--- DICTIONARIES (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

succession ::: the coming of one person or thing after another in order, sequence, or in the course of events.

successor ::: one who succeeds or follows another.

SUCCESS. ::: There arc always two elements in spiritual success — one’s own steady will and endeavour and the Power that in one way or another helps and gives the result of endeavour.

Succession and Duration: These concepts are inseparable from the idea of 'flowing' time in which every event endures relatively to a succession of other events. In Leibniz's view, succession was the most important characteristic of time defined by him as "the order of succession." Some thinkers, notably H. Bergson, regard duration (duree) as the very essence of time, "time perceived as indivisible," in which the vital impulse (elan vital) becomes the creative source of all change comparable to a snow-ball rolling down a hill and swelling on its way. According to A. N. Whitehead, duration is 'a slab of nature' possessing temporal thickness, it is a cross-section of the world in its process, or "the immediate present condition of the world at some epoch." -- R.B.W.

SuccessoR
A language for {distributed computing} derived from {SR}.
["SuccessoR: Refinements to SR", R.A. Olsson et al, TR 84-3, U
Arizona 1984].
(1994-12-15)

successor
{daughter}

SuccessoR ::: A language for distributed computing derived from SR.[SuccessoR: Refinements to SR, R.A. Olsson et al, TR 84-3, U Arizona 1984]. (1994-12-15)

SUCCESS. ::: There arc always two elements in spiritual success — one’s own steady will and endeavour and the Power that in one way or another helps and gives the result of endeavour.

succession ::: the coming of one person or thing after another in order, sequence, or in the course of events.

successor ::: one who succeeds or follows another.

--- QUOTES [142 / 142 - 500 / 26005] (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

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   1 There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment.
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1:A minute's success pays the failure of years. ~ Robert Browning,

2:Self-trust is the first secret of success. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,

3:Success means doing something sincerely and wholeheartedly. ~ Bruce Lee,

4:The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus. ~ Bruce Lee,

5:The path to success is to take massive, determined action. ~ Anthony Robbins,

6:A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new. ~ Marshall McLuhan,

7:Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day. ~ Jim Rohn,

8:The standard of success is whether you've pleased God. ~ A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada,

9:No life can be successful without self-discipline. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II ,

10:Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value. ~ Albert Einstein,

11:Success comes from curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self criticism. ~ Albert Einstein,

12:I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate. ~ George F Burns,

13:What is the secret of success in sadhana? Surrender. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II ,

14:He is the wisest who seeks God. He is the most successful who has found God. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,

15:The measure of the sincerity is the measure of the success.23 April 1968 ~ The Mother, On Education ,

16:Successful assimilation depends on mastery. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human On Original Thinking,

17:Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure. ~ Napoleon Hill,

18:The mind is a thing that dwells in diffusion, in succession. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga 2.04 - Concentration,

19:Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with your might. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,

20:Faith is the first condition of success in every great undertaking. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I The Leverage of Faith,

21:There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment., ~ There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment.,

22:265. Care not for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human 3.1.10 - Karma,

23:The reason deals successfully only with the settled and the finite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle The Reason as Governor of Life,

24:Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel,

25:In each success a seed of failure lurks. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri The Yoga of the King,

26:Even the most successful victor receives much from the vanquished. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India “Is India Civilised?” - II,

27:Success is the development of the power with which to get whatever one wants in life without interfering with the rights of others. ~ Napoleon Hill,

28:Strength men desire in their masters;All men worship success and in failure and weakness abandon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems 5.1.01 - Ilion,

29:True teaching is not an accumulation of knowledge; it is an awaking of consciousness which goes through successive stages. ~ Ancient Egyptian Proverb,

30:In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human successes, but on how well we have loved. ~ Saint John of the Cross,

31:III. THEOREMS: 1. Every intentional act is a Magical Act. 2. Every successful act has conformed to the postulate. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA Magick,

32:Aggression must be successful and creative if the defence is to be effective. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India “Is India Civilised?” - I,

33:Be perfectly sincere in your consecration to the Divine's work. This will assure you strength and success. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II Sincerity,

34:His small successes are failures of the soul,His little pleasures punctuate frequent griefs: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri 02.05 - The Godheads of the Little Life,

35:Death in one’s own dharma brings new birth, success in an alien path means only successful suicide. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin The Awakening Soul of India,

36:Success must not elate your minds, nor failure discourage. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest To Motilal Roy,

37:True success is not measured by the amount of money that you have made. It is measured by the amount of wisdom and compassion that you have cultivated. ~ Chamtrul Rinpoche,

38:All Nature is an attempt at a progressive revelation of the concealed Truth, a more and more successful reproduction of the divine image. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga ,

39:No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga ,

40:Inheritor of the brief animal mind,Man, still a child in Nature’s mighty hands,In the succession of the moments lives; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri 01.04 - The Secret Knowledge,

41:The object of life is the growth of the soul, not outward success of the hour or even of the near future. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I 06.01 - The Word of Fate,

42:So we should acquire the power of concentration by fixing the mind first on forms and when we have obtained in this a full success, we can easily fix it on the formless. ~ Ramakrishna,

43:Even in failure there is a preparation for success: our nights carry in them the secret of a greater dawn. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India “Is India Civilised?” - III,

44:Eternal perdition is impossible,—it fails to cross successfully over death & enters into trans-mortal darkness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad,

45:The builder Reason lost her confidenceIn the successful sleight and turn of thoughtThat makes the soul the prisoner of a phrase. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri 02.13 - In the Self of Mind,

46:To enter into a deeper or higher consciousness or for that deeper or higher consciousness to descend into you-that is the true success of meditation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II ,

47:Even if you are not apparently successful in your meditation, it is better to persist and to be more obstinate than the opposition of your lower nature. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II ,

48:Give yourself up to deep meditation.Throw away all other considerations of life.The calculative life will not be crowned with spiritual success. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Conscious Immortality Ch. 7,

49:A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life. ~ Lewis Mumford,

50:There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: More money for more work. ~ Aleister Crowley,

51:Create your vision, then systematically follow it. There are no guarantees of success. There is only the assurance that if you do nothing, you will accomplish nothing. . . . Where do you want to start? ~ Forsha (31),

52:Perform all thy actions with mind concentrated on the Divine, renouncing attachment and looking upon success and failure with an equal eye. Spirituality implies equanimity. [Trans. Purohit Swami] ~ Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita ,

53:Make of us the hero warriors we aspire to become. May we fight successfully the great battle of the future that is to be born, against the past that seeks to endure, so that the new things may manifest and we be ready to receive them. ~ The Mother, On Education ,

54:358. Men hunt after petty successes and trivial masteries from which they fall back into exhaustion and weakness; meanwhile all the infinite force of God in the universe waits vainly to place itself at their disposal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human 3.1.10 - Karma,

55:If we fail in our immediate aim, it is because he has intended the failure; often our failure or ill-result is the right road to a truer issue than an immediate and complete success would have put in our reach. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga 1.11 - The Master of the Work,

56:One who first founds on a large scale and rapidly, needs always as his successor a man with the talent or the genius for organisation rather than an impetus for expansion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle The Ancient Cycle of Prenational Empire-Building - The Modern Cycle of Nation-Building,

57:Its touch can turn difficulties into opportunities, failure into success and weakness into unfaultering strength. For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme and now or tomorrow its effect is sure, a thing decreed, inevitable and irresistible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother ,

58:Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you're putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you're doing the same thing you know that... you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve. ~ Elon Musk,

59:A magical diary is the magicians most essential and powerful tool. It should be large enough to allow a full page for each day. Students should record the time, duration and degree of success of any practice undertaken. They should make notes about environmental factors conducive (or otherwise) to the work. ~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null Liber MMM [13],

60:In roughly the last century, important experiments have been launched by such charismatic educators as Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Shinichi Suzuki, John Dewey, and A. S. Neil. These approaches have enjoyed considerable success[...] Yet they have had relatively little impact on the mainstream of education throughout the contemporary world. ~ Howard Gardner,

61:Feeling of discontinuity as a person. My various selves-how do they all come together? And anxiety at moments of transition from one "role" to another. Will I make it fifteen minutes from now? Be able to step into, inhabit the person I'm supposed to be? This is felt as an infinitely hazardous leap, no matter how often it's successfully executed. ~ Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh ,

62:During the dark night there is no choice but to surrender control, give in to unknowing, and stop and listen to whatever signals of wisdom might come along. It's a time of enforced retreat and perhaps unwilling withdrawal. The dark night is more than a learning experience; it's a profound initiation into a realm that nothing in the culture, so preoccupied with external concerns and material success, prepares you for. ~ Thomas Moore,

63:One must find out for oneself, and make sure beyond doubt, 'who' one is, 'what' one is, 'why' one is... Being thus conscious of the proper course to pursue, the next thing is to understand the conditions necessary to following it out. After that, one must eliminate from oneself every element alien or hostile to success, and develop those parts of oneself which are specially needed to control the aforesaid conditions. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA ,

64:But if we desire to make the most of the opportunity that this life gives us, if we wish to respond adequately to the call we have received and to attain to the goal we have glimpsed, not merely advance a little towards it, it is essential that there should be an entire self-giving. The secret of success in Yoga is to regard it not as one of the aims to be pursued in life, but as the one and only aim, not as an important part of life, but as the whole of life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga ,

65:The Quest of the Holy Grail, the Search for the Stone of the Philosophers-by whatever name we choose to call the Great Work-is therefore endless. Success only opens up new avenues of brilliant possibility. Yea, verily, and Amen! the task is tireless and its joys without bounds; for the whole Universe, and all that in it is, what is it but the infinite playground of the Crowned and Conquering Child, of the insatiable, the innocent, the ever-rejoicing Heir of Space and Eternity, whose name is MAN? ~ Aleister Crowley, Little Essays Toward Truth ,

66:She follows to the goal of those that are passing on beyond, she is the first in the eternal succession of the dawns that are coming, - Usha widens bringing out that which lives, awakening someone who was dead. . . . What is her scope when she harmonises with the dawns that shone out before and those that now must shine? She desires the ancient mornings and fulfils their light; projecting forwards her illumination she enters into communion with the rest that are to come. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine [Kutsu Angirasa - Rig Veda I. 113. 8,

67:Those who really want to be yogis must give up, once for all, this nibbling at things. Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced. Others are mere talking-machines. If we really want to be blessed and make others blessed, we must go deeper. ~ Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga Pratyahara and Dharana,

68:SLEIGHT OF MIND IN INVOCATIONInvocation is a three stage process. Firstly the magician consciously identifies with what is traditionally called a god-form, secondly he enters gnosis and thirdly the magicians subconsciousness manifests the powers of the god-form. A successful invocation means nothing less than full "possession" by the god-form. With practice the first stage of conscious identification can be abbreviated greatly to the point where it may only be necessary to concentrate momentarily on a well used god-form. ~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Kaos ,

69:The spirit, while superior to all of its bodies, is incapable of manifesting without its chain of vehicles. This divine spark must always be limited by the quality of its bodies. In all too many cases, it is the servant of its own dependencies. Instead of ruling its world by apostolic succession, the spirit is generally bowed and broken by the endless demands of the lower nature. The appetites, desires, and selfish propensities cast the spirit into a dungeon, while a false and cruel monarch rules the empire in his stead. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics ,

70:In ancient times many years of preparation were required before the neophyte was permitted to enter the temple of the Mysteries. In this way the shallow, the curious, the faint of heart, and those unable to withstand the temptations of life were automatically eliminated by their inability to meet the requirements for admission. The successful candidate who did pass between the pillars entered the temple, keenly realizing his sublime opportunity, his divine obligation, and the mystic privilege which he had earned for himself through years of special preparation. ~ Manly P Hall,

71:High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss,Discoverers of beauty's sunlit waysAnd swimmers of Love's laughing fiery floodsAnd dancers within rapture's golden doors,Their tread one day shall change the suffering earthAnd justify the light on Nature's face.Although Fate lingers in the high BeyondAnd the work seems vain on which our heart's force was spent,All shall be done for which our pain was borne.Even as of old man came behind the beastThis high divine successor surely shall come ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri 03.04 - The Vision and the Boon,

72:And yet, and yet... Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are apparent desperations and secret consolations. Our destiny ... is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths Selected Stories and Other Writings,

73:. . . misfortune has its uses; for, as our bodily frame would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere was removed, so, if the lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship and adversity; if everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly--nay, they would go mad. And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,

74:System Shock states the percentage chance a character has to survive magical effects that reshape or age his body: petrification (and reversing petrification), polymorph, magical aging, etc. It can also be used to see if the character retains consciousness in particularly difficult situations. For example, an evil wizard polymorphs his dim-witted hireling into a crow. The hireling, whose Constitution score is 13, has an 85% chance to survive the change. Assuming he survives, he must successfully roll for system shock again when he is changed back to his original form or else he will die. ~ AD&D,

75:8. Now let us turn at last to our castle with its many mansions. You must not think of a suite of rooms placed in succession, but fix your eyes on the keep, the court inhabited by the King.23' Like the kernel of the palmito,24' from which several rinds must be removed before coming to the eatable part, this principal chamber is surrounded by many others. However large, magnificent, and spacious you imagine this castle to be, you cannot exaggerate it; the capacity of the soul is beyond all our understanding, and the Sun within this palace enlightens every part of it. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle ,

76:The simple fact is that we live in a world of conflict and opposites because we live in a world of boundaries. Since every boundary line is also a battle line, here is the human predicament: the firmer one's boundaries, the more entrenched are one's battles. The more I hold onto pleasure, the more I necessarily fear pain. The more I pursue goodness, the more I am obsessed with evil. The more I seek success, the more I must dread failure. The harder I cling to life, the more terrifying death becomes. The more I value anything, the more obsessed I become with its loss. Most of our problems, in other words, are problems of boundaries ~ ,

77:It may yet be said that a logical succession of the states of progress would be very much in this order. First, there is a large turning in which all the natural mental activities proper to the individual nature are taken up or referred to a higher standpoint and dedicated by the soul in us, the psychic being, the priest of the sacrifice, to the divine service; next, there is an attempt at an ascent of the being and a bringing down of the Light and Power proper to some new height of consciousness gained by its upward effort into the whole action of the knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga The Ascent Of The Sacrifice - I,

78:It is said that the faculty of concentrated attention is at the source of all successful activity. Indeed the capacity and value of a man can be measured by his capacity of concentrated attention.[2] In order to obtain this concentration, it is generally recommended to reduce one's activities, to make a choice and confine oneself to this choice alone, so as not to disperse one's energy and attention. For the normal man, this method is good, sometimes even indispensable. But one can imagine something better. [2] Generally it comes through interest and a special attraction for a subject - Mother's note. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II ,

79:Remember that which is written: "Moderate strength rings the bell: great strength returns the penny." It is always the little bit extra that brings home the bacon. It is the last attack that breaks through the enemy position. Water will never boil, however long you keep it at 99° C. You may find that a Pranayama cycle of 10-20-30 brings no result in months; put it up to 10-20-40, and Dhyana comes instantly. When in doubt, push just a little bit harder. You have no means of finding out what are exactly the right conditions for success in any practice; but all practices are alike in one respect; the desired result is in the nature of orgasm. ~ Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears ,

80:But while it is difficult for man to believe in something unseen within himself, it is easy for him to believe in something which he can image as extraneous to himself. The spiritual progress of most human beings demands an extraneous support, an object of faith outside us. It needs an external image of God; or it needs a human representative, - Incarnation, Prophet or Guru; or it demands both and receives them. For according to the need of the human soul the Divine manifests himself as deity, as human divine or in simple humanity - using that thick disguise, which so successfully conceals the Godhead, for a means of transmission of his guidance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga ,

81:Faith ::: One must say, "Since I want only the Divine, my success is sure, I have only to walk forward in all confidence and His own Hand will be there secretly leading me to Him by His own way and at His own time." That is what you must keep as your constant mantra. Anything else one may doubt but that he who desires only the Divine shall reach the Divine is a certitude and more certain than two and two make four. That is the faith every sadhak must have at the bottom of his heart, supporting him through every stumble and blow and ordeal. It is only false ideas still casting their shadows on your mind that prevent you from having it. Push them aside and the back of the difficulty will be broken. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II ,

82:Mother, I would like to know from you if it is good for me to devote more time to meditation than I am doing at present. I spend about two hours, morning and evening together. I am as yet not quite successful in meditation. My physical mind disturbs me a lot. I pray to you that it may become quiet and my psychic being may come out. It is so painful to find the mind working like a mad machine and the heart sleeping like a stone. Mother, let me feel your presence within my heart always....The increase of time given to meditation is not very useful unless the urge for meditation comes spontaneously from inside and not from any arbitrary decision of the mind. My help, love and blessings are always with you. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II ,

83:The more complete your faith, sincerity and surrender, the more will grace and protection be with you. And when the grace and protection of the Divine Mother are with you, what is there that can touch you or whom need you fear? A little of it even will carry you through all difficulties, obstacles and dangers, surrounded by its full presence you can go securely on your way because it is hers, careless of all menace, unaffected by any hostility however powerful, whether from this world or from worlds invisible. Its touch can turn difficulties into opportunities, failure into success and weakness into unfaltering strength. For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme and now or tomorrow its effect is sure, a thing decreed, inevitable and irresistible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother ,

84:But, apart from all these necessities, there is the one fundamental necessity of the nature and object of embodied life itself, which is to seek infinite experience on a finite basis; and since the form, the basis by its very organisation limits the possibility of experience, this can only be done by dissolving it and seeking new forms. For the soul, having once limited itself by concentrating on the moment and the field, is driven to seek its infinity again by the principle of succession, by adding moment to moment and thus storing up a Time-experience which it calls its past; in that Time it moves through successive fields, successive experiences or lives, successive accumulations of knowledge, capacity, enjoyment, and all this it holds in subconscious or superconscious memory as its fund of past acquisition in Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine ,

85:PURANI: There was some effort. Only, you can say that the effort was negligible in proportion to the success. SRI AUROBINDO: It is not a question of proportion. One may have put in a great deal of effort and yet there could be no result because there was not a complete and total sincerity. On the other hand, when the result comes with little effort it is because the whole being has responded-- and Grace found it possible to act. All the same, effort is a contributory factor. Sometimes one goes on making an effort with no result or even the condition becomes worse. And when one has given it up, one finds suddenly that the result has come. It may be that the effort was keeping up the resistance too. And when the effort is given up, the resistance says, "This fellow has given up effort. What is the use of resisting anymore?" ( Laughter ) ~ Nirodbaran, TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO VOLUME 1 405,

86:I am the sort of man who has changed completely under the effect of suffering, even though this transformation may simply be the intensification of elements already there. Thus amplified, they gave an entirely new perspective on life. I believe frenetically and fanatically, in the virtues of suffering and of anxiety, and I believe in them especially since, though I've suffered greatly and despaired much, I nevertheless acquired through them a sense of my own destiny, a sort of weird enthusiasm for my mission. On the heights of the most terrifying despair, I experience the joy of having a destiny, of living a life of successive deaths and transfigurations, of turning every moment into a cross-road. And I am proud that my life begins with death, unlike the majority of people, who end with death. I feel as if my death were in the past, and the future looks to me like a sort of personal illumination. ~ Emil Cioran,

87:Part 2 - Initiation6. The Road of Trials:Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure. It has produced a world literature of miraculous tests and ordeals. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region. Or it may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage. The original departure into the land of trials represented only the beginning of the long and really perilous path of initiatory conquests and moments of illumination. Dragons have now to be slain and surprising barriers passed-again, again, and again. Meanwhile there will be a multitude of preliminary victories, unsustainable ecstasies and momentary glimpses of the wonderful land. ~ Joseph Campbell,

88:ALL YOGA is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. The soul that is called to this deep and vast inward change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may reach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap to it by a sudden touch or shock; it may be pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward necessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod the path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga 1.02 - Self-Consecration,

89:I think one of the most important thing is to know why one meditates; this is what gives the quality of the meditation and makes it of one order or another. You may meditate to open yourself to the divine Force, you may meditate to reject the ordinary consciousness, you may meditate to enter the depths of your being, you may meditate to learn how to give yourself integrally; you may meditate for all kinds of things. You may meditate to enter into peace and calm and silence - this is what people generally do, but without much success. But you may also meditate to receive the Force of transformation, to discover the points to be transformed, to trace out the line of progress. And then you may also meditate for very practical reasons: when you have a difficulty to clear up, a solution to find, when you want help in some action or another. You may meditate for that too. I think everyone has his own mode of meditation. But if one wants the meditation to be dynamic, one must have an aspiration for progress and the meditation must be done to help and fulfill this aspiration for progress. Then it becomes dynamic. ~ The Mother,

90:In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified, heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened, concentrated by Asana and Pranayama. This concentration of powers is then directed towards that physical centre in which the divine consciousness sits concealed in the human body. The power of Life, Nature-power, coiled up with all its secret forces asleep in the lowest nervous plexus of the earth-being,-for only so much escapes into waking action in our normal operations as is sufficient for the limited uses of human life,-rises awakened through centre after centre and awakens, too, in its ascent and passage the forces of each successive nodus of our being, the nervous life, the heart of emotion and ordinary mentality, the speech, sight, will, the higher knowledge, till through and above the brain it meets with and it becomes one with the divine consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga The Yoga of Self-Perfection,

91:the three successive elements ::: The progressive self-manifestation of Nature in man, termed in modern language his evolution, must necessarily depend upon three successive elements, that which is already evolved, that which is persistently in the stage of conscious evolution and that which is to be evolved and may perhaps be already displayed, if not constantly, then occasionally or with some regularity of recurrence, in primary formations or in others more developed and, it may well be, even in some, however rare, that are near to the highest possible realisation of our present humanity. For the march of Nature is not drilled to a regular and mechanical forward stepping. She reaches constantly beyond herself even at the cost of subsequent deplorable retreats. She has rushes; she has splendid and mighty outbursts; she has immense realisations. She storms sometimes passionately forward hoping to take the kingdom of heaven by violence. And these self-exceedings are the revelation of that in her which is most divine or else most diabolical, but in either case the most puissant to bring her rapidly forward towards her goal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis,

92:The third operation in any magical ceremony is the oath or proclamation. The Magician, armed and ready, stands in the centre of the Circle, and strikes once upon the bell as if to call the attention of the Universe. He then declares who he is, reciting his magical history by the proclamation of the grades which he has attained, giving the signs and words of those grades. He then states the purpose of the ceremony, and proves that it is necessary to perform it and to succeed in its performance. He then takes an oath before the Lord of the Universe (not before the particular Lord whom he is invoking) as if to call Him to witness the act. He swears solemnly that he will perform it-that nothing shall prevent him from performing it-that he will not leave the operation until it is successfully performed-and once again he strikes upon the bell. Yet, having demonstrated himself in that position at once infinitely lofty and infinitely unimportant, the instrument of destiny, he balances this by the Confession, in which there is again an infinite exaltation harmonised with an infinite humility. He admits himself to be a weak human being humbly aspiring to something higher; a creature of circumstance utterly dependent-even for the breath of life-upon a series of fortunate accidents. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA ,

93:The Twenty Tenets of Holons1. Reality as a whole is not composed of things, or processes, but of holons. 2. Holons display four fundamental capacities: a. self-preservation, b. self-adaptation, c. self-transcendence. d. self-dissolution. 3. Holons emerge. 4. Holons emerge holarchically. 5. Each emergent holon transcends but includes its predecessor. 6. The lower sets the possibilities of the higer; the higher sets the probabilities of the lower. 7. "The number of levels which a hierarchy comprises determines whether it is 'shallow' or 'deep'; and the number of holons on any given level we shall call its 'span'" (A. Koestler). 8. Each successive level of evolution produces greater depth and less span. 9. Destroy any type of holon, and you will destroy all of the holons above it and none of the holons below it. 10. Holarchies coevolve. 11. The micro is in relational exchange with the macro at all levels of its depth. 12. Evolution has directionality: a. Increasing complexity. b. Increasing differentiation/integration. c. Increasing organisation/structuration. d. Increasing relative autonomy. e. Increasing telos. ~ Ken Wilber, Sex Ecology Spirituality 1995,

94:Sometimes when an adverse force attacks us and we come out successful, why are we attacked once again by the same force? Because something was left inside. We have said that the force can attack only when there is something which responds in the nature - however slight it may be. There is a kind of affinity, something corresponding, there is a disorder or an imperfection which attracts the adverse force by responding to it. So, if the attack comes, you must keep perfectly quiet and send it back, but it does not necessarily follow that you have got rid of that small part in you which allows the attack to come. You have something in you which attracts this force; take, for example (it is one of the most frequent things), the force of depression, that kind of attack of a wave of depression that falls upon you: you lose confidence, you lose hope, you have the feeling you will never be able to do anything, you are cast down. It means there is in your vital being something which is naturally egoistic, surely a little vain, which needs encouragement to remain in a good state. So it is like a little signal for those forces which intimates to them: "You can come, the door is open." But there is another part in the being that was watching when these forces arrived; instead of allowing them to enter, the part which... ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953 ,

95:It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or heard of by any Earthman. Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.in fact it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor - of which no Earthman had ever heard either. Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one - more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway? In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words Don't Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover. ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ,

96:the joy of progress ::: It is the will for progress and self-purification which lights the [psychic] fire. The will for progress. Those who have a strong will, when they turn it towards spiritual progress and purification, automatically light the fire within themselves. And each defect one wants to cure or each progress one wants to make - if all that is thrown into the fire, it burns with a new intensity. And this is not an image, it is a fact in the subtle physical. One can feel the warmth of the flame, one can see in the subtle physical the light of the flame. And when there is something in the nature which prevents one from advancing and one throws it into this fire, it begins to burn and the flame becomes more intense....How can one feel sweetness and joy when one is in difficulty?Exactly, when the difficulty is egoistic or personal, if one makes an offering of it and throws it into the fire of purification, one immediately feels the joy of progress. If one does it sincerely, at once there is a welling up of joy. That is obviously what ought to be done instead of despairing and lamenting. If one offers it up and aspires sincerely for transformation and purification, one immediately feels joy springing up in the depths of the heart. Even when the difficulty is a great sorrow, one may do this with much success. One realises that behind the sorrow, no matter how intense it may be, there is divine joy. ~ The Mother,

97:The scientists, all of them, have their duties no doubt, but they do not fully use their education if they do not try to broaden their sense of responsibility toward all mankind instead of closing themselves up in a narrow specialization where they find their pleasure. Neither engineers nor other scientific men have any right to prefer their own personal peace to the happiness of mankind; their place and their duty are in the front line of struggling humanity, not in the unperturbed ranks of those who keep themselves aloof from life. If they are indifferent, or discouraged because they feel or think that they know that the situation is hopeless, it may be proved that undue pessimism is as dangerous a "religion" as any other blind creed. Indeed there is very little difference in kind between the medieval fanaticism of the "holy inquisition," and modern intolerance toward new ideas. All kinds of intellect must get together, for as long as we presuppose the situation to be hopeless, the situation will indeed be hopeless. The spirit of Human Engineering does not know the word "hopeless"; for engineers know that wrong methods are alone responsible for disastrous results, and that every situation can be successfully handled by the use of proper means. The task of engineering science is not only to know but to know how. Most of the scientists and engineers do not yet realize that their united judgment would be invincible; no system or class would care to disregard it. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity ,

98:challenge for the Integral Yogin ::: Nor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to solve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. To him as to all seekers of the spirit there are offered for solution the oppositions of the reason, the clinging hold of the senses, the perturbations of the heart, the ambush of the desires, the clog of the physical body; but he has to deal in another fashion with their mutual and internal conflicts and their hindrance to his aim, for he must arrive at an infinitely more difficult perfection in the handling of all this rebel matter. Accepting them as instruments for the divine realisation and manifestation, he has to convert their jangling discords, to enlighten their thick darknesses, to transfigure them separately and all together, harmonising them in themselves and with each other, -- integrally, omitting no grain or strand or vibration, leaving no iota of imperfection anywhere. All exclusive concentration, or even a succession of concentrations of that kind, can be in his complex work only a temporary convenience; it has to be abandoned as soon as its utility is over. An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he must labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga 78,

99:Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which gives unity and system to the body of the sciences, and the kind which results from a critical examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. But it cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions. If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science, his answer will last as long as you are willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will, if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results such as have been achieved by other sciences. It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton's great work was called 'the mathematical principles of natural philosophy'. Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy. ~ Bertrand Russell,

100:The Lord has veiled himself and his absolute wisdom and eternal consciousness in ignorant Nature-Force and suffers her to drive the individual being, with its complicity, as the ego; this lower action of Nature continues to prevail, often even in spite of man's half-lit imperfect efforts at a nobler motive and a purer self-knowledge. Our human effort at perfection fails, or progresses very incompletely, owing to the force of Nature's past actions in us, her past formations, her long-rooted associations; it turns towards a true and high-climbing success only when a greater Knowledge and Power than our own breaks through the lid of our ignorance and guides or takes up our personal will. For our human will is a misled and wandering ray that has parted from the supreme Puissance. The period of slow emergence out of this lower working into a higher light and purer force is the valley of the shadow of death for the striver after perfection; it is a dreadful passage full of trials, sufferings, sorrows, obscurations, stumblings, errors, pitfalls. To abridge and alleviate this ordeal or to penetrate it with the divine delight faith is necessary, an increasing surrender of the mind to the knowledge that imposes itself from within and, above all, a true aspiration and a right and unfaltering and sincere practice. "Practise unfalteringly," says the Gita, "with a heart free from despondency," the Yoga; for even though in the earlier stage of the path we drink deep of the bitter poison of internal discord and suffering, the last taste of this cup is the sweetness of the nectar of immortality and the honey-wine of an eternal Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga 1.08 - The Supreme Will,

101:The sign of the immersion of the embodied soul in Prakriti is the limitation of consciousness to the ego. The vivid stamp of this limited consciousness can be seen in a constant inequality of the mind and heart and a confused conflict and disharmony in their varied reactions to the touches of experience. The human reactions sway perpetually between the dualities created by the soul's subjection to Nature and by its often intense but narrow struggle for mastery and enjoyment, a struggle for the most part ineffective. The soul circles in an unending round of Nature's alluring and distressing opposites, success and failure, good fortune and ill fortune, good and evil, sin and virtue, joy and grief, pain and pleasure. It is only when, awaking from its immersion in Prakriti, it perceives its oneness with the One and its oneness with all existences that it can become free from these things and found its right relation to this executive world-Nature. Then it becomes indifferent to her inferior modes, equal-minded to her dualities, capable of mastery and freedom; it is seated above her as the high-throned knower and witness filled with the calm intense unalloyed delight of his own eternal existence. The embodied spirit continues to express its powers in action, but it is no longer involved in ignorance, no longer bound by its works; its actions have no longer a consequence within it, but only a consequence outside in Prakriti. The whole movement of Nature becomes to its experience a rising and falling of waves on the surface that make no difference to its own unfathomable peace, its wide delight, its vast universal equality or its boundless God-existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga ,

102:Sweet Mother, how can we cut the knot of the ego? How to cut it? Take a sword and strike it (laughter), when one becomes conscious of it. For usually one is not; we think it quite normal, what happens to us; and in fact it is very normal but we think it quite good also. So to begin with one must have a great clear-sightedness to become aware that one is enclosed in all these knots which hold one in bondage. And then, when one is aware that there's something altogether tightly closed in there - so tightly that one has tried in vain to move it - then one imagines one's will to be a very sharp sword-blade, and with all one's force one strikes a blow on this knot (imaginary, of course, one doesn't take up a sword in fact), and this produces a result. Of course you can do this work from the psychological point of view, discovering all the elements constituting this knot, the whole set of resistances, habits, preferences, of all that holds you narrowly closed in. So when you grow aware of this, you can concentrate and call the divine Force and the Grace and strike a good blow on this formation, these things so closely held, like that, that nothing can separate them. And at that moment you must resolve that you will no longer listen to these things, that you will listen only to the divine Consciousness and will do no other work except the divine work without worrying about personal results, free from all attachment, free from all preference, free from all wish for success, power, satisfaction, vanity, all this.... All this must disappear and you must see only the divine Will incarnated in your will and making you act. Then, in this way, you are cured. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954 ,

103:[the first aid, shastra, the lotus of the eternal knowledge:] The supreme Shastra of the Integral Yoga is the eternal Veda secret in the heart of every thinking and living being. The lotus of the eternal knowledge and the eternal perfection is a bud closed and folded up within us. It opens swiftly or gradually, petal by petal, through successive realisations, once the mind of man begins to turn towards the Eternal, once his heart, no longer compressed and confined by attachment to finite appearances, becomes enamoured, in whatever degree, of the Infinite. All life, all thought, all energising of the faculties, all experiences passive or active, become thenceforward so many shocks which disintegrate the teguments of the soul and remove the obstacles to the inevitable efflorescence. He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite. He has received the divine touch without which there is no awakening, no opening of the spirit; but once it is received, attainment is sure, whether conquered swiftly in the course of one human life or pursued patiently through many stadia of the cycle of existence in the manifested universe. Nothing can be taught to the mind which is not already concealed as potential knowledge in the unfolding soul of the creature. So also all perfection of which the outer man is capable, is only a realising of the eternal perfection of the Spirit within him. We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature. All teaching is a revealing, all becoming is an unfolding. Self-attainment is the secret; self-knowledge and an increasing consciousness are the means and the process. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga The Four Aids [53],

104:Sweet Mother, how can we cut the knot of the ego? How to cut it? Take a sword and strike it (laughter), when one becomes conscious of it. For usually one is not; we think it quite normal, what happens to us; and in fact it is very normal but we think it quite good also. So to begin with one must have a great clear-sightedness to become aware that one is enclosed in all these knots which hold one in bondage. And then, when one is aware that there's something altogether tightly closed in there - so tightly that one has tried in vain to move it - then one imagines one's will to be a very sharp sword-blade, and with all one's force one strikes a blow on this knot (imaginary, of course, one doesn't take up a sword in fact), and this produces a result. Of course you can do this work from the psychological point of view, discovering all the elements constituting this knot, the whole set of resistances, habits, preferences, of all that holds you narrowly closed in. So when you grow aware of this, you can concentrate and call the divine Force and the Grace and strike a good blow on this formation, these things so closely held, like that, that nothing can separate them. And at that moment you must resolve that you will no longer listen to these things, that you will listen only to the divine Consciousness and will do no other work except the divine work without worrying about personal results, free from all attachment, free from all preference, free from all wish for success, power, satisfaction, vanity, all this.... All this must disappear and you must see only the divine Will incarnated in your will and making you act. Then, in this way, you are cured. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954 ,

105:We have all a ruling defect, which is for our soul as the umbilical cord of its birth in sin, and it is by this that the enemy can always lay hold upon us: for some it is vanity, for others idleness, for the majority egotism. Let a wicked and crafty mind avail itself of this means and we are lost; we may not go mad or turn idiots, but we become positively alienated, in all the force of the expression - that is, we are subjected to a foreign suggestion. In such a state one dreads instinctively everything that might bring us back to reason, and will not even listen to representations that are opposed to our obsession. Here is one of the most dangerous disorders which can affect the moral nature. The sole remedy for such a bewitchment is to make use of folly itself in order to cure folly, to provide the sufferer with imaginary satisfactions in the opposite order to that wherein he is now lost. Endeavour, for example, to cure an ambitious person by making him desire the glories of heaven - mystic remedy; cure one who is dissolute by true love - natural remedy; obtain honourable successes for a vain person; exhibit unselfishness to the avaricious and procure for them legitimate profit by honourable participation in generous enterprises, etc. Acting in this way upon the moral nature, we may succeed in curing a number of physical maladies, for the moral affects the physical in virtue of the magical axiom: "That which is above is like unto that which is below." This is why the Master said, when speaking of the paralyzed woman: "Satan has bound her." A disease invariably originates in a deficiency or an excess, and ever at the root of a physical evil we shall find a moral disorder. This is an unchanging law of Nature. ~ Eliphas Levi, Transcendental Magic ,

106:But this is only one side of the force that works for perfection. The process of the integral Yoga has three stages, not indeed sharply distinguished or separate, but in a certain measure successive. There must be, first, the effort towards at least an initial and enabling self-transcendence and contact with the Divine; next, the reception of that which transcends, that with which we have gained communion, into ourselves for the transformation of our whole conscious being; last, the utilisation of our transformed humanity as a divine centre in the world. So long as the contact with the Divine is not in some considerable degree established, so long as there is not some measure of sustained identity, sayujya, the element of personal effort must normally predominate. But in proportion as this contact establishes itself, the sadhaka must become conscious that a force other than his own, a force transcending his egoistic endeavour and capacity, is at work in him and to this Power he learns progressively to submit himself and delivers up to it the charge of his Yoga. In the end his own will and force become one with the higher Power; he merges them in the divineWill and its transcendent and universal Force. He finds it thenceforward presiding over the necessary transformation of his mental, vital and physical being with an impartial wisdom and provident effectivity of which the eager and interested ego is not capable. It is when this identification and this self-merging are complete that the divine centre in the world is ready. Purified, liberated, plastic, illumined, it can begin to serve as a means for the direct action of a supreme Power in the larger Yoga of humanity or superhumanity, of the earth's spiritual progression or its transformation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga ,

107:There is, indeed, a higher form of the buddhi that can be called the intuitive mind or intuitive reason, and this by its intuitions, its inspirations, its swift revelatory vision, its luminous insight and discrimination can do the work of the reason with a higher power, a swifter action, a greater and spontaneous certitude. It acts in a self-light of the truth which does not depend upon the torch-flares of the sense-mind and its limited uncertain percepts; it proceeds not by intelligent but by visional concepts: It is a kind of truth-vision, truth-hearing, truth-memory, direct truth-discernment. This true and authentic intuition must be distinguished from a power of the ordinary mental reason which is too easily confused with it, that power of Involved reasoning that reaches its conclusion by a bound and does not need the ordinary steps of the logical mind. The logical reason proceeds pace after pace and tries the sureness of each step like a marl who is walking over unsafe ground and has to test by the hesitating touch of his foot each span of soil that he perceives with his eye. But this other supralogical process of the reason is a motion of rapid insight or swift discernment; it proceeds by a stride or leap, like a man who springs from one sure spot to another point of sure footing, -- or at least held by him to be sure. He sees this space he covers in one compact and flashing view, but he does not distinguish or measure either by eye or touch its successions, features and circumstances. This movement has something of the sense of power of the intuition, something of its velocity, some appearance of its light and certainty, arid we always are apt to take it for the intuition. But our assumption is an error and, if we trust to it, it may lead us into grievous blunders. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga ,

108:THE FOUR FOUNDATIONAL PRACTICES Changing the Karmic Traces Throughout the day, continuously remain in the awareness that all experience is a dream. Encounter all things as objects in a dream, all events as events in a dream, all people as people in a dream. Envision your own body as a transparent illusory body. Imagine you are in a lucid dream during the entire day. Do not allow these reminders to be merely empty repetition. Each time you tell yourself, "This is a dream," actually become more lucid. Involve your body and your senses in becoming more present. Removing Grasping and Aversion Encounter all things that create desire and attachment as the illusory empty, luminous phenomena of a dream. Recognize your reactions to phenomena as a dream; all emotions, judgments, and preferences are being dreamt up. You can be certain that you are doing this correctly if immediately upon remembering that your reaction is a dream, desire and attachment lessen. Strengthening Intention Before going to sleep, review the day and reflect on how the practice has been. Let memories of the day arise and recognize them as memories of dream. Develop a strong intention to be aware in the coming night's dreams. Put your whole heart into this intention and pray strongly for success. Cultivating Memory and joyful Effort Begin the day with the strong intention to maintain the practice. Review the night, developing happiness if you remembered or were lucid in your dreams. Recommit yourself to the practice, with the intention to become lucid if you were not, and to further develop lucidity if you were. At any time during the day or evening it is good to pray for success in practice. Generate as strong an intention as possible. This is the key to the practice, ~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep ,

109:This inner Guide is often veiled at first by the very intensity of our personal effort and by the ego's preoccupation with itself and its aims. As we gain in clarity and the turmoil of egoistic effort gives place to a calmer self-knowledge, we recognise the source of the growing light within us. We recognise it retrospectively as we realise how all our obscure and conflicting movements have been determined towards an end that we only now begin to perceive, how even before our entrance into the path of the Yoga the evolution of our life has been designedly led towards its turning point. For now we begin to understand the sense of our struggles and efforts, successes and failures. At last we are able to seize the meaning of our ordeals and sufferings and can appreciate the help that was given us by all that hurt and resisted and the utility of our very falls and stumblings. We recognise this divine leading afterwards, not retrospectively but immediately, in the moulding of our thoughts by a transcendent Seer, of our will and actions by an all-embracing Power, of our emotional life by an all-attracting and all-assimilating Bliss and Love. We recognise it too in a more personal relation that from the first touched us or at the last seizes us; we feel the eternal presence of a supreme Master, Friend, Lover, Teacher. We recognise it in the essence of our being as that develops into likeness and oneness with a greater and wider existence; for we perceive that this miraculous development is not the result of our own efforts; an eternal Perfection is moulding us into its own image. One who is the Lord or Ishwara of the Yogic philosophies, the Guide in the conscious being ( caitya guru or antaryamin ), the Absolute of the thinker, the Unknowable of the Agnostic, the universal Force of the materialist, the supreme Soul and the supreme Shakti, the One who is differently named and imaged by the religions, is the Master of our Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga 1.01 - The Four Aids,

110:Nati is the submission of the soul to the will of God; its acceptance of all touches as His touches, of all experience as His play with the soul of man. Nati may be with titiksha, feeling the sorrow but accepting it as God's will, or with udasinata, rising superior to it and regarding joy and sorrow equally as God's working in these lower instruments, or with ananda, receiving everything as the play of Krishna and therefore in itself delightful. The last is the state of the complete Yogin, for by this continual joyous or anandamaya namaskara to God constantly practised we arrive eventually at the entire elimination of grief, pain etc, the entire freedom from the dwandwas, and find the Brahmananda in every smallest, most trivial, most apparently discordant detail of life & experience in this human body. We get rid entirely of fear and suffering; Anandam Brahmano vidvan na bibheti kutaschana. We may have to begin with titiksha and udasinata but it is in this ananda that we must consummate the siddhi of samata. The Yogin receives victory and defeat, success and ill-success, pleasure and pain, honour and disgrace with an equal, a sama ananda, first by buddhi-yoga, separating himself from his habitual mental & nervous reactions & insisting by vichara on the true nature of the experience itself and of his own soul which is secretly anandamaya, full of the sama ananda in all things. He comes to change all the ordinary values of experience; amangala reveals itself to him as mangala, defeat & ill-success as the fulfilment of God's immediate purpose and a step towards ultimate victory, grief and pain as concealed and perverse forms of pleasure. A stage arrives even, when physical pain itself, the hardest thing for material man to bear, changes its nature in experience and becomes physical ananda; but this is only at the end when this human being, imprisoned in matter, subjected to mind, emerges from his subjection, conquers his mind and delivers himself utterly in his body, realising his true anandamaya self in every part of the adhara. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Record Of Yoga ,

111:But usually the representative influence occupies a much larger place in the life of the sadhaka. If the Yoga is guided by a received written Shastra, - some Word from the past which embodies the experience of former Yogins, - it may be practised either by personal effort alone or with the aid of a Guru. The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master. This is a narrower practice, but safe and effective within its limits, because it follows a well-beaten track to a long familiar goal.For the sadhaka of the integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture. Where the Scripture is profound, wide, catholic, it may exercise upon him an influence for the highest good and of incalculable importance. It may be associated in his experience with his awakening to crowning verities and his realisation of the highest experiences. His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively, - if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past. But in the end he must take his station, or better still, if he can, always and from the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond the limitations of the word that he uses. The Gita itself thus declares that the Yogin in his progress must pass beyond the written Truth, - sabdabrahmativartate - beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear, - srotavyasya srutasya ca. For he is not the sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a sadhaka of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga 1.01 - The Four Aids,

112:As Korzybski and the general semanticists have pointed out, our words, symbols, signs, thoughts and ideas are merely maps of reality, not reality itself, because "the map is not the territory." The word "water" won't satisfy your thirst. But we live in the world of maps and words as if it were the real world. Following in the footsteps of Adam, we have become totally lost in a world of purely fantasy maps and boundaries. And these illusory boundaries, with the opposites they create, have become our impassioned battles. Most of our "problems of living," then, are based on the illusion that the opposites can and should be separated and isolated from one anotheR But since all opposites are actually aspects of one underlying reality, this is like trying to totally separate the two ends of a single rubber band. All you can do is pull harder and harder-until something violently snaps. Thus we might be able to understand that, in all the mystical traditions the world over, one who sees through the illusion of the opposites is called "liberated." Because he is "freed from the pairs" of opposites, he is freed in this life from the fundamentally nonsensical problems and conflicts involved in the war of opposites. He no longer manipulates the opposites one against the other in his search for peace, but instead transcends them both. Not good vs. evil but beyond good and evil. Not life against death but a center of awareness that transcends both. The point is not to separate the opposites and make "positive progress," but rather to unify and harmonize the opposites, both positive and negative, by discovering a ground which transcends and encompasses them both. And that ground, as we will soon see, is unity consciousness itself. In the meantime, let us note, as does the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita, that liberation is not freedom from the negative, but freedom from the pairs altogether: Content with getting what arrives of itself Passed beyond the pairs, free from envy, Not attached to success nor failure, Even acting, he is not bound. He is to be recognized as eternally free Who neither loathes nor craves; For he that is freed from the pairs, Is easily freed from conflict. ~ Ken Wilber, No Boundary ,

113:If we analyse the classes of life, we readily find that there are three cardinal classes which are radically distinct in function. A short analysis will disclose to us that, though minerals have various activities, they are not "living." The plants have a very definite and well known function-the transformation of solar energy into organic chemical energy. They are a class of life which appropriates one kind of energy, converts it into another kind and stores it up; in that sense they are a kind of storage battery for the solar energy; and so I define THE PLANTS AS THE CHEMISTRY-BINDING class of life. The animals use the highly dynamic products of the chemistry-binding class-the plants-as food, and those products-the results of plant-transformation-undergo in animals a further transformation into yet higher forms; and the animals are correspondingly a more dynamic class of life; their energy is kinetic; they have a remarkable freedom and power which the plants do not possess-I mean the freedom and faculty to move about in space; and so I define ANIMALS AS THE SPACE-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE. And now what shall we say of human beings? What is to be our definition of Man? Like the animals, human beings do indeed possess the space-binding capacity but, over and above that, human beings possess a most remarkable capacity which is entirely peculiar to them-I mean the capacity to summarise, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences of the past; I mean the capacity to use the fruits of past labors and experiences as intellectual or spiritual capital for developments in the present; I mean the capacity to employ as instruments of increasing power the accumulated achievements of the all-precious lives of the past generations spent in trial and error, trial and success; I mean the capacity of human beings to conduct their lives in the ever increasing light of inherited wisdom; I mean the capacity in virtue of which man is at once the heritor of the by-gone ages and the trustee of posterity. And because humanity is just this magnificent natural agency by which the past lives in the present and the present for the future, I define HUMANITY, in the universal tongue of mathematics and mechanics, to be the TIME-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity ,

114:There I waited day and night for the voice of God within me, to know what He had to say to me, to learn what I had to do. In this seclusion the earliest realisation, the first lesson came to me. I remembered then that a month or more before my arrest, a call had come to me to put aside all activity, to go in seclusion and to look into myself, so that I might enter into closer communion with Him. I was weak and could not accept the call. My work was very dear to me and in the pride of my heart I thought that unless I was there, it would suffer or even fail and cease; therefore I would not leave it. It seemed to me that He spoke to me again and said, The bonds you had not the strength to break, I have broken for you, because it is not my will nor was it ever my intention that that should continue. I have had another thing for you to do and it is for that I have brought you here, to teach you what you could not learn for yourself and to train you for my work. Then He placed the Gita in my hands. His strength entered into me and I was able to do the sadhana of the Gita. I was not only to understand intellectually but to realise what Sri Krishna demanded of Arjuna and what He demands of those who aspire to do His work, to be free from repulsion and desire, to do work for Him without the demand for fruit, to renounce self-will and become a passive and faithful instrument in His hands, to have an equal heart for high and low, friend and opponent, success andfailure, yet not to do His work negligently. I realised what the Hindu religion meant. We speak often of the Hindureligion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much to be believed as lived. This is the Dharma that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin ,

115:The general characteristics and attributions of these Grades are indicated by their correspondences on the Tree of Life, as may be studied in detail in the Book 777. Student. -- His business is to acquire a general intellectual knowledge of all systems of attainment, as declared in the prescribed books. (See curriculum in Appendix I.) {231} Probationer. -- His principal business is to begin such practices as he my prefer, and to write a careful record of the same for one year. Neophyte. -- Has to acquire perfect control of the Astral Plane. Zelator. -- His main work is to achieve complete success in Asana and Pranayama. He also begins to study the formula of the Rosy Cross. Practicus. -- Is expected to complete his intellectual training, and in particular to study the Qabalah. Philosophus. -- Is expected to complete his moral training. He is tested in Devotion to the Order. Dominus Liminis. -- Is expected to show mastery of Pratyahara and Dharana. Adeptus (without). -- is expected to perform the Great Work and to attain the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. Adeptus (within). -- Is admitted to the practice of the formula of the Rosy Cross on entering the College of the Holy Ghost. Adeptus (Major). -- Obtains a general mastery of practical Magick, though without comprehension. Adeptus (Exemptus). -- Completes in perfection all these matters. He then either ("a") becomes a Brother of the Left Hand Path or, ("b") is stripped of all his attainments and of himself as well, even of his Holy Guardian Angel, and becomes a babe of the Abyss, who, having transcended the Reason, does nothing but grow in the womb of its mother. It then finds itself a Magister Templi. -- (Master of the Temple): whose functions are fully described in Liber 418, as is this whole initiation from Adeptus Exemptus. See also "Aha!". His principal business is to tend his "garden" of disciples, and to obtain a perfect understanding of the Universe. He is a Master of Samadhi. {232} Magus. -- Attains to wisdom, declares his law (See Liber I, vel Magi) and is a Master of all Magick in its greatest and highest sense. Ipsissimus. -- Is beyond all this and beyond all comprehension of those of lower degrees. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA ,

116:But this is not always the manner of the commencement. The sadhaka is often led gradually and there is a long space between the first turning of the mind and the full assent of the nature to the thing towards which it turns. There may at first be only a vivid intellectual interest, a forcible attraction towards the idea and some imperfect form of practice. Or perhaps there is an effort not favoured by the whole nature, a decision or a turn imposed by an intellectual influence or dictated by personal affection and admiration for someone who is himself consecrated and devoted to the Highest. In such cases, a long period of preparation may be necessary before there comes the irrevocable consecration; and in some instances it may not come. There may be some advance, there may be a strong effort, even much purification and many experiences other than those that are central or supreme; but the life will either be spent in preparation or, a certain stage having been reached, the mind pushed by an insufficient driving-force may rest content at the limit of the effort possible to it. Or there may even be a recoil to the lower life, - what is called in the ordinary parlance of Yoga a fall from the path. This lapse happens because there is a defect at the very centre. The intellect has been interested, the heart attracted, the will has strung itself to the effort, but the whole nature has not been taken captive by the Divine. It has only acquiesced in the interest, the attraction or the endeavour. There has been an experiment, perhaps even an eager experiment, but not a total self-giving to an imperative need of the soul or to an unforsakable ideal. Even such imperfect Yoga has not been wasted; for no upward effort is made in vain. Even if it fails in the present or arrives only at some preparatory stage or preliminary realisation, it has yet determined the soul's future.But if we desire to make the most of the opportunity that this life gives us, if we wish to respond adequately to the call we have received and to attain to the goal we have glimpsed, not merely advance a little towards it, it is essential that there should be an entire self-giving. The secret of success in Yoga is to regard it not as one of the aims to be pursued in life, but as the one and only aim, not as an important part of life, but as the whole of life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga 1.02 - Self-Consecration,

117:complexity of the human constitution ::: There is another direction in which the ordinary practice of Yoga arrives at a helpful but narrowing simplification which is denied to the Sadhaka of the integral aim. The practice of Yoga brings us face to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being, the stimulating but also embarrassing multiplicity of our personality, the rich endless confusion of Nature. To the ordinary man who lives upon his own waking surface, ignorant of the self's depths and vastnesses behind the veil, his psychological existence is fairly simple. A small but clamorous company of desires, some imperative intellectual and aesthetic cravings, some tastes, a few ruling or prominent ideas amid a great current of unconnected or ill-connected and mostly trivial thoughts, a number of more or less imperative vital needs, alternations of physical health and disease, a scattered and inconsequent succession of joys and griefs, frequent minor disturbances and vicissitudes and rarer strong searchings and upheavals of mind or body, and through it all Nature, partly with the aid of his thought and will, partly without or in spite of it, arranging these things in some rough practical fashion, some tolerable disorderly order, -- this is the material of his existence. The average human being even now is in his inward existence as crude and undeveloped as was the bygone primitive man in his outward life. But as soon as we go deep within ourselves, -- and Yoga means a plunge into all the multiple profundities of' the soul, -- we find ourselves subjectively, as man in his growth has found himself objectively, surrounded by a whole complex world which we have to know and to conquer. The most disconcerting discovery is to find that every part of us -- intellect, will, sense-mind, nervous or desire self, the heart, the body-has each, as it were, its own complex individuality and natural formation independent of the rest; it neither agrees with itself nor with the others nor with the representative ego which is the shadow cast by some central and centralising self on our superficial ignorance. We find that we are composed not of one but many personalities and each has its own demands and differing nature. Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga 1.02 - Self-Consecration,

118:reading ::: Self-Help Reading List: James Allen As a Man Thinketh (1904) Marcus Aurelius Meditations (2nd Century) The Bhagavad-Gita The Bible Robert Bly Iron John (1990) Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy (6thC) Alain de Botton How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997) William Bridges Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes (1980) David Brooks The Road to Character (2015) Brené Brown Daring Greatly (2012) David D Burns The New Mood Therapy (1980) Joseph Campbell (with Bill Moyers) The Power of Myth (1988) Richard Carlson Don't Sweat The Small Stuff (1997) Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) Deepak Chopra The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (1994) Clayton Christensen How Will You Measure Your Life? (2012) Paulo Coelho The Alchemist (1988) Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1991) The Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler The Art of Happiness (1999) The Dhammapada (Buddha's teachings) Charles Duhigg The Power of Habit (2011) Wayne Dyer Real Magic (1992) Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance (1841) Clarissa Pinkola Estes Women Who Run With The Wolves (1996) Viktor Frankl Man's Search For Meaning (1959) Benjamin Franklin Autobiography (1790) Shakti Gawain Creative Visualization (1982) Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence (1995) John Gray Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (1992) Louise Hay You Can Heal Your Life (1984) James Hillman The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling (1996) Susan Jeffers Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway (1987) Richard Koch The 80/20 Principle (1998) Marie Kondo The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2014) Ellen Langer Mindfulness: Choice and Control in Everyday Life (1989) Lao-Tzu Tao-te Ching (The Way of Power) Maxwell Maltz Psycho-Cybernetics (1960) Abraham Maslow Motivation and Personality (1954) Thomas Moore Care of the Soul (1992) Joseph Murphy The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963) Norman Vincent Peale The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) M Scott Peck The Road Less Traveled (1990) Anthony Robbins Awaken The Giant Within (1991) Florence Scovell-Shinn The Game of Life and How To Play It (1923) Martin Seligman Learned Optimism (1991) Samuel Smiles Self-Help (1859) Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The Phenomenon of Man (1955) Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854) Marianne Williamson A Return To Love (1993) ~ Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Self-Help ,

119:Daemons A daemon is a process that runs in the background, not connecting to any controlling terminal. Daemons are normally started at boot time, are run as root or some other special user (such as apache or postfix), and handle system-level tasks. As a convention, the name of a daemon often ends in d (as in crond and sshd), but this is not required, or even universal. The name derives from Maxwell's demon, an 1867 thought experiment by the physicist James Maxwell. Daemons are also supernatural beings in Greek mythology, existing somewhere between humans and the gods and gifted with powers and divine knowledge. Unlike the demons of Judeo-Christian lore, the Greek daemon need not be evil. Indeed, the daemons of mythology tended to be aides to the gods, performing tasks that the denizens of Mount Olympus found themselves unwilling to do-much as Unix daemons perform tasks that foreground users would rather avoid. A daemon has two general requirements: it must run as a child of init, and it must not be connected to a terminal. In general, a program performs the following steps to become a daemon: 1. Call fork( ). This creates a new process, which will become the daemon. 2. In the parent, call exit( ). This ensures that the original parent (the daemon's grandparent) is satisfied that its child terminated, that the daemon's parent is no longer running, and that the daemon is not a process group leader. This last point is a requirement for the successful completion of the next step. 3. Call setsid( ), giving the daemon a new process group and session, both of which have it as leader. This also ensures that the process has no associated controlling terminal (as the process just created a new session, and will not assign one). 4. Change the working directory to the root directory via chdir( ). This is done because the inherited working directory can be anywhere on the filesystem. Daemons tend to run for the duration of the system's uptime, and you don't want to keep some random directory open, and thus prevent an administrator from unmounting the filesystem containing that directory. 5. Close all file descriptors. You do not want to inherit open file descriptors, and, unaware, hold them open. 6. Open file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 (standard in, standard out, and standard error) and redirect them to /dev/null. Following these rules, here is a program that daemonizes itself: ~ OReilly Linux System Programming,

120:Are not offering and surrender to the Divine the same thing?They are two aspects of the same thing, but not altogether the same. One is more active than the other. They do not belong to quite the same plane of existence. For example, you have decided to offer your life to the Divine, you take that decision. But all of a sudden, something altogether unpleasant, unexpected happens to you and your first movement is to react and protest. Yet you have made the offering, you have said once for all: "My life belongs to the Divine", and then suddenly an extremely unpleasant incident happens (that can happen) and there is something in you that reacts, that does not want it. But here, if you want to be truly logical with your offering, you must bring forward this unpleasant incident, make an offering of it to the Divine, telling him very sincerely: "Let Your will be done; if You have decided it that way, it will be that way." And this must be a willing and spontaneous adhesion. So it is very difficult. Even for the smallest thing, something that is not in keeping with what you expected, what you have worked for, instead of an opposite reaction coming in - spontaneously, irresistibly, you draw back: "No, not that" - if you have made a complete surrender, a total surrender, well, it does not happen like that: you are as quiet, as peaceful, as calm in one case as in the other. And perhaps you had the notion that it would be better if it happened in a certain way, but if it happens differently, you find that this also is all right. You might have, for example, worked very hard to do a certain thing, so that something might happen, you might have given much time, much of your energy, much of your will, and all that not for your own sake, but, say, for the divine work (that is the offering); now suppose that after having taken all this trouble, done all this work, made all these efforts, it all goes just the other way round, it does not succeed. If you are truly surrendered, you say: "It is good, it is all good, it is all right; I did what I could, as well as I could, now it is not my decision, it is the decision of the Divine, I accept entirely what He decides." On the other hand, if you do not have this deep and spontaneous surrender, you tell yourself: "How is it? I took so much trouble to do a thing which is not for a selfish purpose, which is for the Divine Work, and this is the result, it is not successful!" Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it is like that. True surrender is a very difficult thing. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953 Talks 600-652,

121:Disciple: What are the conditions of success in this yoga?Sri Aurobindo: I have often told of them. Those go through who have the central sincerity. It does not mean that the sincerity is there in all the parts of the being. In that sense no one is entirely ready. But if the central sincerity is there it is possible to establish it in all the parts of the being.The second thing necessary is a certain receptivity in the being, what we call, the "opening" up of all the planes to the Higher Power.The third thing required is the power of holding the higher Force, a certain ghanatwa - mass - that can hold the Power when it comes down.And about the thing that pushes there are two things that generally push: One is the Central Being. The other is destiny. If the Central Being wants to do something it pushes the man. Even when the man goes off the line he is pushed back again to the path. Of course, the Central Being may push through the mind or any other part of the being. Also, if the man is destined he is pushed to the path either to go through or to get broken,Disciple: There are some people who think they are destined or chosen and we see that they are not "chosen".Sri Aurobindo: Of course, plenty of people think that they are specially "chosen" and that they are the first and the "elect" and so on. All that is nothing.Disciple: Then, can you. say who is fit out of all those that have come?Sri Aurobindo: It is very difficult to say. But this can be said that everyone of those who have come in has some chance to go through if he can hold on to it.Disciple: There is also a chance of failure.Sri Aurobindo: Of course, and besides, the whole universe is a play of forces and one can't always wait till all the conditions of success have been fulfilled. One has to take risks and take his chance.Disciple: What is meant by "chance"? Does it mean that it is only one possibility out of many others, or does it mean that one would be able to succeed in yoga?Sri Aurobindo: It means only that he can succeed if he takes his chance properly. For instance, X had his chance.Disciple: Those who fall on the path or slip, do they go down in their evolution?Sri Aurobindo: That depends. Ultimately, the Yoga may be lost to him.Disciple: The Gita says: Na hi kalyānkṛt - nothing that is beneficial - comes to a bad end.Sri Aurobindo: That is from another standpoint. You must note the word is kalyān kṛt - it is an important addition. ~ Sri Aurobindo, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO RECORDED BY A B PURANI (20-09-1926),

122:"Without conscious occult powers, is it possible to help or protect from a distance somebody in difficulty or danger? If so, what is the practical procedure?" Then a sub-question: "What can thought do?" We are not going to speak of occult processes at all; although, to tell the truth, everything that happens in the invisible world is occult, by definition. But still, practically, there are two processes which do not exclude but complete each other, but which may be used separately according to one's preference. It is obvious that thought forms a part of one of the methods, quite an important part. I have already told you several times that if one thinks clearly and powerfully, one makes a mental formation, and that every mental formation is an entity independent of its fashioner, having its own life and tending to realise itself in the mental world - I don't mean that you see your formation with your physical eyes, but it exists in the mental world, it has its own particular independent existence. If you have made a formation with a definite aim, its whole life will tend to the realisation of this aim. Therefore, if you want to help someone at a distance, you have only to formulate very clearly, very precisely and strongly the kind of help you want to give and the result you wish to obtain. That will have its effect. I cannot say that it will be all-powerful, for the mental world is full of innumerable formations of this kind and naturally they clash and contradict one another; hence the strongest and the most persistent will have the best of it. Now, what is it that gives strength and persistence to mental formations? - It is emotion and will. If you know how to add to your mental formation an emotion, affection, tenderness, love, and an intensity of will, a dynamism, it will have a much greater chance of success. That is the first method. It is within the scope of all those who know how to think, and even more of those who know how to love. But as I said, the power is limited and there is great competition in that world. Therefore, even if one has no knowledge at all but has trust in the divine Grace, if one has the faith that there is something in the world like the divine Grace, and that this something can answer a prayer, an aspiration, an invocation, then, after making one's mental formation, if one offers it to the Grace and puts one's trust in it, asks it to intervene and has the faith that it will intervene, then indeed one has a chance of success. Try, and you will surely see the result. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956 253,

123:The preliminary movement of Rajayoga is careful self-discipline by which good habits of mind are substituted for the lawless movements that indulge the lower nervous being. By the practice of truth, by renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and inclination to the divine Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, clear state of mind and heart is established. This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts therefore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pranayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kundalini, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi. By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga The Conditions of the Synthesis,

124:It is then by a transformation of life in its very principle, not by an external manipulation of its phenomena, that the integral Yoga proposes to change it from a troubled and ignorant into a luminous and harmonious movement of Nature. There are three conditions which are indispensable for the achievement of this central inner revolution and new formation; none of them is altogether sufficient in itself, but by their united threefold power the uplifting can be done, the conversion made and completely made. For, first, life as it is is a movement of desire and it has built in us as its centre a desire-soul which refers to itself all the motions of life and puts in them its own troubled hue and pain of an ignorant, half-lit, baffled endeavour: for a divine living, desire must be abolished and replaced by a purer and firmer motive-power, the tormented soul of desire dissolved and in its stead there must emerge the calm, strength, happiness of a true vital being now concealed within us. Next, life as it is is driven or led partly by the impulse of the life-force, partly by a mind which is mostly a servant and abettor of the ignorant life-impulse, but in part also its uneasy and not too luminous or competent guide and mentor; for a divine life the mind and the life-impulse must cease to be anything but instruments and the inmost psychic being must take their place as the leader on the path and the indicator of a divine guidance. Last, life as it is is turned towards the satisfaction of the separative ego; ego must disappear and be replaced by the true spiritual person, the central being, and life itself must be turned towards the fulfilment of the Divine in terrestrial existence; it must feel a Divine Force awaking within it and become an obedient instrumentation of its purpose. There is nothing that is not ancient and familiar in the first of these three transforming inner movements; for it has always been one of the principal objects of spiritual discipline. It has been best formulated in the already expressed doctrine of the Gita by which a complete renouncement of desire for the fruits as the motive of action, a complete annulment of desire itself, the complete achievement of a perfect equality are put forward as the normal status of a spiritual being. A perfect spiritual equality is the one true and infallible sign of the cessation of desire, - to be equal-souled to all things, unmoved by joy and sorrow, the pleasant and the unpleasant, success or failure, to look with an equal eye on high and low, friend and enemy, the virtuous and the sinner, to see in all beings the manifold manifestation of the One and in all things the multitudinous play or the slow masked evolution of the embodied Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2,

125:root of the falsification and withdrawl of divine love ::: At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Nature-forces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind's and the life's falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind's ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2,

126:To Know How To Suffer IF AT any time a deep sorrow, a searing doubt or an intense pain overwhelms you and drives you to despair, there is an infallible way to regain calm and peace. In the depths of our being there shines a light whose brilliance is equalled only by its purity; a light, a living and conscious portion of a universal godhead who animates and nourishes and illumines Matter, a powerful and unfailing guide for those who are willing to heed his law, a helper full of solace and loving forbearance towards all who aspire to see and hear and obey him. No sincere and lasting aspiration towards him can be in vain; no strong and respectful trust can be disappointed, no expectation ever deceived. My heart has suffered and lamented, almost breaking beneath a sorrow too heavy, almost sinking beneath a pain too strong.... But I have called to thee, O divine comforter, I have prayed ardently to thee, and the splendour of thy dazzling light has appeared to me and revived me. As the rays of thy glory penetrated and illumined all my being, I clearly perceived the path to follow, the use that can be made of suffering; I understood that the sorrow that held me in its grip was but a pale reflection of the sorrow of the earth, of this abysm of suffering and anguish. Only those who have suffered can understand the suffering of others; understand it, commune with it and relieve it. And I understood, O divine comforter, sublime Holocaust, that in order to sustain us in all our troubles, to soothe all our pangs, thou must have known and felt all the sufferings of earth and man, all without exception. How is it that among those who claim to be thy worshippers, some regard thee as a cruel torturer, as an inexorable judge witnessing the torments that are tolerated by thee or even created by thy own will? No, I now perceive that these sufferings come from the very imperfection of Matter which, in its disorder and crudeness, is unfit to manifest thee; and thou art the very first to suffer from it, to bewail it, thou art the first to toil and strive in thy ardent desire to change disorder into order, suffering into happiness, discord into harmony. Suffering is not something inevitable or even desirable, but when it comes to us, how helpful it can be! Each time we feel that our heart is breaking, a deeper door opens within us, revealing new horizons, ever richer in hidden treasures, whose golden influx brings once more a new and intenser life to the organism on the brink of destruction. And when, by these successive descents, we reach the veil that reveals thee as it is lifted, O Lord, who can describe the intensity of Life that penetrates the whole being, the radiance of the Light that floods it, the sublimity of the Love that transforms it for ever! ~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago 1.05 - To Know How To Suffer,

127:the process of unification, the perfecting our one's instrumental being, the help one needs to reach the goal ::: If we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavor. As you pursue this labor of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection. ... It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us [the psychic being], to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it. In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perfection and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realize. This discovery and realization should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think. ~ The Mother, On Education ,

128:The modern distinction is that the poet appeals to the imagination and not to the intellect. But there are many kinds of imagination; the objective imagination which visualises strongly the outward aspects of life and things; the subjective imagination which visualises strongly the mental and emotional impressions they have the power to start in the mind; the imagination which deals in the play of mental fictions and to which we give the name of poetic fancy; the aesthetic imagination which delights in the beauty of words and images for their own sake and sees no farther. All these have their place in poetry, but they only give the poet his materials, they are only the first instruments in the creation of poetic style. The essential poetic imagination does not stop short with even the most subtle reproductions of things external or internal, with the richest or delicatest play of fancy or with the most beautiful colouring of word or image. It is creative, not of either the actual or the fictitious, but of the more and the most real; it sees the spiritual truth of things, - of this truth too there are many gradations, - which may take either the actual or the ideal for its starting-point. The aim of poetry, as of all true art, is neither a photographic or otherwise realistic imitation of Nature, nor a romantic furbishing and painting or idealistic improvement of her image, but an interpretation by the images she herself affords us, not on one but on many planes of her creation, of that which she conceals from us, but is ready, when rightly approached, to reveal. This is the true, because the highest and essential aim of poetry; but the human mind arrives at it only by a succession of steps, the first of which seems far enough from its object. It begins by stringing its most obvious and external ideas, feelings and sensations of things on a thread of verse in a sufficient language of no very high quality. But even when it gets to a greater adequacy and effectiveness, it is often no more than a vital, an emotional or an intellectual adequacy and effectiveness. There is a strong vital poetry which powerfully appeals to our sensations and our sense of life, like much of Byron or the less inspired mass of the Elizabethan drama; a strong emotional poetry which stirs our feelings and gives us the sense and active image of the passions; a strong intellectual poetry which satisfies our curiosity about life and its mechanism, or deals with its psychological and other "problems", or shapes for us our thoughts in an effective, striking and often quite resistlessly quotable fashion. All this has its pleasures for the mind and the surface soul in us, and it is certainly quite legitimate to enjoy them and to enjoy them strongly and vividly on our way upward; but if we rest content with these only, we shall never get very high up the hill of the Muses. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry ,

129:on purifying ego and desire ::: The elimination of all egoistic activity and of its foundation, the egoistic consciousness, is clearly the key to the consummation we desire. And since in the path of works action is the knot we have first to loosen, we must endeavour to loosen it where it is centrally tied, in desire and in ego; for otherwise we shall cut only stray strands and not the heart of our bondage.These are the two knots of our subjection to this ignorant and divided Nature, desire and ego-sense. And of these two desire has its native home in the emotions and sensations and instincts and from there affects thought and volition; ego-sense lives indeed in these movements, but it casts its deep roots also in the thinking mind and its will and it is there that it becomes fully self conscious. These are the twin obscure powers of the obsessing world-wide Ignorance that we have to enlighten and eliminate. In the field of action desire takes many forms, but the most powerful of all is the vital selfs craving or seeking after the fruit of our works. The fruit we covet may be a reward of internal pleasure; it may be the accomplishment of some preferred idea or some cherished will or the satisfaction of the egoistic emotions, or else the pride of success of our highest hopes and ambitions. Or it may be an external reward, a recompense entirely material, -wealth, position, honour, victory, good fortune or any other fulfilment of vital or physical desire. But all alike are lures by which egoism holds us. Always these satisfactions delude us with the sense of mastery and the idea of freedom, while really we are harnessed and guided or ridden and whipped by some gross or subtle, some noble or ignoble, figure of the blind Desire that drives the world. Therefore the first rule of action laid down by the Gita is to do the work that should be done without any desire for the fruit, niskama karma. ... The test it lays down is an absolute equality of the mind and the heart to all results, to all reactions, to all happenings. If good fortune and ill fortune, if respect and insult, if reputation and obloquy, if victory and defeat, if pleasant event and sorrowful event leave us not only unshaken but untouched, free in the emotions, free in the nervous reactions, free in the mental view, not responding with the least disturbance or vibration in any spot of the nature, then we have the absolute liberation to which the Gita points us, but not otherwise. The tiniest reaction is a proof that the discipline is imperfect and that some part of us accepts ignorance and bondage as its law and clings still to the old nature. Our self-conquest is only partially accomplished; it is still imperfect or unreal in some stretch or part or smallest spot of the ground of our nature. And that little pebble of imperfection may throw down the whole achievement of the Yoga ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga The Yoga of Divine Works,

130:reading ::: 50 Psychology Classics: List of Books Covered: Alfred Adler - Understanding Human Nature (1927) Gordon Allport - The Nature of Prejudice (1954) Albert Bandura - Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control (1997) Gavin Becker - The Gift of Fear (1997) Eric Berne - Games People Play (1964) Isabel Briggs Myers - Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type (1980) Louann Brizendine - The Female Brain (2006) David D Burns - Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (1980) Susan Cain - Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (2012) Robert Cialdini - Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984) Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Creativity (1997) Carol Dweck - Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006) Albert Ellis & Robert Harper - (1961) A Guide To Rational Living(1961) Milton Erickson - My Voice Will Go With You (1982) by Sidney Rosen Eric Erikson - Young Man Luther (1958) Hans Eysenck - Dimensions of Personality (1947) Viktor Frankl - The Will to Meaning (1969) Anna Freud - The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1936) Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams (1901) Howard Gardner - Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983) Daniel Gilbert - Stumbling on Happiness (2006) Malcolm Gladwell - Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005) Daniel Goleman - Emotional Intelligence at Work (1998) John M Gottman - The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work (1999) Temple Grandin - The Autistic Brain: Helping Different Kinds of Minds Succeed (2013) Harry Harlow - The Nature of Love (1958) Thomas A Harris - I'm OK - You're OK (1967) Eric Hoffer - The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951) Karen Horney - Our Inner Conflicts (1945) William James - Principles of Psychology (1890) Carl Jung - The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1953) Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) Alfred Kinsey - Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) RD Laing - The Divided Self (1959) Abraham Maslow - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (1970) Stanley Milgram - Obedience To Authority (1974) Walter Mischel - The Marshmallow Test (2014) Leonard Mlodinow - Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior (2012) IP Pavlov - Conditioned Reflexes (1927) Fritz Perls - Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (1951) Jean Piaget - The Language and Thought of the Child (1966) Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (2002) VS Ramachandran - Phantoms in the Brain (1998) Carl Rogers - On Becoming a Person (1961) Oliver Sacks - The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1970) Barry Schwartz - The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (2004) Martin Seligman - Authentic Happiness (2002) BF Skinner - Beyond Freedom & Dignity (1953) Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton & Sheila Heen - Difficult Conversations (2000) William Styron - Darkness Visible (1990) ~ Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Psychology Classics ,

131:In our world error is continually the handmaid and pathfinder of Truth; for error is really a half-truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal. Well, if it could always be, as it has been in the great period we are leaving, the faithful handmaid, severe, conscientious, clean-handed, luminous within its limits, a half-truth and not a reckless and presumptuous aberration. A certain kind of Agnosticism is the final truth of all knowledge. For when we come to the end of whatever path, the universe appears as only a symbol or an appearance of an unknowable Reality which translates itself here into different systems of values, physical values, vital and sensational values, intellectual, ideal and spiritual values. The more That becomes real to us, the more it is seen to be always beyond defining thought and beyond formulating expression. "Mind attains not there, nor speech."3 And yet as it is possible to exaggerate, with the Illusionists, the unreality of the appearance, so it is possible to exaggerate the unknowableness of the Unknowable. When we speak of It as unknowable, we mean, really, that It escapes the grasp of our thought and speech, instruments which proceed always by the sense of difference and express by the way of definition; but if not knowable by thought, It is attainable by a supreme effort of consciousness. There is even a kind of Knowledge which is one with Identity and by which, in a sense, It can be known. Certainly, that Knowledge cannot be reproduced successfully in the terms of thought and speech, but when we have attained to it, the result is a revaluation of That in the symbols of our cosmic consciousness, not only in one but in all the ranges of symbols, which results in a revolution of our internal being and, through the internal, of our external life. Moreover, there is also a kind of Knowledge through which That does reveal itself by all these names and forms of phenomenal existence which to the ordinary intelligence only conceal It. It is this higher but not highest process of Knowledge to which we can attain by passing the limits of the materialistic formula and scrutinising Life, Mind and Supermind in the phenomena that are characteristic of them and not merely in those subordinate movements by which they link themselves to Matter. The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. And since in man there is the inalienable impulse of Nature towards self-realisation, no struggle of the intellect to limit the action of our capacities within a determined area can for ever prevail. When we have proved Matter and realised its secret capacities, the very knowledge which has found its convenience in that temporary limitation, must cry to us, like the Vedic Restrainers, 'Forth now and push forward also in other fields.' ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine ,

132:There's an idea in Christianity of the image of God as a Trinity. There's the element of the Father, there's the element of the Son, and there's the element of the Holy Spirit. It's something like the spirit of tradition, human beings as the living incarnation of that tradition, and the spirit in people that makes relationship with the spirit and individuals possible. I'm going to bounce my way quickly through some of the classical, metaphorical attributes of God, so that we kind of have a cloud of notions about what we're talking about, when we return to Genesis 1 and talk about the God who spoke chaos into Being.There's a fatherly aspect, so here's what God as a father is like. You can enter into a covenant with it, so you can make a bargain with it. Now, you think about that. Money is like that, because money is a bargain you make with the future. We structured our world so that you can negotiate with the future. I don't think that we would have got to the point where we could do that without having this idea to begin with. You can act as if the future's a reality; there's a spirit of tradition that enables you to act as if the future is something that can be bargained with. That's why you make sacrifices. The sacrifices were acted out for a very long period of time, and now they're psychological. We know that you can sacrifice something valuable in the present and expect that you're negotiating with something that's representing the transcendent future. That's an amazing human discovery. No other creature can do that; to act as if the future is real; to know that you can bargain with reality itself, and that you can do it successfully. It's unbelievable.It responds to sacrifice. It answers prayers. I'm not saying that any of this is true, by the way. I'm just saying what the cloud of ideas represents. It punishes and rewards. It judges and forgives. It's not nature. One of the things weird about the Judeo-Christian tradition is that God and nature are not the same thing, at all. Whatever God is, partially manifest in this logos, is something that stands outside of nature. I think that's something like consciousness as abstracted from the natural world. It built Eden for mankind and then banished us for disobedience. It's too powerful to be touched. It granted free will. Distance from it is hell. Distance from it is death. It reveals itself in dogma and in mystical experience, and it's the law. That's sort of like the fatherly aspect.The son-like aspect. It speaks chaos into order. It slays dragons and feeds people with the remains. It finds gold. It rescues virgins. It is the body and blood of Christ. It is a tragic victim, scapegoat, and eternally triumphant redeemer simultaneously. It cares for the outcast. It dies and is reborn. It is the king of kings and hero of heroes. It's not the state, but is both the fulfillment and critic of the state. It dwells in the perfect house. It is aiming at paradise or heaven. It can rescue from hell. It cares for the outcast. It is the foundation and the cornerstone that was rejected. It is the spirit of the law.The spirit-like aspect. It's akin to the human soul. It's the prophetic voice. It's the still, small voice of conscience. It's the spoken truth. It's called forth by music. It is the enemy of deceit, arrogance, and resentment. It is the water of life. It burns without consuming. It's a blinding light.That's a very well-developed set of poetic metaphors. These are all...what would you say...glimpses of the transcendent ideal. That's the right way of thinking about it. They're glimpses of the transcendent ideal, and all of them have a specific meaning. In part, what we're going to do is go over that meaning, as we continue with this series. What we've got now is a brief description, at least, of what this is. ~ Jordan Peterson, Biblical Series 1,

133:The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching the divine Being. In an ordinary Yoga one main power of being or one group of its powers is made the means, vehicle, path. In a synthetic Yoga all powers will be combined and included in the transmuting instrumentation. In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified, heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened, concentrated by Asana and Pranayama. This concentration of powers is then directed towards that physical centre in which the divine consciousness sits concealed in the human body. The power of Life, Nature-power, coiled up with all its secret forces asleep in the lowest nervous plexus of the earth-being,-for only so much escapes into waking action in our normal operations as is sufficient for the limited uses of human life,-rises awakened through centre after centre and awakens, too, in its ascent and passage the forces of each successive nodus of our being, the nervous life, the heart of emotion and ordinary mentality, the speech, sight, will, the higher knowledge, till through and above the brain it meets with and it becomes one with the divine consciousness. In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. our ordinary mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed towards the divine Being, then by a summary process of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated into a higher power of its upward action, the mind, supported and strengthened by this greater action and concentration of the body and life upon which it rests, is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration, gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects, the one temporal, the other eternal,are gained by this discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will, deep light of reception, powerful light of thought-radiation which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult powers around which there has been woven so much quite dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the one final end and the one all-important gain is that the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance, can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the soul be made free to unite with the divine Being. The triple way takes for its chosen instruments the three main powers of the mental soul-life of the human being. Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision and it makes them by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of a Goddirected seeking its means for the greatest knowledge and the greatest vision of all, God-knowledge and God-vision. Its aim is to see, know and be the Divine. Works, action selects for its instrument the will of the doer of works; it makes life an offering of sacrifice to the Godhead and by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of subjection to the divine Will a means for contact and increasing unity of the soul of man with the divine Master of the universe. Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic powers of the soul and by turning them all Godward in a perfect purity, intensity, infinite passion of seeking makes them a means of God-possession in one or many relations of unity with the Divine Being. All aim in their own way at a union or unity of the human soul with the supreme Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga The Yoga of Self-Perfection,

134:PRATYAHARAPRATYAHARA is the first process in the mental part of our task. The previous practices, Asana, Pranayama, Yama, and Niyama, are all acts of the body, while mantra is connected with speech: Pratyahara is purely mental. And what is Pratyahara? This word is used by different authors in different senses. The same word is employed to designate both the practice and the result. It means for our present purpose a process rather strategical than practical; it is introspection, a sort of general examination of the contents of the mind which we wish to control: Asana having been mastered, all immediate exciting causes have been removed, and we are free to think what we are thinking about. A very similar experience to that of Asana is in store for us. At first we shall very likely flatter ourselves that our minds are pretty calm; this is a defect of observation. Just as the European standing for the first time on the edge of the desert will see nothing there, while his Arab can tell him the family history of each of the fifty persons in view, because he has learnt how to look, so with practice the thoughts will become more numerous and more insistent. As soon as the body was accurately observed it was found to be terribly restless and painful; now that we observe the mind it is seen to be more restless and painful still. (See diagram opposite.) A similar curve might be plotted for the real and apparent painfulness of Asana. Conscious of this fact, we begin to try to control it: "Not quite so many thoughts, please!" "Don't think quite so fast, please!" "No more of that kind of thought, please!" It is only then that we discover that what we thought was a school of playful porpoises is really the convolutions of the sea-serpent. The attempt to repress has the effect of exciting. When the unsuspecting pupil first approaches his holy but wily Guru, and demands magical powers, that Wise One replies that he will confer them, points out with much caution and secrecy some particular spot on the pupil's body which has never previously attracted his attention, and says: "In order to obtain this magical power which you seek, all that is necessary is to wash seven times in the Ganges during seven days, being particularly careful to avoid thinking of that one spot." Of course the unhappy youth spends a disgusted week in thinking of little else. It is positively amazing with what persistence a thought, even a whole train of thoughts, returns again and again to the charge. It becomes a positive nightmare. It is intensely annoying, too, to find that one does not become conscious that one has got on to the forbidden subject until one has gone right through with it. However, one continues day after day investigating thoughts and trying to check them; and sooner or later one proceeds to the next stage, Dharana, the attempt to restrain the mind to a single object. Before we go on to this, however, we must consider what is meant by success in Pratyahara. This is a very extensive subject, and different authors take widely divergent views. One writer means an analysis so acute that every thought is resolved into a number of elements (see "The Psychology of Hashish," Section V, in Equinox II). Others take the view that success in the practice is something like the experience which Sir Humphrey Davy had as a result of taking nitrous oxide, in which he exclaimed: "The universe is composed exclusively of ideas." Others say that it gives Hamlet's feeling: "There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so," interpreted as literally as was done by Mrs. Eddy. However, the main point is to acquire some sort of inhibitory power over the thoughts. Fortunately there is an unfailing method of acquiring this power. It is given in Liber III. If Sections 1 and 2 are practised (if necessary with the assistance of another person to aid your vigilance) you will soon be able to master the final section. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA ,

135:STAGE TWO: THE CHONYID The Chonyid is the period of the appearance of the peaceful and wrathful deities-that is to say, the subtle realm, the Sambhogakaya. When the Clear Light of the causal realm is resisted and contracted against, then that Reality is transformed into the primordial seed forms of the peaceful deities (ishtadevas of the subtle sphere), and these in turn, if resisted and denied, are transformed into the wrathful deities. The peaceful deities appear first: through seven successive substages, there appear various forms of the tathagatas, dakinis, and vidyadharas, all accompanied by the most dazzlingly brilliant colors and aweinspiring suprahuman sounds. One after another, the divine visions, lights, and subtle luminous sounds cascade through awareness. They are presented, given, to the individual openly, freely, fully, and completely: visions of God in almost painful intensity and brilliance. How the individual handles these divine visions and sounds (nada) is of the utmost significance, because each divine scenario is accompanied by a much less intense vision, by a region of relative dullness and blunted illuminations. These concomitant dull and blunted visions represent the first glimmerings of the world of samsara, of the six realms of egoic grasping, of the dim world of duality and fragmentation and primitive forms of low-level unity. According to the Thotrol. most individuals simply recoil in the face of these divine illuminations- they contract into less intense and more manageable forms of experience. Fleeing divine illumination, they glide towards the fragmented-and thus less intense-realm of duality and multiplicity. But it's not just that they recoil against divinity-it is that they are attracted to the lower realms, drawn to them, and find satisfaction in them. The Thotrol says they are actually "attracted to the impure lights." As we have put it, these lower realms are substitute gratifications. The individual thinks that they are just what he wants, these lower realms of denseness. But just because these realms are indeed dimmer and less intense, they eventually prove to be worlds without bliss, without illumination, shot through with pain and suffering. How ironic: as a substitute for God, individuals create and latch onto Hell, known as samsara, maya, dismay. In Christian theology it is said that the flames of Hell are God's love (Agape) denied. Thus the message is repeated over and over again in the Chonyid stage: abide in the lights of the Five Wisdoms and subtle tathagatas, look not at the duller lights of samsara. of the six realms, of safe illusions and egoic dullness. As but one example: Thereupon, because of the power of bad karma, the glorious blue light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu will produce in thee fear and terror, and thou wilt wish to flee from it. Thou wilt begat a fondness for the dull white light of the devas [one of the lower realms]. At this stage, thou must not be awed by the divine blue light which will appear shining, dazzling, and glorious; and be not startled by it. That is the light of the Tathagata called the Light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu. Be not fond of the dull white light of the devas. Be not attached to it; be not weak. If thou be attached to it, thou wilt wander into the abodes of the devas and be drawn into the whirl of the Six Lokas. The point is this: ''If thou are frightened by the pure radiances of Wisdom and attracted by the impure lights of the Six Lokas [lower realms], then thou wilt assume a body in any of the Six Lokas and suffer samsaric miseries; and thou wilt never be emancipated from the Ocean of Samsara, wherein thou wilt be whirled round and round and made to taste the sufferings thereof." But here is what is happening: in effect, we are seeing the primal and original form of the Atman project in its negative and contracting aspects. In this second stage (the Chonyid), there is already some sort of boundary in awareness, there is already some sort of subject-object duality superimposed upon the original Wholeness and Oneness of the Chikhai Dharmakaya. So now there is boundary-and wherever there is boundary, there is the Atman project. ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project 129,

136:In the lower planes can't one say what will happen at a particular moment? That depends. On certain planes there are consciousnesses that form, that make formations and try to send them down to earth and manifest them. These are planes where the great forces are at play, forces struggling with each other to organise things in one way or another. On these planes all the possibilities are there, all the possibilities that present themselves but have not yet come to a decision as to which will come down.... Suppose a plane full of the imaginations of people who want certain things to be realised upon earth - they invent a novel, narrate stories, produce all kinds of phenomena; it amuses them very much. It is a plane of form-makers and they are there imagining all kinds of circumstances and events; they play with the forces; they are like the authors of a drama and they prepare everything there and see what is going to happen. All these formations are facing each other; and it is those which are the strongest, the most successful or the most persistent or those that have the advantage of a favourable set of circumstances which dominate. They meet and out of the conflict yet another thing results: you lose one thing and take up another, you make a new combination; and then all of a sudden, you find, pluff! it is coming down. Now, if it comes down with a sufficient force, it sets moving the earth atmosphere and things combine; as for instance, when with your fist you thump the saw-dust, you know surely what happens, don't you? You lift your hand, give a formidable blow: all the dust gets organised around your fist. Well, it is like that. These formations come down into matter with that force, and everything organises itself automatically, mechanically as around the striking fist. And there's your wished object about to be realised, sometimes with small deformations because of the resistance, but it will be realised finally, even as the person narrating the story up above wanted it more or less to be realised. If then you are for some reason or other in the secret of the person who has constructed the story and if you follow the way in which he creates his path to reach down to the earth and if you see how a blow with the fist acts on earthly matter, then you are able to tell what is going to happen, because you have seen it in the world above, and as it takes some time to make the whole journey, you see in advance. And the higher you rise, the more you foresee in advance what is going to happen. And if you pass far beyond, go still farther, then everything is possible. It is an unfolding that follows a wide road which is for you unknowable; for all will be unfolded in the universe, but in what order and in what way? There are decisions that are taken up there which escape our ordinary consciousness, and so it is very difficult to foresee. But there also, if you enter consciously and if you can be present up there... How shall I explain that to you? All is there, absolute, static, eternal: but all that will be unfolded in the material world, naturally more or less one thing after another; for in the static existence all can be there, but in the becoming all becomes in time, that is, one thing after another. Well, what path will the unfolding follow? Up there is the domain of absolute freedom.... Who says that a sufficiently sincere aspiration, a sufficiently intense prayer is not capable of changing the path of the unfolding? This means that all is possible. Now, one must have a sufficient aspiration and a prayer that's sufficiently intense. But that has been given to human nature. It is one of the marvellous gifts of grace given to human nature; only, one does not know how to make use of it. This comes to saying that in spite of the most absolute determinisms in the horizontal line, if one knows how to cross all these horizontal lines and reach the highest Point of consciousness, one is able to make things change, things apparently absolutely determined. So you may call it by any name you like, but it is a kind of combination of an absolute determinism with an absolute freedom. You may pull yourself out of it in any way you like, but it is like that. I forgot to say in that book (perhaps I did not forget but just felt that it was useless to say it) that all these theories are only theories, that is, mental conceptions which are merely more or less imaged representations of the reality; but it is not the reality at all. When you say "determinism" and when you say "freedom", you say only words and all that is only a very incomplete, very approximate and very weak description of what is in reality within you, around you and everywhere; and to be able to begin to understand what the universe is, you must come out of your mental formulas, otherwise you will never understand anything. To tell the truth, if you live only a moment, just a tiny moment, of this absolutely sincere aspiration or this sufficiently intense prayer, you will know more things than by meditating for hours. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953 ,

137:What are these operations? They are not mere psychological self-analysis and self-observation. Such analysis, such observation are, like the process of right thought, of immense value and practically indispensable. They may even, if rightly pursued, lead to a right thought of considerable power and effectivity. Like intellectual discrimination by the process of meditative thought they will have an effect of purification; they will lead to self-knowledge of a certain kind and to the setting right of the disorders of the soul and the heart and even of the disorders of the understanding. Self-knowledge of all kinds is on the straight path to the knowledge of the real Self. The Upanishad tells us that the Self-existent has so set the doors of the soul that they turn outwards and most men look outward into the appearances of things; only the rare soul that is ripe for a calm thought and steady wisdom turns its eye inward, sees the Self and attains to immortality. To this turning of the eye inward psychological self-observation and analysis is a great and effective introduction.We can look into the inward of ourselves more easily than we can look into the inward of things external to us because there, in things outside us, we are in the first place embarrassed by the form and secondly we have no natural previous experience of that in them which is other than their physical substance. A purified or tranquillised mind may reflect or a powerful concentration may discover God in the world, the Self in Nature even before it is realised in ourselves, but this is rare and difficult. (2) And it is only in ourselves that we can observe and know the process of the Self in its becoming and follow the process by which it draws back into self-being. Therefore the ancient counsel, know thyself, will always stand as the first word that directs us towards the knowledge. Still, psychological self-knowledge is only the experience of the modes of the Self, it is not the realisation of the Self in its pure being. The status of knowledge, then, which Yoga envisages is not merely an intellectual conception or clear discrimination of the truth, nor is it an enlightened psychological experience of the modes of our being. It is a "realisation", in the full sense of the word; it is the making real to ourselves and in ourselves of the Self, the transcendent and universal Divine, and it is the subsequent impossibility of viewing the modes of being except in the light of that Self and in their true aspect as its flux of becoming under the psychical and physical conditions of our world-existence. This realisation consists of three successive movements, internal vision, complete internal experience and identity. This internal vision, dr.s.t.i, the power so highly valued by the ancient sages, the power which made a man a Rishi or Kavi and no longer a mere thinker, is a sort of light in the soul by which things unseen become as evident and real to it-to the soul and not merely to the intellect-as do things seen to the physical eye. In the physical world there are always two forms of knowledge, the direct and the indirect, pratyaks.a, of that which is present to the eyes, and paroks.a, of that which is remote from and beyond our vision. When the object is beyond our vision, we are necessarily obliged to arrive at an idea of it by inference, imagination, analogy, by hearing the descriptions of others who have seen it or by studying pictorial or other representations of it if these are available. By putting together all these aids we can indeed arrive at a more or less adequate idea or suggestive image of the object, but we do not realise the thing itself; it is not yet to us the grasped reality, but only our conceptual representation of a reality. But once we have seen it with the eyes,-for no other sense is adequate,-we possess, we realise; it is there secure in our satisfied being, part of ourselves in knowledge. Precisely the same rule holds good of psychical things and of he Self. We may hear clear and luminous teachings about the Self from philosophers or teachers or from ancient writings; we may by thought, inference, imagination, analogy or by any other available means attempt to form a mental figure or conception of it; we may hold firmly that conception in our mind and fix it by an entire and exclusive concentration;3 but we have not yet realised it, we have not seen God. It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, jyotirmaya brahman, and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen. After that revelation, whatever fadings of the light, whatever periods of darkness may afflict the soul, it can never irretrievably lose what it has once held. The experience is inevitably renewed and must become more frequent till it is constant; when and how soon depends on the devotion and persistence with which we insist on the path and besiege by our will or our love the hidden Deity. (2) And it is only in ourselves that we can observe and know the 2 In one respect, however, it is easier, because in external things we are not so much hampered by the sense of the limited ego as in ourselves; one obstacle to the realisation of God is therefore removed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga 2.02 - The Status of Knowledge,

138:The Supermind [Supramental consciousness] is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights, it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness. All the life and action and leading of the Supermind is guarded in its very nature from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda. Supermind is an eternal reality of the divine Being and the divine Nature. In its own plane it already and always exists and possesses its own essential law of being; it has not to be created or to emerge or evolve into existence out of involution in Matter or out of non-existence, as it might seem to the view of mind which itself seems to its own view to have so emerged from life and Matter or to have evolved out of an involution in life and Matter. The nature of Supermind is always the same, a being of knowledge, proceeding from truth to truth, creating or rather manifesting what has to be manifested by the power of a pre-existent knowledge, not by hazard but by a self-existent destiny in the being itself, a necessity of the thing in itself and therefore inevitable. Its -manifestation of the divine life will also be inevitable; its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here. Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is therefore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible. It is when all the movements of thought, impulse and action are governed and directed by a self-existent and luminously automatic truth-consciousness and our whole nature comes to be constituted by it and made of its stuff that the life divine will be complete and absolute. Even as it is, in reality though not in the appearance of things, it is a secret self-existent knowledge and truth that is working to manifest itself in the creation here. The Divine is already there immanent within us, ourselves are that in our inmost reality and it is this reality that we have to manifest; it is that which constitutes the urge towards the divine living and makes necessary the creation of the life divine even in this material existence. A manifestation of the Supermind and its truth-consciousness is then inevitable; it must happen in this world sooner or lateR But it has two aspects, a descent from above, an ascent from below, a self-revelation of the Spirit, an evolution in Nature. The ascent is necessarily an effort, a working of Nature, an urge or nisus on her side to raise her lower parts by an evolutionary or revolutionary change, conversion or transformation into the divine reality and it may happen by a process and progress or by a rapid miracle. The descent or self-revelation of the Spirit is an act of the supreme Reality from above which makes the realisation possible and it can appear either as the divine aid which brings about the fulfilment of the progress and process or as the sanction of the miracle. Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here. Even in the effort and progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights of the nature, and it must be wholly that in the final movement towards the spiritual change, realisation, transformation. It must be still more so when there is a transition across the dividing line between the Ignorance and the Knowledge and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge, from consciousness to greater consciousness, from being to greater being. There is then no longer any necessity for the slow pace of the ordinary evolution; there can be rapid conversion, quick transformation after transformation, what would seem to our normal present mind a succession of miracles. An evolution on the supramental levels could well be of that nature; it could be equally, if the being so chose, a more leisurely passage of one supramental state or condition of things to something beyond but still supramental, from level to divine level, a building up of divine gradations, a free growth to the supreme Supermind or beyond it to yet undreamed levels of being, consciousness and Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga 558,

139:How to MeditateDeep meditation is a mental procedure that utilizes the nature of the mind to systematically bring the mind to rest. If the mind is given the opportunity, it will go to rest with no effort. That is how the mind works.Indeed, effort is opposed to the natural process of deep meditation. The mind always seeks the path of least resistance to express itself. Most of the time this is by making more and more thoughts. But it is also possible to create a situation in the mind that turns the path of least resistance into one leading to fewer and fewer thoughts. And, very soon, no thoughts at all. This is done by using a particular thought in a particular way. The thought is called a mantra.For our practice of deep meditation, we will use the thought - I AM. This will be our mantra.It is for the sound that we will use I AM, not for the meaning of it.The meaning has an obvious significance in English, and I AM has a religious meaning in the English Bible as well. But we will not use I AM for the meaning - only for the sound. We can also spell it AYAM. No meaning there, is there? Only the sound. That is what we want. If your first language is not English, you may spell the sound phonetically in your own language if you wish. No matter how we spell it, it will be the same sound. The power of the sound ...I AM... is great when thought inside. But only if we use a particular procedure. Knowing this procedure is the key to successful meditation. It is very simple. So simple that we will devote many pages here to discussing how to keep it simple, because we all have a tendency to make things more complicated. Maintaining simplicity is the key to right meditation.Here is the procedure of deep meditation: While sitting comfortably with eyes closed, we'll just relax. We will notice thoughts, streams of thoughts. That is fine. We just let them go by without minding them. After about a minute, we gently introduce the mantra, ...I AM...We think the mantra in a repetition very easily inside. The speed of repetition may vary, and we do not mind it. We do not intone the mantra out loud. We do not deliberately locate the mantra in any particular part of the body. Whenever we realize we are not thinking the mantra inside anymore, we come back to it easily. This may happen many times in a sitting, or only once or twice. It doesn't matter. We follow this procedure of easily coming back to the mantra when we realize we are off it for the predetermined time of our meditation session. That's it.Very simple.Typically, the way we will find ourselves off the mantra will be in a stream of other thoughts. This is normal. The mind is a thought machine, remember? Making thoughts is what it does. But, if we are meditating, as soon as we realize we are off into a stream of thoughts, no matter how mundane or profound, we just easily go back to the mantra.Like that. We don't make a struggle of it. The idea is not that we have to be on the mantra all the time. That is not the objective. The objective is to easily go back to it when we realize we are off it. We just favor the mantra with our attention when we notice we are not thinking it. If we are back into a stream of other thoughts five seconds later, we don't try and force the thoughts out. Thoughts are a normal part of the deep meditation process. We just ease back to the mantra again. We favor it.Deep meditation is a going toward, not a pushing away from. We do that every single time with the mantra when we realize we are off it - just easily favoring it. It is a gentle persuasion. No struggle. No fuss. No iron willpower or mental heroics are necessary for this practice. All such efforts are away from the simplicity of deep meditation and will reduce its effectiveness.As we do this simple process of deep meditation, we will at some point notice a change in the character of our inner experience. The mantra may become very refined and fuzzy. This is normal. It is perfectly all right to think the mantra in a very refined and fuzzy way if this is the easiest. It should always be easy - never a struggle. Other times, we may lose track of where we are for a while, having no mantra, or stream of thoughts either. This is fine too. When we realize we have been off somewhere, we just ease back to the mantra again. If we have been very settled with the mantra being barely recognizable, we can go back to that fuzzy level of it, if it is the easiest. As the mantra refines, we are riding it inward with our attention to progressively deeper levels of inner silence in the mind. So it is normal for the mantra to become very faint and fuzzy. We cannot force this to happen. It will happen naturally as our nervous system goes through its many cycles ofinner purification stimulated by deep meditation. When the mantra refines, we just go with it. And when the mantra does not refine, we just be with it at whatever level is easy. No struggle. There is no objective to attain, except to continue the simple procedure we are describing here.When and Where to MeditateHow long and how often do we meditate? For most people, twenty minutes is the best duration for a meditation session. It is done twice per day, once before the morning meal and day's activity, and then again before the evening meal and evening's activity.Try to avoid meditating right after eating or right before bed.Before meal and activity is the ideal time. It will be most effective and refreshing then. Deep meditation is a preparation for activity, and our results over time will be best if we are active between our meditation sessions. Also, meditation is not a substitute for sleep. The ideal situation is a good balance between meditation, daily activity and normal sleep at night. If we do this, our inner experience will grow naturally over time, and our outer life will become enriched by our growing inner silence.A word on how to sit in meditation: The first priority is comfort. It is not desirable to sit in a way that distracts us from the easy procedure of meditation. So sitting in a comfortable chair with back support is a good way to meditate. Later on, or if we are already familiar, there can be an advantage to sitting with legs crossed, also with back support. But always with comfort and least distraction being the priority. If, for whatever reason, crossed legs are not feasible for us, we will do just fine meditating in our comfortable chair. There will be no loss of the benefits.Due to commitments we may have, the ideal routine of meditation sessions will not always be possible. That is okay. Do the best you can and do not stress over it. Due to circumstances beyond our control, sometimes the only time we will have to meditate will be right after a meal, or even later in the evening near bedtime. If meditating at these times causes a little disruption in our system, we will know it soon enough and make the necessary adjustments. The main thing is that we do our best to do two meditations every day, even if it is only a short session between our commitments. Later on, we will look at the options we have to make adjustments to address varying outer circumstances, as well as inner experiences that can come up.Before we go on, you should try a meditation. Find a comfortable place to sit where you are not likely to be interrupted and do a short meditation, say ten minutes, and see how it goes. It is a toe in the water.Make sure to take a couple of minutes at the end sitting easily without doing the procedure of meditation. Then open your eyes slowly. Then read on here.As you will see, the simple procedure of deep meditation and it's resulting experiences will raise some questions. We will cover many of them here.So, now we will move into the practical aspects of deep meditation - your own experiences and initial symptoms of the growth of your own inner silence. ~ Yogani, Deep Meditation ,

140:[The Gods and Their Worlds] [...] According to traditions and occult schools, all these zones of realities, these planes of realities have got different names; they have been classified in a different way, but there is an essential analogy, and if you go back far enough into the traditions, you see only the words changing according to the country and the language. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists offer great similarities. All who set out on the discovery of these invisible worlds and make a report of what they saw, give a very similar description, whether they be from here or there; they use different words, but the experience is very similar and the handling of forces is the same. This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at the centre - it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest - and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ends by universalising oneself. And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds. There are, then, only a very small number of people in the West who know that these gods are not merely subjective and imaginary - more or less wildly imaginary - but that they correspond to a universal truth. All these regions, all these domains are filled with beings who exist, each in its own domain, and if you are awake and conscious on a particular plane - for instance, if on going out of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the material world, and there even comes a time when the one region has a direct action upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the overmental worlds, you will find a concrete reality absolutely independent of your personal experience; you go back there and again find the same things, with the differences that have occurred during your absence. And you have relations with those beings that are identical with the relations you have with physical beings, with this difference that the relation is more plastic, supple and direct - for example, there is the capacity to change the external form, the visible form, according to the inner state you are in. But you can make an appointment with someone and be at the appointed place and find the same being again, with certain differences that have come about during your absence; it is entirely concrete with results entirely concrete. One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain defects and certain qualities because men have thought them to be like that - all those who say that God is made in the image of man and that he exists only in human thought, all these will not understand; to them this will appear absolutely ridiculous, madness. One must have lived a little, touched the subject a little, to know how very concrete the thing is. Naturally, children know a good deal if they have not been spoilt. There are so many children who return every night to the same place and continue to live the life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoilt with age, you can keep them with you. At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration. You go until you reach a certain spot, as you would go in life, then you take a rest, then you return and begin again - you begin the work at the place where you left off and you continue it. And you perceive that there are things which are quite independent of you, in the sense that changes of which you are not at all the author, have taken place automatically during your absence. But for this, you must live these experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how far you can delude yourself. So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it. When you have worked in that domain, you recognise in fact that once a subject has been studied and something has been learnt mentally, it gives a special colour to the experience; the experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact that the subject was known and studied lends a particular quality. Whereas if you had learnt nothing about the question, if you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation. Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for the first time, they are bewildered, they have the impression they have fallen into the night, into nothingness, into non-being! I had a Danish friend, a painter, who was like that. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him "go out" - but it was a frightful thing! When he was dreaming, a part of his mind still remained conscious, active, and a kind of link existed between this active part and his external being; then he remembered some of his dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised. Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to enter into themselves, they are in agony - naturally! They have the impression that they are vanishing. And with reason: there is nothing, no consciousness! These things that appear to us quite natural and evident, are, for people who know nothing, wild imagination. If, for example, you transplant these experiences or this knowledge to the West, well, unless you have been frequenting the circles of occultists, they stare at you with open eyes. And when you have turned your back, they hasten to say, "These people are cranks!" Now to come back to the gods and conclude. It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence - gods or demons, invisible beings and powers - do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects. In the gods there is no fault because they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint: as gods, it is their manner of being. But if you take a higher point of view, if you have a higher vision, a vision of the whole, you see that they lack certain qualities that are exclusively human. By his capacity of love and self-giving, man can have as much power as the gods and even more, when he is not egoistic, when he has surmounted his egoism. If he fulfils the required condition, man is nearer to the Supreme than the gods are. He can be nearer. He is not so automatically, but he has the power to be so, the potentiality. If human love manifested itself without mixture, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love there is as much love of oneself as of the one loved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself. - 4 November 1958 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III 355 ,

141:The Science of Living To know oneself and to control oneself AN AIMLESS life is always a miserable life. Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life. Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others. But whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised unless you have realised perfection in yourself. To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour. As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection. All this can be realised by means of a fourfold discipline, the general outline of which is given here. The four aspects of the discipline do not exclude each other, and can be followed at the same time; indeed, this is preferable. The starting-point is what can be called the psychic discipline. We give the name "psychic" to the psychological centre of our being, the seat within us of the highest truth of our existence, that which can know this truth and set it in movement. It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us, to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it. In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perception and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realise. This discovery and realisation should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think. To complement this movement of inner discovery, it would be good not to neglect the development of the mind. For the mental instrument can equally be a great help or a great hindrance. In its natural state the human mind is always limited in its vision, narrow in its understanding, rigid in its conceptions, and a constant effort is therefore needed to widen it, to make it more supple and profound. So it is very necessary to consider everything from as many points of view as possible. Towards this end, there is an exercise which gives great suppleness and elevation to the thought. It is as follows: a clearly formulated thesis is set; against it is opposed its antithesis, formulated with the same precision. Then by careful reflection the problem must be widened or transcended until a synthesis is found which unites the two contraries in a larger, higher and more comprehensive idea. Many other exercises of the same kind can be undertaken; some have a beneficial effect on the character and so possess a double advantage: that of educating the mind and that of establishing control over the feelings and their consequences. For example, you must never allow your mind to judge things and people, for the mind is not an instrument of knowledge; it is incapable of finding knowledge, but it must be moved by knowledge. Knowledge belongs to a much higher domain than that of the human mind, far above the region of pure ideas. The mind has to be silent and attentive to receive knowledge from above and manifest it. For it is an instrument of formation, of organisation and action, and it is in these functions that it attains its full value and real usefulness. There is another practice which can be very helpful to the progress of the consciousness. Whenever there is a disagreement on any matter, such as a decision to be taken, or an action to be carried out, one must never remain closed up in one's own conception or point of view. On the contrary, one must make an effort to understand the other's point of view, to put oneself in his place and, instead of quarrelling or even fighting, find the solution which can reasonably satisfy both parties; there always is one for men of goodwill. Here we must mention the discipline of the vital. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can set everything in motion, build and realise; but it can also destroy and mar everything. Thus it may be the most difficult part to discipline in the human being. It is a long and exacting labour requiring great patience and perfect sincerity, for without sincerity you will deceive yourself from the very outset, and all endeavour for progress will be in vain. With the collaboration of the vital no realisation seems impossible, no transformation impracticable. But the difficulty lies in securing this constant collaboration. The vital is a good worker, but most often it seeks its own satisfaction. If that is refused, totally or even partially, the vital gets vexed, sulks and goes on strike. Its energy disappears more or less completely and in its place leaves disgust for people and things, discouragement or revolt, depression and dissatisfaction. At such moments it is good to remain quiet and refuse to act; for these are the times when one does stupid things and in a few moments one can destroy or spoil the progress that has been made during months of regular effort. These crises are shorter and less dangerous for those who have established a contact with their psychic being which is sufficient to keep alive in them the flame of aspiration and the consciousness of the ideal to be realised. They can, with the help of this consciousness, deal with their vital as one deals with a rebellious child, with patience and perseverance, showing it the truth and light, endeavouring to convince it and awaken in it the goodwill which has been veiled for a time. By means of such patient intervention each crisis can be turned into a new progress, into one more step towards the goal. Progress may be slow, relapses may be frequent, but if a courageous will is maintained, one is sure to triumph one day and see all difficulties melt and vanish before the radiance of the truth-consciousness. Lastly, by means of a rational and discerning physical education, we must make our body strong and supple enough to become a fit instrument in the material world for the truth-force which wants to manifest through us. In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and the vital. It obeys them blindly, at the cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation and endurance. It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that now govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the being, you will be amazed at what it is capable of doing. Calm and quiet, strong and poised, at every minute it will be able to put forth the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action and to recuperate, through contact with the universal forces, the energies it expends consciously and usefully. In this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give it perfect proportions and ideal beauty of form. And this harmony will be progressive, for the truth of the being is never static; it is a perpetual unfolding of a growing perfection that is more and more total and comprehensive. As soon as the body has learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be possible for it to escape, through a continuous process of transformation, from the necessity of disintegration and destruction. Thus the irrevocable law of death will no longer have any reason to exist. When we reach this degree of perfection which is our goal, we shall perceive that the truth we seek is made up of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge, Power and Beauty. These four attributes of the Truth will express themselves spontaneously in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind will be the vehicle of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and harmony. Bulletin, November 1950 ~ The Mother, On Education ,

142:One little picture in this book, the Magic Locket, was drawn by 'Miss Alice Havers.' I did not state this on the title-page, since it seemed only due, to the artist of all these (to my mind) wonderful pictures, that his name should stand there alone.The descriptions, of Sunday as spent by children of the last generation, are quoted verbatim from a speech made to me by a child-friend and a letter written to me by a lady-friend.The Chapters, headed 'Fairy Sylvie' and 'Bruno's Revenge,' are a reprint, with a few alterations, of a little fairy-tale which I wrote in the year 1867, at the request of the late Mrs. Gatty, for 'Aunt Judy's Magazine,' which she was then editing.It was in 1874, I believe, that the idea first occurred to me of making it the nucleus of a longer story.As the years went on, I jotted down, at odd moments, all sorts of odd ideas, and fragments of dialogue, that occurred to me--who knows how?--with a transitory suddenness that left me no choice but either to record them then and there, or to abandon them to oblivion. Sometimes one could trace to their source these random flashes of thought--as being suggested by the book one was reading, or struck out from the 'flint' of one's own mind by the 'steel' of a friend's chance remark but they had also a way of their own, of occurring, a propos of nothing --specimens of that hopelessly illogical phenomenon, 'an effect without a cause.' Such, for example, was the last line of 'The Hunting of the Snark,' which came into my head (as I have already related in 'The Theatre' for April, 1887) quite suddenly, during a solitary walk: and such, again, have been passages which occurred in dreams, and which I cannot trace to any antecedent cause whatever. There are at least two instances of such dream-suggestions in this book--one, my Lady's remark, 'it often runs in families, just as a love for pastry does', the other, Eric Lindon's badinage about having been in domestic service.And thus it came to pass that I found myself at last in possession of a huge unwieldy mass of litterature--if the reader will kindly excuse the spelling --which only needed stringing together, upon the thread of a consecutive story, to constitute the book I hoped to write. Only! The task, at first, seemed absolutely hopeless, and gave me a far clearer idea, than I ever had before, of the meaning of the word 'chaos': and I think it must have been ten years, or more, before I had succeeded in classifying these odds-and-ends sufficiently to see what sort of a story they indicated: for the story had to grow out of the incidents, not the incidents out of the story I am telling all this, in no spirit of egoism, but because I really believe that some of my readers will be interested in these details of the 'genesis' of a book, which looks so simple and straight-forward a matter, when completed, that they might suppose it to have been written straight off, page by page, as one would write a letter, beginning at the beginning; and ending at the end.It is, no doubt, possible to write a story in that way: and, if it be not vanity to say so, I believe that I could, myself,--if I were in the unfortunate position (for I do hold it to be a real misfortune) of being obliged to produce a given amount of fiction in a given time,--that I could 'fulfil my task,' and produce my 'tale of bricks,' as other slaves have done. One thing, at any rate, I could guarantee as to the story so produced--that it should be utterly commonplace, should contain no new ideas whatever, and should be very very weary reading!This species of literature has received the very appropriate name of 'padding' which might fitly be defined as 'that which all can write and none can read.' That the present volume contains no such writing I dare not avow: sometimes, in order to bring a picture into its proper place, it has been necessary to eke out a page with two or three extra lines : but I can honestly say I have put in no more than I was absolutely compelled to do.My readers may perhaps like to amuse themselves by trying to detect, in a given passage, the one piece of 'padding' it contains. While arranging the 'slips' into pages, I found that the passage was 3 lines too short. I supplied the deficiency, not by interpolating a word here and a word there, but by writing in 3 consecutive lines. Now can my readers guess which they are?A harder puzzle if a harder be desired would be to determine, as to the Gardener's Song, in which cases (if any) the stanza was adapted to the surrounding text, and in which (if any) the text was adapted to the stanza.Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature--at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it come's is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune. I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story--I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it--but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen storybooks have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'--is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.Hence it is that, in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' I have striven with I know not what success to strike out yet another new path: be it bad or good, it is the best I can do. It is written, not for money, and not for fame, but in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love, some thoughts that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which are the very life of Childhood; and also in the hope of suggesting, to them and to others, some thoughts that may prove, I would fain hope, not wholly out of harmony with the graver cadences of Life.If I have not already exhausted the patience of my readers, I would like to seize this opportunity perhaps the last I shall have of addressing so many friends at once of putting on record some ideas that have occurred to me, as to books desirable to be written--which I should much like to attempt, but may not ever have the time or power to carry through--in the hope that, if I should fail (and the years are gliding away very fast) to finish the task I have set myself, other hands may take it up.First, a Child's Bible. The only real essentials of this would be, carefully selected passages, suitable for a child's reading, and pictures. One principle of selection, which I would adopt, would be that Religion should be put before a child as a revelation of love--no need to pain and puzzle the young mind with the history of crime and punishment. (On such a principle I should, for example, omit the history of the Flood.) The supplying of the pictures would involve no great difficulty: no new ones would be needed : hundreds of excellent pictures already exist, the copyright of which has long ago expired, and which simply need photo-zincography, or some similar process, for their successful reproduction. The book should be handy in size with a pretty attractive looking cover--in a clear legible type--and, above all, with abundance of pictures, pictures, pictures!Secondly, a book of pieces selected from the Bible--not single texts, but passages of from 10 to 20 verses each--to be committed to memory. Such passages would be found useful, to repeat to one's self and to ponder over, on many occasions when reading is difficult, if not impossible: for instance, when lying awake at night--on a railway-journey --when taking a solitary walk-in old age, when eyesight is failing or wholly lost--and, best of all, when illness, while incapacitating us for reading or any other occupation, condemns us to lie awake through many weary silent hours: at such a time how keenly one may realise the truth of David's rapturous cry "O how sweet are thy words unto my throat: yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth!"I have said 'passages,' rather than single texts, because we have no means of recalling single texts: memory needs links, and here are none: one may have a hundred texts stored in the memory, and not be able to recall, at will, more than half-a-dozen--and those by mere chance: whereas, once get hold of any portion of a chapter that has been committed to memory, and the whole can be recovered: all hangs together.Thirdly, a collection of passages, both prose and verse, from books other than the Bible. There is not perhaps much, in what is called 'un-inspired' literature (a misnomer, I hold: if Shakespeare was not inspired, one may well doubt if any man ever was), that will bear the process of being pondered over, a hundred times: still there are such passages--enough, I think, to make a goodly store for the memory.These two books of sacred, and secular, passages for memory--will serve other good purposes besides merely occupying vacant hours: they will help to keep at bay many anxious thoughts, worrying thoughts, uncharitable thoughts, unholy thoughts. Let me say this, in better words than my own, by copying a passage from that most interesting book, Robertson's Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Lecture XLIX. "If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as safeguards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps."Fourthly, a "Shakespeare" for girls: that is, an edition in which everything, not suitable for the perusal of girls of (say) from 10 to 17, should be omitted. Few children under 10 would be likely to understand or enjoy the greatest of poets: and those, who have passed out of girlhood, may safely be left to read Shakespeare, in any edition, 'expurgated' or not, that they may prefer: but it seems a pity that so many children, in the intermediate stage, should be debarred from a great pleasure for want of an edition suitable to them. Neither Bowdler's, Chambers's, Brandram's, nor Cundell's 'Boudoir' Shakespeare, seems to me to meet the want: they are not sufficiently 'expurgated.' Bowdler's is the most extraordinary of all: looking through it, I am filled with a deep sense of wonder, considering what he has left in, that he should have cut anything out! Besides relentlessly erasing all that is unsuitable on the score of reverence or decency, I should be inclined to omit also all that seems too difficult, or not likely to interest young readers. The resulting book might be slightly fragmentary: but it would be a real treasure to all British maidens who have any taste for poetry.If it be needful to apologize to any one for the new departure I have taken in this story--by introducing, along with what will, I hope, prove to be acceptable nonsense for children, some of the graver thoughts of human life--it must be to one who has learned the Art of keeping such thoughts wholly at a distance in hours of mirth and careless ease. To him such a mixture will seem, no doubt, ill-judged and repulsive. And that such an Art exists I do not dispute: with youth, good health, and sufficient money, it seems quite possible to lead, for years together, a life of unmixed gaiety--with the exception of one solemn fact, with which we are liable to be confronted at any moment, even in the midst of the most brilliant company or the most sparkling entertainment. A man may fix his own times for admitting serious thought, for attending public worship, for prayer, for reading the Bible: all such matters he can defer to that 'convenient season', which is so apt never to occur at all: but he cannot defer, for one single moment, the necessity of attending to a message, which may come before he has finished reading this page,' this night shalt thy soul be required of thee.'The ever-present sense of this grim possibility has been, in all ages, 1 an incubus that men have striven to shake off. Few more interesting subjects of enquiry could be found, by a student of history, than the various weapons that have been used against this shadowy foe. Saddest of all must have been the thoughts of those who saw indeed an existence beyond the grave, but an existence far more terrible than annihilation--an existence as filmy, impalpable, all but invisible spectres, drifting about, through endless ages, in a world of shadows, with nothing to do, nothing to hope for, nothing to love! In the midst of the gay verses of that genial 'bon vivant' Horace, there stands one dreary word whose utter sadness goes to one's heart. It is the word 'exilium' in the well-known passageOmnes eodem cogimur, omniumVersatur urna serius ociusSors exitura et nos in aeternumExilium impositura cymbae.Yes, to him this present life--spite of all its weariness and all its sorrow--was the only life worth having: all else was 'exile'! Does it not seem almost incredible that one, holding such a creed, should ever have smiled?And many in this day, I fear, even though believing in an existence beyond the grave far more real than Horace ever dreamed of, yet regard it as a sort of 'exile' from all the joys of life, and so adopt Horace's theory, and say 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'We go to entertainments, such as the theatre--I say 'we', for I also go to the play, whenever I get a chance of seeing a really good one and keep at arm's length, if possible, the thought that we may not return alive. Yet how do you know--dear friend, whose patience has carried you through this garrulous preface that it may not be your lot, when mirth is fastest and most furious, to feel the sharp pang, or the deadly faintness, which heralds the final crisis--to see, with vague wonder, anxious friends bending over you to hear their troubled whispers perhaps yourself to shape the question, with trembling lips, "Is it serious?", and to be told "Yes: the end is near" (and oh, how different all Life will look when those words are said!)--how do you know, I say, that all this may not happen to you, this night?And dare you, knowing this, say to yourself "Well, perhaps it is an immoral play: perhaps the situations are a little too 'risky', the dialogue a little too strong, the 'business' a little too suggestive.I don't say that conscience is quite easy: but the piece is so clever, I must see it this once! I'll begin a stricter life to-morrow." To-morrow, and to-morrow, and tomorrow!"Who sins in hope, who, sinning, says,'Sorrow for sin God's judgement stays!'Against God's Spirit he lies; quite stops Mercy with insult; dares, and drops,Like a scorch'd fly, that spins in vainUpon the axis of its pain,Then takes its doom, to limp and crawl,Blind and forgot, from fall to fall."Let me pause for a moment to say that I believe this thought, of the possibility of death--if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.But, once realise what the true object is in life--that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds'--but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man--and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!One other matter may perhaps seem to call for apology--that I should have treated with such entire want of sympathy the British passion for 'Sport', which no doubt has been in by-gone days, and is still, in some forms of it, an excellent school for hardihood and for coolness in moments of danger.But I am not entirely without sympathy for genuine 'Sport': I can heartily admire the courage of the man who, with severe bodily toil, and at the risk of his life, hunts down some 'man-eating' tiger: and I can heartily sympathize with him when he exults in the glorious excitement of the chase and the hand-to-hand struggle with the monster brought to bay. But I can but look with deep wonder and sorrow on the hunter who, at his ease and in safety, can find pleasure in what involves, for some defenceless creature, wild terror and a death of agony: deeper, if the hunter be one who has pledged himself to preach to men the Religion of universal Love: deepest of all, if it be one of those 'tender and delicate' beings, whose very name serves as a symbol of Love--'thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women'--whose mission here is surely to help and comfort all that are in pain or sorrow!'Farewell, farewell! but this I tellTo thee, thou Wedding-Guest!He prayeth well, who loveth wellBoth man and bird and beast.He prayeth best, who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.' ~ Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno ,

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Success is man's god. ~ Aeschylus

2:Success breeds success. ~ Mia Hamm

3:Any success matters to me. ~ Ledisi

4:I am a one success man. ~ Tom Baker

5:success is 99% failure ~ Henry Ford

6:what is success? ~ Paul David Tripp

7:Success is what sells. ~ Andy Warhol

8:For the success, ~ William Shakespeare

9:Momentum builds success. ~ Suzy Kassem

10:Purpose defines success. ~ David Allen

11:Success is a lousy teacher, ~ Amy Webb

12:Fail your way to success. ~ Bear Grylls

13:I failed my way to success. ~ Anonymous

14:Success is overrated. ~ Keith Olbermann

15:Clarity precedes success. ~ Robin Sharma

16:Failure is part of success. ~ Hank Aaron

17:Success excuses all risks. ~ Naomi Novik

18:Success is a lousy teacher. ~ Bill Gates

19:I believe in Success, ~ William Allingham

20:I had flops, I had success. ~ Agnes Varda

21:Success demands paranoia. ~ Joseph Finder

22:Success hath made me wanton. ~ Ben Jonson

23:Success is intentional. ~ Shannon L Alder

24:Success is the best revenge. ~ Kanye West

25:Success supposes endeavour. ~ Jane Austen

26:Success will ruin your life. ~ Tom Clancy

27:Temerity is not always successful. ~ Livy

28:Working together is success. ~ Henry Ford

29:Failure is a part of success. ~ Hank Aaron

30:Fear is a healthy part of success. ~ Ne Yo

31:Genuine effort is success. ~ Vernon Howard

32:Nothing succeeds like success. ~ Anonymous

33:Show me success without ego! ~ Ivana Trump

34:Success breeds confidence. ~ Beryl Markham

35:Success has many fathers. ~ John F Kennedy

36:Success is never accidental. ~ Jack Dorsey

37:Success is never accidental. ~ Peter Thiel

38:The Key to Success is Action ~ Brian Tracy

39:There is no shortcut to success ~ Samarpan

40:90% of success is failure. ~ Soichiro Honda

41:I hope Mr. Obama has success. ~ Raul Castro

42:In success be moderate. ~ Benjamin Franklin

43:Life lives only in success. ~ Bayard Taylor

44:Simplicity is the key to success. ~ Pitbull

45:Success is a poor teacher ~ Robert Kiyosaki

46:Success is as dangerous as failure. ~ Laozi

47:Success is dependant on effort. ~ Sophocles

48:Success is dependent on effort. ~ Sophocles

49:Success is never final. ~ Winston Churchill

50:Success is the reward for toil. ~ Sophocles

51:The key to success is action. ~ Brian Tracy

52:I don't think I'm successful. ~ Jenny Eclair

53:In life, success begets success. ~ Tim Kaine

54:I will never feel successful. ~ Howard Stern

55:Nothing fails like success. ~ Anthony Powell

56:Nothing fails like success. ~ Robin S Sharma

57:Promoting an image of success. ~ Bandy X Lee

58:Success had its penalties. ~ Agatha Christie

59:Success is to be Happy in Life. ~ Heidi Klum

60:Success only breeds a new goal ~ Bette Davis

61:Awareness Increases Success ~ Michael Anthony

62:been raised rather successfully ~ David Nasaw

63:Doubt is the enemy of success. ~ Jim Bridwell

64:Every Experience is a Success. ~ Louise L Hay

65:Everything I touch is a success. ~ Louise Hay

66:I failed my way to success. ~ Thomas A Edison

67:Indeed, all success comes from Allah Alone. ~

68:Longevity is the key to success. ~ Ed Seykota

69:Nothing fails like success. ~ Stephen R Covey

70:Success is a poor teacher ~ Robert T Kiyosaki

71:Success is not a stop sign. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

72:the gravity of past success. ~ Garry Kasparov

73:Too much success is not an advantage. ~ Laozi

74:True success is obeying God. ~ John C Maxwell

75:Applause waits on success. ~ Benjamin Franklin

76:A successful coup ain't a treason. ~ Toba Beta

77:Develop success from failures. ~ Dale Carnegie

78:It [success] is really by mistake. ~ Ai Weiwei

79:People fail forward to success. ~ Mary Kay Ash

80:Successful people breed success. ~ Phil Crosby

81:Success is my drug of choice. ~ Curtis Jackson

82:The key to success is failure ~ Michael Jordan

83:Failure is the seed of success ~ Kaoru Ishikawa

84:I am made, crudely, for success. ~ Sylvia Plath

85:I create my success from within ~ Deepak Chopra

86:Success consists in the climb. ~ Elbert Hubbard

87:Success is 99 percent failure. ~ Soichiro Honda

88:True success requires sacrifice. ~ Rick Riordan

89:Failure is success in progress ~ Albert Einstein

90:I think that success is having fun. ~ Bruno Mars

91:Modesty is the key to success ~ Paul the Apostle

92:My drive is other people's success. ~ Kevin Hart

93:Nothing succeeds like success. ~ Alexandre Dumas

94:Positive thinking breeds success. ~ Urijah Faber

95:Success is a great deodorant. ~ Elizabeth Taylor

96:Success is best when its shared ~ Howard Schultz

97:Success is not something you pursue. ~ Jim Rohn

98:Success is the enemy of comedy. ~ Jerry Seinfeld

99:I have a definition of success. ~ Benjamin Zander

100:Life is not a success only journey. ~ Phil McGraw

101:Success begets more in television. ~ Grant Tinker

102:Successful people are action oriented. ~ Jim Rohn

103:Success is 20% skills and 80% strategy ~ Jim Rohn

104:Success is a decision, not a gift. ~ Ben Bergeron

105:Success is outliving your failures ~ Erma Bombeck

106:Success Should Never Breed Complacency ~ Xenophon

107:Success usually breeds a degree of hubris. ~ Moby

108:The best form of revenge is success ~ Peter James

109:There is no success without hardship. ~ Sophocles

110:90% of success in life is showing up ~ Woody Allen

111:Being first is no guarantee of success ~ Anonymous

112:Being successful is kind of dull. ~ Nolan Bushnell

113:CHAPTER LXXV ARABELLA’S SUCCESS ~ Anthony Trollope

114:Enemies are the price of success ~ Joe Abercrombie

115:Every epoch dreams its successor. ~ Jules Michelet

116:Failure is... the highway to success. ~ Og Mandino

117:Fame and success are very different things. ~ Enya

118:Historian: an unsuccessful novelist. ~ H L Mencken

119:Oh god, success is so exhausting. ~ Laurie Simmons

120:Our problems determine our successes ~ Mark Manson

121:Patience is a key element of success. ~ Bill Gates

122:Pursue excellence; ignore success. ~ Deepak Chopra

123:Success has ruin'd many a man. ~ Benjamin Franklin

124:Success has ruined many a man. ~ Benjamin Franklin

125:Success is beautiful and dangerous. ~ Robin Sharma

126:90 per cent of success is turning up. ~ Woody Allen

127:all success cloaks a surrender ~ Simone de Beauvoir

128:Due to success I started losing friends. ~ Ace Hood

129:Enemies are the price of success. ~ Joe Abercrombie

130:Even success needs its consolations. ~ George Eliot

131:RECONDITION YOURSELF FOR SUCCESS ~ David J Schwartz

132:Success and rest don't sleep together. ~ Og Mandino

133:Success is a fruit of slow growth. ~ Henry Fielding

134:Success is best when it is shared. ~ Howard Schultz

135:Success is one thing, impact is another ~ Ray Lewis

136:Success is the sum of details. ~ Harvey S Firestone

137:Success is total self-acceptance. ~ Viktor E Frankl

138:Success only hurts the first time. ~ R K Milholland

139:The best formula for revenge is success. ~ Kid Rock

140:The city that has speed has success. ~ Le Corbusier

141:The key to more success is coco butter. ~ DJ Khaled

142:We're endangered by our own success. ~ Vernor Vinge

143:A success unshared is a failure. ~ John Paul DeJoria

144:Education is the ticket to success ~ Jaime Escalante

145:Happiness is the precursor to success. ~ Shawn Achor

146:I dreamt of worldly success once. ~ Miyamoto Musashi

147:Massive success is the best revenge. ~ Grant Cardone

148:Now is the magic word of success. ~ David J Schwartz

149:Our struggles determine our successes. ~ Mark Manson

150:Showbiz is great if you're successful. ~ Don Rickles

151:Success and excess are not the same. ~ Joshua Becker

152:Successful crimes alone are justified. ~ John Dryden

153:Successful Crop-Rotation Practices ~ Carleen Madigan

154:Successful people reject rejection. ~ John C Maxwell

155:Success has made failures of many men. ~ Cindy Adams

156:Success in life is about obsession ~ Massimo Bottura

157:Success is a refined study of the obvious ~ Jim Rohn

158:Success is a worn down pencil. ~ Robert Rauschenberg

159:Success, remember is the reward of toil. ~ Sophocles

160:Success without happiness is failure. ~ Tony Robbins

161:suffering is the essence of success!!! ~ Abdul Kalam

162:The best revenge is massive success. ~ Frank Sinatra

163:The greatest revenge is massive success. ~ Les Brown

164:Why not imagine yourself successful? ~ Maxwell Maltz

165:Your success & happiness lies in you. ~ Helen Keller

166:A Successful Journey Is the Destination ~ John Wooden

167:Early success is a terrible teacher. ~ Chris Hadfield

168:Effort is the siamese twin of success ~ Shane Koyczan

169:It's all success if it's what you need. ~ Tom DeLonge

170:Lore: Making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS! ~ Wil Wheaton

171:...nothing succeeds like success. ~ Patricia Cornwell

172:One fails forward toward success. ~ Charles Kettering

173:Part of success is preparation on purpose. ~ Jim Rohn

174:Passion is the beginning of success ~ Robert Kiyosaki

175:Patience is the slow road to success ~ Kao Kalia Yang

176:Perfectionism is not the key to success. ~ Bren Brown

177:Practice structure determines success. ~ Bobby Knight

178:Successful leaders are great askers ~ Warren G Bennis

179:Successful SRE teams are built on trust ~ Betsy Beyer

180:Success is a collection of problems solved. ~ I M Pei

181:Success is the child of audacity. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

182:Success is the result of hard work. ~ Thomas A Edison

183:Success without fulfillment is failure ~ Tony Robbins

184:There are no shortcuts to success. ~ Annika Sorenstam

185:There's no deodorant like success. ~ Elizabeth Taylor

186:The secret to my success is practice! ~ David Beckham

187:The successful leader must be willing ~ Napoleon Hill

188:To the success of our hopeless cause ~ Robert Littell

189:What does it take to be successful here? ~ Chris Voss

190:Your success and happiness lie in you. ~ Helen Keller

191:Appreciation is the currency of success. ~ Shaka Smart

192:by no legislation, no partisan success, by ~ Ginny Dye

193:Eighty percent of success is showing up. ~ Woody Allen

194:I came to success very late in life. ~ Kelly Masterson

195:I want to be successful, not famous. ~ George Harrison

196:Life is a journey. Success is a process. ~ Corey Wayne

197:Makeup can contribute to our success. ~ Sahara Sanders

198:Money is the seal and stamp of success. ~ D H Lawrence

199:My definition of success is control. ~ Kenneth Branagh

200:Optimism is a faith that leads to success. ~ Bruce Lee

201:Someone else's success is not your failure. ~ Zoe Sugg

202:Success depends upon previous preparation. ~ Confucius

203:Successful software always gets changed. ~ Fred Brooks

204:Success is how you collect your minutes. ~ Norman Lear

205:Success is somebody else's failure. ~ Ursula K Le Guin

206:Success is something you attract not pursue! ~ Unknown

207:Success is when the checks don’t bounce. ~ Andy Warhol

208:Success multiplies what was already there. ~ Anonymous

209:Success rarely brings satisfaction. ~ Baltasar Gracian

210:Success! Success! The enemy of progress! ~ Edgar Degas

211:Success without fulfillment is failure. ~ Tony Robbins

212:There is no success in your comfort zone. ~ Bo S nchez

213:We learn from failure, not from success! ~ Bram Stoker

214:Why accept failure when success is free? ~ Kevin Gates

215:A good poem about failure is a success. ~ Philip Larkin

216:All success comes through other people. ~ Bryant McGill

217:Don't be entitled - earn your success. ~ Mandana Dayani

218:Everything bows to success, even grammar. ~ Victor Hugo

219:Good-humor is always a success. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

220:I failed my way to success. —THOMAS EDISON ~ Tony Hsieh

221:It's hard to shake a stick at success. ~ Nathan Fillion

222:I've never met a successful pessimist. ~ William O Neil

223:Life is a successive symphony of losses. ~ Isaac Asimov

224:Life is knowledge, livin it is Succes! ~ John Steinbeck

225:Love is the answer for the team's success. ~ Jon Gordon

226:Mark it. No challenges, no success! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

227:Money is a poor indicator of success. ~ Richard Branson

228:Never try to copy a successful personality. ~ Bruce Lee

229:One man cannot practice many arts with success. ~ Plato

230:Our "overnight" success took 1,000 days. ~ Brian Chesky

231:Passionate living is the soul of success. ~ Daniel Amen

232:Past failures unlock future successes ~ Richard Branson

233:Preparation clears a pathway for success. ~ Ron Kaufman

234:Secrecy spawns isolation, not success. ~ John C Maxwell

235:Success always leaves footprints. ~ Booker T Washington

236:Success demands singleness of purpose. ~ Vince Lombardi

237:Successful people don’t do it alone. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

238:Success is not success without a successor. ~ T D Jakes

239:Success is only measured in terms of JOY ~ Esther Hicks

240:Success is sequential, not simultaneous ~ Gary W Keller

241:Success is the best builder of character. ~ Adolph Rupp

242:Success is the intelligent use of mistakes. ~ Anonymous

243:Success is the residue of planning. ~ Benjamin Franklin

244:Success is unpredictable and fragile. ~ Brigitte Bardot

245:Success was his chosen form of revenge. ~ Michael Lewis

246:The best revenge in the world is success. ~ Suge Knight

247:There are no keys to success - only tools. ~ Criss Jami

248:There is no success or failure in Nature. ~ John Searle

249:The road to success is through commitment. ~ Will Smith

250:The true success is to labour. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

251:Training meets preparation meets success. ~ Celia Aaron

252:What if the Secret to Success is Failure?. ~ Paul Tough

253:Your Kindness Will Lead You to Success ~ Bruce Kasanoff

254:Action is the foundation of all success. ~ Pablo Picasso

255:All men seek one goal: success or happiness. ~ Aristotle

256:Ease leads to habit, as success to ease. ~ George Crabbe

257:Failure is not a prerequisite for success. ~ Jason Fried

258:Failure is success if we learn from it. ~ Malcolm Forbes

259:If you can worry, you can imagine success! ~ Tim Sanders

260:I wanted to be successful, not famous. ~ George Harrison

261:life is a succession of readjustments. ~ Elizabeth Bowen

262:NEVER be surprised by your own success! ~ Steve Maraboli

263:Overnight success stories take a long time. ~ Steve Jobs

264:Practice is simply preparation for success. ~ Zig Ziglar

265:Success and failure are equally surprising. ~ Daryl Hall

266:Success and failure are terrible traps. ~ Frederick Lenz

267:Success doesn't stop when you get there ~ Michael Jordan

268:Success has many fathers, failure many sons. ~ Ryan Ross

269:Success is ninety-nine percent failure. ~ Soichiro Honda

270:Success is the most valuable commodity. ~ Dominick Dunne

271:The best revenge is the massive success. ~ Frank Sinatra

272:The first rule for success? Show up. ~ Jeanne Robertson

273:The key to success is to be easy to work with. ~ DJ Quik

274:The secret of my success is my hairspray. ~ Richard Gere

275:Why be a man when you can be a success? ~ Bertolt Brecht

276:Why be a man when you can be a success. ~ Bertolt Brecht

277:You build a successful life a day at a time. ~ Lou Holtz

278:Action is the fundamental key to success. ~ Pablo Picasso

279:A visionary pastor is a successful pastor. ~ George Barna

280:Don’t aim for perfection, aim for success. ~ Eike Batista

281:eighty percent of success is just showing up. ~ Anonymous

282:Everything can be undone, including success. ~ Lynda Obst

283:Getting a mentor is the shortcut to success. ~ Bo S nchez

284:How success changes the opinion of men! ~ Maria Edgeworth

285:I don't expect success. I prepare for it. ~ Ryan Reynolds

286:I love seeing my husband having success. ~ Heather Dubrow

287:Impatience never commanded success. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

288:I still come closest to success with drawing. ~ Paul Klee

289:I've had great success being a total idiot. ~ Jerry Lewis

290:learn from their successes and mistakes. This ~ Anonymous

291:My literary success meant nothing to me ~ Taylor Caldwell

292:Our greatest fear is fear of success. ~ Steven Pressfield

293:success and like free enterprise and all ~ William Gaddis

294:Successful guilt is the bane of society ~ Publilius Syrus

295:Successful innovations become conventions. ~ Mason Cooley

296:Successful people fail their way to the top! ~ Jeff Olson

297:Successful villany is called virtue. ~ Seneca the Younger

298:success is a journey, not a destination. ~ Robin S Sharma

299:Success is not a mystery. It is a science. ~ John Assaraf

300:Success isnt permanent & failure isnt fatal. ~ Mike Ditka

301:Success shuns the man who lacks ideas. ~ David J Schwartz

302:The mind is hopeful; success is in God's hands. ~ Plautus

303:The path to success is not a straight line. ~ Harley King

304:There is no success without a successor. ~ John C Maxwell

305:There isn't a formal definition of success. ~ Ernest Sosa

306:The successful writer listens to himself. ~ Frank Herbert

307:Three keys to success: read, read, read. ~ Vladimir Lenin

308:To me, success is choice and opportunity. ~ Harrison Ford

309:We all have paid the cost of our success. ~ M F Moonzajer

310:Well, a lot of successes come by mistake. ~ Scott Weiland

311:Without Struggle There Is No Success ~ Frederick Douglass

312:You need lucky breaks to be successful. ~ Richard Branson

313:Affirmation + Imagery + Emotion = Success ~ Robert Anthony

314:A man once said that the pinnacle of success ~ Todd Snider

315:Comedy can't be about continuous success. ~ Martin Freeman

316:Dare to dream of your great success. ~ Mary Anne Radmacher

317:Enthusiasm is the engine of success. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

318:I am as successful as I make up my mind to be ~ Louise Hay

319:I am not successful, in terms of Hollywood. ~ Robin Wright

320:I have had a lot of success with failure ~ Thomas A Edison

321:I hold the Key to my Own Success! (You do too!) ~ Kid Rock

322:Individual honors come with team success. ~ Gilbert Arenas

323:In success we shall find seeds of despair ~ Steven Erikson

324:It's man's to fight, but heaven's to give success. ~ Homer

325:It takes many, many failures to reach success. ~ Frank Mir

326:Live your vision and demand your success. ~ Steve Maraboli

327:Mental toughness is essential to success. ~ Vince Lombardi

328:Only the insane equate pain with success. ~ American McGee

329:Passion or skill + usefulness = success ~ Chris Guillebeau

330:Success comes from any and all directions. ~ Deepak Chopra

331:Success doesn't change you... It reveals you ~ Johnny Depp

332:Success has always been a great liar ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

333:Success in life means living by your values. ~ Russ Harris

334:Success is achieved in inches, not miles. ~ John C Maxwell

335:Success is buried in the garden of failure. ~ Rick Wakeman

336:Success is how you bounce on the bottom. ~ George S Patton

337:Success is never so interesting as struggle ~ Willa Cather

338:suffering is the essence of success!!! ~ A P J Abdul Kalam

339:... there is no deodorant like success. ~ Elizabeth Taylor

340:There is no growth or success without change. ~ Ed Catmull

341:Up from the ashes come the roses of success. ~ Ian Fleming

342:We hate it when our friends become successful. ~ Morrissey

343:Ask: “What does it take to be successful here? ~ Chris Voss

344:A strenuous soul hates cheap success. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

345:Be careful of success; it has a dark side. ~ Robert Redford

346:'Best Man Holiday' was a very successful film. ~ Kevin Hart

347:CHAPTER LXI THE SUCCESS OF LADY AUGUSTUS ~ Anthony Trollope

348:Coquetry is the art of successful deception. ~ Louise Colet

349:Embrace the inspiration of people’s success. ~ Guy Kawasaki

350:Envy was just the tax you paid on success. ~ David Nicholls

351:Even success softens not the heart of the envious. ~ Pindar

352:Failure is not an option. Success is just a process. ~ Wale

353:Humility is a byproduct of enduring success. ~ Iimani David

354:I loved Australia. I was very successful there ~ Todd Barry

355:In every failure is the seed of success... ~ Deepak Chopra

356:In every failure lies the seeds of success. ~ Deepak Chopra

357:It's not about success, it's about progress. ~ Tony Robbins

358:It takes years to make an overnight success. ~ Eddie Cantor

359:My success has surpassed my childhood dreams. ~ Lisa Leslie

360:Now success was like lust, she's good to the touch, ~ Jay Z

361:Remember there is no success without hard work. ~ Sophocles

362:Success comes from within, not from without. ~ Rhonda Byrne

363:Success for me is to go out there and dominate. ~ Jon Jones

364:Success has always been a great liar. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

365:Success is a state of mind, waiting for action. ~ Jon Jones

366:Success makes you less intimidated by things. ~ Nate Silver

367:The first step to success it's to imagine it ~ Pete Hautman

368:The key to success is emotional stability. ~ Warren Buffett

369:The real secret of success is enthusiasm. ~ Walter Chrysler

370:The secret of my success is longevity. ~ Charles Hartshorne

371:Without possessions, success, fame; who are you? ~ Rajneesh

372:You cannot be successful without failure. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

373:you cannot pursue success; success ensues. ~ Robin S Sharma

374:You must develop yourself to be successful ~ John C Maxwell

375:Aim for service and success will follow! ~ Albert Schweitzer

376:Believe you will be successful and you will. ~ Dale Carnegie

377:Dark accurate plunger down the successive knell ~ Allen Tate

378:Efficiency and focus are the keys to success. ~ Robert Crais

379:Eighty percent of success is just showing up. ~ Stephen King

380:Every shuttle mission's been successful. ~ Christa McAuliffe

381:Failure is a necessary ingredient for success. ~ Bran Ferren

382:Failure is a stepping stone to success. ~ Arianna Huffington

383:Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success. ~ John Keats

384:Failure is part of the process of success. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

385:Failure is temporary. Success is permanent. ~ Kulpreet Yadav

386:Failures are easier to repeat than successes. ~ Mason Cooley

387:Fame is cool but I believe in success. ~ Floyd Mayweather Jr

388:FOCUS - Follow One Course Until Successful ~ Robert Kiyosaki

389:Follow your passion and you'll be successful. ~ Duane Ludwig

390:Give me a highly successful unionized industry. ~ Jack Welch

391:I didn't become successful until I became myself ~ Sam Smith

392:I don't have to be a success. I can just try. ~ Terry Bozzio

393:I have no inflated ideas about success anyway. ~ Trevor Dunn

394:Mistakes come from doing, but so does success. ~ John Wooden

395:Much success to you, even if you wish me the opposite. ~ Nas

396:My success rate is 100 percent. Do the math. ~ Charlie Sheen

397:Nothing's funny about someone who's successful. ~ Drew Carey

398:Patience, passion and perseverance equals success. ~ Pitbull

399:Science is a collection of successful recipes. ~ Paul Val ry

400:Success always demands a greater effort. ~ Winston Churchill

401:Success creates opportunities for other people. ~ Liz Murray

402:Success doesn't teach as many lessons as failure ~ Jay Samit

403:Successful rebellions always begin in secret. ~ Stephen King

404:Success has nothing to do with happiness. ~ Gillian Anderson

405:Success in crime always invites to worse deeds ~ Edward Coke

406:Success is about playing to your strengths. ~ Sophia Amoruso

407:Success is loving life and daring to live it. ~ Maya Angelou

408:Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions. ~ William James

409:The path to success requires you to commit. ~ DeVon Franklin

410:There's no right or wrong, success or failure. ~ Miley Cyrus

411:The secret of success is focus of purpose. ~ Thomas A Edison

412:The success of the film is down to the crew. ~ Dougray Scott

413:Visualize success, but don't believe your eyes. ~ A C Newman

414:We learn from failure, not from success!" When ~ Bram Stoker

415:You are only an attitude away from success! ~ John C Maxwell

416:Action is the universal language of success. ~ Steve Maraboli

417:Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom. ~ Euripides

418:An overnight success is ten years in the making. ~ Tom Clancy

419:considered to complete successfully. Other values ~ Anonymous

420:Dress for success. Also arm yourself for it. ~ Jesse Petersen

421:Europe's biggest problem is its success. ~ Timothy Garton Ash

422:Every success is the mother of countless others. ~ Henry Ford

423:Failure is inevitable. Success is elusive. ~ Steven Spielberg

424:Failure is just success rounded down, my friend! ~ Ryan North

425:Failure is the tuition you pay for success. ~ Craig Groeschel

426:Focused, hard work is the real key to success. ~ John Carmack

427:It is the success which makes great men. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

428:Mistakes are the stepping stones to success. ~ John C Maxwell

429:Nobody accomplishes success by themselves. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

430:Sometimes success is disguised as hard work. ~ S Truett Cathy

431:Success can create more madness than happiness. ~ Billy Ocean

432:Success covers a multitude of blunders. ~ George Bernard Shaw

433:Success, for me, is a song that can deliver shivers. ~ Grimes

434:Success is 90 percent dependent on our mind-set. ~ Marie Kond

435:Success is a place in time, Don't be late ~ Julian Pencilliah

436:Success is fucking up on your own terms. ~ Guillermo del Toro

437:Success is not permanent & failure is not fatal. ~ Mike Ditka

438:Success isn't permanent and failure isn't fatal. ~ Mike Ditka

439:Success sabotages the memories of the successful. ~ Anonymous

440:Success! to thee, as to a God, men bend the knee. ~ Aeschylus

441:The jests of the rich are ever successful. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

442:The key to success is to stay clean at all times. ~ DJ Khaled

443:The motive of success is not enough. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

444:There's no abiding success without commitment. ~ Tony Robbins

445:Unselfishness is the key to success in higher life ~ Samarpan

446:We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it. ~ John Adams

447:When it comes to success. Rent is due everyday ~ Darren Hardy

448:Willingness to take risks is the path to success. ~ Anonymous

449:Willingness to take risks is the path to success. ~ Biz Stone

450:You cannot keep determined people for success. ~ Mary Kay Ash

451:You learn more in failure than you ever do in success ~ Jay Z

452:99 percent of success is built on failure. ~ Charles Kettering

453:Action is the foundational key to all success. ~ Pablo Picasso

454:A successful business is either loved or needed. ~ Ted Leonsis

455:Behind every successful fortune there is a crime. ~ Mario Puzo

456:C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success. ~ Dennis Ritchie

457:consistency is a critical component of success. ~ Darren Hardy

458:Everybody that's successful lays a blueprint out. ~ Kevin Hart

459:Failure is part of the process of success. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki

460:FOCUS - Follow One Course Until Successful ~ Robert T Kiyosaki

461:FOCUS: Follow One Course Until Successful. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki

462:For Kim did nothing with an immense success. ~ Rudyard Kipling

463:His head was turned by too great success. ~ Seneca the Younger

464:I'm not going to apologize for being successful. ~ Mitt Romney

465:I remember my mistakes more than my success. ~ Adrian Peterson

466:I think I have enough to be successful out there. ~ Eddy Curry

467:I've had great success in everything I've done. ~ Donald Trump

468:Play without fear, and you will be successful. ~ Mario Lemieux

469:Proceed toward "success" with extreme caution. ~ Bryant McGill

470:Silhouette is what makes anything successful. ~ Sophia Amoruso

471:So important to keep the pathway of success clean. ~ DJ Khaled

472:Some days success just means not giving up. ~ Steve Roggenbuck

473:Sometimes failure is the beginning of success ~ Astrid Scholte

474:Success always demands a greater effort. ~ Winston S Churchill

475:Success and money can really be quite blinding. ~ Jim Harrison

476:Success builds character, failure reveals it. ~ Dave Checketts

477:Success can eliminate as many options as failure ~ Tom Robbins

478:Success in never final; failure is never fatal ~ Conrad Hilton

479:Success is about taking advantage of opportunity. ~ Mike Ditka

480:Success is achieving what one really wants. ~ Swami Kriyananda

481:Success is sweetest to one who has known failure. ~ B C Forbes

482:Success makes a lot of bad shit go away. So ~ Michael Connelly

483:Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation ~ Zig Ziglar

484:Success ... seems to be connected with action. ~ Conrad Hilton

485:Success, which hides behind time’s lag. ~ Marguerite de Angeli

486:The realism of failure, the romance of success. ~ Mason Cooley

487:There is no abiding success without commitment. ~ Tony Robbins

488:There is no growth or success without change. For ~ Ed Catmull

489:The road to success just might be your driveway. ~ Joey Reiman

490:The soul of success is surrendering to what is. ~ Phil Jackson

491:The success I've achieved comes to me from God ~ Justin Bieber

492:UNSUCCESSFULLY TRYING TO manage a life that ~ M William Phelps

493:Weeds are out most successful cultivated crop. ~ Richard Mabey

494:Without new ideas success can become stale. ~ Anthony Bourdain

495:Work hard in silence, let success be your noise. ~ Frank Ocean

496:You can judge the success of a man by his bodyguards! ~ Prince

497:A minute's success pays the failure of years. ~ Robert Browning

498:A minute’s success pays the failure of years. ~ Robert Browning

499:A successful murder depends on knowing your victim, ~ P D James

500:Coral Gables was successful from the start. ~ Barry Eichengreen