studies; secondly, in a less direct fashion, by substituting for a time at least the vernacular tongues for the old simple Sanscrit as the more common & popular means of religious propaganda and by giving them a literary position and repute, it made a general return to the old generality of the Vedic studies practically impossible. For the Vedas were written in an ancient form of the literary tongue the real secret of which had already been to a great extent lost even to the learned; such knowledge of it as remained, subsisted with difficulty by means of a laborious memorising and a traditional scholarship, conservative indeed but still slowly diminishing and replacing more & more real knowledge by uncertainty, disputed significance and the continuously increasing ingenuities of the ritualist, the grammarian and the sectarian polemical disputant. When after the fall of the Buddhistic Mauryas, feeble successors of the great Asoka, first under Pushyamitra and his son and afterwards under the Guptas, Hinduism revived, a return to the old forms of the creed and the old Vedic scholarship was no longer possible. The old pre-Buddhistic Sanscrit was, to all appearance, a simple, vigorous, living language understood though not spoken by the more intelligent of the common people just as the literary language of Bengal, the language of Bankim Chandra, is understood by every intelligent Bengali, although in speech more contracted forms and a very different vocabulary are in use. But the new Sanscrit of the revival tended to be more & more a learned, scholarly, polished and rhetorical tongue, certainly one of the most smooth, stately & grandiose ever used by human lips, but needing a special & difficult education to understand its grammar, its rhetoric, its rolling compounds and its long flowing sentences. The archaic language of the Vedas ceased to be the common study even of the learned and was only mastered, one is constrained to believe with less & less efficiency, by a small number of scholars. An education in which it took seven years to master the grammar of the language, became inevitably the grave of all true Vedic knowledge. Veda ceased to be the pivot of the Hindu religion, and its place was taken by the only religious compositions which were modern enough in language and simple enough in style to be popular, the Puranas. Moreover, the conception of Veda popularised by Buddhism, Sanscrit as the more common & popular means of religious propaganda and by giving them a literary position and repute, it made a general return to the old generality of the Vedic studies practically impossible. For the Vedas were written in an ancient form of the literary tongue the real secret of which had already been to a great extent lost even to the learned; such knowledge of it as remained, subsisted with difficulty by means of a laborious memorising and a traditional scholarship, conservative indeed but still slowly diminishing and replacing more & more real knowledge by uncertainty, disputed significance and the continuously increasing ingenuities of the ritualist, the grammarian and the sectarian polemical disputant. When after the fall of the Buddhistic Mauryas, feeble successors of the great Asoka, first under Pushyamitra and his son and afterwards under the Guptas, Hinduism revived, a return to the old forms of the creed and the old Vedic scholarship was no longer possible. The old pre-Buddhistic Sanscrit was, to all appearance, a simple, vigorous, living language understood though not spoken by the more intelligent of the common people just as the literary language of Bengal, the language of Bankim Chandra, is understood by every intelligent Bengali, although in speech more contracted forms and a very different vocabulary are in use. But the new Sanscrit of the revival tended to be more & more a learned, scholarly, polished and rhetorical tongue, certainly one of the most smooth, stately & grandiose ever used by human lips, but needing a special & difficult education to understand its grammar, its rhetoric, its rolling compounds and its long flowing sentences. The archaic language of the Vedas ceased to be the common study even of the learned and was only mastered, one is constrained to believe with less & less efficiency, by a small number of scholars. An education in which it took seven years to master the grammar of the language, became inevitably the grave of all true Vedic knowledge. Veda ceased to be the pivot of the Hindu religion, and its place was taken by the only religious compositions which were modern enough in language and simple enough in style to be popular, the Puranas. Moreover, the conception of Veda popularised by Buddhism, a Scripture of ritual and of animal Sacrifice, persisted in the popular mind even after the decline of Buddhism and the revival of great philosophies ostensibly based on Vedic authority. It was under the dominance of this ritualistic conception that Sayana wrote his great commentary which has ever since been to the Indian Pundit the one decisive authority on the sense of Veda. The four Vedas have definitely taken a subordinate place as karmakanda, books of ritual; and to the Upanishads alone, in spite of occasional appeals to the text of the earlier Scriptures, is reserved that aspect of spiritual knowledge & teaching which alone justifies the application to any human composition of the great name of Veda.
  But in spite of this great downfall the ancient tradition, the ancient sanctity survived. The people knew not what Veda might be; but the old idea remained fixed that Veda is always the fountain of Hinduism, the standard of orthodoxy, the repository of a sacred knowledge; not even the loftiest philosopher or the most ritualistic scholar could divest himself entirely of this deeply ingrained & instinctive conception. To complete the degradation of Veda, to consummate the paradox of its history, a new element had to appear, a new form of intelligence undominated by the ancient tradition & the mediaeval method to take possession of Vedic interpretation. European scholarship which regards human civilisation as a recent progression starting yesterday with the Fiji islander and ending today with Haeckel and Rockefeller, conceiving ancient culture as necessarily primitive culture and primitive culture as necessarily half-savage culture, has turned the light of its Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology on the Veda. The result we all know. Not only all vestige of sanctity, but all pretension to any kind of spiritual knowledge or experience disappears from the Veda. The old Rishis are revealed to us as a race of ignorant and lusty barbarians who drank & enjoyed and fought, gathered riches & procreated children, Sacrificed and praised the Powers of Nature as if they were powerful men & women, and had no higher hope or idea. The only idea they had of religion beyond an occasional sense of sin and a perpetual preoccupation with a ritual barbarously encumbered with a mass of meaningless ceremonial details, was a mythology composed of the phenomena of dawn, night, rain, sunshine and harvest and the facts of astronomy converted into a wildly confused & incoherent mass of allegorical images and personifications. Nor, with the European interpretation, can we be proud of our early forefa thers as poets and singers. The versification of the Vedic hymns is indeed noble and melodious,though the incorrect method of writing them established by the old Indian scholars, often conceals their harmonious construction,but no other praise can be given. The Nibelungenlied, the Icelandic Sagas, the Kalewala, the Homeric poems, were written in the dawn of civilisation by semi-barbarous races, by poets not superior in culture to the Vedic Rishis; yet though their poetical value varies, the nations that possess them, need not be ashamed of their ancient heritage. The same cannot be said of the Vedic poems presented to us by European scholarship. Never surely was there even among savages such a mass of tawdry, glittering, confused & purposeless imagery; never such an inane & useless burden of epithets; never such slipshod & incompetent writing; never such a strange & almost insane incoherence of thought & style; never such a bald poverty of substance. The attempt of patriotic Indian scholars to make something respectable out of the Veda, is futile. If the modern interpretation stands, the Vedas are no doubt of high interest & value to the philologist, the anthropologist & the historian; but poetically and spiritually they are null and worthless. Its reputation for spiritual knowledge & deep religious wealth, is the most imposing & baseless hoax that has ever been worked upon the imagination of a whole people throughout many millenniums.
  Is this, then, the last word about the Veda? Or, and this is the idea I write to suggest, is it not rather the culmination of a long increasing & ever progressing error? The theory this book is written to enunciate & support is simply this, that our forefa thers of early Vedantic times understood the Veda, to which they were after all much nearer than ourselves, far better than Sayana, far better than Roth & Max Muller, that they were, to a great extent, in possession of the real truth about the Veda, that that truth was indeed a deep spiritual truth, karmakanda as well as jnanakanda of the Veda contains an ancient knowledge, a profound, complex & well-ordered psychology & philosophy, strange indeed to our modern conception, expressed indeed in language still stranger & remoter from our modern use of language, but not therefore either untrue or unintelligible, and that this knowledge is the real foundation of our later religious developments, & Veda, not only by historical continuity, but in real truth & substance is the parent & bedrock of all later Hinduism, of Vedanta, Sankhya, Nyaya, Yoga, of Vaishnavism & Shaivism&Shaktism, of Tantra&Purana, even, in a remoter fashion, of Buddhism & the later unorthodox religions. From this quarry all have hewn their materials or from this far-off source drawn unknowingly their waters; from some hidden seed in the Veda they have burgeoned into their wealth of branchings & foliage. The ritualism of Sayana is an error based on a false preconception popularised by the Buddhists & streng thened by the writers of the Darshanas,on the theory that the karma of the Veda was only an outward ritual & ceremony; the naturalism of the modern scholars is an error based on a false preconception encouraged by the previous misconceptions of Sayana,on the theory of the Vedas [as] not only an ancient but a primitive document, the production of semi-barbarians. The Vedantic writers of the Upanishads had alone the real key to the secret of the Vedas; not indeed that they possessed the full knowledge of a dialect even then too ancient to be well understood, but they had the knowledge of the Vedic Rishis, possessed their psychology, & many of their general ideas, even many of their particular terms & symbols. That key, less & less available to their successors owing to the difficulty of the knowledge itself & of the language in which it was couched and to the immense growth of outward ritualism, was finally lost to the schools in the great debacle of Vedism induced by the intellectual revolutions of the centuries which immediately preceded the Christian era.
  It is therefore a Vedantic or even what would nowadays be termed a theosophic interpretation of the Veda which in this book I propose to establish. My suggestion is that the gods of the Rigveda were indeed, as the European scholars have seen, masters of the Nature-Powers, but not, as they erroneously theorise, either exclusively or even mainly masters of the visible & physical Nature-Powers. They presided over and in their nature & movement were also & more predominantly mental Nature-Powers, vital Nature-Powers, even supra-mental Nature-Powers. The religion of the Vedic Rishis I suppose on this hypothesis to have been a sort of practical & concrete Brahmavada founded on the three principles of complex existence, isotheism of the gods and parallelism of their functions on all the planes of that complex existence; the secret of their ideas, language & ritual I suppose to rest in an elaborate habit of symbolism & double meaning which tends to phrase & typify all mental phenomena in physical and concrete figures. While the European scholars suppose the Rishis to have been simple-minded barbarians capable only of a gross & obvious personification of forces, only of a confused, barbarous and primitive system of astronomical allegories and animistic metaphors, I suppose them to have been men of daring and observant minds, using a bold and vigorous if sometimes fanciful system of images to express an elaborate practical psychology and self-observation in which what we moderns regard as abstract experiences & ideas were rather perceived with the vividness of physical experiences & images & so expressed in the picturesque terms of a great primitive philosophy. Their outward Sacrifice & ritual I suppose to have been partly the symbols & partly the means of material expression for certain psychological processes, the first foundations of our Hindu system of Yoga, by which they believed themselves able to attain inward & outward mastery, knowledge, joy and extended life & being.
  This theory, although it starts really from a return to the point of view of the early Vedantic writers, appears at the present day doubly revolutionary, because it denies the two established systems of interpretation which have conquered and still hold the modern mind and determine for it the sense of the Veda. Sayana is for the orthodox Indian the decisive and infallible authority; for the heterodox or educated the opinions and apparent discoveries of European philologists are the one infallible and irrefutable pramna. Is it then really true that either from the point of view of orthodox Hindu faith or on the basis of a rational interpretation based on sound philology and criticism the door is closed to any radically new interpretation and the true sense of Veda has, in the main, been settled for us & to all future generations? If so, if Sayanas authority is unquestionable, or if the system of the Europeans is sound and unimprovable in its essential features, then there is no room for the new theory of which I have briefly indicated the nature. The Veda then remains nothing more than a system of sacrificial ritual & mythology of the most primitive crudeness. I hope to show briefly that there is no such finality; the door is wide open, the field is still free for a better understanding and a deeper knowledge.
  The modern world cares little for orthodox Hindu opinion, for the opinion of its Pandits or for the ancient authority of its received guides; putting these things aside as the heavy and now useless baggage of the dead past it moves on free and unhampered to its objective, seeking ever fresh vistas of undiscovered knowledge. But a Hindu writer, still holding the faith of his ancestors, owes a certain debt to the immediate past, not so much as to hamper his free enquiry and outlook upon truth, but enough to demand from him a certain respect for whatever in it is really respectworthy and some attempt to satisfy his coreligionists that in opening out a fresh outlook on ancient knowledge he is not uprooting truths that are essential to their common religion. Nothing in those truths compels us to accept the plenary authority of Sayana or the ritualistic interpretation of the Vedas. The hymns of the Veda are, for us, inspired truth and therefore infallible; it follows that the only interpretative authority on them which can claim also to be infallible is one which itself works by the faculty of divine inspiration. The only works for which the ordinary tradition claims this equal authority are the Brahmanas, Aranyakas & Upanishads. Even among these authorities, if we accept them as all and equally inspired and authoritative, and on this point Hindus are not in entire agreement,the Brahmanas which deal with the ceremonial detail of Vedic Sacrifice, are authoritative for the ritual only; for the inner sense the Upanishads are the fit authority. Sayana can lay claim to no such sanctity for his opinions. He is no ancient Rishi, nor even an inspired religious teacher, but a grammarian and scholar writing in the twelfth century after Christ several millenniums subsequent to the Rishis to whom Veda was revealed. By his virtues & defects as a scholar his interpretation must be judged. His erudition is vast, his industry colossal; he has so occupied the field that everyone who approaches the Veda must pass to it under his shadow; his commentary is a mine of knowledge about Vedic Sanscrit and full of useful hints for the interpretation of Veda. But there the tale of his merits ends. Other qualities are needed for a successful Vedic commentary which in Sayana are conspicuous by their absence; and his defects as a critic are almost as colossal as his industry and erudition. He is not a disinterested mind seeking impartially the truth of Veda but a professor of the ritualistic school of interpretation intent upon reading the traditional ceremonial sense into the sacred hymns; even so he is totally wanting in consistency, coherence and settled method. Not only is he frequently uncertain of himself, halts and qualifies his interpretation with an alternative or not having the full courage of his ritualistic rendering introduces it as a mere possibility,these would be meritorious failings,but he wavers in a much more extraordinary fashion, forcing the ritualistic sense of a word or passage where it cannot possibly hold, abandoning it unaccountably where it can well be sustained. The Vedas are masterpieces of flawless literary style and logical connection. But Sayana, like many great scholars, is guiltless of literary taste and has not the least sense of what is or is not possible to a good writer. His interpretation of any given term is seldom consistent even in similar passages of different hymns, but he will go yet farther and give two entirely different renderings to the same word though occurring in successive riks & in an obviously connected strain of thought. The rhythm and balance of a sentence is nothing to him, he will destroy it ruthlessly in order to get over a difficulty of interpretation; he will disturb the arrangement of a sentence sometimes in the most impossible manner, connecting absolutely disconnected words, breaking up inseparable connections, inserting a second and alien sentence in between the head & tail of the first, and creating a barbarous complexity & confusion where the symbolic movement of the Rishis, unequalled in its golden ease, lucidity and straightforwardness, demands an equal lucidity & straightforwardness in the commentator. A certain rough coherence of thought he attempts to keep, but his rendering makes oftenest a clumsy sense & not unoften no ascertainable sense at all; while he has no scruple in breaking up the coherence entirely in favour of his ritualism. These are, after all, faults common in a scholastic mentality, but even were they less prominent & persistent in him than I have found them to be, they liberate us from all necessity for an exaggerated deference to his authority as an interpreter. Nor, indeed, were Sayana an ideal commentator, could he possibly be relied upon to give us the true sense of Veda; for the language of these hymns, whatever the exact date of their Rishis, goes back to an immense antiquity and long before Sayana the right sense of many Vedic words and the right clue to many Vedic allusions and symbols were lost to the scholars of India. Much indeed survived in tradition, but more had been lost or disfigured, and the two master clues, intellectual & spiritual, on which we can yet rely for the recovery of these losses, a sound philology and the renewal in ourselves of the experiences which form the subject of the Vedic hymns, were the one entirely wanting, the other grown more & more inaccessible with time not only to the Pandit but to the philosopher. Even in our days the sound philology is yet wanting, though the seeds have been sown & even the first beginnings made; nor are the Vedic experiences any longer pursued in their entirety by the Indian Yogins who have learned to follow in this Kali Yuga less difficult paths and more modern systems.
  But the ritualistic interpretation of the Rigveda does not stand on the authority of Sayana alone. It is justified by Shankaracharyas rigid division of karmakanda and jnanakanda and by a long tradition dating back to the propaganda of Buddha which found in the Vedic hymns a great system of ceremonial or effective Sacrifice and little or nothing more. Even the Brahmanas in their great mass & minuteness seem to bear unwavering testimony to the pure ritualism of the Veda. But the Brahmanas are in their nature rubrics of directions to the priests for the right performance of the outward Vedic Sacrifice,that system of symbolic & effective offerings to the gods of Soma-wine, clarified butter or consecrated animals in which the complex religion of the Veda embodied itself for material worship,rubrics accompanied by speculative explanations of old ill-understood details & the popular myths & traditions that had sprung up from obscure allusions in the hymns. Whatever we may think of the Brahmanas, they merely affirm the side of outward ritualism which had grown in a huge & cumbrous mass round the first simple rites of the Vedic Rishis; they do not exclude the existence of deeper meanings & higher purposes in the ancient Scripture. Not only so, but they practically affirm them by including in the Aranyakas compositions of a wholly different spirit & purpose, the Upanishads, compositions professedly intended to bring out the spiritual gist and drift of the earlier Veda. It is clear therefore that to the knowledge or belief of the men of those times the Vedas had a double aspect, an aspect of outward and effective ritual, believed also to be symbolical,for the Brahmanas are continually striving to find a mystic symbolism in the most obvious details of the Sacrifice, and an aspect of highest & divine truth hidden behind these symbols. The Upanishads themselves have always been known as Vedanta. This word is nowadays often used & spoken of as if it meant the end of Veda, in the sense that here historically the religious development commenced in the Rigveda culminated; but obviously it means the culmination of Veda in a very different sense, the ultimate and highest knowledge & fulfilment towards which the practices & strivings of the Vedic Rishis mounted, extricated from the voluminous mass of the Vedic poems and presented according to the inner realisation of great Rishis like Yajnavalkya & Janaka in a more modern style and language. It is used much in the sense in which Madhuchchhandas, son of Viswamitra, says of Indra, Ath te antamnm vidyma sumatnm, Then may we know something of thy ultimate right thinkings, meaning obviously not the latest, but the supreme truths, the ultimate realisations. Undoubtedly, this was what the authors of the Upanishads themselves saw in their work, statements of supreme truth of Veda, truth therefore contained in the ancient mantras. In this belief they appeal always to Vedic authority and quote the language of Veda either to justify their own statements of thought or to express that thought itself in the old solemn and sacred language. And with regard to this there are spoken these Riks.
  In what light did these ancient thinkers understand the Vedic gods? As material Nature Powers called only to give worldly wealth to their worshippers? Certainly, the Vedic gods are in the Vedanta also accredited with material functions. In the Kena Upanishad Agnis power & glory is to burn, Vayus to seize & bear away. But these are not their only functions. In the same Upanishad, in the same apologue, told as a Vedantic parable, Indra, Agni & Vayu, especially Indra, are declared to be the greatest of the gods because they came nearest into contact with the Brahman. Indra, although unable to recognise the Brahman directly, learned of his identity from Uma daughter of the snowy mountains. Certainly, the sense of the parable is not that Dawn told the Sky who Brahman was or that material Sky, Fire & Wind are best able to come into contact with the Supreme Existence. It is clear & it is recognised by all the commentators, that in the Upanishads the gods are masters not only of material functions in the outer physical world but also of mental, vital and physical functions in the intelligent living creature. This will be directly evident from the passage describing the creation of the gods by the One & Supreme Being in the Aitareya Upanishad & the subsequent movement by which they enter in the body of man and take up the control of his activities. In the same Upanishad it is even hinted that Indra is in his secret being the Eternal Lord himself, for Idandra is his secret name; nor should we forget that this piece of mysticism is founded on the hymns of the Veda itself which speak of the secret names of the gods. Shankaracharya recognised this truth so perfectly that he uses the gods and the senses as equivalent terms in his great commentary. Finally in the Isha Upanishad,itself a part of the White Yajur Veda and a work, as I have shown elsewhere, full of the most lofty & deep Vedantic truth, in which the eternal problems of human existence are briefly proposed and masterfully solved,we find Surya and Agni prayed to & invoked with as much solemnity & reverence as in the Rigveda and indeed in language borrowed from the Rigveda, not as the material Sun and material Fire, but as the master of divine God-revealing knowledge & the master of divine purifying force of knowledge, and not to drive away the terrors of night from a trembling savage nor to burn the offered cake & the dripping ghee in a barbarian ritual, but to reveal the ultimate truth to the eyes of the Seer and to raise the immortal part in us that lives before & after the body is ashes to the supreme felicity of the perfected & sinless soul. Even subsequently we have seen that the Gita speaks of the Vedas as having the supreme for their subject of knowledge, and if later thinkers put it aside as karmakanda, yet they too, though drawing chiefly on the Upanishads, appealed occasionally to the texts of the hymns as authorities for the Brahmavidya. This could not have been if they were merely a ritual hymnology. We see therefore that the real Hindu tradition contains nothing excluding the interpretation which I put upon the Rigveda. On one side the current notion, caused by the immense overgrowth of ritualism in the millennium previous to the Christian era and the violence of the subsequent revolt against it, has been fixed in our minds by Buddhistic ideas as a result of the most formidable & damaging attack which the ancient Vedic religion had ever to endure. On the other side, the Vedantic sense of Veda is supported by the highest authorities we have, the Gita & the Upanishads, & evidenced even by the tradition that seems to deny or at least belittle it. True orthodoxy therefore demands not that we should regard the Veda as a ritualist hymn book, but that we should seek in it for the substance or at least the foundation of that sublime Brahmavidya which is formally placed before us in the Upanishads, regarding it as the revelation of the deepest truth of the world & man revealed to illuminated Seers by the Eternal Ruler of the Universe.
  Modern thought & scholarship stands on a different foundation. It proceeds by inference, imagination and conjecture to novel theories of old subjects and regards itself as rational, not traditional. It professes to rebuild lost worlds out of their disjected fragments. By reason, then, and without regard to ancient authority the modern account of the Veda should be judged. The European scholars suppose that the mysticism of the Upanishads was neither founded upon nor, in the main, developed from the substance of the Vedas, but came into being as part of a great movement away from the naturalistic materialism of the early half-savage hymns. Unable to accept a barbarous mummery of ritual and incantation as the highest truth & highest good, yet compelled by religious tradition to regard the ancient hymns as sacred, the early thinkers, it is thought, began to seek an escape from this impasse by reading mystic & esoteric meanings into the simple text of the sacrificial bards; so by speculations sometimes entirely sublime, sometimes grievously silly & childish, they developed Vedanta. This theory, simple, trenchant and attractive, supported to the European mind by parallels from the history of Western religions, is neither so convincing nor, on a broad survey of the facts, so conclusive as it at first appears. It is certainly inconsistent with what the old Vedantic thinkers themselves knew and thought about the tradition of the Veda. From the Brahmanas as well as from the Upanishads it is evident that the Veda came down to the men of those days in a double aspect, as the heart of a great body of effective ritual, but also as the repository of a deep and sacred knowledge, Veda and not merely worship. This idea of a philosophic or theosophic purport in the hymns was not created by the early Hindu mystics, it was inherited by them. Their attitude to the ritual even when it was performed mechanically without the possession of this knowledge was far from hostile; but as ritual, they held it to be inferior in force and value, avaram karma, a lower kind of works and not the highest good; only when performed with possession of the knowledge could it lead to its ultimate results, to Vedanta. By that, says the Chhandogya Upanishad, both perform karma, both he who knows this so and he who knows not. Yet the Ignorance and the Knowledge are different things and only what one does with the knowledge,with faith, with the Upanishad,that has the greater potency. And in the closing section of its second chapter, a passage which sounds merely like ritualistic jargon when one has not the secret of Vedic symbolism but when that secret has once been revealed to us becomes full of meaning and interest, the Upanishad starts by saying The Brahmavadins say, The morning offering to the Vasus, the afternoon offering to the Rudras and the evening offering to the Adityas and all the gods,where then is the world of the Yajamana? (that is to say, what is the spiritual efficacy beyond this material life of the three different Sacrifices & why, to what purpose, is the first offered to the Vasus, the second to the Rudras, the third to the Adityas?) He who knows this not, how should he perform (effectively) ,therefore knowing let him perform. There was at any rate the tradition that these things, the Sacrifice, the god of the Sacrifice, the world or future state of the Sacrificer had a deep significance and were not mere ritual arranged superstitiously for material ends. But this deeper significance, this inner Vedic knowledge was difficult and esoteric, not known easily in its profundity and subtlety even by the majority of the Brahmavadins themselves; hence the searching, the mutual questionings, the record of famous discussions that occupy so much space in the Upanishadsdiscussions which, we shall see, are not intellectual debates but comparisons of illuminated knowledge & spiritual experience.
  If this traditionlet us call it mystic or esoteric for want of a less abused wordwas already formed at the time of the Brahmanas and Upanishads, when and how did it originally arise? Two possibilities present themselves. The tradition may have grown up gradually in the period between the Vedic hymns and the exegetical writings or else the esoteric sense may have already existed in the Veda itself and descended in a stream of tradition to the later mystics, developing, modifying itself, substituting new terms for oldas is the way of traditions. The former is, practically, the European theory.We are told that this spiritual revolution, this movement away from ritual Nature-worship to Brahmavada, begun in the seed in the later Vedic hymns, is found in a more developed state in the Upanishads & culminated in Buddha. In these writings and in the Brahmanas some record can be found of the speculations by which the development was managed. If it prove to be so, if these ancient writings are really the result of progressive intellectual speculation departing from crude & imperfect beginnings of philosophic thought, the European theory justifies itself to the reason and can no longer easily be disputed. But is this the true character of the Upanishads? It seems to me that in most of their dealings with our religions and our philosophical literature European scholars have erred by imposing their own familiar ideas and the limits of their own mentality on the history of an alien mentality and an alien development. Nowhere has this error been more evident than in the failure to realise the true nature of the Upanishads. In India we have never developed, but only affirmed thought by philosophical speculation, because we have never attached to the mere intellectual idea the amazingly exaggerated value which Europe has attached to it, but regarded it only as a test of the logical value to be attached to particular intellectual statements of truth. That is not truth to us which is merely well & justly thought out & can be justified by ratiocinative argument; only that is truth which has been lived & seen in the inner experience. We meditate not to get ideas, but in order to experience, to realise. When we speak of the Jnani, the knower, we do not mean a competent and logical thinker full of wise or of brilliant ideas, but a soul which has seen and lived & spoken in himself with the living truth. Ratiocination is freely used by the later philosophers, but only for the justification against opponents of the ideas already formed by their own meditation or the meditation of others, Rishis, gurus, ancient Vedantins; it is not itself a sufficient means towards the discovery of truth, but at best a help. The ideas of our great thinkers are not mere intellectual statements or even happy or great intuitions; they are based upon spiritual experiences formalised by the intellect into a philosophy. Shankaras passionate advocacy of the idea of Maya as an explanation of life was not merely the ardour of a great metaphysician enamoured of a beautiful idea or a perfect theory of life, but the passion of a man with a deep & vast spiritual experience which he believed to be the sole means of human salvation. Therefore philosophy in India, instead of tending as in Europe to ignore or combat religion, has always been itself deeply religious. In Europe Buddha and Shankara would have become the heads of metaphysical schools & ranked with Kant or Hegel or Nietzsche1 as strong intellectual influences; in India they became, inevitably, the founders of great religious sects, immense moral & spiritual forces;inevitably because Europe has made thought its highest & noblest aim, while India seeks not after thought but soul-vision and inner experience and even in the realm of ideas believes that they can & ought to be seen & lived inwardly rather than merely thought and allowed indirectly to influence outward action. This has been the mentality of our race for ages.Was the mentality of our Vedic forefa thers entirely different from our own? Was it, as Western scholars seem to insist, a European mentality, the mentality of incursive Western savages, (it is Sergis estimate of the Aryans), changed afterwards by the contact with the cultured & reflective Dravidians into something new and strange, rationality changing to mysticism, materialism to a metaphysical spirituality? If so, the change had already been effected when the Upanishads were written. We speak of the discussions in the Upanishads; but in all truth the twelve Upanishads contain not a single genuine discussion. Only once in that not inconsiderable mass of literature, is there something of the nature of logical argument brought to the support of a philosophical truth. The nature of debate or logical reasoning is absent from the mentality of the Upanishadic thinkers. The grand question they always asked each other was not What hast thou thought out in this matter? or What are thy reasonings & conclusions? but What dost thou know? What hast thou seen in thyself? The Vedantic like the Vedic Rishi is a drashta & srota, not a manota, a kavi, not a manishi. There is question, there is answer; but solely for the comparison of inner knowledge & experience; never for ratiocinative argument, for disputation, for the battles of the logician. Always, knowledge, spiritual vision, experience are what is demanded; and often a questioner is turned back because he is not yet prepared in soul to realise the knowledge of the master. For all knowledge is within us and needs only to be awakened by the fit touch which opens the eyes of the soul or by the powerful revealing word.We find throughout the Vedic era always the same method, always the same theory of knowledge; they persist indeed in India to the present day and later habits of metaphysical debate unknown to the Vedic Brahmavadins have never been able to dethrone them from their primaeval supremacy. Let a man present never so finely reasoned a system of metaphysical philosophy, few will turn to hear, none leave his labour to receive, but let a man say as in the old Vedantic times I have experienced, my soul has seen, & hundreds in India will yet leave all to share in this new light of the eternal Truth.

1.11 - BOOK THE ELEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  In Sacrifice to murder'd Phocus' shade.
  The king commands his servants to their arms;

1.11 - Correspondence and Interviews, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  Apart from these discussions on politics in which Sri Aurobindo gave a prophetic warning about China's intention and about the Hindu-Moslem situation in Bengal, Surendra Mohan speaks of some astrological reading regarding Sri Aurobindo, which vitally concerned us. According to Bhrigu astrology, he says, Sri Aurobindo after his 78th year, would develop a loathing towards his body and then would leave it; otherwise death was in his control, he was such a great Yogi.... It was also mentioned there that the Mother or he himself could perform a particular yaja, a sacrificial ceremony following elaborate instructions and repeating certain mantras. On hearing this Surendra Mohan immediately came here and informed the Mother about it. When Sri Aurobindo heard of it, he consoled him saying, "Don't worry." The Mother asked him to send a copy of those instructions but due to some misunderstanding they arrived too late to be of any possible use. Now, this reading took place probably in October 1950. I remember very well the Mother having a talk with Sri Aurobindo on this point. That the reading was unhappily true has been borne out by later developments. Sri Aurobindo's answer to Surendra Mohan was equivocal; we now know that he had already decided to leave a year before. Had the instructions arrived earlier and the yaja been performed, it is still improbable that Sri Aurobindo would have changed his decision. The whole thing still remains a baffling mystery. We can only quote the Mother's words on the subject, uttered on 28.12.50: "Our Lord has Sacrificed himself totally for us.... He was not compelled to leave his body, he chose to do so for reasons so sublime that they are beyond the reach of human mentality.... And when one cannot understand, the only thing is to keep a respectful silence." Another utterance on 18.1.51: "We stand in the Presence of Him who has Sacrificed his physical life in order to help more fully his work of transformation.
  "He is always with us, aware of what we are doing, of all our thoughts, of all our feelings and all our actions."

1.11 - FAITH IN MAN, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  on the one hand, the spirit (let us call it "Christian") of Sacrifice and
  of union centered in the expectation of a Vision in the future; and

1.11 - Legend of Dhruva, the son of Uttanapada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  giras said; "If you desire an exalted station, worship that Govinda in whom, immutable and undecaying, all that is, exists." Pulastya said; "He who adores the divine Hari, the supreme soul, supreme glory, who is the supreme Brahma, obtains what is difficult of attainment, eternal liberation." "When that Janārddana," observed Kratu, "who in Sacrifices is the soul of Sacrifice, and who in abstract contemplation is supreme spirit, is pleased, there is nothing man may not acquire." Pulaha said; "Indra, having worshipped" the lord of the world, obtained the dignity of king of the celestials. Do thou adore, pious youth, that Viṣṇu, the lord of Sacrifice." "Any thing, child, that the mind covets," exclaimed Vaśiṣṭha, "may be obtained by propitiating Viṣṇu, even though it he the station that is the most excellent in the three worlds."
  Dhruva replied to them; "You have told me, humbly bending before you, what deity is to be propitiated: now inform me what prayer is to he meditated by me, that will offer him gratification. May the great Ṛṣis, looking upon me with favour, instruct me how I am to propitiate the god." The Ṛṣis answered; "Prince, thou deservest to hear how the adoration of Viṣṇu has been performed by those who have been devoted to his service. The mind must first be made to forsake all external impressions, and a man must then fix it steadily on that being in whom the world is. By him whose thoughts are thus concentrated on one only object, and wholly filled by it; whose spirit is firmly under control; the prayer that we shall repeat to thee is to be inaudibly recited: 'Om! glory to Vāsudeva, whose essence is divine wisdom; whose form is inscrutable, or is manifest as Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva[2].' This prayer, which was formerly uttered by your grandsire, the Manu Svāyambhuva, and propitiated by which, Viṣṇu conferred upon him the prosperity he desired, and which was unequalled in the three worlds, is to be recited by thee. Do thou constantly repeat this prayer, for the gratification of Govinda."

1.11 - ON THE NEW IDOL, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  of these human Sacrifices!
  The earth is free even now for great souls. There

1.11 - The Influence of the Sexes on Vegetation, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  to Sacrifice the immediate gratification of his senses. That this is
  or may be so, the examples I have cited are amply sufficient to

1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  to bear, that all have to bear who have Sacrificed everything
  else to the one aim of uplifting the earth out of its dark-
  --
  have Sacrificed everything else to the one aim of uplifting
  earth out of its darkness towards the Divine. 44

1.11 - The Master of the Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
     The first step on this long path is to consecrate all our works as a Sacrifice to the Divine in us and in the world; this is an attitude of the mind and heart, not too difficult to initiate, but very difficult to make absolutely sincere and all-pervasive. The second step is to renounce attachment to the fruit of our works; for the only true, inevitable and utterly desirable fruit of Sacrifice-the one thing needful -- is the Divine Presence and the Divine Consciousness and Power in us, and if that is gained, all else will be added. This is a transformation of the egoistic will in our vital being, our desire-soul and desire-nature, and it is far more difficult than the other. The third step is to get rid of the central egoism and even the ego-sense of the worker. That is the most difficult transformation of all and cannot be perfectly done if the first two steps have not been taken; but these first steps too cannot be completed unless the third comes in to crown the movement and, by the extinction of egoism, eradicates the very origin of desire. Only when the small ego-sense is rooted out from the nature can the seeker know his true person that stands above as a portion and power of the Divine and renounce all motive-force other than the will of the Divine shakti.
     There are gradations in this last integralising movement; for it cannot be done at once or without long approaches that bring it progressively nearer and make it at last possible. The first attitude to be taken is to cease to regard ourselves as the worker and firmly to realise that we are only one instrument of the cosmic Force. At first it is not the one Force but many cosmic forces that seem to move us; but these may be turned into feeders of the ego and this vision liberates the mind but not the rest of the nature. Even when we become aware of all as the working of one cosmic Force and of the Divine behind it, that too need not liberate. If the egoism of the worker disappears, the egoism of the instrument may replace it or else prolong it in a disguise. The life of the world has been full of instances of egoism of this kind and it can be more engrossing and enormous than any other; there is the same danger in Yoga. A man becomes a leader of men or eminent in a large or lesser circle and feels himself full of a power that he knows to be beyond his own ego-Force; he may be aware of a Fate acting through him or a Will mysterious and unfathomable or a Light within of great brilliance. There are extraordinary results of his thoughts, his actions or his creative genius. He effects some tremendous destruction that clears the path for humanity or some great construction that becomes its momentary resting-place. He is a scourge or he is a bringer of light and healing, a creator of beauty or a messenger of knowledge. Or, if his work and its effects are on a lesser scale and have a limited field, still they are attended by the strong sense that he is an instrument and chosen for his mission or his labour. Men who have this destiny and these powers come easily to believe and declare themselves to be mere instruments in the hand of God or of Fate: but even in tile declaration we can see that there can intrude or take refuge an intenser and more exaggerated egoism than ordinary men have the courage to assert or the strength to house within them. And often if men of this kind speak of God, it is to erect all image of him which is really nothing but a huge shadow of themselves or their own nature, a sustaining Deific Essence of their own type of will and thought and quality and force. This magnified image of their ego is the Master whom they serve. This happens only too often in Yoga to strong but crude vital natures or minds too easily exalted when they allow ambition, pride or the desire of greatness to enter into their spiritual seeking and vitiate its purity of motive; a magnified ego stands between them and their true being and grasps for its own personal purpose the strength from a greater unseen Power, divine or undivine, acting through them of which they become vaguely or intensely aware. An intellectual perception or vital sense of a Force greater than ours and of ourselves as moved by it is not sufficient to liberate from the ego.

1.11 - The Second Genesis, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  When That which had not desired to affirm itself in this Matter, manifested there, when That which was pure, eternal and unconditioned liberty voluntarily, bound itself in the chains of Necessity, in the determinism of the becoming in order to break their constraints, when the Absolute entered, not out of desire, but by a Sacrifice into the obscure forms of the relative, then indeed the being was born and the universe was engendered. That was the second genesis, the birth by Love.
  ***

1.11 - The Seven Rivers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  "black-skinned" and "noseless" enemies. Or does the conquest of Swar mean simply the winning of heaven by Sacrifice? And in either case what is the sense of this curious collocation of cows, waters and the sun or cows, waters and the sky? Is it not rather a system of symbolic meanings in which the herds, indicated by the word gah. in the sense both of cows and rays of light, are the illuminations from the higher consciousness which have their origin in the Sun of Light, the Sun of Truth? Is not Swar itself the world or plane of immortality governed by that Light or Truth of the all-illumining Sun called in Veda the vast Truth, r.tam br.hat, and the true Light? and are not the divine waters, apo devh., divyah.
  110
  --
  So also he interprets the all-important Vedic word r.tam sometimes as Sacrifice, sometimes as truth, sometimes as water, and all these different senses in a single hymn of five or six verses!
  The Seven Rivers
  --
  "We have made the Sacrifice to ascend towards the supreme, let the Word increase. With kindlings of his fire, with obeisance of submission they set Agni to his workings; they have given expression in the heaven to the knowings of the seers and they desire a passage for him in his strength, in his desire of the word. (2)
  "Full of intellect, purified in discernment, the perfect friend
  --
  Gods and men, says Vishwamitra in effect, kindle this divine force by lighting the fires of the inner Sacrifice; they enable it to work by their adoration and submission to it; they express in heaven, that is to say, in the pure mentality which is symbolised by Dyaus, the knowings of the Seers, in other words the illuminations of the Truth-consciousness which exceeds Mind; and they do this in order to make a passage for this divine force which in its strength seeking always to find the word of right self-expression aspires beyond mind. This divine will carrying in all its workings the secret of the divine knowledge, kavikratuh., befriends or builds up the mental and physical consciousness in man, divah. pr.thivyah., perfects the intellect, purifies the discernment so that they grow to be capable of the "knowings of the seers" and by the superconscient Truth thus made conscient in us establishes firmly the Beatitude (vs. 2-3).
  The rest of the passage describes the ascent of this divine conscious-force, Agni, this Immortal in mortals who in the Sacrifice takes the place of the ordinary will and knowledge of man, from the mortal and physical consciousness to the immortality of the Truth and the Beatitude. The Vedic Rishis speak of five births for man, five worlds of creatures where works are done, panca janah., panca kr.s.t.h. or ks.ith.. Dyaus and Prithivi represent the pure mental and the physical consciousness; between them is the Antariksha, the intermediate or connecting level of the vital or nervous consciousness. Dyaus and Prithivi are Rodasi, our two firmaments; but these have to be overpassed, for then we find admission to another heaven than that of the pure mind - to the wide, the Vast which is the basis, the foundation (budhna) of the infinite consciousness, Aditi. This Vast is the Truth which supports the supreme triple world, those highest steps or seats
  (padani, sadamsi) of Agni, of Vishnu, those supreme Names of the Mother, the cow, Aditi. The Vast or Truth is declared to be

1.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Of little use are worship, oblations, or Sacrifice.
  He sang another song:

1.11 - Works and Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:1.11 - Works and Sacrifice
  author class:Sri Aurobindo
  --
  Works and Sacrifice
  HE YOGA of the intelligent will and its culmination in the Brahmic status, which occupies all the close of the second chapter, contains the seed of much of the teaching of the Gita, - its doctrine of desireless works, of equality, of the rejection of outward renunciation, of devotion to the Divine; but as yet all this is slight and obscure. What is most strongly emphasised as yet is the withdrawal of the will from the ordinary motive of human activities, desire, from man's normal temperament of the sense-seeking thought and will with its passions and ignorance, and from its customary habit of troubled manybranching ideas and wishes to the desireless calm unity and passionless serenity of the Brahmic poise. So much Arjuna has understood. He is not unfamiliar with all this; it is the substance of the current teaching which points man to the path of knowledge and to the renunciation of life and works as his way of perfection. The intelligence withdrawing from sense and desire and human action and turning to the Highest, to the One, to the actionless Purusha, to the immobile, to the featureless Brahman, that surely is the eternal seed of knowledge. There is no room here for works, since works belong to the Ignorance; action is the very opposite of knowledge; its seed is desire and its fruit is bondage. That is the orthodox philosophical doctrine, and
  --
  Works and Sacrifice
  107
  --
  Works and Sacrifice
  109
  --
  Again, I cannot accept the current interpretation of niyatam karma as if it meant fixed and formal works and were equivalent to the Vedic nityakarma, the regular works of Sacrifice, ceremonial and the daily rule of Vedic living. Surely, niyata simply takes up the niyamya of the last verse. Krishna makes a statement, "he who controlling the senses by the mind engages with the organs of action in Yoga of action, he excels," manasa niyamya arabhate karmayogam, and he immediately goes on to draw from the statement an injunction, to sum it up and convert it into a rule. "Do thou do controlled action," niyatam kuru karma tvam: niyatam takes up the niyamya, kuru karma takes up the arabhate karmayogam. Not formal works fixed by an external rule, but desireless works controlled by the liberated buddhi, is the Gita's teaching.
  110
  --
   of ceremonial Sacrifice, daily conduct and social duty, which the man who seeks liberation may do simply because it is enjoined upon him, without any personal purpose or subjective interest in them, with an absolute indifference to the doing, not because he is compelled by his nature but because it is enjoined by the
  Shastra. But if the principle of the action is not to be external to the nature but subjective, if the actions even of the liberated and the sage are to be controlled and determined by his nature, svabhava-niyatam, then the only subjective principle of action is desire of whatever kind, lust of the flesh or emotion of the heart or base or noble aim of the mind, but all subject to the gun.as of
  Prakriti. Let us then interpret the niyata karma of the Gita as the nityakarma of the Vedic rule, its kartavya karma or work that has to be done as the Aryan rule of social duty and let us take too its work done as a Sacrifice to mean simply these Vedic Sacrifices and this fixed social duty performed disinterestedly and without any personal object. This is how the Gita's doctrine of desireless work is often interpreted. But it seems to me that the Gita's teaching is not so crude and simple, not so local and temporal and narrow as all that. It is large, free, subtle and profound; it is for all time and for all men, not for a particular age and country.
  Especially, it is always breaking free from external forms, details, dogmatic notions and going back to principles and the great facts of our nature and our being. It is a work of large philosophic truth and spiritual practicality, not of constrained religious and philosophical formulas and stereotyped dogmas.
  --
  Works and Sacrifice
  111
  --
  Gita teaches and desirelessness is only a means to this end, not an aim in itself. Yes, but how is it to be brought about? By doing all works with Sacrifice as the only object, is the reply of the divine Teacher. "By doing works otherwise than for Sacrifice, this world of men is in bondage to works; for Sacrifice practise works, O son of Kunti, becoming free from all attachment." It is evident that all works and not merely Sacrifice and social duties can be done in this spirit; any action may be done either from the ego-sense narrow or enlarged or for the sake of the Divine.
  All being and all action of Prakriti exist only for the sake of the Divine; from that it proceeds, by that it endures, to that it is directed. But so long as we are dominated by the ego-sense we cannot perceive or act in the spirit of this truth, but act for the satisfaction of the ego and in the spirit of the ego, otherwise than for Sacrifice. Egoism is the knot of the bondage. By acting
  Godwards, without any thought of ego, we loosen this knot and finally arrive at freedom.
  At first, however, the Gita takes up the Vedic statement of the idea of Sacrifice and phrases the law of Sacrifice in its current terms. This it does with a definite object. We have seen that the quarrel between renunciation and works has two forms, the opposition of Sankhya and Yoga which is already in principle reconciled and the opposition of Vedism and Vedantism which the Teacher has yet to reconcile. The first is a larger statement of
  112
  --
  In the opposition of Vedism and Vedantism works, karma, are restricted to Vedic works and sometimes even to Vedic Sacrifice and ritualised works, all else being excluded as not useful to salvation. Vedism of the Mimansakas insisted on them as the means, Vedantism taking its stand on the Upanishads looked on them as only a preliminary belonging to the state of ignorance and in the end to be overpassed and rejected, an obstacle to the seeker of liberation. Vedism worshipped the Devas, the gods, with Sacrifice and held them to be the powers who assist our salvation. Vedantism was inclined to regard them as powers of the mental and material world opposed to our salvation (men, says the Upanishad, are the cattle of the gods, who do not desire man to know and be free); it saw the Divine as the immutable
  Brahman who has to be attained not by works of Sacrifice and worship but by knowledge. Works only lead to material results and to an inferior Paradise; therefore they have to be renounced.
  The Gita resolves this opposition by insisting that the Devas are only forms of the one Deva, the Ishwara, the Lord of all
  Yoga and worship and Sacrifice and austerity, and if it is true that Sacrifice offered to the Devas leads only to material results and to Paradise, it is also true that Sacrifice offered to the Ishwara leads beyond them to the great liberation. For the Lord and the immutable Brahman are not two different beings, but one and the same Being, and whoever strives towards either, is striving towards that one divine Existence. All works in their totality find their culmination and completeness in the knowledge of the
  Divine, sarvam karmakhilam partha jnane parisamapyate. They are not an obstacle, but the way to the supreme knowledge.
  Works and Sacrifice
  113
  Thus this opposition too is reconciled with the help of a large elucidation of the meaning of Sacrifice. In fact its conflict is only a restricted form of the larger opposition between Yoga and
  Sankhya. Vedism is a specialised and narrow form of Yoga; the principle of the Vedantists is identical with that of the Sankhyas, for to both the movement of salvation is the recoil of the intelligence, the buddhi, from the differentiating powers of Nature, from ego, mind, senses, from the subjective and the objective, and its return to the undifferentiated and the immutable. It is with this object of reconciliation in his mind that the Teacher first approaches his statement of the doctrine of Sacrifice; but throughout, even from the very beginning, he keeps his eye not on the restricted Vedic sense of Sacrifice and works, but on their larger and universal application, - that widening of narrow and formal notions to admit the great general truths they unduly restrict which is always the method of the Gita.

1.12 - BOOK THE TWELFTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  And Jove with solemn Sacrifice adore;
  A boding sign the priests and people see:
  --
  Heav'n had its part in Sacrifice: the rest
  Was broil'd, and roasted for the future feast.
  --
  So, when some brawny Sacrificer knocks,
  Before an altar led, an offer'd ox,

1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  under the same conditions the Work and the Sacrifice.
  XII

1.12 - Dhruva commences a course of religious austerities, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  kāra), primeval nature, and the pure, subtile, all-pervading soul, that surpasses nature. Salutation to that spirit that is void of qualities; that is supreme over all the elements and all the objects of sense, over intellect, over nature and spirit. I have taken refuge with that pure form of thine, oh supreme, which is one with Brahma, which is spirit, which transcends all the world. Salutation to that form which, pervading and supporting all, is designated Brahma, unchangeable, and contemplated by religious sages. Thou art the male with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet, who traversest the universe, and passest ten inches beyond its contact[2]. Whatever has been, or is to be, that, Puruṣottama, thou art. From thee sprang Virāt, Svarāt, Samrāt, and Adhipuruṣa[3]. The lower, and upper, and middle parts of the earth are not independent of thee: from thee is all this universe, all that has been, and that shall be: and all this world is in thee, assuming this universal form[4]. From thee is Sacrifice derived, and all oblations, and curds, and ghee, and animals of either class (domestic or wild). From thee the Rig-Veda, the Sāma, the metres of the Vedas, and the Yajur-Véda are born. Horses, and cows having teeth in one jaw only[5], proceed from thee; and from thee come goats, sheep, deer. Brahmans sprang from thy mouth; warriors from thy arms; Vaisyas from thy thighs; and Śūdras from thy feet. From thine eyes come the sun; from thine ears, the wind; and from thy mind, the moon: the vital airs from thy central vein; and fire from thy mouth: the sky from thy navel; and heaven from thy head: the regions from thine ears; the earth from thy feet. All this world was derived from thee. As the wide-spreading Nyagrodha (Indian fig) tree is compressed in a small seed[6], so, at the time of dissolution, the whole universe is comprehended in thee as its germ. As the Nyagrodha germinates from the seed, and becomes first a shoot, and then rises into loftiness, so the created world proceeds from thee, and expands into magnitude. As the bark and leaves of the Plantain tree are to be seen in its stem, so thou art the stem of the universe, and all things are visible in thee. The faculties of the intellect, that are the cause of pleasure and of pain, abide in thee as one with all existence; but the sources of pleasure and of pain, singly or blended, do not exist in thee, who art exempt from all qualities[7]. Salutation to thee, the subtile rudiment, which, being single, becomes manifold, Salutation to thee, soul of existent things, identical with the great elements. Thou, imperishable, art beheld in spiritual knowledge as perceptible objects, as nature, as spirit, as the world, as Brahmā, as Manu, by internal contemplation. But thou art in all, the element of all; thou art all, assuming every form; all is from thee, and thou art from thyself. I salute thee, universal soul: glory be to thee. Thou art one with all things: oh lord of all, thou art present in all things. What can I say unto thee? thou knowest all that is in the heart, oh soul of all, sovereign lord of all creatures, origin of all things. Thou, who art all beings, knowest the desires of all creatures. The desire that I cerished has been gratified, lord, by thee: my devotions have been crowned with success, in that I have seen thee."
  Viṣṇu said to Dhruva; "The object of thy devotions has in truth been attained, in that thou hast seen me; for the sight of me, young prince, is never unproductive. Ask therefore of me what boon thou desirest; for men in whose sight I appear obtain all their wishes." To this, Dhruva answered; "Lord god of all creatures, who abidest in the hearts of all, how should the wish that I cerish be unknown to thee? I will confess unto thee the hope that my presumptuous heart has entertained; a hope that it would be difficult to gratify, but that nothing is difficult when thou, creator of the world, art pleased. Through thy favour, Indra reigns over the three worlds. The sister-queen of my mother has said to me, loudly and arrogantly, 'The royal throne is not for one who is not born of me;' and I now solicit of the support of the universe an exalted station, superior to all others, and one that shall endure for ever." Viṣṇu said to him; "The station that thou askest thou shalt obtain; for I was satisfied with thee of old in a prior existence. Thou wast formerly a Brahman, whose thoughts were ever devoted to me, ever dutiful to thy parents, and observant of thy duties. In course of time a prince became thy friend, who was in the period of youth, indulged in all sensual pleasures, .and was of handsome appearance and elegant form. Beholding, in consequence of associating with him, his affluence, you formed the desire that you might be subsequently born as the son of a king; and, according to your wish, you obtained a princely birth in the illustrious mansion of Uttānapāda. But that which would have been thought a great boon by others, birth in the race of Svāyambhuva, you have not so considered, and therefore have propitiated me. The man who worships me obtains speedy liberation from life. What is heaven to one whose mind is fixed on me? A station shall be assigned to thee, Dhruva, above the three worlds[8]; one in which thou shalt sustain the stars and the planets; a station above those of the sun, the moon, Mars, the son of Soma (Mercury), Venus, the son of Sūrya (Saturn), and all the other constellations; above the regions of the seven Ṛṣis, and the divinities who traverse the atmosphere[9]. Some celestial beings endure for four ages; some for the reign of a Manu: to thee shall be granted the duration of a Kalpa. Thy mother Sunīti, in the orb of a bright star, shall abide near thee for a similar term; and all those who, with minds attentive, shall glorify thee at dawn or at eventide, shall acquire exceeding religious merit.

1.12 - God Departs, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  It is finished, the dread mysterious Sacrifice,
  Offered by God's martyred body for the world.
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  Immersed in silent, incommunicable grief we sat by his immobile body. From that stupor, Sanyal woke me up and said, "A lot of things to do; get up." Yes, the body had to be prepared for public view. News had already gone abroad. The Ashram photographers who had no chance to take photos of the Living would now take them of the Maha Samadhi. "In the morning twilight of the gods," the sadhaks came one by one and saw the Marvel and the Mystery, the body of the Golden Purusha in eternal sleep. And with tears of joy and grief they offered their prayer to the One who had Sacrificed all for them.
  I also saw, to my utter wonder and delight, that the entire body was suffused with a golden crimson hue, so fresh, so magnificent. It seemed to have lifted my pall of gloom and I felt light and happy without knowing why. When the Mother came, I asked naively, "Mother, won't he come back?" "No!" she replied, "If he wanted to come back, he would not have left the body." Pointing to the Light she said, "If this Supramental Light remains we shall keep the body in a glass case." Alas, it did not remain and on the fifth day, on the 9th of December in the evening, the body was laid in a vault.
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  Thus came to a close the physical life of the One who, without the world knowing it, worked unceasingly for the world and will continue doing so, careless of human reward of any kind and accepting the success of his mission as the only recompense. Of the latter he was absolutely sure, but were it to end in failure, he said that he would still go on unperturbed, because "I would still have done to the best of my power the work that I had to do, and what is so done counts always in the economy of the universe." Was it the Sacrifice that he called, "paying here God's debt to earth and man"? Never has there been recorded in earth-history a phenomenon where a person of Sri Aurobindo's supreme eminence has lived secluded from the world-gaze and quietly and unobtrusively passed away. Such a complete self-effacement can be thought of only of one who is a god or has become a god. It is certain that one day the world will wake up to realise who he was and what it owes to him as it becomes more and more enlightened in its consciousness. Already, some faint glimmerings of that recognition are visible in the Eastern sky, "a long lone line of hesitating hue". His Birth Centenary is knocking at our door. Rabindranath's salutation to him in his political days will turn into a salutation of the whole of humanity as its lover and saviour. The long lone hue will be transformed into a full blaze of the living Sun.
  I need not add that the Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo is not just a conventional place of pilgrimage. Every part of it is vibrant with the Consciousness-Force that the Master embodied during his unparalleled lifelong sadhana. From the oldest to the youngest, devotees see his glorious face, hear his ethereal voice, receive his answer to their prayers and become filled with something that cannot be mathematically proved, but subjectively apprehended. Yogis, saints and sadhus through the ages have done miracles; the Samadhi does the same in a different way; it is a Presence that radiates a constant stream of Peace, Light, Force, and responds to all our soul-needs when we approach it with faith and devotion.

1.12 - Love The Creator, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  But in order that it might fertilise the germs of death, was it not inevitable that love should bury itself alive therein? Before anything could be, love had to make a holocaust of itself. Together with desire there was in the beginning Sacrifice; and desire contained in its germ all the sorrows of the world, Sacrifice all the joys of infinity.
  All religions under different symbols speak of this Sacrifice; but those that proclaim it the most highly are the religions whose teaching is joy.
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1.12 - The Herds of the Dawn, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Light that Indra restores to the Sacrificer. The recovery of the lost or stolen cows is constantly spoken of in the Vedic hymns and its sense will be clear enough when we come to examine the legend of the Panis and of the Angirases.
  Once this sense is established, the material explanation of the Vedic prayer for "cows" is at once shaken; for if the lost cows for whose restoration the Rishis invoke Indra, are not physical herds stolen by the Dravidians but the shining herds of the Sun, of the Light, then we are justified in considering whether the same figure does not apply when there is the simple prayer for "cows" without any reference to any hostile interception.
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  But Dawn is not only drawn by these shining herds; she brings them as a gift to the Sacrificer; she is, like Indra in his
  Soma-ecstasy, a giver of the Light. In a hymn of Vasishtha
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   gava us.asam vavasanta. And in the very next verse she is asked to confirm or establish for the Sacrificers gomad ratnam asvavat purubhojah., a state of bliss full of the light (cows), of the horses
  (vital force) and of many enjoyments. The herds which Usha gives are therefore the shining troops of the Light recovered by the gods and the Angiras Rishis from the strong places of Vala and the Panis and the wealth of cows (and horses) for which the
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  The objections are manifold and some of them overwhelming. If we assume that the Vedic hymns were composed in India and the dawn is the Indian dawn and the night the brief Indian night of ten or twelve hours, we have to start with the concession that the Vedic Rishis were savages overpowered by a terror of the darkness which they peopled with goblins, ignorant of the natural law of the succession of night and day - which is yet beautifully hymned in many of the Suktas, - and believed that it was only by their prayers and Sacrifices that the Sun rose in the heavens and the Dawn emerged from the embrace of her sister
  Night. Yet they speak of the undeviating rule of the action of the Gods, and of Dawn following always the path of the eternal
  Law or Truth! We have to suppose that when the Rishi gives vent to the joyous cry "We have crossed over to the other shore of this darkness!", it was only the normal awakening to the daily sunrise that he thus eagerly hymned. We have to suppose that the Vedic peoples sat down to the Sacrifice at dawn and prayed for the light when it had already come. And if we accept all these improbabilities, we are met by the clear statement that it was only after they had sat for nine or for ten months that the lost light and the lost sun were recovered by the Angiras
  Rishis. And what are we to make of the constant assertion of the discovery of the Light by the Fathers; - "Our fathers found out the hidden light, by the truth in their thoughts they brought to birth the Dawn," gud.ham jyotih. pitaro anvavindan, satyamantra ajanayan us.asam (VII.76.4). If we found such a verse in any collection of poems in any literature, we would at once give it a psychological or a spiritual sense; there is no just reason for a different treatment of the Veda.

1.12 - The Sacred Marriage, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  used to offer an annual Sacrifice to Artemis on her birthday,
  purchasing the sacrificial victim with the fines which they had paid
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  had been committed, an expiatory Sacrifice should be offered by the
  pontiffs in the grove of Diana. For we know that the crime of incest
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  offered Sacrifices for a fruitful year.
  Thus the custom of marrying gods either to images or to human beings
  --
  girl thereafter remained a virgin and Sacrificed to the idol for the
  people. They showed her the utmost reverence and deemed her divine.
  --
  king's own daughter to be Sacrificed. She is exposed to the monster,
  but the hero of the tale, generally a young man of humble birth,

1.12 - The Significance of Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:1.12 - The Significance of Sacrifice
  author class:Sri Aurobindo
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  The Significance of Sacrifice
  HE GITA'S theory of Sacrifice is stated in two separate passages; one we find in the third chapter, another in the fourth; the first gives it in language which might, taken by itself, seem to be speaking only of the ceremonial Sacrifice; the second interpreting that into the sense of a large philosophical symbolism, transforms at once its whole significance and raises it to a plane of high psychological and spiritual truth. "With Sacrifice the Lord of creatures of old created creatures and said,
  By this shall you bring forth (fruits or offspring), let this be your milker of desires. Foster by this the gods and let the gods foster you; fostering each other, you shall attain to the supreme good.
  Fostered by Sacrifice the gods shall give you desired enjoyments; who enjoys their given enjoyments and has not given to them, he is a thief. The good who eat what is left from the Sacrifice, are released from all sin; but evil are they and enjoy sin who cook (the food) for their own sake. From food creatures come into being, from rain is the birth of food, from Sacrifice comes into being the rain, Sacrifice is born of work; work know to be born of Brahman, Brahman is born of the Immutable; therefore is the all-pervading Brahman established in the Sacrifice. He who follows not here the wheel thus set in movement, evil is his being, sensual is his delight, in vain, O Partha, that man lives." Having thus stated the necessity of Sacrifice, - we shall see hereafter in what sense we may understand a passage which seems at first sight to convey only a traditional theory of ritualism and the necessity of the ceremonial offering, - Krishna proceeds to state the superiority of the spiritual man to works. "But the man whose delight is in the Self and who is satisfied with the enjoyment of the Self and in the Self he is content, for him there exists no work that needs to be done. He has no object here to be gained by action done and none to be gained by action undone;
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  Here then are the two ideals, Vedist and Vedantist, standing as if in all their sharp original separation and opposition, on one side the active ideal of acquiring enjoyments here and the highest good beyond by Sacrifice and the mutual dependence of the human being and the divine powers and on the other, facing it, the austerer ideal of the liberated man who, independent in the Spirit, has nothing to do with enjoyment or works or the human or the divine worlds, but exists only in the peace of the supreme Self, joys only in the calm joy of the Brahman. The next verses create a ground for the reconciliation between the two extremes; the secret is not inaction as soon as one turns towards the higher truth, but desireless action both before and after it is reached. The liberated man has nothing to gain by action, but nothing also to gain by inaction, and it is not at all for any personal object that he has to make his choice. "Therefore without attachment perform ever the work that is to be done
  (done for the sake of the world, lokasangraha, as is made clear immediately afterward); for by doing work without attachment man attains to the highest. For it was even by works that Janaka and the rest attained to perfection." It is true that works and Sacrifice are a means of arriving at the highest good, sreyah. param avapsyatha; but there are three kinds of works, that done without Sacrifice for personal enjoyment which is entirely selfish and egoistic and misses the true law and aim and utility of life, mogham partha sa jvati, that done with desire, but with Sacrifice and the enjoyment only as a result of Sacrifice and therefore to that extent consecrated and sanctified, and that done without desire or attachment of any kind. It is the last which brings the soul of man to the highest, param apnoti purus.ah..
  The whole sense and drift of this teaching turns upon the interpretation we are to give to the important words, yajna, karma, brahma, Sacrifice, work, Brahman. If the Sacrifice is simply the Vedic Sacrifice, if the work from which it is born is the Vedic rule of works and if the brahman from which the work itself is born is the sabdabrahman in the sense only of the
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   letter of the Veda, then all the positions of the Vedist dogma are conceded and there is nothing more. Ceremonial Sacrifice is the right means of gaining children, wealth, enjoyment; by ceremonial Sacrifice rain is brought down from heaven and the prosperity and continuity of the race assured; life is a continual transaction between the gods and men in which man offers ceremonial gifts to the gods from the gifts they have bestowed on him and in return is enriched, protected, fostered. Therefore all human works have to be accompanied and turned into a sacrament by ceremonial Sacrifice and ritualistic worship; work not so dedicated is accursed, enjoyment without previous ceremonial Sacrifice and ritual consecration is a sin. Even salvation, even the highest good is to be gained by ceremonial Sacrifice. It must never be abandoned. Even the seeker of liberation has to continue to do ceremonial Sacrifice, although without attachment; it is by ceremonial Sacrifice and ritualistic works done without attachment that men of the type of Janaka attained to spiritual perfection and liberation.
  Obviously, this cannot be the meaning of the Gita, for it would be in contradiction with all the rest of the book. Even in the passage itself, without the illumining interpretation afterwards given to it in the fourth chapter, we have already an indication of a wider sense where it is said that Sacrifice is born from work, work from brahman, brahman from the Akshara, and therefore the all-pervading Brahman, sarvagatam brahma, is established in the Sacrifice. The connecting logic of the "therefore" and the repetition of the word brahma are significant; for it shows clearly that the brahman from which all work is born has to be understood with an eye not so much to the current Vedic teaching in which it means the Veda as to a symbolical sense in which the creative Word is identical with the all-pervading Brahman, the Eternal, the one Self present in all existences, sarvabhutes.u, and present in all the workings of existence. The Veda is the knowledge of the Divine, the Eternal, - "I am He who is to be known in all the books of the Knowledge," vedais ca vedyah.,
  Krishna will say in a subsequent chapter; but it is the knowledge of him in the workings of Prakriti, in the workings of the three
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  Brahman with qualities, proceed all the works1 of the universal energy, Karma, in man and in all existences; from that work proceeds the principle of Sacrifice. Even the material interchange between gods and men proceeds upon this principle, as typified in the dependence of rain and its product food on this working and on them the physical birth of creatures. For all the working of Prakriti is in its true nature a Sacrifice, yajna, with the Divine
  Being as the enjoyer of all energisms and works and Sacrifice and the great Lord of all existences, bhoktaram yajnatapasam sarvaloka-mahesvaram, and to know this Divine all-pervading and established in Sacrifice, sarvagatam yajne pratis.t.hitam, is the true, the Vedic knowledge.
  That this is the right interpretation results also from the opening of the eighth chapter where the universal principles are enumerated, aks.ara (brahma), svabhava, karma, ks.ara bhava, purus.a, adhiyajna. Akshara is the immutable Brahman, spirit or self, Atman; swabhava is the principle of the self, adhyatma, operative as the original nature of the being, "own way of becoming", and this proceeds out of the self, the Akshara; Karma proceeds from that and is the creative movement, visarga, which brings all natural beings and all changing subjective and objective shapes of being into existence; the result of
  Karma therefore is all this mutable becoming, the changes of nature developed out of the original self-nature, ks.ara bhava out of svabhava; Purusha is the soul, the divine element in the becoming, adhidaivata, by whose presence the workings of Karma become a Sacrifice, yajna, to the Divine within; adhiyajna is this secret Divine who receives the Sacrifice.
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  But he may be known in an inferior action through the devas, the gods, the powers of the divine Soul in Nature and in the eternal interaction of these powers and the soul of man, mutually giving and receiving, mutually helping, increasing, raising each other's workings and satisfaction, a commerce in which man rises towards a growing fitness for the supreme good. He recognises that his life is a part of this divine action in Nature and not a thing separate and to be held and pursued for its own sake. He regards his enjoyments and the satisfaction of his desires as the fruit of Sacrifice and the gift of the gods in their divine universal workings and he ceases to pursue them in the false and evil spirit of sinful egoistic selfishness as if they were a good to be seized from life by his own unaided strength without return and without thankfulness. As this spirit increases in him, he subordinates his desires, becomes satisfied with Sacrifice as the law of life and works and is content with whatever remains over from the Sacrifice, giving up all the rest freely as an offering in the great and beneficent interchange between his life and the worldlife. Whoever goes contrary to this law of action and pursues works and enjoyment for his own isolated personal self-interest, lives in vain; he misses the true meaning and aim and utility of living and the upward growth of the soul; he is not on the path which leads to the highest good. But the highest only comes when the Sacrifice is no longer to the gods, but to the one allpervading Divine established in the Sacrifice, of whom the gods are inferior forms and powers, and when he puts away the lower self that desires and enjoys and gives up his personal sense of being the worker to the true executrix of all works, Prakriti, and his personal sense of being the enjoyer to the Divine Purusha, the higher and universal Self who is the real enjoyer of the works of Prakriti. In that Self and not in any personal enjoyment he finds now his sole satisfaction, complete content, pure delight; he has nothing to gain by action or inaction, depends neither on gods nor men for anything, seeks no profit from any, for the self-delight is all-sufficient to him, but does works for the sake of the Divine only, as a pure Sacrifice, without attachment or desire. Thus he gains equality and becomes free from the
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  Prakriti. Thus is Sacrifice his way of attaining to the Highest.
  That this is the sense of the passage is made clear in what follows, by the affirmation of lokasangraha as the object of works, of Prakriti as the sole doer of works and the divine
  Purusha as their equal upholder, to whom works have to be given up even in their doing, - this inner giving up of works and yet physical doing of them is the culmination of Sacrifice,
  - and by the affirmation that the result of such active Sacrifice with an equal and desireless mind is liberation from the bondage of works. "He who is satisfied with whatever gain comes to him and equal in failure and success, is not bound even when he acts. When a man liberated, free from attachment, acts for Sacrifice, all his action is dissolved," leaves, that is to say, no result of bondage or after-impression on his free, pure, perfect and equal soul. To these passages we shall have to return. They are followed by a perfectly explicit and detailed interpretation of the meaning of yajna in the language of the Gita which leaves no doubt at all about the symbolic use of the words and the psychological character of the Sacrifice enjoined by this teaching. In the ancient Vedic system there was always a double sense physical and psychological, outward and symbolic, the exterior form of the Sacrifice and the inner meaning of all its circumstances. But the secret symbolism of the ancient Vedic mystics, exact, curious, poetic, psychological, had been long forgotten by this time and it is now replaced by another, large, general and philosophical in the spirit of Vedanta and a later Yoga. The fire of Sacrifice, agni, is no material flame, but brahmagni, the fire of the Brahman, or it is the Brahman-ward energy, inner Agni, priest of the Sacrifice, into which the offering is poured; the fire is self-control or it is a purified sense-action or it is the vital energy in that discipline of the control of the vital being through the control of the breath which is common to Rajayoga and Hathayoga, or it is the fire of self-knowledge, the flame of the supreme Sacrifice. The food eaten as the leavings of the Sacrifice is, it is explained, the nectar
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  Soma-wine was the physical symbol of the amr.ta, the immortalising delight of the divine ecstasy won by the Sacrifice, offered to the gods and drunk by men. The offering itself is whatever working of his energy, physical or psychological, is consecrated by him in action of body or action of mind to the gods or God, to the Self or to the universal powers, to one's own higher Self or to the Self in mankind and in all existences.
  This elaborate explanation of the Yajna sets out with a vast and comprehensive definition in which it is declared that the act and energy and materials of the Sacrifice, the giver and receiver of the Sacrifice, the goal and object of the Sacrifice are all the one Brahman. "Brahman is the giving, Brahman is the food-offering, by Brahman it is offered into the Brahman-fire,
  Brahman is that which is to be attained by samadhi in Brahmanaction." This then is the knowledge in which the liberated man has to do works of Sacrifice. It is the knowledge declared of old in the great Vedantic utterances, "I am He", "All this verily is the Brahman, Brahman is this Self." It is the knowledge of the entire unity; it is the One manifest as the doer and the deed and the object of works, knower and knowledge and the object of knowledge. The universal energy into which the action is poured is the Divine; the consecrated energy of the giving is the Divine; whatever is offered is only some form of the Divine; the giver of the offering is the Divine himself in man; the action, the work, the Sacrifice is itself the Divine in movement, in activity; the goal to be reached by Sacrifice is the Divine. For the man who has this knowledge and lives and acts in it, there can be no binding works, no personal and egoistically appropriated action; there is only the divine Purusha acting by the divine Prakriti in His own being, offering everything into the fire of His self-conscious cosmic energy, while the knowledge and the possession of His divine existence and consciousness by the soul unified with Him is the goal of all this God-directed movement and activity. To know that and to live and act in this unifying consciousness is to be free.
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  But all even of the Yogins have not attained to this knowledge. "Some Yogins follow after the Sacrifice which is of the gods; others offer the Sacrifice by the Sacrifice itself into the
  Brahman-fire." The former conceive of the Divine in various forms and powers and seek him by various means, ordinances, dharmas, laws or, as we might say, settled rites of action, selfdiscipline, consecrated works; for the latter, those who already know, the simple fact of Sacrifice, of offering whatever work to the Divine itself, of casting all their activities into the unified divine consciousness and energy, is their one means, their one dharma. The means of Sacrifice are various; the offerings are of many kinds. There is the psychological Sacrifice of self-control and self-discipline which leads to the higher self-possession and self-knowledge. "Some offer their senses into the fires of control, others offer the objects of sense into the fires of sense, and others offer all the actions of the sense and all the actions of the vital force into the fire of the Yoga of self-control kindled by knowledge." There is, that is to say, the discipline which receives the objects of sense-perception without allowing the mind to be disturbed or affected by its sense-activities, the senses themselves becoming pure fires of Sacrifice; there is the discipline which stills the senses so that the soul in its purity may appear from behind the veil of mind-action, calm and still; there is the discipline by which, when the self is known, all the actions of the senseperceptions and all the action of the vital being are received into that one still and tranquil soul. The offering of the striver after perfection may be material and physical, dravya-yajna, like that consecrated in worship by the devotee to his deity, or it may be the austerity of his self-discipline and energy of his soul directed to some high aim, tapo-yajna, or it may be some form of Yoga like the Pranayama of the Rajayogins and Hathayogins, or any other yoga-yajna. All these tend to the purification of the being; all Sacrifice is a way towards the attainment of the highest.
  The one thing needful, the saving principle constant in all these variations, is to subordinate the lower activities, to diminish the control of desire and replace it by a superior energy, to abandon the purely egoistic enjoyment for that diviner delight
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   which comes by Sacrifice, by self-dedication, by self-mastery, by the giving up of one's lower impulses to a greater and higher aim.
  "They who enjoy the nectar of immortality left over from the Sacrifice attain to the eternal Brahman." Sacrifice is the law of the world and nothing can be gained without it, neither mastery here, nor the possession of heavens beyond, nor the supreme possession of all; "this world is not for him who doeth not Sacrifice, how then any other world?" Therefore all these and many other forms of Sacrifice have been "extended in the mouth of the Brahman," the mouth of that Fire which receives all offerings; they are all means and forms of the one great Existence in activity, means by which the action of the human being can be offered up to That of which his outward existence is a part and with which his inmost self is one. They are "all born of work"; all proceed from and are ordained by the one vast energy of the Divine which manifests itself in the universal karma and makes all the cosmic activity a progressive offering to the one
  Self and Lord and of which the last stage for the human being is self-knowledge and the possession of the divine or Brahmic consciousness. "So knowing thou shalt become free."
  But there are gradations in the range of these various forms of Sacrifice, the physical offering the lowest, the Sacrifice of knowledge the highest. Knowledge is that in which all this action culminates, not any lower knowledge, but the highest, selfknowledge and God-knowledge, that which we can learn from those who know the true principles of existence, that by possessing which we shall not fall again into the bewilderment of the mind's ignorance and into its bondage to mere sense-knowledge and to the inferior activity of the desires and passions. The knowledge in which all culminates is that by which "thou shalt see all existences (becomings, bhutani) without exception in the Self, then in Me." For the Self is that one, immutable, all-pervading, all-containing, self-existent reality or Brahman hidden behind our mental being into which our consciousness widens out when it is liberated from the ego; we come to see all beings as becomings, bhutani, within that one self-existence.
  But this Self or immutable Brahman we see too to be the
  The Significance of Sacrifice
  123
   self-presentation to our essential psychological consciousness of a supreme Being who is the source of our existence and of whom all that is mutable or immutable is the manifestation. He is God, the Divine, the Purushottama. To Him we offer everything as a Sacrifice; into His hands we give up our actions; in His existence we live and move; unified with Him in our nature and with all existence in Him, we become one soul and one power of being with Him and with all beings; with His supreme reality we identify and unite our self-being. By works done for Sacrifice, eliminating desire, we arrive at knowledge and at the soul's possession of itself; by works done in self-knowledge and Godknowledge we are liberated into the unity, peace and joy of the divine existence.

1.12 - The Sociology of Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  It is therefore probable that for a long time this City under construction will be a place where negative possibilities will be exacerbated as much as the positive ones, under the relentless pressure of the beacon of Truth. And falsehood is skilled at holding on to insignificant details, resistance at sticking to everyday trifles, which become the very sign of refusal. Falsehood knows how to make great Sacrifices. It can follow a discipline, extol an ideal, collect merit badges and Brownie points, but it betrays itself in the insignificant that is its last refuge. It is really in matter that the game is played out. This City of the Future is a battlefield, a difficult adventure. What is decided over there with machine guns, guerrilla warfare and glorious deeds is decided here with sordid details and an invisible warfare against falsehood. But a single victory won over petty human egoism is more pregnant with consequences for the earth than the rearranging of all the frontiers of Asia, for this frontier and this egoism are the original barbed wire that divides the world.
  For that matter, the apprentice superman could begin his battle very early, not just in himself but in his children, and not just from their birth but right from their conception.
  --
  The apprentice superman does not believe in suffering. He believes in enrichment through joy; he believes in Harmony. He does not believe in education; he believes in the power of truth in the heart of all things and all beings he only helps that truth to grow with as little interference as possible. He trusts in the powers of that truth. He knows that man always moves toward his goal, inexorably, despite everything he is told or taught he only tries to suppress that despite. He simply waters that little sapling of truth and then again, with some caution, for some saplings prefer a sandy and rocky soil. But, at least, in that City or rather, laboratory of the future the child will be born in less stifling conditions. He will not be brainwashed, met at every street corner by screaming posters, corrupted by television or poisoned by vulgar movies, not burdened by all the vibrations of anxiety, fear or desire that his mother may have conscientiously accumulated in her womb through entertaining reading, debilitating films or a torn home life for everything is recorded, the slightest vibration, the least shock; everything enters the embryo freely, remains and accumulates there. The Greeks knew this well, and the Egyptians and the Indians, who used to surround the mother with special conditions of beauty and harmony so that the breath of the gods could pervade each day and each breath of the child, so that everything could be an inspiration of truth. And when the mother and father decided to have a child, they did it as a prayer, a Sacrifice for incarnating the gods of the future. It takes only a spark of aspiration, a flame of entreaty, a luminous breath in the mother's heart for the same light to answer and come down, the identical flame, the kindred intensity of life if we are gray and dull, we will summon only the grayness and nothingness of millions of lifeless men.
  The child of that City will be born with a flame, consciously, voluntarily, without having to undo millennia of animality or abysses of prejudice. He will not be told incessantly that he has to earn a living, for nobody will earn a living in the City of the Future, nobody will have money. Living will be devoted to serving the Truth, each according to his capacity or talent, and the only earnings will be joy. He will not be deluged with musts and must-nots; he will only be shown the immediate sadness of not listening to the right little note. He will not be tormented with the idea of finding a job, being a success, outranking others, passing or failing grades, for nobody succeeds or fails in the City of the Future, nobody has a job, nobody takes precedence over anybody; one does the one job of pursuing a clear little note that lights up everything, does everything for one, takes care of everything for one, unites everything in its tranquil harmony, and whose only success is to be in accord with itself and with the whole. He will not learn to depend on a teacher, a book or a machine, but to rely on that little flame inside, that sprightly little flowing that guides his steps, prompts a discovery, leads by chance to an experience and brings out knowledge effortlessly. And he will learn to cultivate the powers of his body the way others today cultivate the powers of push buttons. His faculties will not be confined in ready-made forms of vision and comprehension; in him will be fostered a vision that has nothing to do with the eyes, a comprehension that is not from books, dreams of other worlds that prepare tomorrow's, direct communications and instant intuitions and subtle senses. And if machines are still used in the City of the Future, he will be told that they are temporary crutches until we find in our own heart the source of the pure Power which will one day transmute matter as we now transmute a blank sheet of paper into a green prairie with the stroke of a pencil. He will be taught the Look, the true and potent look, the look that creates, that changes everything he will be taught to use his own powers and to believe in his power of truth, and that the purer and clearer he is, in harmony with the Law, the more matter responds to Truth. And, instead of entering a prison, the child will grow up in an atmosphere of natural oneness, free of you, me, yours or mine, where he will not have been taught constantly to put up screens and mental barriers, but to be consciously what he unconsciously has been since the beginning of time: to extend himself into all that is and lives, to feel in all that feels, to comprehend through an identical more profound breathing, through a silence that carries everything, to recognize the same little flame everywhere, to love the same clear little flowing everywhere, and to be the self everywhere, behind a thousand different faces and in a thousand musics that are a single music.

1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  Mantras, great poetry, great music, or the sacred Word, all come from the overmind plane. It is the source of all creative or spiritual activity (the two cannot be separated: the categorical divisions of the intellect vanish in this clear space where everything is sacred, even the profane). We might now attempt to describe the particular vibration or rhythm of the overmind. First, as anyone knows who has the capacity to enter more or less consciously in contact with the higher planes a poet, a writer, or an artist it is no longer ideas one perceives and tries to translate when one goes beyond a certain level of consciousness: one hears. Vibrations, or waves, or rhythms, literally impose themselves and take possession of the seeker, and subsequently garb themselves with words and ideas, or music, or colors, during the descent. But the word or idea, the music or color is merely a result, a byproduct: it only gives a body to that first, highly compelling vibration. If the poet, the true one, next corrects and recorrects his draft, it is not to improve the form, as it were, or to find a more adequate expression, but to capture the vibrating life behind more accurately; if the true vibration is absent, all the magic disintegrates, as a Vedic priest mispronouncing the mantra of the Sacrifice. When the consciousness is transparent, the sound can be heard distinctly, and it is a seeing sound, as it were, a sound-image or a sound-idea, which inseparably links hearing to vision and thought within the same luminous essence. All is there, self-contained, within a single vibration. On all the intermediate planes higher mind, illumined or intuitive mind the vibrations are generally broken up as flashes, pulsations, or eruptions, while in the overmind they are great notes.
  They have neither beginning nor end, and they seem to be born out of the Infinite and disappear into the Infinite 206 ; they do not "begin" anywhere, but rather flow into the consciousness with a kind of halo of eternity, which was vibrating beforeh and and continues to vibrate long afterward, like the echo of another voyage behind this one:

1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Whenever God is thought of as being wholly in time, there is a tendency to regard Him as a numinous rather than a moral being, a God of mere unmitigated Power rather than a God of Power, Wisdom and Love, an inscrutable and dangerous potentate to be propitiated by Sacrifices, not a Spirit to be worshipped in spirit. All this is only natural; for time is a perpetual perishing and a God who is wholly in time is a God who destroys as fast as He creates. Nature is as incomprehensibly appalling as it is lovely and bountiful. If the Divine does not transcend the temporal order in which it is immanent, and if the human spirit does not transcend its time-bound soul, then there is no possibility of justifying the ways of God to man. God as manifested in the universe is the irresistible Being who speaks to Job out of the whirlwind, and whose emblems are Behemoth and Leviathan, the war horse and the eagle. It is this same Being who is described in the Apocalyptic eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. O Supreme Spirit, says Arjuna, addressing himself to the Krishna whom he now knows to be the incarnation of the Godhead, I long to see your Isvara-form that is to say, his form as God of the world, Nature, the temporal order. Krishna answers, You shall behold the whole universe, with all things animate and inanimate, within this body of mine. Arjunas reaction to the revelation is one of amazement and fear.
  Ah, my God, I see all gods within your body;
  --
  God who is Spirit can only be worshipped in spirit and for his own sake; but God in time is normally worshipped by material means with a view to achieving temporal ends. God in time is manifestly the destroyer as well as the creator; and because this is so, it has seemed proper to worship him by methods which are as terrible as the destructions he himself inflicts. Hence, in India, the blood Sacrifices to Kali, in her aspect as Nature-the-Destroyer; hence those offerings of children to the Molochs, denounced by the Hebrew prophets; hence the human Sacrifices practised, for example, by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Druids, the Aztecs. In all such cases the divinity addressed was a god in time, or a personification of Nature, which is nothing else but Time itself, the devourer of its own offspring; and in all cases the purpose of the rite was to obtain a future benefit or to avoid one of the enormous evils which Time and Nature for ever hold in store. For this it was thought to be worth while to pay a high price in that currency of suffering, which the Destroyer so evidently valued. The importance of the temporal end justified the use of means that were intrinsically terrible, because intrinsically time-like. Sublimated traces of these ancient patterns of thought and behaviour are still to be found in certain theories of the Atonement, and in the conception of the Mass as a perpetually repeated Sacrifice of the God-Man.
  In the modern world the gods to whom human Sacrifice is offered are personifications, not of Nature, but of mans own, home-made political ideals. These, of course, all refer to events in timeactual events in the past or the present, fancied events in the future. And here it should be noted that the philosophy which affirms the existence and the immediate realizableness of eternity is related to one kind of political theory and practice; the philosophy which affirms that what goes on in time is the only reality, results in a different kind of theory and justifies quite another kind of political practice. This has been clearly recognized by Marxist writers,* who point out that when Christianity is mainly preoccupied with events in time, it is a revolutionary religion, and that when, under mystical influences, it stresses the Eternal Gospel, of which the historical or pseudo-historical facts recorded in Scripture are but symbols, it becomes politically static and reactionary.
  This Marxian account of the matter is somewhat oversimplified. It is not quite true to say that all theologies and philosophies whose primary concern is with time, rather than eternity, are necessarily revolutionary. The aim of all revolutions is to make the future radically different from and better than the past. But some time-obsessed philosophies are primarily concerned with the past, not the future, and their politics are entirely a matter of preserving or restoring the status quo and getting back to the good old days. But the retrospective time-worshippers have one thing in common with the revolutionary devotees of the bigger and better future; they are prepared to use unlimited violence to achieve their ends. It is here that we discover the essential difference between the politics of eternity-philosophers and the politics of time-philosophers. For the latter, the ultimate good is to be found in the temporal worldin a future, where everyone will be happy because all are doing and thinking something either entirely new and unprecedented or, alternatively, something old, traditional and hallowed. And because the ultimate good lies in time, they feel justified in making use of any temporal means for achieving it. The Inquisition burns and tortures in order to perpetuate a creed, a ritual and an ecclesiastico-politico-financial organization regarded as necessary to mens eternal salvation. Bible-worshipping Protestants fight long and savage wars, in order to make the world safe for what they fondly imagine to be the genuinely antique Christianity of apostolic times. Jacobins and Bolsheviks are ready to Sacrifice millions of human lives for the sake of a political and economic future gorgeously unlike the present. And now all Europe and most of Asia has had to be Sacrificed to a crystal-gazers vision of perpetual Co-Prosperity and the Thousand-Year Reich. From the records of history it seems to be abundantly clear that most of the religions and philosophies which take time too seriously are correlated with political theories that inculcate and justify the use of large-scale violence. The only exceptions are those simple Epicurean faiths, in which the reaction to an all too real time is Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. This is not a very noble, nor even a very realistic kind of morality. But it seems to make a good deal more sense than the revolutionary ethic: Die (and kill), for tomorrow someone else will eat, drink and be merry. In practice, of course, the prospect even of somebody elses future merriment is extremely precarious. For the process of wholesale dying and killing creates material, social and psychological conditions that practically guarantee the revolution against the achievement of its beneficent ends.
  For those whose philosophy does not compel them to take time with an excessive seriousness the ultimate good is to be sought neither in the revolutionarys progressive social apocalypse, nor in the reactionarys revived and perpetuated past, but in an eternal divine now which those who sufficiently desire this good can realize as a fact of immediate experience. The mere act of dying is not in itself a passport to eternity; nor can wholesale killing do anything to bring deliverance either to the slayers or the slain or their posterity. The peace that passes all understanding is the fruit of liberation into eternity; but in its ordinary everyday form peace is also the root of liberation. For where there are violent passions and compelling distractions, this ultimate good can never be realized. That is one of the reasons why the policy correlated with eternity-philosophies is tolerant and non-violent. The other reason is that the eternity, whose realization is the ultimate good, is a kingdom of heaven within. Thou art That; and though That is immortal and impassible, the killing and torturing of individual thous is a matter of cosmic significance, inasmuch as it interferes with the normal and natural relationship between individual souls and the divine eternal Ground of all being. Every violence is, over and above everything else, a sacrilegious rebellion against the divine order.

1.13 - BOOK THE THIRTEENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
  Yet sure no God approves this Sacrifice.
  O cou'd I but conceal this dire event

1.13 - Conclusion - He is here, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  Even the date seems to have been envisaged by him, for we have seen that the symptoms took a suddenly grave turn as soon as the School Anniversary functions were over. Evidently he was waiting for the passing of that date and then relaxed all control. The end came swiftly. We know also from the Mother's revealing account that a year earlier he had taken the decision to leave the body. The Mother had said to Dr. Sanyal, "People do not know what a tremendous Sacrifice he has made for the world. About a year ago, while I was discussing things, I remarked that I felt like leaving this body of mine. He spoke out in a very firm tone, 'No, this can never be. If necessary for this transformation, I might go, you will have to fulfil our Yoga of supramental descent and transformation.'" He told us he would not explain why he was not Curing himself as we would not understand it. He called it "the dread mysterious Sacrifice, offered by God's martyred body". These significant words which were the last touches to be given to Savitri suggest a clue that might disclose the meaning of the event.
  There is a message received by the Mother to the same effect. When on December 8, the Mother inwardly asked him to resuscitate himself, he clearly answered, "I have left this body purposely. I will not take it back. I shall manifest again in the first supramental body built in the supramental way." We need not probe further into the mystery, since it is of another dimension. Instead, it would be much more soul-satisfying to know that though physically he has withdrawn, his Presence is always with us. We get that illumination from the Mother's statement on December 7, 1950 during Sri Aurobindo's lying in state. It runs, "Lord, this morning Thou hast given me the assurance that Thou wouldst stay with us until Thy work is achieved, not only as a consciousness which guides and illumines but also as a dynamic Presence in action. In unmistakable terms Thou hast promised that all of Thyself would remain here and not leave the earth atmosphere until earth is transformed. Grant that we may be worthy of this marvellous Presence and that henceforth everything in us be concentrated on the one will to be more and more perfectly consecrated to the fulfilment of Thy sublime Work!"
  --
  Let us see now what have been the effects, direct and indirect, of that withdrawal. First of all, by virtue of this tremendous Sacrifice the Supramental Light which had been descending into the most outward physical since 1938 but could not be fixed there, was at last fixed in the earth-consciousness. This massive descent into his own body and extending through it into all Matter was a crowning achievement of his Yoga at the expense of his body's Sacrifice and an act of unparalleled self-effacement for the sake of the earth-transformation. The next step that was to follow was the great Manifestation which took place in 1956. The Mother is reported to have said after it, "Now my work is done." This means that essentially what she and Sri Aurobindo had been wanting to do was achieved, but the details had to be consciously worked out and a concentrated yoga is required to hasten the evolution. There is no doubt that the Manifestation, so soon in the wake of his departure, was the direct result of Sri Aurobindo's Sacrifice. One might argue that it should have been possible without his leaving the body. Quite true, but it was getting delayed, as Sri Aurobindo complained more than once in his letters. Various internal and external circumstances were always hindering it. We have noted in the chapter on Savitri Sri Aurobindo's complaint about his real work being hampered by these factors and yet he could not ignore them. They did not leave him sufficient time for concentration which, he said, was his real work. A drastic measure to deal with all obstruction at its very root seemed called for. This measure would also create the right conditions by which the subtle sheath, free from its physical counterparts, gets its full scope and can work more dynamically from above and behind. Sri Aurobindo could now make the path clear for the Manifestation in 1956. The Mother has said in the Bulletin of Physical Education that we have no idea of the tremendous work Sri Aurobindo has done in the occult worlds as a result of which all the crucial changes are taking place in her body. It will be, therefore, not an error of perception to call his passing away a strategic retreat, nor an emotional hyperbole to call it a Sacrifice, a martyrdom. The phenomenon itself that we witnessed was something stupendous, beyond all canons of Science. Whoever has heard of a dead body changing its colour overnight, becoming charged with a gold-crimson radiance and remaining intact for five days?
  The second effect whose purport will not be evident to those who are unfamiliar with Sri Aurobindo's Yoga was, to quote the Mother, "As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he had called the Mind of Light got realised here. The Supermind had descended long ago very long ago in the mind and even in the vital: it was working in the physical also, but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question now was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light."[1] It is because the Mother as his supreme collaborator was there to receive the Light and continue his work that Sri Aurobindo could make that holocaust of himself. The holocaust has also had one effect which cannot but be regarded as being eminently in accord with Sri Aurobindo's own vision. It is clear that the Ashram "instead of dwindling after the Master's self-withdrawal has leaped gloriously forward under the Mother's leadership". Earlier Sri Aurobindo's towering personality, though in seclusion, dominated the scene. Now the picture, as I said, is entirely different. We can see that all the world is coming to the Mother and accepting her as the Divine Mother, the Shakti who rules, guides and saves. This is what Sri Aurobindo had wanted and laid down since the Mother took charge of the Ashram, as the prime desideratum of his Supramental Yoga. It has been rendered possible and quickly effective by his unprecedented Sacrifice. It is also in keeping with his nature. He had admitted that temperamentally he was always prone to act from behind the veil, the way of the Supreme to move men and forces without their knowledge. His political life, except for a short period, and life in Pondicherry, bear testimony to its truth. So the final retirement was consistent with that disposition and is its highest culmination. This culmination has carried the Mother even more to the forefront. There she stands now and plays the role of Shakti and, as she has said, is doing Sri Aurobindo's work and giving his final dream, of which he has spoken in his Independence Day message, a concrete shape on this earth. Sri Aurobindo constantly helps her from behind. The Mother has said in the Bulletin, as I have stated before, what a vast amount of work Sri Aurobindo has done in the occult field in consequence of which the work of transformation of the physical has become easier. Similarly, can we have any idea of his world-action, particularly in the political field, for example his occult contribution to the liberation of Bangladesh? Let us remember Sri Aurobindo's prophetic voice, "Division must go." His Force has not ceased to act in that direction. On the contrary it is moving powerfully towards the realisation of this prophecy. These are his works on a cosmic scale that we are aware of. In our individual cases too his Presence and his dynamic action have been testified to by devotees and disciples all over India and in the West We hear his voice, get his touch, protection, active intervention. The Mother told me more than once that she always saw Sri Aurobindo working on me. I had a personal proof of his surprisingly direct intervention, saving me from a critical situation that could have otherwise put my sadhana in peril. I have mentioned another occult phenomenon in the preface of my Talks with Sri Aurobindo, Vol. I to illustrate his subtle help. A third small instance will suffice: when the Ashram was passing through a financial difficulty, the Mother reported the matter to Sri Aurobindo. He replied, "Ask Prodyot." And it is well known that Prodyot brings a lot of money for the Ashram.
  Still, it cannot be denied that we do miss his physical Presence, especially those of us whom he had drawn near by his personal intimacy and those who had the exceptional privilege of living with him and serving him. "Nirod is no doctor to me; he has come to serve me," is one of his few utterances I cannot forget, though I know too well how poorly I served him. Sometimes when we think of the old days that will never come back, when I go over his unparalleled correspondence with me, a void, a sore loss fills my heart. A few days after Sri Aurobindo's departure, the Mother asked a group of sadhaks what was the greatest loss caused by his absence. Different answers were given, but the Mother replied, "No, not these; the biggest loss is that I can no longer approach him for his advice. For instance, if he were there, I could have gone and asked him to stop the rain." (It was raining heavily at that moment.) To this, someone said, "But, Mother, you can look into yourself." She kept quiet. Here I may speculate on this incident. To deal with any serious problem needs a degree of concentration. The Mother has always been a very busy person; She often fell back on Sri Aurobindo to do the concentration needed. The more important point, however, seems to be that certain problems are better dealt with by an embodied spiritual force than a disembodied one, problems concerned perhaps with the most outward material aspect of existence. We see how our difficulties and problems get quickly solved by the Mother's direct intervention. Apropos of the above incident, I may further ask: Did not the Mother hint at something more poignant? The difference between a physical presence and a subtle one? Whenever there was an intricate situation to face, some crucial stage to be crossed, she quietly came and laid the burden at his feet with an utter trust, that he would see it through. The ineffable physical Presence of an Avatar of Sri Aurobindo's stature, one whose work ultimately was transformation and divinisation of the very body, was a heavenly boon to our corporeal earthly life. The incarnation itself would have otherwise lost much of its significance.
  Both the external and the internal development towards physical divinisation is going on apace in the Mother so that in a not distant future it will be seen that the Sacrifice, the martyrdom has not gone in vain, but has resulted in the emergence of a glorified body the consummation of the Supramental victory over Matter.
  One can then conclude by saying that in his departure as well as in life the aim of Sri Aurobindo's entire Sadhana was served namely to make the Mother manifest, without which the divinisation of Matter would be impossible. We hear this truth very beautifully expressed in his poem A God's Labour:

1.13 - Dawn and the Truth, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   all apply; there would be no meaning in a constant affirmation that Dawn follows the path of the Sacrifice or follows the path of the water. We can only escape from the obvious significance if we choose to understand by pantha r.tasya the path, not of the
  Truth, but of the Sun. But the Veda describes rather the Sun as following the path of Usha and this would be the natural image suggested to an observer of the physical Dawn. Moreover, even if the phrase did not clearly in other passages mean the path of the Truth, the psychological significance would still intervene; for the sense would then be that the dawn of illumination follows the path of the True or the Lord of the Truth, Surya
  --
  Horse of the Sacrifice, the hymns of various Rishis to the Horse Dadhikravan and again in the opening of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad in which "Dawn is the head of the
  Horse" is the first phrase of a very elaborate figure.

1.13 - Posterity of Dhruva, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  Sunīthā was originally the daughter of Mrityu, by whom she was given to Anga to wife. She bore him Veṇa, who inherited the evil propensities of his maternal grandfather. When he was inaugurated by the Ṛṣis monarch of the earth, he caused. it to be every where proclaimed, that no worship should be performed, no oblations offered, no gifts bestowed upon the Brahmans. "I, the king," said he, "am the lord of Sacrifice; for who but I am entitled to the oblations." The Ṛṣis, respectfully approaching the sovereign, addressed him in melodious accents, and said, "Gracious prince, we salute you; hear what we have to represent. For the preservation of your kingdom and your life, and for the benefit of all your subjects, permit us to worship Hari, the lord of all Sacrifice, the god of gods, with solemn and protracted rites[2]; a portion of the fruit of which will revert to you[3]. Viṣṇu, the god of oblations, being propitiated with Sacrifice by us, will grant you, oh king, all your desires. Those princes have all their wishes gratified, in whose realms Hari, the lord of Sacrifice, is adored with sacrificial rites." "Who," exclaimed Veṇa, "is superior to me? who besides me is entitled to worship? who is this Hari, whom you style the lord of Sacrifice? Brahmā, Janārddana. Śambhu, Indra, Vāyu, Ravi (the sun), Hutabhuk (fire), Varuṇa, Dhātā, Pūṣā, (the sun), Bhūmi (earth), the lord of night (the moon); all these, and whatever other gods there be who listen to our vows; all these are present in the person of a king: the essence of a sovereign is all that is divine. Conscious of this, I have issued my commands, and look that you obey them. You are not to Sacrifice, not to offer oblations, not to give alms. As the first duty of women is obedience to their lords, so observance of my orders is iñcumbent, holy men, on you." "Give command, great king," replied the Ṛṣis, "that piety may suffer no decrease. All this world is but a transmutation of oblations; and if devotion be suppressed, the world is at an end." But Veṇa was entreated in vain; and although this request was repeated by the sages, he refused to give the order they suggested. Then those pious Munis were filled with wrath, and cried out to each other, "Let this wicked wretch be slain. The impious man who has reviled the god of Sacrifice who is without beginning or end, is not fit to reign over the earth." And they fell upon the king, and beat him with blades of holy grass, consecrated by prayer, and slew him, who had first been destroyed by his impiety towards god.
  Afterwards the Munis beheld a great dust arise, and they said to the people who were nigh, "What is this?" and the people answered and said, "Now that the kingdom is without a king, the dishonest men have begun to seize the property of their neighbours. The great dust that you behold, excellent Munis, is raised by troops of clustering robbers, hastening to fall upon their prey." The sages, hearing this, consulted, and together rubbed the thigh of the king, who had left no offspring, to produce a son. From the thigh, thus rubbed, came forth a being of the complexion of a charred stake, with flattened features (like a negro), and of dwarfish stature. "What am I to do?" cried he eagerly to the Munis. "Sit down" (Nishida), said they; and thence his name was Niṣāda. His descendants, the inhabitants of the Vindhya mountain, great Muni, are still called Niṣādas, and are characterized by the exterior tokens of depravity[4]. By this means the wickedness of Versa was expelled; those Niṣādas being born of his sins, and carrying them away. The Brahmans then proceeded to rub the right arm of the king, from which friction was engendered the illustrious son of Veṇa, named Prithu, resplendent in person, as if the blazing deity of Fire bad been manifested.
  --
  The mighty Prithu, the son of Veda, being thus invested with universal dominion by those who were skilled in the rite, soon removed the grievances of the people whom his father had oppressed, and from winning their affections he derived the title of Rāja, or king[6]. The waters became solid, when he traversed the ocean: the mountains opened him a path: his banner passed unbroken (through the forests): the earth needed not cultivation; and at a thought food was prepared: all kine were like the cow of plenty: honey was stored in every flower. At the Sacrifice of the birth of Prithu, which was performed by Brahmā, the intelligent Sūta (herald or bard) was produced, in the juice of the moon-plant, on the very birth-day[7]: at that great Sacrifice also was produced the accomplished Māgadha: and the holy sages said to these two persons, "Praise ye the king Prithu, the illustrious son of Veṇa; for this is your especial function, and here is a fit subject for your praise." But they respectfully replied to the Brahmans, "We know not the acts of the new-born king of the earth; his merits are not understood by us; his fame is not spread abroad: inform us upon what subject we may dilate in his praise." "Praise the king," said the Ṛṣis, "for the acts this heroic monarch will perform; praise him for the virtues he will display." The king, hearing these words, was much pleased, and reflected that persons acquire commendation by virtuous actions, and that consequently his virtuous conduct would be the theme of the eulogium which the bards were about to pronounce: whatever merits, then, they should panegyrize in their encomium, he determined that he would endeavour to acquire; and if they should point out what faults ought to be avoided, he would try to shun them. He therefore listened attentively, as the sweet-voiced encomiasts celebrated the future virtues of Prithu, the enlightened son of Veṇa.
  "The king is a speaker of truth, bounteous, an observer of his promises; he is wise, benevolent, patient, valiant, and a terror to the wicked; he knows his duties; he acknowledges services; he is compassionate and kind-spoken; he respects the venerable; he performs Sacrifices; he reverences the Brahmans; he cherishes the good; and in administering justice is indifferent to friend or foe."
  The virtues thus celebrated by the Sūta and the Magadhā were chersed in the remembrance of the Rāja, and practised by him when occasion arose. Protecting this earth, the monarch performed many great sacrificial ceremonies, accompanied by liberal donations. His subjects soon approached him, suffering from the famine by which they were afflicted, as all the edible plants had perished during the season of anarchy. In reply to his question of the cause of their coming, they told him, that in the interval in which the earth was without a king all vegetable products had been withheld, and that consequently the people had perished. "Thou," said they, "art the bestower of subsistence to us; thou art appointed, by the creator, the protector of the people: grant us vegetables, the support of the lives of thy subjects, who are perishing with hunger."
  --
  [2]: With the Dīrghasatra, 'long Sacrifice;' a ceremony lasting a thousand years.
  [3]: That is, the land will be fertile in proportion as the gods are propitiated, and the king will benefit accordingly, as a sixth part of the merit and of the produce will be his. So the commentator explains the word 'portion.'
  --
  [7]: The birth of Prithu is to be considered as the Sacrifice, of which Brahmā, the creator, was the performer; but in other places, as in the Padma, it is considered that an actual sacrificial rite was celebrated, at which the first encomiasts were produced. The Bhāgavata does not account for their appearance.
  [8]: 'Having willed or determined the Manu Svāyambhuva to be the calf:' ###. So the Padma P.: ###. The Bhāgavata has, 'Having made the Manu the calf.' By the calf,' or Manu in that character, is typified, the commentator observes, the promoter of the multiplication of progeny: ###.

1.13 - THE HUMAN REBOUND OF EVOLUTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  terms of this Absolute it is Sacrifice, not egotism, that becomes odi-
  ous and absurd. Irreversibility, then, is the first condition.

1.13 - The Kings of Rome and Alba, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  the white bull Sacrificed on the Alban Mount, there was one whose
  members styled themselves the Men of the Oak, doubtless on account

1.13 - The Lord of the Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:1.13 - The Lord of the Sacrifice
  author class:Sri Aurobindo
  --
  The Lord of the Sacrifice
  E HAVE, before we can proceed further, to gather up all that has been said in its main principles. The whole of the Gita's gospel of works rests upon its idea of Sacrifice and contains in fact the eternal connecting truth of God and the world and works. The human mind seizes ordinarily only fragmentary notions and standpoints of a manysided eternal truth of existence and builds upon them its various theories of life and ethics and religion, stressing this or that sign or appearance, but to some entirety of it it must always tend to reawaken whenever it returns in an age of large enlightenment to any entire and synthetic relation of its world-knowledge with its God-knowledge and self-knowledge. The gospel of the Gita reposes upon this fundamental Vedantic truth that all being is the one Brahman and all existence the wheel of Brahman, a divine movement opening out from God and returning to God.
  All is the expressive activity of Nature and Nature a power of the Divine which works out the consciousness and will of the divine Soul master of her works and inhabitant of her forms. It is for his satisfaction that she descends into the absorption of the forms of things and the works of life and mind and returns again through mind and self-knowledge to the conscious possession of the Soul that dwells within her. There is first an involving of self and all it is or means in an evolution of phenomena; there is afterwards an evolution of self, a revelation of all it is and means, all that is hidden and yet suggested by the phenomenal creation. This cycle of Nature could not be what it is but for the
  --
  The Lord of the Sacrifice
  125
  --
  All truth of works must depend upon the truth of being. All active existence must be in its inmost reality a Sacrifice of works offered by Prakriti to Purusha, Nature offering to the supreme and infinite Soul the desire of the multiple finite Soul within her. Life is an altar to which she brings her workings and the fruits of her workings and lays them before whatever aspect of the Divinity the consciousness in her has reached for whatever result of the Sacrifice the desire of the living soul can seize on as its immediate or its highest good. According to the grade of consciousness and being which the soul has reached in Nature, will be the Divinity it worships, the delight which it seeks and the hope for which it Sacrifices. And in the movement of the mutable Purusha in Nature all is and must be interchange; for
  126
  --
   existence is one and its divisions must found themselves on some law of mutual dependence, each growing by each and living by all. Where Sacrifice is not willingly given, Nature exacts it by force, she satisfies the law of her living. A mutual giving and receiving is the law of Life without which it cannot for one moment endure, and this fact is the stamp of the divine creative
  Will on the world it has manifested in its being, the proof that with Sacrifice as their eternal companion the Lord of creatures has created all these existences. The universal law of Sacrifice is the sign that the world is of God and belongs to God and that life is his dominion and house of worship and not a field for the self-satisfaction of the independent ego; not the fulfilment of the ego, - that is only our crude and obscure beginning, - but the discovery of God, the worship and seeking of the Divine and the
  Infinite through a constantly enlarging Sacrifice culminating in a perfect self-giving founded on a perfect self-knowledge, is that to which the experience of life is at last intended to lead.
  But the individual being begins with ignorance and persists long in ignorance. Acutely conscious of himself he sees the ego as the cause and whole meaning of life and not the Divine. He sees himself as the doer of works and does not see that all the workings of existence including his own internal and external activities are the workings of one universal Nature and nothing else. He sees himself as the enjoyer of works and imagines that for him all exists and him Nature ought to satisfy and obey his personal will; he does not see that she is not at all concerned with satisfying him or at all careful of his will, but obeys a higher universal will and seeks to satisfy a Godhead who transcends her and her works and creations; his finite being, his will and his satisfactions are hers and not his, and she offers them at every moment as a Sacrifice to the Divine of whose purpose in her she makes all this the covert instrumentation. Because of this ignorance whose seal is egoism, the creature ignores the law of Sacrifice and seeks to take all he can for himself and gives only what Nature by her internal and external compulsion forces him to give. He can really take nothing except what she allows him to receive as his portion, what the divine Powers within her yield
  The Lord of the Sacrifice
  127
   to his desire. The egoistic soul in a world of Sacrifice is as if a thief or robber who takes what these Powers bring to him and has no mind to give in return. He misses the true meaning of life and, since he does not use life and works for the enlargement and elevation of his being through Sacrifice, he lives in vain.
  Only when the individual being begins to perceive and acknowledge in his acts the value of the self in others as well as the power and needs of his own ego, begins to perceive universal
  Nature behind his own workings and through the cosmic godheads gets some glimpse of the One and the Infinite, is he on his way to the transcendence of his limitation by the ego and the discovery of his soul. He begins to discover a law other than that of his desires, to which his desires must be more and more subordinated and subjected; he develops the purely egoistic into the understanding and ethical being. He begins to give more value to the claims of the self in others and less to the claims of his ego; he admits the strife between egoism and altruism and by the increase of his altruistic tendencies he prepares the enlargement of his own consciousness and being. He begins to perceive Nature and divine Powers in Nature to whom he owes Sacrifice, adoration, obedience, because it is by them and by their law that the workings both of the mental and the material world are controlled, and he learns that only by increasing their presence and their greatness in his thought and will and life can he himself increase his powers, knowledge, right action and the satisfactions which these things bring to him. Thus he adds the religious and supraphysical to the material and egoistic sense of life and prepares himself to rise through the finite to the Infinite.
  But this is only a long intermediate stage. It is still subject to the law of desire, to the centrality of all things in the conceptions and needs of his ego and to the control of his being as well as his works by Nature, though it is a regulated and governed desire, a clarified ego and a Nature more and more subtilised and enlightened by the sattwic, the highest natural principle. All this is still within the domain, though the very much enlarged domain, of the mutable, finite and personal. The real self-knowledge and consequently the right way of works
  --
   lies beyond; for the Sacrifice done with knowledge is the highest Sacrifice and that alone brings a perfect working. That can only come when he perceives that the self in him and the self in others are one being and this self is something higher than the ego, an infinite, an impersonal, a universal existence in whom all move and have their being, - when he perceives that all the cosmic gods to whom he offers his Sacrifice are forms of one infinite Godhead and when again, leaving all his limited and limiting conceptions of that one Godhead, he perceives him to be the supreme and ineffable Deity who is at once the finite and the infinite, the one self and the many, beyond Nature though manifesting himself through Nature, beyond limitation by qualities though formulating the power of his being through infinite quality. This is the Purushottama to whom the Sacrifice has to be offered, not for any transient personal fruit of works, but for the soul's possession of God and in order to live in harmony and union with the Divine.
  In other words, man's way to liberation and perfection lies through an increasing impersonality. It is his ancient and constant experience that the more he opens himself to the impersonal and infinite, to that which is pure and high and one and common in all things and beings, the impersonal and infinite in
  --
  The Lord of the Sacrifice
  129
  --
  The liberation given by this perfect impersonality is real, is complete, is indispensable; but is it the last word, the end of the whole matter? All life, all world-existence, we have said, is the Sacrifice offered by Nature to the Purusha, the one and secret soul in Nature, in whom all her workings take place; but its real sense is obscured in us by ego, by desire, by our limited, active, multiple personality. We have risen out of ego and desire and limited personality and by impersonality, its great corrective, we have found the impersonal Godhead; we have identified our being with the one self and soul in whom all exist. The Sacrifice of works continues, conducted not by ourselves any longer, but by Nature, - Nature operating through the finite part of our being, mind, senses, body, - but in our infinite being. But to whom then is this Sacrifice offered and with what object? For the impersonal has no activity and no desires, no object to be gained, no dependence for anything on all this world of creatures; it exists for itself, in its own self-delight, in its own immutable eternal being. We may have to do works without desire as a means in order to reach this impersonal self-existence and selfdelight, but, that movement once executed, the object of works is finished; the Sacrifice is no longer needed. Works may even then continue because Nature continues and her activities; but there is no longer any further object in these works. The sole reason
  The Lord of the Sacrifice
  131
  --
  Lord and enjoyer of the Sacrifice, bhoktaram yajnatapasam, and there is still an object in the Sacrifice. The impersonal Brahman is not the very last word, not the utterly highest secret of our being; for impersonal and personal, finite and infinite turn out to be only two opposite, yet concomitant aspects of a divine
  Being unlimited by these distinctions who is both these things at once. God is an ever unmanifest Infinite ever self-impelled to manifest himself in the finite; he is the great impersonal Person of whom all personalities are partial appearances; he is the Divine who reveals himself in the human being, the Lord seated in the heart of man. Knowledge teaches us to see all beings in the one impersonal self, for so we are liberated from the separative
  --
  Me." Our ego, our limiting personalities stand in the way of our recognising the Divine who is in all and in whom all have their being; for, subject to personality, we see only such fragmentary aspects of Him as the finite appearances of things suffer us to seize. We have to arrive at him not through our lower personality, but through the high, infinite and impersonal part of our being, and that we find by becoming this self one in all in whose existence the whole world is comprised. This infinite containing, not excluding all finite appearances, this impersonal admitting, not rejecting all individualities and personalities, this immobile sustaining, pervading, containing, not standing apart from all the movement of Nature, is the clear mirror in which the Divine will reveal His being. Therefore it is to the Impersonal that we have first to attain; through the cosmic deities, through the aspects of the finite alone the perfect knowledge of God cannot be totally obtained. But neither is the silent immobility of the impersonal Self, conceived as shut into itself and divorced from all that it sustains, contains and pervades, the whole allrevealing all-satisfying truth of the Divine. To see that we have to look through its silence to the Purushottama, and he in his divine greatness possesses both the Akshara and the Kshara; he is seated in the immobility, but he manifests himself in the movement and in all the action of cosmic Nature; to him even after liberation the Sacrifice of works in Nature continues to be offered.
  The real goal of the Yoga is then a living and self-completing union with the divine Purushottama and is not merely a selfextinguishing immergence in the impersonal Being. To raise our whole existence to the Divine Being, to dwell in him (mayyeva nivasis.yasi), to be at one with him, unify our consciousness with his, to make our fragmentary nature a reflection of his perfect nature, to be inspired in our thought and sense wholly by the divine knowledge, to be moved in will and action utterly and faultlessly by the divine will, to lose desire in his love and delight, is man's perfection; it is that which the Gita describes as
  The Lord of the Sacrifice
  133
   the highest secret. It is the true goal and the last sense of human living and the highest step in our progressive Sacrifice of works.
  For he remains to the end the master of works and the soul of Sacrifice.
  XIV

1.14 - Descendants of Prithu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  [3]: The text is, ###. Kuśa or varhis is properly 'sacrificial grass' (Poa); and Prācināgra, literally, 'having its tips towards the east;' the direction in which it should be placed upon the ground, as a seat for the gods on occasion of offerings made to them. The name therefore intimates, either that the practice originated with him, or, as the commentator explains it, that he was exceedingly devout, offering Sacrifices or invoking p. 107 the gods every where. The Hari Vaṃśa adds a verse to that of our text, reading, ###, which Mons. Langlois has rendered, 'Quand il marchoit sur la terre les pointes de cousa etoient courbées vers l'Orient;' which he supposes to mean, 'Que ce prince avait tourné ses pensées et porté sa domination vers l'Orient:' a supposition that might have been obviated by a little further consideration of the verse of Manu to which he refers. "If he have sitten on culms of grass with their points towards the east," &c. The commentary explains the passage as above, referring ### to ### not to ### as, ###. 'He was called Prācinavarhis, because his sacred grass, pointing east, was going upon the very earth, or was spread over the whole earth.' The text of the Bhāgavata also explains clearly what is meant: 'By whose sacred grass, pointing to the east, as he performed Sacrifice after Sacrifice, the whole earth, his sacrificial ground, was overspread.'

1.14 - FOREST AND CAVERN, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
  Thou, Hell, hast claimed this Sacrifice as thine!
  Help, Devil! through the coming pangs to push me;

1.14 - IMMORTALITY AND SURVIVAL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  When I have Sacrificed my angel soul,
  I shall become that which no mind ever conceived.

1.14 - The Principle of Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  HIS THEN is the sense of the Gita's doctrine of Sacrifice. Its full significance depends on the idea of the
  Purushottama which as yet is not developed, - we find it set forth clearly only much later in the eighteen chapters, - and therefore we have had to anticipate, at whatever cost of infidelity to the progressive method of the Gita's exposition, that central teaching. At present the Teacher simply gives a hint, merely adumbrates this supreme presence of the Purushottama and his relation to the immobile Self in whom it is our first business, our pressing spiritual need to find our poise of perfect peace and equality by attainment to the Brahmic condition. He speaks as yet not at all in set terms of the Purushottama, but of himself, - "I", Krishna, Narayana, the Avatar, the God in man who is also the Lord in the universe incarnated in the figure of the divine charioteer of Kurukshetra. "In the Self, then in
  --
  The works of Sacrifice are thus vindicated as a means of liberation and absolute spiritual perfection, samsiddhi. So
  Janaka and other great Karmayogins of the mighty ancient
  Yoga attained to perfection, by equal and desireless works done as a Sacrifice, without the least egoistic aim or attachment - karman.aiva hi samsiddhim asthita janakadayah.. So too and with the same desirelessness, after liberation and perfection, works can and have to be continued by us in a large divine spirit, with the calm high nature of a spiritual royalty. "Thou shouldst do works regarding also the holding together of the peoples, lokasangraham evapi sampasyan kartum arhasi. Whatsoever the
  Best doeth, that the lower kind of man puts into practice; the standard he creates, the people follows. O son of Pritha, I have no work that I need to do in all the three worlds, I have nothing that I have not gained and have yet to gain, and I abide verily in the paths of action," varta eva ca karman.i, - eva implying,
  --
  But let us clearly understand that they must not be interpreted, as the modern pragmatic tendency concerned much more with the present affairs of the world than with any high and far-off spiritual possibility seeks to interpret them, as no more than a philosophical and religious justification of social service, patriotic, cosmopolitan and humanitarian effort and attachment to the hundred eager social schemes and dreams which attract the modern intellect. It is not the rule of a large moral and intellectual altruism which is here announced, but that of a spiritual unity with God and with this world of beings who dwell in him and in whom he dwells. It is not an injunction to subordinate the individual to society and humanity or immolate egoism on the altar of the human collectivity, but to fulfil the individual in God and to Sacrifice the ego on the one true altar of the allembracing Divinity. The Gita moves on a plane of ideas and experiences higher than those of the modern mind which is at the stage indeed of a struggle to shake off the coils of egoism, but is still mundane in its outlook and intellectual and moral rather than spiritual in its temperament. Patriotism, cosmopolitanism, service of society, collectivism, humanitarianism, the ideal or religion of humanity are admirable aids towards our escape from our primary condition of individual, family, social, national egoism into a secondary stage in which the individual realises, as far as it can be done on the intellectual, moral and emotional level, - on that level he cannot do it entirely in the right and perfect way, the way of the integral truth of his being, - the oneness of his existence with the existence of other beings. But
  The Principle of Divine Works

1.14 - The Structure and Dynamics of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  even the animals which are offered in Sacrifice."
  234

1.14 - The Succesion to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  twenty-fourth day of February a Sacrifice used to be offered in the
  Comitium, and when it was over the King of the Sacred Rites fled
  --
  public Sacrifice to the ancestral gods, when some men, to whom he
  had given umbrage, despatched him with the sacrificial knives and

1.15 - Index, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  The Sacrifice
  Epilogue

1.15 - LAST VISIT TO KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "Is Keshab a small person? He is respected by all, seekers after wealth as well as holy men. Once I visited Dayananda, who was then staying at a garden house. I saw he was extremely anxious about Keshab's coming; he went out every few minutes to see whether he had arrived. I learnt later on that Keshab had made an appointment with him that day. Keshab, I understood, had no faith in the Sacrifices and the deities mentioned in the Vedas. Referring to this, Dayananda said: 'Why, the Lord has created so many things. Could He not make deities as well?' "
  Continuing, the Master said: "Keshab is free from the pride of a small minded religious teacher. To many people he has said, 'If you have any doubts, go there2 to have them solved.' It is my way, too, to say: 'What shall I do with people's respect? Let Keshab's virtues increase a millionfold.' Keshab is certainly a great man. Everyone respects him, seekers after wealth as well as holy men." Thus did Sri Ramakrishna praise Keshab before the latter's disciples.

1.15 - The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  N SPEAKING of this Yoga in which action and knowledge become one, the Yoga of the Sacrifice of works with knowledge, in which works are fulfilled in knowledge, knowledge supports, changes and enlightens works, and both are offered to the Purushottama, the supreme Divinity who becomes manifest within us as Narayana, Lord of all our being and action seated secret in our hearts for ever, who becomes manifest even in the human form as the Avatar, the divine birth taking possession of our humanity, Krishna has declared in passing that this was the ancient and original Yoga which he gave to Vivasvan, the
  Sun-God, Vivasvan gave it to Manu, the father of men, Manu gave it to Ikshvaku, head of the Solar line, and so it came down from royal sage to royal sage till it was lost in the great lapse of Time and is now renewed for Arjuna, because he is the lover and devotee, friend and comrade of the Avatar. For this, he says, is the highest secret, - thus claiming for it a superiority to all other forms of Yoga, because those others lead to the impersonal Brahman or to a personal Deity, to a liberation in actionless knowledge or a liberation in absorbed beatitude, but this gives the highest secret and the whole secret; it brings us to divine peace and divine works, to divine knowledge, action and ecstasy unified in a perfect freedom; it unites into itself all the Yogic paths as the highest being of the Divine reconciles and makes one in itself all the different and even contrary powers and principles of its manifested being. Therefore this Yoga of the Gita is not, as some contend, only the Karmayoga, one and the lowest, according to them, of the three paths, but a highest
  --
  But most men, the Gita goes on to say, desiring the fulfilment of their works, Sacrifice to the gods, to various forms and personalities of the one Godhead, because the fulfilment
  (siddhi) that is born of works, - of works without knowledge,
  - is very swift and easy in the human world; it belongs indeed to that world alone. The other, the divine self-fulfilment in man by the Sacrifice with knowledge to the supreme Godhead, is much more difficult; its results belong to a higher plane of existence and they are less easily grasped. Men therefore have to follow the fourfold law of their nature and works and on this plane of mundane action they seek the Godhead through his various qualities. But, says Krishna, though I am the doer of the fourfold works and creator of its fourfold law, yet I must be known also as the non-doer, the imperishable, the immutable Self. "Works affect me not, nor have I desire for the fruit of works;" for
  God is the impersonal beyond this egoistic personality and this strife of the modes of Nature, and as the Purushottama also, the impersonal Personality, he possesses this supreme freedom even in works. Therefore the doer of divine works even while following the fourfold law has to know and live in that which is beyond, in the impersonal Self and so in the supreme Godhead.

1.15 - The Suprarational Good, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Our ethical impulses and activities begin like all the rest in the infrarational and take their rise from the subconscient. They arise as an instinct of right, an instinct of obedience to an ununderstood law, an instinct of self-giving in labour, an instinct of Sacrifice and self- Sacrifice, an instinct of love, of self-subordination and of solidarity with others. Man obeys the law at first without any inquiry into the why and the wherefore; he does not seek for it a sanction in the reason. His first thought is that it is a law created by higher powers than himself and his race and he says with the ancient poet that he knows not whence these laws sprang, but only that they are and endure and cannot with impunity be violated. What the instincts and impulses seek after, the reason labours to make us understand, so that the will may come to use the ethical impulses intelligently and turn the instincts into ethical ideas. It corrects mans crude and often erring misprisions of the ethical instinct, separates and purifies his confused associations, shows as best it can the relations of his often clashing moral ideals, tries to arbitrate and compromise between their conflicting claims, arranges a system and many-sided rule of ethical action. And all this is well, a necessary stage of our advance; but in the end these ethical ideas and this intelligent ethical will which it has tried to train to its control, escape from its hold and soar up beyond its province. Always, even when enduring its rein and curb, they have that inborn tendency.
  For the ethical being like the rest is a growth and a seeking towards the absolute, the divine, which can only be attained securely in the suprarational. It seeks after an absolute purity, an absolute right, an absolute truth, an absolute strength, an absolute love and self-giving, and it is most satisfied when it can get them in absolute measure, without limit, curb or compromise, divinely, infinitely, in a sort of godhead and transfiguration of the ethical being. The reason is chiefly concerned with what it best understands, the apparent process, the machinery, the outward act, its result and effect, its circumstance, occasion and motive; by these it judges the morality of the action and the morality of the doer. But the developed ethical being knows instinctively that it is an inner something which it seeks and the outward act is only a means of bringing out and manifesting within ourselves by its psychological effects that inner absolute and eternal entity. The value of our actions lies not so much in their apparent nature and outward result as in their help towards the growth of the Divine within us. It is difficult, even impossible to justify upon outward grounds the absolute justice, absolute right, absolute purity, love or selflessness of an action or course of action; for action is always relative, it is mixed and uncertain in its results, perplexed in its occasions. But it is possible to relate the inner being to the eternal and absolute good, to make our sense and will full of it so as to act out of its impulsion or its intuitions and inspirations. That is what the ethical being labours towards and the higher ethical man increasingly attains to in his inner efforts.

1.15 - The Transformed Being, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  It will be the end of the Artifice. This fabulous, monstrous world bristling with machines on every floor and every level swallowed up by a machinery that swallows us and swallows life's slightest movement, the least breath of thought, the lightest heartbeat, that rolls us under its enormous armored tank in which those richest in false powers, most armed with deceptive words, most affluent in false colors and tinsel and fake, artificial television lights, whose shell of triumphant unconsciousness is the heaviest, dominate a hypnotized mass which consents to this barbarous Sacrifice to Moloch, this universal and total slavery, detailed down to the tiniest subconscious reaction, in which even the most enlightened men are still impelled by the muffled reverberation of the Machine, alienated from their own powers of seeing, feeling and communicating, smothered beneath an enormous apparatus that conditions their thought and feelings and beliefs, regimented by science, regimented by the law, regimented by the Machine one must keep clicking in order to live, eat, brea the and travel, keep alive in order to stay alive will vanish like some unreal nightmare under the tranquil gaze of Truth, which will put each thing in its place, endow the truer ones with power, clo the each according to his own light, illuminate each one in his true color, expose the innermost vibration without subterfuge, without false clothing, rank beings spontaneously, automatically, visibly, according to the quality of their flame and the intensity of their joy, impart its powerful rhythm to the clearer ones, give to each a world in his measure, a dwelling in his color, an immortal body attuned to his joy, a scope of action commensurate with the scope of his own ray, a power to mold and use matter proportionate to his intensity of truth, his capacity for beauty and his degree of genuine imagination. For, in the end, Truth is Beauty, is supreme Imagination which, through those millions of years and billions of sorrows, sought to make us rediscover our own power of loving, of creating and of uprooting death through immortal joy.
  But how will this matter, as heavy and stubborn as it is, this unfeeling rock, obey the power of the Spirit? How will the earth's matter allow itself to be transformed without being crushed, violated, pulverized by some sledgehammer of one kind or another, heated to a few thousand degrees in our nuclear kettles? We might as well ask how that rock could ever escape the tortuous climb of the caterpillar we see no farther than our mental conditioning, but our vision is false and the matter we crush without mercy is as living, active, responsive as the stream of stars above our heads or the invisible quivering of the lotus under the summer sun. Matter too is living; it too is a substance of the Eternal, and it can respond as much as the mind, heart or plant. Only we have to find the point of contact, to know the true language, just as we have found the language of numbers, only to extract a few monsters. Another language needs to be found for another vision, a concrete language that imparts the experience of what it names, brings to light what it says, touches what it expresses, which does not translate but materializes the vibrations and moves things by emitting the same note. A whole magic of the Word needs to be found again.

1.15 - The world overrun with trees; they are destroyed by the Pracetasas, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  [13]: The Viśvādevas are a class of gods to whom Sacrifices should be offered daily. Manu, III. 121. They are named in some of the Purāṇas, as the Vāyu and Matsya: the former specifying ten; the latter, twelve.
  [14]: The Sādhyas, according to the Vāyu, are the personified rites and prayers of the Vedas, born of the metres, and partakers of the Sacrifices. The same work names twelve, which are all names of Sacrifices and formulæ, as Darśa, Paurnamāsa, Vrihadaśva, Rathantara, &c. The Matsya P., Padma P., and Hari V. have a different set of seventeen appellations, apparently of arbitrary selection, as Bhava, Prabhava, Īśa, Aruṇi, &c.
  [15]: Or, according to the Padma P., because they are always present in light, or luminous irradiation.

1.15 - The Worship of the Oak, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  heaven. Altars were set up within these enclosures and Sacrifices
  offered on them. Several such places are known from inscriptions to
  --
  of lightning, is alone lord of all things, and they Sacrifice to him
  oxen and every victim."
  --
  of the sacred wood. Men Sacrificed to oak-trees for good crops,
  while women did the same to lime-trees; from which we may infer that
  --
  drought, when they wanted rain, they used to Sacrifice a black
  heifer, a black he-goat, and a black cock to the thunder god in the

1.16 - PRAYER, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Lord, I know not what to ask of thee. Thou only knowest what I need. Thou lovest me better than I know how to love myself. Father, give to thy child that which he himself knows not how to ask. Smite or heal, depress me or raise me up: I adore all thy purposes without knowing them. I am silent; I offer myself up in a Sacrifice; I yield myself to Thee; I would have no other desire than to accomplish thy will. Teach me to pray. Pray Thyself in me.
  Fnelon

1.16 - The Suprarational Ultimate of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  For this growing collectivist or cooperative tendency embodies the second instinct of the vital or practical being in man. It shows itself first in the family ideal by which the individual subordinates himself and finds his vital satisfaction and practical account, not in his own predominant individuality, but in the life of a larger vital ego. This ideal played a great part in the old aristocratic views of life; it was there in the ancient Indian idea of the kula and the kuladharma, and in later India it was at the root of the joint-family system which made the strong economic base of mediaeval Hinduism. It has taken its grossest Vaishya form in the ideal of the British domestic Philistine, the idea of the human individual born here to follow a trade or profession, to marry and procreate a family, to earn his living, to succeed reasonably if not to amass an efficient or ostentatious wealth, to enjoy for a space and then die, thus having done the whole business for which he came into the body and performed all his essential duty in life,for this apparently was the end unto which man with all his divine possibilities was born! But whatever form it may take, however this grossness may be refined or toned down, whatever ethical or religious conceptions may be superadded, always the family is an essentially practical, vitalistic and economic creation. It is simply a larger vital ego, a more complex vital organism that takes up the individual and englobes him in a more effective competitive and cooperative life unit. The family like the individual accepts and uses society for its field and means of continuance, of vital satisfaction and well-being, of aggrandisement and enjoyment. But this life unit also, this multiple ego can be induced by the cooperative instinct in life to subordinate its egoism to the claims of the society and trained even to Sacrifice itself at need on the communal altar. For the society is only a still larger vital competitive and cooperative ego that takes up both the individual and the family into a more complex organism and uses them for the collective satisfaction of its vital needs, claims, interests, aggrandisement, well-being, enjoyment. The individual and family consent to this exploitation for the same reason that induced the individual to take on himself the yoke of the family, because they find their account in this wider vital life and have the instinct in it of their own larger growth, security and satisfaction. The society, still more than the family, is essentially economic in its aims and in its very nature. That accounts for the predominantly economic and materialistic character of modern ideas of Socialism; for these ideas are the full rationalistic flowering of this instinct of collective life. But since the society is one competitive unit among many of its kind, and since its first relations with the others are always potentially hostile, even at the best competitive and not cooperative, and have to be organised in that view, a political character is necessarily added to the social life, even predominates for a time over the economic and we have the nation or State. If we give their due value to these fundamental characteristics and motives of collective existence, it will seem natural enough that the development of the collective and cooperative idea of society should have culminated in a huge, often a monstrous overgrowth of the vitalistic, economic and political ideal of life, society and civilisation.
  What account are the higher parts of mans being, those finer powers in him that more openly tend to the growth of his divine nature, to make with this vital instinct or with its gigantic modern developments? Obviously, their first impulse must be to take hold of them and dominate and transform all this crude life into their own image; but when they discover that here is a power apart, as persistent as themselves, that it seeks a satisfaction per se and accepts their impress to a certain extent, but not altogether and, as it were, unwillingly, partially, unsatisfactorily,what then? We often find that ethics and religion especially, when they find themselves in a constant conflict with the vital instincts, the dynamic life-power in man, proceed to an attitude of almost complete hostility and seek to damn them in idea and repress them in fact. To the vital instinct for wealth and wellbeing they oppose the ideal of a chill and austere poverty; to the vital instinct for pleasure the ideal not only of self-denial, but of absolute mortification; to the vital instinct for health and ease the ascetics contempt, disgust and neglect of the body; to the vital instinct for incessant action and creation the ideal of calm and inaction, passivity, contemplation; to the vital instinct for power, expansion, domination, rule, conquest the ideal of humility, self-abasement, submission, meek harmlessness, docility in suffering; to the vital instinct of sex on which depends the continuance of the species, the ideal of an unreproductive chastity and celibacy; to the social and family instinct the anti-social ideal of the ascetic, the monk, the solitary, the world-shunning saint. Commencing with discipline and subordination they proceed to complete mortification, which means when translated the putting to death of the vital instincts, and declare that life itself is an illusion to be shed from the soul or a kingdom of the flesh, the world and the devil,accepting thus the claim of the unenlightened and undisciplined life itself that it is not, was never meant to be, can never become the kingdom of God, a high manifestation of the Spirit.
  --
  Let us then look at this vital instinct and life dynamism in its own being and not merely as an occasion for ethical or religious development and see whether it is really rebellious in its very nature to the Divine. We can see at once that what we have described is the first stage of the vital being, the infrarational, the instinctive; this is the crude character of its first native development and persists even when it is trained by the growing application to it of the enlightening reason. Evidently it is in this natural form a thing of the earth, gross, earthy, full even of hideous uglinesses and brute blunders and jarring discords; but so also is the infrarational stage in ethics, in aesthetics, in religion. It is true too that it presents a much more enormous difficulty than these others, more fundamentally and obstinately resists elevation, because it is the very province of the infrarational, a first formulation of consciousness out of the Inconscient, nearest to it in the scale of being. But still it has too, properly looked at, its rich elements of power, beauty, nobility, good, Sacrifice, worship, divinity; here too are highreaching gods, masked but still resplendent. Until recently, and even now, reason, in the garb no longer of philosophy, but of science, has increasingly proposed to take up all this physical and vital life and perfect it by the sole power of rationalism, by a knowledge of the laws of Nature, of sociology and physiology and biology and health, by collectivism, by State education, by a new psychological education and a number of other kindred means. All this is well in its own way and in its limits, but it is not enough and can never come to a truly satisfying success. The ancient attempt of reason in the form of a high idealistic, rational, aesthetic, ethical and religious culture achieved only an imperfect discipline of the vital man and his instincts, sometimes only a polishing, a gloss, a clothing and mannerising of the original uncouth savage. The modern attempt of reason in the form of a broad and thorough rational, utilitarian and efficient instruction and organisation of man and his life is not succeeding any better for all its insistent but always illusory promise of more perfect results in the future. These endeavours cannot indeed be truly successful if our theory of life is right and if this great mass of vital energism contains in itself the imprisoned suprarational, if it has, as it then must have, the instinctive reaching out for something divine, absolute and infinite which is concealed in its blind strivings. Here too reason must be overpassed or surpass itself and become a passage to the Divine.
  The first mark of the suprarational, when it intervenes to take up any portion of our being, is the growth of absolute ideals; and since life is Being and Force and the divine state of being is unity and the Divine in force is God as Power taking possession, the absolute vital ideals must be of that nature. Nowhere are they wanting. If we take the domestic and social life of man, we find hints of them there in several forms; but we need only note, however imperfect and dim the present shapes, the strivings of love at its own self-finding, its reachings towards its absolute the absolute love of man and woman, the absolute maternal or paternal, filial or fraternal love, the love of friends, the love of comrades, love of country, love of humanity. These ideals of which the poets have sung so persistently, are not a mere glamour and illusion, however the egoisms and discords of our instinctive, infrarational way of living may seem to contradict them. Always crossed by imperfection or opposite vital movements, they are still divine possibilities and can be made a first means of our growth into a spiritual unity of being with being. Certain religious disciplines have understood this truth, have taken up these relations boldly and applied them to our souls communion with God; and by a converse process they can, lifted out of their present social and physical formulas, become for us, not the poor earthly things they are now, but deep and beautiful and wonderful movements of God in man fulfilling himself in life. All the economic development of life itself takes on at its end the appearance of an attempt to get rid of the animal squalor and bareness which is what obligatory poverty really means, and to give to man the divine ease and leisure of the gods. It is pursued in a wrong way, no doubt, and with many ugly circumstances, but still the ideal is darkly there. Politics itself, that apparent game of strife and deceit and charlatanism, can be a large field of absolute idealisms. What of patriotism,never mind the often ugly instincts from which it starts and which it still obstinately preserves,but in its aspects of worship, self-giving, discipline, self- Sacrifice? The great political ideals of man, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, apart from the selfishnesses they serve and the rational and practical justifications with which they arm themselves, have had for their soul an ideal, some half-seen truth of the absolute and have carried with them a worship, a loyalty, a loss of self in the idea which have made men ready to suffer and die for them. War and strife themselves have been schools of heroism; they have preserved the heroic in man, they have created the katriys tyaktajvit of the Sanskrit epic phrase, the men of power and courage who have abandoned their bodily life for a cause; for without heroism man cannot grow into the Godhead; courage, energy and strength are among the very first principles of the divine nature in action. All this great vital, political, economic life of man with its two powers of competition and cooperation is stumbling blindly forward towards some realisation of power and unity,in two divine directions, therefore. For the Divine in life is Power possessed of self-mastery, but also of mastery of His world, and man and mankind too move towards conquest of their world, their environment. And again the Divine in fulfilment here is and must be oneness, and the ideal of human unity however dim and far off is coming slowly into sight. The competitive nation-units are feeling, at times, however feebly as yet, the call to cast themselves into a greater unified cooperative life of the human race.

1.17 - Legend of Prahlada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  Listen, Maitreya, to the story of the wise and magnanimous Prahlāda, whose adventures are ever interesting and instructive. Hiraṇyakaśipu, the son of Diti, had formerly brought the three worlds under his authority, confiding in a boon bestowed upon him by Brahmā[1]. He had usurped the sovereignty of Indra, and exercised of himself the functions of the sun, of air, of the lord of waters, of fire, and of the moon. He himself was the god of riches; he was the judge of the dead; and he appropriated to himself, without reserve, all that was offered in Sacrifice to the gods. The deities therefore, flying from their seats in heaven, wandered, through fear of the Daitya, upon the earth, disguised in mortal shapes. Having conquered the three worlds, he was inflated with pride, and, eulogized by the Gandharvas, enjoyed whatever he desired. The Gandharvas, the Siddhas, and the snake-gods all attended upon the mighty Hiraṇyakaśipu, as he sat at the banquet. The Siddhas delighted stood before him, some playing on musical instruments, some singing songs in his praise, and others shouting cries of victory; whilst the nymphs of heaven danced gracefully in the crystal palace, where the Asura with pleasure quaffed the inebriating cup.
  The illustrious son of the Daitya king, Prahlāda, being yet a boy, resided in the dwelling of his preceptor, where he read such writings as are studied in early years. On one occasion he came, accompanied by his teacher, to the court of his father, and bowed before his feet as he was drinking. Hiraṇyakaśipu desired his prostrate son to rise, and said to him, "Repeat, boy, in substance, and agreeably, what during the period of your studies you have acquired." "Hear, sire," replied Prahlāda, "what in obedience to your commands I will repeat, the substance of all I have learned: listen attentively to that which wholly occupies my thoughts. I have learned to adore him who is without beginning, middle, or end, increase or diminution; the imperishable lord of the world, the universal cause of causes." On hearing these words, the sovereign of the Daityas, his eyes red with wrath, and lip swollen with indignation, turned to the preceptor of his son, and said, "Vile Brahman, what is this preposterous commendation of my foe, that, in disrespect to me, you have taught this boy to utter?" "King of the Daityas," replied the Guru, "it is not worthy of you to give way to passion: that which your son has uttered, he has not been taught by me." "By whom then," said Hiraṇyakaśipu to the lad, "by whom has this lesson, boy, been taught you? your teacher denies that it proceeds from him." "Viṣṇu, father," answered Prahlāda, "is the instructor of the whole world: what else should any one teach or learn, save him the supreme spirit?" "Blockhead," exclaimed the king, "who is this Viṣṇu, whose name you thus reiterate so impertinently before me, who am the sovereign of the three worlds?" "The glory of Viṣṇu," replied Prahlāda, "is to be meditated upon by the devout; it cannot be described: he is the supreme lord, who is all things, and from whom all things proceed." To this the king rejoined, "Are you desirous of death, fool, that you give the title of supreme lord to any one whilst I survive?" "Viṣṇu, who is Brahma," said Prahlāda, "is the creator and protector, not of me alone, but of all human beings, and even, father, of you: he is the supreme lord of all. Why should you, sire, be offended?" Hiraṇyakaśipu then exclaimed, "What evil spirit has entered into the breast of this silly boy, that thus, like one possessed, he utters such profanity?" "Not into my heart alone," said Prahlāda, "has Viṣṇu entered, but he pervades all the regions of the universe, and by his omnipresence influences the conduct of all beings, mine, fattier, and thine[2]." "Away with the wretch!" cried the king; "take him to his preceptor's mansion. By whom could he have been instigated to repeat the lying praises of my foe?"

1.17 - Practical rules for the Tragic Poet., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready made or constructs it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline, and then fill in the episodes and amplify in detail. The general plan may be illustrated by the Iphigenia. A young girl is Sacrificed; she disappears mysteriously from the eyes of those who Sacrificed her; She is transported to another country, where the custom is to offer up all strangers to the goddess. To this ministry she is appointed. Some time later her own brother chances to arrive. The fact that the oracle for some reason ordered him to go there, is outside the general plan of the play. The purpose, again, of his coming is outside the action proper.
  However, he comes, he is seized, and, when on the point of being Sacrificed, reveals who he is. The mode of recognition may be either that of Euripides or of Polyidus, in whose play he exclaims very naturally:--'So it was not my sister only, but I too, who was doomed to be Sacrificed'; and by that remark he is saved.
  After this, the names being once given, it remains to fill in the episodes. We must see that they are relevant to the action. In the case of Orestes, for example, there is the madness which led to his capture, and his deliverance by means of the purificatory rite. In the drama, the episodes are short, but it is these that give extension to Epic poetry.

1.17 - The Burden of Royalty, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  but only from one that had been slain or Sacrificed; if she heard
  thunder she was tabooed till she had offered an expiatory Sacrifice.
  Among the Grebo people of Sierra Leone there is a pontiff who bears
  --
  blood of a Sacrificed goat. He has charge of the public talismans
  and idols, which he feeds with rice and oil every new moon; and he

1.17 - The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Tradition asserts the separate existence of two classes of Angiras Rishis, the one Navagwas who Sacrificed for nine months, the other Dashagwas whose sessions of Sacrifice endured for ten. According to this interpretation we must take Navagwa and Dashagwa as "nine-cowed" and "ten-cowed", each cow representing collectively the thirty Dawns which constitute one month of the sacrificial year. But there is at least one passage of the Rig Veda which on its surface is in direct conflict with the traditional interpretation. For in the seventh verse of V.45 and again in the eleventh we are told that it was the Navagwas, not the Dashagwas, who Sacrificed or chanted the hymn for ten months. This seventh verse runs, Anunod atra hastayato adrir, arcan yena dasa maso navagvah.; r.tam yat sarama ga avindad, visvani satya angiras cakara, "Here cried (or, moved) the stone impelled by the hand, whereby the Navagwas chanted for ten months the hymn; Sarama travelling to the Truth found the cows; all things the Angiras made true." And in verse 11 we have the assertion repeated; Dhiyam vo apsu dadhis.e svars.am, yayataran dasa maso navagvah.; aya dhiya syama devagopa, aya dhiya tuturyama ati amhah.. "I hold for you in the waters (i.e. the seven Rivers) the thought that wins possession of heaven2
  (this is once more the seven-headed thought born from the Truth and found by Ayasya), by which the Navagwas passed through the ten months; by this thought may we have the gods for protectors, by this thought may we pass through beyond the evil."
  --
  Angirashood and in that case the Navagwas themselves might well become Dashagwas by extending the period of the Sacrifice to ten months instead of nine. The expression in the hymn, dasa maso ataran, indicates that there was some difficulty in getting through the full period of ten months. It is during this period apparently that the sons of darkness had the power to assail the Sacrifice; for it is indicated that it is only by the confirming of the thought which conquers Swar, the solar world, that the
  Rishis are able to get through the ten months, but this thought once found they become assured of the protection of the gods and pass beyond the assault of the evil, the harms of the Panis and Vritras. This Swar-conquering thought is certainly the same as that seven-headed thought which was born from the Truth and discovered by Ayasya the companion of the Navagwas; for by it, we are told, Ayasya becoming universal, embracing the births in all the worlds, brought into being a fourth world or fourfold world, which must be the supramental beyond the three lower sessions, Dyaus, Antariksha and Prithivi, that wide world which, according to Kanwa son of Ghora, men reach or create by crossing beyond the two Rodasi after killing Vritra. This fourth world must be therefore Swar. The seven-headed thought of Ayasya enables him to become visvajanya, which means probably that he occupies or possesses all the worlds or births of the soul or else that he becomes universal, identifying himself with all beings born, - and to manifest or give being to a certain fourth world (Swar), turyam svij janayad visvajanyah. (X.67.1); and the thought established in the waters which enables the
  --
  The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas 177 of Ayasya to the Navagwas which raises the nine Navagwas to the number of ten and enables them by his discovery of the seven-headed Swar-conquering thought to prolong their ninemonths' Sacrifice through the tenth month? Thus they become the ten Dashagwas. We may note in this connection that the intoxication of the Soma by which Indra manifests or increases the might of Swar or the Swar-Purusha (Svarn.ara) is described as ten-rayed and illuminating (dasagvam vepayantam).
  This conclusion is entirely confirmed by the passage in
  III.39.5 which we have already cited. For there we find that it is with the help of the Navagwas that Indra pursues the trace of the lost kine, but it is only with the aid of the ten Dashagwas that he is able to bring the pursuit to a successful issue and find that Truth, satyam tat, namely, the Sun that was lying in the darkness. In other words, it is when the nine-months' Sacrifice is prolonged through the tenth, it is when the Navagwas become the ten Dashagwas by the seven-headed thought of Ayasya, the tenth Rishi, that the Sun is found and the luminous world of
  Swar in which we possess the truth of the one universal Deva, is disclosed and conquered. This conquest of Swar is the aim of the Sacrifice and the great work accomplished by the Angiras
  Rishis.
  --
  Vala," or, as Sayana interprets it, "by Sacrifice lasting for a year."
  This passage certainly goes far to support the Arctic theory, for it speaks of a yearly and not a daily return of the Sun. But we are not concerned with the external figure, nor does its validity in any way affect our own theory; for it may very well be that the striking Arctic experience of the long night, the annual
  --
  The symbolism of the Veda depends upon the image of the life of man as a Sacrifice, a journey and a battle. The ancient
  Mystics took for their theme the spiritual life of man, but, in order both to make it concrete to themselves and to veil its secrets from the unfit, they expressed it in poetical images drawn from the outward life of their age. That life was largely an existence of herdsmen and tillers of the soil for the mass of the people varied by the wars and migrations of the clans under their kings, and in all this activity the worship of the gods by Sacrifice had become the most solemn and magnificent element, the knot of all the rest.
  For by the Sacrifice were won the rain which fertilised the soil, the herds of cattle and horses necessary for their existence in peace and war, the wealth of gold, land (ks.etra), retainers, fightingmen which constituted greatness and lordship, the victory in the
  The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas 183 battle, safety in the journey by land and water which was so difficult and dangerous in those times of poor means of communication and loosely organised inter-tribal existence. All the principal features of that outward life which they saw around them the mystic poets took and turned into significant images of the inner life. The life of man is represented as a Sacrifice to the gods, a journey sometimes figured as a crossing of dangerous waters, sometimes as an ascent from level to level of the hill of being, and, thirdly, as a battle against hostile nations. But these three images are not kept separate. The Sacrifice is also a journey; indeed the Sacrifice itself is described as travelling, as journeying to a divine goal; and the journey and the Sacrifice are both continually spoken of as a battle against the dark powers.
  The legend of the Angirases takes up and combines all these three essential features of the Vedic imagery. The Angirases are pilgrims of the light. The phrase naks.antah. or abhinaks.antah. is constantly used to describe their characteristic action. They are those who travel towards the goal and attain to the highest, abhinaks.anto abhi ye tam anasur nidhim paramam, "they who travel to and attain that supreme treasure" (II.24.6). Their action is invoked for carrying forward the life of man farther towards its goal, sahasrasave pra tiranta ayuh. (III.53.7). But this journey, if principally of the nature of a quest, the quest of the hidden light, becomes also by the opposition of the powers of darkness an expedition and a battle. The Angirases are heroes and fighters of that battle, gos.u yodhah., "fighters for the cows or rays".
  --
   periods of the Sacrifice of the Navagwas and it is effected by the force of the Soma-wine and the sacred Word.
  The drinking of the Soma-wine as the means of strength, victory and attainment is one of the pervading figures of the
  --
  (the seven rivers) like chariots to their sea, - that we desire that we may travel on the path of the truth," pantham r.tasya yatave tam mahe (VIII.12.2-3). It is in the power of the Soma that the hill is broken open, the sons of darkness overthrown. This Somawine is the sweetness that comes flowing from the streams of the upper hidden world, it is that which flows in the seven waters, it is that with which the ghr.ta, the clarified butter of the mystic Sacrifice, is instinct; it is the honeyed wave which rises out of the ocean of life. Such images can have only one meaning; it is the divine delight hidden in all existence which, once manifest, supports all life's crowning activities and is the force that finally immortalises the mortal, the amr.tam, ambrosia of the gods.
  But it is especially the Word that the Angirases possess; their seerhood is their most distinguishing characteristic. They are brahman.asah. pitarah. somyasah. . . . r.tavr.dhah. (VI.75.10), the fathers who are full of the Soma and have the word and are therefore increasers of the Truth. Indra in order to impel them on the path joins himself to the chanted expressions of their thought and gives fullness and force to the words of their soul, angirasam ucatha jujus.van brahma tutod gatum is.n.an (II.20.5).
  --
  It is when enriched in light and force of thought by the Angirases that Indra completes his victorious journey and reaches the goal on the mountain; "In him our primal fathers, the seven seers, the Navagwas, increase their plenty, him victorious on his march and breaking through (to the goal), standing on the mountain, inviolate in speech, most luminous-forceful by his thinkings," naks.ad-dabham taturim parvates.t.ham, adroghavacam matibhih. savis.t.ham (VI.22.2). It is by singing the Rik, the hymn of illumination, that they find the solar illuminations in the cave of our being, arcanto7 ga avindan (I.62.2). It is by the stubh, the all-supporting rhythm of the hymn of the seven seers, by the vibrating voice of the Navagwas that Indra becomes full of the power of Swar, svaren.a svaryah. and by the cry of the Dashagwas that he rends Vala in pieces (I.62.4). For this cry is the voice of the higher heaven, the thunder that cries in the lightning-flash of Indra, and the advance of the Angirases on their path is the forward movement of this cry of the heavens, pra brahman.o angiraso naks.anta, pra krandanur nabhanyasya vetu (VII.42.1); for we are told that the voice of Brihaspati the Angirasa discovering the Sun and the Dawn and the Cow and the light of the Word is the thunder of Heaven, br.haspatir us.asam suryam gam, arkam viveda stanayann iva dyauh. (X.67.5). It is by the satya mantra, the true thought expressed in the rhythm of the truth, that the hidden light is found and the Dawn brought to birth, gud.ham jyotih. pitaro anvavindan, satyamantra ajanayann us.asam (VII.76.4). For these are the Angirases who speak aright, ittha vadadbhih. angirobhih. (VI.18.5), masters of the Rik who place perfectly their thought, svadhbhir r.kvabhih. (VI.32.2); they are the sons of heaven, heroes of the Mighty Lord who speak the truth and think the straightness and therefore they are able to hold the seat of illumined knowledge, to mentalise the supreme abode of the Sacrifice, r.tam samsanta r.ju ddhyana, divas putraso asurasya vrah.; vipram padam angiraso dadhana, yajnasya dhama prathamam mananta (X.67.2).
  Arcati (r.c) in the Veda means to shine and to sing the Rik; arka means sun, light and the Vedic hymn.

1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  etc., but it only touches the effects, never the true cause. The yogi sees the cause before the effect. A scientist can deduce a certain cause from the effects produced, whereas a yogi deduces the effects from the cause; he can even deduce effects that do not yet exist from a cause that already exists (e.g., the accident will happen tomorrow from the force of the accident that is already there in the background). The scientist manipulates effects, at times bringing about catastrophes; the yogi sees the cause, or, rather, identifies with the Cause, and thereby he can alter the effects, or as Sri Aurobindo puts it, the "habits" we call laws. Ultimately, all our physical effects, which we have codified into laws, are nothing more than a convenient support for the manifestation of forces that are behind, exactly as a performance of magic requires certain ritualistic diagrams, certain ingredients or formulas, so that the forces invoked can manifest themselves. This whole world is a gigantic magical performance, a constant act of magic. But the earthly diagram, all the ingredients we have so earnestly and unchangeably codified, all our infallible formulas, are merely conventions. The earthly ritual can change if, instead of remaining mesmerized by the effects, we go back to the cause behind them on the side of the Magician. There is a tale about a Hindu Brahmin who, every day at the hour of his worship, had the family cat tied up so that he would not be disturbed in his ritual. Eventually, both the Brahmin and the cat died, and the Brahmin's son, now in charge of the worship ceremony, procured a new cat, which he then conscientiously tied up during the Sacrifice! From father to son, the cat had become an indispensable element in the effective performance of
  the ritual. Our own unassailable laws, too, may contain a few little cats. If we go back to the original force concealed behind the physical support, to the "true movement," as the Mother describes it, then we begin to witness the Great Play, and to realize just how different it is from the rigid notions we have of it. Behind the phenomenon of gravitation, to take one of the rituals, there is what the ancient yogis called Vayu, which causes gravitation and the electromagnetic fields (as Sri Aurobindo mentioned also during that conversation of 1926),

1.18 - ON LITTLE OLD AND YOUNG WOMEN, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  makes any Sacrifice, and everything else seems without
  value to her. Let man fear woman when she hates: for

1.18 - The Divine Worker, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Nature, but to the Lord in Sacrifice, into the calm and joy of the
  Impersonal from whom all action proceeds without disturbing his peace. The true Sannyasa of action is the reposing of all works on the Brahman. "He who, having abandoned attachment, acts reposing (or founding) his works on the Brahman, brahman.yadhaya karman.i, is not stained by sin even as water clings not to the lotus-leaf." Therefore the Yogins first "do works with the body, mind, understanding, or even merely with the organs of action, abandoning attachment, for self-purification, sangam tyaktvatmasuddhaye. By abandoning attachment to the fruits of works the soul in union with Brahman attains to peace of rapt foundation in Brahman, but the soul not in union is attached to the fruit and bound by the action of desire." The foundation, the purity, the peace once attained, the embodied soul perfectly controlling its nature, having renounced all its actions by the mind, inwardly, not outwardly, "sits in its ninegated city neither doing nor causing to be done." For this soul is the one impersonal Soul in all, the all-pervading Lord, prabhu, vibhu, who, as the impersonal, neither creates the works of the world, nor the mind's idea of being the doer, na kartr.tvam na karman.i, nor the coupling of works to their fruits, the chain of cause and effect. All that is worked out by the Nature in the man, svabhava, his principle of self-becoming, as the word literally means. The all-pervading Impersonal accepts neither the sin nor the virtue of any: these are things created by the ignorance in the creature, by his egoism of the doer, by his ignorance of his highest self, by his involution in the operations of Nature, and

1.18 - THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  that it is truly a Faith (that is to say, entailing Sacrifice and the final
  abandonment of self for something greater) necessarily implies an

1.18 - The Human Fathers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  HESE characteristics of the Angiras Rishis seem at first sight to indicate that they are in the Vedic system a class of demigods, in their outward aspect personifications or rather personalities of the Light and the Voice and the Flame, but in their inner aspect powers of the Truth who second the gods in their battles. But even as divine seers, even as sons of Heaven and heroes of the Lord, these sages represent aspiring humanity. True, they are originally the sons of the gods, devaputrah., children of Agni, forms of the manifoldly born Brihaspati, and in their ascent to the world of the Truth they are described as ascending back to the place from whence they came; but even in these characteristics they may well be representative of the human soul which has itself descended from that world and has to reascend; for it is in its origin a mental being, son of immortality (amr.tasya putrah.), a child of Heaven born in Heaven and mortal only in the bodies that it assumes. And the part of the Angiras Rishis in the Sacrifice is the human part, to find the word, to sing the hymn of the soul to the gods, to sustain and increase the divine Powers by the praise, the sacred food and the
  Soma-wine, to bring to birth by their aid the divine Dawn, to win the luminous forms of the all-radiating Truth and to ascend to its secret, far and high-seated home.
  In this work of the Sacrifice they appear in a double form,1 the divine Angirases, r.s.ayo divyah., who symbolise and preside over certain psychological powers and workings like the gods, and the human fathers, pitaro manus.yah., who like the Ribhus, also described as human beings or at least human powers that
  It is to be noted that the Puranas distinguish specifically between two classes of Pitris, the divine Fathers, a class of deities, and the human Ancestors, to both of whom the pin.d.a is offered. The Puranas, obviously, only continue in this respect the original Vedic tradition.
  --
  Pitris along with the Bhrigus and Atharvans and receive their own peculiar portion in the Sacrifice, they are in the rest of the
  Veda also called upon in a less definite but a larger and more significant imagery. It is for the great human journey that they are invoked; for it is the human journey from the mortality to the immortality, from the falsehood to the truth that the Ancestors accomplished, opening the way to their descendants.
  --
  VII.52. The first of these two hymns of Vasishtha is a Sukta in which the gods are invoked precisely for this great journey, adhvara yajna,2 the Sacrifice that travels or is a travel to the home of the godheads and at the same time a battle: for thus it is sung, "Easy of travelling for thee is the path, O Agni, and known to thee from of old. Yoke in the Soma-offering thy ruddy
  (or, actively-moving) mares which bear the hero. Seated, I call the births divine" (verse 2). What path is this? It is the path between the home of the gods and our earthly mortality down which the gods descend through the antariks.a, the vital regions, to the earthly Sacrifice and up which the Sacrifice and man by the Sacrifice ascends to the home of the gods. Agni yokes his mares, his variously-coloured energies or flames of the divine
  Force he represents, which bear the Hero, the battling power within us that performs the journey. And the births divine are at once the gods themselves and those manifestations of the divine life in man which are the Vedic meaning of the godheads. That this is the sense becomes clear from the fourth Rik. "When the
  Sayana takes a-dhvara yajna, the unhurt Sacrifice; but "unhurt" can never have come to be used as a synonym of Sacrifice. Adhvara is "travelling", "moving", connected with adhvan, a path or journey from the lost root adh, to move, extend, be wide, compact, etc. We see the connection between the two words adhvan and adhvara in adhva, air, sky and adhvara with the same sense. The passages in the Veda are numerous in which the adhvara or adhvara yajna is connected with the idea of travelling, journeying, advancing on the path.
  The Human Fathers
  --
  The hymn is therefore an invocation to Agni for the journey to the supreme good, the divine birth, the bliss. And its opening verse is a prayer for the necessary conditions of the journey, the things that are said here to constitute the form of the pilgrim Sacrifice, adhvarasya pesah., and among these comes first the forward movement of the Angirases; "Forward let the Angirases travel, priests of the Word, forward go the cry of heaven (or, of the heavenly thing, cloud or lightning), forward move the fostering Cows that diffuse their waters, and let the two pressing-stones be yoked (to their work) - the form of the pilgrim Sacrifice," pra brahman.o angiraso naks.anta, pra krandanur nabhanyasya vetu; pra dhenava udapruto navanta, yujyatam adr adhvarasya pesah.. The Angirases with the divine
  Word, the cry of Heaven which is the voice of Swar the luminous heaven and of its lightnings thundering out from the Word, the divine waters or seven rivers that are set free to their flowing by that heavenly lightning of Indra the master of Swar, and with the outflowing of the divine waters the outpressing of the immortalising Soma, these constitute the form, pesah., of the adhvara yajna. And its general characteristic is forward movement, the advance of all to the divine goal, as emphasised by the three verbs of motion, naks.anta, vetu, navanta and the emphatic pra, forward, which opens and sets the key to each clause.
  --
  And the third verse runs, "May the Angirases who hasten through to the goal move in their travelling to the bliss of the divine Savitri; and that (bliss) may our great Father, he of the Sacrifice, and all the gods becoming of one mind accept in heart." Turan.yavo naks.anta ratnam devasya savitur iyanah.. It is quite clear therefore that the Angirases are travellers to the light and truth of the solar deity from which are born the luminous cows they wrest from the Panis and to the bliss which, as we always see, is founded on that light and truth. It is clear also that this journey is a growing into the godhead, into the infinite being (aditayah. syama), said in this hymn (verse 2) to come by the growth of the peace and bliss through the action in us of
  Mitra, Varuna and the Vasus who protect us in the godhead and the mortality.
  --
  Atri beheld the warrior Agni and the luminous cows, those of whom even the old became young again. This field, ks.etra, is only another image for the luminous home (ks.aya) to which the gods by the Sacrifice lead the human soul.
  Vishwamitra then proceeds to indicate the real mystic sense of all this imagery. "He having Dakshina with him held in his right hand (daks.in.e daks.in.avan) the secret thing that is placed in the secret cave and concealed in the waters. May he, knowing perfectly, separate the light from the darkness, jyotir vr.n.ta tamaso vijanan, may we be far from the presence of the evil."
  We have here a clue to the sense of this goddess Dakshina who seems in some passages to be a form or epithet of the Dawn and in others that which distributes the offerings in the Sacrifice.
  Usha is the divine illumination and Dakshina is the discerning knowledge that comes with the dawn and enables the Power in the mind, Indra, to know aright and separate the light from the darkness, the truth from the falsehood, the straight from the crooked, vr.n.ta vijanan. The right and left hand of Indra are his two powers of action in knowledge; for his two arms are called gabhasti, a word which means ordinarily a ray of the sun but also forearm, and they correspond to his two perceptive powers, his two bright horses, har, which are described as suneyed, suracaks.asa and as vision-powers of the Sun, suryasya ketu. Dakshina presides over the right-hand power, daks.in.a, and therefore we have the collocation daks.in.e daks.in.avan. It is this discernment which presides over the right action of the Sacrifice and the right distribution of the offerings and it is this which enables Indra to hold the herded wealth of the Panis securely, in his right hand. And finally we are told what is this secret thing
  The Human Fathers
  --
  Vasishtha which I shall next examine, VII.76, although to a superficial glance it would seem to be only an ecstatic picture of the physical Dawn. This first impression, however, disappears when we examine it; we see that there is a constant suggestion of a profounder meaning and, the moment we apply the key we have found, the harmony of the real sense appears. The hymn commences with a description of that rising of the Sun into the light of the supreme Dawn which is brought about by the gods and the Angirases. "Savitri, the god, the universal Male, has ascended into the Light that is immortal and of all the births, jyotir amr.tam visvajanyam; by the work (of Sacrifice) the eye of the gods has been born (or, by the will-power of the gods vision has been born); Dawn has manifested the whole world (or, all that comes into being, all existences, visvam bhuvanam)." This immortal light into which the sun rises is elsewhere called the true light, r.tam jyotih., Truth and immortality being constantly associated in the Veda. It is the light of the knowledge given by the seven-headed thought which Ayasya discovered when he became visvajanya, universal in his being; therefore this light too is called visvajanya, for it belongs to the fourth plane, the turyam svid of Ayasya, from which all the rest are born and by whose truth all the rest are manifested in their large universality and no longer in the limited terms of the falsehood and crookedness.
  Therefore it is called also the eye of the gods and the divine dawn that makes manifest the whole of existence.

1.19 - Dialogue between Prahlada and his father, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  On hearing this, Hiraṇyakaśipu started up from his throne in a fury, and spurned his son on the breast with his foot. Burning with rage, he wrung his hands, and exclaimed, "Ho Viprachitti! ho Rāhu! ho Bali[2]! bind him with strong bands[3], and cast him into the ocean, or all the regions, the Daityas and Dānavas, will become converts to the doctrines of this silly wretch. Repeatedly prohibited by us, he still persists in the praise of our enemies. Death is the just retribution of the disobedient." The Daityas accordingly bound the prince with strong bands, as their lord had commanded, and threw him into the sea. As he floated on the waters, the ocean was convulsed throughout its whole extent, and rose in mighty undulations, threatening to submerge the earth. This when Hiraṇyakaśipu observed, he commanded the Daityas to hurl rocks into the sea, and pile them closely on one another, burying beneath their iñcumbent mass him whom fire would not burn, nor weapons pierce, nor serpents bite; whom the pestilential gale could not blast, nor poison nor magic spirits nor incantations destroy; who fell from the loftiest heights unhurt; who foiled the elephants of the spheres: a son of depraved heart, whose life was a perpetual curse. "Here," he cried, "since he cannot die, here let him live for thousands of years at the bottom of the ocean, overwhelmed by mountains. Accordingly the Daityas and Dānavas hurled upon Prahlāda, whilst in the great ocean, ponderous rocks, and piled them over him for many thousand miles: but he, still with mind undisturbed, thus offered daily praise to Viṣṇu, lying at the bottom of the sea, under the mountain heap. "Glory to thee, god of the lotus eye: glory to thee, most excellent of spiritual things: glory to thee, soul of all worlds: glory to thee, wielder of the sharp discus: glory to the best of Brahmans; to the friend of Brahmans and of kine; to Kṛṣṇa, the preserver of the world: to Govinda be glory. To him who, as Brahmā, creates the universe; who in its existence is its preserver; be praise. To thee, who at the end of the Kalpa takest the form of Rudra; to thee, who art triform; be adoration. Thou, Achyuta, art the gods, Yakṣas, demons, saints, serpents, choristers and dancers of heaven, goblins, evil spirits, men, animals, birds, insects, reptiles, plants, and stones, earth, water, fire, sky, wind, sound, touch, taste, colour, flavour, mind, intellect, soul, time, and the qualities of nature: thou art all these, and the chief object of them all. Thou art knowledge and ignorance, truth and falsehood, poison and ambrosia. Thou art the performance and discontinuance of acts[4]: thou art the acts which the Vedas enjoin: thou art the enjoyer of the fruit of all acts, and the means by which they are accomplished. Thou, Viṣṇu, who art the soul of all, art the fruit of all acts of piety. Thy universal diffusion, indicating might and goodness, is in me, in others, in all creatures, in all worlds. Holy ascetics meditate on thee: pious priests Sacrifice to thee. Thou alone, identical with the gods and the fathers of mankind, receivest burnt-offerings and oblations[5]. The universe is thy intellectual form[6]; whence proceeded thy subtile form, this world: thence art thou all subtile elements and elementary beings, and the subtile principle, that is called soul, within them. Hence the supreme soul of all objects, distinguished as subtile or gross, which is imperceptible, and which cannot be conceived, is even a form of thee. Glory be to thee, Puruṣottama; and glory to that imperishable form which, soul of all, is another manifestation[7] of thy might, the asylum of all qualities, existing in all creatures. I salute her, the supreme goddess, who is beyond the senses; whom the mind, the tongue, cannot define; who is to be distinguished alone by the wisdom of the truly wise. Om! salutation to Vāsudeva: to him who is the eternal lord; he from whom nothing is distinct; he who is distinct from all. Glory be to the great spirit again and again: to him who is without name or shape; who sole is to be known by adoration; whom, in the forms manifested in his descents upon earth, the dwellers in heaven adore; for they behold not his inscrutable nature. I glorify the supreme deity Viṣṇu, the universal witness, who seated internally, beholds the good and ill of all. Glory to that Viṣṇu from whom this world is not distinct. May he, ever to be meditated upon as the beginning of the universe, have compassion upon me: may he, the supporter of all, in whom every thing is warped and woven[8], undecaying, imperishable, have compassion upon me. Glory, again and again, to that being to whom all returns, from whom all proceeds; who is all, and in whom all things are: to him whom I also am; for he is every where; and through whom all things are from me. I am all things: all things are in me, who am everlasting. I am undecayable, ever enduring, the receptacle of the spirit of the supreme. Brahma is my name; the supreme soul, that is before all things, that is after the end of all. ootnotes and references:
  [1]: These are the four Upāyas, 'means of success,' specified in the Amera-koṣa.

1.19 - Tabooed Acts, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  the natives a certain sum, which is spent in the Sacrifice of
  buffaloes or pigs to the spirits of the land and water, in order to
  --
  frequently received with a Sacrifice of animal life or food, or of
  fire and incense. The Afghan Boundary Mission, in passing by
  --
  village in Central Africa Emin Pasha was received with the Sacrifice
  of two goats; their blood was sprinkled on the path and the chief
  --
  out of his house into the town unless a human Sacrifice is made to
  propitiate the gods: on this account he never goes out beyond the

1.19 - THE MASTER AND HIS INJURED ARM, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Neither right nor wrong doing am I, neither pleasure nor pain, Nor the mantra, the sacred place, the Vedas, the Sacrifice; Neither the act of eating, the eater, nor the food: I am Pure Knowledge and Bliss: I am iva! I am iva!
  Death or fear I have none, nor any distinction of caste; Neither father nor mother nor even a birth have I; Neither friend nor comrade, neither disciple nor guru: I am Pure Knowledge and Bliss: I am iva! I am iva!

1.19 - The Victory of the Fathers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Agni, the truth-conscious seer-will, is the principal godhead who enables us to effect the Sacrifice; he leads it on the path of the
  The Victory of the Fathers
  --
  With these conceptions clearly fixed in our minds we shall be able to understand the verses of Vamadeva which only repeat in symbolic language the substance of the thought expressed more openly by Parashara. It is to Agni the Seer-Will that Vamadeva's opening hymns are addressed. He is hymned as the friend or builder of man's Sacrifice who awakes him to the vision, the knowledge (ketu), sa cetayan manus.o yajnabandhuh. (IV.1.9); so doing, "he dwells in the gated homes of this being, accomplishing; he, a god, has come to be the means of accomplishment of the mortal," sa ks.eti asya duryasu sadhan, devo martasya sadhanitvam apa. What is it that he accomplishes? The next verse tells us. "May this Agni lead us in his knowledge towards that bliss of him which is enjoyed by the gods, that which by the thought all the immortals created and Dyauspita the father out-pouring the Truth"; sa tu no agnir nayatu prajanann, accha ratnam devabhaktam yad asya; dhiya yad visve amr.ta akr.n.van, dyaus.pita janita satyam uks.an. This is Parashara's beatitude of the Immortality created by all the powers of the immortal godhead doing their work in the thought of the Truth and in its impulsion, and the out-pouring of the Truth is evidently the out-pouring of the waters as is indicated by the word uks.an,
  Parashara's equal diffusion of the seven rivers of the truth over the hill.
  --
  This immortality is the beatitude enjoyed by the gods of which Vamadeva has already spoken as the thing which Agni has to accomplish by the Sacrifice, the supreme bliss with its thrice seven ecstasies (I.20.7). For he proceeds; "Vanished the darkness, shaken in its foundation; Heaven shone out (rocata dyauh., implying the manifestation of the three luminous worlds of Swar, divo rocanani); upward rose the light of the divine Dawn; the
  Sun entered the vast fields (of the Truth) beholding the straight
  --
  The hymn closes thus: "May I speak the word towards Agni shining pure, the priest of the offering greatest in Sacrifice who brings to us the all; may he press out both the pure udder of the
  Cows of Light and the purified food of the plant of delight (the
  Soma) poured out everywhere. He is the infinite being of all the lords of Sacrifice (the gods) and the guest of all human beings; may Agni, accepting into himself the increasing manifestation of the gods, knower of the births, be a giver of happiness."
  In the second hymn of the fourth Mandala we get very clearly and suggestively the parallelism of the seven Rishis who are the divine Angirases and the human fathers. The passage is preceded by four verses, IV.2.11-14, which bring in the idea of the human seeking after the Truth and the Bliss. "May he the knower discern perfectly the Knowledge and the Ignorance, the wide levels and the crooked that shut in mortals; and, O God, for a bliss fruitful in offspring, lavish on us Diti and protect Aditi."
  --
  Vedanta; and the Knowledge is likened to the wide open levels which are frequently referred to in the Veda; they are the large levels to which those ascend who labour in the Sacrifice and they find there Agni seated self-blissful (V.7.5); they are the wide being which he makes for his own body (V.4.6), the level wideness, the unobstructed vast. It is therefore the infinite being of the Deva to which we arrive on the plane of the Truth, and it contains
  The Victory of the Fathers
  --
  Deva)"; kavim sasasuh. kavayo adabdha, nidharayanto duryasu ayoh.; atas tvam dr.syan agna etan, pad.bhih. pasyer adbhutan arya evaih.. This is again the journey to the vision of the Godhead. "Thou, O Agni, youngest power, art the perfect guide (on that journey) to him who sings the word and offers the Soma and orders the Sacrifice; bring to the illumined who accomplishes the
  Cittim acittim cinavad vi vidvan, pr.s.t.heva vta vr.jina ca martan. Vr.jina means crooked, and is used in the Veda to indicate the crookedness of the falsehood as opposed to the open straightness of the Truth, but the poet has evidently in his mind the verbal sense of vr.j, to separate, screen off, and it is this verbal sense in the adjective that governs martan.
  --
   work the bliss with its vast delight for his increasing, satisfying the doer of the work (or, the man, cars.an.iprah.). Now, O Agni, of all that we have done with our hands and our feet and our bodies the right thinkers (the Angirases) make as it were thy chariot by the work of the two arms (Heaven and Earth, bhurijoh.); seeking to possess the Truth they have worked their way to it (or won control of it)," r.tam yemuh. sudhya asus.an.ah.. "Now as the seven seers of Dawn the Mother, the supreme disposers (of the Sacrifice), may we beget for ourselves the gods; may we become the
  Angirases, sons of Heaven, breaking open the wealth-filled hill, shining in purity." We have here very clearly the seven divine
  --
  The Angirases are again mentioned in IV.3.11, and some of the expressions which lead up to this verse, are worth noting; for it cannot be too often repeated that no verse in the Veda can be properly understood except by reference to its context, to its place in the thought of the Sukta, to all that precedes and all that follows. The hymn opens with a call to men to create Agni who Sacrifices in the truth, to create him in his form of golden light (hiran.yarupam, the gold being always the symbol of the solar light of the Truth, r.tam jyotih.) before the Ignorance can form itself, pura tanayitnor acittat. The god is asked to awaken to the work of man and the truth in him as being himself "the
  Truth-conscious who places aright the thought", r.tasya bodhi r.tacit svadhh., - for all falsehood is merely a wrong placing of the Truth. He is to refer all fault and sin and defect in man to the various godheads or divine powers of the Divine Being so that it may be removed and the man declared finally blameless before the Infinite Mother - aditaye anagasah., or for the infinite existence, as it is elsewhere expressed.

1.201 - Socrates, #Symposium, #Plato, #Philosophy
  There was one occasion in particular, before the plague,145 when she procured for the Athenians, after they had performed Sacrifices, a tenyear postponement of that disease. She it was who taught me the whole subject of love, and it is the things she had to say about it that I shall try to recount to you, starting from the conclusions that Agathon and I reached together but speaking now on my own as best I can. As you demonstrated, Agathon, one should first define who Love is and what 201e he is like, before talking about his characteristic activity.
  I think it will be easiest to proceed as did my visitor from Mantinea with me on that occasion, by question and answer. I said much the same sort of things to her as Agathon said to me just now, that Love was a great god and that he was love of what is beautiful. She set about refuting146 me with those arguments that I have just used against
  --
  Interpreting and conveying all that passes between gods and humans: from humans, petitions and sacrificial offerings, and from gods, instructions and the favours they return. Spirits, being intermediary, fill the space between the other two, so that all are bound together into one entity. It is by means of spirits that all divination can take place, the whole craft of seers and priests, with their Sacrifices, rites and spells, and all prophecy and magic. Deity and humanity are completely separate, but through the mediation of spirits all converse and communication from gods to humans, waking and sleeping, is made possible. The man who is wise in these matters is a man of the spirit,152 whereas the man who is wise in a skill153 or a manual craft,154 which is a different sort of expertise, is materialistic.155 These spirits are many and of many kinds, and one of them is Love.
  And who are his father and mother? I asked.
  --
  I was surprised to hear this speech. Well now, Diotima, I said. I know you are very wise, but is this really how things are? Like the perfect sophist183 she replied: Believe me, Socrates. You have only to look at humankinds love of honour and you will be surprised at your absurdity regarding the matters I have just mentioned, unless you think about it and reflect how strongly people are affected by the desire to become famous and to lay up immortal glory for all time.184 For the sake of this they are prepared to run risks even more than for their children spend their money, endure any kind of suffering, even die in the cause. Do you suppose, she went on, that Alcestis would have died to save Admetus, or Achilles would have Sacrificed his life to avenge Patroclus, or your Athenian king Codrus would have perished before his time for the sake of his sons succession, if they had not thought that the memory of their virtue,185 which indeed we still have of them, would be immortal? Far from it, she said. I think that it is for the sake of immortal fame186 and this kind of glorious reputation187 that everyone strives to the utmost, and the better they are the more they strive: for they desire what is immortal.
  Those whose pregnancy is of the body, she went on, are drawn more towards women, and they express their love through the procreation of children, ensuring for themselves, they think, for all time to come, immortality and remembrance and happiness in this way. But

1.2.01 - The Call and the Capacity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Western and Eastern human nature. Only the teaching in India is of old standing that all must be turned towards the Divine and everything else either Sacrificed or changed into a subordinate and ancillary movement or made by sublimation a first step only towards the seeking for the Divine. This no doubt helps the Indian sadhak if not to become single-hearted at once, yet to orientate himself more completely towards the goal. It is not always for him the Divine alone, though that is considered the highest state, but the Divine chief and first is easily grasped by him as the ideal.
  The Indian sadhak has his own difficulties in his approach to the Yoga - at least to this Yoga - which a Westerner has in less measure. Those of the occidental nature are born of the dominant trend of the European mind in the immediate past.

12.01 - This Great Earth Our Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Veda draws a graphic picture of the eternal stability, the sameness, almost the oppressive monotony of the material universe through millions and millions of aeons of its existence. The eternal recurrence without beginning and without end of the rising and setting of the sun and the stars, the inviolable law of Varuna, suffers no break or change. But when we look near at home, turn from our father the Heaven to our mother Earth and look a little more closely, a different picture emerges here: for here is the arena of the Vedic progressive Sacrifice.1
   The earth is well-known for its force of gravitation, the force that pulls things downward and at best allows a horizontal trajectory, that is the apparent movement. But it also has another, a contrary movement, the anti-gravity force, the force of levitation and ascension. Earth, clay, never had a warm reception at the hands of spiritual persons or even of ordinary people who lay the whole blame upon this poor element for all the misfortunes of life here belowprecisely because of the earth's gravitating pull. The earth is considered as the very nursery of sin; the consciousness of sin however began with the advent of man upon earth. The creation was governed at the beginning and for long by an eternal unchangeable law, and man came in as an intervention, a breach of the law; He came with the knowledge and force of division and distinction, that between the right and the wrong. He brought in him the will independent of the eternal lawto discover a law of his own. That has been called transgression; in the popular style, that is sin. Apart from the obloquy that the term sin carries with it, it is at bottom, however, the sense of ambiguity, the sense of choice, the sense of liberty. Man has been given this sense so that he may find out that the customary, the habitual, the millennial is not the only rhythm or line of movement but that he may look beyond and find other lines which open the way to progress, which are not bound to mere reiteration. A new sense of direction is behind the spirit of independence that appears as transgression or sinit is this which the human consciousness aims at in the movement. It is an opportunity to move away and upward, to fresh dimensions of consciousness and being.
  --
   I have spoken of the sprouting virtue in the earth-element; the same has developed in man, the earth's child, to unforeseen dimensions. Earth's upward drive towards a greater harmony is in reality the working of the Godhead "Agni", the self-conscious energy that is secreted in the heart of all earthly existence. The Vedas say, the earth is the own home of Agni. Agni is an earthly Godhead, even as Indra is a godhead of the heavens. We spoke of water being the characteristic element imbedded, inextricably mixed with the earth. Water gives the necessary condition or element for the sprouting movement; but Agni is the agent, the initiating executive force, it is the concentrated energy of consciousness: in man it is the individualised spiritual element, therefore Agni is said to be the leader of the progressive Sacrifice, adhvara yaja, the journey of ascent and evolution towards the final destiny.
   The Earth gives her material body, her substance for the incarnation and establishment of the supreme state of the Transcendent the Self or Sachchidanandahere below. And for the manifestation and expression through life and the senses she offers her secret conscious-force, the light-energy to incorporate the supreme Chit-tapas; but the Ananda of the Supreme she realises in a strange and piquant way. The delight that earth offers or embodies is of a special nature. It is the delight of taste.

1.2.02 - Qualities Needed for Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  (2) To do all work as a Sacrifice without any egoistic motive.
  (3) To establish and deepen the inner calm and quiet. If that is done, all these things will be felt more and more as external and the falling off of desire and attachment will become possible.

12.09 - The Story of Dr. Faustus Retold, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Also we know there are some types or lines of sadhana in which the spiritual discipline, it is said, needs a human Sacrifice, to complete the full course of such a discipline at the end one has to offer a human Sacrificekill a human beinga young boy, because.. because he has a sweet soul.
   We need not be shocked; after all, the phenomenon is symbolic. The rites represent a psychological operation. A human being, a young boy Sacrificed means whatever is most developed in you, whatever is aspiring, whatever is beautiful, is offered to the Divine. In fact, all rituals and ceremonies, all pujas are symbolic, that is to say, representations on the physical plane of inner movementsspiritual efforts. It is true some of them, to us moderns, appear revolting and reprehensible but we must remember these ceremonies if they were physically practised were done millenniums ago when humanity was quite young and had not emerged very much out of the animal existence. The life in that early stage of consciousness had to pursue for bare subsistence a mode of living that is un-understandable to the consciousness of today. The human aspiration however was still present there and made use of these normal modalities of life to express and embody itself.
   We leave it at that, but the point of the matter is this: the material, the physical life that is in your body is made interesting, even the body itself becomes not only living but beautiful because of the presence of the soul in it, embalming it, perfuming it. If you are able ever to meet it, contact it, touch it, you will find yourself wonderfully transmuted, you will carry yourself and spread abroad your own sweet scent like the scented deer. The body is called a temple, the habitation of the Divinity that is in you. Therefore it must be kept clean and pureno dust from the intruding feet of Satan's brood nor any shadow from their presence should fall here. That other influence must always be shaken off. You must always love your soul, always remain in its embrace, then you will no longer be a mere human being but an angel, indeed a god.

1.20 - Death, Desire and Incapacity, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  11:In the conscious mind that which was still only a vital hunger in subconscious life, transforms itself into higher forms; hunger in the vital parts becomes craving of Desire in the mentalised life, straining of Will in the intellectual or thinking life. This movement of desire must and ought to continue until the individual has grown sufficiently so that he can now at last become master of himself and by increasing union with the Infinite possessor of his universe. Desire is the lever by which the divine Life-principle effects its end of self-affirmation in the universe and the attempt to extinguish it in the interests of inertia is a denial of the divine Life-principle, a Will-not-to-be which is necessarily ignorance; for one cannot cease to be individually except by being infinitely. Desire too can only cease rightly by becoming the desire of the infinite and satisfying itself with a supernal fulfilment and an infinite satisfaction in the all-possessing bliss of the Infinite. Meanwhile it has to progress from the type of a mutually devouring hunger to the type of a mutual giving, of an increasingly joyous Sacrifice of interchange; - the individual gives himself to other individuals and receives them back in exchange; the lower gives itself to the higher and the higher to the lower so that they may be fulfilled in each other; the human gives itself to the Divine and the Divine to the human; the All in the individual gives itself to the All in the universe and receives its realised universality as a divine recompense. Thus the law of Hunger must give place progressively to the law of Love, the law of Division to the law of Unity, the law of Death to the law of Immortality. Such is the necessity, such the justification, such the culmination and self-fulfilment of the Desire that is at work in the universe.
  12:As this mask of Death which Life assumes results from the movement of the finite seeking to affirm its immortality, so Desire is the impulse of the Force of Being individualised in Life to affirm progressively in the terms of succession in Time and of self-extension in Space, in the framework of the finite, its infinite Bliss, the Ananda of Sachchidananda. The mask of Desire which that impulse assumes comes directly from the third phenomenon of Life, its law of incapacity. Life is an infinite Force working in the terms of the finite; inevitably, throughout its overt individualised action in the finite its omnipotence must appear and act as a limited capacity and a partial impotence, although behind every act of the individual, however weak, however futile, however stumbling, there must be the whole superconscious and subconscious presence of infinite omnipotent Force; without that presence behind it no least single movement in the cosmos can happen; into its sum of universal action each single act and movement falls by the fiat of the omnipotent omniscience which works as the Supermind inherent in things. But the individualised life-force is to its own consciousness limited and full of incapacity; for it has to work not only against the mass of other environing individualised life-forces, but also subject to control and denial by the infinite Life itself with whose total will and trend its own will and trend may not immediately agree. Therefore limitation of force, phenomenon of incapacity is the third of the three characteristics of individualised and divided Life. On the other hand, the impulse of self-enlargement and allpossession remains and it does not and is not meant to measure or limit itself by the limit of its present force or capacity. Hence from the gulf between the impulse to possess and the force of possession desire arises; for if there were no such discrepancy, if the force could always take possession of its object, always attain securely its end, desire would not come into existence but only a calm and self-possessed Will without craving such as is the Will of the Divine.

1.20 - Equality and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  OGA and knowledge are, in this early part of the Gita's teaching, the two wings of the soul's ascent. By Yoga is meant union through divine works done without desire, with equality of soul to all things and all men, as a Sacrifice to the
  Supreme, while knowledge is that on which this desirelessness, this equality, this power of Sacrifice is founded. The two wings indeed assist each other's flight; acting together, yet with a subtle alternation of mutual aid, like the two eyes in a man which see together because they see alternately, they increase one another mutually by interchange of substance. As the works grow more and more desireless, equal-minded, sacrificial in spirit, the knowledge increases; with the increase of the knowledge the soul becomes firmer in the desireless, sacrificial equality of its works.
  The Sacrifice of knowledge, says the Gita therefore, is greater than any material Sacrifice. "Even if thou art the greatest doer of sin beyond all sinners, thou shalt cross over all the crookedness of evil in the ship of knowledge. . . . There is nothing in the world equal in purity to knowledge." By knowledge desire and its first-born child, sin, are destroyed. The liberated man is able to do works as a Sacrifice because he is freed from attachment through his mind, heart and spirit being firmly founded in selfknowledge, gata-sangasya jnanavasthita-cetasah.. All his work disappears completely as soon as done, suffers laya, as one might say, in the being of the Brahman, pravilyate; it has no reactionary consequence on the soul of the apparent doer. The work is done by the Lord through his Nature, it is no longer personal to the human instrument. The work itself becomes but power of the nature and substance of the being of the Brahman.
  It is in this sense that the Gita is speaking when it says that all the totality of work finds its completion, culmination, end in knowledge, sarvam karmakhilam jnane parisamapyate. "As

1.20 - Tabooed Persons, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  head-hunter in the same island we learn that Sacrifices are offered
  on this occasion to appease the soul of the man whose head has been
  --
  We have offered the Sacrifice to appease you. Your spirit may now
  rest and leave us at peace. Why were you our enemy? Would it not
  --
  until Sacrifice had been offered and ceremonies of purification
  performed. If his victim chanced to be a foreigner, the homicide had
  --
  irrigation, the chief who offers the traditional Sacrifices and
  implores the protection of the deities on the work has to stay all

1.20 - TANTUM RELIGIO POTUIT SUADERE MALORUM, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Turning to God without turning from self"the formula is absurdly simple; and yet, simple as it is, it explains all the follies and iniquities committed in the name of religion. Those who turn to God without turning from themselves are tempted to evil in several characteristic and easily recognizable ways. They are tempted, first of all, to practice magical rites, by means of which they hope to compel God to answer their petitions and, in general, to serve their private or collective ends. All the ugly business of Sacrifice, incantation and what Jesus called vain repetition is a product of this wish to treat God as a means to indefinite self-aggrandisement, rather than as an end to be reached through total self-denial. Next, they are tempted to use the name of God to justify what they do in pursuit of place, power and wealth. And because they believe themselves to have divine justification for their actions, they proceed, with a good conscience, to perpetrate abominations, which nature, left to itself, would be ashamed to own. Throughout recorded history, an incredible sum of mischief has been done by ambitious idealists, self-deluded by their own verbiage and a lust for power, into a conviction that they were acting for the highest good of their fellow men. In the past, the justification for such wickedness was God or the Church, or the True Faith"; today idealists kill and torture and exploit in the name of the Revolution, the New Order, the World of the Common Man, or simply the Future. Finally there are the temptations which arise, when the falsely religious begin to acquire the powers which are the fruit of their pious and magical practices. For, let there be no mistake, Sacrifice, incantation and vain repetition actually do produce fruits, especially when practised in conjunction with physical austerities. Men who turn towards God without turning away from themselves do not, of course, reach God; but if they devote themselves energetically enough to their pseudo-religion, they will get results. Some of these results are doubtless the product of auto-suggestion. (It was through vain repetition that Cou got his patients to cure themselves of their diseases.) Others are due, apparently, to that something not ourselves in the psychic medium that something which makes, not necessarily for righteousness, but always for power. Whether this something is a piece of secondh and objectivity, projected into the medium by the individual worshipper and his fellows and predecessors; whether it is a piece of first-hand objectivity, corresponding, on the psychic level, to the data of the material universe; or whether it is a combination of both these things, it is impossible to determine. All that need be said in this place is that people who turn towards God without turning from themselves often seem to acquire a knack of getting their petitions answered and sometimes develop considerable supernormal powers, such as those of psychic healing and extra-sensory perception. But, it may be asked: Is it necessarily a good thing to be able to get ones petitions answered in the way one wants them to be? And how far is it spiritually profitable to be possessed of these miraculous powers? These are questions which were considered in the section on Prayer and will be further discussed in the chapter on The Miraculous.
  The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, approached the shambles and thus addressed the pigs. How can you object to the? I shall fatten you for three months. I shall discipline myself for ten days and fast for three. I shall strew fine grass and place you bodily upon a carved sacrificial dish. Does not this satisfy you?
  --
  Anyone who Sacrifices anything but his own person or his own interests is on exactly the same level as Chuang Tzus pigs. The pigs seek their own advantage inasmuch as they prefer life and bran to honour and the shambles; the Sacrificers seek their own advantage inasmuch as they prefer the magical, God-constraining death of pigs to the death of their own passions and self-will. And what applies to Sacrifice, applies equally to incantations, rituals and vain repetitions, when these are used (as they all too frequently are, even in the higher religions) as a form of compulsive magic. Rites and vain repetitions have a legitimate place in religion as aids to recollectedness, reminders of truth momentarily forgotten in the turmoil of worldly distractions. When spoken or performed as a kind of magic, their use is either completely pointless; or else (and this is worse) it may have ego-enhancing results, which do not in any way contri bute to the attainment of mans final end.
  The vestments of Isis are variegated to represent the cosmos; that of Osiris is white, symbolizing the Intelligible Light beyond the cosmos.

1.20 - The Hound of Heaven, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Then after the invocation of Indra and Agni by the "words of perfect speech that are loved of the gods", - for by those words the Maruts1 perform the Sacrifices as seers who by their seer-knowledge do well the sacrificial work, ukthebhir hi s.ma kavayah. suyajna . . . maruto yajanti, - the Rishi next puts into the mouth of men an exhortation and mutual encouragement to do even as the Fathers and attain the same divine results.
  "Come now, today let us become perfected in thought, let us destroy suffering and unease, let us embrace the higher good," eto nu adya sudhyo bhavama, pra ducchuna minavama a varyah.;
  --
   that attack and divide, dves.amsi); let us go forward towards the Master of the Sacrifice. Come, let us create the Thought, O friends, (obviously, the seven-headed Angiras-thought), which is the Mother (Aditi or the Dawn) and removes the screening pen of the Cow." The significance is clear enough; it is in such passages as these that the inner sense of the Veda half disengages itself from the veil of the symbol.
  Then the Rishi speaks of the great and ancient example which men are called upon to repeat, the example of the Angirases, the achievement of Sarama. "Here the stone was set in motion whereby the Navagwas chanted the hymn for the ten months, Sarama going to the Truth found the cows, the Angiras made all things true. When in the dawning of this vast One (Usha representing the infinite Aditi, mata devanam aditer ankam) all the Angirases came together with the cows (or rather, perhaps by the illuminations represented in the symbol of the cows or Rays); there was the fountain of these (illuminations) in the supreme world; by the path of the Truth Sarama found the cows." Here we see that it is through the movement of Sarama going straight to the Truth by the path of the Truth, that the seven seers, representing the seven-headed or seven-rayed thought of Ayasya and Brihaspati, find all the concealed illuminations and by force of these illuminations they all come together, as we have been already told by Vasishtha, in the level wideness, samane urve, from which the Dawn has descended with the knowledge (urvad janat gat, v. 2) or, as it is here expressed, in the dawning of this vast One, that is to say, in the infinite consciousness. There, as Vasishtha has said, they, united, agree in knowledge and do not strive together, sangatasah. sam janate na yatante mithas te, that is to say, the seven become as one, as is indicated in another hymn; they become the one seven-mouthed Angiras, an image corresponding to that of the seven-headed thought, and it is this single unified Angiras who makes all things true as the result of Sarama's discovery (verse 7). The harmonised, united, perfected Seer-Will corrects all falsehood and crookedness and turns all thought, life, action into terms of the Truth. In this hymn also the action of Sarama is precisely that of the Intuition
  --
  Divine Force) is born quivering with his flame of the offering for Sacrifice to the great Sons of the Shining One (the Deva,
  Rudra); great is the child of them, a vast birth; there is a great movement of the Driver of the shining steeds (Indra, the Divine
  Mind) by the Sacrifices. The conquering (dawns) cleave to him in his struggle, they deliver by knowledge a great light out of the darkness; knowing the Dawns rise up to him, Indra has become the one lord of the luminous cows. The cows who were in the strong place (of the Panis) the thinkers clove out; by the mind the
  It is in this sense that we can easily understand many now obscure expressions of the
  --
  "Indra, the Vritra-slayer, by those who were born (the sons of the Sacrifice), by the offerings, by the hymns of illumination released upward the shining ones; the wide and delightful Cow
  (the cow Aditi, the vast and blissful higher consciousness) bringing for him the sweet food, the honey mixed with the ghr.ta, yielded it as her milk. For this Father also (for Heaven) they fashioned the vast and shining abode; doers of perfect works, they had the entire vision of it. Wide-upholding by their support the Parents (Heaven and Earth) they sat in that high world and embraced all its ecstasy. When for the cleaving away (of evil and falsehood) the vast Thought holds him immediately increasing in his pervasion of earth and heaven, - then for Indra in whom are the equal and faultless words, there are all irresistible energies.
  --
   pure, had served thee, the pure one, with the ghr.ta, they held the sacrificial names and set moving (to the supreme heaven) forms well born. They had knowledge of the vast heaven and earth and bore them forward, they the sons of Rudra, the lords of the Sacrifice; the mortal awoke to vision and found Agni standing in the seat supreme. Knowing perfectly (or in harmony) they kneeled down to him; they with their wives (the female energies of the gods) bowed down to him who is worthy of obeisance; purifying themselves (or, perhaps, exceeding the limits of heaven and earth) they created their own (their proper or divine) forms, guarded in the gaze, each friend, of the Friend. In thee the gods of the Sacrifice found the thrice seven secret seats hidden within; they, being of one heart, protect by them the immortality. Guard thou the herds that stand and that which moves. O Agni, having knowledge of all manifestations (or births) in the worlds (or, knowing all the knowledge of the peoples) establish thy forces, continuous, for life. Knowing, within, the paths of the journeying of the gods thou becamest their sleepless messenger and the bearer of the offerings. The seven mighty ones of heaven (the rivers) placing aright the thought, knowing the Truth, discerned the doors of the felicity; Sarama found the fastness, the wideness of the cows whereby now the human creature enjoys (the supreme riches). They who entered upon all things that bear right issue, made the path to Immortality; by the great ones and by the greatness earth stood wide; the mother Aditi with her sons came for the upholding. The Immortals planted in him the shining glory, when they made the two eyes of heaven (identical probably with the two vision-powers of the Sun, the two horses of Indra); rivers, as it were, flow down released; the shining ones
  (the cows) who were here below knew, O Agni."
  --
  English. It is clear at the very first glance that it is throughout a hymn of knowledge, of the Truth, of a divine Flame which is hardly distinguishable from the supreme Deity, of immortality, of the ascent of the gods, the divine powers, by the Sacrifice to their godhead, to their supreme names, to their proper forms, to
  220
  --
  "embassy" of Sarama, it is the colloquy of Sarama and the Panis; but it adds nothing essential to what we already know about her and its chief importance lies in the help it gives us in forming our conception of the masters of the cavern treasure. We may note, however, that neither in this hymn, nor in the others we have noticed is there the least indication of the figure of the divine hound which was attri buted to Sarama in a possibly later development of the Vedic imagery. It is surely the shining fairfooted goddess by whom the Panis are attracted and whom they desire as their sister, - not as a dog to guard their cattle, but as one who will share in the possession of their riches. The image of the hound of heaven is, however, exceedingly apt and striking and was bound to develop out of the legend. In one of the earlier hymns we have mention indeed of a son for whom Sarama "got food" according to an ancient interpretation which accounts for the phrase by a story that the hound Sarama demanded food for her offspring in the Sacrifice as a condition of her search for the lost cows. But this is obviously an explanatory invention
  The Hound of Heaven
  --
   which finds no place in the Rig Veda itself. The Veda says, "In the Sacrifice" or, as it more probably means, "in the seeking of Indra and the Angirases (for the cows) Sarama discovered a foundation for the Son," vidat sarama tanayaya dhasim (I.62.3); for such is the more likely sense here of the word dhasim. The son is in all probability the son born of the Sacrifice, a constant element in the Vedic imagery and not the dog-race born of Sarama.
  We have similar phrases in the Veda as in I.96.4, matarisva puruvarapus.t.ir vidad gatum tanayaya svarvit, "Matarishwan

1.21 - Families of the Daityas, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  [18]Surabhi was the mother of cows and buffaloes[19]: Irā, of trees and creeping plants and shrubs, and every kind of grass: Khasā, of the Rākṣasas and Yakṣas[20]: Muni, of the Apsarasas[21]: and Aṛṣṭā, of the illustrious Gandharvas. These were the children of Kaśyapa, whether movable or stationary, whose descendants multiplied infinitely through successive generations[22]. This creation, oh Brahman, took place in the second or Svārociṣa Manvantara. In the present or Vaivaswata Manvantara, Brahmā being engaged at the great Sacrifice instituted by Varuṇa, the creation of progeny, as it is called, occurred; for he begot, as his sons, the seven Ṛṣis, who were formerly mind-engendered; and was himself the grand-sire of the Gandharvas, serpents, Dānavas, and gods[23].
  Diti, having lost her children, propitiated Kaśyapa; and the best of ascetics, being pleased with her, promised her a boon; on which she prayed for a son of irresistible prowess and valour, who should destroy Indra. The excellent Muni granted his wife the great gift she had solicited, but with one condition: "You shall bear a son," he said, "who shall slay Indra, if with thoughts wholly pious, and person entirely pure, you carefully carry the babe in your womb for a hundred years." Having thus said, Kaśyapa departed; and the dame conceived, and during gestation assiduously observed the rules of mental and personal purity. When the king of the immortals, learnt that Diti bore a son destined for his destruction, he came to her, and attended upon her with the utmost humility, watching for an opportunity to disappoint her intention. At last, in the last year of the century, the opportunity occurred. Diti retired one night to rest without performing the prescribed ablution of her feet, and fell asleep; on which the thunderer divided with his thunderbolt the embryo in her womb into seven portions. The child, thus mutilated, cried bitterly; and Indra repeatedly attempted to console and silence it, but in vain: on which the god, being incensed, again divided each of the seven portions into seven, and thus formed the swift-moving deities called Mārutas (winds). They derived this appellation from the words with which Indra had addressed them (Mā rodīh, 'Weep not'); and they became forty-nine subordinate divinities, the associates of the wielder of the thunderbolt[24].
  --
  [23]: We have a considerable variation here in the commentary, and it may be doubted if the allusion in the text is accurately explained by either of the versions. In one it is said that 'Brahmā, the grandsire of p. 151 the Gandharvas, &c., appointed the seven Ṛṣis, who were born in a former Manvantara, to be his sons, or to be the intermediate agents in creation: he created no other beings himself, being engrossed by the sacrificial ceremony.' Instead of "putratwe," 'in the state of sons,' the reading is sometimes "pitratwe," 'in the character of fathers;' that is, to all other beings. Thus the gods and the rest, who in a former Manvantara originated from Kaśyapa, were created in the present period as the offspring of the seven Ṛṣis. The other explanation agrees with the preceding in ascribing the birth of all creatures to the intermediate agency of the seven Ṛṣis, but calls them the actual sons of Brahmā, begotten at the Sacrifice of Vanilla, in the sacrificial fire. The authority for the story is not given, beyond its being in other Purāṇas, it has the air of a modern mystification. The latter member of the passage is separated altogether from the foregoing, and carried on to what follows: thus; "In the war of the Gandharvas, serpents, gods, and demons, Diti having lost her children," &c.; the word 'virodha' being understood, it is said, This is defended by the authority of the Hari Vaṃśa, where the passage occurs word for word, except in the last half stanza, which, instead of ### occurs ###. The parallel passages are thus rendered by M. Langlois: 'Le Mouni Swarotchicha avoit cessé de régner quand cette création eut lieu: c'était sous l'empire du Menou Vevaswata le Sacrifice de Varouna avait commencé. La première création fut celle de Brahmā, quand il jugea qu'il était temps de procéder à son Sacrifice, et que, souverain aïeul du monde, il forma lui-meme dans sa pensée et enfanta les sept Brahmarchis.'
  [24]: This legend occurs in all those Purāṇas in which the account of Kaśyapa's family is related.

1.21 - IDOLATRY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  What follows is an extract from a very remarkable letter written in 1836 by Thomas Arnold to his old pupil and future biographer, A. P. Stanley. Fanaticism is idolatry; and it has the moral evil of idolatry in it; that is, a fanatic worships something which is the creation of his own desire, and thus even his self-devotion in support of it is only an apparent self-devotion; for in fact it is making the parts of his nature or his mind, which he least values, offer Sacrifice to that which he most values. The moral fault, as it appears to me, is the idolatry the setting up of some idea which is most kindred to our own minds, and the putting it in the place of Christ, who alone cannot be made an idol and inspire idolatry, because He combines all ideas of perfection and exhibits them in their just harmony and combination. Now in my own mind, by its natural tendency that is, taking my mind at its besttruth and justice would be the idols I should follow; and they would be idols, for they would not supply all the food which the mind wants, and whilst worshipping them, reverence and humility and tenderness might very likely be forgotten. But Christ Himself includes at once truth and justice and all these other qualities too. Narrow-mindedness tends to wickedness, because it does not extend its watchfulness to every part of our moral nature, and the neglect fosters wickedness in the parts so neglected.
  As a piece of psychological analysis this is admirable. Its only defect is one of omission; for it neglects to take into account those influxes from the eternal order into the temporal, which are called grace or inspiration. Grace and inspiration are given when, and to the extent to which, a human being gives up self-will and abandons himself, moment by moment, through constant recollectedness and non-attachment, to the will of God. As well as the animal and spiritual graces, whose source is the divine Nature of Things, there are human pseudo-gracessuch as, for example, the accessions of strength and virtue that follow self-devotion to some form of political or moral idolatry. To distinguish the true grace from the false is often difficult; but as time and circumstances reveal the full extent of their consequences on the soul, discrimination becomes possible even to observers having no special gifts of insight. Where the grace is genuinely supernatural, an amelioration in one aspect of the total personality is not paid for by atrophy or deterioration elsewhere. The virtue which is accompanied and perfected by the love and knowledge of God is something quite different from the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees which, for Christ, was among the worst of moral evils. Hardness, fanaticism, uncharitableness and spiritual pridethese are the ordinary by-products of a course of stoical self-improvement by means of personal effort, either unassisted or, if assisted, seconded only by the pseudo-graces which are given when the individual devotes himself to the achievement of an end which is not his true end, when the goal is not God, but merely a magnified projection of his own favourite ideas or moral excellences. The idolatrous worship of ethical values in and for themselves defeats its own objectand defeats it not only because, as Arnold insists, there is a lack of all-round development, but also and above all because even the highest forms of moral idolatry are God-eclipsing and therefore guarantee the idolater against the enlightening and liberating knowledge of Reality.

1.21 - Tabooed Things, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  cutting an inscription in stone, an expiatory Sacrifice of a lamb
  and a pig must be offered, which was repeated when the graving-tool
  --
  brought into Greek sanctuaries. In Crete Sacrifices were offered to
  Menedemus without the use of iron, because the legend ran that
  --
  he was allowed to carry a sword wherewith to Sacrifice a bull. To
  this day a Hottentot priest never uses an iron knife, but always a
  --
  offspring, she offers a Sacrifice of food; and while the devil is
  bolting it, she attaches iron rings and small bells to her child's
  --
  a meeting of magistrates, at prayers and Sacrifices, no man was
  suffered to cross his legs or clasp his hands. The stock instance of

1.22 - Dominion over different provinces of creation assigned to different beings, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  WHEN Prithu was installed in the government of the earth, the great father of the spheres established sovereignties in other parts of the creation. Soma was appointed monarch of the stars and planets, of Brahmans and of plants, of Sacrifices and of penance. Vaisravaṇa was made king over kings; and Varuṇa, over the waters. Viṣṇu was the chief of the Ādityas; Pāvaka, of the Vasus; Dakṣa, of the patriarchs; Vāsava, of the winds. To Prahlāda was assigned dominion over the Daityas and Dānavas; and Yama, the king of justice, was appointed the monarch of the Manes (Pitris). Airāvata was made the king of elephants; Garuḍa, of birds; Indra, of the gods. Uccaiśravas was the chief of horses; Vṛṣabha, of kine. Śeṣa became the snake-king; the lion, the monarch of the beasts; and the sovereign of the trees was the holy fig-tree[1]. Having thus fixed the limits of each authority, the great progenitor Brahmā stationed rulers for the protection of the different quarters of the world: he made Sudhanwan, the son of the patriarch Viraja, the regent of the east; Sa
  khapāda, the son of the patriarch Kardama, of the south; the immortal Ketumat, the son of Rajas, regent of the west; and Hiraṇyaroman, the son of the patriarch Parjanya, regent of the north[2]. By these the whole earth, with its seven continents and its cities, is to the present day vigilantly protected, according to their several limits.

1.22 - ON THE GIFT-GIVING VIRTUE, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  become Sacrifices and gifts yourselves; and that is why
  you thirst to pile up all the riches in your soul. Insatiably your soul strives for treasures and gems, because

1.23 - Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A spiritualised society would live like its spiritual individuals, not in the ego, but in the spirit, not as the collective ego, but as the collective soul. This freedom from the egoistic standpoint would be its first and most prominent characteristic. But the elimination of egoism would not be brought about, as it is now proposed to bring it about, by persuading or forcing the individual to immolate his personal will and aspirations and his precious and hard-won individuality to the collective will, aims and egoism of the society, driving him like a victim of ancient Sacrifice to slay his soul on the altar of that huge and shapeless idol. For that would be only the Sacrifice of the smaller to the larger egoism, larger only in bulk, not necessarily greater in quality or wider or nobler, since a collective egoism, result of the united egoisms of all, is as little a god to be worshipped, as flawed and often an uglier and more barbarous fetish than the egoism of the individual. What the spiritual man seeks is to find by the loss of the ego the self which is one in all and perfect and complete in each and by living in that to grow into the image of its perfection,individually, be it noted, though with an all-embracing universality of his nature and its conscious circumference. It is said in the old Indian writings that while in the second age, the age of Power, Vishnu descends as the King, and in the third, the age of compromise and balance, as the legislator or codifier, in the age of the Truth he descends as Yajna, that is to say, as the Master of works and Sacrifice manifest in the heart of his creatures. It is this kingdom of God within, the result of the finding of God not in a distant heaven but within ourselves, of which the state of society in an age of the Truth, a spiritual age, would be the result and the external figure.
  Therefore a society which was even initially spiritualised would make the revealing and finding of the divine Self in man the supreme, even the guiding aim of all its activities, its education, its knowledge, its science, its ethics, its art, its economical and political structure. As it was to some imperfect extent in the ancient Vedic times with the cultural education of the higher classes, so it would be then with all education. It would embrace all knowledge in its scope, but would make the whole trend and aim and the permeating spirit not mere worldly efficiency, though that efficiency would not be neglected, but this self-developing and self-finding and all else as its powers. It would pursue the physical and psychic sciences not in order merely to know the world and Nature in her processes and to use them for material human ends, but still more to know through and in and under and over all things the Divine in the world and the ways of the Spirit in its masks and behind them. It would make it the aim of ethics not to establish a rule of action whether supplementary to the social law or partially corrective of it, the social law that is after all only the rule, often clumsy and ignorant, of the biped pack, the human herd, but to develop the divine nature in the human being. It would make it the aim of Art not merely to present images of the subjective and objective world, but to see them with the significant and creative vision that goes behind their appearances and to reveal the Truth and Beauty of which things visible to us and invisible are the forms, the masks or the symbols and significant figures.

1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  In the course of an informal conversation Sri Bhagavan pointed out that Self-Realisation is possible only for the fit. The vasanas must be eliminated before jnana dawns. One must be like Janaka for jnana to dawn. One must be ready to Sacrifice everything for the Truth.
  Complete renunciation is the index of fitness.
  --
  The bliss of peace is too good to be disturbed. A man fast asleep hates to be awakened and ordered to mind his business. The bliss of sleep is too enthralling to be Sacrificed to the work born of thoughts. The thought-free state is ones primal state and full of bliss. Is it not miserable to leave such a state for the thought-ridden and unhappy one?
  If one wants to abide in the thought-free state, a struggle is inevitable.

1.24 - Necromancy and Spiritism, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Now then, let me call you attention to the extreme care which Lvi took to construct a proper Magical Link between himself and the Ancient Master. Alas! It was rather a case of building with bricks made without straw; he had not at his comm and any fresh and vital object pertaining intimately to Apollonius. A "relic" would have been immensely helpful, especially if it had been consecrated and re-consecrated through the centuries by devout veneration. This, incidentally, is the great advantage that one may often obtain when invoking Gods; their images, constantly revered, nourished by continual Sacrifice, serve as a receptacle for the Prana driven into them by thousands or millions of worshippers. In fact, such idols are often already consecrated talismans; and their possession and daily use is at least two-thirds of the battle.
  Apollonius was indeed as refractory a subject as Lvi could possibly have chosen. All the cards were against him.

1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  ASWALA: Yajnavalkya, since everything connected with the Sacrifice is pervaded by death and is subject to death, by what means can the Sacrificer overcome death?
  YAJNAVALKYA: By the knowledge of the identity between the Sacrificer, the fire and the ritual word. For the ritual word is indeed the Sacrificer, and the ritual word is the fire, and the fire, which is one with Brahman, is the Sacrificer. This knowledge leads to liberation. This knowledge leads one beyond death.
  Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad
  --
  If sacramental rites are constantly repeated in a spirit of faith and devotion, a more or less enduring effect is produced in the psychic medium, in which individual minds ba the and from which they have, so to speak, been crystallized out into personalities more or less fully developed, according to the more or less perfect development of the bodies with which they are associated. (Of this psychic medium an eminent contemporary philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad, has written, in an essay on telepathy contri buted to the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, as follows. We must therefore consider seriously the possibility that a persons experience initiates more or less permanent modifications of structure or process in something which is neither his mind nor his brain. There is no reason to suppose that this substratum would be anything to which possessive adjectives, such as mine and yours and his, could properly be applied, as they can be to minds and animated bothes. Modifications which have been produced in the substratum by certain of Ms past experience are activated by Ns present experiences or interests, and they become cause factors in producing or modifying Ns later experiences.) Within this psychic medium or non-personal substratum of individual minds, something which we may think of metaphorically as a vortex persists as an independent existence, possessing its own derived and secondary objectivity, so that, wherever the rites are performed, those whose faith and devotion are sufficiently intense actually discover something out there, as distinct from the subjective something in their own imaginations. And so long as this projected psychic entity is nourished by the faith and love of its worshippers, it will possess, not merely objectivity, but power to get peoples prayers answered. Ultimately, of course, I alone am the giver, in the sense that all this happens in accordance with the divine laws governing the universe in its psychic and spiritual, no less than in its material, aspects. Nevertheless, the devas (those imperfect forms under which, because of their own voluntary ignorance, men worship the divine Ground) may be thought of as relatively independent powers. The primitive notion that the gods feed on the Sacrifices made to them is simply the crude expression of a profound truth. When their worship falls off, when faith and devotion lose their intensity, the devas sicken and finally the. Europe is full of old shrines, whose saints and Virgins and relics have lost the power and the second-hand psychic objectivity which they once possessed. Thus, when Chaucer lived and wrote, the deva called Thomas Becket was giving to any Canterbury pilgrim, who had sufficient faith, all the boons he could ask for. This once-powerful deity is now stone-dead; but there are still certain churches in the West, certain mosques and temples in the East, where even the most irreligious and un-psychic tourist cannot fail to be aware of some intensely numinous presence. It would, of course, be a mistake to imagine that this presence is the presence of that God who is a Spirit and must be worshipped in spirit; it is rather the psychic presence of mens thoughts and feelings about the particular, limited form of God, to which they have resorted according to the impulse of their inborn naturethoughts and feelings projected into objectivity and haunting the sacred place in the same way as thoughts and feeling of another kind, but of equal intensity, haunt the scenes of some past suffering or crime. The presence in these consecrated buildings, the presence evoked by the performance of traditional rites, the presence inherent in a sacramental object, name or formulaall these are real presences, but real presences, not of God or the Avatar, but of something which, though it may reflect the divine Reality, is yet less and other than it.
  Dulcis Jesu memoria
  --
  We see then that intense faith and devotion, coupled with perseverance by many persons in the same forms of worship or spiritual exercise, have a tendency to objectify the idea or memory which is their content and so to create, in some sort, a numinous real presence, which worshippers actually find out there no less, and in quite another way, than in here. Insofar as this is the case, the ritualist is perfectly correct in attri buting to his hallowed acts and words a power which, in another context, would be called magical. The mantram works, the Sacrifice really does something, the sacrament confers grace ex opere operato: these are, or rather may be, matters of direct experience, facts which anyone who chooses to fulfill the necessary conditions can verify empirically for himself. But the grace conferred ex opere operato is not always spiritual grace and the hallowed acts and formulas have a power which is not necessarily from God. Worshippers can, and very often do, get grace and power from one another and from the faith and devotion of their predecessors, projected into independent psychic existences that are hauntingly associated with certain places, words and acts. A great deal of ritualistic religion is not spirituality, but occultism, a refined and well-meaning kind of white magic. Now, just as there is no harm in art, say, or science, but a great deal of good, provided always that these activities are not regarded as ends, but simply as means to the final end of all life, so too there is no harm in white magic, but the possibilities of much good, so long as it is treated, not as true religion, but as one of the roads to true religionan effective way of reminding people with a certain kind of psycho-physical make-up that there is a God, in knowledge of whom standeth their eternal life. If ritualistic white magic is regarded as being in itself true religion; if the real presences it evokes are taken to be God in Himself and not the projections of human thoughts and feelings about God or even about something less than God; and if the sacramental rites are performed and attended for the sake of the spiritual sweetness experienced and the powers and advantages conferred then there is idolatry. This idolatry is, at its best, a very lofty and, in many ways, beneficent kind of religion. But the consequences of worshipping God as anything but Spirit and in any way except in spirit and in truth are necessarily undesirable in this sense that they lead only to a partial salvation and delay the souls ultimate reunion with the eternal Ground.
  That very large numbers of men and women have an ineradicable desire for rites and ceremonies is clearly demonstrated by the history of religion. Almost all the Hebrew prophets were opposed to ritualism. Rend your hearts and not your garments. I desire mercy and not Sacrifice. I hate, I despise your feasts; I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. And yet, in spite of the fact that what the prophets wrote was regarded as divinely inspired, the Temple at Jerusalem continued to be, for hundreds of years after their time, the centre of a religion of rites, ceremonials and blood Sacrifice. (It may be remarked in passing that the shedding of blood, ones own or that of animals or other human beings, seems to be a peculiarly efficacious way of constraining the occult or psychic world to answer petitions and confer supernormal powers. If this is a fact, as from the anthropological and antiquarian evidence it appears to be, it would supply yet another cogent reason for avoiding animal Sacrifices, savage bodily austerities and even, since thought is a form of action, that imaginative gloating over spilled blood, which is so common in certain Christian circles.) What the Jews did in spite of their prophets, Christians have done in spite of Christ. The Christ of the Gospels is a preacher and not a dispenser of sacraments or performer of rites; he speaks against vain repetitions; he insists on the supreme importance of private worship; he has no use for Sacrifices and not much use for the Temple. But this did not prevent historic Christianity from going its own, all too human, way. A precisely similar development took place in Buddhism. For the Buddha of the Pali scriptures, ritual was one of the fetters holding back the soul from enlightenment and liberation. Nevertheless, the religion he founded has made full use of ceremonies, vain repetitions and sacramental rites.
  There would seem to be two main reasons for the observed developments of the historical religions. First, most people do not want spirituality or deliverance, but rather a religion that gives them emotional satisfactions, answers to prayer, supernormal powers and partial salvation in some sort of posthumous heaven. Second, some of those few who do desire spirituality and deliverance find that, for them, the most effective means to those ends are ceremonies, vain repetitions and sacramental rites. It is by participating in these acts and uttering these formulas that they are most powerfully reminded of the eternal Ground of all being; it is by immersing themselves in the symbols that they can most easily come through to that which is symbolized. Every thing, event or thought is a point of intersection between creature and Creator, between a more or less distant manifestation of God and a ray, so to speak, of the unmanifest Godhead; every thing, event or thought can therefore be made the doorway through which a soul may pass out of time into eternity. That is why ritualistic and sacramental religion can lead to deliverance. But at the same time every human being loves power and self-enhancement, and every hallowed ceremony, form of words or sacramental rite is a channel through which power can flow out of the fascinating psychic universe into the universe of embodied selves. That is why ritualistic and sacramental religion can also lead away from deliverance.
  --
  The world is imprisoned in its own activity, except when actions are performed as worship of God. Therefore you must perform every action sacramentally (as if it were yajna, the Sacrifice that, in its divine Logos-essence, is identical with the Godhead to whom it is offered), and be free from all attachment to results.
  Bhagavad Gita

1.24 - The Killing of the Divine King, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  grave-shrines of the kings and Sacrifices are offered at them just
  as at the shrines of Nyakang.
  --
  performs this Sacrifice to the idol, and whoever desires to reign
  another twelve years and undertake this martyrdom for love of the
  --
  life on the issue of battle was known as the "Great Sacrifice." It
  fell every twelfth year, when the planet Jupiter was in retrograde
  --
  gallantry, the same useless Sacrifice of life was repeated again and
  again. Yet perhaps no Sacrifice is wholly useless which proves that
  there are men who prefer honour to life.
  --
  king of Sweden, is said to have Sacrificed to Odin for length of
  days and to have been answered by the god that he should live so
  long as he Sacrificed one of his sons every ninth year. He
   Sacrificed nine of them in this manner, and would have Sacrificed
  the tenth and last, but the Swedes would not allow him. So he died
  --
  We know that human Sacrifices formed part of the rites.
  There are some grounds for believing that the reign of many ancient
  --
  least to be imprisoned for life. Perhaps they were Sacrificed by
  being roasted alive in a bronze image of a bull, or of a bull-headed
  --
  fires, human victims may have been Sacrificed to the idol by being
  roasted in its hollow body or placed on its sloping hands and
  --
  that the Carthaginians Sacrificed their offspring to Moloch. The
  children were laid on the hands of a calf-headed image of bronze,
  --
  family; but with the growth of civilisation the Sacrifice of an
  innocent person would be revolting to the public sentiment, and

1.25 - On the destroyer of the passions, most sublime humility, which is rooted in spiritual feeling., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
  60. I find that Manasseh sinned as no other man has sinned by defiling the temple of God with idols and contaminating all the divine worship. If the whole world had undertaken a fast for him it could have made no reparation for this. But humility had power to remedy even what was incurable in him. If Thou hadst desired Sacrifice I would have given it, says David to God; but Thou wilt not be pleased with holocausts, that is, with bodies consumed by fasting. The Sacrifice for Godand everyone knows what follows.6
  1 1 Corinthians iv, 4.
  --
  6 The Sacrifice for God is a contrite spirit; a contrite and humble heart God will not despise (Psalm l, 17).
  61. I have sinned against the Lord, blessed humility once cried to God after committing adultery and murder; and he soon heard: The Lord has put away thy sin.1

1.25 - Temporary Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  of the stars was fulfilled by this Sacrifice; and Abbas, who
  reascended his throne in a most propitious hour, was promised by his

1.26 - Sacrifice of the Kings Son, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  object:1.26 - Sacrifice of the Kings Son
  author class:James George Frazer
  --
  XXVI. Sacrifice of the King's Son
  A POINT to notice about the temporary kings described in the
  --
  succeeded in getting the life of another accepted as a Sacrifice
  instead of his own, he would have to show that the death of that
  --
  life might be spared. After he had Sacrificed his second son he
  received from the god an answer that he should live so long as he
  gave him one of his sons every ninth year. When he had Sacrificed
  his seventh son, he still lived, but was so feeble that he could not
  --
  children of Athamas by his first wife had been Sacrificed to Zeus.
  When Athamas heard that, he sent for the children, who were with the
  --
  there he Sacrificed the ram with the golden fleece to Zeus the God
  of Flight; but some will have it that he Sacrificed the animal to
  Laphystian Zeus. The golden fleece itself he gave to his wife's
  --
  that King Athamas himself should be Sacrificed as an expiatory
  offering for the whole country. So the people decked him with
  --
  just about to Sacrifice him when he was rescued either by his
  grandson Cytisorus, who arrived in the nick of time from Colchis, or
  --
  of Tenedos, where babes were Sacrificed to him. Thus bereft of wife
  and children the unhappy Athamas quitted his country, and on
  --
  should be Sacrificed without fail, if ever he set foot in the
  town-hall, where the offerings were made to Laphystian Zeus by one
  --
  procession, and Sacrificed. These instances appear to have been
  notorious, if not frequent; for the writer of a dialogue attri buted
  --
  Greeks, and he refers with horror to the Sacrifices offered on Mount
  Lycaeus and by the descendants of Athamas.
  --
  Athamas purposed to Sacrifice his two children Phrixus and Helle. On
  the whole, comparing the traditions about Athamas with the custom
  --
  that a ram was accepted as a vicarious Sacrifice in room of the
  royal victim, provided always that the prince abstained from setting
  foot in the town-hall where the Sacrifices were offered to
  Laphystian Zeus by one of his kinsmen. But if he were rash enough to
  --
  danger, sometimes gave his own son to die as a Sacrifice for the
  people. Thus Philo of Byblus, in his work on the Jews, says: "It was

1.28 - On holy and blessed prayer, mother of virtues, and on the attitude of mind and body in prayer., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
  51. It is one thing frequently to keep watch over the heart, and another to supervise the heart by means of the mind, that ruler and bishop that offers spiritual Sacrifices to Christ. When the holy and heavenly fire comes to dwell in the souls of the former, as says one of those who have received the title of Theologian,4 it burns them because they still lack purification, whereas it enlightens the latter according to the degree of their perfection. For one and the same fire is called both the fire which consumes and the light which illuminates.5 That is why some people come from prayer as if they were marching out of a fiery furnace and feel relief as from some defilement and from all that is material, while others are as if illumined with light and clothed in a garment of joy and humility. But those who come from prayer without experiencing either of these two effects have prayed bodily (not to say after the Jewish fashion), and not spiritually.
  52. If a body is changed in its activity from contact with another body, then how can he remain unchanged who touches the body of God with innocent hands?6

1.2 - Katha Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  the wells he has dug and the Sacrifices he has offered and
  all his sons and his cattle are torn from him by that guest
  --
  of the external Sacrifice to which these profound phrases are inapplicable.
  14. "Hearken to me and understand, O Nachiketas; I declare
  --
  7 The Sacrifice of the lower existence to the divine, consummated on the three planes
  of man's physical, vital and mental consciousness.
  --
  I heaped the fire of Nachiketas, and by the Sacrifice of
  transitory things I won the Eternal.
  --
  is the bridge of those who do Sacrifice and he is Brahman
  supreme and imperishable, and the far shore of security to
  --
  waking life and stand before him with Sacrifice; for he is
  that Agni. This is the thing thou seekest.
  --
  in the interregions, the Sacrificer at the altar, the Guest in
  the vessel of the drinking; He is in man and in the Great

1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  In the course of an informal conversation Sri Bhagavan pointed out that Self-Realisation is possible only for the fit. The vasanas must be eliminated before jnana dawns. One must be like Janaka for jnana to dawn. One must be ready to Sacrifice everything for the Truth.
  Complete renunciation is the index of fitness.
  --
  The bliss of peace is too good to be disturbed. A man fast asleep hates to be awakened and ordered to mind his business. The bliss of sleep is too enthralling to be Sacrificed to the work born of thoughts. The thought-free state is one's primal state and full of bliss. Is it not miserable to leave such a state for the thought-ridden and unhappy one?
  303

1.31 - Adonis in Cyprus, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  Women who refused to Sacrifice their hair had to give themselves up
  to strangers on a certain day of the festival, and the money which
  --
  goddess instead of as a Sacrifice regularly enjoined by her on all
  her devotees. At all events the story indicates that the princesses
  --
  father on the throne or be Sacrificed in his stead whenever stress
  of war or other grave junctures called, as they sometimes did, for

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun sacrifice

The noun sacrifice has 5 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
                  
1. (7) forfeit, forfeiture, sacrifice ::: (the act of losing or surrendering something as a penalty for a mistake or fault or failure to perform etc.)
2. (1) sacrifice ::: (personnel that are sacrificed (e.g., surrendered or lost in order to gain an objective))
3. sacrifice ::: (a loss entailed by giving up or selling something at less than its value; "he had to sell his car at a considerable sacrifice")
4. sacrifice, ritual killing ::: (the act of killing (an animal or person) in order to propitiate a deity)
5. sacrifice ::: ((baseball) an out that advances the base runners)

--- Overview of verb sacrifice

The verb sacrifice has 4 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
                  
1. (10) sacrifice, give ::: (endure the loss of; "He gave his life for his children"; "I gave two sons to the war")
2. (1) sacrifice ::: (kill or destroy; "The animals were sacrificed after the experiment"; "The general had to sacrifice several soldiers to save the regiment")
3. sacrifice ::: (sell at a loss)
4. sacrifice ::: (make a sacrifice of; in religious rituals)


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun sacrifice

5 senses of sacrifice                        

Sense 1
forfeit, forfeiture, sacrifice
   => act, deed, human action, human activity
     => event
       => psychological feature
         => abstraction, abstract entity
           => entity

Sense 2
sacrifice
   => personnel casualty, loss
     => casualty
       => decrease, lessening, drop-off
         => change, alteration, modification
           => happening, occurrence, occurrent, natural event
             => event
               => psychological feature
                 => abstraction, abstract entity
                   => entity

Sense 3
sacrifice
   => loss
     => transferred property, transferred possession
       => possession
         => relation
           => abstraction, abstract entity
             => entity

Sense 4
sacrifice, ritual killing
   => killing, kill, putting to death
     => termination, ending, conclusion
       => change of state
         => change
           => action
             => act, deed, human action, human activity
               => event
                 => psychological feature
                   => abstraction, abstract entity
                     => entity

Sense 5
sacrifice
   => putout
     => out
       => failure
         => nonaccomplishment, nonachievement
           => act, deed, human action, human activity
             => event
               => psychological feature
                 => abstraction, abstract entity
                   => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun sacrifice

2 of 5 senses of sacrifice                      

Sense 4
sacrifice, ritual killing
   => hecatomb
   => immolation

Sense 5
sacrifice
   => sacrifice fly


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun sacrifice

5 senses of sacrifice                        

Sense 1
forfeit, forfeiture, sacrifice
   => act, deed, human action, human activity

Sense 2
sacrifice
   => personnel casualty, loss

Sense 3
sacrifice
   => loss

Sense 4
sacrifice, ritual killing
   => killing, kill, putting to death

Sense 5
sacrifice
   => putout




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun sacrifice

5 senses of sacrifice                        

Sense 1
forfeit, forfeiture, sacrifice
  -> act, deed, human action, human activity
   => action
   => acquiring, getting
   => causing, causation
   => delivery, obstetrical delivery
   => departure, going, going away, leaving
   => discovery, find, uncovering
   => disposal, disposition
   => implementation, effectuation
   => egress, egression, emergence
   => equalization, equalisation, leveling
   => exhumation, disinterment, digging up
   => mitzvah, mitsvah
   => propulsion, actuation
   => recovery, retrieval
   => running away
   => touch, touching
   => nonaccomplishment, nonachievement
   => leaning
   => motivation, motivating
   => assumption
   => rejection
   => forfeit, forfeiture, sacrifice
   => derivation
   => activity
   => hire
   => wear, wearing
   => judgment, judgement, assessment
   => production
   => stay
   => residency, residence, abidance
   => inactivity
   => hindrance, hinderance, interference
   => stop, stoppage
   => group action
   => distribution
   => legitimation
   => waste, permissive waste
   => proclamation, promulgation
   => communication, communicating
   => speech act

Sense 2
sacrifice
  -> personnel casualty, loss
   => wound, injury, combat injury
   => sacrifice

Sense 3
sacrifice
  -> loss
   => forfeit, forfeiture
   => financial loss
   => sacrifice
   => wastage

Sense 4
sacrifice, ritual killing
  -> killing, kill, putting to death
   => deathblow, coup de grace
   => death
   => euthanasia, mercy killing
   => homicide
   => dispatch, despatch
   => fell
   => suicide, self-destruction, self-annihilation
   => slaughter
   => poisoning
   => suffocation, asphyxiation
   => sacrifice, ritual killing
   => electrocution
   => decapitation, beheading
   => genocide, race murder, racial extermination

Sense 5
sacrifice
  -> putout
   => force out, force-out, force play, force
   => fielder's choice
   => sacrifice




--- Grep of noun sacrifice
feast of sacrifice
sacrifice
sacrifice fly
sacrifice operation
sacrificer
self-sacrifice



IN WEBGEN [10000/645]

Wikipedia - A Certain Sacrifice -- 1985 film by Stephen Jon Lewicki
Wikipedia - Altar -- Structure upon which offerings such as sacrifices are made for religious purposes
Wikipedia - Animal sacrifice
Wikipedia - Animal tithe -- Tithe of kosher grazing animals (cattle, sheep, and goats) to God, to be sacrificed as a Korban
Wikipedia - Ashvamedha -- Horse sacrifice ritual followed by the Srauta tradition of Vedic religion
Wikipedia - A Wife's Sacrifice -- 1916 film by J. Gordon Edwards
Wikipedia - Blood sacrifice
Wikipedia - Blot: Sacrifice in Sweden -- 1998 live album by Blood Axis
Wikipedia - CAP theorem -- Need to sacrifice consistency or availability in the presence of network partitions
Wikipedia - Daksha yajna -- Hindu legend of the destruction of King Daksha's sacrifice
Wikipedia - Devotio -- Roman generals vow to sacrifice his own life in battle along with the enemy to chthonic gods in exchange for a victory.
Wikipedia - DuM-EM-!ni Brav -- A practice of Christianized animal sacrifices amongst the Serbian Orthodox
Wikipedia - Ecofascism -- Theoretical political model in which a totalitarian government would require individuals to sacrifice their own interests to the environment
Wikipedia - Eid al-Adha -- Islamic holiday, also called the "Festival of the Sacrifice"
Wikipedia - Exchange sacrifice
Wikipedia - Extreme clipper -- Clipper ship designed to sacrifice cargo capacity for speed
Wikipedia - Fedayeen -- Military groups willing to sacrifice themselves for a larger campaign
Wikipedia - Greek gift sacrifice -- Chess move
Wikipedia - Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice -- 2017 video game
Wikipedia - Her Silent Sacrifice -- 1917 film
Wikipedia - His Greatest Sacrifice -- 1921 film by J. Gordon Edwards
Wikipedia - Horse sacrifice -- Type of animal sacrifice
Wikipedia - Human sacrifice in Aztec culture -- Aztec rite
Wikipedia - Human sacrifice -- Killing one or more humans, usually as an offering to a deity, as part of a ritual
Wikipedia - Impact Wrestling Sacrifice -- Total Nonstop Action Wrestling pay-per-view event series
Wikipedia - Inhabit (album) -- album by Living Sacrifice
Wikipedia - Intellectual Sacrifice and Other Mimetic Paradoxes -- 2018 book about sacrifice by Paolo Diego Bubbio
Wikipedia - Justification (theology) -- God's righteous act of declaring the ungodly to be righteous, through faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice
Wikipedia - Kourbania -- Christianized animal sacrifices in some parts of Greece
Wikipedia - Lenten sacrifice -- Sacrifice during lent
Wikipedia - Love's Sacrifice
Wikipedia - Luakini -- Native Hawaiian sacred place where people were sacrificed
Wikipedia - Moloch -- The biblical name of a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice.
Wikipedia - Passover sacrifice -- The sacrifice that the Torah mandates the Israelites to ritually slaughter and eat on the first night of Pesach
Wikipedia - Pawn Sacrifice -- 2014 film by Edward Zwick
Wikipedia - Peace offering -- Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible
Wikipedia - Pesachim -- Talmudic tractate about the Passover festival and sacrifice
Wikipedia - Queen sacrifice
Wikipedia - Sacrifice (2005) -- 2005 Total Nonstop Action Wrestling pay-per-view event
Wikipedia - Sacrifice (2006) -- 2006 Total Nonstop Action Wrestling pay-per-view event
Wikipedia - Sacrifice (2007) -- 2007 Total Nonstop Action Wrestling pay-per-view event
Wikipedia - Sacrifice (2008) -- 2008 Total Nonstop Action Wrestling pay-per-view event
Wikipedia - Sacrifice (2009) -- 2009 Total Nonstop Action Wrestling pay-per-view event
Wikipedia - Sacrifice (2010 film) -- 2010 film by Chen Kaige
Wikipedia - Sacrifice (2010) -- 2010 Total Nonstop Action Wrestling pay-per-view event
Wikipedia - Sacrifice (2011) -- 2011 Total Nonstop Action Wrestling pay-per-view event
Wikipedia - Sacrifice (2012) -- 2012 Total Nonstop Action Wrestling pay-per-view event
Wikipedia - Sacrifice (2014) -- 2014 Total Nonstop Action Wrestling pay-per-view event
Wikipedia - Sacrifice and Bliss -- 2009 studio album by Stinking Lizaveta
Wikipedia - Sacrifice (chess) -- Chess move that offers material gain in exchange for positional advantage
Wikipedia - Sacrificed Women -- 1952 film by Alberto Gout M-CM-^@brego
Wikipedia - Sacrifice in the Post-Kantian Tradition -- 2014 book by Diego Bubbio
Wikipedia - Sacrifice (song)
Wikipedia - Sacrifice (video game) -- 2000 real-time strategy video game
Wikipedia - Sacrifice -- Offering to a higher purpose, in particular divine beings
Wikipedia - Sarpa Satra -- Yagna (Sacrifice) in Hindu Scriptures
Wikipedia - Self-sacrifice in Jewish law
Wikipedia - Self-sacrifice
Wikipedia - Sonargoltr -- Boar, sacrificed as a part of Yule celebrations in Germanic paganism
Wikipedia - Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice
Wikipedia - Soul Sacrifice (video game)
Wikipedia - Taurobolium -- Practice of a ritual sacrifice of a bull
Wikipedia - The Sacrifice (1909 film) -- 1909 film
Wikipedia - The Sacrifice of Ellen Larsen -- 1921 film
Wikipedia - Tophet -- Location in Jerusalem where human sacrifice was practiced
Wikipedia - Women's Sacrifice -- 1922 film
Wikipedia - Yajna -- Ritual offering sacrifice in Hinduism
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Interfaith#Sacrifice_of_Guru_Tegh_Bahadur
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Magic_and_religion#Sacrifice
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Quimbanda#Animal_Sacrifices
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Releasing_life#Opposition_to_animal_sacrifice
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_(Qurbani)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Sacrifice_(Qurbani)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/User_blog:Sgt.Friso/Ritual_sacrifice_in_Nepal_sees_320,000_animals_slaughtered_to_Hindu_goddess
auromere - the-nachiketa-fire-sacrifice
auromere - psychic
auromere - the-nachiketa-fire-sacrifice
selforum - animal sacrifice not seen as literal
selforum - aim of sacrifice is self effacement as
dedroidify.blogspot - iraq-altar-of-sacrifice
dedroidify.blogspot - kings-used-to-be-sacrificed
Dharmapedia - Human_sacrifice
Psychology Wiki - Sacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Es/HeroicSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/ArcOfSacrifices
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/ChildrenOfTheCornIITheFinalSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/PawnSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheFinalSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HeroicSacrifice/AnimatedFilms
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https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HeroicSacrifice/FanWorks
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HeroicSacrifice/Literature
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HeroicSacrifice/LiveActionFilms
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HeroicSacrifice/LiveActionTV
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HeroicSacrifice/OtherMedia
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HeroicSacrifice/RealLife
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HeroicSacrifice/TabletopGames
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https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HeroicSacrifice/VisualNovels
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HeroicSacrifice/Webcomics
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HeroicSacrifice/WesternAnimation
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/HeroicSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/HumanSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/LastSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HEROICSACRIFICe
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroicSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroicSacrifices
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HesitantSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumanSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NegateYourOwnSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PreSacrificeFinalGoodbye
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SacrificedBasicSkillForAwesomeTraining
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SelfSacrificeScheme
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SenselessSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SentimentalSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StupidSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SurvivalThroughSelfSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TargetedHumanSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VirginSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/BrandOfSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/LivingSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/PlayingWith/HeroicSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/HeroicSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/HumanSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E06SacrificeOfAngels
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/HumanSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoExamples/HeroicSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoExamples/HumanSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/HellbladeSenuasSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Sacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/SacrificeGirl
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/SoulSacrifice
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WebVideo/ChicagoByNightTheSacrifice
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:A_Commonwealth_Cross_of_Sacrifice_or_War_Cross.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hellblade:_Senua's_Sacrifice
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sacrifice
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sacrificed
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sacrifices
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Self-sacrifice
The Silver Surfer (1998 - 1999) - The story of Norrin Radd, a simple citizen of the alien planet Zenn-La, who sacrifices his own independent life (and his love Shala Bal), to save his world from the Devourer of Worlds, Galactus. In return, Norrin Radd agrees to become Galactus' herald, seeking out worlds for Galactus to consume and...
Clash of the Titans(1981) - A fantasy movie based on the Greek mythology of Perseus featuring stop motion animation creatures by the great Ray Harryhausen. Perseus must save Princess Andromeda from being sacrificed to the sea creature the Kraken ,so he embarks on a quest aided by his companions and a mechanical owl named Bubo.
Tombs Of The Blind Dead(1973) - In the 13th century there existed a legion of evil knights known as the Templars, who quested for eternal life by drinking human blood and committing sacrifices. Executed for their unholy deeds, the Templars bodies were left out for the crows to peck out their eyes. Now, in modern day Portugal, a gr...
Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice(1993) - Straight after the events of the first film, the children are moved to Gatlins neighbouring town Hemmingford. A failed journalist called John comes to Hemmingford to find out what happened in Gatlin. His son Danny is with him, John and Danny don't get on well together. They are staying in the same h...
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth(1971) - In this sequel to ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. (1966) a young blond escapes sacrifice and falls in love with a handsome fisherman and trains disnoaur. The special effects created by Jim Danforth, are excellent. It got nominated for an Oscar for best Special Effects, but got beaten by Disney's BEDKNOBS AND...
Trapped In Space (1995) - After an accident depletes the oxygen supply, aboard a spaceship,Five astronauts must make a complex decision.Since there is only enough oxygen left for three,two people must sacrifice their lives.Starring Jack Wagner,Jack Coleman,and Kay Lenz.
Curse III:Blood Sacrifice(1991) - A witch doctor summons a demonic creature to torture a pregnant woman(Jenilee Harrison).
Asylum Of Satan(1972) - A young woman finds herself held against her will in an eerie mental asylum by the sinister "Dr. Specter" and his masculine-looking assistant, Martine. She begins to suspect that the visions of horror she experiences are not nightmares and that she is due to be sacrificed to The Evil One.
Prehistoric Women(1967) - Jungle guide David Marchand is kidnapped by a tribe of natives who want to sacrifice him to their white rhino god. Just as he's about to be killed, however, he is thrown backwards in time to a kingdom of brunette women and their blonde slaves. David rejects the advances of Queen Kari and sides with...
Pokmon Heroes(2002) - In the seaside town of Altomare there lives a legend about how two legendary Pokemon named Latias and Latios protected the town from a trainer who was terrorizing after which Latios sacrificed itself. Latios had its soul kept in a mystical item called the Soul Dew, which is being sought by Annie & O...
Click(2006) - Architect Michael Newman is married to his high school sweetheart Donna and their children Ben and Samantha. Despite his loving nature, his boss Mr. Ammer is always pushing him over and he always sacrifices family time to make extra money for lavish possessions. One day, on a trip to a Bed Bath & Be...
Werewolves On Wheels(1971) - A biker gang visits a monastery where they encounter black-robed monks engaged in worshipping Satan. When the monks try to persuade one of the female bikers, Helen, to become a satanic sacrifice the bikers smash up the monastery and leave. The monks have the last laugh, though, as Helen, as a result...
The Alamo(1960) - The legendary true story of a small band of soldiers who sacrificed their lives in hopeless combat against a massive army in order to prevent a tyrant from smashing the new Republic of Texas.
Talisman(1998) - As the millenium draws near, an evil being awakens. Fused to an ancient Talisman for centuries -- Theriel, the Black Angel is summoned from his resting place to usher in the end of the world. The ghastly messenger must claim seven human sacrifices to complete the ritual and open the gates of Hell. A...
Blood Tide(1982) - An adventurer hunting for treasure in Greece accidentally frees a monster that forces local villagers to sacrifice virgins.
Apocalypto(2006) - The Mayan kingdom is at the height of its opulence and power but the foundations of the empire are beginning to crumble. The leaders believe they must build more temples and sacrifice more people or their crops and citizens will die. Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), a peaceful hunter in a remote tribe,...
Spooky Buddies(2011) - In 1937, Warwick the Warlock has dognapped five puppies to sacrifice to the Halloween Hound. One puppy named Pip escapes and comes to the present where he teams up with the Buddies to stop a re-awakened Warwick.
https://myanimelist.net/manga/22650/Seikon_Sacrifice
Avengers: Infinity War (2018) ::: 8.4/10 -- PG-13 | 2h 29min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi | 27 April 2018 (USA) -- The Avengers and their allies must be willing to sacrifice all in an attempt to defeat the powerful Thanos before his blitz of devastation and ruin puts an end to the universe. Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo Writers:
Draft Day (2014) ::: 6.8/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 50min | Drama, Sport | 11 April 2014 (USA) -- At the NFL Draft, General Manager Sonny Weaver has the opportunity to rebuild his team when he trades for the number one pick. He must decide what he's willing to sacrifice on a life-changing day for a few hundred young men with NFL dreams. Director: Ivan Reitman Writers:
Help! (1965) ::: 7.2/10 -- G | 1h 32min | Adventure, Comedy, Musical | 25 August 1965 (USA) -- Sir Ringo Starr finds himself the human sacrifice target of a cult, and his fellow members of The Beatles must try to protect him from it. Director: Richard Lester Writers: Marc Behm (screenplay), Charles Wood (screenplay) | 1 more credit Stars:
Hotel Mumbai (2018) ::: 7.6/10 -- R | 2h 3min | Action, Drama, History | 29 March 2019 (USA) -- The true story of the Taj Hotel terrorist attack in Mumbai. Hotel staff risk their lives to keep everyone safe as people make unthinkable sacrifices to protect themselves and their families. Director: Anthony Maras Writers:
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) ::: 7.6/10 -- PG | 1h 58min | Action, Adventure | 23 May 1984 (USA) -- In 1935, Indiana Jones arrives in India, still part of the British Empire, and is asked to find a mystical stone. He then stumbles upon a secret cult committing enslavement and human sacrifices in the catacombs of an ancient palace. Director: Steven Spielberg Writers:
Pawn Sacrifice (2014) ::: 7.0/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 55min | Biography, Drama, Sport | 25 September 2015 (USA) -- Set during the Cold War, American chess prodigy Bobby Fischer finds himself caught between two superpowers and his own struggles as he challenges the Soviet Empire. Director: Edward Zwick Writers:
Superman II (1980) ::: 6.8/10 -- PG | 2h 7min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi | 19 June 1981 (USA) -- Superman agrees to sacrifice his powers to start a relationship with Lois Lane, unaware that three Kryptonian criminals he inadvertently released are conquering Earth. Directors: Richard Lester, Richard Donner (uncredited) Writers:
The Alamo (1960) ::: 6.9/10 -- Passed | 2h 42min | Adventure, Drama, History | 27 October 1960 (UK) -- In 1836, a small band of soldiers sacrifice their lives in hopeless combat against a massive army in order to prevent a tyrant from smashing the new Republic of Texas. Director: John Wayne Writer:
The Berlin File (2013) ::: 6.6/10 -- Bereullin (original title) -- The Berlin File Poster -- Jong-seong, a North Korean ghost agent, interrupts an illegal arms sale in Berlin. A notorious North Korean agent tests the loyalties of everyone involved as Jong-Seong prepares to make the ultimate sacrifice. Director: Seung-wan Ryoo
The Brave ::: TV-14 | 43min | Action, Drama, Thriller | TV Series (20172018) -- The complex world of our bravest military heroes who make personal sacrifices while executing the most challenging and dangerous missions behind enemy lines. Creator:
The Guardian (2006) ::: 6.9/10 -- PG-13 | 2h 19min | Action, Adventure, Drama | 29 September 2006 (USA) -- A high school swim champion with a troubled past enrolls in the U.S. Coast Guard's "A" School, where legendary rescue swimmer Ben Randall teaches him some hard lessons about loss, love, and self-sacrifice. Director: Andrew Davis Writer:
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) ::: 7.0/10 -- R | 2h 1min | Drama, Horror, Mystery | 3 November 2017 (USA) -- Steven, a charismatic surgeon, is forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice after his life starts to fall apart, when the behavior of a teenage boy he has taken under his wing turns sinister. Director: Yorgos Lanthimos Writers:
The Remains of the Day (1993) ::: 7.8/10 -- PG | 2h 14min | Drama, Romance | 19 November 1993 (USA) -- A butler who sacrificed body and soul to service in the years leading up to World War II realizes too late how misguided his loyalty was to his lordly employer. Director: James Ivory Writers:
To Save a Life (2009) ::: 6.9/10 -- PG-13 | 2h | Drama | 11 November 2010 (South Korea) -- After a childhood friend's death, Jake Taylor, an all-star athlete must change his life - and sacrifice his dreams to save the lives of others. Director: Brian Baugh Writers: Brian Baugh, Jim Britts
https://adventurequest.fandom.com/wiki/AdventureQuest_Storyline/The_Devourer_Saga,_Part_7:_Sacrifice
https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/Divergence_(Sacrifice_of_Angels)
https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_of_Angel's_divergence
https://aoc.fandom.com/wiki/Quest:Tarisha's_Sacrifice
https://arrow.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice
https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/Beware_the_Batman_Episode_1.10:_Sacrifice
https://berserk.fandom.com/wiki/Brand_of_Sacrifice
https://bindingofisaac.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_Room
https://clonewars.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Arrow_(TV_Series)_Episode:_Sacrifice
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Smallville_(TV_Series)_Episode:_Sacrifice
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Superman:_Sacrifice
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_(Diablo_II)
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_(Diablo_III)
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_(Paladin)
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Blood_Sacrifice
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Deadly_sacrifice
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Noble_Sacrifice
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Ode_to_sacrifice
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Selfless_sacrifice
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Warden's_sacrifice
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Your_glorious_sacrifice
https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/MAP35:_Evil_Sacrifice_(Doom_64)
https://dreamtheater.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrificed_Sons
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Blade_of_Sacrifice
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/March_of_Sacrifices
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Pillar_of_Sacrifice
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Pledge:_March_of_Sacrifices
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Aliz_Tae_Sacrifice
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Enhance:_Oration_of_Sacrifice
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hand_of_Sacrifice
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hand_of_Sacrifice?
https://evanescence.fandom.com/wiki/Sweet_Sacrifice_(music_video)
https://evanescence.fandom.com/wiki/Sweet_Sacrifice_(song)
https://fanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Alice_Human_Sacrifice
https://fanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/My_Sacrifice
https://fatalframe.fandom.com/wiki/Crimson_Sacrifice_Ritual
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Attestation_of_Sacrifice
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_(Mission)
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Ardent_Sacrifice
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/IV:_Light's_Sacrifice
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_of_the_Widow
https://grimm.fandom.com/wiki/The_Law_of_Sacrifice
https://guildopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Self_Sacrifice
https://guildopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Seven_Heroes_of_Sacrifice
https://hpmor.fandom.com/wiki/Blood_Fort_sacrifice
https://kungfupanda.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_at_the_Edge_of_Time
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Children_of_the_Corn_II:_The_Final_Sacrifice
https://loveless.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Noah%27s_Sacrifice_and_His_Drunkenness
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Noah's_Sacrifice_and_His_Drunkenness
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_of_Angels
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_of_Angels_(episode)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifices_of_War
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine_-_Too_Long_a_Sacrifice
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine_-_Too_Long_a_Sacrifice_(omnibus)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Never-Ending_Sacrifice
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Too_Long_a_Sacrifice,_Issue_1
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Too_Long_a_Sacrifice,_Issue_2
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Too_Long_a_Sacrifice,_Issue_3
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Too_Long_a_Sacrifice,_Issue_4
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Blood_Sacrifice
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Iron_and_Sacrifice
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/...Sacrifice_of_Angels
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_of_Angels_(episode)
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifices_and_Survivors
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifices_of_War
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Never-Ending_Sacrifice
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sacrifice_(Tarsus_IV)
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Zodian_Sacrifice
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Too_Long_a_Sacrifice
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Too_Long_a_Sacrifice,_Issue_1
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Too_Long_a_Sacrifice,_Issue_2
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Too_Long_a_Sacrifice,_Issue_3
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Too_Long_a_Sacrifice,_Issue_4
https://midnight-texas.fandom.com/wiki/The_Virgin_Sacrifice
https://monsuno.fandom.com/wiki/Revenge/Sacrifice
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Sacrifice
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice
https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Hellblade:_Senua%27s_Sacrifice
https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Hellblade:_Senua's_Sacrifice
https://naruto.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_(volume)
https://netflix.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice
https://orphanblack.fandom.com/wiki/Transitory_Sacrifices_of_Crisis
https://salem.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifices
https://sawfilms.fandom.com/wiki/10_Pints_of_Sacrifice
https://smallville.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice
https://soulfly.fandom.com/wiki/Living_Sacrifice
https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Artanis:_Sacrifice
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Empire_7:_Sacrifice
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Legacy_of_the_Force:_Sacrifice
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Media:AhsokaBarrissSacrifice-WF.ogg
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_at_Endor
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_(cinematic_trailer)
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Unidentified_Troukree_(sacrifice)
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Sacrifice_(comic_story)
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/High_Priest_of_Sacrifice
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Human_sacrifice
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Inhuman_Sacrifice_(comic_story)
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Bride_of_Sacrifice
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Halls_of_Sacrifice_(comic_story)
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sacrifice_of_Jo_Grant_(audio_story)
https://the-good-doctor.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice
https://the-handmaids-tale.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice
https://thehellblade.fandom.com/wiki/Hellblade:_Senua's_Sacrifice
https://vampirediaries.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sacrifice_(event)
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Blood_Sacrifice:_The_Thaumaturgy_Companion
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_(CTL)
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice_(MTR)
https://witchblade.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Blessing_of_Sacrifice
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Grimoire_of_Sacrifice
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Roar_of_Sacrifice
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Sacrifice
https://xtvclamp.fandom.com/wiki/Shadow_Sacrifices
100-man no Inochi no Ue ni Ore wa Tatteiru 2nd Season -- -- Maho Film -- ? eps -- Manga -- Action Game Drama Fantasy Shounen -- 100-man no Inochi no Ue ni Ore wa Tatteiru 2nd Season 100-man no Inochi no Ue ni Ore wa Tatteiru 2nd Season -- Second season of 100-man no Inochi no Ue ni Ore wa Tatteiru. -- TV - Jul ??, 2021 -- 27,971 N/APlatinum End -- -- Signal.MD -- ? eps -- Manga -- Psychological Supernatural Drama Shounen -- Platinum End Platinum End -- After the death of his parents, a young Mirai Kakehashi is left in the care of his abusive relatives. Since then, he has become gloomy and depressed, leading him to attempt suicide on the evening of his middle school graduation. Mirai, however, is saved by a pure white girl named Nasse who introduces herself as a guardian angel wishing to give him happiness—by granting him supernatural powers and a chance to become the new God. -- -- In order to earn the position, he must defeat 12 other "God Candidates" within 999 days. Soon, Mirai begins a struggle to survive as a terrifying battle royale erupts between himself and the candidates looking to obtain the most power in the world. -- -- TV - Oct ??, 2021 -- 27,914 N/A -- -- Touch -- -- Gallop, Group TAC, Studio Junio -- 101 eps -- Manga -- Sports Romance School Drama Slice of Life Shounen -- Touch Touch -- The story centers around three characters—Uesugi Kazuya, his twin older brother Tatsuya, and Asakura Minami. Kazuya is the darling of his town as he's talented, hardworking, and the ace pitcher for his middle school baseball team. Tatsuya is a hopeless slacker who's been living the life of giving up the spotlight to Kazuya, despite the fact that he may be more gifted than him. Minami is the beautiful childhood girlfriend and for all intents, sister from next door who treats both of them as equals. Society largely assumes Kazuya and Minami will become the perfect couple, including Tatsuya. Yet as time progresses, Tatsuya grows to realize that he's willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of his brother, except at the expense of giving up Minami to Kazuya. And thus the story is told of Tatsuya trying to prove himself over his established younger brother, how it affects the relationship between the three, and both brothers' attempts to make Minami's lifelong dreams come true. -- 27,856 8.02
Berserk: Ougon Jidai-hen III - Kourin -- -- Studio 4°C -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Demons Drama Fantasy Horror Military Seinen Supernatural -- Berserk: Ougon Jidai-hen III - Kourin Berserk: Ougon Jidai-hen III - Kourin -- The Band of the Hawk has dwindled in the year since Guts left them on his journey to forge his own destiny. Unaware of their fate, Guts returns to the Hawks—now being led by his former ally Casca—after a rumor about them passes his way. Once the saviors of the kingdom of Midland, the Band of the Hawk are now hunted as they desperately fight for their lives while plotting to free their leader, Griffith, after he was imprisoned for committing treason. But the man they save is far from the Griffith they remember. -- -- Griffith is a shell of his former charismatic self after a year of continuous, horrific torture. No longer able to walk, speak, or even hold a sword, he has nothing but the small, strange trinket, the Crimson Behelit, that will not leave him. The entire Band of the Hawk want to rise to greatness once more, but how much are they willing to sacrifice to return to their past glory? It doesn't seem possible, but when Griffith's heart darkens and a solar eclipse blackens the sky, the Behelit offers a choice that will leave the Band of the Hawk with a blood-soaked fate that will haunt them for the rest of their days. -- -- -- Licensor: -- NYAV Post, VIZ Media -- Movie - Feb 1, 2013 -- 163,699 8.20
Berserk: Ougon Jidai-hen III - Kourin -- -- Studio 4°C -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Demons Drama Fantasy Horror Military Seinen Supernatural -- Berserk: Ougon Jidai-hen III - Kourin Berserk: Ougon Jidai-hen III - Kourin -- The Band of the Hawk has dwindled in the year since Guts left them on his journey to forge his own destiny. Unaware of their fate, Guts returns to the Hawks—now being led by his former ally Casca—after a rumor about them passes his way. Once the saviors of the kingdom of Midland, the Band of the Hawk are now hunted as they desperately fight for their lives while plotting to free their leader, Griffith, after he was imprisoned for committing treason. But the man they save is far from the Griffith they remember. -- -- Griffith is a shell of his former charismatic self after a year of continuous, horrific torture. No longer able to walk, speak, or even hold a sword, he has nothing but the small, strange trinket, the Crimson Behelit, that will not leave him. The entire Band of the Hawk want to rise to greatness once more, but how much are they willing to sacrifice to return to their past glory? It doesn't seem possible, but when Griffith's heart darkens and a solar eclipse blackens the sky, the Behelit offers a choice that will leave the Band of the Hawk with a blood-soaked fate that will haunt them for the rest of their days. -- -- Movie - Feb 1, 2013 -- 163,699 8.20
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S -- -- Toei Animation -- 38 eps -- Manga -- Drama Magic Romance Shoujo -- Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S -- The Sailor Guardians and their leader, Sailor Moon, continue their duty of protecting Earth from any who would dare cause it harm. However, Sailor Mars' apocalyptic visions and the appearance of two new guardians—Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus—signal that a new battle will soon begin. -- -- These newcomers seek three Talismans that are inside the Pure Heart Crystals within human beings. Once brought together, these objects form The Holy Grail, a magical relic with extraordinary abilities. They want to use the Grail to save the world, but an evil organization known as the Death Busters seeks its power for their own desires. -- -- The removal of a Talisman from a person's Heart Crystal will cause their death, something that Uranus and Neptune see as a necessary sacrifice to form the Grail, while Sailor Moon and her group deem it unforgivable. But can any sacrifice be worth the cost if it saves the lives of the entire human race? -- -- -- Licensor: -- Geneon Entertainment USA, VIZ Media -- TV - Mar 19, 1994 -- 116,281 7.86
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S -- -- Toei Animation -- 38 eps -- Manga -- Drama Magic Romance Shoujo -- Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S -- The Sailor Guardians and their leader, Sailor Moon, continue their duty of protecting Earth from any who would dare cause it harm. However, Sailor Mars' apocalyptic visions and the appearance of two new guardians—Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus—signal that a new battle will soon begin. -- -- These newcomers seek three Talismans that are inside the Pure Heart Crystals within human beings. Once brought together, these objects form The Holy Grail, a magical relic with extraordinary abilities. They want to use the Grail to save the world, but an evil organization known as the Death Busters seeks its power for their own desires. -- -- The removal of a Talisman from a person's Heart Crystal will cause their death, something that Uranus and Neptune see as a necessary sacrifice to form the Grail, while Sailor Moon and her group deem it unforgivable. But can any sacrifice be worth the cost if it saves the lives of the entire human race? -- -- TV - Mar 19, 1994 -- 116,281 7.86
Bouken Ou Beet -- -- Toei Animation -- 52 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Fantasy Shounen Supernatural -- Bouken Ou Beet Bouken Ou Beet -- It is the dark century and the people are suffering under the rule of the devil, Vandel, who is able to manipulate monsters. The Vandel Busters are a group of people who hunt these devils, and among them, the Zenon Squad is known to be the strongest busters on the continent. A young boy, Beet, dreams of joining the Zenon Squad. However, one day, as a result of Beet's fault, the Zenon squad was defeated by the devil, Beltose. The five dying busters sacrificed their life power into their five weapons, Saiga. After giving their weapons to Beet, they passed away. Years have passed since then and the young Vandel Buster, Beet, begins his adventure to carry out the Zenon Squad's will to put an end to the dark century. -- 13,435 6.97
Bouken Ou Beet Excellion -- -- Toei Animation -- 25 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Fantasy Shounen Supernatural -- Bouken Ou Beet Excellion Bouken Ou Beet Excellion -- It is the dark century and the people are suffering under the rule of the devil, Vandel, who is able to manipulate monsters. The Vandel Busters are a group of people who hunt these devils, and among them, the Zenon Squad is known to be the strongest busters on the continent. A young boy, Beet, dreams of joining the Zenon Squad. However, one day, as a result of Beet's fault, the Zenon squad was defeated by the devil, Beltose. The five dying busters sacrificed their life power into their five weapons, Saiga. After giving their weapons to Beet, they passed away. Years have passed since then and the young Vandel Buster, Beet, begins his adventure to carry out the Zenon Squad's will to put an end to the dark century. -- 6,908 6.71
B: The Beginning Succession -- -- Production I.G -- 6 eps -- Original -- Action Mystery Police Psychological Supernatural Thriller -- B: The Beginning Succession B: The Beginning Succession -- In the first season of B: The Beginning, two men confronted their own past with great sacrifice. Maverick detective Keith Flick fought against his demons and finally exposed the dark secrets behind the Kingdom of Cremona. Mutant wunderkind Koku finally reunited with the most precious memory from his stolen childhood. Several months have passed since then, and the entire world seems to have forgotten the turmoil caused by those events. As Keith returns to the Royal Police to conduct his own investigation, Koku and Yuna try to enjoy an ordinary life in peace. But the consequences of the Jaula Blanca experiments are far from being extinct, as Koku soon discovers when his supposedly dead lab mate Kirisame suddenly shows up. -- -- (Source: Official Site) -- ONA - Mar 18, 2021 -- 57,391 6.13
Cardcaptor Sakura Movie 2: Fuuin Sareta Card -- -- Madhouse -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Comedy Drama Fantasy Magic Romance Shoujo -- Cardcaptor Sakura Movie 2: Fuuin Sareta Card Cardcaptor Sakura Movie 2: Fuuin Sareta Card -- For this year's Nadeshiko Festival, Sakura Kinomoto's elementary school class is presenting a play. She will portray a princess who struggles to respond to the love confession of the neighboring country's prince. Sakura empathizes with her character all too well, since she herself still owes an answer to the boy who confessed his love for her four months ago. -- -- When cousins Shaoran and Meiling Li return from Hong Kong to pay a surprise visit to their friends in Japan, Sakura receives further encouragement to finally declare her feelings. However, she is repeatedly distracted by a presence reminiscent of a Clow Card as well as unexplained disappearances around town. -- -- Eventually, Sakura learns of another of Clow Reed's creations—the "Nothing"—which was formerly sealed away beneath the magician's old house. It has power equal to all 52 cards Sakura possesses, and furthermore, it wants to take those cards away from her! Objects, space, and people disappear from Tomoeda with each card that is stolen. Sakura sets out to capture the Nothing so everything will return to normal, but what must she sacrifice in the process? -- -- Movie - Jul 15, 2000 -- 97,928 8.22
Corpse Party: Tortured Souls - Bougyakusareta Tamashii no Jukyou -- -- Asread -- 4 eps -- Visual novel -- Mystery Horror Supernatural -- Corpse Party: Tortured Souls - Bougyakusareta Tamashii no Jukyou Corpse Party: Tortured Souls - Bougyakusareta Tamashii no Jukyou -- Nine students gather in their high school at night to bid farewell to a friend. As is customary among many high school students, they perform a sort of ritual for them to remain friends forever, using small paper charms shaped like dolls. -- -- However, the students do not realize that these charms are connected to Heavenly Host Academy—an elementary school that was destroyed years ago after a series of gruesome murders took place, a school that rests under the foundation of their very own Kisaragi Academy. Now, trapped in an alternate dimension with vengeful ghosts of the past, the students must work together to escape—or join the spirits of the damned forever. -- -- A feast for mystery fanatics, gore-hounds, and horror fans alike, Corpse Party: Tortured Souls - Bougyakusareta Tamashii no Jukyou shows a sobering look at redemption, sacrifice, and how the past is always right behind, sometimes a little too close for comfort. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Maiden Japan -- OVA - Jul 24, 2013 -- 296,149 6.55
Da Yu Hai Tang (Movie) -- -- B&T -- 1 ep -- Original -- Adventure Supernatural Drama Romance -- Da Yu Hai Tang (Movie) Da Yu Hai Tang (Movie) -- In an old mythical world, there reside spirit-like beings who oversee the natural order of the mortal realm. One of them, a young girl named Chun, has just come of age and must undergo her rite of passage by experiencing the human world for herself. While there, she gets caught in a fishing net during a storm and is rescued by a human boy. -- -- However, the boy ends up drowning during the incident, and Chun returns to her realm full of guilt. Afterwards, she meets the Soul Keeper and decides to revive the boy in exchange for a part of her lifespan. Little does she know, meddling with the natural order of the world has severe consequences. -- -- Da Yu Hai Tang is a story about sacrifice and redemption as Chun comes to terms with the limitations of her powers and deals with death, love, and her own emotions. She must decide if she will sacrifice everything to save the human boy or forsake her moral obligation for the order of the world. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Shout! Factory -- Movie - Jul 8, 2016 -- 31,800 7.56
Dies Irae -- -- A.C.G.T. -- 11 eps -- Visual novel -- Action Military Super Power Magic -- Dies Irae Dies Irae -- On May 1, 1945 in Berlin, as the Red Army raises the Soviet flag over the Reichskanzlei, a group of Nazi officers conduct a ritual. For them, the slaughter in the city is nothing but the perfect ritual sacrifice in order to bring back the Order of the 13 Lances, a group of supermen whose coming would bring the world's destruction. Years later, no one knows if this group of officers succeeded, or whether they lived or died. Few know of their existence, and even those who knew began to pass away as the decades passed. -- -- Now in December in the present day in Suwahara City, Ren Fujii spends his days at the hospital. It has been two months since the incident that brought him to the hospital: a fight with his friend Shirou Yusa where they almost tried to kill each other. He tries to value what he has left to him, but every night he sees the same dream: a guillotine, murderers who hunt people, and the black clothed knights who pursue the murderers. He is desperate to return to his normal, everyday life, but even now he hears Shirou's words: "Everyone who remains in this city eventually loses their minds." -- -- (Source: ANN) -- 115,820 5.37
Dies Irae -- -- A.C.G.T. -- 11 eps -- Visual novel -- Action Military Super Power Magic -- Dies Irae Dies Irae -- On May 1, 1945 in Berlin, as the Red Army raises the Soviet flag over the Reichskanzlei, a group of Nazi officers conduct a ritual. For them, the slaughter in the city is nothing but the perfect ritual sacrifice in order to bring back the Order of the 13 Lances, a group of supermen whose coming would bring the world's destruction. Years later, no one knows if this group of officers succeeded, or whether they lived or died. Few know of their existence, and even those who knew began to pass away as the decades passed. -- -- Now in December in the present day in Suwahara City, Ren Fujii spends his days at the hospital. It has been two months since the incident that brought him to the hospital: a fight with his friend Shirou Yusa where they almost tried to kill each other. He tries to value what he has left to him, but every night he sees the same dream: a guillotine, murderers who hunt people, and the black clothed knights who pursue the murderers. He is desperate to return to his normal, everyday life, but even now he hears Shirou's words: "Everyone who remains in this city eventually loses their minds." -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Crunchyroll, Funimation -- 115,820 5.37
Dororo -- -- MAPPA, Tezuka Productions -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Demons Historical Samurai Shounen Supernatural -- Dororo Dororo -- The greedy samurai lord Daigo Kagemitsu's land is dying, and he would do anything for power, even renounce Buddha and make a pact with demons. His prayers are answered by 12 demons who grant him the power he desires by aiding his prefecture's growth, but at a price. When Kagemitsu's first son is born, the boy has no limbs, no nose, no eyes, no ears, nor even skin—yet still, he lives. -- -- This child is disposed of in a river and forgotten. But as luck would have it, he is saved by a medicine man who provides him with prosthetics and weapons, allowing for him to survive and fend for himself. The boy lives and grows, and although he cannot see, hear, or feel anything, he must defeat the demons that took him as sacrifice. With the death of each one, he regains a part of himself that is rightfully his. For many years he wanders alone, until one day an orphan boy, Dororo, befriends him. The unlikely pair of castaways now fight for their survival and humanity in an unforgiving, demon-infested world. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 745,731 8.20
Dororo to Hyakkimaru -- -- Mushi Production -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Supernatural Shounen -- Dororo to Hyakkimaru Dororo to Hyakkimaru -- To aid his conquest of Japan, the ruthless lord Daigo Kagemitsu offers to sacrifice his soon-to-be-born son to 48 demons. The demons accept, and the next day, the child is born with several missing limbs and is ruthlessly cast down a river. -- -- Fifteen years later, a stubborn young boy named Dororo struggles to survive against hunger and oppressive samurai on the streets of an impoverished and war-torn village. After angering a group of thugs, Dororo is attacked by them, but a mysterious man interrupts them, claiming to hear spirits nearby. Sure enough, a monster emerges from the river, and the man then removes his prosthetic arms, revealing blades hidden underneath, with which he slays the monster before leaving. -- -- That night, as the man walks through the forest, Dororo approaches him and declares that he will accompany him. From this, the man, Hyakkimaru, reveals that many of his body parts were stolen by demons and that though he sought a peaceful life, he couldn't escape their relentless onslaught. Despite the tale, Dororo still insists on tagging along. And thus, Hyakkimaru travels through Japan with his new companion and a puppy named Nota, facing the brutality of both hell and mankind. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- 12,964 7.18
Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken (TV) -- -- Toei Animation -- 46 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Comedy Demons Magic Martial Arts Fantasy Shounen -- Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken (TV) Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken (TV) -- After the defeat of the demon lord Hadlar all of the monsters were unleashed from his evil will and moved to the island of Delmurin to live in peace. Dai is the only human living on the island. Having been raised by the kindly monster Brass, Dai's dream is to grow up to be a hero. He gets to become one when Hadlar is resurrected and the previous hero, Avan, comes to train Dai to help in the battle. But Hadlar, announcing that he now works for an even more powerful demon lord, comes to kill Avan. To save his students Avan uses a Self-Sacrifice spell to attack, but is unable to defeat Hadlar. When it seems that Dai and Avan's other student Pop are doomed a mark appears on Dai's forehead and he suddenly gains super powers and is able to fend off Hadlar. The two students then go off on a journey to avenge Avan and bring peace back to the world. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- TV - Oct 17, 1991 -- 19,176 7.61
Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou -- -- David Production -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Action Supernatural Shounen -- Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou -- After his confrontation in the Nether with his younger brother Shou, Shinra Kusakabe's resolve to become a hero that saves lives from the flame terror strengthens. Finding a way to turn the Infernals back into people, unraveling the mystery of the Evangelist and Adolla Burst, and saving his mother and Shou—these are the goals Shinra has in mind. However, he has come to realize that attaining these goals will not be easy, especially with the imminent danger the Evangelist poses. -- -- The Evangelist's plan is clear: to gather the eight pillars—the individuals who possess Adolla Burst—and sacrifice them to recreate the Great Cataclysm from 250 years ago. Having been revealed by the First Pillar that the birth of a new pillar is approaching, Shinra is determined to protect his fellow pillars from the Evangelist. Thus, the fiery battle between the Special Fire Force and the Evangelist ignites. Together with the Special Fire Force, Shinra's fight continues as he uncovers the truth about the Great Cataclysm and the nature of Adolla Bursts, as well as the mysteries behind human combustion. -- -- 402,357 7.75
Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou -- -- David Production -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Action Supernatural Shounen -- Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou -- After his confrontation in the Nether with his younger brother Shou, Shinra Kusakabe's resolve to become a hero that saves lives from the flame terror strengthens. Finding a way to turn the Infernals back into people, unraveling the mystery of the Evangelist and Adolla Burst, and saving his mother and Shou—these are the goals Shinra has in mind. However, he has come to realize that attaining these goals will not be easy, especially with the imminent danger the Evangelist poses. -- -- The Evangelist's plan is clear: to gather the eight pillars—the individuals who possess Adolla Burst—and sacrifice them to recreate the Great Cataclysm from 250 years ago. Having been revealed by the First Pillar that the birth of a new pillar is approaching, Shinra is determined to protect his fellow pillars from the Evangelist. Thus, the fiery battle between the Special Fire Force and the Evangelist ignites. Together with the Special Fire Force, Shinra's fight continues as he uncovers the truth about the Great Cataclysm and the nature of Adolla Bursts, as well as the mysteries behind human combustion. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 402,357 7.75
Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works 2nd Season -- -- ufotable -- 13 eps -- Visual novel -- Action Fantasy Magic Supernatural -- Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works 2nd Season Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works 2nd Season -- In the midst of the Fifth Holy Grail War, Caster sets her plans into motion, beginning with the capture of Shirou's Servant Saber. With the witch growing ever more powerful, Rin and Archer determine she is a threat that must be dealt with at once. But as the balance of power in the war begins to shift, the Master and Servant find themselves walking separate ways. -- -- Meanwhile, despite losing his Servant and stumbling from injuries, Shirou ignores Rin's warning to abandon the battle royale, forcing his way into the fight against Caster. Determined to show his resolve in his will to fight, Shirou's potential to become a protector of the people is put to the test. -- -- Amidst the bloodshed and chaos, the motivations of each Master and Servant are slowly revealed as they sacrifice everything in order to arise as the victor and claim the Holy Grail. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 636,899 8.33
Fire Emblem -- -- Studio Fantasia -- 2 eps -- Game -- Action Adventure Fantasy Magic Shounen -- Fire Emblem Fire Emblem -- The Kingdoms of Dolhr, Grust, and Gra band together to wage war on the rest of the continent Archanea and defeat the Kingdom of Altea. King Cornelius is slain in battle but his son Prince Marth is able to escape the invasion thanks to the sacrifice of his older sister Elice. He and a small group of retainers find refuge on the island nation of Talys, where they spend the next three years in hiding under the royal family's protection. -- -- Marth lives a peaceful life in Talys, enjoying the beauty of the island and the friendship of its pegasus-riding princess, Caeda. But he is uneasy, knowing soon the day will come that he must take up arms. That day arrives when Caeda comes to Marth and his retainers in a panic, telling him that the castle town has been attacked. After some close calls, they manage to defeat the assailants and save the city. -- -- Realizing that his presence may bring further danger to his new home, Marth decides that now is the time to set off. He journeys to raise an army with which to reclaim his kingdom. -- -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films -- OVA - Jan 26, 1996 -- 10,977 5.64
Fullmetal Alchemist -- -- Bones -- 51 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Magic Military Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist Fullmetal Alchemist -- Edward Elric, a young, brilliant alchemist, has lost much in his twelve-year life: when he and his brother Alphonse try to resurrect their dead mother through the forbidden act of human transmutation, Edward loses his brother as well as two of his limbs. With his supreme alchemy skills, Edward binds Alphonse's soul to a large suit of armor. -- -- A year later, Edward, now promoted to the fullmetal alchemist of the state, embarks on a journey with his younger brother to obtain the Philosopher's Stone. The fabled mythical object is rumored to be capable of amplifying an alchemist's abilities by leaps and bounds, thus allowing them to override the fundamental law of alchemy: to gain something, an alchemist must sacrifice something of equal value. Edward hopes to draw into the military's resources to find the fabled stone and restore his and Alphonse's bodies to normal. However, the Elric brothers soon discover that there is more to the legendary stone than meets the eye, as they are led to the epicenter of a far darker battle than they could have ever imagined. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America, Funimation -- 1,197,219 8.15
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood -- -- Bones -- 64 eps -- Manga -- Action Military Adventure Comedy Drama Magic Fantasy Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood -- "In order for something to be obtained, something of equal value must be lost." -- -- Alchemy is bound by this Law of Equivalent Exchange—something the young brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric only realize after attempting human transmutation: the one forbidden act of alchemy. They pay a terrible price for their transgression—Edward loses his left leg, Alphonse his physical body. It is only by the desperate sacrifice of Edward's right arm that he is able to affix Alphonse's soul to a suit of armor. Devastated and alone, it is the hope that they would both eventually return to their original bodies that gives Edward the inspiration to obtain metal limbs called "automail" and become a state alchemist, the Fullmetal Alchemist. -- -- Three years of searching later, the brothers seek the Philosopher's Stone, a mythical relic that allows an alchemist to overcome the Law of Equivalent Exchange. Even with military allies Colonel Roy Mustang, Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye, and Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes on their side, the brothers find themselves caught up in a nationwide conspiracy that leads them not only to the true nature of the elusive Philosopher's Stone, but their country's murky history as well. In between finding a serial killer and racing against time, Edward and Alphonse must ask themselves if what they are doing will make them human again... or take away their humanity. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America, Funimation -- 2,372,958 9.18
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa -- -- Bones -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Military Comedy Historical Drama Fantasy Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa -- In desperation, Edward Elric sacrificed his body and soul to rescue his brother Alphonse, and is now displaced in the heart of Munich, Germany. He struggles to adapt to a world completely foreign to him in the wake of the economic crisis that followed the end of World War I. Isolated and unable to return home with his alchemy skills, Edward continues to research other methods of escaping the prison alongside colleagues who bear striking resemblances to many of the people he left behind. As dissent brews among the German citizenry, its neighbors also feel the unrest of the humiliated nation. -- -- Meanwhile, Alphonse continues to investigate Edward's disappearance, delving into the science of alchemy in the hopes of finally reuniting with his older brother. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Movie - Jul 23, 2005 -- 285,281 7.56
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa -- -- Bones -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Military Comedy Historical Drama Fantasy Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa -- In desperation, Edward Elric sacrificed his body and soul to rescue his brother Alphonse, and is now displaced in the heart of Munich, Germany. He struggles to adapt to a world completely foreign to him in the wake of the economic crisis that followed the end of World War I. Isolated and unable to return home with his alchemy skills, Edward continues to research other methods of escaping the prison alongside colleagues who bear striking resemblances to many of the people he left behind. As dissent brews among the German citizenry, its neighbors also feel the unrest of the humiliated nation. -- -- Meanwhile, Alphonse continues to investigate Edward's disappearance, delving into the science of alchemy in the hopes of finally reuniting with his older brother. -- -- Movie - Jul 23, 2005 -- 285,281 7.56
Fuyu no Semi -- -- Venet -- 3 eps -- Manga -- Drama Historical Romance Samurai Yaoi -- Fuyu no Semi Fuyu no Semi -- If time did not allow ordinary things to be ordinary. How would you have lived? -- -- It is the Bakumatsu and early Meiji Period. Akizuki Keiichirou and Kusaka Touma stand of opposite sides of the political scale of the time but still, something as fragile as the shell of a cicada binds these two men together in a tragic and cruel fate. A story of friendship, love and seperation as well as reunion and sacrifice. -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- -- Licensor: -- Kitty Media, Media Blasters -- OVA - Feb 23, 2007 -- 18,544 7.51
Ginga Hyouryuu Vifam -- -- Sunrise -- 46 eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Adventure Space Mecha -- Ginga Hyouryuu Vifam Ginga Hyouryuu Vifam -- AD. 2058, on the Clayad which was the 3rd planet of the Ypserlon system, which was 43 light years away from Earth, suddently aliens raided the planet.The emigrants on the Clayad had to escape from the planet. Because of the confusion during the escape, the children were strayed from their parents and got in the training space ship, Janous. With a lot of sacrifices, they managed to arrive at 4th planet Belwick. However, the Belwick had been already in the war. Therefore, the 13 children had to go to the Earth by themselves. -- -- (Source: AnimeNfo) -- TV - Oct 21, 1983 -- 3,077 7.10
Hataraku Maou-sama! 2nd Season -- -- - -- ? eps -- Light novel -- Comedy Demons Supernatural Romance Fantasy -- Hataraku Maou-sama! 2nd Season Hataraku Maou-sama! 2nd Season -- Second season of Hataraku Maou-sama! -- TV - ??? ??, ???? -- 98,137 N/A -- -- Cardcaptor Sakura Movie 2: Fuuin Sareta Card -- -- Madhouse -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Comedy Drama Fantasy Magic Romance Shoujo -- Cardcaptor Sakura Movie 2: Fuuin Sareta Card Cardcaptor Sakura Movie 2: Fuuin Sareta Card -- For this year's Nadeshiko Festival, Sakura Kinomoto's elementary school class is presenting a play. She will portray a princess who struggles to respond to the love confession of the neighboring country's prince. Sakura empathizes with her character all too well, since she herself still owes an answer to the boy who confessed his love for her four months ago. -- -- When cousins Shaoran and Meiling Li return from Hong Kong to pay a surprise visit to their friends in Japan, Sakura receives further encouragement to finally declare her feelings. However, she is repeatedly distracted by a presence reminiscent of a Clow Card as well as unexplained disappearances around town. -- -- Eventually, Sakura learns of another of Clow Reed's creations—the "Nothing"—which was formerly sealed away beneath the magician's old house. It has power equal to all 52 cards Sakura possesses, and furthermore, it wants to take those cards away from her! Objects, space, and people disappear from Tomoeda with each card that is stolen. Sakura sets out to capture the Nothing so everything will return to normal, but what must she sacrifice in the process? -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media, Geneon Entertainment USA, Nelvana -- Movie - Jul 15, 2000 -- 97,928 8.22
Kikou Ryohei Mellowlink -- -- Sunrise -- 12 eps -- Original -- Action Mecha Military Sci-Fi -- Kikou Ryohei Mellowlink Kikou Ryohei Mellowlink -- As the sole survivor from a squad that was sacrificed and hung out as scapegoats for embezzlement of military resources at the end of the 100 years war, Mellowlink Arity is out for revenge. -- -- Carrying the dogtags of his deceased comrades and armed with a dated anti AT rifle, he swears to hunt down and exact revenge on the corrupt officers that betrayed his squad, and maybe even uncover the truth behind the plot as well. -- OVA - Nov 21, 1988 -- 7,376 7.12
Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - Nanika wo Suru Tame ni - Life Goes On. -- -- A.C.G.T. -- 1 ep -- Light novel -- Adventure Drama Fantasy -- Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - Nanika wo Suru Tame ni - Life Goes On. Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - Nanika wo Suru Tame ni - Life Goes On. -- After running away from the grim future that awaited her back in her home country, a young girl takes upon a new name and identity—inspired by the man who sacrificed his life to help her escape. Alongside her newfound companion, a talking motorcycle, the two find themselves a new home in the forest—where lives an elderly woman with an expertise in guns. Under the woman's care, the girl is trained in marksmanship and motorcycle handling among other various skills needed to survive. -- -- Although the girl is happy with her current life, her guilt regarding her savior's death continues to build within herself. She still feels responsible for her savior's death, and considers the consequences of using his name as her own. In doing so, she is denying her own identity and existence by trying to replicate another person's life, instead of living her own. -- -- Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - Nanika wo Suru Tame ni - Life Goes On. follows the journey of a young girl as she begins to come to terms with her new identity. -- -- Movie - Feb 19, 2005 -- 47,709 7.78
Loveless -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Mystery Supernatural Drama Romance Fantasy Josei Shounen Ai -- Loveless Loveless -- In the world of Loveless, each person is born with cat ears and a tail, which disappear only if that person engages in a sexual intercourse. Because of this, they have come to symbolize virginity and innocence. Additionally, fighting is only done by "fighting pairs" or couples, where one is known as the Sacrifice and the other as the Fighter. The first receives the damage while the latter attacks. -- -- Ritsuka Aoyagi is a 12-year-old boy, who for some unknown reason suffers from amnesia. His brother got killed recently, and as if his life has not been hard enough lately, on his first day at the new school he gets approached by a stranger called Agatsuma Soubi, who claims to have known his late brother. Ritsuka finds out that Agatsuma and his brother used to be a fighting pair, and that Agatsuma has inherited Ritsuga now that his brother is gone. Together, they try to find the truth behind his brother's death and the organization known as the "Seven Moons," which may have been responsible for it. All the while, it seems that Ritsuka and Agatsuma are becoming closer than they intended to be… -- -- Licensor: -- Media Blasters -- TV - Apr 7, 2005 -- 123,001 6.84
Loveless -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Mystery Supernatural Drama Romance Fantasy Josei Shounen Ai -- Loveless Loveless -- In the world of Loveless, each person is born with cat ears and a tail, which disappear only if that person engages in a sexual intercourse. Because of this, they have come to symbolize virginity and innocence. Additionally, fighting is only done by "fighting pairs" or couples, where one is known as the Sacrifice and the other as the Fighter. The first receives the damage while the latter attacks. -- -- Ritsuka Aoyagi is a 12-year-old boy, who for some unknown reason suffers from amnesia. His brother got killed recently, and as if his life has not been hard enough lately, on his first day at the new school he gets approached by a stranger called Agatsuma Soubi, who claims to have known his late brother. Ritsuka finds out that Agatsuma and his brother used to be a fighting pair, and that Agatsuma has inherited Ritsuga now that his brother is gone. Together, they try to find the truth behind his brother's death and the organization known as the "Seven Moons," which may have been responsible for it. All the while, it seems that Ritsuka and Agatsuma are becoming closer than they intended to be… -- TV - Apr 7, 2005 -- 123,001 6.84
Made in Abyss Movie 3: Fukaki Tamashii no Reimei -- -- Kinema Citrus -- 1 ep -- Web manga -- Sci-Fi Adventure Mystery Drama Fantasy -- Made in Abyss Movie 3: Fukaki Tamashii no Reimei Made in Abyss Movie 3: Fukaki Tamashii no Reimei -- Continuing their perilous descent down the Abyss, Riko, Regu, and newfound friend Nanachi reach the Abyss' fifth layer, The Sea of Corpses. Upon arriving at the research station known as Idofront, the main trio encounter the mysterious Prushka, the alleged daughter of Bondrewd, who leads them to the White Whistle responsible for Nanachi's dark past. Despite the welcoming appearances of Idofront's residents, Nanachi warns the young adventurers that things are not always what they seem. With the only route to the sixth layer shrouded in mystery and Bonedrewd's schemes awaiting them, what sacrifices must be made in order to continue the journey down to the bottom of the Abyss? -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- Movie - Jan 17, 2020 -- 233,635 8.73
Made in Abyss Movie 3: Fukaki Tamashii no Reimei -- -- Kinema Citrus -- 1 ep -- Web manga -- Sci-Fi Adventure Mystery Drama Fantasy -- Made in Abyss Movie 3: Fukaki Tamashii no Reimei Made in Abyss Movie 3: Fukaki Tamashii no Reimei -- Continuing their perilous descent down the Abyss, Riko, Regu, and newfound friend Nanachi reach the Abyss' fifth layer, The Sea of Corpses. Upon arriving at the research station known as Idofront, the main trio encounter the mysterious Prushka, the alleged daughter of Bondrewd, who leads them to the White Whistle responsible for Nanachi's dark past. Despite the welcoming appearances of Idofront's residents, Nanachi warns the young adventurers that things are not always what they seem. With the only route to the sixth layer shrouded in mystery and Bonedrewd's schemes awaiting them, what sacrifices must be made in order to continue the journey down to the bottom of the Abyss? -- -- Movie - Jan 17, 2020 -- 233,635 8.73
Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei -- -- Connect -- ? eps -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Magic Fantasy -- Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei -- A century has passed since magic—true magic, the stuff of legends—has returned to the world. It is spring, the season of new beginnings, and a new class of students is about to begin their studies at the First National Magic University Affiliated High School, nickname: First High. -- -- A manga spin-off of the immensely popular light novel series Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei (The Irregular at Magic High School), Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei (The Honor Student at Magic High School) follows the events of the original series as seen through the eyes of Miyuki Shiba, Tatsuya's sister. The life of an honor student comes with a lot of expectations...and unexpected hidden feelings?! -- -- (Source: Yen Press, edited) -- TV - Jul ??, 2021 -- 34,380 N/A -- -- Saint Seiya: Meiou Hades Elysion-hen -- -- Toei Animation -- 6 eps -- Manga -- Action Fantasy Shounen Super Power -- Saint Seiya: Meiou Hades Elysion-hen Saint Seiya: Meiou Hades Elysion-hen -- After the 12 Gold Saints sacrifice their lives to destroy the Wailing Wall, The Bronze Saints enter the deepest realm of the Underworld, Elysion, where they face off aganist Hades's two most powerful servants: The Twin Gods, Hypnos and Thanatos, before they can reach Hades for the final battle. -- OVA - Mar 7, 2008 -- 34,233 7.59
Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e -- -- SILVER LINK. -- 13 eps -- Light novel -- Action Demons Magic Fantasy School -- Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e -- In the distant past, a war between humans and demons brought about widespread chaos and bloodshed. To put an end to this seemingly endless conflict, Demon King Anos Voldigoad willingly sacrificed his life, hoping to be reborn in a peaceful future. -- -- In preparation for their king's return, the demon race created the Demon King Academy, an elite institution tasked with determining Anos' identity when he reawakens. He reincarnates two millennia later, but to his surprise, he soon learns that the level of magic in the world has drastically waned during his absence. Moreover, when he enrolls at the academy to reclaim his rightful title, he finds out that demonkind remembers him differently. His personality, his deeds, and even his legacy are all falsified—masked beneath the name of an impostor. This "lack" of common knowledge renders him the academy's outlier—a misfit never before seen in history. -- -- Despite these drawbacks, Anos remains unfazed. As he sets out to uncover those altering his glorious past, he takes it upon himself to make his descendants recognize that their ruler has finally returned. -- -- 402,347 7.33
Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e -- -- SILVER LINK. -- 13 eps -- Light novel -- Action Demons Magic Fantasy School -- Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e -- In the distant past, a war between humans and demons brought about widespread chaos and bloodshed. To put an end to this seemingly endless conflict, Demon King Anos Voldigoad willingly sacrificed his life, hoping to be reborn in a peaceful future. -- -- In preparation for their king's return, the demon race created the Demon King Academy, an elite institution tasked with determining Anos' identity when he reawakens. He reincarnates two millennia later, but to his surprise, he soon learns that the level of magic in the world has drastically waned during his absence. Moreover, when he enrolls at the academy to reclaim his rightful title, he finds out that demonkind remembers him differently. His personality, his deeds, and even his legacy are all falsified—masked beneath the name of an impostor. This "lack" of common knowledge renders him the academy's outlier—a misfit never before seen in history. -- -- Despite these drawbacks, Anos remains unfazed. As he sets out to uncover those altering his glorious past, he takes it upon himself to make his descendants recognize that their ruler has finally returned. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 402,347 7.33
Mobile Suit Gundam 00 The Movie: A Wakening of the Trailblazer -- -- Sunrise -- 1 ep -- Original -- Action Mecha Sci-Fi Space -- Mobile Suit Gundam 00 The Movie: A Wakening of the Trailblazer Mobile Suit Gundam 00 The Movie: A Wakening of the Trailblazer -- In the year 2314 AD, the world is at peace. Thanks to the sacrifices of Celestial Being and its mobile suit pilots, the people of Earth experience a time of prosperity and unity, enjoying tranquil lives once thought impossible. Celestial Being, an organization once painted as villains by the Earth Sphere Federation, now exists in public perception as a group of heroes, celebrated in film and culture. -- -- When an extraterrestrial threat arrives on Earth, threatening the newly acquired calm stasis, Celestial Being springs back into action. Led by ace pilot Setsuna F. Seiei, the Gundam Meisters of the group battle the hostile alien forces, teaming up with old rivals to protect the human race from certain doom. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment -- Movie - Sep 18, 2010 -- 53,047 7.31
Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt -- -- Sunrise -- 4 eps -- Manga -- Action Military Sci-Fi Space Drama Mecha -- Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt -- In Universal Century 0079, forces of the Earth Federation and Principality of Zeon engage in a battle within the Thunderbolt Sector during the One Year War. This section of space—known for its constant strikes of electricity—proves to be a deadly battlefield, as Federation pilot Io Fleming leads a charge against Zeon's ace Daryl Lorenz and his squad of snipers. With the fighters on both sides proving to be formidable soldiers, neither side is willing to back down, fighting strategically amongst the remnants of colonies. -- -- But when Io gets a hold of a prototype Gundam, Daryl will have to make a sacrifice in order to obtain enough power to crush his enemy and ensure that Zeon is victorious, or watch as his comrades are slaughtered by a single man. -- -- ONA - Dec 25, 2015 -- 41,056 7.93
Muramasa -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Historical Horror Martial Arts Samurai -- Muramasa Muramasa -- "A man with arms which can kill people like puppets is not aware that he himself has already become a puppet." In this short hand-drawn silent animation, a wandering samurai learns this lesson firsthand. -- -- Along his travels, the samurai comes across a straw dummy at the base of a tree, with a sword lodged in its body. Upon drawing it out, the samurai learns that the blade is imbued with magic, and immensely powerful. The power comes at a price, though, and wielding the blade begins to slowly drive the warrior mad. He now has a choice to make: remain himself, or sacrifice his sanity for ultimate power? -- Movie - Aug 21, 1987 -- 4,605 6.20
Naruto -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 220 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Super Power Martial Arts Shounen -- Naruto Naruto -- Moments prior to Naruto Uzumaki's birth, a huge demon known as the Kyuubi, the Nine-Tailed Fox, attacked Konohagakure, the Hidden Leaf Village, and wreaked havoc. In order to put an end to the Kyuubi's rampage, the leader of the village, the Fourth Hokage, sacrificed his life and sealed the monstrous beast inside the newborn Naruto. -- -- Now, Naruto is a hyperactive and knuckle-headed ninja still living in Konohagakure. Shunned because of the Kyuubi inside him, Naruto struggles to find his place in the village, while his burning desire to become the Hokage of Konohagakure leads him not only to some great new friends, but also some deadly foes. -- -- -- Licensor: -- VIZ Media -- 1,972,081 7.92
Pokemon Movie 08: Mew to Hadou no Yuusha Lucario -- -- OLM -- 1 ep -- Game -- Action Adventure Kids Drama Fantasy -- Pokemon Movie 08: Mew to Hadou no Yuusha Lucario Pokemon Movie 08: Mew to Hadou no Yuusha Lucario -- A long time ago, the people of Camaron Palace found themselves on the brink of destruction. Fortunately, they escaped it when Sir Aaron, the True Guardian of Aura, saved them. He sacrificed himself to stop a war between kingdoms. From that day on, a tournament is held every year to commemorate his noble deed. -- -- Satoshi, a budding Pokemon trainer from Kanto, manages to win the latest tournament and is allowed to wield a staff said to have belonged to Sir Aaron himself. Lucario, the Aura Pokemon—who is also the servant of the True Guardian—emerges from the staff. However, remembering his last memory of his master abandoning him, Lucario runs away in confusion. -- -- Meanwhile, Pikachu, Satoshi's companion, is abruptly taken by a Pokemon named Mew to the legendary Tree of Beginning. Only Lucario knows the way there, but he is unwilling to trust humans after his master's betrayal. Even so, to save his partner, Satoshi and his companions must acquire all the help they need and travel to the Tree of Beginning, unfolding hidden truths from centuries ago. -- -- -- Licensor: -- 4Kids Entertainment, VIZ Media -- Movie - Jul 16, 2005 -- 91,291 7.30
Pokemon Movie 08: Mew to Hadou no Yuusha Lucario -- -- OLM -- 1 ep -- Game -- Action Adventure Kids Drama Fantasy -- Pokemon Movie 08: Mew to Hadou no Yuusha Lucario Pokemon Movie 08: Mew to Hadou no Yuusha Lucario -- A long time ago, the people of Camaron Palace found themselves on the brink of destruction. Fortunately, they escaped it when Sir Aaron, the True Guardian of Aura, saved them. He sacrificed himself to stop a war between kingdoms. From that day on, a tournament is held every year to commemorate his noble deed. -- -- Satoshi, a budding Pokemon trainer from Kanto, manages to win the latest tournament and is allowed to wield a staff said to have belonged to Sir Aaron himself. Lucario, the Aura Pokemon—who is also the servant of the True Guardian—emerges from the staff. However, remembering his last memory of his master abandoning him, Lucario runs away in confusion. -- -- Meanwhile, Pikachu, Satoshi's companion, is abruptly taken by a Pokemon named Mew to the legendary Tree of Beginning. Only Lucario knows the way there, but he is unwilling to trust humans after his master's betrayal. Even so, to save his partner, Satoshi and his companions must acquire all the help they need and travel to the Tree of Beginning, unfolding hidden truths from centuries ago. -- -- Movie - Jul 16, 2005 -- 91,291 7.30
Pupa -- -- Studio Deen -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Fantasy Horror Psychological -- Pupa Pupa -- Abandoned by their abusive parents and with only each other to depend on, siblings Utsutsu and Yume Hasegawa find themselves led astray by beautiful red butterflies that have appeared in their world. Unbeknownst to them, these crimson winged heralds trumpet the beginning of a cannibalistic nightmare—a mysterious virus known as Pupa is about to hatch. -- -- After succumbing to the full effects of Pupa, Yume undergoes a grotesque metamorphosis into a monstrous creature with an insatiable desire for flesh; Utsutsu, on the other hand, is only partially affected, gaining remarkable regenerative powers instead. Reaffirming the resolve to keep the promise he made to himself years ago, Utsutsu is willing to sacrifice everything in order to always be there for his precious little sister. -- -- Pupa tells the story of a loving brother's desperate struggles to save his sister while protecting the world from her uncontrollable hunger. -- -- 154,549 3.39
Saint Seiya: Meiou Hades Elysion-hen -- -- Toei Animation -- 6 eps -- Manga -- Action Fantasy Shounen Super Power -- Saint Seiya: Meiou Hades Elysion-hen Saint Seiya: Meiou Hades Elysion-hen -- After the 12 Gold Saints sacrifice their lives to destroy the Wailing Wall, The Bronze Saints enter the deepest realm of the Underworld, Elysion, where they face off aganist Hades's two most powerful servants: The Twin Gods, Hypnos and Thanatos, before they can reach Hades for the final battle. -- OVA - Mar 7, 2008 -- 34,233 7.59
Seirei no Moribito -- -- Production I.G -- 26 eps -- Novel -- Action Adventure Historical Fantasy -- Seirei no Moribito Seirei no Moribito -- On the precipice of a cataclysmic drought, the Star Readers of the Shin Yogo Empire must devise a plan to avoid widespread famine. It is written in ancient myths that the first emperor, along with eight warriors, slew a water demon to avoid a great drought and save the land that was to become Shin Yogo. If a water demon was to appear once more, its death could bring salvation. However, the water demon manifests itself within the body of the emperor's son, Prince Chagum—by the emperor's order, Chagum is to be sacrificed to save the empire. -- -- Meanwhile, a mysterious spear-wielding mercenary named Balsa arrives in Shin Yogo on business. After saving Chagum from a thinly veiled assassination attempt, she is tasked by Chagum's mother to protect him from the emperor and his hunters. Bound by a sacred vow she once made, Balsa accepts. -- -- Seirei no Moribito follows Balsa as she embarks on her journey to protect Chagum, exploring the beauty of life, nature, family, and the bonds that form between strangers. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Geneon Entertainment USA, Media Blasters, Sentai Filmworks, VIZ Media -- 181,438 8.16
Senki Zesshou Symphogear -- -- Encourage Films, Satelight -- 13 eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Music -- Senki Zesshou Symphogear Senki Zesshou Symphogear -- Tsubasa Kazanari and Kanade Amou—the idol duo known as Zwei Wing—use their songs to power ancient weapons known as "symphogears" to combat a deadly alien race called the "Noise." While the general public is aware of the Noise's existence, knowledge of the symphogears are kept a secret. When the Noise attack one of Zwei Wing's concerts, Kanade sacrifices herself to protect a young girl named Hibiki Tachibana, leaving Tsubasa devastated and a fragment of her symphogear embedded within Hibiki. -- -- Two years pass and Hibiki is once again dragged into a Noise attack. While rescuing a young girl who has been left behind during the evacuation, she awakens the power of Kanade's symphogear lying within her. Although Tsubasa still grieves over the loss of Kanade, both girls must now learn to work together using their powers to defend humanity against the Noise. -- -- 97,499 7.02
Senki Zesshou Symphogear -- -- Encourage Films, Satelight -- 13 eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Music -- Senki Zesshou Symphogear Senki Zesshou Symphogear -- Tsubasa Kazanari and Kanade Amou—the idol duo known as Zwei Wing—use their songs to power ancient weapons known as "symphogears" to combat a deadly alien race called the "Noise." While the general public is aware of the Noise's existence, knowledge of the symphogears are kept a secret. When the Noise attack one of Zwei Wing's concerts, Kanade sacrifices herself to protect a young girl named Hibiki Tachibana, leaving Tsubasa devastated and a fragment of her symphogear embedded within Hibiki. -- -- Two years pass and Hibiki is once again dragged into a Noise attack. While rescuing a young girl who has been left behind during the evacuation, she awakens the power of Kanade's symphogear lying within her. Although Tsubasa still grieves over the loss of Kanade, both girls must now learn to work together using their powers to defend humanity against the Noise. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- 97,499 7.02
Senki Zesshou Symphogear GX -- -- Satelight -- 13 eps -- Original -- Action Music Sci-Fi -- Senki Zesshou Symphogear GX Senki Zesshou Symphogear GX -- Following the events of Senki Zesshou Symphogear G, Hibiki Tachibana, Tsubasa Kazanari, and Chris Yukine continue to operate under the command of Genjuurou Kazanari. Meanwhile, Maria Cadenzavna Eve, Kirika Akatsuki, and Shirabe Tsukuyomi are taken into protective custody. With peace restored, everyone returns to their daily lives; however, the appearance of the alchemist Carol Malus Dienheim and her subordinates—the "Autoscorers"—threatens to draw everyone back into a conflict. -- -- Armed with a strange and magical power, Carol wishes to initiate the apocalypse and bring destruction to the world... and she is willing to sacrifice everything to do so. Against this mysterious new foe, the six Symphogear wielders must rise to the challenge in order to protect what they hold dear. However, will Carol and her Autoscorers prove to be too much to handle in this fight to protect the fate of the world? -- -- 38,803 7.42
Shingeki no Kyojin Season 3 Part 2 -- -- Wit Studio -- 10 eps -- Manga -- Action Drama Fantasy Military Mystery Shounen Super Power -- Shingeki no Kyojin Season 3 Part 2 Shingeki no Kyojin Season 3 Part 2 -- Seeking to restore humanity's diminishing hope, the Survey Corps embark on a mission to retake Wall Maria, where the battle against the merciless "Titans" takes the stage once again. -- -- Returning to the tattered Shiganshina District that was once his home, Eren Yeager and the Corps find the town oddly unoccupied by Titans. Even after the outer gate is plugged, they strangely encounter no opposition. The mission progresses smoothly until Armin Arlert, highly suspicious of the enemy's absence, discovers distressing signs of a potential scheme against them. -- -- Shingeki no Kyojin Season 3 Part 2 follows Eren as he vows to take back everything that was once his. Alongside him, the Survey Corps strive—through countless sacrifices—to carve a path towards victory and uncover the secrets locked away in the Yeager family's basement. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 1,244,399 9.11
Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii Desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii Desu ka? -- -- C2C, Satelight -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Sci-Fi Drama Romance Fantasy -- Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii Desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii Desu ka? Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii Desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii Desu ka? -- Putting his life on the line, Willem Kmetsch leaves his loved ones behind and sets out to battle a mysterious monster, and even though he is victorious, he is rendered frozen in ice. It is during his icy slumber that terrifying creatures known as "Beasts" emerge on the Earth's surface and threaten humanity's existence. Willem awakens 500 years later, only to find himself the sole survivor of his race as mankind is wiped out. -- -- Together with the other surviving races, Willem takes refuge on the floating islands in the sky, living in fear of the Beasts below. He lives a life of loneliness and only does odd jobs to get by. One day, he is tasked with being a weapon storehouse caretaker. Thinking nothing of it, Willem accepts, but he soon realizes that these weapons are actually a group of young Leprechauns. Though they bear every resemblance to humans, they have no regard for their own lives, identifying themselves as mere weapons of war. Among them is Chtholly Nota Seniorious, who is more than willing to sacrifice herself if it means defeating the Beasts and ensuring peace. -- -- Willem becomes something of a father figure for the young Leprechauns, watching over them fondly and supporting them in any way he can. He, who once fought so bravely on the frontlines, can now only hope that the ones being sent to battle return safely from the monsters that destroyed his kind. -- -- 288,264 7.71
Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii Desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii Desu ka? -- -- C2C, Satelight -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Sci-Fi Drama Romance Fantasy -- Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii Desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii Desu ka? Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii Desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii Desu ka? -- Putting his life on the line, Willem Kmetsch leaves his loved ones behind and sets out to battle a mysterious monster, and even though he is victorious, he is rendered frozen in ice. It is during his icy slumber that terrifying creatures known as "Beasts" emerge on the Earth's surface and threaten humanity's existence. Willem awakens 500 years later, only to find himself the sole survivor of his race as mankind is wiped out. -- -- Together with the other surviving races, Willem takes refuge on the floating islands in the sky, living in fear of the Beasts below. He lives a life of loneliness and only does odd jobs to get by. One day, he is tasked with being a weapon storehouse caretaker. Thinking nothing of it, Willem accepts, but he soon realizes that these weapons are actually a group of young Leprechauns. Though they bear every resemblance to humans, they have no regard for their own lives, identifying themselves as mere weapons of war. Among them is Chtholly Nota Seniorious, who is more than willing to sacrifice herself if it means defeating the Beasts and ensuring peace. -- -- Willem becomes something of a father figure for the young Leprechauns, watching over them fondly and supporting them in any way he can. He, who once fought so bravely on the frontlines, can now only hope that the ones being sent to battle return safely from the monsters that destroyed his kind. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 286,923 7.71
Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii Desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii Desu ka? -- -- C2C, Satelight -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Sci-Fi Drama Romance Fantasy -- Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii Desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii Desu ka? Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii Desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii Desu ka? -- Putting his life on the line, Willem Kmetsch leaves his loved ones behind and sets out to battle a mysterious monster, and even though he is victorious, he is rendered frozen in ice. It is during his icy slumber that terrifying creatures known as "Beasts" emerge on the Earth's surface and threaten humanity's existence. Willem awakens 500 years later, only to find himself the sole survivor of his race as mankind is wiped out. -- -- Together with the other surviving races, Willem takes refuge on the floating islands in the sky, living in fear of the Beasts below. He lives a life of loneliness and only does odd jobs to get by. One day, he is tasked with being a weapon storehouse caretaker. Thinking nothing of it, Willem accepts, but he soon realizes that these weapons are actually a group of young Leprechauns. Though they bear every resemblance to humans, they have no regard for their own lives, identifying themselves as mere weapons of war. Among them is Chtholly Nota Seniorious, who is more than willing to sacrifice herself if it means defeating the Beasts and ensuring peace. -- -- Willem becomes something of a father figure for the young Leprechauns, watching over them fondly and supporting them in any way he can. He, who once fought so bravely on the frontlines, can now only hope that the ones being sent to battle return safely from the monsters that destroyed his kind. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 288,264 7.71
Tears to Tiara -- -- White Fox -- 26 eps -- Visual novel -- Action Adventure Fantasy Magic -- Tears to Tiara Tears to Tiara -- As the Holy Empire rises to power, the neighboring lands begin to gradually fall under its control. The Empire's conquest eventually reaches the small island of Erin, home to the Gael tribe. There, a priestess named Riannon is kidnapped to be offered as a living sacrifice to the demon king Arawn, a malevolent being rumored to have caused untold destruction in the past. -- -- Riannon's brother, First Warrior Arthur, rescues her, when Arawn suddenly materializes before them as a handsome grey-haired man. Hiding his true identity and remaining enigmatic, Arawn pledges his power and leadership to the tribe's cause and joins Arthur, Riannon, and their merry band of friends—including a talented swordsman, an agile hunter, and a group of ecstatic pixies—as they fight back against the Empire, while uncovering the dark secrets of the land along the way. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- TV - Apr 6, 2009 -- 70,374 7.19
Touch -- -- Gallop, Group TAC, Studio Junio -- 101 eps -- Manga -- Sports Romance School Drama Slice of Life Shounen -- Touch Touch -- The story centers around three characters—Uesugi Kazuya, his twin older brother Tatsuya, and Asakura Minami. Kazuya is the darling of his town as he's talented, hardworking, and the ace pitcher for his middle school baseball team. Tatsuya is a hopeless slacker who's been living the life of giving up the spotlight to Kazuya, despite the fact that he may be more gifted than him. Minami is the beautiful childhood girlfriend and for all intents, sister from next door who treats both of them as equals. Society largely assumes Kazuya and Minami will become the perfect couple, including Tatsuya. Yet as time progresses, Tatsuya grows to realize that he's willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of his brother, except at the expense of giving up Minami to Kazuya. And thus the story is told of Tatsuya trying to prove himself over his established younger brother, how it affects the relationship between the three, and both brothers' attempts to make Minami's lifelong dreams come true. -- 27,856 8.02
Yami no Teio: Kyuuketsuki Dracula -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Other -- Vampire -- Yami no Teio: Kyuuketsuki Dracula Yami no Teio: Kyuuketsuki Dracula -- On a seemingly normal night in Boston, a satanic ritual is taking place: a bride is to be offered up as a sacrifice. However, Dracula, the King of Vampires, swoops in and steals her, with the intent of depriving the woman of both her blood and her life. And yet, despite his earlier motives for abducting the bride, Dracula is astonished by her beauty and decides to keep the woman as his wife. -- -- He and Domini, his spouse, lead a fruitful life together, bearing a healthy son by the name of Janus, with Dracula's crime against Satan fading from memory. On the other hand, Satan hasn't forgiven him for stealing his rightful bride and is plotting to ruin his happiness when the time is right. Another group, the Vampire Hunters, similarly wish to destroy Dracula as vengeance for the souls he has taken to feed himself. -- -- Now carrying the burden of a family, Dracula must protect himself from Satan's plots as well as from the vengeful Vampire Hunters in a desperate fight for survival and forbidden love. -- -- Special - Aug 19, 1980 -- 3,030 3.80
Yuu☆Yuu☆Hakusho -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 112 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Demons Supernatural Martial Arts Shounen -- Yuu☆Yuu☆Hakusho Yuu☆Yuu☆Hakusho -- One fateful day, Yuusuke Urameshi, a 14-year-old delinquent with a dim future, gets a miraculous chance to turn it all around when he throws himself in front of a moving car to save a young boy. His ultimate sacrifice is so out of character that the authorities of the spirit realm are not yet prepared to let him pass on. Koenma, heir to the throne of the spirit realm, offers Yuusuke an opportunity to regain his life through completion of a series of tasks. With the guidance of the death god Botan, he is to thwart evil presences on Earth as a Spirit Detective. -- -- To help him on his venture, Yuusuke enlists ex-rival Kazuma Kuwabara, and two demons, Hiei and Kurama, who have criminal pasts. Together, they train and battle against enemies who would threaten humanity's very existence. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- TV - Oct 10, 1992 -- 500,430 8.45
Zero no Tsukaima: Princesses no Rondo -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Harem Comedy Magic Romance Ecchi Fantasy School -- Zero no Tsukaima: Princesses no Rondo Zero no Tsukaima: Princesses no Rondo -- Following his brave sacrifice in the war against Albion, Saito Hiraga is knighted and treated as an aristocrat, something that proves difficult for Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière. With their relationship no longer defined as the mighty Void mage and clueless familiar, she wonders what exactly this means for them. -- -- While venturing to a castle, Louise is ambushed by a powerful mage named Sheffield. Battling alone, the young mage nearly faces defeat until Saito makes his appearance. The mystical and unknown nature of Void magic seems to be at work in the battle, and Louise begins to believe in the possibility of another Void user. Moreover, she realizes that Saito's magical rune is fading, and so a new adventure begins as they search for the elf who revived Saito in the past. The relationship between former master and servant faces a new challenge as they work to restore the runes and redefine the bond which holds them together. -- -- 377,294 7.38
Zero no Tsukaima: Princesses no Rondo -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Harem Comedy Magic Romance Ecchi Fantasy School -- Zero no Tsukaima: Princesses no Rondo Zero no Tsukaima: Princesses no Rondo -- Following his brave sacrifice in the war against Albion, Saito Hiraga is knighted and treated as an aristocrat, something that proves difficult for Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière. With their relationship no longer defined as the mighty Void mage and clueless familiar, she wonders what exactly this means for them. -- -- While venturing to a castle, Louise is ambushed by a powerful mage named Sheffield. Battling alone, the young mage nearly faces defeat until Saito makes his appearance. The mystical and unknown nature of Void magic seems to be at work in the battle, and Louise begins to believe in the possibility of another Void user. Moreover, she realizes that Saito's magical rune is fading, and so a new adventure begins as they search for the elf who revived Saito in the past. The relationship between former master and servant faces a new challenge as they work to restore the runes and redefine the bond which holds them together. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 377,294 7.38
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Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac
Ancient Egyptian retainer sacrifices
Animal sacrifice
Animal sacrifice among Nihang Sikhs
Animal sacrifice in Hinduism
Blt: Sacrifice in Sweden
Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice
Child sacrifice
Court of Imperial Sacrifices
Cross of Sacrifice
Curse III: Blood Sacrifice
Depictions of the sacrifice of Iphigenia
Esplanade of Sacrifice to the Heaven and Earth
(Flesh & Blood) Sacrifice
Greek gift sacrifice
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Holocaust (sacrifice)
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice in Aztec culture
Human sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures
Impact Wrestling Sacrifice
Intelligence and Sacrifice
Last Sacrifice
Left 4 Dead: The Sacrifice
Lenten sacrifice
List of songs recorded by Living Sacrifice
Living Sacrifice
Medal for Sacrifice and Courage
Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice
Of Truth and Sacrifice
Parish of the Holy Sacrifice
Passover sacrifice
Pawn Sacrifice
Queen sacrifice
Sacrifice
Sacrifice (2005)
Sacrifice (2006)
Sacrifice (2007)
Sacrifice (2008)
Sacrifice (2009)
Sacrifice (2010)
Sacrifice (2011)
Sacrifice (2012)
Sacrifice (2016)
Sacrifice (Angel)
Sacrifice (band)
Sacrifice bunt
Sacrifice (chess)
Sacrifice (disambiguation)
Sacrificed Women
Sacrifice fly
Sacrifice (Gary Numan album)
Sacrifice in Maya culture
Sacrifice in the Post-Kantian Tradition
Sacrifice (Motrhead album)
Sacrifice (novel)
Sacrifice of Angels
Sacrifice of Isaac (Caravaggio)
Sacrifice of the intellect
Sacrifice play
Sacrifices (album)
Sacrifices (Dreamville, EarthGang and J. Cole song)
Sacrifices of the Heart
Sacrifice (song)
Sacrifice (TV program)
Sacrifice (video game)
Sacrifice zone
Self-sacrifice in Jewish law
Self-Sacrifice National Democratic Party
Seven Sacrifices
Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice
Soul Sacrifice
Soul Sacrifice (video game)
The Advance-Guard, or The Military Sacrifice
The Final Sacrifice
The Sacrifice
The Sacrifice (2005 film)
The Sacrifice (2020 film)
The Sacrifice (Applegate novel)
The Sacrifice (Fear Itself)
The Sacrifice of Ellen Larsen
The Sacrifice of Isaac (Rembrandt)
The Sacrifices to Cupid
The Spook's Sacrifice
The Wall of Sacrifice
Turkish Armed Forces Medal of Distinguished Courage and Self-Sacrifice
Ultimate Sacrifice
Wife to Be Sacrificed
Women's Sacrifice



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