the_School
School
school
the School (notes)
the School (old)
the School (old2)
The Western Canon - The Books and School of the Ages
schooled ::: educated, trained (a person, his mind, powers, tastes, etc.); to render wise, skilful, or tractable by training or discipline.
schoolman ::: one versed in scholastic learning or engaged in scholastic pursuits.
schoolbook ::: n. --> A book used in schools for learning lessons.
schoolboy ::: n. --> A boy belonging to, or attending, a school.
schooldame ::: n. --> A schoolmistress.
schooled ::: imp. & p. p. --> of School
schoolery ::: n. --> Something taught; precepts; schooling.
schoolfellow ::: n. --> One bred at the same school; an associate in school.
schoolgirl ::: n. --> A girl belonging to, or attending, a school.
schoolhouse ::: n. --> A house appropriated for the use of a school or schools, or for instruction.
schooling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of School ::: n. --> Instruction in school; tuition; education in an institution of learning; act of teaching.
Discipline; reproof; reprimand; as, he gave his son a good schooling. html{color:
schoolmaid ::: n. --> A schoolgirl.
schoolman ::: n. --> One versed in the niceties of academical disputation or of school divinity.
schoolmaster ::: n. --> The man who presides over and teaches a school; a male teacher of a school.
One who, or that which, disciplines and directs.
schoolmate ::: n. --> A pupil who attends the same school as another.
schoolmen ::: pl. --> of Schoolman
schoolmistress ::: n. --> A woman who governs and teaches a school; a female school-teacher.
schoolroom ::: n. --> A room in which pupils are taught.
school ::: n. --> A shoal; a multitude; as, a school of fish.
A place for learned intercourse and instruction; an institution for learning; an educational establishment; a place for acquiring knowledge and mental training; as, the school of the prophets.
A place of primary instruction; an establishment for the instruction of children; as, a primary school; a common school; a grammar school.
schoolship ::: n. --> A vessel employed as a nautical training school, in which naval apprentices receive their education at the expense of the state, and are trained for service as sailors. Also, a vessel used as a reform school to which boys are committed by the courts to be disciplined, and instructed as mariners.
school-teacher ::: n. --> One who teaches or instructs a school.
schoolward ::: adv. --> Toward school.
schoolbook ::: n. --> A book used in schools for learning lessons.
schoolboy ::: n. --> A boy belonging to, or attending, a school.
schooldame ::: n. --> A schoolmistress.
schooled ::: imp. & p. p. --> of School
schoolery ::: n. --> Something taught; precepts; schooling.
schoolfellow ::: n. --> One bred at the same school; an associate in school.
schoolgirl ::: n. --> A girl belonging to, or attending, a school.
schoolhouse ::: n. --> A house appropriated for the use of a school or schools, or for instruction.
schooling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of School ::: n. --> Instruction in school; tuition; education in an institution of learning; act of teaching.
Discipline; reproof; reprimand; as, he gave his son a good schooling. html{color:
schoolmaid ::: n. --> A schoolgirl.
schoolman ::: n. --> One versed in the niceties of academical disputation or of school divinity.
schoolmaster ::: n. --> The man who presides over and teaches a school; a male teacher of a school.
One who, or that which, disciplines and directs.
schoolmate ::: n. --> A pupil who attends the same school as another.
schoolmen ::: pl. --> of Schoolman
schoolmistress ::: n. --> A woman who governs and teaches a school; a female school-teacher.
schoolroom ::: n. --> A room in which pupils are taught.
school ::: n. --> A shoal; a multitude; as, a school of fish.
A place for learned intercourse and instruction; an institution for learning; an educational establishment; a place for acquiring knowledge and mental training; as, the school of the prophets.
A place of primary instruction; an establishment for the instruction of children; as, a primary school; a common school; a grammar school.
schoolship ::: n. --> A vessel employed as a nautical training school, in which naval apprentices receive their education at the expense of the state, and are trained for service as sailors. Also, a vessel used as a reform school to which boys are committed by the courts to be disciplined, and instructed as mariners.
school-teacher ::: n. --> One who teaches or instructs a school.
schoolward ::: adv. --> Toward school.
Schools of the Prophets “Schools established by Samuel for the training of the Nabiim (prophets). Their method was pursued on the same lines as that of a Chela or candidate for initiation into the occult sciences, i.e., the development of abnormal faculties or clairvoyance leading to Seership. Of such schools there were many in days of old in Palestine and Asia Minor. That the Hebrews worshipped Nebo, the Chaldean god of secret learning, is quite certain, since they adopted his name as an equivalent of Wisdom” (TG 294).
schooled ::: educated, trained (a person, his mind, powers, tastes, etc.); to render wise, skilful, or tractable by training or discipline.
schoolman ::: one versed in scholastic learning or engaged in scholastic pursuits.
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1:A school without music is like a body without a soul ~ Saint John Bosco, #KEYS
2:Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend. ~ Mao Zedong, #KEYS
3:Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it. ~ Albert Einstein, #KEYS
4:Much of the material presented in schools strikes students as alien, if not pointless. ~ Howard Gardner, #KEYS
5:The severest school of anarchism rejects all compromise with communism. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle The End of the Curve of Reason, #KEYS
6:I have realized why corrupt politicians do nothing to improve the quality of public school education. They are terrified of educated voters. ~ Miriam, #KEYS
7:Did something disappoint you?Did something sadden you?The school of life wanted to teach youan important lesson through that experience. ~ Haemin Sunim, #KEYS
8:We as economic society are going to have to pay our whole population to go to school and pay it to stay at school. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, Education Automation: Freeing the Scholar to Return to His Studie , #KEYS
9:Pain is the touch of our Mother teaching us how to bear and grow in rapture. She has three stages of her schooling, endurance first, next equality of soul, last ecstasy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human , #KEYS
10:A schoolman mind had captured life’s large space,But chose to live in bare and paltry roomsParked off from the too vast dangerous universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri 07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #KEYS
11:Are we forming children who are only capable of learning what is already known? Or should we try to develop creative and innovative minds, capable of discovery from the preschool age on, throughout life? ~ Jean Piaget, #KEYS
12:Every maker of video games knows something that the makers of curriculum don't seem to understand. You'll never see a video game being advertised as being easy. Kids who do not like school will tell you it's not because it's too hard. It's because it's--boring ~ Seymour Papert, #KEYS
13:I am convinced that the act of thinking logically cannot possibly be natural to the human mind. If it were, then mathematics would be everybody's easiest course at school and our species would not have taken several millennia to figure out the scientific method. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #KEYS
14:Everything you've learned in school as 'obvious' becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #KEYS
15:A schoolman mind had captured life’s large space,But chose to live in bare and paltry roomsParked off from the too vast dangerous universe,Fearing to lose its soul in the infinite.Even the Idea’s ample sweep was cutInto a system, chained to ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri 07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #KEYS
16:Integral theory is a school of philosophy that seeks to integrate all of human wisdom into a new, emergent worldview that is able to accommodate the gifts of all previous worldviews, including those which have been historically at odds: science and religion, Eastern and Western schools of thought, and pre-modern, modern and post-modern worldviews. ~ Daily Evolver, #KEYS
17:The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. . . . They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; - cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #KEYS
18:Student debt is structured to be a burden for life. The indebted cannot declare bankruptcy, unlike Donald Trump. Current student debt is estimated to be over $1.45 trillion. There are ample resources for that simply from waste, including the bloated military and the enormous concentrated private wealth that has accumulated in the financial and general corporate sector under neoliberal policies. There is no economic reason why free education cannot flourish from schools through colleges and university. The barriers are not economic but rather political decisions. ~ Noam Chomsky, #KEYS
19:The black magician is one who learns to manipulate these forces for selfish and destructive purposes, his own aggrandizement of the fulfillment of desire, while the white magician prays that he may learn to manipulate them as God would have them manipulated - for the salvation of the divine creation. The powers are in the hands of those capable of invoking them; it makes no difference whether for good or ill. For this reason, the schools of white magic conceal these powers from man until, through growth, purification, and unfoldment, he gains the proper incentive for using them. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics , #KEYS
20:Out of all the sciences... the ancients, in their studies, especially selected seven to be mastered by those who were to be educated. These seven they considered so to excel all the rest in usefulness that anyone who had been thoroughly schooled in them might afterward come to knowledge of the others by his own inquiry and effort rather than by listening to a teacher. For these, one might say, constitute the best instruments, the best rudiments, by which the way is prepared for the mind's complete knowledge of philosophic truth. Therefore they are called by the name trivium and quadrivium, because by them, as by certain ways (viae), a quick mind enters into the secret places of wisdom. ~ Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon , #KEYS
21:We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #KEYS
22:We cannot perceive Chaos directly, for it simultaneously contains the opposite to anything we might think it is. We can, however, occasionally glimpse and make use of partially formed matter which has only probablistic and indeterministic existence. This stuff we can call the aethers. 1wordlist AUTHORS BOOKS-INFO cats CHEATSHEETS COMMANDS d20 dc-empty define-1355 DICTIONARIES DICTIONARIES-2020-03-23 DOCS.RACKET DOCS.RACKET_W_LINKS goodreads_books_data goodreads_books_data-raw GRAMMER input.su keys keys_2020-03-29 keys_2020-06-04 keys_2020-06-05 keys_2020-06-27 keys-2020-08-14 keys-2020-10-13 keys.bak-2020-02-11 keys-bak-2020-09-14 LISTS MEDIA_LISTS MEM_AUDIO_199 most new_keys_subject_tagged new_keys_subject_tagged_html_tagged new_keys_subject_tagged_r NEWLIB PARTIAL_FORMATTED plants PROGRAMS QUOTES RESUMES sedrnS19w sss_7418_2019-12-18 style.css subjects subjects_wo_periods syn syn1 synonyms temp temp1 temp_11 test5 thedbs.zip todo twitter_full_s TWITTER-RIPS VG WEB_ADDRESSES WIKI wikit_list.su wordincarnate_SA_4500 wordincarnate_SA_clean wordincarnate_SA_clean2 WORDLIST wordlist wordlist (3rd copy) wordlist (another copy) wordlist-broken maybe wordlist-config wordlist (copy) wordlist-ru wordlist-temp wordlist-u ZZ If it makes us feel any better we can call this Chaos, the Tao, or God, and imagine it to be benevolent and human-hearted. There are two schools of thought in magic. One considers the formative agent of the universe to be random and chaotic, and the other considers that it is a force of spiritual consciousness. As they have only themselves on which to base their speculations, they are basically saying that their own natures are either random and chaotic or spiritually conscious. ~ Peter J Carroll, Miscellaneous Excerpts Part 2 , #KEYS
23:And the first of the adepts covered His shame with a cloth, walking backwards, and was white. And the second of the adepts covered his shame with a cloth, walking sideways, and was yellow. And the third of the adepts made a mock of His nakedness, walking forwards, and was black. And these are the three great schools of the Magi, who are also the three Magi that journeyed unto Bethlehem; and because thou hast not wisdom, thou shalt not know which school prevaileth, or if the three schools be not one.* 1wordlist AUTHORS BOOKS-INFO cats CHEATSHEETS COMMANDS d20 dc-empty define-1355 DICTIONARIES DICTIONARIES-2020-03-23 DOCS.RACKET DOCS.RACKET_W_LINKS goodreads_books_data goodreads_books_data-raw GRAMMER input.su keys keys_2020-03-29 keys_2020-06-04 keys_2020-06-05 keys_2020-06-27 keys-2020-08-14 keys-2020-10-13 keys.bak-2020-02-11 keys-bak-2020-09-14 LISTS MEDIA_LISTS MEM_AUDIO_199 most new_keys_subject_tagged new_keys_subject_tagged_html_tagged new_keys_subject_tagged_r NEWLIB PARTIAL_FORMATTED plants PROGRAMS QUOTES RESUMES sedrnS19w sss_7418_2019-12-18 style.css subjects subjects_wo_periods syn syn1 synonyms temp temp1 temp_11 test5 thedbs.zip todo twitter_full_s TWITTER-RIPS VG WEB_ADDRESSES WIKI wikit_list.su wordincarnate_SA_4500 wordincarnate_SA_clean wordincarnate_SA_clean2 WORDLIST wordlist wordlist (3rd copy) wordlist (another copy) wordlist-broken maybe wordlist-config wordlist (copy) wordlist-ru wordlist-temp wordlist-u ZZ This doctrine of the Three Schools is of extreme interest. Roughly, it may be said that the White is the Pure Mystic, whose attitude to God is one of reverence. The Yellow School conceals the Mysteries indeed, but examines them as it goes along. The Black School is that of pure Scepticism. We are now ready to study the philosophical bases of these three Schools. ~ Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears? 43?, #KEYS
24:Gradually a separation took place among the schools of the Mysteries. The zeal of the priests to spread their doctrines in many cases apparently exceeded their intelligence. As a result, many were allowed to enter the temples before they had really prepared themselves for the wisdom they were to receive. The result was that these untutored minds, slowly gaining positions of authority, became at last incapable of maintaining the institution because they were unable to contact the spiritual powers behind the material enterprise. So the Mystery Schools vanished. The spiritual hierarchy, served through all generations by a limited number of true and devoted followers, withdrew from the world; while the colossal material organizations, having no longer any contact with the divine source, wandered in circles, daily becoming more involved in the rituals and symbols which they had lost the power of interpreting. ~ Manly P Hall, What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples , #KEYS
25:She sets the hard inventions of her brain In a pattern of eternal fixity: Indifferent to the cosmic dumb demand, Unconscious of too close realities, Of the unspoken thought, the voiceless heart, She leans to forge her credos and iron codes And metal structures to imprison life And mechanic models of all things that are. For the world seen she weaves a world conceived: She spins in stiff but unsubstantial lines Her gossamer word-webs of abstract thought, Her segment systems of the Infinite, Her theodicies and cosmogonic charts And myths by which she explains the inexplicable. At will she spaces in thin air of mind Like maps in the school-house of intellect hung, Forcing wide Truth into a narrow scheme, Her numberless warring strict philosophies; Out of Nature's body of phenomenon She carves with Thought's keen edge in rigid lines, Like rails for the World-Magician's power to run, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri , #KEYS
26:five schools of yoga ::: For if, leaving aside the complexities of their particular processes, we fix our regard on the central principle of the chief schools of Yoga still prevalent in India, we find that they arrange themselves in an ascending order which starts from the lowest rung of the ladder, the body, and ascends to the direct contact between the individual soul and the transcendent and universal Self. Hathayoga selects the body and the vital functionings as its instruments of perfection and realisation; its concern is with the gross body. Rajayoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power; it concentrates on the subtle body. The triple Path of Works, of Love and of Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth, Beatitude and Infinity which are the nature of the spiritual life.Its method is a direct commerce between the human Purusha in the individual body and the divine Purusha who dwells in everybody and yet transcends all form and name. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, #KEYS
27:Recommended ReadingDavid Foster Wallace - Infinite JestDH Lawrence - The RainbowGabriel Garcia Marquez - Love in the Time of CholeraKarl Ove Knausgaard - My StruggleVirginia Woolf - To The LighthouseBen Lerner - The Topeka SchoolSally Rooney - Conversations With FriendsNell Zink - The WallcreeperElena Ferrante - The Days of AbandonmentJack Kerouac - Dharma BumsWalt Whitman - Leaves of GrassMichael Murphy - Golf in the KingdomBarbara Kingsolver - Prodigal SummerAlbertine Sarrazin - AstragalRebecca Solnit - The Faraway NearbyMichael Paterniti - Love and Other Ways of DyingRainer Maria Rilke - Book of HoursJames Baldwin - Another CountryRoberto Calasso - KaTranslation by S. Radhakrishan - Principle UpanisadsChogyam Trungpa - Cutting Through Spiritual MaterialismTranslation by Georg Feuerstein - Yoga SutraRichard Freeman - The Mirror of YogaTranslation by S. Radhakrishan - The Bhagavad GitaShrunyu Suzuki - Zen Mind Beginner's MindHeinrich Zimmer - Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and CivilizationSogyal Rinpoche - The Tibetan Book of Living and DyingJoseph Campbell - Myths of LightJoseph Campbell - The Hero With A Thousand FacesSri Aurobindo - SavitriThomas Meyers - Anatomy TrainsWendy Doniger - The Hindus ~ Jason Bowman, http://www.jasonbowmanyoga.com/recommended-reading , #KEYS
28:People think of education as something that they can finish. And what's more, when they finish, it's a rite of passage. You're finished with school. You're no more a child, and therefore anything that reminds you of school - reading books, having ideas, asking questions - that's kid's stuff. Now you're an adult, you don't do that sort of thing any more.You have everybody looking forward to no longer learning, and you make them ashamed afterward of going back to learning. If you have a system of education using computers, then anyone, any age, can learn by himself, can continue to be interested. If you enjoy learning, there's no reason why you should stop at a given age. People don't stop things they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age.What's exciting is the actual process of broadening yourself, of knowing there's now a little extra facet of the universe you know about and can think about and can understand. It seems to me that when it's time to die, there would be a certain pleasure in thinking that you had utilized your life well, learned as much as you could, gathered in as much as possible of the universe, and enjoyed it. There's only this one universe and only this one lifetime to try to grasp it. And while it is inconceivable that anyone can grasp more than a tiny portion of it, at least you can do that much. What a tragedy just to pass through and get nothing out of it. ~ Isaac Asimov, Carl Freedman - Conversations with Isaac Asimov-University Press of Mississippi (2005).pdf , #KEYS
29:In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is called 'the resurrection body ' and 'the glorified body.' The prophet Isaiah said, 'The dead shall live, their bodies shall rise' (Isa. 26:19). St. Paul called it 'the celestial body' or 'spiritual body ' (soma pneumatikon) (I Corinthians 15:40). In Sufism it is called 'the most sacred body ' (wujud al-aqdas) and 'supracelestial body ' (jism asli haqiqi). In Taoism, it is called 'the diamond body,' and those who have attained it are called 'the immortals' and 'the cloudwalkers.' In Tibetan Buddhism it is called 'the light body.' In Tantrism and some schools of yoga, it is called 'the vajra body,' 'the adamantine body,' and 'the divine body.' In Kriya yoga it is called 'the body of bliss.' In Vedanta it is called 'the superconductive body.' In Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, it is called 'the radiant body.' In the alchemical tradition, the Emerald Tablet calls it 'the Glory of the Whole Universe' and 'the golden body.' The alchemist Paracelsus called it 'the astral body.' In the Hermetic Corpus, it is called 'the immortal body ' (soma athanaton). In some mystery schools, it is called 'the solar body.' In Rosicrucianism, it is called 'the diamond body of the temple of God.' In ancient Egypt it was called 'the luminous body or being' (akh). In Old Persia it was called 'the indwelling divine potential' (fravashi or fravarti). In the Mithraic liturgy it was called 'the perfect body ' (soma teilion). In the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, it is called 'the divine body,' composed of supramental substance. In the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin, it is called 'the ultrahuman'. ~ , http://herebedragons.weebly.com/homo-lumen.html , #KEYS
30:science of consciousness, the soul and objective matter ::: When the ancient thinkers of India set themselves to study the soul of man in themselves and others, they, unlike any other nation or school of early thought, proceeded at once to a process which resembles exactly enough the process adopted by modern science in its study of physical phenomena. For their object was to study, arrange and utilise the forms, forces and working movements of consciousness, just as the modern physical Sciences study, arrange and utilize the forms, forces and working movements of objective Matter. The material with which they had to deal was more subtle, flexible and versatile than the most impalpable forces of which the physical Sciences have become aware; its motions were more elusive, its processes harder to fix; but once grasped and ascertained, the movements of consciousness were found by Vedic psychologists to be in their process and activity as regular, manageable and utilisable as the movements of physical forces. The powers of the soul can be as perfectly handled and as safely, methodically and puissantly directed to practical life-purposes of joy, power and light as the modern power of electricity can be used for human comfort, industrial and locomotive power and physical illumination; but the results to which they give room and effect are more wonderful and momentous than the results of motorpower and electric luminosity. For there is no difference of essential law in the physical and the psychical, but only a difference and undoubtedly a great difference of energy, instrumentation and exact process. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human Towards a True Scientific Psychology, #KEYS
31:Shastra is the knowledge and teaching laid down by intuition, experience and wisdom, the science and art and ethic of life, the best standards available to the race. The half-awakened man who leaves the observance of its rule to follow the guidance of his instincts and desires, can get pleasure but not happiness; for the inner happiness can only come by right living. He cannot move to perfection, cannot acquire the highest spiritual status. The law of instinct and desire seems to come first in the animal world, but the manhood of man grows by the pursuit of truth and religion and knowledge and a right life. The Shastra, the recognised Right that he has set up to govern his lower members by his reason and intelligent will, must therefore first be observed and made the authority for conduct and works and for what should or should not be done, till the instinctive desire nature is schooled and abated and put down by the habit of self-control and man is ready first for a freer intelligent self-guidance and then for the highest supreme law and supreme liberty of the spiritual nature. For the Shastra in its ordinary aspect is not that spiritual law, although at its loftiest point, when it becomes a science and art of spiritual living, Adhyatma-shastra, - the Gita itself describes its own teaching as the highest and most secret Shastra, - it formulates a rule of the self-transcendence of the sattwic nature and develops the discipline which leads to spiritual transmutation. Yet all Shastra is built on a number of preparatory conditions, dharmas; it is a means, not an end. The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit when abandoning all dharmas the soul turns to God for its sole law of action, acts straight from the divine will and lives in the freedom of the divine nature, not in the Law, but in the Spirit. This is the development of the teaching which is prepared by the next question of Arjuna. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays On The Gita , #KEYS
32:Ekajaṭī or Ekajaṭā, (Sanskrit: "One Plait Woman"; Wylie: ral gcig ma: one who has one knot of hair),[1] also known as Māhacīnatārā,[2] is one of the 21 Taras. Ekajati is, along with Palden Lhamo deity, one of the most powerful and fierce goddesses of Vajrayana Buddhist mythology.[1][3] According to Tibetan legends, her right eye was pierced by the tantric master Padmasambhava so that she could much more effectively help him subjugate Tibetan demons. Ekajati is also known as "Blue Tara", Vajra Tara or "Ugra Tara".[1][3] She is generally considered one of the three principal protectors of the Nyingma school along with Rāhula and Vajrasādhu (Wylie: rdo rje legs pa). Often Ekajati appears as liberator in the mandala of the Green Tara. Along with that, her ascribed powers are removing the fear of enemies, spreading joy, and removing personal hindrances on the path to enlightenment. Ekajati is the protector of secret mantras and "as the mother of the mothers of all the Buddhas" represents the ultimate unity. As such, her own mantra is also secret. She is the most important protector of the Vajrayana teachings, especially the Inner Tantras and termas. As the protector of mantra, she supports the practitioner in deciphering symbolic dakini codes and properly determines appropriate times and circumstances for revealing tantric teachings. Because she completely realizes the texts and mantras under her care, she reminds the practitioner of their preciousness and secrecy.[4] Düsum Khyenpa, 1st Karmapa Lama meditated upon her in early childhood. According to Namkhai Norbu, Ekajati is the principal guardian of the Dzogchen teachings and is "a personification of the essentially non-dual nature of primordial energy."[5] Dzogchen is the most closely guarded teaching in Tibetan Buddhism, of which Ekajati is a main guardian as mentioned above. It is said that Sri Singha (Sanskrit: Śrī Siṃha) himself entrusted the "Heart Essence" (Wylie: snying thig) teachings to her care. To the great master Longchenpa, who initiated the dissemination of certain Dzogchen teachings, Ekajati offered uncharacteristically personal guidance. In his thirty-second year, Ekajati appeared to Longchenpa, supervising every ritual detail of the Heart Essence of the Dakinis empowerment, insisting on the use of a peacock feather and removing unnecessary basin. When Longchenpa performed the ritual, she nodded her head in approval but corrected his pronunciation. When he recited the mantra, Ekajati admonished him, saying, "Imitate me," and sang it in a strange, harmonious melody in the dakini's language. Later she appeared at the gathering and joyously danced, proclaiming the approval of Padmasambhava and the dakinis.[6] ~ Wikipedia, #KEYS
33:At it's narrowest (although this is a common and perhaps the official position; need to find ref in What is Enlightenment) "integral", "turquois" (Spiral Dynamics), and "second tier" (ditto) are all synonms, and in turn are equivalent to Wilber IV / AQAL/Wilber V "Post-metaphysical" AQAL. This is the position that "Integral = Ken Wilber". It constitutes a new philosophical school or meme-set, in the tradition of charismatic spiritual teachers of all ages, in which an articulate, brilliant, and popular figure would arise, and gather a following around him- or her-self. After the teacher passes on, their teaching remains through books and organisations dedicated to perpetuating that teaching; although without the brilliant light of the Founder, things generally become pretty stultifying, and there is often little or no original development. Even so, the books themselves continue to inspire, and many people benefit greatly from these tecahings, and can contact the original Light of the founders to be inspired by them on the subtle planes. Some late 19th, 20th, and early 21st century examples of such teachers, known and less well-known, are Blavatsky, Theon, Steiner, Aurobindo, Gurdjieff, Crowley, Alice Bailey, Carl Jung, Ann Ree Colton, and now Ken Wilber. Also, many popular gurus belong in this category. It could plausibly be suggested that the founders of the great world religions started out no different, but their teaching really caught on n a big way....At its broadest then, the Integral Community includes not only Wilber but those he cites as his influences and hold universal and evolutionary views or teachings, as well as those who, while influenced by him also differ somewhat, and even those like Arthur M Young that Wilber has apparently never heard of. Nevertheless, all share a common, evolutionary, "theory of everything" position, and, whilst they may differ on many details and even on many major points, taken together they could be considered a wave front for a new paradigm, a memetic revolution. I use the term Daimon of the Integral Movement to refer to the spiritual being or personality of light that is behind and working through this broader movement.Now, this doesn't mean that this daimon is necessarily a negative entity. I see a lot of promise, a lot of potential, in the Integral Approach. From what I feel at the moment, the Integral Deva is a force and power of good.But, as with any new spiritual or evolutionary development, there is duality, in that there are forces that hinder and oppose and distort, as well as forces that help and aid in the evolution and ultimate divinisation of the Earth and the cosmos. Thus even where a guru does give in the dark side (as very often happens with many gurus today) there still remains an element of Mixed Light that remains (one finds this ambiguity with Sai Baba, with Da Free John, and with Rajneesh); and we find this same ambiguity with the Integral Community regarding what seems to me a certain offputting devotional attitude towards Wilber himself. The light will find its way, regardless. However, an Intregral Movement that is caught up in worship of and obedience to an authority figure, will not be able to achieve what a movement unfettered by such shackles could. ~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper Ken Wilber, #KEYS
34:PRATYAHARAPRATYAHARA is the first process in the mental part of our task. The previous practices, Asana, Pranayama, Yama, and Niyama, are all acts of the body, while mantra is connected with speech: Pratyahara is purely mental. And what is Pratyahara? This word is used by different authors in different senses. The same word is employed to designate both the practice and the result. It means for our present purpose a process rather strategical than practical; it is introspection, a sort of general examination of the contents of the mind which we wish to control: Asana having been mastered, all immediate exciting causes have been removed, and we are free to think what we are thinking about. A very similar experience to that of Asana is in store for us. At first we shall very likely flatter ourselves that our minds are pretty calm; this is a defect of observation. Just as the European standing for the first time on the edge of the desert will see nothing there, while his Arab can tell him the family history of each of the fifty persons in view, because he has learnt how to look, so with practice the thoughts will become more numerous and more insistent. As soon as the body was accurately observed it was found to be terribly restless and painful; now that we observe the mind it is seen to be more restless and painful still. (See diagram opposite.) A similar curve might be plotted for the real and apparent painfulness of Asana. Conscious of this fact, we begin to try to control it: "Not quite so many thoughts, please!" "Don't think quite so fast, please!" "No more of that kind of thought, please!" It is only then that we discover that what we thought was a school of playful porpoises is really the convolutions of the sea-serpent. The attempt to repress has the effect of exciting. When the unsuspecting pupil first approaches his holy but wily Guru, and demands magical powers, that Wise One replies that he will confer them, points out with much caution and secrecy some particular spot on the pupil's body which has never previously attracted his attention, and says: "In order to obtain this magical power which you seek, all that is necessary is to wash seven times in the Ganges during seven days, being particularly careful to avoid thinking of that one spot." Of course the unhappy youth spends a disgusted week in thinking of little else. It is positively amazing with what persistence a thought, even a whole train of thoughts, returns again and again to the charge. It becomes a positive nightmare. It is intensely annoying, too, to find that one does not become conscious that one has got on to the forbidden subject until one has gone right through with it. However, one continues day after day investigating thoughts and trying to check them; and sooner or later one proceeds to the next stage, Dharana, the attempt to restrain the mind to a single object. Before we go on to this, however, we must consider what is meant by success in Pratyahara. This is a very extensive subject, and different authors take widely divergent views. One writer means an analysis so acute that every thought is resolved into a number of elements (see "The Psychology of Hashish," Section V, in Equinox II). Others take the view that success in the practice is something like the experience which Sir Humphrey Davy had as a result of taking nitrous oxide, in which he exclaimed: "The universe is composed exclusively of ideas." Others say that it gives Hamlet's feeling: "There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so," interpreted as literally as was done by Mrs. Eddy. However, the main point is to acquire some sort of inhibitory power over the thoughts. Fortunately there is an unfailing method of acquiring this power. It is given in Liber III. If Sections 1 and 2 are practised (if necessary with the assistance of another person to aid your vigilance) you will soon be able to master the final section. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA , #KEYS
35:GURU YOGA Guru yoga is an essential practice in all schools of Tibetan Buddhism and Bon. This is true in sutra, tantra, and Dzogchen. It develops the heart connection with the masteR By continually strengthening our devotion, we come to the place of pure devotion in ourselves, which is the unshakeable, powerful base of the practice. The essence of guru yoga is to merge the practitioner's mind with the mind of the master. What is the true master? It is the formless, fundamental nature of mind, the primordial awareness of the base of everything, but because we exist in dualism, it is helpful for us to visualize this in a form. Doing so makes skillful use of the dualisms of the conceptual mind, to further strengthen devotion and help us stay directed toward practice and the generation of positive qualities. In the Bon tradition, we often visualize either Tapihritsa* as the master, or the Buddha ShenlaOdker*, who represents the union of all the masters. If you are already a practitioner, you may have another deity to visualize, like Guru Rinpoche or a yidam or dakini. While it is important to work with a lineage with which you have a connection, you should understand that the master you visualize is the embodiment of all the masters with whom you are connected, all the teachers with whom you have studied, all the deities to whom you have commitments. The master in guru yoga is not just one individual, but the essence of enlightenment, the primordial awareness that is your true nature. The master is also the teacher from whom you receive the teachings. In the Tibetan tradition, we say the master is more important than the Buddha. Why? Because the master is the immediate messenger of the teachings, the one who brings the Buddha's wisdom to the student. Without the master we could not find our way to the Buddha. So we should feel as much devotion to the master as we would to the Buddha if the Buddha suddenly appeared in front of us. Guru yoga is not just about generating some feeling toward a visualized image. It is done to find the fundamental mind in yourself that is the same as the fundamental mind of all your teachers, and of all the Buddhas and realized beings that have ever lived. When you merge with the guru, you merge with your pristine true nature, which is the real guide and masteR But this should not be an abstract practice. When you do guru yoga, try to feel such intense devotion that the hair stands upon your neck, tears start down your face, and your heart opens and fills with great love. Let yourself merge in union with the guru's mind, which is your enlightened Buddha-nature. This is the way to practice guru yoga. The Practice After the nine breaths, still seated in meditation posture, visualize the master above and in front of you. This should not be a flat, two dimensional picture-let a real being exist there, in three dimensions, made of light, pure, and with a strong presence that affects the feeling in your body,your energy, and your mind. Generate strong devotion and reflect on the great gift of the teachings and the tremendous good fortune you enjoy in having made a connection to them. Offer a sincere prayer, asking that your negativities and obscurations be removed, that your positive qualities develop, and that you accomplish dream yoga. Then imagine receiving blessings from the master in the form of three colored lights that stream from his or her three wisdom doors- of body, speech, and mind-into yours. The lights should be transmitted in the following sequence: White light streams from the master's brow chakra into yours, purifying and relaxing your entire body and physical dimension. Then red light streams from the master's throat chakra into yours, purifying and relaxing your energetic dimension. Finally, blue light streams from the master's heart chakra into yours, purifying and relaxing your mind. When the lights enter your body, feel them. Let your body, energy, and mind relax, suffused inwisdom light. Use your imagination to make the blessing real in your full experience, in your body and energy as well as in the images in your mind. After receiving the blessing, imagine the master dissolving into light that enters your heart and resides there as your innermost essence. Imagine that you dissolve into that light, and remain inpure awareness, rigpa. There are more elaborate instructions for guru yoga that can involve prostrations, offerings, gestures, mantras, and more complicated visualizations, but the essence of the practice is mingling your mind with the mind of the master, which is pure, non-dual awareness. Guru yoga can be done any time during the day; the more often the better. Many masters say that of all the practices it is guru yoga that is the most important. It confers the blessings of the lineage and can open and soften the heart and quiet the unruly mind. To completely accomplish guru yoga is to accomplish the path. ~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep , #KEYS
36:Death & FameWhen I dieI don't care what happens to my body throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel CemeteryBut I want a big funeral St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in ManhattanFirst, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother 96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear'd, sister-in-law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters their grandchildren, companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan--Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche, there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting America, Satchitananda Swami Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche, Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau Roshis, Lama Tarchen --Then, most important, lovers over half-century Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories"He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran of the thousandday retreat --""I played music on subway platforms, I'm straight but loved him he loved me""I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone""We'd lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly arms round each other""I'd always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my skivvies would be on the floor""Japanese, always wanted take it up my bum with a master""We'd talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then sleep in his captain's bed.""He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy""I was lonely never in bed nude with anyone before, he was so gentle my stomach shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen nipple to hips-- ""All I did was lay back eyes closed, he'd bring me to come with mouth & fingers along my waist""He gave great head"So there be gossip from loves of 1948, ghost of Neal Cassady commin-gling with flesh and youthful blood of 1997 and surprise -- "You too? But I thought you were straight!""I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me.""I forgot whether I was straight gay queer or funny, was myself, tender and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head, my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly. on my prick, tickled with his tongue my behind""I loved the way he'd recite 'But at my back allways hear/ time's winged chariot hurrying near,' heads together, eye to eye, on a pillow --"Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear"I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his walk-up flat, seduced me didn't want to, made me come, went home, never saw him again never wanted to... ""He couldn't get it up but loved me," "A clean old man." "He made sure I came first"This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor--Then poets & musicians -- college boys' grunge bands -- age-old rock star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical con-ductors, unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trum-peters, bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger fiddlers with dobro tamborine harmonica mandolin auto-harp pennywhistles & kazoosNext, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60's India, Late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman Massa-chusets surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American provincesThen highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate biblio-philes, sex liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either sex"I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved him anyway, true artist""Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me from suicide hospitals""Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink, dishes my studio guest a week in Budapest"Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois""I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- ""He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas City""Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City""Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982""I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized others like me out there"Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gesturesThen Journalists, editors's secretaries, agents, portraitists & photo-graphy aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural historians come to witness the historic funeral Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatnicks & Deadheads, autograph-hunters, distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkersEveryone knew they were part of 'History" except the deceased who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was aliveFebruary 22, 1997 ~ Allen Ginsberg, #KEYS
37:Education THE EDUCATION of a human being should begin at birth and continue throughout his life. Indeed, if we want this education to have its maximum result, it should begin even before birth; in this case it is the mother herself who proceeds with this education by means of a twofold action: first, upon herself for her own improvement, and secondly, upon the child whom she is forming physically. For it is certain that the nature of the child to be born depends very much upon the mother who forms it, upon her aspiration and will as well as upon the material surroundings in which she lives. To see that her thoughts are always beautiful and pure, her feelings always noble and fine, her material surroundings as harmonious as possible and full of a great simplicity - this is the part of education which should apply to the mother herself. And if she has in addition a conscious and definite will to form the child according to the highest ideal she can conceive, then the very best conditions will be realised so that the child can come into the world with his utmost potentialities. How many difficult efforts and useless complications would be avoided in this way! Education to be complete must have five principal aspects corresponding to the five principal activities of the human being: the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic and the spiritual. Usually, these phases of education follow chronologically the growth of the individual; this, however, does not mean that one of them should replace another, but that all must continue, completing one another until the end of his life. We propose to study these five aspects of education one by one and also their interrelationships. But before we enter into the details of the subject, I wish to make a recommendation to parents. Most parents, for various reasons, give very little thought to the true education which should be imparted to children. When they have brought a child into the world, provided him with food, satisfied his various material needs and looked after his health more or less carefully, they think they have fully discharged their duty. Later on, they will send him to school and hand over to the teachers the responsibility for his education. There are other parents who know that their children must be educated and who try to do what they can. But very few, even among those who are most serious and sincere, know that the first thing to do, in order to be able to educate a child, is to educate oneself, to become conscious and master of oneself so that one never sets a bad example to one's child. For it is above all through example that education becomes effective. To speak good words and to give wise advice to a child has very little effect if one does not oneself give him an example of what one teaches. Sincerity, honesty, straightforwardness, courage, disinterestedness, unselfishness, patience, endurance, perseverance, peace, calm, self-control are all things that are taught infinitely better by example than by beautiful speeches. Parents, have a high ideal and always act in accordance with it and you will see that little by little your child will reflect this ideal in himself and spontaneously manifest the qualities you would like to see expressed in his nature. Quite naturally a child has respect and admiration for his parents; unless they are quite unworthy, they will always appear to their child as demigods whom he will try to imitate as best he can. With very few exceptions, parents are not aware of the disastrous influence that their own defects, impulses, weaknesses and lack of self-control have on their children. If you wish to be respected by a child, have respect for yourself and be worthy of respect at every moment. Never be authoritarian, despotic, impatient or ill-tempered. When your child asks you a question, do not give him a stupid or silly answer under the pretext that he cannot understand you. You can always make yourself understood if you take enough trouble; and in spite of the popular saying that it is not always good to tell the truth, I affirm that it is always good to tell the truth, but that the art consists in telling it in such a way as to make it accessible to the mind of the hearer. In early life, until he is twelve or fourteen, the child's mind is hardly open to abstract notions and general ideas. And yet you can train it to understand these things by using concrete images, symbols or parables. Up to quite an advanced age and for some who mentally always remain children, a narrative, a story, a tale well told teach much more than any number of theoretical explanations. Another pitfall to avoid: do not scold your child without good reason and only when it is quite indispensable. A child who is too often scolded gets hardened to rebuke and no longer attaches much importance to words or severity of tone. And above all, take good care never to scold him for a fault which you yourself commit. Children are very keen and clear-sighted observers; they soon find out your weaknesses and note them without pity. When a child has done something wrong, see that he confesses it to you spontaneously and frankly; and when he has confessed, with kindness and affection make him understand what was wrong in his movement so that he will not repeat it, but never scold him; a fault confessed must always be forgiven. You should not allow any fear to come between you and your child; fear is a pernicious means of education: it invariably gives birth to deceit and lying. Only a discerning affection that is firm yet gentle and an adequate practical knowledge will create the bonds of trust that are indispensable for you to be able to educate your child effectively. And do not forget that you have to control yourself constantly in order to be equal to your task and truly fulfil the duty which you owe your child by the mere fact of having brought him into the world. Bulletin, February 1951 ~ The Mother, On Education , #KEYS
38:Can a Yogi attain to a state of consciousness in which he can know all things, answer all questions, relating even to abstruse scientific problems, such as, for example, the theory of relativity?Theoretically and in principle it is not impossible for a Yogi to know everything; all depends upon the Yogi. But there is knowledge and knowledge. The Yogi does not know in the way of the mind. He does not know everything in the sense that he has access to all possible information or because he contains all the facts of the universe in his mind or because his consciousness is a sort of miraculous encyclopaedia. He knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces. Or he knows because he lives in a plane of consciousness or is in contact with a consciousness in which there is the truth and the knowledge. If you are in the true consciousness, the knowledge you have will also be of the truth. Then, too, you can know directly, by being one with what you know. If a problem is put before you, if you are asked what is to be done in a particular matter, you can then, by looking with enough attention and concentration, receive spontaneously the required knowledge and the true answer. It is not by any careful application of theory that you reach the knowledge or by working it out through a mental process. The scientific mind needs these methods to come to its conclusions. But the Yogi's knowledge is direct and immediate; it is not deductive. If an engineer has to find out the exact position for the building of an arch, the line of its curve and the size of its opening, he does it by calculation, collating and deducing from his information and data. But a Yogi needs none of these things; he looks, has the vision of the thing, sees that it is to be done in this way and not in another, and this seeing is his knowledge. Although it may be true in a general way and in a certain sense that a Yogi can know all things and can answer all questions from his own field of vision and consciousness, yet it does not follow that there are no questions whatever of any kind to which he would not or could not answer. A Yogi who has the direct knowledge, the knowledge of the true truth of things, would not care or perhaps would find it difficult to answer questions that belong entirely to the domain of human mental constructions. It may be, he could not or would not wish to solve problems and difficulties you might put to him which touch only the illusion of things and their appearances. The working of his knowledge is not in the mind. If you put him some silly mental query of that character, he probably would not answer. The very common conception that you can put any ignorant question to him as to some super-schoolmaster or demand from him any kind of information past, present or future and that he is bound to answer, is a foolish idea. It is as inept as the expectation from the spiritual man of feats and miracles that would satisfy the vulgar external mind and leave it gaping with wonder. Moreover, the term "Yogi" is very vague and wide. There are many types of Yogis, many lines or ranges of spiritual or occult endeavour and different heights of achievement, there are some whose powers do not extend beyond the mental level; there are others who have gone beyond it. Everything depends on the field or nature of their effort, the height to which they have arrived, the consciousness with which they have contact or into which they enter. Do not scientists go sometimes beyond the mental plane? It is said that Einstein found his theory of relativity not through any process of reasoning, but through some kind of sudden inspiration. Has that inspiration anything to do with the Supermind?The scientist who gets an inspiration revealing to him a new truth, receives it from the intuitive mind. The knowledge comes as a direct perception in the higher mental plane illumined by some other light still farther above. But all that has nothing to do with the action of Supermind and this higher mental level is far removed from the supramental plane. Men are too easily inclined to believe that they have climbed into regions quite divine when they have only gone above the average level. There are many stages between the ordinary human mind and the Supermind, many grades and many intervening planes. If an ordinary man were to get into direct contact even with one of these intermediate planes, he would be dazzled and blinded, would be crushed under the weight of the sense of immensity or would lose his balance; and yet it is not the Supermind. Behind the common idea that a Yogi can know all things and answer all questions is the actual fact that there is a plane in the mind where the memory of everything is stored and remains always in existence. All mental movements that belong to the life of the earth are memorised and registered in this plane. Those who are capable of going there and care to take the trouble, can read in it and learn anything they choose. But this region must not be mistaken for the supramental levels. And yet to reach even there you must be able to silence the movements of the material or physical mind; you must be able to leave aside all your sensations and put a stop to your ordinary mental movements, whatever they are; you must get out of the vital; you must become free from the slavery of the body. Then only you can enter into that region and see. But if you are sufficiently interested to make this effort, you can arrive there and read what is written in the earth's memory. Thus, if you go deep into silence, you can reach a level of consciousness on which it is not impossible for you to receive answers to all your questions. And if there is one who is consciously open to the plenary truth of the supermind, in constant contact with it, he can certainly answer any question that is worth an answer from the supramental Light. The queries put must come from some sense of the truth and reality behind things. There are many questions and much debated problems that are cobwebs woven of mere mental abstractions or move on the illusory surface of things. These do not pertain to real knowledge; they are a deformation of knowledge, their very substance is of the ignorance. Certainly the supramental knowledge may give an answer, its own answer, to the problems set by the mind's ignorance; but it is likely that it would not be at all satisfactory or perhaps even intelligible to those who ask from the mental level. You must not expect the supramental to work in the way of the mind or demand that the knowledge in truth should be capable of being pieced together with the half-knowledge in ignorance. The scheme of the mind is one thing, but Supermind is quite another and it would no longer be supramental if it adapted itself to the exigencies of the mental scheme. The two are incommensurable and cannot be put together. When the consciousness has attained to supramental joys, does it no longer take interest in the things of the mind?The supramental does not take interest in mental things in the same way as the mind. It takes its own interest in all the movements of the universe, but it is from a different point of view and with a different vision. The world presents to it an entirely different appearance; there is a reversal of outlook and everything is seen from there as other than what it seems to the mind and often even the opposite. Things have another meaning; their aspect, their motion and process, everything about them, are watched with other eyes. Everything here is followed by the supermind; the mind movements and not less the vital, the material movements, all the play of the universe have for it a very deep interest, but of another kind. It is about the same difference as that between the interest taken in a puppet-play by one who holds the strings and knows what the puppets are to do and the will that moves them and that they can do only what it moves them to do, and the interest taken by another who observes the play but sees only what is happening from moment to moment and knows nothing else. The one who follows the play and is outside its secret has a stronger, an eager and passionate interest in what will happen and he gives an excited attention to its unforeseen or dramatic events; the other, who holds the strings and moves the show, is unmoved and tranquil. There is a certain intensity of interest which comes from ignorance and is bound up with illusion, and that must disappear when you are out of the ignorance. The interest that human beings take in things founds itself on the illusion; if that were removed, they would have no interest at all in the play; they would find it dry and dull. That is why all this ignorance, all this illusion has lasted so long; it is because men like it, because they cling to it and its peculiar kind of appeal that it endures. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931 93?
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39:[The Gods and Their Worlds] [...] According to traditions and occult schools, all these zones of realities, these planes of realities have got different names; they have been classified in a different way, but there is an essential analogy, and if you go back far enough into the traditions, you see only the words changing according to the country and the language. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists offer great similarities. All who set out on the discovery of these invisible worlds and make a report of what they saw, give a very similar description, whether they be from here or there; they use different words, but the experience is very similar and the handling of forces is the same. This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at the centre - it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest - and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ends by universalising oneself. And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds. There are, then, only a very small number of people in the West who know that these gods are not merely subjective and imaginary - more or less wildly imaginary - but that they correspond to a universal truth. All these regions, all these domains are filled with beings who exist, each in its own domain, and if you are awake and conscious on a particular plane - for instance, if on going out of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the material world, and there even comes a time when the one region has a direct action upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the overmental worlds, you will find a concrete reality absolutely independent of your personal experience; you go back there and again find the same things, with the differences that have occurred during your absence. And you have relations with those beings that are identical with the relations you have with physical beings, with this difference that the relation is more plastic, supple and direct - for example, there is the capacity to change the external form, the visible form, according to the inner state you are in. But you can make an appointment with someone and be at the appointed place and find the same being again, with certain differences that have come about during your absence; it is entirely concrete with results entirely concrete. One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain defects and certain qualities because men have thought them to be like that - all those who say that God is made in the image of man and that he exists only in human thought, all these will not understand; to them this will appear absolutely ridiculous, madness. One must have lived a little, touched the subject a little, to know how very concrete the thing is. Naturally, children know a good deal if they have not been spoilt. There are so many children who return every night to the same place and continue to live the life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoilt with age, you can keep them with you. At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration. You go until you reach a certain spot, as you would go in life, then you take a rest, then you return and begin again - you begin the work at the place where you left off and you continue it. And you perceive that there are things which are quite independent of you, in the sense that changes of which you are not at all the author, have taken place automatically during your absence. But for this, you must live these experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how far you can delude yourself. So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it. When you have worked in that domain, you recognise in fact that once a subject has been studied and something has been learnt mentally, it gives a special colour to the experience; the experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact that the subject was known and studied lends a particular quality. Whereas if you had learnt nothing about the question, if you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation. Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for the first time, they are bewildered, they have the impression they have fallen into the night, into nothingness, into non-being! I had a Danish friend, a painter, who was like that. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him "go out" - but it was a frightful thing! When he was dreaming, a part of his mind still remained conscious, active, and a kind of link existed between this active part and his external being; then he remembered some of his dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised. Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to enter into themselves, they are in agony - naturally! They have the impression that they are vanishing. And with reason: there is nothing, no consciousness! These things that appear to us quite natural and evident, are, for people who know nothing, wild imagination. If, for example, you transplant these experiences or this knowledge to the West, well, unless you have been frequenting the circles of occultists, they stare at you with open eyes. And when you have turned your back, they hasten to say, "These people are cranks!" Now to come back to the gods and conclude. It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence - gods or demons, invisible beings and powers - do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects. In the gods there is no fault because they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint: as gods, it is their manner of being. But if you take a higher point of view, if you have a higher vision, a vision of the whole, you see that they lack certain qualities that are exclusively human. By his capacity of love and self-giving, man can have as much power as the gods and even more, when he is not egoistic, when he has surmounted his egoism. If he fulfils the required condition, man is nearer to the Supreme than the gods are. He can be nearer. He is not so automatically, but he has the power to be so, the potentiality. If human love manifested itself without mixture, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love there is as much love of oneself as of the one loved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself. - 4 November 1958 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III 355
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40:Mental EducationOF ALL lines of education, mental education is the most widely known and practised, yet except in a few rare cases there are gaps which make it something very incomplete and in the end quite insufficient. Generally speaking, schooling is considered to be all the mental education that is necessary. And when a child has been made to undergo, for a number of years, a methodical training which is more like cramming than true schooling, it is considered that whatever is necessary for his mental development has been done. Nothing of the kind. Even conceding that the training is given with due measure and discrimination and does not permanently damage the brain, it cannot impart to the human mind the faculties it needs to become a good and useful instrument. The schooling that is usually given can, at the most, serve as a system of gymnastics to increase the suppleness of the brain. From this standpoint, each branch of human learning represents a special kind of mental gymnastics, and the verbal formulations given to these various branches each constitute a special and well-defined language. A true mental education, which will prepare man for a higher life, has five principal phases. Normally these phases follow one after another, but in exceptional individuals they may alternate or even proceed simultaneously. These five phases, in brief, are: (1) Development of the power of concentration, the capacity of attention. (2) Development of the capacities of expansion, widening, complexity and richness. (3) Organisation of one's ideas around a central idea, a higher ideal or a supremely luminous idea that will serve as a guide in life. (4) Thought-control, rejection of undesirable thoughts, to become able to think only what one wants and when one wants. (5) Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being. It is not possible to give here all the details concerning the methods to be employed in the application of these five phases of education to different individuals. Still, a few explanations on points of detail can be given. Undeniably, what most impedes mental progress in children is the constant dispersion of their thoughts. Their thoughts flutter hither and thither like butterflies and they have to make a great effort to fix them. Yet this capacity is latent in them, for when you succeed in arousing their interest, they are capable of a good deal of attention. By his ingenuity, therefore, the educator will gradually help the child to become capable of a sustained effort of attention and a faculty of more and more complete absorption in the work in hand. All methods that can develop this faculty of attention from games to rewards are good and can all be utilised according to the need and the circumstances. But it is the psychological action that is most important and the sovereign method is to arouse in the child an interest in what you want to teach him, a liking for work, a will to progress. To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can give to a child: to love to learn always and everywhere, so that all circumstances, all happenings in life may be constantly renewed opportunities for learning more and always more. For that, to attention and concentration should be added observation, precise recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of observation can be developed by varied and spontaneous exercises, making use of every opportunity that presents itself to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert and prompt. The growth of the understanding should be stressed much more than that of memory. One knows well only what one has understood. Things learnt by heart, mechanically, fade away little by little and finally disappear; what is understood is never forgotten. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to a child the how and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must direct the child to those who are qualified to answer or point out to him some books that deal with the question. In this way you will progressively awaken in the child the taste for true study and the habit of making a persistent effort to know. This will bring us quite naturally to the second phase of development in which the mind should be widened and enriched. You will gradually show the child that everything can become an interesting subject for study if it is approached in the right way. The life of every day, of every moment, is the best school of all, varied, complex, full of unexpected experiences, problems to be solved, clear and striking examples and obvious consequences. It is so easy to arouse healthy curiosity in children, if you answer with intelligence and clarity the numerous questions they ask. An interesting reply to one readily brings others in its train and so the attentive child learns without effort much more than he usually does in the classroom. By a choice made with care and insight, you should also teach him to enjoy good reading-matter which is both instructive and attractive. Do not be afraid of anything that awakens and pleases his imagination; imagination develops the creative mental faculty and through it study becomes living and the mind develops in joy. In order to increase the suppleness and comprehensiveness of his mind, one should see not only that he studies many varied topics, but above all that a single subject is approached in various ways, so that the child understands in a practical manner that there are many ways of facing the same intellectual problem, of considering it and solving it. This will remove all rigidity from his brain and at the same time it will make his thinking richer and more supple and prepare it for a more complex and comprehensive synthesis. In this way also the child will be imbued with the sense of the extreme relativity of mental learning and, little by little, an aspiration for a truer source of knowledge will awaken in him. Indeed, as the child grows older and progresses in his studies, his mind too ripens and becomes more and more capable of forming general ideas, and with them almost always comes a need for certitude, for a knowledge that is stable enough to form the basis of a mental construction which will permit all the diverse and scattered and often contradictory ideas accumulated in his brain to be organised and put in order. This ordering is indeed very necessary if one is to avoid chaos in one's thoughts. All contradictions can be transformed into complements, but for that one must discover the higher idea that will have the power to bring them harmoniously together. It is always good to consider every problem from all possible standpoints so as to avoid partiality and exclusiveness; but if the thought is to be active and creative, it must, in every case, be the natural and logical synthesis of all the points of view adopted. And if you want to make the totality of your thoughts into a dynamic and constructive force, you must also take great care as to the choice of the central idea of your mental synthesis; for upon that will depend the value of this synthesis. The higher and larger the central idea and the more universal it is, rising above time and space, the more numerous and the more complex will be the ideas, notions and thoughts which it will be able to organise and harmonise. It goes without saying that this work of organisation cannot be done once and for all. The mind, if it is to keep its vigour and youth, must progress constantly, revise its notions in the light of new knowledge, enlarge its frame-work to include fresh notions and constantly reclassify and reorganise its thoughts, so that each of them may find its true place in relation to the others and the whole remain harmonious and orderly. All that has just been said concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, which is at least equally important, is the constructive faculty, the capacity to form and thus prepare action. This very important part of mental activity has rarely been the subject of any special study or discipline. Only those who want, for some reason, to exercise a strict control over their mental activities think of observing and disciplining this faculty of formation; and as soon as they try it, they have to face difficulties so great that they appear almost insurmountable. And yet control over this formative activity of the mind is one of the most important aspects of self-education; one can say that without it no mental mastery is possible. As far as study is concerned, all ideas are acceptable and should be included in the synthesis, whose very function is to become more and more rich and complex; but where action is concerned, it is just the opposite. The ideas that are accepted for translation into action should be strictly controlled and only those that agree with the general trend of the central idea forming the basis of the mental synthesis should be permitted to express themselves in action. This means that every thought entering the mental consciousness should be set before the central idea; if it finds a logical place among the thoughts already grouped, it will be admitted into the synthesis; if not, it will be rejected so that it can have no influence on the action. This work of mental purification should be done very regularly in order to secure a complete control over one's actions. For this purpose, it is good to set apart some time every day when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put one's synthesis in order. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain control over your thoughts even during work and action, allowing only those which are useful for what you are doing to come to the surface. Particularly, if you have continued to cultivate the power of concentration and attention, only the thoughts that are needed will be allowed to enter the active external consciousness and they then become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it becomes necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stilled and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can gradually open to the higher regions of the mind and learn to record the inspirations that come from there. But even before reaching this point, silence in itself is supremely useful, because in most people who have a somewhat developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is kept under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in activities which are sometimes excessive and often incoherent. This creates a great stress which leads to fatigue and the diminution of the intellectual faculties. The fact is that like all the other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and it will not have this rest unless we know how to provide it. The art of resting one's mind is something to be acquired. Changing one's mental activity is certainly one way of resting; but the greatest possible rest is silence. And as far as the mental faculties are concerned a few minutes passed in the calm of silence are a more effective rest than hours of sleep. When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved, no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found. When it is agitated, thought becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity. Bulletin, November 1951 ~ The Mother, On Education , #KEYS
41:One little picture in this book, the Magic Locket, was drawn by 'Miss Alice Havers.' I did not state this on the title-page, since it seemed only due, to the artist of all these (to my mind) wonderful pictures, that his name should stand there alone.The descriptions, of Sunday as spent by children of the last generation, are quoted verbatim from a speech made to me by a child-friend and a letter written to me by a lady-friend.The Chapters, headed 'Fairy Sylvie' and 'Bruno's Revenge,' are a reprint, with a few alterations, of a little fairy-tale which I wrote in the year 1867, at the request of the late Mrs. Gatty, for 'Aunt Judy's Magazine,' which she was then editing.It was in 1874, I believe, that the idea first occurred to me of making it the nucleus of a longer story.As the years went on, I jotted down, at odd moments, all sorts of odd ideas, and fragments of dialogue, that occurred to me--who knows how?--with a transitory suddenness that left me no choice but either to record them then and there, or to abandon them to oblivion. Sometimes one could trace to their source these random flashes of thought--as being suggested by the book one was reading, or struck out from the 'flint' of one's own mind by the 'steel' of a friend's chance remark but they had also a way of their own, of occurring, a propos of nothing --specimens of that hopelessly illogical phenomenon, 'an effect without a cause.' Such, for example, was the last line of 'The Hunting of the Snark,' which came into my head (as I have already related in 'The Theatre' for April, 1887) quite suddenly, during a solitary walk: and such, again, have been passages which occurred in dreams, and which I cannot trace to any antecedent cause whatever. There are at least two instances of such dream-suggestions in this book--one, my Lady's remark, 'it often runs in families, just as a love for pastry does', the other, Eric Lindon's badinage about having been in domestic service.And thus it came to pass that I found myself at last in possession of a huge unwieldy mass of litterature--if the reader will kindly excuse the spelling --which only needed stringing together, upon the thread of a consecutive story, to constitute the book I hoped to write. Only! The task, at first, seemed absolutely hopeless, and gave me a far clearer idea, than I ever had before, of the meaning of the word 'chaos': and I think it must have been ten years, or more, before I had succeeded in classifying these odds-and-ends sufficiently to see what sort of a story they indicated: for the story had to grow out of the incidents, not the incidents out of the story I am telling all this, in no spirit of egoism, but because I really believe that some of my readers will be interested in these details of the 'genesis' of a book, which looks so simple and straight-forward a matter, when completed, that they might suppose it to have been written straight off, page by page, as one would write a letter, beginning at the beginning; and ending at the end.It is, no doubt, possible to write a story in that way: and, if it be not vanity to say so, I believe that I could, myself,--if I were in the unfortunate position (for I do hold it to be a real misfortune) of being obliged to produce a given amount of fiction in a given time,--that I could 'fulfil my task,' and produce my 'tale of bricks,' as other slaves have done. One thing, at any rate, I could guarantee as to the story so produced--that it should be utterly commonplace, should contain no new ideas whatever, and should be very very weary reading!This species of literature has received the very appropriate name of 'padding' which might fitly be defined as 'that which all can write and none can read.' That the present volume contains no such writing I dare not avow: sometimes, in order to bring a picture into its proper place, it has been necessary to eke out a page with two or three extra lines : but I can honestly say I have put in no more than I was absolutely compelled to do.My readers may perhaps like to amuse themselves by trying to detect, in a given passage, the one piece of 'padding' it contains. While arranging the 'slips' into pages, I found that the passage was 3 lines too short. I supplied the deficiency, not by interpolating a word here and a word there, but by writing in 3 consecutive lines. Now can my readers guess which they are?A harder puzzle if a harder be desired would be to determine, as to the Gardener's Song, in which cases (if any) the stanza was adapted to the surrounding text, and in which (if any) the text was adapted to the stanza.Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature--at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it come's is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune. I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story--I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it--but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen storybooks have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'--is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.Hence it is that, in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' I have striven with I know not what success to strike out yet another new path: be it bad or good, it is the best I can do. It is written, not for money, and not for fame, but in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love, some thoughts that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which are the very life of Childhood; and also in the hope of suggesting, to them and to others, some thoughts that may prove, I would fain hope, not wholly out of harmony with the graver cadences of Life.If I have not already exhausted the patience of my readers, I would like to seize this opportunity perhaps the last I shall have of addressing so many friends at once of putting on record some ideas that have occurred to me, as to books desirable to be written--which I should much like to attempt, but may not ever have the time or power to carry through--in the hope that, if I should fail (and the years are gliding away very fast) to finish the task I have set myself, other hands may take it up.First, a Child's Bible. The only real essentials of this would be, carefully selected passages, suitable for a child's reading, and pictures. One principle of selection, which I would adopt, would be that Religion should be put before a child as a revelation of love--no need to pain and puzzle the young mind with the history of crime and punishment. (On such a principle I should, for example, omit the history of the Flood.) The supplying of the pictures would involve no great difficulty: no new ones would be needed : hundreds of excellent pictures already exist, the copyright of which has long ago expired, and which simply need photo-zincography, or some similar process, for their successful reproduction. The book should be handy in size with a pretty attractive looking cover--in a clear legible type--and, above all, with abundance of pictures, pictures, pictures!Secondly, a book of pieces selected from the Bible--not single texts, but passages of from 10 to 20 verses each--to be committed to memory. Such passages would be found useful, to repeat to one's self and to ponder over, on many occasions when reading is difficult, if not impossible: for instance, when lying awake at night--on a railway-journey --when taking a solitary walk-in old age, when eyesight is failing or wholly lost--and, best of all, when illness, while incapacitating us for reading or any other occupation, condemns us to lie awake through many weary silent hours: at such a time how keenly one may realise the truth of David's rapturous cry "O how sweet are thy words unto my throat: yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth!"I have said 'passages,' rather than single texts, because we have no means of recalling single texts: memory needs links, and here are none: one may have a hundred texts stored in the memory, and not be able to recall, at will, more than half-a-dozen--and those by mere chance: whereas, once get hold of any portion of a chapter that has been committed to memory, and the whole can be recovered: all hangs together.Thirdly, a collection of passages, both prose and verse, from books other than the Bible. There is not perhaps much, in what is called 'un-inspired' literature (a misnomer, I hold: if Shakespeare was not inspired, one may well doubt if any man ever was), that will bear the process of being pondered over, a hundred times: still there are such passages--enough, I think, to make a goodly store for the memory.These two books of sacred, and secular, passages for memory--will serve other good purposes besides merely occupying vacant hours: they will help to keep at bay many anxious thoughts, worrying thoughts, uncharitable thoughts, unholy thoughts. Let me say this, in better words than my own, by copying a passage from that most interesting book, Robertson's Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Lecture XLIX. "If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as safeguards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps."Fourthly, a "Shakespeare" for girls: that is, an edition in which everything, not suitable for the perusal of girls of (say) from 10 to 17, should be omitted. Few children under 10 would be likely to understand or enjoy the greatest of poets: and those, who have passed out of girlhood, may safely be left to read Shakespeare, in any edition, 'expurgated' or not, that they may prefer: but it seems a pity that so many children, in the intermediate stage, should be debarred from a great pleasure for want of an edition suitable to them. Neither Bowdler's, Chambers's, Brandram's, nor Cundell's 'Boudoir' Shakespeare, seems to me to meet the want: they are not sufficiently 'expurgated.' Bowdler's is the most extraordinary of all: looking through it, I am filled with a deep sense of wonder, considering what he has left in, that he should have cut anything out! Besides relentlessly erasing all that is unsuitable on the score of reverence or decency, I should be inclined to omit also all that seems too difficult, or not likely to interest young readers. The resulting book might be slightly fragmentary: but it would be a real treasure to all British maidens who have any taste for poetry.If it be needful to apologize to any one for the new departure I have taken in this story--by introducing, along with what will, I hope, prove to be acceptable nonsense for children, some of the graver thoughts of human life--it must be to one who has learned the Art of keeping such thoughts wholly at a distance in hours of mirth and careless ease. To him such a mixture will seem, no doubt, ill-judged and repulsive. And that such an Art exists I do not dispute: with youth, good health, and sufficient money, it seems quite possible to lead, for years together, a life of unmixed gaiety--with the exception of one solemn fact, with which we are liable to be confronted at any moment, even in the midst of the most brilliant company or the most sparkling entertainment. A man may fix his own times for admitting serious thought, for attending public worship, for prayer, for reading the Bible: all such matters he can defer to that 'convenient season', which is so apt never to occur at all: but he cannot defer, for one single moment, the necessity of attending to a message, which may come before he has finished reading this page,' this night shalt thy soul be required of thee.'The ever-present sense of this grim possibility has been, in all ages, 1 an incubus that men have striven to shake off. Few more interesting subjects of enquiry could be found, by a student of history, than the various weapons that have been used against this shadowy foe. Saddest of all must have been the thoughts of those who saw indeed an existence beyond the grave, but an existence far more terrible than annihilation--an existence as filmy, impalpable, all but invisible spectres, drifting about, through endless ages, in a world of shadows, with nothing to do, nothing to hope for, nothing to love! In the midst of the gay verses of that genial 'bon vivant' Horace, there stands one dreary word whose utter sadness goes to one's heart. It is the word 'exilium' in the well-known passageOmnes eodem cogimur, omniumVersatur urna serius ociusSors exitura et nos in aeternumExilium impositura cymbae.Yes, to him this present life--spite of all its weariness and all its sorrow--was the only life worth having: all else was 'exile'! Does it not seem almost incredible that one, holding such a creed, should ever have smiled?And many in this day, I fear, even though believing in an existence beyond the grave far more real than Horace ever dreamed of, yet regard it as a sort of 'exile' from all the joys of life, and so adopt Horace's theory, and say 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'We go to entertainments, such as the theatre--I say 'we', for I also go to the play, whenever I get a chance of seeing a really good one and keep at arm's length, if possible, the thought that we may not return alive. Yet how do you know--dear friend, whose patience has carried you through this garrulous preface that it may not be your lot, when mirth is fastest and most furious, to feel the sharp pang, or the deadly faintness, which heralds the final crisis--to see, with vague wonder, anxious friends bending over you to hear their troubled whispers perhaps yourself to shape the question, with trembling lips, "Is it serious?", and to be told "Yes: the end is near" (and oh, how different all Life will look when those words are said!)--how do you know, I say, that all this may not happen to you, this night?And dare you, knowing this, say to yourself "Well, perhaps it is an immoral play: perhaps the situations are a little too 'risky', the dialogue a little too strong, the 'business' a little too suggestive.I don't say that conscience is quite easy: but the piece is so clever, I must see it this once! I'll begin a stricter life to-morrow." To-morrow, and to-morrow, and tomorrow!"Who sins in hope, who, sinning, says,'Sorrow for sin God's judgement stays!'Against God's Spirit he lies; quite stops Mercy with insult; dares, and drops,Like a scorch'd fly, that spins in vainUpon the axis of its pain,Then takes its doom, to limp and crawl,Blind and forgot, from fall to fall."Let me pause for a moment to say that I believe this thought, of the possibility of death--if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.But, once realise what the true object is in life--that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds'--but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man--and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!One other matter may perhaps seem to call for apology--that I should have treated with such entire want of sympathy the British passion for 'Sport', which no doubt has been in by-gone days, and is still, in some forms of it, an excellent school for hardihood and for coolness in moments of danger.But I am not entirely without sympathy for genuine 'Sport': I can heartily admire the courage of the man who, with severe bodily toil, and at the risk of his life, hunts down some 'man-eating' tiger: and I can heartily sympathize with him when he exults in the glorious excitement of the chase and the hand-to-hand struggle with the monster brought to bay. But I can but look with deep wonder and sorrow on the hunter who, at his ease and in safety, can find pleasure in what involves, for some defenceless creature, wild terror and a death of agony: deeper, if the hunter be one who has pledged himself to preach to men the Religion of universal Love: deepest of all, if it be one of those 'tender and delicate' beings, whose very name serves as a symbol of Love--'thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women'--whose mission here is surely to help and comfort all that are in pain or sorrow!'Farewell, farewell! but this I tellTo thee, thou Wedding-Guest!He prayeth well, who loveth wellBoth man and bird and beast.He prayeth best, who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.' ~ Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno , #KEYS
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:go to schools with no ~ Ben Carson, #NFDB
2:schoolteacher. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
3:I did drop out of school. ~ Don Was, #NFDB
4:I was a dummy in school. ~ Alan Ladd, #NFDB
5:Johnson Middle School, ~ Jake Maddox, #NFDB
6:lower, until school ~ Betty G Birney, #NFDB
7:My body is no schoolboy. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
8:I didn't love school. ~ Kim Kardashian, #NFDB
9:Treat the past as a school. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
10:Foggy Bottom Law School. ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
11:I swam in high school. ~ Jimmie Johnson, #NFDB
12:I go to school by bus ~ Franklin W Dixon, #NFDB
13:I was in choir [at school]. ~ Jon Gordon, #NFDB
14:School's-out-for-summer!! ~ Alice Cooper, #NFDB
15:Schwartz High School ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
16:Tell tales out of school. ~ John Heywood, #NFDB
17:Don't peak in high school. ~ Lizzy Caplan, #NFDB
18:High school is the worst. ~ Jessica Brody, #NFDB
19:High school sweethearts, ~ Jake Remington, #NFDB
20:I hated school. Hated it. ~ Ozzy Osbourne, #NFDB
21:I was going to like school. ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
22:The human heart is my school. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
23:back to school on Monday. ~ Teresa Burrell, #NFDB
24:Don't go to business school. ~ Paul Hawken, #NFDB
25:I did plays in grade school. ~ Colin Hanks, #NFDB
26:I'm for prayer in schools. ~ Charles Evers, #NFDB
27:I schooled in the Boston area. ~ Teju Cole, #NFDB
28:I was a high school throw-out. ~ Alan King, #NFDB
29:Old-school as in Dark Ages. ~ Laird Barron, #NFDB
30:Schools teach ignorance. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
31:I got PTSD from high school. ~ Tom Perrotta, #NFDB
32:I'm a believer in film school. ~ Sean Durkin, #NFDB
33:I'm an old-school guy. ~ LaDainian Tomlinson, #NFDB
34:School is the cheapest police. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
35:His public school scholarship had ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
36:I didn't go to school a lot. ~ Victoria Abril, #NFDB
37:I'd love to design a school. ~ Nolan Bushnell, #NFDB
38:I'm an old-school type of guy. ~ Kevin Durant, #NFDB
39:I never went to drama school. ~ Matthew Lewis, #NFDB
40:well-you-did-break-school-rules ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
41:Adversity is a good school. ~ Charlotte Bronte, #NFDB
42:Creeds and schools in abeyance, ~ Walt Whitman, #NFDB
43:I prefer the school of life. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
44:Marriage is not a reform school. ~ Ann Landers, #NFDB
45:I almost failed out of high school. ~ J D Vance, #NFDB
46:I was a smart kid, but I hated school. ~ Eminem, #NFDB
47:I was never very happy at school. ~ Dan Stevens, #NFDB
48:I was quite naughty at school. ~ Gemma Arterton, #NFDB
49:Private school girls are scary. ~ Reki Kawahara, #NFDB
50:Respect movements, flee schools. ~ Jean Cocteau, #NFDB
51:Schooling is so important. ~ Haile Gebrselassie, #NFDB
52:School was not a place I enjoyed. ~ Sean Harris, #NFDB
53:There’s a bomb under the school. ~ Stuart Gibbs, #NFDB
54:Art-school girls are very nice. ~ Anthony Mackie, #NFDB
55:Comin' from the school of hard knocks, ~ Chuck D, #NFDB
56:DavidGoldberg@WillowFallsSchool.edu ~ Wendy Mass, #NFDB
57:Heresie is the school of pride. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
58:I hated school with a passion. ~ Natasha Preston, #NFDB
59:I loved doing problems in school. ~ Andrew Wiles, #NFDB
60:I started drama in high school. ~ Daniel Cudmore, #NFDB
61:I was a good student in school. ~ Kenan Thompson, #NFDB
62:I was such a geek in school. ~ Katherine Jenkins, #NFDB
63:I was terrible at school. ~ Kristin Scott Thomas, #NFDB
64:I was very popular in high school. ~ NeNe Leakes, #NFDB
65:Life is nothing but high school. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
66:I always remember liking school. ~ Damon Lindelof, #NFDB
67:I just didn't like going to school. ~ Justin Long, #NFDB
68:I left school on my 15th birthday. ~ David Bailey, #NFDB
69:I love school. I was a great student. ~ Joan Jett, #NFDB
70:I'm too old-school to tweet. ~ Julianna Margulies, #NFDB
71:In Kansas I have a chess school. ~ Anatoly Karpov, #NFDB
72:Life is a school of probability. ~ Walter Bagehot, #NFDB
73:School is cool. Thats why it rhymes ~ Terry Crews, #NFDB
74:Solitude is the school for genius ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
75:Suffering is wisdom’s schoolteacher ~ Lauren Kate, #NFDB
76:We learn not in the school, but in life. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
77:When it comes to problems at school, ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB
78:his school lessons had been unusually ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
79:I like reading. I just hate school. ~ Armie Hammer, #NFDB
80:I'm quite dyslexic in school. ~ Georgia May Jagger, #NFDB
81:I never liked group work in school. ~ Brendan Fehr, #NFDB
82:I used to like doing school plays. ~ Jamie Waylett, #NFDB
83:I was a loser in high school. ~ Sean William Scott, #NFDB
84:I went to school on Senior Skip Day. ~ Derek Jeter, #NFDB
85:school before me, and we’d see her ~ Carolyn Brown, #NFDB
86:Schools teach the need to be taught. ~ Ivan Illich, #NFDB
87:The problem with education is school. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
88:Time is the school in which we learn ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
89:what happened at school,” she said. ~ Barbara Park, #NFDB
90:High school popularity is so fickle. ~ Kathy Reichs, #NFDB
91:I treat Hollywood as my high school. ~ Charlie Puth, #NFDB
92:I was a complete outsider in high school. ~ Karen O, #NFDB
93:Life is a school of the spirit. ~ Stephen R Lawhead, #NFDB
94:No brain, no gain. Stay in school. ~ Michael Jordan, #NFDB
95:Play it cool, that's the old school rule man. ~ Nas, #NFDB
96:School gets in the way of my learning. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
97:School is pure psycology warfare. ~ Benjamin Lebert, #NFDB
98:Suffering is wisdom's school teacher. ~ Lauren Kate, #NFDB
99:Time is the school in which we learn. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
100:You’re sending me to whore school, ~ Jason Matthews, #NFDB
101:his old school that if there’d been ~ Jeffrey Archer, #NFDB
102:I never worked on the school newspaper. ~ Jeff Bezos, #NFDB
103:I was the hallway clown in high school. ~ J B Smoove, #NFDB
104:I was voted most artistic in school. ~ Ryan McGinley, #NFDB
105:Many more schools can be outstanding. ~ Michael Gove, #NFDB
106:Pranks vs school= pranks win all day ~ Justin Bieber, #NFDB
107:School is the path, not the point. ~ Will Richardson, #NFDB
108:School is very demanding these days. ~ Ross W Greene, #NFDB
109:You’re such a school teacher. ~ Benjamin Alire S enz, #NFDB
110:At school I was an anti-magnet for women. ~ Nick Cave, #NFDB
111:Commerce is the school of cheating. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
112:High school was great when it ended. ~ Jennifer Stone, #NFDB
113:New Dorp High School on Staten Island. ~ Andrew Gross, #NFDB
114:School didn't work for me. I hated it. ~ Gary Paulsen, #NFDB
115:School should be the best party in town ~ Peter Kline, #NFDB
116:So far magic school was rubbish. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan, #NFDB
117:Time is the school in which we learn. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
118:We were cruel, reptilian high school kids. ~ Otsuichi, #NFDB
119:What did you ASK at school today? ~ Richard P Feynman, #NFDB
120:What do they teach them at these schools? ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
121:Call school, tell them I'm lovesick. ~ Ellen Schreiber, #NFDB
122:Don't do drugs, kids. Stay in school. ~ Jamie Zawinski, #NFDB
123:I founded this school for the masses. ~ Atiku Abubakar, #NFDB
124:I'm Jewish. Went to a Jewish school. ~ Jonathan Glazer, #NFDB
125:I teach Sunday school, motherf*****. ~ Stephen Colbert, #NFDB
126:London an’ buy all yer stuff fer school. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
127:Must's a schoolroom in the month of may ~ e e cummings, #NFDB
128:School should be the best party in town. ~ Peter Kline, #NFDB
129:Skip business school. Educate yourself. ~ Josh Kaufman, #NFDB
130:The first day of school is bullshit ~ Lauren Barnholdt, #NFDB
131:There's no better school than real life. ~ Lisa Genova, #NFDB
132:What are you? An after school special? ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
133:When schools flourish, all flourishes. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
134:A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour! ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
135:Girls in my school were always prettier. ~ Bridget Hall, #NFDB
136:I didn't go to prom - I was homeschooled. ~ Brie Larson, #NFDB
137:I have always loved going to school. ~ Rudolph A Marcus, #NFDB
138:I've never been to veterinary school. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
139:I was not the popular kid in school. ~ Gabriel Iglesias, #NFDB
140:Love was life's hardest school of all. ~ Ivan Goncharov, #NFDB
141:Lucifer is God in the public school system ~ Vinnie Paz, #NFDB
142:Philosophy! the lumber of the schools. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
143:Schools resemble the culture of prisons. ~ Henry Giroux, #NFDB
144:School was finally out and I was standing ~ Jack Gantos, #NFDB
145:than any other school. I spent the next few ~ J D Vance, #NFDB
146:THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIORY SCHOOL ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
147:With the “SWAB JOB” school prank sign ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
148:You can pay for school, but you can't buy class ~ Jay Z, #NFDB
149:If we are wise, we never leave school. ~ Horace Fletcher, #NFDB
150:I hated school, didn't like the discipline. ~ Gary Gygax, #NFDB
151:In every high school, there is a clique. ~ Janel Parrish, #NFDB
152:I stay dipped like the first day of school. ~ Cappadonna, #NFDB
153:It is better to support schools than jails. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
154:My boarding school roommate was a mafia princess ~ Tijan, #NFDB
155:Sunday school don't make you cool forever... ~ Sly Stone, #NFDB
156:You never grow out of high school sadly. ~ Kate Bosworth, #NFDB
157:Boarding school is a wicked thing. ~ Kristin Scott Thomas, #NFDB
158:Expansion Leads To Fewer High School Dropouts ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
159:High school was enough of a bitch as it was. ~ Jay McLean, #NFDB
160:Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
161:I didn’t have much school. Three years. ~ Pinetop Perkins, #NFDB
162:I excelled in English while I was at school. ~ Jamie Bell, #NFDB
163:I was not the hot, popular girl in school. ~ Alexis Knapp, #NFDB
164:I went to art school when I was little. ~ Amanda Seyfried, #NFDB
165:I wish I had more time to visit schools. ~ Cornelia Funke, #NFDB
166:Part 3 BACK TO SCHOOL (THE NORMAL KIND) ~ James Patterson, #NFDB
167:reviewed all the school’s security tapes. ~ Melinda Leigh, #NFDB
168:To every class we have a school assign'd, ~ George Crabbe, #NFDB
169:To the extent a school is like a factory, ~ Warren Berger, #NFDB
170:A modern school where football is taught. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
171:Educated fools; from uneducated schools. ~ Curtis Mayfield, #NFDB
172:He who opens a school door, closes a prison. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
173:I learned nothing while I was in school. ~ Lorraine Bracco, #NFDB
174:I taught high school students Spanish. ~ Daniela Bobadilla, #NFDB
175:I think you can go to school at any age. ~ AnnaSophia Robb, #NFDB
176:It was called Nine Gates Mystery School. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
177:I used to play tenor sax in high school, man. ~ Sean Price, #NFDB
178:I was never really unpopular in high school. ~ Tyler Posey, #NFDB
179:Life is the most effective school ever created ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
180:School doesn’t help with real life. ~ Jewell Parker Rhodes, #NFDB
181:School was a drag. Honestly, when is it not? ~ N M Lambert, #NFDB
182:the Massachusetts School for Idiotic Children ~ John Lloyd, #NFDB
183:The Stealthy School of Criticism. ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti, #NFDB
184:to school that morning. On cue - that is, late ~ Dee Ernst, #NFDB
185:We shouldn't need riot police at schools. ~ Noel Gallagher, #NFDB
186:When I was in high school I was 250 pounds. ~ Adam Lambert, #NFDB
187:For digital natives, public schools are jails ~ Bing Gordon, #NFDB
188:I educated myself. To me, school was boring. ~ Van Morrison, #NFDB
189:I never dated much in high school or college. ~ David Spade, #NFDB
190:I was home schooled, so I never got a yearbook. ~ Lucy Hale, #NFDB
191:I wasn't the most popular kid in school. ~ Daniel Radcliffe, #NFDB
192:Most people had high school. I had Breaking Bad. ~ RJ Mitte, #NFDB
193:Scratch a schoolboy and you find a savage. ~ Terry Eagleton, #NFDB
194:Self-reflection is the school of wisdom. ~ Baltasar Gracian, #NFDB
195:So far magic school was total rubbish. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan, #NFDB
196:War is the only proper school of the surgeon. ~ Hippocrates, #NFDB
197:Well, I believe in God. I taught Sunday school. ~ Kay Hagan, #NFDB
198:A human life is a schooling for eternity. ~ Gottfried Keller, #NFDB
199:Don't let school interfere with your education. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
200:He who graduates the harshest school, succeeds. ~ Thucydides, #NFDB
201:I dated the same girl all through high school. ~ Mark Hoppus, #NFDB
202:I don't really know why I went to law school. ~ Emily Giffin, #NFDB
203:I go to school the youth to learn the future. ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
204:In school [I wanted] to be an English teacher. ~ Nancy Grace, #NFDB
205:I played sports growing up in high school. ~ Erin Heatherton, #NFDB
206:I was a scam artist in high school for a while. ~ Scott Caan, #NFDB
207:I wish I wasn't famous. I wish I was still in school ~ Drake, #NFDB
208:Nature is an admirable schoolmistress. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
209:School's a weird thing. I'm not sure it works. ~ Johnny Depp, #NFDB
210:School should be eleven months of the year. ~ Nikki Giovanni, #NFDB
211:School was pretty hard for me at the beginning. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
212:There is only one school: that of talent. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
213:The stage was our school, our home, our life. ~ Lillian Gish, #NFDB
214:Whether I went to school or not, I would always study. ~ RZA, #NFDB
215:Being too cool for school was Jace's thing. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
216:High school to went I, school High to went Y'all ~ Snoop Dogg, #NFDB
217:I come from the school of That Horse is Not Dead. ~ Tom Hanks, #NFDB
218:If he'd been looked like that in high school, ~ Stylo Fantome, #NFDB
219:I knew school was stupid since the fifth grade. ~ Schoolboy Q, #NFDB
220:In high school, I played in a Rush cover band. ~ Sam Trammell, #NFDB
221:I played sports in high school and in college. ~ Jon Bernthal, #NFDB
222:I read a lot of 'Spark Notes' in high school. ~ Lauren Conrad, #NFDB
223:I see a schoolboy when I think of him, ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
224:I threw all my clothes away from high school. ~ Iman Shumpert, #NFDB
225:It's hard for parents just to measure schools. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
226:Life is nothing but high school.” —Kurt Vonnegut ~ Alice Pung, #NFDB
227:Necessity is a violent school-mistress. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
228:Shoot up everything except a school or a playground ~ Birdman, #NFDB
229:teacher’s class in his all-boys’ high school ~ John Lescroart, #NFDB
230:This school is enough to make anyone a communist. ~ Jo Walton, #NFDB
231:We believe in a whole-school approach to ICT. ~ Adrian Wilson, #NFDB
232:We learn not in the school, but in life. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
233:Don't Let them fool you or even try to school you ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
234:Film school was a privilege I could not afford. ~ Ava DuVernay, #NFDB
235:had almost twice as far to school as Joanna. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
236:I didnt go to film school, i went to films ~ Quentin Tarantino, #NFDB
237:I didn't leave business school to go bankrupt. ~ Steve Ballmer, #NFDB
238:I had died and woken up in High School Musical ~ Jamie McGuire, #NFDB
239:I miss school.
What’s wrong with me? ~ Wendelin Van Draanen,#NFDB
240:In high school and college, I was an athlete. ~ David Duchovny, #NFDB
241:I played a lot of character parts in school. ~ Matthew Ashford, #NFDB
242:I still think of Heaven as a liberal-arts school. ~ Mike White, #NFDB
243:It's easy to lose your soul in high school. ~ Faith Erin Hicks, #NFDB
244:I was home schooled starting in seventh grade. ~ Austin Butler, #NFDB
245:I went through a lot of battles in high school. ~ LeBron James, #NFDB
246:I went to drama school at New York University. ~ Molly Shannon, #NFDB
247:I would only date a 15 year old high school girl. ~ Seth Rogen, #NFDB
248:Junior colleges are high schools with ashtrays. ~ Adam Carolla, #NFDB
249:Lovely. Imprisoned in a nursery school dungeon. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
250:My family and school life are important to me. ~ Anna Chlumsky, #NFDB
251:Praise the Lord for Catholic girls schools … ~ William F Brown, #NFDB
252:Schools often get the teachers they deserve! ~ Andy Hargreaves, #NFDB
253:The world is nothing but a school of love; ~ Swami Muktananda, #NFDB
254:They didn’t have guns in school. It was ludicrous. ~ C L Stone, #NFDB
255:When I was at school, I wanted to be a lawyer. ~ Frank Lampard, #NFDB
256:Don't let school get in the way of your education. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
257:Don't let schooling interfere with your education. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
258:Going to car racing school was phenomenal. ~ Michelle Rodriguez, #NFDB
259:I don't remember one thing I learned in school. ~ Bobby Fischer, #NFDB
260:If there's a Hell on Earth, it's high school. ~ Lisa Desrochers, #NFDB
261:I got kicked out of every school I ever went to. ~ Shia LaBeouf, #NFDB
262:I had my schooling right there in the Cotton Club. ~ Lena Horne, #NFDB
263:I never let school get in the way of my education! ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
264:I was a good student, but I didn't like school. ~ Ashley Benson, #NFDB
265:I went to public school up until junior high. ~ Kristen Stewart, #NFDB
266:Poetry makes people nervous. Especially in schools. ~ Sarah Kay, #NFDB
267:Public school system status quo is indefensible. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
268:Rap is still an art, and no-one's from the Old School ~ KRS One, #NFDB
269:School always makes me want to hibernate. - Emma ~ Sara Shepard, #NFDB
270:schoolchildren. Plus he has erectile dysfunction. ~ J A Konrath, #NFDB
271:School plays are fine. Theater in school is fine. ~ Ben Affleck, #NFDB
272:Schools should be places to learn, not to teach. ~ Don Tapscott, #NFDB
273:That day at school I prayed for the world to end. ~ Dave Pelzer, #NFDB
274:The school is the manufactory of humanity. ~ John Amos Comenius, #NFDB
275:The world is our school for spiritual discovery. ~ Paul Brunton, #NFDB
276:At school I was very shy. I wasn't funny really. ~ Michel Gondry, #NFDB
277:Humor is anger that was sent to finishing school. ~ Richard Peck, #NFDB
278:In high school I went on about three dates. ~ Sean William Scott, #NFDB
279:I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book. ~ Coolio, #NFDB
280:I wasn't bad at school, but I was never a bookworm. ~ Idris Elba, #NFDB
281:Kids flourish if we get them to school every day. ~ Connie Smith, #NFDB
282:Now Elisabeth would be home from nursing school ~ Pam Mu oz Ryan, #NFDB
283:Please, we're in high school. Hook up and move on. ~ Rachel Vail, #NFDB
284:Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it. ~ Russell Baker, #NFDB
285:Schools are not exam factories for the rat race. ~ Johann Lamont, #NFDB
286:that school over the years,’ he said, pointing ~ Patricia Gibney, #NFDB
287:The proper school to learn art is not life but art ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
288:The Psalter is the great school of prayer. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
289:They should kick it old school with the Bard.> ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
290:By the time I left school, I had a lot of tenacity. ~ Halle Berry, #NFDB
291:I always enjoyed myself a lot in pre-school. ~ Valentino Garavani, #NFDB
292:I havent really eaten breakfast since high school. ~ Domo Genesis, #NFDB
293:In 1970, you went to school to find your husband. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
294:I sang in art school, just to get money to smoke. ~ Joni Mitchell, #NFDB
295:I was planning on going to Yale to theater school. ~ Shia LaBeouf, #NFDB
296:I went to the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago. ~ Harvey Korman, #NFDB
297:I won! I won! I don't have to go to school anymore. ~ Eddy Merckx, #NFDB
298:Loving long novels plays havoc with going to school ~ John Irving, #NFDB
299:One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
300:schoolkids laughing and horsing around. ~ Oxford University Press, #NFDB
301:School taught him how much he loved being home. ~ Brian K Vaughan, #NFDB
302:School - You can get all A's and still flunk life. ~ Walker Percy, #NFDB
303:Somehow it always comes back to coal at school. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
304:you go to school every morning and sit there for ~ David Grossman, #NFDB
305:You think school ends when it ends, but it doesn't. ~ Kevin James, #NFDB
306:A good mother is worth hundreds of schoolmasters. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
307:At school my nickname is the National Anthem girl. ~ Diana DeGarmo, #NFDB
308:High School is the place where poetry goes to die. ~ Billy Collins, #NFDB
309:I do after-school ballet and also hip-hop and jazz. ~ Elle Fanning, #NFDB
310:If you liked school, you're gonnnnna lovvvvve work! ~ Jello Biafra, #NFDB
311:I love an art-school girl. I mean dont we all? ~ Theophilus London, #NFDB
312:in public schools. Economically, Reagan’s followers— ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
313:I've never let my school interfere with my education. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
314:I was the only one at stage school who wasn't white. ~ Leona Lewis, #NFDB
315:My school is very lucky. We have an Olympic-size pool. ~ R L Stine, #NFDB
316:School will bring you more success than marriage. ~ Nnedi Okorafor, #NFDB
317:The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
318:The school of hard knocks is an accelerated curriculum. ~ Menander, #NFDB
319:All these niggas that have good music have longevity. ~ Schoolboy Q, #NFDB
320:Back to school, to prove to Dad that I'm not a fool. ~ Adam Sandler, #NFDB
321:CALUMNUS, n. A graduate of the School for Scandal. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
322:Do Kids Create Because of School—or in Spite of It? ~ George Couros, #NFDB
323:Experience is a good school. But the fees are high ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
324:Folk can’t learn their lessons if they skip school. ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
325:Gets SCHOOLED By Transgender Caller The Huffington Post ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
326:gone from the school when none here are loyal to him, ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
327:High school is a dark place; I hung out with ‘freaks.’ ~ Jared Leto, #NFDB
328:Id been bumming around in bands since my school days. ~ Rick Astley, #NFDB
329:I'll tell you right now. I'm for prayer in school. ~ Kinky Friedman, #NFDB
330:In a lot of ways, work was my graduate school. ~ Christopher Bollen, #NFDB
331:It’s like they can smell the public school on me. ~ Caroline Kepnes, #NFDB
332:I was the bad kid in school. I was usually in trouble. ~ Scott Caan, #NFDB
333:Music is the school and the hospital of the emotions. ~ Neel Burton, #NFDB
334:My awkward stage extended well into high school. ~ Rachelle Lefevre, #NFDB
335:School's out forever, school's been blown to pieces. ~ Alice Cooper, #NFDB
336:Schools should be integrated by race and by class. ~ Nikki Giovanni, #NFDB
337:Talking to him is rather like talking to a school play. ~ Zo Heller, #NFDB
338:The bulk of mankind are schoolboys through life. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
339:The council is old school. Really, really old school. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
340:The family is the school of duties - founded on love. ~ Felix Adler, #NFDB
341:The first lesson in Christ's school is self-denial. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
342:The nation that has the schools has the future. ~ Otto von Bismarck, #NFDB
343:We schoolmasters must temper discretion with deceit. ~ Evelyn Waugh, #NFDB
344:We've got to have good schools in every zip code. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
345:What did school matter compared to a sister? ~ Benjamin Alire S enz, #NFDB
346:20 years of schooling and they put you on the day shift. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
347:Being an actress doesn't make you popular in school. ~ Kirsten Dunst, #NFDB
348:Experience is a good school. But the fees are high. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
349:Failure in school does not mean failure in Iife. ~ Stephen J Cannell, #NFDB
350:Girls were always my biggest distraction in school. ~ Channing Tatum, #NFDB
351:I haven't done improv since I was in middle school. ~ Gillian Jacobs, #NFDB
352:I'm mostly self-taught. I didn't learn much in school. ~ Agnes Denes, #NFDB
353:I very much support financial education in schools. ~ George Osborne, #NFDB
354:I went to a Catholic school but did not really fit in. ~ Amber Heard, #NFDB
355:Love – Gunner Nash left town the day after high school ~ Erin Wright, #NFDB
356:More depended on the student than on the school. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
357:School is a place were you go to eat your lunch ~ Rodney Dangerfield, #NFDB
358:This ain't going to be no goddamn Sunday school picnic. ~ Kent Haruf, #NFDB
359:This was middle school, the age of miracles, ~ Karen Thompson Walker, #NFDB
360:We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
361:What we look for in the school is unrealized potential. ~ Donna Reed, #NFDB
362:When I was in middle school, I liked to make cartoons. ~ Pete Docter, #NFDB
363:You can finish school as soon as you finish the GCSE's. ~ Tom Felton, #NFDB
364:Elementary school children are very impressionable ~ David J Anderson, #NFDB
365:Every since high school I've been drawn to magazines. ~ Robert Benton, #NFDB
366:found it empty of any school materials. “It is good to ~ Sejal Badani, #NFDB
367:Grammar schools are public schools without the sodomy. ~ Tony Parsons, #NFDB
368:In high school, the hardest years, she salted her bath water. ~ Dessa, #NFDB
369:I was confirmed at my prep school at the age of 13. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
370:Please, don’t drive a school bus blindfolded. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
371:Rocknroll and high school are kind of the same thing, ~ Imogen Binnie, #NFDB
372:Schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
373:Sheep. I'm stuck in a boarding school filled with sheep. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
374:These are the secrets you learn only in clown school. ~ James Hamblin, #NFDB
375:Transparency in the traditional school might destroy it. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
376:Age 10. I joined the school marching band as a drummer. ~ Adrian Belew, #NFDB
377:As a teenager at high school, I felt like an outsider. ~ Shawn Ashmore, #NFDB
378:Baby, high school's over. High school's never over. ~ Karen Joy Fowler, #NFDB
379:Every German child learns to speak English in school. ~ Cornelia Funke, #NFDB
380:I actually just started home schooling. And it is great. ~ Robert Iler, #NFDB
381:I didn't get lessons of any kind I slept through school. ~ Joel Madden, #NFDB
382:I didn't study Greek mythology in school and I wish I had. ~ Eric Bana, #NFDB
383:I'd like to work on putting art programs back in schools. ~ Chaka Khan, #NFDB
384:I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things. ~ James M Barrie, #NFDB
385:I loved school. I studied like crazy. I was a Class A nerd. ~ Maya Lin, #NFDB
386:I've won. Hurray! I don't have to go to school any more. ~ Eddy Merckx, #NFDB
387:I was sometimes called 'coconut' when I was at school. ~ David Oyelowo, #NFDB
388:I was still in school after I dropped my first solo album. ~ Lil Wayne, #NFDB
389:Life is not a fairground, but a school. -- Franz Bardon ~ Franz Bardon, #NFDB
390:Mom, thanks for letting me drop out of high school. Haha! ~ Dave Grohl, #NFDB
391:Most of my schooldays were the worst day of my life. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
392:My education was interrupted only by my schooling. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
393:Private scholarships for students at hopeless schools. ~ Newt Gingrich, #NFDB
394:School might have been shit, but at least it was simple. ~ Mark Haddon, #NFDB
395:Schools did not reveal truths, they concealed them. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
396:Some people do piano lessons after school; I do movies. ~ Elle Fanning, #NFDB
397:The average schoolmaster is, and always must be, an ass. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
398:The New York School poets are my godfathers creatively. ~ Jim Jarmusch, #NFDB
399:The time has come to end social promotion in our schools. ~ Roy Barnes, #NFDB
400:This isn't some after-school feel-good movie special. ~ Meagan Spooner, #NFDB
401:To dance is to live. What I want is a school of life. ~ Isadora Duncan, #NFDB
402:We spend our whole lives recovering from high school. ~ Paula Danziger, #NFDB
403:You gotta school these young macks comin' up today... ~ Big Daddy Kane, #NFDB
404:1) "school isn't where the real learning happens." (3). ~ Gloria Naylor, #NFDB
405:Access to a school library results in more reading. ~ Stephen D Krashen, #NFDB
406:A-PLUS Act - allow states to operate like charter schools. ~ Jim DeMint, #NFDB
407:Education is what you learn after you leave school. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
408:Government-run schools can't instill morals and character. ~ Jim DeMint, #NFDB
409:I came in on the tail end of the old school of Hollywood ~ Tom Berenger, #NFDB
410:I can't even remember not wanting to go to film school. ~ Danny McBride, #NFDB
411:I didn't go to film school, I went to acting school. ~ Charles S Dutton, #NFDB
412:I do not allow my schooling to interfere with my education ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
413:If you're going to school, you should do what you enjoy. ~ April Bowlby, #NFDB
414:I go to school, but I never learn what I want to know. ~ Bill Watterson, #NFDB
415:I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
416:In fourth grade, I missed 82 days of school. Out of 160. ~ LeBron James, #NFDB
417:I struggled academically throughout elementary school ~ Benjamin Carson, #NFDB
418:I was not popular. I was the kid in school that was bullied. ~ Tom Ford, #NFDB
419:I wasn't the most popular girl in school by any means. ~ Cindy Crawford, #NFDB
420:John Denver I listened to when I was in elementary school. ~ Eric Close, #NFDB
421:Kids who go to normal school are so teenagery, so angsty. ~ Jaden Smith, #NFDB
422:Legislators could certainly do with a school of morals. ~ Simon Bolivar, #NFDB
423:My kids are now the most popular kids in their school. ~ Chris Daughtry, #NFDB
424:My mum is a school teacher and my dad is an electrician. ~ Jai Courtney, #NFDB
425:My top priority is to stop the cuts to our public schools. ~ Fred DuVal, #NFDB
426:No star fades faster than that of a high school athlete. ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
427:Old School has humongous laughs all the way through it. ~ Thomas Lennon, #NFDB
428:Support charters; insist on change for failing schools. ~ Newt Gingrich, #NFDB
429:There is a lot of hype about drama school, I think. ~ Eleanor Tomlinson, #NFDB
430:The school felt more mine than in all my four years there. ~ John Green, #NFDB
431:What doesn’t kill us sharpens us. Hardens us. Schools us. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
432:years, it showed real results: the high school ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton, #NFDB
433:Close Dept. of Education, but don't dismantle public schools. ~ Ron Paul, #NFDB
434:Freedom is a school of responsibility for human beings. ~ Dinesh D Souza, #NFDB
435:High school is depressing enough."
I tend to agree. ~ Alecia Whitaker,#NFDB
436:Home schooling as an idea is on a par with home dentistry. ~ Dick Cavett, #NFDB
437:I dropped out of school and I never took acting classes. ~ Alice Englert, #NFDB
438:If there is hell, it was modeled after junior high school. ~ Lewis Black, #NFDB
439:I got eight O-levels at school...zero in every subject. ~ Paul Gascoigne, #NFDB
440:I got expelled from every school I went to in Sydney. ~ Poppy Montgomery, #NFDB
441:In an art school it's very hard to tell who is the best. ~ Daniel Clowes, #NFDB
442:In middle school, I had an '87 Regal. That was unheard of. ~ Young Jeezy, #NFDB
443:In the school of the woods, there is no graduation day. ~ Horace Kephart, #NFDB
444:It's [Jail's] like being at school. Except you can't leave. ~ Boy George, #NFDB
445:It was a terrible school, no matter how you looked at it. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
446:I used to sit in school and dream about getting into films. ~ Cary Elwes, #NFDB
447:I went to a private arts school. We had to wear cloaks. ~ Claire Forlani, #NFDB
448:I went to boarding school at seven and cried and cried. ~ Rupert Everett, #NFDB
449:I went to school on the Internet. I was not a cheerleader. ~ Emmy Rossum, #NFDB
450:I went to the Conservatory of Music in school in Rome. ~ Cecilia Bartoli, #NFDB
451:My education was interrupted only by my schooling. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
452:My mom did what school didn't. She taught me how to think. ~ Trevor Noah, #NFDB
453:My school is attended by near three hundred scholars. ~ Joseph Lancaster, #NFDB
454:School prepares you for the real world... which also bites. ~ Jim Benton, #NFDB
455:Stay in school. Lie to your teachers, but stay in school. ~ Billy Corgan, #NFDB
456:The home is the chief school of human virtues. ~ William Ellery Channing, #NFDB
457:The last thing I wanted to do was blow up another school. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
458:The only thing they can't teach you at art school is art. ~ David Bailey, #NFDB
459:the routine of education in the schools of ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
460:We should throw the Epistle of James out of this school. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
461:Before leaving school I consorted with The Oracle: Google. ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB
462:book variables, student variables, and school variables. ~ Teri S Lesesne, #NFDB
463:Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
464:he was coming while in the elementary school classroom, ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
465:I failed angst in high school. They let me graduate anyway. ~ John Scalzi, #NFDB
466:If you're in high-school and you're not having fun, quit. ~ Doug Stanhope, #NFDB
467:I like a lot of old-school R&B, soul, and classic rock. ~ Wiz Khalifa, #NFDB
468:I most likely be in school, so don't tell my teacher."
-KD ~ Unknown,#NFDB
469:I still had a normal childhood with my friends from school. ~ Demi Lovato, #NFDB
470:I used to spend every morning in detention at my old school. ~ Jake Lloyd, #NFDB
471:I visualized high school as being like ‘Saved By the Bell.’ ~ Vanessa Ray, #NFDB
472:I was dyslexic, so I was put in the silly class at school. ~ David Bailey, #NFDB
473:I was very unsure about what I wanted to do in high school. ~ Aaron Tveit, #NFDB
474:I went to an all white school where I dealt with racism. ~ Chaske Spencer, #NFDB
475:Mean girls go far in high school. Kind women go far in LIFE. ~ Mandy Hale, #NFDB
476:Out of the public schools comes the greatness of the nation. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
477:School’s important at the moment.
Unsexiest statement ever. ~ A S King,#NFDB
478:The government gave me enough money to go to acting school. ~ Tony Curtis, #NFDB
479:The secret school is our silent protest,” she told us. ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
480:This is the Wilderness School. 'Where the Kids are animals ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
481:A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
482:All schools will end up using game metrics in the future. ~ Nolan Bushnell, #NFDB
483:Graduate school is a place to hide for a couple of years. ~ Michael Eisner, #NFDB
484:I bake my daughter cupcakes for her school. I'm very hands-on. ~ Greg Bryk, #NFDB
485:I believe that religious faith schools are highly dubious. ~ Bjorn Ulvaeus, #NFDB
486:I hated school, but I was a good student. I made straight A's. ~ Lucy Hale, #NFDB
487:I'm 18, I'm going to graduate high school in a few months. ~ Camilla Belle, #NFDB
488:I'm still the fat kid from high school who never had a date. ~ Nathan Lane, #NFDB
489:I never went to college - I barely got out of high school. ~ Dave Matthews, #NFDB
490:In high school, I always dressed to impress the girls. ~ Theophilus London, #NFDB
491:I played basketball and soccer my freshman year in high school. ~ Mia Hamm, #NFDB
492:I play guitar and sing when I'm not busy with school and acting. ~ Kaitlyn, #NFDB
493:I think you should fall in love at least twice in high school. ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
494:I wanted to be an elementary school teacher my whole life. ~ Steve Wozniak, #NFDB
495:I was a musical theatre geek in high school and college. ~ Toks Olagundoye, #NFDB
496:I was fortunate to attend a school with an excellent library ~ Syrie James, #NFDB
497:I was going to go to school to become a neurological surgeon. ~ Angel Haze, #NFDB
498:I was just average, I’m afraid. Too dreamy. After school, ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
499:Like everything else in life, it was kind of like high school. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
500:On the morning of the exorcism, I stayed home from school. ~ Paul Tremblay, #NFDB
501:She had no idea how good they had it back at the school. ~ Chris Philbrook, #NFDB
502:What do we mean when we say our school 'values' reading? ~ Kelly Gallagher, #NFDB
503:What I know is my music gets blamed for school shootings. ~ Marilyn Manson, #NFDB
504:All my high school papers were written in the rare book room. ~ Jim Sanborn, #NFDB
505:All the world is my school and all humanity is my teacher. ~ George Whitman, #NFDB
506:A lot of my colleagues at school became great friends of mine. ~ Jenna Bush, #NFDB
507:Apparently when I went to school, I had a Glasgow accent. ~ Annalena McAfee, #NFDB
508:Are the kids at school?"
"No, they're in the lake. My God. ~ Dave Eggers,#NFDB
509:At drama school, I was always playing the 11-year-old boys. ~ Kit Harington, #NFDB
510:Baby, high school's over.
High school's never over.. ~ Karen Joy Fowler,#NFDB
511:choice school, Penn State. It wasn’t the party atmosphere ~ Jonathan Sturak, #NFDB
512:Customer complaints are the schoolbooks from which we learn. ~ Lou Gerstner, #NFDB
513:Defeat is a school in which truth always grows strong. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
514:Don't let your life outside of school dictate your future. ~ Simone Elkeles, #NFDB
515:For all education is outside, not inside, the schoolroom. ~ Christina Stead, #NFDB
516:I bring truth to tha youth tear tha roof off tha ol' school. ~ Tupac Shakur, #NFDB
517:I'm old school. I'm not the fastest guy or the quickest guy. ~ James Harden, #NFDB
518:I started bowling when I was 14, my freshman year in high school. ~ Joe Tex, #NFDB
519:I think school is a place where thinking should be taught. ~ Edward de Bono, #NFDB
520:It's a completely irrational decision to drop out of school. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
521:It was high school. Evil is kind of the name of the game. ~ Jennifer Weiner, #NFDB
522:I was always trying to do things to make school fun. ~ Downtown Julie Brown, #NFDB
523:I went to art school actually when I was sixteen years old. ~ David Hockney, #NFDB
524:Newspapers are the schoolmasters of the common people. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
525:One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
526:One good schoolmaster is worth a thousand priests. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
527:Pain is the best schoolmaster, as you will soon discover. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
528:Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
529:school sounds a bunch more two-fisted than I’d thought. ~ Jonathan L Howard, #NFDB
530:Systems of schooling are over managed and under led. ~ Thomas J Sergiovanni, #NFDB
531:The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
532:The only thing that kept me out of college was high school. ~ Uncle Kracker, #NFDB
533:There is only one school of literature - that of talent. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
534:Well, Fredde has all the best there at that school, all the ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
535:What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common? ~ Steven D Levitt, #NFDB
536:When I was in school, working as a team was called cheating. ~ Peter Norvig, #NFDB
537:Whether I went to school or not, I would always study.” —RZA ~ Austin Kleon, #NFDB
538:You mean he came to your school? The scandalous rodent-loaf! ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
539:A community of people, that's the really what art school is. ~ Ross Bleckner, #NFDB
540:A vacation from school should not mean hunger for our children. ~ Dina Titus, #NFDB
541:Back-to-School Chats, Advice from Mothers to Their Daughters. ~ George Bradt, #NFDB
542:Balancing school, acting, and a social life can be difficult. ~ Emily Osment, #NFDB
543:Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods. ~ Neil Postman, #NFDB
544:I did some school plays in elementary school, but that was it. ~ Jason Mewes, #NFDB
545:I played football growing up in junior high and high school. ~ Ryan Merriman, #NFDB
546:I pray you school yourself. [MacBeth, Act 1V, Scene 2] ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
547:I taught myself more in the library than school taught me. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
548:I try never to let my schooling get in the way of my education. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
549:It's a good day when a goddess gets on the school-bus with you. ~ Barry Lyga, #NFDB
550:I would really like to go back to school. I would love it now. ~ Fiona Apple, #NFDB
551:Jasper's mother had died while he was a junior in high school -- ~ Nina Post, #NFDB
552:Knowledge is dead; the school, however, serves the living. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
553:Let's go into the sanctuary or the adult Sunday school room, ~ Carolyn Brown, #NFDB
554:pressure in school-age children. The NIH has funded subsequent ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
555:Public schooling does not serve a public; it creates a pubic. ~ Neil Postman, #NFDB
556:Schools are for training people how to listen to other people. ~ David Byrne, #NFDB
557:Spike Lee’s School Daze and Sidney Poitier’s To Sir with Love ~ Tayari Jones, #NFDB
558:Undistracted by schooling, one studies best during vacations ~ Carlo Rovelli, #NFDB
559:We're asking schools to look at kids as partners in education. ~ Jill Vialet, #NFDB
560:When I take my kid to school, all the parents stop and stare. ~ Adam Sandler, #NFDB
561:You can drag my body to school but my spirit refuses to go. ~ Bill Watterson, #NFDB
562:And then, when I started to school, I found out I couldn't talk. ~ Mel Tillis, #NFDB
563:A school isn’t a school until Sophie tries to destroy it. ~ Shannon Messenger, #NFDB
564:Banning prayer in school in effect made God unconstitutional. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
565:Be careful or you might go to school tomorrow flushed with sex. ~ Lisa McMann, #NFDB
566:By my senior year in high school, I was friends with every group ~ Shane West, #NFDB
567:have been watching you at school. not in a creepy way. though ~ Julie Buxbaum, #NFDB
568:He was the cleanest-cut comic-book schoolboy hero imaginable. ~ Joanne Harris, #NFDB
569:I believe in teaching, but I don’t believe in going to school. ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
570:Identity politics isn't old school! It's still alive and well. ~ Grace Dunham, #NFDB
571:I felt alienated at school, and I never did well with girls. ~ Burt Bacharach, #NFDB
572:I'm very good at daydreaming. Ask any of my schoolteachers. ~ Bruce Dickinson, #NFDB
573:I never wore full-on eyeliner in high school, but I wanted to. ~ Adam Lambert, #NFDB
574:I've lectured at the Harvard Business School several times. ~ Christie Hefner, #NFDB
575:I was hopeless at high school - I failed everything but Latin. ~ Keanu Reeves, #NFDB
576:I will never be as busy as I was in high school and college. ~ Tyler Hoechlin, #NFDB
577:Mexican marijuana, which he called the schoolboy’s consolation. ~ James Purdy, #NFDB
578:My father's a protector. My father's old-school. He's a cowboy. ~ Paul Walker, #NFDB
579:My favourite subject at school was avoiding unnecessary work. ~ Prince Philip, #NFDB
580:One year ago I left my home for school and never returned. ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
581:On some level, I think everyone felt like a dork in high school. ~ Grant Show, #NFDB
582:Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality. ~ Henry Fielding, #NFDB
583:School, as you might imagine, was a terrific failure. Although ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
584:Teaching at university isn't like teaching in an art school. ~ Barbara Kruger, #NFDB
585:The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
586:The school had a big problem with drugs... especially Class A. ~ Milton Jones, #NFDB
587:We must consider teaching the Egyptian revolution in schools. ~ David Cameron, #NFDB
588:We must stop the trend of closing schools and building prisons. ~ Gale Sayers, #NFDB
589:Your pain is a school unto itself–– and your joy a lovely temple. ~ Aberjhani, #NFDB
590:Agribusinesses should never dictate the quality of school meals. ~ Jared Polis, #NFDB
591:[-] Dust tailed them so Violet could ready for school at home. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
592:Everyone goes to rotten schools when they're kids, don't they? ~ David Gilmour, #NFDB
593:He will only be gone from the school when none are loyal to him. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
594:I had no plans to be ever a lawyer, a crime fighter [in school]. ~ Nancy Grace, #NFDB
595:I loathed every day and regret every moment I spent in a school. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
596:In high school, everybody rapped. You just pounded on the table. ~ Boots Riley, #NFDB
597:In high school, I was the biggest procrastinator in the world. ~ Kristin Kreuk, #NFDB
598:I started performing at school and drama classes when I was 7. ~ Delta Goodrem, #NFDB
599:I think we've tied acquiring knowledge too much to school ~ Arno Allan Penzias, #NFDB
600:I thought this kind of thing only happened at the medical school, ~ Ay e Kulin, #NFDB
601:I usually feel pretty screamy when someone attacks my school. ~ Rachel Hawkins, #NFDB
602:I was not the midwife of the Law School, but its fraternal twin. ~ Norman Lamm, #NFDB
603:I went to great schools. Wharton School, a lot of great places. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
604:Let us teach the young in the school of the fear of the Lord. ~ Pope Clement I, #NFDB
605:Libraries, museums, and schools are fragile institutions. ~ Stephen Greenblatt, #NFDB
606:Life isn't a race to win, it's a school for our higher education. ~ Guy Finley, #NFDB
607:Making a record is like painting a school bus with a toothbrush ~ Quincy Jones, #NFDB
608:Maybe I'm old-school, but I always thought you honor a contract. ~ Brett Favre, #NFDB
609:No one who had any sense has ever liked school. ~ Robert Boothby Baron Boothby, #NFDB
610:Not all schooling is education nor all education, schooling. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
611:Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys. ~ Theodore Roethke, #NFDB
612:Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education. ~ Russell Kirk, #NFDB
613:There were no spells at my school, just a smack in the mouth. ~ Michael Gambon, #NFDB
614:The two of them shook hands the regular way. The old-school way. ~ Mike Lupica, #NFDB
615:They never tell you how heavy a corpse is in training school. ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
616:When I came to Detroit I was just a mild-mannered Sunday-school boy. ~ Ty Cobb, #NFDB
617:When I was in high school, I listened to a lot of death metal bands. ~ Amy Lee, #NFDB
618:All that schooling never prepares you for the reality of life. ~ Juliette Lewis, #NFDB
619:An adult friend of Lincoln's: "Life was to him a school. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, #NFDB
620:A sense of curiosity is nature's original school of education. ~ Smiley Blanton, #NFDB
621:education that stops with school stops where it is beginning. ~ Stephen Leacock, #NFDB
622:Growing up poor, I didn't even have a lunch to take to school. ~ George Foreman, #NFDB
623:I did math in school, obviously. And I loved all my math teachers. ~ Jayma Mays, #NFDB
624:I didn't have many friends; I was kind of bullied at school. ~ Bojana Novakovic, #NFDB
625:I found school pretty tough. I got the mickey taken out of me at school. ~ Mika, #NFDB
626:I had never passed a single school exam, and clearly never would. ~ Mary Leakey, #NFDB
627:I just motor through school in the morning and then go skating. ~ Ryan Sheckler, #NFDB
628:I love being a student, if I could, I'd stay in school forever. ~ Andrea Barber, #NFDB
629:I never let my schoolin' interfere with my learnin' " Mark Twain ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
630:In school, I could hear the leaves rustle and go on a journey. ~ Clint Eastwood, #NFDB
631:it smells like grade school—boredom, paste, Lysoled vomit. I ~ Kathryn Stockett, #NFDB
632:I wore a woman's antique fur jacket to my high school junior prom. ~ Lance Loud, #NFDB
633:My freshman year of high school was just awkwardness all around. ~ Molly Tarlov, #NFDB
634:School is not the end but only the beginning of an education. ~ Calvin Coolidge, #NFDB
635:Serving in Congress is like having a second shot at high school. ~ Barney Frank, #NFDB
636:There is too much repression and suppression in schools. ~ Fanny Jackson Coppin, #NFDB
637:They don't tell you this in school, Everybody plays the fool. ~ Smokey Robinson, #NFDB
638:the years. Mike reminded Aidan of a school kid on the playground, ~ Kate Angell, #NFDB
639:When I got out of Yale Drama School, I was completely broke. ~ Courtney B Vance, #NFDB
640:Writing is the litmus paper of thoughtthe very center of schooling. ~ Ted Sizer, #NFDB
641:You can't learn in school what the world is going to do next year. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
642:You can’t teach art, so ART SCHOOL is a contradiction in terms. ~ Duane Michals, #NFDB
643:You look like you spent a lot more time in prep school than prison. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
644:You’re like a little wild thing
that was never sent to school. ~ Mary Oliver,#NFDB
645:and nails done, right after she visited the school nurse, ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
646:A part of me suddenly wished I hadn’t dressed up like a schoolmarm. ~ Vi Keeland, #NFDB
647:As for acting, I took drama lessons when I was in high school. ~ Megan Gallagher, #NFDB
648:Chaos was spreading through the scene like germs at a preschool. ~ Robert Kroese, #NFDB
649:Don't marry a man to reform him - that's what reform schools are for. ~ Mae West, #NFDB
650:Every man is liable on occasion to behave like a sulky schoolboy ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
651:French name, English accent, American school. Anna confused. ~ Stephanie Perkins, #NFDB
652:God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
653:I can't even say the word 'titmouse' without giggling like a schoolgirl. ~ Homer, #NFDB
654:I felt like a misfit at school, and I think that's quite common. ~ Clare Balding, #NFDB
655:I got expelled from my school when I was 12; I was quite bad! ~ Robert Pattinson, #NFDB
656:I have never been impressed by the formal schools of ethics. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
657:I'll fail."
"At schoool.""Failing at school is failing at life. ~ Ned Vizzini,#NFDB
658:I never completed high school and I am very rich and very successful. ~ Tre Cool, #NFDB
659:I never went to a photography school, which was my saving grace. ~ Duane Michals, #NFDB
660:I played tournament chess from fifth grade up into high school. ~ Chris Hardwick, #NFDB
661:I was a competitive swimmer in middle school and high school. ~ Katharine McPhee, #NFDB
662:Let's face it. No kid in high school feels as though they fit in. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
663:Middle School is about as bad as it gets, and then it gets better. ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
664:My chops are still up, even though I`m not still in high school. ~ Travis Barker, #NFDB
665:My feeling about school was that it interfered with my reading. ~ Linda Ronstadt, #NFDB
666:Newton was a judaic monotheist of the school of Maimonides ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
667:Roarke called up a blueprint of Hillary Clinton High School. “Certain ~ J D Robb, #NFDB
668:Teenage rebellion is for suburban schoolchildren. Get over it. ~ Neal Shusterman, #NFDB
669:That got thrown out of court are what got me thrown out of school. ~ Justin Long, #NFDB
670:That’s exactly what the scythedom is: high school with murder. ~ Neal Shusterman, #NFDB
671:The kindest word to describe my performance in school was Sloth. ~ Harrison Ford, #NFDB
672:The lessons I learned in Sunday School have kept me on track ~ Denzel Washington, #NFDB
673:The most important thing I learned in school was how to touch type. ~ Joichi Ito, #NFDB
674:The pathway to educational excellence lies within each school. ~ Terrence E Deal, #NFDB
675:The Rosary is a school for learning true Christian perfection. ~ Pope John XXIII, #NFDB
676:The stress of grad school can drive anyone temporarily mad. ~ Jonathan Kellerman, #NFDB
677:To belong to a school is necessarily to espouse its prejudices. ~ Gustave Le Bon, #NFDB
678:What about your school? It's defective, it's a pack of useless lies. ~ Meat Loaf, #NFDB
679:When I was in high school, I was voted most likely to succeed. ~ Sheryl Sandberg, #NFDB
680:When I was in school, there was no such thing as girls athletics. ~ Karen DeCrow, #NFDB
681:60 percent of girls finish primary school in low-income countries. ~ Hans Rosling, #NFDB
682:And it was worse because Edward Cullen wasn’t in school at all. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
683:Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
684:HIGH SCHOOL IS THE PENALTY FOR TRANSGRESSIONS YET TO BE SPECIFIED ~ Frank Portman, #NFDB
685:I always try to act like I'm some old school artist from the 1960s. ~ Danny Brown, #NFDB
686:I'd like thousands of schools as good as the one I went to, Eton. ~ Boris Johnson, #NFDB
687:I'd like to go to NYU business school and then go on to film school. ~ Alexa Vega, #NFDB
688:I hate people who act too cool for school. Just own up to it, dude. ~ Wayne White, #NFDB
689:I'm definitely not a science nerd. That was not my forte at school. ~ Emily Blunt, #NFDB
690:I think in high school there's so many cliques. You're never safe. ~ Blake Lively, #NFDB
691:It was during my time at secondary school that I abandoned religion. ~ Paul Nurse, #NFDB
692:Ive never gone to culinary school, but I do love cooking. ~ Keshia Knight Pulliam, #NFDB
693:I went to a school run by Catholic nuns. They were really strict. ~ Sofia Vergara, #NFDB
694:I went to eight different schools my first nine years of school. ~ Vanessa Lachey, #NFDB
695:I went to Samuel Ayer High School, which is now Milpitas High Schoo. ~ Grant Show, #NFDB
696:My nickname in grade school was salamander because I have a lazy eye ~ Thom Yorke, #NFDB
697:Right now many schools have no recess. Most schools have no PE. ~ Richard Simmons, #NFDB
698:She's terse. I can be terse. Once, in flight school, I was laconic. ~ Joss Whedon, #NFDB
699:Since he had nothing better to do well in, he did well in school. ~ Joseph Heller, #NFDB
700:The list, for better or worse, did elevate her status at school. ~ Siobhan Vivian, #NFDB
701:The punches came fast and hard, lying on my back in the school yard. ~ Neil Young, #NFDB
702:there while waiting to take Mighty to school after he returned from ~ Imbolo Mbue, #NFDB
703:The Rosary is a school of Prayer. The Rosary is a school of Faith. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
704:The schools schedule is a series of units of time; the clock is king. ~ Ted Sizer, #NFDB
705:Welcome to adulthood," she said. "It sucks as much as high school. ~ Sarah Dessen, #NFDB
706:Whose school-hours are all the days and nights of our existence. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
707:Who wants to go to school and be asked for, like, 20 autographs? ~ Edward Furlong, #NFDB
708:A mother is a school. Empower her; and you empower a great nation. ~ Hafez Ibrahim, #NFDB
709:An old man at school is a contemptible and ridiculous object. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
710:As a young boy, I was taught in high school that hacking was cool. ~ Kevin Mitnick, #NFDB
711:As the schoolgirl said to the vicar, it was a lot less meaty up close. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
712:At times during high school and college I wished to be a sportswriter. ~ Luke Ford, #NFDB
713:Bring a sword to school. Trust me-those girls will leave you alone. ~ Chris Colfer, #NFDB
714:Despite what people think, I was such a rule follower at school. ~ Kristen Stewart, #NFDB
715:Education is key. I graduated from high school; everyone needs to. ~ Tracy McGrady, #NFDB
716:Female high schoolers in underwear and cat's ears are what I find hot! ~ NisiOisiN, #NFDB
717:Floaters swarmed through his eyeballs like schools of panicked fish. ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB
718:Going to school- picking an apple Getting an education- eating it ~ E L Konigsburg, #NFDB
719:High School is the penalty for transgressions yet to be specified. ~ Frank Portman, #NFDB
720:High school studfents are the largest oppressed minority in America. ~ Jerry Rubin, #NFDB
721:I actually built a tiny computer as a junior high school project. ~ Mitchell Kapor, #NFDB
722:I'd say I've gone to grad school for comedy being on "Community." ~ Gillian Jacobs, #NFDB
723:If knowledge was power I had under my possession the entire school ~ Joanne Harris, #NFDB
724:I guess when you go to business school you never turn business off. ~ Mindy Kaling, #NFDB
725:I hate school with all my might, but then it’s a safer place than home ~ V F Mason, #NFDB
726:I majored in Shakespearean studies at a very tiny school in Georgia. ~ Nancy Grace, #NFDB
727:I'm not a very good advertisement for the American school system. ~ David Brinkley, #NFDB
728:I never understood why the metal heads in my school hated the punks. ~ Trevor Dunn, #NFDB
729:I never went to film school, so I just sort of learned on my own. ~ Steven Sebring, #NFDB
730:It is difficult because the school I go to, my friends do not attend. ~ Mila Kunis, #NFDB
731:It was a tough school. The kids on the debating team took steroids! ~ Milton Berle, #NFDB
732:I was a great student at a great school, Wharton School of Finance. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
733:I was crazy for music as a high school kid and a college kid. ~ Alexandra Patsavas, #NFDB
734:I was discouraged at drama school, along with most of my peers. ~ Sigourney Weaver, #NFDB
735:I went to the public schools myself. And they were great for me. ~ Charles Schumer, #NFDB
736:Lawless schools produce lawless children. ~ William Whitelaw 1st Viscount Whitelaw, #NFDB
737:My mother was the president of the PTA at every school I attended. ~ Vernon Jordan, #NFDB
738:My school of thought is, anything goes, but I can't do that anymore. ~ David Spade, #NFDB
739:Of course I acted in school plays but mostly as angels or mushrooms. ~ Maj Sj wall, #NFDB
740:One school is finished, and the time has come for another to begin. ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
741:Partnership is the way. Dictatorial win-lose is so old-school. ~ Alanis Morissette, #NFDB
742:School seemed unimportant, since I learned so much more on my own. ~ Shannon Tweed, #NFDB
743:Schools of minnows, he thought. Who cared if they lived or died? He ~ Robert Ellis, #NFDB
744:She went back to middle school, and tried not to touch anything dead. ~ V E Schwab, #NFDB
745:The open road is the school of doubt in which man learns faith in man. ~ Pico Iyer, #NFDB
746:What goes on inside the school is an interruption of education. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
747:You can acquire a lot of knowledge without ever going to school. ~ William Glasser, #NFDB
748:America employs more private security guards than high school teachers. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
749:And I played in jazz band as well during all three years in school. ~ Travis Barker, #NFDB
750:As a rule I had a distaste for any reading beyond my school books. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
751:a school-vacation skier is never the equal to a north-country native. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
752:Back when I was in elementary school, I didnt have many friends. ~ Israel Broussard, #NFDB
753:Boys in love with boys, girls in love with their fellow schoolgirls. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
754:But how do schools help matters?" "They give the peasant fresh wants. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
755:California had even won Olympic gold twice. Both schools could ~ Daniel James Brown, #NFDB
756:Employers babysit parents while their children are at school. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
757:He will only be gone from the school when none here are loyal to him, ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
758:I don't think the schools are getting as much money as they should. ~ Matt Gonzalez, #NFDB
759:I grew up Irish Catholic with a bunch of kids at Catholic school. ~ Brigid Brannagh, #NFDB
760:I'm not satisfied with the explanations I get from tv or from school. ~ Erykah Badu, #NFDB
761:In an ideal world for me, school lunch would be free for everybody. ~ Tom Colicchio, #NFDB
762:In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands. ~ Adam Sandler, #NFDB
763:Instead of being on teams at school, I was preparing for auditions. ~ Shawn Ashmore, #NFDB
764:Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB
765:I played music all through school and I kind of performed that way. ~ Ewan McGregor, #NFDB
766:I said school starts tomorrow. I didn’t say I was going to be there. ~ Kim Harrison, #NFDB
767:It’s like finding a magical unicorn in a high school full of cattle. ~ Sara Farizan, #NFDB
768:It wasn't until school that we realised that we were abnormal. ~ Gilberto Hernandez, #NFDB
769:I used to love school until everybody got old enough to point and laugh. ~ A S King, #NFDB
770:I was expelled from four schools. Today I still read with difficulty. ~ Sarah Miles, #NFDB
771:I was going to engineering school but fell in love with physics. ~ Leonard Susskind, #NFDB
772:I was home educated but would skip my lessons to go hang out at school. ~ Dane Cook, #NFDB
773:I went to a regular school, not one of those fame academy things. ~ Alyson Hannigan, #NFDB
774:Lesson #456 of high school life: Never, EVER trust an alarm clock. ~ Heather Brewer, #NFDB
775:Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
776:People only rooted for the underdog in movies, not in middle school. ~ David Wright, #NFDB
777:Sarah Palin should not be on vacation. She should be in summer school. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
778:The higher my GPA gets the more I realize high school is useless ~ Megan McCafferty, #NFDB
779:The less literate are the first to fail and drop out of school. ~ Stephen D Krashen, #NFDB
780:What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism? ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
781:When I came out of school I didn't even think that modeling was a job. ~ Heidi Klum, #NFDB
782:Yes, I took up the guitar when I was about 14 or 15, in high school. ~ Beau Bridges, #NFDB
783:You go from high school, to the NBA, and you're thrown in the fire. ~ Dwight Howard, #NFDB
784:You write for the people in high school who ignored you. We all do. ~ Carolyn Kizer, #NFDB
785:Behind the parents stands the school, and behind the teacher the home. ~ Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
786:I'd go to school and walk up to people. “A new leaf,” I said. ~ Patricia Reilly Giff, #NFDB
787:I did spend a year in high school being obsessed with Fleetwood Mac. ~ Joanna Newsom, #NFDB
788:I'm clear that we do need to improve what's happening in our schools. ~ Michael Gove, #NFDB
789:In some states, not even 50 percent of black boys finish high school. ~ Tavis Smiley, #NFDB
790:It wasn't until my senior year in high school that I started acting. ~ Steve Buscemi, #NFDB
791:I was frequently told at drama school that I was thinking too much. ~ Natalie Dormer, #NFDB
792:I was home-schooled. My mom wasn't a fan of public school systems. ~ Britt Robertson, #NFDB
793:Jail is preschool. Prison is for those earning a Ph.D. in brutality. ~ Damien Echols, #NFDB
794:Middle school's amazing. It is extraordinary. An extraordinary time. ~ Michael Scott, #NFDB
795:School buildings should be opened and used twenty four hours a day. ~ Nikki Giovanni, #NFDB
796:School disruption comes from those children who have given up hope. ~ Albert Shanker, #NFDB
797:The girls in high school who watched 90210? I was watching Seinfeld. ~ Josh Schwartz, #NFDB
798:The money in the schools overpowers the principles of the purpose. ~ Miroslav Vitous, #NFDB
799:The son—deceased’s under that tree, doctor, just inside the schoolyard. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
800:They think I'm going to be a schoolteacher but I'm going to be a poet. ~ Janet Frame, #NFDB
801:Through theater and acting school, I found a way to articulate myself. ~ Adam Driver, #NFDB
802:When I was in high school, I don't know that I really had big dreams. ~ Alan Jackson, #NFDB
803:When I was in high school, I had binders with pictures of tour buses. ~ Hunter Hayes, #NFDB
804:Working at Pixar has been like my graduate school for screenwriting. ~ Michael Arndt, #NFDB
805:Yeah school girl, cool girl. Your dress is sexy and your momma is a cougar. ~ J Cole, #NFDB
806:You ever think that school dances are a form of legalized prostitution? ~ Alex Flinn, #NFDB
807:You send a boy to school in order to make friends - the right sort. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
808:You’ve worked hard at school and at gymnastics. That’s no easy feat! ~ Mary Casanova, #NFDB
809:An animal has to suffer for us old-school Latinos to get what we want. ~ George Lopez, #NFDB
810:Clint looked as shocked as a Sunday School teacher in a brothel. Good. ~ Joanna Blake, #NFDB
811:Correction. You’ll let the whole school know what you find out,” I say. ~ David Estes, #NFDB
812:Everything is uncomfortable for the first time: School, Smoking or Sex. ~ Aakash Deep, #NFDB
813:Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
814:Going to school- picking an apple
Getting an education- eating it ~ E L Konigsburg,#NFDB
815:Group projects are the exception in school, but they should be the norm. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
816:Having a school really is the fulfillment of a longtime dream of mine. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
817:High school is such a shared experience in North American culture. ~ Douglas Coupland, #NFDB
818:I began reading in French. I didn't read in English until high school. ~ Laila Lalami, #NFDB
819:I didn't pay as much attention in school as I would have liked to. ~ Gillian Anderson, #NFDB
820:If I wanted to be a doctor today I'd go to math school not med school. ~ Vinod Khosla, #NFDB
821:I never learned hate at home or shame. I had to go to school for that. ~ Dick Gregory, #NFDB
822:I really love school, but I'd love to continue acting jobs if I can. ~ Georgie Henley, #NFDB
823:I should open a school. Danny’s Academy for Blowing Shit Up and Stuff. ~ Sam Sisavath, #NFDB
824:I started out as a Cold Warrior, even my last years in grade school. ~ Alexander Haig, #NFDB
825:I started out singing in high school in the choir and in a garage band. ~ Stark Sands, #NFDB
826:It often strikes me that the actors in high school movies look too old. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
827:I toned down my accent at school; otherwise, people would pick on me. ~ Michelle Ryan, #NFDB
828:I was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles. ~ Beth Henley, #NFDB
829:I wasn't hugely popular at school. In fact, I was bullied at school. ~ Sally Phillips, #NFDB
830:I went to an all-boys school and hated feeling like one of the crowd. ~ Jeremy Irvine, #NFDB
831:I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
832:I wish we could have acted quicker on Detroit or other failing schools. ~ John Engler, #NFDB
833:Most of my school friends and even a few of my teachers called me Duck. ~ Donald Dunn, #NFDB
834:Oh my God. Oh my God, J.P. is in love with me. And we blew up the school. ~ Meg Cabot, #NFDB
835:Outstanding high school writers reported extensive summer reading ~ Stephen D Krashen, #NFDB
836:Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. ~ Paul Graham, #NFDB
837:School prepares you for the real world but I want the fake world. TEEHEE ~ Jim Benton, #NFDB
838:School shootings were invented by blacks... and stolen by the white man. ~ Chris Rock, #NFDB
839:School was very easy, it turned out, if you just disconnected your heart. ~ Anne Ursu, #NFDB
840:the church of those who are redeemed by high-school reading lists. She ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
841:The public school has become the established church of secular society. ~ Ivan Illich, #NFDB
842:There's a whole catalogue of actors that never went to acting school. ~ Dennis Farina, #NFDB
843:The things that have been most valuable to me I did not learn in school. ~ Will Smith, #NFDB
844:The tie's a multi purpose accessory, y'know, belt, school boy, Rambo. ~ Noel Fielding, #NFDB
845:They put the Negroes in the schools, and now they've driven God out. ~ George Andrews, #NFDB
846:To deschool means to abolish the power of one person to oblige another. ~ Ivan Illich, #NFDB
847:Wake up, go to school, go home. Repeat until the world ends. ~ Shaun David Hutchinson, #NFDB
848:We go to school to learn what books to read for the rest of our lives. ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
849:When I was in film school I was learning more theory than practice. ~ Louis Leterrier, #NFDB
850:You are an ignorant schoolgirl. You think civilization is a good thing. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
851:Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, But Hating, my boy, is an Art. ~ Ogden Nash, #NFDB
852:As Melissa got closer, the taste of school began to foul her mouth. ~ Scott Westerfeld, #NFDB
853:Before I was ever in high school, I had dark circles under my eyes. ~ Benicio Del Toro, #NFDB
854:But life is a great school. It thrashes and bangs and teaches you. ~ Nikita Khrushchev, #NFDB
855:Even though I only have a high-school degree, I'm a professional student. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
856:First day of school, make sure that you know your locker combination. ~ Jordan Francis, #NFDB
857:I had my first and last so-called serious relationship back in high school ~ V F Mason, #NFDB
858:I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that. ~ Dick Gregory, #NFDB
859:In every school I've gone to, all the athletic bastards stick together. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
860:In school all I wanted to do was build technology. That's what I loved. ~ Marc Benioff, #NFDB
861:I used to go to school in Manhattan with a bunch of the City Kids. ~ Melissa Joan Hart, #NFDB
862:I wasn't aiming at the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
863:life is just high school all over again, only with bigger bills to pay. ~ Linda Palmer, #NFDB
864:Metaphor is a form of magical practice. ~ Dr. Martin Shaw (Westcountry School of Myth), #NFDB
865:My nickname in high school was jack-o-lantern because I'm missing 9 teeth ~ Thom Yorke, #NFDB
866:Providence School of Art students used to sneak into P Funk concerts. ~ Bernie Worrell, #NFDB
867:School forces unique individuals to think, act, and, look alike. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
868:School made us 'literate' but did not teach us to read for pleasure. ~ Ambeth R Ocampo, #NFDB
869:the resulting disarray was particularly pronounced in the medical school. ~ Ay e Kulin, #NFDB
870:We have no school records because we’ve never set foot in a classroom. ~ Tara Westover, #NFDB
871:We put so much pressure on kids to excel in school at such a young age. ~ Bruce Jenner, #NFDB
872:When I left school, I wanted to be an artist, specifically a painter. ~ Jonathan Pryce, #NFDB
873:When I was growing up, I went to an Irish-Christian missionary school. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
874:Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
875:America employs more private security guards than high school teachers. ~ Russell Brand, #NFDB
876:Amy Carter, Chelsea Clinton and the Obama girls all had to change schools. ~ Susan Ford, #NFDB
877:As long as algebra is taught in school, there will be prayer in school. ~ Cokie Roberts, #NFDB
878:everyone in our school has afterschool activities. mine is going home. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
879:Generosity is something we learn, from our parents, schools and community. ~ Ross Perot, #NFDB
880:High school games would just as big a deal to me as any major league game. ~ Jim Bouton, #NFDB
881:I had always loved to write and my mom was my editor for my school papers. ~ Jenna Bush, #NFDB
882:I hated school and never read a textbook. I only read entertaining books. ~ Osamu Dazai, #NFDB
883:I'm a bit of a fraud, really, as I didn't study acting at a drama school. ~ Celia Imrie, #NFDB
884:I'm fairly certain lonely's most natural habitat is a school cafeteria. ~ Natalie Lloyd, #NFDB
885:I studied acting in school and then of course couldn't get an acting job. ~ Denis Leary, #NFDB
886:I think everyone feels lost at times during their high school years. ~ Linda Cardellini, #NFDB
887:I think there are school teachers who are on the exact same mission as me. ~ Kanye West, #NFDB
888:It is bigotry for public schools to teach only one theory of origins. ~ Clarence Darrow, #NFDB
889:It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts, ~ Ogden Nash, #NFDB
890:It’s like I missed the day in school when they told us how to be an adult. ~ Lucy Score, #NFDB
891:I was the class clown at school, but at home, my family wasn't very funny. ~ Carrot Top, #NFDB
892:Last week at school Pam Struger wondered why the brilliant girls all die. ~ Chris Kraus, #NFDB
893:Lesson #456 of high school life:
Never, EVER trust an alarm clock. ~ Heather Brewer,#NFDB
894:Music was a way of rebelling against the whole rah-rah high school thing. ~ Adam Levine, #NFDB
895:My belief is that sports in school is not an extracurricular activity. ~ Brian Kilmeade, #NFDB
896:My freshman year of high school I joined the chess and math clubs. ~ Eric Allin Cornell, #NFDB
897:On parochial school I was told I had an overabundance of original sin. ~ Susan Sarandon, #NFDB
898:School curricula that ignore the arts produce highly educated Barbarians ~ Edward Albee, #NFDB
899:She was old too, when she went to school they didn't have history. ~ Rodney Dangerfield, #NFDB
900:So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened. ~ Ted Nelson, #NFDB
901:The role of the federal government, if any, is to create more school choice. ~ Jeb Bush, #NFDB
902:The school curriculum today, particularly American history, is a shame. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
903:Until we get it right, we shall return to the earth-school time after time. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
904:Well, I was going to school in Germany. And in my free time I was dancing. ~ Heidi Klum, #NFDB
905:When I go to school, I'm always happy because it's a normal kid thing. ~ Jackie Evancho, #NFDB
906:…and you’re at school, busy fighting janitors and vegetables with padlocks… ~ Adam Levin, #NFDB
907:A school should not be a preparation for life. A school should be life. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
908:Being bullied is something I experienced in school, and it is not fun. ~ Bridgit Mendler, #NFDB
909:Cleanliness & good sanitation in schools is a matter of high importance. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
910:Dad kept us out of school, but school comes and goes. Family is forever. ~ Charlie Sheen, #NFDB
911:Everyone I’ve ever met who was worth knowing was a bit different at school. ~ Jojo Moyes, #NFDB
912:Flea and Anthony are into funk, like old school Meters and stuff like that. ~ Chad Smith, #NFDB
913:He didn't say school, pinhead." Pigpen interrupts. "He said her parents. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
914:Home is the school where we learn that love shows itself in the details. ~ Andi Ashworth, #NFDB
915:How can it know if the school’s in danger if it’s a hat?” “I have no idea, ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
916:I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
917:I dropped out of high school four times between the ages of 12 to 17. ~ Philip Emeagwali, #NFDB
918:I felt like the big geek in high school. And I still feel like a big geek. ~ Leslie Bibb, #NFDB
919:If you want to work on the core problem, it's early school literacy. ~ James L Barksdale, #NFDB
920:I got a Lucifer soul. I'll be the Devil's son, Devil's work, gettin' work. ~ Schoolboy Q, #NFDB
921:I graduated in 1930 and I went up to the Yale Drama School for two years. ~ Albert Maltz, #NFDB
922:I had an Edinburgh, middle-class childhood and a public school education. ~ Rory Bremner, #NFDB
923:I'm completely self-taught. I absolutely don't believe in art or film schools! ~ Tom Six, #NFDB
924:I really hated school. I had the feeling I was losing a lot of time. ~ Olivier Theyskens, #NFDB
925:I really want to go back to school and finish up my sociology degree. ~ Alicia Sacramone, #NFDB
926:I used to make fun of the kids in school who acted or went to dance class. ~ Matt Dillon, #NFDB
927:I used to skip school and paint my face with Ace Frehley Kiss make-up. ~ Dimebag Darrell, #NFDB
928:I want to go to school. College. Get a degree. I want to make a difference. ~ Maya Banks, #NFDB
929:I was a keen sportsman, and became school captain in soccer and cricket. ~ John E Walker, #NFDB
930:I was bullied every second of every day in elementary and middle school. ~ Selena Gomez, #NFDB
931:I went out with the same girl throughout all four years of high school. ~ Jesse Metcalfe, #NFDB
932:I went to an all boys' school in South London and the only god was sport. ~ Lennie James, #NFDB
933:I went to a segregated school; I was born a Negro, not a black man. ~ Michael Eric Dyson, #NFDB
934:I went to law school. I found it interesting for the first three weeks. ~ Demetri Martin, #NFDB
935:I went to school at a place that also shaped my life, Boston Latin School. ~ Nat Hentoff, #NFDB
936:London audiences have this reputation for being a bit too cool for school. ~ Laura Mvula, #NFDB
937:My first debate in high school--"Resolved: Girls are no good"--and I won! ~ Donald Freed, #NFDB
938:Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it. ~ Bel Kaufman, #NFDB
939:NO PDA,school rules. And besides she's my partner dickhead." said Alex. ~ Simone Elkeles, #NFDB
940:Of the six people who started PayPal, four had built bombs in high school. ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
941:Oh, Homer! You don't have to play dumb anymore! You're not at school now. ~ John Marsden, #NFDB
942:People saying that you been robbed is almost better than winning a Grammy. ~ Schoolboy Q, #NFDB
943:Schools [are]...institutions monopolizing the daytimes of childhood. ~ John Taylor Gatto, #NFDB
944:Schools were designed to produce good employees instead of employers ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
945:School was a strange place where they tried to make you into something. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
946:Terry Gross. I would rush home from high school to listen to Terry Gross. ~ John Hodgman, #NFDB
947:The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has — I'm not kidding. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
948:the only place more germ laden than a hospital is an elementary school. ~ Laurie Frankel, #NFDB
949:To a very great degree, school is a place where children learn to be stupid. ~ John Holt, #NFDB
950:Unfortunately, for many people school is the end, not the beginning. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
951:We all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school. ~ Peter De Vries, #NFDB
952:We get schooled by the people around us, and it stays inside us deep. ~ George Pelecanos, #NFDB
953:We have successfully achieved the target of building toilets in schools. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
954:Whatever, I copied all through school, and look how well I’m doing today. ~ Adrian Young, #NFDB
955:Wow. I thought I was the only person at this school faking every moment. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
956:You know what the problem with high school is? There is way too much of it. ~ Jay McLean, #NFDB
957:As an actor, the first thing you learn in drama school is you never judge. ~ Jason Clarke, #NFDB
958:Because A) you clearly didn’t go to my high school, and B) maybe I’m wrong, ~ Scott Meyer, #NFDB
959:By bells and many other similar techniques they (schools) teach that ~ John Taylor Gatto, #NFDB
960:College is a place to keep warm between high school and an early marriage. ~ George Gobel, #NFDB
961:Every child in American should have access to a well-stocked school library. ~ Laura Bush, #NFDB
962:Extroverts never understand introverts, and it was like that in school days. ~ Neil Peart, #NFDB
963:Honestly, I wasn't that girl in high school who people spread rumors about. ~ Josie Loren, #NFDB
964:I attended public school with the same group of kids from K through 12. ~ Thomas Friedman, #NFDB
965:I certainly didn't learn anything in school. My education was the world. ~ Diana Vreeland, #NFDB
966:I loved school so much that most of my classmates considered me a dork. ~ Natalie Portman, #NFDB
967:I'm at the National Theatre School, which is like the Juilliard of Canada. ~ Jake Epstein, #NFDB
968:In a time hollowed out by decorum, one must school oneself in spontaneity. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
969:In a way I thought school would last forever. It’s come round so quickly. ~ Louise Jensen, #NFDB
970:In elementary and high school, I never considered acting as a profession. ~ Rashida Jones, #NFDB
971:In high school, I was kind of a loner because I had moved to a new school. ~ Jennie Garth, #NFDB
972:In my first year at drama school, I did this kids' show called 'Let's See. ~ Alan Cumming, #NFDB
973:I was always acting. I was doing after-school plays and stuff like that. ~ Justin Theroux, #NFDB
974:I went to public school all my life and all through college and I liked it. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
975:Keeping our kids engaged and in school must become a national priority. ~ Cedric Richmond, #NFDB
976:My school spirit is at an all time low, I'm losing my status at the school. ~ Frank Zappa, #NFDB
977:one of the most important components of homeschooling is worldview education. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
978:Prison for the crime of puberty -- that was how secondary school had seemed. ~ David Brin, #NFDB
979:School teaches you what to do with the rest of your life. I already knew. ~ Avril Lavigne, #NFDB
980:The first rule we were taught in medical school was “A cadaver is not a toy. ~ Mira Grant, #NFDB
981:The internet is like a gossipy girls' locker room after school, isn't it? ~ Alex Kapranos, #NFDB
982:There have always been card schools at football clubs and always will be. ~ Peter Shilton, #NFDB
983:To put me through school my morn had to work, so I was a latchkey kid. ~ Lara Flynn Boyle, #NFDB
984:Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
985:We live in a society where we wake up our kids for school but not Fajr. ~ Nouman Ali Khan, #NFDB
986:When I was five I thought auditions were a great way to get out of school! ~ Logan Lerman, #NFDB
987:WHY? Mostly because I’m the biggest DORK in the entire school. And ~ Rachel Ren e Russell, #NFDB
988:Back in high school I told my dad, "I'm going to have a computer someday." ~ Steve Wozniak, #NFDB
989:Behind the parents stands the school, and behind the teacher the home. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
990:But then, even with sex, I'm more in the school of less is more in movies. ~ Aaron Eckhart, #NFDB
991:Competition is the school in which companies learn to perfect their skills ~ Gurcharan Das, #NFDB
992:Eddie waited 'til he finished high school, he went to Hollywood, got a tattoo. ~ Tom Petty, #NFDB
993:Experience is the best of school masters, only the school fees are heavy. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
994:Feeding a child at school is such a simple thing - but it works miracles. ~ Drew Barrymore, #NFDB
995:given the proper kind of training. In the next year or two, every school ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
996:God has a university. It's a small school. Few enroll; even fewer graduate. ~ Gene Edwards, #NFDB
997:Homosexuality is like a boarding school in which there are no vacations. ~ Andrew Holleran, #NFDB
998:I can not imagine my life if I didn't have a music program in my school. ~ Beyonce Knowles, #NFDB
999:I didn't have any qualifications when I left school - I had three O-levels. ~ Simon Cowell, #NFDB
1000:I didn't spend money on nothin'. Besides my daughter, bucket hats, and weed. ~ Schoolboy Q, #NFDB
100
1 Philosophy
1 Occultism
1 Integral Yoga
18 Sri Aurobindo
10 The Mother
2 Sri Ramakrishna
2 Nolini Kanta Gupta
8 The Synthesis Of Yoga
8 The Mothers Agenda
7 The Life Divine
7 Savitri
7 Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
6 Talks
6 Essays On The Gita
5 Words Of Long Ago
5 Walden
4 The Blue Cliff Records
4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
4 Letters On Yoga I
4 Essays Divine And Human
4 Collected Poems
4 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
3 The Integral Yoga
3 Liber ABA
3 Isha Upanishad
2 The Secret Of The Veda
2 Theosophy
2 Talks With Sri Aurobindo
2 On Education
2 Letters On Yoga II
2 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
2 Complete ADND formatted
2 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
0.01_-_Life_and_Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HERE are two necessities of Nature's workings which seem always to intervene in the greater forms of human activity, whether these belong to our ordinary fields of movement or seek those exceptional spheres and fulfilments which appear to us high and divine. Every such form tends towards a harmonised complexity and totality which again breaks apart into various channels of special effort and tendency, only to unite once more in a larger and more puissant synthesis. Secondly, development into forms is an imperative rule of effective manifestation; yet all truth and practice too strictly formulated becomes old and loses much, if not all, of its virtue; it must be constantly renovated by fresh streams of the spirit revivifying the dead or dying vehicle and changing it, if it is to acquire a new life. To be perpetually reborn is the condition of a material immortality. We are in an age, full of the throes of travail, when all forms of thought and activity that have in themselves any strong power of utility or any secret virtue of persistence are being subjected to a supreme test and given their opportunity of rebirth. The world today presents the aspect of a huge cauldron of Medea in which all things are being cast, shredded into pieces, experimented on, combined and recombined either to perish and provide the scattered material of new forms or to emerge rejuvenated and changed for a fresh term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity. The child of immemorial ages, preserved by its vitality and truth into our modern times, it is now emerging from the secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it had taken refuge and is seeking its place in the future sum of living human powers and utilities. But it has first to rediscover itself, bring to the surface
0.02_-_The_Three_Steps_of_Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But in order that we may be wisely guided in our effort, we must know, first, the general principle and purpose underlying this separative impulse and, next, the particular utilities upon which the method of each school of Yoga is founded. For the general principle we must interrogate the universal workings of Nature herself, recognising in her no merely specious and illusive activity of a distorting Maya, but the cosmic energy and working of God Himself in His universal being formulating and inspired by a vast, an infinite and yet a minutely selective
Wisdom, prajna prasr.ta puran. of the Upanishad, Wisdom that went forth from the Eternal since the beginning. For the particular utilities we must cast a penetrative eye on the different methods of Yoga and distinguish among the mass of their details the governing idea which they serve and the radical force which gives birth and energy to their processes of effectuation.
0.03_-_The_Threefold_Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Mind finds fully its force and action only when it casts itself upon life and accepts equally its possibilities and its resistances as the means of a greater self-perfection. In the struggle with the difficulties of the material world the ethical development of the individual is firmly shaped and the great schools of conduct are formed; by contact with the facts of life Art attains to vitality, Thought assures its abstractions, the generalisations of the philosopher base themselves on a stable foundation of science and experience.
--
The schools of Indian Yoga lent themselves to the compromise. Individual perfection or liberation was made the aim, seclusion of some kind from the ordinary activities the condition, the renunciation of life the culmination. The teacher gave his knowledge only to a small circle of disciples. Or if a wider movement was attempted, it was still the release of the individual soul that remained the aim. The pact with an immobile society was, for the most part, observed.
0.04_-_The_Systems_of_Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HESE relations between the different psychological divisions of the human being and these various utilities and objects of effort founded on them, such as we have seen them in our brief survey of the natural evolution, we shall find repeated in the fundamental principles and methods of the different schools of Yoga. And if we seek to combine and harmonise their central practices and their predominant aims, we shall find that the basis provided by Nature is still our natural basis and the condition of their synthesis.
--
For if, leaving aside the complexities of their particular processes, we fix our regard on the central principle of the chief schools of Yoga still prevalent in India, we find that they arrange themselves in an ascending order which starts from the lowest rung of the ladder, the body, and ascends to the direct contact between the individual soul and the transcendent and universal
Self. Hathayoga selects the body and the vital functionings as its instruments of perfection and realisation; its concern is with the gross body. Rajayoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power; it concentrates on the subtle body. The triple Path of Works, of Love and of Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth,
0.05_-_The_Synthesis_of_the_Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Y THE very nature of the principal Yogic schools, each covering in its operations a part of the complex human integer and attempting to bring out its highest possibilities, it will appear that a synthesis of all of them largely conceived and applied might well result in an integral Yoga. But they are so disparate in their tendencies, so highly specialised and elaborated in their forms, so long confirmed in the mutual opposition of their ideas and methods that we do not easily find how we can arrive at their right union.
An undiscriminating combination in block would not be a synthesis, but a confusion. Nor would a successive practice of each of them in turn be easy in the short span of our human life and with our limited energies, to say nothing of the waste of labour implied in so cumbrous a process. Sometimes, indeed,
Hathayoga and Rajayoga are thus successively practised. And in a recent unique example, in the life of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, we see a colossal spiritual capacity first driving straight to the divine realisation, taking, as it were, the kingdom of heaven by violence, and then seizing upon one Yogic method after another and extracting the substance out of it with an incredible rapidity, always to return to the heart of the whole matter, the realisation and possession of God by the power of love, by the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and by the spontaneous play of an intuitive knowledge. Such an example cannot be generalised. Its object also was special and temporal, to exemplify in the great and decisive experience of a master-soul the truth, now most necessary to humanity, towards which a world long divided into jarring sects and schools is with difficulty labouring, that all sects are forms and fragments of a single integral truth and all disciplines labour in their different ways towards one supreme experience. To know, be and possess
--
Yogic system which is in its nature synthetical and starts from a great central principle of Nature, a great dynamic force of
Nature; but it is a Yoga apart, not a synthesis of other schools.
--
If, however, we leave aside, here also, the actual methods and practices and seek for the central principle, we find, first, that Tantra expressly differentiates itself from the Vedic methods of Yoga. In a sense, all the schools we have hitherto examined are Vedantic in their principle; their force is in knowledge, their method is knowledge, though it is not always discernment by the intellect, but may be, instead, the knowledge of the heart expressed in love and faith or a knowledge in the will working out through action. In all of them the lord of the Yoga is the Purusha, the Conscious Soul that knows, observes, attracts, governs. But in Tantra it is rather Prakriti, the Nature-Soul, the Energy, the
Will-in-Power executive in the universe. It was by learning and applying the intimate secrets of this Will-in-Power, its method, its Tantra, that the Tantric Yogin pursued the aims of his discipline, - mastery, perfection, liberation, beatitude. Instead of drawing back from manifested Nature and its difficulties, he confronted them, seized and conquered. But in the end, as is the general tendency of Prakriti, Tantric Yoga largely lost its principle in its machinery and became a thing of formulae and occult mechanism still powerful when rightly used but fallen from the clarity of their original intention.
--
But in either case it is always through something in the lower that we must rise into the higher existence, and the schools of
Yoga each select their own point of departure or their own gate of escape. They specialise certain activities of the lower
01.04_-_Motives_for_Seeking_the_Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Let us look on it as a sort of infants' school for the unready.
01.05_-_The_Yoga_of_the_King_The_Yoga_of_the_Spirits_Freedom_and_Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This dusk room with its dark internal stair,
The infant soul in its small nursery school
Mid objects meant for a lesson hardly learned
02.01_-_Metaphysical_Thought_and_the_Supreme_Truth, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the East, especially in India, the metaphysical thinkers have tried, as in the West, to determine the nature of the highest Truth by the intellect. But, in the first place, they have not given mental thinking the supreme rank as an instrument in the discovery of Truth, but only a secondary status. The first rank has always been given to spiritual intuition and illumination and spiritual experience; an intellectual conclusion that contradicts this supreme authority is held invalid. Secondly, each philosophy has armed itself with a practical way of reaching to the supreme state of consciousness, so that even when one begins with Thought, the aim is to arrive at a consciousness beyond mental thinking. Each philosophical founder (as also those who continued his work or school) has been a metaphysical thinker doubled with a Yogi. Those who were only philosophic intellectuals were respected for their learning but never took rank as truth discoverers. And the philosophies that lacked a sufficiently powerful means of spiritual experience died out and became things of the past because they were not dynamic for spiritual discovery and realisation.
02.03_-_The_Glory_and_the_Fall_of_Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To him who serves with a free equal heart
Obedience is his princely training's school,
His nobility's coronet and privilege,
02.06_-_The_Integral_Yoga_and_Other_Yogas, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I know very well also that there have been seemingly allied ideals and anticipations - the perfectibility of the race, certain
Tantric sadhanas, the effort after a complete physical siddhi by certain schools of Yoga, etc. etc. I have alluded to these things myself and have put forth the view that the spiritual past of the race has been a preparation of Nature not merely for attaining to the Divine beyond this world, but also for this very step forward which the evolution of the earth-consciousness has still to make.
02.10_-_The_Kingdoms_and_Godheads_of_the_Little_Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
At will she spaces in thin air of mind
Like maps in the school-house of intellect hung,
Forcing wide Truth into a narrow scheme,
02.11_-_The_Kingdoms_and_Godheads_of_the_Greater_Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
King-children born on Wisdom's early plane,
Taught in her school world-making's mystic play.
Archmasons of the eternal Thaumaturge,
04.02_-_The_Growth_of_the_Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Adept of truth, initiate of bliss,
A mystic acolyte trained in Nature's school,
Aware of the marvel of created things
--
In a small circle of young eager hearts,
Her being's early school and closed domain,
Apprentice in the business of earth-life,
She schooled her heavenly strain to bear its touch,
Content in her little garden of the gods
07.03_-_The_Entry_into_the_Inner_Countries, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Spirit's almighty freedom was not here:
A schoolman mind had captured life's large space,
But chose to live in bare and paltry rooms
10.03_-_The_Debate_of_Love_and_Death, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Or the technique of a brief hour's success
She teaches, an usher in utility's school.
1.00_-_Gospel, #Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Gadādhar grew up into a healthy and restless boy, full of fun and sweet mischief. He was intelligent and precocious and endowed with a prodigious memory. On his father's lap he learnt by heart the names of his ancestors and the hymns to the gods and goddesses, and at the village school he was taught to read and write. But his greatest delight was to listen to recitations of stories from Hindu mythology and the epics. These he would afterwards recount from memory, to the great joy of the villagers. Painting he enjoyed; the art of moulding images of the gods and goddesses he learnt from the potters. But arithmetic was his great aversion.
--
Gadādhar himself now organized a dramatic company with his young friends. The stage was set in the mango orchard. The themes were selected from the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Gadādhar knew by heart almost all the roles, having heard them from professional actors. His favourite theme was the Vrindāvan episode of Krishna's life, depicting those exquisite love-stories of Krishna and the milkmaids and the cowherd boys. Gadādhar would play the parts of Rādhā or Krishna and would often lose himself in the character he was portraying. His natural feminine grace heightened the dramatic effect. The mango orchard would ring with the loud kirtan of the boys. Lost in song and merry-making, Gadādhar became indifferent to the routine of school.
--
The first effect of the draught on the educated Hindus was a complete effacement from their minds of the time-honoured beliefs and traditions of Hindu society. They came to believe that there was no transcendental Truth. The world perceived by the senses was all that existed. God and religion were illusions of the untutored mind. True knowledge could be derived only from the analysis of nature. So atheism and agnosticism became the fashion of the day. The youth of India, taught in English schools, took malicious delight in openly breaking the customs and traditions of their society. They would do away with the caste-system and remove the discriminatory laws about food. Social reform, the spread of secular education, widow remarriage, abolition of early marriage -
--
By far the ablest leader of the Brāhmo movement was Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-1884). Unlike Rājā Rāmmohan Roy and Devendranāth Tāgore, Keshab was born of a middle-class Bengāli family and had been brought up in an English school. He did not know Sanskrit and very soon broke away from the popular Hindu religion. Even at an early age he came under the spell of Christ and professed to have experienced the special favour of John the Baptist, Christ, and St. Paul. When he strove to introduce Christ to the Brāhmo Samāj, a rupture became inevitable with Devendranāth. In 1868
--
Mahendranāth Gupta, known as "M.", arrived at Dakshineśwar in February 1882. He belonged to the Brāhmo Samāj and was headmaster of the Vidyāsāgar High school at Śyāmbazār, Calcutta. At the very first sight the Master recognized him as one of his "marked" disciples. Mahendra recorded in his diary Sri Ramakrishna's conversations with his devotees. These are the first directly recorded words, in the spiritual history of the world, of a man recognized as belonging in the class of Buddha and Christ. The present volume is a translation of this diary. Mahendra was instrumental, through his personal contacts, in spreading the Master's message among many young and aspiring souls.
--
Two more young men, Sāradā Prasanna and Tulasi, complete the small band of the Master's disciples later to embrace the life of the wandering monk. With the exception of the elder Gopāl, all of them were in their teens or slightly over. They came from middle-class Bengāli families, and most of them were students in school or college. Their parents and relatives had envisaged for them bright worldly careers. They came to Sri Ramakrishna with pure bodies, vigorous minds, and uncontaminated souls. All were born with unusual spiritual attributes. Sri Ramakrishna accepted them, even at first sight, as his children, relatives, friends, and companions. His magic touch unfolded them. And later each according to his measure reflected the life of the Master, becoming a torch-bearer of his message across land and sea.
1.00_-_Main, #Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
Exile and imprisonment are decreed for the thief, and, on the third offence, place ye a mark upon his brow so that, thus identified, he may not be accepted in the cities of God and His countries. Beware lest, through compassion, ye neglect to carry out the statutes of the religion of God; do that which hath been bidden you by Him Who is compassionate and merciful. We school you with the rod of wisdom and laws, like unto the father who educateth his son, and this for naught but the protection of your own selves and the elevation of your stations. By My life, were ye to discover what We have desired for you in revealing Our holy laws, ye would offer up your very souls for this sacred, this mighty, and most exalted Faith.
--
We have not entered any school, nor read any of your dissertations. Incline your ears to the words of this unlettered One, wherewith He summoneth you unto God, the Ever-Abiding. Better is this for you than all the treasures of the earth, could ye but comprehend it.
--
O Pen of the Most High! Move Thou upon the Tablet at the bidding of Thy Lord, the Creator of the Heavens, and tell of the time when He Who is the Dayspring of Divine Unity purposed to direct His steps towards the school of Transcendent Oneness; haply the pure in heart may gain thereby a glimpse, be it as small as a needle's eye, of the mysteries of Thy Lord, the Almighty, the Omniscient, that lie concealed behind the veils. Say: We, indeed, set foot within the school of inner meaning and explanation when all created things were unaware. We saw the words sent down by Him Who is the All-Merciful, and We accepted the verses of God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting, which He+F1 presented unto Us, and hearkened unto that which He had solemnly affirmed in the Tablet. This we assuredly did behold. And We assented to His wish through Our behest, for truly We are potent to command.
--
O people of the Bayan! We, verily, set foot within the school of God when ye lay slumbering; and We perused the Tablet while ye were fast asleep. By the one true God! We read the Tablet ere it was revealed, while ye were unaware, and We had perfect knowledge of the Book when ye were yet unborn. These words are to your measure, not to God's. To this testifieth that which is enshrined within His knowledge, if ye be of them that comprehend; and to this the tongue of the Almighty doth bear witness, if ye be of those who understand. I swear by God, were We to lift the veil, ye would be dumbfounded.
--
Take heed that ye dispute not idly concerning the Almighty and His Cause, for lo! He hath appeared amongst you invested with a Revelation so great as to encompass all things, whether of the past or of the future. Were We to address Our theme by speaking in the language of the inmates of the Kingdom, We would say: "In truth, God created that school ere He created heaven and earth, and We entered it before the letters B and E were joined and knit together." Such is the language of Our servants in Our Kingdom; consider what the tongue of the dwellers of Our exalted Dominion would utter, for We have taught them Our knowledge and have revealed to them whatever had lain hidden in God's wisdom. Imagine then what the Tongue of Might and Grandeur would utter in His All-Glorious Abode!
1.01_-_Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
We know not much about them. It is remarkable that _we_ know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men. But why do men degenerate ever?
What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?
--
For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business. When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its small profits might suffice,for my greatest skill has been to want but little,so little capital it required, so little distraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I contemplated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of them; so, to keep the flocks of Admetus. I also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to the city, by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned that trade curses everything it handles; and though you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business.
1.01_-_Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The tradition, then, was there and it was prolonged after the
Vedic times. Yaska speaks of several schools of interpretation of
the Veda. There was a sacrificial or ritualistic interpretation,
1.01_-_Historical_Survey, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
that its philosophy apparently emanated from one of the
Hebrew prophetic schools. Mordell finally hazards the opinion that the Sepher Yetsirah represents the genuine fragments of Philolaus, who was the first to publish the
Pythagorean philosophy, and that Philolaus seems to correspond in very curious ways to Joseph ben Uziel who wrote down the Sepher Yetsirah. If the latter theory can be maintained, then we may claim for the Sepher Yetsirah a pre-Talmudic origin - probably the second century prior to the Christian era.
--
Be that as it may, and ignoring the sterile aspects of con- troversy, the public appearance of the Zohar was the great landmark in the development of the Qabalah, and we to-day are able to divide its history into two main periods, pre- and post-Zoharic. While it is undeniable that there were
Jewish prophetic and mystical schools of great proficiency and possessing much recondite knowledge in Biblical times, such as that of Samuel, the Essenes, and Philo, yet the first
Qabalistic school of which we have any accurate public record was known as the school of Gerona in Spain (the twelfth century a.d.), so-called because its founder Isaac the Blind and many of his disciples were born there. Of the founder of the school practically nothing is known.
Two of his students were Rabbi Azariel and Rabbi Ezra.
--
Next in succession was the school of Segovia and its disciples, among whom was one Todras Abulafia, a physi- cian and financier occupying an important and most dis- tinguished position in the Court of Sancho IV, King of
Castile. The characteristic predisposition of this school was its devotion to exegetical methods ; its disciples endeavour- ing to interpret the Bible and the Hagadah in accordance with the doctrinal Qabalah.
A contemporary school believed that Judaism of that day, taken from an exclusively philosophical standpoint, did not show the "right way to the Sanctuary", and endeavoured to combine philosophy and Qabalah, illustrating their various theorems by mathematical forms.
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The Zohar is the next major development. This book combining, absorbing, and synthesizing the different features and doctrines of the previous schools, made its ddbut, creating a profound sensation in theological and philosophical circles by reason of its speculations concerning
God, the doctrine of Emanations, the evolution of the
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Luria founded a school the precise opposite to that of
Cordovero. He himself was a zealous and brilliant student both of the Talmud and Rabbinic lore, but found that the simple retirement of a life of study did not satisfy him.
--
Eliphaz Levi Zahed, a Roman Catholic deacon of remark- able perspicuity, in 1852 published a brilliant volume,
Doctrine et Rituel de la Haute Magie, in which we find clear and unmistakable symptoms of an understanding of the underlying basis of the Qabalah- its ten Sephiros and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew Alphabet as a suitable framework for the construction of a workable system for philosophical comparison and synthesis. It is said that he published this work at a time when information on all occult matters was strictly prohibited, for various reasons of its own, by the Esoteric school to which he belonged.
We find, then, a companion volume issued but a short while after, La Histoire de la Magie, wherein - undoubtedly to protect himself from the censure levelled at him, and throw unsuspecting enquirers off the track - he contradicts his former conclusions and theorizations.
1.01_-_Our_Demand_and_Need_from_the_Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HE WORLD abounds with scriptures sacred and profane, with revelations and half-revelations, with religions and philosophies, sects and schools and systems. To these the many minds of a half-ripe knowledge or no knowledge at all attach themselves with exclusiveness and passion and will have it that this or the other book is alone the eternal Word of
God and all others are either impostures or at best imperfectly inspired, that this or that philosophy is the last word of the reasoning intellect and other systems are either errors or saved only by such partial truth in them as links them to the one true philosophical cult. Even the discoveries of physical Science have been elevated into a creed and in its name religion and spirituality banned as ignorance and superstition, philosophy as frippery and moonshine. And to these bigoted exclusions and vain wranglings even the wise have often lent themselves, misled by some spirit of darkness that has mingled with their light and overshadowed it with some cloud of intellectual egoism or spiritual pride. Mankind seems now indeed inclined to grow a little modester and wiser; we no longer slay our fellows in the name of God's truth or because they have minds differently trained or differently constituted from ours; we are less ready to curse and revile our neighbour because he is wicked or presumptuous enough to differ from us in opinion; we are ready even to admit that Truth is everywhere and cannot be our sole monopoly; we are beginning to look at other religions and philosophies for the truth and help they contain and no longer merely in order to damn them as false or criticise what we conceive to be their errors. But we are still apt to declare that our truth gives us the supreme knowledge which other religions or philosophies
--
Essays on the Gita
striking speculations of a philosophic intellect, but rather enduring truths of spiritual experience, verifiable facts of our highest psychological possibilities which no attempt to read deeply the mystery of existence can afford to neglect. Whatever the system may be, it is not, as the commentators strive to make it, framed or intended to support any exclusive school of philosophical thought or to put forward predominantly the claims of any one form of Yoga. The language of the Gita, the structure of thought, the combination and balancing of ideas belong neither to the temper of a sectarian teacher nor to the spirit of a rigorous analytical dialectics cutting off one angle of the truth to exclude all the others; but rather there is a wide, undulating, encircling movement of ideas which is the manifestation of a vast synthetic mind and a rich synthetic experience. This is one of those great syntheses in which Indian spirituality has been as rich as in its creation of the more intensive, exclusive movements of knowledge and religious realisation that follow out with an absolute concentration one clue, one path to its extreme issues. It does not cleave asunder, but reconciles and unifies.
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9
comprehensiveness. Its aim is precisely the opposite to that of the polemist commentators who found this Scripture established as one of the three highest Vedantic authorities and attempted to turn it into a weapon of offence and defence against other schools and systems. The Gita is not a weapon for dialectical warfare; it is a gate opening on the whole world of spiritual truth and experience and the view it gives us embraces all the provinces of that supreme region. It maps out, but it does not cut up or build walls or hedges to confine our vision.
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We of the coming day stand at the head of a new age of development which must lead to such a new and larger synthesis. We are not called upon to be orthodox Vedantins of any of the three schools or Tantrics or to adhere to one of the theistic religions of the past or to entrench ourselves within the four corners of the teaching of the Gita. That would be to limit ourselves and to attempt to create our spiritual life out of the being, knowledge and nature of others, of the men of the past, instead of building it out of our own being and potentialities. We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of the future. A mass of new material is flowing into us; we have not only to assimilate the influences of the great theistic religions of India and of the world and a recovered sense of the meaning of Buddhism, but to take full account of the potent though limited revelations of modern knowledge and seeking; and, beyond that, the remote and dateless past which seemed to be dead is returning upon us with an effulgence of many luminous secrets long lost to the consciousness of mankind but now breaking out again from behind the veil. All this points to a new, a very rich, a very vast synthesis; a fresh and widely embracing harmonisation of our gains is both an intellectual and a spiritual necessity of the future.
1.01_-_The_Highest_Meaning_of_the_Holy_Truths, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
not two is the highest meaning of the holy truths. This is the
most esoteric, most abstruse point of the doctrinal schools.
Hence the Emperor picked out this ultimate paradigm to ask
1.02_-_Isha_Analysis, #Isha Upanishad, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
These three attitudes correspond to three truths of the
2 The positions, in inverse order, of the three principal philosophical schools of
Vedanta, Monism, Qualified Monism and Dualism.
1.02_-_Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
8:The difficulty of the task has led naturally to the pursuit of easy and trenchant solutions; it has generated and fixed deeply' the tendency of religions and of schools of Yoga to separate the life of the world from the inner life. The powers of this world and their actual activities, it is felt, either do not belong to God at all or are for some obscure and puzzling cause, Maya or another, a dark contradiction of the divine Truth. And on their own opposite side the powers of the Truth and their ideal activities are seen to belong to quite another plane of consciousness than that, obscure, ignorant and perverse in its impulses and forces, on which the life of the earth is founded. There appears at once the antinomy of a bright and pure kingdom of God and a dark and impure kingdom of the devil; we feel the opposition of our crawling earthly birth and life to an exalted spiritual God-consciousness; we become readily convinced of the incompatibility of life's subjection to Maya with the soul's concentration in pure Brahman existence. The easiest way is to turn away from all that belongs to the one and to retreat by a naked and precipitous ascent into the other. Thus arises the attraction and, it would seem, the necessity of the principle of exclusive concentration which plays so prominent a part in the specialised schools of Yoga; for by that concentration we can arrive through an uncompromising renunciation of the world at an entire self-consecration to the One on whom we concentrate. It is no longer incumbent on us to compel all the lower activities to the difficult recognition of a new and higher spiritualised life and train them to be its agents or executive powers. It is enough to kill or quiet them and keep at most the few energies necessary, on one side, for the maintenance of the body and, on the other, for communion with the Divine.
1.02_-_The_7_Habits_An_Overview, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
them running. Or a person endlessly going to school, never producing, living on other people's golden eggs -- the eternal student syndrome.
1.02_-_The_Divine_Teacher, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Vaishnava form of Vedantism which has laid most stress upon this conception expresses the relation of God in man to man in God by the double figure of Nara-Narayana, associated historically with the origin of a religious school very similar in its doctrines to the teaching of the Gita. Nara is the human soul which, eternal companion of the Divine, finds itself only when it awakens to that companionship and begins, as the Gita would say, to live in God. Narayana is the divine Soul always present in our humanity, the secret guide, friend and helper of the human being, the "Lord who abides within the heart of creatures" of the Gita; when within us the veil of that secret sanctuary is withdrawn and man speaks face to face with God, hears the divine voice, receives the divine light, acts in the divine power, then becomes possible the supreme uplifting of the embodied human conscious-being into the unborn and eternal. He becomes capable of that dwelling in God and giving up of his whole consciousness into the Divine which the Gita upholds as the best or highest secret of things, uttamam rahasyam. When
1
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the name first in the Chhandogya Upanishad where all we can gather about him is that he was well known in spiritual tradition as a knower of the Brahman, so well known indeed in his personality and the circumstances of his life that it was sufficient to refer to him by the name of his mother as Krishna son of Devaki for all to understand who was meant. In the same Upanishad we find mention of King Dhritarashtra son of Vichitravirya, and since tradition associated the two together so closely that they are both of them leading personages in the action of the
Mahabharata, we may fairly conclude that they were actually contemporaries and that the epic is to a great extent dealing with historical characters and in the war of Kurukshetra with a historical occurrence imprinted firmly on the memory of the race. We know too that Krishna and Arjuna were the object of religious worship in the pre-Christian centuries; and there is some reason to suppose that they were so in connection with a religious and philosophical tradition from which the Gita may have gathered many of its elements and even the foundation of its synthesis of knowledge, devotion and works, and perhaps also that the human Krishna was the founder, restorer or at the least one of the early teachers of this school. The Gita may well in spite of its later form represent the outcome in Indian thought of the teaching of Krishna and the connection of that teaching with the historical Krishna, with Arjuna and with the war of
Kurukshetra may be something more than a dramatic fiction. In the Mahabharata Krishna is represented both as the historical character and the Avatar; his worship and Avatarhood must therefore have been well established by the time - apparently from the fifth to the first centuries B.C. - when the old story and poem or epic tradition of the Bharatas took its present form. There is a hint also in the poem of the story or legend of the Avatar's early life in Vrindavan which, as developed by the Puranas into an intense and powerful spiritual symbol, has exercised so profound an influence on the religious mind of
1.02_-_The_Pit, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The contrary philosophical argument of the idealistic schools is that in studying the laws of Nature, we only study the laws of our own minds; that it would be quite simple to demonstrate that, after all, we really attach very little meaning to such ideas as matter, motion, and weight, etc., other than a purely idealistic one; that they are mere phases of our thought.
Qabalists and all the various schools of Mystics generally begin from a still more absolute point of view, arguing that the whole controversy is a purely verbal one; for all such ontological propositions can, with a little ingenuity, be reduced to one form or another. There is in consequence of this observation in the realm of modern Philosophy what is
--
Victorians so simple, objective, and intelligible-such as matter, energy, space, etc.-have completely failed to resist analysis. A few modern thinkers, seeing clearly the absolute debacle in which the old positivist science was bound to lead them, the breaking up of this icy expanse of frozen thought, determined at all costs to find a modus vivendi for
Athena. This necessity was emphasized in the most surprising way by the result of the Michelson-Morley experiments, when Physics itself calmly and frankly offered a contradiction in terms. It was not the metaphysicians this time who were picking holes in a vacuum. It was the mathematicians and the physicists who found the ground completely cut away from under their feet. It was not enough to replace the geometry of Euclid by those of Riemann and Lobatchevsky and the mechanics of Newton by those of Einstein, so long as any of the axioms of the old thought and the definitions of its terms survived. They deliberately abandoned positivism and materialism for an indeterminate mysticism, creating a new mathematical philosophy and a new logic, wherein infinite-or rather transfinite-ideas might be made commensurable with those of ordinary thought in the forlorn hope that all might live happily ever after. In short, to use a Qabalistic nomenclature, they found it incumbent upon themselves to adopt for inclusion of terms of Ruach (intellect) concepts which are proper only to Neschamah (the organ and faculty of direct spiritual apperception and intuition). This same process took place in Philosophy years earlier. Had the dialectic of Hegel been only. half understood, the major portion of philosophical speculation from the schoolmen to
Kant's perception of the Antinomies of Reason would have been thrown overboard.
1.02_-_The_Stages_of_Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Occultism
p. 36
a higher strictly disciplined school bears to the incidental training. But impatient dabbling, devoid of earnest perseverance, can lead to nothing at all. The study of Spiritual Science can only be successful if the student retain what has already been indicated in the preceding chapter, and on the basis of this proceed further.
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The would-be initiate must bring with him a certain measure of courage and fearlessness. He must positively go out of his way to find opportunities for developing these virtues. His training should provide for their systematic cultivation. In this respect, life itself is a good school-possibly the best school. The student must learn to look danger calmly in the face and try to overcome difficulties unswervingly. For instance, when in the presence of some peril, he must swiftly come to the conviction that fear is of no possible use; I must not feel afraid; I must only think of what is to be done. And he must improve to the extent of feeling, upon occasions which formerly inspired him with fear, that to be frightened, to be disheartened, are things that are out of the question as far as his own inmost self is concerned. By self-discipline in this direction, quite definite qualities are develop which are necessary for initiation into the higher mysteries. Just as man requires nervous force in his physical being in order to use his physical sense, so also he
p. 75
1.02_-_The_Two_Negations_1_-_The_Materialist_Denial, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
16:If modern Materialism were simply an unintelligent acquiescence in the material life, the advance might be indefinitely delayed. But since its very soul is the search for Knowledge, it will be unable to cry a halt; as it reaches the barriers of senseknowledge and of the reasoning from sense-knowledge, its very rush will carry it beyond and the rapidity and sureness with which it has embraced the visible universe is only an earnest of the energy and success which we may hope to see repeated in the conquest of what lies beyond, once the stride is taken that crosses the barrier. We see already that advance in its obscure beginnings.
17:Not only in the one final conception, but in the great line of its general results Knowledge, by whatever path it is followed, tends to become one. Nothing can be more remarkable and suggestive than the extent to which modern Science confirms in the domain of Matter the conceptions and even the very formulae of language which were arrived at, by a very different method, in the Vedanta, - the original Vedanta, not of the schools of metaphysical philosophy, but of the Upanishads. And these, on the other hand, often reveal their full significance, their richer contents only when they are viewed in the new light shed by the discoveries of modern Science, - for instance, that Vedantic expression which describes things in the Cosmos as one seed arranged by the universal Energy in multitudinous forms.6 Significant, especially, is the drive of Science towards a Monism which is consistent with multiplicity, towards the Vedic idea of the one essence with its many becomings. Even if the dualistic appearance of Matter and Force be insisted on, it does not really stand in the way of this Monism. For it will be evident that essential Matter is a thing non-existent to the senses and only, like the Pradhana of the Sankhyas, a conceptual form of substance; and in fact the point is increasingly reached where only an arbitrary distinction in thought divides form of substance from form of energy.
18:Matter expresses itself eventually as a formulation of some unknown Force. Life, too, that yet unfathomed mystery, begins to reveal itself as an obscure energy of sensibility imprisoned in its material formulation; and when the dividing ignorance is cured which gives us the sense of a gulf between Life and Matter, it is difficult to suppose that Mind, Life and Matter will be found to be anything else than one Energy triply formulated, the triple world of the Vedic seers. Nor will the conception then be able to endure of a brute material Force as the mother of Mind. The Energy that creates the world can be nothing else than a Will, and Will is only consciousness applying itself to a work and a result.
1.03_-_Reading, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell. Even the college-bred and so called liberally educated men here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaintance with the English classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and Bibles, which are accessible to all who will know of them, there are the feeblest efforts any where made to become acquainted with them. I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to keep himself in practice, he being a Canadian by birth; and when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English. This is about as much as the college bred generally do or aspire to do, and they take an English paper for the purpose. One who has just come from reading perhaps one of the best
English books will find how many with whom he can converse about it? Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so called illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it. Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader; and as for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do not know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of;and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-books, and when we leave school, the Little Reading, and story books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.
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We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked,goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the state, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisureif they are indeed so well offto pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives.
Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under the skies of
Concord? Can we not hire some Abelard to lecture to us? Alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected. In this country, the village should in some respects take the place of the nobleman of
Europe. It should be the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the magnanimity and refinement. It can spend money enough on such things as farmers and traders value, but it is thought Utopian to propose spending money for things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. This town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a town-house, thank fortune or politics, but probably it will not spend so much on living wit, the true meat to put into that shell, in a hundred years. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars annually subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter is better spent than any other equal sum raised in the town. If we live in the nineteenth century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the nineteenth century offers?
Why should our life be in any respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once?not be sucking the pap of neutral family papers, or browsing Olive-Branches here in New England. Let the reports of all the learned societies come to us, and we will see if they know any thing. Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and
Redding & Co. to select our reading? As the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever conduces to his culture,geniuslearningwitbookspaintingsstatuarymusic philosophical instruments, and the like; so let the village do,not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with these. To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions; and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater than the noblemans. New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is the _uncommon_ school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.
1.03_-_To_Layman_Ishii, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #Hakuin Ekaku, #Zen
"When you consider it, present-day Zen teachers act in much the same way in guiding their students. I've seen and heard how they take young people of exceptional talent-those destined to become the very pillars and ridgepoles of our school-and with their extremely ill-advised and inopportune methods, end up turning them into something half-baked and unachieved. This is the primary reason for the decline of our Zen school, why the Zen groves are withering away.
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Zen teachers with their box-shrub Zen will carry the day. 4 If that happens, the supreme teaching of the
Buddha-mind school will plunge to earth forever, and its true and rigorous traditions will disappear from the ancestral groves."
I gave a sigh, and said, "Boku, come over here. I want you to listen to what I say. In studying Zen, it is necessary to pierce completely through when you penetrate to the source. It is the same with all the workings of heaven and earth. The wonderful transformation of springtime does not take place without the winter's severity, the intense cold that makes the hundred plants and grasses fade and shrivel, the bamboo split and shatter. But with the advent of spring, the ten thousand buds and blossoms emerge, rivaling one another with their charms and beauties. Hence the saying, 'To make something grow and develop, you must cut it back. To make something flourish, you must check its progress.'
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"First you have the students who, after engaging in genuine Zen practice for a long time until principles and wisdom are gradually exhausted, emotions and views eliminated, techniques and verbal resources used up, wither into a perfect and unflappable serenity, their bodies and minds completely dispassionate. Suddenly, satori comes. They are liberated. Like the phoenix that soars up from its golden cage. Like the crane that breaks free of its pen. Releasing their hands from the cliffside, they die the great death and are reborn into life anew. These are students who have thoroughly penetrated, who have bored through all forms and penetrated all sounds and can see their self-nature as clearly as if it was in the palm of their hand. After painstakingly working their way through the final barrier koans set up by the patriarchal teachers, their minds, in one single vigorous effort, abruptly transform. Such students are possessed of deep discernment and innate ability that enables them to enter liberation at a single blow from the iron hammer. They are foremost among all the outstanding seeds and buds of our school. The only thing they lack is the personal confirmation of a genuine teacher.
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"There are also students who spend much time and effort tenaciously engaged in hidden practice and secret activity until, one day, owing to the guidance of a teacher, they finally are able to reach a state of firm belief. We can call them the believers. They understand without any doubt about essential principles such as the self-nature being apart from birth-and-death and the true body transcending past and present. However, the great and essential matter of the Zen school is beyond them. They can't see it even dimly in their dreams. They are not only powerless to save others, they
33
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"As the priest Nan-t'ang declared, 'You must see your self-nature as clearly as if you are looking at it in the palm of your hand, so that each and every thing becomes perfectly and unmistakably your own wondrously profound field of Dharma truth.'y It is a matter demanding the greatest care. For this reason, the Zen school declares: 'Clarifying your self but not the things before your eyes gets you only half, and clarifying the things before your eyes but not your self gets you only half as well. You must know that if you press on, the time will come when it will all be yours.'z It also says, 'If students of the Way want to confirm whether they have truly entered realization, they must examine their mind
34
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2. Dead otter (shi-katsudatsu) Zen, according to a glossary of Zen terms dating from shortly after
Hakuin's time, refers to quietist practices employed in the St school's silent illumination Zen. The
Sung master Ta-hui speaks of "bands of miscreant shavepates who have not yet opened their own eyes, but who nonetheless strive to lead others into a state of quietistic stagnation in the realm of the blind otters" (Ta-hui's Letters, third Letter to Cheng Shih-lang). In his work Krju, the Tokugawa scholar-priest Mujaku Dch concludes that the term does not refer to an otter (he suggests instead a red-haired, wolflike animal): "Although I have been unable to discover precisely what this creature is, it is said to 'play possum,' pretending to be dead to draw people near so it can seize and devour them."
1.04_-_Pratyahara, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
5:A similar curve might be plotted for the real and apparent painfulness of Asana.
6:Conscious of this fact, we begin to try to control it: "Not quite so many thoughts, please!" "Don't think quite so fast, please!" "No more of that kind of thought, please!" It is only then that we discover that what we thought was a school of playful porpoises is really the convolutions of the sea-serpent. The attempt to repress has the effect of exciting.
7:When the unsuspecting pupil first approaches his holy but wily Guru, and demands magical powers, that Wise One replies that he will confer them, points out with much caution and secrecy some particular spot on the pupil's body which has never previously attracted his attention, and says: "In order to obtain this magical power which you seek, all that is necessary is to wash seven times in the Ganges during seven days, being particularly careful to avoid thinking of that one spot." Of course the unhappy youth spends a disgusted week in thinking of little else.
1.04_-_Reality_Omnipresent, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5:Man, too, becomes perfect only when he has found within himself that absolute calm and passivity of the Brahman and supports by it with the same divine tolerance and the same divine bliss a free and inexhaustible activity. Those who have thus possessed the Calm within can perceive always welling out from its silence the perennial supply of the energies that work in the universe. It is not, therefore, the truth of the Silence to say that it is in its nature a rejection of the cosmic activity. The apparent incompatibility of the two states is an error of the limited Mind which, accustomed to trenchant oppositions of affirmation and denial and passing suddenly from one pole to the other, is unable to conceive of a comprehensive consciousness vast and strong enough to include both in a simultaneous embrace. The Silence does not reject the world; it sustains it. Or rather it supports with an equal impartiality the activity and the withdrawal from the activity and approves also the reconciliation by which the soul remains free and still even while it lends itself to all action.
6:But, still, there is the absolute withdrawal, there is the NonBeing. Out of the Non-Being, says the ancient Scripture, Being appeared.2 Then into the Non-Being it must surely sink again. If the infinite indiscriminate Existence permits all possibilities of discrimination and multiple realisation, does not the NonBeing at least, as primal state and sole constant reality, negate and reject all possibility of a real universe? The Nihil of certain Buddhist schools would then be the true ascetic solution; the Self, like the ego, would be only an ideative formation by an illusory phenomenal consciousness.
7:But again we find that we are being misled by words, deceived by the trenchant oppositions of our limited mentality with its fond reliance on verbal distinctions as if they perfectly represented ultimate truths and its rendering of our supramental experiences in the sense of those intolerant distinctions. NonBeing is only a word. When we examine the fact it represents, we can no longer be sure that absolute non-existence has any better chance than the infinite Self of being more than an ideative formation of the mind. We really mean by this Nothing something beyond the last term to which we can reduce our purest conception and our most abstract or subtle experience of actual being as we know or conceive it while in this universe. This Nothing then is merely a something beyond positive conception. We erect a fiction of nothingness in order to overpass, by the method of total exclusion, all that we can know and consciously are. Actually when we examine closely the Nihil of certain philosophies, we begin to perceive that it is a zero which is All or an indefinable Infinite which appears to the mind a blank, because mind grasps only finite constructions, but is in fact the only true Existence.3
1.04_-_Sounds, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns, where once only the hunter penetrated by day, in the darkest night dart these bright saloons without the knowledge of their inhabitants; this moment stopping at some brilliant station-house in town or city, where a social crowd is gathered, the next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day. They go and come with such regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one well conducted institution regulates a whole country. Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented? Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office? There is something electrifying in the atmosphere of the former place. I have been astonished at the miracles it has wrought; that some of my neighbors, who, I should have prophesied, once for all, would never get to Boston by so prompt a conveyance, are on hand when the bell rings. To do things railroad fashion is now the by-word; and it is worth the while to be warned so often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in this case. We have constructed a fate, an _Atropos_, that never turns aside. (Let that be the name of your engine.) Men are advertised that at a certain hour and minute these bolts will be shot toward particular points of the compass; yet it interferes with no mans business, and the children go to school on the other track. We live the steadier for it. We are all educated thus to be sons of Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts. Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.
1.04_-_The_Core_of_the_Teaching, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Buddha back to his wife and father and the government of the
Sakya State, or would direct a Ramakrishna to become a Pundit in a vernacular school and disinterestedly teach little boys their lessons, or bind down a Vivekananda to support his family and for that to follow dispassionately the law or medicine or journalism. The Gita does not teach the disinterested performance of duties but the following of the divine life, the abandonment of all dharmas, sarvadharman, to take refuge in the Supreme alone, and the divine activity of a Buddha, a Ramakrishna, a
Vivekananda is perfectly in consonance with this teaching. Nay, although the Gita prefers action to inaction, it does not rule out the renunciation of works, but accepts it as one of the ways to the Divine. If that can only be attained by renouncing works and life and all duties and the call is strong within us, then into the bonfire they must go, and there is no help for it. The call of God is imperative and cannot be weighed against any other considerations.
1.04_-_The_First_Circle,_Limbo:_Virtuous_Pagans_and_the_Unbaptized._The_Four_Poets,_Homer,_Horace,_Ovid,_and_Lucan._The_Noble_Castle_of_Philosophy., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
They do me honour, and in that do well."
Thus I beheld assemble the fair school
Of that lord of the song pre-eminent,
1.04_-_To_the_Priest_of_Rytan-ji, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #Hakuin Ekaku, #Zen
This letter from Hakuin's mid-fifties shows him accepting an invitation from a temple in neighboring
Ttmi Province to lecture on a Chinese Zen text, Precious Lessons of the Zen school. He was in the middle of his second decade of teaching at Shin-ji, having two years before completed a highly successful meeting that had established his reputation as one of the foremost Zen teachers in the country, and had also attracted a large assembly of trainees to the temple. Hakuin now seems more willing to accept requests from other temples to conduct lecture meetings.
--
The Chronological Biography entry for 1742 refers to this meeting without adding much to what is already known: "During the summer the master acceded to a request from Rytan-ji and went to
Ttmi Province to lecture on Precious Lessons of the Zen school."
But we learn from Trei's draft manuscript of the Chronological Biography that the meeting was actually held in autumn to commemorate the 650th anniversary of the temple's founding, and that "a hundred monks accompanied Hakuin on the journey to Ttmi to take part in the meeting." Precious
Lessons of the Zen school is a late twelfth-century work Hakuin frequently used as a text for lectures.
1.05_-_Adam_Kadmon, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
are unfamiliar with the general conceptions held in mystic- ism as very strange indeed. But the idea of an inner man using a mind and body as instruments for the obtaining of experience and thus self-consciousness is inherent in every mystical system that has seen the light of the Sun. The classifications of the nature of man used by the various schools of Mysticism are tabulated on the opposite chart, using the ten Sephiros as the basis for comparison.
--
The Commentary on the Ten Sephiros, written in Hebrew by
Rabbi Azariel ben Menaham already mentioned. He dis- tinguished himself as a philosopher, Qabalist and Tal- mudist, and was a pupil of Isaac the Blind, the founder of the Qabalistic school of Gerona. His commentary, men- tioned above, is written in a remarkably lucid and academic manner, and the classification is extremely satisfactory.
1.05_-_Hsueh_Feng's_Grain_of_Rice, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
Whoever would uphold the teaching of our school must be a
brave spirited fellow; only with the ability to kill a man with
--
word or half a phrase for a whole lifetime? Therefore, when it
came to supporting the teaching of the school and continuing
the life of the Buddhas, they would spit out a word or half a
1.05_-_Mental_Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Generally speaking, schooling is considered to be all the mental education that is necessary. And when a child has been made to undergo, for a number of years, a methodical training which is more like cramming than true schooling, it is considered that whatever is necessary for his mental development has been done. Nothing of the kind. Even conceding that the training is given with due measure and discrimination and does not permanently damage the brain, it cannot impart to the human mind the faculties it needs to become a good and useful instrument. The schooling that is usually given can, at the most, serve as a system of gymnastics to increase the suppleness of the brain. From this standpoint, each branch of human learning represents a special kind of mental gymnastics, and the verbal formulations given to these various branches each constitute a special and well-defined language.
--
You will gradually show the child that everything can become an interesting subject for study if it is approached in the right way. The life of every day, of every moment, is the best school of all, varied, complex, full of unexpected experiences, problems to be solved, clear and striking examples and obvious consequences. It is so easy to arouse healthy curiosity in children, if you answer with intelligence and clarity the numerous questions they ask. An interesting reply to one readily brings others in its train and so the attentive child learns without effort much more than he usually does in the classroom. By a choice made with care and insight, you should also teach him to enjoy good reading-matter which is both instructive and attractive. Do not be afraid of anything that awakens and pleases his imagination; imagination develops the creative mental faculty and through it study becomes living and the mind develops in joy.
1.05_-_Solitude, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving north-east rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In one heavy thunder shower the lightning struck a large pitch-pine across the pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or five inches wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. I passed it again the other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men frequently say to me, I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially. I am tempted to reply to such,This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five
Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction.
1.05_-_Some_Results_of_Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Occultism
p. 155
to the fact that the schoolmaster who used to worry him many years ago wore a coat of that color. Innumerable illusions are based upon such associations. Many things leave their mark upon the soul while remaining outside the pale of consciousness. The following may occur. Someone reads in the paper about the death of a well-known person, and forthwith claims to have had a presentiment of it yesterday, although he had neither heard nor seen anything that might have given rise to such a thought. And indeed it is quite true that the thought occurred to him yesterday, as though of its own accord, that this particular person would die; only one thing escaped his attention: two or three hours before this thought occurred to him yesterday, he went to visit an acquaintance; a newspaper lay on the table; he did not actually read it, but his eyes unconsciously fell on the announcement of the dangerous illness of the person in question. He remained unconscious of the impression he had received, and yet this impression resulted in his presentiment.
1.06_-_Yun_Men's_Every_Day_is_a_Good_Day, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
Ch'an;
Silence, not clamor, is in order for the Ch'an school.
Ten thousand kinds of clever talk -how can they
--
Ch'u, Chih Men Shih Kuan, Te Shan Yuan Mi, and Hsiang Lin
Teng Yuan. They all were great masters of the school. Hsiang
Lin served as Yun
1.07_-_Hui_Ch'ao_Asks_about_Buddha, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
Fa Yen gave his seal of approval and said, "This one verse alone
can perpetuate my school. In the future kings and lords will
honor you. I am not equal to you."
1.07_-_On_Our_Knowledge_of_General_Principles, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
One of the great historic controversies in philosophy is the controversy between the two schools called respectively 'empiricists' and
'rationalists'. The empiricists--who are best represented by the
British philosophers, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume--maintained that all our knowledge is derived from experience; the rationalists--who are represented by the Continental philosophers of the seventeenth century, especially Descartes and Leibniz--maintained that, in addition to what we know by experience, there are certain 'innate ideas' and 'innate principles', which we know independently of experience. It has now become possible to decide with some confidence as to the truth or falsehood of these opposing schools. It must be admitted, for the reasons already stated, that logical principles are known to us, and cannot be themselves proved by experience, since all proof presupposes them. In this, therefore, which was the most important point of the controversy, the rationalists were in the right.
1.07_-_The_Farther_Reaches_of_Human_Nature, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
4:Recall that two of our tenets (8 and 12d) stated that increasing evolution means increasing depth and increasing relative autonomy. In the realm of human development, this particularly shows up in the fact that, according to developmental psychology (as we will see), increasing growth and development always involve increasing internalization (or increasing interiorization). And as paradoxical as it initially sounds, the more interiorized a person is, the less narcissistic his or her awareness becomes. So we need to understand why, for all schools of developmental psychology, this equation is true: increasing development = increasing interiorization = decreasing narcissism (or decreasing egocentrism).
--
To simplify considerably, Broughton asked individuals from preschool age to early adulthood: what or where is your self?
1.07_-_The_Literal_Qabalah_(continued), #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
From my point of view, to attend to the problem itself, there cannot possibly be the slightest connection between the two philosophic formulations which have been at the foundation of virulent controversy. Because, let me insist most strongly, the two schools under consideration specu- late upon two entirely different topics. According to the
Church, the various aspects of the Trinity are, severally, all
1.08_-_The_Methods_of_Vedantic_Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
14:We see this succession in the Upanishads and the subsequent Indian philosophies. The sages of the Veda and Vedanta relied entirely upon intuition and spiritual experience. It is by an error that scholars sometimes speak of great debates or discussions in the Upanishad. Wherever there is the appearance of a controversy, it is not by discussion, by dialectics or the use of logical reasoning that it proceeds, but by a comparison of intuitions and experiences in which the less luminous gives place to the more luminous, the narrower, faultier or less essential to the more comprehensive, more perfect, more essential. The question asked by one sage of another is "What dost thou know?", not "What dost thou think?" nor "To what conclusion has thy reasoning arrived?" Nowhere in the Upanishads do we find any trace of logical reasoning urged in support of the truths of Vedanta. Intuition, the sages seem to have held, must be corrected by a more perfect intuition; logical reasoning cannot be its judge.
15:And yet the human reason demands its own method of satisfaction. Therefore when the age of rationalistic speculation began, Indian philosophers, respectful of the heritage of the past, adopted a double attitude towards the Truth they sought. They recognised in the Sruti, the earlier results of Intuition or, as they preferred to call it, of inspired Revelation, an authority superior to Reason. But at the same time they started from Reason and tested the results it gave them, holding only those conclusions to be valid which were supported by the supreme authority. In this way they avoided to a certain extent the besetting sin of metaphysics, the tendency to battle in the clouds because it deals with words as if they were imperative facts instead of symbols which have always to be carefully scrutinised and brought back constantly to the sense of that which they represent. Their speculations tended at first to keep near at the centre to the highest and profoundest experience and proceeded with the united consent of the two great authorities, Reason and Intuition. Nevertheless, the natural trend of Reason to assert its own supremacy triumphed in effect over the theory of its subordination. Hence the rise of conflicting schools each of which founded itself in theory on the Veda and used its texts as a weapon against the others. For the highest intuitive Knowledge sees things in the whole, in the large and details only as sides of the indivisible whole; its tendency is towards immediate synthesis and the unity of knowledge. Reason, on the contrary, proceeds by analysis and division and assembles its facts to form a whole; but in the assemblage so formed there are opposites, anomalies, logical incompatibilities, and the natural tendency of Reason is to affirm some and to negate others which conflict with its chosen conclusions so that it may form a flawlessly logical system. The unity of the first intuitional knowledge was thus broken up and the ingenuity of the logicians was always able to discover devices, methods of interpretation, standards of varying value by which inconvenient texts of the Scripture could be practically annulled and an entire freedom acquired for their metaphysical speculation.
16:Nevertheless, the main conceptions of the earlier Vedanta remained in parts in the various philosophical systems and efforts were made from time to time to recombine them into some image of the old catholicity and unity of intuitional thought. And behind the thought of all, variously presented, survived as the fundamental conception, Purusha, Atman or Sad Brahman, the pure Existent of the Upanishads, often rationalised into an idea or psychological state, but still carrying something of its old burden of inexpressible reality. What may be the relation of the movement of becoming which is what we call the world to this absolute Unity and how the ego, whether generated by the movement or cause of the movement, can return to that true Self, Divinity or Reality declared by the Vedanta, these were the questions speculative and practical which have always occupied the thought of India.
1.09_-_Saraswati_and_Her_Consorts, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The number seven plays an exceedingly important part in the
Vedic system, as in most very ancient schools of thought. We find it recurring constantly, - the seven delights, sapta ratnani; the seven flames, tongues or rays of Agni, sapta arcis.ah., sapta jvalah.; the seven forms of the Thought-principle, sapta dhı̄tayah.; the seven Rays or Cows, forms of the Cow unslayable, Aditi, mother of the gods, sapta gavah.; the seven rivers, the seven mothers or fostering cows, sapta matarah., sapta dhenavah., a term applied indifferently to the Rays and to the Rivers. All these sets of seven depend, it seems to me, upon the Vedic classification of the fundamental principles, the tattvas, of existence.
1.1.01_-_Seeking_the_Divine, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Let us look on it as a sort of infants' school for the unready.
1.1.01_-_The_Divine_and_Its_Aspects, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The distinction between the Transcendental, the Cosmic, the Individual Divine is not my invention, nor is it native to India or to Asia - it is on the contrary a recognised European teaching current in the esoteric tradition of the Catholic Church where it is the authorised explanation of the Trinity, - Father, Son and Holy Ghost, - and it is very well-known to European mystic experience. In essence it exists in all spiritual disciplines that recognise the omnipresence of the Divine - in Indian Vedantic experience and in Mahomedan Yoga (not only the Sufi, but other schools also) - the Mahomedans even speak of not two or three but many levels of the Divine until one reaches the Supreme. As for the idea in itself, surely there is a difference between the individual, the cosmos in space and time, and something that exceeds this cosmic formula or any cosmic formula. There is a cosmic consciousness experienced by many which is quite different in its scope and action from the individual consciousness, and if there is a consciousness beyond the cosmic, infinite and essentially eternal, not merely extended in Time, that also must be different from these two. And if the Divine is or manifests Himself in these three, is it not conceivable that in aspect, in
His working, He may differentiate Himself so much that we are driven, if we are not to confound all truth of experience, if we are not to limit ourselves to a mere static experience of something indefinable, to speak of a triple aspect of the Divine?
1.10_-_Conscious_Force, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
4:The problem of consciousness is not solved by this theory; for it does not explain how the contact of vibrations of Force should give rise to conscious sensations. The Sankhyas or analytic thinkers posited therefore behind these five elements two principles which they called Mahat and Ahankara, principles which are really non-material; for the first is nothing but the vast cosmic principle of Force and the other the divisional principle of Ego-formation. Nevertheless, these two principles, as also the principle of intelligence, become active in consciousness not by virtue of Force itself, but by virtue of an inactive Conscious-Soul or souls in which its activities are reflected and by that reflection assume the hue of consciousness.
5:Such is the explanation of things offered by the school of Indian philosophy which comes nearest to the modern materialistic ideas and which carried the idea of a mechanical or unconscious Force in Nature as far as was possible to a seriously reflective Indian mind. Whatever its defects, its main idea was so indisputable that it came to be generally accepted. However the phenomenon of consciousness may be explained, whether Nature be an inert impulse or a conscious principle, it is certainly Force; the principle of things is a formative movement of energies, all forms are born of meeting and mutual adaptation between unshaped forces, all sensation and action is a response of something in a form of Force to the contacts of other forms of Force. This is the world as we experience it and from this experience we must always start.
6:Physical analysis of Matter by modern Science has come to the same general conclusion, even if a few last doubts still linger. Intuition and experience confirm this concord of Science and Philosophy. Pure reason finds in it the satisfaction of its own essential conceptions. For even in the view of the world as essentially an act of consciousness, an act is implied and in the act movement of Force, play of Energy. This also, when we examine from within our own experience, proves to be the fundamental nature of the world. All our activities are the play of the triple force of the old philosophies, knowledge-force, desire-force, action-force, and all these prove to be really three streams of one original and identical Power, Adya Shakti. Even our states of rest are only equable state or equilibrium of the play of her movement.
1.12_-_Brute_Neighbors, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
While he was thinking one thing in his brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your adversarys checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem is to place yours nearest to where his will appear again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, having apparently passed directly under the boat. So long-winded was he and so unweariable, that when he had swum farthest he would immediately plunge again, nevertheless; and then no wit could divine where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like a fish, for he had time and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest part. It is said that loons have been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with hooks set for trout,though
Walden is deeper than that. How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid their schools! Yet he appeared to know his course as surely under water as on the surface, and swam much faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantly dived again. I found that it was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would rise; for again and again, when I was straining my eyes over the surface one way, I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh behind me. But why, after displaying so much cunning, did he invariably betray himself the moment he came up by that loud laugh? Did not his white breast enough betray him? He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the splash of the water when he came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning,perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface.
1.12_-_Sleep_and_Dreams, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
*
Sleep is the school one must pass through if one knows how to learn ones lesson there, so that the inner being may become independent of the physical form, conscious in its own right and master of its own life. There are entire parts of the being that need this immobility and semi-consciousness of the outer being, of the body, in order to be able to lead their own life independently.
It is another school for another result, but it is still a school.
--
In the third the train is, as always, an image of the way and the journey towards the goal. The sets of people are the various groups (secret societies etc.) that have been formed for this purpose. The one you were supposed to join was the society to which you became attached composed of the boys who were with you at your first school; the image is clear, but an association which you did not feel to be definitive.
1.15_-_The_Possibility_and_Purpose_of_Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
the world is not the only object of the descent of the Avatar, that great mystery of the Divine manifest in humanity; for the upholding of the Dharma is not an all-sufficient object in itself, not the supreme possible aim for the manifestation of a Christ, a
Krishna, a Buddha, but is only the general condition of a higher aim and a more supreme and divine utility. For there are two aspects of the divine birth; one is a descent, the birth of God in humanity, the Godhead manifesting itself in the human form and nature, the eternal Avatar; the other is an ascent, the birth of man into the Godhead, man rising into the divine nature and consciousness, madbhavam agatah.; it is the being born anew in a second birth of the soul. It is that new birth which Avatarhood and the upholding of the Dharma are intended to serve. This double aspect in the Gita's doctrine of Avatarhood is apt to be missed by the cursory reader satisfied, as most are, with catching a superficial view of its profound teachings, and it is missed too by the formal commentator petrified in the rigidity of the schools. Yet it is necessary, surely, to the whole meaning of the doctrine. Otherwise the Avatar idea would be only a dogma, a popular superstition, or an imaginative or mystic deification of historical or legendary supermen, not what the Gita makes all its teaching, a deep philosophical and religious truth and an essential part of or step to the supreme mystery of all, rahasyam uttamam.
1.16_-_The_Triple_Status_of_Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
12:Obviously, these three poises would be only different ways of dealing with the same Truth; the Truth of existence enjoyed would be the same, the way of enjoying it or rather the poise of the soul in enjoying it would be different. The delight, the Ananda would vary, but would abide always within the status of the Truth-consciousness and involve no lapse into the Falsehood and the Ignorance. For the secondary and tertiary Supermind would only develop and apply in the terms of the divine multiplicity what the primary Supermind had held in the terms of the divine unity. We cannot stamp any of these three poises with the stigma of falsehood and illusion. The language of the Upanishads, the supreme ancient authority for these truths of a higher experience, when they speak of the Divine existence which is manifesting itself, implies the validity of all these experiences. We can only assert the priority of the oneness to the multiplicity, a priority not in time but in relation of consciousness, and no statement of supreme spiritual experience, no Vedantic philosophy denies this priority or the eternal dependence of the Many on the One. It is because in Time the Many seem not to be eternal but to manifest out of the One and return into it as their essence that their reality is denied; but it might equally be reasoned that the eternal persistence or, if you will, the eternal recurrence of the manifestation in Time is a proof that the divine multiplicity is an eternal fact of the Supreme beyond Time no less than the divine unity; otherwise it could not have this characteristic of inevitable eternal recurrence in Time.
13:It is indeed only when our human mentality lays an exclusive emphasis on one side of spiritual experience, affirms that to be the sole eternal truth and states it in the terms of our all-dividing mental logic that the necessity for mutually destructive schools of philosophy arises. Thus, emphasising the sole truth of the unitarian consciousness, we observe the play of the divine unity, erroneously rendered by our mentality into the terms of real difference, but, not satisfied with correcting this error of the mind by the truth of a higher principle, we assert that the play itself is an illusion. Or, emphasising the play of the One in the Many, we declare a qualified unity and regard the individual soul as a soul-form of the Supreme, but would assert the eternity of this qualified existence and deny altogether the experience of a pure consciousness in an unqualified oneness. Or, again, emphasising the play of difference, we assert that the Supreme and the human soul are eternally different and reject the validity of an experience which exceeds and seems to abolish that difference. But the position that we have now firmly taken absolves us from the necessity of these negations and exclusions: we see that there is a truth behind all these affirmations, but at the same time an excess which leads to an ill-founded negation. Affirming, as we have done, the absolute absoluteness of That, not limited by our ideas of unity, not limited by our ideas of multiplicity, affirming the unity as a basis for the manifestation of the multiplicity and the multiplicity as the basis for the return to oneness and the enjoyment of unity in the divine manifestation, we need not burden our present statement with these discussions or undertake the vain labour of enslaving to our mental distinctions and definitions the absolute freedom of the Divine Infinite.
1.200-1.224_Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
The siddhas say that the one who leaves his body behind as a corpse cannot attain mukti. They are reborn. Only those whose bodies dissolve in space, in light or away from sight, attain liberation.
The Advaitins of Sankaras school stop short at Self-Realisation and this is not the end, the siddhas say.
There are also others who extol their own pet theories as the best, e.g., late Venkaswami Rao of Kumbakonam, Brahmananda Yogi of Cuddappah, etc.
--
Thus - you see - Devotion is nothing more than knowing oneself. The school of Qualified Monism also admits it. Still, adhering to their traditional doctrine, they persist in affirming that the individuals are part of the Supreme - his limbs as it were. Their traditional doctrine says also that the individual soul should be made pure and then surrendered to the Supreme; then the ego is lost and one goes to the regions of Vishnu after ones death; then finally there is the enjoyment of the Supreme (or the Infinite)!
To say that one is apart from the Primal Source is itself a pretension; to add that one divested of the ego becomes pure and yet retains individuality only to enjoy or serve the Supreme, is a deceitful stratagem. What duplicity is this - first to appropriate what is really
1.2.01_-_The_Call_and_the_Capacity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If your conclusion were true, the whole aim of this Yoga would be a vain thing; for we are not working for a race or a people or a continent or for a realisation of which only Indians or only Orientals are capable. Our aim is not, either, to found a religion or a school of philosophy or a school of Yoga, but to create a ground and a way of spiritual growth and experience which will bring down a greater Truth beyond the mind but not
1.20_-_Equality_and_Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
211
mankind is now vainly seeking, when once men lift their eyes and their hearts to see the Divine in them and around, in all and everywhere, sarves.u, sarvatra, and learn that it is in him they live, while this lower nature of division is only a prison-wall which they must break down or at best an infant-school which they must outgrow, so that they may become adult in nature and free in spirit. To be made one self with God above and God in man and God in the world is the sense of liberation and the secret of perfection.
1.240_-_1.300_Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Mr. F. G. Pearce, Principal, Scindia school, Gwalior: Bhagavan has stated
[in Sad Vidya Anubandham (Supplement) sloka 36]: "The illiterates are certainly better off than the literates whose egos are not destroyed by the quest of the self." This being so, could Bhagavan advise a school master
(who feels this to be true) how to carry on education in such a way that the desire for literacy and intellectual knowledge may not obscure the more important search for the Self? Are the two incompatible? If they are not, then from what age, and by what means, can young people best be stimulated towards the search for the Real Truth within?
--
D.: Buddha, when asked if there is the ego, was silent; when asked if there is no ego, he was silent; asked if there is God, he was silent; asked if there is no God, he was silent. Silence was his answer for all these. Mahayana and Hinayana schools have both misinterpreted his silence because they say that he was an atheist. If he was an atheist, why should he have spoken of nirvana, of births and deaths, of karma, reincarnations and dharma? His interpreters are wrong. Is it not so?
M.: You are right.
--
Bhagavan was then reading Trilinga in Telugu on the reincarnation of a boy. The boy is now thirteen years old and reading in the Government
High school in a village near Lucknow. When he was three years he used to dig here and there; when asked, he would say that he was trying to recover something which he had hidden in the earth. When he was four years old, a marriage function was celebrated in his home. When leaving, the guests humorously remarked that they would return for this boy's marriage. But he turned round and said: "I am already married.
--
Both schools mean the same thing. Their ultimate aim is to realise the Absolute Consciousness. The unreality of the cosmos is implied in Recognition (Pratyabhijna), whereas it is explicit in Vedanta. If the world be taken as chit (consciousness), it is always real. Vedanta says that there is no nana (diversity), meaning that it is all the same Reality.
1.240_-_Talks_2, #unset, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Talk 253.
Mr. F. G. Pearce, Principal, Scindia school, Gwalior: Bhagavan has stated
[in Sad Vidya Anubandham (Supplement) sloka 36]: The illiterates are certainly better off than the literates whose egos are not destroyed by the quest of the self. This being so, could Bhagavan advise a school master
(who feels this to be true) how to carry on education in such a way that the desire for literacy and intellectual knowledge may not obscure the more important search for the Self? Are the two incompatible? If they are not, then from what age, and by what means, can young people best be stimulated towards the search for the Real Truth within?
--
M.: Substance and shadow are for the one who sees only the shadow and mistakes it for the substance and sees its shadow also. But there is neither substance nor shadow for the one who is aware only of the Reality.
D.: Buddha, when asked if there is the ego, was silent; when asked if there is no ego, he was silent; asked if there is God, he was silent; asked if there is no God, he was silent. Silence was his answer for all these. Mahayana and Hinayana schools have both misinterpreted his silence because they say that he was an atheist. If he was an atheist, why should he have spoken of nirvana, of births and deaths, of karma, reincarnations and dharma? His interpreters are wrong. Is it not so?
M.: You are right.
--
Bhagavan was then reading Trilinga in Telugu on the reincarnation of a boy. The boy is now thirteen years old and reading in the Government
High school in a village near Lucknow. When he was three years he used to dig here and there; when asked, he would say that he was trying to recover something which he had hidden in the earth. When he was four years old, a marriage function was celebrated in his home. When leaving, the guests humorously remarked that they would return for this boys marriage. But he turned round and said: I am already married.
I have two wives. When asked to point them out, he requested to be taken to a certain village, and there he pointed to two women as his wives. It is now learnt that a period of ten months elapsed between the death of their husband and the birth of this boy.
--
So also the world cannot have an independent existence. Swatantra becomes eventually an attribute of the Supreme. Sri Sankara says that the Absolute is without attributes and that Maya is not and has no real being. What is the difference between the two? Both agree that the display is not real. The images of the mirror cannot in any way be real. The world does not exist in reality (vastutah).
Both schools mean the same thing. Their ultimate aim is to realise the Absolute Consciousness. The unreality of the cosmos is implied in Recognition (Pratyabhijna), whereas it is explicit in Vedanta. If the world be taken as chit (consciousness), it is always real. Vedanta says that there is no nana (diversity), meaning that it is all the same Reality.
There is agreement on all points except in words and the method of expression.
--
The young man thinks that Sri Bhagavan gave him upadesa in the following words: The self (i.e. ego) must be subdued by oneself.
The man however has refused the offer of a job to him in one of the local schools and thinks that he has been given a mighty job by the
Hill or by Sri Bhagavan. What that job is the world will know later, he says. He had further anticipated all this days occurrences some months ago and had foretold them to his mother and to his friends.
--
The thought rises up as the subject and object. I alone being held, all else disappears. It is enough, but only to the competent few.
The others argue, Quite so. The world that exists in my sleep has existed before my birth and will exist after my death. Do not others see it? How can the world cease to be if my ego appears not? The genesis of the world and the different schools of thought are meant to satisfy such people.
D.: Nevertheless, being only products of intellect they cannot turn the mind inward.
--
D.: According to the creed that there is no creation (ajatavada), the explanations of Sri Bhagavan are faultless; but are they admissible in other schools?
M.: There are three methods of approach in Advaita vada.
--
Suddha satva is quite pure; misra (mixed satva) is a combination of satva with other qualities. The quality satva implies only its predominance over the other two qualities.
Later Sri Bhagavan continued: The intricate maze of philosophy of different schools is said to clarify matters and reveal the Truth.
But in fact they create confusion where no confusion need exist.
1.300_-_1.400_Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
The man however has refused the offer of a job to him in one of the local schools and thinks that he has been given a mighty job by the
Hill or by Sri Bhagavan. "What that job is the world will know later", he says. He had further anticipated all this day's occurrences some months ago and had foretold them to his mother and to his friends.
--
The others argue, "Quite so. The world that exists in my sleep has existed before my birth and will exist after my death. Do not others see it? How can the world cease to be if my ego appears not?" The genesis of the world and the different schools of thought are meant to satisfy such people.
--
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi
D.: According to the creed that there is no creation (ajatavada), the explanations of Sri Bhagavan are faultless; but are they admissible in other schools?
M.: There are three methods of approach in Advaita vada.
--
Later Sri Bhagavan continued: The intricate maze of philosophy of different schools is said to clarify matters and reveal the Truth.
1.439, #unset, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Kuppu Iyer regaining the use of his legs.
Again a girl from the Girls school was decoyed and was being robbed of her jewels. Suddenly an old man appeared on the scene, rescued the girl, escorted her to her home and then disappeared.
Often such mysterious happenings occur in Tiruvannamalai.
--
Bhagavan to read. Sri Bhagavan softly spoke of the interpretation of the
Bhashyakara and further explained the same. To consider the Brahmaloka as a region is also admissible. That is what the pouraniks say and many other schools also imply it by expounding kramamukti (liberation by degrees). But the Upanishads speak of sadyomukti (immediate liberation) as in Na tasya prana utkramanti; ihaiva praleeyante - the pranas do not rise up; they lose themselves here. So Brahmaloka will be Realisation of
Brahman (Brahmasakshatkara). It is a state and not a region. In the latter case, paramritat must be properly understood. It is para inasmuch as avyakrita is the causal Energy transcending the universe, amrita because it persists until the Self is realised. So that paramritat will mean avyakrita.
The kramamukti (liberation by degrees) school say that the upasaka goes to the region of his Ishta Devata which is Brahmaloka to him. The souls passing to all other lokas return to be reborn. But those who have gained the Brahmaloka do not. Moreover those desirous of a particular loka can by proper methods gain the same. Whereas Brahmaloka cannot be gained so long as there is any desire left in the person. Desirelessness alone will confer the loka on him. His desirelessness signifies the absence of the incentive for rebirth.
The age of Brahma is practically immeasurable. The presiding deity of the loka is said to have a definite period of life. When he passes away his loka also is dissolved. The inmates are emancipated at the same
--
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi time, irrespective of the different nature of individual consciousness in them prior to Self-realisation.
The kramamukti school objects to the idea of sadyomukti (immediate liberation) because the Jnani is supposed to lose body-consciousness at the same time that ignorance is dispelled but he continues to live in the body. They ask, How does the body function without the mind?
The answer is somewhat elaborate:
--
Sutra Bhashya:
The sutras are meant to elucidate and establish the meanings of the texts. The commentaries try to do so by bringing in the opponents views, refuting them and arriving at conclusions after long discussions; there are also differences of opinion in the same school of thought;
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi again protagonists and antagonists. Also different schools of thought interpret the same text in different ways and arrive at different conclusions, contrary to each other.
How then is the purpose of the sutras served?
--
Talk 632.
Mr. Satyanarayana Rao, a teacher in Vellore Mahant school, is a wellknown devotee of Sri Maharshi. He has been ailing from a cancer of
the gullet and the doctors have no hopes for him. He has been given
--
enough that one realises the Self. It is always the Brahman.
According to the other school, nididhyasana will be the thought
Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahman). That is diversion of thought
1.450_-_1.500_Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Again a girl from the Girl's school was decoyed and was being robbed of her jewels. Suddenly an old man appeared on the scene, rescued the girl, escorted her to her home and then disappeared.
1.550_-_1.600_Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Sutra Bhashya:-
The sutras are meant to elucidate and establish the meanings of the texts. The commentaries try to do so by bringing in the opponent's views, refuting them and arriving at conclusions after long discussions; there are also differences of opinion in the same school of thought;
551
--
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi again protagonists and antagonists. Also different schools of thought interpret the same text in different ways and arrive at different conclusions, contrary to each other.
2.01_-_2.09_-_MASTER_AND_DISCIPLE, #Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M. had yet to learn the distinction between knowledge and ignorance. Up to this time his conception had been that one got knowledge from books and schools. Later on he gave up this false conception. He was taught that to know God is knowledge, and not to know Him, ignorance. When Sri Ramakrishna exclaimed, "And you are a man of knowledge!", M.'s ego was again badly shocked.
--
The devotees and the Master sang and danced in a state of divine fervour. Several of them were in an ecstatic mood. Nityagopal's chest glowed with the upsurge of emotion, and Rakhal lay on the floor in ecstasy, completely unconscious of the world. The Master put his hand on Rakhal's chest and said: "Peace. Be quiet." This was Rakhal's first experience of ecstasy. He lived with his father in Calcutta and now and then visited the Master at Dakshineswar. About this time he had studied a short while in Vidyasagar's school at Syampukur.
--
that he was a teacher at Vidyasagar's school, the Master asked: "Can you take me to Vidyasagar? I should like very much to see him." M. told Iswar Chandra of Sri Ramakrishna's wish, and the pundit gladly agreed that M. should bring the Master, some Saturday afternoon at four o'clock. He only asked M. what kind of paramahamsa the Master was, saying, "Does he wear an ochre cloth?" M. answered: "No, sir. He is an unusual person. He wears a red-bordered cloth and polished slippers. He lives in a room in Rani Rasmani's temple garden. In his room there is a couch with a mattress and mosquito net. He has no outer indication of holiness. But he doesn't know anything except God. Day and night he thinks of God alone."
--
"Suka and other sages stood on the shore of this Ocean of Brahman and saw and touched the water. According to one school of thought they never plunged into it.
--
NARENDRA: "I have been asking M. about the boys in the schools. The conduct of students nowadays isn't all that it should be."
--
"Sambhu Mallick once talked about establishing hospitals, dispensaries, and schools, making roads, digging public reservoirs, and so forth. I said to him: 'Don't go out of your way to look for such works. Undertake only those works that present themselves to you and are of pressing necessity-and those also in a spirit of detachment.' It is not good to become involved in many activities. That makes one forget God. Coming to the Kalighat temple, some, perhaps, spend their whole time in giving alms to the poor. They have no time to see the Mother in the inner shrine! (Laughter.) First of all manage somehow to see the image of the Divine Mother, oven by pushing through the crowd.
--
Sri Ramakrishna, accompanied by Rakhal and several other devotees, came to Calcutta in a carriage and called for M. at the school where he was teaching. Then they all set out for the Maidan. Sri Ramakrishna wanted to see the Wilson Circus. As the carriage rolled along the crowded Chitpore Road, his joy was very great. Like a little child he leaned first out of one side of the carriage and then out of the other, talking to himself as if addressing the passers-by. To M. he said: "I find the attention of the people fixed on earthly things. They are all rushing about for the sake of their stomachs. No one is thinking of God."
--
MASTER: "I felt very badly when I heard of the boy's passing away. He was a pupil in a school and he used to come here. He would often say to me that he couldn't enjoy worldly life. He had lived with some relatives in the western provinces and at that time used to meditate in solitude, in the meadows, hills, and forests. He told me he had visions of many divine forms.
--
Adhar Sen arrived with several of his friends. He was a deputy magistrate, about thirty years old. This was his second visit to the Master. He was accompanied by his friend Saradacharan, who was extremely unhappy because of the death of his eldest son. A retired deputy inspector of schools, Saradacharan devoted himself to meditation and prayer. Adhar had brought his friend to the Master for consolation in his afflicted state of mind.
2.01_-_Habit_1_Be_Proactive, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
Earlier, I shared with you the story of my son who was having serious problems in school. Sandra and I were deeply concerned about his apparent weaknesses and about the way other people were treating him.
2.02_-_Habit_2_Begin_with_the_End_in_Mind, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
I have done similar visualization exercises with some of my university classes. "Assume you only have this one semester to live," I tell my students, "and that during this semester you are to stay in school as a good student. Visualize how you would spend your semester.
--
I have helped and encouraged my son, Sean, to use this affirmation process extensively throughout his football career. We started when he played quarterback in high school, and eventually, I taught him how to do it on his own.
--
We review the statement frequently and rework goals and jobs twice a year, in September and June
-- the beginning of school and the end of school -- to reflect the situation as it is, to improve it, to strengthen it. It renews us, it recommits us to what we believe in, what we stand for.
2.02_-_The_Ishavasyopanishad_with_a_commentary_in_English, #Isha Upanishad, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
to increasing enlightenment is entirely true, for Knowledge, by
which I mean not the schoolmaster's satchelful of information or
even the learning of the Universities, but Jnana, the perception
2.03_-_Indra_and_the_Thought-Forces, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For he would confirm again in himself these splendid energies, and it is a hymn of affirmation that he offers them, the stoma of the Vedic sages. In the system of the Mystics, which has partially survived in the schools of Indian Yoga, the Word is a power, the Word creates. For all creation is expression, everything exists already in the secret abode of the Infinite, guha hitam, and has only to be brought out here in apparent form by the active consciousness. Certain schools of Vedic thought even
2.03_-_Karmayogin_A_Commentary_on_the_Isha_Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
believed that human personality was a single and indivisible
thing; yet recently a school of psychologists has grown up who
consider man as a bundle of various personalities rather than
--
They are no more than an infant or preparatory class in the
school of Brahmavidya.
It is evident again that works done with desire, works done
--
sayujya or constant union of the individual self with the Eternal.
It is supposed by some schools that entire salvation consists in
laya or absorption into the Eternal, in other words entire selfremoval from phenomena and entrance into the utter being of
--
social divisions became more intricately complex, the priest-class
breaking up into schools, the warriors into clans, the people into
2.05_-_Apotheosis, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
dynamics of the psyche to the teachings of the modern Freudian
school. According to the latter, the life-wish (eros or libido, cor
responding to the Buddhist Kama, "desire") and the death-wish
2.05_-_Habit_3_Put_First_Things_First, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
4. Real Estate Salesperson
5. Sunday school Teacher
6. Symphony Board Member
2.05_-_The_Divine_Truth_and_Way, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Even if in the mind we feel them to be comparatively unreal in face of the absolutely
Real. Shankara's Mayavada apart from its logical scaffolding comes when reduced to terms of spiritual experience to no more than an exaggerated expression of this relative unreality. Beyond mind the difficulty disappears, for there it never existed. The separate experiences that lie behind the differences of religious sects and schools of philosophy or Yoga, transmuted, shed their divergent mental sequences, are harmonised and, when exalted to their highest common intensity, unified in the supramental infinite.
2.06_-_The_Wand, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
49:At school our masters punished us; when we leave school, if we have not learned to punish ourselves, we have learned nothing.
50:In fact the only danger is that we may value the achievement in itself. The boy who prides himself on his school knowledge is in danger of becoming a college professor.
2.07_-_The_Mother_Relations_with_Others, #Words Of The Mother I, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To comfort you, I can say immediately and once and for all, that I never pay any attention to what people say of one another, whoever it is who speaks and on your side I ask you never to take seriously what somebody (whoever it is) says in my name, because even with the best of wills it is always distorted.
Now I ask you also not to worry about this school affair.
I will not write about it, but one day I intend to call you and to explain how I see the whole thing. Afterwards you shall see how you feel about it.
2.08_-_The_Sword, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
It all dealings with demons the point of the Sword is kept downwards, and it should not be used for invocation, as is taught in certain schools of magick.
2.10_-_2.19_-_THE_MASTER_WITH_THE_BRAHMO_DEVOTEES_(II), #Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "Once a salt doll went to the ocean to measure its depth. But it could not come back to give a report. According to one school of thought, sages like Sukadeva saw and touched the Ocean of Brahman, but did not plunge into It.
--
"One or two young boys of the village were my close friends. I was very intimate with some of them; but now they are totally immersed in worldliness. A few of them visit me here now and then and say, 'Goodness! He seems to be just the same as he was in the village school!' While I was at school, arithmetic would throw me into confusion, but I could paint very well and could also model small images of the deities.
--
"There are two schools of thought: the Vedānta and the Purana. According to the Vedānta this world is a 'framework of illusion', that is to say, it is all illusory, like a dream. But according to the Purana, the books of devotion, God Himself has become the twenty-four cosmic principles. Worship God both within and without.
--
(To Govinda) "Sometimes I say, 'Thou art verily I, and I am verily Thou.' Again I feel, 'Thou art Thou.' Then I do not find any trace of 'I'. It is Śakti alone that becomes flesh as God Incarnate. According to one school of thought, Rāma and Krishna are but two waves in the Ocean of Absolute Bliss and Consciousness.
--
MASTER (to M.): "Self-Knowledge is discussed in the Ashtāvakra Samhitā. The non-dualists say, 'Soham', that is, 'I am the Supreme Self.' This is the view of the sannyasis of the Vedantic school. But this is not the right attitude for householders, who are conscious of doing everything themselves. That being so, how can they declare, 'I am That, the actionless Supreme Self'? According to the non-dualists the Self is unattached.
--
"According to one school of thought, God cannot be seen. Who sees whom? Is God outside you, that you can see Him? One sees only oneself. Having once entered the 'black waters' of the ocean, the ship does not come back and so cannot describe what it experiences."
--
MASTER (to M.): "How is it that you are here today? Have you no school?"
M: "Our school closed today at half past one."
--
M: "Vidyasagar visited the school. He owns the school. So the boys get a half holiday whenever he comes."
--
"Let me tell you the story of a boy named Jatila. He used to walk to school through the woods, and the journey frightened him; One day he told his mother of his fear. She replied: 'Why should you be afraid? Call Madhusudana.' 'Mother,' asked the boy, 'who is Madhusudana?' The mother said, 'He is your Elder Brother.' One day after this, when the boy again felt afraid in the woods, he cried out, 'O Brother Madhusudana!' But there was no response. He began to weep aloud: 'Where are You, Brother Madhusudana? Come to me. I am afraid.' Then God could no longer stay away. He appeared before the boy and said: 'Here I am. Why are you frightened?' And so, saying He took the boy out of the woods and showed him the way to school. When He took leave of the boy, God said: 'I will come whenever you call Me. Do not be afraid.' One must have this faith of a child, this yearning.
--
"According to one school, the gopis of Vrindāvan, like Yaśoda, had believed in the formless God in their previous births; but they did not derive any satisfaction from this belief. That is why later on they enjoyed so much bliss in the company of Sri Krishna in the Vrindāvan episode of His life. One day Krishna said to the gopis: 'Come along. I shall show you the Abode of the Eternal. Let us go to the Jamuna for a bath.' As they dived into the water of the river, they at once saw Goloka. Next they saw the Indivisible Light. Thereupon Yaśoda exclaimed: 'O Krishna, we don't care for these things any more. We would like to see You in Your human form. I want to take You in my arms and feed You.'
2.1.02_-_Nature_The_World-Manifestation, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is said by certain Adwaitists with an unusual largeness of philosophic toleration that the views of all other philosophies are true on the way or at least useful and mark stages in the realisation of the Truth, but the highest realisation is the truth of
Monistic Adwaita - there is only the One and nothing else. This concession comes to nothing; for it means that other spiritual experiences are only temporarily helpful delusions or helpful half truths and the only true truth is Adwaita. The dispute remains; for all the other schools also will claim theirs as the highest truth. The mind cannot arrive at a perfect toleration, because the mind needs a cut and defined truth opposed or superior to all others. In the supermind, the aspect of the One is true like all other aspects; all are equally true but none solely true.
2.20_-_2.29_-_RULES_FOR_HOUSEHOLDERS_AND_MONKS, #Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
ADHAR: "Sir, I have been busy with so many things. I had to attend a conference of the school committee and various other meetings."
MASTER: "So you completely lost yourself in schools and meetings and forgot everything else?"
--
After a time the Master suddenly said to Adhar: "Look here. All these are unreal-meetings, school, office, and everything else. God alone is the Substance, and all else is illusory. One should worship God with one's whole mind."
--
M. returned to the Master's room and sat on the floor. Sri Ramakrishna offered him some fruit and sweets to eat. On account of trouble in the family, M. had recently rented a house in another section of Calcutta near his school, his father and brothers continuing to live in the ancestral home. But Sri Ramakrishna wanted him to return to his own home, since a joint family affords many advantages to one leading a religious life. Once or twice the Master had spoken to M. to this effect, but unfortunately he had not yet returned to his family. Sri Ramakrishna referred to the matter again.
--
Narayan was a school boy sixteen or seventeen years old. He often visited the Master, who was very fond of him.
--
MASTER (to Niranjan, pointing to M.) "He is the headmaster of a school. At my bidding he went to see you. (To M.) Did you send Baburam to me the other day?"
--
He had been seeking a job to maintain his mother, brothers, and sisters. He had served a few days as headmaster of the Vidyasagar school at Bowbazar.
--
MASTER: "At Vrindāvan I myself put on the garb of the Vaishnavas and wore it for fifteen days. (To the devotees) I have practised the disciplines of all the paths, each for a few days. Otherwise I should have found no peace of mind. (Smiling) I have practised all the disciplines; I accept all paths. I respect the Saktas, the Vaishnavas, and also the Vedantists. Therefore people of all sects come here. And everyone of them thinks that I belong to his school. I also respect the modern Brahmajnanis.
--
ASTER (smiling): "Vijay is in a wonderful state of mind nowadays. He falls to the ground while chanting the name of Hari. He devotes himself to kirtan, meditation, and other spiritual practices till four in the morning. He now puts on an ochre robe and prostrates himself before the images of God. Once he accompanied me to Gadadhar's schoolhouse.
--
MASTER (to M. and the others): "Why should I be one-sided? The goswamis belong to the Vaishnava school and are very bigoted. They think that their opinion alone is right and all other opinions are wrong. My words have hit him hard. (Smiling) One must strike the elephant on the head with the goad; that is the elephant's most sensitive spot."
--
Sri Ramakrishna then spoke to Mahendra Mukherji about Narayan, a school-boy sixteen or seventeen years old, who often visited the Master and was very dear to him.
--
Nimai has opened a school, but he cannot teach the students any longer. Gangadas, his former teacher, comes to persuade him to direct his attention to his worldly duties. He says to Srivas: "Listen, Srivas! We are brahmins, too, and devoted to the worship of Vishnu. But you people are ruining Nimai's worldly prospects."
2.2.03_-_The_Science_of_Consciousness, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
106
When the ancient thinkers of India set themselves to study the soul of man in themselves and others, they, unlike any other nation or school of early thought, proceeded at once to a process which resembles exactly enough the process adopted by modern science in its study of physical phenomena. For their object was to study, arrange and utilise the forms, forces and working movements of consciousness, just as the modern physical Sciences study, arrange and utilise the forms, forces and working movements of objective Matter. The material with which they had to deal was more subtle, flexible and versatile than the most
2.22_-_Rebirth_and_Other_Worlds;_Karma,_the_Soul_and_Immortality, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
These are very summary popular notions and offer no foothold to the philosophic reason and no answer to a search for the true significance of life. A vast world-system which exists only as a convenience for turning endlessly on a wheel of Ignorance with no issue except a final chance of stepping out of it, is not a world with any real reason for existence.
A world which serves only as a school of sin and virtue and consists of a system of rewards and whippings, does not make any better appeal to our intelligence. The soul or spirit within us, if it is divine, immortal or celestial, cannot be sent here solely to be put to school for this kind of crude and primitive moral education; if it enters into the Ignorance, it must be because there is some larger principle or possibility of its being that has to be worked out through the Ignorance. If, on the other hand, it is a being from the Infinite plunged for some cosmic purpose into the obscurity of Matter and growing to self-knowledge within it, its life here and the significance of that life must be something more than that of an infant coddled and whipped into virtuous ways; it must be a growth out of an assumed ignorance towards its own full spiritual stature with a final passage into an immortal consciousness, knowledge, strength, beauty, divine purity and power, and for such a spiritual growth this law of Karma is all too puerile. Even if the soul is something created, an infant being that has to learn from Nature and grow into immortality, it must be by a larger law of growth and not by some divine code of primitive and barbaric justice. This idea of Karma is a construction of the smaller part of the human vital mind concerned with its petty rules of life and its desires and joys and sorrows and erecting their puny standards into the law and aim of the cosmos. These notions cannot be acceptable to the thinking mind; they have too evidently the stamp of a construction fashioned by our human ignorance.
But the same solution can be elevated to a higher level of reason and given a greater plausibility and the colour of a cosmic principle. For, first, it may be based on the unassailable ground that all energies in Nature must have their natural consequence; if any are without visible result in the present life, it may well be that the outcome is only delayed, not withheld for ever. Each being reaps the harvest of his works and deeds, the returns of the action put forth by the energies of his nature, and those which are not apparent in his present birth must be held over for a subsequent existence. It is true that the result of the energies and actions of the individual may accrue not to himself but to others when he is gone; for that we see constantly happening, - it happens indeed even during a man's lifetime that the fruits of his energies are reaped by others; but this is because there is a solidarity and a continuity of life in Nature and the individual cannot altogether, even if he so wills, live for himself alone. But, if there is a continuity of his own life by rebirth for the individual and not only a continuity of the mass life and the cosmic life, if he has an ever-developing self, nature and experience, then it is inevitable that for him too the working of his energies should not be cut off abruptly but must bear their consequence at some time in his continuous and developing existence. Man's being, nature, circumstances of life are the result of his own inner and outer activities, not something fortuitous and inexplicable: he is what he has made himself; the past man was the father of the man that now is, the present man is the father of the man that will be.
2.24_-_The_Evolution_of_the_Spiritual_Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is possible indeed that it is the mystic or the incipient occultist who was everywhere the creator of religion and imposed his secret discoveries in the form of belief, myth and practice on the mass human mind; for it is always the individual who receives the intuitions of Nature and takes the step forward dragging or drawing the rest of humanity behind him. But even if we give the credit of this new creation to the subconscious mass mind, it is the occultist and mystic element in that mind which created it and it must have found individuals through whom it could emerge; for a mass experience or discovery or expression is not the first method of Nature; it is at some one point or a few points that the fire is lit and spreads from hearth to hearth, from altar to altar. But the spiritual aspiration and experience of the mystics was usually casketed in secret formulas and given only to a few initiates; it was conveyed to the rest or rather preserved for them in a mass of religious or traditional symbols. It is these symbols that were the heart's core of religion in the mind of an early humanity.
Out of this second stage there emerged a third which tried to liberate the secret spiritual experience and knowledge and put it at the disposal of all as a truth that could have a common appeal and must be made universally available. A tendency prevailed, not only to make the spiritual element the very kernel of the religion, but to render it attainable to all the worshippers by an exoteric teaching; as each esoteric school had had its system of knowledge and discipline, so now each religion was to have its system of knowledge, its creed and its spiritual discipline. Here, in these two forms of the spiritual evolution, the esoteric and the exoteric, the way of the mystic and the way of the religious man, we see a double principle of evolutionary Nature, the principle of intensive and concentrated evolution in a small space and the principle of expansion and extension so that the new creation may be generalised in as large a field as possible. The first is the concentrated dynamic and effective movement; the second tends towards diffusion and status. As a result of this new development, the spiritual aspiration at first carefully treasured by a few became more generalised in mankind, but it lost in purity, height and intensity. The mystics founded their endeavour on a power of suprarational knowledge, intuitive, inspired, revelatory and on the force of the inner being to enter into occult truth and experience: but these powers are not possessed by men in the mass or possessed only in a crude, undeveloped and fragmentary initial form on which nothing could be safely founded; so for them in this new development the spiritual truth had to be clothed in intellectual forms of creed and doctrine, in emotional forms of worship and in a simple but significant ritual. At the same time the strong spiritual nucleus became mixed, diluted, alloyed; it tended to be invaded and aped by the lower elements of mind and life and physical nature. It was this mixture and alloy and invasion of the spurious, this profanation of the mysteries and the loss of their truth and significance, as well as the misuse of the occult power that comes by communication with invisible forces, that was most dreaded by the early mystics and prevented by secrecy, by strict discipline, by restriction to the few fit initiates.
Another untoward result or peril of the diffusive movement and the consequent invasion has been the intellectual formalisation of spiritual knowledge into dogma and the materialisation of living practice into a dead mass of cult and ceremony and ritual, a mechanisation by which the spirit was bound to depart in course of time from the body of the religion. But this risk had to be taken, for the expansive movement was an inherent necessity of the spiritual urge in evolutionary Nature.
--
But this plasticity sought to support itself on a fixed religiosocial system, which it permeated with the principle of a graded working out of the human nature turned at its height towards a supreme spiritual endeavour; this social fixity, which was perhaps necessary at one time for unity of life if not also as a settled and secure basis for the spiritual freedom, has been on one side a power for preservation but also the one obstacle to the native spirit of entire catholicity, an element of excessive crystallisation and restriction. A fixed basis may be indispensable, but if settled in essence, this also must be in its forms capable of plasticity, evolutionary change; it must be an order, but a growing order.
Nevertheless, the principle of this great and many-sided religious and spiritual evolution was sound, and by taking up in itself the whole of life and of human nature, by encouraging the growth of intellect and never opposing it or putting bounds to its freedom, but rather calling it in to the aid of the spiritual seeking, it prevented the conflict or the undue predominance which in the Occident led to the restriction and drying up of the religious instinct and the plunge into pure materialism and secularism. A method of this plastic and universal kind, admitting but exceeding all creeds and forms and allowing every kind of element, may have numerous consequences which might be objected to by the purist, but its great justifying result has been an unexampled multitudinous richness and a more than millennial persistence and impregnable durability, generality, universality, height, subtlety and many-sided wideness of spiritual attainment and seeking and endeavour. It is indeed only by such a catholicity and plasticity that the wider aim of the evolution can work itself out with any fullness. The individual demands from religion a door of opening into spiritual experience or a means of turning towards it, a communion with God or a definite light of guidance on the way, a promise of the hereafter or a means of a happier supraterrestrial future; these needs can be met on the narrower basis of credal belief and sectarian cult. But there is also the wider purpose of Nature to prepare and further the spiritual evolution in man and turn him into a spiritual being; religion serves her as a means for pointing his effort and his ideal in that direction and providing each one who is ready with the possibility of taking a step upon the way towards it. This end she serves by the immense variety of the cults she has created, some final, standardised and definitive, others more plastic, various and many-sided. A religion which is itself a congeries of religions and which at the same time provides each man with his own turn of inner experience, would be the most in consonance with this purpose of Nature: it would be a rich nursery of spiritual growth and flowering, a vast multiform school of the soul's discipline, endeavour, self-realisation. Whatever errors Religion has committed, this is her function and her great and indispensable utility and service, - the holding up of this growing light of guidance on our way through the mind's ignorance towards the Spirit's complete consciousness and self-knowledge.
Occultism is in its essence man's effort to arrive at a knowledge of secret truths and potentialities of Nature which will lift him out of slavery to his physical limits of being, an attempt in particular to possess and organise the mysterious, occult, outwardly still undeveloped direct power of Mind upon Life and of both Mind and Life over Matter. There is at the same time an endeavour to establish communication with worlds and entities belonging to the supraphysical heights, depths and intermediate levels of cosmic Being and to utilise this communion for the mastery of a higher Truth and for a help to man in his will to make himself sovereign over Nature's powers and forces. This human aspiration takes its stand on the belief, intuition or intimation that we are not mere creatures of the mud, but souls, minds, wills that can know all the mysteries of this and every world and become not only Nature's pupils but her adepts and masters. The occultist sought to know the secret of physical things also and in this effort he furthered astronomy, created chemistry, gave an impulse to other sciences, for he utilised geometry also and the science of numbers; but still more he sought to know the secrets of supernature. In this sense occultism might be described as the science of the supernatural; but it is in fact only the discovery of the supraphysical, the surpassing of the material limit, - the heart of occultism is not the impossible chimera which hopes to go beyond or outside all force of Nature and make pure phantasy and arbitrary miracle omnipotently effective. What seems to us supernatural is in fact either a spontaneous irruption of the phenomena of other-Nature into physical Nature or, in the work of the occultist, a possession of the knowledge and power of the higher orders or grades of cosmic Being and Energy and the direction of their forces and processes towards the production of effects in the physical world by seizing on possibilities of interconnection and means for a material effectuality. There are powers of the mind and the life-force which have not been included in Nature's present systematisation of mind and life in matter, but are potential and can be brought to bear upon material things and happenings or even brought in and added to the present systematisation so as to enlarge the control of mind over our own life and body or to act on the minds, lives, bodies of others or on the movements of cosmic Forces. The modern admission of hypnotism is an example of such a discovery and systematised application, - though still narrow and limited, limited by its method and formula, - of occult powers which otherwise touch us only by a casual or a hidden action whose process is unknown to us or imperfectly caught by a few; for we are all the time undergoing a battery of suggestions, thought suggestions, impulse suggestions, will suggestions, emotional and sensational suggestions, thought waves, life waves that come on us or into us from others or from the universal Energy, but act and produce their effects without our knowledge. A systematised endeavour to know these movements and their law and possibilities, to master and use the power or Nature-force behind them or to protect ourselves from them would fall within one province of occultism: but it would only be a small part even of that province; for wide and multiple are the possible fields, uses, processes of this vast range of little explored Knowledge.
2.30_-_2.39_-_THE_MASTER_IN_VARIOUS_MOODS, #Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
According to this school the name of God is enough to liberate a soul. There is no need of such things as worship, sacrifice, the discipline of Tantra, and the recitation of mantras.
--
MASTER: "But he had no vanity of scholarship. Further, what he said about the last days of his life came to pass. He spent them in Benares, following the injunctions of the scriptures. I saw his children. They were wearing high boots and had been educated in English schools."
--
SRI RAMAKRISHNA lay on the small couch in his room at the Dakshineswar temple garden. It was about two in the afternoon. M. and Priya Mukherji were sitting on the floor. M. had left his school at one o'clock and had just arrived at Dakshineswar. The Master was telling anecdotes about the calculating nature of the wealthy Jadu Mallick.
--
Narayan arrived. Sri Ramakrishna was very happy to see him. He seated Narayan by his side on the small couch. He showed him his love by stroking his body and giving him sweets to eat. Then he asked Narayan tenderly, "Will you have some water?" Narayan was a student at M.'s school. At home his people beat him for visiting Sri Ramakrishna.
--
"According to a certain school of thought there are four classes of devotees: the pravartaka, the sadhaka, the siddha, and the siddha of the siddha. He who has just begun religious life is a pravartaka. Such a man puts his denominational marks on his body and forehead, wears a rosary around his neck, and scrupulously follows other outer conventions. The sadhaka has advanced farther. His desire for outer show has become less. He longs for the realization of God and prays to Him sincerely. He repeats the name of God and calls on Him with a guileless heart. Now, whom should we call the siddha? He who has the absolute conviction that Cod exists and is the sole Doer; he who has seen God. And who is the siddha of the siddha? He who has not merely seen God, but has intimately talked with Him as Father, Son, or Beloved.
--
MASTER (to M.): "What about your school?"
--
Their host entered the room and saluted Sri Ramakrishna. He was a pious man and devoted to the Master. The pundit's son was still there. The Master asked if the Panini, the Sanskrit grammar, was taught in the schools. He further asked about the Nyaya and the Vedānta philosophies. The host did not show much interest in the discussion and changed the subject.
--
Or what does he say about me? I understand that he is very reticent. (To Gopal) Ask Tejchandra to come here Saturdays and Tuesdays. (To M.) Suppose I go to your school and look for-"
M. thought that Sri Ramakrishna wanted to go to his school to see Narayan. He said to the Master, "You might as well wait at our house."
MASTER: "No, I have something else in mind. I should like to see whetherthere are other worth-while boys in the school."
M: "Of course you can go. Other visitors come to the school. You cancome too."
--
The performance began. Prahlada was seen entering the schoolroom as a student. At the sight of him Sri Ramakrishna uttered once or twice the word "Prahlada" and went into samādhi.
--
Bankim was a school boy whom Sri Ramakrishna had met in Bagh bazar. Noticing him even from a distance, the Master had said that he was a fine boy.
--
"He who has developed such yoga can see God. In the theatre the audience remains engaged in all kinds of conversation, about home, office, and school, till the curtain goes up; but no sooner does it go up than all conversation comes to a stop, and the people watch the play with fixed attention. If after a long while someone utters a word or two, it is about the play.
--
Later Sri Ramakrishna went out in the direction of the Panchavati. He asked M. about Binode, a student in M.'s school, who now and then experienced ecstasy while thinking of God. The Master loved him dearly. As he was returning to his room with M., he asked: "Well, some speak of me as an Incarnation of God. What do you think about it?" The Master came back to his room and sat on the small couch. He repeated the question to M. The other devotees were seated at a distance and could not follow the conversation.
--
Baburam was a student in the Entrance Class in the school where M. taught.
--
M taught in a school in the neighbourhood. He often brought his young students to visit the Master at Balarām's house. On this day, having learnt of Sri Ramakrishna's arrival, M. went there at noon during the recess hour of the school. He found the Master resting in the drawing room after his midday meal. Several young boys were in the room. M
--
MASTER (tenderly): "How could you come now? Have you no school work?"
M: "I have come directly from school. Just now I have no important work to do."
--
The Master and M. were thus talking about the young devotee when someone reminded M. of his school.
--
After school-hours M. returned to Balarām's house and found the Master sitting in the drawing-room, surrounded by his devotees and disciples. Among them were Girish, Suresh, Balarām, Lātu, and Chunilal. The Master's face was beaming with a sweet smile, which was reflected in the happy faces of those in the room. M. was asked to take a seat by the Master's side.
--
MASTER (annoyed): "Yes, he can bare his teeth at school, but shyness overpowers him when he is asked to sing!"
--
M: "As a matter of fact, the same thing is written in one of the textbooks of the school.
--
Sri Ramakrishna was resting, reclining against a bolster. M had brought with him a twelve year-old boy who was a student in his school. His name was Kshirode.
--
Purna, another young devotee, also arrived. It was with great difficulty that Sri Ramakrishna had managed to have him come. His relatives strongly objected to his visiting the Master. Purna was a student in the fifth grade of the school where M. taught.
2.3.06_-_The_Mind, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Western Ideas of Mind and Spirit
St. Augustine was a man of God and a great saint, but great saints are not always - or often - great psychologists or great thinkers. The psychology here1 is that of the most superficial schools, if not that of the man in the street; there are as many errors in it as there are psychological statements - and more, for several are not expressed but involved in what he writes. I am aware that these errors are practically universal, for psychological enquiry in Europe (and without enquiry there can be no sound knowledge) is only beginning and has not gone very far, and what has reigned in men's minds up to now is a superficial statement of the superficial appearances of our consciousness as they look to us at first view and nothing more. But knowledge only begins when we get away from the surface phenomena and look behind them for their true operations and causes. To the superficial view of the outer mind and senses the sun is a little fiery ball circling in mid air round the earth and the stars twinkling little things stuck in the sky for our benefit at night.
--
Letters on Yoga - I
things in which it is formed or trained to obey it, but the relation of the body to the mind is not in all things that of an automatic perfect instrument. The body also has a consciousness of its own and, though it is a submental instrument or servant consciousness, it can disobey or fail to obey as well. In many things, in matters of health and illness for instance, in all automatic functionings, the body acts on its own and is not a servant of the mind. If it is fatigued, it can offer a passive resistance to the mind's will. It can cloud the mind with tamas, inertia, dullness, fumes of the subconscient so that the mind cannot act. The arm lifts itself no doubt when it gets the suggestion, but at first the legs do not obey when they are asked to walk; they have to learn how to leave the crawling attitude and movement and take up the erect and ambulatory habit. When you first ask the hand to draw a straight line or to play music, it can't do it and won't do it. It has to be schooled, trained, taught, and afterwards it does automatically what is required of it. All this proves that there is a body consciousness different from the mind consciousness which can do things at the mind's order but has to be awakened, trained, made a good and conscious instrument. It can even be so trained that a mental will or suggestion can cure the illnesses of the body. But all these things, these relations of mind and body, stand on the same footing in essence as the relation of mind to vital and it is not so easy or primary a matter as Augustine would have it.
2.3.1_-_Svetasvatara_Upanishad, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1. 'Tis Nature and Self-existence, say one school of the Seers.
Nay, 'tis Time, say another; both are deceived and bewildered. 'Tis the Majesty of the Lord in the world of His
2.40_-_2.49_-_THE_MASTER_AT_THE_HOUSES_OF_BALARĀM_AND_GIRISH, #Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M taught in a school in the neighbourhood. He had a little recess at one o'clock, during which he visited Sri Ramakrishna. It was time for him to go back to the school. He saluted the Master.
--
A DEVOTEE: "school is not over yet. He came here during recess."
--
M.'s school closed at four o'clock. He came back to Balarām's house and found the Master sitting in the drawing room. The devotees were arriving one by one. The younger Naren and Ram came. Narendra, too, was there. M saluted the Master and took a seat, The ladies sent a plate of halua for Sri Ramakrishna. Because of the sore in his throat he could not eat any hard food.
--
MASTER: "It can't be said that bhaktas need Nirvāna. According to some schools there is an eternal Krishna and there are also His eternal devotees. Krishna is Spirit embodied, and His Abode also is Spirit embodied. Krishna is eternal and the devotees also are eternal. Krishna and the devotees are like the moon and the stars-always near each other. You yourself repeat: 'what need is there of penance if God is seen within and without?' Further, I have told you that the devotee who is born with an element of Vishnu cannot altogether get rid of bhakti.
--
Mahimacharan kept quiet. He had many duties in the world. He had lately started a school to help others.
MASTER (to Mahima): "Sambhu once said to me: 'I have some money. It is my desire to spend it for good works-for schools and dispensaries, roads, and so forth.' I said to him: ' It will be good if you can do these works in a selfless spirit. But it is extremely difficult to perform unselfish action. Desire for fruit comes from nobody knows where. Let me ask you something. Suppose God appears before you; will you pray to Him; then, for such things as schools and dispensaries and hospitals?' "
--
MASTER: "If I see Purna once more, then my longing for him will diminish. How intelligent he is! His mind is much drawn to me. He says, 'I too feel a strange sensation in my heart for you.' (To M.) They have taken him away from your school. Will that harm you?"
M: "If Vidyāsāgar tells me that Purna's relatives have taken him away from the school on my account, I have an explanation to give him."
--
Further, I shall tell him that the textbooks prescribed by the school authorities say that one should love God with all one's soul" (The Master laughs.) MASTER : "At Captain's house I sent for the younger Naren. I said to him:' where is your house? I want to see it.' 'Please do come', he said. But he became nervous as we were going there, lest his father should know about it. (All laugh.) (To a visitor) "You haven't been here for a long time-about seven or eight months."
--
MASTER (to M. and the others): "Hasn't the younger Naren come? Perhaps he thought I had left. (To Mukherji) How amazing! Even during his boyhood, on returning from school, he cried for God. Is it a small thing to cry for God? He is very intelligent, too. He is like a bamboo with a big hollow space inside. All of his mind is fixed on me.
--
M: "About Sambhu Mallick. He had said to you: 'It is my desire to devote my money to the building of schools, hospitals, dispensaries, and the like. That will do good to many.'
Thereupon you had said to him, 'Suppose God appears before you; will you then ask Him to build schools, hospitals, and dispensaries?' I told the doctor another thing."
--
MASTER (to the doctor, pointing to M.): "He instructs the school-boys."
--
Narendra entered the room and sat near Sri Ramakrishna. Since the death of his father he had been very much worried about the family's financial condition. He now had to support his mother and brothers. Besides, he was preparing himself for his law examination. Lately he had served as a teacher in the Vidyāsāgar school at Bowbazar.
3.01_-_Towards_the_Future, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
THE PAINTER
THE schoolFRIEND
--
Towards the Future
As the curtain rises, She and the schoolfriend are sitting side by side on the sofa.
--
schoolFRIEND
Certainly not. But I had lost trace of you and did not know where to find you. And now that I have found you, what a surprise! You, married... how strange! I can't believe it.
--
schoolFRIEND
I understand... I remember how ironically you used to refer to marriage as "a co-operative venture in consumption and production", and how distasteful you used to find everything that displayed human animality, the beast in man. And how you used to say, "Let us not be mammals..."
--
schoolFRIEND
My poor friend!
--
Oh, I am not telling you this to arouse your pity. I am not to be pitied. My dream is practically unrealisable in the world as it is. Human nature would have to change so much for this to become possible. Besides, my husband and I are very good friends, although that does not prevent us both from feeling very isolated. Esteem and mutual concessions create a harmony that makes life more than merely bearable. But is that happiness?
schoolFRIEND
For many people that might be happiness.
--
schoolFRIEND
I can see that something great, something out of the ordinary rules your life. But as I do not know what it is, it seems rather mysterious to me.
--
schoolFRIEND
What an excellent idea! Nothing could please me more. When will you come? Would you like to come today?
--
schoolFRIEND
Very well, then. Goodbye, I shall see you soon.
3.02_-_The_Great_Secret, #unset, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Born into a thoroughly respectable bourgeois family where art was considered as a pastime rather than a career and artists as rather unreliable people, prone to debauchery and with a dangerous disregard for money, I felt, perhaps out of contrariness, a compelling need to become a painter. My entire consciousness was centred in my eyes and I could express myself more easily by a sketch than in words. I learnt much better by looking at pictures than by reading books, and what I had once seen - landscapes, faces or drawings - I never forgot.
At the age of thirteen, through much effort, I had almost mastered the techniques of drawing, water colour, pastels and oil painting. Then I had the chance to do some small commissions for friends and acquaintances of my parents, and as soon as I earned some money, my family began to take my vocation seriously. I took advantage of this to pursue my studies as far as I could. When I was old enough to be admitted, I joined the school of Fine Arts and almost immediately started taking part in competitions. I was one of the youngest artists ever to win the Prix de Rome and that gave me the opportunity to make a thorough study of Italian art. Later on, travelling scholarships allowed me to visit Spain, Belgium, Holland, England and other countries too. I did not want to be a man of one period or one school, and I studied the art of all countries, in all forms, oriental as well as occidental.
At the same time I went ahead with my own work, trying to find a new formula. Then came success and fame; I won first prizes in exhibitions, I sat on juries, my paintings were shown in the leading museums of the world and snatched up by the art dealers. It meant wealth, titles, honours; even the word "genius" was used... But I am not satisfied. My conception of genius is quite different. We have to create new forms, with new methods and processes, in order to express a new kind of beauty that is higher and purer, truer and nobler. So long as I still feel bound to human animality, I cannot free myself completely from the forms of material Nature. The aspiration was there, but the knowledge, the vision was lacking.
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Naturally these were ideal conditions to be born in and grow into a healthy, strong and capable state of physical fitness. All the physical qualities that were acquired by my parents by ardent practice of the different athletic exercises were easily passed on to me. Moreover, my athlete parents wanted to see their dream fulfilled in me, - they wanted me to be a great and successful athlete. So they brought me up carefully, devoting to me all their knowledge and experience of attaining health, strength, vigour and vitality; and they would let nothing that would help me to achieve this end escape. From my very birth, they fulfilled all the best conditions of health and hygiene, as regards food, clothing, sleep, cleanliness, good habits and so on, that were materially possible. Afterwards, through well-planned physical exercises, they brought out gradually in my body symmetry, proportion, grace, rhythm and harmony. Then they cultivated in me agility, a daring spirit, alertness, accuracy and co-ordination, and finally I was trained to acquire strength and endurance.
I was sent to a boarding school. Naturally the programme of physical education appealed to me the most. I started taking keen interest in it and in a few years I gradually took my place among the good players and athletes of my school. Then my first success came when I won the inter-school boxing championship. How happy and proud my parents were when they saw their dream on the way to fulfilment! I was very much encouraged by my success, and henceforth put all my determination with earnestness, care and hard effort into mastering the technique and acquiring the skills of all the branches of physical education. I was taught to develop all the different capacities of the body by participating in all the sporting activities. I believed that by an all-round physical training one could be highly successful and be master of more than one or even a few activities. That is why I participated in all the sporting items that opportunity offered me. Year after year, in open championship I regularly won the wrestling, boxing, weight-lifting, body-building, swimming, track and field events, tennis, gymnastics and many other activities also.
Now I was eighteen years old. I wanted to compete in the national games championship. As a believer in all-round development I selected the Decathlon event as my item in the national championship. It is the toughest of all events, - it demands a supreme test of speed, strength, endurance, co-ordination and many other qualities. I got down to training and after six months of hard work I took the championship easily, keeping my second man far behind.
3.02_-_The_Soul_in_the_Soul_World_after_Death, #Theosophy, #Rudolf Steiner, #Occultism
p. 122
must needs die out ultimately. Naturally the privation which precedes its complete extinction in the soul is full of suffering. This state of suffering is the school for the destruction of the illusion in which such persons are completely wrapped up during physical life.
3.03_-_On_Thought_-_II, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Moreover, it was to escape the distortion of an environment made up of habit and fixity that the schools of ancient times where the young prophets were educated were established far from the cities.
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Indeed, how can we have an exclusive passion for one particular doctrine or school or religion when we have had the experience that each one of them contains treasures of light and truth, however varied the caskets which enclose them?
16 February 1912
3.1.02_-_A_Theory_of_the_Human_Being, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
as more authoritative, because nearer to the gods, and the less ancient less authoritative because nearer to man's ultimate degeneracy, we believe on the contrary that the more ancient is always on the whole more untrue because nearer to the unlettered and unenquiring savage, the more modern the more true because held as opinion by the lettered and instructed citizen of
Paris or Berlin. Neither position can be accepted. Verification by experience & experiment is the only standard of truth, not antiquity, not modernity. Some of the ideas of the ancients or even of the savage now scouted by us may be lost truths or statements of valid experience from which we have turned or become oblivious; many of the notions of the modern schoolmen will certainly in the future be scouted as erroneous and superstitious.
3.1.02_-_Spiritual_Evolution_and_the_Supramental, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Human History and Spiritual Evolution
There have been times when the seeking for spiritual attainment was, at least in certain civilisations, more intense and widespread than now or rather than it has been in the world in general during the past few centuries. For now the curve seems to be the beginning of a new turn of seeking which takes its start from what was achieved in the past and projects itself towards a greater future. But always, even in the age of the Vedas or in Egypt, the spiritual achievement or the occult knowledge was confined to a few; it was not spread in the whole mass of humanity. The mass of humanity evolves slowly, containing in itself all stages of the evolution from the material and the vital man to the mental man. A small minority has pushed beyond the barriers, opening the doors to occult and spiritual knowledge and preparing the ascent of the evolution beyond mental man into spiritual and supramental being. Sometimes this minority has exercised an enormous influence as in Vedic India, Egypt or, according to tradition, in Atlantis, and determined the civilisation of the race, giving it a strong stamp of the spiritual or the occult; sometimes they have stood apart in their secret schools or orders, not directly influencing a civilisation which was sunk in material ignorance or in chaos and darkness or in the hard external enlightenment which rejects spiritual knowledge.
3.11_-_Spells, #Complete ADND formatted, #unset, #Zen
Wisdom, however.
Second, spells may be pooled among the spellcasters within the mindnet. Any priest may use a spell memorized by another priest with two conditions: the priest who has memorized the spell must allow its use; and a priest "borrowing" a spell may use only spells of levels he could normally cast. Such borrowing still causes the spell to be lost from the mind of the caster who memorized it. A caster may not borrow spells outside his normal class restrictions. Priests and wizards within a mindnet cannot mix their priestly and wizardly spells, nor can a specialist borrow a spell from an opposition school.
Third, each member of the mindnet is in constant mental communication. Each member knows what is happening at the locations of all other members.
3.1.24_-_In_the_Moonlight, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Ah, beautiful and wise, but to what end?
Europe knows not, nor any of her schools
Who scorn the higher thought for dreams of fools;
3.4.2_-_Guru_Yoga, #The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, #Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, #Buddhism
subject:Buddhism
Guru yoga is an essential practice in all schools of Tibetan Buddhism and Bon. This is true in sutra, tantra, and Dzogchen. It develops the heart connection with the master. By continually strengthening our devotion, we come to the place of pure devotion in ourselves, which is the unshakeable, powerful base of the practice. The essence of guru yoga is to merge the practitioner's mind with the mind of the master.
What is the true master? It is the formless, fundamental nature of mind, the primordial awareness of the base of everything, but because we exist in dualism, it is helpful for us to visualize this in a form. Doing so makes skillful use of the dualisms of the conceptual mind, to further strengthen devotion and help us stay directed toward practice and the generation of positive qualities.
3-5_Full_Circle, #unset, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It will be noted that the above factors are all critical in the present historical era. The fact that these are among the weakest outputs in most courses today further underscores the importance of the work in this seminar.
The course was thought to be almost equally valuable for school administrators, teachers, and graduate students. With appropriate modifications in the level of sophistication, it is believed that the seminar would be effective for college freshmen and some talented high school students.
Specific Applications
Several of the teachers are applying the basic ideas of the seminar in their own teaching and are reporting quite significant results in terms of student motivation and technical performance. The flexibility of the approach is suggested by the fact that teachers in many different fields and grade levels are using some adaptation of it. For instance, William Eblen and his associates in Wilton, Connecticut, use their own variation of this approach in their high school and college ecology project, Total Education for a Total Environment (TETE). Professor Rossalie Pinkham, Director of Laboratory schools, Southern Connecticut State College, and Chairman, Consortium on Systems Education, New Haven, uses it as a springboard into, and as a frame of reference for, linguistic and social science subject areas. Chemistry teachers in high school use the periodic table as a springboard into interdisciplinary units. Biology teachers can use the general model as a functional framework for integrating the study of evolution in all the traditional sub-fields of biology and for relating evolution theory to psycho-social studies. Historians and anthropologists use it as a functional basis for explaining the process of change.
Being an economist who had already developed a broad economizing model for interpreting the universe of organized energy before meeting Mr. Haskell two years ago, I have blended his model into the economizing framework. A brief sketch of that master model will set the stage for describing the nature and importance of the task of developing a meta-language of the sciences, and for describing the particular approach we are developing at the SCSC Center for I-D Creativity.
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Against the background already sketched we can now consider the challenge before us. A part of the challenge is reflected in the following excerpt from Dr. N. Henry Moss' address, "The Pursuit of Knowledge-Synthesis or Fragmentation?", given as retiring President of the New York Academy of Sciences:
Where are our great synthesizers of knowledge? . . . Industry, government, universities, and medical schools have need of and eagerly seek capable people who can efl'ectively give the broad sweep, recognize the important from the unimportant, and maintain a reasonable understanding of the literature in multiple medical and scientific areas. . . . We must be able to develop a corps of such scientists and physicians as synthesizers and integrators to help guide us in directing our resources toward optimum use. . . . We must create this kind of fine generalist in the image of a captain of a team, a strong and vigorous leader with intelligent insight and technical know-how in multiple fields.7
Another part of the challenge is reflected in the sketch of Figure 3 which is a proposal for designing and developing a global network of centers and institutes for the promotion of general systems methods, philosophy, attitudes, and viewpoints. The terminology used there is suggestive rather than definitive. That mission profile is the embryo of a possible blueprint for a global campaign to translate the capabilities of unified science models into a widespread program of action. The assumption is made that the entire realm or universe of knowledge would be restructured as a prerequisite to any adequate reforms in curriculum and administration.
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It follows that when mobility is blocked long and effectively, it results in anomalous relations between controller and work component, and thus in breakdown or disintegration of the system. It also follows that when mobility is artificially generated, forcing large numbers of unmutated, actually low-potential minds into control positions, the society transmutes down to the corresponding Period.
Stated more simply, each person is a complex key and every social habitat a compound lock. For thousands of years mankind has matched its human locks and keys by the expensive, painful, inconclusive method of theory-less trial and error. The first part of this chapter departs from this method by putting in train the classification of locks and keys. Its second part, by Arthur Jensen, describes the ever more accurate and reliable diagnoses of peoples' inborn genotypic capabilities. To this must then be added the diagnosis of habitat capabilities for transforming the individuals' genetic potentials into phenotypic actualities. Together, these operations will become a technology second to none in importance. (In the section on mapping the web-of-mind, a method is developed for cheap and painless computer simulation of the mutual consequences of placing each of the various kinds of students in any of the various kinds of schools, extant and theoretical. No means and effort should be spared to develop this technology as fast as possible.)
Human Stratification and Periodicity, Figure IV-1, and their development, Figure IV-2, are here, I believe, accounted for in a manner consistent with the data and operations of all the sciences involved: with genetics, psychology, linguistics, history, anthropology, and sociology.9 Geometrized political science, briefly presented in the second Chapter which is strongly concerned with the qualitative, directional component of human cultures--accords with all these data and theories.1 Its detailed presentation, however, like that of the present quantitative (not numerically, but geometrically quantitative) studies, display the same background structure as do the six lower Major Strata (natural kingdoms) and Major Periods (natural empires), conforming to what Heisenberg calls the central order.
--
It follows that when mobility is blocked long and effectively, it results in anomalous relations between controller and work component, and thus in breakdown or disintegration of the system. It also follows that when mobility is artificially generated, forcing large numbers of unmutated, actually low-potential minds into control positions, the society transmutes down to the corresponding Period.
Stated more simply, each person is a complex key and every social habitat a compound lock. For thousands of years mankind has matched its human locks and keys by the expensive, painful, inconclusive method of theory-less trial and error. The first part of this chapter departs from this method by putting in train the classification of locks and keys. Its second part, by Arthur Jensen, describes the ever more accurate and reliable diagnoses of peoples' inborn genotypic capabilities. To this must then be added the diagnosis of habitat capabilities for transforming the individuals' genetic potentials into phenotypic actualities. Together, these operations will become a technology second to none in importance. (In the section on mapping the web-of-mind, a method is developed for cheap and painless computer simulation of the mutual consequences of placing each of the various kinds of students in any of the various kinds of schools, extant and theoretical. No means and effort should be spared to develop this technology as fast as possible.)
Human Stratification and Periodicity, Figure IV-1, and their development, Figure IV-2, are here, I believe, accounted for in a manner consistent with the data and operations of all the sciences involved: with genetics, psychology, linguistics, history, anthropology, and sociology.9 Geometrized political science, briefly presented in the second Chapter which is strongly concerned with the qualitative, directional component of human cultures--accords with all these data and theories.1 Its detailed presentation, however, like that of the present quantitative (not numerically, but geometrically quantitative) studies, display the same background structure as do the six lower Major Strata (natural kingdoms) and Major Periods (natural empires), conforming to what Heisenberg calls the central order.
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The Englishmen were very pleased. They declared these summer jobs the most important part of my and my friends' education. This, they said, is the best way students can come to understand working people; their lives, their problems. They condemned their own kind of vacations as sheer waste, and held that in the long run it endangers the State.
Why these American students' summer jobs are important appears in the following little map of our school of hard knocks, the so-called "real" world. (Actually, of course, the academic world is just as real.)
The students learn the Majority's languages, idioms, and ways of thinking; enormously important things that even top-notch college professors rarely know, and which they could not teach, even if they did. The students learn the meaning of grinding physical work, of physical working conditions, of occupational hazards, brutality, hopelessness as no books, films, or courses can teach them. The foremen and workers among, and under, whom these students labor spot them and educate their characters in ways that can't be read; that have to be experienced. How to talk, to respond, to be respectful to people who expertly control plants, animals, things.--The university must be academic in order to think clearly and disinterestedly, as George Pake points out in "Whither United States Universities?"14
FIGURE IV-7 A web-of-mind: Non-academic institution for the transformation of top genotypic potentials into phenotypic actualities. The "real" world: a school of hard knocks.
Its education must therefore be constantly brought "down from the gallery of spectators and analysts into the arena with the contenders." This education is essential training for the exacting, hard-nosed task of governing a country. Many of America's Founders combined the two kinds of education mapped in Figures IV-6 and IV-7. As a result, they ran the country in a cybernetically feasible way.23 Few modern American students, on the other hand, now get either kind of education. As a result "there has developed in this country," as Walter Lipmann pointed out long ago, "a functional derangement of the relationship between the mass of the people and the government".19 This derangement will presently be specified and mapped.
But first, a report on the combination of these two complementary aspects of a Minority's education by the Soviet Government. This report was made in 1967 to the New York Chapter of the Society for General Research by a well known personage who had just returned from an extremely friendly visit to the U.S.S.R. The meeting was held at the New York Academy of Sciences under my chairmanship, and I paraphrase my notes.
There are in the U.S.S.R. certain unpublicized schools whose object it is to train the country's most responsible future leaders and controllers. The most outstanding children are sought out by means of the best available tests and observations. (The youngest ones enter the school when about eighteen months old.) Absolutely no expense or effort is spared.
At first the ratio of children to teachers is 1:1; later it becomes 2:1 and higher. Every effort is made to assemble the kind of faculty and students mapped in the center of Figure IV-6. As these students grow older, individuals are sent periodically to work in carefully chosen factories, collective farms, research centers, army units, and so forth. This gives them the training mapped in Figure IV-7. (Soviet administrators refer to these superlative institutions--half jokingly, of course--as their schools for "philosopher kings.") From time to time individual students take courses in various gymnasia and universities open to all who pass public examinations. This serves to give the future leaders connections in, and understanding of such institutions.
This is as far as I paraphrase my notes. It should, however, be pointed out parenthetically that these students' sporadic attendance at public institutions also serves the important function of veiling their strategic schools' existence. This veiling is not arbitrary: the Majority people--as Figures IV-2, IV-3, and IV-4 indicate--having lower abstraction ceilings, are more or less aphasic and agnosic to the Minority's highest and most important levels of abstraction. They do not clearly understand the culture's need for such exclusive schools. So, if they knew of these schools' existence, they would demand open admission to them, breaking them down to the Majority's lower ceilings, as diagrammed below. This would, in time, bring to the Soviet Union what Lippmann calls the "functional derangement between the mass of the people [Majority] and the government [Minority] ."
To prevent this, and yet maintain such special schooling openly, the authorities would be obliged to explain and massively advocate the cybernetically efFective relation between Majority and Minority. But this would seriously hamper their currently successful disorganization of education abroad, not to mention openly contradicting their promise of "classless" society some day in the Soviet Union. Both of these unacceptable alternatives have been avoided by keeping secret the existence of Soviet schools for Philosopher Kings.
How, then, could the public disclosure of them in the present book be countered? Two ways present themselves: these schools' existence could be denied, and this description be denounced as fabrication. That would however be quite useless since, as the authorities know, this disclosure can be backed by much more detailed evidence, including first hand accounts.
The other alternative would be to present these extraordinary institutions as a great Soviet achievement, and as an advance toward the endlessly promised "classless" society.
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The second conclusion would be the one predicted by Unified Science: The fairest and most objective tests will show virtue to be quite evenly distributed among all social Strata. But they will show a great skewing of talent-distribution, where talent is predominantly identified with abstraction ceilings. (This skewing occurs both empirically and ex hypothesi: in Unified Science the distribution of social Strata is based upon the distribution of abstraction ceilings, as shown in Figures IV-2 and IV-4.)
The third conclusion follows inexorably: the use of fair and objective tests results in a vast preponderance of high Stratum (Minority) students in those schools and universities which are designed to train young people for "the government of society." It is therefore natural that the Stratum representation in such schools should approximate the ones shown in Figures IV-6 and IV-7, beginning to settle that question too.29
The Opposite Derangements of Government.
Our model of Leibniz's Universal Characteristic can now be applied to rational settlement of the major reciprocal political questions of our century: the breakdown of working democracies, on one hand by egalitarian democracy, and on the other hand by dictatorial autocracy. Walter Lippmann has analysed what has been happening quite effectively; that is to say, cybernetically. A few short excerpts from his famous book, with the appropriate interpolations, will complete the large and dynamic map of Industrial civilization outlined above. The consequences of open (blind) university admission policy on one hand and of the development of well matched key-lock colleges, universities, trade-schools etc. on the other hand will then become much clearer than before, making prediction possible. We will conclude by verifying our prediction in terms of a concrete case: New York's City College.
"The more I have brooded upon the events which I have lived through myself," Lippmann wrote in 1955, "the more astounding and significant does it seem that the decline of power and influence and self confidence of Western democracies has been so steep and so sudden. [It has been steeper yet in the years since he wrote this presage.] We have fallen far in a short space of time... What we have seen is not only decay--though much of the old structure was dissolving--but something which can be called an historic catastrophe."19,30 p.15.
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All civilizations equalize the education opportunities they provide for their various age-grades or Sub-strata, from infancy to maturity, by corresponding gradings of the subject matter taught. Equality of opportunity for unequal age-groups is approached by careful provision of a corresponding inequality of educational habitats.
So also in regard to their various psycho-social Strata: equality of opportunity for people with unequal inborn abstraction ceilings is approached by careful provision of corresponding training situations. During the first few years (preceding and up to the attainment of the first human abstraction ceiling) a single institution, Kindergarten, and the first few grades, provides equality of opportunity for all Strata.36 Figure IV-3 shows graphically humankind's initial state of intellectual identity (zero), and its divergence into Strata during ontogeny. As the childrens' creodes separate--as Stratum after Stratum approaches its abstraction ceiling, levels out, and is surpassed by the people with higher inborn abstraction ceilings--each Stratum enters the corresponding set of educational institutions. Namely, the kind of institution designed to provide for it the opportunity to realize its inborn capacities to the fullest degree: apprenticeships, craft schools, trade schools, secretarial schools, high schools, preparatory schools, (European) gymnasia, junior colleges, colleges, institutes of technology, graduate schools, post-doctoral training courses, institutes for advanced study, and so forth.
In Figure IV-2, Period 6 (Lower Industrialists) displays six Strata, each characterized by the corresponding number of Substrata. The highest Sub-stratum in each case (including the first one) is reached by, and only by, utilizing opportunities for continuous, persistent development of inborn capabilities.
Exceptions occur for reasons well known to geneticists, and are often important. Child prodigies appear from time to time, for whom equality of opportunity requires skipping one age-graded school class after another; for instance, Norbert Wiener.37 Stratum prodigies occur, for whom equality of opportunity requires the by-passing of one school-type after another; John Stewart Mill.38 Period prodigies occur, for whom equality of opportunity requires travelling to an Industrial country and studying in its higher schools; for instance, Yomo Kenyatta.39 (These latter two kinds of exception comprise the two Majority groups mapped in Figure IV-6.)
Downward exceptions also occur, especially in the highest and most recently entered Strata. (Geneticists recognize them as "regressions toward the mean."40) But downward exceptions occur in all Strata. (Of late those who display them have been euphemistically called "retarded.") For them, equality of opportunity requires repetition of school classes, top Stratum children's apprenticeship in trade or craft schools, and emigration to less developed regions or countries.
Since respectable institutional channels for these adjustments are inadequate or absent, considerable numbers of young people, called Hippies, are improvising equality of opportunity by "dropping out" in all three of these ways. Many emigrate to rural parts of New Mexico, Arizona and similar regions and try unsuccessfully to simulate pre-Industrial life styles.
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Figure IV-8 is a theoretical model of an open-admissions college, as this term is defined and applied at New York City College, 1970-1971. It will be compared with the earliest available report of the empirical event: "Up the Down Campus--Notes from a Teacher on Open Admissions" by M. Ann Petrie,46 a member of the College's English Department who strongly supports this so-called "open" structure.
The only screening used in the admission of new students was a school average of 80 or top-half rating in high school. According to Miss Petrie "850 of the 2,440 freshmen who registered as full-time day students last fall would not have been there had traditional standards been applied." This increases the ratio of Majority to Minority students in the symbiotic model (Figure IV-6) by about 35%, making their proportions roughly equal (50%-50%). According to coaction theory, a model displaying these changed proportions predicts the following change of coactions.
FIGURE IV-8 Open admissions institution for the ostensible "transformation" of medium genetic potentials into top phenotypic actualities. A prediction model.
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In the lower left-hand corner, C. P. Snow's Two Cultures, Literary and Scientific, are shown modified and assembled into a new form of what Walter Lippmann has called The Public Philosophy.41 Namely, the Public Philosophy of our new, emergent culture, Higher Industrial Civilization; Human Period 7 of the Periodic Table of Human Cultures, Figure IV-4.55 This Public Philosophy emerges as a result of certain quite precise modifications of our traditional scientific and literary cultures, as also of the conflict-biased Marxist theory and practice, diagrammed in Plain Truth--And Redirection of the Cold War.23
These changes are already in process of occurring: first because of the new concepts and methods of Unified Science, represented by the three nested braces; and second, because of compatible new concepts emerging in the major components of the Literary culture: one component embodied in the Division of Humanities, the other in the school of Business (or better of Management), and represented by the long parallel braces.
It is because of the unification of the sciences (nested braces), that inter-translatability not only of scientific, but also of literary and managerial background theories and languages can be effected. This inter-translatability is represented by the convergence of the arrows originating in the left-hand brace (government, business, modern agriculture) which are deeply influenced by the Literary culture (the Division of Humanities) through whose brace the arrows pass (art, philosophy, religion). In the New University these non-scientific aspects of mankind are in harmony with Unified Science, whose nested braces govern the arrows' directions: like theirs, the dominant value-premise of all three sub-cultures is positive.
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A few pages later, however, Snow goes on to "Observe the development of what, in the terms of our formulae, is becoming [in America] something like a third culture" p. 67.10 This third culture comprizes the center of Figure IV-11, PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY, the actual subject of the present book; far greater than the sum of its parts, shown at the left.
When first accepted for publication, this figure did not include the school of Business or Management. Inclusion of this recent addition to higher education was made possible by the brilliant assembly of old and new constructive trends in managerial thought and practice by Carl H. Madden in his new book, Clash of Culture--The Decade of the Seventies. In this book, Madden has formulated the main problems of our civilization. Figuratively speaking, he has put together the lock for which Unified Science is the constructive key. That is to say, his conceptualization is the factor which permits assembly of the actually Three Cultures into the Public Philosophy.
The Marxists had formulated this problem in an incorrect and thus destructive way long ago. In the Depression I had set myself to reformulate the problem, and have been at it ever since. That's how we came to have the key to Madden's lock, ready at the right time; the time which makes its idea irresistible.
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28. Padover, Saul K., ed., Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, New American Library, New York, 1946, p. 82.
29. These tests will of course also show the existence and the size of what Thomas Jefferson called the artficial aristocracy. "There is also an artificial aristocracy," he wrote in the same letter, "founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents."28 We probably can, however, go a great deal deeper: with computer help we probably can show various degrees of talents, and degrees of diverse temperaments. Also significant combinations of these degrees and kinds of innate talent and virtue or viciousness, as the case may be. These we can then match with appropriate schools and other kinds of training.
30. The giant corporations and monopolistic trade unions are fully as disintegrative, intensifying the system's malfunction (see Mintz, Morton, and J. S. Cohen, with a preface by Ralph Nader, "America, Inc.--Who Owns and Operates the United States," Dial Press, New York, 197I.)
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35. People displaying this mentality are called Generalists. See The Moral Society--A Rational Alternative to Death by John David Garcia. ( Julian Press, New York, 1971.)
36. It is true that in feudal societies, royal households, and in Soviet schools for "philosopher kings" not even the first few grades are shared by all Strata. Whether this does or does not further equality of opportunity is a technical question whose answer may require more knowledge than our society yet has.
37. Wiener, Norbert, Ex prodigy: My Childhood and Youth, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1953.
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43. The present unification of the sciences was carried out during a twenty-odd year withdrawal (1948-I969). The symposium whose expanded proceedings are here published initiated the implementation of unified science in an allout attempt to halt the headlong rout of Lower Industrial civilization described by Lippmann, and to transform it into our culture's advance into Period 7, Figure IV-4.
44. Some, of course, do so conseiously. E.g. the Soviet leaders who use abundant tests in screening students for their Minority schools, yet back Americans and Englishmen who denounce the use of tests in similar schools beyond their borders.
45. Kendall, Henry W. and Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, "The Structure of the Proton and the Neutron," Scientific American, June, 1971.
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61. George C. Lodge is a Harvard Professor of Business Administration.
62. At the end of the school year, however, about 40% of the Freshman class dropped out of their own accord. Contrary to the Dean's prediction, the institution thus seems to be behaving homeostatically. To fulfil his prediction, the college would have to be changed into a high school by changing the faculty.
PART II
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Coordinate system 1 represents the traditional Capitalist System, as it existed in Switzerland in 1925 and still exists in varying degrees in nearly all countries of the partially Free World. Side by side, there are symbiotic ( + , + ) industries and businesses, and monopolistic, predatory ones ( - , + ); there are symbiotic labor organizations, and some who, by monopolistic union practices, systematically exploit and sometimes ruin management ( + , - ).
Coordinate system 2 represents the formation of Switzerland's rrertical front in 1925. "A group of far-sighted leaders, headed by Gottlieb Duttweiler and supported today (1948) by one hundred and forty thousand common citizens-most of them with their families33--jointly created a region of cooperation in the following activities: Food distribution, industrial manufacturing, finance, farm production; press, movies, schools and book publishing; clothing, transport and tourist recreation, all this backed by a political movement especially strong in Zurich. These organizations have linked together enough of the spontaneous and scattered pockets of healthy Swiss resistance to both predation and parasitism to form a continuous cooperative front of both classes together, a vertical split from top to bottom of Swiss society. This is clearly shown by the fact that among the members of the Migros organizations and especially by the electors supporting its poiitical movement (the Landring of the Independents) we find every class of the Swiss population, workers as well as manufacturers; producers as well as consumers; employees as well as employers; people of literary, artistic, and scientific professions as well as their directors, publishers, and administrators."32
Coordinate system 3 represents Switzerland's Social-Capitalist revolution; the long and continuing struggle between the two sides of her vertical front. By creating mutually beneficial stores and industries, Migros gives the Swiss public a choice, an alternative to the monopolists' exploitive industries, stores, and so forth. This choice transmutes a strategic volume of the monopolists' trade from predation (Group VI) to zero (Group 0).34 Nobody is arrested or killed, no factories are destroyed. What people do is to transfer their trade, their economic ballots, from the Dominant Minority, the monopolistic exploiters, to their Creative Minority. The monopolists have mounted long, ferocious price wars, campaigns of vilification, and prosecutions in the courts. But the Swiss public has had the moral stamina and courage, and the intelligence to support their Creative Minority victoriously for nearly fifty years. They even forced down the prices of the international oil trust, and have now expanded their vertical front to defend their environment: Migros has declared war on the water polluting detergent manufacturers by giving the public equally good but non-polluting alternatives. The public is joining the fray enthusiastically.
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"The Club of Rome," says the Science Policy Bulletin, "comprises some 50 scientists, planners, intellectuals and industrialists from Asia, Africa, Western Europe, and North and Latin America, and is concerned with global problems of the techno-scientific (Lower Industrial) society. The `action oriented' Club of Rome `believes it is still possible . . . to meet this unprecedented tangle of problems beforc it outstrips our capacity for control.' The Club's first objective is `to acquire and spread an in-depth understanding of the present critical state of human affairs and of the narrowing and uncertain perspectives and options which are likely for the future, if present trends are not corrected. The second objective is, then, to recognize and propose new policy guidelines and patterns of action capable of redressing the situation and keeping it under control."42 Then comes the call for the leading link, the strategic factor: Peccei affirms that "the Club feels there is an urgent necessity for a `Copernican change' in attitude, to shift from a fragmented viewpoint to a systematic viewpoint."19
The book you are reading and its waiting line of sequels display this change of attitude, together with the concepts and metalanguage necessary for transmitting it. Their successful introduction into the multiversity will transform it in the manner foreseen and predicted in Figure IV-11, the New University. This revolutionized institution's alumni--organized specialists and generalists, Figure IV-12-will spread this New-Copernican attitude from kindergarten through primary, secondary, and tertiary schools, to graduate schools.
Correct and successful examination, diagnosis, prescription and prognosis are essential. But while the Club of Rome, our multiversities and the Scientific Community tend to stop there, the leadership procedure-sequence goes on, inexorably: after prognosis must come execution of the prescription. And this can be done only by the system's work component, the Majority, which Communists call the masses, and Swiss Social Capitalists call the general public. The Club of Rome wants to instruct the public. But to execute its prescriptions the public must be led! And finally, after each action, must come the feedback operation, retrospection: careful comparison of the execution's outcome with the prognosis, so as to correct and improve the system's later performances. Only retrospection closes the system's circuit and guarantees morally oriented development.
Theory becomes a social force only when it has gripped the masses, Marx declared. But the masses have, by definition, 1, 2, 3 and 4~ human level.s of abstraction, while theory includes levels 5, 6, and 7 (see Figures IV-1 to 4). To grip the masses, theory has to be transposed to every level. For without transposition, theory cannot grip the masses and is sterile. And who knows how to transpose theory better than organized specialists and generalists?
It is not, however, primarily scientists, but leaders of the great public who can execute prescriptions, carry out the patterns of action now being formulated. Their training is provided for in the New University's school of Management, shown on the left-hand side of Figure IV-9.
Yet plenty of our colleagues who cannot change are apt to drag their heels: some of the best established, most reputable ones refused even to look through Galileo's telescope or Pasteur's microscope! Their fate is to be dragged, kicking and screaming, in the dust of the chariot of becoming.
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2. Jonas, Hans, The Phenomenon of Life--Toward a Philosophy of Biology, Bell Publ. Co., New York, 1968.
3. This diagram, based upon Two Modes of Thought by James B. Conant is taken from my xeroxed book Unified Science--Assembly of the Sciences into A Single Discipline, Volume I, Scientia Generalis, Chap. 7. It has been used as a textbook at the New school for Social Research in New York and Southern Connecticut State College in New Haven, and is being readied for publication. (See, Conant, James, B., Two Modes of Thought, Trident Press, New York, 1964. Haskell, Edward, Unified--of the Sciences into a Single Discipline, Vol. I, Scientia Generalis. Preface and a chapter by Harold G. Cassidy. Offset-printed by N.I.H. 1968; xeroxed by IBM Systems Res. Inst., New York, 1969.)
4. Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Beyond, Harper & Row, New York, 1971.
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CLARK, Jere Walton, born in Rex, Georgia, January 31, 1922; B.B.A. University of Georgia, 1947, M.A. 1949; Du Pont fellow, University of Virginia, 1949-51, Ph.D. (economics) 1953. Assistant professor, West Virginia University, 1952-55; associate professor, University of Chattanooga, 1955-62; professor of economics, Southern Connecticut State College, 1962- , chairman of Department of economics, 1966-70, director of Center for Interdisciplinary Creativity, 1967- . Recipient of award for best college course in economics, Calvin K. Kazanjian Economics Foundation, 1963. Chairman, task force on general systems education, Society for General Systems Research; executive director, Consortium on Systems Education, New Haven. Address : Center for Interdisciplinary Creativity, Southern Connecticut State College, New Haven, Connecticut 06515.
HASKELL, Edward Frhlich, born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, August 24, 1906. A.B. Oberlin College, 1929; Columbia, 1929-30; Harvard, 1935-37; Chicago, 1937-40, fellow, 1940-43. Instructor in sociology (human, animal, plant) and anthropology, University of Denver, 1944, Brooklyn College, 1946-48. Chairman, Council for Unified Research and Education, 1948- . Consultant, West Virginia University, Drew University New school for Social Research, 1968; special lecturer, Southern Connecticut State College, Center for Interdisciplinary Creativity, 1969- . Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Society for Applied Anthropology; convening secretary, New University Council. Author: Lance--A Novel About Multicultural Men, 1941; (with Harold Cassidy) Plain Truth and Redirection of the Cold War, offset printed, 1961; (with a chapter by Harold Cassidy) Unified Science, Volume I, offset printed by National Institute of Health and xeroxed by IBM Systems Research Institute, 1969; various articles. Address: 617 West 113th Street, New York, N.Y. 10025.
JENSEN, Arthur Robert, born in San Diego, California, August 24, 1923. B.A. University of California at Berkeley, 1945; M.A. San Diego State College, 1952; Ph.D. (psychology) Columbia, 1956. Research fellow, Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, 1956-58; assistant professor of educational psychology, University of California at Berkeley, 1958-61, associate professor, 1962-66, professor, 1966- , associate resident psychologist, Center for Human Learning, 1961-66, resident psychologist, Institute for Human Learning, 1966- . Guggenheim fellow, Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, 1964-65; fellow, Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science, Stanford University, 1966-67. Author, Genetics and Education, 1972; numerous articles. Address: Department of Education, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720.
3.6.01_-_Heraclitus, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
not very far from the Vedantic position. The Buddhists of the
Nihilistic school used in their own way the image of the stream
and the image of the fire. They saw, as Heraclitus saw, that
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new symbols, new and more philosophic restatements of their
hidden truths, new disciplines, schools of Yoga. Attempts, such
as that of Pythagoras, were made; but Greece at large followed
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
sense he distinguishes and quotes occasionally various ancient
schools of interpretation, one of which is spiritual and philosophic and finds the sense of the Upanishads in the Veda. Even
he feels himself obliged sometimes, though very rarely, to follow
4.09_-_The_Liberation_of_the_Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature, because she is a power of spirit, is essentially qualitative in her action. One may almost say that Nature is only the power in being and the development in action of the infinite qualities of the spirit, anantaguna. All else belongs to her outward and more mechanical aspects; but this play of quality is the essential thing, of which the rest is the result and mechanical combination. Once we have set right the working of the essential power and quality, all the rest becomes subject to the control of the experiencing Purusha. But in the inferior nature of things the play of infinite quality is subject to a limited measure, a divided and conflicting working, a system of opposites and discords between which some practical mobile system of concords has to be found and to be kept in action; this play of concorded discords, conflicting qualities, disparate powers and ways of experience compelled to some just manageable, partial, mostly precarious agreement, an unstable, mutable equilibrium, is managed by a fundamental working in three qualitative modes which conflict and combine together in all her creations. These three modes have been given in the Sankhya system, which is generally adopted for this purpose by all the schools of philosophic thought and of Yoga 'in India, the three names, sattva, rajas and tamas.656 Tarnas is the principle and power of inertia; Rajas is the principle of kinesis, passion, endeavour, struggle, initiation (arambha); Sattwa the principle of assimilation, equilibrium and harmony. The metaphysical bearing of this classification does not concern us; but in its psychological and spiritual bearing it is of immense practical importance, because these three principles enter into all things, combine to give them their turn of active nature, result, effectuation, and their unequal working in the soul-experience is the constituent force of our active personality, our temperament, type of nature and cast of psychological response to experience.