TERMS STARTING WITH
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. LAM RIM CHEN MO ("Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path")
2. LAM RIM CHUNG BA ("Short Treatise on the Stages of the Path")
3. LAM RIM BSDUS DON ("Concise Meaning of the Stages of the Path"); all by TSONG KHA PA BLO BZANG GRAGS PA
4.LAM RIM GSER ZHUN MA ("Stages of the Path [like] Refined Gold") by the third DALAI LAMA BSOD NAMS RGYA MTSHO
5.BDE LAM LAM RIM ("The Easy Path Stages of the Path") by the first PAn CHEN BLA MA BLO BZANG CHOS KYI RGYAL MTSHAN
6.LAM RIM 'JAM DPAL ZHAL LUNG ("Stages of the Path [which are] the Instructions of MaNjusrī") by the fifth Dalai Lama NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO
7.MYUR LAM LAM RIM ("The Quick Path Stages of the Path") by the second Pan chen Lama Blo bzang ye shes dpal bzang po (Losang Yeshe Palsangpo, 1663-1737)
8.LAM RIM SNYING GU ("Essential Stages of the Path") by Dwags po Ngag dbang grags pa (Dakpo Ngawang Drakpa, born c. 1450).
abhibhvAyatana. (P. abhibhAyatana; T. zil gyis gnon pa'i skye mched; C. shengchu; J. shosho; K. sŭngch'o 勝處). In Sanskrit, "sphere of sovereignty" or "station of mastery"; eight stages of transcendence over the sense spheres (AYATANA), which are conducive to the development of meditative absorption (DHYANA). By recognizing from various standpoints that material forms are external, one trains oneself to let go of attachments to material objects and focus exclusively on the meditation subject. The standard list of eight is as follows. When one perceives forms internally (viz., on one's own person), one sees forms external to oneself that are (1) limited and beautiful or ugly (viz., pure and impure colors) or (2) unlimited, and beautiful or ugly, and masters them so that one is aware that one knows and sees them; when one does not perceive forms internally, one sees external forms that are (3) limited or (4) unlimited. When one does not perceive forms internally, one sees external forms that are (5) blue, (6) yellow, (7) red, or (8) white and masters them so that one is aware that one knows and sees them. In the PAli meditative literature, the earth and the color devices (KASInA) are said to be especially conducive to developing these spheres of sovereignty. Progress through these spheres weans the mind from its attraction to the sensuous realm (KAMADHATU) and thus encourages the advertence toward the four meditative absorptions (DHYANA; RuPAVACARADHYANA) associated with the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU), wherein the mind becomes temporarily immune to sensory input and wholly absorbed in its chosen object of meditation.
AbhidharmakosabhAsya. (T. Chos mngon pa'i mdzod kyi bshad pa; C. Apidamo jushe lun; J. Abidatsuma kusharon; K. Abidalma kusa non 阿毘達磨倶舎論). In Sanskrit, "A Treasury of ABHIDHARMA, with Commentary"; an influential scholastic treatise attributed to VASUBANDHU (c. fourth or fifth century CE). The AbhidharmakosabhAsya consists of two texts: the root text of the Abhidharmakosa, composed in verse (kArikA), and its prose autocommentary (bhAsya); this dual verse-prose structure comes to be emblematic of later SARVASTIVADA abhidharma literature. As the title suggests, the work is mainly concerned with abhidharma theory as it was explicated in the ABHIDHARMAMAHAVIBHAsA, the principal scholastic treatise of the VAIBHAsIKAABHIDHARMIKAs in the SarvAstivAda school. In comparison to the MahAvibhAsA, however, the AbhidharmakosabhAsya presents a more systematic overview of SarvAstivAda positions. At various points in his expositions, Vasubandhu criticizes the SarvAstivAda doctrine from the standpoint of the more progressive SAUTRANTIKA offshoot of the SarvAstivAda school, which elicited a spirited response from later SarvAstivAda-VaibhAsika scholars, such as SAMGHABHADRA in his *NYAYANUSARA. The AbhidharmakosabhAsya has thus served as an invaluable tool in the study of the history of the later MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS. The Sanskrit texts of both the kArikA and the bhAsya were lost for centuries before being rediscovered in Tibet in 1934 and 1936, respectively. Two Chinese translations, by XUANZANG and PARAMARTHA, and one Tibetan translation of the work are extant. The Kosa is primarily concerned with a detailed elucidation of the polysemous term DHARMA, the causes (HETU) and conditions (PRATYAYA) that lead to continued rebirth in SAMSARA, and the soteriological stages of the path (MARGA) leading to enlightenment. The treatise is divided into eight major chapters, called kosasthAnas. (1) DhAtunirdesa, "Exposition on the Elements," divides dharmas into various categories, such as tainted (SASRAVA) and untainted (ANASRAVA), or compounded (SAMSKṚTA) and uncompounded (ASAMSKṚTA), and discusses the standard Buddhist classifications of the five aggregates (SKANDHA), twelve sense fields (AYATANA), and eighteen elements (DHATU). This chapter also includes extensive discussion of the theory of the four great elements (MAHABHuTA) that constitute materiality (RuPA) and the Buddhist theory of atoms or particles (PARAMAnU). (2) Indriyanirdesa, "Exposition on the Faculties," discusses a fivefold classification of dharmas into materiality (rupa), thought (CITTA), mental concomitants (CAITTA), forces dissociated from thought (CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKARA), and the uncompounded (ASAMSKṚTA). This chapter also has extensive discussions of the six causes (HETU), the four conditions (PRATYAYA), and the five effects or fruitions (PHALA). (3) Lokanirdesa, "Exposition on the Cosmos," describes the formation and structure of a world system (LOKA), the different types of sentient beings, the various levels of existence, and the principle of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA) that governs the process of rebirth, which is discussed here in connection with the three time periods (TRIKALA) of past, present, and future. (4) Karmanirdesa, "Exposition on Action," discusses the different types of action (KARMAN), including the peculiar type of action associated with unmanifest materiality (AVIJNAPTIRuPA). The ten wholesome and unwholesome "paths of action" (KUsALA-KARMAPATHA and AKUsALA-KARMAPATHA) also receive a lengthy description. (5) Anusayanirdesa, "Exposition on the Proclivities," treats the ninety-eight types of ANUsAYA in relation to their sources and qualities and the relationship between the anusayas and other categories of unwholesome qualities, such as afflictions (KLEsA), contaminants (ASRAVA), floods (OGHA), and yokes (yoga). (6) MArgapudgalanirdesa, "Exposition on the Path and the [Noble] Persons," outlines how either insight into the four noble truths and carefully following a series of soteriological steps can remove defilements and transform the ordinary person into one of the noble persons (ARYAPUDGALA). (7) JNAnanirdesa, "Exposition on Knowledge," offers a detailed account of the ten types of knowledge and the distinctive attributes of noble persons and buddhas. (8) SamApattinirdesa, "Exposition on Attainment," discusses different categories of concentration (SAMADHI) and the attainments (SAMAPATTI) that result from their perfection. (9) Appended to this main body is a ninth section, an independent treatise titled the Pudgalanirdesa, "Exposition of the Notion of a Person." Here, Vasubandhu offers a detailed critique of the theory of the self, scrutinizing both the Buddhist PUDGALAVADA/VATSĪPUTRĪYA "heresy" of the inexpressible (avAcya) "person" (PUDGALA) being conventionally real and Brahmanical theories of a perduring soul (ATMAN). Numerous commentaries to the Kosa, such as those composed by VASUMITRA, YAsOMITRA, STHIRAMATI, and Purnavardhana, attest to its continuing influence in Indian Buddhist thought. The Kosa was also the object of vigorous study in the scholastic traditions of East Asia and Tibet, which produced many indigenous commentaries on the text and its doctrinal positions.
AbhisamayAlaMkAra. (T. Mngon par rtogs pa'i rgyan). In Sanskrit, "Ornament of Realization"; a major scholastic treatise of the MAHAYANA, attributed to MAITREYANATHA (c. 350CE). Its full title is AbhisamayAlaMkAranAmaprajNApAramitopadesasAstra (T. Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa'i man ngag gi bstan bcos mngon par rtogs pa'i rgyan) or "Treatise Setting Forth the Perfection of Wisdom called 'Ornament for Realization.'" In the Tibetan tradition, the AbhisamayAlaMkAra is counted among the five treatises of Maitreya (BYAMS CHOS SDE LNGA). The 273 verses of the AbhisamayAlaMkAra provide a schematic outline of the perfection of wisdom, or PRAJNAPARAMITA, approach to enlightenment, specifically as delineated in the PANCAVIMsATISAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA ("Perfection of Wisdom in Twenty-Five Thousand Lines"). This detailed delineation of the path is regarded as the "hidden teaching" of the prajNApAramitA sutras. Although hardly known in East Asian Buddhism (until the modern Chinese translation by FAZUN), the work was widely studied in Tibet, where it continues to hold a central place in the monastic curricula of all the major sects. It is especially important for the DGE LUGS sect, which takes it as the definitive description of the stages of realization achieved through the Buddhist path. The AbhisamayAlaMkAra treats the principal topics of the prajNApAramitA sutras by presenting them in terms of the stages of realizations achieved via the five paths (PANCAMARGA). The eight chapters of the text divide these realizations into eight types. The first three are types of knowledge that are essential to any type of practice and are generic to both the mainstream and MahAyAna schools. (1) The wisdom of knowing all modes (SARVAKARAJNATA), for the bodhisattva-adepts who are the putative target audience of the commentary, explains all the characteristics of the myriad dharmas, so that they will have comprehensive knowledge of what the attainment of enlightenment will bring. (2) The wisdom of knowing the paths (MARGAJNATA), viz., the paths perfected by the sRAVAKAs, is a prerequisite to achieving the wisdom of knowing all modes. (3) The wisdom of knowing all phenomena (SARVAJNATA) is, in turn, a prerequisite to achieving the wisdom of knowing the paths. With (4) the topic of the manifestly perfect realization of all aspects (sarvAkArAbhisambodha) starts the text's coverage of the path itself, here focused on gaining insight into all aspects, viz., characteristics of dharmas, paths, and types of beings. By reaching (5) the summit of realization (murdhAbhisamaya; see MuRDHAN), one arrives at the entrance to ultimate realization. All the realizations achieved up to this point are secured and commingled through (6) gradual realization (anupurvAbhisamaya). The perfection of this gradual realization and the consolidation of all previous realizations catalyze the (7) instantaneous realization (ekaksanAbhisamaya). The fruition of this instantaneous realization brings (8) realization of the dharma body, or DHARMAKAYA (dharmakAyAbhisambodha). The first three chapters thus describe the three wisdoms incumbent on the buddhas; the middle four chapters cover the four paths that take these wisdoms as their object; and the last chapter describes the resultant dharma body of the buddhas and their special attainments. The AbhisamayAlaMkAra provides a synopsis of the massive prajNApAramitA scriptures and a systematic outline of the comprehensive path of MahAyAna. The AbhisamayAlaMkAra spurred a long tradition of Indian commentaries and other exegetical works, twenty-one of which are preserved in the Tibetan canon. Notable among this literature are Arya VIMUKTISEnA's Vṛtti and the ABHISAMAYALAMKARALOKA and Vivṛti (called Don gsal in Tibetan) by HARIBHADRA. Later Tibetan commentaries include BU STON RIN CHEN GRUB's Lung gi snye ma and TSONG KHA PA's LEGS BSHAD GSER PHRENG.
acephalocyst ::: n. --> A larval entozoon in the form of a subglobular or oval vesicle, or hydatid, filled with fluid, sometimes found in the tissues of man and the lower animals; -- so called from the absence of a head or visible organs on the vesicle. These cysts are the immature stages of certain tapeworms. Also applied to similar cysts of different origin.
Achebiosis [from Greek arch original + bios life] Life from the beginning; in some scientific uses, life not derived from life, spontaneous generation. Such generation occurs even today but pertains specially to certain stages of evolution. Archebiosis is used to designate a life origination occurring in a fifth stage of evolution (SD 1:455); but this origination means a manifestation of life on the seven planes concerned.
adhimoksa. (P. adhimokkha; T. mos pa; C. shengjie; J. shoge; K. sŭnghae 勝解). In Sanskrit, "determination," "resolution," or "zeal"; a general term denoting an inclination toward a virtuous object, sometimes used to indicate a preliminary stage prior to the conviction that results from direct experience; also seen written as adhimukti. The adhimukticaryAbhumi incorporates the stages of the path of accumulation (SAMBHARAMARGA) and the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMARGA) prior to the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA). In a more technical sense, adhimoksa is a mental factor (CAITTA) that keeps consciousness intent on its object without straying to another object. It is listed among the ten major omnipresent mental concomitants (S. MAHABHuMIKA) that are present in all in the dharma taxonomy of the SARVASTIVADA school, among the five determinative mental concomitants (S. VINIYATA) in the YOGACARA dharma system, and one of the six secondary (P. pakinnaka) factors in the PAli ABHIDHAMMA. Adhimoksa is also used to describe the interests or dispositions of sentient beings, the knowledge of which contributes to a buddha's pedagogical skills.
A few centuries after the composition of the JNānaprasthāna, or c. first half of the second-century CE, Sarvāstivāda exegetes compiled a massive commentary to the text, entitled the ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ, which followed the root text's chapters and section divisions but exponentially expanded the coverage of the school's teachings. Because of their adherence to the exegetical approaches outlined in that commentary, later masters of the Sarvāstivāda school in KASHMIR-GANDHĀRA termed themselves "VAIBHĀsIKA." ¶ The JNānaprasthāna is probably the last of the canonical Sarvāstivāda abhidharma texts to have been composed and contains a systematic overview of the emblematic doctrines of the mature school. Distinctive Sarvāstivāda doctrines treated in the text include the full roster of the four conditions (PRATYAYA) and six causes (HETU); the Sarvāstivāda's eponymous teaching that factors (dharma) exist in all three time periods (TRIKĀLA) of the past, present, and future; the definitive classification schema for the mental concomitants (CAITTA); and the listing of the four conditioned characteristics (SAMSKṚTALAKsAnA) of dharmas, viz., origination (JĀTI), continuance (STHITI), senescence (JARĀ), and desinence (anityatā, ANITYA; viz., death). The JNānaprasthāna's outline of Sarvāstivāda abhidharma is based on a soteriological schema, ultimately deriving from the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. The opening chapter on miscellaneous factors begins with a discussion of the highest worldly factors (laukikāgradharma), perhaps the major conceptual innovation of the text, that is, dharmas at the moment of the transition from ordinary person (PṚTHAGJANA) to noble one (ĀRYA), when they catalyze access to the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA). The JNānaprasthāna thus uses its treatment of the highest worldly dharmas as an interpretative tool to integrate its discussion of the major stages in the path, from the mundane path of practice (LAUKIKA-BHĀVANĀMĀRGA), to the path of vision, the supramundane path of cultivation (LOKOTTARA-BHĀVANĀMĀRGA), and the path of the realized adept (AsAIKsAMĀRGA; see also PANCAMĀRGA). This focus also highlights the major difference between Sarvāstivāda and Pāli abhidharma materials: whereas Pāli texts include substantial coverage of such preliminary practices as morality and choosing a meditation subject, the JNānaprasthāna is principally concerned with the more advanced stages of the path. The second critical contribution of the JNānaprasthāna is its systematization of the six causes (HETU). These six are not found in the ĀGAMAs, and only four are listed in earlier Sarvāstivāda abhidharma texts, such as the VIJNĀNAKĀYA[PĀDAsĀSTRA]. Kātyāyanīputra's systematization of this list seems to have been intended to demonstrate the causal connections that pertained between the stages of the path. Overall, the JNānaprasthāna is best known not for its doctrinal innovations but instead for its grand systematization of Sarvāstivāda abhidharma.
age ::: n. --> The whole duration of a being, whether animal, vegetable, or other kind; lifetime.
That part of the duration of a being or a thing which is between its beginning and any given time; as, what is the present age of a man, or of the earth?
The latter part of life; an advanced period of life; seniority; state of being old.
One of the stages of life; as, the age of infancy, of youth,
All theses various “creations” mentioned in the Puranas represent stages of evolutionary production, following each other in regular serial order, and thus unfolding into manifestation what lay originally latent in the seed out of which these various stages arise. Thus the reference in the Vishnu-Purana, for example, by analogical reasoning can apply either to a universe, solar system, planetary chain, or to the developmental history of earth and its inhabitants.
Alokasyopalabdhisa. (T. nye bar thob pa'i snang ba). In Sanskrit "appearance of near-attainment," the penultimate stage in the final three stages of the dissolution of consciousness that culminates in the dawning of "clear light" (PRABHASVARA), the actual moment of death according to certain systems of ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA. After the gross elements and states of consciousness dissolve, a process that is accompanied by a series of signs, the subtler levels of consciousness appear: first an experience of radiant whiteness called appearance (Aloka) like a night sky filled with moonlight, then an experience of redness, called increase (vṛddhi) like a clear sky filled with sunlight, and finally an experience called "near attainment" (upalabdha) like a black moonless sky, so called because it is the state nearest to the most subtle level of consciousness, the mind of clear light.
Amiga "computer" A range of home computers first released by {Commodore Business Machines} in early 1985 (though they did not design the original - see below). Amigas were popular for {games}, {video processing}, and {multimedia}. One notable feature is a hardware {blitter} for speeding up graphics operations on whole areas of the screen. The Amiga was originally called the Lorraine, and was developed by a company named "Amiga" or "Amiga, Inc.", funded by some doctors to produce a killer game machine. After the US game machine market collapsed, the Amiga company sold some {joysticks} but no Lorraines or any other computer. They eventually floundered and looked for a buyer. Commodore at that time bought the (mostly complete) Amiga machine, infused some money, and pushed it through the final stages of development in a hurry. Commodore released it sometime[?] in 1985. Most components within the machine were known by nicknames. The {coprocessor} commonly called the "Copper" is in fact the "{Video} Timing Coprocessor" and is split between two chips: the instruction fetch and execute units are in the "Agnus" chip, and the {pixel} timing circuits are in the "Denise" chip (A for address, D for data). "Agnus" and "Denise" were responsible for effects timed to the {real-time} position of the video scan, such as midscreen {palette} changes, {sprite multiplying}, and {resolution} changes. Different versions (in order) were: "Agnus" (could only address 512K of {video RAM}), "Fat Agnus" (in a {PLCC} package, could access 1MB of video RAM), "Super Agnus" (slightly upgraded "Fat Agnus"). "Agnus" and "Fat Agnus" came in {PAL} and {NTSC} versions, "Super Agnus" came in one version, jumper selectable for PAL or NTSC. "Agnus" was replaced by "Alice" in the A4000 and A1200, which allowed for more {DMA} channels and higher bus {bandwidth}. "Denise" outputs binary video data (3*4 bits) to the "Vidiot". The "Vidiot" is a hybrid that combines and amplifies the 12-bit video data from "Denise" into {RGB} to the {monitor}. Other chips were "Amber" (a "flicker fixer", used in the A3000 and Commodore display enhancer for the A2000), "Gary" ({I/O}, addressing, G for {glue logic}), "Buster" (the {bus controller}, which replaced "Gary" in the A2000), "Buster II" (for handling the Zorro II/III cards in the A3000, which meant that "Gary" was back again), "Ramsey" (The {RAM} controller), "DMAC" (The DMA controller chip for the WD33C93 {SCSI adaptor} used in the A3000 and on the A2091/A2092 SCSI adaptor card for the A2000; and to control the {CD-ROM} in the {CDTV}), and "Paula" ({Peripheral}, Audio, {UART}, {interrupt} Lines, and {bus Arbiter}). There were several Amiga chipsets: the "Old Chipset" (OCS), the "Enhanced Chipset" (ECS), and {AGA}. OCS included "Paula", "Gary", "Denise", and "Agnus". ECS had the same "Paula", "Gary", "Agnus" (could address 2MB of Chip RAM), "Super Denise" (upgraded to support "Agnus" so that a few new {screen modes} were available). With the introduction of the {Amiga A600} "Gary" was replaced with "Gayle" (though the chipset was still called ECS). "Gayle" provided a number of improvments but the main one was support for the A600's {PCMCIA} port. The AGA chipset had "Agnus" with twice the speed and a 24-bit palette, maximum displayable: 8 bits (256 colours), although the famous "{HAM}" (Hold And Modify) trick allows pictures of 256,000 colours to be displayed. AGA's "Paula" and "Gayle" were unchanged but AGA "Denise" supported AGA "Agnus"'s new screen modes. Unfortunately, even AGA "Paula" did not support High Density {floppy disk drives}. (The Amiga 4000, though, did support high density drives.) In order to use a high density disk drive Amiga HD floppy drives spin at half the rotational speed thus halving the data rate to "Paula". Commodore Business Machines went bankrupt on 1994-04-29, the German company {Escom AG} bought the rights to the Amiga on 1995-04-21 and the Commodore Amiga became the Escom Amiga. In April 1996 Escom were reported to be making the {Amiga} range again but they too fell on hard times and {Gateway 2000} (now called Gateway) bought the Amiga brand on 1997-05-15. Gateway licensed the Amiga operating system to a German hardware company called {Phase 5} on 1998-03-09. The following day, Phase 5 announced the introduction of a four-processor {PowerPC} based Amiga {clone} called the "{pre\box}". Since then, it has been announced that the new operating system will be a version of {QNX}. On 1998-06-25, a company called {Access Innovations Ltd} announced {plans (http://micktinker.co.uk/aaplus.html)} to build a new Amiga chip set, the {AA+}, based partly on the AGA chips but with new fully 32-bit functional core and 16-bit AGA {hardware register emulation} for {backward compatibility}. The new core promised improved memory access and video display DMA. By the end of 2000, Amiga development was under the control of a [new?] company called {Amiga, Inc.}. As well as continuing development of AmigaOS (version 3.9 released in December 2000), their "Digital Environment" is a {virtual machine} for multiple {platforms} conforming to the {ZICO} specification. As of 2000, it ran on {MIPS}, {ARM}, {PPC}, and {x86} processors. {(http://amiga.com/)}. {Amiga Web Directory (http://cucug.org/amiga.html)}. {amiCrawler (http://amicrawler.com/)}. Newsgroups: {news:comp.binaries.amiga}, {news:comp.sources.amiga}, {news:comp.sys.amiga}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.advocacy}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.announce}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.applications}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.audio}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.datacomm}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.emulations}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.games}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.graphics}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.hardware}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.introduction}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.marketplace}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.misc}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.multimedia}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.programmer}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.reviews}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.tech}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.telecomm}, {news:comp.Unix.amiga}. See {aminet}, {Amoeba}, {bomb}, {exec}, {gronk}, {guru meditation}, {Intuition}, {sidecar}, {slap on the side}, {Vulcan nerve pinch}. (2003-07-05)
Amiga ::: (computer) A range of home computers first released by Commodore Business Machines in early 1985 (though they did not design the original - see below). feature is a hardware blitter for speeding up graphics operations on whole areas of the screen.The Amiga was originally called the Lorraine, and was developed by a company named Amiga or Amiga, Inc., funded by some doctors to produce a killer game joysticks but no Lorraines or any other computer. They eventually floundered and looked for a buyer.Commodore at that time bought the (mostly complete) Amiga machine, infused some money, and pushed it through the final stages of development in a hurry. Commodore released it sometime[?] in 1985.Most components within the machine were known by nicknames. The coprocessor commonly called the Copper is in fact the Video Timing Coprocessor and is Agnus chip, and the pixel timing circuits are in the Denise chip (A for address, D for data).Agnus and Denise were responsible for effects timed to the real-time position of the video scan, such as midscreen palette changes, sprite the A4000 and A1200, which allowed for more DMA channels and higher bus bandwidth.Denise outputs binary video data (3*4 bits) to the Vidiot. The Vidiot is a hybrid that combines and amplifies the 12-bit video data from Denise into RGB to the monitor.Other chips were Amber (a flicker fixer, used in the A3000 and Commodore display enhancer for the A2000), Gary (I/O, addressing, G for glue logic), card for the A2000; and to control the CD-ROM in the CDTV), and Paula (Peripheral, Audio, UART, interrupt Lines, and bus Arbiter).There were several Amiga chipsets: the Old Chipset (OCS), the Enhanced Chipset (ECS), and AGA. OCS included Paula, Gary, Denise, and Agnus.ECS had the same Paula, Gary, Agnus (could address 2MB of Chip RAM), Super Denise (upgraded to support Agnus so that a few new screen modes were Gayle (though the chipset was still called ECS). Gayle provided a number of improvments but the main one was support for the A600's PCMCIA port.The AGA chipset had Agnus with twice the speed and a 24-bit palette, maximum displayable: 8 bits (256 colours), although the famous HAM (Hold And Modify) use a high density disk drive Amiga HD floppy drives spin at half the rotational speed thus halving the data rate to Paula.Commodore Business Machines went bankrupt on 1994-04-29, the German company Escom AG bought the rights to the Amiga on 1995-04-21 and the Commodore Amiga range again but they too fell on hard times and Gateway 2000 (now called Gateway) bought the Amiga brand on 1997-05-15.Gateway licensed the Amiga operating system to a German hardware company called Phase 5 on 1998-03-09. The following day, Phase 5 announced the introduction of a four-processor PowerPC based Amiga clone called the pre\box. Since then, it has been announced that the new operating system will be a version of QNX.On 1998-06-25, a company called Access Innovations Ltd announced to build a new Amiga chip set, the AA+, based partly on the AGA chips but with backward compatibility. The new core promised improved memory access and video display DMA.By the end of 2000, Amiga development was under the control of a [new?] company called Amiga, Inc.. As well as continuing development of AmigaOS (version 3.9 multiple platforms conforming to the ZICO specification. As of 2000, it ran on MIPS, ARM, PPC, and x86 processors. . . .Newsgroups: comp.binaries.amiga, comp.sources.amiga, comp.sys.amiga, comp.sys.amiga.advocacy, comp.sys.amiga.announce, comp.sys.amiga.applications, comp.sys.amiga.multimedia, comp.sys.amiga.programmer, comp.sys.amiga.reviews, comp.sys.amiga.tech, comp.sys.amiga.telecomm, comp.Unix.amiga.See aminet, Amoeba, bomb, exec, gronk, guru meditation, Intuition, sidecar, slap on the side, Vulcan nerve pinch.(2003-07-05)
Anahata-sabda (Sanskrit) Anāhata-śabda [from an not + ā-han to beat, strike + śabda sound from the verbal root śabd to make noise, cry out, invoke] Unstruck circle of sound; the immaterial sound produced by no form of material substance; a mystical bell-like sound at times heard by the dying which slowly lessens in intensity until the moment of death. Also heard by the yogi or contemplative at certain stages of his meditation. The Theravada Buddhists speak of this inner signal as the voice of devas which resemble the “sound of a golden bell” (Digha-nikaya 1:152). The anahata-sabda is, in reality, a reflection of the inherent sound-characteristic of akasa (cf VS 18, 78).
MONAD, THE; THE SAME AS PRIMORDIAL ATOM is the smallest possible part of primordial matter and the smallest firm point for individual consciousness. K 1.4.5, 1.12.1
The monads are the sole content of the cosmos.
All forms of matter existing in the cosmos consist of monads at different stages of development. All these compositions of monads are being formed, changed, dissolved, and re-formed in innumerable variations, but the monads&
NATURE BEING Evolutionary being belonging to the deva evolution and at stages of development corresponding to the vegetable and animal kingdoms as well as the lowest human stages. In the normal case, a nature being has no lower envelopes than the etheric. Nature beings work as builders of organisms for monads of the human evolution. Of old, nature beings are divided into four groups according to the four elements: gnomes (earth), undines (water), sylphs (air), salamanders
(fire). The pixies, fairies, trolls, etc. of folklore have reference to nature beings.
ananda ::: delight, bliss, ecstasy, beatitude; "a profound concentrated ananda intense self-existent bliss extended to all that our being does, envisages, creates, a fixed divine rapture"; same as sama ananda, the universal delight which constitutes active / positive samata, "an equal delight in all the cosmic manifestation of the Divine", whose "foundation is the Atmajnana or Brahmajnana by which we perceive the whole universe as a perception of one Being that manifests itself in multitudinous forms and activities"; the highest of the three stages of active / positive . 12 samata, "the joy of Unity" by which "all is changed into the full and pure ecstasy" of the Spirit; the third and highest state of bhukti, consisting of the delight of existence experienced "throughout the system" in seven principal forms (kamananda, premananda, ahaituka ananda, cidghanananda, suddhananda, cidananda and sadananda) corresponding to the seven kosas or sheaths of the being and the seven lokas or planes of existence; physical ananda or sarirananda in its five forms, also called vividhananda (various delight), the fourth member of the sarira catus.t.aya; (especially in the plural, "anandas") any of these forms of ananda; same as anandaṁ brahma, the last aspect of the fourfold brahman; bliss of infinite conscious existence, "the original, all-encompassing, all-informing, all-upholding delight", the third aspect of saccidananda and the principle manifested in its purity in janaloka or anandaloka, also present in an involved or subordinated form on every other plane.
anthracene ::: n. --> A solid hydrocarbon, C6H4.C2H2.C6H4, which accompanies naphthalene in the last stages of the distillation of coal tar. Its chief use is in the artificial production of alizarin.
anulomaNAna. In PAli, "conformity knowledge"; according to the VISUDDHIMAGGA, this is the ninth and last of nine knowledges (P. NAna, S. JNANA) cultivated as part of the purity of knowledge and vision of progress along the path (P. patipadANAnadassanavisuddhi). This latter category, in turn, constitutes the sixth of the seven purities (VIsUDDHI) to be developed along the path to liberation. "Conformity knowledge" refers to the last three so-called impulsion moments (javana) of consciousness that arise in the mind of the practitioner preceding his perception of the nibbAna element (NIRVAnADHATU). This knowledge is so named because it conforms itself to the preceding eight stages of knowledge, as well as to the immediately following supramundane path (P. AriyamAgga, S. ARYAMARGA) and the thirty-seven constituents of enlightenment (P. bodhipakkhiyadhamma, S. BODHIPAKsIKADHARMA). When the three moments are treated separately, they receive different names. The first impulsion moment is called "preparation" (P. parikamma), when adaptation knowledge takes as its object the compounded formations (SAMSKARA) as being something impermanent (ANITYA), suffering (DUḤKHA), and nonself (ANATMAN). Immediately thereafter, the second impulsion moment arises, which takes the same formations as its object and is called "access" (upacAra). Immediately following that the third impulsion moment arises taking the same object, which is called "conformity" (anuloma). At this point, the practitioner is at the threshold of liberation (P. vimokkha, S. VIMOKsA), and, therefore, conformity knowledge is described as the final stage in what is called "insight leading to emergence" (P. vutthAnagAminivipassanA). This category includes the sixth, seventh, and eighth knowledges (NAna) in the ninefold schema: namely, "knowledge arising from the desire for deliverance" (P. MUCCITUKAMYATANAnA), "knowledge arising from the contemplation on reflection" (P. PAtISAnKHANUPASSANANAnA), and "knowledge arising from equanimity regarding all formations of existence" (P. SAnKHARUPEKKHANAnA).
anuttarayogatantra. (T. bla na med pa'i rnal 'byor rgyud). In Sanskrit, "unsurpassed yoga tantra." According to an Indian classification system, later adopted in Tibet, anuttarayogatantra is the highest category in the fourfold division of tantric texts, above YOGATANTRA, CARYATANTRA, and KRIYATANTRA. Texts classified as unsurpassed yoga tantras include such works as the GUHYASAMAJATANTRA, the HEVAJRATANTRA, and the CAKRASAMVARATANTRA. These tantras were further divided into mother tantras (MATṚTANTRA) and father tantras (PITṚTANTRA). The mother tantras, also known as dAKINĪ tantras, are traditionally said to emphasize wisdom (PRAJNA) over method (UPAYA), especially wisdom in the form of the mind of clear light (PRABHASVARACITTA). The father tantras are those that, between method (upAya) and wisdom (prajNA), place a particular emphasis on method, especially as it pertains to the achievement of the illusory body (MAYADEHA) on the stage of generation (UTPATTIKRAMA). According to Tibetan exegetes, buddhahood can only be achieved through the practice of anuttarayogatantra; it cannot be achieved by the three "lower tantras" or by the practice of the PARAMITAYANA. The many practices set forth in the anuttarayogatantras are often divided into two larger categories, those of the stage of generation (utpattikrama) and those of the stage of completion (NIsPANNAKRAMA). The latter typically includes the practice of sexual yoga. The status of the KALACAKRATANTRA, historically the latest of the unsurpassed yoga tantras (the text includes apparent references to Muslim invaders in the Indian subcontinent), was accorded special status by DOL PO PA SHES RAB RGYAL MTSHAN; TSONG KHA PA in his SNGAGS RIM CHEN MO ("Great Exposition of the Stages of Tantra") gave it a separate place within a general anuttarayogatantra category, while others such as Red mda' ba Gzhon nu blo gros said it was not a Buddhist tantra at all.
apprentice: An aspiring or newly Awakened mage who’s in the early stages of her training. Capitalized, the word becomes a Council title for a low-level Tradition mage.
Arc(s), Ascending and Descending Also Luminous and Shadowy Arcs. A cycle of development, such as that of a planetary chain, can be divided into two halves, the first from the first globe to the middle of the most material globe, and the other extending from this midpoint upwards to the last globe. The first half is the downward or shadowy arc; the second is the ascending or luminous arc. The descending arc represents an involution of spirit and a concurrent evolution of matter resulting in a progressive materialization of spirit and a continuous grossening or concretion of the texture of matter; the ascending arc represents an evolution of spirit and involution of matter, resulting in a progressive dematerialization, spiritualization, or refinement of matter as it increasingly manifests the qualities of spirit. Yet spirit and matter are fundamentally one essence at different stages of development.
Arundhati-nyaya: The star Arundhati is rarely visible to the naked eye; to point it out, therefore, some very big star near it is shown at first as Arundhati; then it is rejected and a smaller star is pointed out as Arundhati and so on till the actual Arundhati is located. This method of leading from the gross to the more subtle is called Arundhati-nyaya. This method is followed specially in Indian philosophy where in the beginning men are goaded to have faith in the lower form of worship with the help of Agamas and Tantras; then guided to the Bhakti method or the dualistic religion of the Puranas; then, again, to the rigour of the Smritis, and finally, to the non-dual (Advaita) Vedanta of the Upanishads and Ajati-vada. (Compare this with the Bhramara-kita-nyaya which is a direct meditation on the Absolute at one stretch without any such preliminary stages of religion as in the case of the former.)
Arvaksrotas (Sanskrit) Arvāksrotas [from arvāk downwards + srotas stream] Those beings in which the current or stream of nutriment tends downwards. The creation of man, the seventh creation of Brahma in the Vishnu-Purana. These seven creations, which “did not occur on this globe, wherever else they may have taken place” (SD 2:162), refer to different stages of evolution in the earlier periods of a globe-manvantara, as well as of a chain-manvantara. See also TIRYAKSROTAS
AryamArgaphala. (P. ariyamaggaphala; T. 'phags lam gyi 'bras bu; C. shengdaoguo; J. shodoka; K. songdo kwa 聖道果). In Sanskrit, "noble path and fruit"; the four supramundane (LOKOTTARA) paths (MARGA) and the four supramundane fruitions (PHALA) that mark the attainment of sanctity (ARYA). Attainment of the path refers to the first moment of entering into or becoming a candidate (pratipannaka) for any of the four stages of sanctity; viz., stream-enterer (SROTAAPANNA), once-returner (SAKṚDAGAMIN), nonreturner (ANAGAMIN), and worthy one (ARHAT). During this initial moment of path attainment, the mind takes the nirvAna element (NIRVAnADHATU) as its object. Path attainment is brought about by insight (VIPAsYANA) into the three universal marks (TRILAKsAnA) of existence that characterize all phenomena: impermanence (ANITYA), suffering (DUḤKHA), and nonself (ANATMAN). Attainment of the fruit refers to the moments of consciousness that immediately follow attainment of the path. Attainment of any of the four paths occurs only once, while attainment of the fruit can be repeated indefinitely during a lifetime, depending on the circumstances. It is said that, by virtue of attaining the path, one "becomes" free in stages of the ten fetters (SAMYOJANA) that bind one to the cycle of rebirth, and, by virtue of attaining the fruit, one "is" free from the fetters. The ten fetters that are put aside in stages are (1) belief in the existence of a self (ATMAN) in relation to the body (SATKAYADṚstI; P. sakkAyaditthi); (2) belief in the efficacy of rites and rituals (sĪLAVRATAPARAMARsA; P. sīlabbataparAmAsa) as a means of salvation; (3) doubt about the efficacy of the path (VICIKITSA; P. vicikicchA); (4) sensual craving (KAMACCHANDA); (5) malice (VYAPADA); (6) craving for existence as a divinity in the realm of subtle materiality (RuPARAGA); (7) craving for existence as a divinity in the immaterial realm (ARuPYARAGA; P. aruparAga); (8) pride (MANA); (9) restlessness (AUDDHATYA; P. uddhacca); and (10) ignorance (AVIDYA; P. avijjA). See also sRAMAnYAPHALA.
Asana: Sanskrit for sitting, posture; one of the stages of the practice of Yoga.
A Sanskrit equivalent for the left-hand path is pratyeka-yana [from pratyeka every one for himself + yana path]. Those who follow this path are also called vamacharins, and their school or course of life is known as vamachara or savyachara. They follow the easy but perilous path leading downwards into ever more confusing, horrifying stages of matter and final spiritual obscuration and personal annihilation.
Asrama-dharma: Duties pertaining to the four orders or stages of life.
Asrama-karani: Duties of the four stages of life.
ASSIMILATION. ::: There has to be a period of assimilation. When the being is unconscious, the assimilation goes on behind the veil or below the surface and meanwhile the surface consciousness sees only dullness and the loss of what it had got; but when one is conscious, then one can see the assimilation going on and one sees that nothing is lost, it is only a quiet settling in of what has come down.
To remain quiet for a time after the descent of Force is the best way of assimilating it.
There are always pauses of preparation and assimilation between two movements.
The periods of assimilation continue till all that has to be done is fundamentally done. Only they have a different character in the later stages of sadhana. If they cease altogether at an early stage, it is because all that the nature was capable of has been done and that would mean it was not capable of much.
Astral Light ::: The astral light corresponds in the case of our globe, and analogically in the case of our solar system, towhat the linga-sarira is in the case of an individual man. Just as in man the linga-sarira or astral body is the vehicle or carrier of prana or life-energy, so is the astral light the carrier of the cosmic jiva or cosmic life-energy. To us humans it is an invisible region surrounding our earth, as H. P. Blavatsky expresses it,as indeed it surrounds every other physical globe; and among the seven kosmic principles it is the mostmaterial excepting one, our physical universe.The astral light therefore is, on the one hand, the storehouse or repository of all the energies of thekosmos on their way downwards to manifest in the material spheres -- of our solar system in general aswell as of our globe in particular; and, on the other hand, it is the receptacle or magazine of whateverpasses out of the physical sphere on its upward way.Thirdly, it is a kosmic "picture-gallery" or indelible record of whatever takes place on the astral andphysical planes; however, this last phase of the functions of the astral light is the least in importance andreal interest.The astral light of our own globe, and analogically of any other physical globe, is the region of thekama-loka, at least as concerns the intermediate and lower parts of the kama-loka; and all entities that diepass through the astral light on their way upwards, and in the astral light throw off or shed the kama-rupaat the time of the second death.The solar system has its own astral light in general, just as every globe in the universal solar system hasits astral light in particular, in each of these last cases being a thickening or materializing or concretingaround the globe of the general astral substance forming the astral light of the solar system. The astrallight, strictly speaking, is simply the lees or dregs of akasa and exists in steps or stages of increasingethereality. The more closely it surrounds any globe, the grosser and more material it is. It is thereceptacle of all the vile and horrible emanations from earth and earth beings, and is therefore in partsfilled with earthly pollutions. There is a constant interchange, unceasing throughout the solarmanvantara, between the astral light on the one hand, and our globe earth on the other, each giving andreturning to the other.Finally, the astral light is with regard to the material realms of the solar system the copy or reflection ofwhat the akasa is in the spiritual realms. The astral light is the mother of the physical, just as the spirit isthe mother of the akasa; or, inversely, the physical is merely the concretion of the astral, just as the akasais the veil or concretion of the highest spiritual. Indeed, the astral and physical are one, just as the akasicand the spiritual are one.
Atisa DīpaMkarasrījNAna. (T. A ti sha Mar me mdzad dpal ye shes) (982-1054). Indian Buddhist monk and scholar revered by Tibetan Buddhists as a leading teacher in the later dissemination (PHYI DAR) of Buddhism in Tibet. His name, also written as Atisha, is an ApabhraMsa form of the Sanskrit term atisaya, meaning "surpassing kindness." Born into a royal family in what is today Bangladesh, Atisa studied MAHAYANA Buddhist philosophy and TANTRA as a married layman prior to being ordained at the age of twenty-nine, receiving the ordination name of DīpaMkarasrījNAna. After studying at the great monasteries of northern India, including NALANDA, ODANTAPURĪ, VIKRAMAsĪLA, and SOMAPURA, he is said to have journeyed to the island of Sumatra, where he studied under the CITTAMATRA teacher Dharmakīrtisrī (also known as guru Sauvarnadvīpa) for twelve years; he would later praise Dharmakīrtisrī as a great teacher of BODHICITTA. Returning to India, he taught at the Indian monastic university of VIKRAMAsĪLA. Atisa was invited to Tibet by the king of western Tibet YE SHES 'OD and his grandnephew BYANG CHUB 'OD, who were seeking to remove perceived corruption in the practice of Buddhism in Tibet. Atisa reached Tibet in 1042, where he initially worked together with the renowned translator RIN CHEN BZANG PO at THO LING monastery in the translation of PRAJNAPARAMITA texts. There, he composed his famous work, the BODHIPATHAPRADĪPA, or "Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment," an overview of the MahAyAna Buddhist path that served as a basis for the genre of literature known as LAM RIM ("stages of the path"). He spent the remaining twelve years of his life in the central regions of Tibet, where he formed his principal seat in Snye thang (Nyetang) outside of LHA SA where he translated a number of MADHYAMAKA works into Tibetan. He died there and his relics were interred in the SGROL MA LHA KHANG. Atisa and his chief disciples 'BROM STON RGYAL BA'I 'BYUNG GNAS and RNGOG LEGS PA'I SHES RAB are considered the forefathers of the BKA' GDAMS PA sect of Tibetan Buddhism. In Tibet, he is commonly known by the honorific title Jo bo rje (Jowoje), "the Superior Lord."
Atmagraha. (P. attagaha; T. bdag 'dzin; C. wozhi; J. gashu; K. ajip 我執). In Sanskrit, "clinging to self" or "conception of self"; the fundamental ignorance that is the ultimate cause of suffering (DUḤKHA) and rebirth (SAMSARA). Although the self does not exist in reality, the mistaken conception that a self exists (SATKAYADṚstI) constitutes the most fundamental form of clinging, which must be eliminated through wisdom (PRAJNA). Two types of attachment to self are mentioned in MAHAYANA literature: the type that is constructed or artificial (S. parakalpita; T. kun btags; C. fenbie wozhi) and that type that is innate (S. sahaja; T. lhan skyes; C. jusheng wozhi). The former is primarily an epistemic error resulting from unsystematic attention (AYONIsOMANASKARA) and exposure to erroneous philosophies and mistaken views (VIPARYASA); it is eradicated at the stage of stream-entry (see SROTAAPANNA) for the sRAVAKA and PRATYEKABUDDHA and at the DARsANAMARGA for the BODHISATTVA. The latter is primarily an affective, habitual, and instinctive clinging, conditioned over many lifetimes in the past, which may continue to be present even after one has abandoned the mistaken conception of a perduring self after achieving stream-entry. This innate form of clinging to self is only gradually attenuated through the successive stages of spiritual fruition, until it is completely extinguished at the stage of arhatship (see ARHAT) or buddhahood. In the MahAyAna philosophical schools, the conception of self is said to be twofold: the conception of the self of persons (pudgalAtmagraha) and the conception of the self of phenomena or factors (dharmAtmagraha). The second is said to be more subtle than the first. The first is said to be abandoned by followers of the HĪNAYANA paths in order to attain the rank of arhat, while both forms must be abandoned by the BODHISATTVA in order to achieve buddhahood. See also ATMAN; PUDGALANAIRATMYA.
At the end of the third round, there were forerunning monads who were already human in nature and characteristic, and who were leading the way towards the true humanity of the fourth round, and therefore were the guides of the less progressed human monads when it became the latter’s turn to incarnate during the fourth round. These advance-guard monads are sometimes termed the Sons of Yoga. As intellectual and moral responsibility appears in the evolving human monads only when mind enters the picture — which occurred for the majority of the human monads only during the third root-race of the fourth round — during the third round few monads had reached the stage of true intellectual and moral responsibility; and during the second round even these forerunners were themselves unfolding the powers and responsibilities of mind and of choice. During the third round: “He had now a perfectly concrete or compacted body; at first the form of a giant ape, and more intelligent (or rather cunning) than spiritual. For in the downward arc he has now reached the point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed or over-shadowed by nascent mentality. In the last half of this third round his gigantic stature decreases, his body improves in texture . . . and he becomes a more rational being — through still more an ape than a Deva man” (ML 87-8) — that is, manas (mind) was not yet functioning. Thus while the third-round forerunners may be considered truly human, the great bulk of the human kingdom was still but in the elemental stages of intellectual and moral responsibility. Mind was only just beginning to show itself, and hence the humans were rather cunning than intellectual, instinctual rather than spiritual.
“At the mysteries of the Anthesteria . . . after the usual baptism by purification of water, the Mystae were made to pass through to another door (gate), and one particularly for that purpose, which was called, ‘the gate of Dionysus,’ and that of ‘the purified’ ” (IU 2:245-6). These were the Lesser Mysteries, preliminary and complementary to those held in the month of Boedromion (September) in Eleusis. Some scholars, seeing the analogy between climatic seasons and the stages of initiation, have supposed that the festival celebrated primarily the advent of spring and that the rites were symbolic of this; whereas others believe that the initiations were the main events and were held at times when nature harmonized with the purpose in view.
Atzmut (G-d&
Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430. St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents. Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided. Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients. S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings"). This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism). (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment. Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect. Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good." In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love. In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909). Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint. The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value. (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey). (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience. (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria. (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers: subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists); logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality); metaphysical objectivism (values --or norms or ideals --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.
Avadhuta (Sanskrit) Avadhūta [from ava-dhū to shake off] Shaken off, dispelled, rejected, as applied to evil spirits or enemies; also applied to plants shaken by the wind. As a noun, one who has shaken off himself worldly feeling and shackling ties. Also one of the six degrees or stages of asceticism.
avaivartika. (T. phyir mi ldog; C. butuizhuan; J. futaiten; K. pult'oejon 不退轉). In Sanskrit, "nonretrogression" or "irreversible"; a term used to describe a stage on the path (MARGA) at which further progress is assured, with no further possibility of retrogressing to a previous stage. For the BODHISATTVA, different texts posit this crucial transition as occurring at various points along the path, such as on the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMARGA), where there is then no danger of the bodhisattva turning back to seek instead to become an ARHAT; the first BHuMI; or the eighth bhumi, when the bodhisattva is then certain to continue forward to complete, perfect enlightenment (ANUTTARASAMYAKSAMBODHI). There are many variant forms in Sanskrit (e.g., avaivarya, avinivartya, avinivartanīya, and anivartiya), of which avaivartika is among the most common. The state of nonretrogression is also termed the avaivartyabhumi. Nonretrogression is also listed in the MAHAVASTU as the highest of four stages of practice (CARYA). In the PURE LAND schools, taking rebirth (WANGSHENG) in AMITABHA's PURE LAND of SUKHAVATĪ is said to constitute the stage of nonretrogression.
Avarana. (T. sgrib pa; C. zhang; J. sho; K. chang 障). In Sanskrit and PAli, "obstruction," "obstacle," or "hindrance." In MAHAYANA literature, two types of Avarana are commonly described: "obstructions that are the afflictions," or "afflictive obstructions" (KLEsAVARAnA), and cognitive or noetic obstructions, viz., "obstructions to omniscience" (JNEYAVARAnA). sRAVAKAs and PRATYEKABUDDHAs can be freed from the afflictive obstructions, but only BODHISATTVAs are able to free themselves from the cognitive obstructions. In the YOGACARA system, the cognitive obstructions result from fundamental misapprehensions about the nature of reality. Because of the attachment that derives from the reification of what are actually imaginary external phenomena, conceptualization and discrimination arise in the mind, which in turn lead to pride, ignorance, and wrong views. Based on the mistakes in understanding generated by these cognitive obstructions, the individual engages in defiled actions motivated by anger, envy, etc., which constitute the afflictive obstructions. The afflictive obstructions may be removed by followers of the srAvaka, pratyekabuddha, and beginning bodhisattva paths by applying various antidotes or counteragents (PRATIPAKsA) to the afflictions or defilements (KLEsA); overcoming these types of obstructions will lead to freedom from further rebirth. The cognitive obstructions, however, can only be overcome by advanced bodhisattvas who seek instead to achieve buddhahood, by perfecting their understanding of emptiness (suNYATA) and compassion (KARUnA) and amassing a great store of merit (PUnYA) by engaging in the bodhisattva deeds (CARYA). Buddhas, therefore, are the only class of beings who have overcome both types of obstructions and thus are able simultaneously to cognize all objects of knowledge in the universe. The jNeyAvarana are therefore sometimes translated as "obstructions to omniscience." In the elaboration of the obstructions in the YogAcAra text CHENG WEISHI LUN (*VijNaptimAtratAsiddhi), there are ten types of Avarana that are specifically said to obstruct the ten types of suchness (TATHATA) correlated with the ten stages of the bodhisattva path (DAsABHuMI): (1) the obstruction of the common illusions of the unenlightened (pṛthagjanatvAvarana; C. yishengxing zhang); (2) the obstruction of deluded conduct (mithyApratipattyAvarana; C. xiexing zhang); (3) the obstruction of dullness (dhandhatvAvarana; C. andun zhang); (4) the obstruction of the manifestation of subtle afflictions (suksmaklesasamudAcArAvarana; C. xihuo xianxing zhang); (5) the obstruction of the lesser HĪNAYANA ideal of PARINIRVAnA (hīnayAnaparinirvAnAvarana; C. xiasheng niepan zhang); (6) the obstruction of the manifestation of coarse characteristics (sthulanimittasamudAcArAvarana; C. cuxiang xianxing zhang); (7) the obstruction of the manifestation of subtle characteristics (suksmanimittasamudAcArAvarana; C. xixiang xianxing zhang); (8) the obstruction of the continuance of activity even in the immaterial realm that is free from characteristics (nirnimittAbhisaMskArAvarana; C. wuxiang jiaxing zhang); (9) the obstruction of not desiring to act to bring salvation to others (parahitacaryAkAmanAvarana; C. buyuxing zhang); and (10) the obstruction of not yet acquiring mastery over all things (dharmesuvasitApratilambhAvarana; fa weizizai zhang). These ten obstructions are overcome by practicing, respectively: (1) the perfection of giving (DANAPARAMITA); (2) the perfection of morality (sĪLAPARAMITA); (3) the perfection of forbearance (KsANTIPARAMITA); (4) the perfection of energetic effort (VĪRYAPARAMITA); (5) the perfection of meditative absorption (DHYANAPARAMITA); (6) the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNAPARAMITA); (7) the perfection of expedient means (UPAYAPARAMITA); (8) the perfection of the vow (to attain enlightenment) (PRAnIDHANAPARAMITA); (9) the perfection of powers (BALAPARAMITA); and (10) the perfection of omniscience (jNAnapAramitA). See also KARMAVARAnA; NĪVARAnA.
AvataMsakasutra. (T. Mdo phal po che; C. Huayan jing; J. Kegongyo; K. Hwaom kyong 華嚴經). In Sanskrit, "Garland Scripture"; also known as the BUDDHAVATAMSAKASuTRA ("Scripture of the Garland of Buddhas"), or *BuddhAvataMsakanAmamahAvaipulyasutra, the Sanskrit reconstruction of the title of the Chinese translation Dafangguang fo huayan jing, which is usually abbreviated in Chinese simply as the HUAYAN JING ("Flower Garland Scripture"). The sutra is one of the most influential Buddhist scriptures in East Asia and the foundational text of the indigenous East Asian HUAYAN ZONG. The first major edition of the AvataMsakasutra was said to have been brought from KHOTAN and was translated into Chinese by BUDDHABHADRA in 421; this recension consisted of sixty rolls and thirty-four chapters. A second, longer recension, in eighty rolls and thirty-nine chapters, was translated into Chinese by sIKsANANDA in 699; this is sometimes referred to within the Huayan tradition as the "New [translation of the] AvataMsakasutra" (Xin Huayan jing). A Tibetan translation similar to the eighty-roll recension also exists. The AvataMsakasutra is traditionally classified as a VAIPULYASuTRA; it is an encyclopedic work that brings together a number of heterogeneous texts, such as the GAndAVYuHA and DAsABHuMIKASuTRA, which circulated independently before being compiled together in this scripture. No Sanskrit recension of the AvataMsakasutra has been discovered; even the title is not known from Sanskrit sources, but is a reconstruction of the Chinese. (Recent research in fact suggests that the correct Sanskrit title might actually be BuddhAvataMsakasutra, or "Scripture of the Garland of Buddhas," rather than AvataMsakasutra.) There are, however, extant Sanskrit recensions of two of its major constituents, the Dasabhumikasutra and Gandavyuha. Given the dearth of evidence of a Sanskrit recension of the complete AvataMsakasutra, and since the scripture was first introduced to China from Khotan, some scholars have argued that the scripture may actually be of Central Asian provenance (or at very least was heavily revised in Central Asia). There also exists in Chinese translation a forty-roll recension of the AvataMsakasutra, translated by PRAJNA in 798, which roughly corresponds to the Gandavyuha, otherwise known in Chinese as the Ru fajie pin or "Chapter on the Entry into the DHARMADHATU." Little attempt is made to synthesize these disparate materials into an overarching narrative, but there is a tenuous organizational schema involving a series of different "assemblies" to which the different discourses are addressed. The Chinese tradition presumed that the AvataMsakasutra was the first sermon of the Buddha (see HUAYAN ZHAO), and the sutra's first assembly takes place at the BODHI TREE two weeks after he had attained enlightenment while he was still immersed in the samAdhi of oceanic reflection (SAGARAMUDRASAMADHI). The AvataMsaka is therefore believed to provide a comprehensive and definitive description of the Buddha's enlightenment experience from within this profound state of samAdhi. The older sixty-roll recension includes a total of eight assemblies held at seven different locations: three in the human realm and the rest in the heavens. The later eighty-roll recension, however, includes a total of nine assemblies at seven locations, a discrepancy that led to much ink in Huayan exegesis. In terms of its content, the sutra offers exuberant descriptions of myriads of world systems populated by buddhas and bodhisattvas, along with elaborate imagery focusing especially on radiant light and boundless space. The scripture is also the inspiration for the famous metaphor of INDRAJALA (Indra's Net), a canopy made of transparent jewels in which each jewel is reflected in all the others, suggesting the multivalent levels of interaction between all phenomena in the universe. The text focuses on the unitary and all-pervasive nature of enlightenment, which belongs to the realm of the Buddha of Pervasive Light, VAIROCANA, the central buddha in the AvataMsaka, who embodies the DHARMAKAYA. The sutra emphasizes the knowledge and enlightenment of the buddhas as being something that is present in all sentient beings (see TATHAGATAGARBHA and BUDDHADHATU), just as the entire universe, or trichiliocosm (S. TRISAHASRAMAHASAHASRALOKADHATU) is contained in a minute mote of dust. This notion of interpenetration or interfusion (YUANRONG) is stressed in the thirty-second chapter of Buddhabhadra's translation, whose title bears the influential term "nature origination" (XINGQI). The sutra, especially in FAZANG's authoritative exegesis, is presumed to set forth a distinctive presentation of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA) in terms of the dependence of the whole on its parts, stressing the unity of the universe and its emptiness (suNYATA) of inherent nature; dependent origination here emerges as a profound ecological vision in which the existence of any one thing is completely dependent on the existence of all other things and all things on any one thing. Various chapters of the sutra were also interpreted as providing the locus classicus for the exhaustive fifty-two stage MahAyAna path (MARGA) to buddhahood, which included the ten faiths (only implied in the scripture), the ten abodes, ten practices, ten dedications, and ten stages (DAsABHuMI), plus the two stages of awakening itself: virtual enlightenment (dengjue) and sublime enlightenment (miaojue). This soteriological process was then illustrated through the peregrinations of the lad SUDHANA to visit his religious mentors, each of whom is identified with one of these specific stages; Sudhana's lengthy pilgrimage is described in great detail in the massive final chapter (a third of the entire scripture), the Gandavyuha, titled in the AvataMsakasutra the "Entry into the DharmadhAtu" chapter (Ru fajie pin). The evocative and widely quoted statement in the "Brahmacarya" chapter that "at the time of the initial arousal of the aspiration for enlightenment (BODHICITTOTPADA), complete, perfect enlightenment (ANUTTARASAMYAKSAMBODHI) is already achieved" was also influential in the development of the East Asian notion of sudden enlightenment (DUNWU), since it implied that awakening could be achieved in an instant of sincere aspiration, without requiring three infinite eons (ASAMKHYEYAKALPA) of religious training. Chinese exegetes who promoted this sutra reserved the highest place for it in their scriptural taxonomies (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) and designated it the "perfect" or "consummate" teaching (YUANJIAO) of Buddhism. Many commentaries on and exegeses of the sutra are extant, among which the most influential are those written by FAZANG, ZHIYAN, CHENGGUAN, LI TONGXUAN, GUIFENG ZONGMI, WoNHYO, ŬISANG, and MYoE KoBEN.
“Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development—Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable.” Letters on Yoga
avavAda. (P. ovAda; T. gdams ngag; C. jiaodaolun; J. kyodoron; K. kyodoron 教導論). In Sanskrit, "admonitions" or "instructions"; oral instructions that provide practical advice to a student. These may include instructions given to a monk or nun, or instructions on how to put into practice a particular doctrine or teaching. The term carries the connotation of advice drawn from experience in contrast to learning derived from books, although a true practitioner is said to be someone who can see all of the SuTRAs and sASTRAs as avavAda. The term often appears in compound with its near-synonym anusAsanī as "admonition and instruction" (avavAdAnusAsanī). The compound OVADAPAtIMOKKHA (S. *avavAdaprAtimoksa) is also used to refer to a foundational disciplinary code (PRATIMOKsA) handed down by the past buddha VIPAsYIN (P. Vipassī), which is believed to summarize the teachings fundamental to all the buddhas; it is found in the MAHAPADANASUTTANTA [DĪGHANIKAYA no. 14] and DHAMMAPADA v. 183: "Not doing anything evil,/Undertaking what is wholesome,/Purifying one's mind:/This is the teaching of the buddhas" (P. sabbapApassa akaranaM/kusalassupasampadA/sacittapariyodapanaM/etaM buddhAna sAsanaM). This verse has been widely incorporated into THERAVADA Buddhist rituals and ceremonies. According to the ABHISAMAYALAMKARA, in the PRAJNAPARAMITA sutras, there are distinct avavAda for each stage of the bodhisattva path (MARGA) corresponding to the twenty-two stages of BODHICITTA.
avidyA. (P. avijjA; T. ma rig pa; C. wuming; J. mumyo; K. mumyong 無明). In Sanskrit, "ignorance"; the root cause of suffering (DUḤKHA) and one of the key terms in Buddhism. Ignorance occurs in many contexts in Buddhist doctrine. For example, ignorance is the first link in the twelvefold chain of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA) that sustains the cycle of birth and death (SAMSARA); it is the condition that creates the predispositions (SAMSKARA) that lead to rebirth and thus inevitably to old age and death. Ignorance is also listed as one of the root afflictions (S. MuLAKLEsA) and the ten "fetters" (SAMYOJANA) that keep beings bound to saMsAra. AvidyA is closely synonymous with "delusion" (MOHA), one of the three unwholesome roots (AKUsALAMuLA). When they are distinguished, moha may be more of a generic foolishness and benightedness, whereas avidyA is instead an obstinate misunderstanding about the nature of the person and the world. According to ASAnGA's ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA, for example, moha is the factor of nescience, while avidyA is the active misconstruction of the nature of reality; he uses the analogy of twilight (= moha) falling on a coiled rope (= reality), which someone in the darkness wrongly conceives to be a snake (= avidyA). Due to the pervasive influence of ignorance, the deluded sentient being (PṚTHAGJANA) sees what is not self as self, what is impermanent as permanent, what is impure as pure, and what is painful as pleasurable (see VIPARYASA); and due to this confusion, one is subject to persistent suffering (duḥkha) and continued rebirth. The inveterate propensity toward ignorance is first arrested in the experience of stream-entry (see SROTAAPANNA), which eliminates the three cognitive fetters of belief in a perduring self (SATKAYADṚstI), attachment to rules and rituals (S. sĪLAVRATAPARAMARsA), and skeptical doubt (S. VICIKITSA). AvidyA is gradually alleviated at the stages of once-returners (SAKṚDAGAMIN) and nonreturners (ANAGAMIN), and permanently eliminated at the stage of arhatship (see ARHAT), the fourth and highest degree of sanctity in mainstream Buddhism (see ARYAPUDGALA).
Ayin (Nothingness) :::For further explanation see: Ten stages of G-d&
BARBARISM, STAGE OF The first or lowest of man&
Bde lam lam rim. (Delam Lamrim). In Tibetan, "The Stages of the Easy Path," an important "stages of the path" (LAM RIM) treatise composed by the first PAn CHEN LAMA BLO BZANG CHOS KYI RGYAL MTSHAN. The work's complete title is Byang chub lam gyi rim pa'i khrid yig thams cad mkhyen par bgrod pa'i bde lam.
beta testing ::: (programming) Testing a pre-release (potentially unreliable) version of a piece of software by making it available to selected users. This term derives from early 1960s terminology for product cycle checkpoints, first used at IBM but later standard throughout the industry.Alpha test was the unit, module, or component test phase; Beta Test was initial system test. These themselves came from earlier A- and B-tests for today's beta) was the B-test performed on early samples of the production design.An item in beta test is thus mostly working but still under test. In the Real World, systems (hardware or software) often go through two stages of release testing: Alpha (in-house) and Beta (out-house?). Beta releases are generally made available to a small number of lucky (or unlucky), trusted customers. (1996-11-05)
BhAvanAkrama. (T. Sgom rim). In Sanskrit, "Stages of Meditation," the title of three separate but related works by the late-eighth century Indian master KAMALAsĪLA. During the reign of the Tibetan king KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN at the end of the eighth century, there were two Buddhist factions at court, a Chinese faction led by the Northern Chan (BEI ZONG) monk Heshang Moheyan (MahAyAna) and an Indian faction of the recently deceased sANTARAKsITA, who with the king and PADMASAMBHAVA had founded the first Tibetan monastery at BSAM YAS (Samye). According to traditional accounts, sAntaraksita foretold of dangers and left instructions in his will that his student Kamalasīla should be summoned from India. A conflict seems to have developed between the Indian and Chinese partisans (and their allies in the Tibetan court) over the question of the nature of enlightenment, with the Indians holding that enlightenment takes place as the culmination of a gradual process of purification, the result of perfecting morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMADHI), and wisdom (PRAJNA). The Chinese spoke against this view, holding that enlightenment was the intrinsic nature of the mind rather than the goal of a protracted path, such that one need simply to recognize the presence of this innate nature of enlightenment by entering a state of awareness beyond distinctions; all other practices were superfluous. According to both Chinese and Tibetan records, a debate was held between Kamalasīla and Moheyan at Bsam yas, circa 797, with the king himself serving as judge (see BSAM YAS DEBATE). According to Tibetan reports (contradicted by the Chinese accounts), Kamalasīla was declared the winner and Moheyan and his party banished from Tibet, with the king proclaiming that thereafter the MADHYAMAKA school of Indian Buddhist philosophy (to which sAntaraksita and Kamalasīla belonged) would have pride of place in Tibet. ¶ According to Tibetan accounts, after the conclusion of the debate, the king requested that Kamalasīla compose works that presented his view, and in response, Kamalasīla composed the three BhAvanAkrama. There is considerable overlap among the three works. All three are germane to the issues raised in the debate, although whether all three were composed in Tibet is not established with certainty; only the third, and briefest of the three, directly considers, and refutes, the view of "no mental activity" (amanasikAra, cf. WUNIAN), which is associated with Moheyan. The three texts set forth the process for the potential BODHISATTVA to cultivate BODHICITTA and then develop sAMATHA and VIPAsYANA and progress through the bodhisattva stages (BHuMI) to buddhahood. The cultivation of vipasyanA requires the use of both scripture (AGAMA) and reasoning (YUKTI) to understand emptiness (suNYATA); in the first BhAvanAkrama, Kamalasīla sets forth the three forms of wisdom (prajNA): the wisdom derived from learning (sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNA), the wisdom derived from reflection (CINTAMAYĪPRAJNA), and the wisdom derived from cultivation (BHAVANAMAYĪPRAJNA), explaining that the last of these gradually destroys the afflictive obstructions (KLEsAVARAnA) and the obstructions to omniscience (JNEYAVARAnA). The second BhAvanAkrama considers many of these same topics, stressing that the achievement of the fruition of buddhahood requires the necessary causes, in the form of the collection of merit (PUnYASAMBHARA) and the collection of wisdom (JNANASAMBHARA). Both the first and second works espouse the doctrine of mind-only (CITTAMATRA); it is on the basis of these and other statements that Tibetan doxographers classified Kamalasīla as a YOGACARA-SVATANTRIKA-MADHYAMAKA. The third and briefest of the BhAvanAkrama is devoted especially to the topics of samatha and vipasyanA, how each is cultivated, and how they are ultimately unified. Kamalasīla argues that analysis (VICARA) into the lack of self (ATMAN) in both persons (PUDGALA) and phenomena (DHARMA) is required to arrive at a nonconceptual state of awareness. The three texts are widely cited in later Tibetan Buddhist literature, especially on the process for developing samatha and vipasyanA.
bhAvanAmArga. (T. sgom lam; C. xiudao; J. shudo; K. sudo 修道). In Sanskrit, "the path of cultivation" or "path of meditation"; the fourth of the five stages of the path (MARGA) in the SARVASTIVADA soteriological system (also adopted in the MAHAYANA), which follows the path of vision or insight (DARsANAMARGA) and precedes the adept path where no further training is necessary (AsAIKsAMARGA). In the SarvAstivAda path schema, the path of vision consists of fifteen thought-moments, with a subsequent sixteenth moment marking the beginning of the path of cultivation (BHAVANAMARGA). This sixteenth moment, that of subsequent knowledge (ANVAYAJNANA) of the truth of the path (mArga), is, in effect, the knowledge that all of the afflictions (KLEsA) of both the subtle-materiality realm (RuPADHATU) and the immaterial realm (ARuPYADHATU) that are associated with the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS have been abandoned. As a result, the meditator destroys all causes for future rebirth as an animal, ghost, or hell denizen, but is not liberated from rebirth altogether and may still be reborn as a human or divinity. The more deeply rooted afflictions are destroyed over the course of the path of cultivation. For each of the nine levels of the three realms of rebirth-the sensuous realm (with one level), the realm of subtle materiality (with four levels), and the immaterial realm (with four levels)-there are nine levels of afflictions (KLEsA), from the most coarse to the most insidious, making eighty-one levels of affliction to be destroyed. As was the case with the path of vision, these defilements must be destroyed in a two-step process: the actual destruction of the particular affliction and the knowledge that it has been destroyed. There are therefore 162 "moments" of the abandoning of afflictions. This process, which takes place over the course of the path of cultivation, may occur over several lifetimes. However, when the 162nd stage is reached, and the subtlest of the subtle afflictions associated with the ninth level-that is, the fourth absorption of the immaterial realm-has been abandoned, the adept is then liberated from rebirth. The bhAvanAmArga is one of the "paths of the nobles" (ARYAMARGA) and one on this stage is immune to any possibility of retrogression and is assured of eventually achieving NIRVAnA. Reference is also sometimes made to the mundane path of cultivation (LAUKIKA-bhAvanAmArga), which refers to the three trainings (TRIsIKsA) in morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMADHI), and wisdom (PRAJNA) as they are developed before the first of the three fetters (SAMYOJANA) is eradicated and insight achieved. In the MahAyAna path system, with variations between YOGACARA and MADHYAMAKA, the bhAvanAmArga is the period in which the BODHISATTVA proceeds through the ten BHuMIs and destroys the afflictive obstructions (KLEsAVARAnA) and the obstructions to omniscience (JNEYAVARAnA).
biological rhythms: activity that occur with some regularity in an organism.Infradian rhythms occur less than once a day (e.g. human menstrual cycle), circadian rhythms repeat themselves every 24 hours (e.g. sleep/waking cycle), andultradian rhythms more than once a day (e.g. stages of sleep during one night).
Bka' gdams. (Kadam). An early sect of Tibetan Buddhism. In Tibetan, BKA' (ka) is the word of the Buddha or an enlightened master, and gdams (dam) means "to instruct"; traditionally the compound is parsed as "those who take all of the Buddha's words as instruction." Another etymology associates the word bka' with the words of ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNANA, whose followers began the early sect of Tibetan Buddhism, and in place of gdams "to advise" understands dam "to bind," hence, "those who hold his sacred words as binding." The origins of the sect are traced back to the founding of RWA SGRENG monastery in 1056 by Atisa's foremost disciple and interpreter 'BROM STON RGYAL BA'I 'BYUNG GNAS. The three main students of 'Brom ston pa are Po to ba Rin chen gsal (Potowa), Spyan mnga' ba Tshul khrims 'bar (Chen Ngawa), and Bu chung ba Gzhon nu rgyal mtshan (Bu chungwa), from whom originate the three principal Bka' gdams lineages (bka' babs): (1) the authoritative treatises (gzhung) lineage, (2) the essential instruction (gdams ngag) lineage, and (3) the oral instruction (man ngag) lineage, respectively. Po to ba's authoritative treatise lineage emphasized the close study of six paired fundamental Buddhist treatises: the BODHISATTVABHuMI and MAHAYANASuTRALAMKARA, the BODHICARYAVATARA and sIKsASAMUCCAYA, and the JATAKAMALA and UDANAVARGA. The teachings of the lineage of oral instructions are collected in the BKA' GDAMS GLEGS BAM PHA CHOS BU CHOS. The sect is probably best known for its strict discipline and austerity of practice, but the Gsang phu ne'u thog Bka' gdams lineage that is traced back to the founding of the monastery of GSANG PHU NE'U THOG in about 1073 by RNGOG LEGS PA'I SHES RAB, an immediate disciple of Atisa, and his nephew, the translator RNGOG BLO LDAN SHES RAB, gave the Bka' gdams a well-deserved reputation as a sect of great learning. Monks from Gsang phu ne'u thog like PHYWA PA CHOS KYI SENG GE wrote important works on PRAMAnA (logic and epistemology) and formalized debate (rtsod rigs). The Bka' gdams was responsible for the distinctive Tibetan BSTAN RIM (tenrim) ("stages of teaching") genre, based on Atisa's seminal work, the BODHIPATHAPRADĪPA. This genre was later adapted and popularized by TSONG KHA PA in his influential LAM RIM CHEN MO. Tsong kha pa idealized Atisa as the perfect teacher and his early DGE LUGS PA followers, first called Dga' ldan pa (Gandenpa) after the DGA' LDAN monastery he founded, were also known as the new Bka' gdams pa. After the rise of the Dge lugs sect, the Bka' gdams disappeared from Tibetan history, for reasons still not fully understood, with only the monasteries of Rwa sgreng and SNAR THANG retaining their original affiliation.
bodhicitta. (T. byang chub kyi sems; C. putixin; J. bodaishin; K. porisim 菩提心). In Sanskrit, "thought of enlightenment" or "aspiration to enlightenment"; the intention to reach the complete, perfect enlightenment (ANUTTARASAMYAKSAMBODHI) of the buddhas, in order to liberate all sentient beings in the universe from suffering. As the generative cause that leads to the eventual achievement of buddhahood and all that it represents, bodhicitta is one of the most crucial terms in MAHAYANA Buddhism. The achievement of bodhicitta marks the beginning of the BODHISATTVA path: bodhicitta refers to the aspiration that inspires the bodhisattva, the being who seeks buddhahood. In some schools of MahAyAna Buddhism, bodhicitta is conceived as being latent in all sentient beings as the "innately pure mind" (prakṛtiparisuddhacitta), as, for example, in the MAHAVAIROCANABHISAMBODHISuTRA: "Knowing one's own mind according to reality is BODHI, and bodhicitta is the innately pure mind that is originally existent." In this sense, bodhicitta was conceived as a universal principle, related to such terms as DHARMAKAYA, TATHAGATA, or TATHATA. However, not all schools of the MahAyAna (e.g., some strands of YOGACARA) hold that all beings are destined for buddhahood and, thus, not all beings are endowed with bodhicitta. Regardless of whether or not bodhicitta is regarded as somehow innate, however, bodhicitta is also a quality of mind that must be developed, hence the important term BODHICITTOTPADA, "generation of the aspiration to enlightenment." Both the BODHISATTVABHuMI and the MAHAYANASuTRALAMKARA provide a detailed explanation of bodhicitta. In late Indian MahAyAna treatises by such important authors as sANTIDEVA, KAMALAsĪLA, and ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNANA, techniques are set forth for cultivating bodhicitta. The development of bodhicitta also figures heavily in MahAyAna liturgies, especially in those where one receives the bodhisattva precepts (BODHISATTVASAMVARA). In this literature, two types of bodhicitta are enumerated. First, the "conventional bodhicitta" (SAMVṚTIBODHICITTA) refers to a bodhisattva's mental aspiration to achieve enlightenment, as described above. Second, the "ultimate bodhicitta" (PARAMARTHABODHICITTA) refers to the mind that directly realizes either emptiness (suNYATA) or the enlightenment inherent in the mind. This "conventional bodhicitta" is further subdivided between PRAnIDHICITTOTPADA, literally, "aspirational creation of the attitude" (where "attitude," CITTA, refers to bodhicitta), where one makes public one's vow (PRAnIDHANA) to attain buddhahood; and PRASTHANACITTOTPADA, literally "creation of the attitude of setting out," where one actually sets out to practice the path to buddhahood. In discussing this latter pair, sAntideva in his BODHICARYAVATARA compares the first type to the decision to undertake a journey and the second type to actually setting out on the journey; in the case of the bodhisattva path, then, the first therefore refers to the process of developing the aspiration to buddhahood for the sake of others, while the second refers to undertaking the various practices of the bodhisattva path, such as the six perfections (PARAMITA). The AVATAMSAKASuTRA describes three types of bodhicitta, those like a herder, a ferryman, and a king. In the first case the bodhisattva first delivers all others into enlightenment before entering enlightenment himself, just as a herder takes his flock into the pen before entering the pen himself; in the second case, they all enter enlightenment together, just as a ferryman and his passengers arrive together at the further shore; and in the third, the bodhisattva first reaches enlightenment and then helps others to reach the goal, just as a king first ascends to the throne and then benefits his subjects. A standard definition of bodhicitta is found at the beginning of the ABHISAMAYALAMKARA, where it is defined as an intention or wish that has two aims: buddhahood, and the welfare of those beings whom that buddhahood will benefit; the text also gives a list of twenty-two types of bodhicitta, with examples for each. Later writers like Arya VIMUKTISENA and HARIBHADRA locate the AbhisamayAlaMkAra's twenty-two types of bodhicitta at different stages of the bodhisattva path and at enlightenment. At the beginning of his MADHYAMAKAVATARA, CANDRAKĪRTI compares compassion (KARUnA) to a seed, water, and crops and says it is important at the start (where compassion begins the bodhisattva's path), in the middle (where it sustains the bodhisattva and prevents a fall into the limited NIRVAnA of the ARHAT), and at the end when buddhahood is attained (where it explains the unending, spontaneous actions for the sake of others that derive from enlightenment). KarunA is taken to be a cause of bodhicitta because bodhicitta initially arises and ultimately will persist, only if MAHAKARUnA ("great empathy for others' suffering") is strong. In part because of its connotation as a generative force, in ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA, bodhicitta comes also to refer to semen, especially in the practice of sexual yoga, where the physical seed (BĪJA) of awakening (representing UPAYA) is placed in the lotus of wisdom (PRAJNA).
Bodhipathapradīpa. (T. Byang chub lam gyi sgron ma). In Sanskrit, "Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment"; a work composed by the Indian scholar ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNANA at THO LING GTSUG LAG KHANG shortly after he arrived in Tibet in 1042. Tibetan histories often note that Atisa wrote this text in order to clarify problematic points of Buddhist practice, especially TANTRA, which were thought to have degenerated and become distorted, and to show that tantra did not render basic Buddhist practice irrelevant. The Bodhipathapradīpa emphasizes a gradual training in the practices of the MAHAYANA and VAJRAYANA and became a prototype and textual basis first for the bstan rim, or "stages of the teaching" genre, and then for the genre of Tibetan religious literature known as LAM RIM, or "stages of the path." It is also an early source for the instructions and practice of BLO SBYONG, or "mind training." Atisa wrote his own commentary (paNjikA) (Commentary on the Difficult Points of the Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment) to the text. The text says bodhisattvas must first follow one of the sets of PRATIMOKsA disciplinary rules; based on those precepts, they practice the six perfections (PARAMITA); with those perfections as a solid foundation, they finally practice Buddhist tantra.
Bodhisattvabhumi. (T. Byang chub sems dpa'i sa; C. Pusa dichi jing; J. Bosatsujijikyo; K. Posal chiji kyong 菩薩地持經). In Sanskrit, "The Bodhisattva Stages"; a treatise on the entire vocation and training of a BODHISATTVA, attributed to MAITREYA/MAITREYANATHA or ASAnGA (c. fourth century CE), the effective founder of the YOGACARA school. Sanskrit and Tibetan recensions are extant, as well as three different renderings in Chinese: (1) Pusa dichi jing, translated by DHARMAKsEMA between 414-421 CE, which is also abbreviated as the "Treatise on the Bodhisattva Stages" (C. Dichi lun; J. Jijiron; K. Chiji non); (2) Pusa shanjie jing, translated by GUnAVARMAN in 431 CE; and (3) a version incorporated as the fifteenth section of XUANZANG's Chinese translation of Asanga's YOGACARABHuMIsASTRA. In the Tibetan BSTAN 'GYUR, the Bodhisattvabhumi appears as the sixteenth and penultimate part of the fundamental section (sa'i dngos gzhi) of the YogAcArabhumi (which has a total of seventeen sections), but it is set apart as a separate work in 6,000 lines. The Bodhisattvabhumi explains in three major sections the career and practices of a bodhisattva. The chapters on the abodes (vihArapatala) in the second major division and the chapter on stages (bhumipatala) in the third section are considered especially important, because they provide a systematic outline of the soteriological process by which a bodhisattva attains enlightenment. ¶ In contrast to the ten stages (DAsABHuMI) of the bodhisattva path that are described in the DAsABHuMIKASuTRA, the Bodhisattvabhumi instead outlines a system of seven stages (BHuMI), which are then correlated with the thirteen abodes (VIHARA): (1) The stage of innate potentiality (gotrabhumi), which corresponds to the abode of innate potentiality (gotravihAra); (2) the stage of the practice of resolute faith (adhimukticaryAbhumi), corresponding to the abode of resolute faith (adhimukticaryAvihAra); (3) the stage of superior aspiration (suddhAdhyAsayabhumi), which corresponds to the abode of extreme bliss (pramuditavihAra); (4) the stage of carrying out correct practices (caryApratipattibhumi), which includes the abode of superior morality (adhisīlavihAra), the abode of superior concentration (adhicittavihAra), and the abode of the superior wisdom (adhiprajNavihAra), i.e., the abode of superior insight associated with the factors of enlightenment (bodhipaksyapratisaMyukto 'dhiprajNavihAra), the abode of superior insight associated with the truths (satyapratisaMyukto 'dhiprajNavihAra), the abode of superior insight associated with the cessation of dependently arisen transmigration (pratītyasamutpAdapravṛttinivṛttipratisaMyukto 'dhiprajNavihAra), and the signless abode of applied practices and exertion (sAbhisaMskArasAbhoganirnimittavihAra); (5) the stage of certainty (niyatabhumi), which is equivalent to the signless abode that is free from application and exertion (anAbhoganirnimittavihAra); (6) the stage of determined practice (niyatacaryAbhumi), which corresponds to the abode of analytical knowledge (pratisaMvidvihAra); (7) the stage of arriving at the ultimate (nisthAgamanabhumi), which correlates with the abode of ultimate consummation [viz., of bodhisattvahood] (paramavihAra) and the abode of the tathAgata (tathAgatavihAra). In this schema, the first two stages are conceived as preliminary stages of the bodhisattva path: the first stage, the stage of innate potentiality (gotrabhumi), is presumed to be a state in which the aspiration for enlightenment (BODHICITTA) has yet to be generated; the second stage, the stage of the practice of resolute faith (adhimukticaryAbhumi), is referred to as the stage of preparation (saMbhArAvasthA) and applied practice (prayogAvasthA) in the case of the fivefold YOGACARA mArga schema, or alternatively to the ten faiths, ten abodes, ten practices, and ten dedications in the case of the comprehensive fifty-two stage bodhisattva path presented in the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, PUSA YINGLUO BENYE JING, and RENWANG JING. The third stage, the stage of superior aspiration, is regarded as corresponding to the first of the ten bhumis in the Dasabhumikasutra; the fourth stage of carrying out correct practices corresponds to the second through seventh bhumis in that rival schema; the fifth stage of certainty pertains to the eighth bhumi; the stage of determined practice to the ninth bhumi; and the stage of arriving at the ultimate to the tenth bhumi. In fact, however, the seven-bhumi schema of the Bodhisattvabhumi and the ten-bhumi schema of the Dasabhumikasutra developed independently of each other and it requires consider exegetical aplomb to correlate them. ¶ The Bodhisattvabhumi also serves as an important source of information on another crucial feature of bodhisattva practice: the MahAyAna interpretation of a set of moral codes specific to bodhisattvas (BODHISATTVAsĪLA). The chapter on precepts (sīlapatala) in the first major section of the text provides an elaborate description of MahAyAna precepts, which constitute the bodhisattva's perfection of morality (sĪLAPARAMITA). These precepts are classified into the "three sets of pure precepts" (trividhAni sīlAni; C. sanju jingjie, see sĪLATRAYA; TRISAMVARA): (1) the saMvarasīla, or "restraining precepts," (cf. SAMVARA), which refers to the "HĪNAYANA" rules of discipline (PRATIMOKsA) that help adepts restrain themselves from all types of unsalutary conduct; (2) practicing all virtuous deeds (kusaladharmasaMgrAhakasīla), which accumulates all types of salutary conduct; and (3) sattvArthakriyAsīla, which involve giving aid and comfort to sentient beings. Here, the first group corresponds to the generic hīnayAna precepts, while the second and third groups are regarded as reflecting a specifically MahAyAna position on morality. Thus, the three sets of pure precepts are conceived as a comprehensive description of Buddhist views on precepts, which incorporates both hīnayAna and MahAyAna perspectives into an overarching system. A similar treatment of the three sets of pure precepts is also found in the Chinese apocryphal sutra FANWANG JING (see APOCRYPHA), thus providing a scriptural foundation in East Asia for an innovation originally appearing in an Indian treatise. ¶ In Tibet, the Bodhisattvabhumi was a core text of the BKA' GDAMS sect, and its chapter on sīla was the basis for a large body of literature elaborating a VINAYA-type ritual for taking bodhisattva precepts in a MahAyAna ordination ceremony. The SA SKYA PA master Grags pa rgyal mtshan's explanation of CANDRAGOMIN's synopsis of the morality chapter, and TSONG KHA PA's Byang chub gzhung lam are perhaps the best known works in this genre. In Tibet, the SDOM GSUM genre incorporates the Bodhisattvabhumi's three sets of pure precepts into a new scheme that reconciles hīnayAna and MahAyAna with TANTRA.
bodhisattvabhumi. (T. byang chub sems dpa'i sa; C. pusa di; J. bosatsuji; K. posal chi 菩薩地). In Sanskrit, lit. "ground" or "stage" (BHuMI) of a BODHISATTVA, referring to the systematic stages along the path (MARGA) of a bodhisattva's maturation into a buddha. A normative list of ten bhumis, which becomes standard in many MAHAYANA accounts of the bodhisattva path, appears in the DAsABHuMIKASuTRA, a sutra that was later incorporated into the AVATAMSAKASuTRA compilation. These ten stages (DAsABHuMI) of the Dasabhumikasutra correspond to the forty-first to fiftieth stages among the fifty-two bodhisattva stages, the comprehensive outline of the entire bodhisattva path taught in such scriptures as the AvataMsakasutra, the PUSA YINGLUO BENYE JING, and the RENWANG JING. The first bhumi begins on the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA), and the other nine bhumis occur on the path of cultivation (BHAVANAMARGA). (For detailed explication of each stage, see DAsABHuMI s.v.) The PRAJNAPARAMITA SuTRAs, and the MAHAYANASuTRALAMKARA and ABHISAMAYALAMKARA in their exegesis of these stages, explain that bodhisattvas reach each higher level along the path after completing the preparations (parikarman) for it; they set forth the same ten levels as the Dasabhumikasutra with the same names. Arya VIMUKTISENA, in his exegesis of the AbhisamayAlaMkAra, says bodhisattvas on the tenth bhumi are like TATHAGATAs who have passed beyond all stages, and lists eight other stages corresponding roughly to the stages of the eight noble persons (ARYAPUDGALA), with the first through ninth bodhisattva bhumis described as a transcendent ninth level. In contrast to the normative ten bhumis described in the Dasabhumikasutra, MAITREYANATHA/ASAnGA in the BODHISATTVABHuMI instead outlines a system of seven stages (bhumi), which are then correlated with the thirteen abodes (VIHARA). (See the following entry on the treatise for further explication.) The seven-bhumi schema of the Bodhisattvabhumi and the ten-bhumi schema of the Dasabhumikasutra are independent systematizations.
bodhisattva. (P. bodhisatta; T. byang chub sems dpa'; C. pusa; J. bosatsu; K. posal 菩薩). In Sanskrit, lit. "enlightenment being." The etymology is uncertain, but the term is typically glossed to mean a "being (SATTVA) intent on achieving enlightenment (BODHI)," viz., a being who has resolved to become a buddha. In the MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS, the Buddha refers to himself in his many past lifetimes prior to his enlightenment as a bodhisattva; the word is thus generally reserved for the historical Buddha prior to his own enlightenment. In the MAHAYANA traditions, by contrast, a bodhisattva can designate any being who resolves to generate BODHICITTA and follow the vehicle of the bodhisattvas (BODHISATTVAYANA) toward the achievement of buddhahood. The MahAyAna denotation of the term first appears in the AstASAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA, considered one of the earliest MahAyAna sutras, suggesting that it was already in use in this sense by at least the first century BCE. Schools differ on the precise length and constituent stages of the bodhisattva path (MARGA), but generally agree that it encompasses a huge number of lifetimes-according to many presentations, three incalculable eons of time (ASAMKHYEYAKALPA)-during which the bodhisattva develops specific virtues known as perfections (PARAMITA) and proceeds through a series of stages (BHuMI). Although all traditions agree that the bodhisattva is motivated by "great compassion" (MAHAKARUnA) to achieve buddhahood as quickly as possible, Western literature often describes the bodhisattva as someone who postpones his enlightenment in order to save all beings from suffering. This description is primarily relevant to the mainstream schools, where an adherent is said to recognize his ability to achieve the enlightenment of an ARHAT more quickly by following the teachings of a buddha, but chooses instead to become a bodhisattva; by choosing this longer course, he perfects himself over many lifetimes in order to achieve the superior enlightenment of a buddha at a point in the far-distant future when the teachings of the preceding buddha have completely disappeared. In the MahAyAna, the nirvAna of the arhat is disparaged and is regarded as far inferior to buddhahood. Thus, the bodhisattva postpones nothing, instead striving to achieve buddhahood as quickly as possible. In both the mainstream and MahAyana traditions, the bodhisattva, spending his penultimate lifetime in the TUsITA heaven, takes his final rebirth in order to become a buddha and restore the dharma to the world. MAITREYA is the bodhisattva who will succeed the dispensation (sASANA) of the current buddha, GAUTAMA or sAKYAMUNI; he is said to be waiting in the tusita heaven, until the conditions are right for him to take his final rebirth and become the next buddha in the lineage. In the MahAyAna tradition, many bodhisattvas are described as having powers that rival or even surpass those of the buddhas themselves, and come to symbolize specific spiritual qualities, such as AVALOKITEsVARA (the bodhisattva of compassion), MANJUsRĪ (the bodhisattva of wisdom), VAJRAPAnI (the bodhisattva of power), and SAMANTABHADRA (the bodhisattva of extensive practice). In Western literature, these figures are sometimes referred to as "celestial bodhisattvas." ¶ In Korea, the term posal also designates laywomen residents of monasteries, who assist with the menial chores of cooking, preserving food, doing laundry, etc. These posal are often widows or divorcées, who work for the monastery in exchange for room and board for themselves and their children. The posal will often serve the monastery permanently and end up retiring there as well.
Bones The hard tissues that constitute the framework or skeleton of the physical body. They have an organic matrix for the inorganic mineral salts, which go through cycles of dissolution, changed location, crystallization, and reconstruction. Mineral molecules dissolving in their matrix and re-forming themselves anew occurs at that zero-point of transition between the living mineral matter and that of the live animal tissue. This transformation of the mineral atom through crystallization is “the same function, and bears the same relation to its inorganic (so-called) upadhi (or basis) as the formation of cells to their organic nuclei, through plant, insect and animal into man” (SD 2:255). The bones also furnish blood cells and mineral content to the blood stream. In the embryonic resume of racial imbodiments, the process of ossification appears after the progressive stages of its protoplasmic, gelatinous, and cartilaginous frames, analogous to those forms through which nascent humanity passed in the first two and one-half root-races. With the deposit of bones in the fetal framework, and its functional relation to the blood, and with the development of the placenta and of the organs in the mesoderm, the conditions review the gradual physicalization of the gelatinous androgynes of the early third root-race into the bisexual humanity with organized functions like the present mammalian type.
bstan rim. (tenrim). In Tibetan, "stages of the doctrine"; a genre of Tibetan Buddhist literature similar to the "stages of the path" (LAM RIM), of which it is a precursor. Bstan rim texts present a systematic and comprehensive outline of Tibetan Buddhist thought, although they generally differ from "stages of the path" works by referring strictly to MAHAYANA doctrine and avoiding the typology of three spiritual levels of individuals (skyes bu gsum): these are, following the explanation of TSONG KHA PA in his LAM RIM CHEN MO, the individual whose practice leads to a good rebirth, a middling type of individual whose practice leads to NIRVAnA, and the great person whose MahAyAna practice as a BODHISATTVA leads to buddhahood for the sake of all beings. However, the differences between bstan rim and lam rim texts are often blurred; the THAR PA RIN PO CHE'I RGYAN ("Jewel Ornament of Liberation") by SGAM PO PA BSOD NAMS RIN CHEN, for example, is often designated as a "stages of the path" work, although it might more precisely be classified as "stages of the doctrine." Early examples of bstan rim treatises were written at GSANG PHU NE'U THOG monastery by RNGOG BLO LDAN SHES RAB and his followers.
Castle of the Inferior Man: In mysticism, the allegorical name of the seven stages of the soul’s ascent toward the Divinity.
Castration Anxiety ::: According to Freud&
Catatonia [from Greek kata down + tonos tension] Referred to as tension-insanity, this condition is marked with successive stages of psychological depression, excitement, and stupor; the typical symptoms are peculiar mannerisms, stereotyped movements, a cataleptoid muscular rigidity, and great mental and physical stubbornness. There may be hallucinations, depressing illusions, or fantastic religious ideas, or sudden impulsions of violence or indecency, and there is always a dulling of the higher emotional and ethical feelings. After an attack, the person often admits that he has been acting perversely, foolishly, or childishly, but explains that he could not help it. When analyzed in the light of composite human nature, and of the action of different principles during life and after death, the peculiar conditions are explainable. Evidently the sufferers are overcome by some besieging astral entity of kama-rupic nature; or in certain cases by aggregated or collected thought-impressions of former emotional and lower mental storms, excitements, or passion, which at times of ethical inattention flow back upon the brain-mind and affect the receptive body and its nervous system, so that these cases are really reactional effects of precedaneous causes which may even go back in time to a preceding life or lives.
Causality ::: The process through which the diversity of dualistic experiences emerge that characterize a current state of awareness, a particular thread or stream of Mind. The Kabbalah is one system that attempts to model this causal process that emanates stages of awareness from Consciousness amid similar maps that depict this ontological stacking of "selves". The Causal Plane is considered outside of the realm of causality because dualistic experience emanates from the Causal: the actual existence of dualistic experience is predicated on a Non-Duality of experience. This is a complex topic and active area of research; causality heavily determines the current form and subjective nature of Mind. See also Samsara and Karma.
central core: this exists in all vertebrates. The central core regulates the basic life processes such as breathing, pulse, arousal, movement, balance, sleep and also the early stages of processing sensory information. The central core includes the thalamus, pons, cerebellum, reticular formation and medulla.
Chakra: In Yogi philosophy, one of the stages of the development of spiritual force in man.
Chaos (Greek) [from chaino to gape, yawn open] “The earth was without form and void,” says Genesis in describing the first stages of cosmogony. In Greek mythology contains the same idea of the primordial emptiness and formlessness which precedes the rebirth of a universe after pralaya. It was the vacant and spiritual space which existed before the creation of the universe or of the world; from it proceeded Darkness and Night. Chaos is “chaotic” only in the sense that its constituents are unformed and unorganized; it is the kosmic storehouse of all the latent or resting seeds from former manvantaras. It means space — not the Boundless, parabrahman-mulaprakriti, but the space of any particular hierarchy descending into manifestation. In one sense it is the condition of a solar system or planetary chain during its pralaya, containing all the elements in an undifferentiated state. Aether and chaos are the two principles immediately posterior to the first principle.
Ch'ont'ae sagyo ŭi. (C. Tiantai sijiao yi; J. Tendai shikyogi 天台四教儀). In Korean, the "Principle of the Fourfold Teachings of the Tiantai [School]," composed by the Korean monk Ch'egwan (d. 970); an influential primer of TIANTAI ZONG (K. Chont'ae chong) doctrine. The loss of the texts of the Tiantai tradition in China after the chaos that accompanied the fall of the Tang dynasty prompted the king of the Wuyue kingdom to seek copies of them elsewhere in East Asia. King Kwangjong (r. 950-975) of the Koryo dynasty responded to the Wuyue king's search by sending the monk Ch'egwan to China in 961. In order to summarize the major teachings of the Tiantai school, Ch'egwan wrote this one-roll abstract of TIANTAI ZHIYI's Sijiao yi, which also draws on other of Zhiyi's writings, including his FAHUA XUANYI. Ch'egwan's text is especially known for its summary of Zhiyi's doctrinal classification schema (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) on the different (chronological) stages of the Buddha's teaching career and the varying methods he used in preaching to his audiences; these are called the "five periods and eight teachings" (WUSHI BAJIAO). The five periods correspond to what the Tiantai school considered to be the five major chronological stages in the Buddha's teaching career, each of which is exemplified by a specific scripture or type of scripture: (1) HUAYAN (AVATAMSAKASuTRA), (2) AGAMA, (3) VAIPULYA, (4) PRAJNAPARAMITA, and (5) SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA and MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA. The different target audiences of the Buddha's message lead to four differing varieties of content in these teachings (huafa): (1) the PItAKA teachings, which were targeted at the two-vehicle adherents (ER SHENG) of disciples (sRAVAKA) and solitary buddhas (PRATYEKABUDDHA); (2) the common teachings, which were intended for both two-vehicle adherents and neophyte bodhisattvas of the MAHAYANA; (3) the distinct teachings, which targeted only bodhisattvas; (4) the perfect or consummate teachings (YUANJIAO), which offered advanced bodhisattvas an unvarnished assessment of Buddhist truths. In speaking to these audiences, which differed dramatically in their capacity to understand his message, the Buddha is said also to have employed four principal techniques of conversion (huayi), or means of conveying his message: sudden, gradual, secret, and indeterminate. Ch'egwan's text played a crucial role in the revitalization of the Tiantai tradition in China and has remained widely studied since. The Ch'ont'ae sagyo ŭi was also influential in Japan, where it was repeatedly republished. Numerous commentaries on this text have also been written in China, Korea, and Japan.
choreoathetosis ::: The combination of jerky, ballistic, and writhing movements that characterizes the late stages of Huntington’s disease.
chorion ::: n. --> The outer membrane which invests the fetus in the womb; also, the similar membrane investing many ova at certain stages of development.
The true skin, or cutis.
The outer membrane of seeds of plants.
Churning of the Ocean The agitation of milk, separating the uniform fluid into butter and buttermilk, is used as a figure with various applications, but chiefly to a stage in cosmogenesis when the one cosmic substance becomes differentiated into the “cosmic curds.” By this churning, according to the Hindu tale, is produced amrita, the cosmic soma, the fluid of immortality; but inevitably at the same time is produced visha (poison), this being the polar qualities in the cosmic forces, and likewise in ethics good and evil. The Ocean of Milk or Life, space, is churned by the gods; the radiant essence curdled and spread throughout the depths. It is said in the Satapatha-Brahmana that this took place in satya yuga, but the reference here is to cosmic yugas, a period before the earth’s earliest formation. The allegory however may apply to the initial stages of cycles of various magnitudes, and has also astronomical and geographical applications to the formation of world-stuff out of primary matter and to the dvipas or climatic zones, whether celestial or terrestrial, which are spoken of as seas of milk or of curds.
cintAmani. (T. yid bzhin nor bu; C. ruyi baozhu; J. nyoihoju; K. yoŭi poju 如意寶珠). In Sanskrit, "wish-fulfilling gem"; in Indian mythology a magical jewel possessed by DEVAs and NAGAs that has the power to grant wishes. The term is often as a metaphor for various stages of the path, including the initial aspiration to achieve buddhahood (BODHICITTOTPADA), the rarity of rebirth as a human being with access to the dharma, and the merit arising from the teachings of the Buddha. According to the Ruyi baozhu zhuanlun mimi xianshen chengfo jinlunzhouwang jing (also known simply as the Jinlunzhouwang jing), which describes in great detail the inexhaustible merit of this gem, the cintAmani is rough in shape and is comprised of eleven precious materials, including gold and silver, and has thirty-two pieces of the Buddha's relics (sARĪRA) at its core, which give it its special power. In the DAZHIDU LUN, the gem is said to derive from the brain of the dragon king (nAgarAja), the undersea protector of Buddhism, or, alternatively, to be the main jewel ornamenting the top of his head. The text claims that it has the power to protect its carrier from poison and fire; other texts say that the cintAmani has the capacity to drive away evil, clarify muddy water, etc. This gem is also variously said to come from the head of a great makara fish (as in the RATNAKutASuTRAs) or the heart of a GARUdA bird (as in the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING). Other texts suggest that while the king of the gods, INDRA, was fighting with the demigods (ASURA), part of his weapon dropped to the world and became this gem. The bodhisattvas AVALOKITEsVARA and KsITIGARBHA are also depicted holding a cintAmani so that they may grant the wishes of all sentient beings.
cintAmayīprajNA. (P. cintAmayapaNNA; T. bsam pa las byung ba'i shes rab; C. sihui; J. shie; K. sahye 思慧). In Sanskrit, "wisdom derived from reflection [or analysis]"; the second of the three types of wisdom, together with sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNA (wisdom derived from what is heard, viz., study) and BHAVANAMAYĪPRAJNA (wisdom generated by cultivation or meditation). Building upon what one has learned through srutamayīprajNA, the practitioner deepens that knowledge by reflecting upon its significance and its application in understanding the nature of this world and beyond. This reflection may involve a certain level of mental attention and concentration, but not yet full meditative calmness (sAMATHA). This level of understanding is therefore not as profound as the third and final stage of wisdom, bhAvanAmayīprajNA, where the knowledge first learned and subsequently developed over the preceding two stages of wisdom is now authenticated at the level of VIPAsYANA.
circumnutate ::: v. i. --> To pass through the stages of circumnutation.
cittaikAgratA. (P. cittekaggatA; T. sems rtse gcig pa; C. xin yijing xing; J. shin ikkyo sho; K. sim ilgyong song 心一境性). In Sanskrit, "one-pointedness of mind"; a deep state of meditative equipoise in which the mind is thoroughly concentrated on the object of meditation. In the progression of the four meditative absorptions associated with the subtle-materiality realm (RuPAVACARADHYANA), the first absorption (DHYANA) still involves the first two of the five constituents of dhyAna (DHYANAnGA): i.e., the application of thought to the meditative object (VITARKA) and sustained attention to that object (VICARA). As concentration deepens from the second dhyAna onward, applied and sustained thought vanish and the meditator moves from the mental "isolation" or "solitude" (VIVEKA) that characterizes the first dhyAna, to the true one-pointedness of mind (cittaikAgratA) that characterizes all higher stages of dhyAna; in this state of one-pointedness, the mind is so completely absorbed in the meditative object that even these most subtle varieties of thinking have disappeared.
CIVILIZATION, STAGE OF The second of man&
COLD-K ::: Formal design kernel language for describing (sequential) software systems in intermediate stages of their design.[An Introduction to COLD-K, H.B.M. Jonkers in Algebraic Methods: Theory, Tools and Applications, M. Wirsing et al eds, LNCS 394, Springer 1989, pp. 139-205]. (1995-01-04)
COLD-K "language" A formal design {kernel language} for describing (sequential) software systems in intermediate stages of their design. ["An Introduction to COLD-K", H.B.M. Jonkers in Algebraic Methods: Theory, Tools and Applications, M. Wirsing et al eds, LNCS 394, Springer 1989, pp. 139-205]. (1995-01-04)
Comets are coordinated with earlier and later stages of nebular evolution, playing an activating part in the formation of individual celestial bodies. The planets did not emerge from the sun, but the sun is their “co-uterine brother” with the same nebular origin. The sun is the great distributor of light and other radiations, including vital energy, throughout the solar system, and is itself a member of a hierarchy of solar beings.
concrete operational period: In Piaget's stages of cognitive development, a period between ages seven and eleven during which children gain a better understanding of mental operations. Children begin thinking logically about concrete events, but have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts.
configuration management "job, system management" A discipline applying technical and administrative controls to identifying, documentating and reporting on {configuration items}, their physical and functional characteristics and changes to characteristics of those configuration items. {Change management} is one aspect of configuration management but may also refer to the softer, human side of getting people to adapt to changing processes and organisation. {Source code management} or "code management" is configuration management applied to {code} through the various stages of the {software life-cycle}. (2014-01-21)
Cube Often mentioned as equivalent to the square, tetrad, or quaternary. The line, square, and cube represent three stages of matter, with the cube derived from the square in the same way as the square is derived from the line. A cube opened out gives a cross of six squares, four in the vertical line and three in the horizontal, one square being common to both, which is an emblem of the human being with his spiritual and material nature meeting at the intersection.
CULTURE Culture in the esoteric sense of word is only achieved through purposeful, conscious or unconscious, application of the laws of life. In order to be discovered they must first have been applied. K 5.7.13
Cultures are built up by clans at the stages of culture and humanity. When their work is taken over by clans at lower stages, a more or less swift decline sets in. K
5.5.1
Emotional and mental culture are the kinds of culture most important for the realization of unity. Material culture will follow as a matter of course when the good will to mutual assistance is made the highest value and norm. P 1.1.14
We shall have social culture when individuals feel that they exist for the community, and the community feels that it exists for the individual; when everybody regards service as his foremost task. P 1.1.12
CULTURE, STAGE OF The third of man&
Da'ath ::: Translated as "Knowledge" in Hebrew. The "hidden" eleventh Sephirah of the Kabbalah. It is described as "hidden" because it is not so much a true Sephirah as it is a function of the state change that occurs between certain, more-or-less, stable stages of conscious experience. It is representative of the convergent-emergent singularity through which consciousness flips between the individual stages of the Four Worlds and especially through which it flips between a dualistic lens and the lens of the Non-Dual. In Kabbalistic terminology, this latter process is representative of the Da'ath between Atzilut and Briah and the state change from Briatic consciousness to Atzilutic consciousness is referred to as Crossing the Abyss.
Daiviprakriti(Sanskrit) ::: A compound signifying "divine" or "original evolver," or "original source," of the universe orof any self-contained or hierarchical portion of such universe, such as a solar system. Briefly, therefore,daiviprakriti may be called "divine matter," matter here being used in its original sense of "divinemother-evolver" or "divine original substance."Now, as original substance manifests itself in the kosmic spaces as primordial kosmic light -- light inoccult esoteric theosophical philosophy being a form of original matter or substance -- many mysticshave referred to daiviprakriti under the phrase "the Light of the Logos." Daiviprakriti is, in fact, the firstveil or sheath or ethereal body surrounding the Logos, as pradhana or prakriti surrounds Purusha orBrahman in the Sankhya philosophy, and as, on a scale incomparably more vast, mulaprakriti surroundsparabrahman. As daiviprakriti, therefore, is elemental matter, or matter in its sixth and seventh stagescounting from physical matter upwards or, what comes to the same thing, matter in its first and secondstages of its evolution from above, we may accurately enough speak of those filmy ethereal wisps of lightseen in the midnight skies as a physical manifestation of daiviprakriti, because when they are not actuallyresolvable nebulae, they are worlds, or rather systems of worlds, in the making.When daiviprakriti has reached a certain state or condition of evolutionary manifestation, we mayproperly speak of it under the term fohat. Fohat, in H. P. Blavatsky's words, is"The essence of cosmic electricity. An occult Tibetan term for Daivi-prakriti, primordiallight: and in the universe of manifestation the ever-present electrical energy and ceaselessdestructive and formative power. Esoterically, it is the same, Fohat being the universalpropelling Vital Force, at once the propeller and the resultant." -- Theosophical Glossary, p.121All this is extremely well put, but it must be remembered that although fohat is the energizing powerworking in and upon manifested daiviprakriti, or primordial substance, as the rider rides the steed, it isthe kosmic intelligence, or kosmic monad as Pythagoras would say, working through both daiviprakritiand its differentiated energy called fohat, which is the guiding and controlling principle, not only in thekosmos but in every one of the subordinate elements and beings of the hosts of multitudes of theminfilling the kosmos. The heart or essence of the sun is daiviprakriti working as itself, and also in itsmanifestation called fohat, but through the daiviprakriti and the fohatic aspect of it runs the all-permeantand directive intelligence of the solar divinity. The student should never make the mistake, however, ofdivorcing this guiding solar intelligence from its veils or vehicles, one of the highest of which isdaiviprakriti-fohat.
Daiviprakriti (Sanskrit) Daivīprakṛti [from daivī divine from the verbal root div to shine + prakṛti original substance or nature] Divine or original evolver; original source; divine matter or original substance. “As original substance manifests itself in the kosmic spaces as primordial kosmic Light . . . many mystics have referred to Daiviprakriti under the phrase ‘the Light of the Logos.’ Daiviprakriti is, in fact, the first veil or sheath or ethereal body surrounding the Logos, as Pradhana or Prakriti surrounds Purusha or Brahman in the Sankhya philosophy, and as, on a scale incomparably more vast, Mulaprakriti surrounds Parabrahman. As Daiviprakriti, therefore, is elemental matter, . . . matter in its first and second stages of its evolution from above, we may accurately enough speak of those filmy ethereal wisps of light seen in the midnight skies as a physical manifestation of Daiviprakriti, because when they are not actually resolvable nebulae, they are worlds, or rather systems of worlds, in the making.
Dasa-bhumi: Sanskrit for ten stages. In Buddhist terminology, the ten stages of the spiritual development of a Bodhisattva (q.v.) toward Buddhahood. Each school of Buddhism has its own dasa-bhumi, but the most widely accepted set in Mahayana Buddhism is that set forth in the Dasa-bhumi Sastra, viz.: (1) The Stage of Joy, in which the Bodhisattva develops his holy nature and discards wrong views; (2) the Stage of Purity, in which he attains the Perfection of Morality; (3) the Stage of Illumination, in which he attains the Perfection of Patience or Humility, and also the deepest introspective insight; (4) the Stage of Flaming Wisdom, in which he achieves the Perfection of Meditation and realizes the harmony of the Worldly Truth and the Supreme Truth; (5) the Stage of Presence, in which he achieves the Perfection of Wisdom; (7) the Stage of Far-going, in which he attains the Perfection of Expediency by going afar and to save all beings; (8) the Stage of Immovability, in which he attains the Perfection of Vow and realizes the principle that all specific characters of elements (dharmas) are unreal; (9) the Stage of Good Wisdom, in which he achieves the Perfection of Effort, attains the Ten Holy Powers, and preaches both to the redeemable and the unredeemable; (10) the Stage of the Cloud of the Law, in which he attains mastery of Perfect Knowledge and preaches the Law to save all creatures, “like the cloud drops rain over all.”
For further explanation see: &
For further explanation see: Ten stages of G-d&
The four stages of this process correspond to the &
devatāyoga. (T. lha'i rnal 'byor). In Sanskrit, "deity yoga"; tantric practice in which a deity (often a buddha or bodhisattva) is visualized in the presence of the practitioner, the deity is propitiated through offerings, prayers, and the recitation of MANTRA, and is then requested to bestow SIDDHIs. Two types are sometimes enumerated: one in which the deity is visualized in front of the practitioner and another in which the practitioner imagines himself or herself to be the deity. According to TSONG KHA PA, the practice of this latter type of deity yoga is the distinguishing characteristic of the VAJRAYĀNA, differentiating it from the PĀRAMITĀYĀNA. He argues that both forms of deity yoga are to be found in all classes of tantra: KRIYĀ, CARYĀ, YOGA, and ANUTTARAYOGA. Devatāyoga is a central feature of the two stages of anuttarayoga tantra (UTPATTIKRAMA and NIsPANNAKRAMA); in the former "generation" stage, guided by a SĀDHANA, the tāntrika visualizes a MAndALA, with its central and surrounding deities. Through meditation on ANĀTMAN (nonself) or suNYATĀ (emptiness), the practitioner imagines himself or herself to be the central deity of the mandala. In certain forms of practice, the practitioner will also imagine the entire mandala and its deities as residing within the practitioner's body. When the practitioner has developed the ability to visualize the mandala and its deities in minute detail, one moves to the second "completion" stage (nispannakrama), in which the complex of NĀdIs (channels) and CAKRAs (wheels) of the human body are utilized to achieve buddhahood.
DHARMA Dharma is the innermost nature of every individual, that which constitutes his true being. Dharma is what is given in the interdependent arrangement of things... Dharma is the meaning of life for every individual.
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dharmameghā. (T. chos kyi sprin; C. fayun di; J. hounji; K. pobun chi 法雲地). In Sanskrit, "cloud of dharma," the tenth and final "ground" or stage (BHuMI) of the BODHISATTVA path, just prior to the attainment of buddhahood. On the dharmameghā bhumi, the bodhisattva is at the point of attaining the dharma-body (DHARMAKĀYA) that is as vast as the sky, becomes autonomous in interacting with all material and mental factors, and gains all-pervasive knowledge, which causes the excellent dharma to fall like rain from a cloud, nurturing the entire world and increasing the harvest of virtue for sentient beings. This stage is also described as being pervaded by meditative absorption (DHYĀNA) and mastery of the use of DHĀRAnĪ, just as the sky is filled with clouds. According to the CHENG WEISHI LUN (*VijNaptimātratāsiddhisāstra; chap. 11), each of the ten stages of the bodhisattva path leads to the attainment of one of the ten types of suchness (TATHATĀ); these are accomplished by discarding one of the ten kinds of obstructions (ĀVARAnA) through practicing one of the ten perfections (PĀRAMITĀ). In the case of the dharmameghā bhumi, the obstruction of not yet acquiring mastery over all dharmas (fa wei zizai zhang) is removed through the perfection of knowledge (JNĀNAPĀRAMITĀ), leading to the suchness that serves as the support for mastery over action (ye zizai deng suoyi zhenru; *kriyādivasitāsaMnisrayatathatā) and the ability of the bodhisattva to ripen the minds of sentient beings. The tenth stage thus removes any remaining delusions regarding the use of the supernatural knowledges or powers (ABHIJNĀ) or the subtle mysteries, giving the bodhisattva complete autonomy in manipulating all dharmas. As the culminating stage of the "path of cultivation" (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA), the dharmameghā bhumi still contains the last and most subtle remnants of the cognitive obstructions (JNEYĀVARAnA). These obstructions will be completely eradicated through the adamantine-like concentration (VAJROPAMASAMĀDHI), which marks the transition to the "ultimate path" (NIstHĀMĀRGA), or "path where no further training is necessary" (AsAIKsAMĀRGA), i.e., an eleventh stage of the buddhas (TATHĀGATABHuMI) that is sometimes also known as the "universally luminous" (samantaprabhā).
dharmānusārin. (P. dhammānusāri; T. chos kyi rjes su 'brang ba; C. suifaxing; J. zuihogyo; K. subophaeng 隨法行). In Sanskrit, "follower of the dharma," one who arrives at a realization of the dharma or truth through his or her own analysis of the teachings; contrasted with "follower of faith" (sRADDHĀNUSĀRIN) whose religious experience is grounded in the faith or confidence in what others tell him about the dharma. The SARVĀSTIVĀDA (e.g., as described in the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA) and THERAVĀDA (e.g., VISUDDHIMAGGA) schools of mainstream Buddhism both recognize seven types of noble ones (ĀRYA, P. ariya), listed in order of their intellectual superiority: (1) follower of faith (S. sraddhānusārin; P. saddhānusāri); (2) follower of the dharma (S. dharmānusārin; P. dhammānusāri); (3) one who is freed by faith (S. sRADDHĀVIMUKTA; P. saddhāvimutta); (4) one who has formed right view (S. DṚstIPRĀPTA; P. ditthippatta), by developing both faith and wisdom; (5) one who has bodily testimony (S. KĀYASĀKsIN; P. kāyasakkhi), viz., through the temporary suspension of mentality in the absorption of cessation (NIRODHASAMĀPATTI); (6) one who is freed by wisdom (S. PRAJNĀVIMUKTA; P. paNNāvimutta), by freeing oneself through analysis; and (7) one who is freed both ways (S. UBHAYATOBHĀGAVIMUKTA; P. ubhatobhāgavimutta), by freeing oneself through both meditative absorption and wisdom. According to the Sarvāstivāda VAIBHĀsIKA school of ABHIDHARMA, an ARHAT whose liberation is grounded in faith may be subject to backsliding from that state, whereas those who are dharmānusārin are unshakable (AKOPYA), because they have experienced the knowledge of nonproduction (ANUTPĀDAJNĀNA), viz., that the afflictions (klesa) can never occur again, the complement of the knowledge of extinction (KsAYAJNĀNA). ¶ The Theravāda school, which does not accept this dynamic interpretation of an arhat's spiritual experience, develops a rather different interpretation of these types of individuals. BUDDHAGHOSA explains in his VISUDDHIMAGGA that one who develops faith by contemplating the impermanent nature of things is a follower of faith at the moment of becoming a stream-enterer (sotāpanna; S. SROTAĀPANNA) and is one who is freed by faith at the subsequent moments of the fruition of the path; one who is tranquil and develops concentration by contemplating the impermanent nature of things is one who has bodily testimony at all moments; one who develops the immaterial meditative absorptions (arupajhāna; S. ARuPĀVACARADHYĀNA) is one freed both ways; one who develops wisdom is one who follows the dharma (dhammānusāri) at the moment of entry into the rank of stream-enterer and is one who has formed right view at the subsequent moments of path entry. When one achieves highest spiritual attainment, one is called freed by wisdom. In another classification of six individuals found in the Pāli CulAGOPĀLAKASUTTA, dhammānusāri is given as the fifth type, the other five being the worthy one (arahant; S. ARHAT), nonreturner (anāgāmi; S. ANĀGĀMIN), once-returner (sakadāgāmi; S. SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), stream-enterer (sotāpanna; S. srotaāpanna), and follower of faith (saddhānusāri). The IndriyasaMyutta in the SAMYUTTANIKĀYA also mentions these same six individuals and explains their differences in terms of their development of the five spiritual faculties (INDRIYA): faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. An arahant has matured the five faculties; a nonreturner has all five faculties, but they are slightly less developed than in the arahant; a once-returner is slightly less developed than a nonreturner; a stream-enterer slightly less than a once-returner; a dhammānusāri slightly less than a stream-enterer; and a saddhānusāri slightly less than a dhammānusāri. The saddhāvimutta and dhammānusāri are also distinguished depending on when they reach higher spiritual attainment: one who is following faith at the moment of accessing the path (maggakkhana) is called saddhāvimutta, one liberated through faith; the other, who is following wisdom, is called dhammānusāri, one who is liberated by wisdom at the moment of attainment (phalakkhana). ¶ The dharmānusārin is also found in the list of the members of the saMgha when it is subdivided into twenty (VIMsATIPRABHEDASAMGHA). Among the dharmānusārin there are candidates for the fruit of stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNAPRATIPANNAKA), once-returner (SAKṚDĀGĀMIPRATIPANNAKA), and nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIPRATIPANNAKA). The Mahāyāna carries over the division of dharmānusārin and sraddhānusārin into its discussion of the path to enlightenment. The PANCAVIMsATISĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ takes the seven types of noble ones (ārya) listed in order of intellectual superiority, and the eight noble beings (stream-enterer and so on) as examples for bodhisattvas at different stages of the path; the dharmānusārin more quickly reaches the AVAIVARTIKA (irreversible) stage, the sraddhānusārin more slowly, based on the development of wisdom (PRAJNĀ) that has forbearance for the absence of any ultimately existing goal to be reached, and skillful means (UPĀYA) that places pride of place on the welfare of others (PARĀRTHA).
dhyāna. (P. jhāna; T. bsam gtan; C. chan/chanding; J. zen/zenjo; K. son/sonjong 禪/禪定). In Sanskrit, "meditative absorption," specific meditative practices during which the mind temporarily withdraws from external sensory awareness and remains completely absorbed in an ideational object of meditation. The term can refer both to the practice that leads to full absorption and to the state of full absorption itself. Dhyāna involves the power to control the mind and does not, in itself, entail any enduring insight into the nature of reality; however, a certain level of absorption is generally said to be necessary in order to prepare the mind for direct realization of truth, the destruction of the afflictions (KLEsA), and the attainment of liberation (VIMUKTI). Dhyāna is classified into two broad types: (1) meditative absorption associated with the realm of subtle materiality (RuPĀVACARADHYĀNA) and (2) meditative absorption of the immaterial realm (ĀRuPYĀVACARADHYĀNA). Each of these two types is subdivided into four stages or degrees of absorption, giving a total of eight stages of dhyāna. The four absorptions of the realm of subtle materiality are characterized by an increasing attenuation of consciousness as one progresses from one stage to the next. The deepening of concentration leads the meditator temporarily to allay the five hindrances (NĪVARAnA) and to put in place the five constituents of absorption (DHYĀNĀnGA). The five hindrances are: (1) sensuous desire (KĀMACCHANDA), which hinders the constituent of one-pointedness of mind (EKĀGRATĀ); (2) malice (VYĀPĀDA), hindering physical rapture (PRĪTI); (3) sloth and torpor (STYĀNA-MIDDHA), hindering applied thought (VITARKA); (4) restlessness and worry (AUDDHATYA-KAUKṚTYA), hindering mental ease (SUKHA); and (5) skeptical doubt (VICIKITSĀ), hindering sustained thought (VICĀRA). These hindrances thus specifically obstruct one of the specific factors of absorption and, once they are allayed, the first level of the subtle-materiality dhyānas will be achieved. In the first dhyāna, all five constituents of dhyāna are present; as concentration deepens, these gradually fall away, so that in the second dhyāna, both types of thought vanish and only prīti, sukha, and ekāgratā remain; in the third dhyāna, only sukha and ekāgratā remain; and in the fourth dhyāna, concentration is now so rarified that only ekāgratā is left. Detailed correlations appear in meditation manuals describing specifically which of the five spiritual faculties (INDRIYA) and seven constituents of enlightenment (BODHYAnGA) serves as the antidote to which hindrance. Mastery of the fourth absorption of the realm of subtle materiality is required for the cultivation of the supranormal powers (ABHIJNĀ) and for the cultivation of the four ārupyāvacaradhyānas, or meditative absorptions of the immaterial realm. The immaterial absorptions themselves represent refinements of the fourth rupāvacaradhyāna, in which the "object" of meditation is gradually attenuated. The four immaterial absorptions instead are named after their respective objects: (1) the sphere of infinite space (ĀKĀsĀNANTYĀYATANA), (2) the sphere of infinite consciousness (VIJNĀNĀNANTYĀYATANA), (3) the sphere of nothingness (ĀKINCANYĀYATANA), and (4) the sphere of neither perception nor nonperception (NAIVASAMJNĀNĀSAMJYYATANA). Mastery of the subtle-materiality realm absorptions can also result in rebirth as a divinity (DEVA) in the subtle-materiality realm, and mastery of the immaterial absorptions can lead to rebirth as a divinity in the immaterial realm (see ANINJYAKARMAN). Dhyāna occurs in numerous lists of the constituents of the path, appearing, for example, as the fifth of the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ). The term CHAN (J. zen), the name adopted by an important school of indigenous East Asian Buddhism, is the Chinese phonetic transcription of the Sanskrit term dhyāna. See also JHĀNA; SAMĀDHI; SAMĀPATTI.
Dhyana: Sanskrit for meditation or the full accord of thinker and thought without interference and without being merged as yet; the seventh of the eight stages of Yoga.
Dhyana Yoga (Sanskrit) Dhyāna Yoga Profound spiritual mediation on the divinity within, imbodying six or seven stages of advancement, accompanied by the simultaneous abstraction of thought from external existence; the sixth chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita treats of dhyana yoga. Likewise, one of the paramitas of Buddhism.
Dhyānottarapatala. (T. Bsam gtan phyi ma rim par phye ba). In Sanskrit, the "Chapter on the Subsequent Stages of Concentration"; a brief work in seventy-four verses regarded as a chapter of the lost Vajrosnīsatantra. It also is related to the fifth chapter of the MAHĀVAIROCANĀBHISAMBODHISuTRA. The work, preserved only in Tibetan, is classified as a KRIYĀTANTRA, and provides instruction on MANTRA recitation and yogic breath practice (PRĀnĀYĀMA), which are to be undertaken subsequent to the practice of DHYĀNA. There is a detailed commentary on the text by BUDDHAGUHYA.
Dragon of Wisdom Commonly an adept, one of the wise; also popularly a skilled magician — whether of the right or left path. Referring to the earliest stages of cosmogony, dragon is a term often used for the sun in its various cosmologic functions, also for the One or Logos. An important significance of the phrase is that the real initiator of humanity, or of the individual neophyte, is the person’s own higher ego.
dream ::: 1. A series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. 2. A vision occurring to a person while awake. 3. A person or thing that is as pleasant, or seemingly unreal, as a dream 4. An ideal or aspiration; goal; aim. 5. A wild or vain fancy. Dream, dream"s, Dream"s, dreams, dream-brood, dream-brush, dream-built, dream-caught, dream-fact, dream-fate, dream-god"s, dream-happiness, dream-hued, dream-life, dream-light, dream-made, dream-mind, dream-notes, dream-print, dream-sculptured, dream-shores, dream-smiles, dream-splendour, dream-truth, dream-vasts, dream-white, dream-world, half-dream, self-dream, sun-dream, world-dream. *adj. 6. Of a colour: misty, dim, or cloudy. v. 7. To have an image (of) or fantasy (about) in or as if in a dream. dreams, dreamed, *dreaming.
Duality ::: Conscious experiences that characterize the lower three planes of the Four Worlds model are considered dualistic. In these stages of awareness there is a distinction between the subject observing and the object of observation: a quality at the root of all experience outside of the Causal Plane. Contrasted with Non-Duality. See also Phenomenal Reality.
During this evolutionary journey it passes from unself-consciousness through manifold and all-various stages of experience to self-consciousness, finally merging into divinity. When this last stage is reached it is no longer an unself-conscious god-spark but a self-conscious god, one of the co-laborers and collaborators in the great work of the building of the worlds.
Dwags po Bkra shis rnam rgyal. (Dakpo Tashi Namgyal) (1512/13-1587). An abbot of the Tibetan monastery of DWAGS LHA SGAM PO, founded by SGAM PO PA BSOD NAMS RIN CHEN, from which he receives his toponym. In his early years he studied with SA SKYA teachers and was abbot of NA LAN DRAmonastery. He is known in particular for his writing on the HEVAJRATANTRA and MAHĀMUDRĀ; his Nges don phyag rgya chen po'i sgom rim gsal bar byed pa'i legs bshad zla ba'i 'od zer is a definitive text of mahāmudrā, giving a presentation of the graduated stages of HĪNĀYĀNA and MAHĀYĀNA practices and a scholarly explanation of mahāmudrā. Among his students was the scholar PADMA DKAR PO, the fourth head of the BRUG PA BKA' BRYUD sect and the systematizer of its teachings.
EFFORT. ::: It is not advisable in the early stages of the sadhana to leave everything to the Divine or expect everything from it without the need of one’s own endeavour. That is only possible when the psychic being is in front and influencing the whole action (and even then vigilance and a constant assent is necessary), or else later on in the ultimate stages of the yoga when a direct or almost direct supramental force b taking up the consciousness.
EMOTIONALIST Man at the emotional stage (stages of civilization and culture).
EMOTIONAL SELF Monad whose most important kind of self-consciousness is within the molecular worlds 48:2-7 of the solar system. Human emotional selves are at the stages of civilization and culture.
EMOTIONAL STAGE As an emotional self (at the stages of civilization and culture), the individual is in his thinking and acting determined by emotional motives. The emotional stage is the most difficult stage of development. Man must by himself acquire consciousness in all six molecular kinds of his emotional envelope and in the two lowest of his mental envelope. To the emotional stage belongs almost everything that man today regards as civilization and culture. K 1.34.13
Erikson (1902-1994): psychoanalyst and proponent of developmental psychology. Proposed eight stages of psychosocial development from birth to death, for instance identity vs. role confusion.
er wozhi. (J. nigashu; K. i ajip 二我執). In Chinese, "two kinds of attachment to self" (ĀTMAGRĀHA): "self-attachment that arises from discriminatory cognition" (fenbie wozhi) and "innate self-attachment" (jusheng wozhi). The former is primarily an epistemic error resulting from improper thinking and exposure to fallacious doctrines (MITHYĀDṚstI); it is eradicated at the stage of stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA). The latter is primarily an affective, habitual, and instinctive clinging (conditioned for many lifetimes in the past) that may be present whether or not one subscribes to fenbie wozhi, the "view of self." "Innate self-attachment" is only gradually attenuated through the successive stages of spiritual fruition until it is completely extinguished at the stage of the ARHAT. See FAZHI and PUDGALANAIRĀTMYA.
Eschatology: (Gr. ta eschata, death) That part of systematic or dogmatic theology dealing with the last things, namely, death, judgment, heaven and hell, and also with the end of the world. Also applied by philosophers to the complexus of theories relating to the ultimate end of mankind and the final stages of the physical cosmos. -- J.J.R.
Eschatology: That part of systematic or dogmatic theology dealing with the last things, namely, death, judgment, heaven and hell, and also with the end of the world. Also applied by philosophers to the complexus of theories relating to the ultimate end of mankind and the final stages of the physical cosmos.
ESSENTIAL QUALITIES Twelve qualities, manifestations of causal consciousness and will, which the monad must acquire 100 per cent in order to pass to the essential kingdom, the fifth natural kingdom. They sum up all positive human qualities, also those that are possible only at the stages of humanity and ideality. Their true content, therefore, is inaccessible to lower consciousness, and information given about them will unfailingly be emotionalized.
Tentatively, the following symbolical keywords have been used about them: 1) Trust in life, 2) Trust in self, 3) Obedience to law, 4) Uprightness, 5) Impersonality, 6)
Willingness to sacrifice, 7) Faithfulness, 8) Reticence, 9) Joy in life, 10) Purpose, 11)
Wisdom, 12) Unity. (K 1.34.23, 7.23.3)
“Every nation had its exoteric and esoteric religion, the one for the masses, the other for the learned and elect. For example, the Hindus had three degrees with several sub-degrees. The Egyptians had also three preliminary degrees, personified under the ‘three guardians of the fire’ in the Mysteries. The Chinese had their most ancient Triad Society: and the Tibetans have to this day their ‘triple step’: which was symbolized in the ‘Vedas by the three strides of Vishnu. . . . The old Babylonians had their three stages of initiation into the priesthood (which was then esoteric knowledge); the Jews, the Kabbalists and mystics borrowed them from the Chaldees, and the Christian Church from the Jews” (TG 333).
Evolution: The development of organization. The working out of a definite end; action by final causation. For Comte, the successive stages of historical development are necessary. In biology, the series of phylogenetic changes in the structure or behavior of organisms, best exemplified by Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. In cosmology, cosmogony is the theory of the generation of the existing universe in space and time. Opposite of: epigenesis. See Emergent evolution, Evolutionism. Cf. T. Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin. -- J.K.F.
Explanation: In general: the process, art, means or method of making a fact or a statement intelligible; the result and the expression of what is made intelligible; the meaning attributed to anything by one who makes it intelligible; a genetic description, causal development, systematic clarification, rational exposition, scientific interpretation, intelligible connection, ordered manifestation of the elements of a fact or a statement. A. More technically, the method of showing discursively that a phenomenon or a group of phenomena obeys a law, by means of causal relations or descriptive connections, or briefly, the methodical analysis of a phenomenon for the purpose of stating its cause. The process of explanation suggests the real preformation or potential presence of the consequent in the antecedent, so that the phenomenon considered may be evolved, developed, unrolled out of its conditioning antecedents. The process and the value of a scientific explanation involve the question of the relation between cause and law, as these two terms may be identified (Berkeley) or distinguished (Comte). Hence modern theories range between extreme idealism and logical positivism. Both these extremes seem to be unsatisfactory: the former would include too much into science, while the latter would embrace a part of it only, namely the knowledge of the scientific laws. Taking into account Hume's criticism of causality and Mill's reasons for accepting causality, Russell proposes what seems to be a middle course, namely that regular sequences suggest causal relations, that causal relations are one special class of scientific generalization, that is one-way sequences in time, and that causal relations as such should not be used in the advanced stages of scientific generalization, functional relations being sufficient in all cases. However satisfactory in methodology, this view may not cover all the implications of the problem. B. There are three specific types of causal explanation, and their results may be combined: genetic or in terms of the direct and immediate conditions or causes producing a phenomenon (formal and efficient cause); descriptive, or in terms of the material elements of the phenomenon (material cause); teleological, or in terms of the ultimate end to be attained (final cause), either in accordance with the nature of the event or with the intention of the agent. The real causes of a phenomenon cannot be identified always, because the natural process of change or becoming escapes complete rationalization. But the attempt to rationalize the real by causal explanation, need not be abandoned in favor of a limited genetic description (postulational or functional) of the laws which may account for the particular phenomenon.
Fanwang jing. (J. Bonmokyo; K. Pommang kyong 梵網經). In Chinese, "Brahmā's Net Sutra," the scripture is often cited by its reconstructed, but unattested, Sanskrit title, the *Brahmajālasutra. This scripture is reputed to have been translated by KUMĀRAJĪVA in 406, but it is most likely an indigenous Chinese scripture (see APOCRYPHA) composed during the middle of the fifth century. The Fanwang jing, in its current recension in two rolls, purports to be the tenth chapter of a much longer, 120-roll scripture titled the Bodhisattvasīlasutra, which is otherwise unknown. The first roll provides a description of the buddha VAIROCANA and the ten different stages of the BODHISATTVA path. Because subsequent Chinese indigenous scriptures that were closely related to the Fanwang jing, such as the PUSA YINLUO PENYE JING, provided more systematic presentations of these soteriological models, this first roll was not widely studied and was typically omitted in commentaries on the scripture. Far more important to the tradition is the second roll, which is primarily concerned with the "bodhisattva precepts" (BODHISATTVAsĪLA); this roll has often circulated independently as PUSAJIE JING (*Bodhisattvasīlasutra; "The Book of the Bodhisattva Precepts"). This roll provides a list of ten major and forty-eight minor MAHĀYĀNA precepts that come to be known as the "Fanwang Precepts," which became a popular alternative to the 250 monastic precepts of the DHARMAGUPTAKA VINAYA (also known as the SIFEN LÜ). Unlike the majority of rules found in other non-Mahāyāna vinaya codes, the bodhisattva precepts are directed not only at ordained monks and nuns, but also may be taken by laymen and laywomen. The Fanwang jing correlates the precepts with Confucian virtues such as filial piety and obedience, as well as with one's buddha-nature (FOXING). Numerous commentaries on this text were composed, and those written by FAZANG, Mingkuang (fl. 800 CE), and the Korean monk T'AEHYoN (d.u.) were most influential. As the primary scriptural source in East Asia for the bodhisattva precepts, the Fanwang jing was tremendously influential in subsequent developments in Buddhist morality and institutions throughout the region. In Japan, for example, the TENDAISHu monk SAICHo (767-822) disparaged the PRĀTIMOKsA precepts of the traditional vinaya as being the precepts of HĪNAYĀNA adherents, and rejected them in favor of having all monastics take instead the MAHĀYĀNA precepts of the Fanwang jing. In Korea, all monastics and laypeople accept the bodhisattva precepts deriving from the Fanwang jing, but for monks and nuns these are still seen as complementary to their main monastic vows.
fazhi. (J. hoshu/hosshu; K. popchip 法執). In Chinese, "attachment to factors"; in contrast to ĀTMAGRĀHA, the attachment to a self, attachment to factors (DHARMA) refers to either a clinging to the constituent aggregates that make up a person as ultimately real, or an attachment to the Buddhist teachings themselves. In the former scenario, the SARVĀSTIVĀDA, for example, rejects the reality of a self among the constituent factors (DHARMA) that constitute the person, but maintained that constituent parts themselves do have a perduring, ultimate reality. Rival Buddhist schools, most notably the MADHYAMAKA tradition, criticize such a view as being emblematic of an attachment to the dharmas. In the latter scenario, dharma-attachment is the clinging to Buddhist teachings and other heuristic devices as being ultimately real (cf. PARAMĀRTHASATYA). Various Buddhist scriptures tout the Buddhist teachings as skillful strategems (UPĀYA) that serve a provisional purpose. Buddhist teachings are likened to a raft that could be used to cross a river, but once having reached the other shore, the traveler should leave the raft behind lest it become a burden. Doctrinaire interpretations of, or an undue fascination with, the Buddhist teachings, especially when they are ill-suited for the present situation, is said to be a kind of dharma-attachment. Traditionally, two kinds of dharma-attachment are delineated: "dharma-attachment that arises from discriminatory cognition" (fenbie fazhi) and "inborn dharma-attachment" (jusheng fazhi). The former is primarily an epistemic error resulting from improper thinking and exposure to fallacious doctrines-it is eradicated at the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA). The latter is primarily an affective, habitual, and instinctive clinging (conditioned by similar tendencies accrued from previous lives) that may be present whether or not one subscribes to fenbie fazhi-the view of independent, irreducibly real dharmas. "Inborn dharma-attachment" is only gradually attenuated through the successive stages of the path of cultivation (BHĀVANĀLĀRGA). In Mahāyāna polemics, the so-called HĪNAYĀNA can only lead to the eradication of the attachment to self but never to the attachment to dharmas. Cf. DHARMANAIRĀTMYA.
For further explanation see: Ten stages of G-d&
Four Worlds ::: A model of the stages of reality described by the Kabbalah in which the Kabbalistic map is partitioned into four rows where each row contains a number of Sephiroth. These illustrate, from the top down, the evolution of Consciousness from the Non-Dual realm of the Causal Plane through the dualistic beginnings of archetypes in the Mental Plane through the visionary capacity of collective and individual imagination in the Astral Plane into the physical expressions of forms in the Physical Plane.
Freud, Sigmund ::: Dr. Freud is often referred to as the father of clinical psychology. His extensive theory of personality development (psychoanalytical theory) is the cornerstone for modern psychological thought, and consists of (1) the psychosexual stages of development, (2) the structural model of personality (id, ego, superego), and (3) levels of consciousness (conscious, subconscious, and unconscious). See Psychoanalysis.
From another point of view they may be looked upon as life-atoms in different stages of evolutionary growth; and being in various degrees of evolution they are variously spiritual, ethereal, astral, or material, running through vast ranges on all these planes. Thus they exist everywhere: in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and all the tissues of physical nature. Through their agency we perform all our bodily or mental activities.
Function Point Analysis "programming" (FPA) A standard metric for the relative size and complexity of a software system, originally developed by Alan Albrecht of {IBM} in the late 1970s. Functon points (FPs) can be used to estimate the relative size and complexity of software in the early stages of development - analysis and design. The size is determined by identifying the components of the system as seen by the end-user: the inputs, outputs, inquiries, interfaces to other systems, and logical internal files. The components are classified as simple, average, or complex. All of these values are then scored and the total is expressed in Unadjusted FPs (UFPs). Complexity factors described by 14 general systems characteristics, such as reusability, performance, and complexity of processing can be used to weight the UFP. Factors are also weighted on a scale of 0 - not present, 1 - minor influence, to 5 - strong influence. The result of these computations is a number that correlates to system size. Although the FP metric doesn't correspond to any actual physical attribute of a software system (such as {lines of code} or the number of subroutines) it is useful as a relative measure for comparing projects, measuring productivity, and estimating the amount a development effort and time needed for a project. See also {International Function Point Users Group}. (1996-05-16)
Function Point Analysis ::: (programming) (FPA) A standard metric for the relative size and complexity of a software system, originally developed by Alan Albrecht of IBM in the late 1970s.Functon points (FPs) can be used to estimate the relative size and complexity of software in the early stages of development - analysis and design. The size is influence, to 5 - strong influence. The result of these computations is a number that correlates to system size.Although the FP metric doesn't correspond to any actual physical attribute of a software system (such as lines of code or the number of subroutines) it is useful as a relative measure for comparing projects, measuring productivity, and estimating the amount a development effort and time needed for a project.See also International Function Point Users Group. (1996-05-16)
game theory: In The mathematical study of mathematical objects called games which consists of a set of players, a set of actions available to players during specified stages of the game and specified method for determining the payoffs for the players.
Gandavyuha. (T. Sdong po bkod pa; C. Dafangguang fo huayan jing; J. Daihoko butsu kegongyo; K. Taebanggwang pul hwaom kyong 大方廣佛華嚴經). In Sanskrit, loosely translatable as "Multivalent Array Scripture," an important Sanskrit SuTRA that served as a virtual "pilgrim's progress" of MAHĀYĀNA Buddhism; later incorporated into the large scriptural omnibus, the AVATAMSAKASuTRA or BUDDHĀVATAMSAKASuTRA, where the text becomes known as the "Entering the DHARMADHĀTU" chapter (C. Ru fajie pin; S. *Dharmadhātupravesanaparivarta). The Gandavyuha describes the youth SUDHANA's spiritual journey in search of enlightenment through a series of fifty-three spiritual mentors (KALYĀnAMITRA), who serve as the personification of the fifty-two stages of the bodhisattva path, or MĀRGA (Sudhana's first and last teacher, the bodhisattva MANJUsRĪ, are the same, giving a total of fifty-three). At the conclusion of his journey, Sudhana has a vision of SAMANTABHADRA and fully merges with him. The text is especially influential for its description of the accomplishment of the conducts and vows (see BHADRACARĪPRAnIDHĀNA) of Samantabhadra, who comes to be considered the patron bodhisattva of the HUAYAN ZONG of Chinese Buddhism. The first Chinese translation of the AvataMsakasutra, in sixty rolls and thirty-four chapters, was translated by the North Indian monk BUDDHABHADRA (359-429) between 418 and 421, but it included only a severely truncated version of the Gandavyuha chapter. The second translation, in eighty rolls and thirty-nine chapters, completed between 695 and 704 by the Khotanese monk sIKsĀNANDA (652-710), included the full chapter. Since the earlier version was still incomplete, however, a third translation, specifically of the Gandavyuha section, was translated in forty rolls as the Dafangguang fo huayan jing (AvataMsakasutra) by PRAJNA, between 795 and 798. The Gandavyuha is also included among the nine sacred books (NAVAGRANTHA) of the Newar tradition of Nepal.
gastraea ::: n. --> A primeval larval form; a double-walled sac from which, according to the hypothesis of Haeckel, man and all other animals, that in the first stages of their individual evolution pass through a two-layered structural stage, or gastrula form, must have descended. This idea constitutes the Gastraea theory of Haeckel. See Gastrula.
Golden Dawn (The Hermetic Order of the): This Order was founded in1888 and largely dominated by S. Liddell MacGregor-Mathers. Crowley, Spare and Fortune were members of the G.'.D.'. at various stages of their careers. When the Order failed to maintain contact with the Invisible or Secret Chiefs of the Great White Brotherhood,
hengchao. (J. ocho; K. hoengch'o 橫超). In Chinese, "the expeditious (lit. horizontal) deliverance/escape." In the PURE LAND traditions, it is said that deliverance through the aid of "other power" (TARIKI)-i.e., by relying on the vows and saving grace of the buddha AMITĀBHA-is a faster and easier approach to enlightenment than is that found in traditional Buddhist soteriological systems. Since the mainstream conception of transcendence from the round of rebirth (SAMSĀRA) involves a tortuous (lit. vertical) ascent (SHUCHAO) through successive levels of ever-deeper meditative absorptions (DHYĀNA) and ever-more-daunting spiritual fruitions (PHALA), pure land followers argue that their method "cuts horizontally across the three realms of existence" (hengchao sanjie) and bypasses the difficult sequential stages of mainstream approaches. The pure land "shortcut" is conceptualized as a "horizontal" approach partly because, by traveling "westward" instead of "upward"-i.e., being reborn into the western pure land (see SUKHĀVATĪ)-one is more easily liberated from the round of rebirth.
Hermetic Chain ::: Among the ancient Greeks there existed a mystical tradition of a chain of living beings, one end of whichincluded the divinities in their various grades or stages of divine authority and activities, and the otherend of which ran downwards through inferior gods and heroes and sages to ordinary men, and to thebeings below man. Each link of this living chain of beings inspired and instructed the chain below itself,thus transmitting and communicating from link to link to the end of the marvelous living chain, love andwisdom and knowledge concerning the secrets of the universe, eventuating in mankind as the arts and thesciences necessary for human life and civilization. This was mystically called the Hermetic Chain or theGolden Chain.In the ancient Mysteries the teaching of the existence and nature of the Hermetic Chain was fullyexplained; it is a true teaching because it represents distinctly and clearly and faithfully true and actualoperations of nature. More or less faint and distorted copies of the teaching of this Hermetic Chain orGolden Chain or succession of teachers were taken over by various later formal and exoteric sects, suchas the Christian Church, wherein the doctrine was called the Apostolic Succession. In all the greatMystery schools of antiquity there was this succession of teacher following teacher, each one passing onthe light to his successor as he himself had received it from his predecessor; and as long as thistransmission of light was a reality, it worked enormous spiritual benefit among men. Therefore all suchmovements lived, flourished, and did great good in the world. These teachers were the messengers tomen from the Great Lodge of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion. (See also Guru-parampara)
heteromorphic ::: a. --> Deviating from the normal, perfect, or mature form; having different forms at different stages of existence, or in different individuals of the same species; -- applied especially to insects in which there is a wide difference of form between the larva and the adult, and to plants having more than one form of flower.
Himitsu mandara jujushinron. (秘密曼荼羅十住心論). In Japanese, "Ten Abiding States of Mind According to the Sacred MAndALA"; a treatise composed by the Japanese SHINGONSHumonk KuKAI; often referred to more briefly as the Jujushinron. In 830, Kukai submitted this treatise in reply to Emperor Junna's (r. 823-833) request to each Buddhist tradition in Japan to provide an explanation of its teachings. In his treatise, Kukai systematically classified the various Buddhist teachings (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) and placed them onto a spiritual map consisting of the ten stages of the mind (jujushin). The first and lowest stage of the mind ("the deluded, ram-like mind") is that of ignorant beings who, like animals, are driven by their uncontrolled desires for food and sex. The beings of the second stage ("the ignorant, childlike, but tempered mind") display ethical behavior consistent with the teachings of Confucius and the lay precepts of Buddhism. The third stage of mind ("the infantlike, fearless mind") is the state in which one worships the various gods and seeks rebirth in the various heavens, as would be the case in the non-Buddhist traditions of India and in Daoism. The fourth stage ("recognizing only SKANDHAs and no-self") corresponds to the sRĀVAKAYĀNA and the fifth stage ("mind free of karmic seeds") to that of the PRATYEKABUDDHAYĀNA. The sixth stage ("the mind of MAHĀYĀNA, which is concerned with others") corresponds to the YOGĀCĀRA teachings, the seventh ("mind awakened to its unborn nature") to MADHYAMAKA, the eighth ("mind of one path devoid of construction") to TIANTAI (J. TENDAI), and the ninth ("mind completely devoid of self-nature") to HUAYAN (J. Kegon). Kukai placed his own tradition of Shingon at the last and highest stage of mind ("the esoteric and adorned mind"). Kukai also likened each stage of mind to a palace and contended that these outer palaces surround an inner palace ruled by the buddha MAHĀVAIROCANA. To abide in the inner palace one must be initiated into the teachings of Shingon by receiving consecration (ABHIsEKA). Kukai thus provided a Buddhist (or Shingon) alternative to ideal rulership. To demonstrate his schema of the mind, Kukai frequently cites numerous scriptures and commentaries, which made his treatise extremely prolix; Kukai later provided an abbreviated version of his argument, without the numerous supporting references, in his HIZo HoYAKU.
Hippocentaurs [from Greek hippos horse + kentauros centaur] Centaurs said to be half man, half horse. The prefix hippo distinguishes them from another kind of monster, the ichthyscentaurus — half man, half fish. They are among the monsters resulting from nature’s unaided attempts to create in the early stages of evolution.
HUMANITY, STAGE OF The fourth of man&
Hwaom ilsŭng popkye to. (C. Huayan yisheng fajie tu; J. Kegon ichijo hokkaizu 華嚴一乘法界圖). In Korean, "Diagram of the DHARMADHĀTU according to the One Vehicle of Hwaom (C. HUAYAN)," composed by ŬISANG in 670 and presented to his Chinese teacher, ZHIYAN. Ŭisang first provides a wavelike diagram of the dharmadhātu (also sometimes referred to as the Haein to, or "Oceanic-Reflection Diagram"), which contains a verse in two hundred and ten Chinese characters summarizing the gist of the Huayan school's interpretation of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. The diagram and its subsumed verse are then followed by Ŭisang's own (auto)commentary, itself divided into two major sections: the fundamental purport of the diagram and the detailed interpretation of the verse. In the diagram itself, the path meanders along a single line in order to show that all phenomena are interconnected through the single principle of the dharma nature. The diagram begins and ends at the same place in the center of the maze, to suggest that the inception of practice in the generation of the thought of enlightenment (BODHICITTOTPĀDA) and its consummation through enlightenment are identical. The diagram is broadly divided into four equal sections to demonstrate that the dharma nature is perfected through the four means of conversion (SAMGRAHAVASTU: viz., giving, kind words, helpfulness, and cooperation). The single path that meanders through the diagram includes fifty-four curves to indicate the teachers that the pilgrim SUDHANA in the GAndAVYuHA section of the AvataMsakasutra consulted in the course of his training-and thus by extension the stages of the BODHISATTVA path. The "Hwaom ilsŭng popkye to" served as the foundation of Hwaom thought in Korea. There is some controversy over whether the verse itself may have in fact been composed by Zhiyan, with Ŭisang's contribution being to create the diagram for the verse and write the commentary, but there is not currently a scholarly consensus concerning this issue.
HYLOZOICS (Gr. hyle, &
IDEALITY, STAGE OF The highest of man&
II. Metaphysics of History: The metaphysical interpretations of the meaning of history are either supra-mundane or intra-mundane (secular). The oldest extra-mundane, or theological, interpretation has been given by St. Augustine (Civitas Dei), Dante (Divma Commedia) and J. Milton (Paradise Lost and Regained). All historic events are seen as having a bearing upon the redemption of mankind through Christ which will find its completion at the end of this world. Owing to the secularistic tendencies of modern times the Enlightenment Period considered the final end of human history as the achievement of public welfare through the power of reason. Even the ideal of "humanity" of the classic humanists, advocated by Schiller, Goethe, Fichte, Rousseau, Lord Byron, is only a variety of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and in the same line of thought we find A. Comte, H. Spencer ("human moral"), Engels and K. Marx. The German Idealism of Kant and Hegel saw in history the materialization of the "moral reign of freedom" which achieves its perfection in the "objective spirit of the State". As in the earlier systems of historical logic man lost his individuality before the forces of natural laws, so, according to Hegel, he is nothing but an instrument of the "idea" which develops itself through the three dialectic stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. (Example. Absolutism, Democracy, Constitutional Monarchy.) Even the great historian L. v. Ranke could not break the captivating power of the Hegelian mechanism. Ranke places every historical epoch into a relation to God and attributes to it a purpose and end for itself. Lotze and Troeltsch followed in his footsteps. Lately, the evolutionistic interpretation of H. Bergson is much discussed and disputed. His "vital impetus" accounts for the progressiveness of life, but fails to interpret the obvious setbacks and decadent civilizations. According to Kierkegaard and Spranger, merely human ideals prove to be too narrow a basis for the tendencies, accomplishments, norms, and defeats of historic life. It all points to a supra-mundane intelligence which unfolds itself in history. That does not make superfluous a natural interpretation, both views can be combined to understand history as an endless struggle between God's will and human will, or non-willing, for that matter. -- S.V.F.
I. Logic of History The historical objects under observation (man, life, society, biological and geological conditions) are so diverse that even slight mistakes in evaluation of items and of the historical whole may lead to false results. This can be seen from the modern logic of history. In the 18th century, G. B. Vico contended, under the deep impression of the lawfulness prevailing in natural sciences, that historical events also follow each other according to unswerving natural laws. He assumed three stages of development, that of fantasy, of will, and of science. The encyclopedists and Saint-Simon shared his view. The individual is immersed, and driven on, by the current of social tendencies, so that Comte used to speak of an "histoire sans noms". His three stages of development were the theological, metaphysical, and scientific stage. H. Spencer and A. Fouillee regard social life as an organism unfolding itself according to immanent laws, either of racial individuality (Gobineau, Vocher de Lapauge) or of a combination of social, physical, and personal forces (Taine). The spirit of a people and of an age outweigh completely the power of an individual personality which can work only along socially conditioned tendencies. The development of a nation always follows the same laws, it may vary as to time and whereabouts but never as to the form (Burkhardt, Lamprecht). To this group of historians belong also O. Spengler and K. Marx; "Fate" rules the civilization of peoples and pushes them on to their final destination.
Indeed, in ancient India, according to the laws of life then prevailing, all students, whether higher or lower, had to pass through the four stages of imbodied life on earth, and one of these was called grihastha — a man who had his home, wife, and children, as it was then a religious duty for everyone to carry on his own family line.
In past stages of evolution, when inchoate attempts at formation were made, and when planes and states of matter were not as they are now, strange monsters existed, which were at first purely lower astral, then astral-physical, and finally physical, before they died out. Hence the idea that the hydra was derived from traditions or astral visions of some reptile-monster of the Mesozoic Age may be an imperfect intuition of the facts.
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
In the seventh degree, theopathy (the suffering a god — suffering oneself to be one’s own inner god), the personal self has become permanently at-one with the inner divinity. The successful passing of the seventh trial resulted in the initiant’s becoming a glorified Christ, to be followed by the last or ultimate stage of this degree known in Buddhism as achieving buddhahood or nirvana. Since limits cannot be set to attainment, however, still loftier stages of spiritual and intellectual unfolding or initiation await those who have already attained the degree of buddhahood.
intranuclear ::: a. --> Within the nucleus of a cell; as. the intranuclear network of fibrils, seen in the first stages of karyokinesis.
In Yasna 26 five different faculties for understanding or five stages of consciousness are mentioned: Ahu, Daena, Baudha, Urvan, and Fravashi (the need of upright growth). In the Bundahish (ch 1), Ahura-Mazda produces a preparatory creation of embryonic and immaterial existences, the prototypes, fravashis, spiritual counterparts of the guardian angels of the spiritual and material creatures afterwards produced.
Jainism: An Indian religion claiming great antiquity, the last of the great teachers (tirthankara) being Mahavira (6th cent. B.C.), embracing many philosophical elements of a pluralistic type of realism. It rejects Vedic (q.v.) authority and an absolute being, gods as well as men partaking of mortality, and holds the mythologically conceived world to be eternal and subject only to the fixed sequence of six ages, good and bad, but not periodic creation and destruction. There is an infinitude of indestructible individual souls or spiritual entities, each possessing by nature many properties inclusive of omniscience, unlimited energy and bliss which come to the fore upon attaining full independence. The non-spiritual substances are space and time, rest and motion, and matter composed of atoms and capable of being apprehended by the senses and combining to form the world of infinite variety. Matter also penetrates spiritual substance like a physician's pill, changing to karma and producing physical attachments. The good life consists in the acquisition of the three gems (triratna) of right faith (samyag-darsana), right knowledge (samyag-jnana), right conduct (samyag-caritra). Salvation, i.e., becoming a kevalin (cf. kevala), is an arduous task achieved in 14 stages of perfection, the last being bodiless existence in bliss and complete oblivion to the world and its ways. -- K.F.L.
Jhana ::: A Pali term describing an advanced meditative state of awareness. There are both vipassana jhanas and samatha jhanas. The former describes states of meditative insight that are found through progressing through the stages of mindfulness meditation and the latter describes states of advanced concentration whereupon the object of observation becomes increasingly prounounced in the locus of one's awareness (at least in the early states, in later states that object can drop away entirely). The jhanic states are genuinely preternatural to the mundane mind and are somewhat advanced, so a discussion of them will need to await further research and experience.
jhāna. In Pāli, "meditative absorption," corresponding to the Sanskrit DHYĀNA (s.v.). Jhāna refers to the attainment of single-pointed concentration, whereby the mind is withdrawn from external sensory input and completely absorbed in an ideational object of meditation (see KAMMAttHĀNA). Jhāna involves the power to control the mind and does not, in itself, entail any enduring insight into the nature of reality; however, a certain level of concentration is generally said to be necessary in order to prepare the mind for direct realization of truth, the destruction of the afflictions, and the attainment of liberation. Jhāna is classified into two broad types: (1) meditative absorption of the subtle-materiality realm (P. rupāvacarajhāna; S. RuPĀVACARADHYĀNA) and (2) meditative absorption of the immaterial realm (P. arupāvacarajhāna; S. ĀRuPYĀVACARADHYĀNA). Each of these two types is subdivided into four stages or degrees of absorption, giving a total of eight stages of jhāna. These stages are sometimes called the eight "attainments" (SAMĀPATTI). The four absorptions of the subtle-materiality realm are characterized by an increasing attenuation of consciousness as one progresses from one stage to the next. By entering into any one of the jhānas, the meditator temporarily overcomes the five hindrances (NĪVARAnA) through the force of concentration. This is called "overcoming by repression" (P. vikkhambhanappahāna). The five hindrances are (1) "sensuous desire" (KĀMACCHANDA), which hinders one-pointedness of mind (P. cittekaggatā; S. CITTAIKĀGRATĀ); (2) "malice" (P. byāpāda; S. VYĀPĀDA), hindering rapture (P. pīti; S. PRĪTI); (3) "sloth and torpor" (P. thīnamiddha; S. STHYĀNA-MIDDHA), hindering applied thought (P. vitakka; S. VITARKA); (4) "restlessness and worry" (P. uddhaccakukkucca; S. AUDDHATYA-KAUKṚTYA), hindering joy (SUKHA); and (5) "skeptical doubt" (P. vicikicchā; S. VICIKITSĀ), which hinders sustained thought (VICĀRA). These hindrances thus specifically obstruct one of the factors of absorption (P. jhānanga; S. DHYĀNĀnGA), and once they are allayed the first level of the subtle-materiality jhānas will be achieved. In the first jhāna, all five constituents of jhāna are present; as concentration deepens, these gradually fall away, so that in the second jhāna, both types of thought vanish and only pīti, sukha, and ekaggatā remain; in the third jhāna, only sukha and ekaggatā remain; and in the fourth jhāna, concentration is now so rarified that only ekaggatā is left. Detailed correlations appear in meditation manuals describing specifically which of the five spiritual faculties (INDRIYA) and seven constituents of enlightenment (P. bojjhanga; S. BODHYAnGA) serve as the antidote to which hindrance. Mastery of the fourth absorption of the subtle-materiality realm is required for the cultivation of supranormal powers (P. abhiNNā; S. ABHIJNĀ) and for the cultivation of the four arupāvacarajhānas, or meditative absorptions of the immaterial realm. The immaterial absorptions themselves represent refinements of the fourth rupāvacarajhāna, in which the "object" of meditation is gradually attenuated. The four immaterial absorptions instead take as their objects: (1) the sphere of infinite space (P. ākāsānaNcāyatana; S. ĀKĀsĀNANTYĀYATANA), (2) the sphere of infinite consciousness (P. viNNānaNcāyatana; S. VIJNĀNĀNANTYĀYATANA), (3) the sphere of nothingness (P. ākiNcaNNāyatana; S. ĀKINCANYĀYATANA), and (4) the sphere of neither perception nor nonperception (P. nevasaNNānāsaNNāyatana; S. NAIVASAMJNĀNĀSAMJNĀYATANA). Mastery of the absorptions of either the subtle-materiality or immaterial realms results in rebirth in the corresponding heaven of each respective absorption.
Jhumur: “These are the forces that shield, that protect, sun-eyed always representing the supreme, the highest. These forces, these emanations, like the immutable lords, because each of these beings, the Lords, the guardians, the Angels of the Way, all of these are typal beings. They have been put there by the Divine in his plan in order to lead the evolving soul on its way. Here the guardians are protecting, shielding this spirit of the earth. At different stages of the journey you come across different powers.”
jiaoxiang panshi. (J. kyoso hanjaku; K. kyosang p'ansok 教相判釋). In Chinese, lit., "classification and interpretation of the characteristics of the doctrine"; also known as jiaopan or PANJIAO (tenet classification). Tenet classification was a fundamental exegetical practice in East Asian Buddhism, in which scriptures or Buddhist teachings were ranked in order of their supposed relative profundity. The practice flourished in East Asia, especially during the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. As more translations of Buddhist texts became available in East Asia, indigenous exegetes struggled with the question of why this plethora of scriptural material, all of which purported to have been spoken by the Buddha himself, offered such differing presentations of Buddhist thought and practice. Drawing on the notion of UPĀYA, or skill in means, exegetes began to reflect on the context and intent of the different Buddhist scriptures that were now available to them. The origin of scriptures and their teachings were analyzed and evaluated comparatively; after which the texts were organized in a hierarchical or, in some cases, chronological, order. Different exegetical traditions adopted different classification criteria. The TIANTAI ZONG, for example, based its classification schema on the different (chronological) stages of the Buddha's teaching career, the content of those teachings, and the varying methods he used in preaching to his audience (see WUSHI BAJIAO). The HUAYAN ZONG, following the lead of FAZANG and CHENGGUAN, divided scriptures into five levels based on the profundity of their respective teachings: HĪNAYĀNA (viz., the ĀGAMAs), elementary MAHĀYĀNA (viz., YOGĀCĀRA and MADHYAMAKA), advanced Mahāyāna (SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA), sudden teachings (typically CHAN), and perfect teachings (AVATAMSAKASuTRA). Most exegetes placed the central scripture of their schools at the apex of their classificatory hierarchy, thereby using the tenet-classification system as a polemical tool to demonstrate the superiority of their own traditions. See also SIDDHĀNTA.
Jiva (Sanskrit) Jīva A living being, or center of potential vitality and intelligence, equivalent to monad as well as life-atom. “Beginning its career as an unself-conscious god-spark, a jiva — a cosmic elemental born from the cosmic element — its destiny is to pass through all intermediate stages of evolution until finally it becomes a full-blown god, a jivanmukta” (FSO 225).
Kamalasīla. (T. Ka ma la shī la) (c. 740-795). One of the most important Madhyamaka authors of late Indian Buddhism, a major representative of the Yogācāra-Madhyamaka synthesis, and a participant in the famous BSAM YAS DEBATE. According to Tibetan doxographies, he was a proponent of the YOGĀCĀRA-SVĀTANTRIKA-MADHYAMAKA. Although little is known about his life, according to Tibetan sources he was a monk and teacher at NĀLANDĀ. Tibetan sources also count him as one of three (together with sĀNTARAKsITA and JNĀNAGARBHA) "Eastern Svātantrikas" (RANG RGYUD SHAR GSUM), suggesting that he was from Bengal. He was clearly a direct disciple of sāntaraksita, composing important commentaries on his teacher's two major works, the MADHYAMAKĀLAMKĀRA and the TATTVASAMGRAHA. The latter commentary, which is extant in Sanskrit, is an important source for both Hindu and Buddhist philosophical positions in the eighth century. sāntaraksita had gone to Tibet at the invitation of the Tibetan king KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN, where, with the assistance of PADMASAMBHAVA, he founded BSAM YAS, the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet. According to tradition, at the time of his death sāntaraksita warned that a mistaken philosophical view would become established in Tibet and advised the king to invite Kamalasīla to come to Tibet in order to dispel it. This mistaken view was apparently that of Heshang MOHEYAN, a Northern CHAN (BEI ZONG) monk who had developed a following at the Tibetan court. Kamalasīla was invited, and a debate was held between the Indian monk and his Chinese counterpart, with the king serving as judge. It is unclear whether a face-to-face debate took place or rather an exchange of documents. According to Tibetan sources, the king declared Kamalasīla the winner, named MADHYAMAKA as the official philosophical school of his realm, and banished the Chinese contingent. (Chinese records describe a different outcome.) This event, variously known as the BSAM YAS DEBATE, the Council of Bsam yas, and the Council of Lhasa, is regarded as one of the key moments in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. Three of Kamalasīla's most important works appear to have been composed in response to the issues raised in the debate, although whether all three were composed in Tibet is not established with certainty. These texts, each entitled BHĀVANĀKRAMA or "Stages of Meditation," set forth the process for the potential BODHISATTVA to cultivate BODHICITTA and then develop sAMATHA and VIPAsYANĀ and progress through the bodhisattva stages (BHuMI) to buddhahood. The cultivation of vipasyanā requires the use of both scripture (ĀGAMA) and reasoning (YUKTI) to understand emptiness (suNYATĀ); in the first Bhāvanākrama, he sets forth the three forms of wisdom (PRAJNĀ): the wisdom derived from hearing or learning (sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNĀ), the wisdom derived from thinking and reflection (CINTĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ), and the wisdom derived from meditation (BHĀVANĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ). This "gradual" approach, very different from what was advocated in the Chinese CHAN ZONG, is set forth in all three of the Bhāvanākrama, which, according to Tibetan tradition, were composed in Tibet after the Bsam yas debate, at the request of the king. However, only the third, and the briefest, directly considers, and refutes, the view of "no mental activity" (amanasikāra), which is associated with Moheyan. It was also during his time in Tibet that Kamalasīla composed his most important independent (i.e., noncommentarial) philosophical work, the MADHYAMAKĀLOKA, or "Illumination of the Middle Way," a wide-ranging exposition of the Yogācāra-Madhyamaka synthesis. It deals with a number of central epistemological and logical issues to articulate what is regarded as the defining tenet of the Yogācāra-Svātantrika-Madhyamaka school: that major YOGĀCĀRA doctrines, such as "mind-only" (CITTAMĀTRA), and the three natures (TRISVABHĀVA) are important in initially overcoming misconceptions, but they are in fact only provisional (NEYĀRTHA) teachings for those who have not yet understood the Madhyamaka view. The Madhyamakāloka is also important for its exploration of such central MAHĀYĀNA doctrines as the TATHĀGATAGARBHA and the question of the EKAYĀNA. On this latter point, Kamalasīla argues against the Yogācāra position that there are three final vehicles (for the sRĀVAKA, PRATYEKABUDDHA, and BODHISATTVA, with some beings excluded from any path to liberation) in favor of the position that there is a single vehicle to buddhahood (BUDDHAYĀNA) for all beings. Kamalasīla is said to have been murdered in Tibet by partisans of the Chinese position, who caused his death by squeezing his kidneys.
Karma Yoga (Sanskrit) Karma-yoga [from karma action + yoga union] One of the methods or stages of yoga practice and training, involving attaining at-one-ment or union with the spiritual-divine essence within by means of unselfish action or works.
karunā. (T. snying rje; C. bei; J. hi; K. pi 悲). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "compassion," or "empathy"; the wish that others be free from suffering, as distinguished from loving-kindness (MAITRĪ; P. mettā), the wish that others be happy. Compassion is listed as the second of the four divine abidings (BRAHMAVIHĀRA) along with loving-kindness, empathetic joy (MUDITĀ), and equanimity (UPEKsĀ). As one of the forty topics of meditation (P. KAMMAttHĀNA), compassion is used only for the cultivation of tranquillity (sAMATHA), not insight (VIPAsYANĀ). Compassion is to be developed in the following manner: filling one's mind with compassion, one pervades the world with it, first in one direction, then in a second direction, then a third, a fourth, then above, below, and all around. Of the four divine abidings, compassion, along with loving-kindness and empathetic joy, is capable of producing the first three of the four stages of meditative absorption (DHYĀNA). This mainstream Buddhist notion of compassion is to be distinguished from the "great compassion" (MAHĀKARUnĀ) of the BODHISATTVA, whose compassion inspires them to develop BODHICITTA, the aspiration to achieve buddhahood in order to liberate all beings from suffering. This great compassion is distinguished both by its scope (all sentient beings) and its agency (one personally seeks to remove the suffering of others). Great compassion thus becomes the primary motivating force that enables the BODHISATTVA to endure the three infinite eons (ASAMKHYEYAKALPA) necessary to consummate the path to buddhahood. In Mahāyāna literature, numerous techniques are set forth to develop compassion, including acknowledging the kindness one has received from other beings in past lifetimes.
Ladder of Life ::: A term frequently found in theosophical literature, briefly and neatly expressing the ascending grades orstages of manifested existences in the universe. In one sense the term ladder of life is interchangeablewith the other terms, the Hermetic Chain or the Golden Chain.The universe is imbodied consciousnesses; and these imbodied consciousnesses exist in a practicallyinfinite gradation of varying degrees of perfection -- a real ladder of life, or stair of life, stretchingendlessly in either direction, for our imagination can conceive of no limits except a hierarchical one; andsuch hierarchical limitation is but spacial and not actual, qualitative and formal. This ladder of life ismarked at certain intervals by landing places, so to say, which are what theosophists call the differentplanes of being -- the different spheres of consciousness, to put the thought in another manner.
lam 'bras. (lamdre). In Tibetan, lit. "path and result." The central tantric system of the SA SKYA sect of Tibetan Buddhism, derived from the HEVAJRATANTRA and transmitted to Tibet by 'BROG MI SHĀKYA YE SHES. The system was first set down in written form by the first of the five Sa skya hierarchs, SA CHEN KUN DGA' SNYING PO of the aristocratic 'Khon family. There are two exegetical traditions, first, the slob bshad (lopshe), or "explanation for disciples," was originally reserved for members of the 'Khon family, and the second, the tshogs bshad (tsokshe), or "explanation in the assembly," was for a wider audience. The preliminary practices of the lam 'bras are taught under the rubric of the snang ba gsum (nangwa sum) "three appearances" (impure, yogic, and pure) that systematize the topics found in the fundamental Sa skya teaching called "parting from the four attachments" (zhen pa bzhi bral) (see SA CHEN KUN DGA' SNYING PO). These topics are covered in other Tibetan sects under different such names as BSTAN RIM, LAM RIM ("stages of the path"), and so on. The second, the tantric part of the system, requires consecration and includes the practice of esoteric yogas. The practices convey to the practitioner the insight that the nature of the basis (gzhi), path (lam), and result ('bras bu) is the same, and that liberation through the practice of coemergent knowledge (lhan cig skyes pa'i ye shes)-i.e., the enlightened body, speech, and mind-is indivisible from the basis.
Lam rim bsdus don. (Lamrim Düdon). In Tibetan, "Concise Meaning of the Stages of the Path"; also called Lam rim chung ngu or "Brief Stages of the Path." The shortest of three major treatises on the stages of the path to awakening (LAM RIM) composed by the renowned Tibetan scholar TSONG KHA PA BLO BZANG GRAGS PA. The text is written in verse form, based upon the author's own meditative experiences. For that reason, it is often called the Lam rim nyams mgur ma or "Song of Experience of the Stages of the Path."
Lam rim chen mo. In Tibetan, "Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path"; the abbreviated title for one of the best-known works on Buddhist thought and practice in Tibet, composed by the Tibetan luminary TSONG KHA PA BLO BZANG GRAGS PA in 1402 at the central Tibetan monastery of RWA SGRENG. A lengthy treatise belonging to the LAM RIM, or stages of the path, genre of Tibetan Buddhist literature, the LAM RIN CHEN MO takes its inspiration from numerous earlier writings, most notably the BODHIPATHAPRADĪPA ("Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment") by the eleventh-century Bengali master ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA. It is the most extensive treatment of three principal stages that Tsong kha pa composed. The others include (1) the LAM RIM CHUNG BA ("Short Treatise on the Stages of the Path"), also called the Lam rim 'bring ba ("Intermediate Treatise on the States of the Path") and (2) the LAM RIM BSDUS DON ("Concise Meaning of the Stages of the Path"), occasionally also referred to as the Lam rim chung ngu ("Brief Stages of the Path"). The latter text, which records Tsong kha pa's own realization of the path in verse form, is also referred to as the Lam rim nyams mgur ma ("Song of Experience of the Stages of the Path"). The LAM RIM CHEN MO is a highly detailed and often technical treatise presenting a comprehensive and synthetic overview of the path to buddhahood. It draws, often at length, upon a wide range of scriptural sources including the SuTRA and sĀSTRA literature of both the HĪNAYĀNA and MAHĀYĀNA; Tsong kha pa treats tantric practice in a separate work. The text is organized under the rubric of the three levels of spiritual predilection, personified as "the three individuals" (skyes bu gsum): the beings of small capacity, who engage in religious practice in order to gain a favorable rebirth in their next lifetime; the beings of intermediate capacity, who seek liberation from rebirth for themselves as an ARHAT; and the beings of great capacity, who seek to liberate all beings in the universe from suffering and thus follow the bodhisattva path to buddhahood. Tsong kha pa's text does not lay out all the practices of these three types of persons but rather those practices essential to the bodhisattva path that are held in common by persons of small and intermediate capacity, such as the practice of refuge (sARAnA) and contemplation of the uncertainty of the time of death. The text includes extended discussions of topics such as relying on a spiritual master, the development of BODHICITTA, and the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ). The last section of the text, sometimes regarded as a separate work, deals at length with the nature of serenity (sAMATHA) and insight (VIPAsYANĀ); Tsong kha pa's discussion of insight here represents one of his most important expositions of emptiness (suNYATĀ). Primarily devoted to exoteric Mahāyāna doctrine, the text concludes with a brief reference to VAJRAYĀNA and the practice of tantra, a subject discussed at length by Tsong kha pa in a separate work, the SNGAGS RIM CHEN MO ("Stages of the Path of Mantra"). The Lam rim chen mo's full title is Skyes bu gsum gyi rnyams su blang ba'i rim pa thams cad tshang bar ston pa'i byang chub lam gyi rim pa.
Lam rim chung ba. (Lamrim Chungwa). In Tibetan, "Short Treatise on the Stages of the Path"; also called Lam rim 'bring ba ("Intermediate Treatise on the Stages of the Path"); the middle-length of three major treatises on LAM RIM, or stages of the path, composed by the renowned Tibetan luminary TSONG KHA PA BLO BZANG GRAGS PA. It is about half the size of the author's classic LAM RIM CHEN MO ("Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path"), and also less formal. He wrote this work in 1415, some thirteen years after Lam rim chen mo. Although the first sections of the text are largely a summary of what appears in Lam rim chen mo, the section on insight (VIPAsYANĀ) is substantially different from what appears in Tsong kha pa's earlier and longer work, changing the order of the presentation and adding dozens of quotations from Indian works that he did not use in Lam rim chen mo. Perhaps the most important contribution of this later work is its discussion of the two truths (SATYADVAYA) found in the vipasyanā section.
Lam rim gser zhun ma. (Lamrim Sershunma). In Tibetan, "Stages of the Path [like] Refined Gold"; a famous LAM RIM, or stages of the path, text composed by the third DALAI LAMA BSOD NAMS RGYA MTSHO constituting a "word commentary" (tshig 'grel) on TSONG KHA PA BLO BZANG GRAGS PA's LAM RIM BSDUS DON ("Concise Meaning of the Stages of the Path").
lam rim. In Tibetan, "stages of the path"; a common abbreviation for byang chub lam gyi rim pa (jangchup lamkyi rimpa), or "stages of the path to enlightenment," a broad methodological framework for the study and practice of the complete Buddhist path to awakening, as well as the name for a major genre of Tibetan literature describing that path. It is closely allied to the genre known as BSTAN RIM, or "stages of the doctrine." The initial inspiration for the instructions of this system is usually attributed to the Bengali master ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA, whose BODHIPATHAPRADĪPA ("Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment") became a model for numerous later stages of the path texts. The system presents a graduated and comprehensive approach to studying the central tenets of MAHĀYĀNA Buddhist thought and is often organized around a presentation of the three levels of spiritual predilection, personified as "three individuals" (skyes bu gsum): lesser, intermediate, and superior. The stages gradually lead the student from the lowest level of seeking merely to obtain a better rebirth, through the intermediate level of wishing for one's own individual liberation, and finally to adopting the MAHĀYĀNA outlook of the "superior individual," viz., aspiring to attain buddhahood in order to benefit all living beings. The approach is most often grounded in the teachings of the sutra and usually concludes with a brief overview of TANTRA. Although usually associated with the DGE LUGS sect, stages of the path literature is found within all the major sects of Tibetan Buddhism. One common Dge lugs tradition identifies eight major stages of the path treatises:
Lam rim 'jam dpal zhal lung. (Lamrim Jampal Shelung). In Tibetan, "Stages of the Path [which are] the Instructions of MaNjusrī"; an important LAM RIM, or stages of the path, treatise composed by the fifth DALAI LAMA NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO.
Lam rim snying gu. (Lamrim Nyingu). In Tibetan, "Essential Stages of the Path"; an important LAM RIM, or stages of the path, treatise composed by Dwags po Ngag dbang grags pa (Dakpo Ngawang Drakpa, born c. 1450).
Lam rim thar pa'i lag skyang. (Lamrim Tharpe Lakyang). In Tibetan, "Stages of the Path [which are like] Liberation in the Palm of One's Hand"; a well-known LAM RIM, or stages of the path, treatise written by the twentieth-century DGE LUGS scholar Pha bong ka Byams pa bstan 'dzin 'phrin las rgya mtsho (Pabongka Jampa Tendzin Trinle Gyatso, 1878-1941).
Lamrin (Tibetan) lam rim. Stages of the path; the name for a genre of Tibetan Buddhist literature. The most famous such work is Tsong-kha-pa’s Lam rim chen mo, which claims to be based on the earliest such work, the Bodhipathapradipa by Atisha (Dipamkara-shrijnana).
landmarks ::: 1. Prominent identifying features of a landscape. 2. Events marking important stages of development.
latent content : term used in Freud's stages of psychosexual development, to signify the underlying or hidden content represented in dreams.
laukikāgradharma. (T. 'jig rten pa'i chos kyi mchog; C. shidiyifa; J. sedaiippo; K. sejeilbop 世第一法). In Sanskrit, "highest worldly factors," the fourth of the "aids to penetration" (NIRVEDHABHĀGĪYA), which are developed during the "path of preparation" (PRAYOGAMĀRGA) and mark the transition from the mundane sphere of cultivation (LAUKIKAMĀRGA) to the supramundane vision (DARsANA) of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvāry āryasatyāni). This aid to penetration receives its name because these factors (DHARMA) constitute the highest mundane stage prior to the attainment of the first noble (ĀRYA) path, the "path of vision" (DARsANAMĀRGA). There were rival definitions within MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS and among VAIBHĀsIKA teachers themselves about which factors constituted the laukikāgradharma; the orthodox view of the dominant Kashmiri branch was that the laukikāgradharma were those factors involving mind (CITTA) and mental concomitants (CAITTA) that immediately catalyze the abandonment of mundane stages of existence and induce "access to the certainty that one will eventually win liberation" (SAMYAKTVANIYĀMĀVAKRĀNTI). Emerging from the stage of laukikāgradharmas, there is a single moment of "acquiescence to the fact of suffering" (duḥkhe dharmajNānaksānti) at the first (of the sixteen) moments of realization of the four noble truths, which then leads inexorably in the next instant to the path of vision (darsanamārga), which constitutes stream-entry (SROTAĀPANNA), the first of the four stages of sanctity. Thus, the laukikāgradharmas represent the final thought-moment of the ordinary person (PṚTHAGJANA) before one attains the "supreme" fruit of recluseship (sRĀMAnYAPHALA). ¶ In the Mahāyāna reformulation of ABHIDHARMA in the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ) tradition based on the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA, the laukikāgradharma is divided into three parts, a smaller, middling, and final part, within a larger presentation of a path of vision (darsanamārga) that knows "the lack of self of phenomena" (DHARMANAIRĀTMYA), i.e., that even the knowledge of the four noble truths is itself without any essential ultimate truth. According to this Mahāyāna abhidharma presentation, the path counteracts not just the mistaken apprehension of the four noble truths of suffering, origination, cessation, and path but also a series of thirty-eight object and subject conceptualizations (GRĀHYAGRĀHAKAVIKALPA). The three parts of the bodhisattva's laukikāgradharma, each divided again into three, counteract the last set of nine "pure" subject conceptualizations of an essentialized liberated person who experiences a liberating vision.
laukikamārga. (T. 'jig rten pa'i lam; C. shijiandao; J. sekendo; K. segando 世間道). In Sanskrit, lit. "mundane path," those practices that precede the moment of insight (DARsANAMĀRGA) and thus result in a salutary rebirth in SAMSĀRA rather than liberation (VIMUKTI); also called laukika-BHĀVANĀMĀRGA (the mundane path of cultivation). In the five-stage soteriology of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school, the mundane path corresponds to the first two stages, the path of accumulation (SAMBHĀRAMĀRGA) and the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA), because they do not involve the direct perception of reality that transforms an ordinary person (PṚTHAGJANA) into a noble one (ĀRYA). The mundane path is developed when a practitioner has begun to cultivate the three trainings (TRIsIKsĀ) of morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and wisdom (PRAJNĀ) but has yet to eradicate any of the ten fetters (SAMYOJANA) or to achieve insight (DARsANA). The eightfold path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA) is also formulated in terms of the spiritual ascension from mundane (LAUKIKA) to supramundane (LOKOTTARA). For example, mundane right view (SAMYAGDṚstI), the first stage of the eightfold path, refers to the belief in the efficacy of KARMAN and its effects and the reality of a next life after death, thus leading to better rebirths; wrong view (MITHYĀDṚstI), by contrast, denies such beliefs and leads to unsalutary rebirths. After continuing on to cultivate the moral trainings of right speech, action, and livelihood based on this right view, the practitioner next devotes himself to right concentration (SAMYAKSAMĀDHI). Concentration then leads in turn to supramundane right view, which results in direct insight into the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS and the removal of the initial fetters. ¶ In the MADHYĀNTAVIBHĀGA, a Mahāyāna work associated with the name of MAITREYA, the eightfold path is reformulated as a "worldly" path that a bodhisattva treads after the path of vision (darsanamārga), on the model of the Buddha's work for the world after his awakening beneath the BODHI TREE in BODHGAYĀ. The bodhisattva's supramundane vision, described by the seven factors of enlightenment (BODHYAnGA), is an equipoise (SAMĀHITA) in which knowledge is beyond all proliferation (PRAPANCA) and conceptualization (VIKALPA); the states subsequent (pṛsthalabdha) to that equipoise are characterized as the practice of skillful means (UPĀYA) to lead others to liberation, on the model of the Buddha's compassionate activities for the sake of others. The practice serves to accumulate the bodhisattva's merit collection (PUnYASAMBHĀRA); there is no further vision to be gained, only a return to the vision in the supramundane stages characterized as the fundamental (maula) stages of the ten bodhisattva stages (BODHISATTVABHuMI) or a supramundane cultivation (lokottarabhāvanā). All other acts are laukika ("worldly") skillful means.
laya. ::: dissolution; stages of dissolution of consciousness; annihilation; absorption; absorption of breath and mind in the Heart
Lens ::: A perspective through which Consciousness observes the rest of reality and is capable of reflecting upon Itself. This is a complex topic to discuss and an active area of research but is based on the recursive subsetting of Self (of Source Consciousness). How this subsetting takes place through spacetime and how stages of self cohere provides myriad ways in which the perception of the rest of dualistic reality is constrained and through which it is interpreted: these are the lenses of Self.
Liberation of the self from the causes of illusion is sometimes spoken of in relation to the seven sensitive and sensory veils, especially with reference to the human manas principle. Emancipation consists in recognizing that these veils, of which the lower four are by far the most illusory, are the perceivers, and that the function of the true self is those higher faculties which collate and discriminate among perceptions of all kinds and which reach final and true judgment. The self sees or ascertains truth; the veils perceive and are caught by the webs of illusion. The one who has achieved this is said to have attained the fire of knowledge, which destroys not only illusion but even destroys the causes leading to the planes of illusion. Vishnu, among the Vaishnavas in India, and Siva among the Saivas, or indeed of any other divinity, can be considered the cause of final emancipation when used for the true self, exactly as Christians may claim with perfect truth that the Christ (in man) is the shower of final emancipation. The successive emancipation from the seven veils marks seven stages of initiation. Buddhi, from this standpoint the highest, most diaphanous, and therefore the closest to reality of the veils, is said to be transformed into the tree whose fruit is emancipation.
Life-Atoms ::: The physical body is composed essentially of energy, of energies rather, in the forms that are spoken ofin modern physical science as electrons and protons. These are in constant movement; they areincessantly active, and are what theosophists call the imbodiments or manifestations of life-atoms. Theselife-atoms are inbuilt into man's body during the physical life which he leads on earth, although they arenot derivative from outside, but spring forth from within himself -- at least a great majority of them aresuch. This is equivalent to saying that they compose both his physical as well as his intermediate nature,which latter is obviously higher than the physical.When the man dies -- that is to say, when the physical body dies -- its elements pass, each and all, intotheir respective and appropriate spheres: some into the soil, to which those that go there are drawn bymagnetic affinity, an affinity impressed upon their life-energies by the man when alive, whoseovershadowing will and desires, whose overlordship and power, gave them that direction. Others passinto the vegetation from the same reason that the former are impelled to the mineral kingdom; others passinto the various beasts with which they have, at the man's death, magnetic affinity, psychic affinity moreaccurately, an affinity which the man has impressed upon them by his desires and various impulses; andthose which take this path go to form the interior or intermediate apparatus of the beasts into which theypass. So much for the course pursued by the life-atoms of the man's lowest principles.But there are other life-atoms belonging to him. There are life-atoms, in fact, belonging to the sphere ofeach one of the seven principles of man's constitution. This means that there are life-atoms belonging tohis intermediate nature and to his spiritual nature and to all grades intermediate between these two higherparts of him. And in all cases, as the monad "ascends" or "rises" through the spheres, as he goes step bystep higher on his wonderful postmortem journey, on each such step he discards or casts off thelife-atoms belonging to each one of these steps or stages of the journey. With each step, he leaves behindthe more material of these life-atoms until, when he has reached the culmination of his wonderfulpostmortem peregrination, he is, as Paul of the Christians said, living in "a spiritual body" -- that is tosay, he has become a spiritual energy, a monad.Nature permits no absolute standing still for anything, anywhere. All things are full of life, full of energy,full of movement; they are both energy and matter, both spirit and substance; and these two arefundamentally one -- phases of the underlying reality, of which we see but the maya or illusory forms.The life-atoms are actually the offspring or the off-throwings of the interior principles of man'sconstitution. It is obvious that the life-atoms which ensoul the physical atoms in man's body are asnumerous as the atoms which they ensoul; and there are almost countless hosts of them, decillions upondecillions of them, in practically incomputable numbers. Each one of these life-atoms is a being which isliving, moving, growing, never standing still -- evolving towards a sublime destiny which ultimatelybecomes divinity.
LIFE VIEW The life view concerns the consciousness aspect of existence and is the sum total of man's attitude to life, to its meaning and goal, and his view of mankind and man&
light-emitting resistor "electronics, humour" (LER, from "{light-emitting diode}") A {resistor} in the final stages of burning up. (Though intended as purely humorous, the term could sensibly describe the filament of a common incandescent electric light bulb). See also {SED}. (1996-02-06)
light-emitting resistor ::: (electronics, humour) (LER, from light-emitting diode) A resistor in the final stages of burning up.(Though intended as purely humorous, the term could sensibly describe the filament of a common incandescent electric light bulb).See also SED. (1996-02-06)
Line Stages of evolutionary development in cosmic manifestation are sometimes symbolized by the geometrical forms point, line, plane, solid, corresponding to unit or monad, duad, triad, and quaternary. Lines are therefore rays proceeding from an egoic center, and represent cosmic forces and, on the lower planes, the forces familiar in physics. These are dual, bipolar. In geometric symbols, lines may be combined, as for instance in the cross, where common agreement makes the vertical line masculine, the horizontal feminine; or in triangles, where the side lines and the base line each have its particular meaning. A line drawn in physical space may be regarded as a symbol for a real line, but to comprehend what the latter is, we must abstract the idea from all notions of physical space.
Lion In Christian mystical thought one of the four sacred animals of the Bible, associated with the evangelist Mark and, as in the mystical thought of other peoples, representing intense energy, sometimes undaunted courage, and occasionally the solar fire. The lion was a favorite symbol with the ancients, for instance with the Chaldeans, and as a leitmotif of Chaldean art is found extensively. It is also found frequently on Gnostic gems and as emblem and as symbol among the ancient Mithraists, where the lion was one of the stages of instruction and initiation.
lokuttaramagga. (S. lokottaramārga; T. 'jig rten las 'das pa'i lam; C. chushi dao; J. shussedo; K. ch'ulse to 出世道). In Pāli, "supramundane path"; four stages of "attainment" along the noble path (S. ĀRYAMĀRGA) of enlightened persons (S. ĀRYAPUDGALA); viz., the path of stream-enterer (S. srotaāpattimārga), the path of once-returner (S. sakṛdāgāmimārga), the path of nonreturner (S. anāgāmimārga), and the path of the worthy (S. arhanmārga). The four supramundane paths are combined with four supramundane fruitions (LOKUTTARAPHALA) to make eight stages of holiness altogether.
lokuttaraphala. (S. lokottaraphala; T. 'jig rten las 'das pa'i 'bras bu; C. chushi guo; J. shusseka; K. ch'ulse kwa 出世果). In Pāli, "supramundane fruition"; four stages of "enjoyment" along the noble path (S. ĀRYAMĀRGA) of noble persons (S. ĀRYAPUDGALA); viz., the fruition of stream-enterer (S. srotaāpattiphala), fruition of once-returner (S. sakṛdāgāmiphala), fruition of nonreturner (anāgāmiphala), and fruition of the worthy one (S. arhatphala). The four supramundane fruitions are combined with four supramundane paths (LOKUTTARAMAGGA) to make a total of eight stages of sanctity. See ĀRYAMĀRGAPHALA; ĀRYAPUDGALA.
Mahāssapurasutta. (C. Mayi jing; J. Meyukyo; K. Maŭp kyong 馬邑經). In Pāli, the "Greater Discourse at Assapura"; the thirty-ninth sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (a separate SARVĀSTIVĀDA recension appears as the 182nd sutra in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMĀGAMA, and another recension of unidentified affiliation in the EKOTTARĀGAMA); preached by the Buddha to a group of monks dwelling in the market town of Assapura in the Anga country. The people of Assapura were greatly devoted to the Buddha and were generous in their support of the monks. In recognition of their generosity, the Buddha admonished his disciples to strive ardently in their practice of the path to liberation by delivering a discourse on what makes one a true recluse. He describes the path in stages, beginning with the avoidance of evil deeds through the restraint of bodily and verbal actions, followed by the avoidance of evil thoughts through the mental restraint of meditation. This provides the foundation for the cultivation of four stages of meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA), which, in turn, facilitates the eradication of contaminants (P. āsava; S. ĀSRAVA) through the practice of insight (P. vipassanā; S. VIPAsYANĀ) and the attainment of final liberation in NIRVĀnA.
manana. ::: deep contemplation; subtle enquiry; hearing and profound reflection; meditation on the eternal verities; second of the three stages of vedantic realisation
Manifestation ::: A generalizing term signifying not only the beginning but the continuance of organized kosmic activity,the latter including the various minor activities within itself. First there is of course always the Boundlessin all its infinite planes and worlds or spheres, aggregatively symbolized by the circle; then parabrahman,or the kosmic life-consciousness activity, and mulaprakriti its other pole, signifying root-natureespecially in its substantial aspects. Then the next stage lower, Brahman and its veil pradhana; thenBrahma-prakriti or Purusha-prakriti (prakriti being also maya); the manifested universe appearingthrough and by this last, Brahma-prakriti, "father-mother." In other words, the second Logos orfather-mother is the producing cause of manifestation through their son which, in a planetary chain, is theprimordial or the originating manu, called Svayambhuva.When manifestation opens, prakriti becomes or rather is maya; and Brahma, the father, is the spirit of theconsciousness, or the individuality. These two, Brahma and prakriti, are really one, yet they are also thetwo aspects of the one life-ray acting and reacting upon itself, much as a man himself can say, "I am I."He has the faculty of self-analysis or self-division. All of us know it, we can feel it in ourselves -- oneside of us, in our thoughts, can be called the prakriti or the material element, or the mayavi element, orthe element of illusion; and the other is the spirit, the individuality, the god within.The student should note carefully that manifestation is but a generalizing term, comprehensive thereforeof a vast number of different and differing kinds of evolving planes or realms. For instance, there ismanifestation on the divine plane; there is manifestation also on the spiritual plane; and similarly so onall the descending stages of the ladder or stair of life. There are universes whose "physical" plane isutterly invisible to us, so high is it; and there are other universes in the contrary direction, so far beneathour present physical plane that their ethereal ranges of manifestation are likewise invisible to us.
MANKIND OF OUR PLANET The number of individuals counted among our planet's mankind, causalized here or transferred hither, amounts to some 60 thousand million. They are in the physical, emotional, mental, and causal worlds of our planet, most of them asleep in their causal envelopes - since they have no possibility of causal consciousness - pending a new incarnation. K 1.34.7
Of these, some 24 billion causalized (transmigrated from the animal to the human kingdom by acquiring causal envelopes of their own) in Lemuria, beginning in the year
21,686,420 B.C. The other 36 billion have been transferred to our planet at different turns. The causal envelopes of the latter are of very different ages. This explains why the individuals in mankind are at such widely different stages of development, and how it is that many have now passed to higher kingdoms.
Most generally, one can say that mankind&
mārgaphala. (P. maggaphala; T. lam 'bras; C. daoguo; J. doka; K. to kwa 道果). In Sanskrit, lit. "path and its fruition"; the eight stages of realization belonging to an ĀRYA, or "noble one." consisting of four supramundane paths (MĀRGA) and four supramundane fruits (PHALA). These are as follows: (1) realization of the path of stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA), and (2) the realization of the fruition of stream-enterer; (3) realization of the path of once-returner (SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), and (4) realization of the fruition of once-returner; (5) realization of the path of nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIN), and (6) realization of the fruition of nonreturner; and (7) realization of the path of the worthy ones (ARHAT); and (8) the realization of the fruition of worthy one. In Tibetan, the literal translation of mārgaphala as LAM 'BRAS refers to a central doctrine of the SA SKYA sect.
MENTAL STAGE The mental stage is divided into the stages of humanity and ideality (or the causal stage). The humanist activates consciousness in the four lowest mental molecular kinds (47:4-7), the idealist in all six (47:2-7). The humanist is a mental self, the idealist a causal self. K 1.34.18
Missing Link On the theory that man has been produced by evolution from the anthropoid apes, a type which shall be intermediate between the anthropoid and man. A misleading term, implying that a chain of graduated types between animals and men has been completely established except for the lack of a single link or type which, when found, will make the chain complete. The existence of such a nearly complete chain has always been largely suppositious. The Darwinian theory requires that man evolved by successive stages of continually greater refinement, from an unknown beast ancestor, then from a primitive savage and almost bestial type, up to the man of today. The numerous degrees of human refinement found living today or evidenced by their remains, do not represent a progressive, unbroken serial time scale of evolution, but merely a complicated assortment of types which in all times known to science appear to have existed contemporaneously with each other. Moreover the so-called primitive types are now recessive, and have been so for ages, being themselves to us the remote descendants of far earlier races, once civilized, but now represented merely by these degenerate remnants.
monomorphous ::: a. --> Having but a single form; retaining the same form throughout the various stages of development; of the same or of an essentially similar type of structure; -- opposed to dimorphic, trimorphic, and polymorphic.
morula ::: n. --> The sphere or globular mass of cells (blastomeres), formed by the clevage of the ovum or egg in the first stages of its development; -- called also mulberry mass, segmentation sphere, and blastosphere. See Segmentation.
Mundane Consciousness ::: A generalized term for everyday, ordinary awareness. Used to contrast with states and stages of conscious experience that surpass these ordinary expectations and perceptions.
Myur lam lam rim. (Nyurlam Lamrim). In Tibetan, "The Quick Path Stages of the Path"; an important LAM RIM, or "stages of the path," treatise composed by the second PAn CHEN LAMA Blo bzang ye shes dpal bzang po (Losang Yeshe Palsangpo, 1663-1737). The work's complete title is Byang chub lam gyi rim pa'i dmar khrid thams cad mkhyen par bgrod pa'i myur lam.
Nastika (Sanskrit) Nāstika [from na not + āstika one who believes in the existence of the orthodox exoteric divinity and divinities] One who rejects the orthodox and exoteric religious teachings concerning the divinities, and who in consequence is apt to be called an atheist by orthodox exotericists. As all such orthodox exotericism really consists, at least in very large measure, in looking upon the divinities in the universe as objects of adoration, much after the manner in which the populace worships idols, hence nastika can likewise be considered to mean one who rejects idols, including every anthropomorphic god. In this sense every genuine occultist is a nastika, although every occultist will affirm the existence of divinities, gods, spiritual beings, or dhyani-chohans — call them by what name is preferred — in the universe, stating indeed that the universe is filled full with divinities or essentially spiritual beings in the myriad stages of evolutionary development. But the occultist, while revering the more grandly spiritual hierarchies of these divinities, worships or adores none of them, reserving his unspeakably deep reverence for that nameless ineffable mystery which is beyond, above, and within the boundless All, and therefore is not only unspeakable but unthinkable.
Nature ::: The consciousness side of nature is composed of vast hierarchies of gods, developed cosmical spirits,spiritual entities, cosmic graduates in the university of life. The material side of nature is theheterogeneous matter, the material world in its many various planes, in all stages of imperfection -- butall these stages filled with armies of entities evolving and growing. The proper term for nature in moderntheosophical usage is prakriti or still more accurately mulaprakriti -- the ever-living kosmic producer, theeternally fecund mother, of the universe. When a theosophist speaks of nature, unless he limits the termto the physical world, he never means the physical world alone, but the vast reaches of universal kosmosand more particularly the inner realms, the causal factors of the boundless All. Hence, a growingunderstanding of nature in this sense -- which is another way of saying an understanding of reality -obviously provides the only basis of a religion founded on the changeless realities.
Neo-Platonism: The mystic philosophical system established by Plotinus (205-270 A.D.). Its center is the Godhead, the One, the Absolute Good, the Source, an undivided and undifferentiated Unity, from which a succession of emanations radiate out in stages of decreasing splendor and reality.
nididhyasana. :::constancy in the Self; ::: one-pointedness of the mind; cultivation of equanimity in the Self; unwavering, perpetual meditation; third of the three stages of vedantic realisation
nirvedhabhāgīya. (T. nges par 'byed pa'i cha dang mthun pa; C. shunjuezefen; J. junketchakubun; K. sun'gyolt'aekpum 順決擇分). In Sanskrit, "aids to penetration," the constituent stages developed during the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA), the second segment of the five-path schema outlined in the VAIBHĀsIKA ABHIDHARMA system, which mark the transition from the mundane sphere of cultivation (LAUKIKA[BHĀVANĀ]MĀRGA) to the supramundane vision (DARsANA) of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvāry āryasatyāni); also called the "virtuous faculties associated with penetration" (nirvedhabhāgīya-KUsALAMuLA) or the "four virtuous faculties" (CATUsKUsALAMuLA). The nirvedhabhāgīya are the third of the three types of virtuous faculties (KUsALAMuLA) recognized in the VAIBHĀsIKA school, along with the punyabhāgīya and MOKsABHĀGĪYA kusalamulas. In distinction to the moksabhāgīyas, however, which are the remote path of preparation, the nirvedhabhāgīyas constitute instead the proximate path of preparation and are associated specifically with the type of wisdom that is generated through one's own meditative experience (BHĀVANĀMĀYĪPRAJNĀ). The four aids to penetration are (1) heat (usMAN [alt. usmagata]), (2) summit (MuRDHAN), (3) acquiescence or receptivity (KSĀnTI), (4) and highest worldly dharmas (LAUKIKĀGRADHARMA). After accumulating the preliminary skills necessary for religious cultivation on the preceding path of accumulation (SAMBHĀRAMĀRGA), the practitioner continues on to develop the mindfulness of mental constituents (dharma-SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA) on the path of preparation. This path involves the four aids to penetration, which mark successive stages in understanding the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths and are each subdivided into various categories, such as weak, medium, and strong experiences. While the first two of these NIRVEDHABHĀGĪYAs are subject to retrogression and thus belong to the worldly path of cultivation (laukikabhāvanāmārga), the latter two are nonretrogressive (AVAIVARTIKA) and lead inevitably to insight (DARsANA). Mastery of the four aids to penetration culminates in the "unimpeded concentration" (ĀNANTARYASAMĀDHI), in which the meditator acquires fully all the highest worldly dharmas; this distinctive concentration provides access to the third stage of the path, the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA), which marks the entrance into sanctity (ĀRYA) as a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA). Thus the nirvedhabhāgīyas are the pivotal point in the progression of an ordinary person (PṚTHAGJANA) to the status of a noble one (ĀRYA). According to the ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ, disciples (sRĀVAKA) and solitary buddhas (PRATYEKABUDDHA) may develop the nirvedhabhāgīyas either before or during any of the four stages of the meditative absorptions (DHYĀNA), while bodhisattvas develop all four in one sitting during their final lifetimes.
niryāna. (T. nges 'byung; C. chuli; J. shutsuri; K. ch'ulli 出離). In Sanskrit, lit. "departure" or "going out." In the context of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvāry āryasatyāni), it is an aspect of the third "truth of cessation" (NIRODHASATYA), where niryāna means the definite "escape" from suffering when its cause has been eliminated. In the context of the MAHĀYĀNA path, niryāna involves the final stages of a bodhisattva's progress (PRATIPATTI) leading to full enlightenment; the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA gives a list of eight niryānas based on aspects of the final destination. In some contexts, the term, like NIRVEDA and NIḤSARAnA, can mean "renunciation," in the sense of the conviction to be liberated or to emerge from rebirth in SAMSĀRA, whether one is following the path of the sRĀVAKA or PRATYEKABUDDHA in order to become an ARHAT, or is following the BODHISATTVA path in order to become a buddha. It is in this sense that the Tibetan translation of the term as "emergence" (nges 'byung) is deployed by TSONG KHA PA in his delineation of the "three principal aspects of the path" (LAM GTSO RNAM GSUM), where emergence is the first of the three aspects, followed by BODHICITTA and wisdom (PRAJNĀ).
nīvarana. [alt. nivarana] (T. sgrib pa; C. gai; J. gai; K. kae 蓋). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "hindrance" or "obstruction," referring specifically to five hindrances to the attainment of the first meditative absorption of the subtle-materiality realm (RuPĀVACARADHYĀNA). Each of these five hindrances specifically obstructs one of the five constituents of absorption (DHYĀNĀnGA) and must therefore be at least temporarily allayed in order for absorption (DHYĀNA) to occur. The five are: (1) "sensual desire" (KĀMACCHANDA), which hinders one-pointedness of mind (EKĀGRATĀ); (2) "malice" or "ill will" (VYĀPĀDA), hindering physical rapture (PRĪTI); (3) "sloth and torpor" (STYĀNA-MIDDHA), hindering the initial application of thought (VITARKA); (4) "restlessness and worry" (AUDDHATYA-KAUKṚTYA), hindering mental ease (SUKHA); and (5) "skeptical doubt" (VICIKITSĀ), hindering sustained consideration (VICĀRA). Buddhist sutras and meditation manuals, such as the VISUDDHIMAGGA, provide extensive discussion of various antidotes or counteragents (PRATIPAKsA, see also KAMMAttHĀNA) to these hindrances, such as the contemplation on the decomposition of a corpse (AsUBHABHĀVANĀ) to counter sensual desire; the meditation on loving-kindness (MAITRĪ) to counter malice; the recollection of death to counter sloth and torpor; quietude of mind to counter restlessness and worry; and studying the scriptures to counter skeptical doubt. In addition, the five faculties or dominants (INDRIYA) are also specifically designed to allay the five hindrances: faith (sRADDHĀ) counters malice; effort (VĪRYA) counters sloth and torpor; mindfulness (SMṚTI) counters sensual desire; concentration (SAMĀDHI) counters restlessness and worry; and wisdom (PRAJNĀ) counters skeptical doubt. A similar correlation is made between the seven factors of enlightenment (BODHYAnGA) and the hindrances. These five hindrances are permanently eliminated at various stages of the noble path (ĀRYAMĀRGA): worry (kaukṛtya) and skeptical doubt are permanently overcome at the point of becoming a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA); sensual desire and malice on becoming a nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIN); and sloth and torpor and restlessness (auddhatya) on becoming a worthy one (ARHAT).
niyatapuggala. In Pāli, "person with a fixed destiny," in the sense of having a definite place of rebirth, either salutary or unsalutary, in the immediately following lifetime. Such persons are of three types: one who has committed one of five heinous deeds that results in immediate retribution in the next life (P. ānantariyakamma, S. ĀNANTARYAKARMAN) of being reborn in the interminable hell (AVĪCI); one who follows one of the wrong views that leads to a specific unfortunate rebirth in the next lifetime (niyatamicchāditthi); and one who has attained one of the four stages of noble persons (P. ariyapuggala, S. ĀRYAPUDGALA) and thus will be reborn as either a human or a divinity (DEVA) in the next life, or who, in the case of an arahant (S. ARHAT), will not be reborn at all.
Nolini: Refers to the three elements or stages of mind.
object-oriented design "programming" (OOD) A design method in which a system is modelled as a collection of cooperating {objects} and individual objects are treated as instances of a {class} within a {class hierarchy}. Four stages can be identified: identify the classes and objects, identify their {semantics}, identify their relationships and specify class and object interfaces and implementation. Object-oriented design is one of the stages of {object-oriented programming}. {Schlaer-Mellor} is one approach to OOD. ["Object-oriented analysis and design with applications", Grady Booch, 2nd ed., pub. Benjamin/Cummings, Redwood CA, 1994]. (1997-12-07)
object-oriented design ::: (programming) (OOD) A design method in which a system is modelled as a collection of cooperating objects and individual objects are treated as relationships and specify class and object interfaces and implementation. Object-oriented design is one of the stages of object-oriented programming.[Object-oriented analysis and design with applications, Grady Booch, 2nd ed., pub. Benjamin/Cummings, Redwood CA, 1994]. (1997-12-07)
ovicell ::: n. --> One of the dilatations of the body wall of Bryozoa in which the ova sometimes undegro the first stages of their development. See Illust. of Chilostoma.
paNcacaksus. (P. paNcacakkhu; T. spyan lnga; C. wuyan; J. gogen; K. oan 五眼). In Sanskrit, "five eyes," referring to five specific sorts of vision. In Pāli texts they are all associated with the vision of a buddha; in MAHĀYĀNA texts, the five eyes open at higher and higher stages of practice; they overlap with the five (or six) superknowledges (ABHIJNĀ). The MĀMSACAKsUS (fleshly eye) is a VIPĀKAPHALA (maturation result) restricted in its range to the sight of the particular human, animal, or deity that possesses it. (In the case of vultures, for example, it is up to a hundred miles or so; in the case of deities it may be the entire cosmos.) The DIVYACAKsUS (heavenly eye) sees the death and rebirth of all beings; the PRAJNĀCAKsUS (wisdom eye) knows all conditioned (SAMSKṚTA) and unconditioned (ASAMSKṚTA) dharmas and is free from all projections; the DHARMACAKsUS (dharma eye) knows the attainments of all noble persons, from stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA) up to buddha; and the BUDDHACAKsUS (buddha eye) sees all dharmas in the full awakening of final enlightenment. In place of dharmacaksus, Pāli lists have the samantacakkhu (all-seeing eye).
paNcakrama. (T. rim lnga; C. wucidi; J. goshidai; K. och'aje 五次第). In Sanskrit, "five stages," the five stages of the completion stage (NIsPANNAKRAMA) of the ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA path according to the GUHYASAMĀJATANTRA. The five stages are (1) vajra repetition (vajrājāpa), (2) purification of consciousness (cittavisuddhi), (3) self-empowerment (svādhisthāna), (4) enlightenment (abhisaMbodhi), and (5) union (yuganaddha). ¶ PaNcakrama is also the title of a text attributed to NĀGĀRJUNA on the five stages according to the Guhyasamājatantra. Scholars attribute this to the "tantric Nāgārjuna," and not to the MADHYAMAKA master, although, according to the Tibetan tradition, Nāgārjuna lived for six hundred years and thus composed works on tantra. Together with ĀRYADEVA's commentary, the Caryāmelāpakapradīpa, the paNcakrama provides one of the most influential interpretive systems for an anuttarayogatantra cycle.
paNcamārga. (T. lam lnga; C. wuwei; J. goi; K. owi 五位). In Sanskrit, "five paths," the most common description of the path to enlightenment in Sanskrit Buddhism: (1) the path of accumulation (SAMBHĀRAMĀRGA), (2) the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA), (3) the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA), (4) the path of cultivation (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA), and (5) the adept path, lit., "the path where there is nothing more to learn" (AsAIKsAMĀRGA). These five paths are progressive, moving the practitioner sequentially from ordinary existence towards enlightenment and complete liberation from suffering. This system is elaborated especially in SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMA materials, as well as in the YOGĀCĀRA school of the MAHĀYĀNA. Depending on the source in which it is discussed, the paNcamārga can therefore be deployed to describe the spiritual development culminating in the rank of ARHAT or culminating in the rank of buddha. The general features of each of the five stages are as follows. ¶ The first is the "path of accumulation" or "equipment" (saMbhāramārga), wherein the practitioner develops a small degree of three prerequisite qualities for spiritual advancement: morality (sĪLA) by way of the basic precepts, merit (PUnYA) by way of veneration, and concentration (SAMĀDHI). The path of accumulation marks the beginning of the religious life. ¶ In the second "path of preparation" (prayogamārga), the practitioner continues to cultivate those qualities developed in the first path, but also undertakes a more stringent cultivation of concentration (samādhi) through the practice of calmness (sAMATHA); he also begins the cultivation of wisdom (PRAJNĀ) through the practice of insight (VIPAsYANĀ). ¶ With the third path, the "path of vision" (darsanamārga), the practitioner comes to a direct perception of the true nature of reality as it is. This reality may be described in terms of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvāry āryasatyāni) and/or emptiness (suNYATĀ). In the Yogācāra school, this path is understood as the realization that subject and object derive from the same source and a subsequent perception of phenomenal objects without the intervention of conventional labels. The darsanamārga is of particular importance because it typically marks the end of the mundane path of training and the beginning of the supramundane path of sanctity; thus, it is upon entering the path of vision that one becomes a noble person (ĀRYA). In abhidharma models, the path of vision corresponds to the stage of stream-entry (SROTAĀPANNA); in later Mahāyāna models, attainment of this path marks the first stage (BHuMI) of the bodhisattva path. ¶ The fourth path, the "path of cultivation" or "development" (bhāvanāmārga), involves the reinforcement and deepening of the insights developed in the path of vision. This cultivation is accomplished by advanced stages of meditation, through which one eliminates the most subtle and deep-rooted afflictions (KLEsA). The various schools delineate the meditative practices involved in this path in a variety of ways. The ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA, for example, schematizes this path both in terms of the nature or object of the meditation and in terms of the type of affliction that is abandoned during practice. ¶ Finally, the fifth stage, the adept path, lit., the "path where there is nothing more to learn" or the "path where no further training is necessary" (asaiksamārga), is synonymous with the soteriological goal, whether that is the state of an arhat or a buddha. With the consummation of the path of cultivation, the adept achieves the "adamantine-like concentration" (VAJROPAMASAMĀDHI), which leads to the permanent destruction of even the subtlest and most persistent of the ten fetters (SAMYOJANA), resulting in the "knowledge of cessation" (KsAYAJNĀNA) and in some presentations an accompanying "knowledge of nonproduction" (ANUTPĀDAJNĀNA), viz., the knowledges that the fetters were destroyed and could never again recur. With the attainment of this path, the practitioner has nothing more he needs to learn and is freed from the possibility of any further rebirth due to the causal force of KARMAN. This final path is also sometimes referred to as the NIstHĀMĀRGA, or "path of completion." All those proceeding to a state of liberation (VIMOKsA), whether as an arhat or as a buddha, are said to traverse these five paths. See also ĀNANTARYAMĀRGA; VIMOKsAMĀRGA.
Paramartha-satya (Sanskrit) Paramārtha-satya [from paramārtha sublime comprehension + satya truth, reality] Absolute or sublime truth or reality; from another standpoint, the path of pure wisdom-knowledge, bringing individual freedom to the adept, in contrast with samvriti-satya (relative truth). When the adept has reached the first stages of paramartha-satya he becomes a jivanmukta (freed monad), delivered thenceforward from the unceasing round of peregrinating reimbodiments until the end of the kalpa. The Tibetan equivalent is dondampai-denpa.
parasaMbhogakāya. (C. ta shouyong shen; J. tajuyushin; K. t'a suyong sin 他受用身). In Sanskrit, "body intended for others' enjoyment"; one of the four types of buddha bodies (BUDDHAKĀYA) discussed in the BUDDHABHuMIsĀSTRA (C. Fodijing lun), the MAHĀYĀNASAMGRAHA (C. She dasheng lun), and the CHENG WEISHI LUN (S. *VijNaptimātratāsiddhi), along with the "self-nature body" (SVABHĀVAKĀYA), "body intended for personal enjoyment" (SVASAMBHOGAKĀYA), and "transformation body" (NIRMĀnAKĀYA). This fourfold schema of buddha bodies derives from the better-known three bodies of a buddha (TRIKĀYA)-viz., dharma body (DHARMAKĀYA), reward body (SAMBHOGAKĀYA), and transformation body (nirmānakāya)-but distinguishes between two different types of enjoyment bodies. The first, the svasaMbhogakāya, derives from the countless virtues that originate from the accumulation of immeasurable merit and wisdom over a buddha's infinitely long career; this body is a perfect, pure, eternal, and omnipresent material body that enjoys the bliss of dharma (DHARMAPRĪTI) for oneself until the end of time. By contrast, the parasaMbhogakāya is a subtle virtuous body deriving from the wisdom of equality (SAMATĀJNĀNA), which resides in a PURE LAND and displays supernatural powers in order to enhance the enjoyment of the dharma by bodhisattvas at all ten stages of the bodhisattva's career (BODHISATTVABHuMI).
parihāni. (P. parihāni; T. yongs su nyams pa; C. tui; J. tai; K. t'oe 退). In Sanskrit, lit., "diminution," "retrogression," or "backsliding" from virtuous states that had previously been cultivated or mastered. Parihāni refers specifically to the diminution of mental states that had been directed toward liberation (VIMUKTI), which allows mental disturbances to reappear and thus causes regression to previous habitual tendencies involving unwholesome or mundane thoughts and activities. The term often appears in debates concerning the issue of whether the noble persons (ĀRYAPUDGALA) are subject to backsliding. Such MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS as the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA, SARVĀSTIVĀDA, and SAMMITĪYA argued, for example, that ARHATs were subject to backsliding because they were still prone to vestigial negative proclivities of mind (ANUsAYA), even if those only manifested themselves while the monks were sleeping, e.g., nocturnal emissions. The STHAVIRANIKĀYA argued that arhats were not subject to backsliding since they had perfected all the necessary stages of training and were free from such proclivities. Related to this issue are discussions concerning the status of once-returners (SAKṚDĀGĀMIN) and nonreturners (ANĀGĀMIN): the majority of schools posited that once-returners and nonreturners could regress to the status of the stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA), the first level of sanctity, but that the status of the stream-enterer was not subject to retrogression and was thus inviolate. In the PURE LAND tradition, backsliding is a core rationale justifying the pure land teachings, since, in the world of SAMSĀRA, backsliding is inevitable for all except the most resolute practitioners. According to the AMITĀBHASuTRA, for example, sentient beings have accumulated karmic burdens since time immemorial and are invariably subject to backsliding; thus, they will never be able to escape from the endless cycle of birth-and-death on their own. For this reason, the buddha AMITĀBHA encourages them to seek rebirth in the pure land, instead, where they will have no hindrances to their eventual attainment of liberation. In the MAHĀYĀNA tradition, reaching the stage where there no longer is any prospect of regression is a crucial threshold on the path to liberation. Different scriptures place this point of nonbacksliding at different stages along the path. One of the most common explanations about which stage is "irreversible" (AVAIVARTIKA) appears in the DAsABHuMIKASuTRA, which locates it on the eighth stage (BHuMI), the "immovable" (ACALĀ), where further progress is assured and where there is no possible of retrogressing to a preceding stage. However, HARIBHADRA in his commentary on the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA identifies two earlier points at which the bodhisattva becomes irreversible, one on the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA) and one on the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA).
peat ::: n. --> A small person; a pet; -- sometimes used contemptuously.
A substance of vegetable origin, consisting of roots and fibers, moss, etc., in various stages of decomposition, and found, as a kind of turf or bog, usually in low situations, where it is always more or less saturated with water. It is often dried and used for fuel.
phalapratipannaka. (P. phalapatipannaka; T. 'bras bu la zhugs pa; C. deguo; J. tokuka; K. tŭkkwa 得果). In Sanskrit, "one who has entered upon the fruition [of the path]"; a term used to describe four preparatory steps on the path to becoming a "noble one" (ĀRYA). For each of the four stages of stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA), once-returner (SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIN), and worthy one (ARHAT), there are two steps: entering upon the fruition (phalapatipannaka) and abiding in the fruition (PHALASTHITA). These two steps are distinguished as (1) achieving one of the four stages of the path, followed by (2) the state of having achieved that step.
phalasthita. [alt. phalastha] (P. phalathita; T. 'bras bu la gnas pa; C. zhuguo; J. juka; K. chugwa 住果). In Sanskrit, "abiding in the fruition," a term used to describe four resultant steps on the path to becoming a "noble one" (ĀRYA). For each of the four stages of stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA), once-returner (SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIN), and worthy one (ARHAT), there are two steps: entering upon the fruition (PHALAPAtIPANNAKA) and abiding in the fruition (phalasthita). These two steps are distinguished as (1) achieving one of the four stages of the path, followed by (2) the state of having achieved that step.
Phallic, Phallicism, Phallus [from Greek phallos penis] The phallus occurs frequently in Greek mythologic and mystical representation: it is carried by Pan; borne in Bacchic processions; carved on the pedestals of the Hermae in the streets of Athens. There is no reason, apart from appropriateness, for preferring or rejecting one part of the body rather than another as a symbol, so that the phallus of Pan may be quite on a par with the wings on the feet of Hermes. But the symbol has gone through stages of degradation, from being an emblem of spiritual generation to one of mere physical procreation, when physical procreation itself, once thought of in purity and with reverence, acquired associations of profligacy, sin, and shame. The words are chiefly used in The Secret Doctrine in reference to the degeneration of ancient doctrine and ritual from their originally exalted form into a materialized form, whether in Hebraic systems, Dionysion or Bacchic rites, Hindu ceremonial, etc.
Piaget (1896-1980): a Swiss developmental psychologist whose work has had a huge influence on psychology and education. Piaget defined four sequential stages of cognitive development; the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational stages, each characterised by different ways of thinking. Through development a child develops ?a target="_blank" href="https://www.itseducation.asia/psychology/s.htm
Plane ::: A level of reality that uniquely qualifies and constrains Consciousness to a particular lens in subsetted planes. Usually this refers to stable stages of experience in respect to a self or what those stages of stability add to the overall qualia of awareness (i.e. the lens). For example, the Astral Plane adds the capacity to visualize and express certain emotional states to the physical world. There are models that attempt to map the evolution of Consciousness into distinct planes including the Four Worlds Model and the Seven Planes Model. Contrast with Dimension.
Plane Used figuratively for “the range or extent of some state of consciousness, or of the perceptive power of a particular set of senses, or the action of a particular force, or the state of matter corresponding to any of the above” (TG 255). Though the cosmic planes are different from one another, they are not separated by gaps, just as the spectral colors are distinct and characteristic yet merge imperceptibly into each other. Nor can it be supposed that at all stages of evolution the scheme of planes was the same as now: we hear of a physico-astral stage of humanity and of other beings which now no longer exist on earth, in much the same way as we find the fossils of types intermediate between existing types but now extinct.
Polar Cells, Polar Globules, or Polar Bodies Two minute cells thrown off by the unfertilized ovum in its process of maturation. Blavatsky speaks of the first stages of a germ-cell’s development when the nuclear changes include the formation of double cone or spindle “within the cell. This spindle approaches the surface of the cell, and one half of it is extruded in the form of what are called the ‘polar cells.’ These polar cells now die, and the embryo develops from the growth and segmentation of the remaining part of the nucleus which is nourished by the substance of the cell. Then why could not beings have lived thus, and been created in this way — at the very beginning of human and mammalian evolution” The death of the polar cells “would now correspond to the change introduced by the separation of the sexes, when gestation in utero, i.e., within the cell, became the rule” (SD 2:117).
prajNāvimukta. (P. paNNāvimutta; T. shes rab kyis rnam par grol ba; C. hui jietuo; J. egedatsu; K. hyehaet'al 慧解). In Sanskrit, "one who is liberated through wisdom." The term refers specifically to a person who has attained liberation through insight (VIPAsYANĀ) into the three marks of existence: impermanence (ANITYA), suffering (DUḤKHA), and nonself (ANĀTMAN). Anyone who has attained any of the four stages of sanctity (ĀRYA)-stream-entry, once-returning, nonreturning, or arhatship-is said to have attained liberation through wisdom. Such liberation is equivalent to enlightenment (BODHI), results in the permanent eradication of the contaminants (ĀSRAVAKsAYA), and leads to the cessation of REBIRTH. In the Pāli abhidhamma and Sarvāstivāda ABHIDHARMA, the person "liberated through wisdom" is the sixth of seven types of enlightened disciples (ārya); the other six are: (1) the saddhānusāri (S. sRADDHĀNUSĀRIN), or faith-follower; (2) dhammānusāri (S. DHARMĀNUSĀRIN); (3) saddhāvimutta (S. sRADDHĀVIMUKTA), or one liberated through faith; (4) ditthippatta (S. DṚstIPRĀPTA), or vision-attainer; (5) kāyasakkhī (S. KĀYASĀKsIN), or witnessing with this very body; (6) ubhatobhāgavimutta (S. UBHAYATOBHĀGAVIMUKTA), or liberated in both ways. The prajNāvimukta who has attained liberation through the contemplation of no-self is contrasted with cetovimukta (P. cetovimutta; cf. CETOVIMUKTI), or "one liberated through mind," who has mastery of meditative absorptions (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA). The prajNāvimukta is also one of the VIMsATIPRABHEDASAMGHA ("twenty varieties of the āryasaMgha") based on the list given in the MAHĀVYUTPATTI.
prayoga. (T. sbyor ba; C. jiaxing; J. kegyo; K. kahaeng 加行). In Sanskrit, "application," "preparation," "joining together," "exertion." The term is widely used in soteriological, tantric, and astrological literature. It also functions as a technical term in logic, where it is often translated as "syllogism" and refers to a statement that contains a subject, a predicate, and a reason. A correct syllogism is composed of three parts, the subject (dharmin), the property being proved (SĀDHYADHARMA), and the reason (HETU or LInGA). For example, in the syllogism "Sound is impermanent because of being produced," the subject is sound, the property being proved is impermanence, and the reason is being produced. In order for the syllogism to be correct, three relations must exist among the three components of the syllogism: (1) the reason must be a property (DHARMA) of the subject, also called the "position" (PAKsA), (2) there must be a relationship of pervasion (VYĀPTI) between the reason and the property being proved (SĀDHYADHARMA), such that whatever is the reason is necessarily the property being proved, and (3) there must be a relationship of "exclusion" or reverse pervasion (vyatirekavyāpti) between the property being proved and the reason, such that whatever is not the property being proved is necessarily not the reason. ¶ In the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ exegetical tradition based on the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA, prayoga is the word used for the fourth to seventh of the eight ABHISAMAYAs ("clear realizations"). According to Ārya VIMUKTISENA's commentary (Vṛtti), the first three chapters set forth the three knowledges (JNĀNA) as topics to be studied and reflected upon (see sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNĀ, CINTĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ); the next four chapters set forth the practice of those knowledges, viz. the practice of the knowledge of a buddha. This practice is called prayoga. It is primarily at the level of meditation (BHĀVANĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ), and it leads to the SARVĀKĀRAJNATĀ, a buddha's omniscient knowledge of all aspects. The first prayoga is habituation to the perfect realization of all aspects (sarvākārābhisambodha); the second is learning to remain at the summit of the realization (murdhābhisamaya; cf. MuRDHAN); the third is a further habituation to each aspect, one by one (anupurvābhisamaya); and the fourth is the realization of all aspects in one single instant (ekaksanābhisamaya). This is the moment prior to omniscience. This prayoga is first detailed in twenty subtopics beginning with the cryptic statement that the practice is no practice at all; the 173 aspects (ĀKĀRA) that together cover the entire range of a bodhisattva's practice are set forth at all the stages of development, through the paths of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA) and cultivation (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA) up through the bodhisattva stages (BHuMI) to the purification of the buddha-field (BUDDHAKsETRA) and final instants of the path. Through the first of the four prayogas, the bodhisattva gains mastery over all the aspects; through the second, he abides in the mastery of them; with the third, he goes through each and makes the practice special; and with the fourth, he enters into the state of a buddha. See also PRAYOGAMĀRGA.
proximate self ::: One of the three major aspects of the overall self, along with the distal and anterior self. The proximate self is the intimately subjective self, which is experienced as an “I” or “I/me.” It is also the equivalent of the self-identity stream. Wilber’s fulcrums of development refer to the stages of proximate self-sense development.
Psychoanalytic Theory ::: Theory developed by Freud consisting of the structural model of personality, topographical model of personality, defense mechanisms, drives, and the psychosexual stages of development. The primary driving force behind the theory is the id, ego and superego and the division of consciousness into the conscious mind, the pre/subconscious, and the unconscious.
pudgala. (P. puggala; T. gang zag; C. ren/buteqieluo; J. nin/futogara; K. in/pot'ŭkkara 人/補特伽羅). In Sanskrit, "person." Although all Buddhist schools deny the existence of a perduring, autonomous self (ĀTMAN), some schools accepted the provisional existence of a person that is associated with one or more of the aggregates (SKANDHA). There is a wide range of opinion as to the precise status of the person. Most Buddhist schools hold that the person is a provisional designation (PRAJNAPTI), but differ as to which among the constituents of mind and body could be designated by the term "person," with some schools asserting that all five aggregates are designated as the person, while others that only the mental consciousness (MANOVIJNĀNA) is the person. The philosophical challenge faced by the Buddhist schools is to be able to uphold the continuity (SAMTĀNA) of the accumulation and experience of KARMAN over the course of a single lifetime as well as potentially infinite lifetimes in both past and future, while simultaneously upholding the fundamental impermanence of mind and matter and the absence of a permanent self (ANĀTMAN). The VĀTSĪPUTRĪYA and the SAMMITĪYA responded to the problem of accounting for personal continuity and rebirth when there is no perduring self by positing the existence of an "inexpressible" (S. avācya) "person" that is neither permanent nor impermanent and which is neither the same as nor different from the aggregates (skandha), but which is the agent of cognition and the bearer of action (KARMAN) from moment to moment and lifetime to lifetime. This position was criticized by other Buddhist schools, including in the ninth chapter of the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA, where VASUBANDHU condemns this view as the heretical assertion of a permanent self or soul (ĀTMAN). Pudgala is more generically also used in a salutary sense in connection with noble persons (ĀRYAPUDGALA) who have achieved one of the four stages of sanctity. See also sREnIKA HERESY.
Pusa yingluo benye jing. (J. Bosatsu yoraku hongokyo; K. Posal yongnak ponop kyong 菩薩瓔珞本業經). In Chinese, "Book of the Original Acts that Adorn the Bodhisattva," in two rolls, translation attributed to ZHU FONIAN (fl. c. 390); a Chinese indigenous sutra (see APOCRYPHA) often known by its abbreviated title of Yingluo jing. The Yingluo jing was particularly influential in the writings of CHAN and TIANTAI exegetes, including such seminal scholastic figures as TIANTAI ZHIYI, who cited the sutra especially in conjunction with discussions of the BODHISATTVA MĀRGA and Mahāyāna VINAYA. The Yingluo jing is perhaps best known for its attempt to synthesize the variant schemata of the Buddhist path (mārga) into a comprehensive regimen of fifty-two BODHISATTVA stages: the ten faiths, the ten abidings, the ten practices, the ten transferences, and the ten grounds (see C. DAsABHuMI; BHuMI); these then culminate in the two stages of buddhahood, virtual or equal enlightenment (dengjue) and sublime enlightenment (miaojue), which the Yingluo jing calls respectively the immaculate stage (wugou di, S. *amalabhumi) and the sublime-training stage (miaoxue di). The Yingluo jing is one of the first texts formally to include the ten faiths in its prescribed mārga schema, as a preliminary level prior to the initiation onto the bodhisattva path proper, which is said to occur at the time of the first arousal of the thought of enlightenment (BODHICITTOTPĀDA) on the first level of the ten abidings. The text therefore adds an additional ten steps to the forty-two named stages of the path outlined in the AVATAMSAKASuTRA (C. Huayan jing), providing a complete fifty-two-stage path, one of the most comprehensive accounts of the mārga to be found in East Asian Buddhist literature. The Yingluo jing also offers one of the most widely cited descriptions of the threefold classification of Buddhist morality (C. sanju jingji; S. sĪLATRAYA), a categorization of precepts found typically in YOGĀCĀRA-oriented materials. The Yingluo jing describes these as (1) the moral code that maintains both the discipline and the deportments (= S. SAMVARAsĪLA) through the ten perfections (PĀRAMITĀ); (2) the moral code that accumulates wholesome dharmas (= S. kusaladharmasaMgrāhaka) through the eighty-four thousand teachings; and (3) the moral code that aids all sentient beings (= S. SATTVĀRTHAKRIYĀ), through exercising loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity (viz. the four BRAHMAVIHĀRA). The Yingluo jing specifies that these three categories of precepts are the foundation of morality for all bodhisattvas. The provenance and authorship of the Pusa yingluo benye jing have long been matters of controversy. In the fifth-century Buddhist catalogue CHU SANZANG JI JI, the compiler Sengyou lists the Pusa yingluo benye jing among miscellaneous works by anonymous translators. In the 594 scriptural catalogue Zhongjing mulu, the scripture is ascribed to Zhu Fonian, while the LIDAI SANBAO JI instead claims that the text was translated by the dhyāna master Zhiyan in 427. Later cataloguers generally accept the attribution to Zhu Fonian, though some note that the translation style differs markedly from that found in other of his renderings. The attribution to Zhu Fonian is also suspect because it includes passages and doctrines that seem to derive from other indigenous Chinese sutras, such as the RENWANG JING, FANWANG JING, etc., as well as passages that appear in earlier Chinese translations of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, PUSA BENYE JING, SHENGMAN JING, Pusa dichi jing, and DA ZHIDU LUN. Both internal and external evidence therefore suggests that the Yingluo jing is a Chinese apocryphon from the fifth century. ¶ The Pusa yingluo benye jing should be distinguished from the Pusa benye jing ("Basic Endeavors of the Bodhisattvas"), translated by ZHI QIAN (fl. c. 220-252), an authentic translation that offers one of the earliest accounts of the ten stages (S. dasavihāra, DAsABHuMI) translated into Chinese. (It is usually known by its abbreviated title of Benye jing.) This text seems to combine the accounts of the ten bodhisattva stages found in the GAndAVYuHA (viz., AvataMsakasutra) and the MAHĀVASTU and may have been the inspiration for the composition of this indigenous Chinese sutra. (Zhu Fonian also translated a Pusa yingluo jing, which may be how his name became associated with this apocryphal Pusa yingluo benye jing.)
QUASI-OCCULTISM The planetary hierarchy asserts emphatically that man cannot on his own acquire knowledge of higher worlds than the physical. All true knowledge of superphysical reality is a gift from the planetary hierarchy. Ever since esoterics began to be publicized in 1875, people ignorant of esoterics (also discarnate people in the emotional world) have put together their own systems on the basis of esoteric facts they have misunderstood and complemented with their own fanciful speculation. The result of this ongoing distortion has been that most of what is today presented as
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Rathavinītasutta. (C. Qiche jing; J. Shichishakyo; K. Ch'ilch'a kyong 七車經). In Pāli, the "Discourse on the Relay Chariots," the twenty-fourth scripture of the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (a separate SARVĀSTIVĀDA version appears as the ninth sutra in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMĀGAMA, as well as a recension of uncertain affilation in the EKOTTARĀGAMA). This discourse recounts a dialogue between Sāriputta (S. sĀRIPUTRA) and Punna Mantāniputta (see PuRnA) concerning the seven stages of purification (see VISUDDHI) that must be traversed in order to attain final liberation in nibbāna (NIRVĀnA), viz., the purification of (1) morality (SĪLAVISUDDHI); (2) mind (CITTAVISUDDHI); (3) views (DIttHIVISUDDHI); (4) overcoming doubt (KAnKHĀVITARAnAVISUDDHI); (5) the purity of knowledge and vision of what is and is not the path (MAGGĀMAGGANĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI); (6) knowledge and vision of progress along the path (PAtIPADĀNĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI); (7) knowledge and vision itself (NĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI). The seventh purification leads directly to final nibbāna. The seven stages are compared to a relay of seven chariots needed to transport the king of Kosala (KOsALA) from his palace in Sāvatthi (sRĀVASTĪ) to his palace in Sāketa.
rdzogs chen. (dzokchen). A Tibetan philosophical and meditative tradition, usually rendered in English as "great perfection" or "great completion." Developed and maintained chiefly within the RNYING MA sect, rdzogs chen has also been embraced to varying degrees by other Tibetan Buddhist sects. The non-Buddhist Tibetan BON religion also upholds a rdzogs chen tradition. According to legend, the primordial buddha SAMANTABHADRA (T. Kun tu bzang po) taught rdzogs chen to the buddha VAJRASATTVA, who transmitted it to the first human lineage holder, DGA' RAB RDO RJE. From him, rdzogs chen was passed to MANJUsRĪMITRA and thence to sRĪSIMHA, and the Tibetan translator Ba gor VAIROCANA, who had been sent to India by the eighth-century Tibetan King KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN. In addition to Vairocana, the semimythical figures of VIMALAMITRA and PADMASAMBHAVA are considered to be foundational teachers of rdzogs chen in Tibet. Historically, rdzogs chen appears to have been a Tibetan innovation, drawing on multiple influences, including both non-Buddhist native Tibetan beliefs and Chinese and Indian Buddhist teachings. The term was likely taken from the GUHYAGARBHATANTRA. In the creation and completion stages of tantric practice, one first generates a visualization of a deity and its MAndALA and next dissolves these into oneself, merging oneself with the deity. In the Guhyagarbha and certain other tantras, this is followed with a stage known as rdzogs chen, in which one rests in the unelaborated natural state of one's own innately luminous and pure mind. In the Rnying ma sect's nine-vehicle (T. THEG PA DGU) doxography of the Buddhist teachings, these three stages constitute the final three vehicles: the MAHĀYOGA, ANUYOGA, and ATIYOGA, or rdzogs chen. The rdzogs chen literature is traditionally divided into three categories, which roughly trace the historical development of the doctrine and practices: the mind class (SEMS SDE), space class (KLONG SDE), and instruction class (MAN NGAG SDE). These are collected in a group of texts called the RNYING MA'I RGYUD 'BUM ("treasury of Rnying ma tantras"). The mind class is comprised largely of texts attributed to Vairocana, including the so-called eighteen tantras and the KUN BYED RGYAL PO. They set forth a doctrine of primordial purity (ka dag) of mind (sems nyid), which is the basis of all things (kun gzhi). In the natural state, the mind, often referred to as BODHICITTA, is spontaneously aware of itself (rang rig), but through mental discursiveness (rtog pa) it creates delusion ('khrul ba) and thus gives rise to SAMSĀRA. Early rdzogs chen ostensibly rejected all forms of practice, asserting that striving for liberation would simply create more delusion. One is admonished to simply recognize the nature of one's own mind, which is naturally empty (stong pa), luminous ('od gsal ba), and pure. As tantra continued to grow in popularity in Tibet, and new techniques and doctrines were imported from India, a competing strand within rdzogs chen increasingly emphasized meditative practice. The texts of the space class (klong sde) reflect some of this, but it is in the instruction class (man ngag sde), dating from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, that rdzogs chen fully assimilated tantra. The main texts of this class are the so-called seventeen tantras and the two "seminal heart" collections, the BI MA SNYING THIG ("Seminal Heart of Vimalamitra") and the MKHA' 'GRO SNYING THIG ("Seminal Heart of the dĀKINĪ"). The seventeen tantras and the "Seminal Heart of Vimalamitra" are said to have been taught by Vimalamitra and concealed as "treasure" (GTER MA), to be discovered at a later time. The "Seminal Heart of the dākinī" is said to have been taught by Padmasambhava and concealed as treasure by his consort, YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL. In the fourteenth century, the great scholar KLONG CHEN RAB 'BYAMS PA DRI MED 'OD ZER systematized the multitude of received rdzogs chen literature in his famous MDZOD BDUN ("seven treasuries") and the NGAL GSO SKOR GSUM ("Trilogy on Rest"), largely creating the rdzogs chen teachings as they are known today. With the man ngag sde, the rdzogs chen proponents made full use of the Tibetan innovation of treasure, a means by which later tantric developments were assimilated to the tradition without sacrificing its claim to eighth-century origins. The semilegendary figure of Padmasambhava was increasingly relied upon for this purpose, gradually eclipsing Vairocana and Vimalamitra as the main rdzogs chen founder. In subsequent centuries there have been extensive additions to the rdzogs chen literature, largely by means of the treasure genre, including the KLONG CHEN SNYING THIG of 'JIGS MED GLING PA and the Bar chad kun gsal of MCHOG GYUR GLING PA to name only two. Outside of the Rnying ma sect, the authenticity of these texts is frequently disputed, although there continue to be many adherents to rdzogs chen from other Tibetan Buddhist lineages. Rdzogs chen practitioners are commonly initiated into the teachings with "pointing-out instructions" (sems khrid/ngos sprod) in which a lama introduces the student to the nature of his or her mind. Two main practices known as KHREGS CHOD (breakthrough), in which one cultivates the experience of innate awareness (RIG PA), and THOD RGAL (leap over), elaborate visualizations of external light imagery, preserve the tension between the early admonition against practice and the appropriation of complex tantric techniques and doctrines. Extensive practices engaging the subtle body of psychic channels, winds, and drops (rtsa rlung thig le) further reflect the later tantric developments in rdzogs chen. ¶ RDZOGS CHEN is also used as the short name for one of the largest and most active Tibetan monasteries, belonging to the Rnying ma sect of Tibetan Buddhism, located in the eastern Tibetan region of Khams; the monastery's full name is Rus dam bsam gtan o rgyan chos gling (Rudam Samten Orgyan Choling). It is a major center for both academic study and meditation retreat according to Rnying ma doctrine. At its peak, the monastery housed over one thousand monks and sustained more than two hundred branches throughout central and eastern Tibet. The institution was founded in 1684-1685 by the first RDZOGS CHEN INCARNATION Padma rig 'dzin (Pema Rikdzin) with the support of the fifth DALAI LAMA NGAG DBANG BLO BZANG RGYA MTSHO. Important meditation hermitages in the area include those of MDO MKHYEN RTSE YE SHE RDO RJE and MI PHAM 'JAM DBYANGS RNAM RGYAL RGYA MTSHO. DPAL SPRUL RIN PO CHE passed many years in retreat there, during which time he composed his great exposition of the preliminary practices of Tibetan Buddhism entitled the KUN BZANG BLA MA'I ZHAL LUNG ("Words of My Perfect Teacher").
Renwang jing. (J. Ninnogyo; K. Inwang kyong 仁王經). In Chinese, "Scripture for Humane Kings"; an influential indigenous Chinese scripture (see APOCRYPHA), known especially for its role in "state protection Buddhism" (HUGUO FOJIAO) and for its comprehensive outline of the Buddhist path of practice (MĀRGA). Its full title (infra) suggests that the scripture belongs to the "perfection of wisdom" (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ) genre of literature, but it includes also elements drawn from both the YOGĀCĀRA and TATHĀGATAGARBHA traditions. The text's audience and interlocutors are not the typical sRĀVAKAs and BODHISATTVAs but instead kings hailing from the sixteen ancient regions of India, who beseech the Buddha to speak this sutra in order to protect both their states and their subjects from the chaos attending the extinction of the dharma (MOFA; SADDHARMAVIPRALOPA). By having kings rather than spiritual mentors serve as the interlocutors, the scripture thus focuses on those qualities thought to be essential to governing a state founded on Buddhist principles. The text's concepts of authority, the path, and the world draw analogies with the "humane kings" of this world who serve and venerate the transcendent monks and bodhisattvas. The service and worship rendered by the kings turns them into bodhisattvas, while the soteriological vocation of the monks and bodhisattvas conversely renders them kings. Thus, the relationship between the state and the religion is symbiotic. The sutra is now generally presumed to be an indigenous Chinese scripture that was composed to buttress imperial authority by exalting the benevolent ruler as a defender of the dharma. The Renwang jing is also known for including the ten levels of faith (sRADDHĀ) as a preliminary stage of the Buddhist path prior to the arousal of the thought of enlightenment (BODHICITTOTPĀDA). It is one of a number of Chinese Buddhist apocrypha that seek to provide a comprehensive elaboration of all fifty-two stages of the path, including the PUSA YINGLUO BENYE JING and the YUANJUE JING. The Renwang jing is not known in Sanskrit sources, but there are two recensions of the Chinese text. The first, Renwang bore boluomi jing, is purported to have been translated by KUMĀRAJĪVA and is dated to c. 402, and the latter, titled Renwang huguo bore boluomiduo jing, is attributed to AMOGHAVAJRA and dated to 765. The Amoghavajra recension is based substantially on the Kumārajīva text, but includes additional teachings on MAndALA, MANTRA, and DHĀRAnĪ, additions that reflect Amoghavajra's place in the Chinese esoteric Buddhist tradition. Furthermore, because Amoghavajra was an advisor to three Tang-dynasty rulers, his involvement in contemporary politics may also have helped to shape the later version. Chinese scriptural catalogues (JINGLU) were already suspicious about the authenticity of the Renwang jing as least as early as Fajing's 594 Zhongjing mulu; Fajing lists the text together with twenty-one other scriptures of doubtful authenticity (YIJING), because its content and diction do not resemble those of the ascribed translator. Modern scholars have also recognized these content issues. One of the more egregious examples is the RENWANG JING's reference to four different perfection of wisdom (prajNāpāramitā) sutras that the Buddha is said to have proclaimed; two of the sutras listed are, however, simply different Chinese translations of the same text, the PANCAVIMsATISĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA, a blunder that an Indian author could obviously not have committed. Another example is the scripture's discussion of a three-truth SAMĀDHI (sandi sanmei), in which these three types of concentrations are named worldly truth (shidi), authentic truth (zhendi), and supreme-meaning truth (diyiyidi). This schema is peculiar, and betrays its Chinese origins, because "authentic truth" and "supreme-meaning truth" are actually just different Chinese renderings of the same Sanskrit term, PARAMĀTHASATYA. Based on other internal evidence, scholars have dated the composition of the sutra to sometime around the middle of the fifth century. Whatever its provenance, the text is ultimately reclassified as an authentic translation in the 602 catalogue Zongjing mulu by Yancong and continues to be so listed in all subsequent East Asian catalogues. See also APOCRYPHA; SANDI.
Reversal_amount ::: describes the level of price movement required to shift a chart to the right. This condition is used on charts that only take into consideration price movement instead of both price and time. BREAKING DOWN 'Reversal Amount' In the context of point and figure (P&F) charts, the reversal amount is the number of boxes (an X or an O) required to cause a reversal. A reversal would be represented by a movement to the next column and a change of direction. If you increase the reversal amount, you will remove columns corresponding to less significant trends and make it easier to detect long-term trends. In terms of Kagi charts, it is the amount (generally around 4%) needed to change the direction of the vertical lines. On a fundamental level, technical analysis is grounded in the quest for spotting market reversals, be they upward or downward movements from the market's current trajectory. Naturally, this is easier said than done. Psychologically, reacting optimally to reversals can be incredibly difficult for even seasoned technical analysis strategist and traders. In many ways, this is because, in the early stages of an actual reversal, not just one that's perceived, the market still shows many indications of a continued move in the original direction.
Right-hand Path ::: From time immemorial, in all countries of the earth, among all races of men, there have been existenttwo opposing and antagonistic schools of occult or esoteric training, the one often technically called thePath of Light, and the other the Path of Darkness or of the Shadows. These two paths likewise are muchmore commonly called the right-hand path and the left-hand path, and although these are technical namesin the rather shaky occultism of the Occident, the very same expressions have prevailed all over theworld, and are especially known in the mystical and esoteric literature of Hindustan. The right-hand pathis known in Sanskrit writings by the name dakshina-marga, and those who practice the rules of conductand follow the manner of life enjoined upon those who follow the right-hand path are technically knownas dakshinacharins, and their course of life is known as dakshinachara. Conversely, those who followthe left-hand path, often called Brothers of the Shadow, or by some similar epithet, are calledvamacharins, and their school or course of life is known as vamachara. An alternative expression forvamachara is savyachara. The white magicians or Brothers of Light are therefore dakshinacharins, andthe black magicians or Brothers of the Shadow, or workers of spiritual and intellectual and psychical evil,are therefore vamacharins.To speak in the mystical language of ancient Greece, the dakshinacharins or Brothers of Light pursue thewinding ascent to Olympus, whereas the vamacharins or Brothers of the Left-hand follow the easy butfearfully perilous path leading downwards into ever more confusing, horrifying stages of matter andspiritual obscuration. The latter is the faciles descensus averno (Aeneid, 6.126) of the Latin poet Virgil.Woe be to him who, refusing to raise his soul to the sublime and cleansing rays of the spiritual sun withinhim, places his feet upon the path which leads downwards. The warnings given to students of occultismabout this matter have always been solemn and urgent, and no esotericist should at any moment considerhimself safe or beyond the possibilities of taking the downward way until he has become at one with thedivine monitor within his own breast, his own inner god.
rot ::: v. i. --> To undergo a process common to organic substances by which they lose the cohesion of their parts and pass through certain chemical changes, giving off usually in some stages of the process more or less offensive odors; to become decomposed by a natural process; to putrefy; to decay.
Figuratively: To perish slowly; to decay; to die; to become corrupt.
sāgaramudrāsamādhi. (T. rgya mtsho'i phyag rgya ting nge 'dzin; C. haiyin sanmei; J. kaiin zanmai; K. haein sammae 海印三昧). In Sanskrit, "ocean-seal samādhi," or "oceanic reflection samādhi," a concentration (SAMĀDHI) often treated as emblematic of the HUAYAN ZONG's most profound vision of reality. "Ocean seal" is a metaphor for the pure and still mind that is able to reflect all phenomena while remaining perpetually unaffected by them, just as the calm surface of the ocean is said to be able to reflect all the phenomena in the universe. The AVATAMSAKASuTRA includes the sāgaramudrāsamādhi among several other types of samādhi that it mentions. In the "SAMANTABHADRA Bodhisattva Chapter" (Puxian pusa pin), the first of the ten samādhis taught by this bodhisattva is the sāgaramudrāsamādhi; through its power, a buddha is enabled to perform all types of works to rescue sentient beings, such as manifesting himself as a buddha and using numerous skillful means (UPĀYA) in order to guide them. The "Ten Bhumis Chapter" (Shidi pin) mentions sāgaramudrāsamādhi as one of a list of eleven samādhis that occur to bodhisattvas who reach the tenth stage (BHuMI) on the path. The "Manifestation of the Tathāgata Chapter" (Rulai chuxian pin) says that sāgaramudrāsamādhi is so named because it is like the ocean that reflects the images of all sentient beings. In the Huayan scholastic tradition, sāgaramudrāsamādhi is raised to pride of place within its doctrinal system. Sāgaramudrāsamādhi is considered to be the generic samādhi (zongding) that the Buddha enters prior to beginning the elucidation of the various assemblies recounted in the AvataMsakasutra itself; the seven subsequent samādhis that the Buddha enters as he preaches the teaching of the AvataMsakasutra at each of the eight assemblies (hui) (there is no samādhi prior to the second assembly) are regarded instead as specific types of samādhis (bieding). ZHIYAN (602-668), the second Huayan patriarch, associated sāgaramudrāsamādhi with the teaching of one vehicle (EKAYĀNA) in his KONGMU ZHANG, where he says that the common and distinctive teachings of the one vehicle (yisheng tongbie) are revealed through the "ocean-seal" samādhi, while the teachings of the three vehicles (TRIYĀNA) are revealed through the subsequently obtained wisdom (C. houde zhi; S. PṚstHALABDHAJNĀNA). FAZANG (643-712), the third Huayan patriarch, following his teacher Zhiyan's view, declares at the beginning of his HUAYAN WUJIAO ZHANG that his work was written to reveal the teaching of the one vehicle that the Buddha attained through the "ocean-seal" samādhi. It is Fazang who formalized the place of the sāgaramudrāsamādhi in the Huayan doctrinal system. In his XIU HUAYAN AOZHI WANGJIN HUANYUAN GUAN, Fazang noted that the "ocean-seal" samādhi and the Huayan samādhi (C. Huayan sanmei), both mentioned among the ten samādhis in the Xianshou pusa pin of the AvataMsakasutra, correspond to the "two functions" (er YONG): respectively, to the "function of the eternal abiding of all things reflected on the ocean" (haiyin senluo changzhu yong) and the "function of the autonomy of the perfect luminosity of the DHARMADHĀTU" (fajie yuanming zizai yong). Both of these types of functions were subordinated to the highest category of the "one essence" (yi TI), viz., the "essence of the pure and perfect luminosity of the self-nature" (zixing qingjing yuanming ti). The first type of function, which was associated with the sāgaramudrāsamādhi, was the perfect reflection of all things in the pure mind; like the unsullied ocean that reflected all phenomena, it also was freed from any type of delusion or falsity. For Fazang, "ocean seal" (haiyin) was interpreted to mean the "original enlightenment of true thusness" (ZHENRU BENJUE) by correlating this function with the "ocean of the thusness of the dharma nature" (faxing zhenru hai) as mentioned in the DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith According to the Mahāyāna"). In Fazang's Huayan youxin fajie ji, the "ocean-seal" samādhi was classified as a cause and the Huayan samādhi as a fruition. Elsewhere, in his HUAYAN JING TANXUAN JI, Fazang additionally differentiates the ocean-seal samādhi itself into two phases of cause and fruition: the stage of the cause is attained by the bodhisattva SAMANTABHADRA at the tenth of the ten stages of faith, while the fruition stage corresponds to the samādhi of a tathāgata. In addition to its importance in the AvataMsakasutra and the Huayan school, there are several other sutras that also mention the sāgaramudrāsamādhi. For example, the MAHĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA says that the sāgaramudrāsamādhi incorporates all other samādhis. The RATNAKutASuTRA states that one should abide in sāgaramudrāsamādhi in order to obtain complete, perfect enlightenment (ANUTTARASAMYAKSAMBODHI). Finally, the MAHĀSAMNIPĀTASuTRA says that one can see all sentient beings' mental functions and gain the knowledge of all teaching devices (DHARMAPARYĀYA) through the sāgaramudrāsamādhi.
saiksa. (P. sekha; T. slob pa; C. xueren; J. gakunin; K. hagin 學人). In Sanskrit, "neophyte," "acolyte," one who is undergoing religious training. The path to enlightenment is often divided into the path of training and the path of no further training (AsAIKsA), with the former including (1) the seven paths of enterer and abider in the stages of the stream-enterer, once-returner, and nonreturner, and the enterer in the stage of the arhat; and (2) the paths of accumulation, preparation, vision, and meditation. The adept path where no further training is necessary (AsAIKsAMĀRGA) is the state of an ARHAT or a buddha.
Samadhi(Sanskrit) ::: A compound word formed of sam, meaning "with" or "together"; a, meaning "towards"; andthe verbal root dha, signifying "to place," or "to bring"; hence samadhi, meaning "to direct towards,"generally signifies to combine the faculties of the mind with a direction towards an object. Hence, intensecontemplation or profound meditation, with the consciousness directed to the spiritual. It is the highestform of self-possession, in the sense of collecting all the faculties of the constitution towards reachingunion or quasi-union, long or short in time as the case may be, with the divine-spiritual. One whopossesses and is accustomed to use this power has complete, absolute control over all his faculties, andis, therefore, said to be "completely self- possessed." It is the highest state of yoga or "union."Samadhi, therefore, is a word of exceedingly mystical and profound significance implying the completeabstraction of the percipient consciousness from all worldly or exterior or even mental concerns orattributes, and its absorption into or, perhaps better, its becoming the pure unadulterate, undilutesuperconsciousness of the god within. In other words, samadhi is self-conscious union with the spiritualmonad of the human constitution. Samadhi is the eighth or final stage of genuine occult yoga, and can beattained at any time by the initiate without conscious recourse to the other phases or practices of yogaenumerated in Oriental works, and which other and inferior practices are often misleading, in some casesdistinctly injurious, and at the best mere props or aids in the attaining of complete mental abstractionfrom worldly concerns.The eight stages of yoga usually enumerated are the following: (1) yama, signifying "restraint" or"forbearance"; (2) niyama, religious observances of various kinds, such as watchings or fastings,prayings, penances, etc.; (3) asana (q.v.), postures of various kinds; (4) pranayama, various methods ofregulating the breath; (5) pratyahara, a word signifying "withdrawal," but technically and esoterically the"withdrawal" of the consciousness from sensual or sensuous concerns, or from external objects; (6)dharana (q.v.), firmness or steadiness or resolution in holding the mind set or concentrated on a topic orobject of thought, mental concentration; (7) dhyana (q.v.), abstract contemplation or meditation whenfreed from exterior distractions; and finally, (8) samadhi, complete collection of the consciousness and ofits faculties into oneness or union with the monadic essence.It may be observed, and should be carefully taken note of by the student, that when the initiate hasattained samadhi he becomes practically omniscient for the solar universe in which he dwells, becausehis consciousness is functioning at the time in the spiritual-causal worlds. All knowledge is then to himlike an open page because he is self-consciously conscious, to use a rather awkward phrase, of nature'sinner and spiritual realms, the reason being that his consciousness has become kosmic in its reaches.
Samael (Hebrew) Sammā’ēl In the Hebreo-Chaldean Qabbalah, the Prince of Darkness, the Angel of Death or Poison, who rules the seven habitations called Sheba‘ Ha-yechaloth, zones of our globe, yet these seven habitations or infernal regions are the lower seven of the ten degrees which make the dwelling places of the beings inhabiting the fourth or lowest world of the Qabbalah, of which Samael is supposed to be the hierarch or prince. This fourth or lowest world of Qelippoth (shells) is divided into ten degrees forming the lowest hierarchy of the Qabbalistic system corresponding to the ten Sephiroth. These ten stages of the world of shells are again subdivided into three higher or relatively immaterial, and seven lower, material, or infernal ranges; and of these seven Samael is supposed to be the hierarch or ruler. The Talmud states, however, that “the evil Spirit, Satan, and Sama’el the Angel of Death, are the same” (Rabba Batra, 16a); and Samael is also there made equivalent to the Biblical serpent of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He is also termed the chief of the Dragons of Evil, and is popularly made responsible for the hot scorching wind of the desert — the simoom. In conjunction with Lilith he is represented as the Evil Beast (hiwyai’ bisha’).
sāmantaka. (T. nyer bsdogs; C. jinfen; J. gonbun; K. kŭnbun 近分). In Sanskrit, "preparation," "neighboring state"; according to the YOGĀCĀRABHuMI and the ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA, each of the four concentrations (DHYĀNA) and attainments (SAMĀPATTI) has two parts: maula (fundamental state) and sāmantaka (a neighboring part that is preparatory to that fundamental state). The fundamental state is sAMATHA (serenity, calmness) and the sāmantaka (preparation) is included under the heading of VIPAsYANĀ (insight). Six or seven types of attentions (MANASKĀRA) are listed as preparations for the attainment of the first dhyāna. These include attention that contemplates marks (laksanapratisaMvedīmanaskāra), arises from belief (ādhimoksikamanaskāra), arises from separation (prāvivekyamanaskāra), contemplates joy and withdrawal (ratisaMgrāhakamanaskāra), investigates (mīmāMsakamanaskāra), is a final practice (prayoganistamanaskāra), and leads to the result of the final practice (prayoganistaphalamanaskāra). There are nine impediments (heya) between the fundamental stages of the first and second concentrations (dhyāna), for example. Attention is then paid to the marks of the lower as coarse (audārika) and the higher as delightful (sānta). The first attention identifies the impediments and focuses the mind on removing them; the second brings vigor or energy (VĪRYA); the third, fourth, and six actually counteract the three sets of three impediments; the fifth investigates to see whether the impediments have actually been eliminated. The seventh is the fundamental state. See also UPACĀRASAMĀDHI.
samatha. (P. samatha; T. zhi gnas; C. zhi; J. shi; K. chi 止). In Sanskrit, variously translated as "calmness," "serenity," "quiescence," or "tranquillity" (and sometimes as "stopping," following the Chinese rendering of the term); one of the two major branches of Buddhist meditative cultivation (BHĀVANĀ), along with insight (VIPAsYANĀ). Calmness is the mental peace and stability that is generated through the cultivation of concentration (SAMĀDHI). samatha is defined technically as the specific degree of concentration necessary to generate insight (VIPAsYANĀ) into reality and thus lead to the destruction of the afflictions (KLEsA). samatha is a more advanced degree of concentration than what is ordinarily associated with the sensuous realm (KĀMADHĀTU) but not fully that of the first meditative absorption (DHYĀNA), viz., the first absorption associated with the subtle-materiality realm (RuPĀVACARADHYĀNA). According to the YOGĀCĀRABHuMI and the ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA, samatha is the fundamental state (maula) of each of the four concentrations (dhyāna) and attainments (SAMĀPATTI), in distinction to a neighboring part that is preparatory to that fundamental state (see SĀMANTAKA), which is vipasyanā. The process of meditative cultivation that culminates in calmness is described in one account as having nine stages. In the account found in the MADHYĀNTAVIBHĀGA, for example, there are eight forces that operate during these stages to eliminate five hindrances: viz., laziness, forgetting the object of concentration, restlessness and worry, insufficient application of antidotes (anabhisaMskāra), and over-application of the antidotes (abhisaMskāra). During the initial stage, when first placing the mind on its object, the first hindrance, laziness, is counteracted by a complex of four motivational mental factors: CHANDA (desire-to-do), vyāyāma (resolve), sRADDHĀ (faith), and PRAsRABDHI (pliancy or readiness for the task). When the cultivation of calmness has reached a slightly more advanced stage, mindfulness (SMṚTI) counteracts the forgetfulness that occurs when concentration wanders away from the meditation object. When a stream of concentration is first achieved, a meta-awareness called introspection or clear comprehension (SAMPRAJANYA) operates to counteract dullness and restlessness. Finally, in the last stages of the process, there is an application (abhisaMskāra) in order to heighten the intensity of the concentration to the requisite level, and to avoid the subtle overexcitement that comes with feelings of great ease; and just prior to the attainment of samatha, there is the setting aside of any application of conscious effort. At that point, calmness continues on its own as a natural stream of tranquillity, bringing great physical rapture (PRĪTI) and mental ease (SUKHA) that settles into the advanced state of serenity called samatha. ¶ In the context of monastic discipline, samatha, in its denotation as calming, is also used technically to refer to the formal settlement of monastic disputes. See ADHIKARAnAsAMATHA; SAPTĀDHIKARAnAsAMATHA.
saMbhāramārga. (T. tshogs lam; C. ziliang dao; J. shiryodo; K. charyang to 資糧道). In Sanskrit, "path of accumulation" or "path of equipment"; the first of two parts of the preparatory adhimukticaryābhumi, literally, "level of belief performance" (see ADHIMOKsA); the first of the five paths (PANCAMĀRGA), which begins the accumulations of merit and wisdom necessary to achieve NIRVĀnA or BODHI, respectively, on the sRĀVAKA, PRATYEKABUDDHA, or BODHISATTVA paths. The path of accumulation is said to begin with the authentic wish to achieve the goal of one's path, viz., with NIRVEDA (P. nibbidā) (i.e., disgust for SAMSĀRA) in the case of those who wish for nirvāna, and with the development of BODHICITTA (the aspiration to enlightenment) in the case of those suited for the Mahāyāna. In the first paNcamārga model, the path of accumulation, like the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA) that follows it, is not a noble path of a noble being (ĀRYA) because the direct perception of reality does not occur there. The saMbhāramārga is subdivided into the three stages of small, middling, and large: at the first stage, the cultivation of the four applications of mindfulness (SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA) is primary, at the second the four resolves (PRAHĀnA), and at the third the four legs of miraculous attainment (ṚDDHIPĀDA). In Mahāyāna ABHIDHARMA, the first level of the path of accumulation is exemplified by earth because it is the ground for all good qualities. The second level is exemplified by gold because from that time on the aspiration to reach enlightenment will not change to anything baser; a bodhisattva is no longer capable of retrogressing from the Mahāyāna and gains an initial capacity to hear the voice of an actual buddha through the achievement of the SROTO'NUGATO NĀMA SAMĀDHIḤ. On the third level of the path of accumulation, the bodhisattva is able to see the NIRMĀnAKĀYA of buddhas directly and receive teachings from them.
saMbhāra. (T. tshogs; C. ziliang; J. shiryo; K. charyang 資糧). In Sanskrit, "equipment," requisite," "accumulation." This term is used to indicate those qualities that are necessary for the realization of some religious attainment, usually progress along the path to enlightenment. For example, in a common formulation of the stages of the path that successively lead one to enlightenment, the SAMBHĀRAMĀRGA, or "path of accumulation," is the first of the five paths (PANCAMĀRGA). On this path, the practitioner attains a degree of three prerequisite qualities that must be developed before one can begin to undertake the religious life: morality (sĪLA), merit (PUnYA), and concentration (SAMĀDHI). Similarly, MAHĀYĀNA literature cites merit (punya) and knowledge (JNNĀNA) as the saMbhāra, or "equipment," of the BODHISATTVA. In this sense, the term saMbhāra is also understood to indicate "accumulation" in that it is amassing these qualities that brings about progress on the path. See also BODHISAMBHĀRA.
Sammohavinodanī. In Pāli, "The Dispeller of Delusion," a commentary by the influential Pāli scholar BUDDHAGHOSA on the VIBHAnGA, the second book of the Pāli ABHIDHAMMAPItAKA. This work covers much of the same material found in Buddhaghosa's VISUDDHIMAGGA, which is thought to be the earlier of the two works. In his introduction to Sammohavinodanī, Buddhaghosa claims to have drawn his analysis from more ancient commentaries. The work is divided into eighteen sections, beginning with an exposition on the five aggregates (P. khandha, S. SKANDHA). Each subsequent section covers a different element of the Vibhanga's content, including analyses of the sense spheres (ĀYATANA), elements (DHĀTU), stages of meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA, S. DHYĀNA), the path (P. magga, S. MĀRGA), rules of training (P. sikkhāpada, S. sIKsĀPADA), and so on. This commentary is particularly well known for its analysis of conditioned origination (P. paticcasamuppāda, S. PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA), which offers perhaps the most detailed examination of this doctrine found in the Pāli abhidhamma; there, Buddhaghosa represents the entire chain of causes and effects as occurring in both an entire lifetime as well as in single moment of consciousness. The Sammohavinodanī itself became the subject of extensive exegesis in the Pāli tradition.
saMvṛtibodhicitta. (T. kun rdzob byang chub kyi sems). In Sanskrit, "conventional (or relative) aspiration to enlightenment." In Indian MAHĀYĀNA scholastic literature, this term is contrasted with the "ultimate aspiration to enlightenment" (PARAMĀRTHABODHICITTA). The term saMvṛtibodhicitta is used to refer to BODHICITTA in its more common usage, as the aspiration to achieve buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. It is the generation of this aspiration for enlightenment (BODHICITTOTPĀDA) that marks the beginning of the bodhisattva path and the Mahāyāna path of accumulation (SAMBHĀRAMĀRGA). The ultimate aspiration or mind of enlightenment refers to the bodhisattva's direct realization of the ultimate truth (PARAMĀRTHASATYA). In the case of the MADHYAMAKA school's interpretation, this would be the direct realization of emptiness (suNYATĀ). Such realization, and hence the ultimate aspiration to enlightenment, occurs beginning on the Mahāyāna path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA) and is further developed on the path of cultivation (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA). These two types of bodhicitta explain how bodhicitta is present both during periods of concentration or equipoise (see SAMĀPATTI, SAMĀHITA) on the ultimate truth and during all the other stages of the path, called subsequent attainment (pṛsthalabdha; cf. PṚstHALABDHAJNĀNA). These two terms inform the presentation of bodhicitta in the BODHICITTAVIVARAnA, attributed to NĀGĀRJUNA, and are widely employed in Tibetan BLO SBYONG literature.
samyagvyāyāma. (P. sammāvāyāma; T. yang dag pa'i rtsol ba; C. zhengjingjin; J. shoshojin; K. chongjongjin 正精進). In Sanskrit, "right effort" or "correct effort"; the sixth constituent of the noble eightfold path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA), which is divided into four progressive endeavors: (1) preventing the arising of unwholesome (AKUsALA) mental states that have not yet arisen, (2) continuing to abandon unwholesome mental states that have already arisen, (3) generating wholesome (KUsALA) mental states that have not yet arisen, and (4) continuing to cultivate wholesome mental states that have already arisen. These wholesome mental states are characterized by mindfulness (SMṚTI), energy (VĪRYA), rapture (PRĪTI), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and equanimity (UPEKsĀ), with the emphasis on energy or vigor (vīrya), here called effort (vyāyāma). In a more technical sense, as the sixth constituent of the eightfold noble path as set forth in the MADHYĀNTAVIBHĀGA, MAHĀYĀNASuTRĀLAMKĀRA, and parts of the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA, samyagvyāyāma is the right effort required to eliminate the specific sets of afflictions (KLEsA) that are to be abandoned on the path of cultivation (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA). The same force, required right from the start of the development of the path to enlightenment, is systematized as the four pradhāna (effort) or PRAHĀnA (abandonments). Like smṛti and samādhi (see ṚDDHIPĀDA), effort is singled out for special treatment because of its importance at all stages of the path. The word SAMYAKPRADHĀNA (correct effort) is synonymous with samyakvyāyāma when it describes pradhāna that is fully developed. See also SAMYAKPRADHĀNA.
samyakpradhāna. (P. sammāpadhāna; T. yang dag par spong ba; C. zhengqin; J. shogon; K. chonggŭn 正勤). In Sanskrit, "right effort" or "correct effort"; in Tibetan (which reads the term as PRAHĀnA), "right abandonment." There are four right efforts, which are set forth within the presentation of the second set of dharmas making up the thirty-seven constituents of enlightenment (BODHIPĀKsIKADHARMA). The four pradhānas (efforts or, as prahāna, abandonments) describe effort at incipient stages of the path or religious training; by contrast, right effort (SAMYAKVYĀYĀMA), the sixth constituent of the eightfold path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA), denotes the effort or abandonment that occurs during the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA) or the path of cultivation (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA), when the path is more fully developed. Pradhāna involves the effort to abandon unwholesome (AKUsALA) mental states-and their resulting actions via body, speech, and mind-that are conducive to suffering. Simultaneously, samyakpradhāna encompasses the effort to cultivate those wholesome (KUsALA) mental states that are conducive to happiness for both oneself and others. These wholesome mental states are characterized by mindfulness (SMṚTI), energy (VĪRYA), rapture (PRĪTI), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and equanimity (UPEKsĀ). At the first stage of practice, the focus is on SMṚTI, which, as the foundations of mindfulness (SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA), involves mindfulness of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS as applied to the body, sensations, states of mind, and wholesome and unwholesome dharmas. At the second stage of the practice, the focus is on the effort needed to develop samādhi. When fully developed in the mind of the awakened person, the practice of mindfulness is called right mindfulness; concentration, rapture, and equanimity are included under right concentration; and energy is called right effort (samyakvyāyāma).
samyaksamādhi. (P. sammāsamādhi; T. yang dag pa'i ting nge 'dzin; C. zhengding; J. shojo; K. chongjong 正定). In Sanskrit, "right concentration" or "correct concentration," the eighth constituent of the noble eightfold path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA). It is defined generally as the concentration of the mind on wholesome objects. When fully developed, such concentration results in the attainment of the four levels of meditative absorption (DHYĀNA) associated with the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHĀTU). In this context, two types of samyaksamādhi are described. The first, called mundane, or LAUKIKA, is associated with all forms of ordinary concentration up to and including the four stages of dhyāna. The second type is associated with the attainment of the four supramundane (LOKOTTARA) paths of the stream-enterer, once-returner, nonreturner, and arhat.
samyaktvaniyāmāvakrānti. (P. sammattaniyāma-okkanti; T. yang dag pa nyid skyon med pa la zhugs pa; C. zhengxing lisheng; J. shoshorisho; K. chongsong isaeng 正性離生). In Sanskrit, "access to the certainty that one will eventually win liberation" or "entering the stage of certainty that one is destined for enlightenment." In the five-stage path structure (PANCAMĀRGA) of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school of ABHIDHARMA, the third stage, the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA), is marked by single thought-moments of realization regarding the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvāry āryasatyāni), divided into four insights for each of the four truths. The second of these sixteen moments involves the "knowledge of the fact of suffering" (duḥkhe dharmajNāna) with regard to the sensuous realm of existence (KĀMADHĀTU). This acceptance marks the access to the stage of certainty that one is destined for enlightenment (samyaktvaniyāmāvakrānti). This certainty is catalyzed by the highest worldly dharmas (LAUKIKĀGRADHARMA), the fourth and last of the four aids to penetration (NIRVEDHABHĀGĪYA). This process leads to stream-entry (SROTAĀPANNA), the first of the four stages of sanctity (ĀRYAMĀRGA).
sandhyābhāsā. [alt. saMdhyābhāsyā] (T. dgongs bshad/dgongs skad). In Sanskrit, "intentional language," often mistranslated as "twilight language"; a kind of secret or coded speech, used especially, but not exclusively, in TANTRA. The term is used in a broader hermeneutical sense to explain how a difficult or otherwise problematic text requires commentary in order to bring out its doctrinally consistent meaning. The term is also used in an exclusively tantric sense to refer to a secret linguistic code that is understood and used by initiates of a particular tantric circle: e.g., "frankincense" means "blood" and "camphor" means "semen." The Pradīpoddyotana commentary by the tāntrika Candrakīrti on the Guhyasamājamulatantra explains sandhyābhāsā with a scheme of six alternatives (satkoti) in a series of four modes going from less to more profound. The six alternatives are provisional (NEYĀRTHA) and definitive (NĪTĀRTHA); requiring interpretation (ābhiprāyika) and not requiring interpretation (anābhiprāyika); and ayathāruta (when one cannot take words literally) and yathāruta (when one can take words literally). Complicated or obscure language (called VAJRA expression) that can be taken literally (yathāruta), or that can be taken at face value to convey meaning, provides a provisional meaning, i.e., a meaning that requires interpretation (neyārtha); this leads to what the statement does not say literally (ayathāruta), which is its definitive meaning (nītārtha). A passage about a topic not addressed in statements about lower stages of the tantric path, and therefore couched in words that are coded and apparently contradictory to other statements, in the sense that other passages about practices at lower stages of the tantric path contradict what it says, are ābhiprāyika, while straightforward statements about a topic that is not addressed at lower stages of the tantric path are anābhiprāyika; for example, direct statements about clear light (PRABHĀSVARA) and illusory bodies (māyākāya), the culminating attainments in the Guhyasamāja system. Finally, a statement couched in ordinary language about a topic that is relevant to both earlier and later stages of the tantric path is yathāruta (can be taken literally); statements using a specialized argot, using unusual words that are ordinarily meaningless, like some words in MANTRAs, are ayathāruta. See also ABHIPRĀYA; ABHISAMDHI.
sarvākārajNatā. (T. rnam pa thams cad mkhyen pa; C. yiqiezhong zhi; J. issaishuchi; K. ilch'ejong chi 一切種智). In Sanskrit, "knowledge of all aspects," the preferred term in the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA and its commentaries for the omniscience of a buddha, which simultaneously perceives all phenomena in the universe and their final nature. When explained from the perspective of the goal that bodhisattvas will reach, the knowledge of all aspects is indicated by ten dharmas, among which are cittotpāda (cf. BODHICITTOTPĀDA), defining all the stages of all the Buddhist paths; AVAVĀDA, defining all the instructions relevant to those stages, the stages leading to the elimination of the subject-object conceptualization (GRĀHYAGRĀHAKAVIKALPA) along the entire range of accomplishments up to and including the state of enlightenment itself (see also NIRVEDHABHĀGĪYA); the substratum (GOTRA), objective supports (ĀLAMBANA) and aims (uddesa) of the practice; and the practices (PRATIPATTI) incorporating the full range of skillful means (UPĀYAKAUsALYA) necessary to turn the wheel of the dharma (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA) in all its variety. When described from the perspective of the bodhisattva's practice that leads to it, sarvākārajNatā has 173 aspects: twenty-seven aspects of a sRĀVAKA's knowledge of the four noble truths (SARVAJNATĀ), thirty-six aspects of a BODHISATTVA's knowledge of paths (MĀRGAJNATĀ) and one hundred ten aspects that are unique to a buddha. These are again set forth as the thirty-seven aspects of all-knowledge, thirty-four aspects of the knowledge of the paths, and the thirty-nine aspects of the knowledge of all aspects itself. See also ĀKĀRA.
sāsrava. (P. sāsava; T. zag bcas; C. youlou; J. uro; K. yuru 有漏). In Sanskrit, lit. "with outflows," hence, "contaminated," "tainted." Just as a leaky roof lets in rain that destroys a residence and all its contents, the edifice of the five aggregates (SKANDHA) is a ruin dampened by the afflictions (KLEsA) of greed, hatred, and delusion and riddled with the rot of KARMAN (viz., the formative forces left by the actions motivated by the afflictions). Sāsrava is similar in meaning to SAMKLIstA (defilement, affliction), although wider in application because unwholesome (AKUsALA) and wholesome (KUsALA) states are sāsrava if they lead to a future state with outflows, even if that is a fortunate state of happiness in this lifetime or the next. In this sense, sāsrava is a common designation for the aggregates (skandha) and refers to those objects that may serve as an occasion for the increase of klesa. Thus, even an inanimate object can be considered "contaminated" in the sense that it can serve as a cause for the increase of the afflictions, such as greed. According to the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA, only four dharmas are uncontaminated. Three of these are permanent: space (ĀKĀsA), nonanalytical cessation (APRATISAMKHYĀNIRODHA), and analytical cessation (PRATISAMKHYĀNIRODHA), which would include NIRVĀnA. The only impermanent dharma that is uncontaminated is the truth of the path or true path (MĀRGASATYA); technically, this would refer to the equipoise of nonperception (ASAMJNĀSAMĀPATTI) when absorbed in a perfect vision of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, or, in the MAHĀYĀNA, in the perfect vision of the emptiness (suNYATĀ) of all dharmas. The SĀSRAVASKANDHA (contaminated aggregates) is the entire heap of dharmas that make up a person (PUDGALA), with the sole exception of the NIRVĀnA element, or in Mahāyāna the pure element (DHĀTU) that locates the lineage (GOTRA) of all beings destined for the final perfect enlightenment. The ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA gives six meanings for sāsrava, which it says can be (1) a contaminant (ĀSRAVA) itself, i.e., an actual klesa, (2) the other parts of the mind that are necessarily present when obscuration (ĀVARAnA) is present, (3) the aggregates when klesa is operating, (4) the future contaminated aggregates that arise from the earlier cause, (5) the higher stages of the path because, although not governed by klesa, they are tied up with thought construction, and (6) even the very final stage of the bodhisattva path, because it is affected by residual impressions left by earlier contaminated states.
Satipatthānasutta. (S. *Smṛtyupasthānasutra; T. Dran pa nye bar bzhag pa'i mdo; C. Nianchu jing; J. Nenjogyo; K. Yomch'o kyong 念處經). In Pāli, "Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness"; the tenth sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (a separate SARVĀSTIVĀDA recension appears as the ninety-eighth SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMĀGAMA; there is another unidentified recension in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARĀGAMA). An expanded version of the same sutta, titled the "Great Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness" (MAHĀSATIPAttHĀNASUTTANTA), which adds extensive discussion on mindfulness of breathing (P. ānāpānasati, S. ĀNĀPĀNASMṚTI), is the twenty-second sutta in the Pāli DĪGHANIKĀYA. This sutta is one of the most widely commented upon texts in the Pāli canon and continues to hold a central place in the modern VIPASSANĀ (S. VIPAsYANĀ) movement. The sutta was preached by the Buddha to a gathering of disciples in the town of Kammāsadhamma in the country of the Kurus. The discourse enumerates twenty-one meditation practices for the cultivation of mindfulness (P. sati, S. SMṚTI), a term that refers to an undistracted watchfulness and attentiveness, or to recollection and thus memory. In the text, the Buddha explains the practice under a fourfold rubric called the four foundations of mindfulness (P. satipatthāna, S. SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA). The four foundations are comprised of "contemplation of the body" (P. kāyānupassanā, S. KĀYĀNUPAsYANĀ); "contemplation of sensations" (P. vedanānupassanā, S. vedanānupasyanā), that is, physical and mental sensations (VEDANĀ) that are pleasurable, painful, or neutral; "contemplation of mind" (P. cittānupassanā, S. cittānupasyanā), in which one observes the broader state of mind (CITTA) as, e.g., shrunken or expanded, while under the influence of various positive and negative emotions; and "contemplation of phenomena" (P. dhammānupassanā, S. dharmānupasyanā), which involves the contemplation of several key doctrinal categories, such as the five aggregates (P. khandha, S. SKANDHA) and the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. The first of the four, the mindfulness of the body, involves fourteen exercises, beginning with the mindfulness of the inhalation and exhalation of the breath (P. ānāpānasati, S. ĀNĀPĀNASMṚTI). Mindfulness of the breath is followed by mindfulness of the four physical postures (P. iriyāpatha, S. ĪRYĀPATHA) of walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. This is then extended to a full general awareness of all physical activities. Thus, mindfulness is something that is also meant to accompany all of one's actions in the course of the day, and is not restricted to formal meditation sessions. This discussion is followed by mindfulness of the various components of the body, an intentionally revolting list that includes fingernails, bile, spittle, and urine. Next is the mindfulness of the body as composed of the four great elements (MAHĀBHuTA) of earth, water, fire, and air. Next are the "contemplations on the impure" (P. asubhabhāvanā, S. AsUBHABHĀVANĀ), viz., contemplation of a corpse in nine successive stages of decomposition. The practice of the mindfulness of the body is designed to induce the understanding that the body is a collection of impure elements that arise and cease in rapid succession, utterly lacking any kind of permanent self. This insight into the three marks of existence-impermanence, suffering, and no-self-leads in turn to enlightenment. Mindfulness of the body is presented as the core meditative practice, with the other three types of mindfulness applied as the meditator's attention is drawn to those factors. The sutta calls the foundations of mindfulness the ekayānamagga, which in this context might be rendered as "the only path" or "the one way forward," and states that correct practice of the four foundations of mindfulness will lead to the stage of the worthy one (P. arahant, S. ARHAT), or at least the stage of the nonreturner (P. anāgāmi, S. ANĀGĀMIN), in as little as seven days of practice, according to some interpretations. See also ANUPASSANĀ.
satyadvaya. (P. saccadvaya; T. bden pa gnyis; C. erdi; J. nitai; K. ije 二諦). In Sanskrit, "the two truths," viz., "ultimate truth" (PARAMĀRTHASATYA) and "conventional truth" (SAMVṚTISATYA). The two truths are central terms in Buddhist philosophy for categorizing the phenomena of the universe. Regardless of the school, the two truths are presumed to be exhaustive, with everything that exists, that is, all DHARMAs, falling into one of the two categories. This bifurcation is associated especially with the MADHYAMAKA school, but it occurs in other schools as well, with each providing its own view of what constitutes the two truths. In each case, however, conventional truths might be described as the objects of ordinary experience that tend to be misperceived by the unenlightened, by mistakenly ascribing to them a greater degree of reality than they in fact possess. Thus, despite being "truths," conventional truths are falsely perceived, as implied in the term saMvṛti, with its connotation of deception. Ultimate truths, literally "supreme object truths," might be described as those realities that exist as they appear and whose direct perception can lead to liberation from rebirth. For the VAIBHĀsIKA branch of SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMA, a conventional truth is any phenomenon that can be either physically or mentally broken down into parts; an ultimate truth is a partless particle of matter or an indivisible moment of consciousness. For the YOGĀCĀRA, conventional truths are dependent phenomena (PARATANTRA) as well as permanent phenomena such as space (ĀKĀsA); ultimate truths are consummate natures (PARINIsPANNA). In Madhyamaka, conventional truths are all phenomena other than emptiness (suNYATĀ), which is the ultimate truth. The Chinese SAN LUN ZONG(Madhyamaka) master JIZANG (549-623) discusses the three stages of the two truths, in which each of these stages serves to correct any possible reification of Buddhist truth.
Second Birth In the New Testament, man is said to be born first of the flesh and afterwards of the spirit; in Christian theology, occasionally applied to regeneration — being admitted to the Kingdom of God or becoming a Christian. This is an echo of the Mysteries, where the successful candidate was said to be born again, just as in India the initiate is called dvija (twice-born), one who has undergone the second birth or the birth of the inner person in and from the subordinated outer or personal one. The second birth is no mere metaphor but an actual event in the candidate’s inner life, analogous in a way to the physical birth, resulting in a bringing into activity of the spiritual nature within, which thereafter passes through stages of growth from that of the newborn initiate or child upwards and onwards. An Egyptian papyrus bearing the emblem of an egg floating over a mummy typifies the second birth of the Osirified dead (SD 1:365).
Second Tier ::: Used to summarize the Flex Flow and Global View stages of value systems development from the Spiral Dynamics model. These stages are defined by their capacity to see the relative importance of all value systems, as opposed to First-Tier value systems, which declare their values to be the only correct values. Integral Theory uses Second Tier to refer to the Teal and Turquoise levels of developmental altitude.
Self-Actualization ::: The process through which one becomes the self they feel called toward becoming. Realizing our path is one matter, but actively moving there and stabilizing awareness there is another altogether. These movements can be subtle or profound: distinct leaps in stages of awareness or simply incremental steps evolving perspective.
Self-consciousness Awareness of oneself as the experiencer, attribution of one’s experiences to an ego, consciousness of being a separate individual; whereas consciousness in the abstract is merely awareness of the experience. Animals and very young children are conscious, man is self-conscious; yet the adult, when engrossed in an experience, may lose his self-consciousness for a while. But even man is only partially self-conscious, because he can contemplate only part of his being; that in him which is now the contemplator may become part of what is contemplated. As the subject, the knower, shifts upwards and inwards, so to speak, more and more of the vestures pass into the category of objects or what is known. The Unknown manifests the universe in order to attain full self-consciousness; and in man, the microcosm, an unself-conscious spark of divinity passes through stages of evolution and experience in order to achieve relatively full self-consciousness. The potentiality of self-consciousness, however, is in every atom. In order to become self-conscious, spirit must pass through every cycle of cosmic being, until every ego has attained full self-consciousness as a human being or equivalent entity. Man’s self-consciousness depends on his triple nature; it is man who is the separator of the One into various contrasted aspects.
Selye (1907-1982): an endocrinologist, who explored physiological responses to stress, illness and disease. This led to the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) consisting three stages of stress; an alarm state, resistance state, and exhaustion state.
Sensorimotor Stage ::: The first stage in Piaget&
SERVICE According to the planetary hierarchy, the serving attitude to life is the easiest, safest, quickest path to the fifth natural kingdom. All kingdoms capable of it have as their foremost task of life serving those at lower stages of development, so that they will be able to reach higher ones. Without this help there would be no evolution, or evolution would take tremendously longer time. He who gives shall receive. Those who serve mankind unselfishly are given more and more opportunities of doing so. Service itself develops all requisite qualities and abilities, frees from emotional illusions and mental fictions. K 7.20.3 (K 7.15.15, 7.23.7ff)
shakumon. (C. jimen; K. chongmun 迹門). In Japanese, lit. "trace teaching," or "teaching involving traces"; the provisional teaching of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), which appears in the first half of the twenty-four chapters of the scripture; in distinction to HONMON (fundamental teaching), the definitive final fourteen chapters of the scripture. The term is especially important in both the TIANTAI (J. TENDAI) and NICHIREN-oriented schools of East Asian Buddhism. The Tiantai master TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597) first applied the two terms to refer to these two distinctive parts of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, adapting the terms traces (C. ji, J. shaku) and root (C. ben, J. hon) that had originally been used by SENGZHAO (374-414), a disciple of KUMĀRAJĪVA (344-413), to explain the inconceivable relationship between skillful means (UPĀYA) and enlightened wisdom (PRAJNĀ). Zhiyi made a distinction between the transient buddha who attained the buddhahood during his lifetime in India and the universal buddha who attained buddhahood infinite numbers of KALPAs ago. Zhiyi regarded shakumon to be the teaching of the transient buddha, and honmon the teaching of the universal buddha. The shakumon of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra is also called the practice or causal section of the sutra, since it details the stages of BODHISATTVA practices over countless lifetimes that serve as the prerequisites of future buddhahood. The shakumon thus emphasizes the various skillful means that lead to the one buddha vehicle (see YISHENG; EKAYĀNA).
Sharm al-Sheikh Memorandum ::: An agreement reached between Barak and Arafat on September 4, 1999 that resolved to institute the interim agreement in stages of Israeli redeployment from the West Bank and Gaza by dividing the territories into areas. It also called for permanent status negotiations.
shijue. (J. shikaku; K. sigak 始覺). In Chinese, "acquired," or "actualized enlightenment," one of the two main subdivisions of enlightenment outlined in the DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith According to the Mahāyāna"), along with "original" or "inherent enlightenment" (BENJUE). As the Dasheng qixin lun explains, although enlightenment is in fact innate in the mind of any sentient being, that mind is still subject to "production-and-cessation" (shengmie), viz., the continual process of creation and passing away that is inevitable in the conditioned realm of existence (SAMSĀRA). But because that production-and-cessation aspect of mind is itself grounded on the embryo of buddhahood (TATHĀGATAGARBHA), conventional states of mind inherently retain the capacity to be transformed into "true thusness" (ZHENRU), the ultimate state of reality. This transformation takes place through the process of "actualized enlightenment," that is, undertaking religious cultivation, which in the Dasheng qixin lun specifically means serenity and insight meditation (ZHIGUAN) and no-thought practice (WUNIAN). This process of actualizing enlightenment occurs over four stages of cultivation: (1) the "nonenlightenment" (bujue) of the ordinary worldling who has just entered the path at the level of the ten stages of faith (shixin); (2) the "apparent enlightenment" (xiangsijue) of two-vehicle adherents (ER SHENG) and beginning BODHISATTVAs on the stages of the "three worthies" (sanxian), that is, the ten abodes (shizhu), ten practices (shixing), and ten transferences or dedications (shihuixiang); (3) the "approximate enlightenment" (suifen jue) of DHARMAKĀYA bodhisattvas (fashen pusa) at the stage of the first BHuMI and above; and (4) the "ultimate enlightenment" (jiujingjue), which occurs at the consummation of the ten bhumis (pusa jindi). At the completion of this actualization process, however, one realizes that the enlightenment one has achieved through practice is in fact identical to the enlightened dharma-body (DHARMAKĀYA) that has always been innate; thus "actualized enlightenment" is no different from "original enlightenment." Any apparent differences between these two are but a matter of perspective: the innate luminosity and purity of the tathāgatagarbha and dharmakāya are seen as "original" (viz., "intrinsic") by the sage, but as something that must be "actualized" by the ordinary person.
shuchao. (J. shucho/jucho; K. such'o 豎超). In Chinese, "the tortuous (lit. vertical) deliverance/escape." In PURE LAND polemics, it is claimed that if a practitioner strictly relies on one's own effort (see JIRIKI) to attain liberation, it would involve an arduous, "vertical" ascent through successive stages of ever-deeper meditative absorptions and ever-more-daunting spiritual fruitions. Pure land followers argue that an expeditious, "horizontal" shortcut (cf. HENGCHAO) is possible, by which one simply has to travel "westward" instead of "upward"-i.e., by being reborn into AMITĀBHA Buddha's western pure land (see SUKHĀVATĪ), one will be liberated from the rounds of rebirth in one fell swoop.
simulated annealing A technique which can be applied to any minimisation or learning process based on successive update steps (either random or {deterministic}) where the update step length is proportional to an arbitrarily set parameter which can play the role of a temperature. Then, in analogy with the annealing of metals, the temperature is made high in the early stages of the process for faster minimisation or learning, then is reduced for greater stability.
simulated annealing ::: A technique which can be applied to any minimisation or learning process based on successive update steps (either random or deterministic) where the update temperature is made high in the early stages of the process for faster minimisation or learning, then is reduced for greater stability.
Sngags rim chen mo. (Ngak rim chenmo). In Tibetan, "Great Exposition of the Stages of MANTRA," an extensive theoretical work on the classes and stages of TANTRA, written by the DGE LUGS savant TSONG KHA PA BLO BZANG GRAGS PA. The work is regarded as the tantric companion to his most famous work, the LAM RIM CHEN MO, or "Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path." The work begins with an influential discussion of what distinguishes the MAHĀYĀNA from the HĪNAYĀNA, and within Mahāyāna, what distinguishes the perfection vehicle (PĀRAMITĀYĀNA, phar phyin theg pa) from the mantra vehicle (MANTRAYĀNA, sngags kyi theg pa), with Tsong kha pa arguing that the practice of "deity yoga" (DEVATĀYOGA, lha'i rnal 'byor) is the distinguishing feature of tantric practice. The text then goes on to set forth the principal practices of each of the four major divisions of tantras according to Dge lugs: KRIYĀTANTRA, CARYĀTANTRA, YOGATANTRA, and ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA, with the greater part of the text devoted to the last of these divisions, regarded as essential for the achievement of buddhahood.
SOLAR SYSTEMIC DEVELOPMENT Every solar system undergoes three different stages of development corresponding to the three aspects: those of matter, consciousness, and motion. In each of the three periods the solar system undergoes a complete remoulding. K 2.13.3
Our solar system is halfway through the second stage.
solfatara ::: n. --> A volcanic area or vent which yields only sulphur vapors, steam, and the like. It represents the stages of the volcanic activity.
spiritual ::: The word “spiritual” has at least four major usages: 1. “Spiritual” refers to the highest levels in any developmental line (e.g., transrational cognition, transpersonal self-identity, etc.). 2. “Spiritual” is a separate developmental line itself (e.g., Fowler’s stages of faith). 3. “Spiritual” refers to a state or peak experience (e.g., nature mysticism). 4. “Spiritual” means a particular attitude or orientation, like openness, wisdom, or compassion, which can be present at virtually any state or stage.
sraddhānusārin. (P. saddhānusāri; T. dad pa'i rjes su 'brang ba; C. suixin xing; J. zuishingyo; K. susin haeng 隨信行). In Sanskrit, "follower of faith." The SARVĀSTIVĀDA (e.g., ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA) and Pāli (e.g., VISUDDHIMAGGA) traditions of mainstream Buddhism both recognize seven types of noble ones (ĀRYA, P. ariya): (1) follower of faith (S. sraddhānusārin; P. saddhānusāri); (2) follower of the dharma (S. DHARMĀNUSĀRIN, P. dhammānusāri); (3) one liberated through faith (S. sRADDHĀVIMUKTA; P. saddhāvimutta); (4) one who has formed right view (S. DṚstIPRĀPTA; P. ditthippatta), by developing both faith and wisdom; (5) the bodily witness (S. KĀYASĀKsIN; P. kāyasakkhi), viz., through the temporary suspension of mentality in the equipoise of cessation (NIRODHASAMĀPATTI); (6) one who is freed by wisdom (S. PRAJNĀVIMUKTA; P. paNNāvimutta), by freeing oneself through analysis; and (7) one who is freed both ways (S. UBHAYATOBHĀGAVIMUKTA; P. ubhatobhāgavimutta), by freeing oneself through both meditative absorption and wisdom. A follower of faith is a person who has attained the fruit of stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA) and in whom the faculty (INDRIYA) of faith (sRADDHĀ) is predominant. Such a person will eventually become one who is freed through faith (sRADDHĀVIMUKTA). In the Abhidharmakosabhāsya, there is a basic division of path types and personality types, where a faith-follower and a dharma-follower eliminate hindrances to goals all at once or in a series, and respectively either pass through the intermediate stages of once-returner and nonreturner, or else skip such stages completely, before finally becoming ARHATs. In general, dharma-followers are those who proceed based on knowledge of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS as it pertains to all three realms of existence; they eliminate hindrances to all goals all at once, while the achievements of faith-followers are more progressive. According to the Sarvāstivāda VAIBHĀsIKA school of ABHIDHARMA, an ARHAT whose liberation is grounded in faith may be subject to backsliding from that state, whereas those who are dharmānusārin are unshakable (AKOPYA), because they have experienced the knowledge of nonproduction (ANUTPĀDAJNĀNA), viz., that the afflictions (KLEsA) can never occur again, the complement of the knowledge of extinction (KsAYAJNĀNA). In the MAHĀYĀNA interpretation of the terms, bodhisattvas who are dharma-followers have knowledge of emptiness (suNYATĀ), i.e., they have gained a knowledge of the way things are (TATTVA) even at early stages of the path and will never revert to the HĪNAYĀNA; the faith-followers are not irreversible (AVAIVARTIKA) in that way until higher levels of the path. The sraddhānusārin is also found in the list of the members of the saMgha when it is subdivided into twenty (VIMsATIPRABHEDASAMGHA). Among the sraddhānusārin, there are candidates for the fruit of stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNAPHALAPRATIPANNAKA), once-returner (SAKṚDĀGĀMIPHALAPRATIPANNAKA), and nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIPHALAPRATIPANNAKA). The first has eliminated up to five of the nine sets of afflictions (KLEsA) that cause rebirth in the sensuous realm (KĀMADHĀTU), the second all but the final set, and the last all of the afflictions. The first takes a number of births (never more than seven) in the sensuous realm before reaching nirvāna, the second has only one rebirth in the sensuous realm left, and the nonreturner will never again take rebirth in the sensuous realm prior to reaching nirvāna.
srāmanyaphala. (P. sāmaNNaphala; T. dge sbyong gi tshul gyi 'bras bu; C. shamen'guo; J. shamonka; K. samun'gwa 沙門果). In Sanskrit, "the fruit of recluseship," viz., "the beneficial effects of religious practice." "Fruit" in this compound refers to the benefits that come to fruition in a recluse's current or future life. The latter type includes both merit (PUnYA) and a favorable rebirth. The former benefits are expounded by the Buddha in various versions of the srāmanyaphalasutra (see SĀMANNAPHALASUTTANTA). These benefits include respect from members of higher classes, sensory restraint, contentedness, abandonment of the hindrances, attainment of the four meditative absorptions, insight, supranormal powers, clairaudience, recollection of past lives, and so on. In regard to the progressive path to liberation, srāmanyaphala refers to the four stages of sanctity that culminate in the realization of NIRVĀnA: the fruits of the stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA), once-returner (SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIN), and worthy one (ARHAT).
srāvakabhumi. (T. Nyan thos kyi sa; C. Shengwen di; J. Shomonji; K. Songmun chi 聲聞地). In Sanskrit, the "Stage of the Listener" or "Stage of the Disciple," a work by ASAnGA included in the first and main section (Bahubhumika/Bhumivastu, "Multiple Stages") of his massive compendium, the YOGĀCĀRABHuMI. The work, which also circulated as an independent text, deals with practices associated with the sRĀVAKA (disciples) and consists of four major sections (yogasthāna), which treat spiritual lineage (GOTRA), different types of persons (PUDGALA), preparation for practice (PRAYOGA), and the mundane path (LAUKIKAMĀRGA) and supramundane path (LOKATTARAMĀRGA). The first yogasthāna on spiritual lineage is divided into three parts. First, the stage of lineage (gotrabhumi) discusses the spiritual potentiality or lineage (gotra) of the srāvaka from four standpoints: its intrinsic nature, its establishment or definition (vyavasthāna), the marks (LInGA) characterizing the persons belonging to that lineage, and the classes of people in that lineage. Second, the stage of entrance (avatārabhumi) discusses the stage where the disciple enters upon the practice; like the previous part, this section treats this issue from these same four standpoints. Third, the stage of deliverance (naiskramyabhumi) explains the stage where the disciple, after severing the bonds of the sensual realm (KĀMADHĀTU), practices to obtain freedom from passion (VAIRĀGYA) by following either the mundane or supramundane path; this section subsequently discusses thirteen collections or equipment (saMbhāra) necessary to complete both paths, such as sensory restraint, controlling food intake, etc. This stage of deliverance (naiskramyabhumi) continues over the second through fourth yogasthānas to provide an extended treatment of sravāka practice. The second yogasthāna discusses the theoretical basis of sravāka practice in terms of persons (pudgala), divided into nineteen subsections on such subjects as the classes of persons who cultivate the sravāka path, meditative objects, descriptions of various states of concentration (SAMĀDHI), hindrances to meditation, etc. The third yogasthāna concerns the preliminary practices (prayoga) performed by these persons, describing in detail the process of training. This process begins by first visiting a teacher. If that teacher identifies him as belonging to the srāvaka lineage, the practitioner should then cultivate in five ways: (1) guarding and accumulating the requisites of samādhi (samādhisaMbhāra-raksopacaya), (2) selection (prāvivekya), (3) one-pointedness of mind (CITTAIKĀGRATĀ), (4) elimination of hindrances (ĀVARAnA-visuddhi), and (5) cultivation of correct mental orientation (MANASKĀRA-bhāvanā). Among these five, the section on cittaikāgratā contains one of the most detailed discussions in Sanskrit sources of the meditative procedures for the cultivation of sAMATHA and VIPAsYANĀ. In the fourth yogasthāna, the practitioner, who has accomplished the five stages of application (prayoga), proceeds to either the mundane (laukika) or supramundane (lokottara) path. On the mundane path, the practitioner is said to be reborn into the various heavens of the subtle-materiality realm (RuPADHĀTU) or the immaterial realm (ĀRuPYADHĀTU) by cultivating the four subtle-materiality meditative absorptions (RuPĀVACARADHYĀNA) or the four immaterial meditative absorptions (ĀRuPYĀVACARADHYĀNA). On the supramundane path, the sravāka practices to attain the stage of worthy one (ARHAT) by relying on the insight of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvāry āryasatyāni). See also BODHISATTVABHuMI.
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Sri Aurobindo: "Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development — Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable.” *Letters on Yoga
srotaāpanna. [alt. srotāpanna; srotāpanna] (P. sotāpanna; T. rgyun du zhugs pa; C. yuliu [guo]/xutuohuan; J. yoru[ka]/shudaon; K. yeryu [kwa]/sudawon 預流[果]/須陀洹). In Sanskrit, "stream-enterer" or "stream-winner"; the first of four stages of sanctity (see ĀRYAPUDGALA) in mainstream Buddhism, followed by the once-returner (SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIN) and worthy one (ARHAT). These four stages are together referred to as "the fruits of recluseship" (sRĀMAnYAPHALA), viz., "the effects of religious practice." The term srotaāpanna appears very often in the Buddhist sutras, with members of the Buddha's audience said to have attained this stage immediately upon hearing him preach the dharma. The stage of stream-enterer begins with the initial vision of the reality of NIRVĀnA, at which point one "enters the stream" leading to liberation. Because of this achievement, the srotaāpanna has abandoned completely the first three of ten fetters (SAMYOJANA) that bind one to the cycle of rebirth (SAMSĀRA): (1) belief in the existence of a self in relation to the body (SATKĀYADṚstI), (2) doubt about the efficacy of the path (VICIKITSĀ), (3) belief in the efficacy of rites and rituals (sĪLAVRATAPARĀMARsA). For this reason, after becoming a stream-enterer, the adept will never again be reborn into the unfortunate rebirth destinies (APĀYA, DURGATI) as a demigod, animal, ghost, or hell denizen and is destined to become an arhat in a maximum of seven more lifetimes (see SAPTAKṚDBHAVAPARAMA). There are two stages to stream-entry: SROTAĀPANNAPHALAPRATIPANNAKA, or one who is practicing, or is a candidate for, the fruition of stream-entry; and SROTAĀPANNAPHALASTHA, or one who has reached, or is the recipient of, the fruition of stream-entry. The srotaāpannaphalapratipannaka has only reached the ĀNANTARYAMĀRGA (unimpeded path), whereas the srotaāpannaphalastha has reached the VIMUKTIMĀRGA (path of freedom). In the five-path system (PANCAMĀRGA), stream-entry is equivalent to the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA) on the sRĀVAKA and PRATYEKABUDDHA paths. The srotaāpanna is also one of the twenty members of the ĀRYASAMGHA (see VIMsATIPRABHEDASAMGHA). In this context srotaāpanna is the name for candidates (pratipannaka) for srotaāpanna (the first fruit of the noble path). They may be either a follower through faith (sRADDHĀNUSĀRIN) or a follower through doctrine (DHARMĀNUSĀRIN) with either dull (MṚDVINDRIYA) or keen faculties (TĪKsnENDRIYA). In all cases, they may have destroyed from none up to as many as five of the sets of afflictions (KLEsA) that cause rebirth in the sensuous realm (KĀMADHĀTU) that the ordinary (LAUKIKA) path of meditation (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA) removes, but they will not have eliminated the sixth to the ninth sets. Were they to have removed the sixth set they would be called candidates for the second fruit of once-returner (sakṛdāgāmin), and were they to have removed the ninth set they would be called candidates for the third fruit of nonreturner (anāgāmin).
Stone Age According to current theories of human evolution, the comparatively recent time when man had found out how to make stone implements only, not having yet learnt the use of metals. Subdivided by scientific theorists into the Paleolithic and Neolithic (old and new stone ages). Though people in all ages have used such implements and still do in some places — which fact does not place us all today in the Stone Age — it is evident that the use of stone implements by savage peoples in no wise tends to establish a theory of human evolution. Races branch out like the limbs of a tree, so that different people may be in various stages of their racial evolution at the same time; also a degenerating race may revert to the use of stone implements.
student of sacred study; one who observes the vows of sense-control; the first of the four stages of spiritual life.
Sub-Plane ::: A manner of classifying reality and stages of consciousness by further dividing up a plane. On this site, sub-planes will either have specific functions within a plane (e.g. the Information Plane as the Lower Mental Plane) or can be assigned based on the qualities of that plane (e.g. the elemental sub-planes of each of the Four Worlds, such as Air of Water which is the Mental aspects of the Astral Plane).
svasaMbhogakāya. (C. zi shouyong shen; J. jijuyushin; K. cha suyong sin 自受用身). In Sanskrit, "body intended for personal enjoyment," in contrast to the PARASAMBHOGAKĀYA, "body intended for others' enjoyment"; one of the four types of buddha bodies (BUDDHAKĀYA) discussed in the BUDDHABHuMIsĀSTRA (Fodijing lun), the MAHĀYĀNASAMGRAHA (She dasheng lun), and the CHENG WEISHI LUN (*VijNaptimātratāsiddhisāstra), along with the "self-nature body" (SVABHĀVAKĀYA or svābhāvikakāya), the "body intended for others' enjoyment" (parasaMbhogakāya), and the "transformation body" (NIRMĀnAKĀYA). This fourfold schema of buddha bodies derives from the better-known three bodies of a buddha (TRIKĀYA)-viz., dharma body (DHARMAKĀYA), reward body (SAMBHOGAKĀYA), and transformation body (nirmānakāya)-but distinguishes between these two different types of reward bodies. The svasaMbhogakāya derives from the countless virtues that originate from the accumulation of immeasurable merit and wisdom over a buddha's infinitely-long career; this body is a perfect, pure, eternal and omnipresent material body that enjoys the bliss of dharma (DHARMAPRĪTI) for oneself until the end of time. By contrast, the parasaMbhogakāya is a subtle virtuous body deriving from the cognition of equality (SAMATĀJNĀNA), which resides in a PURE LAND and displays supernatural powers in order to enhance the enjoyment of the dharma by bodhisattvas at all ten stages of the bodhisattva's career (BODHISATTVABHuMI).
tejokasina. (S. tejaskṛtsnāyatana; T. me zad par gyi skye mched; C. huo bianchu; J. kahensho; K. hwa p'yonch'o 火遍處). In Pāli, "fire device"; one of the ten devices (KASInA) described in the PĀLI tradition for developing meditative concentration (P. JHĀNA, S. DHYĀNA); the locus classicus for their exposition is the VISUDDHIMAGGA of BUDDHAGHOSA. Ten kasina are enumerated there: visualization devices that are constructed from the elements (MAHĀBHuTA) of earth, water, fire, air; the colors blue, yellow, red, white; and light and empty space. In each case, the meditation begins by looking at the physical object; the perception of the device is called the "beginning sign" or "preparatory sign" (P. PARIKAMMANIMITTA). Once the object is clearly perceived, the meditator then memorizes the object so that it is seen as clearly in his mind as with his eyes. This perfect mental image of the device is called the "eidetic sign," or "learning sign" (P. UGGAHANIMITTAs), and serves as the subsequent object of concentration. As the internal visualization of this eidetic sign deepens and the five hindrances (NĪVARAnA) to mental absorption are temporarily allayed, a "representational sign" or "counterpart sign" (P. PAtIBHĀGANIMITTA) will emerge from out of the eidetic image, as if, the texts say, a sword is being drawn from its scabbard or the moon is emerging from behind clouds. The representational sign is a mental representation of the visualized image, which does not duplicate what was seen with the eyes but represents its abstracted, essentialized quality. Continued attention to the representational sign will lead to all four of the meditative absorptions of the subtle-materiality realm (RuPADHĀTU). In the case of the tejokasina, the meditator begins by making a fire of dried heartwood, hanging a curtain of reeds, leather, or cloth in front of it, then cutting a hole four fingerwidths in size in the curtain. He then sits in the meditative posture and observes the flame (rather than the sticks or the smoke) through the hole, thinking, "fire, fire," using the perception of the flame as the preparatory sign. The eidetic sign, which is visualized without looking at the flame, appears as a tongue of flame and continually detaches itself from the fire. The representational sign is more steady, appearing motionless like a red cloth in space, a gold fan, or a gold column. With the representational sign achieved, progress through the various stages of absorption may begin. The tejokasina figures prominently in the dramatic story of the passing away of the Buddha's attendant, ĀNANDA. According to FAXIAN, when Ānanda was 120 years old, he set out from MAGADHA to VAIsĀLĪ in order to die. Seeking control of the saint's relics after his death, AJĀTAsATRU followed him to the Rohīni River, while a group for Vaisālī awaited him on the other side. Not wishing to disappoint either group, Ānanda levitated to the middle of the river in the meditative posture, preached the dharma, and then meditated on the tejokasina, which caused his body to burst into flames, with his relics dividing into two parts, one landing on each side of the river.
Thar pa rin po che'i rgyan. (Tarpa rinpoche gyen). In Tibetan, "Jewel Ornament of Liberation"; a systematic presentation of Buddhist teachings and a seminal textbook for the BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism written by SGAM PO PA BSOD RNAM RIN CHEN. The text belongs to the genre of Tibetan literature known as LAM RIM, or "stages of the path," presenting an overview of the elementary tenets of MAHĀYĀNA doctrine through scriptural citation, philosophical reflection, and direct illustration. Its clear, concise, and unpedantic style has made it accessible to generations of readers. The doctrinal content reflects Sgam po pa's training in both the BKA' GDAMS sect and the tradition of MAHĀMUDRĀ, fusing Buddhist theory prevalent in both SuTRA and TANTRA and presenting what has been called sutra mahāmudrā-a tradition of mahāmudrā that does not rely on prerequisite tantric initiations and commitments. Sgam po pa thus transmits the underlying insights of tantric theory outside traditional methods of the VAJRAYĀNA. This system was later criticized by certain scholars such as SA SKYA PAndITA KUN DGA' RGYAL MTSHAN. The work is also commonly known as the Dwags po thar rgyan, after the author's residence in the region of Dwags po (Dakpo).
The ancient conception of fire thus embraced far more than the ordinary view of fire as chemical combustion or one of its phenomena. Among all the older peoples fire was multitudinous in both characteristics and attributes, ranging from divine-spiritual intellectuality through all intermediate stages of its manifestations to the physical heat arising from the burning of material such as wood, or the natural heat of the body. It is for this reason that certain ancient philosophers, such as Heracleitos, spoke of fire as the primordial element of the universe, in close accord with the archaic outlook.
The candidate for initiation into the Mithraic Mysteries had to undergo twelve “tortures” or labors, but the enumeration of the twelve or seven degrees is varied. One consisting of twelve grades is as follows: the candidate first underwent a long probation, with scourging, fasting, and ordeal of water, whereupon he became a soldier of Mithras. Before the soul of the initiant could leave the terrestrial region, it had to pass through the zodiacal grades of the Bull and the Lion, each involving further probation. Then it ascended through the region of the aether by means of the grades of the Vulture, the Ostrich, and the Crow. The soul then strove to pass into the realm of pure fire, through the stages of the Gryphon, the Perses, and the Sun. Finally the soul attained complete union with the divine nature through the grades of Father Eagle, Father Falcon, and Father of Fathers.
The complex scheme of major races and their subdivisions — overlapping each other and in various stages of their evolution, intermingling and crossing with one another — gives rise to the immense variety of types which we see on earth today. See also ROOT-RACE(S)
The Edda’s frost giants should not be confused with the giants and their daughter giantesses, or giant maidens, which represent periods of life and activity. The gods are energic consciousnesses (monads) at all-varying stages of evolution; the giants are their physical expressions or forms, whose lifetimes, however long, are limited. The giants’ daughters represent lesser life periods, several daughter races together comprising their father-race.
The elements of our present atmosphere are compounded from simpler elements which existed on earth at earlier stages of its evolution, and which exist now on some other globes. The atmosphere of our earth has become not only a chemical, but an alchemical crucible, in which “there is a perpetual exchange taking place in space of molecules, or atoms rather, correlating, and thus changing their combining equivalents on every planet” (SD 1:142). Neither sun nor stars are said to have our terrestrial elements, except in the sun’s outer robes, for it is only in its outer robes that the integration of atomic substances become sufficiently physical to permit the appearance of our terrestrial elements; also our globe is said to have its own special laboratory on the far outskirts of the atmosphere, and when the atoms and molecules cross this, they change and differentiate from their primordial nature. The spectroscope may show certain similarities between the elements on sun and stars and those on earth but we have no logical right to infer identity in other respects; and actually the physical and chemical properties of atoms differ on different globes, as do also most of the effects of temperature (SD 1:142).
The Method of Statistics. The basic principle of statistical method is that of simplification, which makes possible a concise and comprehensive knowledge of a mass of isolated facts by correlating them along definite lines. The various stages of this method are: precise definition of the problem or field of inquiry; collection of material required by the problem; tabulation and measurement of material in a manner satisfying the purpose of the problem; clear presentation of the significant features of tabulated material (by means of charts, diagrams, symbols, graphs, equations and the like), selection of mathematical methods for application to the material obtained; necessary conclusion from the facts and figures obtained; general interpretation within the limits of the problem and the procedure used. The special methods of treating statistical data are: collecting, sampling, selecting, tabulating, classifying, totaling or aggregating, measuring, averaging, relating and correlating, presenting symbolically. Each one of these methods uses specialized experimental or mathematical means in its actual application. The special methods of interpreting statistical data already treated are: analyzing, estimiting, describing, comparing, explaining, applying and predicting. In order to be conclusive, the various stages and types of the statistical method must avoid loose definitions, cross divisions resulting ftom conflicting interpretations of the problem, data which are not simultaneous or subject to similar conditions, conclusions from poor oi incomplete data, prejudices in judging, even when there is no conuption of evidence. The philosophy of statistics is concerned in general with the discussion and evaluation of the mathematical principles, methods and results of this science; and in particular with a critical analysis of the fitness of biological, psychological, educational, economic and sociological materials, for various types of statistical treatment. The purpose of such an inquiry is to integrate its results into the general problems and schemes of philosophy proper. Cf.. Richard von Mises, Statistics, Probability, and Truth.
The monad, as its name implies, is ever-enduring as an individual, although at the end of each manvantara it rises into a still higher or divine stage of perfect union with the boundless divine, only to re-issue forth again in due course as the monad it was before, thus beginning a new, immensely long time period of active individualized life as a spiritual consciousness-center. Thus it is that even the monads evolve, each on its own plane, for the hierarchies of the monads are innumerable and exist in all-various degrees at stages of evolutionary progression on the endless ladder of cosmic life.
Theosis ::: What occurs when higher states of gnosis are stabilized into stages of awareness. The blossoming of gnosis into the most perfect expression of consciousness.
Thera (Pali) Thera A Buddhist priest, especially a bhikkhu of Gautama Buddha’s community; specifically a senior member. Three grades were distinguished: thera bhikkhu (a senior); majjhima bhikkhu (middle or secondary disciple); and nava bhikkhu (novice). Four characteristics are mentioned, however, making a man a thera: high character, knowing the essential doctrines by heart, practicing the four jhanas (stages of meditation), and being conscious of having attained at least relative freedom through the destruction of the mental intoxications. A senior woman was termed theri or therika.
There are several states leading to spiritual powers and perception. The eight stages of yoga usually enumerated are: 1) yama (restraint, forbearance); 2) niyama, religious observances such as fastings, prayer, penances; 3) asana, postures of various kinds; 4) pranayama, methods of regulating the breath; 5) pratyahara (withdrawal), withdrawal of the consciousness from external objects; 6) dharana (firmness, steadiness, resolution) mental concentration, holding the mind on an object of thought; 7) dhyana, abstract contemplation or meditation freed from exterior distractions; and 8) samadhi, complete collection of the consciousness and its faculties into union with the monadic essence.
The second hierarchy of the manus, the dhyani-chohans or fully self-conscious devas, who are the original producers of form (rupas), appear at this stage of cosmic emanational evolution. In the Vishnu-Purana these beings are called chitrasikandinas (bright-crested), the seven rishis who are the informing souls of the seven principal stars of the Great Bear. These seven rishis represent hierarchies of spiritual beings who preside over and guide the septenary stages of the evolution of the cosmos.
The senses belong to the third of seven creations mentioned in the Puranas, the first three constituting a group known as the prakrita creations: 1) mahat-tattva creation; 2) bhuta or bhutasarga; and 3) indriya or aindriyaka. These three are not so much senses as the three first or elemental prakrita creations of the cosmos, representing the first three stages of the development of manifestation after a solar pralaya. Nevertheless, as analogy is nature’s rule throughout, these creations are equally applicable to the human senses, applying to the generalized development of sense function and sense apparatus more than to the sense organs themselves. The last of the three is, in its human application, a modified form of ahankara, the conception of the egoistic and mayavi “I” in man, the reflection of the spiritual ego or monad; and this third creation is also termed the organic creation or creation of the senses.
“The seven Stanzas given in this volume represent the seven terms of this abstract formula. They refer to, and describe the seven great stages of the evolutionary process, which are spoken of in the Puranas as the ‘Seven Creations,’ and in the Bible as the ‘Days’ of Creation” (SD 1:20-1).
They come from outside yourself and something replies from the subconscient which keeps for a long time all that the cons- cious being rejects. It is only in the later stages of the yoga that this subconscient part can be made conscious and liberated. It is the waking consciousness that you must keep free from sexual acts and sexual suggestions ::: if you do that, the subconscient part can be easily liberated afterwards.
This represents four stages of evolution: a monad, a dual creative force or duad, the world of forms, and the world of complete and concrete manifestation. This arrangement of dots enables one to deduce any of the numbers from 1 to 10. It was held in such high esteem by the Pythagoreans that their most binding oath was made upon the Tetraktys. “it has a very mystic and varied signification . . . First of all it is Unity, or the ‘One’ under four different aspects; then it is the fundamental number Four, the Tetrad containing the Decad, or Ten, the number of perfection; finally it signifies the primeval Triad (or Triangle) merged in the divine Monad. . . . The mystic Decad, the resultant of the Tetraktys, or the 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10, is a way of expressing this idea. The One is the impersonal principle ‘God’; the Two, matter; the Three, combining Monad and Duad and partaking of the nature of both, is the phenomenal world; the Tetrad, or form of perfection, expresses the emptiness of all; and the Decad, or sum of all, involves the entire Kosmos” (TG 326).
Three Pillars ::: A manner in which the Kabbalah is partitioned into three columns and where each column contains a number of Sephiroth. The Pillar of Mercy contains the Sephiroth with Yang/Force qualities. The Pillar of Severity contains the Sephiroth with Yin/Form qualities. The Middle Pillar contains the Sephiroth that represent stable stages of conscious experience: a fulcrum of balance between Sephiroth in the other two pillars.
Tiantai bajiao. (J. Tendai hakkyo; K. Ch'ont'ae p'algyo 天台八教). In Chinese, "The Eight [Classes of] Teachings according to the TIANTAI." According to the TIANTAI ZONG's system of doctrinal classification (JIAOXIANG PANSHI), the entirety of the Buddhist canon and its teachings can be divided into two groups of four teachings each. The first group of four was called "the four modes of transformative teachings" (huafa sijiao), which categorizes Buddhist teachings based on the content of their teachings and different doctrinal themes and their scriptural bases. The second group of four was called "the four styles of transformative edification" or "four modes of exposition" (huayi sijiao), which categorizes different strands of Buddhism primarily according to their means of conversion or pedagogical styles. ¶ The first group of four teachings, the transformative teachings (huafa sijiao), classifies Buddhism into four categories based on content: (1) zangjiao, the "TRIPItAKA teachings," the basic teachings that are foundational to the HĪNAYĀNA schools, such as the notions of impermanence, suffering, and no-self, and the imperative of attaining NIRVĀnA; (2) tongjiao, the "joint" or "common teachings," a basic strand of MAHĀYĀNA teaching that shares many of the preceding doctrinal themes jointly with the "hīnayāna teachings," the main difference being that it additionally embraces the BODHISATTVA aspiration of helping others; (3) biejiao, the "distinct" or "separate teachings," so named because, unlike the previous category, this strand of Mahāyāna includes notions exclusive to that tradition and not shared with the "hīnayāna"; (4) yuanjiao, the "consummate" or "perfect teaching," which is the exclusive domain of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, the main scripture the Tiantai school itself espouses. ¶ The second group of four teachings, the modes of exposition or conversion (huayi sijiao), contains the following divisions based on pedagogical style: (1) dunjiao, the "sudden teachings" or a direct pedagogical style. Epitomized by the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, this mode of teaching is characterized by a direct revelation of the stage of buddhahood, circumventing the gradual, and more conventional, stages of beginning bodhisattva practices and the "hīnayāna" tradition. (2) Jianjiao, the "gradual teachings" or pedagogical style. Representing these sequential, step-by-step soteriological approaches and pedagogical styles are the ĀGAMAs, the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ sutras, and the VAIPULYA sutras. (3) Budingjiao, the "indefinite teachings" or pedagogical style. The same utterance of the Buddha might be given without differentiation to various members of the audience, but the depth to which they were able to penetrate to that message, and the different interpretations they gave to it, varied depending on their spiritual maturity. (4) Mimijiao, the "esoteric teachings" or pedagogical style. Not to be confused with tantric teachings, "esoteric" here refers to the Tiantai belief that the Buddha sometimes preached in such a way that his same utterance resonated differently with various members within the audience, so that each received the instruction most suitable to his needs and temperament; with this pedagogical style, the Buddha essentially left members of the audience free to fathom an inexhaustibly elastic teaching and be benefited from it according to their unique conditions. See also WUSHI; CH'oNT'AE SAGYO ŬI.
Triangle An emblem of the triad or three-in-one, expressing more than the three dots alone: the points, lines, and the whole figure give a septenate composed of two triads and a monad. The triangle also symbolizes twin rays proceeding from a central point, and when the other ends of these lines are joined, the base line signifies that which is produced by the interaction and interblending of the two formative rays. The apex, the side lines, and the base thus represent the three chief stages of cosmic evolution. The idea is further elaborated in the square pyramid. The Pythagoreans recognized the triangle as the first regular rectilinear figure, as three is the first odd number — the one being considered as the origin and unit, out of which all subsequent parts flow. The usual form of the triangle in symbology is equilateral, with the apex up or down. The circle, triangle, and square form another important triad representing stages in evolution. For interlaced triangles, see also SIX-POINTED STAR
Tripada (Sanskrit) Tripada Three-footed; for instance, fever in India is said to be three-footed because it has three stages of development: cold, heat, and sweat.
trisiksā. (P. tisikkhā; T. bslab pa gsum; C. sanxue; J. sangaku; K. samhak 三學). In Sanskrit, the "three trainings"; three overarching categories of Buddhist practice. First is the training in higher morality (ADHIsĪLAsIKsĀ), which encompasses all forms of restraint of body and speech, including lay and monastic precepts that serve as the foundation for the cultivation of the succeeding stages of concentration and wisdom. Second is the training in higher concentration (ADHISAMĀDHIsIKsĀ, also called adhicitta), which encompasses all forms of meditative practice directed toward the achievement of states of concentration. Third is the training in higher wisdom (ADHIPRAJNĀsIKsĀ), which includes all forms study and reflection that are directed toward developing insight into the true nature of reality. These three trainings are said to subsume all of the constituents of the noble eightfold path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA): adhiprajNāsiksā comprises the first two constituents, viz., right views (SAMYAGDṚstI) and right intention (SAMYAKSAMKALPA); adhisīlasiksā, the middle three constituents, viz., right speech (SAMYAGVĀC), right action (SAMYAKKARMĀNTA), and right livelihood (SAMYAGĀJĪVA); and adhisamādhisiksā, the last three constituents, viz., right effort (SAMYAGVYĀYĀMA), right mindfulness (SAMYAKSMṚTI), and right concentration (SAMYAKSAMĀDHI).
Tsong kha pa Blo bzang grags pa. (Tsong kha pa Losang Drakpa) (1357-1419). A Tibetan scholar and teacher venerated as the founder of the DGE LUGS sect of Tibetan Buddhism; typically known simply as Tsong kha pa. Born in the Tsong kha region of A mdo in northeastern Tibet, he received his initial lay vows under the fourth KARMA PA and began his religious education in the BKA' GDAMS tradition. In 1372, he traveled to central Tibet for further study. He became a disciple of the SA SKYA scholar Red mda' ba Gzhon nu blo gros (Rendawa Shonu Lodro, 1349-1412) but went on to study under many of the leading scholars of the day, including masters of various schools and sectarian affiliations. Another influential teacher was the lama Dbu ma pa (Umapa), from whom he received instructions on the KĀLACAKRATANTRA. He distinguished himself as a brilliant scholar and exegete of both SuTRA and TANTRA. According to his traditional biographies, Tsong kha pa experienced visions of Indian masters such as NĀGĀRJUNA and BUDDHAPĀLITA, who helped to clarify difficult points of doctrine. He is also said to have maintained a special relationship with MANJUsRĪ, the bodhisattva of wisdom, who appeared in visions throughout Tsong kha pa's life offering instruction and advice; Tsong kha pa is sometimes called 'Jam mgon, or "protected by MaNjusrī." Tsong kha pa's biographies speak of four major deeds undertaken during his lifetime. The first, in 1399, was his restoration of an image of the future buddha, MAITREYA. The second was a council to reform the code of VINAYA, convened in 1403 and attended by monks representing all sects of Tibetan Buddhism. The third was the Great Prayer Festival (SMON LAM CHEN MO) inaugurated in 1409 at the JO KHANG in LHA SA, in which he offered the ornaments of a SAMBHOGAKĀYA to the famous statue of JO BO SHĀKYAMUNI, celebrating the Buddha's performance of the sRĀVASTĪ MIRACLES. The festival became an important annual event, drawing thousands of participants from all quarters of the Tibetan Buddhist world. The fourth was the founding in 1409 of DGA' LDAN monastery, which would become one of principal religious institutions in the Lha sa region and seat of the leader of the Dge lugs sect. Tsong kha pa was an original and penetrating philosopher, who saw reason and intellectual development as key aspects of the path to enlightenment. Born during a period when the Tibetan Buddhist canon had been newly formulated, he sought a comprehensive explanation of the Buddhist path, with the PRĀSAnGIKA-MADHYAMAKA of BUDDHAPĀLITA and CANDRAKĪRTI as the highest philosophical view. His works are marked with a concern with systematic consistency, whether it be between sutra and tantra or PRAMĀnA and MADHYAMAKA. A prolific author, Tsong kha pa's works fill eighteen volumes. Among his best known writings are the LAM RIM CHEN MO ("Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment"), composed in 1402 at RWA SGRENG monastery, the SNGAGS RIM CHEN MO ("Great Treatise on the Stages of Mantra"), and the Drang nges LEGS BSHAD SNYING PO ("Essence of Eloquence on the Definitive and Interpretable"). Tsong kha pa called his system of religious practice the Bka' gdams gsar ma, or "New Bka' gdams," after the sect founded by the Bengali master ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA. His followers were later known as Dga' ldan pa (Gandenpa), "those of Dga' ldan," after the monastic seat established by Tsong kha pa. This was sometimes abbreviated as Dga' lugs pa, "those of the system of Dga' ldan," eventually evolving into the current name Dge lugs pa, "those of the system of virtue." Tsong kha pa's fame was greatly elevated through the political power of the Dge lugs sect after the establishment of the institution of the DALAI LAMA. His tomb at Dga' ldan became an important site of pilgrimage prior to its destruction during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Tsong kha pa's fame in Tibet was sufficiently great that he is commonly known simply as Rje rin po che, the "precious leader."
ultradian rhythms: one complete cycle that repeats in less than twenty-four hours, for instance different stages of sleep several times during a single night's sleep.
upadesasaMpramosa. (T. gdams ngag brjed pa; C. wang shengyan; J. boshogon; K. mang songon 忘聖言). In Sanskrit, lit. "loss of the instruction," a term that appears in instructions for developing SAMĀDHI, to describe the point in the early stages of developing concentration where the meditator loses focus upon the chosen object of concentration, thus allowing the mind to wander.
vāgviveka. (T. ngag dben). In Sanskrit, "isolation of speech"; one of the six stages of the completion state (NIsPANNAKRAMA) in the ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA systems. In order to separate the mind from coarse conventional appearances and induce the dawning of the mind of clear light (PRABHĀSVARACITTA), the body, speech, and mind must be isolated from their ordinary forms. In the isolation of speech, the subtle wind (PRĀnA) that is the root of speech is isolated from the ordinary movement of winds. That subtle wind is then combined with MANTRA.
Varnasrama: Related to the four primary groups and the four stages of Hindu life; the laws of the caste and stage of life.
Via Straminis (Latin) The way of straw, the wispy way; the Milky Way, the name evidently referring to the wisps of light with which the Milky Way is strewn, as straw was often used to strew the roads in ancient times. The ancient Syrians in their system of describing the stages of nature, called the spiritual regents within and behind the Milky Way their First Principle. Theosophy regards the Milky Way as not only the origin of all manifested solar systems but likewise as the repository of these solar systems when they finish their evolutionary course and return to the invisible background of the galaxy for their long pralayic rest. Yet this is but a minor part that the Milky Way plays in the cosmic economy, for that pathway of the gods, as many ancient mystics called it, contains some of the deepest mysteries that the human mind in its endless research for truth and knowledge has unfolded. The Romans used two other expressions to denote the Milky Way: the circulus lacteus (milky circle) and via lactis (milky way).
vikalpa. (P. vikappa; T. rnam par rtog pa; C. fenbie; J. funbetsu; K. punbyol 分別). In Sanskrit, "[false] discrimination," "imagining," or "conception"; the discriminative activities of mind, generally portrayed in the negative sense of fantasy and imagination, and often equivalent to "conceptual proliferation" (PRAPANCA). Vikalpa refers to the conceptual activities of the mental consciousness (MANOVIJNĀNA), a mediated mental activity that operates through the medium of generic images (SĀMĀNYALAKsAnA). Vikalpa is often opposed to the immediate knowledge provided by direct perception (PRATYAKsA). The direct perception of reality is therefore commonly described as NIRVIKALPA, or "free from thought." ¶ Three types of conceptual discrimination (TRIVIKALPA) are typically described in the literature. (1) Intrinsic discrimination (SVABHĀVAVIKALPA), which refers to the initial advertence of thought (VITARKA) and the subsequent sustained attention (VICĀRA) to a perceived object of the six sensory consciousnesses (VIJNĀNA), that is, the discrimination of present objects, as when visual consciousness perceives a visual object. (2) Conceptualizing discrimination (ABHINIRuPAnĀVIKALPA), which refers to discursive thought on ideas that arise in the sixth mental consciousness when it adverts toward a mental object that is associated with any of the three time periods of past, present, or future. (3) Discrimination involving reflection on past events (ANUSMARAnAVIKALPA), which refers to discriminative thought involving the memory of past objects. ¶ There is a wide range of opinion as to the value of vikalpa (in the sense of "thought" or "conception") in the soteriological progress. Some traditions would hold that the structured use of conceptual and logical analysis (and especially the use of inference, or ANUMĀNA) is a necessary prerequisite to reaching a state beyond all thought. Such a position is advocated in the Indian philosophical schools and in those that favor the so-called gradual path to enlightenment. In the stages of the path to enlightenment, all forms of meditation prior to the attainment of the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA) are "conceptual" and thus entail vikalpa. Other schools radically devalue all thought as an obstacle to the understanding of the ultimate and would claim that the nonconceptual, described in some cases as "no-thought" (C. WUNIAN), is accessible at all times. Such an approach, most famously expounded in the CHAN traditions of Asia, is associated with the so-called sudden path to enlightenment (see DUNWU). ¶ In the YOGĀCĀRA school, vikalpa is described specifically as the "discriminative conception of apprehended and apprehender" (GRĀHYAGRĀHAKAVIKALPA), referring to the misconception that there is an inherent bifurcation between a perceiving subject (grāhaka) and its perceived objects (grāhya). This bifurcation occurs because of false imagining (ABHuTAPARIKALPA), the tendency of the relative phenomena (PARATANTRA) to be misperceived as divided into a perceiving self and a perceived object that is external to it. By relying on these false imaginings to construct our sense of what is real, we inevitably subject ourselves to continued suffering (DUḤKHA) within the cycle of birth-and-death (SAMSĀRA). Overcoming this bifurcation leads to the nondiscriminative wisdom (NIRVIKALPAJNĀNA), which, in the five-stage path (PANCAMĀRGA) system, marks the inception of the path of vision (darsanamārga), where the adept sees reality directly, without the intercession of concepts. The elimination of grāhyagrāhakavikalpa proceeds from the less to the more subtle. It is easier to realize that a projected object is a projection than to realize that a projecting subject is as well; among projected objects, it is easier to realize that afflicted (SAMKLIstA) dharmas (the SKANDHAs and so on) are projections than to realize that purified (VYAVADĀNA) dharmas (the five paths and so on) are as well; and among subjects it is easier to realize that a material subject (a mental substratum and so on) is a projection than to realize that a nominally existing subject (a nominally existing self and so on) is. This explanation of vikalpa, common in the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ commentarial tradition, influenced the theory of the SAMPANNAKRAMA (completion stage) in ANUTTARAYOGA (highest yoga) TANTRA, where prior to reaching enlightenment the four sets of vikalpas are dissolved with their associated PRĀnAs in the central channel (AVADHuTI).
wangsheng. (J. ojo; K. wangsaeng 往生). In Chinese, "going to rebirth"; referring especially to rebirth in AMITĀBHA's PURE LAND of SUKHĀVATĪ. In its broadest sense, the term is sometimes used to refer to rebirth in either the three realms of existence (LOKADHĀTU) or other buddhas' or BODHISATTVAs' pure lands, such as the ABHIRATI pure land of the buddha AKsOBHYA or the TUsITA heaven of the bodhisattva MAITREYA. The term has a distinctive usage in the East Asian PURE LAND traditions, however, where it refers specifically to rebirth in sukhāvatī. The seminal pure land sutra, the SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA, regards this kind of rebirth as the achievement of the stage of nonretrogression (S. AVAIVARTIKA), one of the stages of the BODHISATTVA path. The Wangshenglun zhu, a commentary by TANLUAN on VASUBANDHU's WULIANGSHOU JING YOUPOTISHE YUANSHENG JI (*Aparimitāyuḥsutropadesa), says that rebirth in sukhāvatī is to be distinguished from the cycle of rebirth in the three realms of existence, because birth in the pure land frees one from any prospect of subsequent rebirths in SAMSĀRA. In order to go to rebirth in sukhāvatī, the pure land tradition offered the simple practice of chanting the buddha Amitābha's name (C. NIAN FO; K. yombul; J. NENBUTSU; see also NAMU AMIDABUTSU). Ritual practices associated with taking rebirth in the pure land also include the deathbed recitation of the name of Amitābha, which is introduced in the Sukhāvatīvyuhasutra as the eighteenth of the forty-eight vows that DHARMĀKĀRA made before he attained enlightenment. According to this vow, a person may be reborn in sukhāvatī by sincerely calling out Amitābha's name a mere ten times. The quality of rebirth in the pure land will be dependent on the practitioner's level of achievement, viz., as superior, average, or inferior. Superior disciples are those who arouse the thought of enlightenment (BODHICITTA) and maintain mindfulness of Amitābha, while cultivating meritorious qualities. Average disciples are those who arouse the thought of enlightenment and maintain mindfulness of Amitābha, but who do not cultivate meritorious qualities to the same extent as do superior disciples. Inferior disciples are those who arouse the thought of enlightenment and maintain mindfulness of Amitābha, but who have not yet consistently begun to cultivate meritorious qualities. Several collections of testimonials regarding the efficacy of wangsheng practice exist in China, including the seventh-century Wangsheng zhuan by Jiacai (fl. c. 627) and the FAYUAN ZHULIN by Daoshi (d. 683).
Wheel Perpetual gyratory motion; a vortex, a center of revolving force. Matter is not only motion itself in low ranges of the cosmos, but has likewise many modes of motion, although not in the sense in which this phrase was used in the 19th century. Lord Kelvin’s vortex-atoms illustrate the point, for he showed that many of the properties attributed to atoms could be represented by regarding atoms as vortices in a frictionless, incompressible fluid. More recent analysis of the atom has failed to resolve it into anything more than electric particles whose properties are functions of their motions. “Atoms are called ‘Vibrations’ in Occultism . . . ” (SD 2:633). Fohat traces spiral lines and forms wheels or centers of force around which primordial cosmic matter expands and contracts and passes through stages of consolidation ending in globes, and later through stages of etherealization. Vortical motion is a universal law, as seen in the stellar universe and in the electronic constitution of the physical atom, giving a fuller meaning to the word cycle.
Wondon songbul non. (圓頓成佛論). In Korean, "The Perfect and Sudden Attainment of Buddhahood"; posthumous publication on the convergence of HWAoM (C. HUAYAN) and SoN (C. CHAN) thought and practice by the mid-Koryo reformer POJO CHINUL (1158-1210). The Wondon songbul non is said to have been found in a wooden box belonging to Chinul after his death and published posthumously by his disciple CHIN'GAK HYESIM. The text provides Chinul's most sustained presentation of his views on Hwaom thought and practice, which were profoundly influenced by LI TONGXUAN's (635-730) idiosyncratic commentary on the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, the HUAYAN JING HELUN. Chinul seeks to demonstrate that the sudden understanding-awakening (K. haeo; C. JIEWU; viz., knowing that one is a buddha) is attained at the first level of the ten stages of faith (sipsin), which were usually thought to be a preliminary stage of training, rather than at the first arousing of the thought of enlightenment (BODHICITTOTPĀDA), which occurred at the first of the ten stages of abiding (sipchu). Chinul supports this argument by drawing on the Hwaom concept of "nature origination" (XINGQI), which he finds superior to the alternative Hwaom theory of the conditioned origination of the dharmadhātu (FAJIE YUANQI). This Hwaom understanding at the very inception of practice that one is endowed with the fundamental nature of buddhahood is compared to the CHAN and SoN notion of "seeing one's nature and attaining buddhahood" (JIANXING CHENGFO). But because Chan/Son does not sanction the prolix conceptual descriptions of this experience that are found in the Hwaom school, it is the true "perfect and sudden" school. See also YUANDUN JIAO.
wushi. (J. goji; K. osi 五時). In Chinese, "the five periods [of the Buddha's teaching]"; the TIANTAI school's temporal taxonomy of Buddhist doctrines (JIAOXIANG PANSHI), according to which the Buddha's teachings differ because he preached them at different points during his pedagogical career. The initial account of his awakening that the Buddha taught immediately after his enlightenment was described in the AVATAMSAKASuTRA; this stage is thus termed the HUAYAN period (huayan shiqi). This account of the experience of buddhahood was, however, so unadulterated and sublime that many sRĀVAKA disciples were utterly unable to comprehend its message. The Buddha therefore began his teaching anew in a second period that was termed Luyuan shiqi (after the Deer Park, MṚGADĀVA, where many of the ĀGAMA scriptures were taught) or ahan shiqi (after the āgamas, which were the compilation of the Buddha's words from this period). This period was said to be an explicit attempt on the part of the Buddha to accommodate those disciples who were confounded during the first period, by teaching his insights in their most elementary form. The third period is called fangdeng (VAIPULYA) shiqi, where the "HĪNAYĀNA" teachings of the second period were superseded by teaching the aspiration for the MAHĀYĀNA. Various sutras that explicitly compare Mahāyāna favorably to "hīnayāna"-such as the sRĪMĀLĀDEVĪSIMHANĀDASuTRA and the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA-were supposedly products of this period. The fourth period is termed the bore shiqi, after its eponymous sutras, the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ. This was the stage of the Buddha's teaching career where he began to remove the boundaries separating Mahāyāna and "hīnayāna" by leading his audience from the presumption that there were two separate vehicles to instead a common realization of emptiness (suNYATĀ). The final period is called Fahua Niepan shiqi, after its two representative sutras, the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA and the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA. The teachings associated with this period are described as the "consummate" or "perfect" teachings (YUANJIAO) because they espouse the idea of one vehicle (or the one buddha vehicle; C. YISHENG; S. EKAYĀNA), which Tiantai claimed was the truest form of the Buddha's original intention (benyuan; see PuRVAPRAnIDHĀNA). The Tiantai school also compares these five stages of the teachings to the five stages in the clarification of milk (see WUWEI, "five tastes"). See also TIANTAI BAJIAO.
xindi. (S. cintābhumikā; J. shinji; K. simji 心地). In Chinese, lit. "mind-ground" or "mind as ground"; a common metaphor used in MAHĀYĀNA literature to suggest that mind or thought is the source, or "ground," of all phenomena. The Dasheng bensheng xindi guan jing ("Sutra on the Great-Vehicle Contemplation of the Innate Mind Ground"), for example, metaphorically refers to the minds of the sentient beings of the three realms of existence as a "mind-ground," since all phenomena-whether mundane (LAUKIKA) or supramundane (LOKOTTARA), and including all virtuous and nonvirtuous dharmas, as well as the five rebirth destinies (GATI) and the states of a PRATYEKABUDDHA, BODHISATTVA, or even a buddha-are generated from the mind of sentient beings, just as all grains and fruits are generated from soil. A commentary to the MAHĀVAIROCANĀBHISAMBODHISuTRA (Dari jing shu) says that the mind is also metaphorically referred to as a "ground," since the practice of bodhisattvas relies on the mind, just as activities of ordinary people rely on the ground. In the FANWANG JING ("Brahmā's Net Sutra"), the mind-ground refers to the bodhisattva precepts (PUSA JIE), which help to restrain the activities of body, speech, and mind; the precepts are the mind-ground because the activities of mind, or thought, are the basis for actions performed via body and speech. The buddha Vairocana says in the sutra that he achieved complete, perfect enlightenment (SAMYAKSAMBODHI) only after cultivating the mind-ground over a hundred incalculable eons (ASAMKHYEYAKALPA). The Korean monk WoNHYO (617-686), in his Pommanggyong Posal kyebon sagi ("Personal Exposition on the Bodhisattva Precepts Text of the 'Brahmā's Net Sutra'"), described three different denotations of mind-ground in terms of the abider and the ground on which that abider resides. These are (1) the fifty stages of the bodhisattva path (the ten BODHISATTVABHuMI, plus the forty stages preliminary to the bhumis), which is the ground on which the thought of enlightenment (BODHICITTA) of the bodhisattva abides; (2) the three categories of precepts (sĪLATRAYA), which is the ground on which the enlightened mind abides; and (3) the realm of reality (DHARMADHĀTU), which is the ground on which the practitioner abides. In the CHAN ZONG, the mind that was transmitted by BODHIDHARMA, the putative founder of Chan, is termed the mind-ground, and his teaching of the one (enlightened) mind is called the dharma teaching of the mind-ground (xindi famen). HUANGBO XIYUN (d. 850) says in his CHUANXIN FAYAO that the "dharma teaching of the mind-ground means that all dharmas are constructed depending upon this mind." Finally, GUIFENG ZONGMI in his CHANYUAN CHUCHUANJI TUXU ("Prolegomenon to the Comprehensive References to the Fountainhead of Chan Collection") equates mind-ground with the buddha-nature (FOXING): "the originally enlightened true nature of sentient beings is called both buddha-nature and mind-ground."
xinxin. (J. shinjin; K. sinsim 信心). In Chinese, "mind of faith" or "faith in mind"; the compound is typically interpreted to mean either faith in the purity of one's own mind or else a mind that has faith in the three jewels (RATNATRAYA) and the principle of causality. The "mind of faith" is generally considered to constitute the inception of the Buddhist path (MĀRGA). In the elaborate fifty-two stage path schema outlined in such scriptures as the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, the RENWANG JING, and the PUSA YINGLUO BENYE JING, "mind of faith" (xinxin) constitutes the first of the ten stages of faith (shixin), a preliminary level of the BODHISATTVA path generally placed prior to the generation of the thought of enlightenment (BODHICITTOTPĀDA) that occurs on the first of the ten abiding stages (shizhu). The MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA also says that the buddha-nature (FOXING) can be called the "great mind of faith" (da xinxin) because a bodhisattva-mahāsattva, through this mind of faith, comes to be endowed with the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ). ¶ In the PURE LAND traditions, the mind of faith typically refers to faith in the vows of the buddha AMITĀBHA, which ensures that those who have sincere devotion and faith in that buddha will be reborn in his pure land of SUKHĀVATĪ. SHANDAO (613-681) divided the mind of faith into two types: (1) faith in one's lesser spiritual capacity (xinji), which involves acceptance of the fact that one has fallen in a state of delusion during myriads of rebirths, and (2) faith in dharma (xinfa), which is faith in the fact that one can be saved from this delusion through the vows of Amitābha. SHINRAN (1173-1262) glosses the mind of faith as the buddha-mind realized by entrusting oneself to Amitābha's name and vow. ¶ The term xinxin is also used as a translation of the Sanskrit sRADDHĀ (faith), which is one of the five spiritual faculties (INDRIYA), and of ADHYĀsAYA (lit. "determination," "resolution"), which is used to describe the intention of the bodhisattva to liberate all beings from suffering. See also XINXIN MING.
Yachid (&
yathābhutajNānadarsana. (P. yathābhutaNānadassana; C. rushi zhijian; J. nyojitsu chiken; K. yosil chigyon 如實知見). In Sanskrit, "knowledge and vision that accord with reality"; a crucial insight leading to deliverance (VIMUKTI), which results in dispassion toward the things of this world because of seeing things as they actually are: i.e., as impermanence (ANITYA), suffering (DUḤKHA), and nonself (ANĀTMAN). "Knowledge and vision (jNānadarsana)" is usually interpreted to suggest the direct insight into things "as they are" (yathābhuta), meaning these three marks of existence (TRILAKsAnA), or sometimes the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. YathābhutajNānadarsana is presumed to be closely related to wisdom (PRAJNĀ), but with one significant difference: yathābhutajNānadarsana is the first true insight, but it is intermittent and weak, while prajNā is continuous and strong. Seeing things as they are, however, is intense enough that the insight so gleaned is sufficient to transform an ordinary person (PṚTHAGJANA) into an ĀRYA. ¶ In the Upanisāsutta of the SAMYUTTANIKĀYA, the standard twelvefold chain of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA) is connected to an alternate chain that is designated the "supramundane dependent origination" (P. lokuttara-paticcasamuppāda; S. lokottara-pratītyasamutpāda), which outlines the process leading to liberation and prominently includes the knowledge and vision that accord with reality. Here, the last factor in the standard chain, that of old age and death (JARĀMARAnA), is substituted with suffering (P. dukkha; S. DUḤKHA), which in turn becomes the first factor in this alternate series. According to the Nettipakarana, a Pāli exegetical treatise, this chain of supramundane dependent origination consists of: (1) suffering (P. dukkha; S. duḥkha), (2) faith (P. saddhā; S. sRADDHĀ), (3) delight or satisfaction (P. pāmojja; S. prāmodya), (4) rapture or joy (P. pīti; S. PRĪTI), (5) tranquility or repose (P. passaddhi; S. PRAsRABDHI), (6) mental ease or bliss (SUKHA), (7) concentration (SAMĀDHI), (8) knowledge and vision that accord with reality (P. yathābhutaNānadassana; S. yathābhutajNānadarsana), (9) disgust (P. nibbidā; S. NIRVEDA), (10) dispassion (P. virāga; S. VAIRĀGYA), (11) liberation (P. vimutti; S. VIMUKTI), and (12) knowledge of the destruction of the contaminants (P. āsavakkhayaNāna; S. āsravaksayajNāna; see ĀSRAVAKsAYA). The Kimatthiyasutta of the AnGUTTARANIKĀYA gives a slightly different version of the first links, replacing suffering and faith with (1) observance of precepts (P. kusalasīla; S. kusalasīla) and (2) freedom from remorse (P. avippatisāra; S. avipratisāra). In both formulations, yathābhutajNānadarsana arises as a result of the preceding factor of meditative concentration (samādhi); it is regarded as the specific awareness (JNĀNA) of the nature of reality, which is seen (DARsANA) vividly and directly. In this context, yathābhutajNānadarsana is essentially synonymous with insight (VIPAsYANĀ). As this chain of transcendental dependent origination is sometimes interpreted, the stage of faith (P. saddhā; S. sraddhā) is made manifest through generosity (DĀNA) and observing precepts (sĪLA), which frees the mind from feelings of remorse and guilt (avipratisāra). The stage of delight or satisfaction (prāmodya) refers to a satisfied or relaxed state of mind, which is freed from any mental disturbances that might prevent concentration. The stages of rapture (prīti), bliss (sukha), and concentration (samādhi) are factors associated with the four levels of meditative absorption (DHYĀNA). The knowledge and vision that accord with reality arise in dependence on the preceding samādhi; it is able to destroy the afflictions (KLEsA), rather than simply suppress them, as occurs in the state of concentration, and thus leads to liberation from SAMSĀRA. The fact that samādhi provides a basis for seeing things "as they are," which generates an insight that can bring about liberation, demonstrates the explicitly soteriological dimensions of concentration in a Buddhist meditative context. ¶ In Pāli sources, such as the VISUDDHIMAGGA, yathābhutajNānadarsana is the fifteenth of eighteen principal types of superior insight (P. mahāvipassanā), which liberate the mind from delusions regarding the world and the self. The eighteen insights are contemplations of: (1) impermanence (aniccānupassanā); (2) suffering (dukkhānupassanā); (3) nonself (anattānupassanā); (4) aversion (nibbidānupassanā); (5) dispassion (virāgānupassanā); (6) extinction (nirodhānupassanā); (7) abandoning (patinissaggānupassanā); (8) waning (khayānupassanā); (9) disappearing (vayānupassanā); (10) change (viparināmānupassanā); (11) signlessness (animittānupassanā); (12) wishlessness (appanihitānupassanā); (13) emptiness (suNNatānupassanā); (14) advanced understanding into phenomena (adhipaNNādhammavipassanā); (15) knowledge and vision that accord with reality (yathābhutaNānadassana); (16) contemplation of danger (ādīnavānupassanā); (17) contemplation involving reflection (patisankhānupassanā); and (18) contemplation of turning away (vivattanānupassanā). The counterparts which are overcome through these eighteen insights are: (1) the idea of permanence, (2) the idea of pleasure, (3) the idea of self, (4) delighting, (5) greed, (6) origination, (7) grasping, (8) the idea of compactness, (9) the accumulation of action (kamma), (10) the idea of lastingness, (11) signs, (12) desire, (13) misinterpretation, (14) misinterpretation due to grasping, (15) misinterpretation due to confusion, (16) misinterpretation due to reliance, (17) nonreflection or thoughtlessness, (18) misinterpretation due to entanglement.
Yogabhāvanāmārga. [alt. Bhāvanāyogamārga; Yogabhāvanāpatha] (T. Rnal 'byor bsgom pa'i lam). In Sanskrit, "Path of Yogic Cultivation"; a work on the BODHISATTVA path usually attributed to the eighth-century Indian master JNānagarbha, who is known as the teacher of sĀNTARAKsITA (c. 725-788) and a disciple of srīgupta. It is presumed that the Yogabhāvanāmārga is an example of the later MADHYAMAKA school's attention to the theme of the stages of meditative cultivation (BHĀVANĀ), as best exemplified by KAMALAsĪLA's three BHĀVANĀKRAMAs. There are two JNānagarbhas known to the tradition, one from the early ninth century and the other from the eleventh century. Some scholars suggest that the commentary to the Maitreya chapter of the SAMDHINIRMOCANASuTRA should be attributed to the first JNānagarbha, while authorship of the Yogabhāvanāmārga should be ascribed to the second. The Yogabhāvanāmārga, along with JNānagarbha's two other works, the Satyadvayavibhanga ("Analysis of the Two Truths") and its autocommentary Satyadvayavibhangavṛtti ("Commentary on Analysis of the Two Truths"), are only extant in Tibetan translation.
Yogācārabhumisāstra. [alt. Yogācārabhumi] (T. Rnal 'byor spyod pa'i sa'i bstan bcos; C. Yuqieshidi lun; J. Yugashijiron; K. Yugasaji non 瑜伽師地論). In Sanskrit, "Treatise on the Stages of Yogic Practice"; an encyclopedic work that is the major treatise (sĀSTRA) of the YOGĀCĀRA school of Indian Buddhism. It was widely influential in East Asia and Tibet, being translated into Chinese by XUANZANG between 646 and 648 and into Tibetan circa 800. Authorship is traditionally ascribed to ASAnGA (or, in China, to MAITREYA), but the size and scope of the text suggest that it is the compilation of the work of a number of scholars (possibly including Asanga) during the fourth century CE. The work is divided into five major sections. The first and longest, comprising approximately half the text, is called the "Multiple Stages" (Bahubhumika or Bhumivastu) and sets forth the stages of the path to buddhahood in seventeen sections. The two most famous of these sections (both of which are preserved in Sanskrit and which circulated as independent works) are the sRĀVAKABHuMI and the BODHISATTVABHuMI, the latter providing one of the most detailed discussions of the bodhisattva path (MĀRGA) in Indian literature. In this section, many of the central doctrines of the Yogācāra school are discussed, including the eight consciousnesses, the ĀLAYAVIJNĀNA, and the three natures (TRISVABHĀVA). The structures and practices of the paths of the sRĀVAKA, PRATYEKABUDDHA, and BODHISATTVA are presented here in the form that would eventually become normative among MAHĀYĀNA scholasts in general (not just adherents of Yogācāra). The second section, "Compendium of Resolving [Questions]" (ViniscayasaMgrahanī), considers controversial points that arise in the previous section. The third section, "Compendium of Interpretation" (VyākhyānasaMgrahanī), examines these points in light of relevant passages from the sutras; it is interesting to note that the majority of the texts cited in this section are Sanskrit ĀGAMAs rather than Mahāyāna sutras. The fourth, called "Compendium of Synonyms" (ParyāyasaMgraha) considers the terms mentioned in the sutras. The fifth and final section, "Compendium of Topics" (VastusaMgraha), considers central points of Buddhist doctrine, including PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA and BODHI. This section also contains a discussion of VINAYA and (in the Chinese version) ABHIDHARMA.
ypsiliform ::: a. --> Resembling the / in appearance; -- said of the germinal spot in the ripe egg at one of the stages of fecundation.
yuanrong. (J. ennyu; K. wonyung 圓融). In Chinese, "consummate interfusion," "perfectly interfused"; a term used in the HUAYAN and TIANTAI traditions to refer to the ultimate state of reality wherein each individual phenomenon is perceived to be perfectly interfused and completely harmonized with every other phenomena. Yuanrong is contrasted with "separation" (GELI), the understanding of reality in terms of the discriminative phenomena of the conventional realm. ¶ The concept of yuanrong is deployed soteriologically as one of the two modes of describing the bodhisattva path in the Huayan tradition, viz., the "approach of consummate interfusion" (yuanrong men), also known as the "approach of consummate interfusion and mutual conflation" (YUANRONG XIANGSHE MEN); this mode is contrasted with the "approach of sequential practices" (CIDI XINGBU MEN). The approach of sequential practices refers to the different stages in the process of religious training, which progress through the fifty-two stages of the bodhisattva path (MĀRGA). By contrast, the yuanrong men focuses instead on the principle of equivalency (pingdeng) and indicates the way in which any one stage of training subsumes all stages of the path, or how the inception of the path is in fact identical to its consummation. According to this mode of description, then, the completion of the ten stages of faith (shixin), a preliminary stage of the mārga in the Huayan tradition, is often stated to be identical to the achievement of buddhahood (XINMAN CHENGFO). In the Huayan school's fivefold taxonomy of the teachings (HUAYAN WUJIAO) as systematized by FAZANG (643-712), the three vehicles are considered to represent the xingbu men, while the "consummate teaching" (YUANJIAO), the final and highest level of teaching in this schema, corresponds to the yuanrong men. ¶ Yuanrong is also used in accounts of contemplation practice in the Huayan school, as, for example, in the "contemplation on the consummate interfusion of the three sages" (sansheng yuanrong guan), which was treated by both CHENGGUAN (738-839) and LI TONGXUAN (635-730). In this Huayan meditation, the bodhisattvas MANJUsRĪ and SAMANTABHADRA represent the causal aspects of practice (yinfen), and the buddha VAIROCANA, the fruition aspect (guofen); the consummate interfusion of the causal and effect aspects of practice thus indicates enlightenment. Samantabhadra and MaNjusrī are juxtaposed as, respectively, the DHARMADHĀTU as the object of faith (suoxin) and the mind as the subject of faith (nengxin), as practice (xing) and understanding (jie), and as principle (LI) and wisdom (zhi). When these juxtaposed aspects are perfectly interfused with each other, the causal aspect is consummated and becomes perfectly interfused with the effect aspect. Thus Samantabhadra as the "empty TATHĀGATAGARBHA" (kong rulaizang) and MaNjusrī as the "nonempty tathāgatagarbha" (bukong rulaizang) are interfused with Vairocana Buddha's "comprehensive tathāgatagarbha" (zong rulaizang). ¶ In the Tiantai tradition, the "consummate interfusion of the three truths" (yuanrong sandi) is one of the two ways of interpreting the three truths (SANDI), viz., of emptiness (kongdi), provisionally real (jiadi), and the mean (zhongdi). The yuanrong sandi, also termed the "nonsequential three truths" (BU CIDI SANDI), refers to the notion that each truth (di) is endowed with all three of these truths together, and thus the particular and the universal are not separate from one another. This mode is distinguished from the "differentiated three truths" (GELI SANDI), also known as the "sequential three truths" (cidi sandi), where each truth is treated independently; in this mode, the first two truths represent the aspect of phenomena, while the last truth, of the mean, refers to the aspect of principle. In the Tiantai doctrinal taxonomy (see TIANTAI BAJIAO; WUSHI BAJIAO), geli sandi and yuanrong sandi are said to correspond, respectively, to the "distinct teaching" (biejiao) and the "consummate teaching" (yuanjiao), the third and fourth of the "four types of teaching according to their content" (huafa sijiao) in the Tiantai doctrinal classification. ¶ In both the Huayan and Tiantai traditions, yuanrong is also employed as a defining characteristic of the "dharma realm" (fajie; S. dharmadhātu). The term "consummate interfusion of the dharma realm" (fajie yuanrong) describes both the infinitely interdependent state of the Huayan "dharmadhātu of the unimpeded interpenetration of phenomenon with phenomena" (SHISHI WU'AI FAJIE), as well as the Tiantai doctrine of "intrinsic inclusiveness" (xingju), in which each individual phenomenon is said to be endowed with the TRICHILIOCOSM (SANQIAN DAQIAN SHIJIE; see TRISĀHASRAMAHĀSĀHASRALOKADHĀTU), which represents the entirety of existence in the Tiantai cosmology. The Huayan "dharmadhātu of the unimpeded interpenetration of phenomenon with phenomena" is systematized in the doctrine of the Huayan version of causality, the "conditioned origination of the dharmadhātu" (FAJIE YUANQI), and this Huayan causality of the dharmadhātu is also explained as the "consummate interfusion of the six aspects" (LIUXIANG yuanrong).
Zodiacus vitae (Latin for Zodiac of Life): An old school book by Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus, widely used in England in the 16th century. Its twelve chapters were said by Foster Watson, M.A., Professor of Education in the University College of Wales (in the modern annotated edition published by Philip Wellby in 1908) to “find their parallel in the twelve labours of Hercules,” and thus “to typify the evolution of the human soul through successive stages of mental and spiritual enlightenment.”
zooid ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or resembling, an animal. ::: n. --> An organic body or cell having locomotion, as a spermatic cell or spermatozooid.
An animal in one of its inferior stages of development, as one of the intermediate forms in alternate generation.
KEYS (10k)
13 Sri Aurobindo
2 Ken Wilber
2 James W Fowler
1 Sri Ramakrishna
1 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
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10 Sri Aurobindo
10 Anonymous
7 Ken Wilber
6 Frederick Lenz
4 Steven Pressfield
4 Shannon L Alder
4 Emily Giffin
3 Rebecca Solnit
3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
3 Melanie Benjamin
3 Jacque Fresco
3 Glen Cook
3 Gene Kim
3 Friedrich Nietzsche
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1:The Lord has provided different forms of worship to suit different people with different capacities in different stages of development. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
2: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
3:To put it all very plainly, evolution can continue. It has already brought forth humans from amoebas- why on earth should we think that after that prodigious feat lasting billions of years, evolution just petered out and wound down? And if the ratio "amoeba to human" is repeated, the result could only be God. The mystics simply show us the stages of higher evolution leading to that Summit. ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project, #KEYS
4:I believe faith is a human universal. We are endowed at birth with nascent capacities for faith. How these capacities are activated and grow depends to a large extent on how we are welcomed into the world and what kinds of environments we grow in. Faith is interactive and social; it requires community, language, ritual and nurture. Faith is also shaped by initiatives from beyond us and other people, initiatives of spirit or grace. How these latter initiatives are recognized and imaged, or unperceived and ignored, powerfully affects the shape of faith in our lives.
~ James W Fowler, Stages Of Faith,#KEYS
5:Faith is a coat against ... nakedness. For most of us, most of the time, faith functions so as to screen off the abyss of mystery that surrounds us. But we all at certain times call upon faith to provide nerve to stand in the presence of the abyss--naked, stripped of life supports, trusting only in the being, the mercy and the power of the Other in the darkness. Faith helps us form a dependable 'life space,' an ultimate environment. At a deeper level, faith undergirds us when our life space is punctured and collapses, when the felt reality of our ultimate environment proves to be less than ultimate.
~ James W Fowler, Stages Of Faith,#KEYS
6:The visions you describe are those which come in the earliest stages of sadhana. At this stage most of the things seen are formations of the mental plane and it is not always possible to put on them a precise significance, for they depend on the individual mind of the sadhak. At a later stage the power of vision becomes important for the sadhana, but at first one has to go on without attaching excessive importance to the details - until the consciousness develops more. The opening of the consciousness to the Divine Light and Truth and Presence is always the one important thing in the yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Visions and Symbols,#KEYS
7:Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability- and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually-let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don't try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,#KEYS
8:the supreme third period of greater divine equality :::
If we can pass through these two stages of the inner change without being arrested or fixed in either, we are admitted to a greater divine equality which is capable of a spiritual ardour and tranquil passion of delight, a rapturous, all-understanding and all-possessing equality of the perfected soul, an intense and even wideness and fullness of its being embracing all things. This is the supreme period and the passage to it is through the joy of a total self-giving to the Divine and to the universal Mother. For strength is then crowned by a happy mastery, peace deepens into bliss, the possession of the divine calm is uplifted and made the ground for the possession of the divine movement. But if this greater perfection is to arrive, the soul's impartial high-seatedness looking down from above on the flux of forms and personalities and movements and forces must be modified and change into a new sense of strong and calm submission and a powerful and intense surrender. ...
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Equality and the Annihilation of Ego,#KEYS
9:the fourth aid, time, kala :::
The sadhaka who has all these aids is sure of his goal. Even a fall will be for him only a means of rising and death a passage towards fulfilment. For once on this path, birth and death become only processes in the development of his being and the stages of his journey.
Time is the remaining aid needed for the effectivity of the process. Time presents itself to human effort as an enemy or a friend, as a resistance, a medium or an instrument. But always it is really the instrument of the soul.
Time is a field of circumstances and forces meeting and working out a resultant progression whose course it measures. To the ego it is a tyrant or a resistance, to the Divine an instrument. Therefore, while our effort is personal, Time appears as a resistance, for it presents to us all the obstruction of the forces that conflict with our own. When the divine working and the personal are combined in our consciousness, it appears as a medium and a condition. When the two become one, it appears as a servant and instrument.
The ideal attitude of the sadhaka towards Time is to have an endless patience as if he had all eternity for his fulfilment and yet to develop the energy that shall realise now and with an ever-increasing mastery and pressure of rapidity till it reaches the miraculous instantaneousness of the supreme divine Transformation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids,#KEYS
10:It must also be kept in mind that the supramental change is difficult, distant, an ultimate stage; it must be regarded as the end of a far-off vista; it cannot be and must not be turned into a first aim, a constantly envisaged goal or an immediate objective. For it can only come into the view of possibility after much arduous self-conquest and self-exceeding, at the end of many long and trying stages of a difficult self-evolution of the nature. One must first acquire an inner Yogic consciousness and replace by it our ordinary view of things, natural movements, motives of life; one must revolutionise the whole present build of our being. Next, we have to go still deeper, discover our veiled psychic entity and in its light and under its government psychicise our inner and outer parts, turn mind-nature, life-nature, body-nature and all our mental, vital, physical action and states and movements into a conscious instrumentation of the soul. Afterwards or concurrently we have to spiritualise the being in its entirety by a descent of a divine Light, Force, Purity, Knowledge, freedom and wideness. It is necessary to break down the limits of the personal mind, life and physicality, dissolve the ego, enter into the cosmic consciousness, realise the self, acquire a spiritualised and universalised mind and heart, life-force, physical consciousness. Then only the passage into the supramental consciousness begins to become possible, and even then there is a difficult ascent to make each stage of which is a separate arduous achievement. Yoga is a rapid and concentrated conscious evolution of the being, but however rapid, even though it may effect in a single life what in an instrumental Nature might take centuries and millenniums or many hundreds of lives, still all evolution must move by stages; even the greatest rapidity and concentration of the movement cannot swallow up all the stages or reverse natural process and bring the end near to the beginning.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supermind and the Yoga of Works, 281,#KEYS
11:the spiritual force behind adoration :::
All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendor appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter this image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, The Works of Love - The Works of Life, 159,#KEYS
12:There is one point in particular I would like to single out and stress, namely, the notion of evolution. It is common to assume that one of the doctrines of the perennial philosophy... is the idea of involution-evolution. That is, the manifest world was created as a "fall" or "breaking away" from the Absolute (involution), but that all things are now returning to the Absolute (via evolution). In fact, the doctrine of progressive temporal return to Source (evolution) does not appear anywhere, according to scholars as Joseph Campbell, until the axial period (i.e. a mere two thousand years ago). And even then, the idea was somewhat convoluted and backwards. The doctrine of the yugas, for example, sees the world as proceeding through various stages of development, but the direction is backward: yesterday was the Golden Age, and time ever since has been a devolutionary slide downhill, resulting in the present-day Kali-Yuga. Indeed, this notion of a historical fall from Eden was ubiquitous during the axial period; the idea that we are, at this moment, actually evolving toward Spirit was simply not conceived in any sort of influential fashion.
But sometime during the modern era-it is almost impossible to pinpoint exactly-the idea of history as devolution (or a fall from God) was slowly replaced by the idea of history as evolution (or a growth towards God). We see it explicitly in Schelling (1775-1854); Hegel (1770-1831) propounded the doctrine with a genius rarely equaled; Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) made evolution a universal law, and his friend Charles Darwin (1809-1882) applied it to biology. We find it next appearing in Aurobindo (1872-1950), who gave perhaps its most accurate and profound spiritual context, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) who made it famous in the West.
But here is my point: we might say that the idea of evolution as return-to-Spirit is part of the perennial philosophy, but the idea itself, in any adequate form, is no more than a few hundred years old. It might be 'ancient' as timeless, but it is certainly not ancient as "old."...
This fundamental shift in the sense or form of the perennial philosophy-as represented in, say, Aurobindo, Hegel, Adi Da, Schelling, Teilhard de Chardin, Radhakrishnan, to name a few-I should like to call the "neoperennial philosophy." ~ Ken Wilber, The Eye Of Spirit,#KEYS
13:the three stages of the ascent :::
There are three stages of the ascent, -at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, the higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, ideas, and at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance.In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are half-lights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process.In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will,#KEYS
14:But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, lateR But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single command or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination. When the Yoga is perfect, all action becomes of this character. We may indeed distinguish three stages of a growing progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. The first is the stage when we are still governed by the intellect, heart and senses; these have to seek or wait for the divine inspiration and guidance and do not always find or receive it. The second is the stage when human intelligence is more and more replaced by a high illumined or intuitive spiritualised mind, the external human heart by the inner psychic heart, the senses by a purified and selfless vital force. The third is the stage when we rise even above spiritualised mind to the supramental levels. In all three stages the fundamental character of the liberated action is the same, a spontaneous working of Prakriti no longer through or for the ego but at the will and for the enjoyment of the supreme Purusha. At a higher level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature, - no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218, #KEYS
15: There is also the consecration of the thoughts to the Divine. In its inception this is the attempt to fix the mind on the object of adoration, -for naturally the restless human mind is occupied with other objects and, even when it is directed upwards, constantly drawn away by the world, -- so that in the end it habitually thinks of him and all else is only secondary and thought of only in relation to him. This is done often with the aid of a physical image or, more intimately and characteristically, of a Mantra or a divine name through which the divine being is realised. There are supposed by those who systematise, to be three stages of the seeking through the devotion of the mind, first, the constant hearing of the divine name, qualities and all that has been attached to them, secondly, the constant thinking on them or on the divine being or personality, thirdly, the settling and fixing of the mind on the object; and by this comes the full realisation. And by these, too, there comes when the accompanying feeling or the concentration is very intense, the Samadhi, the ecstatic trance in which the consciousness passes away from outer objects. But all this is really incidental; the one thing essential is the intense devotion of the thought in the mind to the object of adoration. Although it seems akin to the contemplation of the way of knowledge, it differs from that in its spirit. It is in its real nature not a still, but an ecstatic contemplation; it seeks not to pass into the being of the Divine, but to bring the Divine into ourselves and to lose ourselves in the deep ecstasy of his presence or of his possession; and its bliss is not the peace of unity, but the ecstasy of union. Here, too, there may be the separative self-consecration, which ends in the giving up of all other thought of life for the possession of this ecstasy, eternal afterwards in planes beyond, or the comprehensive consecration in which all the thoughts are full of the Divine and even in the occupations of life every thought remembers him. As in the other Yogas, so in this, one comes to see the Divine everywhere and in all and to pour out the realisation of the Divine in all ones inner activities and outward actions. But all is supported here by the primary force of the emotional union: for it is by love that the entire self-consecration and the entire possession is accomplished, and thought and action become shapes and figures of the divine love which possesses the spirit and its members.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Way of Devotion [T2],#KEYS
16:This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge. A downpour of inwardly visible Light very usually envelops this action; for it must be noted that, contrary to our ordinary conceptions, light is not primarily a material creation and the sense or vision of light accompanying the inner illumination is not merely a subjective visual image or a symbolic phenomenon: light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy. There is also in this descent the arrival of a greater dynamic, a golden drive, a luminous enthousiasmos of inner force and power which replaces the comparatively slow and deliberate process of the Higher Mind by a swift, sometimes a vehement, almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation.
But these two stages of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind's transmutation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude. ... Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of stable lightnings.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
17:In the process of this change there must be by the very necessity of the effort two stages of its working. First, there will be the personal endeavour of the human being, as soon as he becomes aware by his soul, mind, heart of this divine possibility and turns towards it as the true object of life, to prepare himself for it and to get rid of all in him that belongs to a lower working, of all that stands in the way of his opening to the spiritual truth and its power, so as to possess by this liberation his spiritual being and turn all his natural movements into free means of its self-expression. It is by this turn that the self-conscious Yoga aware of its aim begins: there is a new awakening and an upward change of the life motive. So long as there is only an intellectual, ethical and other self-training for the now normal purposes of life which does not travel beyond the ordinary circle of working of mind, life and body, we are still only in the obscure and yet unillumined preparatory Yoga of Nature; we are still in pursuit of only an ordinary human perfection. A spiritual desire of the Divine and of the divine perfection, of a unity with him in all our being and a spiritual perfection in all our nature, is the effective sign of this change, the precursory power of a great integral conversion of our being and living. By personal effort a precursory change, a preliminary conversion can be effected; it amounts to a greater or less spiritualising of our mental motives, our character and temperament, and a mastery, stilling or changed action of the vital and physical life. This converted subjectivity can be made the base of some communion or unity of the soul in mind with the Divine and some partial reflection of the divine nature in the mentality of the human being. That is as far as man can go by his unaided or indirectly aided effort, because that is an effort of mind and mind cannot climb beyond itself permanently: at most it arises to a spiritualised and idealised mentality. If it shoots up beyond that border, it loses hold of itself, loses hold of life, and arrives either at a trance of absorption or a passivity. A greater perfection can only be arrived at by a higher power entering in and taking up the whole action of the being. The second stage of this Yoga will therefore be a persistent giving up of all the action of the nature into the hands of this greater Power, a substitution of its influence, possession and working for the personal effort, until the Divine to whom we aspire becomes the direct master of the Yoga and effects the entire spiritual and ideal conversion of the being. Two rules there are that will diminish the difficulty and obviate the danger. One must reject all that comes from the ego, from vital desire, from the mere mind and its presumptuous reasoning incompetence, all that ministers to these agents of the Ignorance. One must learn to hear and follow the voice of the inmost soul, the direction of the Guru, the command of the Master, the working of the Divine Mother. Whoever clings to the desires and weaknesses of the flesh, the cravings and passions of the vital in its turbulent ignorance, the dictates of his personal mind unsilenced and unillumined by a greater knowledge, cannot find the true inner law and is heaping obstacles in the way of the divine fulfilment. Whoever is able to detect and renounce those obscuring agencies and to discern and follow the true Guide within and without will discover the spiritual law and reach the goal of the Yoga. A radical and total change of consciousness is not only the whole meaning but, in an increasing force and by progressive stages, the whole method of the integral Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Integral Perfection [618],#KEYS
18::::
As an inner equality increases and with it the sense of the true vital being waiting for the greater direction it has to serve, as the psychic call too increases in all the members of our nature, That to which the call is addressed begins to reveal itself, descends to take possession of the life and its energies and fills them with the height, intimacy, vastness of its presence and its purpose. In many, if not most, it manifests something of itself even before the equality and the open psychic urge or guidance are there. A call of the veiled psychic element oppressed by the mass of the outer ignorance and crying for deliverance, a stress of eager meditation and seeking for knowledge, a longing of the heart, a passionate will ignorant yet but sincere may break the lid that shuts off that Higher from this Lower Nature and open the floodgates. A little of the Divine Person may reveal itself or some Light, Power, Bliss, Love out of the Infinite. This may be a momentary revelation, a flash or a brief-lived gleam that soon withdraws and waits for the preparation of the nature; but also it may repeat itself, grow, endure. A long and large and comprehensive working will then have begun, sometimes luminous or intense, sometimes slow and obscure. A Divine Power comes in front at times and leads and compels or instructs and enlightens; at others it withdraws into the background and seems to leave the being to its own resources. All that is ignorant, obscure, perverted or simply imperfect and inferior in the being is raised up, perhaps brought to its acme, dealt with, corrected, exhausted, shown its own disastrous results, compelled to call for its own cessation or transformation or expelled as worthless or incorrigible from the nature. This cannot be a smooth and even process; alternations there are of day and night, illumination and darkness, calm and construction or battle and upheaval, the presence of the growing Divine Consciousness and its absence, heights of hope and abysses of despair, the clasp of the Beloved and the anguish of its absence, the overwhelming invasion, the compelling deceit, the fierce opposition, the disabling mockery of hostile Powers or the help and comfort and communion of the Gods and the Divine Messengers. A great and long revolution and churning of the ocean of Life with strong emergences of its nectar and its poison is enforced till all is ready and the increasing Descent finds a being, a nature prepared and conditioned for its complete rule and its all-encompassing presence. But if the equality and the psychic light and will are already there, then this process, though it cannot be dispensed with, can still be much lightened and facilitated: it will be rid of its worst dangers; an inner calm, happiness, confidence will support the steps through all the difficulties and trials of the transformation and the growing Force profiting by the full assent of the nature will rapidly diminish and eliminate the power of the opposing forces. A sure guidance and protection will be present throughout, sometimes standing in front, sometimes working behind the veil, and the power of the end will be already there even in the beginning and in the long middle stages of the great endeavour. For at all times the seeker will be aware of the Divine Guide and Protector or the working of the supreme Mother-Force; he will know that all is done for the best, the progress assured, the victory inevitable. In either case the process is the same and unavoidable, a taking up of the whole nature, of the whole life, of the internal and of the external, to reveal and handle and transform its forces and their movements under the pressure of a diviner Life from above, until all here has been possessed by greater spiritual powers and made an instrumentation of a spiritual action and a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 179,#KEYS
19:The recurring beat that moments God in Time.
Only was missing the sole timeless Word
That carries eternity in its lonely sound,
The Idea self-luminous key to all ideas,
The integer of the Spirit's perfect sum
That equates the unequal All to the equal One,
The single sign interpreting every sign,
The absolute index to the Absolute.
There walled apart by its own innerness
In a mystical barrage of dynamic light
He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
As if from Matter's plinth and viewless base
To a top as viewless, a carved sea of worlds
Climbing with foam-maned waves to the Supreme
Ascended towards breadths immeasurable;
It hoped to soar into the Ineffable's reign:
A hundred levels raised it to the Unknown.
So it towered up to heights intangible
And disappeared in the hushed conscious Vast
As climbs a storeyed temple-tower to heaven
Built by the aspiring soul of man to live
Near to his dream of the Invisible.
Infinity calls to it as it dreams and climbs;
Its spire touches the apex of the world;
Mounting into great voiceless stillnesses
It marries the earth to screened eternities.
Amid the many systems of the One
Made by an interpreting creative joy
Alone it points us to our journey back
Out of our long self-loss in Nature's deeps;
Planted on earth it holds in it all realms:
It is a brief compendium of the Vast.
This was the single stair to being's goal.
A summary of the stages of the spirit,
Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies
Refashioned in our secret air of self
A subtle pattern of the universe.
It is within, below, without, above.
Acting upon this visible Nature's scheme
It wakens our earth-matter's heavy doze
To think and feel and to react to joy;
It models in us our diviner parts,
Lifts mortal mind into a greater air,
Makes yearn this life of flesh to intangible aims,
Links the body's death with immortality's call:
Out of the swoon of the Inconscience
It labours towards a superconscient Light.
If earth were all and this were not in her,
Thought could not be nor life-delight's response:
Only material forms could then be her guests
Driven by an inanimate world-force.
Earth by this golden superfluity
Bore thinking man and more than man shall bear;
This higher scheme of being is our cause
And holds the key to our ascending fate;
It calls out of our dense mortality
The conscious spirit nursed in Matter's house.
The living symbol of these conscious planes,
Its influences and godheads of the unseen,
Its unthought logic of Reality's acts
Arisen from the unspoken truth in things,
Have fixed our inner life's slow-scaled degrees.
Its steps are paces of the soul's return
From the deep adventure of material birth,
A ladder of delivering ascent
And rungs that Nature climbs to deity.
Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godhead's fall.
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state;
Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness
Divinity's lapse from its own splendours wove
The many-patterned ground of all we are.
An idol of self is our mortality.
Our earth is a fragment and a residue;
Her power is packed with the stuff of greater worlds
And steeped in their colour-lustres dimmed by her drowse;
An atavism of higher births is hers,
Her sleep is stirred by their buried memories
Recalling the lost spheres from which they fell.
Unsatisfied forces in her bosom move;
They are partners of her greater growing fate
And her return to immortality;
They consent to share her doom of birth and death;
They kindle partial gleams of the All and drive
Her blind laborious spirit to compose
A meagre image of the mighty Whole.
The calm and luminous Intimacy within
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:There are three stages of life: youth, maturity, and & 2:Mentors are available at all stages of your leadership life - early, middle and late. Seek them out and listen; absorb their knowledge and use it. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 3:If we can simply distinguish between the different successive stages of evolution, it is possible to see primeval events within the earthly events of the present. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 4:There is something very fragile about the beginning stages of psychic development. Eventually, one becomes very strong and the cushioning isn't as necessary. It's still logical because we live in an abrasive world. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 5:Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1- It's completely impossible. 2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing. 3- I said it was a good idea all along. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 6:They were still in the happier stages of love. They were full of brave illusions about each other, tremendous illusions, so that the communion of self with self seemed to be on a plane where no other human relations mattered. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 7:It is not advisable for persons who are in the early stages of meditation to mediate on the two lower chakras. You will unleash powers and forces that will throw you into very powerful altered state of consciousness that might not be pleasant at all. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 8:The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We're just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people - as remarkable as the telephone. ~ steve-jobs, @wisdomtrove 9:If you have the desire, if you establish the goal - which is harmony, which is happiness through liberation- then these stages of revolt, of war, of struggle, can be avoided - should be avoided. You are not going to wallow in the gutter if you can jump over it. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 10:In advancing stages of contemplation, rising from contemplation of Nature, to that in the soul, and thence again to that in the divine Mind, the object contemplated becomes progressively a more and more intimate possession of the contemplating being, more and more one with them. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 11:I would say the three stages of making a film are the initial & 12:At the Integral stages of development, the entire universe starts to make sense, to hang together, to actually appear as a uni-verse—a one world—a single, unified, integrated world that unites not only different philosophies and ideas about the world, but different practices for growth and development as well. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 13:Every new stroke of civilization has cost the lives of countless brave men, who have fallen defeated by the dragon, in their efforts to win the apples of the Hesperides, or the fleece of gold. Fallen in their efforts to overcome the old, half sordid savagery of the lower stages of creation, and win the next stage. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 14:Belief, thus, in the supernatural, great as are the services which it rendered in the early stages of human development, cannot be considered to be any longer required, either for enabling us to know what is right and wrong in social morality, or for supplying us with motives to do right and to abstain from wrong. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 15:When you have done the spiritual growing up you realize that every human being is of equal importance, has work to do in this world, and has equal potential. We are in many varied stages of growth; this is true because we have free will. You have free will as to whether you will finish the mental and emotional growing up. Many choose not to. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 16:What would it mean if there were a theory that explained everything? And just what does "everything" actually mean, anyway? Would this new theory in physics explain, say the meaning of human poetry? Or how economics work? Or the stages of psychosexual development? Can this new physics explain the currents of ecosystems, or the dynamics of history, or why human wars are so terribly common? ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 17:In that Great Ocean of Universal or Cosmic Mind, bodies of Substance are but as floating specks of dust— or even bubbles formed of the substance of that Ocean itself— on the surface of that Ocean, there may arise waves, currents, ripples, eddies, whirlpools,— storms, hurricanes, tempests,— from its bosom may rise vapor, that after stages of clouds, rain-drops, flowing in streams, rivers, bays, at last again reach the source of its origin. These disturbances and changes we call Energy, Force, Motion— but they are but surface manifestations, and the Great Ocean is serene in its depths, and, in reality, is unchanged and undisturbed. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:There are many stages of grief. ~ Jennifer Aniston, #NFDB
2:Three stages of truth for scientists: ~ Leo Szilard, #NFDB
3:We kind of deny the stages of life. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
4:Is being a jerk one of the five stages of grief? ~ Lisa Schroeder, #NFDB
5:The stages of human development are to strive for: ~ Erwin Schrodinger, #NFDB
6:At the last stages of the journey, there’s no journey at all. ~ Jay Michaelson, #NFDB
7:We are all daughters of God in various stages of construction. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
8:Was I in the end stages of some prolonged form of annihilation? ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
9:Hiphop hasn't had stages of growth through its 30 years of existence. ~ Slick Rick, #NFDB
10:We arrive at the various stages of life quite as novices. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
11:The four stages of man are infancy, childhood, adolescence, and obsolescence. ~ Art Linkletter, #NFDB
12:The three stages of life: youth, middle age, and ‘You’re looking good, Mr. Keating. ~ Ann Patchett, #NFDB
13:There are three stages of life: youth, maturity, and 'My, you're looking good!' ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
14:In the early stages of creation of both art and science, everything in the mind is a story. ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
15:There are three stages of life:
1. Birth.
2. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?
3. Death. ~ Jill Shalvis,#NFDB
16:offer the mind training called Stages of the Heroic Mind To help overcome fear and fatigue. ~ Thupten Jinpa, #NFDB
17:We are in the final stages of egoic madness. Almost the whole world is fighting each other. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
18:As long as you have war, police, prisons, crime, you are in the early stages of civilization. ~ Jacque Fresco, #NFDB
19:I feel closer to the artist I was when I was 19 now then I have done in other stages of my career. ~ Ben Watt, #NFDB
20:the five stages of zombie grief: denial, acceptance, hunger, more hunger, and knock-knock jokes. ~ Devon Monk, #NFDB
21:What are the five stages of realizing you just did something too stupid to tell your friends? ~ Ruth Cardello, #NFDB
22:I'm so familiar with what Malcolm X wrote at certain stages of his own life and development. ~ Manning Marable, #NFDB
23:You have probably had past lives where you were in better stages of mind than you are in now. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
24:Normal children often pass through stages of passionate cruelty, laziness, lying and thievery. ~ G Stanley Hall, #NFDB
25:In the last stages of a final illness, we need only the absence of pain and the presence of family. ~ Helen Hayes, #NFDB
26:In the early stages of innovation, your goal is to learn as much as you can as quickly as you can. ~ Scott D Anthony, #NFDB
27:People at different stages of their lives are doing different things, and they're all using Google. ~ Susan Wojcicki, #NFDB
28:in the early stages of building a brand, the problem you’re solving should be a constant guiding light. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
29:The ages two to 15 I spent at different stages of shortness. I didn't become a tall person until I was 16. ~ John Cusack, #NFDB
30:I make no special difference between architecture and design, they are two different stages of invention. ~ Ettore Sottsass, #NFDB
31:It’s okay to feel that hollowness within you.
And it’s okay to be in denial. They are all stages of grief. ~ Faraaz Kazi,#NFDB
32:The maintenance of high standards of behavior in nonviolent action is necessary at all stages of the conflict. ~ Gene Sharp, #NFDB
33:DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
34:The five stages of bureaucratic grieving are: denial, anger, committee meetings, scapegoating, and cover-up. ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
35:Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows. ~ Bernard Malamud, #NFDB
36:At some stages of your life you will deal with things and at others you are overwhelmed with misery and anxiety. ~ Nigella Lawson, #NFDB
37:The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery. ~ Erik Erikson, #NFDB
38:During the earliest stages of thought, accommodation remains on the surface of physical as well as social experience. ~ Jean Piaget, #NFDB
39:Gossip and drama are different stages of the same intoxication… the first is the buzz; the latter is the hangover. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
40:I'd cycled through the stages of rejection - denial, anger, homicidal mania, hating Matt's stupid face, and acceptance ~ Tim Anderson, #NFDB
41:It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
42:It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon, #NFDB
43:Loving an addict is to live torn between hope and mourning, caught in an endless repetition of the five stages of grief. ~ Geneva Lee, #NFDB
44:She had arrived at the last stages of some disassembly line, one we all were traveling down and couldn’t seem to get off. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
45:A human body is associated with six stages of transformation, birth, growth, change, evolution, death and destruction. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
46:Demos are something you do in the early stages of your career, but when you get going, you just go in and record the song. ~ Mark Kozelek, #NFDB
47:Dreams carry us back to the earlier stages of human culture and afford us a means of understanding it more clearly. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
48:Every life is different; being pro-life is not only about saving the fetus, being pro-life is about all the stages of life. ~ Nat Hentoff, #NFDB
49:I've gone through so many of these stages of defeat and loss and victory, the ups and downs, that I know how to handle it. ~ Barbara Boxer, #NFDB
50:We’re all damaged. It’s a universal component of the human condition, like the stages of grief, deja vu, and expired coupons. ~ Tim Dorsey, #NFDB
51:I definitely have had friendships and moments with people from different backgrounds and in different stages of their lives. ~ Sofia Coppola, #NFDB
52:It is only thinking which seemingly reduces pure Awareness to these apparently successive stages of limitation and localisation, ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
53:Every cricketer knows that in the early stages of a batsman's innings i.e. before he gets his eye in - luck plays an important part. ~ W G Grace, #NFDB
54:Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle, and a victory. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
55:She had already—carefully, obediently—stepped through all the stages of bereavement: anger, denial, bargaining, Häagen-Dazs, rage. ~ Lorrie Moore, #NFDB
56:Apparently there were seven stages of grief but that was a neat way of putting it. Grief was messy and didn't colour inside the lines ~ Emily Gale, #NFDB
57:He had a colorless translucence about him that made him seem as if he were in the earliest stages of progressive invisibility. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
58:Mainly, the more faddish and newer stages of life are really just marketing schemes. Tweenhood. The young old. The quarter-life crisis. ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
59:There are many forms of love as there is moments in time, and you are capable of feeling them all at different stages of your life. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
60:Seeing, feeling, thinking, believing - these are the stages of how we change our style on the outside and our self-image on the inside. ~ Stacy London, #NFDB
61:You just don’t want to admit that you’re in the beginning stages of a bromance to end all bromances.”
I snorted. “Whatever. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
62:Eventually, I would love to be on my deathbed and looked at as an icon. Right now I'm still at the baby stages of my career. But that is the goal. ~ Kesha, #NFDB
63:Contemplative prayer is a discipline that enables our developing relationship with Jesus Christ to reach stages of growth in union with God. ~ James W Goll, #NFDB
64:A rill in a barnyard and the Grand Canyon represent, in the main, stages of valley erosion that began some millions of years apart. ~ George Gaylord Simpson, #NFDB
65:I’m already in the late stages of advanced detachment where my mother is concerned. With a little practice I could feel that way about everyone. ~ Susan Juby, #NFDB
66:It is said that there are three stages of life for those of us who live our lives in circles. These are rejection, exploration and acceptance. ~ Claire North, #NFDB
67:It is said that there are three stages of life for those of us who live our lives in circles. These are rejection, exploration, and acceptance. ~ Claire North, #NFDB
68:If the world does improve on the whole, yet youth must always begin anew, and go through the stages of culture from the beginning. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
69:I had rather, if cruelty has been prevented by the four prints [The Four Stages of Cruelty], be maker of them than of the [Raphael] cartoons. ~ William Hogarth, #NFDB
70:Surrounding myself with women of different backgrounds and on different paths and in different stages of their lives has become so valuable to me. ~ Brie Larson, #NFDB
71:We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB
72:A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers.
As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool. ~ T S Eliot,#NFDB
73:If living is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness. ~ Jane Smiley, #NFDB
74:If you meditate with a teacher who is enlightened, you can ride with them into stages of mind that are perhaps not available to you at this time. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
75:parent who was not able to play, freely and pleasurably, in earlier stages of his own life will have difficulty enjoying play with his or her children ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
76:We love music deeply, but why? Put simply: music makes lives, shapes lives, expresses all shades and
stages of life - and even saves lives. ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru,#NFDB
77:What a mess the world is in. It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
78:A simple church is a congregation designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth. ~ Thom S Rainer, #NFDB
79:If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness. ~ Jane Smiley, #NFDB
80:I've been incredibly lucky throughout the beginning stages of my career up 'til now, and so lucky to work with the incredible people I've worked with. ~ Cher Lloyd, #NFDB
81:I have been through the stages of disbelief and shock, to anger and ultimately grief over the loss of the family I so badly wanted for my children. ~ Elin Nordegren, #NFDB
82:Building software implies various stages of planning, preparation and execution that vary in kind and degree depending on what's being built. [...] ~ Steve McConnell, #NFDB
83:Not for the first time, he wished he commanded a highly trained bunch of soldiers instead of a ragtag mob of rejects in varying stages of alcoholism. ~ Chris Wooding, #NFDB
84:During the early stages of a project, don’t study how the task has been approached in the company, industry, field, or region where you are working. ~ Robert I Sutton, #NFDB
85:One of the grave dangers inherent in the various stages of any theatrical career-whether it be budding, quiescent or diminishing-is the advice of friends. ~ Moss Hart, #NFDB
86:An awareness of alternatives at the early stages of learning a skill gives a conditional quality to the learning, which, again, increases mindfulness. ~ Ellen J Langer, #NFDB
87:There are five stages of meditation, each one leading gradually into the next: concentration, meditation, contemplation, illumination, and inspiration. ~ Benjamin Creme, #NFDB
88:I had three stages of knowing Wellington Mara. He was my boss for a long time and he was a father figure. And finally, as we got older, he was my friend. ~ Frank Gifford, #NFDB
89:I am full of the sorrow that goes with changes in surroundings, those successive stages of annihilation that slowly lead to the great and final void. ~ Isabelle Eberhardt, #NFDB
90:Man has boyhood, adolescence, youth, middle age and senescence, as stages of growth; there are also corresponding stages in the growth of wisdom in him. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
91:equally real at all stages of his life; specifically, the fact that a particular stage is present cannot be regarded as conferring on it any special status. ~ Thomas Nagel, #NFDB
92:The outmoded idea that college should cater to students just out of high school, even though a significant portion of students are in different stages of life. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
93:Writers when they're writing live in a spooky, clamorous silence, a state somewhat like the advanced stages of prayer but without prayer's calming benefits. ~ Joy Williams, #NFDB
94:There are three stages of scientific discovery: first people deny it is true; then they deny it is important; finally they credit the wrong person. ~ Alexander von Humboldt, #NFDB
95:The walls were covered in rich, floral-patterned wallpaper and large oil paintings of white dudes at various stages of life and facial hair manscaping trends. ~ Alyssa Cole, #NFDB
96:In the early stages of development, growth is constrained by number of potential new ideas, but later on it is constrained only by the ability to process them.19 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
97:Like most Christians, I believe the Genesis account of creation is a description of six different stages of creation, each of which may have taken eons of time. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
98:He didn't want the friends of the different stages of his life to meet. Their encounter would almost be between different facets of himself, face to face. ~ Upamanyu Chatterjee, #NFDB
99:Partisans who expect every idea to fit on a bumper sticker will proceed through the various stages of grief before accepting that they have oversimplified reality. ~ Nate Silver, #NFDB
100:My favorite Halloween candy is the candy corn. It comes in four colors: white, yellow, orange, brown. Those are also the stages of your teeth rotting after you eat it. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
101:If we can simply distinguish between the different successive stages of evolution, it is possible to see primeval events within the earthly events of the present. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #NFDB
102:Books... are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
103:In the Buddha's life story we see the three stages of practice: Morality comes first, then concentrated meditation, and then wisdom. And we see that the path takes time. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
104:It was our Creator who led us through the stages of evolution, from the animal state to the human. His purpose was to make us intelligent and aware, so that we might know Him. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
105:I would say there have been different stages of my feminist awakening. The more layers you peel back and the more things you're made aware of, you're like, "Oh my God." ~ Emma Watson, #NFDB
106:A ten-year, double-blind study from the Mayo Clinic concluded that even in late stages of dementia, the last to go is the lobe of the brain in charge of cafeteria layout. ~ Tim Dorsey, #NFDB
107:In his first teaching, the Buddha compares the stages of freeing the mind to recovery from an illness: if we don’t first recognize that we are ill, we won’t seek help. ~ Tashi Tsering, #NFDB
108:Men look to love and life for everything; they receive a little less than that; they imagine that they have received nothing: these are the three stages of the pessimist. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
109:Stages of life are artifacts. Adolescence is a useful contrivance, midlife is a moving target, senior citizens are an interest group, and tweenhood is just plain made up. ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
110:At the different stages of recognition, reflection, and redress, practicing compassion provides potentially world-saving opportunities which otherwise likely would not exist. ~ Aberjhani, #NFDB
111:If you want to surpass the stages of doubt and secure better communication between your inner and outer body it is wise to surpass the challenge of the words ‘if only’. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
112:Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. ~ Aldo Leopold, #NFDB
113:feedback from right-to-left at all stages of the value stream, amplifying it to ensure that we can prevent problems from happening again or enable faster detection and recovery. ~ Gene Kim, #NFDB
114:You own a dog with the knowledge that it will move through the stages of existence in fast forward, providing you with a lesson about your own life passages if you let it. ~ Antonya Nelson, #NFDB
115:From my earliest youth, I have known that while one is obliged to plan with care the stages of one's journey, one is entitled to dream, and keep dreaming, of its destination. ~ Shimon Peres, #NFDB
116:We are into the opening stages of a human-caused biotic holocaust-a wholesale elimination of species-that could leave the planet impoverished for at least five million years. ~ Norman Myers, #NFDB
117:I went through various stages in my childhood, as we all do, various stages of obsessions with people and things. And I did. I wanted to be the first white Harlem Globetrotter. ~ Johnny Depp, #NFDB
118:Fundamentally, life shouldn't be about trivial pursuits or adolescent identity crises (although these may be appropriate in certain stages of life), but about doing your duty. ~ Svend Brinkmann, #NFDB
119:In addition to calling each other standard names like bitch and whore, the Finches incorporated Freud's stages of psychosexual development into their arsenal of invectives. ~ Augusten Burroughs, #NFDB
120:Here, I thought, I had found the human race in its final stages of decadence perverse, insouciant, without ambition. And I could not blame them. After all, they had no future. ~ Michael Moorcock, #NFDB
121:Painting, especially much better than words, allows oneself to express the various stages of thought, including the deeper levels, the underground stages of the mental process. ~ Claes Oldenburg, #NFDB
122:Accursed be he who willingly saddens an immortal spirit---doomed to infamy in later, wiser ages, doomed in future stages of his own being to deadly penance, only short of death. ~ Margaret Fuller, #NFDB
123:It is quite possible that China may reach the stages of socialism and communism considerably later than your countries in the West which are so much more highly developed economically. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
124:All history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social development. ~ Friedrich Engels, #NFDB
125:Your whole life you are really writing one book, which is an attempt to grasp the consciousness of your time and place– a single book written from different stages of your ability. ~ Nadine Gordimer, #NFDB
126:Acting gets into your blood, after so many years, and I just always like revisiting it. It's fun to meet new people and watch them coming along, at different stages of their careers. ~ Clint Eastwood, #NFDB
127:I am growing old of course, but I am still in the early stages of disintegration, and regarded as just about cool enough by some fashionable young ppl to be permitted to think aloud. ~ Pete Townshend, #NFDB
128:In England, as on the Continent, two stages of invasion are distinguished; the first, from about 787 to 855, a purely destructive one of plunder and rapine; the second, of occupation. ~ Lynn Thorndike, #NFDB
129:Psychologically, without valid cultural myths, there are no longer forms of guidance for the individual to help navigate the stages of life or to come to terms with the deeper psyche. ~ Keiron Le Grice, #NFDB
130:There is a role for growth and experiencing the world, and pushing the boundaries of that, and then there is a time to bring it within. All people are at different stages of that journey. ~ Karan Bajaj, #NFDB
131:Books, you know, Charles, are like lobster-shells. We surround ourselves with ’em, and then we grow out of ’em and leave ’em behind, as evidences of our earlier stages of development. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
132:Most of my friends between 21 and 31 are at different stages of figuring out what the hell they are going to do with their lives. It's a big part of our generation. What is the next step? ~ Orlando Jones, #NFDB
133:A deeper understanding of single men and women can be immensely helpful in navigating through the five different stages of dating: attraction, uncertainty, commitment, intimacy, and engagement. ~ John Gray, #NFDB
134:close to his chest. “In the skull we have the bad—and possibly the good,” Golliher said. “The skull exhibits three distinct cranial fractures showing mixed stages of healing. Here is the first. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
135:I must absorb everything while I'm still singing and step onto the stages of my many homes, and look out at the familiar surroundings, at the people who have come to hear me, to hear music. ~ Marilyn Horne, #NFDB
136:We love people differently at different stages of our knowledge of them. As love changes its hape and its nature, we have to decide what we're going to do about that love on any given day. ~ Barbara Hambly, #NFDB
137:if you’re kicking yourself for not having accomplished all you thought you should have by now, don’t worry about it. People bloom at different stages of their lives, and often more than once. ~ Lauren Graham, #NFDB
138:In the various stages of development which the struggle of working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
139:It's like when someone dies, the initial stages of grief seem to be the worst. But in some ways, it's sadder as time goes by and you consider how much they're missed in your life. In the world. ~ Emily Giffin, #NFDB
140:It's like when someone dies, the initial stages of grief seem to be the worst. But in some ways, it's sadder as time goes by and you consider how much they've missed in your life. In the world. ~ Emily Giffin, #NFDB
141:It’s like when someone dies, the initial stages of grief seem to be the worst. But in some ways, it’s sadder as time goes by and you consider how much they’ve missed in your life. In the world. ~ Emily Giffin, #NFDB
142:Civilization, we shall find, like Universalism and Christianity, is anti evolutionary in its effects; it works against the laws and conditions which regulated the earlier stages of man's ascent. ~ Arthur Keith, #NFDB
143:Most of us will have more than one job in our working lives, which means we will have more than one opportunity to seek meaningful work at different stages of our own deepening humanity. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor, #NFDB
144:What a mess the world is in,” cried the man, reading the news in his paper. “It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
145: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.Image Courtesy: Arup Mitr, #NFDB
146:She lowered her voice as if she were sharing a secret. “I think you do like Archer, and you just don’t want to admit that you’re in the beginning stages of a bromance to end all bromances. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
147:Theories have four stages of acceptance: i. this is worthless nonsense; ii. this is interesting, but perverse; iii. this is true, but quite unimportant; iv. I always said so. —J. B. S. HALDANE, 1963 ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
148: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,#NFDB
149:So long as western people imagine that there only exists a single type of humanity, that there is only one 'civilization', at different stages of development, no mutual understanding will be possible. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
150:I waited a moment, then lowered myself, cross-legged, to the earth. Some of the graves were adorned with flowers, in various stages of freshness and decay. As though the dead could smell the bouquets. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
151:the sensory inflows are gated differently as ego states change, both during the developmental stages of life or when previous developmental stages are intentionally regenerated later in life. ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner, #NFDB
152:I think the earlier stages of Alzheimer's are the hardest. Particularly because the person knows that they are losing awareness. They're aware that they're losing awareness, and you see them struggling. ~ Patti Davis, #NFDB
153:The later stages of the enlightenment process are trickier, and it is really essential to have a teacher then. You need correction, direction, and most of all you need a master's auric empowerment. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
154:The teacher will have a certain imprint, and each teacher imprints differently. Ultimately the imprint of the teacher is a limitation that you will have to overcome in your final stages of knowledge. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
155:In the early stages of wealth, up to 10 years after individuals became very rich, they display a bit of reluctance to spend money. It's a lot easier rationalizing spending a lot for a house. ~ Frederick Winslow Taylor, #NFDB
156:High bankruptcy rates, increased credit card debt, and identity theft make it imperative that all of us take an active role in providing financial and economic education during all stages of one's life. ~ Ruben Hinojosa, #NFDB
157:our goal is to create fast feedback and fast forward loops wherever work is performed, at all stages of the technology value stream, encompassing Product Management, Development, QA, Infosec, and Operations. This ~ Gene Kim, #NFDB
158:[My characters are] conglomerations of past and present stages of civilization, bits from books and newspapers, scraps of humanity, rags and tatters of fine clothing, patched together as is the human soul ~ August Strindberg, #NFDB
159:The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
160:There are tons of businesses that exist in the United States. An insane number of people who are in business for themselves. And then there are people on board feeling they're at key early stages of companies. ~ Alex Blumberg, #NFDB
161:Thus, not only am I a monster, I'm a really lousy one. A lonely, classic Five Stages of Grief following, insecure, shut-in of a pathetic beast who talks to the snakes on her head and the statues on her island. ~ Heather Lyons, #NFDB
162:Im constantly astounded by how amazing women are. And as we go through all these different stages of life as long as you share them with others and say, Well, this is bloody weird, you can get through everything. ~ Dawn French, #NFDB
163:In the early stages of a startup, focusing on “execution” will put you out of business. Instead, you need a “learning and discovery” process so you can get the company to the point where you know what to execute. ~ Steve Blank, #NFDB
164:Books … are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at The Bellona Club (1928)., #NFDB
165:The most important rule is to formulate, clearly and precisely, the goal to be reached, and then to retain it unswervingly in mind throughout all the stages of the execution, which are often long and complex. ~ Roberto Assagioli, #NFDB
166:I think there are different kinds of poetry for different stages of life and there's the wild, exuberance of youth, there's the painful agony of midlife experience, there's the late poetry in the presence of death. ~ Edward Hirsch, #NFDB
167:It’s easier when the patient is ninety-four, in the last stages of dementia, with a severe brain bleed. But for someone like me—a thirty-six-year-old given a diagnosis of terminal cancer—there aren’t really words. ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
168:There is something very fragile about the beginning stages of psychic development. Eventually, one becomes very strong and the cushioning isn't as necessary. It's still logical because we live in an abrasive world. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
169:I am convinced that international terrorism gave itself the goal of not allowing the re-election of Bush. The statement by bin Laden in the final stages of the pre-election campaign is the best confirmation of this. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
170:In the early stages of the fight Mr. Winston Churchill spoke with affectionate raillery of me and my "Chicks." He could have said nothing to make me more proud; every Chick was needed before the end. ~ Hugh Dowding 1st Baron Dowding, #NFDB
171:Though the first stages of confession may not seem to do anything, they are changing an image and causing faith to come. Faith comes by hearing God's Word. Keep hearing yourself speak God's Word, and faith will come. ~ Charles Capps, #NFDB
172:Paul Bearer was very influential in the early stages of my career. He constantly hounded me and I just think he realized the potential that was there. He convinced me that I was in the right place and doing the right thing. ~ John Cena, #NFDB
173:Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1- It's completely impossible. 2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing. 3- I said it was a good idea all along. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
174:The question is not whether there is intelligent life out there, the question is, whether there is intelligent life down here. As long as you have war, police, prisons, crime, you are in the early stages of civilization. ~ Jacque Fresco, #NFDB
175:Cities never flourish alone. They have to be trading with other cities. My new hypothesis shows why. But also in trading with each other they can't be in too different stages of development, and they can't copy one another. ~ Jane Jacobs, #NFDB
176:I do not agree with this century's fashion of running down the human species as a failed try, a doomed sport. At our worst, we may be going through the early stages of adolescence, and everyone remembers what that is like. ~ Lewis Thomas, #NFDB
177:Physical love must end up as a creative love. And creative love must end up as a divine love. And divine love must end up as a unison love. And unison love must become God Itself. These are the known stages of love. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
178:Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
179:If you're a fat person - and especially if you're a woman - at all stages of your life you'll get abuse for it, so you have to work out a way of dealing with it. The best way is to be humorous about it - that defuses any tension. ~ Jo Brand, #NFDB
180:Once established, an original river advances through its long life, manifesting certain peculiarities of youth, maturity and old age, by which its successive stages of growth may be recognized without much difficulty. ~ William Morris Davis, #NFDB
181:... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher. ~ Catharine Beecher, #NFDB
182:The occurrence of successive forms of life upon our globe is an historical fact, which cannot be disputed; and the relation of these successive forms, as stages of evolution of the same type, is established in various cases. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
183:The Rhineland cities were developing the market economy that would eventually replace agrarian civilization; they were therefore in the very early stages of modernization, a transition that always strains social relations. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
184:Soon the sky began to turn a starlit lavender. Many looked up and admired it, for it was often said that when you are no longer moved by the last stages of dusk in the Mexican desert, it is time to shake the hand of your Maker. ~ Robert Hough, #NFDB
185:If these pages are thick with death, think of the battlefield. Corpses in different stages of decay, the slowly dying, moments of death exist around you everywhere. Who are you? You are among the living, but can you be certain? ~ Susan Griffin, #NFDB
186:It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it [the Constitution] a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
187:Someday being with Dex will be a distant memory. This fact makes me sad too. Its the initial stages of grief that seem to be worst but in some ways, Its sadder as time goes by and you consider how much they're missed in your life. ~ Emily Giffin, #NFDB
188:And then we've got Blades of Glory, and we've got Brothers Solomon, and I've got a script in development with this guy Chuck Martin who used to write on Arrested, and, you know, we have a few things in various stages of development. ~ Will Arnett, #NFDB
189:Comedian Robin Williams was grappling with severe depression when he committed suicide Monday, and on Thursday we learned that he also was in the early stages of Parkinson's disease. Sadly, the two conditions are often found together. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
190:The occurrence of successive forms of life upon our globe is an historical fact, which cannot be disputed; and the relation of these successive forms, as stages of evolution of the same type, is established in various cases. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley, #NFDB
191:They were still in the happier stages of love. They were full of brave illusions about each other, tremendous illusions, so that the communion of self with self seemed to be on a plane where no other human relations mattered. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
192:We talk about civilization as though it's a static state. There are no civilized people yet, it's a process that's constantly going on... As long as you have war, police, prisons, crime, you are in the early stages of civilization. ~ Jacque Fresco, #NFDB
193:If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
194:I'm in the early stages of a film called 'Freezing Time' about Eadweard Muybridge, the Victorian photographer who was really the forefather of cinema. Digital animators still treat his images like the Bible. He was a very obsessed man. ~ Andy Serkis, #NFDB
195:Regulatory fiat cannot create a market at a technologically interdependent interface. And by the same token, regulation and so-called monopoly power rarely prevail at modular interfaces between stages of value-added technology. ~ Clayton Christensen, #NFDB
196:I think when you're in the early stages of writing a song, it's important to shut off the part of your brain that tries to edit or criticize. That function comes in handy later, but if you let it in too early, you can trip yourself up. ~ Nick Valensi, #NFDB
197:Casein, which makes up 87% of cow’s milk protein, promoted all stages of the cancer process. What type of protein did not promote cancer, even at high levels of intake? The safe proteins were from plants, including wheat and soy. As ~ T Colin Campbell, #NFDB
198:Since September 11, it seems to me that never in our lifetime, except possibly in the early stages of World War II, has it been clearer that we have as a source of strength, a source of direction, a source of inspiration - our story. ~ David McCullough, #NFDB
199:Most unsettling of all was the possibility that he was one of the rare creatures genuinely comfortable with bodies that have already moved into the stages of decomposition. In which case Mike was right, maybe this guy was my dream man. ~ Caitlin Doughty, #NFDB
200:The eight stages of the SJW attack sequence are as follows: Locate or Create a Violation of the Narrative. Point and Shriek. Isolate and Swarm. Reject and Transform. Press for Surrender. Appeal to Amenable Authority. Show Trial. Victory Parade. ~ Vox Day, #NFDB
201:Everything changes as you move through three stages of awareness:
first, that beliefs are the result of conditions;
second, that beliefs are the cause of conditions;
and third, that beliefs are themselves conditions. ~ Eric Micha el Leventhal,#NFDB
202:Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
203:I think it is probably more important to attend specialized conventions for a journeyman writer than any other, but it's useful at all stages of a career, if for nothing else, to find out how the industry is working at any given time. ~ Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, #NFDB
204:It's hard to see potential in a rough cut - especially with comedy, which is hit or miss. This is where my lack of experience hurt me - not in the execution of the final product, but with my expectations for it in the early stages of post. ~ Desiree Akhavan, #NFDB
205:We are in the final stages of egoic madness. Almost the whole world is fighting each other. We witnessed the final stages of egoic madness in the 20th century, and even now it still is playing itself out. It has not quite come to an end yet. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
206:Downsides, yeah, and when there are more downsides when churches first start - they go through stages of transforming to becoming multiracial. So in the beginning stages there's often a lot of pain, a lot of confusion, a lot of people leave. ~ Michael Emerson, #NFDB
207:Myth is the system of basic metaphors, images, and stories that informs the perceptions, memories, and aspirations of a people; provides the rationale for its institutions, rituals and power structure; and gives a map of the purpose and stages of life. ~ Sam Keen, #NFDB
208:People go through different stages of their lives at different times. If you're out of sync with your friend group, that gets exploded once everyone starts having kids because they just have to deal with different stuff that you don't really relate to. ~ Jon Hamm, #NFDB
209:World trade depends on differences among countries, not similarities. Different countries are in different stages of development. It is appropriate for them to have different patterns, different policies for ecology, labor standards, and so forth. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
210:Shock, confusion, fear, anger, grief, and defiance. On Sept. 11, 2001, and for the three days following the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, President George W. Bush led with raw emotion that reflected the public's whipsawing stages of acceptance. ~ Ron Fournier, #NFDB
211:It is not advisable for persons who are in the early stages of meditation to mediate on the two lower chakras. You will unleash powers and forces that will throw you into very powerful altered state of consciousness that might not be pleasant at all. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
212:The great management guru Charles Handy says that, as far as money goes, you have to look after yourself. He reckons you may need to do something else as well as your “passion project” to earn money, particularly in the early stages of a new business ~ Tom Hodgkinson, #NFDB
213:But one almost always emerges gradually from a coma; there are intermediate stages of consciousness. It is in these transitional stages, where consciousness of a sort has returned, but not yet fully lucid consciousness, that NDEs tend to occur. Alexander ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
214:It was that stages-of-anger thing. I was shocked and then I got pissed and then I fought like hell … and then I went numb. They called it acceptance, but it wasn’t. It’s what happens when you have only two choices: live with the monster, or kill yourself. ~ Ilsa J Bick, #NFDB
215:That was a fate we could not escape, we women; we would always be called upon by others in a way men simply never were. But weren’t we always, first and foremost—woman? Wasn’t there strength in that, victory, clarity—in all the stages of a woman’s life? ~ Melanie Benjamin, #NFDB
216:In their groundbreaking book, Tribal Leadership, management consultants Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright lay out the five stages of tribal development, which they formulated after conducting extensive research on small to midsize organizations. ~ Phil Jackson, #NFDB
217:It takes courage and intelligence, you know, to do the stages of Yoga right, and to start with this Hatha Yoga… It’s just you and nothing but you, standing in one spot frozen like a statue with no place to go for help or excuse or scapegoat except inward. ~ Bikram Choudhury, #NFDB
218:Maybe we're all ongoing stories, defined at various stages of life, or whenever people oblige us to declare ourselves. Fiction is marvelous for studying this, allowing the writer and reader to leap decades in a sentence. No other art lets you bend time as much. ~ Tom Rachman, #NFDB
219:The five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Many experience these stages usually after the death of someone they love. For me, love means everything, and I am proud to say that I have finally reached the stage of acceptance. ~ N M Lambert, #NFDB
220:And if it is true that in the final stages of totalitarianism an absolute evil appears (absolute because it can no longer be deduced from humanly comprehensible motives), it is also true that without it we might never have known the truly radical nature of Evil. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
221:My father started growing very quiet as Alzheimer's started claiming more of him. The early stages of Alzheimer's are the hardest because that person is aware that they're losing awareness. And I think that that's why my father started growing more and more quiet. ~ Patti Davis, #NFDB
222:The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We're just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people - as remarkable as the telephone. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
223:I am a big gamer. I am kind of in the beginning stages of creating a graphic novel entity that would encompass a game and a movie. I would die happy if I could be a voice in a game that I would actually play and create easter eggs with the team. That's my dream. ~ Janina Gavankar, #NFDB
224:Epilogue The Three Stages of Awakening My job here on earth is twofold. My job is first of all to make amends. My second job is to awaken people who might be asleep. Almost everyone is asleep! The only way I can awaken them is to work on myself. —Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
225:There are three stages of boiling: the first boil is when the little bubbles like the eye of fishes swim on the surface; the second boil is when the bubbles are like crystal beads rolling in a fountain; the third boil is when the billows surge wildly in the kettle. ~ Kakuz Okakura, #NFDB
226:The trend of all knowledge at the present is to specialize, but archaeology has in it all the qualities that call for the wide view of the human race, of its growth from the savage to the civilized, which is seen in all stages of social and religious development. ~ Margaret Murray, #NFDB
227:At every level there are eight stages of intelligence. You have to turn your brain on to the circuits that are used at that level of intelligence. And there are ways to change the human brain to different stages. The things that change your brain are called 'drugs'. ~ Timothy Leary, #NFDB
228:If you have the desire, if you establish the goal - which is harmony, which is happiness through liberation- then these stages of revolt, of war, of struggle, can be avoided - should be avoided. You are not going to wallow in the gutter if you can jump over it. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
229:'Studying the Way' is just a figure of speech, a method of arousing people's interest in the early stages of their development. In fact, the Way is not something which can be studied. Study leads to the retention of concepts, and so the Way is entirely misunderstood ~ Huangbo Xiyun, #NFDB
230:Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man's onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason. ~ Albert Pike, #NFDB
231:Nothing in Nature stands still; everything strives and moves forward. If we could only view the first stages of creation, how the kingdoms of nature were built one upon the other, a progression of forward-striving forces would reveal itself in all evolution. ~ Johann Gottfried Herder, #NFDB
232:The early stages of a creative thought, the ones that count, do not arise from jigsaw puzzles of specialization. The most successful scientist thinks like a poet—wide-ranging, sometimes fantastical—and works like a bookkeeper. It is the latter role that the world sees. ~ Edward O Wilson, #NFDB
233:So even these stages of progression, whether it's your career or whatever, you get somewhere, but then it always brings a new host of issues that are relative dissatisfactions to a certain degree. I think it was a great philosopher who once said, "Mo' money, mo' problems." ~ Steve Zissis, #NFDB
234:The single biggest factor determining recovery and remission from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) at this point is undoubtedly appropriate rest in the early and/or severe stages of the illness.
The importance of avoiding overexertion in M.E. can not be overestimated. ~ Jodi Bassett,#NFDB
235:I can't imagine writing a book without some strong female characters, unless that was a demand of the setting. I actually tend to suspect that in real life, there have always been very strong female characters, but at certain stages of society, they've been asked to cool it. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
236:The engine of liberty must be greased with the blood of both the oppressors and the oppressed. There is no better lubrication for something so prone to rust and seizure.” Sirius Vant, in a speech to the Sun Dogs, Unknown Planet, Aashaanti Corridor, final stages of the Triton Wars ~ Sara King, #NFDB
237:The “Florida effect” involves two stages of priming. First, the set of words primes thoughts of old age, though the word old is never mentioned; second, these thoughts prime a behavior, walking slowly, which is associated with old age. All this happens without any awareness. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
238:ERIK ERIKSON, ONE OF the most innovative psychoanalysts of the twentieth century, wrote about these moments of existential review in his work on the human life cycle. He famously argued that all of us go through eight stages of development, each marked by a specific conflict. ~ Jennifer Senior, #NFDB
239:A powerful tool in the early stages of developing scenarios is to pretend the interface is magic. If your persona has goals and the product has magical powers to meet them, how simple could the interaction be? This kind of thinking is useful to help designers look outside the box. ~ Alan Cooper, #NFDB
240:I would say the three stages of making a film are the initial 'are we gonna do this,' 'how much will I be paid,' is there a lot of nights, who's it going to be with? The second stage of doing a film is how much fun your going to have doing it. The third stage is was the film a hit? ~ Steve Martin, #NFDB
241:The Four Stages of Writer’s Block
W.B. Stage I: I want to write but I can’t.
W.B. Stage II: I have to write but I can’t.
W.B. Stage I: I don’t want to write but I have to.
W.B. Stage I: I don’t have time for writing … and, honestly, I don’t feel like writing. ~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer,#NFDB
242:Is it reasonable to suppose that we can apply a broad-spectrum insecticide to kill the burrowing larval stages of a crop-destroying insect ... without also killing the 'good' insects whose function may be the essential one of breaking down organic matter and maintaining healthy soil? ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
243:In the early stages of a pregnancy, the Government cannot intervene with a woman's right to choose. That is it, plain and simple. Guess what. We are not going to be big brother or sister, as the case may be. We are going to allow a woman, her doctor, and her God to make that decision. ~ Barbara Boxer, #NFDB
244:For Liesel Meminger, the early stages of 1942 could be summed up like this:
She became thirteen years of age. Her chest was still flat. She had not yet bled. The young man from her basement was now in her bed.
***Q&A***
How did Max Vandenburg end up in liesel's bed? He fell. ~ Markus Zusak,#NFDB
245:Plato or Pythagoras would have told Marx that any deification must be based on individuality. It is perhaps this truth that Lenin and Stalin realized in their final stages of personal development. “Collective perfection” is a notion inherited from Judaic and perhaps Iranian ideology. ~ Stephen E Flowers, #NFDB
246:In the early stages of feminist movement we used the phrase “woman-identified woman” or “man-identified woman” to distinguish between those activists who did not choose lesbianism but who did choose to be woman-identified, meaning their ontological existence did not depend on male affirmation. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
247:We all know Aesop’s fable of the dog who dropped a piece of meat to grasp at its reflection in the water. We must not, however, judge too severely of error. In the initial stages of mental progress, error in symbolic reference is the discipline which promotes imaginative freedom. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
248:The four stages of acceptance:
1. This is worthless nonsense.
2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.
3. This is true, but quite unimportant.
4. I always said so."
(Review of The Truth About Death, in: Journal of Genetics 1963, Vol. 58, p.464) ~ J B S Haldane,#NFDB
249:Therapists need to have a long experience in personal therapy to see what it's like to be on the other side of the couch and see what they find helpful or not helpful. And if possible, get into therapy at different stages of their life with different kinds of therapists just to sample a bit. ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
250:the three stages of a bull market”: the first stage, when only a few unusually perceptive people believe things will get better, the second stage, when most investors realize that improvement is actually taking place, and the third stage, when everyone concludes things will get better forever. ~ Howard Marks, #NFDB
251:There’s a similar effect in the job market. If you are applying for a job and don’t get a call back, you have every reason to be disappointed. However, if you make it to the final stages of the selection process and then receive the rejection, the disappointment can be much bigger – irrationally. ~ Rolf Dobelli, #NFDB
252:I personally love shows that change the lives of people that go through the show. And even if you don't like to cook, I think you should watch just for the story of these people who are going through different stages of their lives through the show. The way they evolve and grow is amazing. ~ Ana Claudia Talancon, #NFDB
253:Everyone’s life is an evolution of emotions, spirit and beliefs. The storyline changes, plots thicken, main characters mature and new spiritual journeys begin. This is true of inspirational authors. Their books represent only the stages of their life. New triumphs of the soul have yet to be written! ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
254:the more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there; and he retraced the stages of his journeys, and he came to know the port from which he set sail, and the familiar places of his youth, and the surroundings of home... ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
255:I have been influenced by many different artists at many different stages of my life. Starting out, it was people like Elton John, Billy Joel, Ben Folds, and Fiona Apple. As I got older I got deeper into the work of bands like the Beatles, artists like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Etta James, and Joni Mitchell. ~ Sara Bareilles, #NFDB
256:At the Integral stages of development, the entire universe starts to make sense, to hang together, to actually appear as a uni-verse—a “one world”—a single, unified, integrated world that unites not only different philosophies and ideas about the world, but different practices for growth and development as well. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
257:Designing is always on the mind of a designer, and as I was saying it's a sort of digestive process, so I usually keep it to myself unless I'm collaborating with someone because explaining all the things that are going on in your head can be quite exhausting, especially in the early stages of a project. ~ Christian Louboutin, #NFDB
258:As legal scholar David Cole has observed, “The Court has imposed nearly insurmountable barriers to persons challenging race discrimination at all stages of the criminal justice system.”92 The barriers are so high that few lawsuits are even filed, notwithstanding shocking and indefensible racial disparities. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
259:Every new stroke of civilization has cost the lives of countless brave men, who have fallen defeated by the dragon, in their efforts to win the apples of the Hesperides, or the fleece of gold. Fallen in their efforts to overcome the old, half sordid savagery of the lower stages of creation, and win the next stage. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
260:You can’t be like me But be happy that you can’t I see pain but I don’t feel it I am like the old Tin Man. —THE AVETT BROTHERS, “TIN MAN” ACCORDING TO ELISABETH KÜBLER-ROSS, THERE ARE FIVE stages of grief a person passes through after the death of a loved one: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
261:Belief, thus, in the supernatural, great as are the services which it rendered in the early stages of human development, cannot be considered to be any longer required, either for enabling us to know what is right and wrong in social morality, or for supplying us with motives to do right and to abstain from wrong. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
262:If Norman had found a way, had stumbled on a path--or, indeed, if he had not found a way--then I wanted to know. I was after something more intimate, something less elegant and Kübler-Ross's stages of denial, anger, bargaining, grieving and acceptance. I simply wanted to know how to accomplish a good death. ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
263:classic model of the stages of creativity roughly translates to three modes of focus: orienting, where we search out and immerse ourselves in all kinds of inputs; selective attention on the specific creative challenge; and open awareness, where we associate freely to let the solution emerge—then home in on the solution. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
264:You try to break it down to weeks at a time otherwise you sort of make yourself crazy spinning out going from one....you just can't get your head around one of them fully. So I'm more task oriented. I like to sort of like focus on one thing for a couple of weeks...and also they're all in different stages of development. ~ Justin Theroux, #NFDB
265:I'm always in this shape, that shape, whatever shape you like the most. I am always in various stages of shapes. If the woman needs to be more soft I'll gain weight and then I'll lose weight for another film that I did where I wanted her to be more wiry. I enjoy using my body as something that helps me get to a character. ~ Sandra Bullock, #NFDB
266:I think all tennis players have to struggle through the early stages of their career. We start off playing tournaments and really just get by. I always had a dream to play in the big tournaments and never have doubted if it was worth it. Having to battle a little early on in my career makes it all the more worthwhile now. ~ Samantha Stosur, #NFDB
267:We need to give the private sector many more powerful incentives to do research and development, to bring ideas and new discoveries to market in Canada, and commercialize them here, and stay here through successive stages of growth. But they can only do it with better government policies that give them more powerful incentive. ~ Chris Alexander, #NFDB
268:[Don Beck] said, after hearing about the three stages of epiphany, "There's a word in the Bantu languages that [Archbishop Desmond] Tutu has used to help bring the entire country of South Africa together: ubuntu, meaning 'Today I share with you because tomorrow you share with me.'" The word can also be translated "I am because we are. ~ Dave Logan, #NFDB
269:The general direction of evolution is to produce a serially imprinting, multibrained creature able to decipher its own program, create the technology to leave the planet and live in post-terrestrial mini-worlds, decode the aging sectors of the DNA code--thus assuring immortality, and act in harmony with stages of evolution to come. ~ Timothy Leary, #NFDB
270:There are many stages of grief. It's sad, something coming to an end. It cracks you open, in a way -- cracks you open to feeling. When you try to avoid the pain, it creates greater pain. I'm a human being, having a human experience in front of the world. I wish it weren't in front of the world. I try really hard to rise above it. ~ Jennifer Aniston, #NFDB
271:For the record, there are other visitors, a handful of pleasant-faced, middle-aged women, long-standing friends of my mother, attractive women in the early stages of disrepair, fighting to keep age at bay with facials, compression undergarments, and aggressively fashionable skirts bought off the rack at Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom ~ Jonathan Tropper, #NFDB
272:Building software implies various stages of planning, preparation and execution that vary in kind and degree depending on what's being built. [...]
Building a four-foot tower requires a steady hand, a level surface, and 10 undamaged beer cans. Building a tower 100 times that size doesn't merely require 100 times as many beer cans. ~ Steve McConnell,#NFDB
273:Modern survival psychologists have determined that this “social”—as opposed to “authoritarian”—form of leadership is ill suited to the early stages of a disaster, when decisions must be made quickly and firmly. Only later, as the ordeal drags on and it is necessary to maintain morale, do social leadership skills become important. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick, #NFDB
274:To be fair, if we are having a mass extinction, we're in the early stages of it. I think it's knowing facts like that which has made me less fearful about the future. Mass extinction is a long, complicated process that we are just now beginning to understand - and likewise, we are just beginning to understand how we might prevent one. ~ Annalee Newitz, #NFDB
275:A rock concert at a farm in Bethel, New York, in 1969 attracted some 400,000 people who wallowed happily about in the rain, some in various stages of undress and drug-induced haze, for three days. Traffic jams and police barricades prevented many thousands more from attending. "Woodstock" was the culminating event of "countercultural ~ James T Patterson, #NFDB
276:While thinking when sober, our success at reaching our goals by using the First Baltic Front troops, the Memel operation, it can't be disregarded, that the troops not only honorably accomplished their powerful strategic operation, but also an infusion of victory for the Soviet armed forces and an entrance into the final stages of the war. ~ Ivan Bagramyan, #NFDB
277:The cognitive functioning of a human brain depends on a delicate orchestration of many factors, especially during the critical stages of embryo development-and it is much more likely that this self-organizing structure, to be enhanced, needs to be carefully balanced, tuned, and cultivated rather than simply flooded with some extraneous potion. ~ Nick Bostrom, #NFDB
278:The cognitive functioning of a human brain depends on a delicate orchestration of many factors, especially during the critical stages of embryo development—and it is much more likely that this self-organizing structure, to be enhanced, needs to be carefully balanced, tuned, and cultivated rather than simply flooded with some extraneous potion. ~ Nick Bostrom, #NFDB
279:The Kalergi Plan In short, Kalergi is still held in very high, near mythical esteem and the policy of the Kalergi Plan was and still is the basis of official European Union government policy aimed at Cultural, Political and Genetic genocide of the Peoples of Europe, through a full implementation of all seven stages of the Multicultural concept. ~ Citizen One, #NFDB
280:Our contemporary society is experimenting with the diminishment of caregivers for children. Some children are raised through crucial stages of life by only one person. This one person, who strives to give the best, may be overwhelmed, busy, trying to raise many children. And even in homes with two parents, many children are essentially alone. ~ Michael Gurian, #NFDB
281:Success is different at different stages of development—from not wetting your pants in infancy, to being well liked in childhood and adolescence, to getting laid in young adulthood, to making money and having prestige in later adulthood, to getting laid in middle age, to being well liked in old age, to not wetting your pants in senility.” What’s ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
282:The other thing I remember about the earlier and more active stages of my illness is having a black panther under my bed. After a while it was discovered that I was simply hallucinating as the result of too much arsenic in the medicine I was being given; but at the time it must have been even more terrifying for my parents than it was for me. ~ Rosemary Sutcliff, #NFDB
283:Hence a certain tension between religion and society marks the higher stages of every civilization. Religion begins by offering magical aid to harassed and bewildered men; it culminates by giving to a people that unity of morals and belief which seems so favorable to statesmanship and art; it ends by fighting suicidally in the lost cause of the past. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
284:Something he had heard some wise man say. About the three stages of empire, the three generations. First came the conquerers, unstoppable in war. Then came the administrators, who bound it all together into one apparently unshakable, immortal edifice. Then came the wasters, who knew no responsibility and squandered the capital of their inheritance upon ~ Glen Cook, #NFDB
285:The journey inward is what gives meaning to the life outside ourselves. Not in any static, dogmatic, once-for-all way either, but in a way that grows and develops and changes to meet different circumstances, different stages of development. Contemplation is not an optional extra -- it is, as much as action, part of the very stuff of being human." ~ Monica Furlong, #NFDB
286:We are all addicts in various stages of degradation where I live on the Upper West Side, some to heroin, some to small dogs, and some to the New York Times. The heroin is cut, the dogs are paranoid, and the Times cheats by skimping on the West Coast ball scores. No matter, each of us goes upon the street solely in pursuit of his own particular curse. ~ Murray Kempton, #NFDB
287:The study of the global climate, the comparison of the Earth with other worlds, are subjects in their earliest stages of development. They are fields that are poorly and grudgingly funded. In our ignorance, we continue to push and pull, to pollute the atmosphere and brighten the land, oblivious of the fact that the long-term consequences are largely unknown. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
288:The truth is that both sets of parents are “real.” During the developmental stages of early childhood, when a child’s thinking is concrete, an adopted child needs to understand that there are two mothers and two fathers, but there is only one set of, or one parent. The role of parent must be made clear and distinguished from that of mother and father. ~ Joyce Maguire Pavao, #NFDB
289:Something he had heard some wise man say. About the three stages of empire, the three generations. First came the conquerers, unstoppable in war. Then came the administrators, who bound it all together into one apparently unshakable, immortal edifice. Then came the wasters, who knew no responsibility and squandered the capital of their inheritance upon whims and vices. ~ Glen Cook, #NFDB
290:Because a child is . . . small and its conscious thoughts scarce and simple, we do not realize the far-reaching complications of the infantile mind that are based on its original identity with the prehistoric psyche. That original mind is just as much present and still functioning in the child as the evolutionary stages of mankind are in its embryonic body. P. 89 ~ Carl Gustav Jung, #NFDB
291:We see not only thought as participating in evolution as an anomaly or as an epiphenomenon; but evolution as so reducible to and identifiable with a progress towards thought that the movement of our souls expresses and measures the very stages of progress of evolution itself. Man discovers that he is nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
292:She shrugged and, with one
gulp, drank half a glass of champagne.
“How long has she been like this?” The look on Edie’s father’s face was edging from half to threequarters
barbarian.
“Oh, about two years,” Edie said, considering. “In the stages of marital harmony, I’d say the two
of you are at about stage eight of ten—ten being the slough of utter despond. ~ Eloisa James,#NFDB
293:There is a kind of orthodoxy in which the several loci of systematic theology, or stages of redemptive history, are all in place, but that lacks the life of the whole, just as arms, legs, torso, head, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth may all be present—while the body as a whole lacks energy and perhaps life itself. The form of godliness is not the same as its power. ~ Sinclair B Ferguson, #NFDB
294:With influenza and many other diseases the order is reversed, high infectivity preceding symptoms by a matter of days. A perverse pattern: the danger, then the warning. That probably helped account for the scale of worldwide misery and death during the 1918–1919 influenza: high infectivity among cases before they experienced the most obvious and debilitating stages of illness. ~ David Quammen, #NFDB
295:We understand God best, Dorothy Sayers suggests, by thinking of God as a creative artist. Imagine God as an engineer or watchmaker or immovable force, and you will go astray. God's image shines through us most clearly in the act of creation-comprising the three stages of Idea, Expression, and Recognition-and by reproducing this act we may begin to grasp, by analogy, the Trinity. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
296:agents shall be recruited from orphans. They shall be trained in the following techniques: interpretation of signs and marks, palmistry and similar techniques of interpreting body marks, magic and illusions, the duties of the ashramas, the stages of life, and the science of omens and augury. Alternatively, they can be trained in physiology and sociology, the art of men and society. ~ Tarquin Hall, #NFDB
297:Curiously, ghosts are rarely if ever seen in the nude. They appear fully clothed, and may even change clothing on subsequent appearances. They may change their form, to appear as they looked at different stages of their lives. Unless someone out there knows of an extoplasmic department store on the spiritual plane, we have to wonder, "Where do the clothes and accessories come from? ~ Loyd Auerbach, #NFDB
298:[S]ome score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar ought to be --- as here they are --- mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horse-hair warded heads against walls of words, and making a pretence of equity with serious faces .... ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
299:Shamanism is not confined to specific socio-economic settings or stages of development. It is fundamentally the ability that all of us share, some with and some without the help of hallucinogens, to enter altered states of consciousness and to travel out of body in non-physical realms - there to encounter supernatural entities and gain useful knowledge and healing powers from them. ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
300:Humans carry around legacy behaviors and biases, jerry-rigged holdovers from earlier stages of evolution that follow their own obsolete rules. What seem like erratic, irrational choices are, in fact, strategies created long ago for solving other kinds of problems. We’re all trapped in the bodies of sly, social-climbing opportunists shaped to survive the savanna by policing each other. ~ Richard Powers, #NFDB
301:There is all this stuff about how sensitive poets are and how in touch with feelings, etc. they are, but really all we care about is language. At least in the initial stages of the process of writing the poem, though later other things start to come in, and a really good poem usually needs something more than just an interest in the material of language to mean anything to a reader. ~ Matthew Zapruder, #NFDB
302:Walk the Bowery under the El at night and all you feel is a sort of cold guilt. Touched for a dime, you try to drop the coin and not touch the hand, because the hand is dirty; you try to avoid the glance, because the glance accuses. This is not so much personal menace as universal — the cold menace of unresolved human suffering and poverty and the advanced stages of the disease alcoholism. ~ E B White, #NFDB
303:What would it mean if there were a theory that explained everything? And just what does "everything" actually mean, anyway? Would this new theory in physics explain, say the meaning of human poetry? Or how economics work? Or the stages of psychosexual development? Can this new physics explain the currents of ecosystems, or the dynamics of history, or why human wars are so terribly common? ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
304:To put it all very plainly, evolution can continue. It has already brought forth humans from amoebas— why on earth should we think that after that prodigious feat lasting billions of years, evolution just petered out and wound down? And if the ratio "amoeba to human" is repeated, the result could only be God. The mystics simply show us the stages of higher evolution leading to that Summit. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
305:The hardest thing was going through different stages of weight loss. At the beginning, it was easy to take off the weight with exercise and eating less but then you reach a point where 90 per cent of the weight loss is achieved purely through reducing your calorie intake. My goal was to lose four pounds per week. That worked well for the first few months but then things got tricky. ~ Matthew McConaughey, #NFDB
306:I have devoted my whole life to the study of Nature, and yet a single sentence may express all that I have done. I have shown that there is a correspondence between the succession of Fishes in geological times and the different stages of their growth in the egg,-this is all. It chanced to be a result that was found to apply to other groups and has led to other conclusions of a like nature. ~ Louis Agassiz, #NFDB
307:We have, then, three main forms of the family, corresponding in general to the three main stages of human development. For savagery group marriage, for barbarism the pairing family, for civilization monogamy supplemented by adultery and prostitution. Between the pairing family and monogamy, in the higher stage of barbarism, the rule of men over female slaves and polygamy is inserted. As ~ Friedrich Engels, #NFDB
308:Within Tibetan Buddhism, shamatha practice maps on to the nine stages of attentional development wherein thoughts gradually subside as concentrative power is increased to the point at which one can effortlessly maintain single-pointed focus on a chosen object for at least four hours. The accomplishment of shamatha is accompanied by a powerful experience of bliss, luminosity, and stillness. ~ B Alan Wallace, #NFDB
309:He was talking nonstop. When had it happened? When had the boy turned eleven and decided to like music about various stages of death, alienation, freezing and general doom? Perhaps it ought to have worried Harry, but it didn’t. It was a starting point, a curiosity that had to be satisfied, clothes the boy had to try on to see if they fit. Other things would come along. Better things. Worse things. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
310:Many stages of a baby's
development in the mother's
womb are related in
the Qur'an. As described in
Surat al-Muminun 14, the
cartilage of the embryo in
the mother's womb ossifies
first. Then these bones
are covered with muscle
cells. Allah describes this
development with the
verse: "… [We then]
formed the lump into
bones and clothed the
bones in flesh. ~ Harun Yahya,#NFDB
311:Something he had heard some wise man say. About the three stages of empire, the three generations. First came the conquerers, unstoppable in war. Then came the administrators, who bound it all together into one apparently unshakable, immortal edifice. Then came the wasters, who knew no responsibility and squandered the capital of their inheritance upon whims and vices. And fell to other conquerers. ~ Glen Cook, #NFDB
312:If women in all stages of life don't get involved and fight for what we want, plans will be made that we may not like, and it'll be our own damned fault. I think about this everyday. It's true at every level, from the Capitol to your city's town hall to your neighborhood school. We need to participate, and we need to be heard. Our lives, our communities, and our world will be better for it. ~ Kirsten Gillibrand, #NFDB
313:The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it-this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
314:There are three stages to a demonic pregnancy. I call them infestation, oppression, and possession.”
She paused with the bottle close to her mouth. “Aren’t those the stages of demonic possession?”
Smiling, he shrugged. “Pregnancy is pretty much the same thing.”
“No, it’s really not.” She cocked her head. “Anyone ever told you that you have the oddest sense of humor?”
“Once or twice. ~ Suzanne Wright,#NFDB
315:It's impossible to move through the stages of grief when a person is both dead and alive, the way Min is. It's like she's living permanently in an airport terminal, moving from one departure lounge to another but never getting on a plane. Sometimes I tell myself that I'd do anything for Min. That I'd do whatever was necessary for her to be happy. Except that I'm not entirely sure what that would be. ~ Miriam Toews, #NFDB
316:she did not still feel, as I did, the anxiety about a woman who was suffering for love. What did I care about shoes. I still had, in my mind’s eye, the most secret stages of that affair of violated trust, passion, poetry that became a book, and it was as if she and I had read a novel together, as if we had seen, there in the back of the shop and not in the parish hall on Sunday, a dramatic film. I ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
317:Pinterest clearly demonstrates the four stages of the Hook Model. It is a seamless flow, from the itch of the internal trigger that moves users to the intended action, through the variable reward, and finally to the investment, which also loads the next external trigger. Pinterest users move through the Hook cycle from beginning to end, and then happily return to the starting point for another go ‘round. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
318:Meditation handbooks from Sheer Peaks monasteries advised the practitioner to envision herself midcopulation with a sensory lushness from which even an Iskari romance might shrink—and then to envision one’s partner undergoing the many stages of death and decomposition, until one lay in congress with a skeleton. Which proved, to Kai’s mind, that monks were a lot kinkier than most people gave them credit. ~ Max Gladstone, #NFDB
319:To put it all very plainly, evolution can continue. It has already brought forth humans from amoebas- why on earth should we think that after that prodigious feat lasting billions of years, evolution just petered out and wound down? And if the ratio "amoeba to human" is repeated, the result could only be God. The mystics simply show us the stages of higher evolution leading to that Summit. ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project, #NFDB
320:virtually the entire senior staff and cabinet of the Trump presidency, past and present, had traveled through the stages of adventure, challenge, frustration, battle, self-justification, and doubt, before finally having to confront the very real likelihood that the president they worked for—whose presidency they bore some official responsibility for—didn’t have the wherewithal to adequately function in his job. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
321:An individual enters the final stages of the Way when the nafs begins to release its grip on the qalb, thus allowing the ruh—which is present in all humanity, but is cloaked in the veil of the self—to absorb the qalb as though it were a drop of dew plunged into a vast, endless sea. When this occurs, the individual achieves fana: ecstatic, intoxicating self-annihilation. This is the final station along the Sufi Way. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
322:High horns, low horns, silence, and finally a pandemonium of trumpets, rattles, croaks, and cries that almost shakes the bog with its nearness ... A new day has begun on the crane marsh. A sense of time lies thick and heavy on such a place ... Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. ~ Aldo Leopold, #NFDB
323:This is Poyo. Poyo was exposed to a near-lethal amount of radiation as an egg, during the first stages of a government experiment to create mutant super soldiers--trained in exotic martial arts technique by Tibetan Kung Fu fightin' monks--and given strange bio-enhancements during a rash of farm animal abductions by extra-terrestrials. Nah, just kidding. None of that shit is true. Poyo is just really, really bad ass. ~ John Layman, #NFDB
324:In trading with each other cities can't be in too different stages of development, and they can't copy one another. Backward cities, or younger cities, or newly forming cities in supply regions, have to develop to a great extent on one another's shoulders. This is one of the terrible things about empires. Empires want them only to trade with the empire, which doesn't help them at all. It's just a way of exploiting them. ~ Jane Jacobs, #NFDB
325:All the words that George Bush used in public during the early stages of the crisis - "wanted, dead or alive," "a crusade," etc. - suggest not so much an orderly and considered progress towards bringing the man to justice according to international norms, but rather something apocalyptic, something of the order of the criminal atrocity itself. That will make matters a lot, lot worse, because there are always consequences. ~ Edward Said, #NFDB
326:With acting, I'm taking somebody else's work and interpreting it. Whereas with music, it's organic. It's completely myself. Nobody else is really involved with the beginning stages of it. Art is something that I haven't really put out to the public. There's a couple pictures on MySpace, but I haven't done a gallery opening or anything like that. Art is very personal to me. I haven't really shared it with too many people. ~ Tinsel Korey, #NFDB
327:The laws of Coexistence;-the adaptation of structure to function; and to a certain extent the elucidation of natural affinities may be legitimately founded upon the examination of fully developed species;-But to obtain an insight into the laws of development,-the signification or bedeutung, of the parts of an animal body demands a patient examination of the successive stages of their development, in every group of Animals. ~ Richard Owen, #NFDB
328:Who was this woman before me, her face imprinted with the expectations of others? I was Mom. I was Wife. I was Tragedy. I was Pilot. They all were me, and I, them. That was a fate we could not escape, we women; we would always be called upon by others in a way men simply never were. But weren't we always, first and foremost -- woman? Wasn't there strength in that, victory, clarity -- in all the stages of a woman's life? ~ Melanie Benjamin, #NFDB
329:Who was this woman before me, her face imprinted with the expectations of others? I was Mom. I was Wife. I was Tragedy. I was Pilot. They all were me, and I them. That was the fate we could not escape, we women; we would always be called upon by others in a way men simply never were. But weren't we always, first and foremost -- woman? Wasn't there strength in that, victory, clarity -- in all the stages of a woman's life? ~ Melanie Benjamin, #NFDB
330:One of the most painful stages in the twin flame relationship is that of the “runner and chaser” dynamic. After the initial stages of ecstatic union and fairy-tale partnership, things start to heat up. Egos begin to clash, core wounds, insecurities, and traumas are rubbed raw, and shadow selves lash out. As a result, it’s inevitable that almost every twin flame relationship will battle through drama and dysfunction at first. ~ Aletheia Luna, #NFDB
331:[T]horoughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. — Carl Jung, Stages of Life ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
332:The first man who said "fire burns" was employing scientific method, at any rate if he had allowed himself to be burnt several times. This man had already passed through the two stages of observation and generalization. He had not, however, what scientific technique demands - a careful choice of significant facts on the one hand, and, on the other hand, various means of arriving at laws otherwise than my mere generalization. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
333:"Teachers"... treat students neither coercively nor instrumentally but as joint seekers of truth and of mutual actualization. They help students define moral values not by imposing their own moralities on them but by positing situations that pose hard moral choices and then encouraging conflict and debate. They seek to help students rise to higher stages of moral reasoning and hence to higher levels of principled judgment. ~ James MacGregor Burns, #NFDB
334:Other relaxations are peculiar to certain times, places and stages of life, but the study of letters is the nourishment of our youth, and the joy of our old age. They throw an additional splendor on prosperity, and are the resource and consolation of adversity; they delight at home, and are no embarrassment abroad; in short, they are company to us at night, our fellow travelers on a journey, and attendants in our rural recesses. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
335:In the early stages of enlightenment, the aspirant is overwhelmed by his discovery that God is within himself. It stirs his intensest feelings and excites his deepest thoughts. But, though he does not know it, those very feelings and thoughts still form part of his ego, albeit the highest part. So he still separates his being into two—self and Overself. Only in the later stages does he find that God not only is within himself but is himself. ~ Paul Brunton, #NFDB
336:Nothing happened--or perhaps everything happened, and his destiny simply forked at that instant, as it probably does sometimes at night, especially in a strange bed, at stages of great happiness or great desolation, when we happen to die in our sleep, but continue our normal existence, with no perceptible break in the faked serialization, on the following, neatly prepared morning, with a spurious past discreetly but firmly attached behind. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
337:When I was in eighth grade, I used a self-timing camera to take nude pictures of myself in various stages of erection. I then exchanged my biology teacher’s slides with the images. The teacher, in a state of panic, kept rapidly pressing the ‘next’ button. It was like a pornographic flip-book. That was the last straw in a very heavy pile of straws. I was expelled, and I ended up transferring mid-year from boarding school to a public school near home. ~ Dani Alexander, #NFDB
338:Discipline is no longer literal obedience but intelligent obedience, for discipline aims at obedience coupled with activity of will. Once discipline weakens and vanishes, as it does towards the latter stages of the fire fight, and the crowd instinct possesses the soldier, then will he, if training has formed those necessary mental reflexes, surrender himself to the will of his leader; this is where leadership supplants discipline without destroying it. ~ J F C Fuller, #NFDB
339:I prefer the gradual path My feeling is that mythic forms reveal themselves gradually in the course of your life if you know what they are and how to pay attention to their emergence. My own initiation into the mythic depths of the unconscious has been through the mind, through the books that surround me in this library. I have recognized in my quest all the stages of the hero's journey. I had my calls to adventure, my guides, demons, and illuminations. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
340:The thing may sound absurd to you, but you can do it if you will: standing back, as it were, from the vague and purposeless reactions in which most men fritter their vital energies. Then you can survey with a certain calm, a certain detachment, your universe and the possibilities of life within it: can discern too, if you be at all inclined to mystical adventure, the stages of the road along which you must pass on your way towards harmony with the Real. ~ Evelyn Underhill, #NFDB
341:Those two impostors,’ Triumph and Disaster, never played their pranks more shamelessly than in the Great War. When men have done their duty and done their best, have shirked no labour and flinched from no decision that it was their task to take, there is no disgrace in eventual personal failure. They are but good comrades who fall in the earlier stages of an assault, which others, profiting by their efforts and experiences, ultimately carry to victory. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
342:In her novel Regeneration, Pat Barker writes of a doctor who 'knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
343:The events of the last forty years have inflicted such a blow to the self confidence of Western civilization and to the belief in progress which was so strong during the nineteenth century, that men tend to go too far in the opposite direction: in fact the modern world is experiencing the same kind of danger which was so fatal to the ancient world--the crisis of which Gilbert Murray writes in his Four Stages of Greek Religion as "The Loss of Nerve. ~ Christopher Henry Dawson, #NFDB
344:I was at the beginning stages of my pregnancy, and it never really feels real anyway, until you actually start showing and you start to feel the baby kick. Fortunately I didn't have any morning sickness or anything like that. And I really didn't want to be distracted from the work at hand, so I didn't tell anybody. It was really just towards the end of shooting where I was about five months, where I needed to tell a costume designer[ of the True Detective]. ~ Michelle Monaghan, #NFDB
345:There is no doubt that the princess did become a queen---not only on the screen. One of the most loved, one of the most skillful, one of the most intelligent, one of the most sensitive, charming actresses---and friends, in my life---but also in the later stages of her life, the UNICEF ambassador to the children of the world. The generosity, sensitivity, the nobility of her service to the children of the world and the mothers of the world will never be forgotten. ~ Gregory Peck, #NFDB
346:I've never met someone who died.I mean someone who could actually talk to me about it.Was it all bright lights and Mormon Tabernacle Choir music?" She smiled in spite of her fear.She'd used this tactic before with victims in their first stages of shock to calm them down until help could get there."Well,I can't really be sure but I think I remember hearing Queen's 'Another One Bites The Dust',"she quipped.He snorted."Well, at least it wasn't ACDC's 'Highway to Hell'. ~ Terri Reid, #NFDB
347:Because reading books and having them bound represent two enormously different stages of development. First, people gradually get used to reading, over centuries naturally, but they don't take care of their books and toss them around. Having books bound signifies respect for the book; it indicates that people not only love to read, but they view it an important occupation. Nowhere in Russia has that stage been reached. Europe has been binding its books for sometime. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
348:The great thing is these days I no longer have to work for a living and that all of the things that I'm able to do where money is paid as compensation for whatever it be, I'm able to donate all of that to charity. That's a wonderful position to find yourself in at the latest stages of your life and I'm proud to have walked the path that I have and I'm proud to be able to continue working and to be able to give away what I earn to some very good causes here in the Southwest. ~ Robin Leach, #NFDB
349:The opening bars of a new band’s song comes on the radio and Sophie quickly flicks up the volume. A good omen. She’s been listening out for the song for ages. She’s in the early stages of falling in love with it, where she knows the chorus but not the verses and she makes up pretend words so she doesn’t have to stop singing. She sings lustily, enjoying how stupid she must look to other people, with her mouth opening and shutting and her face twisting in rock-star anguish. ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
350:For any true stickler, you see, the sight of the plural word “Book’s” with an apostrophe in it will trigger a ghastly private emotional process similar to the stages of bereavement, though greatly accelerated. First there is shock. Within seconds, shock gives way to disbelief, disbelief to pain, and pain to anger. Finally (and this is where the analogy breaks down), anger gives way to a righteous urge to perpetrate an act of criminal damage with the aid of a permanent marker. ~ Lynne Truss, #NFDB
351:The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors. ~ Franz Oppenheimer, #NFDB
352:If successive stages of environment become correlated with man in a two-way process, man himself becomes an expanding concept. Looked at in this way, evolution may then also be understood in terms of an expanding multilevel process concept of self-transcendence—or, viewed as a totality, as an overall process of self-attunement of an evolution which becomes ever more fully self-reflective, conscious of its own unfolding. ~ Erich Jantsch, Evolution and Consciousness - Human Systems in Transition, #NFDB
353:I’d read up on this issue a little bit since the retreat. According to the school of Buddhism to which Joseph belonged (there were many, I’d learned), there were four stages of enlightenment. The schema sounded like something out of Dungeons & Dragons. Someone who’d achieved the first stage of enlightenment was a “stream-enterer.” This was followed by a “once-returner,” a “non-returner,” and then a fully enlightened being, known as an “arhant.” Each stage had sixteen sublevels. ~ Dan Harris, #NFDB
354:Being dropped by your stalker is pretty bad. I mean he watches you week-in, week-out for almost a year, and then you have sex and he’s like ‘wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. We no longer require your position as victim. Don’t call us; we’ll call you. It’s not you…it’s me. We’re just at different stages of our stalker/stalkee relationship. I need space.’
How pathetic are you? You’re actually ticked off that your stalker is no longer skulking around in the shadows. That’s just…pitiful. ~ Belle Aurora,#NFDB
355:Most corporations fail to tolerate the creative fanatic who has been the driving force behind most major innovations. Innovations, being far removed from the mainstream of the business, show little promise in the early stages of development. Moreover, the champion is obnoxious, impatient, egotistic, and perhaps a bit irrational in organizational terms. As a consequence, he is not hired. If hired, he is not promoted or rewarded. He is regarded as “not a serious person,” “embarrassing,” or ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
356:I’m not sure why I had to weather the stages of grief after hearing the news that night. Maybe it was the death of my singledom or the death of my own childhood that scared me. For some reason, when you’re faced with the realization that you’re going to become a parent, it immediately changes how you view yourself. You no longer think of yourself as someone else’s child because you can’t be a parent and a child. It’s an official good-bye, and good-byes always scared the hell out of me. ~ Renee Carlino, #NFDB
357:Daydreamer, dream on. Never forget that you are a one-of-a-kind, never-before-seen, gift-to-the-world, and you've got a special purpose for being here. Raising children is beautiful and chaotic and wonder-filled, but you'll have a lot of life to live once your children are out of the early stages of intense need for your time and attention. So dream your dreams, and journal your thoughts and ideas, and don't be afraid to embrace the present, secure in the knowledge that your time will come. ~ L R Knost, #NFDB
358:Resonating the first half of the highest quality material known to man.
Previously worked out, I embraced the back story never told but retold as practical reality. All I ask and bleed, there's nothing more to be felt as a man anymore. Most rebuild to be included, invoking the awakening stages of beautiful death; resonating with frozen lakes, dirty films we made and seven million pounds of sorrow disguised as drifting smoke that showed me the path out the final frame of reference. ~ Brandon Villasenor,#NFDB
359:Thus, the very high developmental stance of pluralism—the product of at least six major stages of transformation—turns around and denies the very path that produced its own noble stance. It extends an egalitarian embrace to every stance, no matter how shallow or narcissistic. Thus, the more egalitarianism is implemented, the more it invites, indeed encourages, the Culture of Narcissism. And the Culture of Narcissism is the antithesis of the integral culture, the opposite of a world at peace. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
360:While in Europe aspiring Communists were motivated, above all, by the desire to ameliorate social injustices, the East Asian version of Communism had both social and nationalist dimensions. In the 1920s and 1930s, in the era when Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh were young idealists, Communism in East Asia was widely seen as a shortcut to the national revival and modernity, a way not only to solve social problems but also to leapfrog past stages of backwardness and colonial dependency. ~ Andrei Lankov, #NFDB
361:Fantasy, an unflagging optimism is necessary for a writer at all stages of this rough game. A kind of madness is therefore necessary, when there is every logical reason for a state of depression and discouragement. Perhaps the fact that I can react with utter gloom to this is what keeps me from being psychotic and keeps me merely neurotic. I am doing quite a good day's work today. But I am also aware of the madness that actually sustains me, and I am not made more comfortable or happy by it. ~ Patricia Highsmith, #NFDB
362:Many people who are going through the early stages of the awakening process are no longer certain what their outer purpose is. What drives the world no longer drives them. Seeing the madness of our civilization so clearly, they feel somewhat alienated from the culture around them. Some feel that they inhabit a no-man's-land between two worlds. They are no longer run by the ego, yet the arising awareness has not yet become fully integrated into their lives. Inner and outer purpose have not merged. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
363:The action cycle can start from the top, by establishing a new goal, in which case we call it goal-driven behavior. In this situation, the cycle starts with the goal and then goes through the three stages of execution. But the action cycle can also start from the bottom, triggered by some event in the world, in which case we call it either data-driven or event-driven behavior. In this situation, the cycle starts with the environment, the world, and then goes through the three stages of evaluation. ~ Donald A Norman, #NFDB
364:a classic yields significantly different meanings when read in different circumstances and moods; on a larger scale, a classic conveys wholly different worlds when read in different times of life, at different stages of experience, feeling, and understanding of life. Classics may be interesting and even entertaining, but people always find they are not like books used for diversion, which give up all of their content at once; the classics seem to grow wiser as we grow wiser, more useful the more we use them. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
365:attractive women in the early stages of disrepair, fighting to keep age at bay with facials, compression undergarments, and aggressively fashionable skirts bought off the rack at Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. They run on treadmills, these women, work out with personal trainers and play tennis at the club, but still their hips widen, their legs thicken, their breasts sag. Genetics help some more than others, but they are all like melting ice cream bars, slowly sliding down the stick as they come apart. ~ Jonathan Tropper, #NFDB
366:The real wonder is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted [in the federal convention], and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
367:In the very early stages of working in sports, I was sick of being referred to as "the Barbie doll" because I had long, blond, fake hair. So I went and bought a boxed hair color, dyed my hair black, and put on glasses. And I looked ridiculous. I looked like a completely different person. I was trying to get away from the stereotype but what I realized in doing that is that what I say and how I conduct myself in what I do will speak for itself, and I don't need to apologize for being a woman in that space. ~ Charissa Thompson, #NFDB
368:Jeremy Popkin's collection of first-person narratives of the Haitian Revolution is an extremely valuable work, accessible, sound and intelligent. I only wish such a book had been available fifteen years ago when I was in the early stages of researching my series of novels. Popkin has been deft and tactful in stitching together these excerpts, and as a result, he manages to tell a complete version of the Revolution almost entirely in the words of the people who experienced it-this book engaged me deeply. ~ Madison Smartt Bell, #NFDB
369:There are points of likeness in the seminal disasters that befell both Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt in the early stages of their careers. Both crucibles were precipitated by a combination of intimate, personal crises and public repudiation that seemed to crush their core ambitions. Both swore off politics or at least paid lip service to deserting politics forever. Both suffered severe depressions. Healing change had to come from within while they waited for the historical kaleidoscope to turn. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, #NFDB
370:The trauma of Down's syndrome is that it is present prenatally and can therefore undermine the early stages of bonding. The challenge of autism is that it sets in or is detected in the toddler years, and so transfigures the child to whom parents have already bonded. The shock of schizophrenia is that it manifests in late adolescence or early adulthood, and parents must accept that the child they have known and loved for more than a decade may be irrevocably lost, even as that child looks much the same as ever. ~ Andrew Solomon, #NFDB
371:While they go get the others, I figure out the details. The system I’ve set up is intended to "process’’ matches. It does this by moving a quantity of match sticks out of their box, and through each of the bowls in succession. The dice determine how many matches can be moved from one bowl to the next. The dice represent the capacity of each resource, each bowl; the set of bowls are my dependent events, my stages of production. Each has exactly the same capacity as the others, but its actual yield will fluctuate somewhat. ~ Jeff Cox, #NFDB
372:Put differently, oppressive actions and drives are inherent in the lower stages of development. […] A lower, pre-worldcentric stage of development will step all over worldcentric values if it can, not because it is trying to specifically oppress those values, but because it does not yet possess those values itself and has no understanding of their value, goodness, or desirability. The cure for this is to move development forward, not to criminalize earlier stages (which is like calling age 5 a disease and outlawing it). ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
373:Where-to-play choices occur across a number of domains, notably these: Geography. In what countries or regions will you seek to compete? Product type. What kinds of products and services will you offer? Consumer segment. What groups of consumers will you target? In which price tier? Meeting which consumer needs? Distribution channel. How will you reach your customers? What channels will you use? Vertical stage of production. In what stages of production will you engage? Where along the value chain? How broadly or narrowly? ~ A G Lafley, #NFDB
374:The idea of childhood as a social invention, in retrospect, is hardly credible. In the Bible, in writings of the Greeks and Romans, and in the works of the first great educator of the modern era, Comenius, children were recognized as being both different from adults and different from one another with respect to their stages of development. To be sure, the scientific study of children and the increased length of life in modern times have enhanced our understanding of age differences, but they have always been acknowledged. ~ David Elkind, #NFDB
375:The Masai, nomadic cattle herders in East Africa, meet their salt needs by bleeding livestock and drinking the blood. But vegetable diets, rich in potassium, offer little sodium chloride. Wherever records exist of humans in different stages of development, as in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century North America, it is generally found that hunter tribes neither made nor traded for salt but agricultural tribes did. On every continent, once human beings began cultivating crops, they began looking for salt to add to their diet. ~ Mark Kurlansky, #NFDB
376:While they go get the others, I figure out the details. The system I’ve set up is intended to "process’’ matches. It does this by moving a quantity of match sticks out of their box, and through each of the bowls in succession. The dice determine how many matches can be moved from one bowl to the next. The dice represent the capacity of each resource, each bowl; the set of bowls are my dependent events, my stages of production. Each has exactly the same capacity as the others, but its actual yield will fluctuate somewhat. ~ Eliyahu M Goldratt, #NFDB
377:It had been more than a year since the Joker’s conquest of America and we were all still in shock and going through the stages of grief but now we needed to come together and set love and beauty and solidarity and friendship against the monstrous forces that faced us. Humanity was the only answer to the cartoon. I had no plan except love. I hoped another plan might emerge in time but for now there was only holding each other tightly and passing strength to each other, body to body, mouth to mouth, spirit to spirit, me to you. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
378:The word curriculum originated in the 1600s as a derivative of the Latin word for “course,” specifically a course for a horse or chariot race. That’s a far cry from the stuffy academic flavor the word carries today. Before it was used in formal education, curriculum referred to the necessary stages of development children go through on their way to adulthood. And before it evolved into a rigid syllabus of assignments and tests, a curriculum was a series of tasks and experiences designed to take someone on a journey toward maturity. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
379:Perhaps the most meaningful exchange I had on the subject was a completely random discussion with my uncle Martin at my parents’ annual summer pool party. Martin, a former entrepreneur who was now in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, turned to me and asked an intriguing question: “Which is more exciting to you? Reality or memory?” I paused, considered it, and said, “I wish I could say reality, but it’s probably memory.” And then I asked, “What about you?” At which point Martin stared blankly back at me and asked, “What was the question? ~ Dan Harris, #NFDB
380:Historically, Buddhist monks hoping to detach themselves from lust and curb their desire for permanence would meditate on the form of a rotting corpse. Known as the nine cemetery contemplations, the meditation would focus the different stages of decomposition: “(1) distension (choso); (2) rupture (kaiso); (3) exudation of blood (ketsuzuso); (4) putrefaction (noranso); (5) discoloration and desiccation (seioso); (6) consumption by animals and birds (lanso); (7) dismemberment (sanso); (8) bones (kosso); and (9) parched to dust (shoso). ~ Caitlin Doughty, #NFDB
381:Even the conservative American Dietetic Association, the largest organization of dietary professionals in the world, has stated in no uncertain terms: “Appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes. ~ Scott Jurek, #NFDB
382:Science and technology were often used by [the magician of old], even before they came into the marketplace on a mass basis. For example, prior to the moving picture going into theatre, magicians were using the technique of images in motion as illusions in their shows. At that time the process was so new, an audience perceived it as magic. Also in the early stages of holograms magicians would use these images to baffle and mystify their fans. Hence, you always need to stay one step ahead of the technology game to "WOW" the audience. ~ David Copperfield, #NFDB
383:The artist and the fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of self- confidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His faith is that humankind is advancing, however haltingly and imperfectly, toward a better world. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
384:The hallway outside the courtroom was as crowded as ever, filled with people who were at some stage of “growing into their guilt.” This refers to a concept very similar to the five stages of grief developed by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: First, a criminal defendant denies; he claims to be innocent. Second, he gets angry at the system, lashing out at the cops or the judge or his attorney. Third, he bargains, searching for a plea deal that will keep him out of jail or prison. Fourth and fifth come depression, and, ultimately, acceptance. The ~ J D Trafford, #NFDB
385:Contrast this to the more traditional model where Development and Test teams are assigned to a “project” and then reassigned to another project as soon as the project is completed and funding runs out. This leads to all sorts of undesired outcomes, including developers being unable to see the long-term consequences of decisions they make (a form of feedback) and a funding model that only values and pays for the earliest stages of the software life cycle—which, tragically, is also the least expensive part for successful products or services. †† ~ Gene Kim, #NFDB
386:nod and continues talking to Cliff York on the phone. He’s making notes but won’t need to refer to them. He has no trouble mentally keeping track of names, dates and figures, times and places, even telephone numbers. The project under discussion, a six-unit apartment house in Jefferson Park, is in the middle stages of completion. Initial obstacles—plans, permits, financing—have been overcome, and all the units have been gutted. He and Cliff, his general contractor, are talking about water pressure. They set a time to meet later in the day to ~ A S A Harrison, #NFDB
387:In the first stages of civilisation the magician was the man of science. The mysteries of this magic art being inseparable from those of religion and philosophy, were preserved... hermetically sealed in the adyta of the temple. Its philosophy was the cabala. We must consequently look on the various cabalas or oral traditions, transmitted from age to age as the oracles of various faiths and creeds, as constituting the elements of that theory which the Jewish cabala promulgated some centuries later in a condensed and mutilated form. ~ Encyclopedia Brittanica (1875), #NFDB
388:Dantes passed through all the stages of torture natural to prisoners in suspense. He was sustained at first by that pride of conscious innocence which is the sequence to hope; then he began to doubt his own innocence, which justified in some measure the governor's belief in his mental alienation; and then, relaxing his sentiment of pride, he addressed his supplications, not to God, but to man. God is always the last resource. Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
389:Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery.If there’s the hundredth part of a false note in speaking the truth, it leads to a discord, and that leads to trouble.But if all, to the last note, is false in flattery, it is just as agreeable, and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be a coarse satisfaction, but still a satisfaction. And however coarse the flattery, at least half will be sure to seem true. That’s so for all stages of development and classes of society. -Svidrigailov (Crime and Punishment) ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
390:Pike said, “What were they saying?” “Couldn’t hear, but it’s an easy guess. The nephew here just lost two hundred thousand and a boatload of workers. They probably weren’t talking about a promotion.” Their next stop was a large two-level strip mall on Vermont. The strip mall was in the final stages of being remodeled, with a club and a restaurant taking up most of the upper level and what looked like another bar and a karaoke lounge on the lower level. A large sign in Korean script and English hung across the front of the karaoke lounge: OPENING SOON. Stone ~ Robert Crais, #NFDB
391:It is clear, then, that the idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory of rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, "objectivity," "truth," it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes. ~ Paul Feyerabend, #NFDB
392:We can witness collective movements alarmingly influenced by genuine social phobias and affecting the most industrialized and educated societies. Exclusive identities are being asserted, singular affiliations are being stressed, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to recognize the other in the mirror of one´s own quest. Reducing the other to the sole expression of his or her "difference" is one of the stages of dehumanization; and law alone - let alone the right to equality - cannot suffice to remedy the situation. Here comes the time of the new "barbarians". ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
393:Beneath a cockeyed crown that was missing its head stone in the front, the contorted and pockmarked corpse slouched on the hardwood was in the final stages of dying. Vampires were not like humans when it came to the aging process. Rather than a slow descent into an elderly state, the species went through the transition to maturity at around twenty-five, and following that, their bodies stayed in a state of prime physical condition until the very end of their lives. At that point, a rapid degeneration took place, faculties failing in a tumble that led quickly into the grave. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
394:During the worst stages of my eating disorder, I was all-or-none with food—either bingeing or not eating. Much of my experience was, in fact, that if I ate anything, I would eat everything. I began to understand that this happened because I was starving myself. In starvation mode, my body literally thought I was facing a famine. It didn’t know that I was living near a grocery store and several fast-food restaurants. Thinking I was facing a real food shortage, its primal instinct was to binge on large amounts of food, conserving fat in preparation for the hard times ahead. ~ Jenni Schaefer, #NFDB
395:I had the mistaken idea, based on what happened in World War I, that we would stay out of the war, and it is very unfortunate that I felt like that. If I had been more convinced, as Wigner and Szilard were, that we were going to get into the war, I would have pushed harder to begin making the bomb. I figured out that roughly half a million to a million people were being killed a month in the later stages of the war. Every month by which we could have shortened the war would have made a difference of a half million to a million lives, including the life of my own brother. ~ Gregory Benford, #NFDB
396:On the collective level, we incubate our society through the generations within cultural shells. In what ways do these fuzzy matrices of technology, language, art, science, and architecture, and of values, laws, and myths, separate us too harshly from nature? In what ways do they connect us to nature via bridges unachievable without such sheltering from the storms of time’s brutal uncertainties? The inquiries out into nature we have launched from such shells reveal new borders that serve as paradigms for the next stages of cultural evolution. ~ Tyler Volk, Metapatterns - Across Space, Time, and Mind, #NFDB
397:I believe faith is a human universal. We are endowed at birth with nascent capacities for faith. How these capacities are activated and grow depends to a large extent on how we are welcomed into the world and what kinds of environments we grow in. Faith is interactive and social; it requires community, language, ritual and nurture. Faith is also shaped by initiatives from beyond us and other people, initiatives of spirit or grace. How these latter initiatives are recognized and imaged, or unperceived and ignored, powerfully affects the shape of faith in our lives.
~ James W Fowler, Stages Of Faith,#NFDB
398:The cost reductions for renewable energy continue downward in a very dramatic way. We're in the early stages of a sustainability revolution in the globe that has the scale of the industrial revolution but the speed of the digital revolution. And you see it with renewable energy and you see it with LED lighting, which takes a fraction of the energy for the existing bulbs. All new lights are going to be LED. Electric vehicles. There are a lot of changes underway right now. I'm excited by the prospect, and I look forward to working in the months and years to come to accelerate this transition. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
399:Jack Goody (1977) has convincingly shown how shifts hitherto labeled as shifts from magic to science, or from the so-called ‘prelogical’ to the more and more ‘rational’ state of consciousness, or from Lévi-Strauss’s ‘savage’ mind to domesticated thought, can be more economically and cogently explained as shifts from orality to various stages of literacy. I had earlier suggested (1967b, p. 189) that many of the
contrasts often made between ‘western’ and other views seem reducible to contrasts between deeply interiorized literacy and more or less residually oral states of consciousness. ~ Walter J Ong,#NFDB
400:An individual enters the final stages of the Way when the nafs begins to release its grip on the qalb, thus allowing the ruh—which is present in all humanity, but is cloaked in the veil of the self—to absorb the qalb as though it were a drop of dew plunged into a vast, endless sea. When this occurs, the individual achieves fana: ecstatic, intoxicating self-annihilation. This is the final station along the Sufi Way. It is here, at the end of the journey, when the individual has been stripped of his ego, that he becomes one with the Universal Spirit and achieves unity with the Divine. Although ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
401:At conception, we start as a single cell that contains all the DNA needed to build our body. The plan for that entire body unfolds via the instructions contained in this single microscopic cell. To go from this generalized egg cell to a complete human, with trillions of specialized cells organized in just the right way, whole batteries of genes need to be turned on and off at just the right stages of development. Like a concerto composed of individual notes played by many instruments, our bodies are a composition of individual genes turning on and off inside each cell during our development. ~ Neil Shubin, #NFDB
402:In addition to calling each other standard names like bitch and whore, the Finches incorporated Freud's stages of psycho-sexual development into their arsenal of invectives.
"You're so oral. You'll never make it to genital! The most you can ever hope for is to reach anal, you immature, frigid old maid," Natalie yelled.
"Stop antagonizing me," Hope shouted. "Just stop transfering all this anger onto me."
"Your avoidance tactics are not giong to work, Miss Hope," Natalie warned. "I'm not going to let you just slink away from me. You hate me and you have to confront me. ~ Augusten Burroughs,#NFDB
403:And then he began to laugh in a peculiar way of his own which was both violent and soundless. His heavy reclining body, draped in its black gown, heaved to and fro. His knees drew themselves up to his chin. His arms dangled over the sides of the chair and were helpless. His head rolled from side to side. It was as though he were in the last stages of strychnine poisoning. But no sound came, nor did his mouth even open. Gradually the spasm grew weaker, and when the natural sand colour of his face had returned (for his corked-up laughter had turned it dark red) he began his smoking again in earnest. ~ Mervyn Peake, #NFDB
404:When? At this time, while you have all the opportunities, if you do not do your best to achieve the pure, stainless path to enlightenment when will you do it? If you don't meditate, don't practise the graduated path to enlightenment, especially bodhicitta, in this life, then when? When will you practise? When will you have this realization? If, in this life, you don't achieve renunciation, bodhicitta and sunyata, as well as the two stages of tantra, when will you? When will you have these attainments? When will you become enlightened? When will you perform perfect work for sentient beings? ~ Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, #NFDB
405:Calvinism, as we have seen, starts from a double decree of absolute predestination, which antedates creation, and is the divine program of human history. This program includes the successive stages of the creation of man, an universal fall and condemnation of the race, a partial redemption and salvation, and a partial reprobation and perdition: all for the glory of God and the display of his attributes of mercy and justice. History is only the execution of the original design. There can be no failure. The beginning and the end, God’s immutable plan and the issue of the world’s history, must correspond. ~ Philip Schaff, #NFDB
406:You will never trust your intuition until you identify with it. Self-esteem enters here. At the earlier stages of inner growth, a person is esteemed who belongs to the group and upholds its values. If the knower within tries to object, he is stifled. Intuition actually becomes an enemy, because it has a nasty habit of saying things you aren’t supposed to hear. A soldier sacrificing his life on the front lines can’t afford to think about the barbarity of war and the rightness of pacifism. If his inner voice says, “What’s the point? The enemy is just me in another man’s skin,” self-esteem gets torn to shreds. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
407:At the beginning of this study on the conditions of suggestion, we have admitted that suggestion could not develop in sickly minds—that it demanded, in order to attain to its full power, minds relatively sane. We have just now demonstrated that it depended on a lack of synthesis, on a weakening of consciousness. Are not these two affirmations contradictory ? Not at all. A symptom may disappear in certain maladies and still remain a pathological symptom. The crepitant rale does not exist in all stages of pneumonia; it disappears in many serious lung affections; it is none the less a very characteristic sign of the disease. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
408:Faith is a coat against ... nakedness. For most of us, most of the time, faith functions so as to screen off the abyss of mystery that surrounds us. But we all at certain times call upon faith to provide nerve to stand in the presence of the abyss--naked, stripped of life supports, trusting only in the being, the mercy and the power of the Other in the darkness. Faith helps us form a dependable 'life space,' an ultimate environment. At a deeper level, faith undergirds us when our life space is punctured and collapses, when the felt reality of our ultimate environment proves to be less than ultimate.
~ James W Fowler, Stages Of Faith,#NFDB
409:I think more people would stay active in church, if they didn't get so offended by the actions of members. Sometimes, you have to view places of worship as free mental health clinics, in order to deal with the piety or hypocrisy. Parishioners are a wounded souls in various stages of healing, who are being treated by angels, with credentials from the University of Hard Knocks. Some take their therapy seriously and try to practice what they learned. Yet, others down the sacrament like a healing dose of Prozac, with no other effort required. When you keep this in mind, you won't feel so annoyed by the personalities you encounter. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
410:But there was as yet no way of living on cash alone. Household production was still essential for survival because few commodities could be bought ready to use. Even store-bought chickens needed to be plucked. Factory-made fabrics had to be cut and sewn. Most families had to make their own bread, and the flour they bought came with bugs, small stones, and other impurities that had to be picked out by hand. As a result, in the early stages of the cash economy most families still needed someone to specialize in household production while other family members devoted more hours to wage earning. Typically, that someone was the wife. ~ Stephanie Coontz, #NFDB
411:After DeepMind’s breakthrough, there’s no reason why a robot can’t ultimately use some variant of deep reinforcement learning to teach itself to walk without help from human programmers: all that’s needed is a system that gives it points whenever it makes progress. Robots in the real world similarly have the potential to learn to swim, fly, play ping-pong, fight and perform a nearly endless list of other motor tasks without help from human programmers. To speed things up and reduce the risk of getting stuck or damaging themselves during the learning process, they would probably do the first stages of their learning in virtual reality. ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
412:The visions you describe are those which come in the earliest stages of sadhana. At this stage most of the things seen are formations of the mental plane and it is not always possible to put on them a precise significance, for they depend on the individual mind of the sadhak. At a later stage the power of vision becomes important for the sadhana, but at first one has to go on without attaching excessive importance to the details - until the consciousness develops more. The opening of the consciousness to the Divine Light and Truth and Presence is always the one important thing in the yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Visions and Symbols,#NFDB
413:His mamãe was the best artist at that show, the disaster that became the yardstick by which I measured all others. Her series of child-sized mannequins depicting the stages of life of a waka in Palmares Três made me bite back tears. She dressed a child in a smock made lovely by a border of hand-stitched coffee beans and sugarcane. The older ones wore a shimmering aquamarine dress with a wistful bow gathered like flowers beneath her chin; a soccer jersey for a team that didn’t exist and shockingly orange cleats; and the last mannequin came of age in a simple wide skirt and blouse in blushing pink and a turban the color of dried blood. ~ Alaya Dawn Johnson, #NFDB
414:Then there’s the issue of cognitive capacity. Deep work is exhausting because it pushes you toward the limit of your abilities. Performance psychologists have extensively studied how much such efforts can be sustained by an individual in a given day.* In their seminal paper on deliberate practice, Anders Ericsson and his collaborators survey these studies. They note that for someone new to such practice (citing, in particular, a child in the early stages of developing an expert-level skill), an hour a day is a reasonable limit. For those familiar with the rigors of such activities, the limit expands to something like four hours, but rarely more. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
415:Hope,... which whispered from Pandora's box after all the other plagues and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things. Without it, there is only time. And time pushes at our backs like a centrifuge, forcing outward and away, until it nudges us into oblivion... It's a law of motion, a fact of physics..., no different from the stages of white dwarves and red giants. Like all things in the universe, we are destined from birth to diverge. Time is simply the yardstick of our separation. If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from an original whole, then there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in proportion to our years. ~ Ian Caldwell, #NFDB
416:Marx's prophecy is also revolutionary in principle. In that all human reality has its origins in the fruits of
production, historical evolution is revolutionary because the economy is revolutionary. At each level of
production the economy arouses the antagonisms that destroy, to the profit of a superior level of
production, the corresponding society. Capitalism is the last of these stages of production because it
produces the conditions in which every antagonism will be resolved and where there will be no more
economy. On that day our history will become prehistory. This representation is the same as Hegel's, but
in another perspective. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
417:What they came to realize was that the newest, most automated, most expedient tool is not always the best choice. Although I’m sure they would bristle at being likened to the Luddites, their decision to forgo the latest technology, at least in some stages of their work, was an act of rebellion resembling that of the old English machine-breakers, if without the fury and the violence. Like the Luddites, they understood that decisions about technology are also decisions about ways of working and ways of living—and they took control of those decisions rather than ceding them to others or giving way to the momentum of progress. They stepped back and thought critically about technology. ~ Nicholas Carr, #NFDB
418:I once worked in a doll factory. First they make the soft cloth body and then they sew in the delicate porcelain feet and hands. The hair goes on after the faces have been painted and attached. Afterwards they clothe it, and it is ready. If you think about it, we’re the same. Step by step we are being refined. All of us are at different stages of perfection. Are you better than your friend because she has not yet her hair and you do? Don’t ever despise or judge anyone. The condition of being human is hard, but here’s the really nice bit – no one ever falls by the wayside. All will make it to perfection. God doesn’t love me any better than he does you or her. We are all his children. ~ Rani Manicka, #NFDB
419:We must think of men who are cruel today as stages of earlier cultures, which have been left over; in their case, the mountain range of humanity shows openly its deeper formations, which otherwise lie hidden. They are backward men whose brains, because of various possible accidents of heredity, have not yet developed much delicacy or versatility.
They show us what we all were, and frighten us. [...] In our brain, too, there must be grooves and bends which correspond to that state of mind, just as there are said to be reminders of the fish state in the form of certain human organs. But these grooves and bends are no longer the bed in which the river of our feeling courses. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
420:The Words
Each word is an angel. Have to
Find each one in that smoky solitude — where
An evening drowns in the water — And above the
Dark forest suddenly is visible the glimmer of a star-studded sky — flapping
Its wings flies the bird of the night...
Each one has its individual personality, each one has secret goals. Have to
Find each one in an immobility inside the tremor
Where time stops in secrecy, and the meaningless mass of things
Change shape into various stages of meaning
Each one has its designated place, like the planets, in a sky
And each one is silent observer, as if — of numerous tides
The waves that line up one after another.
~ Bhaben Barua,#NFDB
421:Second, be very careful to think about your audience’s premises. Don’t assume, for example, that everyone listening trusts the Bible. So when you make a point from the Bible, it will help to show that some other trusted authority (such as empirical science) agrees with the Bible. Use it to promote trust of the Bible, saying something like, “See, the Bible was telling us centuries ago what science now confirms.” That will help convince your hearers of that point so you can move on. By the end of the sermon, of course, you will be appealing only to God’s Word, but in the early stages of the sermon you invite nonbelievers along by showing respect for their doubts about the Bible’s reliability. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
422:In the years following Hannibal’s birth, his father Hamilcar had fought doggedly and with great skill to preserve the remnants of the Carthaginian garrisons in western Sicily. That he was finally unsuccessful was because the Romans had been quick to learn an all-important lesson—to succeed in the Mediterranean theatre it is essential to have command of the sea. In the early stages of this great war the Carthaginians, with centuries of experience behind them, had found little difficulty in trouncing the Romans in naval engagements and in harrying their coastline. But one of the Roman qualities which would greatly assist them to their successful imperial role was an ability to learn from mistakes. ~ Ernle Bradford, #NFDB
423:It is unlikely that one ANP will serve as a constant throughout the person's life. Your client is, therefore, likely to have others besides the ones you know, or several who you might think of as "the host". Adults with dissociative disorders often have several ANPs from earlier stages of life inside. They usually have the same name but are of different ages. Sometimes, there are several current ANPs, each of whom assumes she or he is the "real" person and is amnesiac for the existence of the others. Their current knowledge and experience may overlap, while their other characteristics differ somewhat. This makes them glide easily from one to the other, and the therapist can easily miss the switch. p22 ~ Alison Miller, #NFDB
424:The idea of the simple linear development of society from the culture of the paleolithic (Old Stone Age) through the successive stages of the neolithic (New Stone Age), Bronze, and Iron Ages must be given up. Today we find primitive cultures co-existing with advanced modern society on all the continents-the Bushmen of Australia, the Bushmen of South Africa, truly primitive peoples in South America, and in New Guinea; some tribal peoples in the United States. We shall now assume that, some 20,000 or more years ago, while paleolithic peoples held out in Europe, more advanced cultures existed elsewhere on the earth, and that we have inherited a part of what they once possessed, passed down from people to people. ~ Charles H Hapgood, #NFDB
425:To: KitFrom: MomSubject: The Five Stages of Everything Sucks
It’s the middle of the night. Just stumbled across this attached article re the five stages of grief:
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
Of course BACON should totally be number one on this list. Also, I’ve decided I’m skipping over the first three steps and heading straight for DEPRESSION. You with me?
To: MomFrom: KitSubject: Re: The Five Stages of Everything Sucks
You should really text like a normal person. Who emails anymore? Things this list is missing: Chocolate. Netflix binges. Pajamas.
As for depression, already beat you to it. Sure am #livingmybestlife ~ Julie Buxbaum,#NFDB
426:No wonder, then, that in the early stages of the development of any science different men confronting the same range of phenomena, but not usually all the same range of phenomena, describe and interpret them in different ways. What is surprising, and perhaps also unique in its degree to the fields we call science, is that such initial divergences should ever largely disappear. For they do disappear to a very considerable extent and then apparently once and for all. Furthermore, their disappearance is usually caused by the triumph of one of the pre-paradigm schools, which, because of its own characteristic beliefs and preconceptions, emphasized only some special part of the two sizable and inchoate pool of information, ~ Thomas S Kuhn, #NFDB
427:The distribution of wealth is one of today’s most widely discussed and controversial issues. But what do we really know about its evolution over the long term? Do the dynamics of private capital accumulation inevitably lead to the concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands, as Karl Marx believed in the nineteenth century? Or do the balancing forces of growth, competition, and technological progress lead in later stages of development to reduced inequality and greater harmony among the classes, as Simon Kuznets thought in the twentieth century? What do we really know about how wealth and income have evolved since the eighteenth century, and what lessons can we derive from that knowledge for the century now under way? ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
428:The Muslim has suffered successive stages of defeat. The first was his loss of domination in the world, to the advancing power of Russia and the West. The second was the undermining of his authority in his own country, through an invasion of foreign ideas and laws and ways of life and sometimes even foreign rulers or settlers, and the enfranchisement of native non-Muslim elements. The third—the last straw—was the challenge to his mastery in his own house, from emancipated women and rebellious children. It was too much to endure, and the outbreak of rage against these alien, infidel, and incomprehensible forces that had subverted his dominance, disrupted his society, and finally violated the sanctuary of his home was inevitable. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
429:This, I realized now watching Dienekes rally and tend to his men, was the role of the officer: to prevent those under this command, at all stages of battle--before, during and after--from becoming "possessed." To fire their valor when it flagged and rein in their fury when it threatened to take them out of hand. That was Dienekes' job. That was why he wore the transverse-crested helmet of an officer. His was not, I could see now, the heroism of an Achilles. He was not a superman who waded invulnerably into the slaughter, single-handedly slaying the foe by myriads. He was just a man doing a job. A job whose primary attribute was self-restraint and self-composure, not for his own sake, but for those whom he led by his example. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
430:Making that possible involved creating relationships with several partners who helped Medtronic accomplish customers’ jobs. “Through the assessment of Healthy Heart for All, Medtronic understood the need for partners in different stages of the patient care pathway who can be a strong support in removing the barriers to treatment access,” says Dasgupta. “In this case, partners with capabilities in financing, administration of loans, screening and counselling of patients played a major role. With programs like Healthy Heart for All, Medtronic is delivering greater value to patients, healthcare professionals and hospitals. And it is this value which brings true differentiation where product differentiation may not be easy to demonstrate. ~ Clayton M Christensen, #NFDB
431:Very early in my life it was too late. It was already too late when I was eighteen. Between eighteen and twenty-five my face took off in a new direction. I grew old at eighteen. I don't know if it's the same for everyone, I've never asked. But I believe I've heard of the way time can suddenly accelerate on people when they're going through even the most youthful and highly esteemed stages of life. My ageing was very sudden. I saw it spread over my features one by one, changing the relationship between them, making the eyes larger, the expression sadder, the mouth more final, leaving great creases in the forehead. But instead of being dismayed I watched this process with the same sort of interest I might have taken in the reading of a book. ~ Marguerite Duras, #NFDB
432:Speaking about time’s relentless passage, Powell’s narrator compares certain stages of experience to the game of Russian Billiards as once he used to play it with a long vanished girlfriend. A game in which, he says,
“...at the termination of a given passage of time...the hidden gate goes down...and all scoring is doubled. This is perhaps an image of how we live. For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected; so that before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity."
~ Anthony Powell,#NFDB
433:Van sealed the letter, found his Thunderbolt pistol in the place he had visualized, introduced one cartridge into the magazine, and translated it into its chamber. Then, standing before a closet mirror, he put the automatic to his head, at the point of the pterion, and pressed the comfortably concaved trigger. Nothing happened - or perhaps everything happened, and his destiny simply forked at that instant, as it probably does sometimes at night, especially in a strange bed, at stages of great happiness or great desolation, when we happen to die in our sleep, but continue our normal existence, with no perceptible break in the fakes serialization, on the following, neatly prepared morning, with a spurious past discreetly but firmly attached behind. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
434:We were strolling in the jungle that surrounds the Lilliputian volcanoes in the Middle Andamans. I found your mother stroking the trunk of a palm tree. It was a Corypha Macropoda in its final stages of life. Once it flowers, it dies. She asked me why it happened. It was how trees had evolved, I explained to her. Some had gone from producing hundreds of seeds with a diminished chance of survival to flowering only once but ensuring the seeds made it by giving them their best … Now I realize why she asked me that question. Your mother wanted me to know the answer. As a human being, I cannot look beyond life and death. But as a botanist, I see how limiting individual lifecycles can be to our understanding. Nature is a continuum. That is how it thrives. ~ Shubhangi Swarup, #NFDB
435:Considering the monotony and consequent insipidity of life one would find it unendurably tedious after any considerable length of time, were it not for the continual advance of knowledge and insight and the acquisition of even better and clearer understanding of all things, which is partly the fruit of experience, partly the result of the changes we ourselves undergo through the different stages of life by which our point of view is to a certain extent being continually altered, whereby things reveal to us sides we did not yet know. In this way, despite the decline in our mental powers, dies diem docet still holds indefatigably true and gives life an ever-renewed fascination, that what is identical continually appears as something new and different. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
436:I’ve learned there are no stages to grief. The famous stages of dying (denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance, etc.) apply to people who are dying, not grieving people. Grieving people don’t deny for more than a moment that their loved one has died. They don’t bargain with the universe; it’s too late for bargaining. And anger, acceptance, all the other so-called stages don’t come to a griever in stages. They wash over a griever, as though they were items of clothing in a washing machine, each rubbing and passing over the griever in turn, simultaneously, repeatedly. Anyone saying you are in a certain ‘stage’ of grieving, or, worse, that you are ‘supposed to be’ in a certain stage needs to be taken out and sh—well, needs to be nodded at and forgiven, I suppose. ~ Jim Beaver, #NFDB
437:One may take the line that metaphorical devices are inevitable in the early stages of any science and that although we may look with amusement today upon the “essences,” “forces,” “phlogistons,” and “ethers,” of the science of yesterday, these nevertheless were essential to the historical process. It would be difficult to prove or disprove this. However, if we have learned anything about the nature of scientific thinking, if mathematical and logical researches have improved our capacity to represent and analyze empirical data, it is possible that we can avoid some of the mistakes of adolescence. Whether Freud could have done so is past demonstrating, but whether we need similar constructs in the future prosecution of a science of behavior is a question worth considering. ~ B F Skinner, #NFDB
438:Discussion Questions 1. Have you ever lost someone you care about to serious illness? What is the best way to empathize and comfort those facing serious, life-threatening illness? How prepared do you feel to do and say the right thing when that time comes for someone in your life? 2. What do you think the author means when he says that we’ve “medicalized” mortality? Do you agree? Why do you think that has happened in our culture? How can we shift to a more humane, compassionate approach to mortality? 3. Have you ever seen anyone die or been with someone in the final stages of life? Can you describe that experience? How did the experience affect your wishes for the end of your own life? 4. What did you discover about the physiology of aging? What is your attitude toward aging? ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
439:Janner and Tink joined her and stared out at the sea, her song conjuring images of Anniera, feelings of home, of fire in the hearth. Then the song changed. It took on a sad tone, the notes bending upward like the croon of a lonely bird, and Janner knew Leeli was playing for Nugget. She poured her heart into the song and filled it with everything she felt. Suddenly, like a dream hovering at the front of his mind, Janner could see Nugget. The image swirled like a reflection in a pot of stirred water, gathering itself into clear, moving pictures of little Nugget running through the pasture, fetching a ball, wagging his tail as Leeli stooped to hand him a hogpig bone. The images hovered like smoke from a pipe, scene after beautiful scene of Nugget in all the stages of his life. ~ Andrew Peterson, #NFDB
440:The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity. They do not go the whole way. They stop in some of the intermediate stages of an hundred or a thousand years, and produce what was then done, as a rule for the present day. This is no authority at all. If we travel still farther into antiquity, we shall find a direct contrary opinion and practice prevailing; and if antiquity is to be authority, a thousand such authorities may be produced, successively contradicting each other; but if we proceed on, we shall at last come out right; we shall come to the time when man came from the hand of his Maker. What was he then? Man. Man was his high and only title, and a higher cannot be given him. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
441:To sum up: at various stages of embryonic development, and at various structural levels, we find different biochemical mechanisms, but analogue principles at work. At every stage and level the game is played according to fixed rules but with flexible strategies (although their flexibility is normally hidden from the eye and revealed only by the transplantation and grafting techniques of experimental embryology). The overall rules of the game are laid down in the complete set of instructions operative at any level at any time is triggered off by messages from the inter- and extra-cellular environment, which vary in character according to structural level and developmental stage: fertilizing agents, cytoplasmic feedbacks, direct-contact evocators, hormones, and other catalysts. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
442:Fukushima, Japan. The disaster involving the three General Electric–built reactors on the northeastern coast of Honshu followed a now familiar course, this time played out live on television: a loss of coolant led to reactor meltdown, a dangerous buildup of hydrogen gas, and several catastrophic explosions. No one was killed or injured by the immediate release of radiation, but three hundred thousand people were evacuated from the surrounding area, which will remain contaminated for decades to come. During the early stages of the emergency cleanup, it became clear that robots were incapable of operating in the highly radioactive environment inside the containment buildings of the plant. Japanese soldiers were sent in to do the work, in another Pyrrhic victory of bio-robots over technology. ~ Adam Higginbotham, #NFDB
443:Meghiya, practice the contemplations on death, compassion, impermanence, and the full awareness of breathing: “To overcome desire, practice the contemplation on a corpse, looking deeply at the nine stages of the body’s decay from the time the breathing ceases to the time the bones turn to dust. “To overcome anger and hatred, practice the contemplation on compassion. It illuminates the causes of anger and hatred within our own minds and in the minds of those who have precipitated it. “To overcome craving, practice the contemplation on impermanence, illuminating the birth and death of all things. “To overcome confusion and dispersion, practice the contemplation on the full awareness of breathing. “If you regularly practice these four contemplations, you will attain liberation and enlightenment. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
444:THREE STAGES OF MEDITATION There are three stages in meditation. The first is what is called Dharana, concentrating the mind upon an object. I try to concentrate my mind upon this glass, excluding every other object from my mind except this glass. But the mind is wavering. When it has become strong and does not waver so much, it is called Dhyana, meditation. And then there is a still higher state when the differentiation between the glass and myself is lost — Samadhi or absorption. The mind and the glass are identical. I do not see any difference. All the senses stop and all powers that have been working through other channels of other senses are focused in the mind. Then this glass is under the power of the mind entirely. This is to be realised. It is a tremendous play played by the Yogis. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
445:I pretended to be interested in their secret undertaking, but in fact I was very sorry about it. Although the two siblings had involved me by choosing me as their confidant, it was still an experience that I could enter only as witness: on that path Lila would do great things by herself, I was excluded. But above all, how, after our intense conversations about love and poetry, could she walk me to the door, as she was doing, far more absorbed in the atmosphere of excitement around a shoe?...What did I care about shoes. I still had, in my mind's eye, the most secret stages of that affair of violated trust, passion, poetry that became a book, and it was as if she and I had read a novel together, as if we had seen, there in the back of the shop and not in the parish hall on Sunday, a dramatic film. ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
446:The artist and the fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of self- confidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His faith is that humankind is advancing, however haltingly and imperfectly, toward a better world. The fundamentalist entertains no such notion. In his view, humanity has fallen from a higher state. The truth is not out there awaiting revelation; it has already been revealed. The word of God has been spoken and recorded by His prophet, be he Jesus, Muhammad, or Karl Marx. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
447:These thirty years, and more, that I've spent among exotic, barbaric, indomitable gods and goddesses, nourished on myths, obsessed by symbols, nursed and bewitched by so many images which have come down to me from those submerged worlds, today seem to me to be the stages of a long initiation. Each one of these divine figures, each of these myths or symbols, is connected to a danger that was confronted and overcome. How many times I was almost lost, gone astray in this labyrinth where I risked being killed... These were not only bits of knowledge acquired slowly and leisurely in books, but so many encounters, confrontations, and temptations. I realize perfectly well now all the dangers I skirted during this long quest, and, in the first place, the risk of forgetting that I had a goal... that I wanted to reach a 'center'. ~ Mircea Eliade, #NFDB
448:It seems to me that being psycho-analysed is essentially a process where one is forced back into infantilism and then rescued from it by crystallising what one learns into a sort of intellectual primitivism-one is forced back into myth, and folk lore and everything that belongs to the savage or undeveloped stages of society. For if I say to you: I recognise in that dream,such and such a myth; or in that emotion about my father, that folk-tale; or the atmosphere of that memory is the same as an English ballad-then you smile, you are satisfied. As far as you are concerned, I've gone beyond the childish, I've transmuted it and saved it, by embodying it in myth. But in fact all I do, or you do, is to fish among the childish memories. of an individual, and merge them with the art or ideas that belong to the childhood of a people. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
449:These are the four stages of love, and on each stage there will be a disappearance of fear. If sex happens beautifully, the body fear will disappear. The body will not be neurotic. Ordinarily—I have observed thousands of bodies—they are neurotic, bodies gone mad. Not fulfilled, not at home. If love happens, fear will disappear from the mind. You will have a life of freedom, at ease, at-homeness. No fear will come, no nightmares. If prayer happens, then fear completely disappears, because with prayer you become one—you start feeling a deep relationship with the whole. From the spirit, fear disappears; the fear of death disappears when you pray, never before it. And when you meditate, even fearlessness disappears. Fear disappears, fearlessness disappears. Nothing remains. Or, only the nothing remains. A vast purity, virginity, innocence. ~ Osho, #NFDB
450:The symptoms syphilis engendered worsened over time. In addition to the unsightly skin ulcers that pockmarked the body in the later stages of the disease, many victims endured paralysis, blindness, dementia, and “saddle nose,” a grotesque deformity that occurs when the bridge of the nose caves into the face. (Syphilis was so common that “no nose clubs” sprang up all over London. One newspaper reported that “an eccentric gentleman, having taken a fancy to see a large party of noseless persons, invited every one thus afflicted, whom he met in the streets, to dine on a certain day at a tavern, where he formed them into a brotherhood.” The man, who assumed the alias of Mr. Crampton for these clandestine parties, entertained his noseless friends every month for a year until his death, at which time the group “unhappily dissolved.”) ~ Lindsey Fitzharris, #NFDB
451:There are three stages of transcendental development in devotional service, which are technically called sthāyi-bhāva, anubhāva and mahābhāva. Continual perfect love of Godhead is called sthāyi-bhāva, and when it is performed in a particular type of transcendental relationship it is called anubhāva. But the stage of mahābhāva is visible amongst the personal pleasure potencies of the Lord. It is understood that the grandson of Diti, namely Prahlāda Mahārāja, would constantly meditate on the Lord and reiterate His activities. Because he would constantly remain in meditation, he would easily transfer himself to the spiritual world after quitting his material body. Such meditation is still more conveniently performed by chanting and hearing the holy name of the Lord. This is especially recommended in this Age of Kali. ~ A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhup da, #NFDB
452:On April 11, 1945, my father’s infantry company was attacked by German forces, and in the early stages of battle, heavy artillery fire led to eight casualties. According to the citation: “With complete disregard for his own safety, Private Pausch leaped from a covered position and commenced treating the wounded men while shells continued to fall in the immediate vicinity. So successfully did this soldier administer medical attention that all the wounded were evacuated successfully.” In recognition of this, my dad, then twenty-two years old, was issued the Bronze Star for valor. In the fifty years my parents were married, in the thousands of conversations my dad had with me, it had just never come up. And so there I was, weeks after his death, getting another lesson from him about the meaning of sacrifice—and about the power of humility. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
453:At that point, more than 15,000 women were dying each year from cervical cancer. The Pap smear had the potential to decrease that death rate by 70 percent or more, but there were two things standing in its way: first, many women - like Henrietta - simply didn't get the test; and, second, even when they did, few doctors knew how to interpret the results accurately, because they didn't know what various stages of cervical cancer looked like under a microscope. Some mistook cervical infections for cancer and removed a woman's entire reproductive tract when all she needed was antibiotics. Others mistook malignant changes for infection, sending women home with antibiotics only to have them return later, dying from metastasized cancer. And even when doctors correctly diagnosed precancerous changes, they often didn't know how those changes should be treated. ~ Rebecca Skloot, #NFDB
454:Once inside the hedge, the garden, though sleeping for the winter, nevertheless seemed to glimmer with hidden life. A winding flagstone path made its leisurely way to the door of the house, lined on both sides with tufts of sage, thyme, rosemary, and lavender, grayed with cold. In place of grass, the earth on either side of the path was a riot of plants in varying stages of hibernation and decay. To this side, the dried stalks of full-grown asparagus rustled together. In the far corner, their roots sunk into the wood of the house, an array of nightshades — tomato plants, dried and brown, the gnarled tangles of henbane and moonshade lying in wait for spring. The webbed vines overhead cast the garden in long blue shadow, blurred at the corners, hard to make out, and yet strangely the air inside the garden was not as bitingly cold as it was in the outside world. ~ Katherine Howe, #NFDB
455:Emotional events often attain a privileged status in memory. Cognitive neuroscientists have begun to elucidate the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying emotional retention advantages in the human brain. The amygdala is a brain structure that directly mediates aspects of emotional learning and facilitates memory operations in other regions, including the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. Emotion–memory interactions occur at various stages of information processing, from the initial encoding and consolidation of memory traces to their long-term retrieval. Recent advances are revealing new insights into the reactivation of latent emotional associations and the recollection of personal episodes from the remote past. ~ LaBar K.S.; Cabeza R. (2006). "Cognitive neuroscience of emotional memory". Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 7 (1): 54–64. doi:10.1038/nrn1825. PMID 16371950., #NFDB
456:If this idea is right, then the basis of harmony is successful prediction in the early stages of perception. (This process of prediction need not, and usually does not, involve conscious attention.) Such success is experienced as pleasure, or beauty. Conversely, unsuccessful prediction is a source of pain, or ugliness. A corollary is that by expanding our experience, and learning, we can come to hear harmonies that were previously hidden to us, and to remove sources of pain.
Historically, in Western music, the palette of acceptable tone combinations has expanded over time. Individuals can also learn, by exposure, to enjoy tone combinations that at first seem unpleasant. Indeed, if we are built to enjoy learning to make successful predictions, then predictions that come too easily will not yield the greatest possible pleasure, which should also bring in novelty. ~ Frank Wilczek,#NFDB
457:during the first and primitive stages of the history of our species there was a general centrifugal movement of peoples into distance, to all sides, with the various populations becoming increasingly separated, each developing its own applications and associated interpretations of the shared universal motifs; whereas, since we are all now being brought together again in this mighty present period of world transport and communication, those differences are fading. The old differences separating one system from another now are becoming less and less important, less and less easy to define. And what, on the contrary, is becoming more and more important is that we should learn to see through all the differences to the common themes that have been there all the while, that came into being with the first emergence of ancestral man from the animal levels of existence, and are with us still. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
458:Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability- and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually-let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don't try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,#NFDB
459:There aren’t just stages you randomly move through. No, you feel it all. You feel every single little part at all times, at every single point of the day. Sometimes, you move forward, sometimes, you move two steps back. It’s not a gradual progression, so everything is perfectly fine eventually. Because it’s not going to be fine. You’re never going to be fine. But, eventually, you might be okay with who you are as you find your way to breathe again. But there are no stages of grief. There’s just grief. Plain and simple. And there’s nothing simple about it. There is grief. There is loss. And there is you, finding a way to live through it and knowing that everything hurts around you. So, everything’s going to hurt. You’re going to be angry. You’re going to be sad. You’re going to be numb. You’re going to be all of it. And that’s okay. It’s okay to feel all of that. Or nothing. It’s just okay. ~ Carrie Ann Ryan, #NFDB
460:Spiritual depression presents itself in much the same way as clinical depression—but not quite. The marks of distinction are crucial, yet hard for the untrained to recognize. They make the difference between interpreting the source of depression as a problem that may require medication or as a process of transformation that is best served by reflection, discussion of the stages of the dark night, and understanding the nature of mystical prayer. I have met many people who have been treated for depression and other conditions when they were, in fact, in the deep stages of a spiritual crisis. Without the proper support, that crisis becomes misdirected into a problem with relationships, a problem with one’s childhood, or a chronic malaise. Spiritual crises are now a very real part of our spectrum of health challenges and we need to acknowledge them with the same authority as we do clinical depression. ~ Caroline Myss, #NFDB
461:The artist and the fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of self-confidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His faith is that humankind is advancing, however haltingly and imperfectly, toward a better world. The fundamentalist entertains no such notion. In his view, humanity has fallen from a higher state. The truth is not out there awaiting revelation; it has already been revealed. The word of God has been spoken and recorded by His prophet, be he Jesus, Muhammad, or Karl Marx. Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
462:For him morality was neither conformism nor philosophic wisdom, but living the infinite fullness of possibilities. He believed in morality’s capacity for intensification, in stages of moral experience, and not merely, as most people do, in stages of moral understanding, as if it were something cut-and-dried for which people were just not pure enough. He believed in morality without believing in any specific moral system. Morality is generally understood to be a sort of police regulations for keeping life in order, and since life does not obey even these, they come to look as if they were really impossible to live up to and accordingly, in this sorry way, not really an ideal either. But morality must not be reduced to this level. Morality is imagination. This was what he wanted to make Agathe see. And his second point was: Imagination is not arbitrary. Once imagination is left to caprice, there is a price to pay. ~ Robert Musil, #NFDB
463:Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data. History of science indicates that, particularly in the early developmental stages of a new paradigm, it is not even very difficult to invent such alternates. But that invention of alternates is just what scientists seldom undertake except during the pre-paradigm stage of their science's development and at very special occasions during its subsequent evolution. So long as the tools a paradigm supplies continue to prove capable of solving the problems it defines, science moves fastest and penetrates most deeply through confident employment of those tools. The reason is clear. As in manufacture so in science-retooling is an extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it. The significance of crises is the indication they provide that an occasion for retooling has arrived. ~ Thomas S Kuhn, #NFDB
464:The Priestess
Her skin was pale, and her eyes were dark, and her hair was dyed black. She went on a daytime talk show and proclaimed herself a vampire queen. She showed the cameras her dentally crafted fangs, and brought on ex-lovers who, in various stages of embarrassment, admitted that she had drawn their blood, and that she drank it.
"You can be seen in a mirror, though?" asked the talk show hostess. She was the richest woman in America, and had got that way by bringing the freaks and the hurt and the lost out in front of her cameras and showing their pain to the world.
The studio audience laughed.
The woman seemed slightly affronted. "Yes. Contrary to what people may think, vampires can be seen in mirrors and on television cameras."
"Well, that's one thing you finally got right, honey," said the hostess of the daytime talk show. But she put her hand over her microphone as she said it, and it was never broadcast. ~ Neil Gaiman,#NFDB
465:in Solitude; also James Martin’s introduction to Merton and others, Becoming Who You Are), Henri Nouwen (The Inner Voice of Love), Gregory Mayers (Listen to the Desert), Rowan Williams (Tokens of Trust), J. Keith Miller (Compelled to Control) and David Benner (Spirituality and the Awakening Self). Let me also include here Frederica Matthews-Green (The Jesus Prayer and At the Corner of East and Now) for gentle and compelling introductions to Eastern Orthodoxy, a direction to which I never once nodded throughout my entire seminary career, and James Fowler’s classic Stages of Faith. Others I want to mention are M. Holmes Hartshorne (The Faith to Doubt) and Daniel Taylor (The Myth of Certainty and The Skeptical Believer). I could go on, but each of these were one ah-ha moment after another, encouraging in me a different perspective on what the life of faith can look like, which I found both unsettling and also healing and freeing. These books have become old friends. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
466:Why did you revive me?” Alecto repeated.
“Well… uh, well….” Mandy hesitated, her voice full of sudden misery. “They say there are five stages of grief, you know… five stages. denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Not in any particular order. Anyhow, I denied your death, I was angry about it, I bargained with Mearth to try and get her to un-bury your site and I was depressed about the whole ordeal. One thing I just froze up on though was acceptance. I just couldn’t accept your death. It was really cruel the way you died, and I missed you so much… Mearth, my parents, the cops, Dr. Pottie, they all thought I was crazy. When people think you’re crazy, that label automatically dehumanizes you, because people can use it to discredit everything you say with, “oh, pay no mind to her, she’s just this crazy lunatic with a dead imaginary friend.” I just wanted to do something, anything to make it all go away, and I decided that I wanted to revive you. ~ Rebecca McNutt,#NFDB
467:The people thrown into other cultures go through something of the anguish of the butterfly, whose body must disintegrate and reform more than once in its life cycle. In her novel “Regeneration,” Pat Barker writes of a doctor who “knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cat of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.” But the butterfly is so fit an emblem of the human soul that its name in Greek is “psyche,” the word for soul. We have not much language to appreciate this phase of decay, this withdrawal, this era of ending that must precede beginning. Nor of the violence of the metamorphosis, which is often spoken of as though it were as graceful as a flower blooming. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
468:Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,#NFDB
469:some patients they experience quite definite symptoms of depression. The available evidence indicates that fish oils that have been exposed to the air may develop toxic substances. My work and that of others with experimental animals has demonstrated that paralysis can be produced readily by over-dosing. Serious structural damage can be done to hearts and kidneys. I have reported this in considerable detail. (4) My investigations have shown that when a high vitamin natural cod liver oil is used in conjunction with a high vitamin butter oil the mixture is much more efficient than either alone.4 This makes it possible to use very small doses. Except in the late stages of pregnancy I do not prescribe more than half a teaspoonful with each of three meals a day. This procedure appears to obviate completely the undesirable effects. As stated elsewhere fish oils should be stored in small containers to avoid exposure to the air. Rancid fats and oils destroy vitamins A and E, (5) the former in the stomach ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
470:as a man comes to know God in the unitive vision, he knows in that some moment, his own true Self. This intriguing fact is expressed most succinctly in a passage from the ancient Indian epic, the Ramayana; in it, Rama, who represents the Godhead incarnate, asks his servant, Hanuman, “How do you regard me?” And Hanuman replies: dehabhavena daso’smi jivabhavena twadamshakah atmabhave twamevaham (When I identify with the body, I am Thy servant; When I identify with the soul, I am a part of Thee; But when I identify with the Self, I am truly Thee.)1 These three attitudes represent progressively subtler stages of self-identification: from the identification with the body, to identification with the soul, until, finally, one comes to know the Divine, and thereby one’s eternal Self. While each of these three relational attitudes finds expression as the prevailing attitude within various individual religious traditions, they are essentially representative of the viewpoint from these different stages of self-awareness. ~ Swami Abhayananda, #NFDB
471:Pike said, “What were they saying?” “Couldn’t hear, but it’s an easy guess. The nephew here just lost two hundred thousand and a boatload of workers. They probably weren’t talking about a promotion.” Their next stop was a large two-level strip mall on Vermont. The strip mall was in the final stages of being remodeled, with a club and a restaurant taking up most of the upper level and what looked like another bar and a karaoke lounge on the lower level. A large sign in Korean script and English hung across the front of the karaoke lounge: OPENING SOON. Stone said, “Y’see? This is what I was talking about. You can’t open for business without the right staff.” I liked it. Under construction was good. Opening soon was good. The more pressure Park felt to recover his people, the more desperately he would look for ways to do so. We stopped at two more strip malls and a large commercial building on Western Avenue. Park met people at each site, and toured the properties as if checking their progress, but no one looked happy, especially Park. One ~ Robert Crais, #NFDB
472:Students who are beginning to struggle in math and science often look at others who are intellectual racehorses and tell themselves they have to keep up. Then they don’t give themselves the extra time they need to truly master the material, and they fall still further behind. As a result of this uncomfortable and discouraging situation, students end up unnecessarily dropping out of math and science. Take a step back and look dispassionately at your strengths and weaknesses. If you need more time to learn math and science, that’s simply the reality. If you’re in high school, try to arrange your schedule to give yourself the time you need to focus on the more difficult materials, and limit these materials to manageable proportions. If you’re in college, try to avoid a full load of heavy courses, especially if you are working on the side. A lighter load of math and science courses can, for many, be the equivalent of a heavy load of other types of courses. Especially in the early stages of college, avoid the temptation to keep up with your peers. ~ Barbara Oakley, #NFDB
473:The ADA takes a conservative stand, leaving out many well-documented health benefits attributable to reducing the consumption of animal products. Here are the three key sentences from the summary of their summary of the relevant scientific literature. One: Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for all individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes. TWO: Vegetarian diets tend to be lower in saturated fat and cholesterol, and have higher levels of dietary fiber, magnesium and potassium, vitamins C and E, folate, carotenoids, flavonoids, and other phytochemicals. Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) “meet and exceed requirements” for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
474:Sleepwalking is a parasomnia, a strange behavior that occurs during sleep. Over the years, sleep experts have identified two main stages of sleep by recording brain waves—rapid eye movement (REM) and non–rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep. Sleepwalking usually occurs after an abrupt and incomplete spontaneous arousal from the non-REM sleep that occurs in the first couple of hours of the night, turning one into a mobile sleeper. Trying to waken sleepwalkers is fruitless and can be dangerous, since the sleepwalker may feel threatened by physical contact and respond violently. Normally, non-REM sleep shifts into REM sleep, during which there is a loss of muscle tone, preventing motor behavior during REM sleep. The majority of sleepwalking episodes tend to be relatively harmless and usually make for a good story as told by the witness, often beginning with “You won’t believe what you did last night!” And if you are the sleepwalker you don’t believe it, because you will have no memory of your midnight shenanigans. Most parasomniac behaviors appear ~ Michael S Gazzaniga, #NFDB
475:Indeed, the capacity to tolerate uncertainty is a prerequisite for the profession. Though the public may believe that therapists guide patients systematically and sure-handedly through predictable stages of therapy to a foreknown goal, such is rarely the case: instead, as these stories bear witness, therapists frequently wobble, improvise, and grope for direction. The powerful temptation to achieve certainty through embracing an ideological school and a tight therapeutic system is treacherous: such belief may block the uncertain and spontaneous encounter necessary for effective therapy. This encounter, the very heart of psychotherapy, is a caring, deeply human meeting between two people, one (generally, but not always, the patient) more troubled than the other. Therapists have a dual role: they must both observe and participate in the lives of their patients. As observer, one must be sufficiently objective to provide necessary rudimentary guidance to the patient. As participant, one enters into the life of the patient and is affected and sometimes changed by the encounter. ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
476:the supreme third period of greater divine equality :::
If we can pass through these two stages of the inner change without being arrested or fixed in either, we are admitted to a greater divine equality which is capable of a spiritual ardour and tranquil passion of delight, a rapturous, all-understanding and all-possessing equality of the perfected soul, an intense and even wideness and fullness of its being embracing all things. This is the supreme period and the passage to it is through the joy of a total self-giving to the Divine and to the universal Mother. For strength is then crowned by a happy mastery, peace deepens into bliss, the possession of the divine calm is uplifted and made the ground for the possession of the divine movement. But if this greater perfection is to arrive, the soul's impartial high-seatedness looking down from above on the flux of forms and personalities and movements and forces must be modified and change into a new sense of strong and calm submission and a powerful and intense surrender. ...
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Equality and the Annihilation of Ego,#NFDB
477:By one estimate, approximately 20 billion synapses are pruned every day between childhood and early adolescence. It’s survival of the busiest. Like a cable TV subscription canceled because nobody’s watching, synaptic connections that aren’t used weaken and vanish. Here is where the power of genes falls off rapidly: genes may lead neurons to make their initial, tentative connections and control the order in which different regions of the brain (and thus physical and mental capacities) come on line, but it’s the environmental inputs acting on the plasticity of the young nervous system that truly determine the circuits that will power the brain. Thus, from the earliest stages of development, laying down brain circuits is an active rather than a passive process, directed by the interaction between experience and the environment. The basic principle is this: genetic signals play a large role in the initial structuring of the brain. The ultimate shape of the brain, however, is the outcome of an ongoing active process that occurs where lived experience meets both the inner and the outer environment. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
478:The essential point about meditation is this: to get anywhere in meditation you need to be able to really steady the mind and be present. That’s just all there is to it and it is largely a question of just doing it. There is an important shift that happens in people’s practice when they really make the commitment to developing concentration and follow through with it. Until one does this, not much is likely to happen in one’s meditative practice! If you decide to do a concentration practice, stay on that object like a rabid dog until you have enough stability and skill to let the mind rest on it naturally. The first formal goal when training in concentration is to attain something called “access concentration,” meaning the ability to stay consistently with your chosen object with relative ease to the general exclusion of distractions. This is the basic attainment that allows you to access the higher stages of concentration and also to begin the path of insight (the third training), so make attaining access concentration your first goal in your meditative practice. You will know when you have it. ~ Daniel M Ingram, #NFDB
479:Earlier I described the component stages of sleep. Here, I reveal the attendant virtues of each. Ironically, most all of the "new," twenty-first century discoveries regarding sleep were delightfully summarized in 1611 in Macbeth, act two, scene two, where Shakespeare prophetically states that sleep is "the chief nourisher in life's feast."* Perhaps, with less highfalutin language, your mother offered similar advice, extolling the benefits of sleep in healing emotional wounds, helping you learn and remember, gifting you with the solutions to challenging problems, and preventing sickness and infection. Science, it seems has simply been evidential, providing proof of everything your mother, and apparently Shakespeare, knew about the wonders of sleep.
----------------------------------
*"Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, source labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast,--"
William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Folger Shakespeare Library (New York: Simon & Schuster; first edition, 2003). ~ Matthew Walker,#NFDB
480:After death, you go on a very long way, that is going up. As you go, little by little, your features change. Your nose and ears retract in the flesh of your face like the little legs of a shellfish. Your fingers retract in your palm, your hands rebsorb in your shoulders. The same, your feet retract to your hips and you don’t walk anymore, you just float along a red brick wall, on which you leave your shadow like a streched disk.
You are so round, that you become translucent and begin to see on all sides at once. While we are alive, we see through a postal box, but after death, we see around, with all our skin.
Floating and looking at the the brick wall closer and closer, we get to a round place. There, in the middle, there is a cell, for we are in a mother’s womb. We enter the cell, and as the stages of our birth take place, we can see through the eyes of all beings, of the flea, of the rabbit, of the cat, the dog, the monkey, the man.. and with a little bit of luck, we can see through the eyes of the wonderful beings that follow the human being.
A dead man is now looking at you through my eyes. ~ Mircea C rt rescu,#NFDB
481:Is it…is it as bad as I’m remembering? I mean, does it really look like we’re having sex? Be honest.” I open my eyes.
Margot’s peering at it, head tilted. “No, it really doesn’t. It just looks like…”
“Like a hot makeout,” Chris supplies.
“Right,” Margot agrees. “Just a hot makeout.”
“You guys swear?”
In unison they say, “We swear.”
“Kitty?” I ask.
She bites her lip. “It looks like sex to me, but I’m the only one here besides you who’s never had sex, so what do I know?” Margot lets out a gasp. “Sorry, I read your diary.” Margot swats at her, and Kitty crawls away fast like a crab.
I take a deep breath. “Okay. I can live with that. I mean, who cares about a hot makeout, right? That’s just part of life, right? And you can barely even see my face? You’d have to really know me to know it was me. My full name isn’t on here anywhere, just Lara Jean. There must be a ton of Lara Jeans, right? Right?”
Margot gives me an impressed nod. “I’ve never seen anybody move through the five stages of grief that fast. You really do have an incredible bounce-back.”
“Thank you,” I say, feeling a little proud. ~ Jenny Han,#NFDB
482:In Emile the child was to be kept from books-except one, Robinson Crusoe, which Rousseau called "the happiest treatise of natural education." "Children begin by being helped, end by being served," he warned. They become masters, using their tears as prayers. The teacher must guide without seeming to, must never use corporal punishment, but must provide situations in which the child can learn for himself. The teacher, too, must know the stages of a child's development and introduce subjects only when the child is emotionally prepared. At the age of twelve the pupil must learn a useful trade. "Emile must work like a peasant and think like a philosopher in order not to be as lazy as a savage." Not until the age of eighteen should Emile turn to moral science and religion, and then he can choose his religion. For "at an age when all is mystery there can be no mysteries properly speaking." The child must have compassion, "love those who have it, but fly from the pious believers." But also shun the philosophers ("angry wolves"), who are "ardent missionaries of atheism and very imperious dogmatics who will not endure without fury that one might think differently from them. ~ Daniel J Boorstin, #NFDB
483:Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery. On the other hand—and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand—once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol, the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous, #NFDB
484:Now, there were large elements of coercion even in the most gentle moments of the Egyptian rule, and there were many joyful expressions of human co-operation and intellectual and emotional enrichment even under the most ruthless of totalitarian monarchs in Mesopotamia. In both cases, many of the higher functions of the city were promoted and enlarged. Neither Egyptian nor Mesopotamian form, then, was pure; for the more co-operative kind of local grouping had features that raised disturbing parallels with insect societies in their tendency to fixation and self-stultification; while in the communities most lamed by neurotic anxieties and irrational aggressive compulsions, there was nevertheless a sufficient cultivation of the more positive aspects of life to create a system of law and order, with reciprocal obligations, and to develop some degree of morality for insiders, even though a growing number of these insiders were slaves, captured in war, or remained the cowed inhabitants of villages compelled under threat of starvation to labor like slaves. So much for the forces that in the early stages of civilization brought the city into existence. We shall soon make a provisional appraisal of the cultural results. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
485:Christianity has thus passed through many stages of its earthly life, and yet has hardly reached the period of full manhood in Christ Jesus. During this long succession of centuries it has outlived the destruction of Jerusalem, the dissolution of the Roman empire, fierce persecutions from without, and heretical corruptions from within, the barbarian invasion, the confusion of the dark ages, the papal tyranny, the shock of infidelity, the ravages of revolution, the attacks of enemies and the errors of friends, the rise and fall of proud kingdoms, empires, and republics, philosophical systems, and social organizations without number. And, behold, it still lives, and lives in greater strength and wider extent than ever; controlling the progress of civilization, and the destinies of the world; marching over the ruins of
human wisdom and folly, ever forward and onward; spreading silently its heavenly blessings from generation to generation, and from country to country, to the ends of the earth. It can never die; it will never see the decrepitude of old age; but, like its divine founder, it will live in the unfading freshness of self-renewing youth and the unbroken vigor of manhood to the end of time, and will outlive time itself. ~ Philip Schaff,#NFDB
486:While there, I was somewhat surprised to learn that our next foray into space would include an orbiter with wings and with wheels that could land on a runway, as well as a booster, also with wings and wheels to land on a runway. The program had generated great interest. At the meeting, at least seven aerospace manufacturers touted their rockets and boosters on which they were already working. They had models built in 1970 regarding the seven configurations and stages of the program to follow Apollo. Today, we would be delighted to have a fully reusable orbiter to take the crew only, a booster to get them there, and then a return to Earth for both of them. We’d love to have that. Why don’t we have that? Because of a grave design flaw. When I studied the models, I observed that the boosters in the models had windows. That was a surprise to me. After all, why would you want windows in a booster with nobody in it? I was informed that a crew of two astronauts would travel inside the booster to the space station, and then return in the booster to land back on Earth. I worried about the crew in the booster during launch and said so. I thought it was unwise because of the expense, but even more so because of the danger to the astronauts. ~ Buzz Aldrin, #NFDB
487:The Illusory Self
I am composed of body and soul, I seem to have mind, reason, sense, yet I find none of them my own. For where was my body prior to my birth, and whither will it go when I have departed? Where are the various states produced by the life stages of an illusory self? Where is the newborn babe, the child, the boy, the pubescent, the stripling, the bearded youth, the lad, the full-grown man? Whence came the soul, whither will it go, how long will it be our mate? Can we tell its essential nature? When did we acquire it? Prior to our birth? But we were not then in existence. What of it after death? But then we who are embodied, compounds endowed with quality, shall be no more, but shall hasten to our rebirth, to be with the unbodied, without composition and without quality. But now, inasmuch as we are alive, we are the dominated rather than the rulers, known rather than knowing. The soul knows us, though unknown by us, and imposes commands we are obliged to obey as wervants their mistress. And when it will, it will transact its divorce in court and depart, leaving our home desolate of life. If we press it to remain, it will dissolve our relationship. So subtle is its nature that it furnishes no handle to the body. ~ Philo of Alexandria,#NFDB
488:ACCORDING TO SCIENTISTS, THERE ARE three stages of love: lust, attraction, and attachment. And, it turns out, each of the stages is orchestrated by chemicals—neurotransmitters—in the brain. As you might expect, lust is ruled by testosterone and estrogen. The second stage, attraction, is governed by dopamine and serotonin. When, for example, couples report feeling indescribably happy in each other’s presence, that’s dopamine, the pleasure hormone, doing its work. Taking cocaine fosters the same level of euphoria. In fact, scientists who study both the brains of new lovers and cocaine addicts are hard-pressed to tell the difference. The second chemical of the attraction phase is serotonin. When couples confess that they can’t stop thinking about each other, it’s because their serotonin level has dropped. People in love have the same low serotonin levels as people with OCD. The reason they can’t stop thinking about each other is that they are literally obsessed. Oxytocin and vasopressin control the third stage: attachment or long-term bonding. Oxytocin is released during orgasm and makes you feel closer to the person you’ve had sex with. It’s also released during childbirth and helps bond mother to child. Vasopressin is released postcoitally. ~ Nicola Yoon, #NFDB
489:It was 1977. Bob Marley was in a foreign studio, recovering from an assassin’s ambush and singing: “Many more will have to suffer. Many more will have to die. Don’t ask me why.” Bantu Stephen Biko was shackled, naked and comatose in the back of a South African police Land Rover. The Baader-Meinhof gang lay in suicide pools in a German prison. The Khmer Rouge filled their killing fields. The Weather Underground and the Young Lords Party crawled toward the final stages of violent implosion. In London, as in New York City, capitalism’s crisis left entire blocks and buildings abandoned, and the sudden appearance of pierced, mohawked, leather-jacketed punks on Kings Road set off paroxysms of hysteria. History behaved as if reset to year zero. In the Bronx, Herc’s time was passing. But the new culture that had arisen around him had captured the imagination of a new breed of youths in the Bronx. Herc had stripped down and let go of everything, save the most powerful basic elements—the rhythm, the motion, the voice, the name. In doing so, he summoned up a spirit that had been there at Congo Square and in Harlem and on Wareika Hill. The new culture seemed to whirl backward and forward—a loop of history, history as loop—calling and responding, leaping, spinning, renewing. ~ Jeff Chang, #NFDB
490:Behind the picture of fresh human possibilities I have been drawing all through 'The Myth of the Machine' is a profound truth to which almost a century ago William James gave expression. "When from our present advanced standpoint," he observed, "we look back upon past stages of human thought, we are amazed that a universe which appears to us of so vast and mysterious a complication should ever have seemed to anyone so little and plain a thing....There is nothing in the spirit and principles of science that need hinder science from dealing successfully with a world in which personal forces are the starting point of new effects. The only form of thing we directly encounter, the only experience that we concretely have, is our own personal life. The only complete category of our thinking, our professors of philosophy tell us, is the abstract elements of that. And this systematic denial on science's part of the personality as a a condition of events, this rigorous belief that in its own essential and innermost nature our world is a strictly impersonal world, may conceivably, as the whirligig of time goes round, prove to be the very defect that our descendants will be most surprised at in our boasted science, the omission that to their eyes will most tend to make it look perspectiveless and short. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
491:The diamond doors flew open. I blinked in disbelief at the transformation within. The tent was no longer of silk but flesh (speckled and pink with spoiled blood); the feast was not a feast, but, rather, on long tables inside, numerous human forms were stretched out, in various stages of flaying; the host was no king, no Christ, but a beast, bloody-handed and long-fanged, wearing a sulfur-colored robe, bits of innards speckling it. Visible therein were three women and a bent-backed old man, bearing long ropes of (their own) intestines (terrible!), but most terrible of all was the way they screeched with joy as my funeral-suited friend was dragged in among them, and the way that poor fellow kept smiling, as if attempting to ingratiate himself with his captors, listing the many charitable things he had done back in Pennsylvania, and the numerous good people who would vouch for him, especially in the vicinity of Wilkes-Barre, if only they might be summoned, even as he was wrestled over to the flaying table by several escort-beings apparently constituted entirely of fire, such that, when they grabbed him (their searing touch instantaneously burning away his funeral suit), his pain was so great that he could no longer struggle or move at all, except his head turned briefly in my direction, and his eyes (horror-filled) met mine. ~ George Saunders, #NFDB
492:Cultures are organisms," Spengler explains, "and world-history is their collective biography." Like any other vital organism, then, each culture goes through the stages of youth, maturity, and decline. "Culture is the prime phenomenon of all past and future world-history." "Every Culture has its own Civilization...The Civilization is the inevitable destiny of the Culture....Civilizations are the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanity is capable. They are a conclusion, the thing-become succeeding the thing-becoming, death following life, rigidity following expansion, intellectual age and the stone-built, petrifying world-city following mother-earth and the spiritual childhood of Doric and Gothic. They are an end, irrevocable, yet by inward necessity reached again and again." Thus, while the culture is a period of ebullient creativity, the civilization that inevitably follows is a period of reflection, organization, and search for material comfort and convenience. For example, classical Greece was the culture; imperial Rome the civilization. From the beauties of Greek poetry to the imperialism of Roman law, we now live in the civilization of Western ("Faustian") culture and cannot avoid the consequences. Among these Spengler foresaw the "megalopolis," the city of faceless masses, the omnipotence of money, and a new Caesarism. ~ Daniel J Boorstin, #NFDB
493:Both women were mothers of children caught up in mind control cover-up, one of which paralleled Kelly’s and my case. She, too, had volumes of documents and evidences whereby it was inexcusable that justice had not prevailed. The other mother conveyed a story that touched me so deeply it undoubtedly will continue to motivate me with reverberating passion forever. This mother was very weak from the final stages of cancer and chemotherapy, and tears slid down her pale gray cheeks as she told me her story. When she reported sexual abuse of her three daughters, the local court system took custody of them. The children appeared dissociative identity disordered from their ordeal, yet were reportedly denied therapy and placed in Foster care “since the mother was dying anyway.” When she finally was granted brief visitation with her precious daughters, they looked dazed and robotic with no memory of her or their sexual abuse. Mind control was apparent to this mother, and she struggled to give voice to their plight to no avail. She explained how love and concern for her children had kept her alive far longer than her doctors thought possible. She embraced me and said, “Now I can die in peace knowing that you are out there talking, raising awareness with the same passion for justice and love for children that I have. Thank you. Please keep talking. Please remember my daughters. ~ Cathy O Brien, #NFDB
494:the fourth aid, time, kala :::
The sadhaka who has all these aids is sure of his goal. Even a fall will be for him only a means of rising and death a passage towards fulfilment. For once on this path, birth and death become only processes in the development of his being and the stages of his journey.
Time is the remaining aid needed for the effectivity of the process. Time presents itself to human effort as an enemy or a friend, as a resistance, a medium or an instrument. But always it is really the instrument of the soul.
Time is a field of circumstances and forces meeting and working out a resultant progression whose course it measures. To the ego it is a tyrant or a resistance, to the Divine an instrument. Therefore, while our effort is personal, Time appears as a resistance, for it presents to us all the obstruction of the forces that conflict with our own. When the divine working and the personal are combined in our consciousness, it appears as a medium and a condition. When the two become one, it appears as a servant and instrument.
The ideal attitude of the sadhaka towards Time is to have an endless patience as if he had all eternity for his fulfilment and yet to develop the energy that shall realise now and with an ever-increasing mastery and pressure of rapidity till it reaches the miraculous instantaneousness of the supreme divine Transformation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids,#NFDB
495:The back door closed as Megan came around the house, and she saw Finn cross the yard and head into the toolshed again. Megan wheeled her bike over to the side wall and propped it up with the others. She paused for a moment, listening. There was no noise. Nothing. What was he doing in there?
God, I really hope it doesn’t involve a stack of Playboys or something, Megan thought, grimacing.
Still, even with that disgusting thought in her mind, she couldn’t help giving in to her curiosity. Besides, she was supposed to be immersing. Part of that was finding out what guys did when they were by themselves in a toolshed, right?
Bracing herself, Megan walked over to the door and pulled it open. Finn whirled around, his eyes wide, and stared at her. He was wearing a blue T-shirt that read Good Boys Vote and it was dotted with fingerprints of purple paint. His hair was a little more mussed than usual.
“Okay, life flashing before my eyes,” he said, letting out a breath. “You scared the crap outta me.”
“Sorry,” Megan said.
Something in her mind told her that she should just back out of the room, but she was too stunned to move. Finn was not, thank goodness, doing anything unsavory. He was holding a paint palette and a brush and standing in front of a canvas. Around him, behind him, on the floor, and leaning against the walls were dozens of other canvases, all in various stages of completion. ~ Kate Brian,#NFDB
496:The only acceptable hobby, throughout all stages of life, is cookery. As a child: adorable baked items. Twenties: much appreciated spag bol and fry-ups. Thirties and forties: lovely stuff with butternut squash and chorizo from the Guardian food section. Fifties and sixties: beef wellington from the Sunday Telegraph magazine. Seventies and eighties: back to the adorable baked items. Perfect. The only teeny tiny downside of this hobby is that I HATE COOKING.
Don't get me wrong; I absolutely adore the eating of the food. It's just the awful boring, frightening putting together of it that makes me want to shove my own fists in my mouth. It's a lovely idea: follow the recipe and you'll end up with something exactly like the pretty picture in the book, only even more delicious. But the reality's rather different. Within fifteen minutes of embarking on a dish I generally find myself in tears in the middle of what appears to be a bombsite, looking like a mentally unstable art teacher in a butter-splattered apron, wondering a) just how I am supposed to get hold of a thimble and a half of FairTrade hazelnut oil (why is there always the one impossible-to-find recipe ingredient? Sesame paste, anyone?) and b) just how I managed to get flour through two closed doors onto the living-room curtains, when I don't recall having used any flour and oh-this-is-terrible-let's-just-go-out-and-get-a-Wagamama's-and-to-hell-with-the-cost, dammit. ~ Miranda Hart,#NFDB
497:More or less the same can be said for Art Therapy, which is organized infantilism. Our class was run by a delirious young woman with a fixed, indefatigable
smile, who was plainly trained at a school offering courses in Teaching Art to the
Mentally Ill; not even a teacher of very young retarded children could have been
compelled to bestow, without deliberate instruction, such orchestrated chuckles
and coos. Unwinding long rolls of slippery mural paper, she would tell us to take
our crayons and make drawings illustrative of themes that we ourselves had chosen. For example: My House. In humiliated rage I obeyed, drawing a square, with a
door and four cross-eyed windows, a chimney on top issuing forth a curlicue of
smoke. She showered me with praise, and as the weeks advanced and my health
improved so did my sense of comedy. I began to dabble happily in colored modeling clay, sculpting at first a horrid little green skull with bared teeth, which our
teacher pronounced a splendid replica of my depression. I then proceeded through
intermediate stages of recuperation to a rosy and cherubic head with a “Have-a-
Nice-Day” smile. Coinciding as it did with the time of my release, this creation truly
overjoyed my instructress (whom I’d become fond of in spite of myself), since, as
she told me, it was emblematic of my recovery and therefore but one more example
of the triumph over disease by Art Therapy. ~ William Styron,#NFDB
498:Joint-stock companies could be similarly flexible. “The absence of close control by the British crown in the early stages of colonization,” Elliott points out, left considerable latitude for the evolution of those forms of government that seemed most appropriate to the people actively involved in the process of overseas enterprise and settlement—the financial backers of the enterprise and the colonists themselves—as long as they operated within the framework of their royal charter. In contrast to Spain’s “new world” colonies—and to the territories that France, more recently, had claimed (but barely settled) along the banks of the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers—British America “was a society whose political and administrative institutions were more likely to evolve from below than to be imposed from above.” 10 That made it a hodgepodge, but also a complex adaptive system. Such systems thrive, theorists tell us, from the need to respond frequently—but not too frequently—to the unforeseen. Controlled environments encourage complacency, making it hard to cope when controls break down, as they sooner or later must. Constant disruptions, however, prevent recuperation: nothing’s ever healthy. There’s a balance, then, between integrative and disintegrative processes in the natural world—an edge of chaos, so to speak—where adaptation, especially self-organization, tends to occur. 11 New political worlds work similarly. ~ John Lewis Gaddis, #NFDB
499:According to scientists, there are three stages of love: lust, attraction, and attachment. And, it turns out, each of the stages is orchestrated by chemicals—neurotransmitters—in the brain.
As you might expect, lust is ruled by testosterone and estrogen.
The second stage, attraction, is governed by dopamine and serotonin. When, for example, couples report feeling indescribably happy in each other’s presence, that’s dopamine, the pleasure hormone, doing its work.
Taking cocaine fosters the same level of euphoria. In fact, scientists who study both the brains of new lovers and cocaine addicts are hard-pressed to tell the difference.
The second chemical of the attraction phase is serotonin. When couples confess that they can’t stop thinking about each other, it’s because their serotonin level has dropped. People in love have the same low serotonin levels as people with OCD. The reason they can’t stop thinking about each other is that they are literally obsessed.
Oxytocin and vasopressin control the third stage: attachment or long-term bonding. Oxytocin is released during orgasm and makes you feel closer to the person you’ve had sex with. It’s also released during childbirth and helps bond mother to child. Vasopressin is released postcoitally.
Natasha knows these facts cold. Knowing them helped her get over Rob’s betrayal. So she knows: love is just chemicals and coincidence.
So why does Daniel feel like something more? ~ Nicola Yoon,#NFDB
500:There's a characteristically brilliant Peanuts strip which opens with Linus sitting on the living-room floor, anxiously clutching his mouth. Lucy enters and asks what's wrong. "I'm aware of my tongue," he explains. "It's an awful feeling! Every now and then I become aware that I have a tongue inside my mouth, and then it starts to feel lumped up... I cant's help it... I can't put it out of my mind... I keep thinking about where my tongue would be if I weren't thinking about it, and then I can feel it sort of pressing against my teeth."
Loudly declaring this the dumbest thing she's ever heard, Lucy scowls away. But a few steps down the corridor, she stops dead in her tracks. She clutches her own mouth. Suddenly she's aware of her tongue too. She runs back and chases him round the room, shouting, "You blockhead!" with her gigantic booming gob.
Occasionally, late at night, while I'm trying to sleep and failing, I experience someting similar - except instead of being aware of my tongue, I'm aware of my entire body, the entire world, and the whole of reality itself. It's like waking from a dream, or a light going on, or a giant "YOU ARE HERE" sign appearing in the sky. The mere fact that I'm actually real and actually breathing suddenly hits me in the head with a thwack. It leaves me giddy. It causes a brief surge of clammy, bubbling anxiety, like the opening stages of a panic attack. The moment soon passes, but while it lasts it's strangely terrifying. ~ Charlie Brooker,#NFDB
501:Judaism and Christianity both agree with Islam in affirming a downward trend for humanity which is to continue until the cataclysms heralding Doomsday. Sometime during the late stages of this process, the Antichrist shall appear, who is not only the epitome of all evil but also the inverted image of Jesus, may peace be upon him, whom he will claim to personify. The Prophet, may God’s blessings and peace be on him, called him the ‘Impostor’ (al-Dajjal) since his characteristic attribute will be relabeling good as evil and evil as good, Heaven as Hell and Hell as Heaven, himself as the Christ and Christ as the Antichrist.
And this is precisely what the West has already succeeded in doing. They have redefined the human being by bringing his physical form to the fore and denying his spirit, redefining him thus as an animal; and they have set the stage for putting everything to the service of the body and thinking solely in material terms. Whereas all religions say that man is degenerating, the West claims that, on the contrary, he is improving by the day; with the implication that they are now far more ‘advanced,’ far more clever and mature than anyone in the past. This evidently gives them the right to dismiss lightly the Prophets and sages of old and their timeless wisdom and speak of them in condescending and derogatory terms. Religion has been redefined as superstition, and the life-to-come as a childish belief deriving from an inability to face reality. ~ Mostafa al Badawi,#NFDB
502:In striving to fulfill our identities as women, it's important not to confound the various passages of life with each other. What we may need in girlhood or adolescence are not the same qualities we need in maturity. The task of adolescence is to leave home. And women in a sexist society have chronically found this hard to do. Our biology has reinforced the very dependence which our minds have been able to fly beyond. Patriarchal practices like arranged marriages, female sexual mutilation and the denial of abortion have encouraged us to glorify not-leaving as a self-protective strategy.
No wonder our creative heroines had to find strategies for leaving. Those who were heterosexual devised the strategy of falling for bad boys as a primal means of separation. We make a mistake in thinking they were only victims. They were adventurers first. That they became victims was not their intent. Sylvia Plath was not merely a masochist but a bold adventurer who perhaps got more than she bargained for.
As I get older, I come to understand that the seemingly self-destructive obsessions of my various younger lives were not only self-destructive. They were also self-creative. All through the stages of our lives, we go through transformations that may only manifest themselves when they are safely over. The rebels and bad boys I loved were the harbingers of my loving those very qualities in myself. I loved and left the bad boys, but I thank them for helping to make me the strong survivor I am today. ~ Erica Jong,#NFDB
503:Women do not simply have faces, as men do; they are identified with their faces. Men have a naturalistic relation to their faces. Certainly they care whether they are good-looking or not. They suffer over acne, protruding ears, tiny eyes; they hate getting bald. But there is a much wider latitude in what is esthetically acceptable in a man’s face than what is in a woman’s. A man’s face is defined as something he basically doesn’t need to tamper with; all he has to do is keep it clean. He can avail himself of the options for ornament supplied by nature: a beard, a mustache, longer or shorter hair. But he is not supposed to disguise himself. What he is “really” like is supposed to show. A man lives through his face; it records the progressive stages of his life. And since he doesn’t tamper with his face, it is not separate from but is completed by his body – which is judged attractive by the impression it gives of virility and energy. By contrast, a woman’s face is potentially separate from her body. She does not treat it naturalistically. A woman’s face is the canvas upon which she paints a revised, corrected portrait of herself. One of the rules of this creation is that the face not show what she doesn’t want it to show. Her face is an emblem, an icon, a flag. How she arranges her hair, the type of make-up she uses, the quality of her complexion – all these are signs, not of what she is “really” like, but of how she asks to be treated by others, especially men. They establish her status as an “object. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
504:It is my thesis that the physical functioning of the living individual and the operation of some of the newer communication machines are precisely parallel in their analogous attempts to control entropy through feedback. Both of them have sensory receptors as one stage in their cycle of operation: that is, in both of them there exists a special apparatus for collecting information from the outer world at low energy levels, and for making it available in the operation of the individual or of the machine. In both cases these external messages are not taken neat, but through the internal transforming powers of the apparatus, whether it be alive or dead. The information is then turned into a new form available for the further stages of performance. In both the animal and the machine this performance is made to be effective on the outer world. In both of them, their performed action on the outer world, and not merely their intended action, is reported back to the central regulatory apparatus. This complex of behavior is ignored by the average man, and in particular does not play the role that it should in our habitual analysis of society; for just as individual physical responses may be seen from this point of view, so may the organic responses of society itself. I do not mean that the sociologist is unaware of the existence and complex nature of communications in society, but until recently he has tended to overlook the extent to which they are the cement which binds its fabric together. ~ Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings (1950), #NFDB
505:Writing and repairing software generally takes far more time and is far more expensive than initially anticipated. “Every feature that is added and every bug that is fixed,” Edward Tenner points out, “adds the possibility of some new and unexpected interaction between parts of the program.”19 De Jager concurs: “If people have learned anything about large software projects, it is that many of them miss their deadlines, and those that are on time seldom work perfectly. … Indeed, on-time error-free installations of complex computer systems are rare.”20 Even small changes to code can require wholesale retesting of entire software systems. While at MIT in the 1980s, I helped develop some moderately complex software. I learned then that the biggest problems arise from bugs that creep into programs during early stages of design. They become deeply embedded in the software’s interdependent network of logic, and if left unfixed can have cascading repercussions throughout the software. But fixing them often requires tracing out consequences that have metastasized in every direction from the original error. As the amount of computer code in our world soars (doubling every two years in consumer products alone), we need practical ways to minimize the number of bugs. But software development is still at a preindustrial stage—it remains more craft than engineering. Programmers resemble artisans: they handcraft computer code out of basic programming languages using logic, intuition, and pattern-recognition skills honed over years of experience. ~ Thomas Homer Dixon, #NFDB
506:Bohm believes the same is true at our own level of existence. Space is not empty. It is full, a plenum as opposed to a vacuum, and is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves. The universe is not separate from this cosmic sea of energy, it is a ripple on its surface, a comparatively small "pattern of excitation" in the midst of an unimaginably vast ocean. "This excitation pattern is relatively autonomous and gives rise to approximately recurrent, stable and separable projections into a three-dimensional explicate order of manifestation, " states Bohm.1 2 In other words, despite its apparent materiality and enormous size, the universe does not exist in and of itself, but is the stepchild of something far vaster and more ineffable. More than that, it is not even a major production of this vaster something, but is only a passing shadow, a mere hiccup in the greater scheme of things. This infinite sea of energy is not all that is enfolded in the implicate order. Because the implicate order is the foundation that has given birth to everything in our universe, at the very least it also contains every subatomic particle that has been or will be; every configuration of matter, energy, life, and consciousness that is possible, from quasars to the brain of Shakespeare, from the double helix, to the forces that control the sizes and shapes of galaxies. And even this is not all it may contain. Bohm concedes that there is no reason to believe the implicate order is the end of things. There may be other undreamed of orders beyond it, infinite stages of further development. ~ Michael Talbot, #NFDB
507:Soon it was time for us to leave; the clock had struck midnight, and we had miles to go before we slept. After throwing my bouquet and saying good-byes, Marlboro Man and I ran through the doors of the club and climbed into the back of a smoky black limousine--the vehicle that would take us to the big city miles away, where we’d stay before flying to Australia the next day. As we pulled away from the waving, birdseed-throwing crowd at the front door of the club, we immediately settled into each other’s arms, melting into a puddle of white silk and black boots and sleepy, unbridled romance.
It was all so new. New dress…new love…a new country--Australia--that neither of us had ever seen. A new life together. A new life for me. New crystal, silver, china. A newly renovated, tiny cowboy house that would be our little house on the prairie when we returned from our honeymoon.
A new husband. My husband. I wanted to repeat it over and over again, wanted to shout it to the heavens. But I couldn’t speak. I was busy. Passion had taken over--a beast had been unleashed. Sleep deprived and exhausted from the celebration of the previous week, once inside the sanctity of the limousine, we were utterly powerless to stop it…and we let it fly. It was this same passion that had gotten us through the early stages of our relationship, and, ultimately, through the choice to wave good-bye to any life I’d ever imagined for myself. To become a part of Marlboro Man’s life instead. It was this same passion that assured me that everything was exactly as it should be. It was the passion that made it all make sense. ~ Ree Drummond,#NFDB
508:In an experiment that became an instant classic, the psychologist John Bargh and his collaborators asked students at New York University—most aged eighteen to twenty-two—to assemble four-word sentences from a set of five words (for example, “finds he it yellow instantly”). For one group of students, half the scrambled sentences contained words associated with the elderly, such as Florida, forgetful, bald, gray, or wrinkle. When they had completed that task, the young participants were sent out to do another experiment in an office down the hall. That short walk was what the experiment was about. The researchers unobtrusively measured the time it took people to get from one end of the corridor to the other. As Bargh had predicted, the young people who had fashioned a sentence from words with an elderly theme walked down the hallway significantly more slowly than the others. The “Florida effect” involves two stages of priming. First, the set of words primes thoughts of old age, though the word old is never mentioned; second, these thoughts prime a behavior, walking slowly, which is associated with old age. All this happens without any awareness. When they were questioned afterward, none of the students reported noticing that the words had had a common theme, and they all insisted that nothing they did after the first experiment could have been influenced by the words they had encountered. The idea of old age had not come to their conscious awareness, but their actions had changed nevertheless. This remarkable priming phenomenon—the influencing of an action by the idea—is known as the ideomotor effect. Although ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
509:In Tibet, we have a traditional image, the windhorse, which represents a balanced relationship between the wind and the mind. The horse represents wind and movement. On its saddle rides a precious jewel. That jewel is our mind. A jewel is a stone that is clear and reflects light. There is a solid, earthly element to it. You can pick it up in your hand, and at the same time you can see through it. These qualities represent the mind: it is both tangible and translucent. The mind is capable of the highest wisdom. It can experience love and compassion, as well as anger. It can understand history, philosophy, and mathematics—and also remember what’s on the grocery list. The mind is truly like a wish-fulfilling jewel. With an untrained mind, the thought process is said to be like a wild and blind horse: erratic and out of control. We experience the mind as moving all the time—suddenly darting off, thinking about one thing and another, being happy, being sad. If we haven’t trained our mind, the wild horse takes us wherever it wants to go. It’s not carrying a jewel on its back—it’s carrying an impaired rider. The horse itself is crazy, so it is quite a bizarre scene. By observing our own mind in meditation, we can see this dynamic at work. Especially in the beginning stages of meditation, we find it extremely challenging to control our mind. Even if we wish to control it, we have very little power to do so, like the infirm rider. We want to focus on the breathing, but the mind keeps darting off unexpectedly. That is the wild horse. The process of meditation is taming the horse so that it is in our control, while making the mind an expert rider. ~ Sakyong Mipham, #NFDB
510:The noise of the town some floors below was greatly muted. In a state of complete mental detachment, he went over the events, the circumstances and the stages of destruction in their lives. Seen in the frozen light of a restrictive past, everything seemed clear, conclusive and indisputable. Now it seemed unthinkable that a girl of seventeen shoudl be so naive; it was particularly unbelieveable that a girl of seventeen should set so much store by love. If the surveys in the magazines were to be believed, things had changed a great deal in the twenty-five years since Annabelle was a teenager. Young girls today were more sensible, more sophisticated. Nowadays they worried more about their exam results and did their best to ensure they would have a decent career. For them, going out with boys was simply a game, a distraction motivated as much by narcissism as by sexual pleasure. They later would try to make a good marriage, basing their decision on a range of social and professional criteria, as well as on shared interests and tastes. Of course, in doing this they cut themselves off from any possibility of happiness--a condition indissociable from the outdated, intensely close bonds so incompatible with the exercise of reason--but this was their attempt to escape the moral and emotional suffering which had so tortured their forebears. This hope was, unfortunately, rapidly disappointed; the passing of love's torments simply left the field clear for boredom, emptiness and an anguished wait for old age and death. The second part of Annabelle's life therefore had been much more dismal and sad than the first, of which, in the end, she had no memory at all. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
511:Frederick Cuvier and several of the older metaphysicians have compared instinct with habit. This comparison gives, I think, an accurate notion of the frame of mind under which an instinctive action is performed, but not necessarily of its origin. How unconsciously many habitual actions are performed, indeed not rarely in direct opposition to our conscious will! yet they may be modified by the will or reason. Habits easily become associated with other habits, with certain periods of time and states of the body. When once acquired, they often remain constant throughout life. Several other points of resemblance between instincts and habits could be pointed out. As in repeating a well-known song, so in instincts, one action follows another by a sort of rhythm; if a person be interrupted in a song, or in repeating anything by rote, he is generally forced to go back to recover the habitual train of thought: so P. Huber found it was with a caterpillar, which makes a very complicated hammock; for if he took a caterpillar which had completed its hammock up to, say, the sixth stage of construction, and put it into a hammock completed up only to the third stage, the caterpillar simply re-performed the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages of construction. If, however, a caterpillar were taken out of a hammock made up, for instance, to the third stage, and were put into one finished up to the sixth stage, so that much of its work was already done for it, far from deriving any benefit from this, it was much embarrassed, and, in order to complete its hammock, seemed forced to start from the third stage, where it had left off, and thus tried to complete the already finished work. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
512:Completely unrecognized is the whole presumption of this saying according to which individual body parts could possess independent volition and as such can inform (sway/direct) the acting of the whole body. Even more seriously — the presumption that self-mutilation can stop or somehow influence higher mental processes. Even the person who is not a trained psychologist or psychiatrist can recognize that we are dealing with a seriously pathological state of mind. I am inclined to believe that gospel sayings represent atavism — a regression to older stages of development. It is one of the vestiges of development of modern consciousness. This is an example of physiological metaphor which never made it through the whole process to unification of consciousness. On the contrary it remained stuck somewhere in stage III. In this stage physiological hypostases represent internal stimuli and are starting to create internal spaces where metaphored action can occur. In this position they hypertrophied unable to move into the next stage of unification into one consciousness. Already at the time of recording in the gospels this saying was perceived as anomalous. Luke, the most educated and refined of synoptical authors, preserved the immediate context, but edited out most of the peculiar parts concerning disseminated volition and self-mutilations. Further and broader contexts which may be mentioned and discussed: other Greek and Hebrew physiological and anatomical metaphors; the popularity of a metaphor of the body for structuring and functioning of society in Hellenism; the ancient practice of religious self-mutilation; the potential for facilitating our understanding of brutish penal codes or modern self-mutilations. ~ Marcel Kuijsten, #NFDB
513:Society itself falls apart into class and intraclass groups; individual life-sequences are directly linked with these and together both individual life and subgroups are opposed to the whole. Thus in the early stages of slaveholding society and in feudal society, individual life-sequences are still rather tightly interwoven with the common life of the most immediate social group. But nevertheless they are separate, even here. The course of individual lives, of groups, and of the sociopolitical whole do not fuse together, they are dispersed, there are gaps; they are measured by different scales of value; each of these series has its own logic of development, its own narratives,
each makes use of and reinterprets the ancient motifs in its own way. Within the boundaries of individual life-series, an interior aspect makes itself apparent. The process of separating out and detaching individual life-sequences from the whole reaches its highest point when financial relations develop in slaveholding society, and under capitalism. Here the individual sequence takes on its specific private character and what is held in common becomes maximally abstract.
The ancient motifs that had passed into the individual life-narratives here undergo a specific kind of degeneration. Food, drink, copulation and so forth lose their ancient "pathos" (their link, their unity with the laboring life of the social whole); they become a petty private matter; they seem to exhaust all their significance within the boundaries of individual life. As a result of this severance from the producing life of the whole and from the collective struggle with nature, their real links with the life of nature are weakened-if not severed altogether. ~ Mikhail Bakhtin,#NFDB
514:In 2003, a Dutch clinical psychologist named Christof van Nimwegen began a fascinating study of computer-aided learning that a BBC writer would later call “one of the most interesting examinations of current computer use and the potential downsides of our increasing reliance on screen-based interaction with information systems.”26 Van Nimwegen had two groups of volunteers work through a tricky logic puzzle on a computer. The puzzle involved transferring colored balls between two boxes in accordance with a set of rules governing which balls could be moved at which time. One of the groups used software that had been designed to be as helpful as possible. It offered on-screen assistance during the course of solving the puzzle, providing visual cues, for instance, to highlight permitted moves. The other group used a bare-bones program, which provided no hints or other guidance. In the early stages of solving the puzzle, the group using the helpful software made correct moves more quickly than the other group, as would be expected. But as the test proceeded, the proficiency of the members of the group using the bare-bones software increased more rapidly. In the end, those using the unhelpful program were able to solve the puzzle more quickly and with fewer wrong moves. They also reached fewer impasses—states in which no further moves were possible—than did the people using the helpful software. The findings indicated, as van Nimwegen reported, that those using the unhelpful software were better able to plan ahead and plot strategy, while those using the helpful software tended to rely on simple trial and error. Often, in fact, those with the helpful software were found “to aimlessly click around” as they tried to crack the puzzle. ~ Nicholas Carr, #NFDB
515:It is as if one of the grains of sand had stuck its neck out and begun to look around. We are that grain of sand, coming to the conclusion of our separateness. This is the “birth of ignorance” in its first stage, a kind of chemical reaction. Duality has begun. The second stage of ignorance-form is called “the ignorance born within.” Having noticed that one is separate, then there is the feeling that one has always been so. It is an awkwardness, the instinct toward self-consciousness. It is also one’s excuse for remaining separate, an individual grain of sand. It is an aggressive type of ignorance, though not exactly aggressive in the sense of anger; it has not developed as far as that. Rather it is aggression in the sense that one feels awkward, unbalanced, and so one tries to secure one’s ground, create a shelter for oneself. It is the attitude that one is a confused and separate individual, and that is all there is to it. One has identified oneself as separate from the basic landscape of space and openness. The third type of ignorance is “self-observing ignorance,” watching oneself. There is a sense of seeing oneself as an external object, which leads to the first notion of “other.” One is beginning to have a relationship with a so-called external world. This is why these three stages of ignorance constitute the skandha of form-ignorance; one is beginning to create the world of forms. When we speak of “ignorance” we do not mean stupidity at all. In a sense, ignorance is very intelligent, but it is a completely two-way intelligence. That is to say, one purely reacts to one’s projections rather than just seeing what is. There is no situation of “letting be” at all, because one is ignoring what one is all the time. That is the basic definition of ignorance. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa, #NFDB
516:In the center of the movement, as the motor that swings it onto motion, sits the Leader. He is separated from the elite formation by an inner circle of the initiated who spread around him an aura of impenetrable mystery which corresponds to his “intangible preponderance.” His position within this intimate circle depends upon his ability to spin intrigues among its members and upon his skill in constantly changing its personnel. He owes his rise to leadership to an extreme ability to handle inner-party struggles for power rather than to demagogic or bureaucratic-organizational qualities. He is distinguished from earlier types of dictators in that he hardly wins through simple violence. Hitler needed neither the SA nor the SS to secure his position as leader of the Nazi movement; on the contrary, Röhm, the chief of the SA and able to count upon its loyalty to his own person, was one of Hitler’s inner-party enemies. Stalin won against Trotsky, who not only had a far greater mass appeal but, as chief of the Red Army, held in his hands the greatest power potential in Soviet Russia at the time. Not Stalin, but Trotsky, moreover, was the greatest organizational talent, the ablest bureaucrat of the Russian Revolution. On the other hand, both Hitler and Stalin were masters of detail and devoted themselves in the early stages of their careers almost entirely to questions of personnel, so that after a few years hardly any man of importance remained who did not owe his position to them. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
517:April 29 MORNING “Thou art my hope in the day of evil.” — Jeremiah 17:17 THE path of the Christian is not always bright with sunshine; he has his seasons of darkness and of storm. True, it is written in God’s Word, “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace;” and it is a great truth, that religion is calculated to give a man happiness below as well as bliss above; but experience tells us that if the course of the just be “As the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day,” yet sometimes that light is eclipsed. At certain periods clouds cover the believer’s sun, and he walks in darkness and sees no light. There are many who have rejoiced in the presence of God for a season; they have basked in the sunshine in the earlier stages of their Christian career; they have walked along the “green pastures” by the side of the “still waters,” but suddenly they find the glorious sky is clouded; instead of the Land of Goshen they have to tread the sandy desert; in the place of sweet waters, they find troubled streams, bitter to their taste, and they say, “Surely, if I were a child of God, this would not happen.” Oh! say not so, thou who art walking in darkness. The best of God’s saints must drink the wormwood; the dearest of His children must bear the cross. No Christian has enjoyed perpetual prosperity; no believer can always keep his harp from the willows. Perhaps the Lord allotted you at first a smooth and unclouded path, because you were weak and timid. He tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, but now that you are stronger in the spiritual life, you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of God’s full-grown children. We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
518:Paul declares the “invisible things of him from the creation of the world” can help us understand “his eternal power and Godhead” (Romans 1:20). The truth that God is a “tri-unity” of two invisible persons (Father and Spirit) and one visible person (Jesus) is evident even in creation. The universe is composed of three structures: space, matter, and time. Of these three, only matter is visible. Space requires length, height, and width to constitute space. Each dimension is separate and distinct in itself, yet the three form space—if you remove height, you no longer have space. Time is also a tri-unity of past, present, and future. Two are invisible (past and future), and one visible (present). Each is separate and distinct, as well as essential for time to exist. Man is also a “tri-unity,” having physical, mental, and spiritual components. Again, two are invisible (mental and spiritual) and one visible (physical). Cells compose the fundamental structural unit of all living organisms. All organic life is made up from cells that consist of three primary parts: the outer wall, the cytoplasm, and the nucleus (like the shell, white, and yoke of an egg). If any one is removed, the cell dies. In each of these examples, the removal of any one component results in the demise of the whole. In like manner, the Godhead contains three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each is God (Ephesians 4:6; Titus 2:13; Acts 5:3, 4), yet there is one God. The removal of one person destroys the unity of the whole. Even the gospel story illustrates the interdependency of threes. The sanctuary had three places: the Courtyard, the Holy Place, and the Most Holy Place. There are three stages of salvation: justification, sanctification, and glorification. In Isaiah 6:3, the angels around God’s throne cry “Holy, Holy, Holy” three times—once for the Father, once for the Son, and once for the Holy Spirit. ~ Doug Batchelor, #NFDB
519:The events of the last forty years have inflicted such a blow to the self confidence of Western civilization and to the belief in progress which was so strong during the nineteenth century, that men tend to go too far in the opposite direction: in fact the modern world is experiencing the same kind of danger which was so fatal to the ancient world--the crisis of which Gilbert Murray writes in his Four Stages of Greek Religion as "The Loss of Nerve.”
There have been signs of this in Western literature for a long time past, and it has already had a serious effect on Western culture an education. This is the typical tragedy of the intelligentsia as shown in nineteenth century Russia and often in twentieth century Germany: the case of a society or class devoting enormous efforts to higher education and to the formation of an intellectual elite and then finding that the final result of the system is to breed a spirit of pessimism and nihilism and revolt. There was something seriously wrong about an educational system which cancelled itself out in this way, which picked out the ablest minds in a society and subjected them to an intensive process of competitive development which ended in a revolutionary or cynical reaction against the society that produced it. But behind these defects of an over-cerebralized and over-competitive method of education, there is the deeper cause in the loss of the common spiritual background which unifies education with social life. For the liberal faith in progress which inspired the nineteenth century was itself a substitute for the simpler and more positive religious faith which was the vital bond of the Western community. If we wish to understand our past and the inheritance of Western culture, we have to go behind the nineteenth century development and study the old spiritual community of Western Christendom as an objective historical reality. ~ Christopher Henry Dawson,#NFDB
520:Even though these individuals had seemed perfectly healthy at birth, something that had happened during their development in the womb affected them for decades afterwards. And it wasn’t just the fact that something had happened that mattered, it was when it happened. Events that take place in the first three months of development, a stage when the foetus is really very small, can affect an individual for the rest of their life. This is completely consistent with the model of developmental programming, and the epigenetic basis to this. In the early stages of pregnancy, where different cell types are developing, epigenetic proteins are probably vital for stabilising gene expression patterns. But remember that our cells contain thousands of genes, spread over billions of base-pairs, and we have hundreds of epigenetic proteins. Even in normal development there are likely to be slight variations in the expression of some of these proteins, and the precise effects that they have at specific chromosomal regions. A little bit more DNA methylation here, a little bit less there. The epigenetic machinery reinforces and then maintains particular patterns of modifications, thus creating the levels of gene expression. Consequently, these initial small fluctuations in histone and DNA modifications may eventually become ‘set’ and get transmitted to daughter cells, or be maintained in long-lived cells such as neurons, that can last for decades. Because the epigenome gets ‘stuck’, so too may the patterns of gene expression in certain chromosomal regions. In the short term the consequences of this may be relatively minor. But over decades all these mild abnormalities in gene expression, resulting from a slightly inappropriate set of chromatin modifications, may lead to a gradually increasing functional impairment. Clinically, we don’t recognise this until it passes some invisible threshold and the patient begins to show symptoms. ~ Nessa Carey, #NFDB
521:We say it is "explanation" but it is only in "description" that we are in advance of the older stages of knowledge and science. We describe better we explain just as little as our predecessors. We have discovered a manifold succession where the naive man and investigator of older cultures saw only two things "cause" and "effect " as it was said we have perfected the conception of becoming but have not got a knowledge of what is above and behind the conception. The series of "causes" stands before us much more complete in every case we conclude that this and that must first precede in order that that other may follow - but we have not grasped anything thereby. The peculiarity for example in every chemical process seems a "miracle " the same as before just like all locomotion nobody has "explained" impulse. How could we ever explain We operate only with things which do not exist with lines surfaces bodies atoms divisible times divisible spaces - how can explanation ever be possible when we first make everything a conception our conception It is sufficient to regard science as the exactest humanizing of things that is possible we always learn to describe ourselves more accurately by describing things and their successions. Cause and effect: there is probably never any such duality in fact there is a continuum before us from which we isolate a few portions - just as we always observe a motion as isolated points and therefore do not properly see it but infer it. The abruptness with which many effects take place leads us into error it is however only an abruptness for us. There is an infinite multitude of processes in that abrupt moment which escape us. An intellect which could see cause and effect as a continuum which could see the flux of events not according to our mode of perception as things arbitrarily separated and broken - would throw aside the conception of cause and effect and would deny all conditionality. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
522:The idea of progress is contemporary with the age of enlightenment and with the bourgeois revolution. Of
course, certain sources of its inspiration can be found in the seventeenth century; the quarrel between the
Ancients and the Moderns already introduced into European ideology the perfectly absurd conception of
an artistic form of progress. In a more serious fashion, the idea of a science that steadily increases its
conquests can also be derived from Cartesian philosophy. But Turgot, in 1750, is the first person to give a
clear definition of the new faith. His treatise on the progress of the human mind basically recapitulates
Bossuet's universal history. The idea of progress alone is substituted for the divine will. "The total mass
of the human race, by alternating stages of calm and agitation, of good and evil, always marches, though
with dragging footsteps, toward greater and greater perfection." This optimistic statement will furnish the
basic ingredient of the rhetorical observations of Condorcet, the official theorist of progress, which he
linked with the progress of the State and of which he was also the official victim in that the enlightened
State forced him to poison himself. Sorel was perfectly correct in saying that the philosophy of progress
was exactly the philosophy to suit a society eager to enjoy the material prosperity derived from technical
progress. When we are assured that tomorrow, in the natural order of events, will be better than today, we
can enjoy ourselves in peace. Progress, paradoxically, can be used to justify conservatism. A draft drawn
on confidence in the future, it allows the master to have a clear conscience. The slave and those whose
present life is miserable and who can find no consolation in the heavens are assured that at least the future
belongs to them. The future is the only kind of property that the masters willingly concede to the slaves. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
523:It must also be kept in mind that the supramental change is difficult, distant, an ultimate stage; it must be regarded as the end of a far-off vista; it cannot be and must not be turned into a first aim, a constantly envisaged goal or an immediate objective. For it can only come into the view of possibility after much arduous self-conquest and self-exceeding, at the end of many long and trying stages of a difficult self-evolution of the nature. One must first acquire an inner Yogic consciousness and replace by it our ordinary view of things, natural movements, motives of life; one must revolutionise the whole present build of our being. Next, we have to go still deeper, discover our veiled psychic entity and in its light and under its government psychicise our inner and outer parts, turn mind-nature, life-nature, body-nature and all our mental, vital, physical action and states and movements into a conscious instrumentation of the soul. Afterwards or concurrently we have to spiritualise the being in its entirety by a descent of a divine Light, Force, Purity, Knowledge, freedom and wideness. It is necessary to break down the limits of the personal mind, life and physicality, dissolve the ego, enter into the cosmic consciousness, realise the self, acquire a spiritualised and universalised mind and heart, life-force, physical consciousness. Then only the passage into the supramental consciousness begins to become possible, and even then there is a difficult ascent to make each stage of which is a separate arduous achievement. Yoga is a rapid and concentrated conscious evolution of the being, but however rapid, even though it may effect in a single life what in an instrumental Nature might take centuries and millenniums or many hundreds of lives, still all evolution must move by stages; even the greatest rapidity and concentration of the movement cannot swallow up all the stages or reverse natural process and bring the end near to the beginning.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supermind and the Yoga of Works, 281,#NFDB
524:Consider again the mated pair with which we began the chapter. Both partners, as selfish machines, ‘want’ sons and daughters in equal numbers. To this extent they agree. Where they disagree is in who is going to bear the brunt of the cost of rearing each one of those children. Each individual wants as many surviving children as possible. The less he or she is obliged to invest in any one of those children, the more children he or she can have. The obvious way to achieve this desirable state of affairs is to induce your sexual partner to invest more than his or her fair share of resources in each child, leaving you free to have other children with other partners. This would be a desirable strategy for either sex, but it is more difficult for the female to achieve. Since she starts by investing more than the male, in the form of her large, food-rich egg, a mother is already at the moment of conception ‘committed’ to each child more deeply than the father is. She stands to lose more if the child dies than the father does. More to the point, she would have to invest more than the father in the future in order to bring a new substitute child up to the same level of development. If she tried the tactic of leaving the father holding the baby, while she went off with another male, the father might, at relatively small cost to himself, retaliate by abandoning the baby too. Therefore, at least in the early stages of child development, if any abandoning is going to be done, it is likely to be the father who abandons the mother rather than the other way around. Similarly, females can be expected to invest more in children than males, not only at the outset, but throughout development. So, in mammals for example, it is the female who incubates the foetus in her own body, the female who makes the milk to suckle it when it is born, the female who bears the brunt of the load of bringing it up and protecting it. The female sex is exploited, and the fundamental evolutionary basis for the exploitation is the fact that eggs are larger than sperms. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
525:Teachers dread nothing so much as unusual characteristics in precocious boys during the initial stages of their adolescence. A certain streak of genius makes an ominous impression on them, for there exists a deep gulf between genius and the teaching profession. Anyone with a touch of genius seems to his teachers a freak from the very first. As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in class, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest. A schoolmaster will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in his class than a single genius, and if you regard it objectively, he is of course right. His task is not to produce extravagant intellects but good Latinists, arithmeticians and sober decent folk. The question of who suffers more acutely at the other's hands - the teacher at the boy's, or vice versa - who is more of a tyrant, more of a tormentor, and who profanes parts of the other's soul, student or teacher, is something you cannot examine without remembering your own youth in anger and shame. yet that s not what concerns us here. We have the consolation that among true geniuses the wounds almost always heal. As their personalities develop, they create their art in spite of school. Once dead, and enveloped by the comfortable nimbus of remoteness, they are paraded by the schoolmasters before other generations of students as showpieces and noble examples. Thus teh struggle between rule and spirit repeats itself year after year from school to school. The authorities go to infinite pains to nip the few profound or more valuable intellects in the bud. And time and again the ones who are detested by their teachers are frequently punished, the runaways and those expelled, are the ones who afterwards add to society's treasure. But some - and who knows how many? - waste away quiet obstinacy and finally go under. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
526:the spiritual force behind adoration :::
All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendor appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter this image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, The Works of Love - The Works of Life, 159,#NFDB
527:When I had the third breakdown, the mini-breakdown, I was in the late stages of writing this book. Since I could not cope with communication of any kind during that period, I put an auto-response message on my E-mail that said I was temporarily unreachable, and a similar message on my answering machine. Acquaintances who had suffered depression knew what to make of these outgoing messages. They wasted no time. I had dozens and dozens of calls from people offering whatever they could offer and doing it glowingly. “I will come to stay the minute you call,” wrote Laura Anderson, who also sent a wild profusion of orchids, “and I’ll stay as long as it takes you to get better. If you’d prefer, you are of course always welcome here; if you need to move in for a year, I’ll be here for you. I hope you know that I will always be here for you.” Claudia Weaver wrote with questions: “Is it better for you to have someone check in with you every day or are the messages too much of a burden? If they are a burden, you needn’t answer this one, but whatever you need—just call me, anytime, day or night.” Angel Starkey called often from the pay phone at her hospital to see if I was okay. “I don’t know what you need,” she said, “but I’m worrying about you all the time. Please take care of yourself. Come and see me if you’re feeling really bad, anytime. I’d really like to see you. If you need anything, I’ll try to get it for you. Promise me you won’t hurt yourself.” Frank Rusakoff wrote me a remarkable letter and reminded me about the precious quality of hope. “I long for news that you are well and off on another adventure,” he wrote, and signed the letter, “Your friend, Frank.” I had felt committed in many ways to all these people, but the spontaneous outpouring astounded me. Tina Sonego said she’d call in sick for work if I needed her—or that she’d buy me a ticket and take me to someplace relaxing. “I’m a good cook too,” she told me. Janet Benshoof dropped by the house with daffodils and optimistic lines from favorite poems written in her clear hand and a bag so she could come sleep on my sofa, just so I wouldn’t be alone. It was an astonishing responsiveness. ~ Andrew Solomon, #NFDB
528:This means that most of the births they have seen were to women on epidurals lying still during labor, waiting for it all to be over. Seeing this kind of birth over and over again causes a subconscious imprint on the mind, and many women develop enough fear of the pains of childbirth that they block the messages their bodies give them about other positions they might take in labor. Others may simply fear diverging from the norm. A woman in the first stage of labor may find it beneficial to try several upright positions: standing, perhaps leaning on a counter or tray table; slow dancing with her partner; sitting while leaning forward or propped up with pillows; squatting; or sitting in a rocking chair. Sometimes one position suffices, but laboring women usually like to change from one position to another as labor progresses. One of the most effective labors I ever witnessed was that of a first-time mother giving birth to a very large baby. She moved through the first part of labor very efficiently by belly-dancing while putting as much of her weight as possible on a long staff she was holding to steady herself. She then pushed her baby out while leaning on the bed in a kneeling position. A woman’s position during labor and birth may affect her ability to breastfeed in a couple of ways. Dr. Roberto Caldeyro-Barcia, an Uruguayan obstetrician, was one of the first to scientifically investigate the effects of maternal position on labor. In 1979 he published a study now regarded as a classic, which demonstrated that mothers in a “vertical” position had thirty-six percent shorter opening stages of labor than “horizontal” women; the “vertical” women also reported less pain than the “horizontals.” Walking helped labor progress as well, because it brought the pressure of the baby’s head against the cervix, helping it to thin and open. And the “vertical” mothers’ babies’ heads were less apt to be extremely molded just after birth, indicating a somewhat smoother passage through the mother’s birth canal. Equally important, the babies of women who gave birth in upright positions had less fetal distress at birth.5 These factors all increase the chances that a woman will have a good early breastfeeding experience. Dr. ~ Ina May Gaskin, #NFDB
529:However, questions arise. Are there people who aren't naive realists, or special situations in which naive realism disappears? My theory—the self-model theory of subjectivity—predicts that as soon as a conscious representation becomes opaque (that is, as soon as we experience it as a representation), we lose naive realism. Consciousness without naive realism does exist. This happens whenever, with the help of other, second-order representations, we become aware of the construction process—of all the ambiguities and dynamical stages preceding the stable state that emerges at the end. When the window is dirty or cracked, we immediately realize that conscious perception is only an interface, and we become aware of the medium itself. We doubt that our sensory organs are working properly. We doubt the existence of whatever it is we are seeing or feeling, and we realize that the medium itself is fallible. In short, if the book in your hands lost its transparency, you would experience it as a state of your mind rather than as an element of the outside world. You would immediately doubt its independent existence. It would be more like a book-thought than a book-perception. Precisely this happens in various situations—for example, In visual hallucinations during which the patient is aware of hallucinating, or in ordinary optical illusions when we suddenly become aware that we are not in immediate contact with reality. Normally, such experiences make us think something is wrong with our eyes. If you could consciously experience earlier processing stages of the representation of the book In your hands, the image would probably become unstable and ambiguous; it would start to breathe and move slightly. Its surface would become iridescent, shining in different colors at the same time. Immediately you would ask yourself whether this could be a dream, whether there was something wrong with your eyes, whether someone had mixed a potent hallucinogen into your drink. A segment of the wall of the Ego Tunnel would have lost its transparency, and the self-constructed nature of the overall flow of experience would dawn on you. In a nonconceptual and entirely nontheoretical way, you would suddenly gain a deeper understanding of the fact that this world, at this very moment, only appears to you. ~ Thomas Metzinger, #NFDB
530:I went straight upstairs to my bedroom after Marlboro Man and I said good night. I had to finish packing…and I had to tend to my face, which was causing me more discomfort by the minute. I looked in the bathroom mirror; my face was sunburn red. Irritated. Inflamed. Oh no. What had Prison Matron Cindy done to me? What should I do? I washed my face with cool water and a gentle cleaner and looked in the mirror. It was worse. I looked like a freako lobster face. It would be a great match for the cherry red suit I planned to wear to the rehearsal dinner the next night.
But my white dress for Saturday? That was another story.
I slept like a log and woke up early the next morning, opening my eyes and forgetting for a blissful four seconds about the facial trauma I’d endured the day before. I quickly brought my hands to my face; it felt tight and rough. I leaped out of bed and ran to the bathroom, flipping on the light and looking in the mirror to survey the state of my face.
The redness had subsided; I noticed that immediately. This was a good development. Encouraging. But upon closer examination, I could see the beginning stages of pruney lines around my chin and nose. My stomach lurched; it was the day of the rehearsal. It was the day I’d see not just my friends and family who, I was certain, would love me no matter what grotesque skin condition I’d contracted since the last time we saw one another, but also many, many people I’d never met before--ranching neighbors, cousins, business associates, and college friends of Marlboro Man’s. I wasn’t thrilled at the possibility that their first impression of me might be something that involved scales. I wanted to be fresh. Dewy. Resplendent. Not rough and dry and irritated. Not now. Not this weekend.
I examined the damage in the mirror and deduced that the plutonium Cindy the Prison Matron had swabbed on my face the day before had actually been some kind of acid peel. The burn came first. Logic would follow that what my face would want to do next would be to, well, peel. This could be bad. This could be real, real bad. What if I could speed along that process? Maybe if I could feed the beast’s desire to slough, it would leave me alone--at least for the next forty-eight hours.
All I wanted was forty-eight hours. I didn’t think it was too much to ask. ~ Ree Drummond,#NFDB
531:From inside the Contuzzi apartment I heard the phone ring. Once, twice, three times. “Bolitar?” It stopped after six rings. “We know you’re still in London. Where are you?” I hung up and looked at Mario’s door. The ringing phone—ringing like a phone used to, not like some ringtone on a cell—had sounded very much like a landline. Hmm. I put my hand on the door. Thick and sturdy. I pressed my ear against the cool surface, hit Mario’s cell phone number, watched the LCD display on my mobile. It took a moment or two before the connection went through. When I heard the faint chime of Mario’s cell phone through the door—the landline had been loud; this was not—dread flooded my chest. True, it may be nothing, but most people nowadays do not travel even the shortest of distances, including bathroom visits, without the ubiquitous cell phone clipped or carried upon their person. You can bemoan this fact, but the chances that a guy working in television news would leave his cell phone behind while heading to his office seemed remote. “Mario?” I shouted. I started pounding on the door. “Mario?” I didn’t expect him to answer, of course. I pressed my ear against the door again, listening for I’m not sure what—a groan maybe. A grunt. Calling out. Something. No sound. I wondered about my options. Not many. I reared back, lifted my heel, and kicked the door. It didn’t budge. “Steel-enforced, mate. You’ll never kick it down.” I turned toward the voice. The man wore a black leather vest without any sort of shirt underneath, and sadly, he didn’t have the build to pull it off. His physique, on too clear a display, managed to be both scrawny and soft. He had a cattle-ring piercing in his nose. He was balding but the little hair he had left was done up in what might be called a comb-over Mohawk. I placed his age at early fifties. It looked like he had gone out to a gay bar in 1979 and had just gotten home. “Do you know the Contuzzis?” I asked. The man smiled. I expected another dental nightmare, but while the rest of him might be in various stages of decay, his teeth were gleaming. “Ah,” he said. “You’re an American.” “Yes.” “Friends with Mario, are we?” No reason to go into a long answer here: “Yes.” “Well, what can I tell you, mate? Normally they’re a quiet couple, but you know what they say—when the wife’s away, the mouse will play. ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
532:So it was that the Red Tower put into production its new, more terrible and perplexing, line of unique novelty items. Among the objects and constructions now manufactured were several of an almost innocent nature. These included tiny, delicate cameos that were heavier than their size would suggest, far heavier, and lockets whose shiny outer surface flipped open to reveal a black reverberant abyss inside, a deep blackness roaring with echoes. Along the same lines was a series of lifelike replicas of internal organs and physiological structures, many of them evidencing an advanced stages of disease and all of them displeasingly warm and soft to the touch. There was a fake disembodied hand on which fingernails would grow several inches overnight and insistently grew back should one attempt to clip them. Numerous natural objects, mostly bulbous gourds, were designed to produce a long, deafening scream whenever they were picked up or otherwise disturbed in their vegetable stillness. Less scrutable were such things as hardened globs of lava into whose rough, igneous forms were sent a pair of rheumy eyes that perpetually shifted their gaze from side to side like a relentless pendulum. And there was also a humble piece of cement, a fragment broken away from any street or sidewalk, that left a most intractable stain, greasy and green, on whatever surface it was placed. But such fairly simple items were eventually followed, and ultimately replaced, by more articulated objects and constructions. One example of this complex type of novelty item was an ornate music box that, when opened, emitted a brief gurgling or sucking sound in emulation of a dying individual's death rattle. Another product manufactured in great quantity at the Red Tower was a pocket watch in a gold casing which opened to reveal a curious timepiece whose numerals were represented by tiny quivering insects while the circling 'hands' were reptilian tongues, slender and pink. But these examples hardly begin to hint at the range of goods that came from the factory during its novelty phase of production. I should at least mention the exotic carpets woven with intricate abstract patterns that, when focused upon for a certain length of time, composed themselves into fleeting phantasmagoric scenes of a kind which might pass through a fever-stricken or even permanently damaged brain. ~ Thomas Ligotti, #NFDB
533:There is one point in particular I would like to single out and stress, namely, the notion of evolution. It is common to assume that one of the doctrines of the perennial philosophy... is the idea of involution-evolution. That is, the manifest world was created as a "fall" or "breaking away" from the Absolute (involution), but that all things are now returning to the Absolute (via evolution). In fact, the doctrine of progressive temporal return to Source (evolution) does not appear anywhere, according to scholars as Joseph Campbell, until the axial period (i.e. a mere two thousand years ago). And even then, the idea was somewhat convoluted and backwards. The doctrine of the yugas, for example, sees the world as proceeding through various stages of development, but the direction is backward: yesterday was the Golden Age, and time ever since has been a devolutionary slide downhill, resulting in the present-day Kali-Yuga. Indeed, this notion of a historical fall from Eden was ubiquitous during the axial period; the idea that we are, at this moment, actually evolving toward Spirit was simply not conceived in any sort of influential fashion.
But sometime during the modern era-it is almost impossible to pinpoint exactly-the idea of history as devolution (or a fall from God) was slowly replaced by the idea of history as evolution (or a growth towards God). We see it explicitly in Schelling (1775-1854); Hegel (1770-1831) propounded the doctrine with a genius rarely equaled; Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) made evolution a universal law, and his friend Charles Darwin (1809-1882) applied it to biology. We find it next appearing in Aurobindo (1872-1950), who gave perhaps its most accurate and profound spiritual context, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) who made it famous in the West.
But here is my point: we might say that the idea of evolution as return-to-Spirit is part of the perennial philosophy, but the idea itself, in any adequate form, is no more than a few hundred years old. It might be 'ancient' as timeless, but it is certainly not ancient as "old."...
This fundamental shift in the sense or form of the perennial philosophy-as represented in, say, Aurobindo, Hegel, Adi Da, Schelling, Teilhard de Chardin, Radhakrishnan, to name a few-I should like to call the "neoperennial philosophy." ~ Ken Wilber, The Eye Of Spirit,#NFDB
534:The principal energy sources of our present industrial civilization are the so-called fossil fuels. We burn wood and oil, coal and natural gas, and, in the process, release waste gases, principally CO2, into the air. Consequently, the carbon dioxide content of the Earth’s atmosphere is increasing dramatically. The possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect suggests that we have to be careful: Even a one- or two-degree rise in the global temperature can have catastrophic consequences. In the burning of coal and oil and gasoline, we are also putting sulfuric acid into the atmosphere. Like Venus, our stratosphere even now has a substantial mist of tiny sulfuric acid droplets. Our major cities are polluted with noxious molecules. We do not understand the long-term effects of our course of action. But we have also been perturbing the climate in the opposite sense. For hundreds of thousands of years human beings have been burning and cutting down forests and encouraging domestic animals to graze on and destroy grasslands. Slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial tropical deforestation and overgrazing are rampant today. But forests are darker than grasslands, and grasslands are darker than deserts. As a consequence, the amount of sunlight that is absorbed by the ground has been declining, and by changes in the land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase the size of the polar ice cap, which, because it is bright, will reflect still more sunlight from the Earth, further cooling the planet, driving a runaway albedo* effect? Our lovely blue planet, the Earth, is the only home we know. Venus is too hot. Mars is too cold. But the Earth is just right, a heaven for humans. After all, we evolved here. But our congenial climate may be unstable. We are perturbing our poor planet in serious and contradictory ways. Is there any danger of driving the environment of the Earth toward the planetary Hell of Venus or the global ice age of Mars? The simple answer is that nobody knows. The study of the global climate, the comparison of the Earth with other worlds, are subjects in their earliest stages of development. They are fields that are poorly and grudgingly funded. In our ignorance, we continue to push and pull, to pollute the atmosphere and brighten the land, oblivious of the fact that the long-term consequences are largely unknown. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
535:the three stages of the ascent :::
There are three stages of the ascent, -at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, the higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, ideas, and at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance.In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are half-lights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process.In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will,#NFDB
536:But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, lateR But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single command or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination. When the Yoga is perfect, all action becomes of this character. We may indeed distinguish three stages of a growing progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. The first is the stage when we are still governed by the intellect, heart and senses; these have to seek or wait for the divine inspiration and guidance and do not always find or receive it. The second is the stage when human intelligence is more and more replaced by a high illumined or intuitive spiritualised mind, the external human heart by the inner psychic heart, the senses by a purified and selfless vital force. The third is the stage when we rise even above spiritualised mind to the supramental levels. In all three stages the fundamental character of the liberated action is the same, a spontaneous working of Prakriti no longer through or for the ego but at the will and for the enjoyment of the supreme Purusha. At a higher level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature, - no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218, #NFDB
537:As for the vice of lust - aside from what it means for spiritual persons to fall into this vice, since my intent is to treat of the imperfections that have to be purged by means of the dark night - spiritual persons have numerous imperfections, many of which can be called spiritual lust, not because the lust is spiritual but because it proceeds from spiritual things. It happens frequently that in a person's spiritual exercises themselves, without the person being able to avoid it, impure movements will be experienced in the sensory part of the soul, and even
sometimes when the spirit is deep in prayer or when receiving the sacraments of Penance or the Eucharist. These impure feelings arise from any of three causes outside one's control.
First, they often proceed from the pleasure human nature finds in spiritual exercises. Since both the spiritual and the sensory part of the soul receive gratification from that refreshment, each part experiences delight according to its own nature and properties. The spirit, the superior part of the soul, experiences renewal and satisfaction in God; and the sense, the lower part, feels sensory gratification and delight because it is ignorant of how to get anything else, and hence takes whatever is nearest, which is the impure sensory satisfaction. It may happen that while a soul is with God in deep spiritual prayer, it will conversely passively experience sensual rebellions, movements, and acts in the senses, not without its own great displeasure.
This frequently happens at the time of Communion. Since the soul receives joy and gladness in this act of love - for the Lord grants the grace and gives himself for this reason - the sensory part also takes its share, as we said, according to its mode. Since, after all, these two parts form one individual, each one usually shares according to its mode in what the other receives. As the Philosopher says: Whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver. Because in the initial stages of the spiritual life, and even more advanced ones, the sensory part of the soul is imperfect, God's spirit is frequently received in this sensory part with this same imperfection. Once the sensory part is reformed through the purgation of the dark night, it no longer has these infirmities. Then the spiritual part of the soul, rather than the sensory part, receives God's Spirit, and the soul thus receives everything
according to the mode of the Spirit. ~ Juan de la Cruz,#NFDB
538: There is also the consecration of the thoughts to the Divine. In its inception this is the attempt to fix the mind on the object of adoration, -for naturally the restless human mind is occupied with other objects and, even when it is directed upwards, constantly drawn away by the world, -- so that in the end it habitually thinks of him and all else is only secondary and thought of only in relation to him. This is done often with the aid of a physical image or, more intimately and characteristically, of a Mantra or a divine name through which the divine being is realised. There are supposed by those who systematise, to be three stages of the seeking through the devotion of the mind, first, the constant hearing of the divine name, qualities and all that has been attached to them, secondly, the constant thinking on them or on the divine being or personality, thirdly, the settling and fixing of the mind on the object; and by this comes the full realisation. And by these, too, there comes when the accompanying feeling or the concentration is very intense, the Samadhi, the ecstatic trance in which the consciousness passes away from outer objects. But all this is really incidental; the one thing essential is the intense devotion of the thought in the mind to the object of adoration. Although it seems akin to the contemplation of the way of knowledge, it differs from that in its spirit. It is in its real nature not a still, but an ecstatic contemplation; it seeks not to pass into the being of the Divine, but to bring the Divine into ourselves and to lose ourselves in the deep ecstasy of his presence or of his possession; and its bliss is not the peace of unity, but the ecstasy of union. Here, too, there may be the separative self-consecration, which ends in the giving up of all other thought of life for the possession of this ecstasy, eternal afterwards in planes beyond, or the comprehensive consecration in which all the thoughts are full of the Divine and even in the occupations of life every thought remembers him. As in the other Yogas, so in this, one comes to see the Divine everywhere and in all and to pour out the realisation of the Divine in all ones inner activities and outward actions. But all is supported here by the primary force of the emotional union: for it is by love that the entire self-consecration and the entire possession is accomplished, and thought and action become shapes and figures of the divine love which possesses the spirit and its members.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Way of Devotion [T2],#NFDB
539:Fairy tales are about trouble, about getting into and out of it, and trouble seems to be a necessary stage on the route to becoming. All the magic and glass mountains and pearls the size of houses and princesses beautiful as the day and talking birds and part-time serpents are distractions from the core of most of the stories, the struggle to survive against adversaries, to find your place in the world, and to come into your own.
Fairy tales are almost always the stories of the powerless, of youngest sons, abandoned children, orphans, of humans transformed into birds and beasts or otherwise enchanted away from their own lives and selves. Even princesses are chattels to be disowned by fathers, punished by step-mothers, or claimed by princes, though they often assert themselves in between and are rarely as passive as the cartoon versions. Fairy tales are children's stories not in wh they were made for but in their focus on the early stages of life, when others have power over you and you have power over no one.
In them, power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness -- from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sewn among the meek is harvested in crisis...
In Hans Christian Andersen's retelling of the old Nordic tale that begins with a stepmother, "The Wild Swans," the banished sister can only disenchant her eleven brothers -- who are swans all day look but turn human at night -- by gathering stinging nettles barehanded from churchyard graves, making them into flax, spinning them and knitting eleven long-sleeved shirts while remaining silent the whole time. If she speaks, they'll remain birds forever. In her silence, she cannot protest the crimes she accused of and nearly burned as a witch.
Hauled off to a pyre as she knits the last of the shirts, she is rescued by the swans, who fly in at the last moment. As they swoop down, she throws the nettle shirts over them so that they turn into men again, all but the youngest brother, whose shirt is missing a sleeve so that he's left with one arm and one wing, eternally a swan-man. Why shirts made of graveyard nettles by bleeding fingers and silence should disenchant men turned into birds by their step-mother is a question the story doesn't need to answer. It just needs to give us compelling images of exile, loneliness, affection, and metamorphosis -- and of a heroine who nearly dies of being unable to tell her own story. ~ Rebecca Solnit,#NFDB
540:Man: Don't these precedents suggest that there is something inherently pre-industrial about the applicability of libertarian ideas—that they necessarily presuppose a rather rural society in which technology and production are fairly simple, and in which the economic organization tends to be small-scale and localized?
Well, let me separate that into two questions: one, how anarchists have felt about it, and two, what I think is the case. As far as anarchist reactions are concerned, there are two. There has been one anarchist tradition—and one might think, say, of Kropotkin as a representative—which had much of the character you describe. On the other hand there's another anarchist tradition that develops into anarcho-syndicalism which simply regarded anarchist ideas as the proper mode of organization for a highly complex advanced industrial society. And that tendency in anarchism merges, or at least inter-relates very closely with a variety of left-wing Marxism, the kind that one finds in, say, the Council Communists that grew up in the Luxemburgian tradition, and that is later represented by Marxist theorists like Anton Pannekoek, who developed a whole theory of workers' councils in industry and who is himself a scientist and astronomer, very much part of the industrial world.
So which of these two views is correct? I mean, is it necessary that anarchist concepts belong to the pre-industrial phase of human society, or is anarchism the rational mode of organization for a highly advanced industrial society? Well, I myself believe the latter, that is, I think that industrialization and the advance of technology raise possibilities for self-management over a broad scale that simply didn't exist in an earlier period. And that in fact this is precisely the rational mode for an advanced and complex industrial society, one in which workers can very well become masters of their own immediate affairs, that is, in direction and control of the shop, but also can be in a position to make the major substantive decisions concerning the structure of the economy, concerning social institutions, concerning planning regionally and beyond. At present, institutions do not permit them to have control over the requisite information, and the relevant training to understand these matters. A good deal could be automated. Much of the necessary work that is required to keep a decent level of social life going can be consigned to machines—at least in principle—which means humans can be free to undertake the kind of creative work which may not have been possible, objectively, in the early stages of the industrial revolution. ~ Noam Chomsky,#NFDB
541:What happened?” I croaked, and she came to my side, offering me a cool drink.
“You’re fine,” she soothed. “Both of you are fine. Just lie still.”
“But…how did I come to be here?”
“You and my son passed out. No one knows how or why, but a lot of people lost consciousness. The Cokyrian commander summoned physicians to treat everyone, then my Lord Landru found you and brought you both here.”
“I need to go home. My mother must be frantic.” I struggled to sit upright, then fell back, my head pounding, nausea sweeping through me that was so debilitating I would have gladly traded it for a hangover.
“Shaselle, are you all right?” It was Grayden, his voice weak and confused. His mother replaced the damp cloth on my brow, then went to offer him something to drink.
“I think I will be,” I managed in response.
I heard voices in the foyer, then Lord Landru strode into the parlor.
“She’s there, Cannan,” he said, and my uncle approached, his atypical worry lines relaxing when he realized I was conscious.
“How are you, Shaselle?”
“Never better.”
He laughed in pure relief. “I’m going to let you rest here for a while yet. Then I’ll return and take you home. But you’re going to be just fine.”
“What went wrong, Uncle? Everyone was so happy, and then…it was chaos.”
“I know. There was a disturbance--Hytanican caused, I’m afraid. But the Cokyrians were only too eager to respond. Feebly armed Hytanicans in various stages of inebriation were no match for sober, well-armed and well-trained Cokyrian soldiers. It would have been a bloodbath had it not been for Commander Narian.” Cannan shook his head, as if trying to figure something out. “I’m not sure what he did, but he must have been anticipating trouble. He released some type of poison--no, not a poison. But some type of airborne substance that knocked everybody off their feet. Shut the fighting down at once.”
He placed a hand on my cheek, brushing away a few wisps of my hair.
“You no doubt feel poorly right now, but I’ve been told the effects wear off in a few hours. You’ll be back to normal after that.”
“Captain, sir?” It was Grayden.
My uncle gazed over at him in surprise. “Yes?”
“This may not be the ideal time to ask, but, would you please permit me to court Shaselle?”
There was stunned silence in the room, then loud laughter.
“I’d be a fool to deny you a chance with my niece. Assuming Shaselle favors the idea.”
“I do, Uncle,” I assured him, easily slipping back toward sleep, images of Grayden and Saadi drifting through my head. Then a remembrance of Queen Alera and Commander Narian came to the forefront--how deferential he had been with her when I had been caught with that dagger, how she had looked at him. And I knew two things with absolute certainty. She was in love with him, and he had to be a good man. ~ Cayla Kluver,#NFDB
542:POLLARD had known better, but instead of pulling rank and insisting that his officers carry out his proposal to sail for the Society Islands, he embraced a more democratic style of command. Modern survival psychologists have determined that this “social”—as opposed to “authoritarian”—form of leadership is ill suited to the early stages of a disaster, when decisions must be made quickly and firmly. Only later, as the ordeal drags on and it is necessary to maintain morale, do social leadership skills become important. Whalemen in the nineteenth century had a clear understanding of these two approaches. The captain was expected to be the authoritarian, what Nantucketers called a fishy man. A fishy man loved to kill whales and lacked the tendency toward self-doubt and self-examination that could get in the way of making a quick decision. To be called “fishy to the backbone” was the ultimate compliment a Nantucketer could receive and meant that he was destined to become, if he wasn’t already, a captain. Mates, however, were expected to temper their fishiness with a more personal, even outgoing, approach. After breaking in the green hands at the onset of the voyage—when they gained their well-deserved reputations as “spit-fires”—mates worked to instill a sense of cooperation among the men. This required them to remain sensitive to the crew’s changeable moods and to keep the lines of communication open. Nantucketers recognized that the positions of captain and first mate required contrasting personalities. Not all mates had the necessary edge to become captains, and there were many future captains who did not have the patience to be successful mates. There was a saying on the island: “[I]t is a pity to spoil a good mate by making him a master.” Pollard’s behavior, after both the knockdown and the whale attack, indicates that he lacked the resolve to overrule his two younger and less experienced officers. In his deference to others, Pollard was conducting himself less like a captain and more like the veteran mate described by the Nantucketer William H. Macy: “[H]e had no lungs to blow his own trumpet, and sometimes distrusted his own powers, though generally found equal to any emergency after it arose. This want of confidence sometimes led him to hesitate, where a more impulsive or less thoughtful man would act at once. In the course of his career he had seen many ‘fishy’ young men lifted over his head.” Shipowners hoped to combine a fishy, hard-driving captain with an approachable and steady mate. But in the labor-starved frenzy of Nantucket in 1819, the Essex had ended up with a captain who had the instincts and soul of a mate, and a mate who had the ambition and fire of a captain. Instead of giving an order and sticking with it, Pollard indulged his matelike tendency to listen to others. This provided Chase—who had no qualms about speaking up—with the opportunity to impose his own will. For better or worse, the men of the Essex were sailing toward a destiny that would be determined, in large part, not by their unassertive captain but by their forceful and fishy mate. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick, #NFDB
543:All that we have seen in this work shows us one clear fact: The
Qur'an, this extraordinary book which was revealed to the Seal of the
Prophets, Muhammad (saas), is a source of inspiration and true knowledge.
The book of Islam-no matter what subject it refers to-is being
proved as Allah's word as each new piece of historical, scientific or
archaeological information comes to light. Facts about scientific subjects
and the news delivered to us about the past and future, facts that
no one could have known at the time of the Qur'an's revelation, are
announced in its verses. It is impossible for this information, examples
of which we have discussed in detail in this book, to have been known
with the level of knowledge and technology available in 7th century
Arabia. With this in mind, let us ask:
Could anyone in 7th century Arabia have known that our atmosphere
is made up of seven layers?
Could anyone in 7th century Arabia have known in detail the various
stages of development from which an embryo grows into a baby
and then enters the world from inside his mother?
Could anyone in 7th century Arabia have known that the universe
is "steadily expanding," as the Qur'an puts it, when modern scientists
have only in recent decades put forward the idea of the "Big Bang"?
Could anyone in 7th century Arabia have known about the fact
that each individual's fingertips are absolutely unique, when we have
only discovered this fact recently, using modern technology and modern
scientific equipment?
Could anyone in 7th century Arabia have known about the role of
one of Pharaoh's most prominent aids, Haman, when the details of
hieroglyphic translation were only discovered two centuries ago?
Could anyone in 7th century Arabia have known that
the word "Pharaoh" was only used from the 14th century
B.C. and not before, as the Old Testament erroneously
claims?
Could anyone in 7th century Arabia
have known about Ubar and Iram's Pillars, which were only discovered
in recent decades via the use of NASA satellite photographs?
The only answer to these questions is as follows: the Qur'an is the
word of the Almighty Allah, the Originator of everything and the One
Who encompasses everything with His knowledge. In one verse, Allah
says, "If it had been from other than Allah, they would have found
many inconsistencies in it." (Qur'an, 4:82) Every piece of information
the Qur'an contains reveals the secret miracles of this divine book.
The human being is meant to hold fast to this Divine Book
revealed by Allah and to receive it with an open heart as his one and
only guide in life. In the Qur'an, Allah tells us the following:
This Qur'an could never have been devised by any besides Allah.
Rather it is confirmation of what came before it and an elucidation of
the Book which contains no doubt from the Lord of all the worlds. Do
they say, "He has invented it"? Say: "Then produce a sura like it and call
on anyone you can besides Allah if you are telling the truth." (Qur'an,
10:37-38)
And this is a Book We have sent down and blessed, so follow it and
have fear of Allah so that hopefully you will gain mercy. (Qur'an, 6:155) ~ Harun Yahya,#NFDB
544:These groups were a new kind of vehicle: a hive or colony of close genetic relatives, which functioned as a unit (e.g., in foraging and fighting) and reproduced as a unit. These are the motorboating sisters in my example, taking advantage of technological innovations and mechanical engineering that had never before existed. It was another transition. Another kind of group began to function as though it were a single organism, and the genes that got to ride around in colonies crushed the genes that couldn’t “get it together” and rode around in the bodies of more selfish and solitary insects. The colonial insects represent just 2 percent of all insect species, but in a short period of time they claimed the best feeding and breeding sites for themselves, pushed their competitors to marginal grounds, and changed most of the Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems (for example, by enabling the evolution of flowering plants, which need pollinators).43 Now they’re the majority, by weight, of all insects on Earth. What about human beings? Since ancient times, people have likened human societies to beehives. But is this just a loose analogy? If you map the queen of the hive onto the queen or king of a city-state, then yes, it’s loose. A hive or colony has no ruler, no boss. The queen is just the ovary. But if we simply ask whether humans went through the same evolutionary process as bees—a major transition from selfish individualism to groupish hives that prosper when they find a way to suppress free riding—then the analogy gets much tighter. Many animals are social: they live in groups, flocks, or herds. But only a few animals have crossed the threshold and become ultrasocial, which means that they live in very large groups that have some internal structure, enabling them to reap the benefits of the division of labor.44 Beehives and ant nests, with their separate castes of soldiers, scouts, and nursery attendants, are examples of ultrasociality, and so are human societies. One of the key features that has helped all the nonhuman ultra-socials to cross over appears to be the need to defend a shared nest. The biologists Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson summarize the recent finding that ultrasociality (also called “eusociality”)45 is found among a few species of shrimp, aphids, thrips, and beetles, as well as among wasps, bees, ants, and termites: In all the known [species that] display the earliest stages of eusociality, their behavior protects a persistent, defensible resource from predators, parasites, or competitors. The resource is invariably a nest plus dependable food within foraging range of the nest inhabitants.46 Hölldobler and Wilson give supporting roles to two other factors: the need to feed offspring over an extended period (which gives an advantage to species that can recruit siblings or males to help out Mom) and intergroup conflict. All three of these factors applied to those first early wasps camped out together in defensible naturally occurring nests (such as holes in trees). From that point on, the most cooperative groups got to keep the best nesting sites, which they then modified in increasingly elaborate ways to make themselves even more productive and more protected. Their descendants include the honeybees we know today, whose hives have been described as “a factory inside a fortress.”47 ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
545:One of the positive side-effects of maintaining a very high degree of awareness of death is that it will prepare the individual to such an extent that, when the individual actually faces death, he or she will be in a better position to maintain his or her presence of mind. Especially in Tantric Buddhism, it is considered that the state of mind which one experiences at the point of death is extremely subtle and, because of the subtlety of the level of that consciousness, it also has a great power and impact upon one’s mental continuum. In Tantric practices we find a lot of emphasis placed on reflections upon the process of death, so that the individual at the time of death not only retains his or her presence of mind, but also is in a position to utilize that subtle state of consciousness effectively towards the realization of the path. From the Tantric perspective, the entire process of existence is explained in terms of the three stages known as ‘death’, the ‘intermediate state’ and ‘rebirth’. All of these three stages of existence are seen as states or manifestations of the consciousness and the energies that accompany or propel the consciousness, so that the intermediate state and rebirth are nothing other than various levels of the subtle consciousness and energy. An example of such fluctuating states can be found in our daily existence, when during the 24-hour day we go through a cycle of deep sleep, the waking period and the dream state. Our daily existence is in fact characterized by these three stages. As death becomes something familiar to you, as you have some knowledge of its processes and can recognize its external and internal indications, you are prepared for it. According to my own experience, I still have no confidence that at the moment of death I will really implement all these practices for which I have prepared. I have no guarantee! Sometimes when I think about death I get some kind of excitement. Instead of fear, I have a feeling of curiosity and this makes it much easier for me to accept death. Of course, my only burden if I die today is, ‘Oh, what will happen to Tibet? What about Tibetan culture? What about the six million Tibetan people’s rights?’ This is my main concern. Otherwise, I feel almost no fear of death. In my daily practice of prayer I visualize eight different deity yogas and eight different deaths. Perhaps when death comes all my preparation may fail. I hope not! I think these practices are mentally very helpful in dealing with death. Even if there is no next life, there is some benefit if they relieve fear. And because there is less fear, one can be more fully prepared. If you are fully prepared then, at the moment of death, you can retain your peace of mind. I think at the time of death a peaceful mind is essential no matter what you believe in, whether it is Buddhism or some other religion. At the moment of death, the individual should not seek to develop anger, hatred and so on. I think even non-believers see that it is better to pass away in a peaceful manner, it is much happier. Also, for those who believe in heaven or some other concept, it is also best to pass away peacefully with the thought of one’s own God or belief in higher forces. For Buddhists and also other ancient Indian traditions, which accept the rebirth or karma theory, naturally at the time of death a virtuous state of mind is beneficial. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
546:This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge. A downpour of inwardly visible Light very usually envelops this action; for it must be noted that, contrary to our ordinary conceptions, light is not primarily a material creation and the sense or vision of light accompanying the inner illumination is not merely a subjective visual image or a symbolic phenomenon: light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy. There is also in this descent the arrival of a greater dynamic, a golden drive, a luminous enthousiasmos of inner force and power which replaces the comparatively slow and deliberate process of the Higher Mind by a swift, sometimes a vehement, almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation.
But these two stages of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind's transmutation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude. ... Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of stable lightnings.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#NFDB
547:In the process of this change there must be by the very necessity of the effort two stages of its working. First, there will be the personal endeavour of the human being, as soon as he becomes aware by his soul, mind, heart of this divine possibility and turns towards it as the true object of life, to prepare himself for it and to get rid of all in him that belongs to a lower working, of all that stands in the way of his opening to the spiritual truth and its power, so as to possess by this liberation his spiritual being and turn all his natural movements into free means of its self-expression. It is by this turn that the self-conscious Yoga aware of its aim begins: there is a new awakening and an upward change of the life motive. So long as there is only an intellectual, ethical and other self-training for the now normal purposes of life which does not travel beyond the ordinary circle of working of mind, life and body, we are still only in the obscure and yet unillumined preparatory Yoga of Nature; we are still in pursuit of only an ordinary human perfection. A spiritual desire of the Divine and of the divine perfection, of a unity with him in all our being and a spiritual perfection in all our nature, is the effective sign of this change, the precursory power of a great integral conversion of our being and living. By personal effort a precursory change, a preliminary conversion can be effected; it amounts to a greater or less spiritualising of our mental motives, our character and temperament, and a mastery, stilling or changed action of the vital and physical life. This converted subjectivity can be made the base of some communion or unity of the soul in mind with the Divine and some partial reflection of the divine nature in the mentality of the human being. That is as far as man can go by his unaided or indirectly aided effort, because that is an effort of mind and mind cannot climb beyond itself permanently: at most it arises to a spiritualised and idealised mentality. If it shoots up beyond that border, it loses hold of itself, loses hold of life, and arrives either at a trance of absorption or a passivity. A greater perfection can only be arrived at by a higher power entering in and taking up the whole action of the being. The second stage of this Yoga will therefore be a persistent giving up of all the action of the nature into the hands of this greater Power, a substitution of its influence, possession and working for the personal effort, until the Divine to whom we aspire becomes the direct master of the Yoga and effects the entire spiritual and ideal conversion of the being. Two rules there are that will diminish the difficulty and obviate the danger. One must reject all that comes from the ego, from vital desire, from the mere mind and its presumptuous reasoning incompetence, all that ministers to these agents of the Ignorance. One must learn to hear and follow the voice of the inmost soul, the direction of the Guru, the command of the Master, the working of the Divine Mother. Whoever clings to the desires and weaknesses of the flesh, the cravings and passions of the vital in its turbulent ignorance, the dictates of his personal mind unsilenced and unillumined by a greater knowledge, cannot find the true inner law and is heaping obstacles in the way of the divine fulfilment. Whoever is able to detect and renounce those obscuring agencies and to discern and follow the true Guide within and without will discover the spiritual law and reach the goal of the Yoga. A radical and total change of consciousness is not only the whole meaning but, in an increasing force and by progressive stages, the whole method of the integral Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Integral Perfection [618],#NFDB
548:Let us fool ourselves no longer. At the very moment Western nations, threw off the ancient regime of absolute government, operating under a once-divine king, they were restoring this same system in a far more effective form in their technology, reintroducing coercions of a military character no less strict in the organization of a factory than in that of the new drilled, uniformed, and regimented army. During the transitional stages of the last two centuries, the ultimate tendency of this system might b e in doubt, for in many areas there were strong democratic reactions; but with the knitting together of a scientific ideology, itself liberated from theological restrictions or humanistic purposes, authoritarian technics found an instrument at hand that h as now given it absolute command of physical energies of cosmic dimensions. The inventors of nuclear bombs, space rockets, and computers are the pyramid builders of our own age: psychologically inflated by a similar myth of unqualified power, boasting through their science of their increasing omnipotence, if not omniscience, moved by obsessions and compulsions no less irrational than those of earlier absolute systems: particularly the notion that the system itself must be expanded, at whatever eventual co st to life.
Through mechanization, automation, cybernetic direction, this authoritarian technics has at last successfully overcome its most serious weakness: its original dependence upon resistant, sometimes actively disobedient servomechanisms, still human enough to harbor purposes that do not always coincide with those of the system.
Like the earliest form of authoritarian technics, this new technology is marvellously dynamic and productive: its power in every form tends to increase without limits, in quantities that defy assimilation and defeat control, whether we are thinking of the output of scientific knowledge or of industrial assembly lines. To maximize energy, speed, or automation, without reference to the complex conditions that sustain organic life, have become ends in themselves. As with the earliest forms of authoritarian technics, the weight of effort, if one is to judge by national budgets, is toward absolute instruments of destruction, designed for absolutely irrational purposes whose chief by-product would be the mutilation or extermination of the human race. Even Ashurbanipal and Genghis Khan performed their gory operations under normal human limits.
The center of authority in this new system is no longer a visible personality, an all-powerful king: even in totalitarian dictatorships the center now lies in the system itself, invisible but omnipresent: all its human components, even the technical and managerial elite, even the sacred priesthood of science, who alone have access to the secret knowledge by means of which total control is now swiftly being effected, are themselves trapped by the very perfection of the organization they have invented. Like the Pharoahs of the Pyramid Age, these servants of the system identify its goods with their own kind of well-being: as with the divine king, their praise of the system is an act of self-worship; and again like the king, they are in the grip of an irrational compulsion to extend their means of control and expand the scope of their authority. In this new systems-centered collective, this Pentagon of power, there is no visible presence who issues commands: unlike job's God, the new deities cannot be confronted, still less defied. Under the pretext of saving labor, the ultimate end of this technics is to displace life, or rather, to transfer the attributes of life to the machine and the mechanical collective, allowing only so much of the organism to remain as may be controlled and manipulated. ~ Lewis Mumford,#NFDB
549:Homage to the Adamantine Mind! Dharma king, you who have realized the essence; you who expound the way of being, out of compassion: king Buddha Samdrup, I bow to you in my heart, pray listen to me. Through your kind and skillful means, by a habit long formed, and as a fruit of long practice in this life, I have realized the nature of ever-presence. When the secret of appearance is revealed, everything arises in a tone of voidness, undefined by the marks of identity. Like a sky that is nothing but an image. When the secret of thoughts is revealed, though active, they are but mind's sport, naked reflections of transcendent mind unsullied by deliberation and correction. When the secret of recollection is revealed, every memory is but an illumination of self-knowledge in the ever-present state, untainted by ego consciousness. When the secret of illusions is revealed, they seem nothing but the primordial state, appearing in the visual field of rikpa, untouched by the dualism of mind and things. When the secret of abiding is revealed, you are in the state of self-cognition, however long you remain, free of elaboration, the expanse unstained by laxity and torpor. When the secret of mobility is revealed, however much you move, you remain within clear light, unstained by distraction, excitement, and so on, a true self-recognizer. When the secret of samsara is revealed, however often one may circle, the cycles are illusion unaffected by joy and pain. This is the realization of Buddha's four bodies. When the secret of peace is revealed, however tranquil one's attainments, they are but an image; this is the natural pure space, free of the signs of being and nonbeing. When the secret of birth is revealed, however one's reborn, it's but an emanation; meditation's vision of pure self-generation free of clinging and apprehensions. When the secret of death is revealed, however often one may die, it's but the vision of the ultimate, the stages of completion perfect, free of any karmic deeds. When the secret of bliss is revealed, its intensity cannot be bettered; this is the state of spontaneous bliss, free of all traces of contamination. When the secret of luminosity is revealed, however bright, it's but an empty form -- mother image of the void in space, free of every multiplicity. When the secret of emptiness is revealed, though empty, it is the unsurpassed, devoid of every contingent stain, and free from every deception. When the secret of the view is revealed, however much one looks and sees, the world remains beyond thought and word -- the expanse beyond dichotomies. When the secret of meditation is revealed, however much one meditates, it's but a state -- undistracted, and in natural restfulness, free of exertion and constraint. When the secret of action is revealed, whatever one does are the six perfections -- spontaneous, free, and to the point, uncolored by strictures and moral codes. When the secret of fruition is revealed, achievements are but the cognition of mind as dharmakaya, the mind itself free of hope and fear. This is the profound innermost secret; guru's blessings have entered my heart; naked nonduality dawns within; the secret of samsara and nirvana is revealed! I have beheld the face of the ordinary mind; I have arrived at the view that is free of extremes; even if the Buddha came in person now, I have no queries that require his advice! This song on the view of voidness expounding the nature of the being of all, spoken in words inspired by conviction, was sung in a voice echoing itself, unobstructed, in between meditation sessions. [1585.jpg] -- from Songs of Spiritual Experience: Tibetan Buddhist Poems of Insight & Awakening, Translated by Thupten Jinpa / Translated by Jas Elsner
~ Karma Trinley, A Song on the View of Voidness
,#NFDB
550::::
As an inner equality increases and with it the sense of the true vital being waiting for the greater direction it has to serve, as the psychic call too increases in all the members of our nature, That to which the call is addressed begins to reveal itself, descends to take possession of the life and its energies and fills them with the height, intimacy, vastness of its presence and its purpose. In many, if not most, it manifests something of itself even before the equality and the open psychic urge or guidance are there. A call of the veiled psychic element oppressed by the mass of the outer ignorance and crying for deliverance, a stress of eager meditation and seeking for knowledge, a longing of the heart, a passionate will ignorant yet but sincere may break the lid that shuts off that Higher from this Lower Nature and open the floodgates. A little of the Divine Person may reveal itself or some Light, Power, Bliss, Love out of the Infinite. This may be a momentary revelation, a flash or a brief-lived gleam that soon withdraws and waits for the preparation of the nature; but also it may repeat itself, grow, endure. A long and large and comprehensive working will then have begun, sometimes luminous or intense, sometimes slow and obscure. A Divine Power comes in front at times and leads and compels or instructs and enlightens; at others it withdraws into the background and seems to leave the being to its own resources. All that is ignorant, obscure, perverted or simply imperfect and inferior in the being is raised up, perhaps brought to its acme, dealt with, corrected, exhausted, shown its own disastrous results, compelled to call for its own cessation or transformation or expelled as worthless or incorrigible from the nature. This cannot be a smooth and even process; alternations there are of day and night, illumination and darkness, calm and construction or battle and upheaval, the presence of the growing Divine Consciousness and its absence, heights of hope and abysses of despair, the clasp of the Beloved and the anguish of its absence, the overwhelming invasion, the compelling deceit, the fierce opposition, the disabling mockery of hostile Powers or the help and comfort and communion of the Gods and the Divine Messengers. A great and long revolution and churning of the ocean of Life with strong emergences of its nectar and its poison is enforced till all is ready and the increasing Descent finds a being, a nature prepared and conditioned for its complete rule and its all-encompassing presence. But if the equality and the psychic light and will are already there, then this process, though it cannot be dispensed with, can still be much lightened and facilitated: it will be rid of its worst dangers; an inner calm, happiness, confidence will support the steps through all the difficulties and trials of the transformation and the growing Force profiting by the full assent of the nature will rapidly diminish and eliminate the power of the opposing forces. A sure guidance and protection will be present throughout, sometimes standing in front, sometimes working behind the veil, and the power of the end will be already there even in the beginning and in the long middle stages of the great endeavour. For at all times the seeker will be aware of the Divine Guide and Protector or the working of the supreme Mother-Force; he will know that all is done for the best, the progress assured, the victory inevitable. In either case the process is the same and unavoidable, a taking up of the whole nature, of the whole life, of the internal and of the external, to reveal and handle and transform its forces and their movements under the pressure of a diviner Life from above, until all here has been possessed by greater spiritual powers and made an instrumentation of a spiritual action and a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 179,#NFDB
551:A Hard Left For High-School History The College Board version of our national story BY STANLEY KURTZ | 1215 words AT the height of the “culture wars” of the late 1980s and early 1990s, conservatives were alive to the dangers of a leftist takeover of American higher education. Today, with the coup all but complete, conservatives take the loss of the academy for granted and largely ignore it. Meanwhile, America’s college-educated Millennial generation drifts ever farther leftward. Now, however, an ambitious attempt to force a leftist tilt onto high-school U.S.-history courses has the potential to shake conservatives out of their lethargy, pulling them back into the education wars, perhaps to retake some lost ground. The College Board, the private company that develops the SAT and Advanced Placement (AP) exams, recently ignited a firestorm by releasing, with little public notice, a lengthy, highly directive, and radically revisionist “framework” for teaching AP U.S. history. The new framework replaces brief guidelines that once allowed states, school districts, and teachers to present U.S. history as they saw fit. The College Board has promised to generate detailed guidelines for the entire range of AP courses (including government and politics, world history, and European history), and in doing so it has effectively set itself up as a national school board. Dictating curricula for its AP courses allows the College Board to circumvent state standards, virtually nationalizing America’s high schools, in violation of cherished principles of local control. Unchecked, this will result in a high-school curriculum every bit as biased and politicized as the curriculum now dominant in America’s colleges. Not coincidentally, David Coleman, the new head of the College Board, is also the architect of the Common Core, another effort to effectively nationalize American K–12 education, focusing on English and math skills. As president of the College Board, Coleman has found a way to take control of history, social studies, and civics as well, pushing them far to the left without exposing himself to direct public accountability. Although the College Board has steadfastly denied that its new AP U.S. history (APUSH) guidelines are politically biased, the intellectual background of the effort indicates otherwise. The early stages of the APUSH redesign overlapped with a collaborative venture between the College Board and the Organization of American Historians to rework U.S.-history survey courses along “internationalist” lines. The goal was to undercut anything that smacked of American exceptionalism, the notion that, as a nation uniquely constituted around principles of liberty and equality, America stands as a model of self-government for the world. Accordingly, the College Board’s new framework for AP U.S. history eliminates the traditional emphasis on Puritan leader John Winthrop’s “City upon a Hill” sermon and its echoes in American history. The Founding itself is demoted and dissolved within a broader focus on transcontinental developments, chiefly the birth of an exploitative international capitalism grounded in the slave trade. The Founders’ commitment to republican principles is dismissed as evidence of a benighted belief in European cultural superiority. Thomas Bender, the NYU historian who leads the Organization of American Historians’ effort to globalize and denationalize American history, collaborated with the high-school and college teachers who eventually came to lead the College Board’s APUSH redesign effort. Bender frames his movement as a counterpoint to the exceptionalist perspective that dominated American foreign policy during the George W. Bush ad ministration. Bender also openly hopes that students exposed to his approach will sympathize with Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s willingness to use foreign law to interpret the U.S. Constitution rather than with Justice Antonin Scalia ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
552:The recurring beat that moments God in Time.
Only was missing the sole timeless Word
That carries eternity in its lonely sound,
The Idea self-luminous key to all ideas,
The integer of the Spirit's perfect sum
That equates the unequal All to the equal One,
The single sign interpreting every sign,
The absolute index to the Absolute.
There walled apart by its own innerness
In a mystical barrage of dynamic light
He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
As if from Matter's plinth and viewless base
To a top as viewless, a carved sea of worlds
Climbing with foam-maned waves to the Supreme
Ascended towards breadths immeasurable;
It hoped to soar into the Ineffable's reign:
A hundred levels raised it to the Unknown.
So it towered up to heights intangible
And disappeared in the hushed conscious Vast
As climbs a storeyed temple-tower to heaven
Built by the aspiring soul of man to live
Near to his dream of the Invisible.
Infinity calls to it as it dreams and climbs;
Its spire touches the apex of the world;
Mounting into great voiceless stillnesses
It marries the earth to screened eternities.
Amid the many systems of the One
Made by an interpreting creative joy
Alone it points us to our journey back
Out of our long self-loss in Nature's deeps;
Planted on earth it holds in it all realms:
It is a brief compendium of the Vast.
This was the single stair to being's goal.
A summary of the stages of the spirit,
Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies
Refashioned in our secret air of self
A subtle pattern of the universe.
It is within, below, without, above.
Acting upon this visible Nature's scheme
It wakens our earth-matter's heavy doze
To think and feel and to react to joy;
It models in us our diviner parts,
Lifts mortal mind into a greater air,
Makes yearn this life of flesh to intangible aims,
Links the body's death with immortality's call:
Out of the swoon of the Inconscience
It labours towards a superconscient Light.
If earth were all and this were not in her,
Thought could not be nor life-delight's response:
Only material forms could then be her guests
Driven by an inanimate world-force.
Earth by this golden superfluity
Bore thinking man and more than man shall bear;
This higher scheme of being is our cause
And holds the key to our ascending fate;
It calls out of our dense mortality
The conscious spirit nursed in Matter's house.
The living symbol of these conscious planes,
Its influences and godheads of the unseen,
Its unthought logic of Reality's acts
Arisen from the unspoken truth in things,
Have fixed our inner life's slow-scaled degrees.
Its steps are paces of the soul's return
From the deep adventure of material birth,
A ladder of delivering ascent
And rungs that Nature climbs to deity.
Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godhead's fall.
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state;
Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness
Divinity's lapse from its own splendours wove
The many-patterned ground of all we are.
An idol of self is our mortality.
Our earth is a fragment and a residue;
Her power is packed with the stuff of greater worlds
And steeped in their colour-lustres dimmed by her drowse;
An atavism of higher births is hers,
Her sleep is stirred by their buried memories
Recalling the lost spheres from which they fell.
Unsatisfied forces in her bosom move;
They are partners of her greater growing fate
And her return to immortality;
They consent to share her doom of birth and death;
They kindle partial gleams of the All and drive
Her blind laborious spirit to compose
A meagre image of the mighty Whole.
The calm and luminous Intimacy within
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#NFDB
553:First Anniversary
Like the vain curlings of the watery maze,
Which in smooth streams a sinking weight does raise,
So Man, declining always, disappears
In the weak circles of increasing years;
And his short tumults of themselves compose,
While flowing Time above his head does close.
Cromwell alone with greater vigour runs,
(Sun-like) the stages of succeeding suns:
And still the day which he doth next restore,
Is the just wonder of the day before.
Cromwell alone doth with new lustre spring,
And shines the jewel of the yearly ring.
'Tis he the force of scattered time contracts,
And in one year the work of ages acts:
While heavy monarchs make a wide return,
Longer, and more malignant than Saturn:
And though they all Platonic years should reign,
In the same posture would be found again.
Their earthy projects under ground they lay,
More slow and brittle than the China clay:
Well may they strive to leave them to their son,
For one thing never was by one king done.
Yet some more active for a frontier town,
Taken by proxy, beg a false renown;
Another triumphs at the public cost,
And will have won, if he no more have lost;
They fight by others, but in person wrong,
And only are against their subjects strong;
Their other wars seem but a feigned contèst,
This common enemy is still oppressed;
If conquerors, on them they turn their might;
If conquered, on them they wreak their spite:
They neither build the temple in their days,
Nor matter for succeeding founders raise;
Nor sacred prophecies consult within,
Much less themself to pèfect them begin;
No other care they bear of things above,
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But with astrologers divine of Jove
To know how long their planet yet reprieves
From the deservéd fate their guilty lives:
Thus (image-like) an useless time they tell,
And with vain sceptre strike the hourly bell,
Nor more contribute to the state of things,
Than wooden heads unto the viol's strings.
While indefatigable Cromwell hies,
And cuts his way still nearer to the skies,
Learning a music in the region clear,
To tune this lower to that higher sphere.
So when Amphion did the lute command,
Which the god gave him, with his gentle hand,
The rougher stones, unto his measures hewed,
Danced up in order from the quarries rude;
This took a lower, that an higher place,
As he the treble altered, or the bass:
No note he struck, but a new stone was laid,
And the great work ascended while he played.
The listening structures he with wonder eyed,
And still new stops to various time applied:
Now through the strings a martial rage he throws,
And joining straight the Theban tower arose;
Then as he strokes them with a touch more sweet,
The flocking marbles in a palace meet;
But for the most the graver notes did try,
Therefore the temples reared their columns high:
Thus, ere he ceased, his sacred lute creates
Th' harmonious city of the seven gates.
Such was that wondrous order and consent,
When Cromwell tuned the ruling Instrument,
While tedious statesmen many years did hack,
Framing a liberty that still went back,
Whose numerous gorge could swallow in an hour
That island, which the sea cannot devour:
Then our Amphion issued out and sings,
And once he struck, and twice, the powerful strings.
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The Commonwealth then first together came,
And each one entered in the willing frame;
All other matter yields, and may be ruled;
But who the minds of stubborn men can build?
No quarry bears a stone so hardly wrought,
Nor with such labour from its centre brought;
None to be sunk in the foundation bends,
Each in the house the highest place contends,
And each the hand that lays him will direct,
And some fall back upon the architect;
Yet all composed by his attractive song,
Into the animated city throng.
The Commonwealth does through their centres all
Draw the circumference of the public wall;
The crossest spirits here do take their part,
Fastening the contignation which they thwart;
And they, whose nature leads them to divide,
Uphold this one, and that the other side;
But the most equal still sustain the height,
And they as pillars keep the work upright,
While the resistance of opposèd minds,
The fabric (as with arches) stronger binds,
Which on the basis of a senate free,
Knit by the roof's protecting weight, agree.
When for his foot he thus a place had found,
He hurls e'er since the world about him round,
And in his several aspects, like a star,
Here shines in peace, and thither shoots in war,
While by his beams observing princes steer,
And wisely court the influence they fear.
O would they rather by his pattern won
Kiss the approaching, not yet angry Son;
And in their numbered footsteps humbly tread
The path where holy oracles do lead;
How might they under such a captain raise
The great designs kept for the latter days!
But mad with reason (so miscalled) of state
They know them not, and what they know not, hate.
Hence still they sing hosanna to the whore,
And her, whom they should massacre, adore:
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But Indians, whom they would convert, subdue;
Nor teach, but traffic with, or burn the Jew.
Unhappy princes, ignorantly bred,
By malice some, by error more misled,
If gracious heaven to my life give length,
Leisure to time, and to my weaknes strength,
Then shall I once with graver accents shake
Your regal sloth, and your long slumbers wake:
Like the shrill huntsman that prevents the east,
Winding his horn to kings that chase the beast.
Till then my muse shall hollo far behind
Angelic Cromwell who outwings the wind,
And in dark nights, and in cold days alone
Pursues the monster through every throne:
Which shrinking to her Roman den impure,
Gnashes her gory teeth; nor there secure.
Hence oft I think if in some happy hour
High grace should meet in one with highest power,
And then a seasonable people still
Should bend to his, as he to heaven's will,
What we might hope, what wonderful effect
From such a wished conjuncture might reflect.
Sure, the mysterious work, where none withstand,
Would forthwith finish under such a hand:
Foreshortened time its useless course would stay,
And soon precipitate the latest day.
But a thick cloud about that morning lies,
And intercepts the beams of mortal eyes,
That 'tis the most which we determine can,
If these the times, then this must be the man.
And well he therefore does, and well has guessed,
Who in his age has always forward pressed:
And knowing not where heaven's choice may light,
Girds yet his sword, and ready stand to fight;
But men, alas, as if they nothing cared,
Look on, all unconcerned, or unprepared;
And stars still fall, and still the dragon's tail
Swinges the volumes of its horrid flail.
For the great justice that did first suspend
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The world by sin, does by the same extend.
Hence that blest day still counterposèd wastes,
The ill delaying what the elected hastes;
Hence landing nature to new seas is tossed,
And good designs still with their authors lost.
And thou, great Cromwell, for whose happy birth
A mould was chosen out of better earth;
Whose saint-like mother we did lately see
Live out an age, long as a pedigree;
That she might seem (could we the Fall dispute),
T' have smelled the blossom, and not eat the fruit;
Though none does of more lasting parents grow,
Yet never any did them honour so,
Though thou thine heart from evil still unstained,
And always hast thy tongue from fraud refrained;
Thou, who so oft through storms of thundering lead
Hast born securely thine undaunted head,
Thy breast through poniarding conspiracies,
Drawn from the sheath of lying prophecies;
Thee proof behond all other force or skill,
Our sins endanger, and shall one day kill.
How near they failed, and in thy sudden fall
At once assayed to overturn us all.
Our brutish fury struggling to be free,
Hurried thy horses while they hurried thee,
When thou hadst almost quit thy mortal cares,
And soiled in dust thy crown of silver hairs.
Let this one sorrow interweave among
The other glories of our yearly song.
Like skilful looms, which through the costly thread
Of purling ore, a shining wave do shed:
So shall the tears we on past grief employ,
Still as they trickle, glitter in our joy.
So with more modesty we may be true,
And speak, as of the dead, the praises due:
While impious men deceived with pleasure short,
On their own hopes shall find the fall retort.
But the poor beasts, wanting their noble guide,
61
(What could they more?) shrunk guiltily aside.
First wingèd fear transports them far away,
And leaden sorrow then their flight did stay.
See how they each his towering crest abate,
And the green grass, and their known mangers hate,
Nor through wide nostrils snuff the wanton air,
Nor their round hoofs, or curlèd manes compare;
With wandering eyes, and restless ears they stood,
And with shrill neighings asked him of the wood.
Thou, Cromwell, falling, not a stupid tree,
Or rock so savage, but it mourned for thee:
And all about was heard a panic groan,
As if that Nature's self were overthrown.
It seemed the earth did from the centre tear;
It seemed the sun was fall'n out of the sphere:
Justice obstructed lay, and reason fooled;
Courage disheartened, and religion cooled.
A dismal silence through the palace went,
And then loud shrieks the vaulted marbles rent,
Such as the dying chorus sings by turns,
And to deaf seas, and ruthless tempests mourns,
When now they sink, and now the plundering streams
Break up each deck, and rip the oaken seams.
But thee triumphant hence the fiery car,
And fiery steeds had borne out of the war,
From the low world, and thankless men above,
Unto the kingdom blest of peace and love:
We only mourned ourselves, in thine ascent,
Whom thou hadst left beneath with mantle rent.
For all delight of life thou then didst lose,
When to command, thou didst thyself dispose;
Resigning up thy privacy so dear,
To turn the headstrong people's charioteer;
For to be Cromwell was a greater thing,
Then ought below, or yet above a king:
Therefore thou rather didst thyself depress,
Yielding to rule, because it made thee less.
For neither didst thou from the first apply
62
Thy sober spirit unto things too high,
But in thine own fields exercised'st long,
An healthful mind within a body strong;
Till at the seventh time thou in the skies,
As a small cloud, like a man's hand, didst rise;
Then did thick mists and winds the air deform,
And down at last thou poured'st the fertile storm,
Which to the thirsty land did plenty bring,
But, though forewarned, o'ertook and wet the King.
What since he did, an higher force him pushed
Still from behind, and yet before him rushed,
Though undiscerned among the tumult blind,
Who think those high decrees by man designed.
'Twas heaven would not that his power should cease,
But walk still middle betwixt war and peace:
Choosing each stone, and poising every weight,
Trying the measures of the breadth and height;
Here pulling down, and there erecting new,
Founding a firm state by proportions true.
When Gideon so did from the war retreat,
Yet by the conquest of two kings grown great,
He on the peace extends a warlike power,
And Israel silent saw him raze the tower;
And how he Succorth's Elders durst suppress,
With thorns and briars of the wilderness.
No king might ever such a force have done;
Yet would not he be Lord, nor yet his son.
Thou with the same strength, and an heart as plain,
Didst (like thine olive) still refuse to reign,
Though why should others all thy labour spoil,
And brambles be anointed with thine oil,
Whose climbing flame, without a timely stop,
Had quickly levelled every cedar's top?
Therefore first growing to thyself a law,
Th' ambitious shrubs thou in just time didst awe.
So have I seen at sea, when whirling winds,
Hurry the bark, but more the seamen's minds,
Who with mistaken course salute the sand,
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And threatening rocks misapprehend for land,
While baleful Tritons to the shipwreck guide,
And corposants along the tackling slide,
The passengers all wearied out before,
Giddy, and wishing for the fatal shore,
Some lusty mate, who with more careful eye
Counted the hours, and every star did spy,
The help does from the artless steersman strain,
And doubles back unto the safer main.
What though a while they grumble discontent,
Saving himself, he does their loss prevent.
'Tis not a freedom, that where all command;
Nor tyranny, where one does them withstand:
But who of both the bounder knows to lay
Him as their father must the state obey.
Thou, and thine house (like Noah's eight) did rest,
Left by the wars' flood on the mountains' crest:
And the large vale lay subject to thy will
Which thou but as an husbandman wouldst till:
And only didst for others plant the vine
Of liberty, not drunken with its wine.
That sober liberty which men may have,
That they enjoy, but more they vainly crave:
And such as to their parents' tents do press,
May show their own, not see his nakedness.
Yet such a Chammish issue still does rage,
The shame and plague both of the land and age,
Who watched thy halting, and thy fall deride,
Rejoicing when thy foot had slipped aside,
That their new king might the fifth sceptre shake,
And make the world, by his example, quake:
Whose frantic army should they want for men
Might muster heresies, so one were ten.
What thy misfortune, they the spirit call,
And their religion only is to fall.
Oh Mahomet! now couldst thou rise again,
Thy falling-sickness should have made thee reign,
While Feake and Simpson would in many a tome,
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Have writ the comments of thy sacred foam:
For soon thou mightst have passed among their rant
Were't but for thine unmovèd tulipant;
As thou must needs have owned them of thy band
For prophecies fit to be Alcoraned.
Accursèd locusts, whom your king does spit
Out of the centre of the unbottomed pit;
Wanderers, adulterers, liars, Munster's rest,
Sorcerers, athiests, jesuits possessed;
You who the scriptures and the laws deface
With the same liberty as points and lace;
Oh race most hypocritically strict!
Bent to reduce us to the ancient Pict;
Well may you act the Adam and the Eve;
Ay, and the serpent too that did deceive.
But the great captain, now the danger's o'er,
Makes you for his sake tremble one fit more;
And, to your spite, returning yet alive
Does with himself all that is good revive.
So when first man did through the morning new
See the bright sun his shining race pursue,
All day he followed with unwearied sight,
Pleased with that other world of moving light;
But thought him when he missed his setting beams,
Sunk in the hills, or plunged below the streams.
While dismal blacks hung round the universe,
And stars (like tapers) burned upon his hearse:
And owls and ravens with their screeching noise
Did make the funerals sadder by their joys.
His weeping eyes the doleful vigils keep,
Not knowing yet the night was made for sleep;
Still to the west, where he him lost, he turned,
And with such accents as despairing mourned:
`Why did mine eyes once see so bright a ray;
Or why day last no longer than a day?'
When straight the sun behind him he descried,
Smiling serenely from the further side.
So while our star that gives us light and heat,
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Seemed now a long and gloomy night to threat,
Up from the other world his flame he darts,
And princes (shining through their windows) starts,
Who their suspected counsellors refuse,
And credulous ambassadors accuse.
`Is this', saith one, `the nation that we read
Spent with both wars, under a captain dead,
Yet rig a navy while we dress us late,
And ere we dine, raze and rebuild their state?
What oaken forests, and what golden mines!
What mints of men, what union of designs!
(Unless their ships, do, as their fowl proceed
Of shedding leaves, that with their ocean breed).
Theirs are not ships, but rather arks of war
And beakèd promontories sailed from far;
Of floating islands a new hatchèd nest;
A fleet of worlds, of other worlds in quest;
An hideous shoal of wood-leviathans,
Armed with three tier of brazen hurricanes,
That through the centre shoot their thundering side
And sink the earth that does at anchor ride.
What refuge to escape them can be found,
Whose watery leaguers all the world surround?
Needs must we all their tributaries be,
Whose navies hold the sluices of the sea.
The ocean is the fountain of command,
But that once took, we captives are on land.
And those that have the waters for their share,
Can quickly leave us neither earth nor air.
Yet if through these our fears could find a pass,
Through double oak, and lined with treble brass,
That one man still, although but named, alarms
More than all men, all navies, and all arms.
Him, in the day, him, in late night I dread,
And still his sword seems hanging o'er my head.
The nation had been ours, but his one soul
Moves the great bulk, and animates the whole.
He secrecy with number hath enchased,
Courage with age, maturity with haste:
The valiant's terror, riddle of the wise,
And still his falchion all our knots unties.
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Where did he learn those arts that cost us dear?
Where below earth, or where above the sphere?
He seems a king by long succession born,
And yet the same to be a king does scorn.
Abroad a king he seems, and something more,
At home a subject on the equal floor.
O could I once him with our title see,
So should I hope that he might die as we.
But let them write is praise that love him best,
It grieves me sore to have thus much confessed.'
Pardon, great Prince, if thus their fear of spite
More than our love and duty do thee right.
I yield, nor further will the prize contend,
So that we both alike may miss our end:
While thou thy venerable head dost raise
As far above their malice as my praise,
And as the Angel of our commonweal,
Troubling the waters, yearly mak'st them heal.
~ Andrew Marvell,#NFDB
554:The First Anniversary Of The Government Under O.C.
Like the vain Curlings of the Watry maze,
Which in smooth streams a sinking Weight does raise;
So Man, declining alwayes, disappears.
In the Weak Circles of increasing Years;
And his short Tumults of themselves Compose,
While flowing Time above his Head does close.
Cromwell alone with greater Vigour runs,
(Sun-like) the Stages of succeeding Suns:
And still the Day which he doth next restore,
Is the just Wonder of the Day before.
Cromwell alone doth with new Lustre spring,
And shines the Jewel of the yearly Ring.
'Tis he the force of scatter'd Time contracts,
And in one Year the Work of Ages acts:
While heavy Monarchs make a wide Return,
Longer, and more Malignant then Saturn:
And though they all Platonique years should raign,
In the same Posture would be found again.
Their earthly Projects under ground they lay,
More slow and brittle then the China clay:
Well may they strive to leave them to their Son,
For one Thing never was by one King don.
Yet some more active for a Frontier Town
Took in by Proxie, beggs a false Renown;
Another triumphs at the publick Cost,
And will have Wonn, if he no more have Lost;
They fight by Others, but in Person wrong,
And only are against their Subjects strong;
Their other Wars seem but a feign'd contest,
This Common Enemy is still opprest;
If Conquerors, on them they turn their might;
If Conquered, on them they wreak their Spight:
They neither build the Temple in their dayes,
Nor Matter for succeeding Founders raise;
Nor Sacred Prophecies consult within,
Much less themselves to perfect them begin,
No other care they bear of things above,
But with Astrologers divine, and Jove,
To know how long their Planet yet Reprives
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From the deserved Fate their guilty lives:
Thus (Image-like) and useless time they tell,
And with vain Scepter strike the hourly Bell;
Nor more contribute to the state of Things,
Then wooden Heads unto the Viols strings,
While indefatigable Cromwell hyes,
And cuts his way still nearer to the Skyes,
Learning a Musique in the Region clear,
To tune this lower to that higher Sphere.
So when Amphion did the Lute command,
Which the God gave him, with his gentle hand,
The rougher Stones, unto his Measures hew'd,
Dans'd up in order from the Quarreys rude;
This took a Lower, that an Higher place,
As he the Treble alter'd, or the Base:
No Note he struck, but a new Story lay'd,
And the great Work ascended while he play'd.
The listning Structures he with Wonder ey'd,
And still new Stopps to various Time apply'd:
Now through the Strings a Martial rage he throws,
And joyng streight the Theban Tow'r arose;
Then as he strokes them with a Touch more sweet,
The flocking Marbles in a Palace meet;
But, for he most the graver Notes did try,
Therefore the Temples rear'd their Columns high:
Thus, ere he ceas'd, his sacred Lute creates
Th'harmonious City of the seven Gates.
Such was that wondrous Order and Consent,
When Cromwell tun'd the ruling Instrument;
While tedious Statesmen many years did hack,
Framing a Liberty that still went back;
Whose num'rous Gorge could swallow in an hour
That Island, which the Sea cannot devour:
Then our Amphion issues out and sings,
And once he struck, and twice, the pow'rful Strings.
The Commonwealth then first together came,
And each one enter'd in the willing Frame;
All other Matter yields, and may be rul'd;
But who the Minds of stubborn Men can build?
No Quarry bears a Stone so hardly wrought,
Nor with such labour from its Center brought;
None to be sunk in the Foundation bends,
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Each in the House the highest Place contends,
And each the Hand that lays him will direct,
And some fall back upon the Architect;
Yet all compos'd by his attractive Song,
Into the Animated City throng.
The Common-wealth does through their Centers all
Draw the Circumf'rence of the publique Wall;
The crossest Spirits here do take their part,
Fast'ning the Contignation which they thwart;
And they, whose Nature leads them to divide,
Uphold, this one, and that the other Side;
But the most Equal still sustein the Height,
And they as Pillars keep the Work upright;
While the resistance of opposed Minds,
The Fabrick as with Arches stronger binds,
Which on the Basis of a Senate free,
Knit by the Roofs Protecting weight agree.
When for his foot he thus a place had found,
He hurles e'r since the World about him round,
And in his sev'ral Aspects, like a Star,
Here shines in Peace, and thither shoots a War.
While by his Beams observing Princes steer,
And wisely court the Influence they fear,
O would they rather by his Pattern won.
Kiss the approaching, nor yet angry Son;
And in their numbred Footsteps humbly tread
The path where holy Oracles do lead;
How might they under such a Captain raise
The great Designs kept for the latter Dayes!
But mad with reason, so miscall'd, of State
They know them not, and what they know not, hate
Hence still they sing Hosanna to the Whore,
And her whom they should Massacre adore:
But Indians whom they should convert, subdue;
Nor teach, but traffique with, or burn the Jew.
Unhappy Princes, ignorantly bred,
By Malice some, by Errour more misled;
If gracious Heaven to my Life give length,
Leisure to Times, and to my Weakness Strength,
Then shall I once with graver Accents shake
Your Regal sloth, and your long Slumbers wake:
Like the shrill Huntsman that prevents the East,
139
Winding his Horn to Kings that chase the Beast.
Till then my Muse shall hollow far behind
Angelique Cromwell who outwings the wind;
And in dark Nights, and in cold Dayes alone
Pursues the Monster thorough every Throne:
Which shrinking to her Roman Den impure,
Gnashes her Goary teeth; nor there secure.
Hence oft I think, if in some happy Hour
High Grace should meet in one with highest Pow'r,
And then a seasonable People still
Should bend to his, as he to Heavens will,
What we might hope, what wonderful Effect
From such a wish'd Conjuncture might reflect.
Sure, the mysterious Work, where none withstand,
Would forthwith finish under such a Hand:
Fore-shortned Time its useless Course would stay,
And soon precipitate the latest Day.
But a thick Cloud about that Morning lyes,
And intercepts the Beams of Mortal eyes,
That 'tis the most which we deteremine can,
If these the Times, then this must be the Man.
And well he therefore does, and well has guest,
Who in his Age has always forward prest:
And knowing not where Heavens choice may light,
Girds yet his Sword, and ready stands to fight;
But Men alas, as if they nothing car'd,
Look on, all unconcern'd, or unprepar'd;
And Stars still fall, and still the Dragons Tail
Swinges the Volumes of its horrid Flail.
For the great Justice that did first suspend
The World by Sin, does by the same extend.
Hence that blest Day still counterpoysed wastes,
The ill delaying, what th'Elected hastes;
Hence landing Nature to new Seas it tost,
And good Designes still with their Authors lost.
And thou, great Cromwell, for whose happy birth
A Mold was chosen out of better Earth;
Whose Saint-like Mother we did lately see
Live out an Age, long as a Pedigree;
That she might seem, could we the Fall dispute,
T'have smelt the Blossome, and not eat the Fruit;
Though none does of more lasting Parents grow,
140
But never any did them Honor so;
Though thou thine Heart from Evil still unstain'd,
And always hast thy Tongue from fraud refrain'd,
Thou, who so oft through Storms of thundring Lead
Hast born securely thine undaunted Head,
Thy Brest through ponyarding Conspiracies,
Drawn from the Sheath of lying Prophecies;
Thee proof beyond all other Force or Skill,
Our Sins endanger, and shall one day kill.
How near they fail'd, and in thy sudden Fall
At once assay'd to overturn us all.
Our brutish fury strugling to be Free,
Hurry'd thy Horses while they hurry'd thee.
When thou hadst almost quit thy Mortal cares,
And soyl'd in Dust thy Crown of silver Hairs.
Let this one Sorrow interweave among
The other Glories of our yearly Song.
Like skilful Looms which through the costly threed
Of purling Ore, a shining wave do shed:
So shall the Tears we on past Grief employ,
Still as they trickle, glitter in our Joy.
So with more Modesty we may be True,
And speak as of the Dead the Praises due:
While impious Men deceiv'd with pleasure short,
On their own Hopes shall find the Fall retort.
But the poor Beasts wanting their noble Guide,
What could they move? shrunk guiltily aside.
First winged Fear transports them far away,
And leaden Sorrow then their flight did stay.
See how they each his towring Crest abate,
And the green Grass, and their known Mangers hate,
Nor through wide Nostrils snuffe the wanton air,
Nor their round Hoofs, or curled Mane'scompare;
With wandring Eyes, and restless Ears theystood,
And with shrill Neighings ask'd him of the Wood.
Thou Cromwell falling, not a stupid Tree,
Or Rock so savage, but it mourn'd for thee:
And all about was heard a Panique groan,
As if that Natures self were overthrown.
It seem'd the Earth did from the Center tear;
It seem'd the Sun was faln out of the Sphere:
Justice obstructed lay, and Reason fool'd;
141
Courage disheartned, and Religion cool'd.
A dismal Silence through the Palace went,
And then loud Shreeks the vaulted Marbles rent.
Such as the dying Chorus sings by turns,
And to deaf Seas, and ruthless Tempests mourns,
When now they sink, and now the plundring Streams
Break up each Deck, and rip the Oaken seams.
But thee triumphant hence the firy Carr,
And firy Steeds had born out of the Warr,
From the low World, and thankless Men above,
Unto the Kingdom blest of Peace and Love:
We only mourn'd our selves, in thine Ascent,
Whom thou hadst lest beneath with Mantle rent.
For all delight of Life thou then didst lose,
When to Command, thou didst thy self Depose;
Resigning up thy Privacy so dear,
To turn the headstrong Peoples Charioteer;
For to be Cromwell was a greater thing,
Then ought below, or yet above a King:
Therefore thou rather didst thy Self depress,
Yielding to Rule, because it made thee Less.
For, neither didst thou from the first apply
Thy sober Spirit unto things too High,
But in thine own Fields exercisedst long,
An Healthful Mind within a Body strong;
Till at the Seventh time thou in the Skyes,
As a small Cloud, like a Mans hand didst rise;
Then did thick Mists and Winds the air deform,
And down at last thou pow'rdst the fertile Storm;
Which to the thirsty Land did plenty bring,
But though forewarn'd, o'r-took and wet the King.
What since he did, an higher Force him push'd
Still from behind, and it before him rush'd,
Though undiscern'd among the tumult blind,
Who think those high Decrees by Man design'd.
'Twas Heav'n would not that his Pow'r should cease,
But walk still middle betwixt War and Peace;
Choosing each Stone, and poysing every weight,
Trying the Measures of the Bredth and Height;
Here pulling down, and there erecting New,
Founding a firm State by Proportions true.
When Gideon so did from the War retreat,
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Yet by Conquest of two Kings grown great,
He on the Peace extends a Warlike power,
And Is'rel silent saw him rase the Tow'r;
And how he Succoths Elders durst suppress,
With Thorns and Briars of the Wilderness.
No King might ever such a Force have done;
Yet would not he be Lord, nor yet his Son.
Thou with the same strength, and an Heart as plain,
Didst (like thine Olive) still refuse to Reign;
Though why should others all thy Labor spoil,
And Brambles be anointed with thine Oyl,
Whose climbing Flame, without a timely stop,
Had quickly Levell'd every Cedar's top.
Therefore first growing to thy self a Law,
Th'ambitious Shrubs thou in just time didst aw.
So have I seen at Sea, when whirling Winds,
Hurry the Bark, but more the Seamens minds,
Who with mistaken Course salute the Sand,
And threat'ning Rocks misapprehend for Land;
While baleful Tritons to the shipwrack guide.
And Corposants along the Tacklings slide.
The Passengers all wearyed out before,
Giddy, and wishing for the fatal Shore;
Some lusty Mate, who with more careful Eye
Counted the Hours, and ev'ry Star did spy,
The Helm does from the artless Steersman strain,
And doubles back unto the safer Main.
What though a while they grumble discontent,
Saving himself he does their loss prevent.
'Tis not a Freedome, that where All command;
Nor Tyranny, where One does them withstand:
But who of both the Bounders knows to lay
Him as their Father must the State obey.
Thou, and thine House, like Noah's Eight did rest,
Left by the Wars Flood on the Mountains crest:
And the large Vale lay subject to thy Will,
Which thou but as an Husbandman would Till:
And only didst for others plant the Vine
Of Liberty, not drunken with its Wine.
That sober Liberty which men may have,
That they enjoy, but more they vainly crave:
And such as to their Parents Tents do press,
143
May shew their own, not see his Nakedness.
Yet such a Chammish issue still does rage,
The Shame and Plague both of the Land and Age,
Who watch'd thy halting, and thy Fall deride,
Rejoycing when thy Foot had slipt aside;
that their new King might the fifth Scepter shake,
And make the World, by his Example, Quake:
Whose frantique Army should they want for Men
Might muster Heresies, so one were ten.
What thy Misfortune, they the Spirit call,
And their Religion only is to Fall.
Oh Mahomet! now couldst thou rise again,
Thy Falling-sickness should have made thee Reign,
While Feake and Simpson would in many a Tome,
Have writ the Comments of thy sacred Foame:
For soon thou mightst have past among their Rant
Wer't but for thine unmoved Tulipant;
As thou must needs have own'd them of thy band
For prophecies fit to be Alcorand.
Accursed Locusts, whom your King does spit
Out of the Center of th'unbottom'd Pit;
Wand'rers, Adult'rers, Lyers, Munser's rest,
Sorcerers, Atheists, Jesuites, Possest;
You who the Scriptures and the Laws deface
With the same liberty as Points and Lace;
Oh Race most hypocritically strict!
Bent to reduce us to the ancient Pict;
Well may you act the Adam and the Eve;
Ay, and the Serpent too that did deceive.
But the great Captain, now the danger's ore,
Makes you for his sake Tremble one fit more;
And, to your spight, returning yet alive
Does with himself all that is good revive.
So when first Man did through the Morning new
See the bright Sun his shining Race pursue,
All day he follow'd with unwearied sight,
Pleas'd with that other World of moving Light;
But thought him when he miss'd his setting beams,
Sunk in the Hills, or plung'd below the Streams.
While dismal blacks hung round the Universe,
And Stars (like Tapers) burn'd upon his Herse:
And Owls and Ravens with their screeching noyse
144
Did make the Fun'rals sadder by their Joyes.
His weeping Eyes the doleful Vigils keep,
Not knowing yet the Night was made for sleep:
Still to the West, where he him lost, he turn'd,
And with such accents, as Despairing, mourn'd:
Why did mine Eyes once see so bright a Ray;
Or why Day last no longer than a Day?
When streight the Sun behind him he descry'd,
Smiling serenely from the further side.
So while our Star that gives us Light and Heat,
Seem'd now a long and gloomy Night to threat,
Up from the other World his Flame he darts,
And Princes shining through their windows starts;
Who their suspected Counsellors refuse,
And credulous Ambassadors accuse.
"Is this, saith one, the Nation that we read
"Spent with both Wars, under a Captain dead?
"Yet rig a Navy while we dress us late;
"And ere we Dine, rase and rebuild our State.
"What Oaken Forrests, and what golden Mines!
"What Mints of Men, what Union of Designes!
"Unless their Ships, do, as their Fowle proceed
"Of shedding Leaves, that with their Ocean breed.
"Theirs are not Ships, but rather Arks of War,
"And beaked Promontories sail'd from far;
"Of floting Islands a new Hatched Nest;
"A Fleet of Worlds, of other Worlds in quest;
"An hideous shole of wood Leviathans,
"Arm'd with three Tire of brazen Hurricans;
"That through the Center shoot their thundring side
"And sink the Earth that does at Anchor ride.
'What refuge to escape them can be found,
"Whose watry Leaguers all the world surround?
"Needs must we all their Tributaries be,
"Whose Navies hold the Sluces of the Sea.
"The Ocean is the Fountain of Command,
"But that once took, we Captives are on Land:
"And those that have the Waters for their share,
"Can quickly leave us neither Earth nor Air.
"Yet if through these our Fears could find a pass;
"Through double Oak, & lin'd with treble Brass;
"That one Man still, although but nam'd, alarms
145
"More then all Men, all Navies, and all Arms.
"Him, all the Day, Him, in late Nights I dread,
"And still his Sword seems hanging o're my head.
"The Nation had been ours, but his one Soul
"Moves the great Bulk, and animates the whole.
"He Secrecy with Number hath inchas'd,
"Courage with Age, Maturity with Hast:
"The Valiants Terror, Riddle of the Wise;
"And still his Fauchion all our Knots unties.
"Where did he learn those Arts that cost us dear?
"Where below Earth, or where above the Sphere?
"He seems a King by long Succession born,
"And yet the same to be a King does scorn.
"Abroad a King he seems, and something more,
"At Home a Subject on the equal Floor.
"O could I once him with our Title see,
"So should I hope yet he might Dye as wee.
"But let them write his Praise that love him best,
"It grieves me sore to have thus much confest.
"Pardon, great Prince, if thus their Fear or Spight
"More then our Love and Duty do thee Right.
"I yield, nor further will the Prize contend;
"So that we both alike may miss our End:
"While thou thy venerable Head dost raise
"As far above their Malice as my Praise.
"And as the Angel of our Commonweal,
"Troubling the Waters, yearly mak'st them Heal.
~ Andrew Marvell,#NFDB
555:Pauline, A Fragment of a Question
Plus ne suis ce que j'ai t,
Et ne le saurois jamais tre.
Marot.
Non dubito, quin titulus libri nostri raritate sua quamplurimos alliciat ad legendum: inter quos nonnulli obliqu opinionis, mente languidi, multi etiam maligni, et in ingenium nostrum ingrati accedent, qui temeraria sua ignorantia, vix conspecto titulo clamabunt Nos vetita docere, hresium semina jacere: piis auribus offendiculo, prclaris ingeniis scandalo esse: . . . . adeo conscienti su consulentes, ut nec Apollo, nec Mus omnes, neque Angelus de coelo me ab illorum execratione vindicare queant: quibus et ego nunc consulo, ne scripta nostra legant, nec intelligant, nec meminerint: nam noxia sunt, venenosa sunt: Acherontis ostium est in hoc libro, lapides loquitur, caveant, ne cerebrum illis excutiat. Vos autem, qui qua mente ad legendum venitis, si tantam prudenti discretionem adhibueritis, quantam in melle legendo apes, jam securi legite. Puto namque vos et utilitatis haud parum et voluptatis plurimum accepturos. Quod si qua repereritis, qu vobis non placeant, mittite illa, nec utimini. Nam et ego vobis illa non Probo, sed Narro. Ctera tamen propterea non respuite . . . . . Ideo, si quid liberius dictum sit, ignoscite adolescenti nostr, qui minor quam adolescens hoc opus composui.
Hen. Corn. Agrippa, De Occult. Philosoph. in Prfat.
London: January 1833.V. A. XX .
1833.
Pauline, mine own, bend o'er methy soft breast
Shall pant to minebend o'er methy sweet eyes,
And loosened hair and breathing lips, and arms
Drawing me to theethese build up a screen
To shut me in with thee, and from all fear;
So that I might unlock the sleepless brood
Of fancies from my soul, their lurking-place,
Nor doubt that each would pass, ne'er to return
To one so watched, so loved and so secured.
But what can guard thee but thy naked love?
Ah dearest, whoso sucks a poisoned wound
Envenoms his own veins! Thou art so good,
So calmif thou shouldst wear a brow less light
For some wild thought which, but for me, were kept
From out thy soul as from a sacred star!
Yet till I have unlocked them it were vain
To hope to sing; some woe would light on me;
Nature would point at one whose quivering lip
Was bathed in her enchantments, whose brow burned
Beneath the crown to which her secrets knelt,
Who learned the spell which can call up the dead,
And then departed smiling like a fiend
Who has deceived God,if such one should seek
Again her altars and stand robed and crowned
Amid the faithful! Sad confession first,
Remorse and pardon and old claims renewed,
Ere I can beas I shall be no more.
I had been spared this shame if I had sat
By thee for ever from the first, in place
Of my wild dreams of beauty and of good,
Or with them, as an earnest of their truth:
No thought nor hope having been shut from thee,
No vague wish unexplained, no wandering aim
Sent back to bind on fancy's wings and seek
Some strange fair world where it might be a law;
But, doubting nothing, had been led by thee,
Thro' youth, and saved, as one at length awaked
Who has slept through a peril. Ah vain, vain!
Thou lovest me; the past is in its grave
Tho' its ghost haunts us; still this much is ours,
To cast away restraint, lest a worse thing
Wait for us in the dark. Thou lovest me;
And thou art to receive not love but faith,
For which thou wilt be mine, and smile and take
All shapes and shames, and veil without a fear
That form which music follows like a slave:
And I look to thee and I trust in thee,
As in a Northern night one looks alway
Unto the East for morn and spring and joy.
Thou seest then my aimless, hopeless state,
And, resting on some few old feelings won
Back by thy beauty, wouldst that I essay
The task which was to me what now thou art:
And why should I conceal one weakness more?
Thou wilt remember one warm morn when winter
Crept aged from the earth, and spring's first breath
Blew soft from the moist hills; the black-thorn boughs,
So dark in the bare wood, when glistening
In the sunshine were white with coming buds,
Like the bright side of a sorrow, and the banks
Had violets opening from sleep like eyes.
I walked with thee who knew'st not a deep shame
Lurked beneath smiles and careless words which sought
To hide it till they wandered and were mute,
As we stood listening on a sunny mound
To the wind murmuring in the damp copse,
Like heavy breathings of some hidden thing
Betrayed by sleep; until the feeling rushed
That I was low indeed, yet not so low
As to endure the calmness of thine eyes.
And so I told thee all, while the cool breast
I leaned on altered not its quiet beating:
And long ere words like a hurt bird's complaint
Bade me look up and be what I had been,
I felt despair could never live by thee:
Thou wilt remember. Thou art not more dear
Than song was once to me; and I ne'er sung
But as one entering bright halls where all
Will rise and shout for him: sure I must own
That I am fallen, having chosen gifts
Distinct from theirsthat I am sad and fain
Would give up all to be but where I was,
Not high as I had been if faithful found,
But low and weak yet full of hope, and sure
Of goodness as of lifethat I would lose
All this gay mastery of mind, to sit
Once more with them, trusting in truth and love
And with an aimnot being what I am.
Oh Pauline, I am ruined who believed
That though my soul had floated from its sphere
Of wild dominion into the dim orb
Of selfthat it was strong and free as ever!
It has conformed itself to that dim orb,
Reflecting all its shades and shapes, and now
Must stay where it alone can be adored.
I have felt this in dreamsin dreams in which
I seemed the fate from which I fled; I felt
A strange delight in causing my decay.
I was a fiend in darkness chained for ever
Within some ocean-cave; and ages rolled,
Till through the cleft rock, like a moonbeam, came
A white swan to remain with me; and ages
Rolled, yet I tired not of my first free joy
In gazing on the peace of its pure wings:
And then I said "It is most fair to me,
"Yet its soft wings must sure have suffered change
"From the thick darkness, sure its eyes are dim,
"Its silver pinions must be cramped and numbed
"With sleeping ages here; it cannot leave me,
"For it would seem, in light beside its kind,
"Withered, tho' here to me most beautiful."
And then I was a young witch whose blue eyes,
As she stood naked by the river springs,
Drew down a god: I watched his radiant form
Growing less radiant, and it gladdened me;
Till one morn, as he sat in the sunshine
Upon my knees, singing to me of heaven,
He turned to look at me, ere I could lose
The grin with which I viewed his perishing:
And he shrieked and departed and sat long
By his deserted throne, but sunk at last
Murmuring, as I kissed his lips and curled
Around him, "I am still a godto thee."
Still I can lay my soul bare in its fall,
Since all the wandering and all the weakness
Will be a saddest comment on the song:
And if, that done, I can be young again,
I will give up all gained, as willingly
As one gives up a charm which shuts him out
From hope or part or care in human kind.
As life wanes, all its care and strife and toil
Seem strangely valueless, while the old trees
Which grew by our youth's home, the waving mass
Of climbing plants heavy with bloom and dew,
The morning swallows with their songs like words,
All these seem clear and only worth our thoughts:
So, aught connected with my early life,
My rude songs or my wild imaginings,
How I look on themmost distinct amid
The fever and the stir of after years!
I ne'er had ventured e'en to hope for this,
Had not the glow I felt at His award,
Assured me all was not extinct within:
His whom all honour, whose renown springs up
Like sunlight which will visit all the world,
So that e'en they who sneered at him at first,
Come out to it, as some dark spider crawls
From his foul nets which some lit torch invades,
Yet spinning still new films for his retreat.
Thou didst smile, poet, but can we forgive?
Sun-treader, life and light be thine for ever!
Thou art gone from us; years go by and spring
Gladdens and the young earth is beautiful,
Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise,
But none like thee: they stand, thy majesties,
Like mighty works which tell some spirit there
Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn,
Till, its long task completed, it hath risen
And left us, never to return, and all
Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain.
The air seems bright with thy past presence yet,
But thou art still for me as thou hast been
When I have stood with thee as on a throne
With all thy dim creations gathered round
Like mountains, and I felt of mould like them,
And with them creatures of my own were mixed,
Like things half-lived, catching and giving life.
But thou art still for me who have adored
Tho' single, panting but to hear thy name
Which I believed a spell to me alone,
Scarce deeming thou wast as a star to men!
As one should worship long a sacred spring
Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long grasses cross,
And one small tree embowers droopingly
Joying to see some wandering insect won
To live in its few rushes, or some locust
To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird
Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air:
And then should find it but the fountain-head,
Long lost, of some great river washing towns
And towers, and seeing old woods which will live
But by its banks untrod of human foot,
Which, when the great sun sinks, lie quivering
In light as some thing lieth half of life
Before God's foot, waiting a wondrous change;
Then girt with rocks which seek to turn or stay
Its course in vain, for it does ever spread
Like a sea's arm as it goes rolling on,
Being the pulse of some great countryso
Wast thou to me, and art thou to the world!
And I, perchance, half feel a strange regret
That I am not what I have been to thee:
Like a girl one has silently loved long
In her first loneliness in some retreat,
When, late emerged, all gaze and glow to view
Her fresh eyes and soft hair and lips which bloom
Like a mountain berry: doubtless it is sweet
To see her thus adored, but there have been
Moments when all the world was in our praise,
Sweeter than any pride of after hours.
Yet, sun-treader, all hail! From my heart's heart
I bid thee hail! E'en in my wildest dreams,
I proudly feel I would have thrown to dust
The wreaths of fame which seemed o'erhanging me,
To see thee for a moment as thou art.
And if thou livest, if thou lovest, spirit!
Remember me who set this final seal
To wandering thoughtthat one so pure as thou
Could never die. Remember me who flung
All honour from my soul, yet paused and said
"There is one spark of love remaining yet,
"For I have nought in common with him, shapes
"Which followed him avoid me, and foul forms
"Seek me, which ne'er could fasten on his mind;
"And though I feel how low I am to him,
"Yet I aim not even to catch a tone
"Of harmonies he called profusely up;
"So, one gleam still remains, although the last."
Remember me who praise thee e'en with tears,
For never more shall I walk calm with thee;
Thy sweet imaginings are as an air,
A melody some wondrous singer sings,
Which, though it haunt men oft in the still eve,
They dream not to essay; yet it no less
But more is honoured. I was thine in shame,
And now when all thy proud renown is out,
I am a watcher whose eyes have grown dim
With looking for some star which breaks on him
Altered and worn and weak and full of tears.
Autumn has come like spring returned to us,
Won from her girlishness; like one returned
A friend that was a lover, nor forgets
The first warm love, but full of sober thoughts
Of fading years; whose soft mouth quivers yet
With the old smile, but yet so changed and still!
And here am I the scoffer, who have probed
Life's vanity, won by a word again
Into my own lifeby one little word
Of this sweet friend who lives in loving me,
Lives strangely on my thoughts and looks and words,
As fathoms down some nameless ocean thing
Its silent course of quietness and joy.
O dearest, if indeed I tell the past,
May'st thou forget it as a sad sick dream!
Or if it lingermy lost soul too soon
Sinks to itself and whispers we shall be
But closer linked, two creatures whom the earth
Bears singly, with strange feelings unrevealed
Save to each other; or two lonely things
Created by some power whose reign is done,
Having no part in God or his bright world.
I am to sing whilst ebbing day dies soft,
As a lean scholar dies worn o'er his book,
And in the heaven stars steal out one by one
As hunted men steal to their mountain watch.
I must not think, lest this new impulse die
In which I trust; I have no confidence:
So, I will sing on fast as fancies come;
Rudely, the verse being as the mood it paints
I strip my mind bare, whose first elements
I shall unveilnot as they struggled forth
In infancy, nor as they now exist,
When I am grown above them and can rule
But in that middle stage when they were full
Yet ere I had disposed them to my will;
And then I shall show how these elements
Produced my present state, and what it is.
I am made up of an intensest life,
Of a most clear idea of consciousness
Of self, distinct from all its qualities,
From all affections, passions, feelings, powers;
And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all:
But linked, in me, to self-supremacy,
Existing as a centre to all things,
Most potent to create and rule and call
Upon all things to minister to it;
And to a principle of restlessness
Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all
This is myself; and I should thus have been
Though gifted lower than the meanest soul.
And of my powers, one springs up to save
From utter death a soul with such desire
Confined to clayof powers the only one
Which marks mean imagination which
Has been a very angel, coming not
In fitful visions but beside me ever
And never failing me; so, though my mind
Forgets not, not a shred of life forgets,
Yet I can take a secret pride in calling
The dark past up to quell it regally.
A mind like this must dissipate itself,
But I have always had one lode-star; now,
As I look back, I see that I have halted
Or hastened as I looked towards that star
A need, a trust, a yearning after God:
A feeling I have analysed but late,
But it existed, and was reconciled
With a neglect of all I deemed his laws,
Which yet, when seen in others, I abhorred.
I felt as one beloved, and so shut in
From fear: and thence I date my trust in signs
And omens, for I saw God everywhere;
And I can only lay it to the fruit
Of a sad after-time that I could doubt
Even his beinge'en the while I felt
His presence, never acted from myself,
Still trusted in a hand to lead me through
All danger; and this feeling ever fought
Against my weakest reason and resolve.
And I can love nothingand this dull truth
Has come the last: but sense supplies a love
Encircling me and mingling with my life.
These make myself: I have long sought in vain
To trace how they were formed by circumstance,
Yet ever found them mould my wildest youth
Where they alone displayed themselves, converted
All objects to their use: now see their course!
They came to me in my first dawn of life
Which passed alone with wisest ancient books
All halo-girt with fancies of my own;
And I myself went with the talea god
Wandering after beauty, or a giant
Standing vast in the sunsetan old hunter
Talking with gods, or a high-crested chief
Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos.
I tell you, nought has ever been so clear
As the place, the time, the fashion of those lives:
I had not seen a work of lofty art,
Nor woman's beauty nor sweet nature's face,
Yet, I say, never morn broke clear as those
On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea,
The deep groves and white temples and wet caves
And nothing ever will surprise me now
Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed,
Who bound my forehead with Proserpine's hair.
And strange it is that I who could so dream
Should e'er have stooped to aim at aught beneath
Aught low or painful; but I never doubted:
So, as I grew. I rudely shaped my life
To my immediate wants; yet strong beneath
Was a vague sense of power though folded up
A sense that, though those shades and times were past,
Their spirit dwelt in me, with them should rule.
Then came a pause, and long restraint chained down
My soul till it was changed. I lost myself,
And were it not that I so loathe that loss,
I could recall how first I learned to turn
My mind against itself; and the effects
In deeds for which remorse were vain as for
The wanderings of delirious dream; yet thence
Came cunning, envy, falsehood, all world's wrong
That spotted me: at length I cleansed my soul.
Yet long world's influence remained; and nought
But the still life I led, apart once more,
Which left me free to seek soul's old delights,
Could e'er have brought me thus far back to peace.
As peace returned, I sought out some pursuit;
And song rose, no new impulse but the one
With which all others best could be combined.
My life has not been that of those whose heaven
Was lampless save where poesy shone out;
But as a clime where glittering mountain-tops
And glancing sea and forests steeped in light
Give back reflected the far-flashing sun;
For music (which is earnest of a heaven,
Seeing we know emotions strange by it,
Not else to be revealed,) is like a voice,
A low voice calling fancy, as a friend,
To the green woods in the gay summer time:
And she fills all the way with dancing shapes
Which have made painters pale, and they go on
Till stars look at them and winds call to them
As they leave life's path for the twilight world
Where the dead gather. This was not at first,
For I scarce knew what I would do. I had
An impulse but no yearningonly sang.
And first I sang as I in dream have seen
Music wait on a lyrist for some thought,
Yet singing to herself until it came.
I turned to those old times and scenes where all
That's beautiful had birth for me, and made
Rude verses on them all; and then I paused
I had done nothing, so I sought to know
What other minds achieved. No fear outbroke
As on the works of mighty bards I gazed,
In the first joy at finding my own thoughts
Recorded, my own fancies justified,
And their aspirings but my very own.
With them I first explored passion and mind,
All to begin afresh! I rather sought
To rival what I wondered at than form
Creations of my own; if much was light
Lent by the others, much was yet my own.
I paused again: a change was comingcame:
I was no more a boy, the past was breaking
Before the future and like fever worked.
I thought on my new self, and all my powers
Burst out. I dreamed not of restraint, but gazed
On all things: schemes and systems went and came,
And I was proud (being vainest of the weak)
In wandering o'er thought's world to seek some one
To be my prize, as if you wandered o'er
The White Way for a star.
And my choice fell
Not so much on a system as a man
On one, whom praise of mine shall not offend,
Who was as calm as beauty, being such
Unto mankind as thou to me, Pauline,
Believing in them and devoting all
His soul's strength to their winning back to peace;
Who sent forth hopes and longings for their sake,
Clothed in all passion's melodies: such first
Caught me and set me, slave of a sweet task,
To disentangle, gather sense from song:
Since, song-inwoven, lurked there words which seemed
A key to a new world, the muttering
Of angels, something yet unguessed by man.
How my heart leapt as still I sought and found
Much there, I felt my own soul had conceived,
But there living and burning! Soon the orb
Of his conceptions dawned on me; its praise
Lives in the tongues of men, men's brows are high
When his name means a triumph and a pride,
So, my weak voice may well forbear to shame
What seemed decreed my fate: I threw myself
To meet it, I was vowed to liberty,
Men were to be as gods and earth as heaven,
And Iah, what a life was mine to prove!
My whole soul rose to meet it. Now, Pauline,
I shall go mad, if I recall that time!
Oh let me look back ere I leave for ever
The time which was an hour one fondly waits
For a fair girl that comes a withered hag!
And I was lonely, far from woods and fields,
And amid dullest sights, who should be loose
As a stag; yet I was full of bliss, who lived
With Plato and who had the key to life;
And I had dimly shaped my first attempt,
And many a thought did I build up on thought,
As the wild bee hangs cell to cell; in vain,
For I must still advance, no rest for mind.
'Twas in my plan to look on real life,
The life all new to me; my theories
Were firm, so them I left, to look and learn
Mankind, its cares, hopes, fears, its woes and joys;
And, as I pondered on their ways, I sought
How best life's end might be attainedan end
Comprising every joy. I deeply mused.
And suddenly without heart-wreck I awoke
As from a dream: I said "'Twas beautiful,
"Yet but a dream, and so adieu to it!"
As some world-wanderer sees in a far meadow
Strange towers and high-walled gardens thick with trees,
Where song takes shelter and delicious mirth
From laughing fairy creatures peeping over,
And on the morrow when he comes to lie
For ever 'neath those garden-trees fruit-flushed
Sung round by fairies, all his search is vain.
First went my hopes of perfecting mankind,
Nextfaith in them, and then in freedom's self
And virtue's self, then my own motives, ends
And aims and loves, and human love went last.
I felt this no decay, because new powers
Rose as old feelings leftwit, mockery,
Light-heartedness; for I had oft been sad,
Mistrusting my resolves, but now I cast
Hope joyously away: I laughed and said
"No more of this!" I must not think: at length
I looked again to see if all went well.
My powers were greater: as some temple seemed
My soul, where nought is changed and incense rolls
Around the altar, only God is gone
And some dark spirit sitteth in his seat.
So, I passed through the temple and to me
Knelt troops of shadows, and they cried "Hail, king!
"We serve thee now and thou shalt serve no more!
"Call on us, prove us, let us worship thee!"
And I said "Are ye strong? Let fancy bear me
"Far from the past!" And I was borne away,
As Arab birds float sleeping in the wind,
O'er deserts, towers and forests, I being calm.
And I said "I have nursed up energies,
"They will prey on me." And a band knelt low
And cried "Lord, we are here and we will make
"Safe way for thee in thine appointed life!
"But look on us!" And I said "Ye will worship
"Me; should my heart not worship too?" They shouted
"Thyself, thou art our king!" So, I stood there
Smilingoh, vanity of vanities!
For buoyant and rejoicing was the spirit
With which I looked out how to end my course;
I felt once more myself, my powersall mine;
I knew while youth and health so lifted me
That, spite of all life's nothingness, no grief
Came nigh me, I must ever be light-hearted;
And that this knowledge was the only veil
Betwixt joy and despair: so, if age came,
I should be lefta wreck linked to a soul
Yet fluttering, or mind-broken and aware
Of my decay. So a long summer morn
Found me; and ere noon came, I had resolved
No age should come on me ere youth was spent,
For I would wear myself out, like that morn
Which wasted not a sunbeam; every hour
I would make mine, and die.
And thus I sought
To chain my spirit down which erst I freed
For flights to fame: I said "The troubled life
"Of genius, seen so gay when working forth
"Some trusted end, grows sad when all proves vain
"How sad when men have parted with truth's peace
"For falsest fancy's sake, which waited first
"As an obedient spirit when delight
"Came without fancy's call: but alters soon,
"Comes darkened, seldom, hastens to depart,
"Leaving a heavy darkness and warm tears.
"But I shall never lose her; she will live
"Dearer for such seclusion. I but catch
"A hue, a glance of what I sing: so, pain
"Is linked with pleasure, for I ne'er may tell
"Half the bright sights which dazzle me; but now
"Mine shall be all the radiance: let them fade
"Untoldothers shall rise as fair, as fast!
"And when all's done, the few dim gleams transferred,"
(For a new thought sprang up how well it were,
Discarding shadowy hope, to weave such lays
As straight encircle men with praise and love,
So, I should not die utterly,should bring
One branch from the gold forest, like the knight
Of old tales, witnessing I had been there)
"And when all's done, how vain seems e'en success
"The vaunted influence poets have o'er men!
"'T is a fine thing that one weak as myself
"Should sit in his lone room, knowing the words
"He utters in his solitude shall move
"Men like a swift windthat tho' dead and gone,
"New eyes shall glisten when his beauteous dreams
"Of love come true in happier frames than his.
"Ay, the still night brings thoughts like these, but morn
"Comes and the mockery again laughs out
"At hollow praises, smiles allied to sneers;
"And my soul's idol ever whispers me
"To dwell with him and his unhonoured song:
"And I foreknow my spirit, that would press
"First in the struggle, fail again to make
"All bow enslaved, and I again should sink.
"And then know that this curse will come on us,
"To see our idols perish; we may wither,
"No marvel, we are clay, but our low fate
"Should not extend to those whom trustingly
"We sent before into time's yawning gulf
"To face what dread may lurk in darkness there.
"To find the painter's glory pass, and feel
"Music can move us not as once, or, worst,
"To weep decaying wits ere the frail body
"Decays! Nought makes me trust some love is true,
"But the delight of the contented lowness
"With which I gaze on him I keep for ever
"Above me; I to rise and rival him?
"Feed his fame rather from my heart's best blood,
"Wither unseen that he may flourish still."
Pauline, my soul's friend, thou dost pity yet
How this mood swayed me when that soul found thine,
When I had set myself to live this life,
Defying all past glory. Ere thou camest
I seemed defiant, sweet, for old delights
Had flocked like birds again; music, my life,
Nourished me more than ever; then the lore
Loved for itself and all it showsthat king
Treading the purple calmly to his death,
While round him, like the clouds of eve, all dusk,
The giant shades of fate, silently flitting,
Pile the dim outline of the coming doom;
And him sitting alone in blood while friends
Are hunting far in the sunshine; and the boy
With his white breast and brow and clustering curls
Streaked with his mother's blood, but striving hard
To tell his story ere his reason goes.
And when I loved thee as love seemed so oft,
Thou lovedst me indeed: I wondering searched
My heart to find some feeling like such love,
Believing I was still much I had been.
Too soon I found all faith had gone from me,
And the late glow of life, like change on clouds,
Proved not the morn-blush widening into day,
But eve faint-coloured by the dying sun
While darkness hastens quickly. I will tell
My state as though 'twere none of minedespair
Cannot come near usthis it is, my state.
Souls alter not, and mine must still advance;
Strange that I knew not, when I flung away
My youth's chief aims, their loss might lead to loss
Of what few I retained, and no resource
Be left me: for behold how changed is all!
I cannot chain my soul: it will not rest
In its clay prison, this most narrow sphere:
It has strange impulse, tendency, desire,
Which nowise I account for nor explain,
But cannot stifle, being bound to trust
All feelings equally, to hear all sides:
How can my life indulge them? yet they live,
Referring to some state of life unknown.
My selfishness is satiated not,
It wears me like a flame; my hunger for
All pleasure, howsoe'er minute, grows pain;
I envyhow I envy him whose soul
Turns its whole energies to some one end,
To elevate an aim, pursue success
However mean! So, my still baffled hope
Seeks out abstractions; I would have one joy,
But one in life, so it were wholly mine,
One rapture all my soul could fill: and this
Wild feeling places me in dream afar
In some vast country where the eye can see
No end to the far hills and dales bestrewn
With shining towers and towns, till I grow mad
Well-nigh, to know not one abode but holds
Some pleasure, while my soul could grasp the world,
But must remain this vile form's slave. I look
With hope to age at last, which quenching much,
May let me concentrate what sparks it spares.
This restlessness of passion meets in me
A craving after knowledge: the sole proof
Of yet commanding will is in that power
Repressed; for I beheld it in its dawn,
The sleepless harpy with just-budding wings,
And I considered whether to forego
All happy ignorant hopes and fears, to live,
Finding a recompense in its wild eyes.
And when I found that I should perish so,
I bade its wild eyes close from me for ever,
And I am left alone with old delights;
See! it lies in me a chained thing, still prompt
To serve me if I loose its slightest bond:
I cannot but be proud of my bright slave.
How should this earth's life prove my only sphere?
Can I so narrow sense but that in life
Soul still exceeds it? In their elements
My love outsoars my reason; but since love
Perforce receives its object from this earth
While reason wanders chainless, the few truths.
Caught from its wanderings have sufficed to quell
Love chained below; then what were love, set free,
Which, with the object it demands, would pass
Reason companioning the seraphim?
No, what I feel may pass all human love
Yet fall far short of what my love should be.
And yet I seem more warped in this than aught,
Myself stands out more hideously: of old
I could forget myself in friendship, fame,
Liberty, nay, in love of mightier souls;
But I begin to know what thing hate is
To sicken and to quiver and grow white
And I myself have furnished its first prey.
Hate of the weak and ever-wavering will,
The selfishness, the still-decaying frame . . .
But I must never grieve whom wing can waft
Far from such thoughtsas now. Andromeda!
And she is with me: years roll, I shall change,
But change can touch her notso beautiful
With her fixed eyes, earnest and still, and hair
Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze,
And one red beam, all the storm leaves in heaven,
Resting upon her eyes and hair, such hair,
As she awaits the snake on the wet beach
By the dark rock and the white wave just breaking
At her feet; quite naked and alone; a thing
I doubt not, nor fear for, secure some god
To save will come in thunder from the stars.
Let it pass! Soul requires another change.
I will be gifted with a wondrous mind,
Yet sunk by error to men's sympathy,
And in the wane of life, yet only so
As to call up their fears; and there shall come
A time requiring youth's best energies;
And lo, I fling age, sorrow, sickness off,
And rise triumphant, triumph through decay.
And thus it is that I supply the chasm
'Twixt what I am and all I fain would be:
But then to know nothing, to hope for nothing,
To seize on life's dull joys from a strange fear
Lest, losing them, all 's lost and nought remains!
There 's some vile juggle with my reason here;
I feel I but explain to my own loss
These impulses: they live no less the same.
Liberty! what though I despair? my blood
Rose never at a slave's name proud as now.
Oh sympathies, obscured by sophistries!
Why else have I sought refuge in myself,
But from the woes I saw and could not stay?
Love! is not this to love thee, my Pauline?
I cherish prejudice, lest I be left
Utterly loveless? witness my belief
In poets, though sad change has come there too;
No more I leave myself to follow them
Unconsciously I measure me by them
Let me forget it: and I cherish most
My love of Englandhow her name, a word
Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart beat!
Pauline, could I but break the spell! Not now
All's feverbut when calm shall come again,
I am prepared: I have made life my own.
I would not be content with all the change
One frame should feel, but I have gone in thought
Thro' all conjuncture, I have lived all life
When it is most alive, where strangest fate
New-shapes it past surmisethe throes of men
Bit by some curse or in the grasps of doom
Half-visible and still-increasing round,
Or crowning their wide being's general aim.
These are wild fancies, but I feel, sweet friend,
As one breathing his weakness to the ear
Of pitying angeldear as a winter flower,
A slight flower growing alone, and offering
Its frail cup of three leaves to the cold sun,
Yet joyous and confiding like the triumph
Of a child: and why am I not worthy thee?
I can live all the life of plants, and gaze
Drowsily on the bees that flit and play,
Or bare my breast for sunbeams which will kill,
Or open in the night of sounds, to look
For the dim stars; I can mount with the bird
Leaping airily his pyramid of leaves
And twisted boughs of some tall mountain tree,
Or rise cheerfully springing to the heavens;
Or like a fish breathe deep the morning air
In the misty sun-warm water; or with flower
And tree can smile in light at the sinking sun
Just as the storm comes, as a girl would look
On a departing lovermost serene.
Pauline, come with me, see how I could build
A home for us, out of the world, in thought!
I am uplifted: fly with me, Pauline!
Night, and one single ridge of narrow path
Between the sullen river and the woods
Waving and muttering, for the moonless night
Has shaped them into images of life,
Like the uprising of the giant-ghosts,
Looking on earth to know how their sons fare:
Thou art so close by me, the roughest swell
Of wind in the tree-tops hides not the panting
Of thy soft breasts. No, we will pass to morning
Morning, the rocks and valleys and old woods.
How the sun brightens in the mist, and here,
Half in the air, like creatures of the place,
Trusting the element, living on high boughs
That swing in the windlook at the silver spray
Flung from the foam-sheet of the cataract
Amid the broken rocks! Shall we stay here
With the wild hawks? No, ere the hot noon come,
Dive we downsafe! See this our new retreat
Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs,
Dark, tangled, old and green, still sloping down
To a small pool whose waters lie asleep
Amid the trailing boughs turned water-plants:
And tall trees overarch to keep us in,
Breaking the sunbeams into emerald shafts,
And in the dreamy water one small group
Of two or three strange trees are got together
Wondering at all around, as strange beasts herd
Together far from their own land: all wildness,
No turf nor moss, for boughs and plants pave all,
And tongues of bank go shelving in the lymph,
Where the pale-throated snake reclines his head,
And old grey stones lie making eddies there,
The wild-mice cross them dry-shod. Deeper in!
Shut thy soft eyesnow lookstill deeper in!
This is the very heart of the woods all round
Mountain-like heaped above us; yet even here
One pond of water gleams; far off the river
Sweeps like a sea, barred out from land; but one
One thin clear sheet has overleaped and wound
Into this silent depth, which gained, it lies
Still, as but let by sufferance; the trees bend
O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl,
And through their roots long creeping plants out-stretch
Their twined hair, steeped and sparkling; farther on,
Tall rushes and thick flag-knots have combined
To narrow it; so, at length, a silver thread,
It winds, all noiselessly through the deep wood
Till thro' a cleft-way, thro' the moss and stone,
It joins its parent-river with a shout.
Up for the glowing day, leave the old woods!
See, they part, like a ruined arch: the sky!
Nothing but sky appears, so close the roots
And grass of the hill-top level with the air
Blue sunny air, where a great cloud floats laden
With light, like a dead whale that white birds pick,
Floating away in the sun in some north sea.
Air, air, fresh life-blood, thin and searching air,
The clear, dear breath of God that loveth us,
Where small birds reel and winds take their delight!
Water is beautiful, but not like air:
See, where the solid azure waters lie
Made as of thickened air, and down below,
The fern-ranks like a forest spread themselves
As though each pore could feel the element;
Where the quick glancing serpent winds his way,
Float with me there, Pauline!but not like air.
Down the hill! Stopa clump of trees, see, set
On a heap of rock, which look o'er the far plain:
So, envious climbing shrubs would mount to rest
And peer from their spread boughs; wide they wave, looking
At the muleteers who whistle on their way,
To the merry chime of morning bells, past all
The little smoking cots, mid fields and banks
And copses bright in the sun. My spirit wanders:
Hedgerows for methose living hedgerows where
The bushes close and clasp above and keep
Thought inI am concentratedI feel;
But my soul saddens when it looks beyond:
I cannot be immortal, taste all joy.
O God, where do they tendthese struggling aims?
What would I have? What is this "sleep" which seems
To bound all? can there be a "waking" point
Of crowning life? The soul would never rule;
It would be first in all things, it would have
Its utmost pleasure filled, but, that complete,
Commanding, for commanding, sickens it.
The last point I can trace isrest beneath
Some better essence than itself, in weakness;
This is "myself," not what I think should be:
And what is that I hunger for but God?
My God, my God, let me for once look on thee
As though nought else existed, we alone!
And as creation crumbles, my soul's spark
Expands till I can say,Even from myself
I need thee and I feel thee and I love thee.
I do not plead my rapture in thy works
For love of thee, nor that I feel as one
Who cannot die: but there is that in me
Which turns to thee, which loves or which should love.
Why have I girt myself with this hell-dress?
Why have I laboured to put out my life?
Is it not in my nature to adore,
And e'en for all my reason do I not
Feel him, and thank him, and pray to himnow?
Can I forego the trust that he loves me?
Do I not feel a love which only one . . .
O thou pale form, so dimly seen, deep-eyed!
I have denied thee calmlydo I not
Pant when I read of thy consummate power,
And burn to see thy calm pure truths out-flash
The brightest gleams of earth's philosophy?
Do I not shake to hear aught question thee?
If I am erring save me, madden me,
Take from me powers and pleasures, let me die
Ages, so I see thee! I am knit round
As with a charm by sin and lust and pride,
Yet though my wandering dreams have seen all shapes
Of strange delight, oft have I stood by thee
Have I been keeping lonely watch with thee
In the damp night by weeping Olivet,
Or leaning on thy bosom, proudly less,
Or dying with thee on the lonely cross,
Or witnessing thine outburst from the tomb.
A mortal, sin's familiar friend, doth here
Avow that he will give all earth's reward,
But to believe and humbly teach the faith,
In suffering and poverty and shame,
Only believing he is not unloved.
And now, my Pauline, I am thine for ever!
I feel the spirit which has buoyed me up
Desert me, and old shades are gathering fast;
Yet while the last light waits, I would say much,
This chiefly, it is gain that I have said
Somewhat of love I ever felt for thee
But seldom told; our hearts so beat together
That speech seemed mockery; but when dark hours come,
And joy departs, and thou, sweet, deem'st it strange
A sorrow moves me, thou canst not remove,
Look on this lay I dedicate to thee,
Which through thee I began, which thus I end,
Collecting the last gleams to strive to tell
How I am thine, and more than ever now
That I sink fast: yet though I deeplier sink,
No less song proves one word has brought me bliss,
Another still may win bliss surely back.
Thou knowest, dear, I could not think all calm,
For fancies followed thought and bore me off,
And left all indistinct; ere one was caught
Another glanced; so, dazzled by my wealth,
I knew not which to leave nor which to choose,
For all so floated, nought was fixed and firm.
And then thou said'st a perfect bard was one
Who chronicled the stages of all life,
And so thou bad'st me shadow this first stage.
'T is done, and even now I recognize
The shift, the change from last to pastdiscern
Faintly how life is truth and truth is good.
And why thou must be mine is, that e'en now
In the dim hush of night, that I have done,
Despite the sad forebodings, love looks through
Whispers,E'en at the last I have her still,
With her delicious eyes as clear as heaven
When rain in a quick shower has beat down mist,
And clouds float white above like broods of swans.
How the blood lies upon her cheek, outspread
As thinned by kisses! only in her lips
It wells and pulses like a living thing,
And her neck looks like marble misted o'er
With love-breath,a Pauline from heights above,
Stooping beneath me, looking upone look
As I might kill her and be loved the more.
So, love meme, Pauline, and nought but me,
Never leave loving! Words are wild and weak,
Believe them not, Pauline! I stained myself
But to behold thee purer by my side,
To show thou art my breath, my life, a last
Resource, an extreme want: never believe
Aught better could so look on thee; nor seek
Again the world of good thoughts left for mine!
There were bright troops of undiscovered suns,
Each equal in their radiant course; there were
Clusters of far fair isles which ocean kept
For his own joy, and his waves broke on them
Without a choice; and there was a dim crowd
Of visions, each a part of some grand whole:
And one star left his peers and came with peace
Upon a storm, and all eyes pined for him;
And one isle harboured a sea-beaten ship,
And the crew wandered in its bowers and plucked
Its fruits and gave up all their hopes of home;
And one dream came to a pale poet's sleep,
And he said, "I am singled out by God,
"No sin must touch me." Words are wild and weak,
But what they would express is,Leave me not,
Still sit by me with beating breast and hair
Loosened, be watching earnest by my side,
Turning my books or kissing me when I
Look uplike summer wind! Be still to me
A help to music's mystery which mind fails
To fathom, its solution, no mere clue!
O reason's pedantry, life's rule prescribed!
I hopeless, I the loveless, hope and love.
Wiser and better, know me now, not when
You loved me as I was. Smile not! I have
Much yet to dawn on you, to gladden you.
No more of the past! I'll look within no more.
I have too trusted my own lawless wants,
Too trusted my vain self, vague intuition
Draining soul's wine alone in the still night,
And seeing how, as gathering films arose,
As by an inspiration life seemed bare
And grinning in its vanity, while ends
Foul to be dreamed of, smiled at me as fixed
And fair, while others changed from fair to foul
As a young witch turns an old hag at night.
No more of this! We will go hand in hand,
I with thee, even as a childlove's slave,
Looking no farther than his liege commands.
And thou hast chosen where this life shall be:
The land which gave me thee shall be our home,
Where nature lies all wild amid her lakes
And snow-swathed mountains and vast pines begirt
With ropes of snowwhere nature lies all bare,
Suffering none to view her but a race
Or stinted or deformed, like the mute dwarfs
Which wait upon a naked Indian queen.
And there (the time being when the heavens are thick
With storm) I'll sit with thee while thou dost sing
Thy native songs, gay as a desert bird
Which crieth as it flies for perfect joy,
Or telling me old stories of dead knights;
Or I will read great lays to theehow she,
The fair pale sister, went to her chill grave
With power to love and to be loved and live:
Or we will go together, like twin gods
Of the infernal world, with scented lamp
Over the dead, to call and to awake,
Over the unshaped images which lie
Within my mind's cave: only leaving all,
That tells of the past doubt. So, when spring comes
With sunshine back again like an old smile,
And the fresh waters and awakened birds
And budding woods await us, I shall be
Prepared, and we will question life once more,
Till its old sense shall come renewed by change,
Like some clear thought which harsh words veiled before;
Feeling God loves us, and that all which errs
Is but a dream which death will dissipate.
And then what need of longer exile? Seek
My England, and, again there, calm approach
All I once fled from, calmly look on those
The works of my past weakness, as one views
Some scene where danger met him long before.
Ah that such pleasant life should be but dreamed!
But whate'er come of it, and though it fade,
And though ere the cold morning all be gone,
As it may be;tho' music wait to wile,
And strange eyes and bright wine lure, laugh like sin
Which steals back softly on a soul half saved,
And I the first deny, decry, despise,
With this avowal, these intents so fair,
Still be it all my own, this moment's pride!
No less I make an end in perfect joy.
E'en in my brightest time, a lurking fear
Possessed me: I well knew my weak resolves,
I felt the witchery that makes mind sleep
Over its treasure, as one half afraid
To make his riches definite: but now
These feelings shall not utterly be lost,
I shall not know again that nameless care
Lest, leaving all undone in youth, some new
And undreamed end reveal itself too late:
For this song shall remain to tell for ever
That when I lost all hope of such a change,
Suddenly beauty rose on me again.
No less I make an end in perfect joy,
For I, who thus again was visited,
Shall doubt not many another bliss awaits,
And, though this weak soul sink and darkness whelm,
Some little word shall light it, raise aloft,
To where I clearlier see and better love,
As I again go o'er the tracts of thought
Like one who has a right, and I shall live
With poets, calmer, purer still each time,
And beauteous shapes will come for me to seize,
And unknown secrets will be trusted me
Which were denied the waverer once; but now
I shall be priest and prophet as of old.
Sun-treader, I believe in God and truth
And love; and as one just escaped from death
Would bind himself in bands of friends to feel
He lives indeed, so, I would lean on thee!
Thou must be ever with me, most in gloom
If such must come, but chiefly when I die,
For I seem, dying, as one going in the dark
To fight a giant: but live thou for ever,
And be to all what thou hast been to me!
All in whom this wakes pleasant thoughts of me
Know my last state is happy, free from doubt
Or touch of fear. Love me and wish me well.
Richmond: October 22, 1832.
~ Robert Browning, Pauline, A Fragment of a Question
,#NFDB
96 Integral Yoga
25 Yoga
24 Occultism
21 Psychology
19 Christianity
16 Fiction
9 Science
8 Philosophy
5 Integral Theory
4 Cybernetics
3 Theosophy
3 Poetry
2 Mythology
2 Education
1 Kabbalah
1 Hinduism
1 Buddhism
1 Baha i Faith
1 Alchemy
92 Sri Aurobindo
31 The Mother
28 Nolini Kanta Gupta
18 Satprem
18 Carl Jung
16 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
16 H P Lovecraft
14 Swami Krishnananda
11 Sri Ramakrishna
9 Rudolf Steiner
6 Plato
4 Norbert Wiener
4 Aleister Crowley
3 Sri Ramana Maharshi
3 Ken Wilber
3 Jordan Peterson
3 James George Frazer
2 Thubten Chodron
2 Saint Augustine of Hippo
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Joseph Campbell
2 Aldous Huxley
24 The Synthesis Of Yoga
16 Lovecraft - Poems
15 The Life Divine
14 The Study and Practice of Yoga
10 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
9 Record of Yoga
9 Mysterium Coniunctionis
8 The Future of Man
8 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
7 Letters On Yoga IV
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
6 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
5 The Practice of Psycho therapy
5 The Phenomenon of Man
5 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
4 The Secret Doctrine
4 The Human Cycle
4 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
4 Letters On Yoga II
4 Cybernetics
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
3 The Golden Bough
3 Talks
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Questions And Answers 1956
3 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
3 Maps of Meaning
3 Magick Without Tears
3 Letters On Yoga III
3 Isha Upanishad
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
3 Agenda Vol 04
2 The Perennial Philosophy
2 Theosophy
2 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
2 The Integral Yoga
2 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
2 The Essentials of Education
2 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
2 Symposium
2 Questions And Answers 1954
2 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
2 Prayers And Meditations
2 Letters On Yoga I
2 Hymn of the Universe
2 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
2 Essays Divine And Human
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
2 Aion
2 Agenda Vol 03
2 Agenda Vol 01
2 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
0 0.02 - Topographical Note, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From the time of Sri Aurobindo's departure (1950) until 1957, we have only a few notes and fragments or rare statements noted from memory. These are the only landmarks of this period, along with Mother's Questions and Answers from her talks at the Ashram Playground. A few of these conversations have been reproduced here insofar as they mark stages of the Supramental
Action.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
There are two stages of bhakti. The first is known as vaidhi-bhakti, or love of God qualified by scriptural injunctions. For the devotees of this stage are prescribed regular and methodical worship, hymns, prayers, the repetition of God's name, and the chanting of His glories. This lower bhakti in course of time matures into para-bhakti, or supreme devotion, known also as prema, the most intense form of divine love. Divine love is an end in itself. It exists potentially in all human hearts, but in the case of bound creatures it is misdirected to earthly objects.
To develop the devotee's love for God, Vaishnavism humanizes God. God is to be regarded as the devotee's Parent, Master, Friend, Child, Husband, or Sweetheart, each succeeding relationship representing an intensification of love. These bhavas, or attitudes toward God, are known as santa, dasya, sakhya, vatsalya, and madhur. The rishis of the Vedas, Hanuman, the cow-herd boys of Vrindavan, Rama's mother Kausalya, and Radhika, Krishna's sweetheart, exhibited, respectively, the most perfect examples of these forms. In the ascending scale the-glories of God are gradually forgotten and the devotee realizes more and more the intimacy of divine communion. Finally he regards himself as the mistress of his Beloved, and no artificial barrier remains to separate him from his Ideal. No social or moral obligation can bind to the earth his soaring spirit. He experiences perfect union with the Godhead. Unlike the Vedantist, who strives to transcend all varieties of the subject-object relationship, a devotee of the Vaishnava path wishes to retain both his own individuality and the personality of God. To him God is not an intangible Absolute, but the Purushottama, the Supreme Person.
0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
nature certain absolute stages of perfection and growth, without
upsetting the physical unity of the world ;
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sadhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine
Strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for our weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It "makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills." The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet, in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
and draw it gradually nearer to God; we have here, as it were, so many stages of the
ascent of the Mount on whose summit the soul attains to transforming union.
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The philosophical trend in poetry has an interesting history with a significant role: it has acted as a force of purification, of sublimation, of katharsis. As man has risen from his exclusively or predominantly vital nature into an increasing mental poise, in the same way his creative activities too have taken this new turn and status. In the earlier stages of evolution the mental life is secondary, subordinate to the physico-vital life; it is only subsequently that the mental finds an independent and self-sufficient reality. A similar movement is reflected in poetic and artistic creation too: the thinker, the philosopher remains in the background at the outset, he looks out; peers through chinks and holes from time to time; later he comes to the forefront, assumes a major role in man's creative activity.
Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over-mental regions. Accordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the higher mentalwhich is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated , form for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked for evident reasons, for human reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate or contri buting factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own substance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day demand.
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the Yoga practised here the aim is to rise to a higher consciousness and to live out of the higher consciousness alone, not with the ordinary motives. This means a change of life as well as a change of consciousness. But all are not so circumstanced that they can cut loose from the ordinary life; they accept it therefore as a field of experience and self-training in the earlier stages of the sadhana. But they must take care to look at it as a field of experience only and to get free from the ordinary desires, attachments and ideas which usually go with it; otherwise it becomes a drag and hindrance on their sadhana. When one is not compelled by circumstances there is no necessity to continue the ordinary life.
It is not helpful to abandon the ordinary life before the being is ready for the full spiritual life. To do so means to precipitate a struggle between the different elements and exasperate it to a point of intensity which the nature is not ready to bear. The vital elements in you have partly to be met by the discipline and experience of life, while keeping the spiritual aim in view and trying to govern life by it progressively in the spirit of Karmayoga.
01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As a matter of fact it is not so. The glimpses of a higher form of consciousness we can see even now present in self-consciousness. We have spoken of the different stages of evolution as if they were separate and distinct and incommensurate entities. They may be described as such for the purpose of a logical understanding, but in reality they form a single progressive continuum in which one level gradually fuses into another. And as the higher level takes up the law of the lower and evolves out of it a characteristic function, even so the law of the higher level with its characteristic function is already involved and envisaged in the law of the lower level and its characteristic function. It cannot be asserted positively that because man's special virtue is self-consciousness, animals cannot have that quality on any account. We do see, if we care to observe closely and dispassionately, that animals of the higher order, as they approach the level of humanity, show more and more evident signs of something which is very much akin to, if not identical with the human characteristic of self-consciousness.
So, in man also, especially of that order which forms the crown of humanityin poets and artists and seers and great men of actioncan be observed a certain characteristic form of consciousness, which is something other than, greater than the consciousness of the mere self. It is difficult as yet to characterise definitely what that thing is. It is the awakening of the self to something which is beyond itselfit is the cosmic self, the oversoul, the universal being; it is God, it is Turiya, it is sachchidanandain so many ways the thing has been sought to be envisaged and expressed. The consciousness of that level has also a great variety of names given to it Intuition, Revelation, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness. It is to be noted here, however, that the thing we are referring to, is not the Absolute, the Infinite, the One without a second. It is not, that is to say, the supreme Reality the Brahmanin its static being, in its undivided and indivisible unity; it is the dynamic Brahman, that status of the supreme Reality where creation, the diversity of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-worldRitam the domain of typal realities. The distinction is necessary, as there does seem to be such a level of consciousness intermediary, again, between man and the Absolute, between self-consciousness and the supreme consciousness. The simplest thing would be to give that intermediate level of consciousness a negative namesince being as yet human we cannot foresee exactly its composition and function the super-consciousness.
01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Unlike the previous irruptions that merged and were lost in the general life and consciousness, Islam entered as a leaven that maintained its integrity and revolutionized Indian life and culture by infusing into its tone a Semitic accent. After the Islamic impact India could not be what she was beforea change became inevitable even in the major note. It was a psychological cataclysm almost on a par with the geological one that formed her body; but the spirit behind which created the body was working automatically, inexorably towards the greater and more difficult synthesis demanded by the situation. Only the thing is to be done now consciously, not through an unconscious process of laissez-faire as on the inferior stages of evolution in the past. And that is the true genesis of the present conflict.
History abounds in instances of racial and cultural immixture. Indeed, all major human groupings of today are invariably composite formations. Excepting, perhaps, some primitiveaboriginal tribes there are no pure races existent. The Briton, the Dane, the Anglo-Saxon, and the Norman have combined to form the British; a Frenchman has a Gaul, a Roman, a Frank in him; and a Spaniard's blood would show an Iberian, a Latin, a Gothic, a Moorish element in it. And much more than a people, a culture in modern times has been a veritable cockpit of multifarious and even incongruous elements. There are instances also in which a perfect fusion could not be accomplished, and one element had to be rejected or crushed out. The complete disappearance of the Aztecs and Mayas in South America, the decadence of the Red Indians in North America, of the Negroes in Africa as a result of a fierce clash with European peoples and European culture illustrate the point.
0 1959-01-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Here is what X told me: I have received a message from my guru.1 In my vision, the Mother was there, next to my guru, and she was smiling. My guru told me that your present difficulties are a period of testing, but I could already give you the first stage of tantric initiation and that for you, the three stages of initiation could be done in an accelerated way.
I will therefore give you initiation this Friday or Saturday, on the day of the full moon or the day before. This first stage will last three months during which you will have to repeat 1 lakh2 times the mantra that I will give you. At the end of three months, I will come to see you in Pondicherryor you will come here for a fortnight, and as soon as I have received the message from my guru, I will give you the second stage that will last three months as well. At the end of these three months, you will receive the full initiation. X warned me that the first stage I am to receive provokes attacks and tests but that all this disappears with the second stage. Forewarned is forearmed. For what reason I do not know, but X told me that the particular nature of my initiation should remain secret and that he will say nothing about it to Swami, and he added (in speaking of the speed of the process), But you will not be less than the Swami. (!!) There, I wanted you to knowbesides, you were present in Xs vision. All this happened at a time when I was in the most desperate crisis I have ever known. Sweet Mother, there is no end to expressing my gratitude to you, and yet with the least trial, I am reduced to nothing. Why have you so much grace for me?
0 1959-01-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
By a special grace, X gave me both stages of the tantric initiation at the same time, although they are normally separated by several years; then if all goes well, he will give me the full initiation in 6 months. I have thus received a mantra, along with the power of realizing it. X told me that a realization should come at the beginning of the fifth month if I repeat the mantra strictly according to his instructions, but he again told me that the hostile forces would do all they could to prevent me from saying my mantra: mental suggestions and even illness. X has understood that I have work at the Ashram, and he has exempted me from the outer forms (pujas and other rituals), but nevertheless I must repeat my mantra very accurately every day (3,333 times, that is, a little more than 3 hours uninterrupted in the mornings, and more than 2 hours in the evening). I must therefore organize myself in such a way as to get up very early in the morning in Pondicherry, for in no case will your work suffer.
Apart from this, he has not yet entirely finished the work of purging that he has been doing on me for over a month, but I believe that everything will be completed in a short time from now.
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you go high enough, you come to the Heart of everything. Whatever manifests in this Heart can manifest in all things. This is the great secret, the secret of divine incarnation in an individual form. For in the normal course of things, what manifests at the center is only realized in the outer form with the awakening and RESPONSE Of the will within the individual form. But if the central Will is constantly, permanently represented in one individual, he can then serve as an intermediary between that Will and all beings, and will FOR THEM. Whatever this being perceives and consciously offers to the supreme Will is replied to as if it came from each individual being. And if individuals happen to be in a more or less conscious and voluntary relationship with this representative being, their relationship increases his efficacy and the supreme Action can work in Matter in a much more concrete and permanent way. This is the reason for these descents of what could be called polarized consciousnesses that always come to earth for a particular realization, with a definite purpose and missiona mission decided upon before the actual embodiment. These mark the great stages of the supreme incarnations upon earth.
And when the day comes for the manifestation of supreme Lovea crystalized, concentrated descent of supreme Love that will truly be the hour of Transformation, for nothing will be able to resist That.
0 1962-03-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Certain stages of your development even require the gurus physical presence: you must no longer go into trance unless he is there, sitting beside you. Out of the question! Cant you just imagine me saddled with loads of people! Its impossible; I couldnt even do the job properly. No, its impossible, it would simply mean exposing a lot of people to permanent danger and I dont want to.
So well put this Talk aside.
0 1962-07-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother refers back to the last conversation, where she spoke of her different stages of development.)
I have seen that the different stages of my development occurred in twelve-year periods, though I dont recall the exact dates. The first period, from the age of five (I cant start earlier than five!) to about eighteen, dealt with consciousness. Then came all the artistic and vital development, culminating in the occult development with Thon (I met Thon around 1905 or 06, I think1). Then right around this time an intensive mental development beganfrom 1908 to 1920, or a little before; but it was especially intense before coming here in 1914.
And 1920 marked the beginning of full development. Not spiritual development that had been going on from the very start but ACTION, the action with Sri Aurobindo. That was clearly from 1920 on; I had met Sri Aurobindo earlier, but it really began in 1920.2
0 1963-05-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
93Pain is the touch of our Mother teaching us to bear and grow in rapture. She has three stages of her schooling, endurance first, next equality of soul, last ecstasy.
I am still in a period of conflict.
0 1963-07-31, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The work consists, I could say, in either removing or transforming (I am not sure which of the two) all the bodys cells that are or have been under the influence of Falsehood (not lie but falsehood), of the state contrary to the Divine. But since probably a radical purge or transformation would have resulted in nothing but the bodys dissolution, the work goes on in stages, progressively (I am going very far back in time, to my first attacks). So the sequence is the following: first, a series of activities or visions (but those visions are always activities at the same time: both activities and visions) in the subconscious domain, showing in a very living and objective way the Falsehood that has to be removed (transformed or removed). At first, I took them as adverse attacks, but now I see they are states of falsehood to which certain elements in the physical being are linked (at the time, I thought, I am brought into contact with that because of the correspondence in me, and I worked on that level but its another way of seeing the same thing). And it produces certainly there is a dissolution there is a transformation, but a dissolution tooand that dissolution naturally brings about an extreme fatigue or a sort of exhaustion in the body; so between two of those stages of transformation, the body is given time to recover strength and energy.1 And I had noticed that those attacks always come after the observation (an observation I made these last few days) of a great increase in power, energy and force; when the body grows more and more solid, there always follows the next day or the day after, first, a series of nights I could call unpleasant (they are not, for theyre instructive), and then a terrible battle in the body. This time I was consciousnaturally, I am conscious every time, but (smiling) more so every time.
I had observed lately that the body was getting much stronger, much more solid, that it was even putting on weight (!), which is almost abnormal. Then, I had a first vision (not vision: an activity, but very clear), then another, and then a third. Last night, I was fed a subtle food, as if to tell me that I would need it because I wouldnt take any physical food2 (not that I thought about it, I simply noticed I had been fed, given certain foods). And with the visions I had the two preceding nights, I knew that at issue were certain elements forming part of the bodys construction (psychological construction), and that they had to be eliminated. So I worked hard for their elimination. And today, the battle was waged.
0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
93Pain 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.
As long as we are dealing with moral things, this is absolutely obvious and indisputable: all moral pain, when you know how to take it, shapes your character and leads you straight to ecstasy. But when it comes to the body
0 1965-07-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I can tell you (if it helps your physical mind) that in Japan I had a sort of measles (which had its own rather deep reasons) and that the Japanese doctor (who, besides, had studied in Germany, anyway he was a doctor through and through) told me very gravely that I should take care, that I was in the early stages of this wonderful disease, that above all I should never live in a cold climate, and this and that. I was losing weight and so on. That was in Japan. Then I came here and I said that to Sri Aurobindo, who looked at me and smiled; and it was over, we didnt talk about it anymore. We didnt talk about it anymore and it wasnt there anymore! (laughing) It was all over. When I met Dr. S., years later, I asked him. Nothing at all, he said, everything is fine, there is absolutely nothing, not a trace. And I hadnt done anything, I hadnt taken any medicine or any precaution. Only, I had told Sri Aurobindo about it, who had looked at me and smiled.
Well, I am convinced thats how it is, thats all. But the physical mind doesnt believe in that. It believes that thats all very well in the higher realms, but when we are in Matter things follow a law of Matter and are material and mechanical, and there is a mechanism, and when the mechanism and so on and so forth (not with these words, but with this thought). And one has to keep forever working on that, forever saying, Oh, put a stop to all your difficulties, keep quiet!
0 1968-11-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"...Pain that travails towards the touch of an unimaginable ecstasy." See also Thoughts and Aphorisms: 93"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."
***
0 1969-09-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Hes come here with a questionnot a mental one. But I should perhaps tell you the stages of his discovery. As you know, he discovered experimentally on himself what was going on. So he sought to understand: he bought books, went to see so-called healers. The first people who taught him were Spiritualists. They told him, Use a pendulum. He used a pendulum to detect diseases, and it worked very well. Then, after a time, he thought, But this isnt reality. And then his Pendulum stopped working! Afterwards, he went to see someone else, who told him, But you should do magnetic passes. He was taught how to do it, and it worked very well: with his fingers he could feel the organs that were out of harmony (because, for him, the key word is Harmony or disharmony). Then, after a while, he said to himself, But this isnt reality either. And nothing worked anymore.
Oh, its very interesting!
0 1970-03-28, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On the four stages of pain?
421There are four stages in the pain God gives to us; when it is only pain; when it is pain that causes pleasure; when it is pain that is pleasure; and when it is purely a fiercer form of delight.
02.01 - Our Ideal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Such a movement of transforming evolution is not merely a possibility or a probability: it is a fact of Nature. Indeed, natural evolution means nothing less than that. First of all, evolution means the reversibility of Nature; for, it is the backward movement of an involutionary process. We have said that the supreme truth and realitysat-cit-ananda, as it is calledmultiplied and concretised itself gradually through various steps and stages of a diminishing power of expression or an increasing entropy of self-concealment: the main grades being the Supermind, the Overmind, the Higher Mind, the Mind, Life and lastly the body or Matter. Having arrived at the extreme end that Matter represents,the farthest apparently from the original source, the movement turns round and seeks to go up the ladder through the same gradations it has traversed. But this process of reversal is not merely a resolution and dissolution, it is a process of greater fulfilment and synthetisation, of sublimation as well as of integration.
Matter is the starting-point of evolution, it is there merely a physico-chemical entity. But it undergoes a change, the first of its kind, a transmutation when it is taken up by life, when it becomes the basis and receptacle of a living organism: vitalised Matter behaves differently from physico-chemical Matter. A farther and greater change is brought about in Matter when it is raised still higher and taken up by the mind, when it answers to the vibrations of a mental organism: mentalised Matter has yet a third norm of behaviour. The' transformation of Matter in slow degrees towards a greater plasticity and spontaneity, a growing sentiency and luminosity is evident as one proceeds up the rungs of natural evolution.
This drive of evolution is a constant and permanent fact of Nature and she is in travail to bring about higher and higher stages of material transformation. It may not be easy to forecast from the present status what the future mode or modes of Matter would be like, even as it was surely impossible to forecast mentalised Matter or living Matter, but that does not make the thing less inevitable.
The inevitability arises from the very fact of this evolutionary urge that a stage will come when Matter will undergo another, more radical and crucial change; it will be taken up by a higher reality than mind and suffused with a light and power belonging to that reality: a spiritual consciousness will emerge and with it spiritualised Matter, even as a mental consciousness emerged and mentalised (however inadequately) Matter, and yet anterior to that a vital consciousness emerged and vitalised Matter. There cannot be a limit to the degree of spiritualisation also; for the degree of the Spirit that Nature manifests in an earthly body will also be the measure to which the body itself is spiritualised. A perfectly dynamic spiritual consciousness will have the power to perfectly spiritualise the body and life and mind. And this grade and power of the supreme Spirit Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind.
02.01 - The World-Stair, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A summary of the stages of the spirit,
Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies
02.06 - The Integral Yoga and Other Yogas, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I have never said that my Yoga was something brand new in all its elements. I have called it the integral Yoga and that means that it takes up the essence and many processes of the old Yogas - its newness is in its aim, standpoint and the totality of its method. In the earlier stages which is all I deal with in books like the Riddle or the Lights1 there is nothing in it that distinguishes it from the old Yogas except the aim underlying its comprehensiveness, the spirit in its movements and the ultimate significance it keeps before it - also the scheme of its psychology and its working, but as that was not and could not be developed systematically or schematically in these letters, it has not been grasped by those who are not already acquainted with it by mental familiarity or some amount of practice. The detail or method of the later stages of the Yoga which go into little known or untrodden regions, I have not made public and I do not at present intend to do so.
I know very well also that there have been seemingly allied ideals and anticipations - the perfectibility of the race, certain
03.04 - Towardsa New Ideology, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, Right, Duty and Dharma are three terms that represent the three stages of an ascending consciousness in its play of forces. At the base and beginning the original and primary state of consciousness is dominated by the mode of inertia (tamas); in that state things are an inchoate mass and are simply jumbled together; they are moved and acted upon helplessly by forces that are outside them. A rise in the scale of growth and evolution occurs when things begin to be organised, that is to say, differentiated and coordinated. And this means at the outset the self-assertion of each and every unit, the claim and the right of the individual to be itself first and foremost. It is a necessary development, for it signifies the growth of self-conscious units out of a general unconsciousness. It is the appearance of rajas, the mode of life and activity. Right belongs to this field and level: it is the lever that serves to bring out the individual nuclei from a general formlessness, it is the force that crystallises and organises the separative centres for separate fulfilment in life. And naturally it is the field also of competition and conflict. This is a stage and has to be transcended, from the domain of differentiation and contrariety one has to rise to the domain of co-ordination and co-operation. Here comes in the concept of duty which seeks to remedy the ills of the modus of rights in two ways, first, by replacing the movement of taking by that of giving, orienting the consciousness from the sense of self-sufficiency and self-importance towards that of submission and humbleness; secondly, by the recognition of the just rights of others also against one's own. Duty represents the mode of sattwa in action.
But the conception of duty too has its limitations. Even apart from the misuses of the ideal to which we have already referred, the ideal itself, is of the mental plane; it is more or less an act of mental will that seeks to impose a rule of co-operation upon the mutually excluding and conflicting entities. The result is bound to be imperfect and precarious. For mind force, although it can exercise some kind of control over the life forces, cannot altogether master them, and eradicate even the very seeds of conflict that breed naturally in that field. The sense of duty raises the consciousness to the mode of sattwa; sattwa holds rajas in check, but is unable to eliminate wholly the propensities and impulses of aberration ingrained in rajas, cannot radically purify or transfigure it.
03.05 - The Spiritual Genius of India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The whole world, in fact, was more or less religious in the early stages of its evolution; for it is characteristic of the primitive nature of man to be god-fearing and addicted to religious rite and ceremony. And Europe too, when she entered on a new cycle of life and began to reconstruct herself after the ruin of the Grco-Latin culture, started with the religion of the Christ and experimented with it during a long period of time. But that is what wasTroja fuit. Europe has outgrown her nonage and for a century and a half, since the mighty upheaval of the French Revolution, she has been rapidly shaking off the last vestiges of her mediaevalism. Today she stands clean shorn of all superstition, which she only euphemistically calls religion or spirituality. Not Theology but Science, not Revelation but Reason, not Magic but Logic, not Fiction but Fact, governs her thoughts and guides her activities. Only India, in part under the stress of her own conservative nature, in part under compelling circumstances, still clings to her things of the past, darknesses that have been discarded by the modern illumination. Indian spirituality is nothing but consolidated mediaevalism; it has its companion shibboleth in the cry, "Back to the village" or "Back to the bullock-cart"! One of the main reasons, if not the one reason why India has today no place in the comity of nations, why she is not in the vanguard of civilisation, is precisely this obstinate atavism, this persistent survival of a spirit subversive of all that is modern and progressive.
It is not my purpose here to take up the cause of spirituality and defend it against materialism. Taking it for granted that real spirituality embodies a truth and power by far higher and mightier than anything materialism can offer, and that man's supreme ideal lies there, let us throw a comparing glance on the two types of spirituality,the one that India knows and the other that Europe knew in the Middle Ages.
03.08 - The Democracy of Tomorrow, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The earlier stages of human society were chiefly concerned with the development of mankind in die mass. It is a collective growth, a general uplifting that is attempted: the individual has no special independent value of his own. The clan, the tribe, the kula, the order, the caste, or the State, when it came to be formed, were the various collective frames of reference for ascertaining the function and the value of the individual. It is in fulfilling the dharma, obeying the nomoi, in carrying out faithfully the duties attached to one's position in the social hierarchy that lay the highest good, summum bonum.
Certainly there were voices of protest, independent spirits who refused to drown themselves, lose themselves in the general current. That is to say, a separate and separative growth of the individual consciousness had to proceed at the same time under whatever duress and compression. An Antigone stood alone in the inviolable sanctity of the individual conscience against the established order of a mighty State. Indeed, individualised individuals were more or less freaks in the social set-up in the early days, revolutionaries or law-breakers, iconoclasts who were not very much favoured by the people. In Europe, it was perhaps with Luther that started a larger movement for the establishment and maintenance of the individual's right. The Reformation characteristically sought to make room for individual judgement and free choice in a field where authority the collective authority of the Churchwas all in all and the individual was almost a nonentity.
04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, these movements, the appearance of great souls upon earth and the manifestation of larger collective surges in human society, are not isolated happenings, having no reference or point of contact with one another. On the contrary, they are two limbs of a global evolutionary process. In and through them across countries and centuries the spirit of humanity moves towards greater and greater fulfilment. Evolution means the growth of consciousness. In man in his collective existence the growth continues: it lies in two directions. First of all, in extension. A sufficiently large physical body is needed to house the growing life and consciousness: therefore the unicellular organism has developed into the multicellular. In the same way, in the earliest stages of human society, the light and power of consciousness, characteristic of that age, found expression among a few only: it was the age of representative individuals, leadersRishi, Magi, Patriarch, Judge, King. Next a stage came when the cultural consciousness widened and, instead of scattered individuals or some families, we have a large group, a whole class or section of society who become the guardian of the light: thus arose the Brahmin, the lite, the cultured class, the aristocracy of talents. The light and culture filters down further and embraces larger masses of people who take living interest and share in the creative activities of man, in the higher preoccupations of mind and thought; this is the age of enlightened bourgeoisie. In comparatively recent times what is familiarly known as the "middle class" was the repository and purveyor of human culture.
The light sinks further down and extends still more its scope seeking to penetrate and encircle the whole of humanity. The general mass of mankind, the lowest strata of society have to be taken in, elevated and illumined. That must be the natural and inevitable consummation of all progress and evolution. And that is the secret sense and justification of the Proletarian Revolution of today. Although, the many names and forms given to it by its violent partisans do not bring out or sufficiently honour the soul and spirit that informs it.
--
In the early stages of humanity its history consists of the isolated histories of various peoples and lands: intercommunication was difficult, therefore all communion was of the nature of infiltration and indirect influence. The difference between countries far distant from each other were well marked and very considerable in respect of their cultures and civilisations. To put it in a somewhat scholarly yet graphic manner, we can say, the i sometric chart of the tides of civilisation in various countries over the globe in those days presents a very unequal and tortuous figure. On the other hand, a graph depicting the situation in modern times would be formed by lines that are more even, uniform and straight. In other words, the world has become one, homogeneous: a consciousness has grown same or similar on the whole in outlook and life-impulse embracing all peoples and races in a tight embrace. The benefit of the descending or manifesting Light is now open equally and freely to each and every member of the human kind.
Not only in extension but the growth or evolution has progressed in another direction. There has not only been a quantitative but also a qualitative development. Culture movements have grown in intent, in depth or elevation, in the meaning and significance of the consciousness involved. And they have converged towards a single aim and purpose. That purpose is not only the establishment of the global consciousness, but the expression and embodiment of the highest, the supreme consciousness. The process here too, as in the domain of extension, is one of graduation, advance by stages. The light, the light of awakening consciousness first touches the more easily accessible parts of human nature, the higher domains that are not too much involved in the gross material or animal nature. It is the realm of thoughts and ideas, of idealism, imagination and aspiration: it is man's mind, which is the least heavily weighted or ballasted by a downward gravitational pull and the most buoyant and supple the Ariel in him. It is his head that first receives the glow of the morning sun.
04.04 - Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This means to say that with the knowledge that is given us today, one can determine more or less definitely the altitudes to which the various spiritual realisations of the past rose and one can see also the degrees or graded stages of the evolution of the spiritual consciousness. A broad landmark can be noted here which concerns us at the present moment. The spiritual consciousness has been rising to higher and higher peaks and possessing them one after another. At the present moment we are at a crisis, at a crucial crossing. The spiritual consciousness attained till now and securely held in human possession (in man's inner nature) is confined to the highest level of the mind with some infiltration from the Overmind and through that, as a springing board, a leap into an indefinite, almost a blank Beyond. Now the time is come and the conditions are ready for the spiritual consciousness in humanity to arrive at the status above the Overmind to the Supermind, and make that a living reality and build in and through that its normal consciousness.
A progressive revelation of higher and higher and more integral states of the spiritual consciousness in and through the realisations of mystics and sages and seersdivine men of all ages, such is the process of evolution that marks the life of man upon earth. This spiritual evolution, however, may not be obviously visible in the external life and character of man: it has been a phenomenon more in his inner being and consciousness, an occult phenomenon. Hence there has intervened a veil, wall of separation between the two. The veil has not been rent precisely because the very highest spiritual potential has not been reached and brought into play. The call of the present age is just to do away with this veil, make of human nature a unified, a streamlined entity, a complete incarnation of the spiritual consciousness in the fullness of its own nature at its source and origin.
04.05 - The Immortal Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire must have been the original source of the inspiration that moved later on Spengler and Toynbee and others to posit a life-line for nations and races and mark its various stages of growth and evolution. The general theory put in a nutshell would be like this: mankind is composed of groups or aggregates of individuals and each has a life-history of its own even like an individual human being, in other words, an inescapable cycle of birth, growth, maturity, decline and disintegration. All groupspeoples; races, nationshave to pass through these destined stages, although, naturally, at different times and with a varying tempo. The view implies two conclusions or rather postulates:(l) that whatever is born must die, there is no resurrection or rejuvenation, neither in the individual nor in the collective life and (2) that humanity remains on the whole more or less the same, there is no global progress: there is no continued march forward towards a kingdom of heaven upon earth, even as there has not been a decline and deterioration from some Golden Age in the past.
Is this so, in point of fact or is it bound to be so, in point of theory? What are the facts? There are at least two human groups or peoples extant that seem to point to a different conclusion. I speak of China and especially of India. Egypt and Greece and Rome, the Minoans, the early Mesopotamians had their day. They rose, they lived, they died and are no more. But India and China, although almost contemporaneous with any of those earliest civilisations, have not vanished; they continue still today. In respect of India at least it cannot be said that she is not today, is totally different from what she was in her Vedic epoch or even in her Harappa and Mohenjo-daro days, in the sense that modern Egypt is not the Egypt of the Pharaohs, nor the Greece of Venizelos the Greece of Pericles.
04.06 - Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This means that with the knowledge that is given us today one can determine more or less definitely the altitudes to which the various spiritual realisations of the past rose and one can see also the degrees or graded stages of the evolution of the spiritual consciousness. A broad landmark can be noted here which concerns us at the present moment. The spiritual consciousness has been rising to higher and higher peaks and possessing them one after another. At the present moment we are at a crisis, at a crucial crossing. The spiritual consciousness attained till now and securely held in human possession (in man's inner nature) is confined to the highest level of the mind with some infiltration from the Overmind and through that, as a springing board, a leap into an indefinite, almost a blank Beyond. Now the time is come and the conditions are ready for the spiritual consciousness in humanity to arrive at the status above the Overmind, the Supermind, and make that a living reality and build in and through that its normal consciousness.
A progressive revelation of higher and higher and more integral states of the spiritual consciousness in and through the realisations of mystics and sages and seersdivine menof all ages, such is the process of evolution that marks the life of man upon earth. This spiritual evolution, however, may not be obviously visible in the external life and character of man: it has been a phenomenon more in his inner being and consciousness, an occult phenomenon. Hence there has intervened a veil, a wall of separation between the two. The veil has not been rent precisely because the very highest spiritual potential has not been reached and brought into play. The call of the present age is just to do away with this veil, make of human nature a unified, a streamlined entity, a complete incarnation of the spiritual consciousness in the fullness of its own nature at its source and origin.
05.20 - The Urge for Progression, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the process of the expression and embodiment of this innermost truth, the first necessary condition is, as we have said, sincerity, that is to say, a constant reference to the demand of that truth, putting everything and judging everything in the light of that truth, a vigilant wakefulness to it. The second condition is progression. It is the law of the Truth that it is expressing itself, seeking to express itself continually and continuously in the march of life; it is always unfolding new norms and forms of its light and power, ever new degrees of realisation. The individual human consciousness has to recognise that progressive flux and march along with it. Human consciousness, the complex of external mind and life and body consciousness, has the habit of halting, clinging to the forms, experiences and gains of the past, storing them in memory, agreeing to a minimum change only just to be able to pour the new into the old. But this conservatism, which is another name for tamasis fatal to the living truth within. Even like the lan vitalso gloriously hymned by Bergson, the inmost consciousness, the central truth of being, the soul lanhas always a forward-looking reference. And it is precisely because the normal instrument of the body and life and mind has always a backward reference, because it slings ,back and cannot keep pace with the march of the soul-consciousness that these members stagnate, wear away, decay and death ends it all. The past has its utility: it marks the stages of progress. It means assimilation, but must not mean stagnation. It may supply the present basis but must always open out to what is coming or may come. If one arrives at a striking realisation, a light is revealed, a Voice, a mantra heard, a norm disclosed, it is simply to be noted, taken in the stuff of the being, made part and parcel of the consciousness; you leave it at that and pass and press on. You must not linger at wayside illuminations however beautiful or even useful some may be. The ideal of the paryataka the wanderermay be taken as a concrete symbol of this principle. The Brahmanas described it graphically in the famous phrase, caraivete, "move on". The Vedic Rishi sang of it in the memorable hymn to Dawn, the goddess who comes today the last of a succession of countless dawns in the immemorial past and the first of a never-ending series of the future. The soul is strung with a golden chain to the Great Fulfilment that moves ahead: even when fulfilled the soul does not rest or come to the end of its mission, it continues to be an ever new expression or instrumentation of the Infinite.
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07.12 - This Ugliness in the World, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Everything in the world has at its source a supreme truth, how is it then that the world has become ugly in its expression? Why are things at all ugly? Because there are other things that intervene between the Source and the manifestation. For example, if I asked you: Do you know your true being? what would you say? You do not know; it would be wonderful if you did. It is the same with all beings and things. And yet you are already a sufficiently developed being, a thinking being, and have gone through many stages of refinement; you are not quite the lizard crawling on the wall! Still you cannot tell what is the truth of your being. That is the secret of the deformation in the world. It is because there is all the unconsciousness the Inconscient that has been created by the fact of separation from one's origin. It is this inconscience which prevents the Source from manifesting in its own nature, although it is there always. It is there, therefore that all things exist, the world exists; but in its expression it is deformed, because it has to manifest itself through inconscience, through ignorance and obscurity. But how did it come about? The will to create was originally a will that projected itself towards individual formation; what it arrived at, however, was not the true individual (or individualisation) but a breaking up of the solid unity into infinitesimal fragments. The original indivisible unity became a sum of infinitely divided unities. These unities or units were individualisations of things separate and feeling and acting as such. It is precisely the feeling of separation from others that gives you the impression that you are an individual. Otherwise you would feel that you were only a fluid mass. That is to say, you are no longer conscious simply of your rigid outer form and all that cuts you off from others and makes of you a separate individual, you are conscious of the vital forces that move about everywhere, of the inconscient that is the foundation of all, you have the impression that you are a moving mass with all kinds of contradictory movements in it, which cannot be separated from each other. You would not have the impression that you are an individual being, but that you are something like one note or vibration in a whole complex. The original will was to form individual beings capable of becoming conscious again of their divine origin. This process of individualisation created the necessity that to be an individual one must feel oneself separate: that is why one is cut off from the original consciousness, at least apparently, and is fallen into inconscience. For the Life of life is the Origin alone and if it is separated from that source, consciousness naturally turns into unconsciousness and you lose trace of the truth of your being. That is the process of the creation or formation of the world by which the pure origin does not manifest directly in its essence and purity, but through deformation, that is to say, unconsciousness and ignorance. That is how ugliness came in, death and disease, wickedness and misery and all. It is the movement, I say, brought in by the necessity of individual formation that has produced these things, each and every one of them, that is the one source of the multiple evil in all its modes and vibrations. I do not say this was indispensable that problem I may take up later on. But for the moment I direct you to the source in order to show the remedy. And there is no point in questioning why it is so. As I said, the only way to settle the world problem is to be conscious again, to recover the lost consciousness. Of course, if you say like some religions that good is good and evil is evil and they will always remain so, then there is no longer any problem. An eternal struggle binds the two together and whichever wins for the moment will make the world a little better at one moment and a little worse at another. But the two exist, continue to exist eternally and indissolubly intertwined. But you have seen it is not like that; one can come out of the tangle into the perfect unity of the truth, for it is that which is the only and original source.
It is this perfect truth, let me repeat, that has scattered itself abroad, into these innumerable little atoms, into these insignificant brain cells which, in spite of all their ignorance, are still moved by a secret stir of consciousness: these little specks of darkness reach out towards light which they can find, for it is within them. They will arrive at what they seek. It may take time more or less, but they will reach in the end. That is then the remedy: it lies in the very heart of evil itself.
08.21 - Human Birth, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Normally we are dealing with a soul that is growing, which is in the process of its growth. Now, there are all the stages of growth, from the tiniest spark that is becoming a little flame of light up to the fully conscious and fully formed being. This ascent of the soul in order to become a mature conscious being, having its own will and deciding its own destiny, takes thousands of years.
When, however, it is a free and conscious soul that seeks to take a body again upon earth, it begins to work upon the body even before the birth. Such being the case, it has no reason not to accept the inconveniences that result from the ignorance of the parents. It has chosen its place for a reason which is a reason not of ignorance: it saw a lightwhich may be simply a light of possibility; but there was a light and that is why it came there. And when from the domain of the psychic it looks upon the earth and has chosen its place of birth, the choice has sufficient discernment in it not to have made a gross mistake.
10.01 - Cycles of Creation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The present cycle, the great cycle that is to say, has, as I have said, for its ultimate motive and purpose the advent and reign of the Supermind. But this proceeds through stages, each stage forming a minor or lesser cycle. The stages of these cycles are the different degrees of what is called evolution. The evolution starts upon the basis of an apparently simple substance and goes on unfolding gradually an inherent complexity. As we know, the different cycles of evolution in the past were at the outset a purely material universe of inorganic elements, then came the cycle of organic combinations, then the manifestation of life and next the mind and at present the mind at its peak capacity, which means the advent of the strange creature that has a miraculous destiny to accomplish. And that is to bring forth out of him the achievement and fulfilment of the next cycle. For the mind is there to bring forth, to usher in the Supermind and man is there as the laboratory and the vanguard as well of the Supermind.
At the present time the human consciousness in general has been so prepared and its dwelling and playfield the earth consciousness made ready to such a degree that it has been possible for the still secreted higher perfection to enter into the arena. The evolution, the growth has been a gradual expression and revelation of the light, the consciousness in a higher and higher degree of purity and potency through an encasement hard and resistant at first but gradually yielding to the impact of the higher status and even transforming itself so as to become its instrument and embodiment. We speak of the present situation, we are concerned with man and what he is to grow into or bring out of himself. Here also there seem to be stages or cycles of creation leading to the final achievement. The whole burden of the present endeavour is how to transcend, transform or modify the animalhood which is the basis of humanity even now and in and through which man is growing and seeking to manifest and incarnate his superior potencies. Man's supramental destiny means that he totally outgrows the animal, outgrows even his manhood in so far as it is merely human; for he has to incorporate the principle of the supramental which wholly transcends the mental.
1.007 - Initial Steps in Yoga Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The difficulty is only in taking the first step; then afterwards, we will be carried by the stream. The sitting for a chosen period is regarded as essential, because it is the first tap that we strike upon the vital point in our personal life in bringing about some sort of a harmony between the body and the mind. All stages in yoga are stages of bringing about harmony. Instead of confusion and unmethodical movement, there would be a more methodical and harmonious adjustment of the various units of life.
Life is very large; it is not confined only to our little room or to our body, and so this adjustment may have to be effected in all the fields of life with which we are directly connected. Though it is true that we are ultimately connected with everything in the universe, for the time being it is enough if we take into consideration those visible factors with which we are immediately concerned in our practical life. These factors have to be adjusted with our life, and vice versa. These factors are, of course, of various kinds. What are the factors in life with which we are connected? There are many things physical, geographical, social, political, moral, and intellectual all these, of course, are things with which we are connected. It is no use, therefore, laying emphasis only on the personal level while the person is also connected externally to the geographical, the historical, the political and the social aspects of life.
1.009 - Perception and Reality, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
To describe the series or the successive stages of this development there is, first, a perception of the object, such as a tree, for example, in front. I perceive an object in front of me such as a tree, and I am convinced that it is a real tree. The tree is really there; it is not an unreal perception. The existence of the tree is real. It is really there outside me. The 'outsideness' of the tree is also real. The tree is real, its externality to me is real and, therefore, I am now compelled to develop a real attitude towards it.
Now comes the second problem. What is this real attitude that I have to develop towards it? The force that urges this real attitude towards the object is egoism. It is the breeding ground for the impulsive power which drives the consciousness out towards that object which has been regarded as real. It is not possible to merely perceive an object and have no attitude towards it, because the very consciousness of an object is the demand of the object to be recognised in a certain manner, and this recognition is called attitude. Therefore, we now have to find out the reason for this perception of the object itself.
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Now, analogically speaking, if the one has become two, and two has become four, four has become eight, etc., so that we are today what we are, in this condition, the reverse process of returning to the original unity would be by a successive recession of the very same process, stage by stage, missing not a single link. These are the stages of yoga. The steps in yoga, or the stages of knowledge, are the process of the recession of the effect into the cause, the condition of the effect in which one is 'A' or 'B' or 'XYZ'. So we have to determine our present condition, and from that condition we must retrace our steps back not suddenly to the topmost unity, but to the immediately-above condition. The step that is next to us, the condition above us, the stage ahead of us, is our goal for the present or the time being, with which we have to get united in meditation, in yoga. And that second step would effect a further stage ahead, and so on and so forth, until the final unity is achieved.
So, it would not be judicious on the part of any individual to vehemently assert that the physical perceptions of the world are all-in-all. The materialist's conception is, therefore, not correct, because this conception arises on account of a miscalculated attitude towards everything. This is the reason why, in the practice of yoga, expert guidance is called for, because we are dealing with matters that are super-intellectual, super-rational. Here our own understanding is not of much use, nor are books of any use, because we are treading on dangerous ground which the mind has not seen and cannot contemplate. We are all a wonder, says the scripture. This is a mystery, a wonder. It is a wonder because it is not capable of intellectually being analysed. The scripture proclaims that the subject is a great mystery, a great wonder and marvel; and one who teaches it is also a marvel, and the one who receives this knowledge, who understands it the disciple is also a wonder, indeed, because though the broadcasting station is powerful, the receiver-set also must be equally powerful to receive the message. The bamboo stick will not receive the message of the BBC. So the disciple is also a wonder to receive this mysterious knowledge, as the teacher himself is a wonder; and the subject is a marvel by itself.
1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The reason for the relaxation of the rule was that it was thought better to help people along in the early stages of the work, even if there was no hope of their turning out first-class. But I should like you to realize that sooner or later, whether in this incarnation or another, it is put up to you to show perfect courage in face of the completely unknown, and the power of rapid and irrevocable decision without without counting the cost.
I think that it is altogether wrong to allow yourself to be worried by "psychological, moral, and artistic problems." It is no good your starting anything of any kind unless you can see clearly into the simplicity of truth. All this humming and hawing about things is moral poison. What is the use of being a woman if you have not got an intuition, an instinct enabling you to distinguish between the genuine and the sham?
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There is really only one point for your judgment. "By their fruits ye shall know them." You have read Liber LXV and Liber VII; That shows you what states you can attain by this cirriculum. Now read "A Master of the Temple" (Blue Equinox, pp. 127-170) for an account of the early stages of training, and their results. (Of course, your path might not coincide with, or even resemble, his path.)
But do get it into you head that "If the blind lead the blind, they shall both fall into the ditch." If you had seen 1% of the mischief that I have seen, you would freeze to the marrow of your bones at the mere idea of seeing another member through the telescope! Well, I employ the figure of hyperbole, that I admit; but it really won't do to have a dozen cooks at the broth! If you're working with me, you'll have no time to waste on other people.
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
In all these perfections is seen the awareness of the Self, and the graded process of identification, utilisation, manipulation and final rejection of the not-self by that Self who is now consciously aware. He hears the note of nature and that of his monad; he recognises their identity, utilises their vibration, and passes rapidly through the three stages of Creator, Preserver and Destroyer.
[201]
1.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
not only our human but our superhuman and divine possibilities, and not only to believe in them but to discover them ourselves, step by step, to see for ourselves and to become vast, as vast as the earth we love and all the lands and all the seas we hold within us? For there is Sri Aurobindo the explorer, who was also a yogi; did he not say that Yoga is the art of conscious self-finding? 3 It is this exploration of consciousness that we would like to undertake with him. If we proceed calmly, patiently, and with sincerity, bravely facing the difficulties of the road and God knows it is rugged enough there is no reason that the window should not open at some point and let the sun shine on us forever. Actually, it is not one but several windows that open one after another, each time on a wider perspective, a new dimension of our own kingdom; and each time it means a change of consciousness as radical as going from sleep to the waking state. We are going to outline the main stages of these changes of consciousness,
as Sri Aurobindo experienced them and described them to his disciples in his integral yoga, until they take us to the threshold of a new, still unknown experience that may have the power to change life itself.
1.012 - Sublimation - A Way to Reshuffle Thought, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We are not to bring about a conflict in life, because spirituality is not in favour of any kind of conflict, whether it is inside or outside. So when we are exerting to control ourselves and to educate ourselves in a higher sense, either in society or in our personal lives, we are not creating any kind of split of consciousness, either social or personal. Rather, we are rising to a higher integrated condition where we have grown into a larger personality, so that in no step that we have taken have we lost anything, nor have we created tension anywhere. All stages of spiritual practice are freedoms attained from tension of every kind. A spiritual genius, even a spiritual seeker, does not create tension anywhere, either externally in society or in one's own self. Whenever we feel tension, we must understand that we have committed a mistake in our practice. What is the mistake.
The mistake is in believing that something is real, and yet not wanting it on account of a traditional attitude towards it that has been religiously introduced. The tradition of religion tells us that something is wrong, though we do not believe it. This is the difficulty. "My feelings say that something is okay, but religion says it is not okay. So I have a split between myself and the religious values." The religious novitiate then becomes a neurotic, an unhappy person, because in the cloister and the monastery he has a world of his own which is in conflict with the world outside. He has been told by religion that the world outside is wrong and the world inside the monastery is right, but he does not believe it. Oh, this is a horror that we cannot believe it and yet we are told to accept it. This is a kind of tyranny. Religion can become a tyrant; it can become a kind of dictator's order. But religion is far from dictatorship this is an important point to remember. Religion is not a dictator. Spirituality is not a tyrant. It is not asking us to do something because it says so. It is again to be emphasised that it is a process of inward adjustment to higher values by way of a positive education.
1.013 - Defence Mechanisms of the Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
So even in self-control there are varieties. It is not the same type of technique that we adopt uniformly and universally, as previously mentioned. Though it is true that everyone is hungry and everyone needs food, universally and uniformly, it does not follow that we all have to be given the same food. The whole world cannot be served the same kind of diet merely because everyone is equally hungry. In the same way, even though self-control is a universal necessity for the purpose of higher spiritual regeneration, the methods of practice may vary in detail according to the conditions of the individual in the stages of evolution, the circumstances in which one lives, and various other such relevant factors. The dependence of the mind on externals is also, therefore, variegated. It is not a uniform type of dependence. Therefore, each one has to investigate into the peculiar type of dependence due to which one is suffering. This requires leisurely thinking. A hurried mind cannot think so deeply on this subject, because it is not easy to detect where we are weak, and upon what things we are hanging for our dependence, for our existence.
Apart from the usual and obvious forms of dependence, such as the need for food, clothing and shelter, there are other types of dependence which are secret, subtler in their nature, and these are more important for the purposes of investigation than the grosser needs, because the grosser needs are well known to everyone. Everyone knows that we will be hungry, and will feel heat and cold, and that we need a shelter for living. But there are other things which may not be known to everybody. We have weaknesses other than the feeling of hunger, thirst, etc., and these are the harassing factors of life. We are worried not so much because of food, clothing and shelter, but due to other things which are the secret wire-pullers of the individual's existence. These other things are not minor factors. They are made to appear as if they are insignificant and secondary on account of a trick played by the mind, because if they are brought to the forefront they will not succeed in their attempts. So, a subtle devise is adopted by the mind to succeed in its attempts.
1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "You were talking of worshipping the clay image. Even if the image is made of clay, there is need for that sort of worship. God Himself has provided different forms of worship. He who is the Lord of the Universe has arranged all these forms to suit different men in different stages of knowledge.
"The mother cooks different dishes to suit the stomachs of her different children.
1.01 - Necessity for knowledge of the whole human being for a genuine education., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
The Teacher and the Three stages of Childhood
When we understand the interrelationship between teacher and child in terms of the temperaments, we see that, during this first stage of life, what we have learned has almost no importance for teaching and educating a child. The most important considerations have to do with the kind of person you are, what impressions the child receives, and whether or not youre worthy of imitation.14
1.01 - Newtonian and Bergsonian Time, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
is eminently irreversible; and although the earlier stages of this
science seem to represent a region of thought almost without
1.01 - On renunciation of the world, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Those who aim at ascending with the body to heaven, need violence indeed and constant suffering6 especially in the early stages of their renunciation, until our pleasure-loving dispositions and unfeeling hearts attain to love of God and chastity by visible sorrow. A great toil, very great indeed, with much unseen suffering, especially for those who live carelessly, until by simplicity, deep angerlessness and diligence, we make our mind, which is a greedy kitchen dog addicted to barking, a lover of chastity and watchfulness. But let us who are weak and passionate have the courage to offer our infirmity and natural weakness to Christ with unhesitating faith, and confess it to Him; and we shall be certain to obtain His help, even beyond our merit, if only we unceasingly go right down to the depth of humility.
All who enter upon the good fight, which is hard and narrow, but also easy, must realize that they must leap into the fire, if they really expect the celestial fire to dwell in them. But, let everyone examine himself, and so let him eat the bread of it with its bitter herbs, and let him drink the cup of it with its
1.01 - Seeing, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
in nature certain absolute stages of perfection and growth,
without upsetting the physical unity of the world;
1.01 - The Four Aids, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
36:The Sadhaka who has all these aids is sure of his goal. Even a fall will be for him only a means of rising and death a passage towards fulfilment. For once on his path, birth and death become only processes in the development of his being and the stages of his journey.
37:Time is the remaining aid needed for the effectivity of the process. Time presents itself to human effort as an enemy or a friend, as a resistance, a medium or an instrument. But always it is really the instrument of the soul.
1.02.2.2 - Self-Realisation, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
THE stages of SELF-REALISATION
THE VISION OF THE ALL
1.028 - Bringing About Whole-Souled Dedication, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Practice, or abhyasa, is always streng thened, and has to be streng thened, by a corresponding practice that goes on simultaneously with abhyasa, and that parallel practice is the automatic withdrawal of the mind from all distracting factors. If we are pulled in two directions with equal force, we will not be able to move even a little bit. We have had occasion to contemplate to some extent on the details of what renunciation is, and what are the various stages of vairagya which Patanjali regards as indispensable to the practice of yoga. He tells us that the practice consists in an insistent attempt on our part to fix ourselves in a single or given attitude. Tatra sthitau yatna abhysa (I.13): Abhyasa or practice is the effort to fix one's own self in a given attitude. What is this given attitude? We have to choose a particular attitude in which to fix ourselves for a protracted period; this is called practice. The attitude in which we have to fix ourselves should be such that we would tend to greater and greater stages of freedom of the soul, and a lessening and decreasing of the intensity of bondage.
As we had occasion to observe, the practice commences with being seated in a particular posture; and sitting in a particular posture is itself a practice. Often we may be under the wrong notion that 'sitting' is not a very important part of yoga, because yoga is mental concentration. Yes, it is true, but the concentration of the mind will not be possible when we are seated in an awkward posture. We must remember that there is a vital connection obtaining among every part of our psychophysical organism. Right from the skin, which is the outermost part of our body, to the deepest level of our psychological being, there is an internal relationship. Any kind of disturbance that is felt in any part of this organic structure will be sympathetically felt to a particular degree in other parts or levels of this organic structure. The posture or asana, the steady seatedness in a particular mood not only of the mind, but also of the body, the nerves and the pranas is essential for the concentration of the mind on the objective.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
The right hemisphere appears integrally involved in the initial stages of analysis of the unexpected or novel
and its a priori hypothesis is always this: this (unknown) place, this unfamiliar space, this unexplored
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Abstraction to Memory. (Only a few of the interactions between the stages of knowledge are indicated,
for the sake of schematic simplicity.)
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whereas Re, the Sun, is above all the manifest God....) The stages of creation cosmogony, theogony,
creation of living beings, etc. are variously presented. According to the solar theology of Heliopolis, a
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abstraction and internalization of religious ideation: in the earliest stages of representation, deities are
viewed as pluralistic, and as individualistic and fractious members of a supracelestial (that is, transpersonal
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The earliest stages of the development of the figure of the hero take the form of mythic
representations of the infant or adolescent, fully or partially dominated by potent maternal force.326 This
1.02 - The Child as growing being and the childs experience of encountering the teacher., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
Yesterday I spoke of the teachers encounter with the children. Today I will try to describe the child as a growing being, and the childs experience of encountering the teacher. A more exact observation of the forces active in human development shows that at the beginning of a childs earthly life we need to distinguish three distinct stages of life. Only after our applied knowledge of human nature yields insight into the characteristic qualities of each of these three stages can we begin to educate in a way that is more appropriateor rather, an education that is more humane.
The Nature of Proof in Spiritual Matters
1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
countless others, like so many stages of our effort. We won't discuss here the great value of these methods, or the remarkable intermediate results they can lead to; we will examine only their goal, their final destination. The truth is, this "poise above" seems to have no relation with real life whatsoever; first, because all these disciplines are extremely demanding, requiring hours and hours of work every day, if not complete solitude; secondly, because their ultimate result is a state of trance or yogic ecstasy, samadhi, perfect equilibrium, ineffable bliss, in which one's awareness of the world is dissolved, annihilated.
Brahman, the Spirit, appears therefore to have absolutely nothing to do with our regular waking consciousness; He is outside all that we know; He is not of this world. Others who were not Indians have said the same.
1.02 - The Refusal of the Call, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
The reply to this question would remain the same throughout the mythologies of the world. For, as is written so frequently in the sacred pages of the Koran: "Well able is Allah to save." The sole problem is what the machinery of the miracle is to be. And that is a secret to be opened only in the following stages of this
Arabian Nights' entertainment.
1.02 - The Stages of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
object:1.02 - The stages of Initiation
subject class:Occultism
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THE stages of INITIATION
THE information given in the following chapters constitutes steps in an esoteric training, the name and character of which will be understood by all who apply this information in the right way. It refers to the three stages through which the training of the spiritual life leads to a certain degree of initiation. But only so much will here be explained as can be publicly imparted. These are merely indications extracted from a still deeper and more intimate doctrine. In esoteric training itself a quite definite course of instruction is followed. Certain exercises enable the soul to attain to a conscious intercourse with the spiritual world. These exercises bear about the same relation to what will be imparted in the following pages, as the instruction given in
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higher stages of knowledge and power is beset with obstacles. A firearm should not be used until sufficient experience has been gained to avoid disaster, caused by its use. A person initiated today without further ado would lack the experience which he will gain during his future incarnations before he can attain to higher knowledge in the normal course of his development. At the portal of initiation, therefore, this experience must be supplied in some other way. Thus the first instructions given to the candidate for initiation serve as a substitute for these future experiences. These are the so-called trials, which he has to undergo, and which constitute a normal course of inner development resulting from due application to such exercises as are described in the preceding chapters.
These trials are often discussed in books, but it is only natural that such discussions should as a rule give quite false impressions of their nature; for without passing through preparation and enlightenment no one can know anything of these tests and appropriately describe them.
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[paragraph continues] Further progress is now only possible if he is able to distinguish illusion, superstition, and everything fantastic, from true reality. This is, at first, more difficult to accomplish in the higher stages of existence than in the lower. Every prejudice, every cherished opinion with regard to the things in question, must vanish; truth alone must guide. There must be perfect readiness to abandon at once any idea, opinion, or inclination when logical thought demands it. Certainty in higher worlds is only likely to be attained when personal opinion is never considered.
People whose mode of thought tends to fancifulness and superstition can never make progress on the path to higher knowledge. It is indeed a precious treasure that the student is to acquire. All doubt regarding the higher worlds is removed from him. With all their laws they reveal themselves to his gaze. But he cannot acquire this treasure so long as he is the prey of fancies and illusions. It would indeed be fatal if his imagination and his prejudices ran away with his intellect. Dreamers and fantastical people are as unfit for the path to higher knowledge as superstitious people. This cannot be over-emphasized. For
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or problem in life, to come to a swift decision without hesitation or delay, for him life itself has been a training in this sense. Such situations are here meant in which success is instantly lost if action is not rapid. A person who is quick to act when a misfortune is imminent, whereas a few moments of hesitation would have seen the misfortune an accomplished fact, and who has turned this ability into a permanent personal quality, has unconsciously acquired the degree of maturity necessary for the third trial. For at this stage everything centers round the development of absolute presence of mind. This trial is known as the Air-Trial, because while undergoing it the candidate can support himself neither upon the firm basis of external incentive nor upon the figures, tones, and colors which he has learned at the stages of preparation and enlightenment, but exclusively upon himself.
Upon successfully passing this trial the student is permitted to enter the temple of higher wisdom. All that is here said on this subject can only be the slenderest allusion. The task now to be performed is often expressed in the statement that the student must take an oath never to betray anything
1.031 - Intense Aspiration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Such an asking, such a kind of aspiration, this kind of longing is unknown to us. Neither can you understand it, nor can I understand it. It is impossible for any human mind to have such an aspiration for anything in this world. We have tentative longings; we have conditional desires and limited loves, but unlimited love is unknown to us. Nevertheless, this is what is needed if we want success. Unfortunately, as the mind has been tethered to conditions of various types right from its birth in this physical world, this kind of aspiration has been a strange phenomenon even to the farthest stretch of imagination. But now we have come to a field of a new type of training where such an old prejudice of thought is to be abandoned and a new understanding is to be awakened in ourselves, which has nothing to do with the factors which may condition this asking in any manner whatsoever. Bondage is of two kinds that which looks bad, and that which looks good. There are two types of bondage in this world. There are certain things which everybody appraises as valuable, considers wonderful and praiseworthy; that is one kind of bondage, and it is as powerful a bondage as the second kind that which we call 'bad' in this world. This is because the idea of bad and good is, again, conditional in respect of circumstances, conditions and stages of evolution. What is bad at one time may be good at another time, and vice versa. So in this unconditional asking of the soul for its supreme object, it gets rid of the shackles of conditional factors either in the form of virtue or in the form of vice.
Spiritual aspiration is a non-ethical movement of consciousness where it becomes superior to all conditions either of morality, or ethics, or law, because it has a law of its own. The law of divine love is different from the law of the world. It cannot be appreciated by ordinary minds, nor can it be understood, because every desire, every wish, every effort, every longing, every love in this world has an ulterior purpose. Whenever we love something in this world, it is with an ulterior motive. We want to achieve something out of it, so the love is not an end in itself. It is the means to the achievement of something else and, therefore, we cannot understand the nature of that love, which is a law unto itself. We are acquainted only with that love which is conditioned by other laws. What are those laws? They are the laws of achievement of an ulterior object, for which purpose love is used as a means or an instrument. So, we are not really unselfish lovers in this world.
1.036 - The Rise of Obstacles in Yoga Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Ordinarily, no one can understand what effects follow from spiritual practice. We cannot understand this by a study of books, because the actions, or the reactions we may say, that follow the practice of a system of spiritual discipline for a protracted period depends upon what is already inside us. What is inside us will come out; and different persons, finding themselves in different stages of evolution, have different patterns of this deposit in themselves. So the experiences that seekers pass through vary in various ways merely because of the difference, and the type of the content of their own personalities.
For a long time it may look as if nothing is happening in spiritual practice. This has been the experience of all yogis, saints and sages. For years and years together we will have no experience whatsoever. It will look like everything is dead, there is no life in anything, that we are striking a brick wall or a hard stone with no effect whatsoever, that our japas produce no effect, our meditations mean nothing, our worships are perhaps not heard by God, and there is only suffering. This condition may persist for several years, and the number of years or the extent of their duration depends upon the nature of the case, just as the purifying medical effect of a medicine depends upon the nature of the disease, the intensity of the disease, and the particular case on hand, to give an instance. But, suddenly, there will be a miracle. This is always the case in spiritual experience it always comes like a miracle. It doesn't come very, very slowly with halting steps, giving previous notice. It will give no notice. When there is illumination, we will not know that it is coming; and when we are going to be opposed, we will not know that it is going to happen. Both things will happen without our having previous knowledge of what is happening.
1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
be paid, in the initial stages of abstract representation) to the more fundamental, but more abstract and
difficult, meta-problem of adaptation how is (or was) how to behave determined? or what is the
1.03 - Invocation of Tara, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
corresponding to many stages of outer, inner, and
secret practice. These stages can only be performed
1.03 - Man - Slave or Free?, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The exclusive pursuit of Yoga by men who seclude themselves either physically or mentally from the contact of the world has led to an erroneous view of this science as something mystic, far-off and unreal. The secrecy which has been observed with regard to Yogic practices,a necessary secrecy in the former stages of human evolution,has stereotyped this error. Practices followed by men who form secret circles and confine the instruction in the mysteries strictly to those who have a certain preparatory fitness, inevitably bear the stamp to the outside world of occultism. In reality there is nothing intrinsically hidden, occult or mystic about Yoga. Yoga is based upon certain laws of human psychology, a certain knowledge about the power of the mind over the body and the inner spirit over the mind which are not generally realised and have hitherto been considered by those in the secret too momentous in their consequences for disclosure until men should be trained to use them aright. Just as a set of men who had discovered and tested the uttermost possibilities of mesmerism and hypnotism might hesitate to divulge them freely to the world lest the hypnotic power should be misused by ignorance or perversity or abused in the interests of selfishness and crime, so the Yogins have usually preserved the knowledge of these much greater forces within us in a secrecy broken only when they were sure of the previous ethical and spiritual training of the neophyte and his physical and moral fitness for the Yogic practices. It became therefore an established rule for the learner to observe strict reserve as to the inner experiences of Yoga and for the developed Yogin as far as possible to conceal himself. This has not prevented treatises and manuals from being published dealing with the physical or with the moral and intellectual sides of Yoga. Nor has it prevented great spirits who have gained their Yoga not by the ordinary careful and scientific methods but by their own strength and the special grace of God, from revealing themselves and their spiritual knowledge to mankind and in their intense love for humanity imparting something of their power to the world. Such were Buddha, Christ, Mahomed, Chaitanya, such have been Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. It is still the orthodox view that the experiences of Yoga must not be revealed to the uninitiated. But a new era dawns upon us in which the old laws must be modified Already the West is beginning to discover the secrets of Yoga. Some of its laws have revealed themselves however dimly and imperfectly to the scientists of Europe while others through Spiritualism, Christian Science, clairvoyance, telepathy and other modern forms of occultism are being almost discovered by accident as if by men groping in the dark and stumbling over truths they cannot understand. The time has almost come when India can no longer keep her light to herself but must pour it out upon the world. Yoga must be revealed to mankind because without it mankind cannot take the next step in the human evolution.
The psychology of the human race has not yet been discovered by Science. All creation is essentially the same and proceeds by similar though not identical laws. If therefore we see in the outside material world that all phenomena proceed from and can be reduced to a single causal substance from which they were born, in which they move and to which they return, the same truth is likely to hold good in the psychical world. The unity of the material universe has now been acknowledged by the scientific intellect of Europe and the high priests of atheism and materialism in Germany have declared the ekam evdvityam in matter with no uncertain voice. In so doing they have merely reaffirmed the discovery made by Indian masters of the Yogic science thousands of years ago. But the European scientists have not discovered any sure and certain methods, such as they have in dealing with gross matter, for investigating psychical phenomena. They can only observe the most external manifestations of mind in action. But in these manifestations the mind is so much enveloped in the action of the outer objects and seems so dependent on them that it is very difficult for the observer to find out the springs of its action or any regularity in its workings. The European scientists have therefore come to the conclusion that it is the stimulations of outside objects which are the cause of psychical phenomena, and that even when the mind seems to act of itself and on its own material it is only associating, grouping together and manipulating the recorded experiences from outside objects. The very nature of mind is, according to them, a creation of past material experience transmitted by heredity with such persistence that we have grown steadily from the savage with his rudimentary mind to the civilised man of the twentieth century. As a natural result of these materialistic theories, science has found it difficult to discover any true psychical centre for the multifarious phenomena of mind and has therefore fixed upon the brain, the material organ of thought, as the only real centre. From this materialistic philosophy have resulted certain theories very dangerous to the moral future of mankind. First, man is a creation and slave of matter. He can only master matter by obeying it Secondly, the mind itself is a form of gross matter and not independent of and master of the senses. Thirdly, there is no real free will, because all our action is determined by two great forces, heredity and environment. We are the slaves of our nature, and where we seem to be free from its mastery, it is because we are yet worse slaves of our environment, worked on by the forces that surround and manipulate us.
1.03 - Tara, Liberator from the Eight Dangers, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
we progress through the stages of the bodhisattva path to Buddhahood.
Reecting on the disadvantages of cyclic existence is another antidote. If
1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
cent groupings the stages of the process may still be discerned in
their present natural state. We know of unattached bees and
1.03 - To Layman Ishii, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
Mount Sumeru, because inhabitants enjoy lives of interminable pleasure; and being enthralled in the worldly wisdom and skillful words (sechibens) of secular life. Dried buds and dead seeds (shge haishu) is a term of reproach directed at followers of the Two Vehicles, who are said to have no possibility for attaining complete enlightenment. t In the system of koan study that developed in later Hakuin Zen, hosshin or Dharmakaya koans are used in the beginning stages of practice (see Zen Dust, 46-50). The lines Hakuin quotes here are not found in the Poems of Han-shan (Han-shan shih). They are attributed to Han-shan in Compendium of the Five Lamps (ch. 15, chapter on Tung-shan Mu-ts'ung): "The master ascended the teaching seat and said, 'Han-shan said that "Red dust dances at the bottom of the well. / White waves rise on the mountain peaks. / The stone woman gives birth to a stone child. / Fur on the tortoise grows longer by the day." If you want to know the Bodhi-mind, all you have to do is to behold these sights.'" The lines are included in a Japanese edition of the work published during Hakuin's lifetime. u The Ten Ox-herding Pictures are a series of illustrations, accompanied by verses, showing the Zen student's progress to final enlightenment. The Five Ranks, comprising five modes of the particular and universal, are a teaching device formulated by Tung-shan of the Sto tradition. v Records of the Lamp, ch. 10. w Liu Hsiu (first century) was a descendant of Western Han royalty who defeated the usurper Wang
Mang and established the Eastern Han dynasty. Emperor Su Tsung (eighth century) regained the throne that his father had occupied before being been driven from power. x Wang Mang (c. 45 BC-23 AD) , a powerful official of the Western Han dynasty, and rebellious
1.045 - Piercing the Structure of the Object, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This sutra has reference to certain specialties of the Samkhya philosophy on which the yoga system of Patanjali, particularly, is based. Of course, it has no contradistinction from other systems of thought as far as the practical aspects are concerned, but the point made in this sutra is that the advance in meditation, or the progress one makes in meditation, is commensurate with the various stages of the manifestation of what is called prakriti in the Samkhya. The indeterminable, or alinga mentioned in this sutra, is nothing but the pradhana or the prakriti of the Samkhya.
The cosmological doctrine of the Samkhya is that there is originally a common base for every form of material existence, and that the variety of this world is really a diversified form of one and the same substance. It is not really a variety of substance but a variety of form forms taken by one and the same substance which the Samkhya calls prakriti or pradhana. This original material of all things, called pradhana or prakriti, is constituted of what we know as gunas, the essential properties sattva, rajas and tamas. These are peculiar things which are easily mistaken and misconstrued as certain conditions or attributes of prakriti or pradhana. However, they are not the ordinary attri butes or qualities of pradhana, but are another name for pradhana itself.
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These stages of meditation are referred to in a sutra of Patanjali from his first chapter, and these stages are designated by him as savitarka, savichara, sananda and sasmita. These are all peculiar technical words of the yoga philosophy, which simply mean the conditions of gross consciousness, subtle consciousness, cause consciousness and reality consciousness. Though he has mentioned only four stages for the purpose of a broad division of the process of ascent, we can subdivide these into many more. As a matter of fact, when we actually come to it and begin to practise, we will find that we have to pass through various stages, just as we do in a course of education. Though we may designate a particular year of study as being the first grade, second grade, third grade, etc., even in each grade we will find there are various stages of study through the divisions of the syllabus or the curriculum of study.
Similarly, in the process of meditation the stages are many, and we may find that practically every day we are in one particular stage. The details of these stages will be known only to one who has started the practice. They cannot be described in books because they are so many, and every peculiar turn of experience will be regarded by us as one stage. Each stage is characterised by a peculiar relation of consciousness to its object and the reaction which the object sets in respect of the consciousness that experiences it. In the beginning it looks very difficult on account of this aforementioned conviction that the object is completely cut off from the mind and that is why there is so much anxiety and heartache in this world. We seem to be completely powerless and helpless in every matter. We are helpless because the world is outside us, and it has no connection with our principle of experience, namely consciousness. To bring into the conscious level the conviction that the objects of experience are not as much segregated as they appear to be, requires very hard effort, philosophical analysis and deep thinking bestowed upon the subject.
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The object of this book is to suggest a prior possibility,that the whole European theory may be from beginning to end a prodigious error. The confident presumption that religion started in fairly recent times with the terrors of the savage, passed through stages of Animism & Nature worship & resulted variously in Paganism, monotheism or the Vedanta has stood in the way of any extension of scepticism to this province of Vedic enquiry. I dispute the presumption and deny the conclusions drawn from it. Before I admit it, I must be satisfied that a system of pure Nature worship ever existed. I cannot accept as evidence Sun & Star myth theories which, as a play of ingenious scholastic fancy, may attract the imagination, but are too haphazard, too easily self-contented, too ill-combined & inconsequent to satisfy the scientific reason. No other religion of which there is any undisputed record or sure observation, can be defined as a system of pure Nature worship. Even the savage-races have had the conception of gods & spirits who are other than personified natural phenomena. At the lowest they have Animism & the worship of spirits, ghosts & devils. Ancestor-worship & the cult of snake & four-footed animal seem to have been quite as old as any Nature-gods with whom research has made us acquainted. In all probability the Python was worshipped long before Apollo. It is therefore evident that even in the lowest religious strata the impulse to personify Nature-phenomena is not the ruling cult-idea of humanity. It is exceedingly unlikely that at any time this element should have so far prevailed as to cast out all the others so as to create a type of cult confined within a pure & rigid naturalism. Man has always seen in the universe the replica of himself. Unless therefore the Vedic Rishis had no thought of their subjective being, no perception of intellectual and moral forces within themselves, it is a psychological impossibility that they should have detected divine forces behind the objective world but none behind the subjective.
These are negative and a priori considerations, but they are supported by more positive indications. The other Aryan religions which are most akin in conception to the Vedic and seem originally to have used the same names for their deities, present themselves to us even at their earliest vaguely historic stage as moralised religions. Their gods had not only distinct moral attri butes, but represented moral & subjective functions. Apollo is not only the god of the sun or of pestilencein Homer indeed Haelios (Saurya) & not Apollo is the Sun God but the divine master of prophecy and poetry; Athene has lost any naturalistic significance she may ever have had and is a pure moral force, the goddess of strong intelligence, force guided by brain; Ares is the lord of battles, not a storm wind; Artemis, if she is the Moon, is also goddess of the free hunting life and of virginity; Aphrodite is only the goddess of Love & Beauty There is therefore a strong moral element in the cult & there are clear subjective notions attached to the divine personalities. But this is not all. There was not only a moral element in the Greek religion as known & practised by the layman, there was also a mystic element and an esoteric belief & practice practised by the initiated. The mysteries of Eleusis, the Thracian rites connected with the name of Orpheus, the Phrygian worship of Cybele, even the Bacchic rites rested on a mystic symbolism which gave a deep internal meaning to the exterior circumstances of creed & cult. Nor was this a modern excrescence; for its origins were lost to the Greeks in a legendary antiquity. Indeed, if we took the trouble to understand alien & primitive mentalities instead of judging & interpreting them by our own standards, I think we should find an element of mysticism even in savage rites & beliefs. The question at any rate may fairly be put, Were the Vedic Rishis, thinkers of a race which has shown itself otherwise the greatest & earliest mystics & moralisers in historical times, the most obstinately spiritual, theosophic & metaphysical of nations, so far behind the Orphic & Homeric Greeks as to be wholly Pagan & naturalistic in their creed, or was their religion too moralised & subjective, were their ceremonies too supported by an esoteric symbolism?
1.04 - The Paths, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Its magical formula is Regeneration through Putrefac- tion. The alchemists of old used this formula mainly. The first common matter of their operations was base, and had to pass through several stages of corruptions or putrefac- tion (or chemical change, as it would be styled to-day), when it was called the black dragon - but from this putrid stage, the pure gold was derived.
Another application of the same formula applies to that psychological state of which all mystics speak, viz. : the
1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In other words, the highest form of the love of God is an immediate spiritual intuition, by which knower, known and knowledge are made one. The means to, and earlier stages of, this supreme love-knowledge of Spirit by spirit are described by Shankara in the preceding verses of his philosophical poem, and consist in acts of a will directed towards the denial of selfness in thought, feeling and action, towards desirelessness and non-attachment or (to use the corresponding Christian term) holy indifference, towards a cheerful acceptance of affliction, without self-pity and without thought of returning evil for evil, and finally towards unsleeping and one-pointed mindfulness of the Godhead who is at once transcendent and, because transcendent, immanent in every soul.
It is plain that no distinct object whatever that pleases the will can be God; and, for that reason, if the will is to be united with Him, it must empty itself, cast away every disorderly affection of the desire, every satisfaction it may distinctly have, high and low, temporal and spiritual, so that, purified and cleansed from all unruly satisfactions, joys and desires, it may be wholly occupied, with all its affections, in loving God. For if the will can in any way comprehend God and be united with Him, it cannot be through any capacity of the desire, but only by love; and as all the delight, sweetness and joy, of which the will is sensible, is not love, it follows that none of these pleasing impressions can be the adequate means of uniting the will to God. These adequate means consist in an act of the will. And because an act of the will is quite distinct from feeling, it is by an act that the will is united with God and rests in Him; that act is love. This union is never wrought by feeling or exertion of the desire; for these remain in the soul as aims and ends. It is only as motives of love that feelings can be of service, if the will is bent on going onwards, and for nothing else.
1.05 - Computing Machines and the Nervous System, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
of the bank at a previous stage of operation. These stages of oper-
ation may be definitely "clocked" from some central clock or
1.05 - Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
During the primary stages of evolution, the consciousness of the atom,
for example, is absorbed in its whirling, as the consciousness of a potter is absorbed in the pot he is making, oblivious to everything else,
1.05 - Problems of Modern Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
entendu. In the same way, the three stages of analytical psychology so far
dealt with are by no means truths of such a nature that the last of them has
1.05 - Some Results of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
ten-petalled lotus flower, for it is now a question of learning consciously to control and dominate the sense-impressions themselves. This is of particular importance in the initial stages of clairvoyance, for it is only by this means that a source of countless illusions and fancies is avoided. People as a rule do not realize by what factors their sudden ideas and memories are dominated, and how they are produced. Consider the following case. Someone is traveling by railway; his mind is busy with one thought; suddenly is thought diverges; he recollects an experience that befell him years ago and interweaves it with his present thought. He did not notice that in looking through the window he had caught sight of a person who resembled another intimately connected with the recollected experience. He remains conscious, not of what he saw, but of the effect it produced, and thus believes that it all came to him of its own accords. How much in life occurs in such a way! How great is the part played in our life by things we hear and learn, without our consciously realizing the connection! Someone, for instance, cannot bear a certain color, but does not realize that this is due
p. 155
1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
How precisely or by what stages this progression and change will take place must depend on the form, need and powers of the individual nature. In the spiritual domain the essence is always one, but there is yet an infinite variety and, at any rate in the integral Yoga, the rigidity of a strict and precise mental rule is seldom applicable; for, even when they walk in the same direction, no two natures proceed on exactly the same lines, in the same series of steps or with quite identical stages of their progress. It may yet be said that a logical succession of the states of progress would be very much in this order. First, there is a large turning in which all the natural mental activities proper to the individual nature are taken up or referred to a higher standpoint and dedicated by the soul in us, the psychic being, the priest of the sacrifice, to the divine service; next, there is an attempt at an ascent of the being and a bringing down of the Light and Power proper to some new height of consciousness gained by its upward effort into the whole action of the knowledge. Here there may be a strong concentration on the inward central change of the consciousness and an abandonment of a large part of the outward-going mental life or else its relegation to a small and subordinate place. At different stages it or parts of it may be taken up again from time to time to see how far the new inner psychic and spiritual consciousness can be brought into its movements, but that compulsion of the temperament or the nature which, in human beings, necessitates one kind of activity or another and makes it seem almost an indispensable portion of the existence, will diminish and eventually no attachment will be left, no lower compulsion or driving force felt anywhere. Only the Divine will matter, the Divine alone will be the one need of the whole being; if there is any compulsion to activity it will be not that of implanted desire or of force of Nature, but the luminous driving of some greater Consciousness-Force which is becoming more and more the sole motive power of the whole existence. On the other hand, it is possible at any period of the inner spiritual progress that one may experience an extension rather than a restriction of the' activities; there may be an opening of new capacities of mental creation and new provinces of knowledge by the miraculous touch of the Yoga-shakti. Aesthetic feeling, the power of artistic creation in one field or many fields together, talent or genius of literary expression, a faculty of metaphysical thinking, any power of eye or ear or hand or mind-power may awaken where none was apparent before. The Divine within may throw these latent riches out from the depths in which they were hidden or a Force from above may pour down its energies to equip the instrumental nature for the activity or the creation of which it is meant to be a channel or a builder. But, whatever may be the method or the course of development chosen by the hidden Master of the Yoga, the common culmination of this stage is the growing consciousness of him above as the mover, decider, shaper of all the movements of the mind and all the activities of knowledge.
There are two signs of the transformation of the seeker's mind of knowledge and works of knowledge from the process of the Ignorance to the process of a liberated consciousness working partly, then wholly in the light of the Spirit. There is first a central change of the consciousness and a growing direct experience, vision, feeling of the Supreme and the cosmic existence, the Divine in itself and the Divine in all things; the mind will be taken up into a growing preoccupation with this first and foremost and will feel itself heightening, widening into a more and more illumined means of expression of the one fundamental knowledge. But also the central Consciousness in its turn will take up more and more the outer mental activities of knowledge and turn them into a parcel of itself or an annexed province; it will infuse into them its more au thentic movement and make a more and more spiritualised and illumined mind its instrument in these surface fields, its new conquests, as well as in its own deeper spiritual empire. And this will be the second sign, the sign of a certain completion and perfection, that the Divine himself has become the Knower and all the inner movements, including the activities of what was once a purely human mental action, have become his field of knowledge. There will be less and less individual choice, opinion, preference, less and less of intellectualisation, mental weaving, cerebral galley-slave labour; a Light within will see all that has to be seen, know all that has to be known, develop, create, organise. It will be the inner Knower who will do in the liberated and universalised mind of the individual the works of an all-comprehending knowledge.
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
is now, and will be something different, once again, in the future. In the earliest stages of its existence,
considered as an independent object, the exemplary block was part of an undifferentiated totality, prior to
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later stages of development. At one point, it transformed itself into something resembling a meerschaum
pipe. Then it reformed itself into a sphere, and shot out through one wall of the case, and the room,
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approached him I could see that he was in the first stages of old age; but he still looked terribly strong.
Someone passed him in a car, driving the opposite direction, and a female voice yelled, look out he
1.05 - The Magical Control of the Weather, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
relieved, at least in the higher stages of savagery, from the need
of earning their livelihood by hard manual toil, and allowed, nay,
1.05 - Vishnu as Brahma creates the world, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
[8]: This reckoning is not very easily reconciled with the creations described; for, as presently enumerated, the stages of creation are seven. The commentator, however, considers the Ūrddhasrotas creation, or that of the superhuman beings, to be the same with that of the Indriyas, or senses over which they preside; by which the number is reduced to six.
[9]: This creation being the work of the supreme spirit, ### according to the commentator; or it might have been understood to mean, that Brahmā was then created, being, as we have seen, identified with Mahat, 'active intelligence,' or the operating will of the Supreme. See p. 15, note 23.
1.06 - Gestalt and Universals, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
ber of transmission fibers found at various stages of the visual
cortex.
1.06 - LIFE AND THE PLANETS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
earliest stages of vitalization by the tenacity with which the most
humble cells reproduce themselves and multiply. This tenacity con-
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
It is by losing the egocentric life that we save the hitherto latent and undiscovered life which, in the spiritual part of our being, we share with the divine Ground. This new-found life is more abundant than the other, and of a different and higher kind. Its possession is liberation into the eternal, and liberation is beatitude. Necessarily so; for the Brahman, who is one with the Atman, is not only Being and Knowledge, but also Bliss, and, after Love and Peace, the final fruit of the Spirit is Joy. Mortification is painful, but that pain is one of the pre-conditions of blessedness. This fact of spiritual experience is sometimes obscured by the language in which it is described. Thus, when Christ says that the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be entered except by those who are as little children, we are apt to forget (so touching are the images evoked by the simple phrase) that a man cannot become childlike unless he chooses to undertake the most strenuous and searching course of self-denial. In practice the comm and to become as little children is identical with the comm and to lose ones life. As Traherne makes clear in the beautiful passage quoted in the section on God in the World, one cannot know created Nature in all its essentially sacred beauty, unless one first unlearns the dirty devices of adult humanity. Seen through the dung-coloured spectacles of self-interest, the universe looks singularly like a dung-heap; and as, through long wearing, the spectacles have grown on to the eyeballs, the process of cleansing the doors of perception is often, at any rate in the earlier stages of the spiritual life, painfully like a surgical operation. Later on, it is true, even self naughting may be suffused with the joy of the Spirit. On this point the following passage from the fourteenth-century Scale of Perfection is illuminating.
Many a man hath the virtues of humility, patience and charity towards his neighbours, only in the reason and will, and hath no spiritual delight nor love in them; for ofttimes he feeleth grudging, heaviness and bitterness for to do them, but yet nevertheless he doth them, but tis only by stirring of reason for dread of God. This man hath these virtues in reason and will, but not the love of them in affection. But when, by the grace of Jesus and by ghostly and bodily exercise, reason is turned into light and will into love, then hath he virtues in affection; for he hath so gnawn on the bitter bark or shell of the nut that at length he hath broken it and now feeds on the kernel; that is to say, the virtues which were first heavy for to practise are now turned into a very delight and savour.
1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendour appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter the image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. Our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal.
An ultimate inexpressible adoration offered by us to the Transcendent, to the Highest,1 to the Ineffable, is yet no complete worship if it is not offered to him wherever he manifests or wherever even he hides his godhead - in man2 and object and every creature. An Ignorance is there no doubt which imprisons the heart, distorts its feelings, obscures the significance of its offering; all partial worship, all religion which erects a mental or a physical idol is tempted to veil and protect the truth in it by a certain cloak of ignorance and easily loses the truth in its image. But the pride of exclusive knowledge is also a limitation and a barrier. For there is, concealed behind individual love, obscured by its ignorant human figure, a mystery which the mind cannot seize, the mystery of the body of the Divine, the secret of a mystic form of the Infinite which we can approach only through the ecstasy of the heart and the passion of the pure and sublimated sense, and its attraction which is the call of the divine Flute-player, the mastering compulsion of the AllBeautiful, can only be seized and seize us through an occult love and yearning which in the end makes one the Form and the Formless, and identifies Spirit and Matter. It is that which the spirit in Love is seeking here in the darkness of the Ignorance and it is that which it finds when individual human love is changed into the love of the Immanent Divine incarnate in the material universe.
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standing in front, sometimes working behind the veil, and the power of the end will be already there even in the beginning and in the long middle stages of the great endeavour. For at all times the seeker will be aware of the Divine Guide and Protector or the working of the supreme Mother Force; he will know that all is done for the best, the progress assured, the victory inevitable. In either case the process is the same and unavoidable, a taking up of the whole nature, of the whole life, of the internal and of the external, to reveal and handle and transform its forces and their movements under the pressure of a diviner Life from above, until all here has been possessed by greater spiritual powers and made an instrumentation of a spiritual action and a divine purpose.
In this process and at an early stage of it it becomes evident that what we know of ourselves, our present conscious existence, is only a representative formation, a superficial activity, a changing external result of a vast mass of concealed existence. Our visible life and the actions of that life are no more than a series of significant expressions, but that which it tries to express is not on the surface; our existence is something much larger than this apparent frontal being which we suppose ourselves to be and which we offer to the world around us. This frontal and external being is a confused amalgam of mind-formations, lifemovements, physical functionings of which even an exhaustive analysis into its component parts and machinery fails to reveal the whole secret. It is only when we go behind, below, above into the hidden stretches of our being that we can know it; the most thorough and acute surface scrutiny and manipulation cannot give us the true understanding or the completely effective control of our life, its purposes, its activities; that inability indeed is the cause of the failure of reason, morality and every other surface action to control and deliver and perfect the life of the human race. For below even our most obscure physical consciousness is a subconscious being in which as in a covering and supporting soil are all manner of hidden seeds that sprout up, unaccountably to us, on our surface and into which we are constantly throwing fresh seeds that prolong our past and will influence our future, - a subconscious being, obscure, small in its motions, capriciously
1.06 - The Transformation of Dream Life, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
Furthermore, the clairvoyant can at this stage perceive things which are almost or entirely withheld from the senses. He can, for instance, tell the astral difference between a room full of low or of high-minded people. Not only the physical but also the spiritual atmosphere of a hospital differs from that of a ballroom. A commercial town has a different astral air from that of a university town. In the initial stages of clairvoyance this perceptive faculty is but slightly developed; its relation to the objects in question is similar to the relation of dream consciousness to waking consciousness in ordinary life; it will, however, become fully awakened at this stage as well.
p. 200
1.070 - The Seven Stages of Perfection, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
object:1.070 - The Seven stages of Perfection
author class:Swami Krishnananda
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Chapter 70: The Seven stages of Perfection
Tad abhvt sayogbhva hna tadde kaivalyam (II.25): The absence of ignorance which is responsible for perceptions is itself liberation; that is the freedom of the spirit. The absence of bondage is the same as the presence of freedom. These are not two experiences, but a self-identical revelation like the passing of the night and the rising of the sun. This experience of freedom, or kaivalya, is not possible of attainment as long as there is even the least tendency or susceptibility to object perception whatever may be the justification which the reason may put forth for such perception.
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This viveka khyati,or understanding, arises by stages; it does not suddenly burst like a bomb. In the beginning it very gradually reveals itself by effort, and later on it becomes a spontaneous feature. In one of the sutras we are told that there are at least seven stages of the manifestation of this understanding. The number seven is very holy, and it has been held holy in all religions and in all mystical fields, whether of the East or the West. Something very strange it is. In all the scriptures we see this number seven mentioned as a holy number. These are supposed to be the stages of the ascent of the soul to its perfection.
The earlier stages are those of personal effort, exertion and deliberate attempt, whereas the later ones are automatic. We are merely carried away by the momentum of past effort where, on account of the diminution of the intensity of individuality-consciousness, the question of personal effort does not arise. The gravitational pull of a totally different realm takes us by the hand and we are led along the direction of that pull, which is a different thing altogether from the pull of this earth, against which we have to put forth effort in the earlier stages.
Tasya saptadh prntabhmi praj (II.27): Consciousness is sevenfold. The awareness of this type arises by gradual degrees, in seven stages, according to the meaning of this sutra as agreed upon by interpreters, because the meaning is not given here as to what these stages are. It simply says there are seven stages. We are told that the seven stages are the stages of the discovery of reality, by degrees, in the phenomena of experience.
The first stage is supposed to be the detection of the defect in the objects or things: there is something wrong with things, and they are not as they appear to be. This is the first awareness that arises in a person. Things are not what they seem, as the poet said. Even the best things are not really what they are. They appear to be best under certain conditions. The valuable things, the worthy things, the virtuous things, the beautiful things all these are conditionally valid, and they are not valid in their essence. That the objects of sense, the things of the world, are constituted of a nature essentially different from what they appear to the senses and the mind is an awareness that arises in the discriminating, and not in all people. Crass perception takes the world for granted, and people run after things as moths run to fire, not knowing that it is their destruction. The awareness arises, pointing out that there is some mystery behind things which is quite different from the colour and the shape of things visible to the senses that there is pain in this world, and it is not pleasure. Pain is rooted behind the so-called pleasure of the world. Sorrow is to follow all the joys of the world, one day or the other. The first step is the awareness or discovery that pain is present and it cannot be avoided under any circumstance as long as things continue to be in the present set-up.
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These stages directly correspond to the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, what the Buddha taught originally as his gospel. The stages of yoga are nothing but these, mentioned here in a new language altogether.
There is an awareness of the presence of a state beyond all suffering; and when the existence of this state beyond suffering becomes an object of ones awareness, coupled with a feeling that there is a way to it that is the beginning of the actual freedom of the soul. Then, there is a complete shaking up from the very roots of ones being. The internal organ, the mind, whose purpose is to bring about bhoga and aparvarga to consciousness, begins to withdraw its sway over consciousness. The power that the mind has over us gets lessened, and instead of our being mastered by it, we seem to have a chance of gaining mastery over it. This awareness arises only when experiences in the world which are to be undergone in this span of life are about to be exhausted. Until that time, the awareness itself will not be there.
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The stages of yoga that are going to be mentioned the limbs of yoga as they are called are the stages of the mastery which one gains over phenomena, external and internal, by a systematic ascent to greater and greater degrees of harmony. Thus, yoga is, in a sense, a system of harmony. The Bhagavadgita has put it very beautifully: samatva yoga ucyate (B.G. II.48).
In every stage there is an establishment of equilibrium of oneself with the atmosphere. The study of the limbs of yoga is a study of the various stages by which we have to establish this harmony of ourselves with the atmosphere. What is called atmosphere is only a term used to indicate the presence of a factor that is external to oneself. The externality consciousness also gets diminished gradually as mastery is gained more and more.
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This is to be obviated by the development of viveka khyati. The purpose of yoga is the enhancement of enlightenment in regard to things by the adjustment of oneself with the object atmosphere in greater and greater harmony which is another way of saying that we have to become more and more sympathetic with the selfhood of things, rather than recognising their object nature. The equilibrium that is the essence of these stages of practice is the essence of the enlightenment that one has to attain, because the rise of enlightenment within is simultaneous with the establishment of harmony outside. Hence, there is a simultaneous change taking place internally, as well as externally.
When we change within ourselves, the world also changes for us. It is not that we change only inside our house, and outside everything remains chaotic. This is not so. There is a corresponding change in the outer atmosphere when there is an internal transformation, because the internal is commensurate with the external. The one is not really outside the other. There is a transformation of existence itself when there is a transformation of consciousness. The attainment of the perfection of consciousness becomes also, at the same time, the attainment of the perfection of all existence, which is the goal of practising the eight limbs of yoga.
1.075 - Self-Control, Study and Devotion to God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Likewise, there are certain conditions to which we are subject, and if we are completely ignorant of the presence of these conditions and move idealistically, in an unrealistic manner, into the higher stages of yoga, there may be a satisfaction of having risen, or even of having had some visions a conviction that something is coming but, with all that, there would be a susceptibility to withdrawal into the earlier stages on account of not being cautious enough to probe into the possibilities of fall and the chances of self-limitation by the very make-up of ones own personality. We are humans; and, as long as there is a feeling that we are human beings, we cannot escape the limitations of human beings. Though we may sometimes think we are gods, we are only human beings because we cannot forget that we are human beings. Our consciousness itself is our bondage.
This is a caution that is given as a timely warning. A warning of this kind has to be given at every step because one cannot say at what moment of time, at what stage, and under what conditions these subliminal impressions will sprout into a wild tree and then cast their shadow upon us so that the light of our aspirations may be blurred. Thus comes the necessity to maintain an unremitting awareness of the presence of God and a perpetual effort to keep oneself, or place oneself, in such ideal conditions which will not, to the extent possible, tempt one to the sensory activities and the mental functions or egoistic operations which are characteristic of the lower human nature.
1.078 - Kumbhaka and Concentration of Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This is also one of the reasons why people with intense cravings have a peculiar physical feature which can be observed, to some extent, if we are cautious. The beauty of the body that is seen in childhood vanishes gradually when the body grows into the stages of youth and adult. There is a sort of equal distribution of the pranic energy in childhood, so that we see a blooming youthfulness, beauty and exuberance in children which is absent in youths and adults because the sense organs of grown-up persons are more active than the sense organs of children. Due to a particular vehemence of a group of senses in adults, or grown-up people, the energy withdraws itself from other parts of the body and directs itself only to that particular part which is asking for fulfilment, so a kind of absence of symmetry can be seen in the system. Symmetry is beauty. Where symmetry and beauty are absent, we find a kind of ugliness gradually creeping into the system, due to the simple reason that the prana is unequally distributed. Hence, the unequal distribution of the prana in the system is due to the presence of desires. The child also has desires. It does not mean that desires are absent there, but they are not manifest; they are not revealed. They are not pressing themselves forward in any particular manner.
The prana shifts its centre of pressure from time to time according to the circumstances, and this should be prevented. The kumbhaka process is a technique by which this excessive emphasis which prana lays on any particular part of the body is obviated, and it is allowed to equally distribute itself in the whole system, which is another way of saying that the rajas of the prana is made to cease. The excessive emphasis of the prana in any particular part of the system is due to rajas, which means there is movement. Without movement, how can there be any kind of unequal distribution of energy? This is prevented by the process of kumbhaka. The filling of the system with the pranic energy means distributing the energy equally in the whole system and making it felt everywhere equally, with equal intensity, and without the special favour it sometimes does to a particular limb or organ. This is what happens in kumbhaka. It can be done, as mentioned, either after exhalation or after inhalation. Either we brea the out and retain the breath, or we brea the in and retain it. These are the two types of kumbhaka mentioned as bahya vritti and abhyantara vritti.
1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
or the stages of the path. If we attend a teaching yet still hold strongly to our
preconceptions about the path, we will evaluate teachers by whether or not
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and non-conceptual. We need to know the stages of the path and to check our
meditation experiences with our teacher to make sure were going in the
1.07 - Medicine and Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
With your permission I will now examine the three stages of medical
procedureanamnesis,
1.07 - Savitri, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
The next step was to make a fair copy of the entire revised work. I don't know why it was not given straightaway for typing. There was a talk between the Mother and Sri Aurobindo about it; Sri Aurobindo might have said that because of copious additions, typing by another person would not be possible. He himself could not make a fair copy. Then the Mother suggested my name and brought a thick blue ledgerlike book for the purpose. I needed two or three reminders from the Mother before I took up the work in right earnest. Every morning I used to sit on the floor behind the head of the bed, and leaning against the wall, start copying like a student of our old Sanskrit tols. Sri Aurobindo's footstool would serve as my table. The Mother would not fail to cast a glance at my good studentship. Though much of the poetry passed over my head, quite often the solar plexus would thrill at the sheer beauty of the images and expressions. The very first line made me gape with wonder. I don't remember if the copying and revision with Sri Aurobindo proceeded at the same time, or revision followed the entire copying. The Mother would make inquiries from time to time either, I thought, to make me abandon my jog-trot manner or because the newly started Press was clamouring for some publication from Sri Aurobindo. Especially now that people had come to know that after The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo was busy with Savitri, they were eagerly waiting for it. But they had to wait quite a long time, for after the revision, when the whole book was handed to the Mother, it was passed on to Nolini for being typed out. Then another revision of the typescript before it was ready for the Press! Again, I cannot swear if the typing was completed first before its revision or both went on at the same time. At any rate, the whole process went very slowly, since Sri Aurobindo would not be satisfied with Savitri done less than perfectly. Neither could we give much time to it, not, I think, more than an hour a day, sometimes even less. The Press began to bring it out in fascicules by Cantos from 1946. At all stages of revision, even on Press proofs, alterations, additions never stopped. It may be mentioned that the very first appearance of anything from Savitri in public was in the form of passages quoted in the essay "Sri Aurobindo: A New Age of Mystical Poetry" by Amal, published in the Bombay Circle and later included as Part III in Amal's book: The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo.
So far the account of the procedure which was followed for working on the three Books seems approximately correct. We have been considerably helped by some dates mentioned before in the account. But in what follows about the rest of the epic, I am afraid that the report cannot claim as much exactness owing to my lapse of memory. I can sum up the position obtained at this stage by quoting Sri Aurobindo's letter to Amal in 1946. After investigating all the documents available, we have come to the following conclusions about the rest of the Books. Book IV, The Book of Birth and Quest, is fairly revised by Sri Aurobindo. Several versions before the end of 1938 have been worked upon these versions are expansions of much older drafts, one of them possibly dating back to Baroda. The revised version was later corrected and amplified with my help as scribe and has been divided into four Cantos. In re-doing Book V, The Book of Love, Sri Aurobindo took up, at a certain point, an earlier version than that of 1936. There are quite a number of versions with various titles before 1936. Here too, originally there were no different Cantos. There are three old versions of The Book of Fate of equal length. They were called Canto II, and fairly short. One of these versions was expanded into enormous length and developed into two Cantos, the very last touches given almost during the final month of Sri Aurobindo's life. An instance of the expansion is the passage "O singer of the ultimate ecstasy... will is Fate." There was no Book of Yoga in the original scheme of the poem. One old version called Book III, Death, has been changed into The Book of Yoga. It was enormously expanded and named Canto I. All the rest of the six Cantos were totally new and dictated. They were all at first divided into Cantos with different titles. Apparently all these Cantos except the first one are entirely new. I could get no trace of any old versions from which they could have been developed. I am now amazed to see that so many lines could have been dictated day after day, like The Book of Everlasting Day. The Book of Death contains three old versions all called Canto III; the final version is constructed from one of these and from another version some lines are taken to be inserted into The Book of Eternal Night, Canto IV, Night, of the early version served as the basis of The Book of Eternal Night. It was revised, lines were added and split into two Cantos. Then in the typescript further revisions took place. Canto I, first called The Passage into the Void of Night, was changed into Towards the Black Void. Book X, The Book of the Double Twilight, called only Twilight, Canto V in the earlier versions of which there are four or five, had no division into Cantos. From these early versions a fair number of lines have been taken and woven into a larger version. The old lines are now not always in their original form. Book XI had three old drafts. One which was larger than the other two has been used for the final version and was enormously expanded; even whole passages running into hundreds of lines have been added, as I have mentioned before. About The Epilogue, except for a few additions, it almost reproduces the single old version.
1.07 - The Continuity of Consciousness, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
Now this condition is only transitional to still higher stages of knowledge. If the student continues his esoteric exercises he will find, in due time, that the radical change, as described above, does not confine itself to his dream life, but that this transformation also extends to what was previously a condition of deep dreamless sleep. Isolated conscious experiences begin to interrupt the complete insensibility of this deep sleep. Perceptions previously unknown to him emerge from the pervading unknown to him emerge from the pervading darkness of sleep. It is, of course, not easy to describe these perceptions, for our language is only adapted to the physical world, and therefore only approximate terms can be found to express what does not at all belong to that world. Still, such terms must be used to describe the higher worlds, and this is only possible by the free use of simile; yet seeing that everything in the world is interrelated, the attempt may be made. The things and beings of the higher worlds are closely enough related to those of the physical world to enable, with a little good will, some sort of conception of these higher worlds to be formed, even though words suitable for the physical world are used. Only the reader
p. 206
1.07 - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
2:This is extremely important, I think, because the higher stages of development, the transrational and transpersonal and mystical stages, all involve a new going within, a new interiorness. And the charge has been circulating, for quite some time now, that endeavors such as meditation are somehow narcissistic and withdrawn. Environmentalists, in particular, often claim that meditation is somehow "escapist" or "egocentric," and that this "going within" simply ignores the "real" problems in the "real" world "out there."
3:Precisely the opposite. Far from being some sort of narcissistic withdrawal or inward isolation, meditation (or transpersonal development in general) is a simple and natural continuation of the evolutionary process, where every going within is also a going beyond to a wider embrace.
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Numerous psychologists (Bruner, Flavell, Arieti, Cowan, Kramer, Commons, Basseches, Arlin, etc.) have pointed out that there is much evidence for a stage beyond Piaget's formal operational. It has been called "dialectical," "integrative," "creative synthetic," "integral-aperspectival," "postformal," and so forth. I, of course, am using the terms vision-logic or network-logic. But the conclusions are all essentially the same: "Piaget's formal operational is considered to be a problem-solving stage. But beyond this stage are the truly creative scientists and thinkers who define important problems and ask important questions. While Piaget's formal model is adequate to describe the cognitive structures of adolescents and competent adults, it is not adequate to describe the towering intellect of Nobel laureates, great statesmen and stateswomen, poets, and so on."5 True enough. But I would like to give a different emphasis to this structure, for while very few people might actually gain the "towering status of a Nobel laureate," the space of vision-logic (its worldspace or worldview) is available for any who wish to continue their growth and development. In other words, to progress through the various stages of growth does not mean that one has to extraordinarily master each and every stage, and demonstrate a genius comprehension at that stage before one can progress beyond it. This would be like saying that no individuals can move beyond the oral stage until they become gourmet cooks.
It is not even necessary to be able to articulate the characteristics of a particular stage (children progress beyond preop without ever being able to define it). It is merely necessary to develop an adequate competence at that stage, in order for it to serve just fine as a platform for the transcendence to the next stage. In order to transcend the verbal, it is not necessary to first become Shakespeare.
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In other words, rationality is global, vision-logic is more global. Take Habermas, for example (in Communication and the Evolution of Society). Formal operational rationality establishes the postconventional stages of, first, "civil liberties" or "legal freedom" for "all those bound by law," and then, in a more developed stage, it demands not just legal freedom but also "moral freedom" for "all humans as private persons." But even further, mature or communicative reason (our vision-logic) demands both "moral and political freedom" for "all human beings as members of a world society." Thus, where rationality began the worldcentric orientation of universal pluralism, vision-logic brings it to a mature fruition by demanding not just legal and moral freedom, but legal and moral and political freedom (includes the previous stage and adds something crucial: transcends and includes).
In just the same way, ecological and relational awareness, which started to emerge with formal operational, comes to a major fruition with vision-logic and the centauric worldview. For, in beginning to differentiate from rationality (look at it, operate upon it), vision-logic can, for the first time, integrate reason with its predecessors, including life and matter, all as junior holons in its own compound individuality.
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As usual, this new centauric stage possesses not just a new cognitive capacity (vision-logic)-it also involves a new sense of identity (centauric), with new desires, new drives, new needs, new perceptions, new terrors, and new pathologies: it is a new and higher self in a new and wider world of others. And Broughton has very carefully mapped out the developmental stages of self and knowing that lead up to this new centauric mode of being-in-the-world.7
To simplify considerably, Broughton asked individuals from preschool age to early adulthood: what or where is your self?
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So the first thing I would like to emphasize is that the higher stages of transpersonal development are stages that are taken from those who have actually developed into those stages and who display palpable, discernible, and repeatable characteristics of that development. The stages themselves can be rationally reconstructed (explained in a rational manner after the fact), but they cannot be rationally experienced. They can be experienced only by a transrational contemplative development, whose stages unfold in the same manner as any other developmental stages, and whose experiences are every bit as real as any others.
But one must be adequate to the experience, or it remains an invisible other world. When the yogis and sages and contemplatives make a statement like, "The entire world is a manifestation of one Self," that is not a merely rational statement that we are to think about and see if it makes logical sense. It is rather a description, often poetic, of a direct apprehension or a direct experience, and we are to test this direct experience, not by mulling it over philosophically, but by taking up the experimental method of contemplative awareness, developing the requisite cognitive tools, and then directly looking for ourselves.
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In the past few decades there has been a concerted effort on the part of many researchers (such as Stanislav Grof, Roger Walsh, Frances Vaughan, Daniel Brown, Jack Engler, Daniel Goleman, Charles Tart, Donald Rothberg, Michael Zimmerman, Seymour Boorstein, Mark Epstein, David Lukoff, Michael Washburn, Joel Funk, John Nelson, John Chirban, Robert Forman, Francis Lu, Michael Murphy, Mark Waldman, James Fadiman, myself, and others)21 to rationally reconstruct the higher stages of transpersonal or contemplative development-stages that continue naturally or normally beyond the ego and centaur if arrest or fixation does not occur.
Much of this work has been summarized in Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development (Wilber, Engler, and Brown), and I will not repeat its contents. But the conclusion is straightforward. As Brown and Engler summarize it:
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This developmental model has also been found to be consistent with the stages of mystical or interior prayer found in the Jewish (Kabbalist), Islamic (Sufi), and Christian mystical traditions (see, for example, Chirban's chapter in Transformations), and Brown has also found it in the Chinese contemplative traditions. Theorists such as Da Avabhasha have given extensive hermeneutic and developmental readings from what now appears to be at least a representative sampling from every known and available contemplative tradition (see, for example, The Basket of Tolerance), and they are in fundamental and extensive agreement with this overall developmental model.
The evidence, though still preliminary, strongly suggests that, at a minimum, there are four general stages of transpersonal development, each with at least two substages (and some with many more). These four stages I call the psychic, the subtle, the causal, and the nondual.
Each of these stages follows the same patterns and shows the same developmental characteristics as all the other stages of consciousness evolution: each is a holon following the twenty tenets (a new differentiation/integration, a new emergence with a new depth, a new interiority, etc.); each possesses a new and higher sense of self existing in a new and wider world of others, with new drives, new cognitions, new moral stances, and so forth; each possesses a deep structure (basic defining pattern) that is culturally invariant but with surface structures (manifestations) that are culturally conditioned and molded; and each has a new and higher form of possible pathology (with the exception of the unmanifest "end" point, although even that is not without certain possible complications in its manifestation).
I have elsewhere given preliminary descriptions of the deep structures (and pathologies) of each of these four major stages.22 Instead of repeating myself, I have for this presentation simply chosen four individuals who are especially representative of these stages, and will let them speak for us. They are (respectively) Ralph Waldo Emerson, Saint Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, and Sri Ramana Maharshi. Each also represents the type of mysticism typical at each stage: nature mysticism, deity mysticism, formless mysticism, and nondual mysticism (each of which we will discuss).
1.07 - THE GREAT EVENT FORESHADOWED - THE PLANETIZATION OF MANKIND, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
by following to their conclusion all the successive stages of its twofold
demand for wholeness and irreversibility) "divinize" us through ac-
1.089 - The Levels of Concentration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The stages, as the sutra tells us the bhumis are the degrees of the manifestation of the nature of the object. It is very difficult to explain to a novitiate what actually is the series of the stages of the development of an object. Any object, for the matter of that, is a very complex structure. It has deep details involved within its being which cannot easily be observed with the naked eye. The implications go deeper and deeper as we begin to conceive the details of the object more and more, with greater and greater attention.
Before we try to touch upon what exactly is in the mind of the author of the sutra when he speaks of the bhumis, or the stages of meditation, I shall give you a gross commonplace example of how we can take the mind deeper and deeper into the nature of an object. Take a currency note. What do we see there? We see a great meaning. That is the first thing that we see in a currency note. We see a purchasing power, a value, a capacity, a treasure, something worthwhile and very commendable. This is all we can conceive when we cast our eyes on a governments currency note. It is, for the non-critical attention of the mind, a value and not a substance. This is the distinction, because its substance is something different from the value that we see in it. We always mix up two things when we see any object in this world. The substance gets buried under the value that we see. The substance of a child is different from the value that a mother sees in that child and so on, with respect to any object.
The value of a currency note is different from the substance of the currency note. The substance is nothing but a piece of paper; the value is something different. The value is a concept, whereas the substance is physical. What we see in a currency note is a physical something, plus a conceptual meaning. So the value of the physical something is in the brain the head or the mind of the person who conceives or perceives that object called the currency note. If we divest that currency note of the value that we have superimposed upon it, we will be entering into the substance of that object. We remove the notion of meaning in it. Suppose there is an order of the government that these currency notes will not be valid from tomorrow. We know what will happen. The currency notes will have no meaning; they will lose all sense. We will see the substance from tomorrow onwards. The value has gone. They are no more currency notes they are merely a quantity of physical substance. Their worth is only in pounds or kilograms of waste paper. All the meaning that we saw yesterday has gone overnight, merely because of an ordinance of the government that these notes will not be valid from such and such a date.
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See where we have gone now from a currency note we have gone to the electric energy. This so-called currency note of so many dollars, pounds or rupees is nothing but electric energy which has been compounded into grosser substances, and we have given an appellation to each stage of the development of this object in its grossified forms. In the subtlest form we call it electrical energy; when it grossifies we call it chemical substance; when it grossifies further we call it wooden pulp; still grosser we call it paper; then further we invest it with some imaginary value called money. This is what has happened to all the objects in the world. The Yoga Sutras tell us that this is not the way of looking at things. We cannot have samyama on an object, we cannot enter into the nature of an object, we cannot commune with the object, we cannot become the object, unless we know what the object is. We have ultimately found out that the so-called currency note is something quite different from what we are conceiving in our mind at the present moment. The stages, or the bhumis, which the sutra refers to here are the stages of the development of the manifestation of the object.
To refresh our memory, we can go back to one or two definitions of Patanjali given in the Samadhi Pada, which we studied long ago. The gross form of the object is a compound of several factors, says Patanjali: tatra abda artha jna vikalpai sa
1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Upon his ascension to the grade of Zelator, he must apply himself to the first stages of Yoga, that is Asana and
Pranayama. He must choose a position in which to medi- tate, and so master it that he can remain absolutely still for long periods of time, his success being gauged by poising on his head a cup filled to the brim with water, of which not one drop must be spilt.
1.08 - Information, Language, and Society, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
sions which affect a man differentially at different stages of his
career. Few philosophers of politics nowadays care to confine
1.08 - Stead and the Spirits, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is not, however, Lord Curzon but Mr. Stead and the spirits with whom we have to deal. We know Mr. Stead as a pushing and original journalist, not always over-refined or delicate either in his actions or expressions, skilful in the advertisement of his views, excitable, earnest, declamatory, loud and even hysterical, if you will, in some of his methods, but certainly neither a liar nor a swindler. He does and says what he believes and nothing else. It is impossible to dismiss his Bureau as an imposture or mere journalistic rclame. It is impossible to dismiss the phenomena of spirit communications, even with all the imposture that unscrupulous money-makers have imported into them, as unreal or a deception. All that can reasonably be said is that their true nature has not yet been established beyond dispute. There are two conceivable explanations, one that of actual spirit communication, the other that of vigorously dramatised imaginary conversations jointly composed with wonderful skill and consistency by the subconscious minds, whatever that may be, of the persons present, the medium being the chief dramaturge of this subconscious literary Committee. This theory is so wildly improbable and so obviously opposed to the nature of the phenomena themselves, that only an obstinate unwillingness to admit new facts and ideas can explain its survival, although it was natural and justifiable in the first stages of investigation. There remains the explanation of actual spirit communication. But even when we have decided on this hypothesis as the base of our investigation, we have to be on our guard against a multitude of errors; for the communications are vitiated first by the errors and self-deceptions of the medium and the sitters, then by the errors and self-deceptions of the communicant spirits, and, worst of all, by deliberate deceit, lies and jugglery on the part of the visitants from the other world. The element of deceit and jugglery on the part of the medium and his helpers is not always small, but can easily be got rid of. Cheap scepticism and cheaper ridicule in such matters is only useful for comforting small brains and weak imaginations with a sense of superiority to the larger minds who do not refuse to enquire into phenomena which are at least widespread and of a consistently regular character. The true attitude is to examine carefully the nature of the phenomena, the conditions that now detract from their value and the possibility of removing them and providing perfect experimental conditions which would enable us to arrive at a satisfactory scientific result. Until the value of the communications is scientifically established, any attempt to use them for utilitarian, theatrical or yet lighter purposes is to be deprecated, as such misuse may end in shutting a wide door to potential knowledge upon humanity.
From this point of view Mr. Steads bizarre experiments are to be deprecated. The one redeeming feature about them is that, as conducted, they seem to remove the first elementary difficulty in the way of investigation, the possibility of human deceit and imposture. We presume that he has got rid of professional mediums and allows only earnest-minded and honourable investigators to be present. But the other elements of error and confusion are encouraged rather than obviated by the spirit and methods of Mr. Steads Bureau. First, there is the error and self-deception of the sitters. The spirit does not express himself directly but has to give his thoughts at third hand; they come first to the intermediary spirit, Julia or another, by her they are conveyed to the human medium and through him conveyed by automatic or conscious speech or writing to the listeners. It is obvious how largely the mind of the medium and, to a smaller but still great extent, the thought-impressions of the other sitters must interfere, and this without the least intention on their part, rather in spite of a strong wish in the opposite direction. Few men really understand how the human mind works or are fitted to watch the processes of their own conscious and half-conscious thought even when the mind is disinterested, still less when it is active and interested in the subject of communication. The sitters interfere, first, by putting in their own thoughts and expressions suggested by the beginnings of the communication, so that what began as a spirit conversation ends in a tangle of the mediums or sitters ideas with the little of his own that the spirit can get in now and then. They interfere not only by suggesting what they themselves think or would say on the subject, but by suggesting what they think the spirit ought dramatically to think or say, so that Mr. Gladstone is made to talk in interminable cloudy and circumambient periods which were certainly his oratorical style but can hardly have been the staple of his conversation, and Lord Beaconsfield is obliged to be cynical and immoral in the tone of his observations. They interfere again by eagerness, which sometimes produces replies according to the sitters wishes and sometimes others which are unpleasant or alarming, but in neither case reliable. This is especially the case in answers to questions about the future, which ought never to be asked. It is true that many astonishing predictions occur which are perfectly accurate, but these are far outweighed by the mass of false and random prediction. These difficulties can only be avoided by rigidly excluding every question accompanied by or likely to raise eagerness or expectation and by cultivating entire mental passivity. The last however is impossible to the medium unless he is a practised Yogin, or in a trance, or a medium who has attained the habit of passivity by an unconscious development due to long practice. In the sitters we do not see how it is to be induced. Still, without unemotional indifference to the nature of the answer and mental passivity the conditions for so difficult and delicate a process of communication cannot be perfect.
1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
In the Interior Castle, one of the truly great texts of subtle-level development, Teresa describes very clearly the stages of evolution of the "little butterfly," as she calls her soul, to its union with the very Divine, and she does so in terms of "seven mansions," or seven stages of growth.
The first three stages deal with the ordinary mind or ego, "unregenerate" in the gross, manifest world of thought and sense. In the first Mansion, that of Humility, the ego is still in love with the creatures and comforts outside the Castle, and must begin a long and searching discipline in order to turn within. In the second Mansion (the Practice of Prayer), intellectual study, edification, and good company streng then the desire and capacity to interiorize and not merely scatter and disperse the self in exterior distractions. In the Mansion of Exemplary Life, the third stage, discipline and ethics are firmly set as a foundation of all that is to follow (very similar to the Buddhist notion that sila, or moral discipline, is the foundation of dhyana, or meditation, and prajna, or spiritual insight). These are all natural (or personal) developments.
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Literal or mythic Christianity, for example, originating from the magic-mythic and mythic stages of development, and beset by "mythic dissociation," imagines God as a Cosmic Father set above and apart from nature (ontologically divorced), and thus any action on God's part is and must be "supernatural"-a "miraculous" suspension of the laws of nature on behalf of "His children," activities that are all nonetheless variations on turning spinach into potatoes.
This dissociation of "natural" and "supernatural," and a praying, a begging, for the latter to miraculously intervene in the former, Emerson calls "meanness and theft," a vicious craving for commodities:
1.08 - The Splitting of the Human Personality during Spiritual Training, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
so, too, does the soul live in a higher world; only, this life of the soul continues also during sleep. The soul is in full activity during sleep, but we can know nothing of this activity so long as we have no spiritual organs of perception through which to observe what is going on around us and see what we ourselves are doing during sleep, as we observe our daily physical environment with our ordinary senses. The preceding chapters have shown that esoteric training consists in the development of such spiritual sense organs. Now if, as a result of esoteric training, the student's life during sleep is transformed in the manner described in the foregoing chapter, he will, when in that condition, be able to follow consciously everything going on around him. He can at will find his way in his environment as he could, when awake, with his ordinary senses. It should here be noted that a higher degree of clairvoyance is required for the higher perception of ordinary physical environment. This was indicated in the last chapter. In the initial stages of his development the student perceives things pertaining to another world without being able to discern their connection
p. 217
1.08 - The Supreme Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1:IN THE light of this progressive manifestation of the Spirit, first apparently bound in the Ignorance, then free in the power and wisdom of the Infinite, we can better understand the great and crowning injunction of the Gita to the Karmayogin, "Abandoning all dharmas, all principles and laws and rules of conduct, take refuge in me alone." All standards and rules are temporary constructions founded upon the needs of the ego in its transition from Matter to Spirit. These makeshifts have a relative imperativeness so long as we rest satisfied in the stages of transition, content with the physical and vital life, attached to the mental movement, or even fixed in the ranges of the mental plane that are touched by the spiritual lustres. But beyond is the unwalled wideness of a supramental infinite consciousness and there all temporary structures cease. It is not possible to enter utterly into the spiritual truth of the Eternal and Infinite if we have not the faith and courage to trust ourselves into the hands of the Lord of all things and the Friend of all creatures and leave utterly behind us our mental limits and measures. At one moment we must plunge without hesitation, reserve, fear or scruple into the ocean of the free, the infinite, the Absolute. After the Law, Liberty; after the personal, after the general, after the universal standards there is something greater, the impersonal plasticity, the divine freedom, the transcendent force and the supernal impulse. After the strait path of the ascent the wide plateaus on the summit.
2:There are three stages of the ascent, - at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance. In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are halflights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process. In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever.
3:Whoever sincerely enters the path of works, must leave behind him the stage in which need and desire are the first law of our acts. For whatever desires still trouble his being, he must, if he accepts the high aim of Yoga, put them away from him into the hands of the Lord within us. The supreme Power will deal with them for the good of the sadhaka and for the good of all. In effect, we find that once this surrender is done, - always provided the rejection is sincere, - egoistic indulgence of desire may for some time recur under the continued impulse of past nature but only in order to exhaust its acquired momentum and to teach the embodied being in his most unteachable part, his nervous, vital, emotional nature, by the reactions of desire, by its grief and unrest bitterly contrasted with calm periods of the higher peace or marvellous movements of divine Ananda, that egoistic desire is not a law for the soul that seeks liberation or aspires to its own original god-nature. Afterwards the element of desire in those impulsions will be thrown away or persistently eliminated by a constant denying and transforming pressure. Only the pure force of action in them (pravr.tti) justified by an equal delight in all work and result that is inspired or imposed from above will be preserved in the happy harmony of a final perfection. To act, to enjoy is the normal law and right of the nervous being; but to choose by personal desire its action and enjoyment is only its ignorant will, not its right. Alone the supreme and universal Will must choose; action must change into a dynamic movement of that Will; enjoyment must be replaced by the play of a pure spiritual Ananda. All personal will is either a temporary delegation from on high or a usurpation by the ignorant Asura.
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16:But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, later. But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single comm and or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination. When the Yoga is perfect, all action becomes of this character. We may indeed distinguish three stages of a growing progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. The first is the stage when we are still governed by the intellect, heart and senses; these have to seek or wait for the divine inspiration and guidance and do not always find or receive it. The second is the stage when human intelligence is more and more replaced by a high illumined or intuitive spiritualised mind, the external human heart by the inner psychic heart, the senses by a purified and selfless vital force. The third is the stage when we rise even above spiritualised mind to the supramental levels.
17:In all three stages the fundamental character of the liberated action is the same, a spontaneous working of Prakriti no longer through or for the ego but at the will and for the enjoyment of the supreme Purusha. At a higher level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature, - no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother
1.098 - The Transformation from Human to Divine, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
That one has to pass through various stages of self-communion before the great aim of yoga is reached is a point which has been emphasised, again and again, in various ways and at different places in the system of Patanjali. We do not suddenly jump to the skies in one stroke. There is a very slow process of growth inwardly, like the maturing of a large tree, stage by stage. And, every stage is supposed to be an occasion for a novel experience every time new experiences present themselves, inasmuch as every experience is one of communion. It is very important to remember that yoga is not a process of thinking through the mind, understanding through the intellect, or ratiocinating. Yoga is communion. This is the main feature of yoga which can miss ones attention, and one can be under the complacent mood that there is a progress gradually taking place while one is merely thinking as one thinks of a cow, or a tree an object which is totally outside oneself.
Every progress is a progress in communion. It is not a progress merely in thought and clarity of understanding which are all very great things, no doubt, in the world, but they are nothing before yoga. We are not here for intensifying our analytic understanding or logical deductive knowledge of things, or for any kind of worldly genius. All that we regard as great in this world becomes nothing before this master technique of yoga, which is the precise reason why some cannot grasp even the first stage of yoga properly, because the very first step itself is a complete turning upside-down of the way of thinking. It is not continuing our present way of thinking that is called yoga. It is a complete transformation, a right-about turn of the entire attitude. This has to be grasped at the very outset. We are not becoming better and better human beings in yoga; we are becoming transformed and transfigured into a newer quality of being. It is not that the human nature continues, the human valuation continues and the human assessment of things continues nothing of the kind. There is a transfiguration of the human character altogether into a newer type of perception and experience. This is what is effected by communion.
Hence, the usual mistaken idea people may carry with them into the field of yoga that what they achieve in the higher stages of yoga is only an expanded, or perhaps a more intensified form of worldly happiness, worldly authority, worldly power or worldly acquisition is a great mistake, and nothing can be worse than that. We are not going to have enjoyments of a worldly kind in the progress of yoga, nor are we going to exercise power as we exercise it in the world of sense and ego. There is such a change as can be compared with the change from an animal to a human being, which cannot be regarded as merely a continuation of the animal species. When we rise from the animal kingdom of consciousness to the human level, we have not simply become better animals; that is not what has happened to us. We have become something quite different from animals. Are we only advanced animals just because we have evolved from the animal state? No. There is a change in intrinsic character. There is a transformation of quality. The human is different from the animal in the intrinsic structure itself, and not merely in the extrinsic expansion of sensory perception or egoistic affirmation.
Likewise is the transformation from the human to the higher levels of yoga, which are the stages of the ascent to the divine. We are becoming we are going to become divine, in different stages. So, we may say that every stage is a new encounter with a qualitative transformation of the personality, a condition with which we cannot compare anything in this world. There is nothing here with which we can compare that state of experience.
If we start comparing, we will be speaking like the frog in the well which had a talk with the frog that came from the ocean. The ocean is so big! Much bigger than the well, said the frog from the ocean. The frog that was in the well, which had never seen anything wider than the well, asked, How big is this ocean? Oh, very big! Is it so big? asked the frog in the well, expanding its body, swelling it. Is this how big the ocean is? Now, what is this that we are talking about? It is not like that, said the ocean frog. It is very big! The well frog swelled still further. Stouter it became, expanded its muscles and said, So big? The ocean is so big? No, no! It is not like that, said the frog from the ocean. It is much bigger than what we are thinking! Is it as big as this well, at least? asked the well frog. Oh, much bigger! said the ocean frog. The well frog was confused and said, What is this? What are we talking about? I cannot understand! The frog in the well could not appreciate anything bigger than the well. What is the ocean? It could not imagine it.
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Now, the teachers of yoga tell us that there are very great dangers which one has to face at certain stages of this ascent. These dangers come from the activity of the senses and the ego. Where do these dangers come from? They come from certain encounters of the meditative individual. What does it encounter? It encounters certain forces which present themselves as personalities, forms, shapes, objects, etc. These forms, which present themselves before ones experience, are the very counterparts of the desires of the senses and the ego. It is to be noted here that everything that is in our individual personality has a cosmical counterpart. Whether it is good or bad, whether it is of this nature or that nature, everything that is inside has a counterpart in the outer world. So, the pressure exerted by any particular aspect in the individual personality stirs up the corresponding counterpart in the outer world, and we encounter that. It is something like the operations of a puppet show. A person operating the movement of puppets with strings is the power that conditions these movements outside. The operator behind moves the fingers in a particular way and accordingly, correspondingly, there is the movement of the puppets outside.
The objects whatever be their nature outside in the world with which we come in contact, are what are invoked and evoked by our inner potentialities. We cannot see anything which we do not deserve, or which is not intended to be a teacher for us or a means of passing through experience. Here, in ordinary life, the life that we are living today, many of these tendencies are pressed down, repressed by the power of a particular form of desire which we are fulfilling in our daily life and a particular form of ego-affirmation, which sets aside every other affirmation. Every time one particular aspect comes to the surface, it pushes the other aspects to the background, so that we appear to be only one thing at a time, and not two things. We do not have two moods at one moment; there is always one mood only, though these moods may go on changing every day, or even in the same day at different times. The different experiences we pass through and the different objects we face in life are the activities of these predominant aspects in our inner personality which work gradually, stage by stage, according to the convenience of the time or when circumstances become favourable.
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gt (III.52). The sutra tells that we will be invited as a guest by the realms of being when we advance in the stages of yoga. There are various realms of existence which we have to pierce and pass through. And, every realm is inhabited by certain denizens. Just as when we go to a new country, the citizens there may welcome us as a friend Come, dear friend, be seated, and so on the citizens, or the inhabitants of the different realms, says the Yoga Shastra, will welcome us, and we are likely to mistake this for an achievement of yoga which it is not. We are likely to get caught up in the atmosphere of that particular realm, because that atmosphere is nothing but what the senses seek and what the ego would like. They become very intense in their presentations, according to the intensity of the practice. Therefore, the sutra tells us that we should not accept these invitations. Otherwise, we will be once again in the same trouble from which we wanted to escape through the practice of yoga. Whatever be the perceptions, whatever be the delights that may present themselves, they have to be ignored by the practicant.
Here, there is another interesting feature which one can notice. These experiences of encounter, or the presentations of delight or invitations, etc., which the sutra mentions, are not necessarily super-physical. They can also be physical. That is, even in this very physical world we may have such experiences, if our practice is intense enough. We will not be able to discover the secret behind the experiences in our life, and may like to pass them over as casual occurrences of the social life of a person. The experiences that we pass through in life even in this physical life, in this very life itself may be the reactions of our practice. The denizens which the sutra speaks of may press themselves forward through the physical counterparts of this very existence itself. They need not necessarily be ethereal beings as the Puranas speak of, such as Indra, etc.
1.09 - ADVICE TO THE BRAHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"One should hear the scriptures during the early stages of spiritual discipline. After attaining God there is no lack of knowledge. Then the Divine Mother supplies it without fail.
"A child spells out every word as he writes, but later on he writes fluently.
1.09 - Civilisation and Culture, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature starts from Matter, develops out of it its hidden Life, releases out of involution in life all the crude material of Mind and, when she is ready, turns Mind upon itself and upon Life and Matter in a great mental effort to understand all three in their phenomena, their obvious action, their secret laws, their normal and abnormal possibilities and powers so that they may be turned to the richest account, used in the best and most harmonious way, elevated to their highest as well as extended to their widest potential aims by the action of that faculty which man alone of terrestrial creatures clearly possesses, the intelligent will. It is only in this fourth stage of her progress that she arrives at humanity. The atoms and the elements organise brute Matter, the plant develops the living being, the animal prepares and brings to a certain kind of mechanical organisation the crude material of Mind, but the last work of all, the knowledge and control of all these things and self-knowledge and self-control,that has been reserved for Man, Natures mental being. That he may better do the work she has given him, she compels him to repeat physically and to some extent mentally stages of her animal evolution and, even when he is in possession of his mental being, she induces him continually to dwell with an interest and even a kind of absorption upon Matter and Life and his own body and vital existence. This is necessary to the largeness of her purpose in him. His first natural absorption in the body and the life is narrow and unintelligent; as his intelligence and mental force increase, he disengages himself to some extent, is able to mount higher, but is still tied to his vital and material roots by need and desire and has to return upon them with a larger curiosity, a greater power of utilisation, a more and more highly mental and, in the end, a more and more spiritual aim in the return. For his cycles are circles of a growing, but still imperfect harmony and synthesis, and she brings him back violently to her original principles, sometimes even to something like her earlier conditions so that he may start afresh on a larger curve of progress and self-fulfilment.
It would seem at first sight that since man is pre-eminently the mental being, the development of the mental faculties and the richness of the mental life should be his highest aim,his preoccupying aim, even, as soon as he has got rid of the obsession of the life and body and provided for the indispensable satisfaction of the gross needs which our physical and animal nature imposes on us. Knowledge, science, art, thought, ethics, philosophy, religion, this is mans real business, these are his true affairs. To be is for him not merely to be born, grow up, marry, get his livelihood, support a family and then die,the vital and physical life, a human edition of the animal round, a human enlargement of the little animal sector and arc of the divine circle; rather to become and grow mentally and live with knowledge and power within himself as well as from within outward is his manhood. But there is here a double motive of Nature, an insistent duality in her human purpose. Man is here to learn from her how to control and create; but she evidently means him not only to control, create and constantly re-create in new and better forms himself, his own inner existence, his mentality, but also to control and re-create correspondingly his environment. He has to turn Mind not only on itself, but on Life and Matter and the material existence; that is very clear not only from the law and nature of the terrestrial evolution, but from his own past and present history. And there comes from the observation of these conditions and of his highest aspirations and impulses the question whether he is not intended, not only to expand inwardly and outwardly, but to grow upward, wonderfully exceeding himself as he has wonderfully exceeded his animal beginnings, into something more than mental, more than human, into a being spiritual and divine. Even if he cannot do that, yet he may have to open his mind to what is beyond it and to govern his life more and more by the light and power that he receives from something greater than himself. Mans consciousness of the divine within himself and the world is the supreme fact of his existence and to grow into that may very well be the intention of his nature. In any case the fullness of Life is his evident object, the widest life and the highest life possible to him, whether that be a complete humanity or a new and divine race. We must recognise both his need of integrality and his impulse of self-exceeding if we would fix rightly the meaning of his individual existence and the perfect aim and norm of his society.
1.09 - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
10:If we can pass through these two stages of the inner change without being arrested or fixed in either, we are admitted to a greater divine equality which is capable of a spiritual ardour and tranquil passion of delight, a rapturous, all-understanding and all-possessing equality of the perfected soul, an intense and even wideness and fullness of its being embracing all things. This is the supreme period and the passage to it is through the joy of a total self-giving to the Divine and to the universal Mother For strength is then crowned by a happy mastery, peace deepens into bliss, the possession of the divine calm is uplifted and made the ground for the possession of the divine movement. But if this greater perfection is to arrive, the soul's impartial high-seatedness looking down from above on the flux of forms and personalities and movements and forces must be modified and change into a new sense of strong and calm submission and a powerful and intense surrender. This submission will be no longer a resigned acquiescence but a glad acceptance: for there will be no sense of suffering or of the bearing of a burden or cross; love and delight and the joy of self-giving will be its brilliant texture. And this surrender will be not only to a divine Will which we perceive and accept and obey, but to a divine Wisdom in the Will which we recognise and a divine Love in it which we feel and rapturously suffer, the wisdom and love of a supreme Spirit and Self of ourselves and all with which we can achieve a happy and perfect unity. A lonely power, peace and stillness is the last word of the philosophic equality of the sage; but the soul in its integral experience liberates itself from this self-created status and enters into the sea of a supreme and allembracing ecstasy of the beginningless and endless beatitude of the Eternal. Then we are at last capable of receiving all contacts with a blissful equality, because we feel in them the touch of the imperishable Love and Delight, the happiness absolute that hides ever in the heart of things. The gain of this culmination in a universal and equal rapture is the soul's delight and the opening gates of the Bliss that is infinite, the Joy that surpasses all understanding.
11:Before this labour for the annihilation of desire and the conquest of the soul's equality can come to its absolute perfection and fruition, that turn of the spiritual movement must have been completed which leads to the abolition of the sense of ego. But for the worker the renunciation of the egoism of action is the most important element in this change. For even when by giving up the fruits and the desire of the fruits to the Master of the Sacrifice we have parted with the egoism of rajasic desire, we may still have kept the egoism of the worker. Still we are subject to the sense that we are ourselves the doer of the act, ourselves its source and ourselves the giver of the sanction. It is still the "I" that chooses and determines, it is still the "I" that undertakes the responsibility and feels the demerit or the merit.
11.03 - Cosmonautics, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The cosmonauts are teaching us at least the possibility of a new, almost a revolutionary acclimatisation of the body, the capability of the human organs to follow a different rhythm of life in place of the old normal way. We know from the past history of the evolutionary stages of life that the advent of a new species is signalled by a change in the conditions of living, and the change in the habitat involves a change in the form, the organs and functions of the body: that is what is meant by the appearance of a new type of creature adapted to the new conditions. Even so today cosmic travels are forcing the human body to adapt itself to new conditions and it is a very conscious discipline. The change in the body of living beings in the previous stages is due to an unconscious pressure brought to bear upon it by an unconscious Nature. But now the situation is different: man is attempting consciously to surpass himself, he has begun to do it in the physical field with remarkable results and a great promise. True, there is another factor, indeed the major factor behind, within the inner consciousness of man and within the inner regions of the world. As I have said, it is a revolutionary change there that is forcing itself upon the outside and the surface of existence.
Thus there is a twofold process for the new man to establish himself here. First, of course, there is the psychological or inner change and reorganisation: man's attempt to reach a new status of being and consciousness not in the category of the mere mental but a supramental status. Its nature and character and formation is being probed into by the new spiritual seekers and aspirants. That work is being done from within outward, and from above downward. This however is supplemented, supported, effectuated or materialised by the other attempt from below going upward and from outside going inward. That is the way of science, of the pragmatic man. The one we may say somewhat philosophically, is the Purusha, the conscious being coming down; the other, Prakriti, pushing up, Nature driving upward or inward.
1.107 - The Bestowal of a Divine Gift, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
When there is a chidra, or a little loophole in the meditative effort which means when we are not meditating these vrittis will come up. Now we are ready, they will say. You have forgotten us, so we are up. And nobody can do anything at that time, because the starved emotions and the frustrated desires have a strength of their own. They are not weaklings. To avoid this problem of having to confront unforeseen vrittis at a later stage, the Yoga Shastras prescribe very graduated ascents, even in the earlier stages of yoga. We are not supposed to jump up in great enthusiasm, as if we are going to catch God in a few days. It is this kind of enthusiasm that leads to such problems.
We have to move gradually, with a tremendous caution with regard to our strengths and weaknesses. It is something like striking a balance sheet. The profit and loss account is struck with great care, and we know where we stand financially at the end of any particular year. Likewise, it is necessary to strike a psychological balance sheet of our life almost every day, towards the end of the day, we may say, and find out where we stand in spiritual life. It is no use imagining that we are seekers and yogins everyone can imagine that. Our actual condition will be known only to us. Many a time there are very difficult situations inwardly which cannot be explained, nor can they be observed by other people; only we can know. But, due to being busy in extraneous activities, and sometimes due to an incorrect idea of ones own strength, which may not be a real strength a kind of wrong estimation of oneself one may be led into erroneous corners and slacken the effort at concentration.
1.10 - THE FORMATION OF THE NOOSPHERE, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
over the main stages of this long history of aggregation. First, in
the depths of the past, we find a thin scattering of hunting groups
11.15 - Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"The poet of patriotism, the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity" he was, in the famous words of his advocate and friend and follower who stood for him before the bar of History for his cause, and not merely before a British Court of Justice. Indeed he was all that, but today we have to add another epithet and complete the description. For he is now the builder of the Life Divine. This was indeed the secret Truth that worked in him from behind and gave to these earlier preoccupations the reality and the beauty they attained and the fullness of their significance. He worked for human evolution, that was his life' mission. He thus formulates the stages of human evolution:
"Family, nationality, humanity are Vishnu's three strides from an isolated to a collective unity. The first has been fulfilled, we yet strive for the perfection of the second, towards the third we are reaching out our hands and the pioneer work is already attempted".
1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development
Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to
1.11 - The Three Purushas, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Greatness of all the philosophical problems which human thought has struggled to solve, is the exact nature and relation to us of the conscious Intelligence in the phenomenal existence around. The idealist denies the phenomenal existence, the materialist denies the conscious Intelligence. To the former, phenomenon is a passing shadow on the luminous calm of the single universal Spirit: to the latter, intelligence is a temporary result of the motions of Matter. The idealist can give no satisfactory explanation of the existence of the shadow; he admits that it is inexplicable, a thing that is and yet is not: the materialist can give no satisfactory explanation of the existence of intelligence; he simply tries to trace the stages of its development and the methods of its workings, and covers over the want of an explanation by the abundant minuteness of his observations. But the soul of Man, looking out and in, is satisfied neither with Shankara nor with Haeckel. It sees the universal existence of phenomena, it sees the universal existence of Intelligence. It seeks a term which will admit both, cover both, identify both; it demands, not an elimination of either, but a reconcilement.
The Upanishads do not deny the reality of the world, but they identify it with Brahman who transcends it. He is the One without a second; He is the All. If all is Brahman, then there can be nothing but Brahman, and therefore the existence of the All, sarvam idam, does not contradict the unity of Brahman, does not establish the reality of bheda, difference. It is one Intelligence looking at itself from a hundred view-points, each point conscious of and enjoying the existence of the others. The shoreless stream of idea and thought, imagination and experience, name and form, sensation and vibration sweeps onward for ever, without beginning, without end, rising into view, sinking out of sight; through it the one Intelligence with its million self-expressions pours itself abroad, an ocean with innumerable waves. One particular self-expression may disappear into its source and continent, but that does not and cannot abolish the phenomenal universe. The One is for ever, and the Many are for ever because the One is for ever. So long as there is a sea, there will be waves.
In the oceanic stir and change of universal Nature the soul or Purusha is the standing-point, stable, unmoving, unchanging, eternal,nitya sarvagata sthur acaloya santana. In the whole, the Purusha or soul is one,there is One Spirit which supports the stir of the Universe, not many. In the individual the One Purusha has three stages of personality; He is One, but triple, trivt. The Upanishads speak of two birds on one tree, of which one eats the fruit of the tree, the other, seated on a higher branch, does not eat but watches its fellow; one is a or lord of itself, the other is ana, not lord of itself, and it is when the eater looks up and perceives the greatness of the watcher and fills himself with it that grief, death, subjection,in one word my, ignorance and illusion, ceases to touch him. There are two unborn who are male and one unborn who is female; she is the tree with its sweet and bitter fruit, the two are the birds. One of the unborn enjoys her sweetness, the other has put it away from him. These are the two Purushas, the akara, or immutable spirit, and the kara, or apparently mutable, and the tree or woman is Prakriti, universal Energy which the Europeans call Nature. The kara purua is the soul in Nature and enjoying Nature, the akara purua is the soul above Nature and watching her. But there is One who is not seated on the tree but occupies and possesses it, who is not only lord of Himself, but lord of all that is: He is higher than the kara, higher than the akara, He is Purushottama, the Soul one with God, with the All.
These three Purushas are described in the fifteenth chapter of the Gita. There are two Purushas in the world, the akara and the kara,the kara is all creatures, the akara is called kastha, the one on the summit. There is another Purusha, the highest (uttama), called also the Paramatma or Supreme Spirit, who enters into the three worlds, (the worlds of suupti, svapna, jgrat, otherwise the causal, mental and physical planes of existence), and sustains them as their imperishable lord. And in the thirteenth chapter, while drawing the distinction between the lower Purusha and the higher, Sri Krishna defines more minutely the relations of God and the individual soul to Nature. Prakriti is the basic source of cause, effect and agency; the Purusha, of the sense of enjoyment of happiness and grief; for it is the soul in Nature (Purusha in Prakriti) that enjoys the threefold workings of things caused by Nature, (the play of conservation, creation and destruction; reception, reaction and resistance; illumination, misconception and obscuration; calm, work and inertia; all being different manifestations of three fundamental forces called the gunas or essential properties of Prakriti), and it is the attachment of the soul to the gunas that is the cause of births in bodies good and evil. The highest Purusha in this body is the one who watches, who sanctions, who enjoys, who upholds, who is the mighty Lord and the Supreme Soul.
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
lower stages of the evolution, - with the same gradations, retardations, inequalities; but still it is more enlightened, increasingly
self-conscious, nearer to a conscious sureness. And the very fact
1.12 - Delight of Existence - The Solution, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
12:In regard to physical pleasure and pain, it is more difficult to apply the universal truth; for this is the very domain of the nerves and the body, the centre and seat of that in us whose nature is to be dominated by external contact and external pressure. Even here, however, we have glimpses of the truth. We see it in the fact that according to the habit the same physical contact can be either pleasurable or painful, not only to different individuals, but to the same individual under different conditions or at different stages of his development. We see it in the fact that men in periods of great excitement or high exaltation remain physically indifferent to pain or unconscious of pain under contacts which ordinarily would inflict severe torture or suffering. In many cases it is only when the nerves are able to reassert themselves and remind the mentality of its habitual obligation to suffer that the sense of suffering returns. But this return to the habitual obligation is not inevitable; it is only habitual. We see that in the phenomena of hypnosis not only can the hypnotised subject be successfully forbidden to feel the pain of a wound or puncture when in the abnormal state, but can be prevented with equal success from returning to his habitual reaction of suffering when he is awakened. The reason of this phenomenon is perfectly simple; it is because the hypnotiser suspends the habitual waking consciousness which is the slave of nervous habits and is able to appeal to the subliminal mental being in the depths, the inner mental being who is master, if he wills, of the nerves and the body. But this freedom which is effected by hypnosis abnormally, rapidly, without true possession, by an alien will, may equally be won normally, gradually, with true possession, by one's own will so as to effect partially or completely a victory of the mental being over the habitual nervous reactions of the body.
13:Pain of mind and body is a device of Nature, that is to say, of Force in her works, meant to subserve a definite transitional end in her upward evolution. The world is from the point of view of the individual a play and complex shock of multitudinous forces. In the midst of this complex play the individual stands as a limited constructed being with a limited amount of force exposed to numberless shocks which may wound, maim, break up or disintegrate the construction which he calls himself. Pain is in the nature of a nervous and physical recoil from a dangerous or harmful contact; it is a part of what the Upanishad calls jugupsa, the shrinking of the limited being from that which is not himself and not sympathetic or in harmony with himself, its impulse of self-defence against "others". It is, from this point of view, an indication by Nature of that which has to be avoided or, if not successfully avoided, has to be remedied. It does not come into being in the purely physical world so long as life does not enter into it; for till then mechanical methods are sufficient. Its office begins when life with its frailty and imperfect possession of Matter enters on the scene; it grows with the growth of Mind in life. Its office continues so long as Mind is bound in the life and body which it is using, dependent upon them for its knowledge and means of action, subjected to their limitations and to the egoistic impulses and aims which are born of those limitations. But if and when Mind in man becomes capable of being free, unegoistic, in harmony with all other beings and with the play of the universal forces, the use and office of suffering diminishes, its raison d'etre must finally cease to be and it can only continue as an atavism of Nature, a habit that has survived its use, a persistence of the lower in the as yet imperfect organisation of the higher. Its eventual elimination must be an essential point in the destined conquest of the soul over subjection to Matter and egoistic limitation in Mind.
1.13 - The Supermind and the Yoga of Works, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It must also be kept in mind that the supramental change is difficult, distant, an ultimate stage; it must be regarded as the end of a far-off vista; it cannot be and must not be turned into a first aim, a constantly envisaged goal or an immediate objective. For it can only come into the view of possibility after much arduous self-conquest and self-exceeding, at the end of many long and trying stages of a difficult self-evolution of the nature. One must first acquire an inner Yogic consciousness and replace by it our ordinary view of things, natural movements, motives of life; one must revolutionise the whole present build of our being. Next, we have to go still deeper, discover our veiled psychic entity and
sadharmya mukti.
1.13 - Under the Auspices of the Gods, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
while others would be in the beam of integral Communism based on fraternal love (given the current evolutionary trend, however, these beams would more than likely be made of a hard light, centered around some economic or titanic ideology). Yet even if such divine centers were to appear on the earth, not only would their brand of unity go against life's diversity, but they would also be constantly threatened by the surrounding darkness; humans are at unequal stages of development a fact we always tend to forget. This is the eternal weakness in all our grand schemes. Our centers of grace would be like
215
1.14 - The Structure and Dynamics of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
different stages of fire (Plate I).
As the picture shows, the four spheres are filled with fire.
--
farious stages of the mystic transformation process, as well as in
the different degrees of initiation into the mysteries. We also
--
starting-points has three stages of transformation, which to-
gether with the first stage make sixteen parts in all. But besides
--
Tabula smaragdina, and the stages of transformation have been
depicted over and over again, above all in the Ripley "Scrowle"
1.14 - The Succesion to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
Saturnalias are not uncommon at some stages of social evolution. In
our own country traces of them long survived in the practices of May
1.15 - Index, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
of, 86, 197/2; as stages of fire, 249
elephant, 226
--
The stages of Life (1930-1931)
The Soul and Death (1934)
1.16 - Man, A Transitional Being, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Until the day She comes to the human being, Her conscious instrument in whom, by whom and through whom She will be able to recover Him, Our humanity is the conscious meeting-place of the finite and the infinite and to grow more and more towards the Infinite even in this physical birth is our privilege.326 A special phenomenon occurs when Agni reaches the human stage of its journey. During the preceding stages of evolution, the evolutionary flame seems to have subsided of its own accord once the new emergence was assured. The explosion of vegetal life seems to have subsided once the animal became firmly established in Life. The teeming of animal life seems similarly to have subsided once humankind became definitively settled in evolution. It does not seem that Nature has created any new animal or plant species since the human species has occupied the crest of evolution. The various species have become stationary; they have attained a degree of perfection, each in its own order, and they remain there. With man, however, the evolutionary urge has not abated, even though he is firmly established in evolution. He is not fulfilled, not satisfied as other species are; he does not know the peace and joy that come with equilibrium. Man is an abnormal who has not found his own normality he may imagine he has, he may appear to be normal 324
325
1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Different stages of spiritual progress
"The first stage is that of the beginner. He studies and hears. Second is the stage of the struggling aspirant. He prays to God, meditates on Him, and sings His name and glories. The third stage is that of the perfect soul. He has seen God, realized Him directly and immediately in his inner Consciousness. Last is the stage of the supremely perfect, like Chaitanya. Such a devotee establishes a definite relationship with God, looking on Him as his Son or Beloved."
1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
At a further stage of transformation, Sri Aurobindo foresees our organs being replaced by a dynamic functioning of our centers of consciousness or chakras. This is the real transition from the animalman conceived by the lower evolution to the human-man of the new evolution. It is one of the tasks undertaken by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. From the earliest stages of yoga we have found that each of our activities, from the highest to the most material, was set in motion and fueled by a current of consciousness-force that seemed to converge at different levels of our being, within certain centers and with different intensities depending upon the type of activity;
whenever we have tried to manipulate this current, we have found it to be an extraordinary source of energy, limited only by our own capacity. Therefore, it is not inconceivable that our organs, which are only the physical translation or the material concentration of this current behind, may in the course of evolution be replaced by a direct action of the centers of consciousness, which would simply radiate their energy throughout the new body, just as the heart, blood and nerves now radiate throughout our present body. This is how the Mother once explained the future body to the ashram children:
--
With his usual clarity, Sri Aurobindo puts us before the fact: In the previous stages of the evolution Nature's first care and effort had to be directed towards a change of consciousness; this was a necessity imposed by the insufficiency of the force of consciousness already in formation to effect a change in the body. But in man a reversal is possible, indeed inevitable; for it is through his consciousness,
349
1.18 - THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
However powerful its impetus in the early stages of the course of
biological evolution into which it has thrust itself, the Marxist an-
1.18 - The Infrarational Age of the Cycle, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We have seen that there are necessarily three stages of the social evolution or, generally, of the human evolution in both individual and society. Our evolution starts with an infrarational stage in which men have not yet learned to refer their life and action in its principles and its forms to the judgment of the clarified intelligence; for they still act principally out of their instincts, impulses, spontaneous ideas, vital intuitions or obey a customary response to desire, need and circumstance,it is these things that are canalised or crystallised in their social institutions. Man proceeds by various stages out of these beginnings towards a rational age in which his intelligent will more or less developed becomes the judge, arbiter and presiding motive of his thought, feeling and action, the moulder, destroyer and re-creator of his leading ideas, aims and intuitions. Finally, if our analysis and forecast are correct, the human evolution must move through a subjective towards a suprarational or spiritual age in which he will develop progressively a greater spiritual, supra-intellectual and intuitive, perhaps in the end a more than intuitive, a gnostic consciousness. He will be able to perceive a higher divine end, a divine sanction, a divine light of guidance for all he seeks to be, think, feel and do, and able, too, more and more to obey and live in this larger light and power. That will not be done by any rule of infrarational religious impulse and ecstasy, such as characterised or rather darkly illumined the obscure confusion and brute violence of the Middle Ages, but by a higher spiritual living for which the clarities of the reason are a necessary preparation and into which they too will be taken up, transformed, brought to their invisible source.
These stages or periods are much more inevitable in the psychological evolution of mankind than the Stone and other Ages marked out by Science in his instrumental culture, for they depend not on outward means or accidents, but on the very nature of his being. But we must not suppose that they are naturally exclusive and absolute in their nature, or complete in their tendency or fulfilment when they come, or rigidly marked off from each other in their action or their time. For they not only arise out of each other, but may be partially developed in each other and they may come to coexist in different parts of the earth at the same time. But, especially, since man as a whole is always a complex being, even man savage or degenerate, he cannot be any of these things exclusively or absolutely,so long as he has not exceeded himself, has not developed into the superman, has not, that is to say, spiritualised and divinised his whole being. At his animal worst he is still some kind of thinking or reflecting animal: even the infrarational man cannot be utterly infrarational, but must have or tend to have some kind of play more or less evolved or involved of the reason and a more or less crude suprarational element, a more or less disguised working of the spirit. At his lucid mental best, he is still not a pure mental being, a pure intelligence; even the most perfect intellectual is not and cannot be wholly or merely rational,there are vital urgings that he cannot exclude, visits or touches of a light from above that are not less suprarational because he does not recognise their source. No god, but at his highest a human being touched with a ray of the divine influence, mans very spirituality, however dominant, must have, while he is still this imperfectly evolved human, its rational and infrarational tendencies and elements. And as with the psychological life of individuals, so must it be with the ages of his communal existence; these may be marked off from each other by the predominant play of one element, its force may overpower the others or take them into itself or make some compromise, but an exclusive play seems to be neither intended nor possible.
1.19 - ON THE PROBABLE EXISTENCE AHEAD OF US OF AN ULTRA-HUMAN, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
born. The human fetus in the earliest stages of its development,
when it is virtually incapable of morphological definition, is a case
1.19 - THE MASTER AND HIS INJURED ARM, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Four stages of life
"There are four stages of life: brahmacharya, garhasthya, Vanaprastha, and sannyas.
During the first three stages a man has to perform his worldly duties. The sannyasi carries only his staff, water-pot, and begging-bowl. He too may perform certain nityakarma, but his mind is not attached to it; he is not conscious of doing such work.
Some sannyasis perform nityakarma to set an example to the world. If a householder or a man belonging to the other stages of life performs action without attachment, then he is united with God through such action.
"In the case of a paramahamsa, like Sukadeva, all karmas-all puja, japa, tarpan, sandhya, and so forth-drop away. In this state a man communes with God through the mind alone. Sometimes he may be pleased to perform outward activities for the welfare of mankind. But his recollection and contemplation of God remain uninterrupted."
1.201 - Socrates, #Symposium, #Plato, #Philosophy
erotica. Diotima is speaking as if Socrates was now reaching the final stages of initiation into a religious mystery-cult. See Mysteries in Glossary of names. eidos. See glossary. 197 psuche.
48
1.2.06 - Rejection, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The effort should be to reject the restlessness and its suggestions altogether. These things come to everybody in the early stages of the sadhana and are sometimes very persistent, even later on they continue - but the sadhak rejects them and regards them as no part of his true consciousness or worthy to determine his action and life, but as untrue suggestions which he has to overcome. If
66
1.2.07 - Surrender, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is not advisable in the early stages of the sadhana to leave everything to the Divine or expect everything from it without the need of one's own endeavour. That is only possible when the psychic being is in front and influencing the whole action
(and even then vigilance and a constant assent are necessary) or else, later on in the ultimate stages of the Yoga when a direct or almost direct supramental force is taking up the consciousness; but this stage is very far away as yet. Under other conditions this attitude is likely to lead to stagnation and inertia. (See The
Mother Part I.)
1.20 - The End of the Curve of Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The exaggeration and inherent weakness of this exclusive idea are sufficiently evident. Man does not actually live as an isolated being, nor can he grow by an isolated freedom. He grows by his relations with others and his freedom must exercise itself in a progressive self-harmonising with the freedom of his fellow-beings. The social principle therefore, apart from the forms it has taken, would be perfectly justified, if by nothing else, then by the need of society as a field of relations which afford to the individual his occasion for growing towards a greater perfection. We have indeed the old dogma that man was originally innocent and perfect; the conception of the first ideal state of mankind as a harmonious felicity of free and natural living in which no social law or compulsion existed because none was needed, is as old as the Mahabharata. But even this theory has to recognise a downward lapse of man from his natural perfection. The fall was not brought about by the introduction of the social principle in the arrangement of his life, but rather the social principle and the governmental method of compulsion had to be introduced as a result of the fall. If, on the contrary, we regard the evolution of man not as a fall from perfection but a gradual ascent, a growth out of the infrarational status of his being, it is clear that only by a social compulsion on the vital and physical instincts of his infrarational egoism, a subjection to the needs and laws of the social life, could this growth have been brought about on a large scale. For in their first crudeness the infrarational instincts do not correct themselves quite voluntarily without the pressure of need and compulsion, but only by the erection of a law other than their own which teaches them finally to erect a yet greater law within for their own correction and purification. The principle of social compulsion may not have been always or perhaps ever used quite wisely,it is a law of mans imperfection, imperfect in itself, and must always be imperfect in its method and result: but in the earlier stages of his evolution it was clearly inevitable, and until man has grown out of the causes of its necessity, he cannot be really ready for the anarchistic principle of living.
But it is at the same time clear that the more the outer law is replaced by an inner law, the nearer man will draw to his true and natural perfection. And the perfect social state must be one in which governmental compulsion is abolished and man is able to live with his fellow-man by free agreement and cooperation. But by what means is he to be made ready for this great and difficult consummation? Intellectual anarchism relies on two powers in the human being of which the first is the enlightenment of his reason; the mind of man, enlightened, will claim freedom for itself, but will equally recognise the same right in others. A just equation will of itself emerge on the ground of a true, self-found and unperverted human nature. This might conceivably be sufficient, although hardly without a considerable change and progress in mans mental powers, if the life of the individual could be lived in a predominant isolation with only a small number of points of necessary contact with the lives of others. Actually, our existence is closely knit with the existences around us and there is a common life, a common work, a common effort and aspiration without which humanity cannot grow to its full height and wideness. To ensure coordination and prevent clash and conflict in this constant contact another power is needed than the enlightened intellect. Anarchistic thought finds this power in a natural human sympathy which, if it is given free play under the right conditions, can be relied upon to ensure natural cooperation: the appeal is to what the American poet calls the love of comrades, to the principle of fraternity, the third and most neglected term of the famous revolutionary formula. A free equality founded upon spontaneous cooperation, not on governmental force and social compulsion, is the highest anarchistic ideal.
1.21 - FROM THE PRE-HUMAN TO THE ULTRA-HUMAN, THE PHASES OF A LIVING PLANET, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
explains the supersession in successive stages of arthropods by ver-
tebrates, of pisciforms by tetrapods, and finally within the tetrapod
1.21 - The Ascent of Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2:But as the scientific mind sought to extend to Life the mechanical principle proper to the existence and concealed mechanical consciousness in Matter, not seeing that a new principle has entered whose very reason of being is to subject to itself the mechanical, so the Darwinian formula was used to extend too largely the aggressive principle of Life, the vital selfishness of the individual, the instinct and process of self-preservation, selfassertion and aggressive living. For these two first states of Life contain in themselves the seeds of a new principle and another state which must increase in proportion as Mind evolves out of matter through the vital formula into its own law. And still more must all things change when as Life evolves upward towards Mind, so Mind evolves upward towards Supermind and Spirit. Precisely because the struggle for survival, the impulse towards permanence is contradicted by the law of death, the individual life is compelled, and used, to secure permanence rather for its species than for itself; but this it cannot do without the co-operation of others; and the principle of co-operation and mutual help, the desire of others, the desire of the wife, the child, the friend and helper, the associated group, the practice of association, of conscious joining and interchange are the seeds out of which flowers the principle of love. Let us grant that at first love may only be an extended selfishness and that this aspect of extended selfishness may persist and dominate, as it does still persist and dominate, in higher stages of the evolution: still as mind evolves and more and more finds itself, it comes by the experience of life and love and mutual help to perceive that the natural individual is a minor term of being and exists by the universal. Once this is discovered, as it is inevitably discovered by man the mental being, his destiny is determined; for he has reached the point at which Mind can begin to open to the truth that there is something beyond itself; from that moment his evolution, however obscure and slow, towards that superior something, towards Spirit, towards supermind, towards supermanhood is inevitably predetermined.
3:Therefore Life is predestined by its own nature to a third status, a third set of terms of its self-expression. If we examine this ascent of Life we shall see that the last terms of its actual evolution, the terms of that which we have called its third status, must necessarily be in appearance the very contradiction and opposite but in fact the very fulfilment and transfiguration of its first conditions. Life starts with the extreme divisions and rigid forms of Matter, and of this rigid division the atom, which is the basis of all material form, is the very type. The atom stands apart from all others even in its union with them, rejects death and dissolution under any ordinary force and is the physical type of the separate ego defining its existence against the principle of fusion in Nature. But unity is as strong a principle in Nature as division; it is indeed the master principle of which division is only a subordinate term, and to the principle of unity every divided form must therefore subordinate itself in one fashion or another by mechanical necessity, by compulsion, by assent or inducement. Therefore, if Nature for her own ends, in order principally to have a firm basis for her combinations and a fixed seed of forms, allows the atom ordinarily to resist the process of fusion by dissolution, she compels it to subserve the process of fusion by aggregation; the atom, as it is the first aggregate, is also the first basis of aggregate unities.
1.22 - THE END OF THE SPECIES, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
aggregation, human, stages of, 169E
agricultural groups, 170
1.23 - Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Moving with difficulty upward from Matter to spirit, this is perhaps a necessary stage of mans development. This was one principal reason of the failure of past attempts to spiritualise mankind, that they endeavoured to spiritualise at once the material man by a sort of rapid miracle, and though that can be done, the miracle is not likely to be of an enduring character if it overleaps the stages of his ascent and leaves the intervening levels untrodden and therefore unmastered. The endeavour may succeed with individuals,Indian thought would say with those who have made themselves ready in a past existence,but it must fail with the mass. When it passes beyond the few, the forceful miracle of the spirit flags; unable to transform by inner force, the new religion for that is what it becomestries to save by machinery, is entangled in the mechanical turning of its own instruments, loses the spirit and perishes quickly or decays slowly. That is the fate which overtakes all attempts of the vitalistic, the intellectual and mental, the spiritual endeavour to deal with material man through his physical mind chiefly or alone; the endeavour is overpowered by the machinery it creates and becomes the slave and victim of the machine. That is the revenge which our material Nature, herself mechanical, takes upon all such violent endeavours; she waits to master them by their concessions to her own law. If mankind is to be spiritualised, it must first in the mass cease to be the material or the vital man and become the psychic and the true mental being. It may be questioned whether such a mass progress or conversion is possible; but if it is not, then the spiritualisation of mankind as a whole is a chimera.
From this point of view it is an excellent thing, a sign of great promise, that the wheel of civilisation has been following its past and present curve upward from a solid physical knowledge through a successive sounding of higher and higher powers that mediate between Matter and Spirit. The human intellect in modern times has been first drawn to exhaust the possibilities of materialism by an immense dealing with life and the world upon the basis of Matter as the sole reality, Matter as the Eternal, Matter as the Brahman, anna brahma. Afterwards it had begun to turn towards the conception of existence as the large pulsation of a great evolving Life, the creator of Matter, which would have enabled it to deal with our existence on the basis of Life as the original reality, Life as the great Eternal, pro brahma. And already it has in germ, in preparation a third conception, the discovery of a great self-expressing and self-finding inner Mind other than our surface mentality as a master-power of existence, and that should lead towards a rich attempt to deal with our possibilities and our ways of living on the basis of Mind as the original reality, the great Eternal, mano brahma. It would also be a sign of promise if these conceptions succeeded each other with rapidity, with a large but swift evocation of the possibilities of each level; for that would show that there is a readiness in our subconscient Nature and that we need not linger in each stage for centuries.
1.23 - The Double Soul in Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1:THE FIRST status of Life we found to be characterised by a dumb inconscient drive or urge, a force of some involved will in the material or atomic existence, not free and possessor of itself or its works or their results, but entirely possessed by the universal movement in which it arises as the obscure unformed seed of individuality. The root of the second status is desire, eager to possess but limited in capacity; the bud of the third is Love which seeks both to possess and be possessed, to receive and to give itself; the fine flower of the fourth, its sign of perfection, we conceive as the pure and full emergence of the original will, the illumined fulfilment of the intermediate desire, the high and deep satisfaction of the conscious interchange of Love by the unification of the state of the possessor and possessed in the divine unity of souls which is the foundation of the supramental existence. If we scrutinise these terms carefully we shall see that they are shapes and stages of the soul's seeking for the individual and universal delight of things; the ascent of Life is in its nature the ascent of the divine Delight in things from its dumb conception in Matter through vicissitudes and opposites to its luminous consummation in Spirit.
2:The world being what it is, it could not be otherwise. For the world is a masked form of Sachchidananda, and the nature of the consciousness of Sachchidananda and therefore the thing in which His force must always find and achieve itself is divine Bliss, an omnipresent self-delight. Since Life is an energy of His conscious-force, the secret of all its movements must be a hidden delight inherent in all things which is at once cause, motive and object of its activities; and if by reason of egoistic division that delight is missed, if it is held back behind a veil, if it is represented as its own opposite, even as being is masked in death, consciousness figures as the inconscient and force mocks itself with the guise of incapacity, then that which lives cannot be satisfied, cannot either rest from the movement or fulfil the movement except by laying hold on this universal delight which is at once the secret total delight of its own being and the original, all-encompassing, all-informing, all-upholding delight of the transcendent and immanent Sachchidananda. To seek for delight is therefore the fundamental impulse and sense of Life; to find and possess and fulfil it is its whole motive.
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Thus we see that each of these illustrations serves a distinct purpose in establishing the stages of unreality. The realised sage finally declares that in the regenerate state the jagrat world also is found to be as unreal as the dream world is found to be in the jagrat state.
Each illustration should be understood in its proper context; it should not be studied as an isolated statement. It is a link in a chain.
1.25 - ADVICE TO PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Different stages of divine love
"Both negation and affirmation are ways to realize one and the same goal. Infinite are the opinions and infinite are the ways. But you must remember one thing. The injunction is that the path of devotion described by Nrada is best suited to the Kaliyuga. According to this path, first comes bhakti; then bhava, when bhakti is mature. Higher than bhava are mahabhava and prema. An ordinary mortal does not attain mahabhava and prema.
1.25 - Fascinations, Invisibility, Levitation, Transmutations, Kinks in Time, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Now for a douche of common sense. Hatha-Yoga is quite clear and simple, even logical, about it. The method is plain Pranayama. Didn't I tell you onetime of the Four stages of Success? 1. Perspiration of a very special kind. 2. Sukshma-Khumbakam: automatic rigidity. One stiffens like a dog in a bell-jar when you pump in Carbon Dioxide (is it?) 3. The Bhuchari-Siddhi, "jumping about like a frog." One is wafted, without one's Asana being disturbed, about the floor, rather as fragments of paper, or dry leaves, might be in a slight draught under the door. 4. If one is quite perfectly balanced one cannot be moved sideways; so one rises. And there you are!
Personally, I reached the Bhuchari-Siddhi quite a number of times; but I never observed No. 4. On several occasions other people have seen me levitated, though never to a height of more than a foot or so. Here is the best account of such an incident, of those at my immediate disposal.
1.27 - Structure of Mind Based on that of Body, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
He discovered, and he demonstrated, that the history of any animal throughout the course of its evolution is repeated in the stages of the individual. To put it crudely, the growth of a child from the fertilized ovum to the adult repeats the adventures of its species.
This doctrine is tremendously important, and I feel that I do not know how to emphasize it as it deserves. I want to be exceptionally accurate; yet the use of his meticulous scientific terms, with an armoury of quotations, would almost certainly result in your missing the point, "unable to see the wood for the trees."
1.28 - Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
15:Yet, as in our subliminal or inner Mind, so in this Mind also a larger power of communication and mutuality still remains, a freer play of mentality and sense than human mind possesses, and the Ignorance is not complete; a conscious harmony, an interdependent organisation of right relations is more possible: mind is not yet perturbed by blind Life forces or obscured by irresponsive Matter. It is a plane of Ignorance, but not yet of falsehood or error, - or at least the lapse into falsehood and error is not yet inevitable; this Ignorance is limitative, but not necessarily falsificative. There is limitation of knowledge, an organisation of partial truths, but not a denial or opposite of truth or knowledge. This character of an organisation of partial truths on a basis of separative knowledge persists in Life and subtle Matter, for the exclusive concentration of Consciousness-Force which puts them into separative action does not entirely sever or veil Mind from Life or Mind and Life from Matter. The complete separation can take place only when the stage of Inconscience has been reached and our world of manifold Ignorance arises out of that tenebrous matrix. These other still conscient stages of the involution are indeed organisations of Conscious Force in which each lives from his own centre, follows out his own possibilities, and the predominant principle itself, whether Mind, Life or Matter, works out things on its own independent basis; but what is worked out are truths of itself, not illusions or a tangle of truth and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance. But when by an exclusive concentration on Force and Form Consciousness-Force seems phenomenally to separate Consciousness from Force, or when it absorbs Consciousness in a blind sleep lost in Form and Force, then Consciousness has to struggle back to itself by a fragmentary evolution which necessitates error and makes falsehood inevitable. Nevertheless, these things too are not illusions that have sprung out of an original Non-Existence; they are, we might say, the unavoidable truths of a world born out of Inconscience. For the Ignorance is still in reality a knowledge seeking for itself behind the original mask of Inconscience; it misses and finds; its results, natural and even inevitable on their own line, are the true consequence of the lapse, - in a way, even, the right working of the recovery from the lapse. Existence plunging into an apparent Non-Existence, Consciousness into an apparent Inconscience, Delight of existence into a vast cosmic insensibility are the first result of the fall and, in the return from it by a struggling fragmentary experience, the rendering of Consciousness into the dual terms of truth and falsehood, knowledge and error, of Existence into the dual terms of life and death, of Delight of existence into the dual terms of pain and pleasure are the necessary process of the labour of self-discovery. A pure experience of Truth, Knowledge, Delight, imperishable existence would here be itself a contradiction of the truth of things. It could only be otherwise if all beings in the evolution were quiescently responsive to the psychic element within them and to the Supermind underlying Nature's operations; but here there comes in the Overmind law of each Force working out its own possibilities. The natural possibilities of a world in which an original Inconscience and a division of consciousness are the main principles, would be the emergence of Forces of Darkness impelled to maintain the Ignorance by which they live, an ignorant struggle to know originative of falsehood and error, an ignorant struggle to live engendering wrong and evil, an egoistic struggle to enjoy, parent of fragmentary joys and pains and sufferings; these are therefore the inevitable first-imprinted characters, though not the sole possibilities of our evolutionary existence. Still, because the Non-Existence is a concealed Existence, the Inconscience a concealed Consciousness, the insensibility a masked and dormant Ananda, these secret realities must emerge; the hidden Overmind and Supermind too must in the end fulfil themselves in this apparently opposite organisation from a dark Infinite.
16:Two things render that culmination more facile than it would otherwise be. Overmind in the descent towards material creation has originated modifications of itself, - Intuition especially with its penetrative lightning flashes of truth lighting up local points and stretches of country in our consciousness, - which can bring the concealed truth of things nearer to our comprehension, and, by opening ourselves more widely first in the inner being and then as a result in the outer surface self also to the messages of these higher ranges of consciousness, by growing into them, we can become ourselves also intuitive and overmental beings, not limited by the intellect and sense, but capable of a more universal comprehension and a direct touch of truth in its very self and body. In fact flashes of enlightenment from these higher ranges already come to us, but this intervention is mostly fragmentary, casual or partial; we have still to begin to enlarge ourselves into their likeness and organise in us the greater Truth activities of which we are potentially capable. But, secondly, Overmind, Intuition, even Supermind not only must be, as we have seen, principles inherent and involved in the Inconscience from which we arise in the evolution and inevitably destined to evolve, but are secretly present, occult actively with flashes of intuitive emergence in the cosmic activity of Mind, Life and Matter. It is true that their action is concealed and, even when they emerge, it is modified by the medium, material, vital, mental in which they work and not easily recognisable. Supermind cannot manifest itself as the Creator Power in the universe from the beginning, for if it did, the Ignorance and Inconscience would be impossible or else the slow evolution necessary would change into a rapid transformation scene. Yet at every step of the material energy we can see the stamp of inevitability given by a supramental creator, in all the development of life and mind the play of the lines of possibility and their combination which is the stamp of Overmind intervention. As Life and Mind have been released in Matter, so too must in their time these greater powers of the concealed Godhead emerge from the involution and their supreme Light descend into us from above.
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Thus we see that each of these illustrations serves a distinct purpose in establishing the stages of unreality. The realised sage finally declares that in the regenerate state the jagrat world also is found to be as unreal as the dream world is found to be in the jagrat state.
Each illustration should be understood in its proper context; it should not be studied as an isolated statement. It is a link in a chain.
1.3.04 - Peace, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To nobody does the divine calm and peace come uninterruptedly in the early stages of the Yoga - it comes little by little - it is sometimes absent for long periods together, or there are strong attacks which cloud it over. It is by long sadhana that one gets the permanent peace.
In the beginning the peace and calmness comes like that only for a short time. The Adhar cannot keep it, its own natural condition being different. But afterwards the power of holding increases until in some part of the being at least it is constant.
14.04 - More of Yajnavalkya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I told you there were four stages of life for an individual in the ancient Indian society. You complete one stage and then proceed to the next, and then to the next and so on. But they also say that you need not go through the stages gradually, step by step in this way; you can skip one or two stages in your stride if you have the capacity to do so; if you want the spiritual life when you are young, even when you have not gone through the worldly life, even then you can jump over, take a leap into the life of the sannysin. It is said the day you feel detached from your worldly home, then forthwith you may take to the life of the ascetic. It depends upon the urge in you, the insistence of the truth in you. A large freedom was given to all who really wanted a spiritual life.
I have said that Yajnavalkya had two wives. You did not ask me why: for to us moderns such a thing is not only immoral but inconvenient; it is however another story, a long story. In those days, those far-off early days of mankind, thousands and thousands, millions perhaps, of years ago, it was the law, die social custom and it became a duty, to have more than one wife and the relation too between man and woman was much freer and more loose. That was because, as you know, man started his earthly life at a certain stage of creation; before that stage there was no man, there were only animals. The earth was filled with animals, only animals, wild animals, ferocious animals, insects, worms, all kinds of ugly and dangerous creatures. Man came long, long after; he is almost a recent appearance. It was a mysterious, indeed a miraculous happening, how all of a sudden, out of or in the midst of animals there appeared a new creature, quite a different type of animal. Still in whatever way it happened, they were not many in number. The first creation of man must have been a very limited operation, limited in space, limited in number. Perhaps they sprouted up like mushrooms here and there, a hundred here, another hundred there, or perhaps a few thousands few and far between. So man led a dangerous and precarious life. All around him these animals, some too big, some too small to be tackled withstood against him, and Nature also was as wild and as much against him. So for self-preservation and survival they needed to be numerous, to increase in number as much as possible. It is exactly what is needed in war; the larger the number of troops, the greater the chance of winning the war. So the impulse in man, in the social aggregate was to have more men, increase the number, to streng then the extent and volume of the force to be able to fight successfully against the enemy. So a necessity became a religious duty to multiply, to procreate and redouble the race. In later days, even when the necessity was not so imperative, even then the habit and custom continued. To beget children was a praiseworthy thing, the more the number the greater the merit. Women who had numerous children were considered favourites of the gods. King Dasharatha had, it appears, a thousand wives, King Dhritarashtra had more than a hundred, Vashishtha had a hundred sons and King Sagar a thousand. Draupadi had five husbands and she was considered the ideal chaste woman.
15.04 - The Mother Abides, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The purpose and aim being not an individual realisation or even a realisation in a few individuals, but an achievement of the human race which means a large or a significant part of it, the effort has had to be directed to that end. The level of the human consciousness has to be lifted up to an extent that it might be capable of holding and embodying the inflatus that was coming into it for the change. Otherwise an individual representing the human level and forming part of the material consciousness would not be able to do it. Not only the earth consciousness but the material constitution of the earth has to be transfigured. For the human body to pass through and complete the stages of transformation must have parallel echoes in other individualsnot necessarily the whole of humanity, but as I said, presumably a sizeable part of it. Otherwise the purpose of the change, a global, collective change will not be fulfilled. An isolated individual supramentalised body upon earth would be a freak of Nature, a forced miracle as it were, an anomalous object in Nature, and a humanity even at its topmost rung would not find any relation or kinship with it.
So, the earth-nature has to be prepared for that end in view, first of all the earth-consciousness in the physical substance and then the raw substance itself. This has to be done as our immediate and urgent business of life.
1.55 - The Transference of Evil, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the hunting, pastoral, and agricultural stages of society; and I
have attempted to explain the motives which led men to adopt so
1913 07 21p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yet what patience is needed! How imperceptible the stages of progress!
Oh! how I call Thee from the very depths of my heart, True Light, Sublime Love, Divine Master who art the source of our light and of our living, our guide and our protector, the Soul of our soul and the Life of our life, the Reason of our being, the supreme Knowledge, the immutable Peace!
1914 07 31p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seems to me that Thou wouldst make me taste successively all the experiences which are ordinarily put at the summit of a Yoga as its culmination and the proof of its perfect accomplishment. The experience is striking, intense, complete; it carries within it the knowledge of all its effects, all its consequences; it is conscious, willed, the result of methodical effort and not of unexpected chance; and yet it is always single of its kind, like milestones set along a route which are separated from each other by a long ribbon of road; and, moreover, these milestones which mark the infinite ascent are never alike; they are always new and seem to have no connection one with the other. Will a time come when Thou wilt make this being capable of synthetising all these countless experiences so as to draw from them a new realisation, more complete and more beautiful than all achieved so far? I do not know. But Thou hast taught me not to regret an exceptional state when it disappears any more than I desire it before it comes. I see in the disappearance no longer the sign of an instability in the progress made, but the evidence of a march which goes deliberately forward without stopping any longer than is indispensable for the various stages of the road.
Each time Thou teachest me yet a little better that the means of manifestation is limited only because we think it so, and that it can effectively partake of Thy infinitude; each time something of Thy immensity makes itself kin to the instrument which is its dwelling-place, flinging wide the doors which open on boundless horizons.
1929-04-28 - Offering, general and detailed - Integral Yoga - Remembrance of the Divine - Reading and Yoga - Necessity, predetermination - Freedom - Miracles - Aim of creation, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the initial stages of Yoga, is it well for the Sadhaka to read ordinary books?
You can read sacred books and yet be far away from the Divine; and you can read the most stupid productions and be in touch with the Divine. It is not possible to get an idea of what the transformed consciousness and its movements are until you have had a taste of the transformation. There is a way of consciousness in union with the Divine in which you can enjoy all you read, as you can all you observe, even the most indifferent books or the most uninteresting things. You can hear poor music, even music from which one would like to run away, and yet you can, not for its outward self but because of what is behind, enjoy it. You do not lose the distinction between good music and bad music, but you pass through either into that which it expresses. For there is nothing in the world which has not its ultimate truth and support in the Divine. And if you are not stopped by the appearance, physical or moral or aesthetic, but get behind and are in touch with the Spirit, the Divine Soul in things, you can reach beauty and delight even through what affects the ordinary sense only as something poor, painful or discordant.
1951-02-26 - On reading books - gossip - Discipline and realisation - Imaginary stories- value of - Private lives of big men - relaxation - Understanding others - gnostic consciousness, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the initial stages of Yoga, is it well for the Sadhaka to read ordinary books?
Questions and Answers 1929 (28 April)
1951-03-24 - Descent of Divine Love, of Consciousness - Earth- a symbolic formation - the Divine Presence - The psychic being and other worlds - Divine Love and Grace - Becoming consaious of Divine Love - Finding ones psychic being - Responsibility, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The gradual formation of the different stages of being, from the Supreme to the most material region, is subsequent to the Inconscient. When, precisely, the Consciousness began its creation (dont take what I say quite literally as though it were a little history of another country, for it is not that, I am trying to make you understand, thats all), the first manifestation of the creative Consciousness was just an emanation of consciousnessof conscious lightand when this emanation separated itself from its origin, the Inconscient was born, through opposition (how to put it? yes, really through opposition. Consequently, the birth of the Inconscient is prior to the formation of the world, and it was only when the perception came that the whole universe was going to be created uselessly that there was a call and Divine Love plunged into the Inconscient to change it into consciousness. Therefore, it can be said that the formation of the material worlds as we know them is the result of the descent of the supreme Consciousness into the Inconscient. It cannot be said that there was something prior to that, things as we know them in the material world ( I apologise for the ambiguity of my words, but you understand one cannot express these things in our usual words).
The formation of the earth as we know it, this infinitesimal point in the immense universe, was made precisely in order to concentrate the effort of transformation upon one point; it is like a symbolic point created in the universe to make it possible, while working directly upon one point, to radiate it over the entire universe.
1953-06-17, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Have you ever seen a tree growing, a palm tree? There is one in the Ashram courtyard, in the Samadhi courtyard, quite close to the door by which you come up every day, have you never seen how it grows? This tree, you know, is some forty, forty-five or fifty years old perhaps. You see how small it is. These trees can become even much taller than the building. They can live several hundred years, easily, in their natural state, if there is no accident. Have you never seen what it does? I see it from above. It is quite pretty. It happens once a year. At first, you see a kind of small brown ball. Then this small brown ball begins to grow and becomes slightly lighter in colour, less deep. Little by little, you see that it is made of a mass of somewhat complex small lines, with their tips bent inward, as though turned back upon themselves; and that begins to grow, it comes out, becomes more and more limpid, until it begins to turn green, a little pale yellowish green and it takes the form of the bishops cross. Then you see it multiplying and separating; it is yet a little brown, a little queer (almost like you), something like a caterpillar. And suddenly, it is as though it sprang out, it leaps forth. It is pale green; it is frail. It has a delightful colour. It leng thens out. This lasts for a day or two; and then on the following day there are leaves. These leaves I have never counted, I do not know how many they are. Every time there is a new range of leaves. They remain very pale; they are exquisite. They are like a little child, with that something tender, pretty and graceful a child has. And you have still the feeling that it is fragile; and indeed, if it receives a blow, it is spoilt for life. It is very frail, but it is delightfully tender. It has its charm and you say: But why does not Nature remain like that? The following morning pluff! they are separated, they are bright green, they look wonderful with all the strength and force of youth, a magnificent brilliant green. It should stop therenot at all. It continues. Then comes the dust, the deterioration from people who pass by. So it begins to fall, to become yellowish, another kind of yellow, the yellow of dryness until it is completely withered and falls away. It is replaced by the trunk. Every year the trunk increases a little. And it will take several hundred years to reach the end. But every year, it repeats the same thing, passes through all the stages of beauty, charm, attractiveness and you say: But why does it not stop there? And the next minute, it is something else. You cannot say it is better, but it is different. And so it passes from one thing to another through all the stages of flowering. Then the accidents begin; with the accidents comes deterioration, and with deterioration there is death.
It is like that. But accidents are not indispensable. And even what looks like death helps in the growth of the tree. One sheds off something, but its in order to grow again and have something more. One must be able to keep the harmony and the beauty till the end. There is no reason why one should have a body which has no longer any purpose in being, in existing; because it would no longer be good for anything. To be no longer good for anything, that is exactly what makes it disappear. One could have a body that grows from perfection to perfection. There are many things in the body that make you say: Ah, if it were like that! Ah, I would like it to be thus! (I am not speaking of your character, for there are so many things that need changing; I am speaking only of your physical appearance). You see some disharmony somewhere and you say: If this disharmony disappeared, how much better would it be! But why dont you think that it could be done? If you look at yourself in quite an objective waynot with that sort of attachment one has for ones little person, but quite objectively, you look at yourself as you would look at another person and tell yourself: But this thing is not altogether in harmony with that, and if you look yet more closely, it becomes very interesting: you discover that this disharmony is the expression of a defect in your character. It is because in your character there is something a bit twisted, not quite harmonious, and in your body this is reproduced somewhere. You try to arrange it in your body and you find out that to get back to the source of this physical disharmony, you have to find out the defect in your inner being. And then you begin to work and the result is obtained.
1954-06-02 - Learning how to live - Work, studies and sadhana - Waste of the Energy and Consciousness, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One is usually shut up in a shell and becomes aware of other shells only when there is a shock or friction. But the consciousness of the circulating Force, of the interdependence of beingsthis is a very rare thing. It is one of the indispensable stages of sadhana.
Mother, cant one study for the Divine?
1954-06-23 - Meat-eating - Story of Mothers vegetable garden - Faithfulness - Conscious sleep, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As for these stages of sleep which are spoken about here, if one is conscious of ones nights, one can cover them in a few minutes. One does not need to wait for hours of sleep to do this, you understand; if one is conscious, one can pass through all that in a few minutes. To begin with, when one is conscious of ones nights, the first thing to do before falling fast asleep, just in the state when one begins to relax, relax all ones nerves I have explained this to you already, one relaxes all the nerves and lets oneself go like this you knowwell, at that moment, one must relax very carefully all mental activity and make that quiet, as quiet as possible, and not go off to sleep until the mind is quite calm. Then you escape quite a long period of useless excitement which is extremely tiring. If you can so manage that the mind relaxes and enters into a complete peace first, your sleep will immediately become very peaceful and very refreshing; naturally, your vital must not be in a turmoil, for then, in that case, it will take you into all sorts of places and make you commit all kinds of stupidities, and the result will be that you will wake up even more tired than when you went to sleep.
But if you are conscious, after having calmed your vital, when you begin to come out from your physical consciousness and enter a more subtle consciousness, you put your vital to sleep, you say to it, Rest now, keep very quiet, and then you enter your mental activity and say to the mind, Rest now, remain very quiet, and you put it to sleep also; and then you come out of the mind into a higher region, and there, if it begins to interest you, for instance, if it is the first time you have gone there, you may look at what is happening, have your experience, learn thingsat times one learns very interesting things; and then, sometimes one can become aware of a certain general state also, have ideas about other people, other things; it is interesting! And later, if you have had enough of this, you say, Keep quiet, sleep, dont move, and you put that to sleep, and rise to a still higher consciousness, and so on, till you reach a state where you are on the borders of form, I am not speaking of physical formon the borders of all form, much higher than the form of thought, naturally; on the borders of all form and all vibration, in the perfect silence, what here we call Sachchidananda. And when you are there, everything stops, all vibrations subside, and if you remain there just three minutes, you come back to your body absolutely rested, refreshed, fortified, as though you had slept for hours! This is something one can learn to do. I dont say it can be done overnight, a little work is necessary and also some persistence, but still this one must learn to do; and when you are very anxious, very tired, very for instance, when you have just undergone violent attacks from hostile forces in one form or another and are very tired, if you follow this process consciously, well, within a few minutes all that disappears completely. It is something worth learning. Only, one must be very, very, very persevering, for Wait a bit, I am going to tell you something more about it.
1955-10-05 - Science and Ignorance - Knowledge, science and the Buddha - Knowing by identification - Discipline in science and in Buddhism - Progress in the mental field and beyond it, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But how can these final conversions be sufficiently multiplied so as to succeed in making the world disappear? This seems impossible, because the process is progressive and one must pass through all the stages of conscious life until one comes to the state when he is ready to take flight into Nirvana. And so, during all this time, what happens to all these poor people, not only to people but to animals also and to plants, to all this life which suffers and struggles and strains? So, even deprived of all hope because at least the scientists tell you, We are going to find the means of making life more comfortable for you. They dont seem to have discovered this very well, because this kind of comfort complicates life and doesnt make it more pleasant. Still at least they give you a gleam of hope, while the other tells you, Wait, wait. When your turn comes you will pass over to the other side. But while waiting one is not happy. So perhaps it could be said that this way of approaching the problem is not altogether satisfactory, for it is a purely and exclusively mental way, and can satisfy only those who have a mental life, and they do not form the majority. Besides, this is what has caused all religions to be vulgarised, even those which had at the start something very high and very true to give; they have been obliged to reduce it to the proportion of the human consciousness. For humanity suffers and it is not with beautiful ideas that it is cured.
Something else is necessary. This perhaps we shall see at the end when we come to it. For the moment
1956-02-15 - Nature and the Master of Nature - Conscious intelligence - Theory of the Gita, not the whole truth - Surrender to the Lord - Change of nature, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the passage of The Synthesis of Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 91) the Mother had just read, Sri Aurobindo expounds the traditional distinction between Purusha and Prakriti, the Master of Nature and Nature, and describes the different stages of immersion of the Master of Nature in Nature, or of the soul in the activities of the world; then he shows the traditional path of the liberation of the spirit, which rises above Nature and becomes once again the Master of Nature.
***
1956-06-06 - Sign or indication from books of revelation - Spiritualised mind - Stages of sadhana - Reversal of consciousness - Organisation around central Presence - Boredom, most common human malady, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:1956-06-06 - Sign or indication from books of revelation - Spiritualised mind - stages of sadhana - Reversal of consciousness - Organisation around central Presence - Boredom, most common human malady
author class:The Mother
1956-06-27 - Birth, entry of soul into body - Formation of the supramental world - Aspiration for progress - Bad thoughts - Cerebral filter - Progress and resistance, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, it is very exceptional, after all, in the great mass of humanity, that a conscious soul incarnates voluntarily. It is something very unusual. I have already told you that when a soul is conscious, fully formed, and wants to incarnate, usually from its psychic plane it looks for a corresponding psychic light at a certain place upon earth. Besides, during its previous incarnation, before going away, before leaving the earth-atmosphere, usually as a result of the experience it had in the life that is coming to an end, the soul chooses more or lessnot in all details but broadly the conditions of its future life. But these are exceptional cases. Possibly we could speak of it for ourselves here, but for the majority, the vast majority of men, even those who are educated, it is out of the question. And what comes then is a psychic being in formation, more or less formed, and there are all the stages of formation from the spark which becomes a little light to the fully formed being, and this extends over thousands of years. This ascent of the soul to become a conscious being having its own will, capable of determining the choice of its own life, takes thousands of years.
So, you are thinking of a soul which would say, No, I refuse this body, I am going to look for another? I dont say it is impossibleeverything is possible. It does happen, in fact, that children are still-born, which means that there was no soul to incarnate in them. But it may be for other reasons also; it may be for reasons of malformation only; one cant say. I dont say it is impossible, but generally, when a conscious and free soul chooses to take a body on earth again, even before its birth it works on this body. So it has no reason not to accept even the inconveniences which may result from the ignorance of the parents; for it has chosen the place for a reason which was not one of ignorance: it saw a light there it might have been simply the light of a possibility, but there was a light and that is why it has come there. So, it is all very well to say, Ah! no, I dont like it, but where would it go to choose another it likes? That may happen, I dont say it is impossible, but it cannot happen very often. For, when from the psychic plane the soul looks at the earth and chooses the place for its next birth, it chooses it with sufficient discernment not to be altogether grossly mistaken.
1957-05-29 - Progressive transformation, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It might be also that the transformation might take place by stages; there are powers of the nature still belonging to the mental region which are yet potentialities of a growing gnosis lifted beyond our human mentality and partaking of the light and power of the Divine and an ascent through these planes, a descent of them into the mental being might seem to be the natural evolutionary course. But in practice it might be found that these intermediate levels would not be sufficient for the total transformation since, being themselves illumined potentialities of mental being not yet supramental in the full sense of the word, they could bring down to the mind only a partial divinity or raise the mind towards that but not effectuate its elevation into the complete supramentality of the truth-consciousness. Still these levels might become stages of the ascent which some would reach and pause there while others went higher and could reach and live on superior strata of a semi-divine existence. It is not to be supposed that all humanity would rise in a block into the supermind.
The Supramental Manifestation, SABCL, Vol. 16, pp. 20-22
1957-10-30 - Double movement of evolution - Disappearance of a species, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo told us last week that this Nature was following an ascending progression in order to manifest more and more the divine consciousness contained in all forms. So, with each new form that it produces, Nature makes a form capable of expressing more completely the spirit which this form contains. But if it were like this, a form comes, develops, reaches its highest point and is followed by another form; the others do not disappear, but the individual does not progress. The individual dog or monkey, for instance, belongs to a species which has its own peculiar characteristics; when the monkey or the man arrives at the height of its possibilities, that is, when a human individual becomes the best type of humanity, it will be finished; the individual will not be able to progress any farther. He belongs to the human species, he will continue to belong to it. So, from the point of view of terrestrial history there is a progress, for each species represents a progress compared with the preceding species; but from the point of view of the individual, there is no progress: he is born, he follows his development, dies and disappears. Therefore, to ensure the progress of the individual, it was necessary to find another means; this one was not adequate. But within the individual, contained in each form, there is an organisation of consciousness which is closer to and more directly under the influence of the inner divine Presence, and the form which is under this influencethis kind of inner concentration of energyhas a life independent of the physical formthis is what we generally call the soul or the psychic being and since it is organised around the divine centre it partakes of the divine nature which is immortal, eternal. The outer body falls away, and this remains throughout every experience that it has in each life, and there is a progress from life to life, and it is the progress of the same individual. And this movement complements the other, in the sense that instead of a species which progresses relative to other species, it is an individual who passes through all the stages of progress of these species and can continue to progress even when the species have reached the limit of their possibilities and stay there or disappearit depends on the case but they cannot go any farther, whereas the individual, having a life independent of the purely material form, can pass from one form to another and continue his progress indefinitely. That makes a double movement which completes itself. And that is why each individual has the possibility of reaching the utmost realisation, independent of the form to which he momentarily belongs.
There are people there used to be and there still are, I believewho say they remember their past lives and recount what happened when they were dogs or elephants or monkeys, and tell you stories in great detail about what happened to them. I am not going to argue with them, but anyway this illustrates the fact that before being a man, one could have been a monkeyperhaps one doesnt have the power to remember it, thats another matter but certainly, this inner divine spark has passed through successive forms in order to become more and more conscious of itself. And if it is proved that one can remember the form one had before becoming a psychic being as it is found in the human form, well, one might very well recollect climbing trees and eating coconuts and even playing all sorts of tricks on the traveller passing beneath!
1958-04-16 - The superman - New realisation, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the previous stages of the evolution Natures first care and effort had to be directed towards a change in the physical organisation, for only so could there be a change of consciousness; this was a necessity imposed by the insufficiency of the force of consciousness already in formation to effect a change in the body. But in man a reversal is possible, indeed inevitable; for it is through his consciousness, through its transmutation and no longer through a new bodily organism as a first instrumentation that the evolution can and must be effected. In the inner reality of things a change of consciousness was always the major fact, the evolution has always had a spiritual significance and the physical change was only instrumental; but this relation was concealed by the first abnormal balance of the two factors, the body of the external Inconscience outweighing and obscuring in importance the spiritual element, the conscious being. But once the balance has been righted, it is no longer the change of body that must precede the change of consciousness; the consciousness itself by its mutation will necessitate and operate whatever mutation is needed for the body. It has to be noted that the human mind has already shown a capacity to aid Nature in the evolution of new types of plant and animal; it has created new forms of its environment, developed by knowledge and discipline considerable changes in its own mentality. It is not an impossibility that man should aid Nature consciously also in his own spiritual and physical evolution and transformation. The urge to it is already there and partly effective, though still incompletely understood and accepted by the surface mentality; but one day it may understand, go deeper within itself and discover the means, the secret energy, the intended operation of the Consciousness-Force within which is the hidden reality of what we call Nature.
If a spiritual unfolding on earth is the hidden truth of our birth into Matter, if it is fundamentally an evolution of consciousness that has been taking place in Nature, then man as he is cannot be the last term of that evolution: he is too imperfect an expression of the Spirit, Mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; Mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and Supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind is capable of opening to what exceeds it, then there is no reason why man himself should not arrive at Supermind and supermanhood or at least lend his mentality, life and body to an evolution of that greater term of the Spirit manifesting in Nature.
1958-05-07 - The secret of Nature, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the earliest stages of evolutionary Nature we are met by the dumb secrecy of her inconscience; there is no revelation of any significance or purpose in her works, no hint of any other principles of being than that first formulation which is her immediate preoccupation and seems to be for ever her only business: for in her primal works Matter alone appears, the sole dumb and stark cosmic reality. A Witness of creation, if there had been one conscious but uninstructed, would only have seen appearing out of a vast abyss of an apparent non-existence an Energy busy with the creation of Matter, a material world and material objects, organising the infinity of the Inconscient into the scheme of a boundless universe or a system of countless universes that stretched around him into Space without any certain end or limit, a tireless creation of nebulae and star-clusters and suns and planets, existing only for itself, without a sense in it, empty of cause or purpose. It might have seemed to him a stupendous machinery without a use, a mighty meaningless movement, an aeonic spectacle without a witness, a cosmic edifice without an inhabitant; for he would have seen no sign of an indwelling Spirit, no being for whose delight it was made. A creation of this kind could only be the outcome of an inconscient Energy or an illusion-cinema, a shadow-play or puppet-play of forms reflected on a superconscient indifferent Absolute. He would have seen no evidence of a soul and no hint of Mind or Life in this immeasurable and interminable display of Matter. It would not have seemed to him possible or imaginable that there could at all be in this desert universe for ever inanimate and insensible an outbreak of teeming life, a first vibration of something occult and incalculable, alive and conscious, a secret spiritual entity feeling its way towards the surface.
The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 848-49
I did not understand this sentence, Sweet Mother: In the earliest stages of evolutionary Nature we are met by the dumb secrecy of her inconscience. What is this secrecy, Sweet Mother?
The intention of Nature? It is what Sri Aurobindo has said from the beginning, that, hidden in the depths, at the core of matter, there is the Divine Presence and that the whole terrestrial evolution is made to prepare the return of the creation to its origin, to this Divine Presence which is at the centre of everything that is the intention of Nature.
1960 11 12? - 49, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you rise high enough, you find yourself at the heart of all things. And what is manifest in this heart can manifest in all things. That is the great secret, the secret of the divine incarnation in an individual form, because in the normal course of things what manifests at the centre is realised in the external form only with the awakening and the response of the will in the individual form. Whereas if the central Will is represented constantly and permanently in an individual being, this individual being can serve as an intermediary between this Will and all beings, and will for them. Everything this individual being perceives and offers in his consciousness to the supreme Will is answered as if it came from each individual being. And if for any reason the individual elements have a more or less conscious and voluntary relation with that representative being, their relation increases the efficacy, the effectiveness of the representative individual; and thus the supreme Action can act in Matter in a much more concrete and permanent manner. That is the reason for these descents of consciousness which we may describe as polarised, for they always come to earth with a definite purpose and for a special realisation, with a missiona mission which is decided upon, determined before the incarnation. These are the great stages of the supreme incarnations on earth.
And when the day comes for the manifestation of supreme love, for the crystallised, concentrated descent of supreme love, that will truly be the hour of transformation. For nothing will be able to resist That.
1963 08 10, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
93-Pain is the touch of our Mother teaching us how to hear and grow in rapture. She has three stages of her schooling, endurance first, next equality of soul, last ecstasy.
As far as moral things are concerned, this is absolutely obvious, it is indisputableall moral suffering moulds your character and leads you straight to ecstasy, when you know how to take it. But when it comes to the body
1970 03 25, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I would like You to explain to me the four stages of pain which Sri Aurobindo speaks of here.
If Sri Aurobindo is speaking of moral pain, of any kind, I can say from experience that the four stages he mentions correspond to four states of consciousness which are the result of inner development and the degree of union with the divine consciousness which the individual consciousness has achieved. When the union is perfect, there only remains a fiercer form of delight.
1f.lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
various stages of that story in their proper order. Some of the vast
rooms were independent units so far as their designs were concerned,
--
ourselves to the scene as it had been at various stages of the regions
age-long, aeon-dead history; so that we were able to sketch a hasty but
1f.lovecraft - Discarded Draft of, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
their final stages of manufacture. Some of the half-tone pictures of
them interested me profoundly, for the strangeness and beauty of the
1f.lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
remarking the piles of coffins in various stages of damage and
shuddering violently at two or three of the few coffin-plates he could
1f.lovecraft - The Curse of Yig, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
stages of the journey, too, there were no Indian snake-legends to
trouble him; for the transplanted tribes from the southeast do not
1f.lovecraft - The Disinterment, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
room in various stages of completion and preservation, I felt there was
enough evidence to blast his soul without my aid. Andrews had gone too
1f.lovecraft - The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
various stages of departure from their primal state. Carter put out of
the way certain things which were after a fashion alive, and fled
--
helped greatly in the earlier stages of the combat. Then, when the
western battle was over, the victorious survivors hastened across to
1f.lovecraft - The Festival, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
faced. At certain stages of the ritual they did grovelling obeisance,
especially when he held above his head that abhorrent Necronomicon he
1f.lovecraft - The Horror at Red Hook, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
rum and prohibited aliens through diverse stages of lawlessness and
obscure vice to murder and mutilation in their most abhorrent guises.
1f.lovecraft - The Horror in the Burying-Ground, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
and in various stages of decay. Normal life is found only around Pecks
general store and filling-station, and it is here that the curious stop
1f.lovecraft - The Hound, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
of all shapes, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.
There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and
1f.lovecraft - The Nameless City, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
stages of the painted epicthe leave-taking of the race that had dwelt
in the nameless city and the valley around for ten million years; the
1f.lovecraft - The Shadow out of Time, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
stages of wear and disintegration. Most of these were carven megaliths
with curved tops and bottoms. A minority were smaller, flatter,
1f.lovecraft - The Shadow over Innsmouth, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
in varying stages of ruin. Then I noticed a few inhabited houses with
rags stuffed in the broken windows and shells and dead fish lying about
1f.lovecraft - The Temple, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
architecture, and in various stages of preservation. Most appeared to
be of marble, gleaming whitely in the rays of the searchlight, and the
1f.lovecraft - Through the Gates of the Silver Key, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
waves, and all stages of growth in each one of these beings, are merely
manifestations of one archetypal and eternal being in the space outside
1f.lovecraft - Under the Pyramids, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
heads of animals in imitation of the elder gods. At all stages of
history the sacred animals were mummified, so that consecrated bulls,
--
landing above the titanic aperture. This placed the last stages of my
crawl at some distance from the noisome herd, though the spectacle
1.kt - A Song on the View of Voidness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Thupten Jinpa & Jas Elsner Original Language Tibetan Homage to the Adamantine Mind! Dharma king, you who have realized the essence; you who expound the way of being, out of compassion: king Buddha Samdrup, I bow to you in my heart, pray listen to me. Through your kind and skillful means, by a habit long formed, and as a fruit of long practice in this life, I have realized the nature of ever-presence. When the secret of appearance is revealed, everything arises in a tone of voidness, undefined by the marks of identity. Like a sky that is nothing but an image. When the secret of thoughts is revealed, though active, they are but mind's sport, naked reflections of transcendent mind unsullied by deliberation and correction. When the secret of recollection is revealed, every memory is but an illumination of self-knowledge in the ever-present state, untainted by ego consciousness. When the secret of illusions is revealed, they seem nothing but the primordial state, appearing in the visual field of rikpa, untouched by the dualism of mind and things. When the secret of abiding is revealed, you are in the state of self-cognition, however long you remain, free of elaboration, the expanse unstained by laxity and torpor. When the secret of mobility is revealed, however much you move, you remain within clear light, unstained by distraction, excitement, and so on, a true self-recognizer. When the secret of samsara is revealed, however often one may circle, the cycles are illusion unaffected by joy and pain. This is the realization of Buddha's four bodies. When the secret of peace is revealed, however tranquil one's attainments, they are but an image; this is the natural pure space, free of the signs of being and nonbeing. When the secret of birth is revealed, however one's reborn, it's but an emanation; meditation's vision of pure self-generation free of clinging and apprehensions. When the secret of death is revealed, however often one may die, it's but the vision of the ultimate, the stages of completion perfect, free of any karmic deeds. When the secret of bliss is revealed, its intensity cannot be bettered; this is the state of spontaneous bliss, free of all traces of contamination. When the secret of luminosity is revealed, however bright, it's but an empty form -- mother image of the void in space, free of every multiplicity. When the secret of emptiness is revealed, though empty, it is the unsurpassed, devoid of every contingent stain, and free from every deception. When the secret of the view is revealed, however much one looks and sees, the world remains beyond thought and word -- the expanse beyond dichotomies. When the secret of meditation is revealed, however much one meditates, it's but a state -- undistracted, and in natural restfulness, free of exertion and constraint. When the secret of action is revealed, whatever one does are the six perfections -- spontaneous, free, and to the point, uncolored by strictures and moral codes. When the secret of fruition is revealed, achievements are but the cognition of mind as dharmakaya, the mind itself free of hope and fear. This is the profound innermost secret; guru's blessings have entered my heart; naked nonduality dawns within; the secret of samsara and nirvana is revealed! I have beheld the face of the ordinary mind; I have arrived at the view that is free of extremes; even if the Buddha came in person now, I have no queries that require his advice! This song on the view of voidness expounding the nature of the being of all, spoken in words inspired by conviction, was sung in a voice echoing itself, unobstructed, in between meditation sessions. [1585.jpg] -- from Songs of Spiritual Experience: Tibetan Buddhist Poems of Insight & Awakening, Translated by Thupten Jinpa / Translated by Jas Elsner
1.poe - Eureka - A Prose Poem, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Let us now, expanding our conceptions, look upon each of these system as in itself an atom; which in fact it is, when we consider it as but one of the countless myriads of systems which constitute the Universe. Regarding all, then, as but colossal atoms, each with the same ineradicable tendency to Unity which characterizes the actual atoms of which it consists -we enter at once upon a new order of aggregations. The smaller systems, in the vicinity of a larger one, would, inevitably, be drawn into still closer vicinity. A thousand would assemble here; a million there -perhaps here, again, even a billion -leaving, thus, immeasurable vacancies in space. And if, now, it be demanded why, in the case of these systems -of these merely Titanic atoms -I speak, simply, of an "assemblage," and not, as in the case of the actual atoms, of a more or less consolidated agglomeration: -if it be asked, for instance, why I do not carry what I suggest to its legitimate conclusion, and describe, at once, these assemblages of system-atoms as rushing to consolidation in spheres -as each becoming condensed into one magnificent sun -my reply is that mellonta tauta -I am but pausing, for a moment, on the awful threshold of the Future. For the present, calling these assemblages "clusters," we see them in the incipient stages of their consolidation. Their absolute consolidation is to come.
We have now reached a point from which we behold the Universe as a spherical space, interspersed, unequably, with clusters. It will be noticed that I here prefer the adverb "unequably" to the phrase "with a merely general equability," employed before. It is evident, in fact, that the equability of distribution will diminish in the ratio of the agglomerative processes -that is to say, as the things distributed diminish in number. Thus the increase of in equability an increase which must continue until, sooner or later an epoch will arrive at which the largest agglomeration will absorb all the others -should be viewed as, simply, a corroborative indication of the tendency to One.
1.rb - Pauline, A Fragment of a Question, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
Who chronicled the stages of all life,
And so thou bad'st me shadow this first stage.
2.01 - Habit 1 Be Proactive, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
When Carol was in the very last stages of the disease, Sandra spent time at her bedside helping her write her personal history. She returned from those protracted and difficult sessions almost transfixed by admiration for her friend's courage and her desire to write special messages to be given to her children at different stages in their lives.
Carol would take as little pain-killing medication as possible so that she had full access to her mental and emotional faculties. Then she would whisper into a tape recorder or to Sandra directly as she took notes. Carol was so proactive, so brave, and so concerned about others that she became an enormous source of inspiration to many people around her.
2.01 - The Object of Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2:The traditional systems, whatever their other differences, all proceed on the belief or the perception that the Eternal and Absolute can only be or at least can only inhabit a pure transcendent state of non-cosmic existence or else a non-existence. All cosmic existence or all that we call existence is a state of ignorance. Even the highest individual perfection, even the blissful cosmic condition is no better than a supreme ignorance. All that is individual, all that is cosmic has to be austerely renounced by the seeker of the absolute Truth. The supreme quiescent Self or else the absolute Nihil is the sole Truth, the only object of spiritual knowledge. The state of knowledge, the consciousness other than this temporal that we must attain is Nirvana, an extinction of ego, a cessation of all mental, vital and physical activities, of all activities whatsoever, a supreme illumined quiescence, the pure bliss of an impersonal tranquillity self-absorbed and ineffable. The means are meditation, concentration excluding all things else, a total loss of the mind in its object. Action is permissible only in the first stages of the search in order to purify the seeker and make him morally and temperamentally a fit vessel for the knowledge. Even this action must either be confined to the performance of the rites of worship and the prescribed duties of life rigorously ordained by the Hindu Shastra or, as in the Buddhistic discipline, must be guided along the eight-fold path to the supreme practice of the works of compassion which lead towards the practical annihilation of self in the good of others. In the end, in any severe and pure Jnanayoga, all works must be abandoned for an entire quiescence. Action may prepare salvation, it cannot give it. Any continued adherence to action is incompatible with the highest progress and may be an insuperable obstacle to the attainment of the spiritual goal. The supreme state of quiescence is the very opposite of action and cannot be attained by those who persist in works. And even devotion, love, worship are disciplines for the unripe soul, are at best the best methods of the Ignorance. For they are offered to something other, higher and greater than ourselves; but in the supreme knowledge there can be no such thing, since there is either only one self or no self at all and therefore either no one to do the worship and offer the love and devotion or no one to receive it. Even thought-activity must disappear in the sole consciousness of identity or of nothingness and by its own quiescence bring about the quiescence of the whole nature. The absolute Identical alone must remain or else the eternal Nihil.
3:This pure Jnanayoga comes by the intellect, although it ends in the transcendence of the intellect and its workings. The thinker in us separates himself from all the rest of what we phenomenally are, rejects the heart, draws back from the life and the senses, separates from the body that he may arrive at his own exclusive fulfilment in that which is beyond even himself and his function. There is a truth that underlies, as there is an experience that seems to justify, this attitude. There is an Essence that is in its nature a quiescence, a supreme of Silence in the Being that is beyond its own development and mutations, immutable and therefore superior to all activities of which it is at most a Witness. And in the hierarchy of our psychological functions the Thought is in a way nearest to this Self, nearest at least to its aspect of the all-conscious knower who regards all activities but can stand back from them all. The heart, will and other powers in us are fundamentally active, turn naturally towards action, find through it their fulfilment, -although they also may automatically arrive at a certain quiescence by fullness of satisfaction in their activities or else by a reverse process of exhaustion through perpetual disappointment and dissatisfaction. The thought too is an active power, but is more capable of arriving at quiescence by its own conscious choice and will. The thought is more easily content with the illumined intellectual perception of this silent Witness Self that is higher than all our activities and, that immobile Spirit once seen, is ready, deeming its mission of truth-finding accomplished, to fall at rest arid become itself immobile. For in its most characteristic movement it is itself apt to be a disinterested witness, judge, observer of things more than an eager participant and passionate labourer in the work and can arrive very readily at a spiritual or philosophic calm and detached aloofness. And since men are mental beings, thought, if not truly their best and highest, is at least their most constant, normal and effective means for enlightening their ignorance. Armed with its functions of gathering and reflection, meditation, fixed contemplation, the absorbed dwelling of the mind on its object, sravana, manana, hididhyasana, it stands at our tops as an indispensable aid to our realisation of that which we pursue, and it is not surprising that it should claim to be the leader of the journey and the only available guide or at least the direct and innermost door of the temple.
2.01 - The Road of Trials, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
"On his laborious journey," reports another observer, "the shaman has to encounter and master a number of differing obstacles (pudak) which are not always easily overcome. After he has wandered through dark forests and over massive ranges of mountains, where he occasionally comes across the bones of other shamans and their animal mounts who have died along the way, he reaches an opening in the ground. The most difficult stages of the adventure now begin, when the depths of the underworld with their remarkable manifestations open before him. . . . After he has appeased the watchers of the kingdom of the dead and made his way past the numerous perils, he comes at last to the Lord of the Underworld, Erlik himself. And the latter rushes against him, horribly bellowing; but if the shaman is sufficiently skillful he can soo the the monster back again with promises of luxurious offerings. This moment of the dialogue with Erlik is the crisis of the ceremonial. The shaman passes into an ecstasy.[4]"
"In every primitive tribe," writes Dr. Gza Rheim, "we find the medicine man in the center of society and it is easy to show that the medicine man is either a neurotic or a psychotic or at least that his art is based on the same mechanisms as a neurosis or a psychosis. Human groups are actuated by their group ideals, and these are always based on the infantile situation.[5]" "The infancy situation is modified or inverted by the process of maturation, again modified by the necessary adjustment to reality, yet it is there and supplies those unseen libidinal ties without which no human groups could exist.[6]" The medicine men, therefore, are simply making both visible and public the systems of symbolic fantasy that are present in the psyche of every adult member of their society. "They are the leaders in this infantile game and the lightning conductors of common anxiety. They fight the demons so that others can hunt the prey and in general fight reality.[7]"
2.02 - THE EXPANSION OF LIFE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
We still seem to be able to see all the stages of this still un-
finished march of nature towards the unification or synthesis of
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the very first stages of its evolution traces the lineaments of one
single and gigantic organism.
--
and all early stages of growth fade and vanish as they recede into
the past. Except for the fixed maxima, the consolidated achieve-
2.02 - The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
studying & utilising critical stages of transition, then the secret
of material creation will be solved, and Science will be able to
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
in the practice of his science. In the first stages of Yoga the
sub-conscious activity of the body due to the life of the cells,
--
if by the Spirit. Spirit follows Prakriti through her three stages of
material evolution, informing and sustaining them and mirrors
--
called tamasic, rajasic, or sattwic. In the early stages of upward
evolution tamas predominates, in the medial rajas, in the final
--
In the early stages of the sub-tamasic state the question was not
so acute, for differentiation in the society was not at first very
--
In the later stages of the subtamasic social period we find
that society has to a less or greater extent contracted its demands on the individual. Over his inner life and a certain part
2.03 - THE MASTER IN VARIOUS MOODS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
There are four stages of life: brahmacharya, garhasthya, vanaprastha, and sannys.
Sannysis must renounce those karmas which are performed with special ends in view; but they should perform the daily obligatory karmas, giving up all desire for results.
2.04 - ADVICE TO ISHAN, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Disciplines during the Sdhan period But a man must be extremely careful during the early stages of spiritual discipline. Then he must live far away from any woman. He must not go too close to one even if she is a great devotee of God. You see, a man must not sway his body while climbing to the roof; he may fall. Weak people should hold on to a support while going up the stairs.
"But it is quite different when one reaches perfection. After the realization of God there is not much for a man to fear; he has become to a great extent secure. The important thing is for a man somehow to climb to the roof. After that he can even dance there. But he cannot dance on the steps. Again, after climbing to the roof, you need no longer discard what you discarded before. You find that the stairs are made of the same materials-bricks, lime, and brick-dust-as the roof. The woman you have to be so careful about at the beginning will appear to you, after the realization of God, as the Divine Mother Herself. Then you will worship her as the Divine Mother. You won't fear her so much.
2.05 - The Cosmic Illusion; Mind, Dream and Hallucination, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is even possible to become wholly conscious in sleep and follow throughout from beginning to end or over large stretches the stages of our dream experience; it is found that then we are aware of ourselves passing from state after state of consciousness to a brief period of luminous and peaceful dreamless rest, which is the true restorer of the energies of the waking nature, and then returning by the same way to the waking consciousness. It is normal, as we thus pass from state to state, to let the previous experiences slip away from us; in the return only the more vivid or those nearest to the waking surface are remembered: but this can be remedied, - a greater retention is possible or the
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2.06 - Two Tales of Seeking and Losing, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
So then the problem that these two companions of ours wanted to solve, arranging the cards around the Ace of Cups, was at once the Great Work of Alchemy and the Quest for the Grail. In the same cards, one after the other, both can recognize the stages of their Art or Adventure: in The Sun, the star of gold or the innocence of the warrior youth; in The Wheel, perpetual motion or the spell of the forest; in Judgment, death and resurrection (of metals and of the soul) or the heavenly call.
As things stand, the two stories constantly risk stumbling over each other, if the mechanism is not made quite clear. The alchemist is the man who, to achieve transformations of matter, tries to make his soul become as unchangeable and pure as gold; but there is the instance of a Doctor Faust, who inverts the alchemist's rules, makes the soul an object of exchange, and thus hopes nature will become incorruptible and it will no longer be necessary to seek gold because all elements will be equally precious: the world is gold, and gold is the world. In the same way a knight-errant is one who submits his actions to an absolute and severe moral law, so that natural law can maintain abundance on earth with absolute freedom; but let us try to imagine a Perceval-Parzival-Parsifal who inverts the rule of the Round Table, knightly virtues in him will be involuntary, they will come forth as a gift of nature, like the colors of butterflies' wings, and while performing his exploits with dazed nonchalance, he will perhaps succeed in subduing nature to his will, in possessing the knowledge of the world like an object, in becoming magician and thaumaturge, in healing the wound of the Fisher King, and in restoring green sap to the wasteland.
2.07 - I Also Try to Tell My Tale, #The Castle of Crossed Destinies, #Italo Calvino, #Fiction
Even in the painters' pictures, Saint George always has an impersonal face, not unlike the Knight of Swords of the cards, and his battle with the dragon is a scene on a coat of arms, fixed outside of time, whether you see him galloping with his lance at rest, as in Carpaccio, charging from his half of the canvas at the dragon who rushes from the other half, and attacking with a concentrated expression, his head down, like a cyclist (around, in the details, there is a calendar of corpses whose stages of decomposition reconstruct the temporal development of the story), or whether horse and dragon are superimposed, monogram-like, as in the Louvre Raphael, where Saint George is using his lance from above, driving it down into the monster's throat, operating with angelic surgery (here the rest of the story is condensed in a broken lance on the ground and a blandly amazed virgin); or in the sequence: princess, dragon, Saint George, the animal (a dinosaur!) is presented as the central element (Paolo Uccello, in London and Paris); or whether Saint George comes between the dragon in the rear and the princess in the foreground (Tintoretto, London).
In any case, Saint George performs his feat before our eyes, always closed in his breastplate, revealing nothing of himself: psychology is no use to the man of action. If anything, we could say psychology is all on the dragon's side, with his angry writhings: the enemy, the monster, the defeated have a pathos that the victorious hero never dreams of possessing (or takes care not to show). It is a short step from this to saying that the dragon is psychology: indeed, he is the psyche, he is the dark background of himself that Saint George confronts, an enemy who has already massacred many youths and maidens, an internal enemy who becomes an object of loathsome alien-ness. Is it the story of an energy projected into the world, or is it the diary of an introversion?
2.08 - ALICE IN WONDERLAND, #God Exists, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
So we are now face to face with the great reality, the God of the cosmos. We have passed through the analysis. We have conducted a study of the three stages of consciousness waking, dream and deep sleep. We studied epistomological processes the perception of the world, how we come in contact with things, and how we know that the world exists at all. This also we have concluded. Many of you may not remember it, but think over or see your diaries if you have noted anything down.
Now we are facing the third principle of the ultimate reality of the cosmos, call it the Absolute, call it Satchidananda, God, Isvara, Hiranyagarbha, Virat, whatever it is. Here, true religion begins. Real religion is an awareness of the presence of the Supreme Being. Therefore, it is well said that religion begins where intellect ends, where reasons fails. When religion begins controlling your life, you cease to be a mere intellectual or a scientist or a philosopher. You are no more a thinker, but a person who lives reality.
2.1.03 - Man and Superman, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The stages of Evolution
Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind
2.10 - Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We can, in this knowledge, understand more clearly the stages of the emergence of consciousness from involution to its evolved appearance, of which we have already attempted some general conception. The material existence has only a physical, not a mental individuality, but there is a subliminal
Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
2.10 - The Realisation of the Cosmic Self, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This realisation of all things as God or Brahman has, as we have seen, three aspects of which we can conveniently make three successive stages of experience. First, there is the Self in whom all beings exist. The Spirit, the Divine has manifested itself as infinite self-extended being, self-existent, pure not subject to Time and Space, but supporting Time and Space as figures of its consciousness. It is more than all things and contains them all within that self-extended being and consciousness, not bound by anything that it creates, holds or becomes, but free and infinite and all-blissful. It holds them, in the old image, as the infinite ether contains in itself all objects. This image of the ethereal (Akasha) Brahman may indeed be of great practical help to the Sadhaka who finds a difficulty in meditating on what seems to him at first an abstract and unseizable idea. In the image of the ether, not physical but an encompassing ether of vast being, consciousness and bliss, he may seek to see with the mind and to feel m his mental being this supreme existence and to identify it in oneness with the self within him. By such meditation the mind may be brought to a favourable state of predisposition in which, by the rending or withdrawing of the veil, the supramental vision may flood the mentality and change entirely all our seeing. And upon that change of seeing, as it becomes more and more potent and insistent and occupies all our consciousness, there will supervene eventually a change of becoming so that what we see we become. We shall be in our self-consciousness not so much cosmic as ultra-cosmic, infinite. Mind and life and body will then be only movements in that infinity which we have become, and we shall see that what exists is not world at all but simply this infinity of spirit in which move the mighty cosmic harmonies of Its own images of self-conscious becoming.
But what then of all these forms and existences that make up the harmony? Shall they be to us only images, empty name and form without any informing reality, poor worthless things in themselves and however grandiose, puissant or beautiful they once seemed to our mental vision, now to be rejected and held of no value? Not so, although that would be the first natural result of a very intense absorption in the infinity of the all-containing Self to the exclusion of the infinities that it contains. But these things are not empty, not mere unreal name and form imagined by a cosmic Mind; they are, as we have said, in their reality self-conscious becomings of the Self, that is to say, the Self dwells within all of them even as within us, conscious of them, governing their motion, blissful in his habitation as in his embrace of all that he becomes. As the ether both contains and is as it were contained in the jar, so this Self both contains and inhabits all existences, not in a physical but in a spiritual sense, and is their reality. This indwelling State of the Self we have to realise; we have to see and ourselves to become in our consciousness the Self in all existences. We have, putting aside all vain resistance of the intellect and the mental associations, to know that the Divine inhabits all these becomings and is their true Self and conscious Spirit, and not to know it only intellectually but to know by a self-experience that shall compel into its own diviner mould all the habits of the mental consciousness.
2.14 - The Passive and the Active Brahman, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The difficulty which the mental being experiences in arriving at an integral realisation of true being and world-being may be met by following one or other of two different lines of his self-development. He may evolve himself from plane to plane of his own being and embrace on each successively his oneness with the world and with Sachchidananda realised as the Purusha and prakriti, Conscious-Soul and Nature-Soul of that plane, taking into himself the action of the lower grades of being as he ascends. He may, that is to say, work out by a sort of inclusive process of self-enlargement arid transformation the evolution of the material into the divine or spiritual man. This seems to have been the method of the most ancient sages of which we get some glimpse in the Rig Veda and some of the Upanishads384. He may, on the other hand, aim straight at the realisation of pure self-existence on the highest plane of mental being and from that secure basis realise spiritually under the conditions of his mentality the process by which the self-existent becomes all existences, but without that descent into the self-divided egoistic consciousness which is a circumstance of evolution in the Ignorance. Thus identified with Sachchidananda in the universal self-existence as the spiritualised mental being, he may then ascend beyond to the supramental plane of the pure spiritual existence. It is the latter method the stages of which we may now attempt to trace for the seeker by the path of knowledge.
When the Sadhaka has followed the discipline of withdrawal from the various identifications of the self with the ego, the mind, the life, the body, he has arrived at realisation by knowledge of a pure, still, self-aware existence, one, undivided, peaceful, inactive, undisturbed by the action of the world. The only relation that this Self seems to have with the world is that of a disinterested Witness not at all involved in or affected or even touched by any of its activities. If this state of consciousness is pushed farther one becomes aware of a self even more remote from world-existence; all that is in the world is in a sense in that Self and yet at the same time extraneous to its consciousness, non-existent in its existence, existing only in a sort of unreal mind, -- a dream therefore, an illusion. This aloof and transcendent Real Existence may be realised as an utter Self of one's own being; or the very idea of a self and of one's own being may be swallowed up in it, so that it is only for the mind an Unknowable That, Unknowable to the mental consciousness and without any possible kind of actual connection or commerce with world-existence. It can even be realised by the mental being as a Nihil, Non-Existence or Void, but a Void of all that is in the world, a Non-Existence of all that is in the world and yet the only Reality. To proceed farther towards that Transcendence by concentration of one's own being upon it is to lose mental existence and world-existence altogether and cast oneself into the Unknowable.
2.14 - The Unpacking of God, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
This less-than-adequate interpretation makes it appear that the most urgent problem in the modern world is to teach everybody systems theory (or some version of Gaia's web-of-life notions, or some version of the "new physics"), instead of seeing that what is required is an understanding of the interior stages of consciousness development. Gaia's main problem is not toxic waste dumps, ozone depletion, or biospheric pollution. These global problems can only be recognized and responded to from a global, worldcentric awareness, and thus Gaia's main problem is that not enough human beings have developed and evolved from egocentric to sociocentric to worldcentric, there to realize-and act on-the ecological crisis. Gaia's main problem is not exterior pollution but interior development, which alone can end exterior pollution.
Preconventional/egocentric and conventional/ethnocentric could care less about the global commons; only postconventional/worldcentric can fully see, and effectively respond to, the universal dimensions of the problem (only formop and vision-logic can grasp universal perspectives). Thus, the more we emphasize teaching a merely
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Global problems demand global awareness, and only interior and Left-Hand stages of development-precisely the domain ignored by flatl and Eco approaches-can even begin to handle the problem.
The pure Eco approach, like its cousin the pure Ego (or pure Self) approach, simply reduces all of Spirit's dimensions to one privileged domain, crippling the full emergence and descent of Spirit itself. Just as the idea in the pure Self camp is that if we simply contact the Higher Self, all our problems will be solved, so the idea in the pure Eco approach is that if we can just demonstrate, once and for all, the unified and holistic nature of the pure Eco, then that will solve all our problems. That forceful demonstration (that Spinozist proof in objective terms) will itself compel all individuals to transform to ultimate unity, or so it is maintained.
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The standard response from the Eco camps is that if people truly learned and really understood the holistic oneness of reality and the great web, that would force them to give up their egos and they would indeed truly transform. But, as we have seen, it is actually quite the contrary: embracing a monological worldview in flatl and terms results precisely in divine egoism. (Because the Right-Hand-only view of systems theory lacks an understanding of the interior stages of consciousness development-from preconventional/egocentric to conventional/sociocentric to postconventional/worldcentric-or more precisely, because it lacks an understanding of all nine fulcrums of interior unfolding, it has no way to carefully gauge consciousness evolution and development. For this reason, flatl and cannot spot the difference between infrarational consciousness and suprarational consciousness-because it cannot spot interior consciousness at all-and thus it constantly falls prey to massive pre/trans fallacies. This allows its proponents to embrace preconventional interiors as if they were postconventional realities: allows them to fall into preconventional/egocentric enthusiasms, even as they champion exterior holism and the great Web of Life, precisely as we saw with the Romantics.)
This approach, then, focuses almost exclusively on Dharma, or the objective Truth, and not enough on Buddha (subjective) and Sangha (intersubjective), or how that Truth refracts as well through the psychological and cultural domains (how that Spirit manifests as all four quadrants of the Kosmos). And when objective truth is made the "total truth"-when it is really thought to be "utterly holistic" and "all-encompassing"-then Buddha and Sangha are violently reduced to flatl and objectivist terms, and an approach that originally wishes us to transcend and include, ends up being a merely and purely Descended worldview that effectively blocks transcendence altogether.
2.16 - The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is also sometimes supposed that the solitary life on earth is a stage only and the development of the being nearer to its original glory occurs in a succession of worlds which are so many other stages of its growth, stadia of its journey. The material universe, or earth especially, will then be a sumptuously appointed field created by a divine power, wisdom or caprice for the enacting of this interlude. According to the view we choose to take of the matter, we shall see in it a place of ordeal, a field of development or a scene of spiritual fall and exile. There is too an Indian view which regards the world as a garden of the divine Lila, a play of the divine Being with the conditions of cosmic existence in this world of an inferior Nature; the soul of man takes part in the Lila through a protracted series of births, but it is destined to reascend at last into the proper plane of the Divine Being and there enjoy an eternal proximity and communion: this gives a certain rationale to the creative process and the spiritual adventure which is either absent or not clearly indicated in the other accounts of this kind of soul movement or soul cycle. Always there are three essential characteristics in all these varying statements of the common principle: - first, the belief in the individual immortality of the human spirit; secondly, as a necessary consequence, the idea of its sojourn on earth as a temporary passage or a departure from its highest eternal nature and of a heaven beyond as its proper habitation; thirdly, an emphasis on the development of the ethical and spiritual being as the means of ascension and therefore the one proper business of life in this world of Matter.
These are the three fundamental ways of seeing, each with its mental attitude towards life, that can be adopted with regard to our existence; the rest are usually midway stations or else variations or composites which attempt to adapt themselves more freely to the complexity of the problem. For, practically, it is impossible for man taken as a race, whatever a few individuals may succeed in doing, to guide his life permanently or wholly by the leading motive of any of these three attitudes, uniquely, to the exclusion of the others' claim upon his nature. A confused amalgam of two or more of them, a conflict or division of his lifemotives between them or some attempt at synthesis is his way of dealing with the various impulses of his complex being and the intuitions of his mind to which they appeal for their sanction.
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Any view of our being which neglects, unduly belittles or intolerantly condemns them, is therefore by that very fact, whatever its other truth or merit or utility, or whatever its suitability to individuals of a certain temperament or in a certain stage of spiritual evolution, unfit to be the general and complete rule of human living. Nature takes good care that the race shall not neglect these aims which are a necessary part of her evolution; for they fall within the method and stages of the divine plan in us, and a vigilance for her first steps and for the maintenance of their mental and material ground is a preoccupation which she cannot allow to go into the background, since these things belong to the foundation and body of her structure.
But also she has implanted in us a sense that there is something in our composition which goes beyond this first terrestrial nature of humanity. For this reason the race cannot accept or follow for a very long time any view of being which ignores this higher and subtler sense and labours to confine us entirely to a purely terrestrial way of living. The intuition of a beyond, the idea and feeling of a soul and spirit in us which is other than the mind, life and body or is greater, not limited by their formula, returns upon us and ends by resuming possession. The ordinary man satisfies this sense easily enough by devoting to it his exceptional moments or the latter part of his life when age shall have blunted the zest of his earthly nature, or by recognising it as something behind or above his normal action to which he can more or less imperfectly direct his natural being: the exceptional man turns to the supraterrestrial as the one aim and law of living and diminishes or mortifies as much as possible his earthly parts in the hope of developing his celestial nature.
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An involution of spirit in the Inconscience is the beginning; an evolution in the Ignorance with its play of the possibilities of a partial developing knowledge is the middle, and the cause of the anomalies of our present nature, - our imperfection is the sign of a transitional state, a growth not yet completed, an effort that is finding its way; a consummation in a deployment of the spirit's self-knowledge and the self-power of its divine being and consciousness is the culmination: these are the three stages of this cycle of the spirit's progressive self-expression in life. The two stages that have already their play seem at first sight to deny the possibility of the later consummating stage of the cycle, but logically they imply its emergence; for if the inconscience has evolved consciousness, the partial consciousness already reached must surely evolve into complete consciousness.
It is a perfected and divinised life for which the earth-nature is seeking, and this seeking is a sign of the Divine Will in Nature.
2.18 - The Evolutionary Process - Ascent and Integration, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The end of this triple process must be a radical change of the action of the Ignorance into an action of Knowledge, of our basis of inconscience into a basis of complete consciousness, - a completeness which exists at present only in what is to us the superconscience. Each ascent will bring with it a partial change and modification of the old nature taken up and subjected to a new fundamental principle; the inconscience will be turned into a partial consciousness, an ignorance seeking for more and more knowledge and mastery: but at some point there must be an ascent which substitutes the principle of knowledge, of a fundamental true consciousness, the consciousness of the Spirit, for the inconscience and ignorance. An evolution in the Inconscience is the beginning, an evolution in the Ignorance is the middle, but the end is the liberation of the spirit into its true consciousness and an evolution in the Knowledge. This is actually what we find to be the law and method of the process which has hitherto been followed and by all signs is likely to be followed in her future working by evolutionary Nature. A first involutionary foundation in which originates all that has to evolve, an emergence and action of the involved powers in or upon that foundation in an ascending series, and a culminating emergence of the highest power of all as the agent of a supreme manifestation are the necessary stages of the journey of evolutionary Nature.
An evolutionary process must be by the very terms of the problem to be solved a development, in some first established basic principle of being or substance, of something that that basic principle holds involved in itself or else admits from outside itself and modifies by the admission; for it must necessarily modify by its own law of nature all that enters into it and is not already part of its own nature. This must be so even if it is a creative evolution in the sense of manifesting always new powers of existence that are not native to the first foundation but introduced into it, accepted into an original substance. If, on the contrary, there is already there in involution, - present in the first foundation, but not yet manifested or not yet organised, - the new principle or power of existence that has to be evolved, then, when it appears, it will still have to accept modification by the nature and law of the basic substance: but also it will modify that substance by its own power, its own law of nature.
2.19 - THE MASTER AND DR. SARKAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
DOCTOR: "iva examined man only in his maturity. But the Europeans have examined man in all stages of his life from the embryo to maturity. It is good to know comparative history. From the history of the Sonthals one learns that Kli was a Santhl woman. She was a valiant fighter. (All laugh.)
"Don't laugh, please. Let me tell you how greatly the study of comparative anatomy has benefited men. The difference between the actions of the pancreatic juice and bile was at first unknown. But later Claude Bernard examined the stomach, liver, and other paits of the rabbit and demonstrated that the action of bile is different from the action of the pancreatic juice. Therefore It stands to reason that we should watch the lower animals as well. The study of man alone is not enough.
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MAHIMA: "The path of Sat, which is the path of knowledge. Next, the path of Chit, of yoga, of karma yoga, which includes the duties and functions of the four stages of life.
Last, the path of nanda, the path of devotion and ecstatic love. You are an adept in all three paths; you can speak of them all with authority."
2.20 - The Infancy and Maturity of ZO, Father and Mother, Israel The Ancient and Understanding, #General Principles of Kabbalah, #Rabbi Moses Luzzatto, #Kabbalah
the stages of man.
However, the idea of "brain exists as the dynamic
2.20 - The Philosophy of Rebirth, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nor is the human soul, the human individual, a free wanderer capriciously or lightly hastening from field to field according to its unfettered choice or according to its free and spontaneously variable action and result of action. That is a radiant thought of pure spiritual liberty which may have its truth in planes beyond or in an eventual release, but is not true at first of the earth-life, of life in the physical universe. The human birth in this world is on its spiritual side a complex of two elements, a spiritual Person and a soul of personality; the former is man's eternal being, the latter is his cosmic and mutable being. As the spiritual impersonal person he is one in his nature and being with the freedom of Sachchidananda who has here consented to or willed his involution in the Nescience for a certain round of soul-experience, impossible otherwise, and presides secretly over its evolution. As the soul of personality he is himself part of that long development of the soul-experience in the forms of Nature; his own evolution must follow the laws and the lines of the universal evolution. As a spirit he is one with the Transcendence which is immanent in the world and comprehensive of it; as a soul he is at once one with and part of the universality of Sachchidananda self-expressed in the world: his self-expression must go through the stages of the cosmic expression, his soul-experience follow the revolutions of the wheel of Brahman in the universe.
The universal Spirit in things involved in the Nescience of the physical universe evolves its nature self in a succession of physical forms up the graded series of Matter, Life, Mind and Spirit. It emerges first as a secret soul in material forms quite subject on the surface to the nescience; it develops as a soul still secret but about to emerge in vital forms that stand on the borders between nescience and the partial light of consciousness which is our ignorance; it develops still farther as the initially conscient soul in the animal mind and, finally, as the more outwardly conscious, but not yet fully conscient soul in man: the consciousness is there throughout in our occult parts of being, the development is in the manifesting Nature. This evolutionary development has a universal as well as an individual aspect: the Universal develops the grades of its being and the ordered variation of the universality of itself in the series of its evolved forms of being; the individual soul follows the line of this cosmic series and manifests what is prepared in the universality of the Spirit. The universal Man, the cosmic Purusha in humanity, is developing in the human race the power that has grown into humanity from below it and shall yet grow to supermind and spirit and become the Godhead in man who is aware of his true and integral self and the divine universality of his nature.
The individual must have followed this line of development; he must have presided over a soul-experience in the lower forms of life before he took up the human evolution: as the One was capable of assuming in its universality these lower forms of the plant and animal, so must the individual, now human, have been capable of assuming them in his previous stages of existence. He now appears as a human soul, the Spirit accepting the inner and outer form of humanity, but he is not limited by this form any more than he was limited by the plant or animal forms previously assumed by him; he can pass on from it to a greater self-expression in a higher scale of Nature.
To suppose otherwise would be to suppose that the spirit which now presides over the human soul-experience was originally formed by a human mentality and the human body, exists by that and cannot exist apart from it, cannot ever go below or above it. In fact, it would then be reasonable to suppose that it is not immortal but has come into existence by the appearance of the human mind and body in the evolution and would disappear by their disappearance. But body and mind are not the creators of the spirit, the spirit is the creator of the mind and body; it develops these principles out of its being, it is not developed into being out of them, it is not a compound of their elements or a resultant of their meeting. If it appears to evolve out of mind and body, that is because it gradually manifests itself in them and not because it is created by them or exists by them; as it manifests, they are revealed as subordinate terms of its being and are to be finally taken up out of their present imperfection and transformed into visible forms and instruments of the spirit. Our conception of the spirit is of something which is not constituted by name and form, but assumes various forms of body and mind according to the various manifestations of its soul-being.
2.22 - Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
OUR FIRST conclusion on the subject of reincarnation has been that the rebirth of the soul in successive terrestrial bodies is an inevitable consequence of the original significance and process of the manifestation in earth-nature; but this conclusion leads to farther problems and farther results which it is necessary to elucidate. There arises first the question of the process of rebirth; if that process is not quickly successive, birth immediately following death of the body so as to maintain an uninterrupted series of lives of the same person, if there are intervals, that in its turn raises the question of the principle and process of the passage to other worlds, which must be the scene of these intervals, and the return to earth-life. A third question is the process of the spiritual evolution itself and the mutations which the soul undergoes in its passage from birth to birth through the stages of its adventure.
If the physical universe were the sole manifested world, or if it were a quite separate world, rebirth as a part of the evolutionary process would be confined to a constant succession of direct transmigrations from one body to another; death would be immediately followed by a new birth without any possibility of an interval, - the passage of the soul would be a spiritual circumstance in the uninterrupted series of a compulsory, mechanical, material procedure. The soul would have no freedom from Matter; it would be perpetually bound to its instrument, the body, and dependent on it for the continuity of its manifested existence. But we have found that there is a life on other planes after death and before the subsequent rebirth, a life consequent on the old and preparatory of the new stage of terrestrial existence. Other planes coexist with ours, are part of one complex system and act constantly upon the physical which is their own final and lowest term, receive its reactions, admit a secret communication and commerce. Man can become conscious of these planes, can even in certain states project his conscious being into them, partly in life, presumably therefore with a full completeness after the dissolution of the body. Such a possibility of projection into other worlds or planes of being becomes then sufficiently actual to necessitate practically its own realisation, immediately and perhaps invariably following on human earthlife if man is from the beginning endowed with such a power of self-transference, eventual if he only arrives at it by a gradual progression. For it is possible that at the beginning he would not be sufficiently developed to carry on his life or his mind into larger life-worlds or mind-worlds and would be compelled to accept an immediate transmigration from one earthly body to another as his only present possibility of persistence.
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A sort of half necessity for the life in other worlds, a dynamic and practical rather than an essential necessity, arises from the very fact that the different world-principles are interwoven with each other and in a way interdependent and the effect that this fact must have upon the process of our spiritual evolution. But this might be counteracted for a time by the greater pull or attraction of the earth or the preponderant physicality of the evolving nature. Our belief in the birth of an ascending soul into the human form and its repeated rebirth in that form, without which it cannot complete its human evolution, rests, from the point of view of the reasoning intelligence, on the basis that the progressive transit of the soul into higher and higher grades of the earthly existence and, once it has reached the human level, its repeated human birth compose a sequence necessary for the growth of the nature; one brief human life upon earth is evidently insufficient for the evolutionary purpose. In the early stages of a series of human reincarnations, during a period of rudimentary humanity, there is a certain possibility at first sight of an often repeated immediate transmigration, - the repeated assumption of a new human form in a fresh birth immediately the previous body has been dissolved by a cessation or expulsion of the organised life-energy and the consequent physical disintegration which we call death. But what necessity of the evolutionary process would compel such a series of immediate rebirths? Evidently, it could only be imperative so long as the psychic individuality - not the secret soul-entity itself but the soul-formation in the natural being - is little evolved, insufficiently developed, so insufficiently formed that it could not abide except by dependence upon the uninterrupted continuance of this life's mental, vital and physical individuality: unable as yet to persist in itself, discard its past mind-formation and life-formation and build after a useful interval new formations, it would be obliged to transfer at once its rudimentary crude personality for preservation to a new body. It is doubtful whether we should be justified in attri buting any such entirely insufficient development to a being so strongly individualised that it has got as far as the human consciousness.
Even at his lowest normality the human individual is still a soul acting through a distinct mental being, however ill-formed his mind may be, however limited and dwarfed, however engrossed and encased in the physical and vital consciousness and unable or unwilling to detach itself from its lower formations. Yet we may suppose that there is a downward attachment so strong as to compel the being to hasten at once to a resumption of the physical life because his natural formation is not really fit for anything else or at home on any higher plane. Or, again, the lifeexperience might be so brief and incomplete as to compel the soul to an immediate rebirth for its continuance. Other needs, influences or causes there may be in the complexity of Natureprocess, such as a strong will of earthly desire pressing for fulfilment, which would enforce an immediate transmigration of the same persistent form of personality into a new body. But still the alternative process of a reincarnation, a rebirth of the Person not only into a new body but into a new formation of the personality, would be the normal line taken by the psychic entity once it had reached the human stage of its evolutionary cycle.
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All this, however, is a matter of dynamic probability, and that, though amounting in practice to a necessity, though justified by certain facts of subliminal experience, is still for the reasoning mind not in itself quite conclusive. We have to ask whether there is any more essential necessity for these internatal intervals, or at least any of so great a dynamic power as to lead to an irresistible conclusion. We shall find one such necessity in the decisive part played by the higher planes in the earthevolution and the relation that it has created between them and the evolving soul-consciousness. Our development takes place very largely by their superior but hidden action upon the earthplane. All is contained in the inconscient or the subconscient, but in potentiality; it is the action from above that helps to compel an emergence. A continuance of that action is necessary to shape and determine the progression of the mental and vital forms which our evolution takes in material nature; for these progressive movements cannot find their full momentum or sufficiently develop their implications against the resistance of an inconscient or inert and ignorant material Nature except by a constant though occult resort to higher supraphysical forces of their own character. This resort, the action of this veiled alliance, takes place principally in our subliminal being and not on the surface: it is from there that the active power of our consciousness emerges, and all that it realises it sends back constantly into the subliminal being to be stored up, developed and re-emerge in stronger forms hereafter. This interaction of our larger hidden being and our surface personality is the main secret of the rapid development that operates in man once he has passed beyond the lower stages of mind immersed in Matter.
This resort must continue in the internatal stage; for a new birth, a new life is not a taking up of the development exactly where it stopped in the last, it does not merely repeat and continue our past surface personality and formation of nature. There is an assimilation, a discarding and streng thening and rearrangement of the old characters and motives, a new ordering of the developments of the past and a selection for the purposes of the future without which the new start cannot be fruitful or carry forward the evolution. For each birth is a new start; it develops indeed from the past, but is not its mechanical continuation: rebirth is not a constant reiteration but a progression, it is the machinery of an evolutionary process.
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For when we say that the soul on earth evolves successively the physical, the vital, the mental, the spiritual being, we do not mean that it creates them and that they had no previous existence. On the contrary, what it does is to manifest these principles of its spiritual entity under the conditions imposed by a world of physical Nature; this manifestation takes the form of a structure of frontal personality which is a translation of the inner self into the terms and possibilities of the physical existence. In fact we must accept the ancient idea that man has within him not only the physical soul or Purusha with its appropriate nature, but a vital, a mental, a psychic, a supramental, a supreme spiritual being;6 and either the whole or the greater presence or force of them is concealed in his subliminal or latent and unformulated in his superconscient parts. He has to bring forward their powers in his active consciousness and to awake to them in its knowledge. But each of these powers of his being is in relation with its own proper plane of existence and all have their roots there. It is through them that there takes place the subliminal resort of the being to the shaping influences from above, a resort which may become more and more conscious as we develop. It is logical then that according to the development of their powers in our conscious evolution should be the internatal resort which this nature of our birth here and its evolutionary object and process necessitate. The circumstances and the stages of that resort must be complex and not of the crudely and trenchantly simple character which the popular religions imagine: but in itself it can be accepted as an inevitable consequence of the very origin and nature of the soul-life in the body. All is a closely woven web, an evolution and an interaction whose links have been forged by a ConsciousForce following out the truth of its own motives according to a dynamic logic of these finite workings of the Infinite.
If this view of rebirth and the soul's temporary passage into other planes of existence is correct, both rebirth and the after-life assume a different significance from the colour put on them by the long-current belief about reincarnation and the after-death sojourn in worlds beyond us. Reincarnation is commonly supposed to have two aspects, metaphysical and moral, an aspect of spiritual necessity, an aspect of cosmic justice and ethical discipline. The soul - in this view or for this purpose supposed to have a real individual existence - is on earth as a result of desire and ignorance; it has to remain on earth or return to it always so long as it has not wearied of desire and awakened to the fact of its ignorance and to the true knowledge. This desire compels it to return always to a new body; it must follow always the revolving wheel of birth till it is enlightened and liberated.
2.23 - Man and the Evolution, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is against this background of a developing evolutionary process that we have to look at man, his origin and first appearance, his status in the manifestation. There are here two possibilities; either there was the sudden appearance of a human body and consciousness in the earth nature, an abrupt creation or independent automatic manifestation of reasoning mentality in the material world intervening upon a previous similar manifestation of subconscious life-forms and of living conscious bodies in Matter, or else there was an evolution of humanity out of animal being, slow perhaps in its preparation and in its stages of development, but with strong leaps of change at the decisive points of the transition. The latter theory offers no difficulty: for it is certain that changes of characteristics in the type, though not of the fundamental type itself, can be brought about in species or genus, - indeed this has already been done by man himself and its possibilities are being strikingly worked out on a small scale by experimental Science, - and it may fairly be assumed that the secretly conscious Energy in Nature could effect largescale operations of the kind and bring about considerable and decisive developments by means of its own creative conventions.
The necessary condition for the change from the normal animal to the human character of existence would be a development of the physical organisation which would capacitate a rapid progression, a reversal or turnover of the consciousness, a reaching to a new height and a looking down from it at the lower stages, a heightening and widening of capacity which would enable the being to take up the old animal faculties with a larger and more plastic, a human intelligence, and at the same time or later to develop greater and subtler powers proper to the new type of being, powers of reason, reflection, complex observation, organised invention, thought and discovery. If there is an emergent Consciousness-Force, there would be no difficulty in the transition, the instrument being provided, except the difficulty of the obstruction and resistance of the material Inconscience.
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In the previous stages of the evolution Nature's first care and effort had to be directed towards a change in the physical organisation, for only so could there be a change of consciousness; this was a necessity imposed by the insufficiency of the force of consciousness already in formation to effect a change in the body. But in man a reversal is possible, indeed inevitable; for it is through his consciousness, through its transmutation and no longer through a new bodily organism as a first instrumentation that the evolution can and must be effected. In the inner reality of things a change of consciousness was always the major fact, the evolution has always had a spiritual significance and the physical change was only instrumental; but this relation was concealed by the first abnormal balance of the two factors, the body of the external Inconscience outweighing and obscuring in importance the spiritual element, the conscious being. But once the balance has been righted, it is no longer the change of body that must precede the change of consciousness; the consciousness itself by its mutation will necessitate and operate whatever mutation is needed for the body. It has to be noted that the human mind has already shown a capacity to aid Nature in the evolution of new types of plant and animal; it has created new forms of its environment, developed by knowledge and discipline considerable changes in its own mentality. It is not an impossibility that man should aid Nature consciously also in his own spiritual and physical evolution and transformation.
The urge to it is already there and partly effective, though still incompletely understood and accepted by the surface mentality; but one day it may understand, go deeper within itself and discover the means, the secret energy, the intended operation of the Consciousness-Force within which is the hidden reality of what we call Nature.
2.24 - The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
IN THE earliest stages of evolutionary Nature we are met by the dumb secrecy of her inconscience; there is no revelation of any significance or purpose in her works, no hint of any other principles of being than that first formulation which is her immediate preoccupation and seems to be for ever her only business: for in her primal works Matter alone appears, the sole dumb and stark cosmic reality. A Witness of creation, if there had been one conscious but uninstructed, would only have seen appearing out of a vast abyss of an apparent non-existence an Energy busy with the creation of Matter, a material world and material objects, organising the infinity of the Inconscient into the scheme of a boundless universe or a system of countless universes that stretched around him into Space without any certain end or limit, a tireless creation of nebulae and star-clusters and suns and planets, existing only for itself, without a sense in it, empty of cause or purpose. It might have seemed to him a stupendous machinery without a use, a mighty meaningless movement, an aeonic spectacle without a witness, a cosmic edifice without an inhabitant; for he would have seen no sign of an indwelling Spirit, no being for whose delight it was made. A creation of this kind could only be the outcome of an inconscient Energy or an illusion-cinema, a shadow play or puppet play of forms reflected on a superconscient indifferent Absolute. He would have seen no evidence of a soul and no hint of mind or life in this immeasurable and interminable display of Matter. It would not have seemed to him possible or imaginable that there could at all be in this desert universe for ever inanimate and insensible an outbreak of teeming life, a first vibration of something occult and incalculable, alive and conscious, a secret spiritual entity feeling its way towards the surface.
But after some aeons, looking out once more on that vain panorama, he might have detected in one small corner at least of the universe this phenomenon, a corner where Matter had been prepared, its operations sufficiently fixed, organised, made stable, adapted as a scene of a new development, - the phenomenon of a living matter, a life in things that had emerged and become visible: but still the Witness would have understood nothing, for evolutionary Nature still veils her secret. He would have seen a Nature concerned only with establishing this outburst of life, this new creation, but life living for itself with no significance in it, - a wanton and abundant creatrix busy scattering the seed of her new power and establishing a multitude of its forms in a beautiful and luxurious profusion or, later, multiplying endlessly genus and species for the pure pleasure of creation: a small touch of lively colour and movement would have been flung into the immense cosmic desert and nothing more. The Witness could not have imagined that a thinking mind would appear in this minute island of life, that a consciousness could awake in the Inconscient, a new and greater subtler vibration come to the surface and betray more clearly the existence of the submerged Spirit. It would have seemed to him at first that Life had somehow become aware of itself and that was all; for this scanty new-born mind seemed to be only a servant of life, a contrivance to help life to live, a machinery for its maintenance, for attack and defence, for certain needs and vital satisfactions, for the liberation of life-instinct and life-impulse. It could not have seemed possible to him that in this little life, so inconspicuous amid the immensities, in one sole species out of this petty multitude, a mental being would emerge, a mind serving life still but also making life and matter its servants, using them for the fulfilment of its own ideas, will, wishes, - a mental being who would create all manner of utensils, tools, instruments out of Matter for all kinds of utilities, erect out of it cities, houses, temples, theatres, laboratories, factories, chisel from it statues and carve cave-cathedrals, invent architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry and a hundred crafts and arts, discover the mathematics and physics of the universe and the hidden secret of its structure, live for the sake of mind and its interests, for thought and knowledge, develop into the thinker, the philosopher and scientist and, as a supreme defiance to the reign of Matter, awake in himself to the hidden Godhead, become the hunter after the invisible, the mystic and the spiritual seeker.
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It would have been possible for the evolutionary principle to have preserved its pristine wholeness of movement while pressing on, by an expansion and not a disruption of the wiser ancient harmony, to a greater synthesis of the principle of concentration and the principle of diffusion. In India, we have seen, there has been a persistence of the original intuition and total movement of evolutionary Nature. For religion in India limited itself by no one creed or dogma; it not only admitted a vast number of different formulations, but contained successfully within itself all the elements that have grown up in the course of the evolution of religion and refused to ban or excise any: it developed occultism to its utmost limits, accepted spiritual philosophies of all kinds, followed to its highest, deepest or largest outcome every possible line of spiritual realisation, spiritual experience, spiritual self-discipline. Its method has been the method of evolutionary Nature herself, to allow all developments, all means of communication and action of the spirit upon the members, all ways of communion between man and the Supreme or Divine, to follow every possible way of advance to the goal and test it even to its extreme. All stages of spiritual evolution are there in man and each has to be allowed or provided with its means of approach to the spirit, an approach suited to its capacity, adhikara.
Even the primitive forms that survived were not banned but were lifted to a deeper significance, while still there was the pressure to the highest spiritual pinnacles in the rarest supreme ether. Even the exclusive credal type of religion was not itself excluded; provided its affinity to the general aim and principle was clear, it was admitted into the infinite variety of the general order.
2.25 - The Triple Transformation, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If the psychic entity had been from the beginning unveiled and known to its ministers, not a secluded King in a screened chamber, the human evolution would have been a rapid souloutflowering, not the difficult, chequered and disfigured development it now is; but the veil is thick and we know not the secret Light within us, the light in the hidden crypt of the heart's innermost sanctuary. Intimations rise to our surface from the psyche, but our mind does not detect their source; it takes them for its own activities because, before even they come to the surface, they are clothed in mental substance: thus ignorant of their authority, it follows or does not follow them according to its bent or turn at the moment. If the mind obeys the urge of the vital ego, then there is little chance of the psyche at all controlling the nature or manifesting in us something of its secret spiritual stuff and native movement; or, if the mind is over-confident to act in its own smaller light, attached to its own judgment, will and action of knowledge, then also the soul will remain veiled and quiescent and wait for the mind's farther evolution. For the psychic part within is there to support the natural evolution, and the first natural evolution must be the development of body, life and mind, successively, and these must act each in its own kind or together in their ill-assorted partnership in order to grow and have experience and evolve. The soul gathers the essence of all our mental, vital and bodily experience and assimilates it for the farther evolution of our existence in Nature; but this action is occult and not obtruded on the surface. In the early material and vital stages of the evolution of being there is indeed no consciousness of soul; there are psychic activities, but the instrumentation, the form of these activities are vital and physical - or mental when the mind is active. For even the mind, so long as it is primitive or is developed but still too external, does not recognise their deeper character. It is easy to regard ourselves as physical beings or beings of life or mental beings using life and body and to ignore the existence of the soul altogether: for the only definite idea that we have of the soul is of something that survives the death of our bodies; but what this is we do not know because even if we are conscious sometimes of its presence, we are not normally conscious of its distinct reality nor do we feel clearly its direct action in our nature.
As the evolution proceeds, Nature begins slowly and tentatively to manifest our occult parts; she leads us to look more and more within ourselves or sets out to initiate more clearly recognisable intimations and formations of them on the surface.
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This rule of different selves in us is at the root of the stages of the development of human personality which we have already had occasion to differentiate, and we can reconsider them now from the point of view of the government of the nature by the inner principle. In some human beings it is the physical Purusha, the being of body, who dominates the mind, will and action; there is then created the physical man mainly occupied with his corporeal life and habitual needs, impulses, life habits, mind habits, body habits, looking very little or not at all beyond that, subordinating and restricting all his other tendencies and possibilities to that narrow formation. But even in the physical man there are other elements and he cannot live altogether as the human animal concerned with birth and death and procreation and the satisfaction of common impulses and desires and the maintenance of the life and the body: this is his normal type of personality, but it is crossed, however feebly, with influences by which he can proceed, if they are developed, to a higher human evolution. If the inner subtle-physical Purusha insists, he can arrive at the idea of a finer, more beautiful and perfect physical life and hope or attempt to realise it in his own or in the collective or group existence. In others it is the vital self, the being of life, who dominates and rules the mind, the will, the action; then is created the vital man, concerned with self-affirmation, selfaggrandisement, life-enlargement, satisfaction of ambition and passion and impulse and desire, the claims of his ego, domination, power, excitement, battle and struggle, inner and outer adventure: all else is incidental or subordinated to this movement and building and expression of the vital ego. But still in the vital man too there are or can be other elements of a growing mental or spiritual character, even if these happen to be less developed than his life-personality and life-power. The nature of the vital man is more active, stronger and more mobile, more turbulent and chaotic, often to the point of being quite unregulated, than that of the physical man who holds on to the soil and has a certain material poise and balance, but it is more kinetic and creative: for the element of the vital being is not earth but air; it has more movement, less status. A vigorous vital mind and will can grasp and govern the kinetic vital energies, but it is more by a forceful compulsion and constraint than by a harmonisation of the being. If, however, a strong vital personality, mind and will can get the reasoning intelligence to give it a firm support and be its minister, then a certain kind of forceful formation can be made, more or less balanced but always powerful, successful and effective, which can impose itself on the nature and environment and arrive at a strong self-affirmation in life and action. This is the second step of harmonised formulation possible in the ascent of the nature.
At a higher stage of the evolution of personality the being of mind may rule; there is then created the mental man who lives predominantly in the mind as the others live in the vital or the physical nature. The mental man tends to subordinate to his mental self-expression, mental aims, mental interests or to a mental idea or ideal the rest of his being: because of the difficulty of this subordination and its potent effect when achieved, it is at once more difficult for him and easier to arrive at a harmony of his nature. It is easier because the mental will once in control can convince by the power of the reasoning intelligence and at the same time dominate, compress or suppress the life and the body and their demands, arrange and harmonise them, force them to be its instruments, even reduce them to a minimum so that they shall not disturb the mental life or pull it down from its ideative or idealising movement. It is more difficult because life and body are the first powers and, if they are in the least strong, can impose themselves with an almost irresistible insistence on the mental ruler. Man is a mental being and the mind is the leader of his life and body; but this is a leader who is much led by his followers and has sometimes no other will than what they impose on him. Mind in spite of its power is often impotent before the inconscient and subconscient which obscure its clarity and carry it away on the tide of instinct or impulse; in spite of its clarity it is fooled by vital and emotional suggestions into giving sanction to ignorance and error, to wrong thought and to wrong action, or it is obliged to look on while the nature follows what it knows to be wrong, dangerous or evil. Even when it is strong and clear and dominant, Mind, though it imposes a certain, a considerable mentalised harmony, cannot integrate the whole being and nature. These harmonisations by an inferior control are, besides, inconclusive, because it is one part of the nature which dominates and fulfils itself while the others are coerced and denied their fullness. They can be steps on the way, but not final; therefore in most men there is no such sole dominance and effected partial harmony, but only a predominance and for the rest an unstable equilibrium of a personality half formed, half in formation, sometimes a disequilibrium or unbalance due to the lack of a central government or the disturbance of a formerly achieved partial poise. All must be transitional until a first, though not a final, true harmonisation is achieved by finding our real centre. For the true central being is the soul, but this being stands back and in most human natures is only the secret witness or, one might say, a constitutional ruler who allows his ministers to rule for him, delegates to them his empire, silently assents to their decisions and only now and then puts in a word which they can at any moment override and act otherwise. But this is so long as the soul personality put forward by the psychic entity is not yet sufficiently developed; when this is strong enough for the inner entity to impose itself through it, then the soul can come forward and control the nature. It is by the coming forward of this true monarch and his taking up of the reins of government that there can take place a real harmonisation of our being and our life.
2.26 - The Ascent towards Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
THE PSYCHIC transformation and the first stages of the spiritual transformation are well within our conception; their perfection would be the perfection, wholeness, consummated unity of a knowledge and experience which is already part of things realised, though only by a small number of human beings. But the supramental change in its process carries us into less explored regions; it initiates a vision of heights of consciousness which have indeed been glimpsed and visited, but have yet to be discovered and mapped in their completeness. The highest of these peaks or elevated plateaus of consciousness, the supramental, lies far beyond the possibility of any satisfying mental scheme or map of it or any grasp of mental seeing and description. It would be difficult for the normal unillumined or untransformed mental conception to express or enter into something that is based on so different a consciousness with a radically different awareness of things; even if they were seen or conceived by some enlightenment or opening of vision, another language than the poor abstract counters used by our mind would be needed to translate them into terms by which their reality could become at all seizable by us. As the summits of human mind are beyond animal perception, so the movements of supermind are beyond the ordinary human mental conception: it is only when we have already had experience of a higher intermediate consciousness that any terms attempting to describe supramental being could convey a true meaning to our intelligence; for then, having experienced something akin to what is described, we could translate an inadequate language into a figure of what we knew. If the mind cannot enter into the nature of supermind, it can look towards it through these high and luminous approaches and catch some reflected impression of the Truth, the Right, the Vast which is the native kingdom of the free Spirit.
But even what can be said about the intermediate consciousness must perforce be inadequate; only certain abstract generalisations can be hazarded which may serve for an initial light of guidance. The one enabling circumstance here is that, however different in constitution and principle, the higher consciousness is still, in its evolutionary form, in what we can first achieve of it here, a supreme development of elements which are already present in ours in however rudimentary and diminished a figure and power of themselves. It is also a helpful fact that the logic of the process of evolutionary Nature continues, greatly modified in some of the rules of its working but essentially the same, in the ascension of the highest heights as in the lower beginnings; thus we can discover and follow to a certain extent the lines of her supreme procedure. For we have seen something of the nature and law of the transition from intellectual to spiritual mind; from that achieved starting-point we can begin to trace the passage to a higher dynamic degree of the new consciousness and the farther transition from spiritual mind towards supermind. The indications must necessarily be very imperfect, for it is only some initial representations of an abstract and general character that can be arrived at by the method of metaphysical inquiry: the true knowledge and description must be left to the language of the mystic and the figures, at once more vivid and more recondite, of a direct and concrete experience.
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This law of Nature's procedure brings in the necessity of a gradation in the last transitional process, a climbing of degrees, an unfolding of higher and higher states that lead us from the spiritualised mind to supermind, - a steep passage that could not be accomplished otherwise. There are above us, we have seen, successive states, levels or graded powers of being overtopping our normal mind, hidden in our own superconscient parts, higher ranges of Mind, degrees of spiritual consciousness and experience; without them there would be no links, no helpful intervening spaces to make the immense ascension possible. It is indeed from these higher sources that the secret spiritual Power acts upon the being and by its pressure brings about the psychic transformation or the spiritual change; but in the early stages of our growth this action is not apparent, it remains occult and unseizable. At first what is necessary is that the pure touch of the spiritual force must intervene in mental nature: that awakening pressure must stamp itself upon mind and heart and life and give them their upward orientation; a subtle light or a great transmuting power must purify, refine and uplift their motions and suffuse them with a higher consciousness that does not belong to their own normal capacity and character. This can be done from within by an invisible action through the psychic entity and the psychic personality; a consciously felt descent from above is not indispensable. The presence of the spirit is there in every living being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure spiritual existence and consciousness, of the delight of a divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and the farthest chambers of the outer being. The necessary turn or change can also be brought about by an occult descent of the spiritual force from above, in which the influx, the influence, the spiritual consequence is felt, but the higher source is unknown and the actual feeling of a descent is not there. A consciousness so touched may be so much uplifted that the being turns to an immediate union with the Self or with the Divine by departure from the evolution and, if that is sanctioned, no question of graduality or steps or method intervenes, the rupture with Nature can be decisive: for the law of departure, once it is made possible, is not or need not be the same as the law of the evolutionary transformation and perfection; it is or can be a leap, a breaking out of bonds rapid or immediate, - the spiritual evasion is secured and its only remaining sanction is the destined fall of the body. But if the transformation of earth life is intended, the first touch of spiritualisation must be followed by an awakening to the higher sources and energies, a seeking for them and an enlargement and heightening of the being into their characteristic status and a conversion of the consciousness to their greater law and dynamic nature. This change must go step by step, till the stair of the ascension is transcended and there is an emergence to those greatest wide-open spaces of which the Veda speaks, the native spaces of a consciousness which is supremely luminous and infinite.
For here there is the same process of evolution as in the rest of the movement of Nature; there is a heightening and widening of the consciousness, an ascent to a new level and a taking up of the lower levels, an assumption and new integration of the existence by a superior power of Being which imposes its own way of action and its character and force of substanceenergy on as much as it can reach of the previously evolved parts of nature. The demand for integration becomes at this highest stage of Nature's workings a point of cardinal importance. In the lower grades of the ascension the new assumption, the integration into a higher principle of consciousness, remains incomplete: the mind cannot wholly mentalise life and matter; there are considerable parts of the life being and the body which remain in the realm of the submental and the subconscient or inconscient. This is one serious obstacle to the mind's endeavour towards the perfection of the nature; for the continued share of the submental, the subconscient and inconscient in the government of the activities, by bringing in another law than that of the mental being, enables the conscious vital and the physical consciousness also to reject the law laid upon them by the mind and to follow their own impulses and instincts in defiance of the mental reason and the rational will of the developed intelligence.
--
But these two stages of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind's transmutation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.
In the human mind the intuition is even such a truthremembrance or truth-conveyance, or such a revealing flash or blaze breaking into a great mass of ignorance or through a veil of nescience: but we have seen that it is subject there to an invading mixture or a mental coating or an interception and substitution; there is too a manifold possibility of misinterpretation which comes in the way of the purity and fullness of its action. Moreover, there are seeming intuitions on all levels of the being which are communications rather than intuitions, and these have a very various provenance, value and character. The infrarational "mystic", so styled, - for to be a true mystic it is not sufficient to reject reason and rely on sources of thought or action of which one has no understanding, - is often inspired by such communications on the vital level from a dark and dangerous source. In these circumstances we are driven to rely mainly on the reason and are disposed even to control the suggestions of the intuition - or the pseudo-intuition, which is the more frequent phenomenon, - by the observing and discriminating intelligence; for we feel in our intellectual part that we cannot be sure otherwise what is the true thing and what the mixed or adulterated article or false substitute. But this largely discounts for us the utility of the intuition: for the reason is not in this field a reliable arbiter, since its methods are different, tentative, uncertain, an intellectual seeking; even though it itself really relies on a camouflaged intuition for its conclusions, - for without that help it could not choose its course or arrive at any assured finding, - it hides this dependence from itself under the process of a reasoned conclusion or a verified conjecture. An intuition passed in judicial review by the reason ceases to be an intuition and can only have the authority of the reason for which there is no inner source of direct certitude. But even if the mind became predominantly an intuitive mind reliant upon its portion of the higher faculty, the co-ordination of its cognitions and its separated activities, - for in mind these would always be apt to appear as a series of imperfectly connected flashes, - would remain difficult so long as this new mentality has not a conscious liaison with its suprarational source or a self-uplifting access to a higher plane of consciousness in which an intuitive action is pure and native.
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This or something more largely planned on these lines might be regarded as the schematic, logical or ideal account of the spiritual transformation, a structural map of the ascent to the supramental summit, looked at as a succession of separate steps, each accomplished before the passage to the next commences. It would be as if the soul, putting forth an organised natural individuality, were a traveller mounting the degrees of consciousness cut out in universal Nature, each ascent carrying it totally as a definite integer, as a separate body of conscious being, from one state of its existence to the next in order. This is so far correct that a sufficient integration of one status has to be complete before an ascent to the next higher station can be entirely secure: this clear succession might also be the course followed by a few even in the early stages of this evolution, and it might become too a normal process after the whole stair-flight of the evolution had been built and made safe. But evolutionary Nature is not a logical series of separate segments; it is a totality of ascending powers of being which interpenetrate and dovetail and exercise in their action on each other a power of mutual modification.
When the higher descends into the lower consciousness, it alters the lower but is also modified and diminished by it; when the lower ascends, it is sublimated but at the same time qualifies the sublimating substance and power. This interaction creates an abundant number of different intermediate and interlocked degrees of the force and consciousness of being, but it also makes it difficult to bring about a complete integration of all the powers under the full control of any one power. For this reason there is not actually a series of simple clear-cut and successive stages in the individual's evolution; there is instead a complexity and a partly determinate, partly confused comprehensiveness of the movement. The soul may still be described as a traveller and climber who presses towards his high goal by step on step, each of which he has to build up as an integer but must frequently redescend in order to rebuild and make sure of the supporting stair so that it may not crumble beneath him: but the evolution of the whole consciousness has rather the movement of an ascending ocean of Nature; it can be compared to a tide or a mounting flux, the leading fringe of which touches the higher degrees of a cliff or hill while the rest is still below. At each stage the higher parts of the nature may be provisionally but incompletely organised in the new consciousness while the lower are in a state of flux or formation, partly moving in the old way though influenced and beginning to change, partly belonging to the new kind but still imperfectly achieved and not yet firm in the change. Another image might be that of an army advancing in columns which annexes new ground, while the main body is still behind in a territory overrun but too large to be effectively occupied, so that there has to be a frequent halt and partial return to the traversed areas for consolidation and assurance of the hold on the occupied country and assimilation of its people. A rapid conquest might be possible, but it would be of the nature of an encampment or a domination established in a foreign country; it would not be the assumption, total assimilation, integration needed for the entire supramental change.
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A third complexity is brought in by the power of the consciousness to live in more than one status at a time; especially, a difficulty is created by the division of our being into an inner and an outer or surface nature and the farther intricacy of a secret circumconscient or environmental consciousness in which are determined our unseen connections with the world outside us. In the spiritual opening, it is the awakened inner being that readily receives and assimilates the higher influences and puts on the higher nature; the external surface self, more entirely moulded by the forces of the Ignorance and Inconscience, is slower to awake, slower to receive, slower to assimilate. There is therefore a long stage in which the inner being is sufficiently transformed but the outer is still involved in a mixed and difficult movement of imperfect change. This disparity repeats itself at each step of the ascent; for in each change the inner being follows more readily, the outer limps after, reluctant or else incompetent in spite of its aspiration and desire: this necessitates a constantly repeated labour of assumption, adaptation, orientation, a labour reproduced in new terms always but always the same in principle. But even when the outer and the inner nature of the individual are unified in a harmonised spiritual consciousness, that still more external but occult part of him in which his being mixes with the being of the outside world and through which the outside world invades his consciousness remains a field of imperfection. There is necessarily a commerce here between disparate influences: the inner spiritual influence is met by quite opposite influences strong in their control of the present world-order; the new spiritual consciousness has to bear the shock of the dominant and established unspiritualised powers of the Ignorance. This creates a difficulty which is of capital importance in all stages of the spiritual evolution and its urge towards a change of the nature.
A subjective spirituality can be established which refuses or minimises commerce with the world or is content to witness its action and throw back or throw out its invading influences without allowing any reaction to them or admitting their intrusion: but if the inner spirituality is to be objectivised in a free worldaction, if the individual has to project himself into the world and in a sense take the world into himself, this cannot be dynamically done without receiving the world influences through one's own circumconscient or environmental being. The spiritual inner consciousness has then to deal with these influences in such a way that, as soon as they approach or enter, they become either obliterated and without result or transformed by their very entry into its own mode and substance. Or it may force them to receive the spiritual influence and return with a transforming power on the world they come from, for such a compulsion on the lower universal Nature is part of a perfect spiritual action. But for that the circumconscient or environmental being must be so steeped in the spiritual light and spiritual substance that nothing can enter into it without undergoing this transformation: the invading external influences have not to bring in at all their lower awareness, their lower sight, their lower dynamism. But this is a difficult perfection, because ordinarily the circumconscient is not wholly our own formed and realised self but ourself plus the external world-nature. It is, for this reason, always easier to spiritualise the inner self-sufficient parts than to transform the outer action; a perfection of introspective, indwelling or subjective spirituality aloof from the world or self-protected against it is easier than a perfection of the whole nature in a dynamic, kinetic spirituality objectivised in the life, embracing the world, master of its environment, sovereign in its commerce with world-nature. But since the integral transformation must embrace fully the dynamic being and take up into it the life of action and the world-self outside us, this completer change is demanded of the evolving nature.
2.28 - Rajayoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
On the whole, for all integral Yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. It is true that their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the Yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral Yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psycho-physical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. We shall have occasion to touch upon this question later when we come to the final principle of synthesis in method to which our examination of the different Yogas is intended to lead.
END OF PARTS ONE AND TWO
2.28 - The Divine Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
39: According to his place in it he would know how to lead or to rule, but also how to subordinate himself; both would be to him an equal delight: for the spirit's freedom, because it is eternal, self-existent and inalienable, can be felt as much in service and willing subordination and adjustment with other selves as in power and rule. An inner spiritual freedom can accept its place in the truth of an inner spiritual hierarchy as well as in the truth, not incompatible with it, of a fundamental spiritual equality. It is this self-arrangement of Truth, a natural order of the spirit, that would exist in a common life of different degrees and stages of the evolving gnostic being. Unity is the basis of the gnostic consciousness, mutuality the natural result of its direct awareness of oneness in diversity, harmony the inevitable power of the working of its force. Unity, mutuality and harmony must therefore be the inescapable law of a common or collective gnostic life. What forms it might take would depend upon the will of evolutionary manifestation of the Supernature, but this would be its general character and principle.
40: This is the whole sense and the inherent law and necessity of the passage from the purely mental and material being and life to the spiritual and supramental being and life, that the liberation, perfection, self-fulfilment for which the being in the Ignorance is seeking can only be reached by passing out of his present nature of Ignorance into a nature of spiritual self-knowledge and worldknowledge. This greater nature we speak of as Supernature because it is beyond his actual level of consciousness and capacity; but in fact it is his own true nature, the height and completeness of it, to which he must arrive if he is to find his real self and whole possibility of being. Whatever happens in Nature must be the result of Nature, the effectuation of what is implied or inherent in it, its inevitable fruit and consequence. If our nature is a fundamental Inconscience and Ignorance arriving with difficulty at an imperfect knowledge, an imperfect formulation of consciousness and being, the results in our being, life and action and creation must be, as they now are, a constant imperfection and insecure half result, an imperfect mentality, an imperfect life, an imperfect physical existence. We seek to construct systems of knowledge and systems of life by which we can arrive at some perfection of our existence, some order of right relations, right use of mind, right use and happiness and beauty of life, right use of the body. But what we achieve is a constructed half-rightness mixed with much that is wrong and unlovely and unhappy; our successive constructions, because of the vice in them and because mind and life cannot rest permanently anywhere in their seeking, are exposed to destruction, decadence, disruption of their order, and we pass from them to others which are not more finally successful or enduring, even if on one side or another they may be richer and fuller or more rationally plausible. It cannot be otherwise, because we can construct nothing which goes beyond our nature; imperfect, we cannot construct perfection, however wonderful may seem to us the machinery our mental ingenuity invents, however externally effective. Ignorant, we cannot construct a system of entirely true and fruitful self-knowledge or world-knowledge: our science itself is a construction, a mass, of formulas and devices; masterful in knowledge of processes and in the creation of apt machinery, but ignorant of the foundations of our being and of world-being, it cannot perfect our nature and therefore cannot perfect our life.
2.3.03 - The Mother's Presence, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The forms that came before your eyes are sometimes glimpses of the things on other planes, sometimes symbols; e.g., the golden water, golden tree, rising moon. At certain stages of the inner opening such things come in great number before the inner vision. The feet of which you saw the golden footprints must have been the Mother's in one of her divine forms descending from the higher plane. The pricking and the heat are both of them signs of an action of the Force taking place within and so affecting the body.
The psychic relations I spoke of are those which men form
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always aware of the Mother - it is of course the psychic - for that though it can be covered over for the time being cannot be misled by the contrary suggestions. Once it is awake, it always reemerges from obscuration - that is the guarantee of the final arrival at the goal, but if it can be maintained in front or even consciously felt behind in all conditions, then the stages of the way also become comparatively safe and can be passed with
6 February 1937 greater ease and security.
2.3.05 - Sadhana through Work for the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Light is not so easy as you fancy; I have warned again and again the sadhaks against the error of thinking they are already in possession of the supermind or in touch with it. One has to go through a long and patient development through many lower stages of consciousness before one can be even within measurable distance of the supermind.
All attachment and self-indulgence are dangerous - attachment and self-indulgence in subjective experiences and remote
23.12 - A Note On The Mother of Dreams, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Rishis spoke of three worlds, three states of being and consciousness. The waking state, the dream state and the sleep state. The waking state means the physical consciousness, the material reality, earth. The dream state means the inner consciousness, the world of subtler formations. It is called the mid-world. Further beyond is the sleep-world, where all outer formations and movements are stilled into their fundamental essences. These are the three stages of the manifestation or evolution of a transcendent Fourth beyond (Turiya). The Transcendent first throws itself out into essential types, original norms of creation, the generic pattern. It is concentrated being and consciousness (Prajna). It is the matrix of creation out of which sprout forth seedlings of an infinite variety. The seeds burst forth and scatter themselves in multiple forms and in multiple directions, pursuing all lines and possibilities of growth and fruition; it is called Hiranyagarbha, the golden embryo. Last comes the actuality; the physical reality into which all the possibilities embody themselves one by one, become earthly facts and figures. It has been named Virat, the Vast, the Concrete.
The Mother of Dreams then is the divine intermediary, the supreme creative Force, the' Mother of Energy. The mighty dynamo fabricating and throwing out endless streams of possible and impossible things. Worlds and gods and men and creatures are all her children - built with her flesh and blood, inspired by her breath, moved by her gesture. But she is the Mother not only of the Shining Ones, but also of the Dark Ones. Calamity and prosperity, rise and fall are cadences in her enchanting symphony. She holds them all in her bosom and carries them forward through a variegated play, a chequered progressive evolution towards their highest and supreme Destiny upon this earth.
2.3.1 - Ego and Its Forms, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Your nature like that of almost everybody has been largely ego-centric and the first stages of the sadhana are with almost everybody ego-centric. The main idea in it is always ones own sadhana, ones own endeavour, ones own development, perfection, siddhi. It is inevitable for most, for without that personal endeavour there would not be sufficient will or push to bring about the first necessary changes. But none of these thingsdevelopment, perfection or siddhican really come in any degree of completeness or unmixed finality until this ego-centric attitude changes into the God-centric, until it becomes the development, perfection, siddhi of the Divine Consciousness, its will and its instrumentation in this body and that can only be when these things become secondary, and bhakti for the Divine, love for the Divine, oneness with the Divine in consciousness, will, heart and body, become the sole aim the rest is then only the fulfilment of the Divine Will by the Divine Power. This attitude is never difficult for the psychic, it is its natural position and feeling, and whenever your psychic was in front, you had it in your central consciousness. But there were the outer mind, vital and physical that brought in their mixture of desire and ego and there could be no effective liberation in life and action till these were liberated. The thinking mind and higher vital can accept without too much difficulty, but the difficulty is with the lower vital and physical and especially with the most external parts of them; for these are entirely creatures of habit, recurring movement, an obstinate repetition of the same movement always. This habit is so blind and obstinate and persistent as to seem almost invincible, especially when it is used at a juncture like this by the Forces of Ignorance as their last refuge or point of attack. But the apparent invincibility is not true. The most ego-centric can change and do change by the psychic principle becoming established in the external nature. That it can be done only by the Divine Grace and Power is true (that is true of all spiritual change)but with the full consent of the being. As it was done in the inner being, so it can be done in the outer; give the adhesion of your full will and faith and, whatever the difficulty, it will be done.
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2.4.2 - Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Aloofness is very necessary at certain stages of the sadhana,but it cannot be maintained all through. One must be able to mix with others and act on them.
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3.00.2 - Introduction, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
more marked. The most vivid examples of these complications areprobably to be found in erotic phenomenology. Four stages of eroticism
were known in the late classical period: Hawwah (Eve), Helen (of Troy),
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figure in four stages, and consequently with four stages of the Eros cult.
The first stageHawwah, Eve, earthis purely biological; woman is
3.01 - THE BIRTH OF THOUGHT, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
alluvial plain, the vital flux, as it crossed the stages of reflection,
was charged with new principles, and as a result manifested new
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We have been following the successive stages of the same
grand progression from the fluid contours of the early earth.
3.01 - The Soul World, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
or soul formations. One ought not to expect, therefore, that what one perceives in the higher worlds is only a vaporous, rarefied matter. So long as one expects something of this kind, one can come to no clear idea as to what is exactly meant by "higher worlds." For many persons it would not be at all as difficult as it actually is to know something about these higher worlds, the elementary part, that is to say, if they did not form the idea that what they are to see is again merely physical matter rarefied. Because they presuppose something of this kind they, as a rule, do not at all wish to acknowledge the reality of that which is the essential part. They look upon it as unreal, refuse to acknowledge it as something that satisfies them, and so on. The higher stages of spiritual development are certainly not easily accessible; but the lower, and that is already a great deal, would not be at all so difficult to reach if people would from the first free themselves from the prejudice which consists in picturing to themselves the soul and spiritual merely as a finer physical.
Just as we do not wholly know a man when
3.02 - King and Queen, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
agents in the early stages of the upward development of the human race.
Layard has amplified this idea in his above-mentioned study. He regards
3.02 - SOL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[120] Accordingly, Sol is the transformative substance, the prima materia as well as the gold tincture. The anonymous treatise De arte chymica distinguishes two parts or stages of the lapis. The first part is called the sol terrenus (earthly sun). Without the earthly sun, the work is not perfected.46 In the second part of the work Sol is joined with Mercurius.
On earth these stones are dead, and they do nothing unless the activity of man is applied to them. [Consider]47 the profound analogy of the gold: the aethereal heaven was locked to all men, so that all men had to descend into the underworld, where they were imprisoned for ever. But Christ Jesus unlocked the gate of the heavenly Olympus and threw open the realm of Pluto, that the souls might be freed, when the Virgin Mary, with the cooperation of the Holy Ghost in an unutterable mystery and deepest sacrament, conceived in her virgin womb that which was most excellent in heaven and upon earth, and finally bore for us the Redeemer of the whole world, who by his overflowing goodness shall save all who are given up to sin, if only the sinner shall turn to him. But the Virgin remained incorrupt and inviolate: therefore not without good reason is Mercurius made equal [aequiparatur] to the most glorious and worshipful Virgin Mary.48
3.02 - THE DEPLOYMENT OF THE NOOSPHERE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
at two different stages of its development.
199
3.02 - The Practice Use of Dream-Analysis, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
conjectured that she might be in the first stages of progressive muscular
atrophy, while another thought that it was a case of hysteria. In view of the
3.03 - The Ascent to Truth, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Seven stages of the ascent, of which the seventh is at the summit.
Epilogue: The new world.
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Seven stages of the Ascent
FIRST STAGE
3.03 - The Four Foundational Practices, #The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, #Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, #Buddhism
The importance of the four preparations to the later stages of dream yoga cannot be overstated.
They are much more powerful than they may appear to be. Furthermore, they are practices anyone can do. They are more psychologically oriented than many practices and will present no difficulty for the practitioner. Simply doing a practice before going to bed may be ineffective, but with consistent practice of the preparations during the day it becomes much easier to attain lucidity in dream and to then go on to the further practices. Using these practices makes everything that happens a cause for the return to presence, and this will bring great benefit to daily life as well as lead to success in dream yoga.
3.04 - LUNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[168] Let us now turn back to the question raised by the quotation in the Rosarium from the Dicta Belini. It is one of those approximate quotations which are typical of the Rosarium.241 In considering the quotation as a whole it should be noted that it is not clear who the speaker is. The Rosarium supposes that it is Sol. But it can easily be shown from the context of the Dicta that the speaker could just as well be the filius Philosophorum, since the woman is sometimes called soror, sometimes mater, and sometimes uxor. This strange relationship is explained by the primitive fact that the son stands for the reborn father, a motif familiar to us from the Christian tradition. The speaker is therefore the father-son, whose mother is the sons sister-wife. According to the degree of our wisdom is contrasted with your understanding; it therefore refers to the wisdom of the Sol redivivus, and presumably also to his sister the moon, hence our and not my wisdom. The degree is not only plausible but is a concept peculiar to the opus, since Sol passes through various stages of transformation from the dragon, lion, and eagle242 to the hermaphrodite. Each of these stages stands for a new degree of insight, wisdom, and initiation, just as the Mithraic eagles, lions, and sun-messengers signify grades of initiation. Unless ye slay me usually refers to the slaying of the dragon, the mortificatio of the first, dangerous, poisonous stage of the anima (= Mercurius), freed from her imprisonment in the prima materia.243 This anima is also identified with Sol.244 Sol is frequently called Rex, and there is a picture showing him being killed by ten men.245 He thus suffers the same mortificatio as the dragon, with the difference that it is never a suicide. For Sol, in so far as the dragon is a preliminary form of the filius Solis, is in a sense the father of the dragon, although the latter is expressly said to beget itself and is thus an increatum.246 At the same time Sol, being his own son, is also the dragon. Accordingly there is a coniugium of the dragon and the woman, who can only be Luna or the lunar (feminine) half of Mercurius.247 As much as Sol, therefore, Luna (as the mother) must be contained in the dragon. To my knowledge there is never any question of her mortificatio in the sense of a slaying. Nevertheless she is included with Sol in the death of the dragon, as the Rosarium hints: The dragon dieth not, except with his brother and his sister.248
[169] The idea that the dragon or Sol must die is an essential part of the mystery of transformation. The mortificatio, this time only in the form of a mutilation, is also performed on the lion, whose paws are cut off,249 and on the bird, whose wings are clipped.250 It signifies the overcoming of the old and obsolete as well as of the dangerous preliminary stages which are characterized by animal-symbols.
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Then follows the passage Therefore pull down the house, etc. If the reader has perused the foregoing passage with the footnotes he will see that these instructions are the typical alchemical procedure for extracting the spirit or soul, and thus for bringing unconscious contents to consciousness. During the solutio, separatio, and extractio the succus lunariae (juice of the moon-plant), blood, or aqua permanens is either applied or extracted. This liquid comes from the unconscious but is not always an au thentic content of it; often it is more an effect of the unconscious on the conscious mind. The psychiatrist knows it as the indirect effect of constellated unconscious contents which attracts or diverts attention to the unconscious and causes it to be assimilated. This process can be observed not only in the gradual formation of hypochondriac obsessions, phobias, and delusions, but also in dreams, fantasies, and creative activities when an unconscious content enforces the application of attention. This is the succus vitae,311 the blood, the vital participation which the patient unconsciously forces on the analyst too, and without which no real therapeutic effect can be achieved. The attention given to the unconscious has the effect of incubation, a brooding312 over the slow fire needed in the initial stages of the work;313 hence the frequent use of the terms decoctio, digestio, putrefactio, solutio. It is really as if attention warmed the unconscious and activated it, thereby breaking down the barriers that separate it from consciousness.
[181] In order to set free the contents hidden in the house314 of the unconscious (anima in compedibus!) the matrix must be opened. This matrix is the canicula, the moon-bitch, who carries in her belly that part of the personality which is felt to be essential, just as Beya did Gabricus. She is the vessel which must be broken asunder in order to extract the precious content, the tender flesh,315 for this is the one thing on which the whole work turns. In this one thing all parts of the work are contained.316 Of these parts two are the artificers, who in the symbolical realm are Sol and Luna, in the human the adept and his soror mystica,317 and in the psychological realm the masculine consciousness and the feminine unconscious (anima). The two vessels are again Sol and Luna,318 the two times are probably the two main divisions of the work, the opus ad album et ad rubeum.319 The former is the opus Lunae, the latter the opus Solis.320 Psychologically they correspond to the constellation of unconscious contents in the first part of the analytical process and to the integration of these contents in actual life. The two fruits321 are the fruit of the sun-and-moon tree,322 gold and silver, or the reborn and sublimated Sol and Luna. The psychological parallel is the transformation of both the unconscious and the conscious, a fact known to everyone who methodically has it out with his unconscious. The two ends or goals are these transformations. But the salvation is one, just as the thing is one: it is the same thing at the beginning as at the end, it was always there and yet it appears only at the end. This thing is the self, the indescribable totality, which though it is inconceivable and irrepresentable is none the less necessary as an intuitive concept. Empirically we can establish no more than that the ego is surrounded on all sides by an unconscious factor. Proof of this is afforded by the association experiment, which gives a graphic demonstration of the frequent failure of the ego and its will. The psyche is an equation that cannot be solved without the factor of the unconscious; it is a totality which includes both the empirical ego and its transconscious foundation.
3.04 - The Way of Devotion, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Consecration becomes in its fullness a devoting of all our being to the Divine; therefore also of all our thoughts and our works. Here the Yoga takes into itself the essential elements of the Yoga of works and the Yoga of knowledge, but in its own manner and with its own peculiar spirit. It is a sacrifice of life and works to the Divine, but a sacrifice of love more than a tuning of the will to the divine Will. The bhakta offers up his life and all that he is and all that he has and all that he does to the Divine. This surrender may take the ascetic form, as when he leaves the ordinary life of men and devotes his days solely to prayer and praise and worship or to ecstatic meditation, gives up his personal possessions and becomes the monk or the mendicant whose one only possession is the Divine, gives up all actions in life except those only which help or belong to the communion with the Divine and communion with other devotees, or at most keeps the doing{|50c-} from the secure fortress of the ascetic life of those services to men which seem peculiarly the outflowing of the divine nature of love, compassion and good. But there is the wider self-consecration, proper to any integral Yoga, which, accepting the fullness of life and the world in its entirety as the play of the Divine, offers up the whole being into his possession; it is a holding of all one is and has as belonging to him only and not to ourselves and a doing of all works as an offering to him. By this comes the complete active consecration of both the inner and the outer life, the unmutilated self-giving. There is also the consecration of the thoughts to the Divine. In its inception this is the attempt to fix the mind on the object of adoration,--for naturally the restless human mind is occupied with other objects and, even when it is directed upwards, constantly drawn away by the world,--so that in the end it habitually thinks of him and all else is only secondary and thought of only in relation to him. This is done often with the aid of a physical image or, more intimately and characteristically, of a mantra or a divine name through which the divine being is realised. There are supposed by those who systematise to be three stages of the seeking through the devotion of the mind, first, the constant hearing of the divine name, qualities and all that has been attached to them, secondly, the constant thinking on them or on the divine being or personality, thirdly, the settling and fixing of the mind on the object; and by this comes the full realisation. And by these, too, there comes when the accompanying feeling or the concentration is very intense, the Samadhi, the ecstatic trance in which the consciousness passes away from outer objects. But all this is really incidental; the one thing essential is the intense devotion of the thought in the mind to the object of adoration. Although it seems akin to the contemplation of the way of knowledge, it differs from that in its spirit. It is in its real nature not a still, but an ecstatic contemplation; it seeks not to pass into the being of the Divine, but to bring the Divine into ourselves and to lose ourselves in the deep ecstasy of his presence or of his possession; and its bliss is not the peace of unity, but the ecstasy of union. Here, too, there may be the separative self-consecration which ends in the giving up of all other thought of life for the possession of this ecstasy, eternal afterwards in planes beyond, or the comprehensive consecration in which all the thoughts are full of the Divine and even in the occupations of life every thought remembers him. As in the other Yogas, so in this, one comes to see the Divine everywhere and in all and to pour out the realisation of the Divine in all one's inner activities and outward actions. But all is supported here by the primary force of the emotional union: for it is by love that the entire self-consecration and the entire possession is accomplished, and thought and action become shapes and figures of the divine love which possesses the spirit and its members.
This is the ordinary movement by which what may be at first a vague adoration of some idea of the Divine takes on the hue and character and then, once entered into the path of Yoga, the inner reality and intense experience of divine love. But there is the more intimate Yoga which from the first consists in this love and attains only by the intensity of its longing without other process or method. All the rest comes, but it comes out of this, as leaf and flower out of the seed; other things are not the means of developing and fulfilling love, but the radiations of love already growing in the soul. This is the way that the soul follows when, while occupied perhaps with the normal human life, it has heard the flute of the Godhead behind the near screen of secret woodlands and no longer possesses itself, can have no satisfaction or rest till it has pursued and seized and possessed the divine fluteplayer. This is in essence the power of love itself in the heart and soul turning from earthly objects to the spiritual source of all beauty and delight. There live in this seeking all the sentiment and passion, all the moods and experiences of love concentrated on a supreme object of desire and intensified a hundredfold beyond the highest acme of intensity possible to a human love. There is the disturbance of the whole life, the illumination by an unseized vision, the unsatisfied yearning for a single object of the heart's desire, the intense impatience of all that distracts from the one preoccupation, the intense pain of the obstacles that stand in the way of possession, the perfect vision of all beauty and delight in a single form. And there are all the many moods of love, the joy of musing and absorption, the delight of the meeting and fulfilment and embrace, the pain of separation, the wrath of love, the tears of longing, the increased delight of reunion. The heart is the scene of this supreme idyll of the inner consciousness, but a heart which undergoes increasingly an intense spiritual change and becomes the radiantly unfolding lotus of the spirit. And as the intensity of its seeking is beyond the highest power of the normal human emotions, so also the delight and the final ecstasy are beyond the reach of the imagination and beyond expression by speech. For this is the delight of the Godhead that passes human understanding. Indian bhakti has given to this divine love powerful forms, poetic symbols which are not in reality so much symbols as intimate expressions of truth which can find no other expression. It uses human relations and sees a divine person, not as mere figures, but because there are divine relations of supreme Delight and Beauty with the human soul of which human relations are the imperfect but still the real type, and because that Delight and Beauty are not abstractions or qualities of a quite impalpable metaphysical entity, but the very body and form of the supreme Being. It is a living Soul to which the soul of the bhakta yearns; for the source of all life is not an idea or a conception or a state of existence, but a real Being. Therefore in the possession of the divine Beloved all the life of the soul is satisfied and all the relations by which it finds and in which it expresses itself, are wholly fulfilled; therefore, too, by any and all of them can the Beloved be sought, though those which admit the greatest intensity, are always those by which he can be most intensely pursued and possessed with the profoundest ecstasy. He is sought within in the heart and therefore apart from all by an inward-gathered concentration of the being in the soul itself; but he is also seen and loved everywhere where he manifests his being. All the beauty and joy of existence is seen as his joy and beauty; he is embraced by the spirit in all beings; the ecstasy of love enjoyed pours itself out in a universal love; all existence becomes a radiation of its delight and even in its very appearances is transformed into something other than its outward appearance. The world itself is experienced as a play of the divine Delight, a Lila, and that in which the world loses itself is the heaven of beatitude of the eternal union.
3.05 - SAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[348] The alchemists knew about the snake and the cold half of nature,691 and they said enough to make it clear to their successors that they endeavoured by their art to lead that serpentine Nous of the darkness, the serpens mercurialis, through the stages of transformation to the goal of perfection (telesmus).692 The more or less symbolical or projected integration of the unconscious that went hand in hand with this evidently had so many favourable effects that the alchemists felt encouraged to express a tempered optimism.
3.06 - Thought-Forms and the Human Aura, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
The aura varies greatly according to the different temperaments and dispositions of people; it varies also in accordance with the stages of spiritual development. A man who
p. 182
3.07 - The Formula of the Holy Grail, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
picture, probably intended to represent successive stages of the alchemical work.]
2. Members of the IV of O.T.O. are well aware of a Word whose analysis contains
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retained their respective points of view in all stages of their art. The practical
consideration is that some aspirants may find it unusally difficult to attain certain
3.1.01 - The Problem of Suffering and Evil, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
of the present and "No farther" and when the fixed line of the present is unfixed and overpassed, it again erects a new line and cries "No farther". If an "elemental" who had attained to the physical mind had been present at the different stages of the earth-history he would have argued like that. When only matter was there and there was no life, if told that there would soon be life on earth embodied in matter, he would have cried out, "What is that? It is impossible, it cannot be done. Life is possible only in a subtle body. It has never been and never will be embodied in gross matter. What, this mass of electrons, gases, chemical elements, this heap of mud and water and stones and inert metals, how are you going to get life in that? Will the metal walk? can the stone live? will you take mud and water and make out of it a body that can move, feel, act, desire?" But life came in spite of the impossibility and living forms were developed - plant and tree and living bodies were built out of the protoplasm and molecule; some ingenious force or being evolved slowly out of that through millions of years with an amazing patience, using chemical and biological elements alike, gene and gland and heart and brain and nerve and cell and living tissue and the animal walked and bounded and man arose evolving through tens of thousands, perhaps millions of years in the body of an erect two-footed animal. There again the physical-minded elemental would have intervened and cried out, "What is this that is being attempted? No, no, impossible. Such a thing has never been done. Reflexes, memories, associations, instinctive combinations of life and action, these things of course are possible; but reason, intelligent will, conscious planning and creation, art, poetry, philosophy in this savage shambling creature? An animal cannot evolve powers and activities which have never been possessed except by the gods and the Asuras. How can this material animal organism ever be capable of such a [incomplete]
3.1.02 - Spiritual Evolution and the Supramental, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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.
The cycles of evolution tend always upward, but they are cycles and do not ascend in a straight line. The process therefore gives the impression of a series of ascents and descents, but what is essential in the gains of the evolution is kept or, even if eclipsed for a time, reemerges in new forms suitable to the new ages.
31.03 - The Trinity of Bengal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
RAMMOHAN, Bankimchandra, Vivekananda - these three personalities represent the three steps in the process of evolution in modern Bengal. Like the three strides of Vishnu these three great souls have occupied three stages of the evolving consciousness of Bengal. The soul of modern Bengal awoke in Rammohan, and then its mind blossomed in Bankim, subsequently its life-energy burst forth in Vivekananda.
In fact we may generalise that all disciplines and ways of creation proceed in the same order. The truth that is to manifest in the material world in a concrete physical form appears at first in an apperception of the inner heart, hrdi pratisya.The mind then seizes upon it and gives a manifest more distinct and secures vitality and leaving the core it starts revealing itself without. Finally, it incarnates in a body, possesses a gross physical form, becomes concrete and real.
31.04 - Sri Ramakrishna, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sri Ramakrishna, at the very outset, proved in his own life the conquest of the inner over the outer, of Consciousness over Matter, of the spiritual over the mundane. And then he sought to impress that high truth on the life-plane of humanity. He sowed the seed of a new future creation. That is why he is the confluence of two epochs. The past ceases and the new future is ushered in him. He seems to have assimilated the essence of all the different spiritual practices of the past and discarded as husk and skin all the non-essentials which vary according to the variations of time and place and person. He brought forward and revived for the future the real truth, the quintessence of spirituality, which means also the supreme felicity. The fundamental nature of the spiritual perfection of Sri Ramakrishna consists in the realisation of God in his Absoluteness. He exemplified, philosophically speaking, the unity and synthesis of the Self and Nature, existence and power, the immutable and its dynamis. He used to say that the Eternal and its manifestation .always go together. The Transcendent is inherent in the manifest; again, the manifest is inherent in the Transcendent. Ascend to the Eternal through the stages of the manifestation and come down from the Eternal into its manifestation - its creation which should not be looked upon as an illusion but only as a form of the Eternal. Therefore Sri Ramakrishna was the worshipper of the Divine Power, the child of the Mother. The Mother herself is the Power of the Brahman.
The dynamic Vedanta of Vivekananda, its application in life, is based on this foundation. Spirituality and life are not two separate things - spirituality should be established and made to flower and bloom in life itself. This great truth always inspired Vivekananda in all his activities. Before the advent of Sri Ramakrishna the word "religion" or "spirituality" used to convey an otherworldly pursuit to the aspirant and to the public as well. Wherever there was some real spiritual practice, the aim and the impulse naturally tended to illustrate the dictum that Brahman alone is the truth and the world an illusion. Sri Ramakrishna shook to its roots the then prevailing conception of illusionism when he made the great Vedantin Totapuri give up the negative path, "Brahman is not this, not this", and accept all this too as Brahman. He further showed Totapuri the glory of the Mother of the universe. Vivekananda seized upon this fundamental realisation of Sri Ramakrishna to turn the tide of religion. His endeavour was to bring down religion or spirituality on the surface of the earth, into normal society and into the ordinary ways of life-activities. Sri Ramakrishna was a genuine Sannyasin at heart but he had never appeared in the garb of a Sannyasin. Vivekananda in spite of his hoisting up the banner of a Sannyasin was a mighty worker in his heart and conduct. He was a worker, but inwardly in communion with the spirit. No doubt, Sri Ramakrishna laid great stress on Samadhi, trance, for the achievement of the unalloyed, pure spiritual truth, but he never accepted the Nirvikalpa Samadhi as the sole self-sufficing goal for all or even for the many. He did not want, personally, to melt away as a salt-doll in the ocean. Like Ramprasad he would rather not become a lump of sugar but taste it instead. The aim of his dynamic personality was to purify and transform the egoistic 'I' into the real I, and take part in the play of the Divine Mother in her creation.
3.1.04 - Transformation in the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I have never said that my Yoga was something brand new in all its elements. I have called it the integral Yoga and that means that it takes up the essence and many processes of the old Yogasits newness is in its aim, standpoint and the totality of its method. In the earlier stages which is all I deal with in books like the Riddle or the Lights1 there is nothing in it that distinguishes it from the old Yogas except the aim underlying its comprehensiveness, the spirit in its movements and the ultimate significance it keeps before italso the scheme of its psychology and its working, but as that was not and could not be developed systematically or schematically in these letters, it has not been grasped by those who are not already acquainted with it by mental familiarity or some amount of practice. The detail or method of the later stages of the Yoga which go into little known or untrodden regions, I have not made public and I do not at present intend to do so.
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. I do not therefore care in the least,even though these ideals were, up to some extent parallel, yet not identical with mine,whether this Yoga and its aim and method are accepted as new or not; that is in itself a trifling matter. That it should be recognised as true in itself by those who can accept or practise it and should make itself true by achievement, is the one thing important; it does not matter if it is called new or a repetition or revival of the old which was forgotten. I laid emphasis on it as new in a letter to certain sadhaks so as to explain to them that a repetition of the aim and idea of the old Yogas was not enough in my eyes, that I was putting forward a thing to be achieved that has not yet been achieved, not yet clearly visualised, even though it is one natural but still secret destined outcome of all the past spiritual endeavour.
3.1.3 - Difficulties of the Physical Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
You used to have dreams on the vital plane also long ago in which you passed through dangerous forests and wildernesses amid perils of land and water and wild beasts etc., but you reached safely under the Mothers protection where you were going. I remember your writing some to me. Also there have been dreams of difficult passages ending in the arrival on the true open way. Only these dreams you are having now indicate the difficulty of the passage through the physical (and no longer through the vital) consciousness but the common element is that you are under the Mothers protection and reach the way at the end. This is quite natural because what everybody is passing through now are the difficulties of the physical and subconscient nature; but the Mothers protection is the same here as in the past stages of the sadhana.
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32.03 - In This Crisis, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The atyasrami sannyasis(those who have surpassed the four ashrams or the four prescribed stages of life) obey no social law, they are outside the pale of law: But they have acquired that right, for they follow a higher law, a spiritual discipline.
That is why we believe that the fundamental reason why human beings have become so infrahuman is that a demoniac influence has possessed them. An asuric force has descended on earth; it wants to appropriate the whole earth, to engulf the entire humanity. Perhaps this is its last chance. That is why it is in the field with all its powers and exerts all its strength. It is from this angle that we view the strifes and tussles going on throughout the world. It is a struggle between two forces: one tamasic, the other resplendent; the one is for man's uplift, the other for his downfall; the one for creation, the other for catastrophe.
32.04 - The Human Body, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Creation originated from the urge of a descent - the descent, of the highest, the transcendent, the supreme consciousness on this dense, hard and solid earth of Matter in the form of a mass of atoms. The urge of this downward tendency continues also in the personalities and the beings that have appeared in the different stages of this descent. They or something in them wants to come down to the level of the earth. Again, in the upward movement as well, their urge is to come up to the status of man, or, it may be, ultimately to partake of the fulfilment that is in bloom or will bloom in the physical. However, we shall shortly deal with that mystery.
Now we were referring to the descent of God in human form. Why has God become man? For what purpose? Regarding this we find a fine principle, a subtle truth in the Christian way of spiritual practice. And it can be said even that it is a unique discovery, a speciality of the Christian sadhana. According to the Christian doctrine, God as such has not come down on the earth, but He has sent His own Son in the form of man - even then the Father and the Son are at bottom one: "I and my Father are one." What for? To take up the sins of man - that means man is a store-house of sin. By his own effort, by his spiritual practice to get rid of sin and to attain to the spiritual divine consciousness and life is not possible for him. Therefore, the supremely gracious God has come down in the human form to expiate the sin of man on his behalf and thus make him fit for receiving the Grace of God. This is the reality of what is called vicarious atonement and redemption.
3.2.4 - Sex, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I have not said [in the preceding letter] that the sex-impulse has not been mastered in other Yogas. I have said that it is difficult to be free from it entirely and that the attempt at sublimation as in the Vaishnava sadhana has its dangers. That is evidenced by all one knows of what has frequently and even largely happened among the Vaishnavas. Transcendence and transformation are different matters. There are three kinds or stages of transformation contemplated in this sadhana, the psychic transformation, the spiritual and the supramental. The first two have been done in their own way in other Yogas; the last is a new endeavour. A transformation sufficient for spiritual realisation is attainable by the two former; a transformation sufficient for the divinisation of human life is, in my view, not possible except by a supramental change.
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3.4.02 - The Inconscient, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In pursuing psychological investigation upon this line we shall only be resuming that which had already been done by our remote forefa thers. For they too, the moment they began to observe, to experiment, to look below the surface of things, were compelled to perceive that the surface man is only a form and appearance and that the real self is something infinitely greater and more profound. They too must have passed through the first materialistic stages of science and philosophy. For we read in the Aitareya Upanishad that entering upon possession of the material world and the body, the Purusha, the Conscious Soul, asks himself, If utterance is by speech and life by the breath, vision by the eye, hearing by the ear, thought by the mind, if in short all the apparent activities of the being can be accounted for by the automatic functioning of Nature, then what am I? And the Upanishad says farther, He being born distinguished only the working of the material elements, for what else was there of which he should discuss and conclude? Yet in the end he beheld this conscious being which is Brahman utterly extended and he said to himself, Now have I really seen So too in the Taittiriya Upanishad Bhrigu Varuni meditating on the Brahman comes first to the conclusion that Matter is Brahman and only afterwards discovers Life that is Brahman,so rising from the materialistic to the vitalistic theory of existence as European thought is now rising,then Mind that is Brahman and then Knowledge that is Brahman,so rising to the sensational and the idealistic realisations of the truth and at last Bliss of Existence that is Brahman. There he pauses in the ultimate spiritual realisation, the highest formulation of knowledge that man can attain.
The Conscient therefore and not the Inconscient was the Truth at which the ancient psychology arrived; and it distinguished three strata of the conscient self, the waking, the dream and the sleep selves of Man,in other words the superficial existence, the subconscient or subliminal and the superconscient which to us seems the inconscient because its state of consciousness is the reverse of ours: for ours is limited and based on division and multiplicity, but this is that which becomes a unity; ours is dispersed in knowledge, but in this other self conscious knowledge is self-collected and concentrated; ours is balanced between dual experiences, but this is all delight, it is that which in the very heart of our being fronts everything with a pure all-possessing consciousness and enjoys the delight of existence.1 Therefore, although its seat is that stratum of consciousness which to us is a deep sleep,for the mind there cannot maintain its accustomed functioning and becomes inconscient,yet its name is He who knows, the Wise One, Prajna. This says the Mandukya Upanishad, is omniscient, omnipotent, the inner control, the womb of all and that from which creatures are born and into which they depart. It answers, therefore, closely enough to the modern idea of the Inconscient corrected by the other modern idea of the subliminal self; for it is inconscient only to the waking mind precisely because it is superconscient to it and the mind is therefore only able to seize it in its results and not in itself. And what better proof can there be of the depth and truth of the ancient psychology than the fact that when modern thought in all its pride of exact and careful knowledge begins to cast its fathom into these depths, it is obliged to repeat in other language what had already been written nearly three thousand years ago?
3.4.1 - The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What is taking place, the subsiding of the surge of subconscient thoughts and movements, and their pressure on the mind, is just what ought to take place. It is not a suppression or pulling back into the subconscient, it is an expulsion from the conscious self into which it has arisen. It is true that something more may rise from the subconscient, but it will be what is still left there. What is now rejected, if it goes anywhere and is not abolished, will go not into the subconscient but into the surrounding consciousness which one carries around himonce there it no longer belongs to oneself in any way and if it tries to return it will be as foreign matter which one has not to accept or allow any longer. These are the two last stages of rejection by which one gets rid of the old things of the nature, they go down into the subconscient and have to be got rid of from there or they go out into the environmental consciousness and are no longer ours.
The idea that one should let what rises from the subconscient go on repeating itself till it is exhausted is not the right idea. For that would needlessly prolong the troubled condition and might be harmful. When these things rise they have to be observed and then thrown out, not kept.
3-5 Full Circle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
There is now much evidence, originating in the work of Piaget (1960) and substantiated in numerous experiments by other child psychologists both here and abroad (for reviews see Flavell, 1963; Kohlberg, 1968; and Phillips, 1969), that individual cognitive development proceeds by distinct, qualitatively different stages in children's modes of thinking and problem solving at different ages. Piaget and others have demonstrated that children's thinking is not just a watered-down or inferior approximation to adult thinking; it is radically and qualitatively different. The stages of mental development form an invariant sequence or succession of individual development. Each stage of cognitive development is a structured whole; mental development does not consist of the mere accretion of specific stimulus-response associations. Cognitive stages are hierarchically integrated; higher stages reintegrate the cognitive structures found at lower stages. Also, as Kohlberg (1968, p. 1021) points out "...there is a hierarchical preference within the individual...to prefer a solution of a problem at the highest level available to him." In reviewing the experimental literature on children's learning, Sheldon White (1965) has amassed evidence for two broad stages of mental development, which he labels associative and cognitive. The transition from one to the other occurs for the vast majority of children between five and seven years of age. In the simplest terms, these stages correspond to concrete-associative thinking and abstract-conceptual thinking. The latter does not displace the former in the course of the child's mental development; in older children and adults the two modes co-exist as hierarchical layers.
Ontogeny of Human Mental Abilities.
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And what was its objective, from its beginning in 1948? We announced it visibly enough in Science: "An OSRD-like organization which may hope to succeed in advancing social (and biological) science through the stages of natural classification (J. S. Mill) and evolution theory (von Bertallanffy and Norbert Wiener), into that achieved by the physical sciences, where scientific fields are connected, and science is closely linked to philosophy and technology. The possibility of such coordination emerged with the independent discoveries of parts of the same conceptual scheme by students of plant, animal, and human coactions (as Leibniz had predicted) . . . Should this scheme prove to be a natural classification (J. S. Mill), it would create conditions for rapid coordination and advance of social science, as the Periodic Table did in chemistry."39,40
The announcement ended with a prediction that only a few Brooklyn College students could at that time begin to understand: "It is anticipated that the philosophical, scientific, and technological structures of Western and Eastern ideologies about conflict and cooperation will have been sufficiently clarified by then to make possible their gradual displacement by an advanced social science which is systematic, useful, and universally accepted, as physical science already is today."40
36.07 - An Introduction To The Vedas, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
These four divisions of the Veda are said to correspond to the four stages of human life. In the first stage, the foremost duty of a Brahmachari (a student practising celibacy) is to recite the mantras of the Samhitas which contain the quintessence of the ideal of life. In the next stage, on entering upon household life one has to practise ceremonies and sacrificial rites and thus the stress is laid on the Brahmanas. In the third stage of life, when one renounces the household life and retires into the forest one has to practise all those sacrificial rites and ceremonies symbolically as a part of one's spiritual discipline following the teachings of the Aranyakas. In the fourth and final stage, one gives up all one's earlier practices and in conformity with the guidance of the Upanishads one takes to the contemplation of the supreme Truth which cannot be attained by reasonings and discussions (naisa tarkena matiraPaneya). ow we may say that the Samhitas, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads indicate changes in the practice of the Vedic truth undergone with the march of time. The spiritual discipline of the Samhitas has for its aim the attainment of Godhood which is an aspect of the cosmic manifestation of the transcendental triune principle, Existence-Consciousness. Bliss. The discipline of the Brahmanas tries to manifest the spirit of the former through external practice. And the spiritual discipline of the Upanishads does not concern itself so much with the manifestation of the gods as it does with getting absorbed in the ultimate Source from whence the gods originated. In other words, the aim of the Upanishadic truth is to indicate how the light of consciousness dwelling in the heart of everyone like a steady flame of the size of the thumb can be merged into the boundless ocean of the transcendental consciousness.
Strictly speaking, the stages of the Samhitas, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads cannot be regarded successive stages. For there are many Upanishads which appeared earlier than many Brahmanas and some portions of the Samhitas. As we understand it, first there were the earlier mantras of the Samhitas from which there arose the two branches, Brahmanas and the Upanishads. The Brahmanas laid stress on the exoteric portions of the Samhitas, and the Upanishads on the esoteric side related to the knowledge of the ultimate Truth.
In the subsequent ages people were attracted more to the exoteric side dealing with ceremonies and sacrificial rites as a means of temporal happiness, and it is the Brahmanas that professed to explain the Vedas. On the other hand, the Upanishads tried to maintain the spirit of the ultimate realisation suggested in the Vedas. That is why the Upanishads have been looked upon as the system of knowledge, while the Brahmanas as that of work.
36.08 - A Commentary on the First Six Suktas of Rigveda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
The Vedic spiritual discipline aims at Truth, the Right and the Vast. The ordinary life consists of body, life and mind. The trivial work, the insignificant inspiration and enjoyment of life, the limited knowledge of the mind - man is aware of nothing beyond. But there is something above the body, life and mind. When one reaches that higher plane, one becomes full of truth-consciousness, that is to say, one owns the nature and the law of conduct of, the Gods. Body, life and mind stand in the way of the aspirant to the realm of the Gods. However, for that we are not to deny the existence of or do away with body, life and mind. What is actually needed is the purification and transformation of these three instruments. There are three stages of purification and transformation; accordingly the present sukta has been divided into three parts each containing three riks.
The first three riks deal with the purification and transformation of life-energy. Vayu is the presiding Deity of life-energy. Vayuh pranah(Vayu is life), says the Mundaka Upanishad. In the Rigveda too there is a clear indication of it. It says, pratnat vayurajayata(Vayu came into existence from the Supreme as Life). This Vayu or life energy is the raison dtreof all the activities of the ordinary human life. Life abounds with desires and enjoyments of earthly objects. The ordinary life is blind and ignorant. It hankers after the satisfaction of desires. It gets satisfaction even in fleeting pleasures. But what an aspirant needs in life is to taste the pure and unalloyed nectar which is the perpetual divine delight inherent in each object.
3.7.1.06 - The Ascending Unity, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But the repeated birth of the same individual does not at first sight seem to be indispensable in this overpowering universal unity. To the logical intellect it might appear to be a contradiction, since all here is the one self, spirit, existence born into nature, assuming a multitude of forms, ascending many gradations of its stages of self-revelation. That summary cutting of existence into the I and the not-I which was the convenience of our egoistic notion of things, a turn of mind so powerful for action, would seem to be only a practical or a mechanical device of the one Spirit to support its separative phenomenon of birth and conscious variation of combined proceeding, a sorcerer's trick of the universal intelligence; it is only apparent fact of being, not its truth, - there is no separation, only a universal unity, one spirit. But may not this again be a swinging away to the opposite extreme? As the ego was an excessive scission in the unity of being, so this idea of an ocean of unity in which our life would be only an inconstant momentary wave, may be a violent excision of something indispensable to the universal order. Individuality is as important a thing to the ways of the
Spirit of existence as universality. The individual is that potent secret of its being upon which the universal stresses and leans and makes the knot of power of all its workings: as the individual grows in consciousness and sight and knowledge and all divine power and quality, increasingly he becomes aware of the universal in himself, but aware of himself too in the universality, of his own past not begun and ended in the single transient body, but opening to future consummations. If the aim of the universal in our birth is to become self-conscient and possess and enjoy its being, still it is done through the individual's flowering and perfection; if to escape from its own workings be the last end, still it is the individual that escapes while the universal seems content to continue its multitudinous births to all eternity. Therefore the individual would appear to be a real power of the Spirit and not a simple illusion or device, except in so far as the universal too may be, as some would have it, an immense illusion or
3.7.2.04 - The Higher Lines of Karma, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The higher mind of man seeks not only after good, but after truth, after knowledge. He has an intellectual as well as an ethical being and the impulse that moves it, the will to know, the thirst for truth is not less divine in its upward orientation than the will to good, not less too in its earlier workings, but even more, a necessity of the growth of our consciousness and being and the right ordering of our action, not less an imperative need laid upon man by the will of the spirit in the universe. And in the pursuit of knowledge as in the pursuit of good we see the same lines and stages of the evolution of energy. At first as its basis there is simply a life-consciousness seeking for its self, becoming more and more aware of its movements, actions and reactions, its environment, its habits, its fixed laws, gaining and enlarging and learning always to profit by self-experience. This is indeed the fundamental purpose of consciousness and use of intelligence, and intelligence with the thinking will in it is mans master faculty and supports and embraces, changes with its change and widens with its widening and increasingly perfects all the others. Mind in its first action pursues knowledge with a certain curiosity, but turns it mainly to practical experience, to a help that enables it to fulfil better and to increase more assuredly the first uses and purposes of life. Afterwards it evolves a freer use of the intelligence, but there is still a dominant turn towards the vital purpose. And we may observe that as a power for the returns of life the world energy seems to attach a more direct importance and give more tangible results to knowledge, to the right practical workings of the intelligence than it yields to moral right. In this material world it is at least doubtful how far moral good is repaid by vital good and moral evil punished by a recoil, but it is certain that we do pay very usually for our errors, for stupidity, for ignorance of the right way of action, for any ignoring or misapplication of the laws that govern our psychical, vital and physical being; it is certain that knowledge is a power for life efficiency and success. Intelligence pays its way in the material world, guards itself against vital and physical suffering, secures its vital rewards more surely than moral right and ethical purpose.
But the higher mind of humanity is no more content with a utilitarian use of knowledge as its last word in the seeking of the intelligence than with a vitalistic and utilitarian turn and demand of the ethical being. As in the ethical, so in the intellectual being of man there emerges a necessity of knowledge which is no longer its utility for life, its need of knowing rightly in order to act rightly, to deal successfully and intelligently with the world around it, but a necessity of the soul, an imperative demand of the inner being. The pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge is the true, the intrinsic dharma of the intellect and not for the sake primarily or even necessarily at all for the securing or the enlargement of the means of life and success in action. The vital kinetic man tends indeed to regard this passion of the intellect as a respectable but still rather unpractical and often trivial curiosity: as he values ethics for its social effects or for its rewards in life, so he values knowledge for its external helpfulness; science is great in his eyes because of its inventions, its increase of comforts and means and appliances: his standard in all things is vital efficiency. But in fact Nature sees and stirs from the first to a larger and more inward Will and is moved with a greater purpose, and all seeking for knowledge springs from a necessity of the mind, a necessity of its nature, and that means a necessity of the soul that is here in nature. Its need to know is one with its need to grow, and from the eager curiosity of the child upward to the serious stress of mind of the thinker, scholar, scientist, philosopher the fundamental purpose of Nature, the constant in it, is the same. All the time that she seems busy only with the maintenance of her works, with life, with the outward, her secret underlying purpose is other,it is the evolution of that which is hidden within her: for if her first dynamic word is life, her greater revealing word is consciousness and the evolution of life and action only the means of the evolution of the consciousness involved in life, the imprisoned soul, the Jiva. Action is a means, but knowledge is the sign and the growth of the conscious soul is the purpose. Mans use of the intelligence for the pursuit of knowledge is therefore that which distinguishes him most from other beings and gives him his high peculiar place in the scale of existence. His passion for knowledge, first world-knowledge, but afterwards self-knowledge and that in which both meet and find their common secret, God-knowledge, is the central drift of his ideal mind and a greater imperative of his being than that of action, though later in laying its complete hold on him, greater in the wideness of its reach and greater too in its effectiveness upon action, in the returns of the world energy to his power of the truth within him.
3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Prakrit of a Prakrit and so on to increasing stages of impurity.
The superior purity of the Indian language is the reason of its
--
right force to order rightly the hymn in relation to the stages of
the sacrifice, therefore he can help the Rishis to speak the b}
--
described or rather two stages of one action.
yjt. S. yjnFy. But yjt like yj/ may also be active = y>y;.
4.01 - THE COLLECTIVE ISSUE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
with certain stages of being which common experience has
hitherto been able to ignore and in particular that of the collective.
4.01 - The Presence of God in the World, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
sought not in the long-outgrown stages of his em-
bryonic life, whether individual or racial, but in the
4.02 - The Integral Perfection, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the process of this change there must be by the very necessity of the effort two stages of its working. First, there will be the personal endeavour of the human being, as soon as he becomes aware by his soul, mind, heart of this divine possibility and turns towards it as the true object of life, to prepare himself for it and to get rid of all in him that belongs to a lower working, of all that stands in the way of his opening to the spiritual truth and its power, so as to possess by this liberation his spiritual being and turn all his natural movements into free means of its self-expression. It is by this turn that the self-conscious Yoga aware of its aim begins: there is a new awakening and an upward change of the life motive. So long as there is only an intellectual, ethical and other self-training for the now normal purposes of life which does not travel beyond the ordinary circle of working of mind, life and body, we are still only in the obscure and yet unillumined preparatory Yoga of Nature; we are still in pursuit of only an ordinary human perfection. A spiritual desire of the Divine and of the divine perfection, of a unity with him in all our being and a spiritual perfection in all our nature, is the effective sign of this change, the precursory power of a great integral conversion of our being and living.
By personal effort a precursory change, a preliminary conversion can be effected; it amounts to a greater or less spiritual Using of our mental motives, our character and temperament, and a mastery, stilling or changed action of the vital and physical life. This converted subjectivity can be made the base of some communion or unity of the soul in mind with the Divine and some partial reflection of the divine nature in the mentality of the human being. That is as far as man can go by his unaided or indirectly aided effort, because that is an effort of mind and mind cannot climb beyond itself permanently: at most it arises to a spiritualised and idealised mentality. If it shoots up beyond that border, it loses hold of itself, loses hold of life, and arrives either at a trance of absorption or a passivity. A greater perfection can only be arrived at by a higher power entering in and taking up the whole action of the being. The second stage of this Yoga will therefore be a persistent giving up of all the action of the nature into the hands of this greater Power, a substitution of its influence, possession and working for the personal effort, until the Divine to whom we aspire becomes the direct master of the Yoga and effects the entire spiritual and ideal conversion of the being.
4.03 - THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[361] In our parable the wonderful water already has that decomposing and dissolving property which anticipates the kings dismemberment.46 The dissolution of the initial material plays a great role in alchemy as an integral part of the process. Here I will mention only the unique interpretation of the solutio given by Dorn. In his Speculativa philosophia he discusses the seven stages of the work. The first stage begins with the study of the philosophers, which is the way to the investigation of truth.
But the truth is that from which nothing can be missing, to which nothing can be added, nay more, to which nothing can be opposed. . . . The truth therefore is a great strength and an impregnable fortress . . ., an unconquerable pledge to them that possess it. In this citadel is contained the true and undoubted stone and treasure of the philosophers, which is not eaten into by moths, nor dug out by thieves, but remaineth for ever when all things else are dissolved, and is appointed for the ruin of many, but for the salvation of others. This is a thing most worthless to the vulgar, spurned above all things and hated exceedingly, yet it is not hateful but lovable, and to philosophers precious above gems.47
4.04 - In the Total Christ, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
even at the lowliest stages of belief in God, we
shall see it as glowing with an irresistible attrac-
4.04 - THE REGENERATION OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[390] The stages of the work are marked by seven colours which are associated with the planets.111 This accounts for the relation of the colours to astrology, and also to psychology, since the planets correspond to individual character components. The Aurora Consurgens relates the colours to the soul.112 Lagneus associates the four principal colours with the four temperaments.113 The psychological significance of the colours comes out quite clearly in Dorn: Truly the form which is the intellect of man is the beginning, middle, and end of the preparations, and this form is indicated by the yellow colour, which shows that man is the greater and principal form in the spagyric work, and one mightier than heaven.114 Since the gold colour signifies intellect, the principal informator (formative agent) in the alchemical process, we may assume that the other three colours also denote psychological functions, just as the seven colours denote the seven astrological components of character. Consequently the synthesis of the four or seven colours would mean nothing less than the integration of the personality, the union of the four basic functions, which are customarily represented by the colour quaternio blue-red-yellow-green.115
[391] The cauda pavonis was a favourite theme for artistic representation in the old prints and manuscripts. It was not the tail alone that was depicted, but the whole bird. Since the peacock stands for all colours (i.e., the integration of all qualities), an illustration in Khunraths Amphitheatrum sapientiae logically shows it standing on the two heads of the Rebis, whose unity it obviously represents. The inscription calls it the bird of Hermes and the blessed greenness, both of which symbolize the Holy Ghost or the Ruach Elohim, which plays a great role in Khunrath.116 The cauda pavonis is also called the soul of the world, nature, the quintessence, which causes all things to bring forth.117 Here the peacock occupies the highest place as a symbol of the Holy Ghost, in whom the male-female polarity of the hermaphrodite and the Rebis is integrated.
4.1.1.01 - The Fundamental Realisations, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Three stages of Transformation:
Psychic, Spiritual, Supramental
4.1.2.02 - The Three Transformations, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There are three stages of the sadhana, psychic change, transition to the higher levels of consciousness - with a descent of their conscious forces - the supramental. In the last even the control over death is a later, not an initial stage. Each of these stages demands a great length of time and a high and long endeavour.
To be sthitaprajna merely means to have one's thinking mind settled in the spiritual consciousness in the realisation of Self. That does not necessarily transform the other parts of the nature. The bringing down of the Force and Light of the higher consciousness, the opening of the psychic and the centres of the mind, vital and physical, the consent and receptive opening of the nature to the workings of the psychic and the higher consciousness, finally the opening to the supramental are the conditions of transformation. What do you mean by "attaining" the higher consciousness? The higher consciousness is something above the mind, vital and body of the human being. It is wholly spiritual.
4.1.2 - The Difficulties of Human Nature, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
These obstacles are usual in the first stages of the sadhana. They are due to the nature being not yet sufficiently receptive. You should find out where the obstacle is, in the mind or the vital, and try to widen the consciousness there, call in more purity and peace and in that purity and peace offer that part of your being sincerely and wholly to the Divine Power.
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4.1.3 - Imperfections and Periods of Arrest, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The length of your period of dullness is also no sufficient reason for losing belief in your capacity or your spiritual destiny. I can look back to periods not of two but of many months of blank suspension of all experience or progress. I believe that alternations of bright and dark periods are almost a universal experience of Yogins, and the exceptions are very rare. If one enquires into the reasons of this phenomenon,very unpleasant to our impatient human nature,it will be found, I think, that they are in the main two. The first is that the human consciousness either cannot bear a constant descent of the Light or Power or Ananda, or cannot at once receive and absorb it; it needs periods of assimilation, but this assimilation goes on behind the veil of the surface consciousness; the experience or the realisation that has descended retires behind that veil and leaves this outer or surface consciousness to lie fallow and become ready for a new descent. In the more developed stages of the Yoga these dark or dull periods become shorter, less trying as well as uplifted by the sense of the greater consciousness which, though not acting for immediate progress, yet remains and sustains the outer nature. The second cause is some resistance, something in the human nature that has not felt the former descents, is not ready, is perhaps unwilling to change,often it is some strong habitual formation of the mind or the vital or some temporary inertia of the physical consciousness and not exactly a part of the nature and this, whether showing or concealing itself, thrusts up the obstacle. If one can detect the cause in oneself, acknowledge it, see its workings and call down the Power for its removal, then the periods of obscurity can be greatly shortened and their acuity becomes less. But in any case the Divine Power is working always behind and one day, perhaps when one least expects it, the obstacle breaks, the clouds vanish and there is again the light and the sunshine. The best thing in these cases is, if one can manage it, not to fret, not to despond, but to insist quietly and keep oneself open, spread to the Light and waiting in faith for it to come: that, I have found, shortens these ordeals. Afterwards, when the obstacle disappears, one finds that a great progress has been made and that the consciousness is far more capable of receiving and retaining than before. There is a return for all the trials and ordeals of the spiritual life.
I write all this to show you that there is nothing peculiar to you in this untoward experience, nothing that would warrant you in thinking yourself less called and fit than others for the Yoga, nothing that would justify you in taking the hand from the plough, even though you find long bits of hard soil that resist and need much labour. The opening you had is sufficient proof that you are meant for the Path; for it is a sure sign of the dawns that are to come hereafter.
4.18 - Faith and shakti, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Moreover, not only a faith in the fundamental principle, ideas, way of the Yoga is needed, but a day to day working faith m the power in us to achieve, in the steps we have taken on the way, in the spiritual experiences that come to us, in the intuitions, the guiding movements of will and impulsion, the moved intensities of the heart and aspirations and fulfilments of the life that are the aids, the circumstances and the stages of the enlarging of the nature and the stimuli or the steps of the soul's evolution. At the same time it has always to be remembered that we are moving from imperfections and ignorance towards light and perfection, and the faith in us must be free from attachment to the forms of our endeavour and the successive stages of our realisation. There is not only much that will be strongly raised in us in order to be cast out and rejected, a battle between the powers of ignorance and the lower nature and the higher powers that have to replace them, but experiences, states of thought and feeling, forms of realisation that are helpful and have to be accepted on the way and may seem to us for the time to be spiritual finalities, are found afterwards to be steps of transition, have to be exceeded and the working faith that supported them withdrawn in favour of other and greater things or of more full and comprehensive realisations and experiences, which replace them or into which they are taken up in a completing transformation. There can be for the seeker of the integral Yoga no clinging to resting-places on the road or to half-way houses; he cannot be satisfied till he has laid down all the great enduring bases of his perfection and broken out into its large and free infinities, and even there he has to be constantly filling himself with more experiences of the Infinite. His progress is an ascent from level to level and each new height brings in other vistas and revelations of the much that has still to be done, bhuri kartvam, till the divine shakti has at last taken up all his endeavour and he has only to assent and participate gladly by a consenting oneness in her luminous workings. That which will support him through these changes, struggles, transformations which might otherwise dishearten and baffle, -- for the intellect and life and emotion always grasp too much at things, fasten on premature certitudes and are apt to be afflicted and unwilling when forced to abandon that on which they rested, --is a firm faith in the shakti that is at work and reliance on the guidance of the Master of the Yoga whose wisdom is not in haste and whose steps through all the perplexities of the mind are assured and just and sound, because they are founded on a perfectly comprehending transaction with the necessities of our nature.
The progress of the Yoga is a procession from the mental ignorance through imperfect formations to a perfect foundation and increasing of knowledge and in its more satisfyingly positive parts a movement from light to greater light, and it cannot cease till we have the greatest light of the supramental knowledge. The motions of the mind in its progress must necessarily be mixed with a greater or lesser proportion of error, and we should not allow our faith to be disconcerted by the discovery of its errors or imagine that because the beliefs of the intellect which aided us were too hasty and positive, therefore the fundamental faith in the soul was invalid. The human intellect is too much afraid of error precisely because it is too much attached to a premature sense of certitude and a too hasty eagerness for positive finality in what it seems to seize of knowledge. As our self-experience increases, we shall find that our errors even were necessary movements, brought with them and left their element or suggestion of truth and helped towards discovery or supported a necessary effort and that the certitudes we have now to abandon had yet their temporary validity in the progress of our knowledge. The intellect cannot be a sufficient guide in the search for spiritual truth and realisation and yet it has to be utilised in the integral movement of our nature. And while, therefore, we have to reject paralysing doubt or mere intellectual scepticism, the seeking intelligence has to be trained to admit a certain large questioning, an intellectual rectitude not satisfied with half-truths, mixtures of error or approximations and, most positive and helpful, a perfect readiness always to move forward from truths already held and accepted to the greater corrective, completing or transcending truths which at first it was unable or, it may be, disinclined to envisage. A working faith of the intellect is indispensable, not a superstitious, dogmatic or limiting credence attached to every temporary support or formula, but a large assent to the successive suggestions and steps of the shakti, a faith fixed on realities, moving from the lesser to the completer realities and ready to throw down all scaffolding and keep only the large and growing structure.
4.1 - Jnana, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
93. 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.
94. All renunciation is for a greater joy yet ungrasped. Some renounce for the joy of duty done, some for the joy of peace, some for the joy of God and some for the joy of self-torture, but renounce rather as a passage to the freedom and untroubled rapture beyond.
4.3.2.02 - Breaking into the Spiritual Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1 In a letter to the correspondent, Krishnaprem said that there are two stages of bhakti.
In the first stage of rapturous adoration, the light and bliss of Krishna rush down into
5.01 - ADAM AS THE ARCANE SUBSTANCE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[552] We must now turn to the question of why it was that Adam should have been selected as a symbol for the prima materia or transformative substance. This was probably due, in the first place, to the fact that he was made out of clay, the ubiquitous materia vilis that was axiomatically regarded as the prima materia and for that very reason was so tantalizingly difficult to find, although it was before all eyes. It was a piece of the original chaos, of the massa confusa, not yet differentiated but capable of differentiation; something, therefore, like shapeless, embryonic tissue. Everything could be made out of it.17 For us the essential feature of the prima materia is that it was defined as the massa confusa and chaos, referring to the original state of hostility between the elements, the disorder which the artifex gradually reduced to order by his operations. Corresponding to the four elements there were four stages of the process (tetrameria), marked by four colours, by means of which the originally chaotic arcane substance finally attained to unity, to the One, the lapis, which at the same time was an homunculus.18 In this way the Philosopher repeated Gods work of creation described in Genesis 1. No wonder, therefore, that he called his prima materia Adam and asserted that it, like him, consisted or was made out of the four elements. For out of the four elements were created our Father Adam and his children, says the Turba.19 And Gabir ibn Hayyan (Jabir)20 says in his Book of Balances:
The Pentateuch says, regarding the creation of the first being, that his body was composed of four things, which thereafter were transmitted by heredity: the warm, the cold, the moist, and the dry. He was in fact composed of earth and water, a body and a soul. Dryness came to him from the earth, moisture from the water, heat from the spirit, and cold from the soul.21
5.03 - The Divine Body, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It might be also that the transformation might take place by stages; there are powers of the nature still belonging to the mental region which are yet potentialities of a growing gnosis lifted beyond our human mentality and partaking of the light and power of the Divine and an ascent through these planes, a descent of them into the mental being might seem to be the natural evolutionary course. But in practice it might be found that these intermediate levels would not be sufficient for the total transformation since, being themselves illumined potentialities of mental being not yet supramental in the full sense of the word, they could bring down to the mind only a partial divinity or raise the mind towards that but not effectuate its elevation into the complete supramentality of the truth-consciousness. Still these levels might become stages of the ascent which some would reach and pause there while others went higher and could reach and live on superior strata of a semi-divine existence. It is not to be supposed that all humanity would rise in a block into the supermind; at first those only might attain to the highest or some intermediate height of the ascent whose inner evolution has fitted them for so great a change or who are raised by the direct touch of the Divine into its perfect light and power and bliss. The large mass of human beings might still remain for long content with a normal or only a partially illumined and uplifted human nature. But this would be itself a sufficiently radical change and initial transformation of earth-life; for the way would be open to all who have the will to rise, the supramental influence of the truth-consciousness would touch the earth-life and influence even its untransformed mass and a hope would be there and a promise eventually available to all which now only the few can share in or realise.
In any case these would be beginnings only and could not constitute the fullness of the divine life upon earth; it would be a new orientation of the earthly life but not the consummation of its change. For that there must be the sovereign reign of a supramental truth-consciousness to which all other forms of life would be subordinated and depend upon it as the master principle and supreme power to which they could look up as the goal, profit by its influences, be moved and upraised by something of its illumination and penetrating force. Especially, as the human body had to come into existence with its modification of the previous animal form and its erect figure of a new power of life and its expressive movements and activities serviceable and necessary to the principle of mind and the life of a mental being, so too a body must be developed with new powers, activities or degrees of a divine action expressive of a truth-conscious being and proper to a supramental consciousness and manifesting a conscious spirit. While the capacity for taking up and sublimating all the activities of the earth-life capable of being spiritualised must be there, a transcendence of the original animality and the actions incurably tainted by it or at least some saving transformation of them, some spiritualising or psychicising of the consciousness and motives animating them and the shedding of whatever could not be so transformed, even a change of what might be called its instrumental structure, its functioning and organisation, a complete and hitherto unprecedented control of these things must be the consequence or incidental to this total change. These things have been already to some extent illustrated in the lives of many who have become possessed of spiritual powers but as something exceptional and occasional, the casual or incomplete manifestation of an acquired capacity rather than the organisation of a new consciousness, a new life and a new nature. How far can such physical transformation be carried, what are the limits within which it must remain to be consistent with life upon earth and without carrying that life beyond the earthly sphere or pushing it towards the supra-terrestrial existence? The supramental consciousness is not a fixed quantity but a power which passes to higher and higher levels of possibility until it reaches supreme consummations of spiritual existence fulfilling supermind as supermind fulfils the ranges of spiritual consciousness that are pushing towards it from the human or mental level. In this progression the body also may reach a more perfect form and a higher range of its expressive powers, become a more and more perfect vessel of divinity.
5.07 - Mind of Light, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature itself the inevitable force of the principle compelling the process of emergence of its inherent powers and characters, the essential features which constitute its reality. As the evolutionary principle emerges, there are also two constant features of the process of the emergence: there are the gradations by which it climbs out of the involution and manifests more and more of its power, its possibilities, the force of the Godhead within it, and there is a constant manifestation of all types and forms of its being which are the visible, indicative and efficient embodiments of its essential nature. There appear in the evolutionary process organised forms and activities of Matter, the types of life and the living beings, the types of mind and the thinking beings, the luminosities and greatnesses of the spiritual principle and the spiritual beings whose nature, character, personality, mark the stages of the ascent towards the highest heights of the evolution and the ultimate largest manifestation of what it is in itself and must become by the force of time and the allrevealing Spirit. This is the real sense and drive of what we see as evolution: the multiplication and variation of forms is only the means of its process. Each gradation contains the possibility and the certainty of the grades beyond it: the emergence of more and more developed forms and powers points to more perfected forms and greater powers beyond them, and each emergence of consciousness and the conscious beings proper to it enables the rise to a greater consciousness beyond and the greater order of beings up to the ultimate godheads of which Nature is striving and is destined to show herself capable. Matter developed its organised forms until it became capable of embodying living
Mind of Light
5.08 - ADAM AS TOTALITY, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[649] If the alchemical process of thought corresponded only to the three stages of purification, illumination, perfection, it would be difficult to see the justification for paraphrasing the analogous Christian ideas, which are so patently betrayed, for instance, in the fixing to the black cross. But the need for a symbolism other than the Christian one is evident from the fact that the transformation process does not culminate in the second Adam and the white dove but in the lapis, which, with Gods help, is made by the empirical man. It is a half physical, half metaphysical product, a psychological symbol expressing something created by man and yet supra-ordinate to him. This paradox can only be something like the symbol of the self, which likewise can be brought forth, i.e., made conscious, by human effort but is at the same time by definition a pre-existent totality that includes the conscious and the unconscious.
[650] This is a thought that goes beyond the Christian world of ideas and involves a mystery consummated in and through man. It is as though the drama of Christs life were, from now on, located in man as its living carrier. As a result of this shift, the events formulated in dogma are brought within range of psychological experience and become recognizable in the process of individuation.
5 - The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
12 Earlier stages of consciousness seem to leave perceptible traces behind them.
For instance, the chakras of the Tantric system correspond by and large to the
6.02 - STAGES OF THE CONJUNCTION, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
object:6.02 - stages of THE CONJUNCTION
author class:Carl Jung
--
2. stages of THE CONJUNCTION
[669] The coniunctio affords another example of the gradual development of an idea in the course of the millennia. Its history flows in two main streams which are largely independent of one another: theology and alchemy. While alchemy has, except for a few traces, been extinct for some two hundred years, theology has put forth a new blossom in the dogma of the Assumption, from which it is evident that the stream of development has by no means come to a standstill. But the differentiation of the two streams has not yet passed beyond the framework of the archetypal hierosgamos, for the coniunctio is still represented as a union of mother and son or of a brother-sister pair. Already in the sixteenth century, however, Gerard Dorn had recognized the psychological aspect of the chymical marriage and clearly understood it as what we today would call the individuation process. This is a step beyond the bounds which were set to the coniunctio, both in ecclesiastical doctrine and in alchemy, by its archetypal symbolism. It seems to me that Dorns view represents a logical understanding of it in two respects: first because the discrepancy between the chemical operation and the psychic events associated with it could not remain permanently hidden from an attentive and critical observer, and secondly because the marriage symbolism obviously never quite satisfied the alchemical thinkers themselves, since they constantly felt obliged to make use of other uniting symbols, besides the numerous variants of the hierosgamos, to express the all but incomprehensible nature of the mystery. Thus the coniunctio is represented by the dragon embracing the woman in the grave,57 or by two animals fighting,58 or by the king dissolving in water,59 and so on. Similarly, in Chinese philosophy the meaning of yang is far from exhausted with its masculine connotation. It also means dry, bright, and the south side of the mountain, just as the feminine yin means damp, dark, and the north side of the mountain.
6.06 - SELF-KNOWLEDGE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[718] The serpent rejoicing in itself (luxurians in se ipso) is the Democritean physis (natura) which embraces itself141 and is symbolized by the uroboros of Greek alchemy, a well-known emblem of Mercurius. It is the symbol of the union of opposites par excellence and an alchemical version of the proverb: les extrmes se touchent. The uroboros symbolizes the goal of the process but not the beginning, the massa confusa or chaos, for this is characterized not by the union of the elements but by their conflict. The expression giving birth in a single day (in uno die parturiens) likewise refers to Mercurius, since he (in the form of the lapis) was named the son of one day.142 This name refers to the creation of light in Genesis 1 : 5: And there was evening and morning, one day. As the son of one day, therefore, Mercurius is light. Hence he is praised as the lux moderna and a light above all lights.143 He is thus Sundays child (born on the day of the sun), just as the planet Mercury is the nearest to the sun and was accounted its child. St. Bonaventure (122174) also speaks of the one day in his Itinerarium, where he discusses the three stages of illumination (triplex illustratio). The first stage consists in giving up the bodily and the temporal in order to attain the first principle, which is spiritual and eternal and above us:
We must enter into our mind [mentem], which is the eternal spiritual image of God within us, and this is to enter into the truth of the Lord; we must pass beyond ourselves to the eternal and preeminently spiritual, and to that which is above us . . . this is the threefold illumination of the one day.144
The one day is the day on which light appeared over the darkness. I cite this passage not only for that reason but as a parallel to the three stages of conjunction in Dorn, which obviously originated in the exercises for spiritual contemplation in the early Middle Ages. The parallel is clearly discernible: first the turning away from the world of sense, then the turning towards the inner world of the mind and the hidden celestial substance, the image and truth of God, and finally the contemplation of the transcendental unus mundus, the potential world outside time, of which we shall have more to say below. But first we examine more closely Albertuss statements on the nature of the quicksilver.
[719] The middle position ascribed to Mercurius provokes Albertus to a remarkable reflection: it seems to him that the concept of breadth (latitudo) expresses the middle disposition whereby depth can be attained. This disposition is the medium between depth and breadth (media est inter profunditatem et latitudinem), as between two extremes or opposites (contraria). The idea at the back of his mind is obviously that of a cross, for height is the complement of depth.145 This would indicate the quaternity, a symbol of Mercurius quadratus, who, in the form of the lapis, consists of the four elements.146 He thus forms the mid-point of the cosmic quaternity and represents the quinta essentia, the oneness and essence of the physical world, i.e., the anima mundi. As I have shown elsewhere, this symbol corresponds to the modern representations of the self.
6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
problems that arise almost regularly during the later stages of
analytical treatment. By "analytical" I mean a procedure that
--
understanding the final stages of the encounter between con-
scious and unconscious, in practice as well as in theory. My
--
61 7 Our series of pictures illustrates the initial stages of the
way of individuation. It would be desirable to know what hap-
--
worth knowing in the later stages of the process, but, from the
point of view of teaching as well as of therapy, it is important
--
The stages of Life (1930-1931)
The Soul and Death (1934)
7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
being, and have gone through many stages of refinement;
you are not quite the lizard walking on the wall! Still
9.99 - Glossary, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
asrama: Hermitage; also any one of the four stages of life: the celibate student stage, the married house-holder stage, the stage of retirement and contemplation, and the stage of religious mendicancy.
Assam: A province in the northeast corner of India.
--
brahmachari: A religious student devoted to the practice of spiritual discipline; a celibate belonging to the first stage of life. See four stages of life.
brahmacharya: The first of the four stages of life: the life of an unmarried student. See four stages of life.
Brahmajnana: The Knowledge of Brahman.
--
four stages of life: Namely, brahmacharya (life of unmarried student), garhasthya (life of married householder), vanaprastha (life of retired householder), and sannyas (life of monk).
G↑
--
garhasthya: The second of the four stages of life: the life of a married householder. See four stages of life.
Gaur: Short for Gauranga.
--
sannyas: The monastic life, the last of the four stages of life. See four stages of life.
sannyasi: A Hindu monk.
--
vanaprastha: The third of the four stages of life: the life of retirement, when husband and wife practise contemplation and other spiritual disciplines. See four stages of life.
Varuna: The presiding deity of the ocean in Hindu mythology.
Blazing P1 - Preconventional consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Ultraviolet, and Clear Light stages of consciousness.
This document is essentially a collection of quotations from the original researchers in each
--
goes through both the Magenta and Red stages of consciousness.]
Self-Identity at the Red Stage of Consciousness
--
[Note that there are two stages of moral development in this stage of consciousness]
Stage 1. The Stage of Punishment and Obedience
--
With respect to self-identity and morals, there are some stages of consciousness which have two stages of that
developmental line, as the researchers went to a greater degree of granularity than the stages of consciousness
Wilber is using. In other cases, a stage may not have any research available for a particular developmental line,
--
Fowler, stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning, 1995, p. 121
35
--
Fowler, stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning, 1995, pp. 133-134
53
--
Fowler, stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning, 1995, pp. 149-150
67
--
Fowler, James W. (1976). stages of Faith: The Structural-Developmental Approach. In T. C.
Hennessy (Ed.), Values and moral development. New York: Paulist Press.
Fowler, James W. (1995). stages of Faith: The Psychology of human Development and the
Quest for Meaning. San Francisco: HarperCollins.
Blazing P2 - Map the Stages of Conventional Consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
object:Blazing P2 - Map the stages of Conventional Consciousness
class:Blazing the Trail from Infancy to Enlightenment
--
Map the stages of Conventional Consciousness
Compiled by Barrett Chapman Brown
--
highest stages of spiritual development identified to date).
Infancy to Enlightenment, Part II: Conventional Consciousness
--
[Note that this stage of consciousness has two stages of cognitive development: formal
operations and systematic. Piagets research ended at formal operations, after which other
--
[Note: There are two stages of self-identity in this general stage of consciousness.]
Self-Aware Level: Transition from Conformist to Conscientious (Expert)
--
transformation that people who think about higher stages of consciousness are interested
in.40
--
Fowler, stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning, 1995, pp. 172-173
22
--
Fowler, stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning, 1995, pp. 182-183
Infancy to Enlightenment, Part II: Conventional Consciousness
--
Fowler, James W. (1976). stages of Faith: The Structural-Developmental Approach. In T. C.
Hennessy (Ed.), Values and moral development. New York: Paulist Press.
Fowler, James W. (1995). stages of Faith: The Psychology of human Development and the
Quest for Meaning. San Francisco: HarperCollins.
--
Explore the stages of
Postconventional Consciousness
Blazing P3 - Explore the Stages of Postconventional Consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
object:Blazing P3 - Explore the stages of Postconventional Consciousness
class:Blazing the Trail from Infancy to Enlightenment
--
Explore the stages of Postconventional Consciousness
Compiled by Barrett Chapman Brown
--
highest stages of spiritual development identified to date).
Infancy to Enlightenment, Part III: Postconventional Consciousness
--
consciousness. The 4th Order extends through the Orange, Green, and Teal stages of
consciousness.
--
consciousness. The 4th Order extends through the Orange, Green, and Teal stages of
consciousness. The next Order of consciousness is 5th order, which corresponds with the
--
which falls between the Violet and Ultraviolet stages of consciousness. It is listed in the
Ultraviolet section below.
--
sample of aging persons. These interview responses suggest that soft stages of what Fowler
calls faith and what we call ethical and religious thinking continue to chart adult
--
which falls between the Violet and Ultraviolet stages of consciousness. It is listed in the
Ultraviolet section below.
--
theodicy. People at other stages often wonder why the enlightenedwhom they perceive to
have heightened powersdo not intervene for the good. The enlightened view is quite
--
Fowler, stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning, 1995 pp. 197-198
23
--
Fowler, stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning, 1995, pp. 199-201
52
--
Fowler, James W. (1995). stages of Faith: The Psychology of human Development and the
Quest for Meaning. San Francisco: HarperCollins.
BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
have "worked their way up from the lower stages of the simple cell-soul" of the gelatinous Bathybius -(See Haeckel's "Present Position of Evolution" Notes), -- and he seems to believe it. For such men, the
metaphysics of Occultism must produce the effect that our grandest orchestral and vocal oratorios
--
common primal form. Physical man must have passed through the same stages of the evolutionary
process in the various modes of procreation as other animals have: he must have divided himself; then,
--
lower stages of the simple cell-soul, through an astonishing series of gradual stages in evolution, up to
the soul of man." ("Present Position of Evolution," p. 266.)
--
the early stages of the Earth.
Let us leave modern Science aside for a moment and turn to ancient knowledge. As we are assured by
--
differentiation of species. The stages of the process itself need no further comment here, being the
basic principles underlying organic development, than to enter on the domain of the biological
--
ye number fifty days" (forty-nine, 7 x 7, stages of activity, and forty-nine stages of rest, on the seven
globes of the chain, and then
BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
to, and describe the seven great stages of the evolutionary process, which are spoken of in the Puranas
as the "Seven Creations," and in the Bible as the "Days" of Creation.
--
expands, and, passing through all the six stages of consolidation, becomes spheroidal and ends by
being transformed into globes or spheres. It is one of the fundamental dogmas of Esoteric Cosmogony,
--
seven classes or hierarchies according to their respective stages of evolution, consciousness, and
merit. Let us follow, then, the order of their appearance on planet A, in the first Round. The timespaces between the appearances of these hierarchies on any one Globe are so adjusted that when Class
--
Occultists, while accepting this thought for convenience sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the
evolution of the concrete from the abstract by terms of which the "Mineral, Vegetable, Animal, (etc.),
--
A, in the first Round, are in very different stages of development. Hence the matter becomes
somewhat complicated. . . . Let us recapitulate.
BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
themselves before our eyes in all conceivable stages of progress. The phenomena
furnish us the grounds for the generalization of two laws which are truly principles of
BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
the Elohim, which preside over and guide the septenary stages of the World's Course.
** From the first, the Orientalists have found themselves beset by great difficulties with regard to any
--
mean everywhere stages of Evolution. Mahat, "Intellect" or mind (which corresponds with Manas, the
former being on the Cosmic, and the latter on the human plane) stands here, too, lower than Buddhi or
BOOK XXI. - Of the eternal punishment of the wicked in hell, and of the various objections urged against it, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Nevertheless, in the "heavy yoke that is laid upon the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb to the day that they return to the mother of all things," there is found an admirable though painful monitor teaching us to be sober-minded, and convincing us that this life has become penal in consequence of that outrageous wickedness which was perpetrated in Paradise, and that all to which the New Testament invites belongs to that future inheritance which awaits us in the world to come, and is offered for our acceptance, as the earnest that we may, in its own due time, obtain that of which it is the pledge. Now, therefore, let us walk in hope, and let us by the spirit mortify the deeds of the flesh, and so make progress from day to day. For "the Lord knoweth them that are His;"[883] and "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are sons of God,"[884] but by grace, not by nature. For there is but one Son of God by nature, who in His compassion became Son of man for our sakes, that we, by nature sons of men, might by grace become through Him sons of God. For He, abiding unchangeable, took upon Him our nature, that thereby He might take us to Himself; and, holding fast His own divinity, He became partaker of our infirmity, that we, being changed into some better thing, might, by participating in His righteousness and immortality,[Pg 442] lose our own properties of sin and mortality, and preserve whatever good quality He had implanted in our nature, perfected now by sharing in the goodness of His nature. For as by the sin of one man we have fallen into a misery so deplorable, so by the righteousness of one Man, who also is God, shall we come to a blessedness inconceivably exalted. Nor ought any one to trust that he has passed from the one man to the other until he shall have reached that place where there is no temptation, and have entered into the peace which he seeks in the many and various conflicts of this war, in which "the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh."[885] Now, such a war as this would have had no existence, if human nature had, in the exercise of free will, continued stedfast in the uprightness in which it was created. But now in its misery it makes war upon itself, because in its blessedness it would not continue at peace with God; and this, though it be a miserable calamity, is better than the earlier stages of this life, which do not recognise that a war is to be maintained. For better is it to contend with vices than without conflict to be subdued by them. Better, I say, is war with the hope of peace everlasting than captivity without any thought of deliverance. We long, indeed, for the cessation of this war, and, kindled by the flame of divine love, we burn for entrance on that well-ordered peace in which whatever is inferior is for ever subordinated to what is above it. But if (which God forbid) there had been no hope of so blessed a consummation, we should still have preferred to endure the hardness of this conflict, rather than, by our non-resistance, to yield ourselves to the dominion of vice.
16. The laws of grace, which extend to all the epochs of the life of the regenerate.
COSA - BOOK XIII, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
contrary unto Thee, did, in these lower stages of the world, beget and
frame these things. Frenzied are they who say thus, because they see not
DS3, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
are also related to the four stages of liberation discussed in Chapter Nine, which begin with the srotaapanna, who breaks out of the egg of the ego, and end with the arhan, whose soul is no longer subject
to rebirth. Tsung-mi says, The beginning of life is called birth. When it first begins, it is by one of
ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
This is the most definite statement of Plotinos's solution of the problem; other references thereto are abundant. So we have a trinity of energy, being and essence,490 and each of us, like the world-Soul has an Eros which is essence and hypostasis.491 Reason is a hypostasis after the nous, and Aphrodite gains an hypostasis in the Ousia.492 The One is intellect, the intelligible, and ousia; or, energy, being, and the intelligible (essence).493 The soul is activity.494 The soul is the third God,495 we are the third rank proceeding from the upper undivided Nature,496 the whole being God, nous, and essence. The Nous is activity, and the First essence. There are three stages of the Good: the King, the nous, and the soul.497 We find energy,1304498 thinking and being, then499 the soul, the nous, and the One. We find Providence threefold (as in Plutarch)500 and three ranks of Gods, demons and world-life.501 Elsewhere, untheologically, or, rather, merely philosophically, he speaks of the hypostasis of wisdom.502
Chaignet's summary of this is503 that504 Plotinos holds that every force in the intelligible is both Being and Substance simultaneously; and reciprocally that no Being, could be conceived without hypostasis, or directed force. Again,505 the world, the universe of things, contains three natures or divine hypostases, soul, mind and unity; which indeed are found in our own nature, and of which the divinest is unity or divinity.
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Higher stages of love, v. 9.2 (5-103).
Higher things from them the lower proceed, i. 8.1 (51-1142).
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Progressively higher stages of love, v. 9.2 (5-103).
Progressively, world-soul informs all things, iv. 3.10 (27-406).
Gorgias, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The dialogue naturally falls into three divisions, to which the three characters of Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles respectively correspond; and the form and manner change with the stages of the argument. Socrates is deferential towards Gorgias, playful and yet cutting in dealing with the youthful Polus, ironical and sarcastic in his encounter with Callicles. In the first division the question is askedWhat is rhetoric? To this there is no answer given, for Gorgias is soon made to contradict himself by Socrates, and the argument is transferred to the hands of his disciple Polus, who rushes to the defence of his master. The answer has at last to be given by Socrates himself, but before he can even explain his meaning to Polus, he must enlighten him upon the great subject of shams or flatteries. When Polus finds his favourite art reduced to the level of cookery, he replies that at any rate rhetoricians, like despots, have great power. Socrates denies that they have any real power, and hence arise the three paradoxes already mentioned. Although they are strange to him, Polus is at last convinced of their truth; at least, they seem to him to follow legitimately from the premises. Thus the second act of the dialogue closes. Then Callicles appears on the scene, at first maintaining that pleasure is good, and that might is right, and that law is nothing but the combination of the many weak against the few strong. When he is confuted he withdraws from the argument, and leaves Socrates to arrive at the conclusion by himself. The conclusion is that there are two kinds of statesmanship, a higher and a lowerthat which makes the people better, and that which only flatters them, and he exhorts Callicles to choose the higher. The dialogue terminates with a mythus of a final judgment, in which there will be no more flattery or disguise, and no further use for the teaching of rhetoric.
The characters of the three interlocutors also correspond to the parts which are assigned to them. Gorgias is the great rhetorician, now advanced in years, who goes from city to city displaying his talents, and is celebrated throughout Greece. Like all the Sophists in the dialogues of Plato, he is vain and boastful, yet he has also a certain dignity, and is treated by Socrates with considerable respect. But he is no match for him in dialectics. Although he has been teaching rhetoric all his life, he is still incapable of defining his own art. When his ideas begin to clear up, he is unwilling to admit that rhetoric can be wholly separated from justice and injustice, and this lingering sentiment of morality, or regard for public opinion, enables Socrates to detect him in a contradiction. Like Protagoras, he is described as of a generous nature; he expresses his approbation of Socrates' manner of approaching a question; he is quite 'one of Socrates' sort, ready to be refuted as well as to refute,' and very eager that Callicles and Socrates should have the game out. He knows by experience that rhetoric exercises great influence over other men, but he is unable to explain the puzzle how rhetoric can teach everything and know nothing.
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Nor does he distinguish between the suffering which improves and the suffering which only punishes and deters. He applies to the sphere of ethics a conception of punishment which is really derived from criminal law. He does not see that such punishment is only negative, and supplies no principle of moral growth or development. He is not far off the higher notion of an education of man to be begun in this world, and to be continued in other stages of existence, which is further developed in the Republic. And Christian thinkers, who have ventured out of the beaten track in their meditations on the 'last things,' have found a ray of light in his writings. But he has not explained how or in what way punishment is to contri bute to the improvement of mankind. He has not followed out the principle which he affirms in the Republic, that 'God is the author of evil only with a view to good,' and that 'they were the better for being punished.' Still his doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments may be compared favourably with that perversion of Christian doctrine which makes the everlasting punishment of human beings depend on a brief moment of time, or even on the accident of an accident. And he has escaped the difficulty which has often beset divines, respecting the future destiny of the meaner sort of men (Thersites and the like), who are neither very good nor very bad, by not counting them worthy of eternal damnation.
We do Plato violence in pressing his figures of speech or chains of argument; and not less so in asking questions which were beyond the horizon of his vision, or did not come within the scope of his design. The main purpose of the Gorgias is not to answer questions about a future world, but to place in antagonism the true and false life, and to contrast the judgments and opinions of men with judgment according to the truth. Plato may be accused of representing a superhuman or transcendental virtue in the description of the just man in the Gorgias, or in the companion portrait of the philosopher in the Theaetetus; and at the same time may be thought to be condemning a state of the world which always has existed and always will exist among men. But such ideals act powerfully on the imagination of mankind. And such condemnations are not mere paradoxes of philosophers, but the natural rebellion of the higher sense of right in man against the ordinary conditions of human life. The greatest statesmen have fallen very far short of the political ideal, and are therefore justly involved in the general condemnation.
Guru Granth Sahib first part, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Bring the twenty-seven elements of the body under your control, and throughout the three stages of life, remember death.
See the Infinite Lord in the ten directions, and in all the variety of nature. Says Nanak, in this way, the One Lord shall carry you across. ||3||26||
Liber 71 - The Voice of the Silence - The Two Paths - The Seven Portals, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The Buddha just before his death went through all these stages of
meditation which are described in the paragraph here quoted:
Meno, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The difficulty in framing general notions which has appeared in this and in all the previous Dialogues recurs in the Gorgias and Theaetetus as well as in the Republic. In the Gorgias too the statesmen reappear, but in stronger opposition to the philosopher. They are no longer allowed to have a divine insight, but, though acknowledged to have been clever men and good speakers, are denounced as 'blind leaders of the blind.' The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is also carried further, being made the foundation not only of a theory of knowledge, but of a doctrine of rewards and punishments. In the Republic the relation of knowledge to virtue is described in a manner more consistent with modern distinctions. The existence of the virtues without the possession of knowledge in the higher or philosophical sense is admitted to be possible. Right opinion is again introduced in the Theaetetus as an account of knowledge, but is rejected on the ground that it is irrational (as here, because it is not bound by the tie of the cause), and also because the conception of false opinion is given up as hopeless. The doctrines of Plato are necessarily different at different times of his life, as new distinctions are realized, or new stages of thought attained by him. We are not therefore justified, in order to take away the appearance of inconsistency, in attri buting to him hidden meanings or remote allusions.
There are no external criteria by which we can determine the date of the Meno. There is no reason to suppose that any of the Dialogues of Plato were written before the death of Socrates; the Meno, which appears to be one of the earliest of them, is proved to have been of a later date by the allusion of Anytus.
Phaedo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
8. Another life must be described, if at all, in forms of thought and not of sense. To draw pictures of heaven and hell, whether in the language of Scripture or any other, adds nothing to our real knowledge, but may perhaps disguise our ignorance. The truest conception which we can form of a future life is a state of progress or educationa progress from evil to good, from ignorance to knowledge. To this we are led by the analogy of the present life, in which we see different races and nations of men, and different men and women of the same nation, in various states or stages of cultivation; some more and some less developed, and all of them capable of improvement under favourable circumstances. There are punishments too of children when they are growing up inflicted by their parents, of elder offenders which are imposed by the law of the land, of all men at all times of life, which are attached by the laws of nature to the performance of certain actions. All these punishments are really educational; that is to say, they are not intended to retaliate on the offender, but to teach him a lesson. Also there is an element of chance in them, which is another name for our ignorance of the laws of nature. There is evil too inseparable from good (compare Lysis); not always punished here, as good is not always rewarded. It is capable of being indefinitely diminished; and as knowledge increases, the element of chance may more and more disappear.
For we do not argue merely from the analogy of the present state of this world to another, but from the analogy of a probable future to which we are tending. The greatest changes of which we have had experience as yet are due to our increasing knowledge of history and of nature. They have been produced by a few minds appearing in three or four favoured nations, in a comparatively short period of time. May we be allowed to imagine the minds of men everywhere working together during many ages for the completion of our knowledge? May not the science of physiology transform the world? Again, the majority of mankind have really experienced some moral improvement; almost every one feels that he has tendencies to good, and is capable of becoming better. And these germs of good are often found to be developed by new circumstances, like stunted trees when transplanted to a better soil. The differences between the savage and the civilized man, or between the civilized man in old and new countries, may be indefinitely increased. The first difference is the effect of a few thousand, the second of a few hundred years. We congratulate ourselves that slavery has become industry; that law and constitutional government have superseded despotism and violence; that an ethical religion has taken the place of Fetichism. There may yet come a time when the many may be as well off as the few; when no one will be weighed down by excessive toil; when the necessity of providing for the body will not interfere with mental improvement; when the physical frame may be streng thened and developed; and the religion of all men may become a reasonable service.
r1912 01 15, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The rati in all things (of the prema-ahaituka-chidghana anandas) is established though occasionally interrupted; the establishment of the ratna has now begun. The rati is less forward in events, than in states & vishayas. The corresponding stages of the bhoga have been rapidly passed through without special notice because it is the ananda and not the bhoga that is intended to be the permanent form of the ananda.
According to prediction by the Vani there is a simultaneous movement of the jnanam, lipi, trikaldrishti covering the whole range attended by a general manifestation of rupadrishti (akasha & chitra) rough, vague or blurred predicted by the lipis 3, (vague & indistinct), 2 & 1. The movement has begun by the activity of the inspiration and of the viveka rejecting false inspirations. By this means several successive movements of men & animals have been accurately though not completely predicted, a few suggestions of error being rejected in time. Some of the inspirations present themselves at a distance & not as trikaldrishti, but a vague suggestion. Few [of] these prove correct.
r1912 11 30, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Rapidity only in the Veda-jnana. The place is beginning to be accurate, but the arrangement is not yet perfect. eg. a bird flying is observed, all the turns of movement are accurately predicted, but not always in their proper order; one turn is omitted or another too soon expected etc. Occasionally a momentary impulse in the bird or in the force that is driving it, is taken for a destined movement, but this source of error, which used to be dominant, is now very weak in its incidence & occasional in its occurrence B [Bijoy] is now responding rapidly to the suggestions of the Power in the siddhiprayoga, but still needs too much the aid of speech. His purity & mukti from dwandwa is perfect except in the karmadeha & the preparation of mukti from ahankara is being completed. Vijnana in the intellect, jnanam, in him is very strong, but not yet turned towards trikaldrishti. Prakamya & vyapti are well developed but not perfect. The other siddhis in him work fitfully. Samadhi is being prepared through dream. He gets sometimes the first stages of ahaituka & chidghana ananda
Strong perception that S. [Srinivasachari] Bh [Bharati] & A [Aiyar] would come in the evening, less strong about A than the others & only general; fulfilled. Other vyaptis fulfilled or proved, vyaptis of action, vyaptis of thought, vyaptis of feeling. Prakamya generally turns into a vyapti. Prakamya vyapti may now be said to be perfect,as perfect as it can be without perfection of the trikaldrishti. Clash of ahankaras over B; first sign of a fresh movement forward so far as he is concerned.
r1912 12 01, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Teja, tapas & prakasha are now coalescing into a harmony; power is increasing in small matters towards perfection of detail, but the movement is only in its initial stage. This initial movement was foreseen & the time fixed three days ago. The perception of the various & subtly shaded significance in lipi & rupa-symbol is perfected; but the rupadrishti itself is manifesting slowly. Images in the akasha are frequently perfect, but when perfect never stable except in very crude forms & that only because of the past strong development in crude images on the lines of perfection by effort which belonged to the initial & mediary stages of the sadhan. Comparative helplessness in the therapeutic power in certain directions, & always only a slow and gradual process.
This afternoon clear & vivid lipi finally emerged from the akasha and the rupa in the crude forms shows a tendency to established stability while the old forms of rupa, sthapatya, saurya, manasa are reemerging in their old perfection. Instantaneous developed rupa is becoming more frequent, but vanishes with the instant. Faith in the vani, lipi & rupa is established except for outside immediate events & the adesha siddhi, in which field faith in the trikaldrishti is not yet firm. Except in this field, tejasic will has separated itself from trikaldrishti & vyaptiprakamya of intention or tendency is no longer adopted as vyaptiprakamya of event or as trikaldrishti of the event. Therefore, if the unoccupied or rather ill-occupied field can be occupied, the perfection of trikaldrishti is within sight. Rapidity of progress promised in lipi & vani for some days past, is now beginning, not only in the Veda, but in the third chatusthaya also. Samata is perfect, tejas is establishing itself, jnana is full & active.
r1913 01 02, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
At night again some clouding. Aishwarya continued in the same stage of progress, sometimes unfulfilled although always with foreknowledge of nonfulfilment, sometimes fulfilled after resistance or partially, sometimes instantaneously and perfectly. This power of the Aishwarya covers only things of immediate occurrence. On eventualities that need a longer space of time for their fulfilment, on settled stages of mind or body, its working, although often successful, is slow and laborious.
Lipi advanced in power, vividness and authority. The beginnings of lipi-kaushalya, especially varna-lipi, were promised in the lipi itself and exemplified; this morning fiery, luminous & coloured lipis have occurred, of a rich substance and brilliant vividness. Rupa is still in the same stage, although it increases in the frequency, normality and even stability of perfect images, sometimes in the sukshma-sthula and sometimes in the sthula akasha. In the samadhi the images were dim and inconstant.
r1913 11 12, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Samat .. bhukti .. Anandam Brahma. These are the three stages of the Ananda. The ananda in the Lilamaya had already been realised, the Ananda in the Brahman is now realised. It was there in an indeterminate perception before; now it is determinate.
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r1914 09 11, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The thought with a little attention now always assumes automatically the vijnanamaya form, is always satya & increasingly rita. If there is any serious defect of rita it is that which still persists in trikaldrishti & affects the jnana. The trikaldrishti & telepathy have now to go through their closing stages of organisation. The rest will be only extension.
Power is improving really, though not quite apparently. That is, the resistance even in kriti is becoming more & more difficult.
r1917 08 15, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Defects in the first two chatusthayas are really not self-existent, but the result of insufficiency in the third, the vijnana. Here all hitherto has been preparation. Gnana is well advanced, T only founded, samadhi is still subject to mentality and incoherence, the physical basis is undeveloped; but all have acquired their crude material. Lipi is specially forward. All the stages of the ideality are customary.
The fourth chatusthaya is developed only in Ananda. Arogya is prepared but still subject to fragmentary denial, in all but the [ . . . ] roga which still persists. Utthapana is thrown backward, Saundarya only developed in psychic youth and a few preparatory movements of the physical change.
r1917 09 04, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In Samadhi the tejomaya is reappearing, chiefly in the chhayamaya environment, clear, perfect, but only with an instantaneous stability, although a tendency of increased stability is not altogether absent. The chhayamaya is now capable at all stages of a great stability which is not infrequent, but still even in the chhayamaya stability is not the rule; instability prevails.
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r1920 06 12, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Samadhi at first of the same kind oppressed by a light unobscure nidra; afterwards strong organisation of thought speech and perception of the highest logistis in all stages of antardarshi and swapna, strong sharira Ananda continuous except in sushupta swapna, lipi perfect except in sushupta, but there no longer fantastically incoherent, other incidents not well organised except rupa (landscapes) clear, tejomaya, but insufficiently stable.
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Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
temperaments and stages of intellectual development. He could astound learned Pandits like Sasadhar
and Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar by the profundity of his wisdom, and he could also bring himself to the
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different men at different stages of spiritual evolution.
327. The mother so arranges the food for her children that each one gets what agrees with him. If she
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illness has a deep meaning. In this body you have gone through various stages of spiritual development;
the body is now suffering from the reaction. When the spiritual waves arise, the consciousness of the
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770. These are the stages of Sadhana (devotional practice) for the purification of the soul;
(I)
Sophist, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Plato arranges in order the stages of knowledge and of existence. They are the steps or grades by which he rises from sense and the shadows of sense to the idea of beauty and good. Mind is in motion as well as at rest (Soph.); and may be described as a dialectical progress which passes from one limit or determination of thought to another and back again to the first. This is the account of dialectic given by Plato in the Sixth Book of the Republic, which regarded under another aspect is the mysticism of the Symposium. He does not deny the existence of objects of sense, but according to him they only receive their true meaning when they are incorporated in a principle which is above them (Republic). In modern language they might be said to come first in the order of experience, last in the order of nature and reason. They are assumed, as he is fond of repeating, upon the condition that they shall give an account of themselves and that the truth of their existence shall be hereafter proved. For philosophy must begin somewhere and may begin anywhere,with outward objects, with statements of opinion, with abstract principles. But objects of sense must lead us onward to the ideas or universals which are contained in them; the statements of opinion must be verified; the abstract principles must be filled up and connected with one another. In Plato we find, as we might expect, the germs of many thoughts which have been further developed by the genius of Spinoza and Hegel. But there is a difficulty in separating the germ from the flower, or in drawing the line which divides ancient from modern philosophy. Many coincidences which occur in them are unconscious, seeming to show a natural tendency in the human mind towards certain ideas and forms of thought. And there are many speculations of Plato which would have passed away unheeded, and their meaning, like that of some hieroglyphic, would have remained undeciphered, unless two thousand years and more afterwards an interpreter had arisen of a kindred spirit and of the same intellectual family. For example, in the Sophist Plato begins with the abstract and goes on to the concrete, not in the lower sense of returning to outward objects, but to the Hegelian concrete or unity of abstractions. In the intervening period hardly any importance would have been attached to the question which is so full of meaning to Plato and Hegel.
They differ however in their manner of regarding the question. For Plato is answering a difficulty; he is seeking to justify the use of common language and of ordinary thought into which philosophy had introduced a principle of doubt and dissolution. Whereas Hegel tries to go beyond common thought, and to combine abstractions in a higher unity: the ordinary mechanism of language and logic is carried by him into another region in which all oppositions are absorbed and all contradictions affirmed, only that they may be done away with. But Plato, unlike Hegel, nowhere bases his system on the unity of opposites, although in the Parmenides he shows an Hegelian subtlety in the analysis of one and Being.
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Nevertheless the consideration of a few general aspects of the Hegelian philosophy may help to dispel some errors and to awaken an interest about it. (i) It is an ideal philosophy which, in popular phraseology, maintains not matter but mind to be the truth of things, and this not by a mere crude substitution of one word for another, but by showing either of them to be the complement of the other. Both are creations of thought, and the difference in kind which seems to divide them may also be regarded as a difference of degree. One is to the other as the real to the ideal, and both may be conceived together under the higher form of the notion. (ii) Under another aspect it views all the forms of sense and knowledge as stages of thought which have always existed implicitly and unconsciously, and to which the mind of the world, gradually disengaged from sense, has become awakened. The present has been the past. The succession in time of human ideas is also the eternal 'now'; it is historical and also a divine ideal. The history of philosophy stripped of personality and of the other accidents of time and place is gathered up into philosophy, and again philosophy clothed in circumstance expands into history. (iii) Whether regarded as present or past, under the form of time or of eternity, the spirit of dialectic is always moving onwards from one determination of thought to another, receiving each successive system of philosophy and subordinating it to that which followsimpelled by an irresistible necessity from one idea to another until the cycle of human thought and existence is complete. It follows from this that all previous philosophies which are worthy of the name are not mere opinions or speculations, but stages or moments of thought which have a necessary place in the world of mind. They are no longer the last word of philosophy, for another and another has succeeded them, but they still live and are mighty; in the language of the Greek poet, 'There is a great God in them, and he grows not old.' (iv) This vast ideal system is supposed to be based upon experience. At each step it professes to carry with it the 'witness of eyes and ears' and of common sense, as well as the internal evidence of its own consistency; it has a place for every science, and affirms that no philosophy of a narrower type is capable of comprehending all true facts.
The Hegelian dialectic may be also described as a movement from the simple to the complex. Beginning with the generalizations of sense, (1) passing through ideas of quality, quantity, measure, number, and the like, (2) ascending from presentations, that is pictorial forms of sense, to representations in which the picture vanishes and the essence is detached in thought from the outward form, (3) combining the I and the not-I, or the subject and object, the natural order of thought is at last found to include the leading ideas of the sciences and to arrange them in relation to one another. Abstractions grow together and again become concrete in a new and higher sense. They also admit of development from within their own spheres. Everywhere there is a movement of attraction and repulsion going onan attraction or repulsion of ideas of which the physical phenomenon described under a similar name is a figure. Freedom and necessity, mind and matter, the continuous and the discrete, cause and effect, are perpetually being severed from one another in thought, only to be perpetually reunited. The finite and infinite, the absolute and relative are not really opposed; the finite and the negation of the finite are alike lost in a higher or positive infinity, and the absolute is the sum or correlation of all relatives. When this reconciliation of opposites is finally completed in all its stages, the mind may come back again and review the things of sense, the opinions of philosophers, the strife of theology and politics, without being disturbed by them. Whatever is, if not the very bestand what is the best, who can tell?is, at any rate, historical and rational, suitable to its own age, unsuitable to any other. Nor can any efforts of speculative thinkers or of soldiers and statesmen materially quicken the 'process of the suns.'
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There is nothing like this progress of opposites in Plato, who in the Symposium denies the possibility of reconciliation until the opposition has passed away. In his own words, there is an absurdity in supposing that 'harmony is discord; for in reality harmony consists of notes of a higher and lower pitch which disagreed once, but are now reconciled by the art of music' (Symp.). He does indeed describe objects of sense as regarded by us sometimes from one point of view and sometimes from another. As he says at the end of the Fifth Book of the Republic, 'There is nothing light which is not heavy, or great which is not small.' And he extends this relativity to the conceptions of just and good, as well as to great and small. In like manner he acknowledges that the same number may be more or less in relation to other numbers without any increase or diminution (Theat.). But the perplexity only arises out of the confusion of the human faculties; the art of measuring shows us what is truly great and truly small. Though the just and good in particular instances may vary, the IDEA of good is eternal and unchangeable. And the IDEA of good is the source of knowledge and also of Being, in which all the stages of sense and knowledge are gathered up and from being hypotheses become realities.
Leaving the comparison with Plato we may now consider the value of this invention of Hegel. There can be no question of the importance of showing that two contraries or contradictories may in certain cases be both true. The silliness of the so-called laws of thought ('All A = A,' or, in the negative form, 'Nothing can at the same time be both A, and not A') has been well exposed by Hegel himself (Wallace's Hegel), who remarks that 'the form of the maxim is virtually self-contradictory, for a proposition implies a distinction between subject and predicate, whereas the maxim of identity, as it is called, A = A, does not fulfil what its form requires. Nor does any mind ever think or form conceptions in accordance with this law, nor does any existence conform to it.' Wisdom of this sort is well parodied in Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, 'Clown: For as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, "That that is is"...for what is "that" but "that," and "is" but "is"?'). Unless we are willing to admit that two contradictories may be true, many questions which lie at the threshold of mathematics and of morals will be insoluble puzzles to us.
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As the historical order of thought has been adapted to the logical, so we have reason for suspecting that the Hegelian logic has been in some degree adapted to the order of thought in history. There is unfortunately no criterion to which either of them can be subjected, and not much forcing was required to bring either into near relations with the other. We may fairly doubt whether the division of the first and second parts of logic in the Hegelian system has not really arisen from a desire to make them accord with the first and second stages of the early Greek philosophy. Is there any reason why the conception of measure in the first part, which is formed by the union of quality and quantity, should not have been equally placed in the second division of mediate or reflected ideas? The more we analyze them the less exact does the coincidence of philosophy and the history of philosophy appear. Many terms which were used absolutely in the beginning of philosophy, such as 'Being,' 'matter,' 'cause,' and the like, became relative in the subsequent history of thought. But Hegel employs some of them absolutely, some relatively, seemingly without any principle and without any regard to their original significance.
The divisions of the Hegelian logic bear a superficial resemblance to the divisions of the scholastic logic. The first part answers to the term, the second to the proposition, the third to the syllogism. These are the grades of thought under which we conceive the world, first, in the general terms of quality, quantity, measure; secondly, under the relative forms of 'ground' and existence, substance and accidents, and the like; thirdly in syllogistic forms of the individual mediated with the universal by the help of the particular. Of syllogisms there are various kinds,qualitative, quantitative, inductive, mechanical, teleological,which are developed out of one another. But is there any meaning in reintroducing the forms of the old logic? Who ever thinks of the world as a syllogism? What connexion is there between the proposition and our ideas of reciprocity, cause and effect, and similar relations? It is difficult enough to conceive all the powers of nature and mind gathered up in one. The difficulty is greatly increased when the new is confused with the old, and the common logic is the Procrustes' bed into which they are forced.
Symposium translated by B Jowett, #Symposium, #Plato, #Philosophy
The successive speeches in praise of love are characteristic of the speakers, and contri bute in various degrees to the final result; they are all designed to prepare the way for Socrates, who gathers up the threads anew, and skims the highest points of each of them. But they are not to be regarded as the stages of an idea, rising above one another to a climax. They are fanciful, partly facetious performances, 'yet also having a certain measure of seriousness,' which the successive speakers dedicate to the god. All of them are rhetorical and poetical rather than dialectical, but glimpses of truth appear in them. When Eryximachus says that the principles of music are simple in themselves, but confused in their application, he touches lightly upon a difficulty which has troubled the moderns as well as the ancients in music, and may be extended to the other applied sciences. That confusion begins in the concrete, was the natural feeling of a mind dwelling in the world of ideas. When Pausanias remarks that personal attachments are inimical to despots. The experience of Greek history confirms the truth of his remark. When Aristophanes declares that love is the desire of the whole, he expresses a feeling not unlike that of the German philosopher, who says that 'philosophy is home sickness.' When Agathon says that no man 'can be wronged of his own free will,' he is alluding playfully to a serious problem of Greek philosophy (compare Arist. Nic. Ethics). So naturally does Plato mingle jest and earnest, truth and opinion in the same work.
The charactersof Phaedrus, who has been the cause of more philosophical discussions than any other man, with the exception of Simmias the Theban (Phaedrus); of Aristophanes, who disguises under comic imagery a serious purpose; of Agathon, who in later life is satirized by Aristophanes in the Thesmophoriazusae, for his effeminate manners and the feeble rhythms of his verse; of Alcibiades, who is the same strange contrast of great powers and great vices, which meets us in historyare drawn to the life; and we may suppose the less-known characters of Pausanias and Eryximachus to be also true to the traditional recollection of them (compare Phaedr., Protag.; and compare Sympos. with Phaedr.). We may also remark that Aristodemus is called 'the little' in Xenophon's Memorabilia (compare Symp.).
Talks 001-025, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
M.: Who is a Master? He is the Self after all. According to the stages of the development of the mind the Self manifests as the Master externally. The famous ancient saint Avadhuta said that he had more than 24 Masters. The Master is one from whom one learns anything. The Guru may be sometimes inanimate also, as in the case of Avadhuta. God, Guru and the Self are identical.
A spiritual-minded man thinks that God is all-pervading and takes
Talks 026-050, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
M.: Both statements are true. They refer to different stages of development and are spoken from different points of view. The aspirant (abhyasi) starts with the definition, that which is real exists always; then he eliminates the world as unreal because it is changing. It cannot be real; not this, not this! The seeker ultimately reaches the Self and there finds unity as the prevailing note. Then, that which was originally rejected as being unreal is found to be a part of the unity. Being absorbed in the Reality, the world also is
Real. There is only being in Self-Realisation, and nothing but being.
The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
Let me briefly recapitulate the three stages of this drama. The first is
the sudden emergence, during a conversation in 1903, of the hunch that
--
trend of development. After these stages of "adaptative radiations",
when the species is plastic and malleable, there usually follow periods
--
istic stages of individual discovery: the periods of creative anarchy to
the period of incubation; the emergence of the new synthesis to the
--
of language. In the early stages of learning to speak, children seem to
have an irresistible impulse to jabber repetitive variations of sound
--
tadpoles; if it was obtained from embryos in later stages of develop-
ment, it will produce abnormal forms.
--
bility of strategy become more evident as we turn to later stages of
development the matrices of morphogenetic fields, which differen-
--
During the earliest stages of development the growth of the embryo
takes place in a fairly stable environment, so that feedback-controls
--
To sum up: at various stages of embryonic development, and at
various structural levels, we find different biochemical mechanisms,
--
tion being that chemical gradients played an important part in the early stages of
differentiation (New Scientist, No 303, 6.9.1962, p. 492).
--
bryonic stages of higher organisms, a physiologically isolated part
tends in general 'to lose its characteristics as a part and to become or
--
agent. At the later, anabolic stages of the process no nerve supply is needed as
denervation experiments show.
--
which it has attained by successive stages of de-particularization and
re-coding.
--
Let us call these three stages of habit-formation the 'letter', 'word',
and 'context* levels. The letter habit is acquired by 'serial learning'.
--
by codes formed at different stages of phylogenetic and ontogenetic
development. All this has been discussed at length in the previous
--
out conscious effort. In the initial stages of learning a complex symbolic
skill, the rules of the game (laws, theorems, mathematical or chemical
The Anapanasati Sutta A Practical Guide to Mindfullness of Breathing and Tranquil Wisdom Meditation, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Bhikkhus, had achieved successive stages of high
distinction.
--
by the elder Bhikkhus, achieved successive stages of high
distinction.
--
and disliking. All of the stages of the lower jhanas
(meditation states) involves letting go of emotional states of
--
one is in the meditation stages of the first four jhanas
(meditation stages). It also says that the most important
--
because one gets to experience the different stages of
meditation. If they stop being attentive to the feeling of the
--
will eventually attain to the higher and more subtle stages of
meditations (arupa jhanas). At that time, one's mind
The Coming Race Contents, #The Coming Race, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
faire as in the inferior stages of evolution in
the past. And that is the true genesis of the
The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
patient, over the successive stages of the Great Work...
As our eyes become accustomed to the darkness, thousands of things emerge from the
--
and the same body taken in two different stages of its evolution, one liquid, the other solid.
With some thought it is easy to understand that such an enterprise cannot lead us to our aim.
--
us first call attention to three stars, characteristic feature of the three stages of the Work, or
preferably of the three successive states of the same substance. The first of these asterisks,
--
colorations of the three main stages of the Work. By imposing this symbolical formula on
sculptors and painters, the alchemist Flamel hid the middle class personality of Flamel the
--
the evolution of the Rebis and reveal outwardly to the alchemist the successive stages of the
inner work. These stages, diversely colored, bear the name of Regimens or Reigns.
--
Some authors, comparing the colored stages of the coction of the seven says of creation, have
coined for the complete labor the expression Hebdomas hebdomadum, the Week of weeks, or
--
(4) We restrict ourselves to enumerate the successive stages of the second Work without proposing a particular
analysis. Great Adepts, and Philale thes particularly in his Introitus, have provided a thorough study of the
--
attri bution to the various stages of the Work, since all of them aim at the same goal and are
oriented towards the assemblage, the homogeneity of the first natures, towards the mutation of
--
goes back to its starting point. These are stages of falling and rising, of solution and
coagulation characterizing the successive multiplications that give for each rebirth of the
The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Stuttgart, April 8, 1924 ::: Necessity for knowledge of the whole human being for a genuine education. The relationship between teacher and child is far-reaching. Before seven, the child is a sense organ, and the body, soul, and spirit exist as a unity. The effects of the teachers temperament on the child. The teachers task during the three stages of childhood.
LECTURE 2
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Aoi Bungaku Series -- -- Madhouse -- 12 eps -- Novel -- Drama Historical Psychological Seinen Thriller -- Aoi Bungaku Series Aoi Bungaku Series -- Ningen Shikkaku -- A high school student seeks solace in narcotics to escape the dispiritedness that has come over his life. As he goes through the different stages of his life, it culminates in the questioning of his existence in the world. -- -- Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita -- The adaptation of Ango Sakaguchi's literary work deals with the love story of a woman abducted by a mountain bandit. -- -- Kokoro -- While trying to fill the void in his life, a university student in Tokyo encounters a charismatic older man, whom he addresses as "Sensei," who offers him advice on life. However, the man is apprehensive to share his life experience, deepening the student's curiosity. Through this peculiar relationship, the student comes to ponder about the distance between him and his family and the growing desolation in his heart filled with ego and guilt. -- -- Hashire, Melos! -- The story portrays the unbreakable bond between two friends, Melos and Selinuntius, and their faith in protecting each other, all while dangling on a thread which hovers over death and misery. -- -- Kumo no Ito -- Kandata is a coldhearted criminal who, while being punished in Hell for his misdeeds, is noticed by the Buddha Shakyamuni. Despite maintaining a record of committing ruthless atrocities, Kandata had once shown mercy to a spider he encountered in the forest by letting it live. Moved by this, Shakyamuni offers him redemption by dropping a spider's thread into the searing pits of Hell, and it is up to Kandata to seize the opportunity. -- -- Jigokuhen -- Yoshihide is a great painter in the land ruled by Horikawa, a tyrant. Offered a commission to paint the "Buddhist Hell" by the lord, Yoshihide declines, as he cannot paint anything he has not witnessed himself. In an attempt to make Yoshihide understand the magnitude of his request, the lord tortures his subjects to provide inspiration for the artist, descending his domain into utter despair and darkness. -- -- TV - Oct 11, 2009 -- 174,861 7.74
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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stages_of_Cruelty_by_Ford_Madox_Brown.jpg
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Eight stages of genocide
Erikson's stages of psychosocial development
Five stages of grief
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Medal for civilian prisoners, deportees and hostages of the 1914-1918 Great War
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Rostow's stages of growth
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