179 Poetry
116 Integral Yoga
74 Occultism
58 Christianity
49 Philosophy
35 Fiction
32 Yoga
32 Psychology
19 Mysticism
18 Mythology
10 Hinduism
6 Theosophy
6 Baha i Faith
5 Philsophy
4 Sufism
3 Integral Theory
2 Zen
2 Science
2 Buddhism
1 Thelema
1 Education
1 Alchemy
85 Sri Aurobindo
41 Nolini Kanta Gupta
36 The Mother
31 James George Frazer
28 Carl Jung
27 Sri Ramakrishna
26 H P Lovecraft
25 Satprem
19 Plotinus
17 William Butler Yeats
15 Saint Augustine of Hippo
13 Ovid
12 Walt Whitman
12 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
12 Percy Bysshe Shelley
11 Saint John of Climacus
11 Lucretius
9 Vyasa
9 Jalaluddin Rumi
9 Aleister Crowley
8 Robert Browning
8 Franz Bardon
7 William Wordsworth
7 Anonymous
6 John Keats
6 Friedrich Nietzsche
6 Baha u llah
6 Alice Bailey
5 Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 Joseph Campbell
5 Jorge Luis Borges
5 Aldous Huxley
4 Swami Vivekananda
4 Plato
4 George Van Vrekhem
4 Edgar Allan Poe
3 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
3 Henry David Thoreau
3 Hafiz
2 Symeon the New Theologian
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Rainer Maria Rilke
2 Paul Richard
2 Mechthild of Magdeburg
2 Kabir
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Jordan Peterson
2 Ibn Arabi
2 Farid ud-Din Attar
2 Allama Muhammad Iqbal
2 Abu-Said Abil-Kheir
2 A B Purani
31 The Golden Bough
26 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
26 Lovecraft - Poems
17 Yeats - Poems
16 Collected Poems
14 Mysterium Coniunctionis
14 City of God
13 Metamorphoses
12 Whitman - Poems
12 Shelley - Poems
11 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
11 The Bible
11 Of The Nature Of Things
10 Savitri
9 Vishnu Purana
9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
8 The Divine Comedy
8 Hymn of the Universe
8 Browning - Poems
7 Wordsworth - Poems
7 Rumi - Poems
7 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
7 5.1.01 - Ilion
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
6 Prayers And Meditations
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
6 Keats - Poems
6 Initiation Into Hermetics
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
6 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
5 Words Of Long Ago
5 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
5 The Practice of Psycho therapy
5 The Perennial Philosophy
5 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
5 On the Way to Supermanhood
5 Letters On Yoga III
5 Labyrinths
5 Kena and Other Upanishads
5 Emerson - Poems
4 The Synthesis Of Yoga
4 The Secret Of The Veda
4 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
4 The Life Divine
4 Talks
4 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
4 Preparing for the Miraculous
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
4 Liber ABA
4 Letters On Yoga IV
4 Letters On Yoga II
4 Essays On The Gita
4 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
3 Walden
3 The Book of Certitude
3 Some Answers From The Mother
3 Record of Yoga
3 Questions And Answers 1956
3 Poe - Poems
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
3 Faust
3 Bhakti-Yoga
3 Aion
3 Agenda Vol 03
3 Agenda Vol 01
2 Vedic and Philological Studies
2 The Practice of Magical Evocation
2 The Phenomenon of Man
2 Selected Fictions
2 Rilke - Poems
2 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
2 Questions And Answers 1954
2 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
2 Maps of Meaning
2 Magick Without Tears
2 Isha Upanishad
2 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
2 Crowley - Poems
2 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
2 Arabi - Poems
2 Anonymous - Poems
2 Agenda Vol 13
2 Agenda Vol 08
00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We can make a distinction here between two types of expression which we have put together indiscriminately, figures and symbols. Figures, we may say, are those that are constructed by the rational mind, the intellect; they are mere metaphors and similes and are not organically related to the thing experienced, but put round it as a robe that can be dropped or changed without affecting the experience itself. Thus, for example, when the Upanishad says, tmnam rathinam viddhi (Know that the soul is the master of the chariot who sits within it) or indriyi haynhu (The senses, they say, are the horses), we have here only a comparison or analogy that is common and natural to the poetic manner. The particular figure or simile used is not inevitable to the idea or experience that it seeks to express, its part and parcel. On the other hand, take this Upanishadic perception: hirayamayena patrea satyasyphitam mukham (The face of the Truth lies hidden under the golden orb). Here the symbol is not mere analogy or comparison, a figure; it is one with the very substance of the experience the two cannot be separated. Or when the Vedas speak of the kindling of the Fire, the rushing of the waters or the rise of the Dawn, the images though taken from the material world, are not used for the sake of mere comparison, but they are the embodiments, the living forms of truths experienced in another world.
When a Mystic refers to the Solar Light or to the Fire the light, for example, that struck down Saul and transformed him into Saint Paul or the burning bush that visited Moses, it is not the physical or material object that he means and yet it is that in a way. It is the materialization of something that is fundamentally not material: some movement in an inner consciousness precipitates itself into the region of the senses and takes from out of the material the form commensurable with its nature that it finds there.
And there is such a commensurability or parallelism between the various levels of consciousness, in and through all the differences that separate them from one another. Thus an object or a movement apprehended on the physical plane has a sort of line of re-echoing images extended in a series along the whole gradation of the inner planes; otherwise viewed, an object or movement in the innermost consciousness translates itself in varying modes from plane to plane down to the most material, where it appears in its grossest form as a concrete three-dimensional object or a mechanical movement. This parallelism or commensurability by virtue of which the different and divergent states of consciousness can portray or represent each other is the source of all symbolism.
A symbol symbolizes something for this reason that both possess in common a certain identical, at least similar, quality or rhythm or vibration, the symbol possessing it in a grosser or more apparent or sensuous form than the thing symbolized does. Sometimes it may happen that it is more than a certain quality or rhythm or vibration that is common between the two: the symbol in its entirety is the thing symbolized but thrown down on another plane, it is the embodiment of the latter in a more concrete world. The light and the Fire that Saint Paul and Moses saw appear to be of this kind.
Thus there is a great diversity of symbols. At the one end is the mere metaphor or simile or allegory ('figure', as we have called it) and at the other end is the symbol identical with the thing symbolized. And upon this inner character of the symbol depends also to a large extent its range and scope. There are symbols which are universal and intimately ingrained in the human consciousness itself. Mankind has used them in all ages and climes almost in the same sense and significance. There are others that are limited to peoples and ages. They are made out of forms that are of local and temporal interest and importance. Their significances vary according to time and place. Finally, there are symbols which are true of the individual consciousness only; they depend on personal peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, on one's environment and upbringing and education.
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00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
First of all, he has the Sun; it is the primary light by which he lives and moves. When the Sun sets, the Moon rises to replace it. When both the Sun and the Moon set, he has recourse to the Fire. And when the Fire, too, is extinguished, there comes the Word. In the end, when the Fire is quieted and the Word silenced, man is lighted by the Light of the Atman. This Atman is All-Knowledge; it is secreted within the life, within the heart: it is selfluminous Vijnamaya preu rdyantar jyoti..
The progression indicated by the order of succession points to a gradual withdrawal from the outer to the inner light, from the surface to the deep, from the obvious to the secret, from the actual and derivative to the real and original. We begin by the senses and move towards the Spirit.
The Sun is the first and the most immediate source of light that man has and needs. He is the presiding deity of our waking consciousness and has his seat in the eyecakusa ditya, ditya caku bhtvakii prviat. The eye is the representative of the senses; it is the sense par excellence. In truth, sense-perception is the initial light with which we have to guide us, it is the light with which we start on the way. A developed stage comes when the Sun sets for us, that is to say, when we retire from the senses and rise into the mind, whose divinity is the Moon. It is the mental knowledge, the light of reason and intelligence, of reflection and imagination that govern our consciousness. We have to proceed farther and get beyond the mind, exceed the derivative light of the Moon. So when the Moon sets, the Fire is kindled. It is the light of the ardent and aspiring heart, the glow of an inner urge, the instincts and inspirations of our secret life-will. Here we come into touch with a source of knowledge and realization, a guidance more direct than the mind and much deeper than the sense-perception. Still this light partakes more of heat than of pure luminosity; it is, one may say, incandescent feeling, but not vision. We must probe deeper, mount higherreach heights and profundities that are serene and transparent. the Fire is to be quieted and silenced, says the Upanishad. Then we come nearer, to the immediate vicinity of the Truth: an inner hearing opens, the direct voice of Truth the Wordreaches us to lead and guide. Even so, however, we have not come to the end of our journey; the Word of revelation is not the ultimate Light. The Word too is clothing, though a luminous clothinghiramayam ptram When this last veil dissolves and disappears, when utter silence, absolute calm and quietude reign in the entire consciousness, when no other lights trouble or distract our attention, there appears the Atman in its own body; we stand face to face with the source of all lights, the self of the Light, the light of the Self. We are that Light and we become that Light.
II. The Four Oblations
--
Svh is the offering and invocation. One must dedicate everything to the Divine, cast all one has or does into the Fire of Aspiration that blazes up towards the Most High, and through the tongue of that one-pointed flame call on the Divinity.
In doing so, in invoking the Truth and consecrating oneself to it, one begins to ascend to it step by step; and each step means a tearing of another veil and a further opening of the I passage. This graded mounting is vaakra.
--
Garhapatya is the Fire in the body-consciousness, the Fire of Earth, as it is sometimes called; Dakshina is the Fire of the moon or mind, and Ahavaniya that of life.10 The earthly fire is also the Fire of the sun; the sun is the source of all earth's heat and symbolises at the same time the spiritual light manifested in the physical consciousness. The lunar fire is also the Fire of the stars, the stars, mythologically, being the consorts or powers of the moon and they symbolise, in Yogic experience, the intuitive thoughts. the Fire of the life-force has its symbol in lightning, electric energy being its vehicle.
Agni in the physical consciousness is calledghapati, for the body is the house in which the soul is lodged and he is its keeper, guardian and lord. the Fire in the mental consciousness is called daki; for it is that which gives discernment, the power to discriminate between the truth and the falsehood, it is that which by the pressure of its heat and light cleaves the wrong away from the right. And the Fire in the life-force is called havanya; for pra is not only the plane of hunger and desire, but also of power and dynamism, it is that which calls forth forces, brings them into' play and it is that which is to be invoked for the progression of the Sacrifice, for an onward march on the spiritual path.
Of the three fires one is the upholderhe who gives the firm foundation, the stable house where the Sacrifice is performed and Truth realised; the second is the Knower, often called in the Veda jtaved, who guides and directs; and the third the Doer, the effective Power, the driving Energyvaivnara.
--
TheChhandyogya12 gives a whole typal scheme of this universal reality and explains how to realise it and what are the results of the experience. The Universal Brahman means the cosmic movement, the cyclic march of things and events taken in its global aspect. The typical movement that symbolises and epitomises the phenomenon, embodies the truth, is that of the sun. The movement consists of five stages which are called the fivefold sma Sma means the equal Brahman that is ever present in all, the Upanishad itself says deriving the word from sama It is Sma also because it is a rhythmic movement, a cadencea music of the spheres. And a rhythmic movement, in virtue of its being a wave, consists of these five stages: (i) the start, (ii) the rise, (iii) the peak, (iv) the decline and (v) the fall. Now the sun follows this curve and marks out the familiar divisions of the day: dawn, forenoon, noon, afternoon and sunset. Sometimes two other stages are added, one at each end, one of preparation and another of final lapse the twilights with regard to the sun and then ,we have seven instead of five smas Like the Sun, the Fire that is to say, the sacrificial Firecan also be seen in its fivefold cyclic movement: (i) the lighting, (ii) the smoke, (iii) the flame, (iv) smouldering and finally (v) extinction the fuel as it is rubbed to produce the Fire and the ashes may be added as the two supernumerary stages. Or again, we may take the cycle of five seasons or of the five worlds or of the deities that control these worlds. The living wealth of this earth is also symbolised in a quintetgoat and sheep and cattle and horse and finally man. Coming to the microcosm, we have in man the cycle of his five senses, basis of all knowledge and activity. For the macrocosm, to I bring out its vast extra-human complexity, the Upanishad refers to a quintet, each term of which is again a trinity: (i) the threefold Veda, the Divine Word that is the origin of creation, (ii) the three worlds or fieldsearth, air-belt or atmosphere and space, (iii) the three principles or deities ruling respectively these worldsFire, Air and Sun, (iv) their expressions, emanations or embodimentsstars and birds and light-rays, and finally, (v) the original inhabitants of these worldsto earth belong the reptiles, to the mid-region the Gandharvas and to heaven the ancient Fathers.
Now, this is the All, the Universal. One has to realise it and possess in one's consciousness. And that can be done only in one way: one has to identify oneself with it, be one with it, become it. Thus by losing one's individuality one lives the life universal; the small lean separate life is enlarged and moulded in the rhythm of the Rich and the Vast. It is thus that man shares in the consciousness and energy that inspire and move and sustain the cosmos. The Upanishad most emphatically enjoins that one must not decry this cosmic godhead or deny any of its elements, not even such as are a taboo to the puritan mind. It is in and through an unimpaired global consciousness that one attains the All-Life and lives uninterruptedly and perennially: Sarvamanveti jyok jvati.
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0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
In the burning flame before him Sri Ramakrishna performed the rituals of destroying his attachment to relatives, friends, body, mind, sense-organs, ego, and the world. The leaping flame swallowed it all, making the initiate free and pure. The sacred thread and the tuft of hair were consigned to the Fire, completing his severance from caste, sex, and society. Last of all he burnt in that fire, with all that is holy as his witness, his desire for enjoyment here and hereafter. He uttered the sacred mantras giving assurance of safety and fearlessness to all beings, who were only manifestations of his own Self. The rites completed, the disciple received from the guru the loin-cloth and ochre robe, the emblems of his new life.
The teacher and the disciple repaired to the meditation room near by. Totapuri began to impart to Sri Ramakrishna the great truths of Vedanta.
--
In the nirvikalpa samadhi Sri Ramakrishna had realized that Brahman alone is real and the world illusory. By keeping his mind six months on the plane of the non-dual Brahman, he had attained to the state of the vijnani, the knower of Truth in a special and very rich sense, who sees Brahman not only in himself and in the transcendental Absolute, but in everything of the world. In this state of vijnana, sometimes, bereft of body-consciousness, he would regard himself as one with Brahman; sometimes, conscious of the dual world, he would regard himself as God's devotee, servant, or child. In order to enable the Master to work for the welfare of humanity, the Divine Mother had kept in him a trace of ego, which he described — according to his mood — as the "ego of Knowledge", the "ego of Devotion", the "ego of a child", or the "ego of a servant". In any case this ego of the Master, consumed by the Fire of the Knowledge of Brahman, was an appearance only, like a burnt string. He often referred to this ego as the "ripe ego" in contrast with the ego of the bound soul, which he described as the "unripe" or "green" ego. The ego of the bound soul identifies itself with the body, relatives, possessions, and the world; but the "ripe ego", illumined by Divine Knowledge, knows the body, relatives, possessions, and the world to be unreal and establishes a relationship of love with God alone. Through this "ripe ego" Sri Ramakrishna dealt with the world and his wife. One day, while stroking his feet, Sarada Devi asked the Master, "What do you think of me?" Quick came the answer: "The Mother who is worshipped in the temple is the mother who has given birth to my body and is now living in the nahabat, and it is She again who is stroking my feet at this moment. Indeed, I always look on you as the personification of the Blissful Mother Kali."
Sarada Devi, in the company of her husband, had rare spiritual experiences. She said: "I have no words to describe my wonderful exaltation of spirit as I watched him in his different moods. Under the influence of divine emotion he would sometimes talk on abstruse subjects, sometimes laugh, sometimes weep, and sometimes become perfectly motionless in samadhi. This would continue throughout the night. There was such an extraordinary divine presence in him that now and then I would shake with fear and wonder how the night would pass. Months went by in this way. Then one day he discovered that I had to keep awake the whole night lest, during my sleep, he should go into samadhi — for it might happen at any moment —, and so he asked me to sleep in the nahabat."
--
Narendra was born in Calcutta on January 12, 1863, of an aristocratic kayastha family. His mother was steeped in the great Hindu epics, and his father, a distinguished attorney of the Calcutta High Court, was an agnostic about religion, a friend of the poor, and a mocker at social conventions. Even in his boyhood and youth Narendra possessed great physical courage and presence of mind, a vivid imagination, deep power of thought, keen intelligence, an extraordinary memory, a love of truth, a passion for purity, a spirit of independence, and a tender heart. An expert musician, he also acquired proficiency in physics, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, history, and literature. He grew up into an extremely handsome young man. Even as a child he practised meditation and showed great power of concentration. Though free and passionate in word and action, he took the vow of austere religious chastity and never allowed the Fire of purity to be extinguished by the slightest defilement of body or soul.
As he read in college the rationalistic Western philosophers of the nineteenth century, his boyhood faith in God and religion was unsettled. He would not accept religion on mere faith; he wanted demonstration of God. But very soon his passionate nature discovered that mere Universal Reason was cold and bloodless. His emotional nature, dissatisfied with a mere abstraction, required a concrete support to help him in the hours of temptation. He wanted an external power, a guru, who by embodying perfection in the flesh would still the commotion of his soul. Attracted by the magnetic personality of Keshab, he joined the Brahmo Samaj and became a singer in its choir. But in the Samaj he did not find the guru who could say that he had seen God.
--
In April 1885 the Master's throat became inflamed. Prolonged conversation or absorption in samadhi, making the blood flow into the throat, would aggravate the pain. Yet when the annual Vaishnava festival was celebrated at Panihati, Sri Ramakrishna attended it against the doctor's advice. With a group of disciples he spent himself in music, dance, and ecstasy. The illness took a turn for the worse and was diagnosed as "clergyman's sore throat". The patient was cautioned against conversation and ecstasies. Though he followed the physician's directions regarding medicine and diet, he could neither control his trances nor withhold from seekers the solace of his advice. Sometimes, like a sulky child, he would complain to the Mother about the crowds, who gave him no rest day or night. He was overheard to say to Her; "Why do You bring here all these worthless people, who are like milk diluted with five times its own quantity of water? My eyes are almost destroyed with blowing the Fire to dry up the water. My health is gone. It is beyond my strength. Do it Yourself, if You want it done. This (pointing to his own body) is but a perforated drum, and if you go on beating it day in and day out, how long will it last?"
But his large heart never turned anyone away. He said, "Let me be condemned to be born over and over again, even in the form of a dog, if I can be of help to a single soul." And he bore the pain, singing cheerfully, "Let the body be preoccupied with illness, but, O mind, dwell for ever in God's Bliss!"
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0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
3 3 3 and places the Fire in the Thurible.
I strike the Bell: I light the flame:
--
He puts the first Cake on the Fire of the Thurible.
I burn the Incense-cake, proclaim
--
takes twigs to kindle the Fire in which it burns itself.
[135]
--
N. the Fire that twisteth itself and burneth like a
scorpion.
--
Fierce are the Fires of the Universe, and on their
daggers they hold aloft the bleeding heart of earth.
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0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
vessels used for cooking are very large, the top of the Fireplaces should not be much higher than ground level. This must
be checked while the kitchen is being repaired. The top of
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0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
becomes transformed through being immersed in fire and at last takes on the Fire's
own properties. The force with which the familiar similitude is driven home
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0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Keep always burning in you the Fire of aspiration and purification which I have kindled there.
Without perseverance one never attains anything.
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01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Too high the Fire spiritual dare not blaze.
4.20
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01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"The zeal for the Lord hath eaten me up." Such has indeed been the case with Pascal, almost literally. the Fire that burned in him was too ardent and vehement for the vehicle, the material instrument, which was very soon used up and reduced to ashes. At twenty-four he was already a broken man, being struck with paralysis and neuras thenia; he died at the comparatively early age of 39, emulating, as it were, the life career of his Lord the Christ who died at 33. the Fire martyrised the body, but kindled and brought forth experiences and realisations that save and truths that abide. It was the Divine Fire whose vision and experience he had on the famous night of 23 November 1654 which brought about his final and definitive conversion. It was the same fire that had blazed up in his brain, while yet a boy, and made him a precocious genius, a marvel of intellectual power in the exact sciences. At 12 this prodigy discovered by himself the 32nd proposition of Euclid, Book I. At sixteen he wrote a treatise on conic sections. At nineteen he invented a calculating machine which, without the help of any mathematical rule or process, gave absolutely accurate results. At twenty-three he published his experiments with vacuum. At twenty-five he conducted the well-known experiment from the tower of St. Jacques, proving the existence of atmospheric pressure. His studies in infinitesimal calculus were remarkably creative and original. And it might be said he was a pioneer in quite a new branch of mathematics, viz., the mathematical theory of probability. We shall see presently how his preoccupation with the mathematics of chance and probability coloured and reinforced his metaphysics and theology.
But the pressure upon his dynamic and heated brain the fiery zeal in his mindwas already proving too much and he was advised medically to take complete rest. Thereupon followed what was known as Pascal's mundane lifea period of distraction and dissipation; but this did not last long nor was it of a serious nature. The inner fire could brook no delay, it was eager and impatient to englobe other fields and domains. Indeed, it turned to its own field the heart. Pascal became initiated into the mystery of Faith and Grace. Still he had to pass through a terrible period of dejection and despair: the life of the world had given him no rest or relaxation, it served only to fill his cup of misery to the brim. But the hour of final relief was not long postponed: the Grace came to him, even as it came to Moses or St. Paul as a sudden flare of fire which burnt up the Dark Night and opened out the portals of Morning Glory.
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0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
or resists, throw it into the flame of Agni, which is the Fire of
aspiration.
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0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Then comes the story of Anusuya and her husb and (who is truly a husb and a very good man, but well, not a god, after all!), who was sleeping with his head resting upon Anusuyas knees. They had finished their puja (both of them were worshippers of Shiva), and after their puja he was resting, sleeping, with his head on Anusuyas knees. Meanwhile, the gods had descended upon earth, particularly this Parvati, and they saw Anusuya like that. Then Parvati exclaimed, This is a good occasion! Not very far away a cooking fire was burning. With her power, she sent the Fire rolling down onto Anusuyas feetwhich startled her because it hurt. It began to burn; not one cry, not one movement, nothing because she didnt want to awaken her husband. But she began invoking Shiva (Shiva was there). And because she invoked Shiva (it is lovely in the story), because she invoked Shiva, Shivas foot began burning! (Mother laughs) Then Narada showed Shiva to Parvati: Look what you are doing; you are burning your husbands foot! So Parvati made the opposite gesture and the Fire was put out.
Thats how it went.
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0 1959-06-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I had said nothing to X about these various dreams before he told me the story of my last three existences: three times I committed suicide the first by fire, the second by hanging, and the third by throwing myself into the void. During the first of these last three existences, I was married to a very good woman, but for some reason I abandoned my wife and I was wandering here and there in search of something. Then I met a sannyasi who wanted to make me his disciple, but I could not make up my mind, I was neither this side nor that side, whereupon my wife came to me and pleaded with me to take her back. Apparently I rejected herso she threw herself into the Fire. Horror-stricken, I followed her, throwing myself into the Fire in turn. That was when I created a connection with certain beings [of the other worlds] and I fell under their power. For two other lives, under the influence of these beings, the same drama was repeated with a few variations.
During the second of these last three existences, I was married to the same woman whom I again abandoned under the influence of the same monk, and I again remained between two worlds wandering here and there. Again my wife came to plead with me and again I pushed her away. She hung herself, and I hung myself in turn.
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0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I found out the details: this boy had to go to the station, but on his way, he went into a shoe store just next to the station to buy a pair of sandals. As he entered, he saw a man there choosing a pair of womens shoes for himself! This seemed strange to him: Whats this man doing buying and he WATCHEDsuddenly, nothing more. He lost consciousness and no longer knew what happened to him. And thats how the story begana man selecting womens shoes in a shop! He must do strange thingsprobably intentionallyto attract peoples attention. Naturally, out of curiosity, the boy started watching, and that was thatall of a sudden, blank, nothing more! And long afterwards he found himself far away in a train with this man. Hes here now with his mother they came to thank me. Its he who gave me the details. Hes a nice boy, but all this has left him with some anxiety, especially when he speaks of it. Hes trying to forget. He told me hed like to join the army and asked my permission. The boy feels a need for force and he has the idea that to be part of such a force would be good for him. (Of course, he didnt tell me all this, hes not that conscious. But thats what he feels the need to be supported by an organization of force.) So I encouraged him. I told him it was a good idea. His mother wasnt very happy! She feared he was leaping from the frying pan into the Fire!
Another curious detail is that after having taken away all his appetite and having put him in the caf as a waiter, they told him, Now you must eat, so he tried to eat, and for four days he vomited up everything he put init was completely black! After that, he was able to start eating a little. Its a fantastic story!
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0 1962-07-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then and there I said to myself, This habit of cremating people is appallingly brutal! (They put the Fire in the mouth first.) He didnt know he was dead and thats how he learned it! From the reaction of the life of the form in the body.
Even when the body is in a thoroughly bad condition, it takes at least seven days for the life of the form to leave it. And for someone practicing yoga, this life is CONSCIOUS. So you burn people a few hours after the doctors have declared them dead, but the life of the form is every inch alive and, in those who have practiced yoga, conscious.
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0 1962-07-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here, Ill give you an example: A. wrote to tell me, If you know how to get in touch with Agni,1 let me know, because I need him! I gave the natural reply, that whats needed is aspiration for progress, a will for perfection, and that you kindle the Fire by burning your desires. I told him this in a way I call very concrete. Well, he answered (laughing), Ohhh! Youre living in abstractions. Thats not what I want, I want a living goda personality, you see!
Thats how people are.
--
Agni: the Fire of inner aspiration. In the Vedas it is represented by a particular god.
***
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0 1962-09-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I could see something almost like the Fire of battlean interesting spectacle! The body was very conscious of the Help it was getting, and that gave it a lot of confidence: it came out of the battle with a kind of increased certainty that it was being led just as it had to be in order to do the thing something nobody knows how to do externally, nobody! Nobody can knownei ther the process nor anything. Its entirely new.
Of course, the supreme Consciousness knows what Its doing and whats going to happen, in that It knows what It wants; but it isnt something that operates from cause to effect, and from events or circumstances to consequences, the way ordinary consciousness operates; its not like that at all, and thats why were unable to express it outwardly for the moment. Maybe later we will be able to spell something out, but it will never be more than (how can I put it?) just a story, right? Not THE thing itself.
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0 1964-12-02, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He has a political attachment to the dogma. For instance, after one of my conversations (I had a good number of conversations with him, three or four, on the mental level, and perfectly objective because his reactions were unexpected; to me they were very spontaneous, in the sense that I received answers that werent at all those I might have expectedwhich proves it was genuine), but for example, before his election, I met him once (there is a part of his mental being, a higher intelligence, thats very well formed, conscious, individualized), and I had a spontaneous conversation that I hadnt sought and which was very interesting. But at one point, I replied to something he said, and I told him with the force I have there [on that higher plane], The Lord is everywhereeven in hell the Lord is there. And then it caused such a violent reaction in him that, pfft! he vanished. I found it very striking. I dont know the dogma, but it seems that in hell, according to the Catholics, whats worse than suffering, the Fire and all that, is the absence of the Lord. It seems its a dogma that the Lord is absent from hell; and me, I was speaking of universal Oneness and I told him that.
There is another thing I remember very clearly, which struck me. It was after his election (but long before his trip to India was decided upon): he had come to India and he came to Pondicherry to meet me (not to meet me: he had come to Pondicherry, then he came and met me). Once in Pondicherry, he came and I saw him there, in the room where I receive people. We had a long conversation, a very long and interesting conversation, and suddenly (it was towards the end, it was time for him to go), when he rose, he was preoccupied by something. He told me, When you speak to your children about me, what will you tell them? You understand, the ego showing itself. So I looked at him (Mother smiles) and said, I will only tell them that we have been in communion in our love for the Supreme. Then he relaxed and left. It struck me. These things are very objective.
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0 1965-02-19, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the vision, the perception (it was like a perception, you know) wasnt exactly from very far because it had the accuracy of a microscope, but all was an object of observation. At that moment, all the Fires were starting, then hundreds of brickbats (not stones: brickbats) were bombarding all the windows and doors (all our windows, all the doors have been smashed in), which means infernal din: a pack of several hundred people, all drunk, bellowing, and shouts all over the place. So that bombardment of stones and those flames leaping up to the sky the whole sky was redit was all seen I was simply seated at my table; when the attack started, I was having my dinner, and a little before it started, that experience came, that consciousness: I wasnt this body anymore, I was the earth the physical truth-consciousness of the earth, to be exactwith a PEACE, a STILLNESS unknown to the physical. And it all seemed like an absolute Falsehood, without any element of truth behind it. Yet at the same time, I had a microscopic perception (but absolutely precise and exact) of all the points of falsehood IN THE ASHRAMS ATMOSPHERE that established the contact.
So if that consciousness that was there had been collective, if it had been possible to receive it collectively, NOTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN TOUCHED: the stones would have been thrown, but wouldnt have hit anyone. Thats how it would have been. For instance, a stone (a brickbat) was flung and hit my window; it fell on the roof there (even causing a water leak that had to be plugged), and I saw that very minute, I saw in the consciousness of the people present the exact vibration of Falsehood that had allowed the stone to hit there. And AT THE SAME TIME, simultaneously (it cant be said, but it was simultaneous), everywhere, all over the town and especially over the Ashram here, I saw all the points, the exact vibration of Falsehood in everyone or everything that made the contact possible.
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0 1966-06-29, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Spontaneously, Id say its the Fire or the breath that carries the whole world. Its the Fire that makes everything live that makes the chest breathe, that makes the sea heave
Thats not bad!
--
I dont know. Consciousness is the breath or the Fire that carries everything.
But if I say fire, theyll immediately say, Ah, consciousness is fire, then!
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0 1967-07-08, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I said, Well, thats what you should do with your past: burn it with the Fire of aspiration. Otherwise, you always remain hitched and fastened, a slave everywhere, with millstones around our necks.
But I tell you, later I realized that if I didnt burn my papers myself, the others kept the pieces! There were things on which I had written To be destroyed if I were to leave this body, Destroy without opening. Then I realized I couldnt trust anyone! So I destroyed them myself.
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0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But that division, that separated part came about when they burned him. Until then, I had kept him whole, and would have made him pass into the psychic as I do with everyone, peacefully, smoothly, without difficulty. But brrt! (same gesture of bursting) Its a frightful shock, you know! They put the Fire in the mouth first. Its Oh, the way men behave with each other I have SEEN all that, I have SEEN it. Its such a frightful, frightful thing!
And to think that It has happened not once or twice but hundreds of times that people who loved someone (they loved their father or brother, or their mother), as soon as that person is dead, if they see him in a dream or vision, they get terribly frightened and want to chase him away! Why? If I ask them why, its such a spontaneous movement in them that they cant answer me. They cant, they find it so natural that they are surprised I should ask the question.
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0 1968-03-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The impression that all realizations on the heights and all the horrible hells one may livein the Fire, they are all ONE. In the Flame, they are ONE. Up above, it all gets dissolved; down below, it all gets dissolved; and in the Flame, its ONE, there are no opposites anymore.
For me, it [what Mother felt in Satprem] was expressed through a sort of very strong, very luminous balance, and oh, with an extraordinary peace.
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0 1969-04-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know that L. went to Delhi to see Indira. He brought her a message about the situation up there [in Bengal]. Then, at the end of the conversation, he told her about the new Consciousness, saying she should open to this Consciousness and that its all-powerful (he repeated it all to me), all-powerful. He even told her, Even if there is a fire, you can walk through the Fire without danger if this Consciousness protects you, something like that. Just when he narrated it to me, they were holding there [in North India] a meeting of the Congress1 in a big pandal [dais], and the pandal caught fire and burned down! Indira was there, and she walked out unharmedjust when he was telling me about it! Its amusing (Mother laughs).
She is beginning to really have faith.
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0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now, you have completely confused the psychic and the spiritual. The psychic, the soul, the Fire within, Agni, does not belong to the mental bubble or to any bubble: it is the Divine in matter. It is that little Fire which opens the door to the great solar Fire of the New Consciousness. It is the instrument of the yoga of the superman (when I speak of turning on the psychic switch, I am there taking the word in the vulgar and ridiculous sense of people seeking visionary and occult experiencesnot in the true sense). Others in every age have had the experience of the psychic, of the inner Fire, but aside from the Rishis, no one used it to transform matter; the religions have made a purely devotional and mystical thing out of it. As for the spiritual, that includes all the planes of consciousness above the ordinary mind. It is the path of ascent. And that is where I repeatedly and emphatically, and from experience, say that those great Experiences, which have to be turned into spiritual summits, are part of the mental bubble (including the overmind): they are the rarefied summits on which the being thins out into a marvelous whiteness, immense, royal, without a ripple of trouble, in an eternal peacewhich can last for millenniums without its changing the world one iota, by definition. But the spiritual is not the supramental, and when one touches the supramental, it seems to be almost a whole other Spirit, it is so compact, warm, powerful, present, embodied and radiantly solid in broad daylight. That is the Radiance which Sri Aurobindo and Mother came to bring down on earththey said over and over that their yoga was new, new, newand it is through the simple little fire inside us that we can enter into direct contact with That, without sitting in the lotus position or leaving life. When one touches That, the spiritual heights seem pale. That is all I have to say. So we do not at all need to be superyogis to have this contact, and those who have found Nirvana, or what have you, have not advanced one inch toward That, because the clue to That is not up there at all or outside, but in your own small capacity of flame.
So if instead of splitting hairs, you set out boldly on the road, afire, you would perhaps discover that we are indeed at the Hour of God and that a single spark of sincere effort, at ones own level, opens doors which have been closed for millenniums.
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0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The young Indian students with whom I discuss your books understand perhaps better than Westerners the reason for all those bloody and apparently useless sacrifices the torments conflicts and revolts of your heroes condemned to death, the great Hunger that drives them beyond themselves for they know that these are like the contractions of childbirth, and that the thick shell of egoism, routine, conformism, intellectual and sentimental habits must be broken for the inner Divine to transpierce the surface of this life for the Divine is indeed WITHIN man, and life harbors its own hidden justification. Echoing the Upanishad, Sri Aurobindo tells us that The earth is His foothold. He also wrote, God is not only in the still small voice, but in the Fire and the whirlwind.
I think I am correctly interpreting the feeling of my young Indian friends when I say that they see the heroes of your novels as raw mystics, to use Claudels description of Rimbaud. This may seem a surprising attribute, considering your heroes atheism, but that is because we have too often confused mysticism or spirituality with religion, as Sri Aurobindo stresses. One need not believe in a personal, extracosmic God to be a mystic. (That is certainly why religion has from time to time taken upon itself to bum alive all the non-regular mystics.) Here we touch upon a huge confusion rooted in religions. Through their monks, sannyasins and ascetics, religions have shown us a purely contemplative, austere and lifeless side of mysticismindeed those mystics, like the religions they practice, live in a negation of life; they go through this vale of tears with their eyes exclusively fixed on the Beyond. But true mysticism is not so limited as that, it seeks to transform life, to reveal the Absolute hidden in it; it seeks to establish the kingdom of God in man, as Sri Aurobindo wrote, and not the kingdom of a Pope, clergy or sacerdotal class. If the modem world lives in conflict and anguish, if it is torn between being and doing, it is because religion has driven away God from this world, severed him from his creation and flung him back to some distant heaven or empty nirvana, thus denying any possibility of human perfection on this earth and digging an unbridgeable gulf between being and doing, between mystics sunk in their dreams and this world abandoned to the forces of evil, to Satan and all those who consent to get their hands dirty.
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0 1972-04-04, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For example, Mother, its absolutely useless to give them fire extinguishers, hoses and water if they dont make any effort to learn how to use the Fire extinguisher and keep the water hose in proper condition.
Yes, thats plain.
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02.01 - A Vedic Story, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sacrifice consists essentially in lighting the Fire and pouring fuelofferingsinto it so that it may burn always and brighter and brighter. It calls the gods, also, it is said, ascends to them, brings them down here to live among men, in men. It lifts men from the ordinary life and consciousness, takes them to the abode of the gods. In other words its function is to bring down and infuse into the human vessel the godly consciousness and delight and power. Its purpose is to divinise human life. Through the sacrifice man offers his present possessions, his body and life and mind to the Deity and deities and by this surrender and submission constant and unfailing (namas) he awakens the Divine in him the Agni that is to lead him to the divine consummation.
Fire then is the energy of consciousness secreted in the heart of things. It is that which moves the creation upward, produces the unfolding evolution that is history, both individual and collective. It is kindled, it increases in volume and strength and purity and effectiveness, as and when a lower element is offered and submitted to a higher reality and this higher reality impinges upon the lower one (which is what the rubbing of the arai or the pressing of the soma symbolises); the limitation is broken, the small enters into and becomes the vast, the crooked is straightened and leng thened out, what was hidden becomes manifest. This is described as the progression of the sacrifice (adhvaraadvanceon the path). That is also the victorious battle waged against the dark forces of Ignorance. The goal, the purpose is the descent and manifestation of the gods here upon earth in human vehicles.
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02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A guardian of the Fire that lights the suns,
She triumphs in her glory and her might:
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02.10 - Two Mystic Poems in Modern Bengali, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Let us all go around the Fire
And scrape and eat of the very Liver, the Muse's self
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02.11 - Hymn to Darkness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A torch is held up in the day's grey, the Fire tears rifts in the day. There's this: the flame's transparence Bitterly denies the day."
"Douve dark and black."
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02.12 - The Heavens of the Ideal, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All the Fire and sweetness of which hardly here
A brilliant shadow visits mortal life.
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03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Virtues are not indications of the Fire of the inner soul, nor are vices irremediable obstacles to its growth. The inner soul, we have said, feeds upon allit is indeed fire, the omnivorous, sarvabhuk,virtues and vices and everything else and gather strength from everywhere. The mystery of miracles, of a sudden change or reversal or revolution in consciousness and way of life lies in the omnipotency of the psychic being. The psychic being has the power of making the apparently impossible, for this reason that it is a portion of the almighty Divine, it is the supreme Conscious-Power crystallised and canalised in a centre for the sake of manifestation. It is a particle from the Being, a spark of the Consciousness, a ripple from the Delight cast into the fastnesses of Matter and the, material body. Now, it is the irresistible urge of this particle, this spark, this ripple to grow and expand, to become in the end the Vast the Ocean and the Sun and the sphere of Infinityto become that not merely in an essential status but in a dynamic and apparent becoming also. The little soul, originally no bigger than a thumb, goes forward through one life after another enlarging and intensifying itself till it recovers and establishes its parent reality in this material body here below, till it unveils what is latent within itself, what is its own, what is itself,its integral self-fulfilment, the Divine integrality.
Here in his inner being, as part and parcel of the Divine, man is absolutely free, has infinite capacity and unbounded aptitude; for here he is master, not slave of Nature, and it is slavery to Nature, that limits and baulks and stultifies man. So does the Upanishad declare in a magnificent and supreme utterance:
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03.15 - Origin and Nature of Suffering, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Here is, briefly, how we view the question. The soul accepts a mortal life of pain and suffering, welcomes an apparent denial of its essential nature for two reasons: (1) to grow and increase in consciousness through such experiences,pain and suffering being one variety of the fuel that tends the Fire that is our soul; and (2) to transfer its inalienable purity into Matter, by its secret pressure and influence gradually transform earthly life into a movement of its own divine state, the state of inviolable Bliss.
All experiences, all contacts with the forms and forces of Life and Matter act indeed as fuel to the flame of the soul's consciousness, whether they are good, bad or indifferent according to some outward view or standard. And in response to the nature and degree of the growth and increase demanded, does the soul choose its fuel, its external mode of life and surroundings. If suffering and misery help to kindle and increase the flame, the soul has no jugups, repulsion for them. Indeed, it accepts the forms of misery in order to cure them, transform them, to bring out of them their original norms of beauty and bliss of which they are a degradation and an aberration.
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04.01 - To the Heights I, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Unwelcome guests are prowling round about. At times they even knock at the door and try to peep through the windows. I have all the doors and windows bolted and barred. And I shall not open them, neither out of kindness nor curiosity. Let them howl in the chill night outside and go their way or perish. I await my own Guest who shall reveal himself from within; for him I keep the hearth clean and warm. I tend the Fire patiently and assiduously. The flames brighten and mount upwardeach a voice that calls and prays for the coming of the Beloved.
O Soul! Listen to his sweet footfall. Lend not your ear to other voices. Gather together in silence all the eagerness of the heart. Lo! the profundities ring with the music of his anklets!
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04.04 - The Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Her mountain altars for the Fires of dawn
And nuptial beaches where the ocean couched
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04.07 - Readings in Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That is the meaning of human life, the significance of even the very ordinary human life. It is the field of a dire debate, a fierce question, a constant struggle between the two opposing or rather polar forces, the will or aspiration to be and the will of inertia not to be the friction, to use a Vedic image, of the two batons of the holy sacrificial wood, arani out of which the flame is to leap forth. The pain and suffering men are subject to in this unhappy vale of tears physical illness and incapacity, vital frustration or mental confusionare symbols and expressions of a deeper fundamental Pain. That pain is the pain of labour, the travail for the birth and incarnation of a godhead asleep or dead. Indeed, the sufferings and ills of life are themselves powerful instruments. They inevitably lead to the Bliss, they are the fuel that kindles, quickens and increases the Fire of Ecstasy that is to blaze up on the day of victory in the full and integral spiritual consciousness. The round of ordinary life is not vain or meaningless: its petty innocent-looking moments and events are the steps of the marching Divinity. Even the commonest life is the holy sacrificial rite progressing, through the oblations of our experiences, bitter or sweet, towards the revelation and establishment of the immortal godhead in man.
II
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04.37 - To the Heights-XXXVII, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
the Fire shines there, but burns not......
It burns when it descends here below
--
the Fire burns-
It burns the dross, but illumines the core of gold;
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05.02 - Of the Divine and its Help, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is a Power that is not grim and violent, but smiling and translucent and yet irresistible. It does not give out heat and soot but radiates a soothing and persuasive clarity. It is not the Fire of our earth that burns and bruises, smokes and crackles-it is something like the serene and silent luminousness, the steady and unaging radiance of the distant stars that energises the cosmic symphony.
All activity should carry with it a sense of repose. Doing everything you must feel as if you were doing nothing-even while most energetic, know how to be perfectly at rest.
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05.02 - Physician, Heal Thyself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Will is a twofold power: it is energy and it is light. True will, will in essential purity, that is to say, when one is perfectly sincere and determined to follow up one's sincerity, impels rightly and impels infallibly. The consciousness is there of the right thing to do and the energy is also there inherent in that consciousness to work it out inevitably. There is a will be longing to a lower level, to the mind which is only a variant of wish, and in reference to that only it is said that even if the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. This will is a light, but without the Fire that vivifies: and that is because there is a division in the consciousness, one can love and yet one can betray, in the words of a famous novelist.
But as we have already said, man is not condemned to this malady of schizophrenia: he is not by nature a Manichean creature. He is whole and entire in his inner reality and true consciousness and he can assert his integrality, he has the freedom and the power to do so-he has to and will do so, since it is not merely a possibility but an inevitability that is to come about in the course of his growth and evolution.
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05.08 - An Age of Revolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The search for a universal principle of Nature is a meta-physical as well as a scientific preoccupation. In ancient days, fo example, we had the Water of Thales or the Fire of Heraclitus as the one original unifying principle of this kind. With the coming of the Renascence and the New Illumination we laughed them out and installed instead the mysterious Ether. For a long time this universalreigned supreme and now that too has gone the way of its predecessors. We thought for a time that we had found in Electric Energy the one sovereign principle in Nature. At a time when we had a few elementsdiscrete, different, fundamental units that in their varying combinations built up the composite structure of Nature, apart from the fact that they reposed finally on the ultimate unifying principle of Ether, it was found also that they all behaved in a uniform and identical and therefore predictable manner. The time and the place (and the mass) being given, everything went according to a pattern and a formula, definite, fixed, mathematically rigid. Even the discovery of one element after another till the number reached the famous figure 92 (itself following a line of mathematically precise and inevitable development) did not materially alter the situation and caused no tribulation. For on further scrutiny a closer unity revealed itself: the supposed disparity in the substance of the various elements was found to be an illusion, for they all appeared now as different organisations or dispositions of the same electric energy (although the identity of electric energy with radiant energy was not always very clear). Thus we could conclude that as the substance was the same, its mode of working also would be' uniform and patterned. In other words, the mechanistic conception still ruled our view' of Nature. That means, the ultimate units, the particles (of energy) that compose Nature are like sea-sands or water-drops, each one is fundamentally similar to any other and all behave similarly, reacting uniformly to the same forces that act upon them.
Well, it is now found that they do not do so. However same or similar constitutionally, each unit is sui generisand its movement cannot be predicted. That movement does not depend upon its mass or store of energy or its position in a pattern, as a wholly mechanistic conception would demand: it is something incalculable, one should say even, erratic. In a radioactive substance, the particle that is shot out, becomes active, cannot be predetermined by any calculation, even if that is due to a definitely and precisely arranged bombardment. So we have come to posit a principle of uncertainty, as a very fundamental law of Nature. It practically declares that the ultimate particle is an autonomou unit, it is an' individual, almost a personality, and seems to have a will of its own. A material unit acts very much like a biological unit: it does not obey mechanically, answer mechanically as an automaton, but seems to possess a capacity for choice, for assent or refusal, for a free determination. The mechanistic view presented is due to an average functioning. The phenomenon has been explained by a very apt image. It is like an army. A group of soldiers, when they are on parade, look all similar and geometrically patterned: each is just like another and all move and march in the same identical manner. But that' is when you look at the whole, the collectivity, but looked individually, each one regains his separate distinct personality, each having his own nature and character, his own unique history: there no two are alike, each is non pareil and behaves differently, incalculably.
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06.07 - Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The remedy is to turn back and hold to the spot of light that is there in the consciousness, the clarity or the aspiration that belongs to the inner and higher being. That has to be used as a torch, as a staff to support and guide you in your periods of darkness and vacillation. That beam of burning light should be thrown, in turn, upon those parts in you that besiege with their obscurity and inconscience, doubt and arrogance, the realisation that comes, the progress on the way. It must be done with firmness, vigilance and perseverance. The mixture has to be sorted out, the dross separated, kept on one side and the pure element on the other: the impurities have to be put under the flame-light to melt, burn away and be eliminated. And this means an ardent sincerity, for that is the tinder which keeps the Fire blazing.
And sincerity demands often a severe dealing with oneself; it involves accepting an inconvenience, inflicting even a painful pressure. One has to be prepared for such a turn, one has to welcome it even at times. The part that is unwilling or refractory has to feel the wrench, if it is to be cleansed and corrected.
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06.08 - The Individual and the Collective, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And this centre is not an isolated entity in its nature: it is, as it were, a universal centre, that is to say, it links itself indissolubly in a secret sense of identity with all other centres. For this self is only one of the selves through which the One Self has multiplied itself for a varied self-objectification. The light that shines here, the Fire that burns here and the delight that flows here illumine, purify and revitalise not only the individual in which it dwells, but move abroad and extend into the other individuals with which it lives in spiritual identity.
***
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06.23 - Here or Elsewhere, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A house is on fire. It has a tarred roof. One can easily understand the fury of the Fire. Some inmates who were trapped have managed to come out in time, although some-what bruised and scalded. But there were others, some children, left inside. One of those who came out rushes back again through the flames and comes and goes till all are saved. He is badly burnt, he has risked his life: he did not mind and could not remain at a safe distance. He could not be contented with saving himself, which was to be sure a sufficient gain in one respect. This soul had a consciousness of his wider self.
In the same way, there are souls that have emerged out of the Fire of earthly life and are enjoying the safety and security of the heavens; but they have been called to come back into the world, add to the experience of the tranquil above the experience of the trouble below. Surely it increases the scope of their consciousness. But to turn upon the world means also to re-enter into ignorance, for this world means ignorance, as it is, it is nothing but ignorance. The role then of one who returns is once more to embrace ignorance, but with a view to bringing into it the light and bliss that he gained from above, permeating the stuff of the present world with the substance of the higher consciousness. It is a sacrifice demanded of him, thus to abandon the eternal felicity of the high heavens the unbroken union with the Divine above and to enter into the depths of this great perilous world: but this is a privilege too, to bring solace to the afflicted, the transforming light to obscure souls, the radiant energy to inert earth. It is a high privilege for which the luminous soul is thankful: he modestly accepts a gift of grace from the Supreme. He accepts the Ignorance and offers it: he lays it at the feet of the Supreme so that it may be transmuted into lightlight here below. His own role is that of a modest intermediary.
***
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07.01 - The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Or close gentle tending or to heap the Fire
Of altar and kitchen, no slight task allowed
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07.02 - The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A statue of the Fire of the inner sun.
In the black night the wrath of storm swept by,
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07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And the Fire and mystery of forbidden delight
Drunk from the world-libido's bottomless well,
--
Thou shalt see the Fire burning on the bare stone
And the deep cavern of thy secret soul."
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07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I carry the Fire that never can be quenched
And the compassion that supports the suns.
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100.00 - Synergy, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
all the oxygen, people suffocate within two minutes. When the Fire is over and
many of the human dead are found inside unscorched, their deaths having been
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10.02 - The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I cherish God the Fire, not God the Dream."
But Death once more inflicted on her heart
--
Harboured the Fires of the universe:
I struck out the supreme original spark
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10.09 - Education as the Growth of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The brain should be a flowering of this consciousness, a developing vehicle for the expression of the increasing consciousness. For that guidance is needed so that one may always turn within and look for that consciousness, feel it growing, and with one's will and thought and act help its growth and development. A brain is not developed by the mass of information that may be pressed into it. Informations are necessary but they should be presented in such a way that they serve as fuel, helpful fuel to the mounting fire; they must not be merely piled up upon and around the Fire or be as so many wet faggots crushing it down with their weight. A true learner is one who seeks sincerely this inner consciousness which is one's own; the true teacher is one who knows how to lead the learner towards this inner light.
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1.00a - DIVISION A - THE INTERNAL FIRES OF THE SHEATHS., #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
I. THE THREE CHANNELS FOR the Fire
From the very use of the term "sheath" it will be noted that we are considering those fires which manifest through the medium of those externalities, of those veils of substance which hide and conceal the inner Reality. We shall not here take up the subject of the sheaths on the higher planes, but simply deal with the Fires that animate the three lower vehicles,the physical body in its two divisions (etheric and dense), the emotional or astral body, and the mental sheath. It is frequently overlooked by the casual student that both the astral and the mental bodies are material, and just as material in their own way, as is the dense physical body, and also that the substance of which they are composed is animated by a triple fire, as is the physical.
In the physical body we have the Fires of the lower nature (the animal plane) centralised at the base of the spine. They are situated at a spot which stands in relation to the physical body as the physical sun to the solar system. This central point of heat radiates in all directions, using the spinal column as its main artery, but working in close connection with certain central ganglia, wherever located, and having a special association with the spleen.
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The subject of the blending of these two fires, which is complete in a normal and healthy person, should engross the attention of the modern physician. He will then concern himself with the removal of nerve congestion or material congestion, so as to leave a free channel for the inner warmth. This blending, which is now a natural and usual growth in every human being, was one of the signs of attainment or of initiation in an earlier solar system. Just as initiation and liberation are marked in this solar system by the blending of the Fires of the body, of the mind and of the Spirit, so in an earlier cycle attainment was marked by the blending of the latent fires of matter with the radiatory or active fires, and then their union with the Fires of mind. In the earlier period the effects in manifestation of the divine Flame were so remote and deeply hidden as to be scarcely recognisable, though dimly there. Its correspondence can be seen in the animal kingdom, in which instinct holds the intuition in latency, [58] and the Spirit dimly overshadows. Yet all is part of a divine whole.
The subject of the radiatory heat of the macrocosmic and microcosmic systems will be dealt with in detail in a later subdivision. Here we will only deal with the latent interior fire of the
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c. The Man. At the base of the spine lie hid the Fires of the human system, or the internal fires of the Microcosm. The centre is located there, and from it the radiations go forth along the three channels, recognisable in the spine.
1. Bodily warmth, the channel along which the heat radiates and which finds the goal of its attention to be the heating of the corporeal frame. This vitalisation of the dense matter of the body finds its correspondence in the systemic akasha, and in planetary productive substance.
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Each of these cosmic Entities is, in His essential essence, Fire; each manifests as fire in a threefold manner. In point of time the cosmic Lord of active Intelligence, considered from the standpoint of cosmic evolution, is more evolved than His two Brothers. He is the life of matter, its latent internal Fire. His is the Fire essence that lies at the heart of the Sun, of the planet, and of man's material forms. He is the sumtotal of the Past.
The Lord of Cosmic Love now seeks union with His Brother, and, in point of time, embodies all the Present. He is the sumtotal of all that is embodied; He is conscious Existence. He is the Son divine and His life and nature evolve through every existent form. The Lord of Cosmic Will holds hid the future within His plans and consciousness. They are all three the Sons of one Father, all three the aspects of the One God, all three are Spirit, all three are Soul, and all three are Rays emanating from one cosmic centre. All three are substance, but in the past one Lord was the elder Son, in the present another Lord comes to the fore, and in the future still another. But this is so only in Time. From the standpoint of the Eternal Now, none is greater nor less than another, for the last shall be first, and the first last. Out of manifestation time is not, and freed from objectivity states of consciousness are not.
the Fire of Spirit is the essential fire of the first Lord of Will plus the Fire of the second Logos of Love. These two cosmic Entities blend, merge, and demonstrate as Soul, utilising for purposes of manifestation the aid of the third Logos. The three fires blend and merge. In this fourth round and on this fourth globe of our planetary scheme, the Fires of the third Logos of intelligent matter are fusing somewhat with the Fires of cosmic [64] mind, showing as will or power, and animating the Thinker on all planes. The object of Their co-operation is the perfected manifestation of the cosmic Lord of Love. This should be pondered upon for it reveals a mystery.
The blending of the three fires, the merging of the three Rays, and the co-operation of the three Logoi have in view (at this time and within this solar system) the development of the Essence of the cosmic Lord of Love, the second Person in the logoic trinity. Earlier it was not so, later it will not be, but now it is. When viewed from the cosmic mental plane these Three constitute the PERSONALITY OF THE LOGOS, and are seen functioning as one. Hence the secret (well recognised as fact, though not understood) of the excessive heat, occultly expressed, of the astral or central body of the triple personality. It animates and controls the physical body, and its desires hold sway in the majority of cases; it demonstrates in time and space the correspondence of the temporary union of spirit and matter, the Fires of cosmic love and the Fires of matter blended. A similar analogy is found in the heat apparent in this second solar system.
d. The Atom. The inner fires of the atom can likewise be seen functioning along similar lines, their demonstration being already somewhat recognised by science. This being so there exists no necessity for further elaboration. [xxi]21
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We might now briefly consider the subject of the Fire elementals and devas, and then deal with the relation of the Personality Ray to this internal fire of the system in its threefold manifestation.
Certain facts are known in connection with the Fire spirits (if so they may be termed). The fundamental fact that should here be emphasised is that AGNI, the Lord of Fire, rules over all the Fire elementals and devas on the three planes of human evolution, the physical, the astral, and the mental, and rules over them not only on this planet, called the Earth, but on the three planes in all parts of the system. He is one of the seven Brothers (to use an expression familiar to students of the Secret Doctrine) Who each embody one of the seven principles, or Who are in Themselves the seven centres in the body of the cosmic Lord of Fire, called by H. P. B. "Fohat." He is that active fiery Intelligence, Who is the basis of the internal fires of the solar system. On each plane one of these Brothers holds sway, and the three elder Brothers (for always the three will be seen, and later the seven, who eventually merge into the primary three) rule on the first, third and the fifth planes, or on the plane of adi, of atma [xxii]22 and of manas. It is urgent that we here remember that They are fire viewed [66] in its third aspect, the Fire of matter. In Their totality these seven Lords form the essence of the cosmic Lord, called in the occult books, Fohat. [xxiii]23
This is so in the same sense as the seven Chohans, [xxiv]24 with Their affiliated groups of pupils, form the essence or centres in the body of one of the Heavenly Men, one of the planetary Logoi. These seven again in Their turn form the essence of the Logos.
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Salamanders, those little fire elementals who can be seen dancing in every flame, tending the Fires of the hearth and the home, and of the factory. They are of the same group as the Fire spirits who can be contacted deep in the fiery bowels of the planet.
Fire spirits, latent in all focal points of heat, who are themselves the essence of warmth, and can be contacted [67] in the heat of the bodily frame, whether human or animal, and who are likewise the warmth terrestrial.
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The pranic elementals, those minute fiery essences who have the ability to permeate the texture of the human body, of a tree, or of all that may be found in the human, vegetable and animal kingdoms, and who blend with the Fires of the microcosmic systems.
Certain of the deva kingdom who may be described as ensouling certain of the great light rays, and Who are in Themselves the essence of those rays. Other forms of such elemental lives and of deva groups might be enumerated, but the above tabulation will suffice for our present purpose.
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Their grades and ranks are many, but their names matter not save in one instance. It may be of interest to know the appellation applied to the devas of fire whose part it is to tend the Fires that will later destroy the causal body. We need to remember that it is the upspringing of the latent fire of matter and its merging with two other fires that causes destruction. These elementals and devas are called the Agnisuryans, and in [68] their totality are the fiery essences of buddhi, hence their lowest manifestation is on the sixth plane, the astral.
Further information concerning these deva lives will be found further on in the Treatise, where they are dealt with at some length.
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1.00b - DIVISION B - THE PERSONALITY RAY AND FIRE BY FRICTION, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
In looking at the matter from the standpoint of fire the idea may be grasped a little through the realisation that the latent fire of matter in the atom is brought into brilliance and usefulness by the action of the personality Ray which merges with this fire and stands in the same position to the permanent atom in the microcosm as FOHAT does on the cosmic plane. the Fire is there hidden within the sphere (whether the sphere systemic or the sphere atomic) and the personality Ray in the one case, and Fohat in the other, acts as the force which brings latency into activity and potentiality into demonstrated power. This correspondence should be thought out with care and judgment. Just as Fohat has to do with active manifestation or objectivity, so the personality Ray has to do with the third, or activity aspect in the microcosm. The work of the third aspect logoic was the arranging of the matter of the system so that eventually it could be built into form through the power of the second aspect. Thus the correspondence works out. By life upon the physical plane (that life wherein the physical permanent atom has its full demonstration) the matter is arranged and separated that must eventually be built into the Temple of Solomon, the egoic body, through the agency of the egoic life, the second [73] aspect. In the quarry of the personal life are the stones prepared for the great Temple. In existence upon the physical plane and in the objective personal life is that experience gained which demonstrates as faculty in the Ego. What is here suggested would richly repay our closest attention, and open up before us reaches of ideas, which should eventuate in a wiser comprehension, a sounder judgment, and a greater encouragement to action.
III. THE PERSONALITY RAY AND KARMA
It might be wise here to recapitulate a little so that in the refreshing of the memory may come the basis of further knowledge. We dealt first with the three fires of the system, macrocosmic and microcosmic, and having laid down certain hypotheses we passed to the consideration of the first of the Fires, that which is inherent in matter. Having studied it somewhat in its threefold manifestation in the various parts of the system, including man, we took up the matter of the personality Ray and its relationship to this third fire. We must recall here that all that has been dealt with has been in relation to matter, and for the whole of this first section this thought must be borne carefully in mind.
In our second section we will consider all from the standpoint of mind, and in the final from the standpoint of the Divine Ray. Here we are dealing with what H. P. B. calls the primordial ray and its manifestations in matter. [xxviii]28 All these Rays of Cosmic Mind, Primordial Activity, and Divine Love-Wisdom are but essential quality demonstrating through the agency of some one factor.
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At this point in the treatise we are confining our attention to the Ray of Active Matter, or to that latent heat in substance which underlies its activity and is the cause of its motion. If we think with sincerity and with clarity we will see how closely therefore the Lipika Lords or the Lords of Karma are associated with this work. Three of Them are closely connected with Karma as it concerns one or other of the three great Rays, or the three FIRES, while the fourth Lipika Lord synthesizes the work of his three Brothers and attends to the uniform blending and merging of the three fires. On our planet, the Earth, They find Their points of contact through the three "Buddhas of Activity," [xxx]30 (the correspondence should be noted here) and the fourth Kumara, the Lord of the World. Therefore, we arrive at the realisation that the personality Ray, in its relation to the Fire of matter, is directly influenced and adjusted in its working by one of the Buddhas of Activity.
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1.00b - Introduction, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Above the male, there are the active elements, that of the Fire in red and the air element in blue colour. Above the female there are the passive elements, the water element in green and the element of the earth in yellow colour.
The middle along the magician up to the globe is dark purple, representing the sign of the akasa principle
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1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
Eighth. When the "will to live" vanishes, then the "Sons of Necessity" cease from objective manifestation. This is logically inevitable, and its working out can be seen in every case of entifed objectivity. When the Thinker on his own plane withdraws his attention from his little system within the three worlds and gathers within himself all his forces, then physical plane existence comes to an end and all returns within the causal consciousness; this is as much an abstraction in the three worlds of the Thinker as the Absolute is in the threefold solar system of the Logos. This demonstrates on the physical plane in the withdrawing from out of the top of the head of the radiant etheric body and the consequent disintegration of the physical. The framework goes and the dense physical form falls apart; the pranic life is abstracted bodily from out of the dense sheath, and the stimulation of the Fires of matter ceases to be. The latent fire of the atom remains; it is inherent, but the form is made by the action of the two fires of matteractive and latent, radiatory and inherentaided by the Fire of the second Logos, and when they are separated the form falls apart. This is a picture in miniature of the essential duality of all things acted upon by Fohat.
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Lastly, all work with fire. Fire internal, inherent and latent; fire radiatory and emanative; fire generated, assimilated and radiated; fire vivifying stimulating, and destroying; fire transmitted, reflected, and absorbed; fire, the basis of all life; fire, the essence of all existence; fire, the means of development, and the impulse behind all evolutionary process; fire, the builder, the preserver and the constructor; fire, the originator, the process and the goal; fire the purifier and the consumer. The God of Fire and the Fire of God interacting upon each other, till all fires blend and blaze and till all that exists, is passed through the Firefrom a solar system to an antand emerges as a triple perfection. Fire then passes out from the ring-pass-not as perfected essence, whether essence emerging from the human ring-pass-not, the planetary ring-pass-not or the solar. The wheel of fire turns and all within that wheel is subjected to the threefold flame, and eventually stands perfected.
III. THE FUNCTION OF THE ETHERIC BODY
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We have touched but little on the subject of the Fire, the purpose of the etheric body being to convey it and distribute it to all parts of its system. We have dwelt on facts which might stimulate interest and emphasise the utility of this pranic vehicle. Certain facts need emphasis and consideration as we study this static ring and its circulating fires. Let me briefly recapitulate for the sake of clarity:
The System receives prana from cosmic sources via three centres, and redistributes it to all parts of its extended influence, or to the bounds of the solar etheric web. This cosmic prana becomes colored by solar quality and reaches the furthest confines of the system. Its mission might be described as the vitalisation of the vehicle which is the physical material expression of the solar Logos.
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The aim for this greater cycle is the blending, as we know, of the two fires of matter, latent and active, and their merging with the Fires of mind and spirit till they are lost from sight in the general flame; the Fires of mind and spirit burn up matter and thereby bring about liberation from the confining vehicles. The altar of earth is the birthplace of spirit, its liberator from the mother (matter), and its entrance into higher realms.
Hence, when the pranic vehicle is working perfectly in all three groups, human, planetary and solar, the union with latent fire will be accomplished. Here lies [103] the reason for the emphasis laid on the necessity for building pure, refined physical vehicles. The more refined and rarefied the form, the better a receiver of prana will it be, and the less will be the resistance found to the uprising of kundalini at the appointed time. Coarse matter and crude immature physical bodies are a menace to the occultist, and no true seer will be found with a body of a gross quality. The dangers of disruption are too great, and the menace of disintegration by fire too awful. Once in the history of the race (in Lemurian days) this was seen in the destruction of the race and the continents by means of fire. [xlvi]45 The Guides of the race at that time availed Themselves of just this very thing to bring about the finish of an inadequate form. The latent fire of matter (as seen in volcanic display, for instance) and the radiatory fire of the system were combined. Planetary kundalini and solar emanation rushed into conjunction, and the work of destruction was accomplished. The same thing may again be seen, only in matter of the second ether, and the effects therefore will be less severe owing to the rarity of this ether and the comparatively greater refinement of the vehicles.
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In touching upon similar conditions in the planet, both these types of trouble will be found. More cannot be said, but in the wise study of solar radiation upon the surface of the planet in connection with its rotary action, some of the group rules of health may be comprehended and followed. The spirit of the planet (or the planetary entity) likewise has his cycles, and in the absorption of [108] planetary prana, and in its correct distribution, lies the secret of fertility and equable vegetation. Much of this is hidden in the fabled story of the war between fire and water, which has its basis in the reaction of the Fire latent in matter, to the Fire emanating outside of matter, and playing upon it. In the interval that has to elapse while the two are in process of blending, come those periods where, through karmic inheritance, reception is unstable and distribution inequable. As the point of race equilibrium is reached, so planetary equilibrium will likewise be attained, and in planetary attainment will come the equilibrium that must mutually take place between the solar planets. When they attain a mutual balance and interaction then the system is stabilised and perfection reached. The even distribution of prana will parallel this balancing in the man, in the race, in the planet and in the system. This is but another way of saying that uniform vibration will be achieved.
b. Microcosmic organic disorders. These are basically two in number:
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The second stage is that in which the pranic fluids begin to blend with the Fire at the base of the spine and to drive that fire slowly upwards, transferring its heat from the centres below the solar plexus to the three higher centres that of the heart, the throat and the head. This is a long and slow process when left to the unaided force of nature, but it is just here that (in a few cases) a quickening of the process is permitted in order to equip workers in the field of human service. This is the object of all occult training. This angle of the matter we will take up in still greater detail when we handle our next point of "Kundalini and the Spine."
The third stage is that in which active radiatory matter or prana is blended ever more perfectly with the Fire latent in matter; this results (as will be brought out later) in certain effects.
It produces a quickening of the normal vibration of the physical body so that it responds with more readiness to the higher note of the Ego, and causes a steady rising of the blending fires through the threefold channel in the spinal column. In the second stage this vitalising blended fire reaches a centre between the lower part of the shoulder blades, which is the point of conjunction, and of complete merging, of the Fire from the base of the [124] spine and the Fire circulating along the pranic triangle. It will be remembered how one point of this triangle originates there. When the threefold basic fire and the threefold pranic fire meet and merge, then evolution proceeds with greatly increased velocity. This is effected definitely at the first Initiation when the polarisation becomes fixed in one or other of the three higher centres,which centre being dependent upon a man's ray.
The result of this merging leads to a change in the action of the centres. They become "wheels turning upon themselves," and from a purely rotary movement become fourth dimensional in action, and manifest as radiant whirling centres of living fire.
The three major head centres (the sequence varying according to ray) become active and a similar process is effected between them as was effected in the pranic triangle. From being three centres that react faintly to each other's vibratory movement (feeling the warmth and rhythm of each other, yet separated), the Fire leaps from centre to centre, and each whirling wheel becomes linked by a chain of fire till there is a triangle of fire through which the kundalini and pranic fires radiate back and forth. Circulation is also carried on. the Fire of kundalini produces the heat of the centre, and its intense radiance and brilliance, while the pranic emanatory fire produces ever increasing activity and rotation.
As time elapses between the first and fourth Initiation, the threefold channel in the spine, and the entire etheric body is gradually cleansed and purified by the action of the Fire till all "dross" (as the Christian expresses it) is burnt away, and naught remains to impede the progress of this flame.
As the Fire of kundalini and prana proceed with their work, and the channel becomes more and more cleared, the centres more active, and the body purer, the flame [125] of spirit, or the Fire from the Ego, comes more actively downwards till a flame of real brilliance issues from the top of the head. This flame surges upwards through the bodies towards its source, the causal body.
Simultaneously with the activity of these fires of matter and of Spirit, the Fires of mind, or manas, burn with greater intensity. These are the Fires given at individualisation. They are fed continuously by the Fire of matter, and their heat is augmented by solar emanatory fire, which originates on the cosmic levels of mind. It is this aspect of the manasic fire that develops under the forms of instinct, animal memory, and functional recollection which are so apparent in the little evolved man. As time progresses the Fire of mind burns more brightly and thus reaches a point where it begins to burn through the etheric web that portion of the web that can be found guarding the centre at the very top of the head, and admitting entrance to the downflow from the Spirit. By its means certain things are brought about:
The kundalini fire is consciously directed and controlled by the mind or will aspect from the mental plane. The two fires of matter by the power of the mind of man are blended first with each other, and, secondly, with the Fire of mind.
The united result of this blending is the destruction (under rule and order), of the etheric web, and the consequent production of continuity of consciousness and the admission into the personal life of man of "Life more abundant," or the third fire of Spirit.
The downrush of Spirit, and the uprising of the inner fires of matter (controlled and directed by the conscious action of the Fire of mind) produce corresponding results on the same levels on the astral and mental planes, so that a paralleling contact is brought about, and the great work of liberation proceeds in an ordered manner.
The three first initiations see these results perfected, [126] and lead to the fourth, where the intensity of the united fires results in the complete burning away of all barriers, and the liberation of the Spirit by conscious directed effort from out its threefold lower sheath. Man has consciously to bring about his own liberation. These results are self-induced by the man himself, as he is emancipated from the three worlds, and has broken the wheel of rebirth himself instead of being broken upon it.
It will be apparent from this elucidation that the exceeding importance of the etheric vehicle as the separator of the Fires has been brought forward, and consequently we have brought to our notice the dangers that must ensue should man tamper injudiciously, ignorantly or wilfully with these fires.
Should a man, by the power of will or through an over-development of the mental side of his character, acquire the power to blend these fires of matter and to drive them forward, he stands in danger of obsession, insanity, physical death, or of dire disease in some part of his body, and he also runs the risk of an over-development of the sex impulse through the driving of the force in an uneven manner upwards, or in forcing its radiation to undesirable centres. The reason of this is that the matter of his body is not pure enough to stand the uniting of the flames, that the channel up the spine is still clogged and blocked, and therefore acts as a barrier, turning the flame backwards and downwards, and that the flame (being united by the power of mind and not being accompanied by a simultaneous downflow from the plane of spirit), permits the entrance, through the burning etheric, of undesirable and extraneous forces, currents, and even entities. These wreck and tear and ruin what is left of the etheric vehicle, of the brain tissue and even of the dense physical body itself.
The unwary man, being unaware of his Ray and therefore of the proper geometrical form of triangle that is [127] the correct method of circulation from centre to centre, will drive the Fire in unlawful progression and thus burn up tissue; this will result then (if in nothing worse), in a setting back for several lives of the clock of his progress, for he will have to spend much time in rebuilding where he destroyed, and with recapitulating on right lines all the work to be done.
If a man persists from life to life in this line of action, if he neglects his spiritual development and concentrates on intellectual effort turned to the manipulation of matter for selfish ends, if he continues this in spite of the promptings of his inner self, and in spite of the warnings that may reach him from Those who watch, and if this is carried on for a long period he may bring upon himself a destruction that is final for this manvantara or cycle. He may, by the uniting of the two fires of matter and the dual expression of mental fire, succeed in the complete destruction of the physical permanent atom, and thereby sever his connection with the higher self for aeons of time. H. P. B. has somewhat touched on this when speaking of "lost souls"; [lx]58 [lxi]59 we must here emphasise the reality of this dire disaster and sound a warning note to those who approach this subject of the Fires of matter with all its latent dangers. The blending of these fires must be the result of spiritualised knowledge, and must be directed solely by the Light of the Spirit, who works through love and is love, and who seeks this unification and this utter merging not from the point of view of sense or of material gratification, but because liberation and purification is desired in order that the higher union with the Logos may be effected; this union must be desired, not for selfish ends, but because group perfection is the goal and scope for greater service to the race must be achieved.
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1.00d - DIVISION D - KUNDALINI AND THE SPINE, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
b. the Fire that passes up the channel,
c. The conjunction of this fire with the radiatory energising fire of the physical body at the point between the shoulder blades,
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The merging of the Fires of matter and the Fires of mind results in the energising of the sumtotal of the atoms of the matter of the body. This is the secret of the immense staying power of the great thinkers and workers of the race. It results also in a tremendous stimulation of the three higher centres in the body, the head, the heart, the throat and in the electrification of this area of the body. These higher centres then form a field of attraction for the downflow of the third fire, that of Spirit. The many-petalled head centre at the top of the head becomes exceedingly active. It is the synthetic head centre, and the sumtotal of all the other centres. The stimulation of the centres throughout the body is paralleled or duplicated by the concurrent vivification of the many-petalled lotus. It is the meeting place of the three fires, those of the body, of the mind, and of the Spirit. The at-one-ment with the Ego is completed when it is fully stimulated, and combustion then ensues; this is duplicated in the subtler vehicles and causes the final consummation and the liberation of Spirit.
The merging of the Fires of matter is the result of evolutionary growth, when left to the normal, slow development that time alone can bring. The junction of the two fires of matter is effected early in the history of man, and is the cause of the rude health that the clean-living, high-thinking man should normally enjoy. When the Fires of matter have passed (united) still further along the etheric spinal channel they contact the Fire of manas as it radiates from the throat centre. Clarity of thought is here essential, and it will be necessary to elucidate somewhat this rather abstruse subject.
1. The three major head centres (from the physical standpoint) are the:
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The other fire of matter (the dual fire) is attracted upward, and merges with the Fire of mind through a junction effected at the alta major centre. This centre is situated at the base of the skull, and there is a slight gap between this centre and the point at which the Fires of matter issue from the spinal channel. Part of the work the man who is developing thought power has to do, is to build a temporary channel in etheric matter to bridge the gap. This channel is the reflection in physical matter of the antaskarana [lxv]63 that the Ego has to build in order to bridge the gap between the lower and higher mental, between the causal vehicle on the third subplane of the mental plane, and the manasic permanent atom on the first subplane. This is the work that all advanced thinkers are unconsciously doing now. When the gap is completely [138] bridged, man's body becomes co-ordinated with the mental body and the Fires of mind and of matter are blended. It completes the perfecting of the personality life, and as earlier said, this perfecting brings a man to the portal of initiationinitiation being the seal set upon accomplished work; it marks the end of one lesser cycle of development, and the beginning of the transference of the whole work to a still higher spiral.
We must always bear in mind that the Fires from the base of the spine and the splenic triangle are fires of matter. We must not lose this recollection nor get confused. They have no spiritual effect, and concern themselves solely with the matter in which the centres of force are located. These centres of force are always directed by manas or mind, or by the conscious effort of the indwelling entity; but that entity is held back in the effects he seeks to achieve until the vehicles through which he is seeking expression, and their directing, energising centres, make adequate response. Hence it is only in due course of evolution, and when the matter of these vehicles is energised sufficiently by its own latent fires that he can accomplish his long-held purpose. Hence again the need of the ascension of the Fire of matter to its own place, and its resurrection from its long burial and seeming prostitution before it can be united with its Father in Heaven, the third Logos, Who is the Intelligence of matter itself. The correspondence, again, holds good. Even the atom of the physical plane has its goal, its initiations and its ultimate triumph.
Other angles of this subject, such as the centres and their relationship to manas, the Fire of Spirit and manas, and the eventual blending of the three fires, will be dealt with in our next two main divisions. In this division we are confining ourselves to the study of matter and fire, and must not digress, or confusion will ensue.
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How this fire at the base of the spine can be aroused, the form its progression should take (dependent upon the Ray), the blending of the Fire with pranic fire and their subsequent united progression, are things of the past with many, and fortunately for the race, the work was achieved without conscious effort. The second blending with the Fire of manas has to be effected. Scarcely as yet have men succeeded in directing the Fire up more than one channel of the threefold column; hence two-thirds of its effect in the majority is yet confined to the stimulation of the organs of race propagation. Only when the Fire has circled unimpeded up another channel is the complete merging with the Fire of manas effected, and only when it progresses geometrically up all the threewith simultaneous action and at uniform vibrationis the true kundalini fire fully aroused, and therefore able to perform its work of cleansing through the burning of the confining web and of the separating particles. When this is accomplished the threefold channel becomes one channel. Hence the danger.
No more can be imparted concerning this subject. He who directs his efforts to the control of the Fires of matter, is (with a dangerous certainty) playing with a fire that may literally destroy him. He should not cast his eyes backwards, but should lift them to the plane where dwells his immortal Spirit, and then by self-discipline, mind-control and a definite refining of his material bodies, whether subtle or physical, fit himself to be a vehicle for the divine birth, and participate in the first Initiation. When the Christ-child (as the Christian so beautifully expresses it) has been born in the cave of the heart, then that divine guest can consciously control the lower material bodies by means of consecrated mind. Only when buddhi has assumed an ever-increasing control [140] of the personality, via the mental plane (hence the need of building the antaskarana), will the personality respond to that which is above, and the lower fires mount and blend with the two higher. Only when Spirit, by the power of thought, controls the material vehicles, does the subjective life assume its rightful place, does the God within shine and blaze forth till the form is lost from sight, and "The path of the just shine ever more and more until the day be with us."
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1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
I would point out primarily and emphasize the fact that the motion we are considering is that due to the Fire latent in matter itself, a motion that is the prime characteristic and basic quality of the Primordial Ray of Active Intelligence. To express it otherwise: it is the outstanding faculty of the third Logos, of Brahma [142] viewed as the Creator, and this faculty is the product or result of an earlier manifestation. Each of the three Logoi, when in manifestation and thus personified, is exemplifying some one quality which predominates over the others. Each, more or less, exemplifies all, but each demonstrates one of the three aspects so profoundly as to be recognised as that aspect itself. In much the same way, for instance, the different incarnating jivas carry a vibration which is their main measure, though they may also have lesser vibrations that are subsidiary to them. Let us get this clear, for the truth embodied is fundamental.
1. The threefold goal,
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The second Logos is solar fire. He is the Fire of matter and the electric fire of Spirit blended, producing, in time and space, that fire which we call solar. He is the quality of the flame, or the essential flame, produced by this merging. A correspondence to this may be seen in the radiatory fire of matter, and in the emanation, for instance, from the central sun, from a planet, or from a human being,which latter emanation we call magnetism. A man's emanation, or characteristic vibration, is the result of the blending of Spirit and matter, and the relative adequacy of the matter, or the form, to the life within. The objective solar system, or the sun in manifestation, is the result of the blending of Spirit (electric fire) with matter (fire by friction), and the emanations of the Son, in time and space, are dependent upon the adequacy of the matter, and of the form to the life within.
The first Logos is electric fire, the Fire of pure Spirit. Yet in manifestation He is the Son, for by union with matter (the mother) the Son is produced by Whom He is [151] known. "I and my Father are One" [lxxi]69 is the most occult statement in the Christian Bible, for it not only refers to the union of a man with his source, the monad, via the ego, but to the union of all life with its source, the will aspect, the first Logos.
We will now endeavor to confine ourselves strictly to the subject of fire in matter, and its active effect upon the sheaths of which it is the animating factor, and upon the centers which come primarily under its control.
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e. Final combustion or disintegration, when the Fires latent and radiatory have achieved a specific stage. This is the secret of final obscuration and of pralaya, but cannot be dissociated from the two other factors of solar and electric fire.
4. Absorption, through that expression which is seen in all whirling spheres of atomic matter at whichever surface in the sphere corresponds to the point called in a planet the North Pole. Some idea of the intention that I seek to convey may be grasped by a study of the atom as portrayed in Babbitt's "Principles of Light and Colour," and later in Mrs. Besant's "Occult Chemistry." This depression is produced by radiations which proceed counter to the rotations of the sphere and pass down from the north southwards to a midway point. From there they tend to increase the latent heat, to produce added momentum and to give specific quality according to the source from which the radiation comes. This absorption of extra-spheroidal emanation is the secret of the dependence of one sphere upon another, and has its correspondence in the cycling of a ray through any plane sphere. Every atom, though termed spheroidal, is more accurately a sphere slightly depressed at one location, [156] that location being the place through which flows the force which animates the matter of the sphere. This is true of all spheres, from the solar down to the atom of matter that we call the cell in the body physical. Through the depression in the physical atom flows the vitalising force from without. Every atom is both positive and negative; it is receptive or negative where the inflowing force is concerned, and positive or radiatory where its own emanations are concerned, and in connection with its effect upon its environment.
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Let us keep clearly in our minds that we are simply considering the three qualities of matter itself and are not considering consciousness. Inertia is the result of lack of activity and the relative quiescence of the Fires of matter. These fires, during obscuration or Pralaya, though latent, are free from the stimulation that comes from the aggregation of atoms into form, and the consequent interplay of the forms upon each other. Where form exists and the Laws of Repulsion and Attraction are coming into force, making radiation therefore possible, then comes stimulation, emanative effect, and a gradual speeding up which eventually, from within the atom itself, by its own rotary movement produces the next quality.
[158]
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i. The synthetic activity of matter in the three types of movement,rotary, spiralling-cyclic and onward progression,which unified movement will be produced by the interaction of the Fires of matter, of mind and of Spirit upon each other.
When the point of rhythm or balance is reached in a solar system, in a plane, in a ray, in a causal body, and in the physical body, then the occupier of the form is loosed from prison; he can withdraw to his originating source, and is liberated from the sheath which has hitherto acted as a prison; and he can escape from an environment which he has utilised for the gaining of experience and as a battle ground between the pairs of opposites. The sheath or form of whatever kind then automatically disintegrates.
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4. The Circle divided into four. This is the true circle of matter, the equal armed cross of the Holy Spirit, Who is the personification of active intelligent matter. This shows the fourth dimensional quality of matter and the penetration of the Fire in four directions, its threefold radiation being symbolised by the triangles formed by the fourfold cross. This portrays the fourfold revolution of any atom. By this is not meant the ability of any atom to make four revolutions, but the fourth dimensional quality of the revolution which is the goal aimed at, and which is even now becoming known in matter during this [161] fourth round, and in this fourth chain. As the fifth spirilla or fifth stream of force in an atom becomes developed, and man can conceive of a fourth-dimensional rotary movement, the accuracy of this symbol will be recognised. It will then be seen that all sheaths in their progress from inertia to rhythm, via mobility, pass through all stages, whether they are logoic sheaths, the rays in which the Heavenly Men veil Themselves, the planes which form the bodies of certain solar entities, the causal body (or the sheath of the Ego on the mental plane), the human physical body in its etheric constitution, or a cell in that body etheric. All these material forms (existent in etheric matter which is the true matter of all forms) are primarily undifferentiated ovoids; they then become actively rotating or manifest latent heat; next they manifest duality or latent and radiatory fire; the expression of these two results in fourth dimensional action or the wheel or rotary form turning upon itself.
5. The swastika, or the Fire extending not only from the periphery to the centre in four directions, but gradually circulating and radiating from and around the entire periphery. This signifies completed activity in every department of matter until finally we have a blazing, fiery wheel, turning every way, with radiant channels of fire from the centre to the ring-pass-not,fire within, without and around until the wheel is consumed and there is naught remaining but perfected fire.
V. MOTION AND THE CENTRES
We can take up this matter of the centres along three lines. Much has been written and discussed anent the centres, and much mystery exists which has aroused the curiosity of the ignorant, and has tempted many to meddle with that which does not concern them. I seek to elucidate somewhat and to give a new angle of vision to [162] the study of these abstruse matters. I do not in any way intend to take up the subject from such an angle as to convey rules and information that will enable a man to vivify these centres and bring them into play. I sound here a solemn word of warning. Let a man apply himself to a life of high altruism, to a discipline that will refine and bring his lower vehicles into subjection, and to a strenuous endeavor to purify and control his sheaths. When he has done this and has both raised and stabilised his vibration, he will find that the development and functioning of the centres has pursued a parallel course, and that (apart from his active participation) the work has proceeded along the desired lines. Much danger and dire calamity attends the man who arouses these centres by unlawful methods, and who experiments with the Fires of his body without the needed technical knowledge. He may, by his efforts, succeed in arousing the Fires and in intensifying the action of the centres, but he will pay the price of ignorance in the destruction of matter, in the burning of bodily or brain tissue, in the development of insanity, and in opening the door to currents and forces, undesirable and destructive. It is not the part of a coward, in these matters concerning the subjective life, to move with caution and with care; it is the part of discretion. The aspirant, therefore, has three things to do:
1. Purify, discipline and transmute his threefold lower nature.
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In doing this he fulfils the law, he puts himself in the right condition for training, fits himself for the ultimate application of the Rod of Initiation, and thus minimises the danger that attends the awakening of the Fire.
[163]
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The centres in the human being deal fundamentally with the Fire aspect in man, or with his divine spirit. They are definitely connected with the Monad, with the will aspect, with immortality, with existence, with the will to live, and with the inherent powers of Spirit. They are not connected with objectivity and manifestation, but with force, or the powers of the divine life. The correspondence in the Macrocosm can be found in the force which manipulates the cosmic nebulae and which by its whirling rotary motion eventually builds them into planets or spheroidal bodies. These planets are each of them an expression of the "will to live" of some cosmic entity, and the force that swirled, that rotated, that built, that solidified, and that continues to hold in form coherent, is the force of some cosmic Being.
This force originates on cosmic mental levels, from certain great foci there, descends to the cosmic astral, forming corresponding cosmic focal points, and on the fourth cosmic etheric level (the buddhic plane of our solar system) finds its outlet in certain great centres. These [166] centres are again reflected or reproduced in the three worlds of human endeavor. The Heavenly Men, therefore, have centres on three solar planes, a fact to be remembered.
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The other two centres have to do primarily with the etheric body and with the astral plane. The throat centre synthesises the entire personality life, and is definitely connected with the mental plane,the three planes, and the two higher planes, and the three centres with the two other centres, the heart and head. Yet, we must not forget that the centre at the base of the spine is also a synthesiser, as would normally be expected, if it is recognised that the lowest plane of all manifestation is the point of deepest reflection. This lowest centre, by synthesising the Fire of kundalini and the pranic fires, eventually blends and merges with the Fire of mind, and later with the Fire of Spirit, producing thus consummation.
We must disabuse our minds of the idea that these centres are physical things. They are whirlpools of force that swirl etheric, astral and mental matter into activity of some kind. Because the action is rotary, the result produced in matter is a circular effect that can be seen by the clairvoyant as fiery wheels situated:
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It would repay the student to contemplate the interesting succession of triangles that are to be found and the way in which they must be linked by the progression of the Fire before that fire can perfectly vivify them, and thence pass on to other transmutations. We might enumerate some of these triangles, bearing always in mind that according to the ray so will proceed the geometric rising of the Fire, and according to the ray so will the points be touched in ordered sequence. Herein lies one of the secrets of initiation, and herein is found some of the dangers entailed in a too quick publication of information concerning the rays.
1. The pranic triangle.
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All these different periods show different triangular radiances. We must not infer from this that when the Fire is centred in one triangle it is not demonstrating in others. Once the Fire has free passage along any triangle it flames continuously, but always there is one triangle more radiant and luminous than the others, and it is from these glowing triangles of light, issuing from wheels and vortices of fire that the clairvoyant and the teachers of the race can appraise a man's position in the scheme of things, and judge of his attainment. At the culmination of life experience, and when man has reached his goal, each triangle is a radiant path of fire, and each centre a wheel of living fiery force rotating at terrific speed; the centre at this stage not only rotates in a specific direction, but literally turns upon itself, forming a living flaming iridescent globe of pure fire, and holding within it a certain geometrical shape, yet withal vibrating so rapidly that the eye can scarcely follow it. Above all, at the top of the head will be seen a fiery display that seems to put all the other centres into insignificance; from the heart of this many-petalled lotus issues a flame of fire with the basic hue of a man's ray. This flame [171] mounts upward and seems to attract downward a sheet of electric light, which is the downflow from the spirit on the highest plane. This marks the blending of the Fires and the deliverance of man from the trammels of matter.
We might now note that the evolution of these centres of force can be portrayed, not only in words, but under the same five symbols that have so often a cosmic interpretation.
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"The secret of the Fire lies hid in the second letter of the Sacred Word. The mystery of life is concealed within the heart. When the lower point vibrates, when the Sacred Triangle glows, when the point, the middle centre, and the apex likewise burn, then the two triangles the greater and the lessermerge with one flame which burneth up the whole."
" the Fire within the lesser fire findeth its progress much impelled when the circle of the moving and the unmoving, of the lesser wheel within the greater wheel that moveth not in Time, findeth a twofold outlet; it then shineth with the glory of the twofold One and of His sixfold brother. Fohat rusheth through space. He searcheth for his complement. [173] The breath of the unmoving one, and the Fire of the One Who seeth the whole from the beginning rush to meet each other, and the unmoving becomes the sphere of activity."
We take up our second point in the consideration of the centres:
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As evolution proceeds, the other centres attain a more pronounced vibration and the Fire (circulating triangularly) will bring them into greater prominence; the two above mentioned, however, are of prime importance at this time. These two, with the lesser triangle of our chain, constitute the focal point of energy viewed from our planetary standpoint.
In addition to these some hints in connection with the microcosmic and macrocosmic centres, we might here give the cosmic correspondences at which it is possible to hint.
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2. With the Fires of mind at a point at the very top of the spine, in the centre of the back part of the throat.
3. With the Fire of Spirit at the point where these two united fires of matter and of mind issue from the top of the head.
c. Each of the three channels within the spinal column have for specific purpose the blending of these threefold fires. We need to bear in mind that the [184] fires circulate, and that, at the moment of achievement, every triangle in the body is vivified, every centre is fully functioning, and a threefold path of fire can be seen extending the entire length of the backbone.
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2. It sweeps into its sphere of influence matter that is keyed to its own vibration, and builds it into its vibratory content. This is but a reflection of the action of the Logos in sweeping into differentiation the matter of the solar system. Kundalini is likewise the Fire or force of matter, and therefore the life of the third Logos.
f. Kundalini has two effects upon the etheric web, as it is called.
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2. Eventually, after the two fires of matter and the Fire of mind have begun to blend (a slow and gradual process), the web itself is destroyed [185] and by the time the third Initiation is reached, the man should have continuity of consciousness. This is so unless for certain work and for certain specific ends, the man consciously and willingly foregoes the burning of the web, a thing which can be brought about by the conscious action of the will.
4. The Centres and the Senses, Normal and Supernormal.
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As regards taste and smell, we might call them minor senses, for they are closely allied to the important sense of touch. They are practically subsidiary to that sense. This second sense, and its connection with this second solar system, should be carefully pondered over. It is predominantly the sense most closely connected with the second Logos. This conveys a hint of much value if duly considered. It is of value to study the extensions of physical plane touch on other planes and to see whither we are led. It is the faculty which enables us to arrive [197] at the essence by due recognition of the veiling sheath. It enables the Thinker who fully utilises it to put himself en rapport with the essence of all selves at all stages, and thereby to aid in the due evolution of the sheath and actively to serve. A Lord of Compassion is one who (by means of touch) feels with, fully comprehends, and realises the manner in which to heal and correct the inadequacies of the not-self and thus actively to serve the plan of evolution. We should study likewise in this connection the value of touch as demonstrated by the healers of the race (those on the Bodhisattva line) [lxxxv]83 and the effect of the Law of Attraction and Repulsion as thus manipulated by them. Students of etymology will have noted that the origin of the word touch is somewhat obscure, but probably means to 'draw with quick motion.' Herein lies the whole secret of this objective solar system, and herein will be demonstrated the quickening of vibration by means of touch. Inertia, mobility, rhythm, are the qualities manifested by the not-self. Rhythm, balance, and stable vibration are achieved by means of this very faculty of touch or feeling. Let me illustrate briefly so as to make the problem somewhat clearer. What results in meditation? By dint of strenuous effort and due attention to rules laid down, the aspirant succeeds in touching matter of a quality rarer than is his usual custom. He contacts his causal body, in time he contacts the matter of the buddhic plane. By means of this touch his own vibration is temporarily and briefly quickened. Fundamentally we are brought back to the subject that we deal with in this treatise. The latent fire of matter attracts to itself that fire, latent in other forms. They touch, and recognition and awareness ensues. the Fire of manas burns continuously and is fed by that which is attracted and repulsed. When the two [198] blend, the stimulation is greatly increased and the ability to touch intensified. The Law of Attraction persists in its work until another fire is attracted and touched, and the threefold merging is completed. Forget not in this connection the mystery of the Rod of Initiation. [lxxxvi]84 Later when we consider the subject of the centres and Initiation it must be remembered that we are definitely studying one aspect of this mysterious faculty of touch, the faculty of the second Logos, wielding the law of Attraction.
Let us now finish what may be imparted on the remaining three sensessight, taste, smell and then briefly sum up their relationship to the centres, and their mutual action and interaction. That will then leave two more points to be dealt with in this first division of the Treatise on Cosmic Fire, and a summing up. We shall then be in a position to take up that portion of the treatise that deals with the Fire of manas and with the development of the manasaputras, [lxxxvii]85 both in their totality and likewise individually. This topic is of the most imperative importance as it deals entirely with man, the Ego, the thinker, and shows the cosmic blending of the Fires of matter and of mind, and their utilisation by the indwelling Flame.
c. Sight. This sense, as said before, is the paramount correlating sense of the solar system.
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d. These centres reach this condition of perfection as the Spirit or Will aspect takes ever fuller control. The unifying triangles are produced by the action of the Fire of mind, while the Fire of matter holds the form together in ordered sequence. So the interdependence of matter, mind and Spirit can be seen and demonstrates to the eye of the clairvoyant as the co-ordination of the three fires.
e. In the Heavenly Man and His body, a chain of globes [lxxxix]87 likewise can be seen and we need here to remember very carefully that the seven chains of a scheme are the expression of a planetary Logos. The Heavenly Men are expressing Themselves through a scheme of seven chains and the emphasis has been laid unduly, perhaps, upon the dense physical planet in any particular chain. This has caused the fact of the chain importance to be somewhat overlooked. Each of the seven chains might be looked upon as picturing the seven centres of one of the Heavenly Men. The idea of groups of Egos forming centres in the Heavenly Men is nevertheless correct, but in this connection the reference is to the centres of force on buddhic and monadic levels. [xc]88
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At the time that initiation is taken, the centres are all active and the lower four (which correspond to the Personality) are beginning the process of translating the Fire into the three higher. The dual revolution in the lower centres is clearly to be seen and the three higher are commencing to be similarly active. By the application of the Rod of Initiation at the time of the initiation ceremony, certain results are achieved in connection with the centres which might be enumerated as follows:
a. the Fire at the base of the spine is definitely directed [208] to whichever centre is the object of special attention. This varies according to the Ray, or the specialised work of the initiate.
b. The centre has its activity intensified, its rate of evolution increased, and certain of the central spokes of the wheel brought into more active radiance. These spokes which are also called by some students lotus-petals, have a close connection with the different spirillae in the permanent atoms. Through their stimulation there comes into play one or more of the corresponding spirillae in the permanent atoms on the three lower planes. After the third Initiation, a corresponding stimulation takes place in the permanent atoms of the Triad, leading to the co-ordination of the buddhic vehicle, and the transference of the lower polarisation into the higher.
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e. By the application of the Rod, the Fire of kundalini is aroused, and its upward progress directed. the Fire at the base of the spine, and the Fire of mind are [210] directed along certain routes, or triangles, by the action of the Rod as it moves in a specified manner. There is a definite occult reason, under the Laws of Electricity, behind the known fact that every initiate, presented to the Initiator, is accompanied by two of the Masters, who stand one on either side of him. The three of them together form a triangle which makes the work possible.
The force of the Rod is twofold, and its power terrific. Apart and alone the initiate could not receive the voltage from the Rod without serious hurt, but in triangular formation transmission comes safely. The two Masters Who thus sponsor the initiate, represent two polarities of the electric All; part of Their work is therefore to stand with all applicants for initiation when they come before the Great Lord.
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Second. The Rod of Initiation known as the "Flaming Diamond" and used by Sanat Kumara, the One Initiator, called in the Bible, the Ancient of Days. This Rod lies hidden "in the East" and holds the Fire latent which irradiates the Wisdom Religion. This Rod was brought by the Lord of the World when He took form and came to our planet eighteen million years ago.
Once in every world period it is subjected to a similar process as that of the lesser Rod, only this time it is recharged by the direct action of the Logos Himself,the Logos of the solar system. The location of this Rod is known only to the Lord of the World, and to the Chohans of the Rays, and (being the talisman of this evolution) the Chohan of the second Ray isunder the Lord of the Worldits main guardian, aided by the deva Lord of the second plane. The Buddhas of activity are responsible for its custody, and under them the Chohan of the Ray. It is produced only at stated times when specific work has to be done. It is used not only at the initiating of men, but at certain planetary functions, of which nothing as yet has been given out. It has its place and function in certain ceremonies connected with the inner round [xciii]91 and the triangle formed by the Earth, Mars [212] and Mercury. But more about this is not at this time permissible.
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1.00 - INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
2. Solar Fire, or cosmic mental fire. This is that portion of the cosmic mental plane which goes to the animation of the mental body of the Logos. This fire may be regarded as the sumtotal of the sparks of mind, the Fires of the mental bodies and the animating principle of the evolving units of the human race in the three worlds.
3. Electric Fire, or the logoic Flame Divine. This flame is the distinguishing mark of our Logos, and it is that which differentiates Him from all other Logoi; it is His dominant characteristic, and the sign of His place in cosmic evolution.
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First, we have the animating fires of the solar system, which are the Fires of the primordial ray of active intelligent matter; these constitute the energy of Brahma, the third aspect of the Logos. Next are to be found the Fires of the divine Ray of Love-Wisdom, the ray of intelligent love, which constitutes the energy of the Vishnu aspect, the second aspect logoic. [iv] 4 Finally are to be found [39] the Fires of the cosmic mental plane, which are the Fires of the cosmic ray of will. They might be described as the rays of intelligent will and are the manifestation of the first aspect logoic, the Mahadeva aspect. [v]5 Therefore we have three cosmic rays manifesting:
The Ray of intelligent activity. This is a ray of a very demonstrable glory, and of a higher point of development than the other two, being the product of an earlier mahakalpa, or a previous solar system.: [vi]6 It embodies [40] the basic vibration of this solar system, and is its great internal fire, animating and vitalising the whole, and penetrating from the centre to the periphery. It is the cause of rotary motion, and therefore of the spheroidal form of all that exists.
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First, as the Fire of Mind, the basis of all expression and in one peculiar occult sense the sumtotal of existence. It provides the relation between the life and the form, between spirit and matter, and is the basis of consciousness itself.
Second, as the Elementals of Fire, or the sumtotal of the active expression of thought, showing itself through the medium of those entities who, in their very essence, are fire itself.
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2. There is next the Fire or Spark of Mind which is the correspondence in man to solar fire. This constitutes the thinking self-conscious unit or the soul. This fire of mind is governed by the Law of Attraction as is its greater correspondence. Later we can enlarge on this. It is this spark of mind in man, manifesting as spiral cyclic activity, which leads to expansion and to his eventual return to the centre of his system, the Monad the origin and goal for the reincarnating Jiva or human being. As in the macrocosm this fire also manifests in a twofold manner.
It shows as that intelligent will which links the Monad or spirit with its lowest point of contact, the personality, functioning through a physical vehicle.
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When the latent fire of the personality or lower self blends with the Fire of mind, that of the higher self, and finally merges with the Divine Flame, then the man takes the fifth Initiation in this solar system, and has completed one of his greater cycles. [xiii]13 When the three blaze forth as one fire, liberation from matter, or from material form is achieved. Matter has been correctly adjusted to spirit, and finally the indwelling life slips forth out of its sheath which forms now only a channel for liberation.
[48]
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To continue our consideration of the Fires which sustain the economy of the visible solar system, and of the visible objective human being, which produce evolutionary development, and which are the bases of all objective efflorescence, it must be noted that they demonstrate as the sumtotal of the vital life of a solar system, of a planet, of the entire constitution of active functioning man upon the physical plane, and of the atom of substance.
Speaking broadly we would say that the first fire deals entirely with:
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c. The evolutionary expression of the soul as it shows forth in the form of that elusive something which brings about the synthesis of matter. As the two merge by means of this active energising factor, that which is termed consciousness appears. [xv]15 As [49] the merging proceeds and the Fires become more and more synthesised, that totality of manifestation which we regard as a conscious existence becomes ever more perfected.
d. The operation of this fire under the Law of Attraction.
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The whole matter dealt with in this Treatise concerns the subjective essence of the solar system, not primarily either the objective or spiritual aspect. It concerns the Entities who indwell the form, who demonstrate as animating factors through the medium of matter, and primarily through etheric matter; who are evolving a second faculty, the Fire of mind, and who are essentially themselves points of fire, cast off through cosmic friction, produced by the turning of the cosmic wheel, swept into temporary limited manifestation and due eventually to return to their central cosmic centre. They will return plus the results of evolutionary growth, and through assimilation they will have intensified their fundamental nature, and be spiritual fire plus the Fire manasic.
The internal fire of matter is called in the Secret Doctrine "Fire by Friction." It is an effect and not a cause. It is produced by the two fires of spirit and of mind (electric and solar fire) contacting each other through the medium of matter. This energy demonstrates in [51] matter itself as the internal fires of the sun, and of the planets and finds a reflection in the internal fires of man. Man is the Flame Divine and the Fire of Mind brought into contact through the medium of substance or form. When evolution ends, the Fire of matter is not cognisable. It persists only when the other two fires are associated, and it does not persist apart from substance itself.
Let us now briefly recognise certain facts regarding fire in matter and let us take them in order, leaving time to elucidate their significance. First we might say that the internal fire being both latent and active, shows itself as the synthesis of the acknowledged fires of the system, and demonstrates, for instance, as solar radiation and inner planetary combustion. This subject has been somewhat covered by science, and is hidden in the mystery of physical plane electricity, which is an expression of the active internal fires of the system and of the planet just as inner combustion is an expression of the latent internal fires. These latter fires are to be found in the interior of each globe, and are the basis of all objective physical life.
Secondly, we might note that the internal fires are the basis of life in the lower three kingdoms of nature, and in the fourth or human kingdom in connection with the two lower vehicles. the Fire of Mind, when blended with the internal fires, is the basis of life in the fourth kingdom, and united they control (partially now and later entirely) the lower threefold man or the personality; this control lasts up to the time of the first Initiation.
the Fire of Spirit finally, when blended with the two other fires (which blending commences in man at the first initiation), forms a basis of spiritual life or existence. As evolution proceeds in the fifth or spiritual kingdom, these three fires blaze forth simultaneously, producing perfected consciousness. This blaze results in the final [52] purification of matter and its consequent adequacy; at the close of manifestation it brings about eventually the destruction of the form and its dissolution, and the termination of existence as understood on the lower planes. In terms of Buddhistic theology it produces annihilation; this involves, not loss of identity, but the cessation of objectivity and the escape of Spirit, plus mind, to its cosmic centre. It has its analogy in the initiation at which the adept stands free from the limitations of matter in the three worlds.
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3. Essential fire, or the Fire elementals who are themselves the essence of fire. They are mainly divided into two groups:
a. Fire devas or evolutionary entities.
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Later we will elaborate on this when we consider the Fire of Mind and deal with the nature of the thought elementals. All these elementals and devas are under the control of the Fire Lord, Agni. When considering Him and His kingdom the subject can be taken up at greater length.
We might here point out, however, that our first two statements concerning the internal fires, express the effect that the Fire entities have upon their environment. Heat and radiation are other terms which might be applied in this sense. Each of these effects produces a [53] different class of phenomena. Latent fire causes the active growth of that in which it is embedded and causes that upward pushing which brings into manifestation all that is found in the kingdoms of nature. Radiatory fire causes the continued growth of that which has progressed, under the influence of latent fire, to a point receptive of the radiatory. Let us tabulate it thus:
Systemic or Macrocosmic: The solar Logos or The Grand Man of the Heavens.
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1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
O peoples of the world! Give ear unto the call of Him Who is the Lord of Names, Who proclaimeth unto you from His habitation in the Most Great Prison: "Verily, no God is there but Me, the Powerful, the Mighty, the All-Subduing, the Most Exalted, the Omniscient, the All-Wise." In truth, there is no God but Him, the Omnipotent Ruler of the worlds. Were it His Will, He would, through but a single word proceeding from His presence, lay hold on all mankind. Beware lest ye hesitate in your acceptance of this Cause-a Cause before which the Concourse on high and the dwellers of the Cities of Names have bowed down. Fear God, and be not of those who are shut out as by a veil. Burn ye away the veils with the Fire of My love, and dispel ye the mists of vain imaginings by the power of this Name through which We have subdued the entire creation.
133
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"All praise be to Thee, O Thou the Desire of the worlds!" In truth, it is in the hand of God to give what He willeth to whomsoever He willeth, and to withhold what He pleaseth from whomsoever He may wish. He knoweth the inner secrets of the hearts and the meaning hidden in a mocker's wink. How many an embodiment of heedlessness who came unto Us with purity of heart have We established upon the seat of Our acceptance; and how many an exponent of wisdom have We in all justice consigned to the Fire. We are, in truth, the One to judge. He it is Who is the manifestation of "God doeth whatsoever He pleaseth", and abideth upon the throne of "He ordaineth whatsoever He chooseth".
158
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thee-verses sent down by God, the Omnipotent Protector, the Lord of might and power. Beware lest the Fire of thy presumptuousness debar thee from attaining to God's Holy Court. Turn unto Him, and fear not because of thy deeds. He, in truth, forgiveth whomsoever He desireth as a bounty on His part; no God is there but Him, the Ever-Forgiving, the All-Bounteous.
We admonish thee solely for the sake of God. Shouldst thou accept this counsel, thou wilt have acted to thine own behoof; and shouldst thou reject it, thy Lord, verily, can well dispense with thee, and with all those who, in manifest delusion, have followed thee. Behold! God hath laid hold on him who led thee astray. Return unto God, humble, submissive and lowly; verily, He will put away from thee thy sins, for thy Lord, of a certainty, is the Forgiving, the Mighty, the All-Merciful.
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1.00 - PRELUDE AT THE THEATRE, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Whom but to see, puts out the Fire of Song!
Hide from my view the surging crowd that passes,
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1.00 - The way of what is to come, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
The other Gods died of their temporality, yet the supreme meaning never dies, it turns into meaning and then into absurdity, and out of the Fire and blood of their collision the supreme meaning rises up rejuvenated anew.
The image of God has a shadow. The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actual and corporeal and have no shadow?
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1.01 - About the Elements, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Tejas ~ principle of the Fire
Waju ~ Principle of the air
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1.01 - BOOK THE FIRST, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
The lighter parts lye next the Fires above;
The grosser near the watry surface move:
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1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the Fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.
One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned any thing of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me any thing to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my
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Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting. So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? According to Liebig, mans body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the Fire goes out. Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much for analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above list, that the expression, _animal life_, is nearly synonymous with the expression, _animal heat_; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the Fire within us,and Fuel serves only to prepare that
Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from without,Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the _heat_ thus generated and absorbed.
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At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my house. No man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain; but before boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the mean while out of doors on the ground, early in the morning: which mode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeable than the usual one. When it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the Fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way. In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad.
It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure until we found a better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. There is some of the same fitness in a mans building his own house that there is in a birds building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer.
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The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not. Would it not be well if we were to celebrate such a busk, or feast of first fruits, as Bartram describes to have been the custom of the Mucclasse Indians? When a town celebrates the busk, says he, having previously provided themselves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and other household utensils and furniture, they collect all their worn out clothes and other despicable things, sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town of their filth, which with all the remaining grain and other old provisions they cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire. After having taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the Fire in the town is extinguished. During this fast they abstain from the gratification of every appetite and passion whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed; all malefactors may return to their town.
On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together, produces new fire in the public square, from whence every habitation in the town is supplied with the new and pure flame.
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1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
That was the general aspect of the ancient worship in Greece, Rome, India and among other ancient peoples. But in all these countries these gods began to assume a higher, a psychological function; Pallas Athene who may have been originally a Dawn-Goddess springing in flames from the head of Zeus, the Sky-God, Dyaus of the Veda, has in classical Greece a higher function and was identified by the Romans with their Minerva, the Goddess of learning and wisdom; similarly, Saraswati, a river Goddess, becomes in India the goddess of wisdom, learning and the arts and crafts: all the Greek deities have undergone a change in this direction - Apollo, the Sun-God, has become a god of poetry and prophecy, Hephaestus the Fire-God a divine smith, god of labour. In India the process was arrested half-way, and the Vedic Gods developed their psychological functions but retained more fixedly their external character and for higher purposes gave place to a new pantheon. They had to give precedence to Puranic deities who developed out of the early company but assumed larger cosmic functions, Vishnu, Rudra, Brahma - developing from the Vedic Brihaspati, or Brahmanaspati, - Shiva, Lakshmi, Durga. Thus in India the change in the gods was less complete, the earlier deities became the inferior divinities of the Puranic pantheon and this was largely due to the survival of the Rig Veda in which their psychological and their external functions co-existed and are both given a powerful emphasis; there was no such early literary record to maintain the original features of the Gods of Greece and Rome.
This change was evidently due to a cultural development in these early peoples who became progressively more mentalised and less engrossed in the physical life as they advanced in civilisation and needed to read into their religion and their deities finer and subtler aspects which would support their more highly mentalised concepts and interests and find for them a true spiritual being or some celestial figure as their support and sanction.
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He is not thinking of the Nature-Power presiding over the outer element of fire or of the Fire of the ceremonial sacrifice. Or he speaks of Saraswati as one who impels the words of Truth and awakes to right thinkings or as one opulent with the thought: Saraswati awakes to consciousness or makes us conscious of the "Great Ocean and illumines all our thoughts." It is surely not the River Goddess whom he is thus hymning but the Power, theRiver if you will, of inspiration, the word of the Truth, bringing its light into our thoughts, building up in us that Truth, an inner knowledge. The Gods constantly stand out in their psychological functions; the sacrifice is the outer symbol of an inner work, an inner interchange between the gods and men, - man givingwhat he has, the gods giving in return the horses of power, the herds of light, the heroes of Strength to be his retinue, winning for him victory in his battle with the hosts of Darkness, Vritras, Dasyus, Panis. When the Rishi says, "Let us become conscious whether by the War-Horse or by the Word of a Strength beyond men", his words have either a mystic significance or they have no coherent meaning at all. In the portions translated in this book we have many mystic verses and whole hymns which, however mystic, tear the veil off the outer sacrificial images covering the real sense of the Veda. "Thought", says the Rishi, "has nourished for us human things in the Immortals, in the Great Heavens; it is the milch-cow which milks of itself the wealth of many forms" - the many kinds of wealth, cows, horses and the rest for which the sacrificer prays; evidently this is no material wealth, it is something which Thought, the Thought embodied in the Mantra, can give and it is the result of the same Thought that nourishes our human things in the Immortals, in the Great Heavens. A process of divinisation, and of a bringing down of great and luminous riches, treasures won from the Gods by the inner work of sacrifice, is hinted at in terms necessarily covert but still for one who knows how to read these secret words, nin.ya vacamsi, sufficiently expressive, kavaye nivacana. Again, Night and Dawn the eternal sisters are like "joyful weaving women weaving the weft of our perfected works into the form of a sacrifice."
Again, words with a mystic form and meaning, but there
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1.01 - On renunciation of the world, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
All who enter upon the good fight, which is hard and narrow, but also easy, must realize that they must leap into the Fire, if they really expect the celestial fire to dwell in them. But, let everyone examine himself, and so let him eat the bread of it with its bitter herbs, and let him drink the cup of it with its
1 I.e. blindness, obtuseness.
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3 Dispassion: Gk. apatheia, which is often misunderstood and mistranslated as apathy, indifference, or insensibility in a Stoic sense. In ecclesiastical Greek, dispassion means freedom from passion through being filled with the Holy Spirit of God as a fruit of divine love. It is a state of soul in which a burning love for God and men leaves no room for selfish and animal passions. How far it is from the cold Stoic conception may be seen from the fact that St. Diadochus can speak of the Fire of dispassion. Cf. Step 28: 27. Throughout this translation apatheia is usually given as dispassion.
4 Exodus xvii.
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1.01 - the Call to Adventure, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
the underworld; the Fire seeds in the ocean of immortality which
supports the earth and surrounds it like a snake; the stars in the
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1.01 - The Dark Forest. The Hill of Difficulty. The Panther, the Lion, and the Wolf. Virgil., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
Within the Fire, because they hope to come,
Whene'er it may be, to the blessed people;
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1.01 - The First Steps, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
A god and a demon went to learn about the Self from a great sage. They studied with him for a long time. At last the sage told them, "You yourselves are the Being you are seeking." Both of them thought that their bodies were the Self. They went back to their people quite satisfied and said, "We have learned everything that was to be learned; eat, drink, and be merry; we are the Self; there is nothing beyond us." The nature of the demon was ignorant, clouded; so he never inquired any further, but was perfectly contented with the idea that he was God, that by the Self was meant the body. The god had a purer nature. He at first committed the mistake of thinking: I, this body, am Brahman: so keep it strong and in health, and well dressed, and give it all sorts of enjoyments. But, in a few days, he found out that that could not be the meaning of the sage, their master; there must be something higher. So he came back and said, "Sir, did you teach me that this body was the Self? If so, I see all bodies die; the Self cannot die." The sage said, "Find it out; thou art That." Then the god thought that the vital forces which work the body were what the sage meant. But after a time, he found that if he ate, these vital forces remained strong, but, if he starved, they became weak. The god then went back to the sage and said, "Sir, do you mean that the vital forces are the Self?" The sage said, "Find out for yourself; thou art That." The god returned home once more, thinking that it was the mind, perhaps, that was the Self. But in a short while he saw that thoughts were so various, now good, again bad; the mind was too changeable to be the Self. He went back to the sage and said, "Sir, I do not think that the mind is the Self; did you mean that?" "No," replied the sage, "thou art That; find out for yourself." The god went home, and at last found that he was the Self, beyond all thought, one without birth or death, whom the sword cannot pierce or the Fire burn, whom the air cannot dry or the water melt, the beginningless and endless, the immovable, the intangible, the omniscient, the omnipotent Being; that It was neither the body nor the mind, but beyond them all. So he was satisfied; but the poor demon did not get the truth, owing to his fondness for the body.
This world has a good many of these demoniac natures, but there are some gods too. If one proposes to teach any science to increase the power of sense-enjoyment, one finds multitudes ready for it. If one undertakes to show the supreme goal, one finds few to listen to him. Very few have the power to grasp the higher, fewer still the patience to attain to it. But there are a few also who know that even if the body can be made to live for a thousand years, the result in the end will be the same. When the forces that hold it together go away, the body must fall. No man was ever born who could stop his body one moment from changing. Body is the name of a series of changes. "As in a river the masses of water are changing before you every moment, and new masses are coming, yet taking similar form, so is it with this body." Yet the body must be kept strong and healthy. It is the best instrument we have.
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1.01 - The Offering, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
neath the rising sun I will call down the Fire.
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1.01 - THE OPPOSITES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[2] The opposites and their symbols are so common in the texts that it is superfluous to cite evidence from the sources. On the other hand, in view of the ambiguity of the alchemists language, which is tam ethice quam physice (as much ethical as physical), it is worth while to go rather more closely into the manner in which the texts treat of the opposites. Very often the masculine-feminine opposition is personified as King and Queen (in the Rosarium philosophorum also as Emperor and Empress), or as servus (slave) or vir rubeus (red man) and mulier candida (white woman);5 in the Visio Arislei they appear as Gabricus (or Thabritius) and Beya, the Kings son and daughter.6 Theriomorphic symbols are equally common and are often found in the illustrations.7 I would mention the eagle and toad (the eagle flying through the air and the toad crawling on the ground), which are the emblem of Avicenna in Michael Maier,8 the eagle representing Luna or Juno, Venus, Beya, who is fugitive and winged like the eagle, which flies up to the clouds and receives the rays of the sun in his eyes. The toad is the opposite of air, it is a contrary element, namely earth, whereon alone it moves by slow steps, and does not trust itself to another element. Its head is very heavy and gazes at the earth. For this reason it denotes the philosophic earth, which cannot fly [i.e., cannot be sublimated], as it is firm and solid. Upon it as a foundation the golden house9 is to be built. Were it not for the earth in our work the air would fly away, neither would the Fire have its nourishment, nor the water its vessel.10
[3] Another favourite theriomorphic image is that of the two birds or two dragons, one of them winged, the other wingless. This allegory comes from an ancient text, De Chemia Senioris antiquissimi philosophi libellus.11 The wingless bird or dragon prevents the other from flying. They stand for Sol and Luna, brother and sister, who are united by means of the art.12 In Lambspringks Symbols13 they appear as the astrological Fishes which, swimming in opposite directions, symbolize the spirit / soul polarity. The water they swim in is mare nostrum (our sea) and is interpreted as the body.14 The fishes are without bones and cortex.15 From them is produced a mare immensum, which is the aqua permanens (permanent water). Another symbol is the stag and unicorn meeting in the forest.16 The stag signifies the soul, the unicorn spirit, and the forest the body. The next two pictures in Lambspringks Symbols show the lion and lioness,17 or the wolf and dog, the latter two fighting; they too symbolize soul and spirit. In Figure VII the opposites are symbolized by two birds in a wood, one fledged, the other unfledged. Whereas in the earlier pictures the conflict seems to be between spirit and soul, the two birds signify the conflict between spirit and body, and in Figure VIII the two birds fighting do in fact represent that conflict, as the caption shows. The opposition between spirit and soul is due to the latter having a very fine substance. It is more akin to the hylical body and is densior et crassior (denser and grosser) than the spirit.
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1.01 - To Watanabe Sukefusa, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
It was impossible for anyone to get near. Shu-liang's terrible screams were heard over half a mile away. After three days and three nights of continual agony, death finally came. When the Fires died out and the villagers came and peered into the hole, they found that although the earth and grass inside were untouched by the flames, Shu-liang had been burned so badly that his body resembled a lump of charcoal.
There is also the story of a priest who was passing an old shrine late one night and saw crowds of tall, strange-looking people within the precincts. Their heads were wrapped in yellow silk and they were sweeping and cleaning the approaches to the shrine with sacred branches of the sakaki tree.
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Good deeds, no matter how many you perform, need no repentance. But evil deeds, even minor ones, are a cause of endless regret and heartache. According to what is written in the sutras, even if a person erects a pagoda twenty yojanas in height, adorns it with the seven precious gems, and enshrines Buddha relics in it, so that every arhat in the world comes to revere it, the arising in his mind of even a single angry thought becomes a fire that will at once turn into a great, all-consuming conflagration. the Fires of wrath and anger consume entire forests of merit and virtue.
Until now, your mother could not devote herself to good works because from the time you were born she lavished her every moment on you, caring for you and seeing that you were provided with everything necessary for your upbringing. If she did find time to enter the family altar room, the sutras and dharanis she recited were always dedicated to your good health and long life, without a thought for her own karmic future, and heedless of her own physical exhaustion. Now, having retired in recent years from her former busy life, she has time to spend quietly on Buddhist devotions-but you come around, hatching your malicious schemes to frustrate and upset her, spreading silly rumors at the yearend cleaning, thinking up ways to anger her at the busy year-end season. What a bitterly cruel thing to do.
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If, on the other hand, you decide that what I have said is unreasonable nonsense, just toss the letter into the Fire. From now on, everything will inevitably depend on your mind alone.
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1.02 - BOOK THE SECOND, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Suppress'd the raging of the Fires with fire.
At once from life and from the chariot driv'n,
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1.02 - Fire over the Earth, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
ness: there was the Fire. This is the truth.
So, far from light emerging gradually out of the
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1.02 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"One may not realize this in youth. I have looked into the hearth in the kitchen of the Kli temple when logs are being burnt. At first the wet wood burns rather well. It doesn't seem then that it contains much moisture. But when the wood is sufficiently burnt, all the moisture runs back to one end. At last water squirts from the fuel and puts out the Fire.
"So one should be careful about anger, passion, and greed. Take, for instance, the case of Hanuman. In a fit of anger he burnt Ceylon. At last he remembered that Sita was living in the aoka grove. Then he began to tremble lest the Fire should injure her."
NEIGHHBOUR: "Why has God created wicked people?"
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1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
May the opening of our mouths quiet the Fire-god!
May thy overpowering poison vanquish the opposing night!
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which fills itself with demons of the imagination, yet exerts an uncanny fascination; it is the Fire that
magically reduces one determinate thing to another; it is the horror and curiosity engendered by the
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installed when one has built a fire altar (garhapatya) and all those who build the Fire altar are legally
established. (Shatapatha Brahmana, VII, 1,1,1-4). By the erection of a fire altar Agni is made present,
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for the perplexed and curious is the redemptive jewel in the head of the toad or in the lair of the Firebelching dragon. The unknown is the Fire, that burns and protects the endlessly mysterious transcendent
object, that simultaneously gives and takes away. The positive aspect of the unknown, incarnated as the
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depths of a mountain, or who conceals a virgin princess in his lair. He is the Fire-breathing winged serpent
of transformation the undescribable union of everything now discriminated, who constantly schemes to
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1.02 - The Age of Individualism and Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We already see a violent though incomplete beginning of this line of social evolution in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia. The trend is for more and more nations to accept this beginning of a new order, and the resistance of the old order is more passive than activeit lacks the Fire, enthusiasm and self-confidence which animates the innovating Idea.
This is no longer recognised by the new order, Fascist or Communistic,here the individual is reduced to a cell or atom of the social body. "We have destroyed" proclaims a German exponent "the false view that men are individual beings; there is no liberty of individuals, there is only liberty of nations or races."
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1.02 - The Concept of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
contemporary accounts. the Fire- or sun-god here invoked is a
figure which has close historical parallels, for instance with the
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1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
bring the Fire to man, the burning sun of the Supermind
16 Sri Aurobindo: op. cit., pp. 168-169.
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1.02 - The Principle of Fire, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Bible we read: Fiat Lux There shall be light. The origin of the light, of course, is to be sought in the Fire. Each element and therefore that of fire, too, has two polarities, i.e., the active and the passive one, which means positive (+) and negative (-). Plus will always signify the constructive, the creative, the productive sources whereas minus stands for all that is destructive or dissecting. There are always two basic qualities, which must be clearly distinguished in each element. Religions have always imputed the good to the active and the evil to the passive side. But fundamentally spoken, there are no such things as good or bad; they are nothing but human conceptions. In the Universe there is neither good nor evil, because everything has been created according to immutable rules, wherein the Divine Principle is reflected and only by knowing these rules, shall we be able to come near to the Divinity.
As mentioned before, the fiery principle owns the expansion, which I shall call electrical fluid for the sake of better comprehension. This definition does not just point to the roughly material electricity in spite of its having a certain analogy to it.
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1.02 - The Refusal of the Call, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
Dr. Jung has reported a dream that resembles very closely the image of the myth of Daphne. The dreamer is the same young man who found himself (supra, p. 55) in the land of the sheep the land, that is to say, of unindependence. A voice within him says, "I must first get away from the father"; then a few nights later: "a snake draws a circle about the dreamer, and he stands like a tree, grown fast to the earth." This is an image of the magic circle drawn about the personality by the dragon power of the fixating parent. Brynhild, in the same way, was protected in her virginity, arrested in her daughter state for years, by the circle of the Fire of all-father Wotan. She slept in timelessness until the coming of Siegfried.
Little Briar-rose (Sleeping Beauty) was put to sleep by a jeal ous hag (an unconscious evil-mother image). And not only the child, her entire world went off to sleep; but at last, "after long, long years," there came a prince to wake her. "The king and queen (the conscious good-parent images), who had just come home and were entering the hall, began to fall asleep, and with them the whole estate. All the horses slept in the stalls, the dogs in the yard, the pigeons on the roof, the flies on the walls, yes, the Fire that flickered on the hearth grew still and slumbered, and the roast ceased to simmer. And the cook, who was about to pull the hair of the scullery boy because he had forgotten some thing, let him go and fell off to sleep. And the wind went down, and not a leaf stirred in the trees. Then around the castle a hedge of thorns began to grow, which became taller every year, and finally shut off the whole estate. It grew up taller than the castle, so that nothing more was seen, not even the weathercock on the roof."
A Persian city once was "enstoned to stone"king and queen, soldiers, inhabitants, and allbecause its people refused the call of Allah. Lot's wife became a pillar of salt for looking back, when she had been summoned forth from her city by Jehovah.
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1.02 - The Stages of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
The first trial consists in obtaining a truer vision than the average man has of the corporeal attributes of lifeless things, and later of plants, animals and human beings. This does not mean what at present is called scientific knowledge, for it is a question not of science but of vision. As a rule, the would-be initiate proceeds to learn how the objects of nature and the beings gifted with life manifest themselves to the spiritual ear and the spiritual eye. In a certain way these things then lie stripped-naked-before the beholder. The qualities which can then be seen and heard are hidden from the physical eyes and ears. For physical perception they are concealed as if by a veil, and the falling away of this veil for the would-be initiate consists in a process designated as the process of Purification by Fire. The first trial is therefore known as the Fire-Trial.
For many people, ordinary life is itself a more or less unconscious process of initiation through the Fire-Trial. Such people have passed through
p. 81
--
The candidate may always turn back after the Fire-trial. He will then resume his life, streng thened in body and soul, and wait for a future incarnation to continue his initiation. In his present incarnation he will prove himself a more
p. 82
--
But if, after completing the Fire-trial, he should wish to continue the path, a certain writing-system generally adopted in esoteric training must now be revealed to him. The actual teachings manifest themselves in this writing, because the hidden (occult) qualities of things cannot be directly expressed in the words of ordinary writing. The pupils of the initiates translate the teachings into ordinary language as best they can. The occult script reveals itself to the soul when the latter has attained spiritual perception, for it is traced in the spiritual world and remains there for all time. It cannot be learned as an artificial writing is learned and read. The candidate grows into clairvoyant knowledge in an appropriate way, and during this growth a new strength is developed in his soul, as a new faculty, through which he feels himself impelled to decipher the occurrences and the beings of the spiritual world
p. 83
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1.02 - Twenty-two Letters, #Sefer Yetzirah The Book of Creation In Theory and Practice, #Anonymous, #Various
There are twenty-two letters, stamina. Three of them, however, are the first elements, fundamentals or mothers, seven double and twelve simple consonants. The three fundamental letters have as their basis the balance. In one scale 17 is the merit and in the other criminality, which are placed in equilibrium by the tongue. The three fundamental letters signify, as is mute like the water and hissing like the Fire, there is among them, a breath of air which reconciles them.
SECTION 2.
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10.32 - The Mystery of the Five Elements, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So, the five senses open out to the five elements, each sense linked to its own element, each sense presenting a particular aspect of the material universe. Thus ether, the subtlest element, is present to the ear, the organ of hearing, air to the skin (twak) the organ of touch, the Fire-element (radiant energy) to the eye, the liquid to the organ of taste, and earth is given over to smell. Earth is linked with smell, perhaps because it is the perfume of creation, the dense aroma of God's material energy. Also earth is the summation of all the elements and all the qualities of matter. It is the epitome of the material creation. The physical beauty of earth is well-known, the landscape and seascape, its rich variegated coloration, we all admire standing upon its bosom, but up in the air, in the wide open spaces earth appears with even a more magical beauty to which cosmonauts have given glowing tri bute. But even this visible beauty pales, I suppose, before the perfume it emits which is its celestial quality, that can only be described indeed as the sweet-scented body of the Divine Substance.
The five elements are thus the five orders of material existence viewed as correlates to the five senses of man. But they are also realities in their own right. They represent the fundamental principles underlying or characterising the nature of matter. Science speaks of the three states of mattersolid, liquid and gaseous. The five elements enumerate five states instead. Thus earth = solid, water = liquid, fire = gaseous or radiant, air = fluid, ether or space = etheric. A distinction is made between gaseous and fluid, fluid being still more dispersive and tenuous. We might take air as representing the ether spoken of in science and what we have been equating with ether may be termed the field the gravitational field, for example, of our days.
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1.03 - BOOK THE THIRD, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
I kindle up the Fires by which I burn,
And my own beauties from the well return.
--
Go, let him feel the whips, the swords, the Fire,
And in the tortures of the rack expire."
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1.03 - Fire in the Earth, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
Once again the Fire has penetrated the earth.
Not with sudden crash of thunderbolt, riving the
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1.03 - Hymns of Gritsamada, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2. O Fire, thine are the call and the offering, thine the purification and the order of the sacrifice, thine the lustration; thou art the Fire-bringer for the seeker of the Truth. The annunciation is thine, thou becomest the pilgrim-rite:1 thou art the priest of the Word and the master of the house in our home.
3. O Fire, thou art Indra the Bull of all that are and thou art wide-moving2 Vishnu, one to be worshipped with obeisance. O Master of the Word, thou art Brahma, the finder of the Riches: O Fire who sustainest each and all, closely thou companionest the Goddess of the many thoughts.3
--
1. Make the Fire that knows all things born to grow by your sacrifice; worship him with thy offering and thy body and thy speech. Worship in his kindling Fire with whom are his strong delights, the male of the sun-world, the Priest of the Call, the inhabitant of Heaven4 who sits at the chariot yoke in our battles.
2. The Nights and the Dawns have lowed to thee as the milchcows low towards a calf in their lairs of rest. O Fire of many blessings, thou art the traveller of Heaven through the ages of man and thou shinest self-gathered through his nights.5
--
1. the Fire that was set inward in the earth is kindled and has arisen fronting all the worlds. He has arisen, the purifying Flame, the priest of the call, the wise of understanding, the Ancient of Days. Today let the Fire in the fullness of his powers, a god to the gods do sacrifice.
2. Fire who voices the godhead, shines revealing the planes, each and each; high of ray he reveals, each and each, the triple heavens by his greatness. Let him flood the oblation with a mind that diffuses the light and manifest the gods on the head of the sacrifice.
--
1. I call to you the Fire with his strong delights and his splendours of light, Fire who strips all sin from us, the guest of the peoples. He becomes like a supporting friend, he becomes the God who knows all things born in the man with whom are the Gods.12
2. The Bhrigus worshipping in the session of the Waters set him a twofold Light in the peoples of Man. May he master all planes prevailing vastly, Fire the traveller of the Gods with his rapid horses.
--
3. As men who would settle in a home bring into it a beloved friend, the Gods have set the Fire in these human peoples. Let him illumine the desire of the billowing nights, let him be one full of discerning mind in the house for the giver of sacrifice.
4. Delightful is his growth as if one's own increase, rapturous is his vision as he gallops burning on his way. He darts about his tongue mid the growths of the forest and tosses his mane like a chariot courser.
--
5. Our words have made the Fire to grow, made the Traveller to grow in the way of self-empire; he holds in himself all glory and beauty.
6. May we cleave to the safeguardings of the Fire and Soma and Indra and of the Gods, meeting with no hurt overcome those that are embattled against us.
SUKTA 9
--
3. They have given him birth in one laid supine who with happy delivery bore him; the Fire became a child in mothers of many forms. This thinker and knower by the greatness of his lights dwells30 even in the destroying Night unenveloped by the darkness.
4. I anoint the Fire with my oblation of light, where he dwells
fronting all the worlds; wide in his horizontal expansion
--
the riches.32 None can touch the body of the Fire where he
plays in his desire of the hues of light,33 in his strong and
--
who would conquer the Treasure and I call to the Fire with
my power of speech and my flame of offering, Fire in whom
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1.03 - On exile or pilgrimage, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
In hastening to solitude and exile, do not wait for world-loving souls, because the thief comes unexpectedly. In trying to save the careless and indolent along with themselves, many perish with them, because in course of time the Fire goes out. As soon as the flame is burning within you, run; for you do not know when it will go out and leave you in darkness. Not all of us are required to save others. The divine Apostle says: Each one of us shall give account of himself to God.4 And again he
says: Thou therefore who teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?1 This is like saying: I do not know whether we must all teach others; but teach yourselves at all costs.
--
Attachment either to some particular relative or to strangers is dangerous. Little by little it can entice us back to the world, and completely quench the Fire of our contrition. It is impossible to look at the sky with one eye and at the earth with the other, and it is equally impossible for anyone not to expose his soul to danger who has not separated himself completely, both in thought and body, from his own relatives and from others.
By much labour and effort a good and firm disposition is developed in us. But what is achieved with great labour can be lost in an instant. For evil company doth corrupt good manners6, being at once worldly and disorderly.7 The man who associates with people of the world or approaches them
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1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
it round the patient's neck, and the other in the smoke of the Fire.
As the vervain dries up in the smoke, so the tumour will also dry up
--
beside the Fire with a little stick pressed down on his neck. This
naturally causes the fall-stick of his trap to drop down on the neck
--
to say, "Do not put your hand in the Fire"; it is a rule of common
sense, because the forbidden action entails a real, not an imaginary
--
standing before the Fire, she mentions aloud all the men she has
scored on her string, name after name. Having ended her confession,
she throws the string into the Fire, and when the god has consumed
it in his pure flame, her sins are forgiven her and she departs in
--
day and night he must keep the Fire burning, for if he were to let
it die out, disaster would be fall the warriors and would continue
--
in the pot or a banana in the Fire), you will become forgetful. The
Galelareese are also of opinion that if a woman were to consume two
--
through the Fire to the food, and so to the prince, who ate the food
which was cooked on the Fire which was fed with the wood which grew
out of the tree. The Sudanese think that if a house is built of the
--
the bow near the Fire to make the wound which it has inflicted hot;
and for the same reason they put the arrow-head, if it has been
recovered, into the Fire. Moreover, they are careful to keep the
bow-string taut and to twang it occasionally, for this will cause
--
burned it slowly in the Fire. As the bundle was consumed, the victim
fell ill, and when it was reduced to ashes, he died. In this last
--
might melt with love of her, did not forget to throw into the Fire a
shred of his cloak which he had dropped in her house. In Prussia
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1.03 - To Layman Ishii, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
I find my entire back streaming with profuse sweat, partly in shame, partly in gratitude. My only request is that after reading this letter, you will pass it on to the Fire god with instructions to consign it to his eternal storehouse. Ha. Ha.
HOZ, 2:166-79
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1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Brahman and akti are identical, like fire and its power to bum. When we talk of fire we automatically mean also its power to burn. Again, the Fire's power to burn implies the Fire itself. If you accept the one you must accept the other.
"Brahman alone is addressed as the Mother. This is because a mother is an object of great love. One is able to realize God just through love. Ecstasy of feeling, devotion, love, and faith - these are the means. Listen to a song:
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1.04 - BOOK THE FOURTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Or at the Fire to comb the wooll they stand,
Or twirl the spindle with a dext'rous hand.
--
He heaves the bellows, and blows fierce the Fire:
From liquid brass, tho' sure, yet subtile snares
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1.04 - Communion, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
If the Fire has come down into the heart of the
world it is, in the last resort, to lay hold on me and
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1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
and the rain are at his comm and and obey his will. the Fire also is
subject to him, and the flames of a conflagration are extinguished
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1.04 - Narayana appearance, in the beginning of the Kalpa, as the Varaha (boar), #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
The Yogis.-Triumph, lord of lords supreme; Keśava, sovereign of the earth, the wielder of the mace, the shell, the discus, and the sword: cause of production, destruction, and existence. THOU ART, oh god: there is no other supreme condition, but thou. Thou, lord, art the person of sacrifice: for thy feet are the Vedas; thy tusks are the stake to which the victim is bound; in thy teeth are the offerings; thy mouth is the altar; thy tongue is the Fire; and the hairs of thy body are the sacrificial grass. Thine eyes, oh omnipotent, are day and night; thy head is the seat of all, the place of Brahma; thy mane is all the hymns of the Vedas; thy nostrils are all oblations: oh thou, whose snout is the ladle of oblation; whose deep voice is the chanting of the Sāma veda; whose body is the hall of sacrifice; whose joints are the different ceremonies; and whose ears have the properties of both voluntary and obligatory rites[7]: do thou, who art eternal, who art in size a mountain, be propitious. We acknowledge thee, who hast traversed the world, oh universal form, to be the beginning, the continuance, and the destruction of all things: thou art the supreme god. Have pity on us, oh lord of conscious and unconscious beings. The orb of the earth is seen seated on the tip of thy tusks, as if thou hadst been sporting amidst a lake where the lotus floats, and hadst borne away the leaves covered with soil. The space between heaven and earth is occupied by thy body, oh thou of unequalled glory, resplendent with the power of pervading the universe, oh lord, for the benefit of all. Thou art the aim of all: there is none other than thee, sovereign of the world: this is thy might, by which all things, fixed or movable, are pervaded. This form, which is now beheld, is thy form, as one essentially with wisdom. Those who have not practised devotion, conceive erroneously of the nature of the world. The ignorant, who do not perceive that this universe is of the nature of wisdom, and judge of it as an object of perception only, are lost in the ocean of spiritual ignorance. But they who know true wisdom, and whose minds are pure, behold this whole world as one with divine knowledge, as one with thee, oh god. Be favourable, oh universal spirit: raise up this earth, for the habitation of created beings. Inscrutable deity, whose eyes are like lotuses, give us felicity. Oh lord, thou art endowed with the quality of goodness: raise up, Govinda, this earth, for the general good. Grant us happiness, oh lotus-eyed. May this, thy activity in creation, be beneficial to the earth. Salutation to thee. Grant us happiness, oh lotus-eyed. arāśara said:-
The supreme being thus eulogized, upholding the earth, raised it quickly, and placed it on the summit of the ocean, where it floats like a mighty vessel, and from its expansive surface does not sink beneath the waters. Then, having levelled the earth, the great eternal deity divided it into portions, by mountains: he who never wills in vain, created, by his irresistible power, those mountains again upon the earth which had been consumed at the destruction of the world. Having then divided the earth into seven great portions or continents, as it was before, he constructed in like manner the four (lower) spheres, earth, sky, heaven, and the sphere of the sages (Maharloka). Thus Hari, the four-faced god, invested with the quality of activity, and taking the form of Brahmā, accomplished the creation: but he (Brahmā) is only the instrumental cause of things to be created; the things that are capable of being created arise from nature as a common material cause: with exception of one instrumental cause alone, there is no need of any other cause, for (imperceptible) substance becomes perceptible substance according to the powers with which it is originally imbued[8].
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1.04 - Nothing Exists Per Se Except Atoms And The Void, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
Weight to the rocks, heat to the Fire, and flow
To the wide waters, touch to corporal things,
--
Wherein all things go on, the Fire of love
Upblown by that fair form, the glowing coal
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1.04 - On Knowledge of the Future World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
If, for example, a person possess a female slave to whom he is exceedingly attached, and on account of his being every day by her side, he is not conscious of his attachment, [84] and then if suddenly he should become offended with her and sell her to another person, and should afterwards become conscious of his concealed love, his heart would hourly assail him and sting him like a serpent. the Fire of regret and rage would burn within him, so that he might be not only sick from its effects, but might even die. Now if it is possible that such results should follow from the loss of a female slave, consider what must be the degree of grief and affliction of a man who is suddenly called upon to part with all his beloved objects in a moment. Just as it might happen that the master of the female slave should throw himself into the water to drown himself, or cast himself into the Fire to burn himself, all on account of his separation from her, so those spirits of men who are in their graves utter many wishes, exclaiming, "Ah! would that these scorpions and serpents, like those in the material world, would only sting us and destroy us, that at least we might be delivered from this torment."
Pain in the world is an accident of the body, and passes from the body to the spirit, and thus the spirit participates in the torment. But in the future world, pain has its home in the spirit itself, and hence it is excruciating.
--
The miterizl torments of the grave, O seeker after the divine mysteries, are those which are addressed to the body and through the body to the spirit. Spiritual torments are those which reach the spirit only. The language of God, "It is the Fire of God, the lighted fire which shall reach the hearts of the reprobates," refers to spiritual torments which affect the heart. The spiritual hell then is of three kinds. The first is the Fire of separation from the [88] lusts of the world; the second is the Fire of shame, ignominy and reproach; and the third is the Fire of exclusion from the beauty of the one Lord. These fires only burn the soul and do not touch the body.
There is in the world a cause or source of each kind of torment. Then let us examine the cause of the Fire of separation from the lusts of the world. In explaining previously the torments of the grave, we said that they arose from love of the world. Love and desire constitute the Paradise of the heart. So long as the heart is with its beloved object, it is in paradise, and as soon as the heart is separated from its beloved object, it is in hell. The men of this world, by their supreme love of the world, have made it to be their beloved object, and as long as they are in the world it is a real paradise to them; but as soon as death comes and separates them from their beloved, their state is a real hell to them. Believers, by loving God and the future world, have made them their best beloved, and as long as they are separated from them they are in hell. But as soon as this separation is annihilated, and they leave this world and go to the other, having attained their chief purpose and desire, they are in paradise in reality.
Suppose a person, a prince, had been passing his life in banqueting and pleasure, and every one around him had been submissive and obedient to his orders. But an enemy comes and deprives him of his principality, enslaves his wife and servants, and they plunder him of his money and property before his eyes. His pearls and jewels are wasted upon trifles, and his beautiful studs of horses and his retinue are dispersed. He becomes a subject in his own city, is compelled to wear coarse clothing in the presence of his former servants, and is appointed to guard and feed the dogs. Can you in any wise appreciate the misfortune into which the prince has fallen, and how deeply he must be a prey to anguish ? Probably he exclaims many times in a [89] day, "Would rather that I had fallen into the abyss of the earth and perished!" The severity of his torture is in proportion to the amount of sensual enjoyments in which he had participated while he was a prince. And it is plain that this torture is not inflicted on the body, but upon only the spirit, and that it is more excruciating than any pains of the body would be.
--
The second kind of torment in hell, beloved, is the Fire of ignominy and shame. In illustration this, suppose that a prince receives in to his friendship a poor'and humble man, treating him with great honor and making'him the favorite among all his confidential servants. He gives into his hands the keys of all his treasuries/commits his honor and wife and family to his care, and in short confides all his affairs into his hands, in full reliance upon him. Then, suppose that the poor man, after being elevated to this high rank, should be puffed up with pride, and should be disposed to betray the honor of the prince,- that he should begin to indulge in unworthy conduct with his wife [90] and servants, and should open his coffers and spend his property for his own pleasures. Suppose farther that he should even be consulting with the prince's enemy who has designs upon the principality, and should enter in to a compact with him. Just at this point the prince from a concealed retreat espies his conduct in his family, and learns how he has wasted his money and his possessions, and in short becomes acquainted with everything he has done. The man also learns that for some time the prince has been aware of his course of conduct, but that the reason of his delaying and postponing punishment was that he might see what other crimes he would commit, that he might punish him accordingly. In these circumstances the reflecting can easily appreciate what would be the confusion and mortification of this individual. He would think it a thousand times better to fall from a precipice and be dashed to pieces, or that the earth should open and he sink into the abyss, than that he should continue to live. So also is it with you. How many actions you perform, of which you say, "it is in private and no one sees it," or of which Satan cloaks over the guilt from your mind, by persuading you that it is all right and fair. But at last, when death comes and makes your sin manifest, then the Fire of ignominy and shame makes you captive to fierce torments and long continued misery....
Suppose you should throw a stone over against a wall, and some one Should come and inform you that the stone had hit your own house; and had put out the eye of your son. When you rush to your house and find that it is even so, can you conceive of the Fire of repentance and anguish you will have to meet? ...
Nor can the overwhelming nature of the remorse or the pain of the punishment be compared with the pain of putting out your son's eye, because the former is eternal. The pains and sorrows of the world are but for a few days [91] and then pass away, while thoughts upon the advantage and profit in the future world of pains endured here, will bring joy to those who reflect upon them. Your happiness does not depend upon your son's eye nor upon your own eye, but upon being accepted of God, and being honored and enriched with a vision of the divine beauty and excellence.
Another illustration of the Fire of shame and ignominy is, to suppose that a prince is giving his son in marriage, and that after many days spent in feasting and rejoicing on the occasion the moment has come for the son to receive his bride. The son, however, has secretly withdrawn with some of his friends and become so intoxicated as to be incapable of reasoning. But at last he concludes that it is time for him to return, and that he will go secretly and alone. He sets out, therefore, on his return home, out of his mind and unconscious of what he is about. He walks on until he reaches a door through which he sees lights burning. He fancies that it is his own house, and straightway he enters in. He looks around and observes that there is not the least movement, not even a breath, but that all have gone to sleep. At last in the middle of the court he sees some one covered over with damask silks and brocades, from whose body is exhaled the odor of musk. He fancies and exclaims that this must be his lawful bride, and he kneels down before her and kisses her lips. He observes that his mouth is damp with moisture that exudes from her lips, and that he is touching something wet. The mouth of his beloved is wounded and bloody, and he thinks that it is rose water, and continues to caress her, till he is stupified with sleep. After a while he awakes and comes into his right mind, and perceives that he is in a sepulchral chapel of the Fire-worshippers, and that what he had embraced was nothing but the body of an old woman ninety years old, who had died six months [92] previously. On that night they had anew changed the coverings, burned incense and lighted the candles.1
When the prince's son sees himself in this condition, shame and mortification overwhelm him to such a degree, that he is upon the point of destroying himself. But still severer anguish lays hold of him, lest, when he should leave the place in this filthy state, he should be seen by some person. While he is asking himself what he should do, his father who knew nothing as to the place where his son had been, but who had left his palace with his friends and his suite in search of his son, meets him just at the moment he is coming out of that house in that state. Imagine now the shame of the sou and what must be his feelings. No doubt but that he would have given his life to any one who could have offered him a refuge and deliverance from his shame. You see that the torment here is spiritual and not material; for there is not an iota of pain here that affected the body.
--
We come now, beloved, to the third fire, the Fire of separation from the divine beauty, and of despair of attaining everlasting felicity. The cause of this fire, is that conduct and stupidity which led the individual, while in the world, not to acquire a knowledge of God, to neglect purifying the mirror of his heart from the consuming cares ot the world and from the rust of sensual pleasures, and to omit those austerities and exertions by which his blamable inclinations and dispositions might be changed to laudable ones. The individual did not act in accordance with the tradition which says, "Acquire a character resembling the character of God," and by means of which he might have been worthy of the vision of the beauty of the Lord, and of being received at the king's court. The heart which is full of the love of the world, and of the rust of worldly cares and transgressions, will see nothing in the future world, must be shut out from all kinds of felicity and will rise blind at the resurrection. Our refuge is in God !
An illustration of this fire of reprobation and banishment may be found in this world, by supposing that a company travelling by night should come into a valley that was very stony, and as they went on their way, they should hear a voice calling out, "Take good heed and carry away with you an abundance of these stones; you [94] will have occasion to use them at some future time." Some of those who heard the voice, exercised prudence, and carried off as many stones as they could; others for the sake of saving themselves trouble, carried off only a few. Others still, did not carry away any, saying, "it is folly to take pains and trouble for the sake of an advantage that is future and prospective : indeed it is not clear that there will be any advantage at all." Besides, they treated as stupid and foolish those who did carry any away, and said, "look at those insane people, who, from pure cupidity and craving for what is impossible, load themselves down like asses, and give themselves useless pains. We are the comfortable ones, who go on our way free, joyful and without concern for the future." When the light of day dawned, they saw that all the stones were invaluable rubies and sapphires, each one of which was worth at least three thousand drachms of silver. Then those who had brought away stones, exclaimed, "alas! that we were not able to bring away any more." But those who had brought away nothing and had traveled with comfort and ease, were overwhelmed with the Fire of reprobation; they strike their heads upon the ground with the energy of remorse, and are filled with sighs and lamentations. Those who had brought away stones, arrived at the city whither they had been going, and bought estates and slaves, jewels and rich and pleasant eatables and all kinds of raiment, and gave themselves up to banqueting and enjoyment, while those who had not brought away any stones, became so hungry, destitute and naked, that they went about desiring to perform for them some kind of service. But when they begged of them either food or drink, they said, in accordance with what God says in his ancient word. "The dwellers in fire shall call out to the inhabitants of Paradise, 'pour out upon us a little of your water and of the enjoyments God has bestowed upon you.'" They will answer, "God has forbidden [95] the unbelievers either."1 "No, we shall give you nothing, for God has prohibited you from having anything. Yesterday you were laughing at us, to-day we laugh at you: as God declares in his eternal word, 'If you mock at us, we will in our turn mock at you, as ye have mocked at us.'"2
This illustration of the enjoyments of Paradise has been made in very brief and comprehensive language, to serve as an example, but it is impossible by any similitude to give an idea of what it is to be separated from the contemplation of the beauty of the Lord. For whoever has but once experienced the delight of being near to God, and has enjoyed the vision of the beauty of the Lord, would perish if he should be for one moment separated from it. Even the last and least person who quits hell will receive a mansion from the Lord God which is equal to ten of these worlds. But we do not mean to say ten worlds in surface or in amount by number and weight, but ten worlds in value and in the beauty they display arid the pleasure they afford.
Having now become acquainted with the three kinds of spiritual torment, know, O student of the divine mysteries, that these spiritual fires of which we have been speaking, are more severe than the Fires which burn the body. The body does not itself perceive pain, and until pain reaches from the body to the spirit, it does not make a trace or impression. If, then, the anguish that is occasioned to the spirit through the channel of the body is so agonizing, imagine how intense must burn the Fire of that anguish which has its origin in the centre of the soul. The pain which any thing suffers is occasioned by the excess of something contrary to the nature and necessities of its constitution.
[96]
The necessities of the constitution of the spirit are to know God and to contemplate his beauty and excellence. But if stupidity and blindness, which are opposed to this tendency of the spirit, become predominant, the soul will be vexed and tormented, and there will be no end to the torment. If it were not that the body is subject to maladies in the world, the fact of this blindness and stupidity would have been visible and apparent to the soul in this world also, and it would also have been the source of immense anguish, and torment would at no moment have ceased to afflict men. Just as when a person has a severe sore upon the hand or foot, if besides it should be cut with a knife or fire should be put upon it, he would not feel the pain of the knife or the Fire, on account of the pain of the sore, so likewise the maladies of the body, such as hunger and thirst, or such maladies as love of possessions and family, combined with the absorbed attention of the senses to these things, prevent the soul from being conscious of its disquiet and distress. But when in death, the torment to which the body was subject is taken away, it will be seen how excruciating is the torment of the soul. And thus also God announces in his holy word : "Ah ! if you knew it with infallible assurance. But you will see hell: you will see it with the eyes of certainty."1
You should know, O inquirer, that the many arguments we have adduced to prove that spiritual torment is more severe than material torment, and the many illustrations of it that we have developed, are understood by intelligent and discerning minds, but the mass of the people understand nothing about them. Suppose, for example, that the sou of a prince has begun to go to school, and he is admonished that if he do not study, his father will not give him the principality. The boy does not understand the [97] import of the warning, and continues busy in playing with tops and nuts. But, if he is told instead, if you do not learn to read and write, your master will whip you or pull your ears, from that moment, understanding the force of the admonition, he leaves his sport and play, and is diligent in his studies. Since, therefore, the commonalty cannot understand the torment of being forbidden and shut out from the vision of the beauty of God, the doctors of the law and the preachers, frighten them with serpents and scorpions, and with the Fire of hell; for they are not capable of understanding anything else. In the other case, how should the "look out! take care !" from the mouth of the master, with the pain of one or two boxes on the ear, have any relation or resemblance in the mind of the boy with the loss of the principality? ...
The heavenly pilgrim must forsake his own city, and not fix himself for permanence in the place where he happens to be. And by the word city, worldly cares and employments are designated. He must quit them, and find his home in the path of obedience, and forsake the land of tribulation: for the prophet has said, "Love of country is an article of religion."
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1.04 - Sounds, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
All day the Fire-steed flies over the country, stopping only that his master may rest, and I am awakened by his tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when in some remote glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice and snow; and he will reach his stall only with the morning star, to start once more on his travels without rest or slumber. Or perchance, at evening, I hear him in his stable blowing off the superfluous energy of the day, that he may calm his nerves and cool his liver and brain for a few hours of iron slumber. If the enterprise were as heroic and commanding as it is protracted and unwearied!
Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns, where once only the hunter penetrated by day, in the darkest night dart these bright saloons without the knowledge of their inhabitants; this moment stopping at some brilliant station-house in town or city, where a social crowd is gathered, the next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day. They go and come with such regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one well conducted institution regulates a whole country. Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented? Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office? There is something electrifying in the atmosphere of the former place. I have been astonished at the miracles it has wrought; that some of my neighbors, who, I should have prophesied, once for all, would never get to Boston by so prompt a conveyance, are on hand when the bell rings. To do things railroad fashion is now the by-word; and it is worth the while to be warned so often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in this case. We have constructed a fate, an _Atropos_, that never turns aside. (Let that be the name of your engine.) Men are advertised that at a certain hour and minute these bolts will be shot toward particular points of the compass; yet it interferes with no mans business, and the children go to school on the other track. We live the steadier for it. We are all educated thus to be sons of Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts. Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.
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1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The immediate or at any rate the earliest known successors of the Rishis, the compilers of the Brahmanas, the writers of theUpanishads give a clear & definite answer to this question.The Upanishads everywhere rest their highly spiritual & deeply mystic doctrines on the Veda.We read in the Isha Upanishad of Surya as the Sun God, but it is the Sun of spiritual illumination, of Agni as the Fire, but it is the inner fire that burns up all sin & crookedness. In the Kena Indra, Agni & Vayu seek to know the supreme Brahman and their greatness is estimated by the nearness with which they touched him,nedistham pasparsha. Uma the daughter of Himavan, the Woman, who reveals the truth to them is clearly enough no natural phenomenon. In the Brihadaranyaka, the most profound, subtle & mystical of human scriptures, the gods & Titans are the masters, respectively, of good and of evil. In the Upanishads generally the word devah is used as almost synonymous with the forces & functions of sense, mind & intellect. The element of symbolism is equally clear. To the terms of the Vedic ritual, to their very syllables a profound significance is everywhere attached; several incidents related in the Upanishads show the deep sense then & before entertained that the sacrifices had a spiritual meaning which must be known if they were to be conducted with full profit or even with perfect safety. The Brahmanas everywhere are at pains to bring out a minute symbolism in the least circumstances of the ritual, in the clarified butter, the sacred grass, the dish, the ladle. Moreover, we see even in the earliest Upanishads already developed the firm outlines and minute details of an extraordinary psychology, physics, cosmology which demand an ancient development and centuries of Yogic practice and mystic speculation to account for their perfect form & clearness. This psychology, this physics, this cosmology persist almost unchanged through the whole history of Hinduism. We meet them in the Puranas; they are the foundation of the Tantra; they are still obscurely practised in various systems of Yoga. And throughout, they have rested on a declared Vedic foundation. The Pranava, the Gayatri, the three Vyahritis, the five sheaths, the five (or seven) psychological strata, (bhumi, kshiti of the Vedas), the worlds that await us, the gods who help & the demons who hinder go back to Vedic origins.All this may be a later mystic misconception of the hymns & their ritual, but the other hypothesis of direct & genuine derivation is also possible. If there was no common origin, if Greek & Indian separated during the naturalistic period of the common religion supposed to be recorded in the Vedas it is surprising that even the little we know of Greek rites & mysteries should show us ideas coincident with those of Indian Tantra & Yoga.
When we go back to the Veda itself, we find in the hymns which are to us most easily intelligible by the modernity of their language, similar & decisive indications. The moralistic conception of Varuna, for example, is admitted even by the Europeans. We even find the sense of sin, usually supposed to be an advanced religious conception, much more profoundly developed in prehistoric India than it was in any other old Aryan nation even in historic times. Surely, this is in itself a significant indication. Surely, this conception cannot have become so clear & strong without a previous history in the earlier hymns. Nor is it psychologically possible that a cult capable of so advanced an idea, should have been ignorant of all other moral & intellectual conceptions reverencing only natural forces & seeking only material ends. Neither can there have been a sudden leap filled up only by a very doubtful henotheism, a huge hiatus between the naturalism of early Veda and the transcendentalism of the Vedic Brahmavada admittedly present in the later hymns. The European interpretation in the face of such conflicting facts threatens to become a brilliant but shapeless monstrosity. And is there no symbolism in the details of the Vedic sacrifice? It seems to me that the peculiar language of the Veda has never been properly studied or appreciated in this connection. What are we to say of the Vedic anxiety to increase Indra by the Soma wine? Of the description of Soma as the amritam, the wine of immortality, & of its forces as the indavah or moon powers? Of the constant sense of the attacks delivered by the powers of evil on the sacrifice? Of the extraordinary powers already attri buted to the mantra & the sacrifice? Have the neshtram potram, hotram of the Veda no symbolic significance? Is there no reason for the multiplication of functions at the sacrifice or for the subtle distinctions between Gayatrins, Arkins, Brahmas? These are questions that demand a careful consideration which has never yet been given for the problems they raise.
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1.04 - The Paths, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Its plants are the Red Poppy and Hibiscus. Knowing the above attri butions one well understands and feels the plaintive cry of the poet : " Crown me with poppy and hibiscus ". The jewel of this Path is the Fire Opal, and its perfumes Olibanum and all fiery odours. The Sepher
Yetsirah title is " The Perpetual Intelligence ".
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1.04 - The Praise, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
Blazing like the Fire at the end of time
Whose right leg extended and left folded,
--
harm our lives to flee away; secondly, the Fire
surrounds us with protection.
--
BLAZING LIKE the Fire AT THE END OF TIME,
WHO, RIGHT LEG EXTENDED AND LEFT FOLDED,
--
the Fire AT THE END OF TIME: according to
traditional cosmology, at the end of a kalpa (cosmic
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1.04 - The Principle of Air, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
In its mediatorship the principle of air has assumed the quality of warmth from the Fire and that of humidity from the water. Without these two qualities any life would be inconceivable. These two qualities will also grant two polarities to the airy principle, which means in the positive outcome the life-giving polarity, and in the negative aspect the destructive polarity.
In addition to that let me say that the mentioned elements are not to be regarded as ordinary fire, water and air which would solely represent aspects of the grossly material plane but in this case universal qualities of all elements are concerned.
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1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
it has faces like the Fires of Death and Time. The kings and
the captains and the heroes on both sides of the world-battle
--
is the cyclone and the Fire and the earthquake and pain and
famine and revolution and ruin and the swallowing ocean.
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1.057 - The Four Manifestations of Ignorance, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Who in this world does not believe the reality of a not-Self, or an object of sense? Is there anyone in this world who does not have the conviction that what he sees, or she sees, is real in itself? And, is there any activity which is not based on this notion? So, we can imagine what will be the outcome of all these activities. They will be only adding fuel to the Fire that is already blazing due to the action of this ignorance. But, when this endeavour on the part of the perceiving consciousness in respect of the objects of sense gets re-evaluated and takes a new turn altogether, then this binding activity can become a liberating activity. That is the subtle difference between discriminative perception of an object and emotional perception of an object. The scientific observation of a thing is different from an observation that is coupled with attachment like, dislike, etc. Gradually the mind has to be disentangled from its obsessions in respect of things, and the perceptions should become detached observations for the purpose of the complete extrication of the mind from its emotional relationships.
Anitya auci dukha antmasu nitya uci sukha tma khyti avidy (II.5). To sum up what this sutra tells us, while it is true that ignorance is the breeding ground for all the effects thereof like, dislike, and so on this ignorance has a fourfold prong with which it moves into action. These four manifestations, which have been mentioned, are: the appearing of the not-Self as the Self, the regarding of impermanent things as permanent, painful experiences as pleasures, and impure things as pure. This is a frightening disclosure, indeed, of the facts of our experiences in this world, because there is no experience which is free from these defects. We cannot humanly imagine a kind of experience which is not involved in these defects. It means to say that ignorance rules the world and, therefore, pain cannot be avoided. Where erroneous perception is present, a sort of sorrow naturally should follow.
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1.05 - BOOK THE FIFTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Crush'd his eyes in, and quench'd the Fire with blood;
Thro' the soft skin the splinter'd bones appear,
--
The sever'd head consumes amidst the Fires.
Then Phineus, who from far his javelin threw,
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1.05 - Character Of The Atoms, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
White-dazzles in the Fire, and rocks will burn
With exhalations fierce and burst asunder.
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1.05 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2. He has sacrificed with sacrifices, he has achieved his labour by his works, he has given to the Fire whose boons grow ever in opulence. And so there befalls him not the turning away of the Glorious Ones; evil comes not to him nor the insolence of the adversary.
3. Faultless is thy seeing like the sun's; terrible marches thy thought when blazing with light thou neighest aloud like a force of battle. This Fire was born in the pleasant woodl and and is a rapturous dweller somewhere in the night.
--
3. He among mortals is fed on inspiration, the illumined who gives with his word to the Fire, the seer whom the Fire of the brilliant illuminations settles by his luminous safeguardings in the conquest of the Pen where are the herds of the Light.
4. Fire of the blackened trail in his very birth has filled wide earth and heaven with his far-seeing light. Now has Fire that makes pure been seen by his bright flame even through much darkness of the billowing Night.
--
5. When the sacred grass has been plucked with prostration of surrender to the Fire, when the ladle of the purification full of the light-offering has been set to its labour, when the home has been reached in the house of Earth and the sacrifice lodged like an eye in the sun, -
6. O Son of Force, O Fire, kindling with the gods thy fires, Priest of the call, priest with thy many flame-armies, dispense to us the Treasures; shining with light let us charge beyond the sin and the struggle.
--
1. When mortal man by his musings comes to take pleasure of work and thought in the Fire, he shines with light and is one supreme; he receives the impulsion that leads him to safety.
2. the Fire is the thinker and knower, the Fire is a mightiest disposer of works and a seer. To Fire the priest of the invocation the peoples of men aspire in their sacrifices.
3. Of many kinds are they who seek thy safeguard and strive with the foe for his riches; men breaking through the Destroyer seek to overcome his lawless strength by the order of their works.
4. the Fire gives to man a Master of beings, a Warrior who overbears the charge of the foe and wins the Waters; the enemies are afraid at his very sight and scatter in panic from his puissance.
5. the Fire is the godhead who rescues mortal man by knowledge from the Binder. A forceful thing is the treasure of his riches, unencircled by the adversary, unbesieged in its plenitudes.
6. O Fire, O friendly Light, O Godhead turn to the Godheads, mayest thou speak for us the true thought of Earth and Heaven; march in peace to the happy abode and the Men of Heaven. Let us pass safe beyond the foe and the sin and the stumbling. Let us pass beyond these things, pass in thy keeping through them safe.
--
7. I chant the Fire that is kindled with the word for fuel, the
Fire that is pure and makes pure; Fire that is steadfast for
--
28. Let the Fire with his keen energy of light overwhelm every
devourer; Fire conquers for us the riches.
--
the advent, aspire bringing his offering to the Fire in the Rite
of the Path; let him with uplifted23 hands and with obeisance
--
Heaven, the Fire of true sacrifice.24
aA t
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1.05 - On painstaking and true repentance which constitute the life of the holy convicts; and about the prison., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
I saw there some who seemed from their demeanour and their thoughts to be out of their mind. In their great disconsolateness they had become like dumb men in complete darkness, and were insensible to the whole of life. Their minds had already sunk to the very depths of humility, and had burnt up the tears in their eyes with the Fire of their despondency.
Others sat thinking and looking on the ground, swaying their heads unceasingly, and roaring and moaning like lions from their inmost heart to their teeth. And some were praying in good hope and asking for complete forgiveness. Others out of unspeakable humility condemned themselves as unworthy of forgiveness, and would cry out that it was not within their power to justify themselves before God. Some begged the Lord that they be punished here, and receive mercy in the next world. Others, crushed by the weight of their conscience, would say in all sincerity: Spare us from future punishment, even though we are not worthy to be granted the Kingdom. And that will satisfy us.
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1.05 - Solitude, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the Fireside every night; we live thick and are in each others way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another.
Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. Consider the girls in a factory,never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.
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1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A Yoga turned towards an all-embracing realisation of the Supreme will not despise the works or even the dreams, if dreams they are, of the Cosmic Spirit or shrink from the splendid toil and many-sided victory which he has assigned to himself In the human creature. But its first condition for this liberality is that our works in the world too must be part of the sacrifice offered to the Highest and to none else, to the Divine shakti and to no other Power, in the right spirit and with the right knowledge, by the free soul and not by the hypnotised bondslave of material Nature. If a division of works has to be made, it is between those that are nearest to the heart of the sacred flame and those that are least touched or illumined by it because they are more at a distance, or between the fuel that burns strongly or brightly and the logs that if too thickly heaped on the altar may impede the ardour of the Fire by their damp, heavy and diffused abundance. But otherwise, apart from this division, all activities of knowledge that seek after or express Truth are in themselves rightful materials for a complete offering; none ought necessarily to be excluded from the wide framework of the divine life. The mental and physical sciences which examine into the laws and forms and processes of things, those which concern the life of men and animals, the social, political, linguistic and historical and those which seek to know and control the labours and activities by which man subdues and utilises his world and environment, and the noble and beautiful Arts which are at once work and knowledge, -- for every well-made and significant poem, picture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression or world-expressions-all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation. But the Yogin has to see that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge.
For all must be done as a sacrifice, all activities must have the One Divine for their object and the heart of their meaning. The Yogin's aim in the sciences that make for knowledge should be to discover and understand the workings of the Divine Consciousness-Puissance in man and creatures and things and forces, her creative significances, her execution of the mysteries, the symbols in which she arranges the manifestation. The Yogin's aim in the practical sciences, whether mental and physical or occult and psychic, should be to enter into the ways of the Divine and his processes, to know the materials and means for the work given to us so that we may use that knowledge for a conscious and faultless expression of the spirit's mastery, joy and self-fulfilment. The Yogin's aim in the Arts should not be a mere aesthetic, mental or vital gratification, but, seeing the Divine everywhere, worshipping it with a revelation of the meaning of its works, to express that One Divine in gods and men and creatures and objects. The theory that sees an intimate connection between religious aspiration and the truest and greatest Art is in essence right; but we must substitute for the mixed and doubtful religious motive a spiritual aspiration, vision, interpreting experience. For the wider and more comprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the hidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from the high motive. The Yogin's distinction from other men is this that he lives in a higher and vaster spiritual consciousness; all his work of knowledge or creation must then spring from there: it must not be made in the mind, -- for it is a greater truth and vision than mental man's that he has to express or rather that presses to express itself through him and mould his works, not for his personal satisfaction, but for a divine purpose.
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1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
see obedient herds, at the first sign from me, hurry to heap coals on the Fire beneath the stake at which I
shall have You burned, because, by coming here, You have made our task more difficult. For if anyone
--
his life. These efforts merely added fuel to the Fire of those who had branded him eccentric, because of his
interest in the psychology of religion (which is, after all, a fundamental aspect of human psychology and
--
its head. The dream also featured a dragon, who breathed fire. After the dragon exhaled, the Fire turned into
the dwarves, who multiplied endlessly, with each breath. He told the dream in a very serious voice to his
--
throat, to where the Fire came out. I would cut out the box the Fire came from, and make a shield from it.
I thought this was a remarkable answer. He had reproduced an archaic hero myth, in perfect form. The
idea of making a shield from the Firebox was nothing short of brilliant. This gave him the power of the
dragon, to use against the dragon.
--
the furnace of the cross and in the Fire, says the Aquarium sapientum, man, like the earthly gold,
attains to the true black Ravens head; that is, he is utterly disfigured and is held in derision by the
--
I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the Fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be
clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest
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1.05 - The Magical Control of the Weather, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
that rain may fall. Here the putting out the Fire with water, which
is an imitation of rain, is reinforced by the influence of the dead
--
rain. Thus the Sulka of New Britain heat stones red hot in the Fire
and then put them out in the rain, or they throw hot ashes in the
--
warming a green stick in the Fire, and then striking it against the
wind.
--
fire, which on no account may be suffered to go out. In the Fire he
burns various kinds of wood, which are supposed to possess the
--
splinters of such wood in the Fire in order that the crust of the
snow may not melt.
--
chanted. An old man then stepped up to the Fire and in a coaxing
voice invited the demon of the wind to come under the Fire and warm
himself. When he was supposed to have arrived, a vessel of water, to
--
where the Fire had been. They thought that the demon would not stay
where he had been so badly treated. To complete the effect, guns
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1.05 - THE MASTER AND KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Thus Brahman and akti are identical. If you accept the one, you must accept the other. It is like fire and its power to burn. If you see the Fire, you must recognize its power to burn also. You cannot think of fire without its power to burn, nor can you think of the power to burn without fire. You cannot conceive of the sun's rays without the sun, nor can you conceive of the sun without its rays.
"What is milk like? Oh, you say, it is something white. You cannot think of the milk without the whiteness, and again, you cannot think of the whiteness without the milk.
--
"Don't you know how easily the people of Calcutta get excited? The milk in the kettle puffs up and boils as long as the Fire burns underneath. Take away the fuel and all becomes quiet. The people of Calcutta love sensations. You may see them digging a well at a certain place. They say they want water. But if they strike a stone they give up that place; they begin at another place. And there, perchance, they find sand; they give up the second place too. Next they begin at a third. And so it goes. But it won't do if a man only imagines that he has God's command.
"God does reveal Himself to man and speak. Only then may one receive His command.
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1.06 - Agni and the Truth, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is not the sacrificial Fire that is capable of these functions, nor can it be any material flame or principle of physical heat and light. Yet throughout the symbol of the sacrificial Fire is maintained. It is evident that we are in the presence of a mystic symbolism to which the Fire, the sacrifice, the priest are only outward figures of a deeper teaching and yet figures which it was thought necessary to maintain and to hold constantly in front.
In the early Vedantic teaching of the Upanishads we come across a conception of the Truth which is often expressed by formulas taken from the hymns of the Veda, such as the expression already quoted, satyam r.tam br.hat, - the truth, the right, the vast. This Truth is spoken of in the Veda as a path leading to felicity, leading to immortality. In the Upanishads also it is by the path of the Truth that the sage or seer, Rishi or Kavi, passes beyond. He passes out of the falsehood, out of the mortal
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1.06 - BOOK THE SIXTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Which, whelm'd in boiling cauldrons o'er the Fire,
Or turn'd on spits, in steamy smoak aspire:
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1.06 - Confutation Of Other Philosophers, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
As throws the Fire its light and warmth around,
Giving thee proof its parts are not compact.
--
Produce the Fire and which, by order changed,
Do change the nature of the thing produced,
--
The thing he calls the Fire. For, though he thinks
The senses truly can perceive the Fire,
He thinks they cannot as regards all else,
--
Under the teeth of death? the Fire? the moist?
Or else the air? which then? the blood? the bones?
--
Stored up within the forests, then the Fires
Could not for any time be kept unseen,
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1.06 - Hymns of Parashara, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2. the Fire having the knowledge is a creator12 without proud
rashness; he is as if the teat of the Cows of Light, the sweetener of the draughts of the Wine.13 He is as one blissful in
--
1. May we win the many Riches, may the Fire, flaming high
with his light, master by the thinking mind, take possession
--
3. the Fire is a master of the nights, he gives of the Riches
to him who prepares for him the sacrifice with the perfect
--
4. Many nights of different forms have increased him, the Fire
who came forth from the Truth, who is the stable and the
--
7. All satisfactions cleave to the Fire as the seven mighty rivers
join the ocean. Our growth of being has not been perceived
--
like pure seed, the Fire gave birth to a might,20 young and
faultless and perfect in thought and sped it on its way.
--
perceived the Fire, standing in the supreme plane.
s\jAnAnA up sFd3EB.; p&Fvto nm-y\ nm-yn^ .
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1.06 - LIFE AND THE PLANETS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
earth: the Fire inspiring us with the joy of action and the love of life.
All this, you may say to me, sounds splendid: but is there not
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1.06 - PIG AND PEPPER, #Alice in Wonderland, #Lewis Carroll, #Fiction
Alice opened the door and went in. The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of smoke from one end to the other; the Duchess was sitting on a three-legged stool in the middle, nursing a baby; the cook was leaning over the Fire, stirring a large caldron which seemed to be full of soup.
"There's certainly too much pepper in that soup!" Alice said to herself, as well as she could for sneezing. Even the Duchess sneezed occasionally; and as for the baby, it was sneezing and howling alternately without a moment's pause. The only two creatures in the kitchen that did _not_ sneeze were the cook and a large cat, which was grinning from ear to ear.
--
Just then the cook took the caldron of soup off the Fire, and at once set to work throwing everything within her reach at the Duchess and the baby-- the Fire-irons came first; then followed a shower of saucepans, plates and dishes. The Duchess took no notice of them, even when they hit her, and the baby was howling so much already that it was quite impossible to say whether the blows hurt it or not.
"Oh, _please_ mind what you're doing!" cried Alice, jumping up and down in an agony of terror.
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1.06 - The Desire to be, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Strip man of his visible and conscious egoisms and under the ashes of his consumed desires you will discover the Fire of ego smouldering still; under the transfigured forms you will find always that attachment to the I without which the being would no longer exist.
From whence could be born the burning heats of love, the very flames of sacrifice if there were not some brand of egoism to serve for their nourishment?
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1.06 - The Light, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Light is established on the principle of fire. Light without fire is unconceivable and for this particular reason it is an aspect of the Fire. Each fiery eleme nt can be converted into light and the other way around. Therefore light involves all the specific qualities such as shining, penetrating, and expanding.
The opposite of light is darkness, which has come out of the principle of water.
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1.06 - The Three Mothers or the First Elements, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The first elements are air, water and fire; the Fire is above, the water below, and a breath of air establishes the balance among them. For an illustration may serve, that the Fire carries the water is the phonetic character of which is mute and is hissing like fire, there is among them, a breath of air which places them in equilibrium. 41
.
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1.06 - WITCHES KITCHEN, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
MEPHISTOPHELES (approaching the Fire)
And what's this pot?
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1.06 - Yun Men's Every Day is a Good Day, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
to blow out the Fires under the cauldrons of hell, or to shatter
sword forests and knife mountains with a shout.
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1.07 - BOOK THE SEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Nor are the trees sufficient for the Fire.
Despairing under grief's oppressive weight,
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1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
6 Kitty Ferguson: the Fire in the Equations, p. 182.br idge ac r oss the afterlife
155
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1.07 - Hymn of Paruchchhepa, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1. I meditate on the Fire, the priest of the call, the giver of the
Treasure, the son of force, who knows all things born, the
--
flaming-power, gives to the Fire that he may guard us. Into
many things he enters and hews them with his flaming light
--
their worship, - the Flame-Seers, the Fire becomes master
of the riches, he who in his purity holds them within him,
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1.07 - On mourning which causes joy., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Compunction is a perennial testing of the conscience which brings about the cooling of the Fire of the heart through spiritual confession. And confession is a forgetfulness of nature, if anyone because of this really forgot to eat his bread.1
Repentance is the cheerful deprival of every bodily comfort.
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1.07 - Production of the mind-born sons of Brahma, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
ga, Marīci springs from Brahmā's eyes, not Atri, who there proceeds, instead of Pulastya, from his ears. The Vāyu has also another account of their origin, and states them to have sprung from the Fires of a sacrifice offered by Brahmā; an allegorical mode of expressing their probable original, considering them to be in some degree real persons, from the Brahmanical ritual, of which they were the first institutors and observers. The Vāyu P. also states, that besides the seven primitive Ṛṣis, the Prajāpatis are numerous, and specifies Kardama, Kaśyapa, Śeṣa, Vikrānta, Susravas, Bahuputra, Kumāra, Vivaswat, Suchisravas, Prācetasa (Dakṣa), Aṛṣṭanemi, Bahula. These and many others were Prajāpatis. In the beginning of the Mahābhārata (A. P.) we have again a different origin, and first Dakṣa, the son of Pracetas, it is said, had seven sons, after whom the twenty-one Prajāpatis were born, or appeared. According to the commentator, the seven sons of Dakṣa were the allegorical persons Krodha, Tamas, Dama, Vikrita, A
giras, Kardama, and Aswa; and the twenty-one Prajāpatis, the seven usually specified Marīci and the rest, and the fourteen Manus. This looks like a blending of the earlier and later notions.
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1.07 - The Fire of the New World, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
object:1.07 - the Fire of the New World
author class:Satprem
--
7. the Fire of the New World
But what is this new consciousness that suddenly appeared in the year of grace 1969 of our evolution? (There may have been many other years of grace before, now buried under the rubble of the earth, and other human cycles that reached the point we have now reached and were destroyed perhaps for the very same reasons that threaten us today. Are we the topmost crest of the great evolutionary wave or simply the nth repetition of an attempt that has taken place many times before, here or in other universes?) This new consciousness may not be so new after all, but it became new for us and entered the field of practical realizations the very day we were able to establish a relation with it we should perhaps say renew the relation with it, because since the beginning of time, here or on other earths, it may be eternally the same eternal Thing with which we establish different relations according to our degree of preparation. What seemed remote and divine to the orangutan is fairly close and far less divine to us, but the godheads of the future remain to be claimed, and there will always be an ever more to incarnate. This ever more is the very meaning of evolution and the misunderstood God we pursue in an orangutan form, a religious or a scientific form; although if we did not baptize Him, He might be the better for it, and we too. But it is one and the same Thing, there, always there only, there are points of rupture among the species, moments of access to another state or another relation. It is quite evident that on its own a chameleon could not imagine (provided it does imagine) anything other than a superchameleon endowed with more lavish colors and more skillful predatory capabilities; similarly, a queen mole would enlarge its storehouse and tunnels which is what we are doing in our human way. What, then, is that vanishing point to something else, that moment of imagination when we emerge into an elsewhere that was always there, another thing that was the same thing, seen and appropriated differently?
--
But where is the mysterious key to that third level? In reality, it is not mysterious after all, although it is full of mysteries. It does not depend on complicated instruments, does not hide under a secret knowledge, does not fall from the sky for the elect it is there, almost visible to the naked eye, utterly simple and natural. It has been there since the beginning of time, in that seed harboring a smoldering fire: a need to reach out and take; in that great nebula gathering its grains of atoms: a need to grow and be; under those sleeping waters already simmering with an impatient fire of life: a need for air and open space. And everything began to move, impelled by the same fire: the heliotrope toward the sun, the dove toward its companion and man toward we know not what. An immense Need in the heart of the worlds, all the way to the galaxies out there, to the limits of Andromeda, which drew each other into a mortal gravitational embrace. That need we see at our own level; it is small or less small, it asks for air or sunlight, a companion and children, books, art and music, objects by the millions but it has really only one object, it asks for only one music, a single sun and a single air. It is a need for infinity. For it was born out of infinity. And so long as it does not meet its one object, it will not stop, nor will the galaxies stop devouring each other, nor men struggling and toiling to seize the one thing they think they do not have, but which pushes and prods inside, poking its unsatisfied fire until we attain the ultimate satisfaction and at once the plenitude of millions of vain objects, of an ephemeral rose and a trivial little gesture. It is this Fire that is the key, because it is born out of the supreme Power that set the world on fire; it is this Fire that sees, because it is born out of the supreme Vision that conceived this seed; it is this Fire that knows, because it recognizes itself everywhere, in things and beings, in the pebble and the stars. This is the Fire of the new world which burns in the heart of man, This that wakes in the sleepers, says the Upanishad.14 And it will not rest until everything is restored to its full truth, and the world to its joy, for it is born of Joy and for Joy.
But, at first, this self of fire is mixed with its obscure undertakings; it toils and desires, struggles and strains; it crawls with the worm, sniffs the wind for the scent of its prey. It has to keep alive, to survive. It feels the world with its small antennae; it sees in fragments, according to its needs. In man, the conscious animal, it widens its scope; it still feels, adds up its pieces, systematizes its data: it makes laws, scholarly treatises, gospels. Yet, behind, there is that self of fire pushing, the something that will not quit, that grows impatient with laws and systems and gospels, that senses a wall behind each captured truth, each framed law, that senses a trap closing on each discovery, as if capturing were to be captured, trapped; there is the something that directs the antenna, which grows impatient even with the antenna, impatient with levers and all the machinery for apprehending the world, as if that machinery and that antenna and that look draped one last veil over the world and prevented it from attaining its naked reality. There is that cry of being in the depths which yearns to see, which really so much needs to see and come out in the open at last: the master of the antenna and not its slave. As if, really, a master had been confined there forever, arduously casting out its pseudopods, its tentacles and all its multicolored nets to try to join with the outside. Then, one day, under the pressure of that fire of need, the machinery begins to crack. Everything cracks: laws, gospels, knowledge and all the jurisprudence of the world. We've had enough! Even of the best we've had enough. It is still a prison, a trap thoughts, books, art and our-Father-which-art-in-heaven. Something else, something else! Oh, something we so much need, which is without a name, except for its blind need!... So we demechanize with the same fury with which we had mechanized. Everything is burned, nothing is left, save that pure fire. That fire which does not know, does not see anything, nothing at all anymore, not even the little fragments it had so conscientiously gathered together. It is an almost painful fire. It struggles and toils and searches and bumps into things; it wants truth, it wants the other thing, as once it wanted objects, the millions of objects of this world, and strained to get. And little by little, everything is consumed. Even the desire for the other thing, even the hope of ever clasping that impossible pure truth, even personal effort melts away; everything slips between our fingers.
--
A flame that does not know, does not see, but is. And there is a sort of softness in simply being that flame, that tiny little flame without object it is, it simply is, purely. It even looks as if it did not need anything else. We sink into it, live in it; it is like a love for nothing, for everything. And sometimes we plunge very deeply into it; then, all the way at the end of this tranquil fire so tranquil we seem to glimpse a childlike smile, something that looks transparently at the world; and, if we do not pay attention, that look is suddenly dispersed, flows with things, breathes with the plant, goes off into infinity everywhere, smiles in this one, smiles in that one, and everything becomes immediate. There is nothing to take anymore, nothing to seize, nothing to want. It is there; everything is there! It is there everywhere. A look without walls, a vision that does not bind, a knowledge that takes nothing everything is known, instantly known. And it goes through things effortlessly, like quicksilver, light as pollen, free as the wind, smiling at everything as if we were smiling at ourselves behind everything. Where is the other, the not-me, the outside, the inside, the near, the far? It merges with everything, communicates instantly, as if it were the same thing everywhere. And soon this little flame begins to recognize its own world; the new geography begins to take on relief, hues, variations. It is one and the same thing, and yet each thing looks unique; there is one and the same fire, but each fire has a particular intensity, a special frequency, a dominant vibration and a seemingly totally different music. Each being has its music, each thing its rhythm, each moment its color, each event its cadence, and everything begins to be tied together. Everything takes on another meaning, a kind of total meaning in which each minute performer has its irreplaceable role, its unique presence, its unique note, its indispensable gesture. Then a vast, miraculous unfolding begins to take place before our eyes. The world is a miracle a discovery at every step, a revelation of a microscopic order, an infinite journey into the finite. We are in the new consciousness; we have seized the Fire of the new world: O Fire... thou art the supreme growth and expansion of our being, all glory and beauty are in thy desirable hue and thy perfect vision. O Vastness, thou art the plenitude that carries us to the end of our way; thou art a multitude of riches spread out on every side.15
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1.07 - The Prophecies of Nostradamus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
continually, and in the midst of the Fire, as it were gleaming
bronze." 28 The north wind comes from the region of fire and,
--
from Gregory we hear a faint echo of the ancient idea of the Fire
in the north, which is still very much alive in Ezekiel, whose
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1.08 - Adhyatma Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
19. Surrender all actions unto the Lord. Fix your mind on Him. Free yourself from egoism, attachment, desire. No action will bind you. Actions are burnt by the Fire of Wisdom. Such actions are no longer actions at all. You will attain the Supreme Abode of everlasting bliss and peace.
20. Conquer likes and dislikes which abide in the senses. You can conquer mind and attain the Peace of the Eternal.
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1.08 - BOOK THE EIGHTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
The time beween, before the Fire they sat,
And shorten'd the delay by pleasing chat.
--
Or as the Fire, which all materials burns,
And wasted forests into ashes turns,
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1.08 - Departmental Kings of Nature, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the King of the Fire and the King of the Water. Their fame is spread
all over the south of the great Indo-Chinese peninsula; but only a
--
We are told that the Fire King, the more important of the two, whose
supernatural powers have never been questioned, officiates at
--
King can raise a flood that would drown the whole earth. If the Fire
King draws the magic sword a few inches from its sheath, the sun is
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1.08 - Origin of Rudra: his becoming eight Rudras, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
"Having thus spoken to his beloved spouse, the mighty Maheśvara created from his mouth a being like the Fire of fate; a divine being, with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet; wielding a thousand clubs, a thousand shafts; holding the shell, the discus, the mace, and bearing a blazing bow and battle-axe; fierce and terrific, shining with dreadful splendour, and decorated with the crescent moon; clothed in a tiger's skin, dripping with blood; having a capacious stomach, and a vast mouth, armed with formidable tusks: his ears were erect, his lips were pendulous, his tongue was lightning; his hand brandished the thunderbolt; flames streamed from his hair; a necklace of pearls wound round his neck; a garland of flame descended on his breast: radiant with lustre, he looked like the final fire that consumes the world. Four tremendous tusks projected from a mouth which extended from ear to ear: he was of vast bulk, vast strength, a mighty male and lord, the destroyer of the universe, and like a large fig-tree in circumference; shining like a hundred moons at once; fierce as the Fire of love; having four heads, sharp white teeth, and of mighty fierceness, vigour, activity, and courage; glowing with the blaze of a thousand fiery suns at the end of the world; like a thousand undimmed moons: in bulk like Himādri, Kailāsa, or Meru, or Mandara, with all its gleaming herbs; bright as the sun of destruction at the end of ages; of irresistible prowess, and beautiful aspect; irascible, with lowering eyes, and a countenance burning like fire; clothed in the hide of the elephant and lion, and girt round with snakes; wearing a turban on his head, a moon on his brow; sometimes savage, sometimes mild; having a chaplet of many flowers on his head, anointed with various unguents, and adorned with different ornaments and many sorts of jewels; wearing a garland of heavenly Karnikāra flowers, and rolling his eyes with rage. Sometimes he danced; sometimes he laughed aloud; sometimes he stood wrapt in meditation; sometimes he trampled upon the earth; sometimes he sang; sometimes he wept repeatedly: and he was endowed with the faculties of wisdom, dispassion, power, penance, truth, endurance, fortitude, dominion, and self-knowledge.
"This being, then, knelt down upon the ground, and raising his hands respectfully to his head, said to Mahādeva, 'Sovereign of the gods, command what it is that I must do for thee.' To which Maheśvara replied, Spoil the sacrifice of Dakṣa.' Then the mighty Vīrabhadra, having heard the pleasure of his lord, bowed down his head to the feet of Prajāpati; and starting like a lion loosed from bonds, despoiled the sacrifice of Dakṣa, knowing that the had been created by the displeasure of Devī. She too in her wrath, as the fearful goddess Rudrakālī, accompanied him, with all her train, to witness his deeds. Vīrabhadra the fierce, abiding in the region of ghosts, is the minister of the anger of Devī. And he then created, from the pores of his skin, powerful demigods, the mighty attendants upon Rudra, of equal valour and strength, who started by hundreds and thousands into existence. Then a loud and confused clamour filled all the expanse of ether, and inspired the denizens of heaven with dread. The mountains tottered, and earth shook; the winds roared, and the depths of the sea were disturbed; the Fires lost their radiance, and the sun grew pale; the planets of the firmament shone not, neither did the stars give light; the Ṛṣis ceased their hymns, and gods and demons were mute; and thick darkness eclipsed the chariots of the skies[5].
"Then from the gloom emerged fearful and numerous forms, shouting the cry of battle; who instantly broke or overturned the sacrificial columns, trampled upon the altars, and danced amidst the oblations. Running wildly hither and thither, with the speed of wind, they tossed about the implements and vessels of sacrifice, which looked like stars precipitated from the heavens. The piles of food and beverage for the gods, which had been heaped up like mountains; the rivers of milk; the banks of curds and butter; the sands of honey and butter-milk and sugar; the mounds of condiments and spices of every flavour; the undulating knolls of flesh and other viands; the celestial liquors, pastes, and confections, which had been prepared; these the spirits of wrath devoured or defiled or scattered abroad. Then falling upon the host of the gods, these vast and resistless Rudras beat or terrified them, mocked and insulted the nymphs and goddesses, and quickly put an end to the rite, although defended by all the gods; being the ministers of Rudra's wrath, and similar to himself[6]. Some then made a hideous clamour, whilst others fearfully shouted, when Yajña was decapitated. For the divine Yajña, the lord of sacrifice, then began to fly up to heaven, in the shape of a deer; and Vīrabhadra, of immeasurable spirit, apprehending his power, cut off his vast head, after he had mounted into the sky[7]. Dakṣa the patriarch, his sacrifice being destroyed, overcome with terror, and utterly broken in spirit, fell then upon the ground, where his head was spurned by the feet of the cruel Vīrabhadra[8]. The thirty scores of sacred divinities were all presently bound, with a band of fire, by their lion-like foe; and they all then addressed him, crying, 'Oh Rudra, have mercy upon thy servants: oh lord, dismiss thine anger.' Thus spake Brahmā and the other gods, and the patriarch Dakṣa; and raising their hands, they said, 'Declare, mighty being, who thou art.' Vīrabhadra said, 'I am not a god, nor an Āditya; nor am I come hither for enjoyment, nor curious to behold the chiefs of the divinities: know that I am come to destroy the sacrifice of Dakṣa, and that I am called Vīrabhadra, the issue of the wrath of Rudra. Bhadrakālī also, who has sprung from the anger of Devī, is sent here by the god of gods to destroy this rite. Take refuge, king of kings, with him who is the lord of Umā; for better is the anger of Rudra than the blessings of other gods.'
"Having heard the words of Vīrabhadra, the righteous Dakṣa propitiated the mighty god, the holder of the trident, Maheśvara. The hearth of sacrifice, deserted by the Brahmans, had been consumed; Yajña had been metamorphosed to an antelope; the Fires of Rudra's wrath had been kindled; the attendants, wounded by the tridents of the servants of the god, were groaning with pain; the pieces of the uprooted sacrificial posts were scattered here and there; and the fragments of the meat-offerings were carried off by flights of hungry vultures, and herds of howling jackals. Suppressing his vital airs, and taking up a posture of meditation, the many-sighted victor of his foes, Dakṣa fixed his eyes every where upon his thoughts. Then the god of gods appeared from the altar, resplendent as a thousand suns, and smiled upon him, and said, 'Dakṣa, thy sacrifice has been destroyed through sacred knowledge: I am well pleased with thee:' and then he smiled again, and said, 'What shall I do for thee; declare, together with the preceptor of the gods.'
"Then Dakṣa, frightened, alarmed, and agitated, his eyes suffused with tears, raised his hands reverentially to his brow, and said, 'If, lord, thou art pleased; if I have found favour in thy sight; if I am to be the object of thy benevolence; if thou wilt confer upon me a boon, this is the blessing I solicit, that all these provisions for the solemn sacrifice, which have been collected with much trouble and during a long time, and which have now been eaten, drunk, devoured, burnt, broken, scattered abroad, may not have been prepared in vain.' 'So let it be,' replied Hara, the subduer of Indra. And thereupon Dakṣa knelt down upon the earth, and praised gratefully the author of righteousness, the three-eyed god Mahādeva, repeating the eight thousand names of the deity whose emblem is a bull."
--
ga and Matsya allude to the dispute between Dakṣa and Sati, and to the latter's putting an end to herself by Yoga. The Padma, Bhāgavata, and Skānda in the Kāsī Khanda, relate the dispute between father and daughter in a like manner, and in more detail. The first refers the death of Sag, however, to a prior period; and that and the Bhāgavata both ascribe it to Yoga. The Kāsī Khanda, with an improvement indicative of a later age, makes Sati throw herself into the Fire prepared for the solemnity.
[5]: The description of Vīrabhadra and his followers is given in other Purāṇas in the same strain, but with less detail.
--
ga and Bhāgavata both state that Vīrabhadra cut off Dakṣa's head, and threw it into the Fire. After the fray therefore, when Śiva restored the dead to life, and the mutilated to their limbs, Dakṣa's head was not forthcoming: it was therefore replaced by the head of a goat, or, according to the Kāsī Khanda, that of a ram. No notice is taken in our text of the conflict elsewhere described between Vīrabhadra and Viṣṇu. In the Li
ga, the latter is beheaded, and his head is blown by the wind into the Fire. The Kūrma, though a Śaiva Purāṇa, is less irreverent towards Viṣṇu, and after describing a contest in which both parties occasionally prevail, makes Brahmā interpose, and separate the combatants. The Kāsī Khanda of the Skānda P. describes Viṣṇu as defeated, and at the mercy of Vīrabhadra, who is prohibited by a voice from heaven from destroying his antagonist: whilst in the Hari Vaṃśa, Viṣṇu compels Śiva to fly, after taking him by the throat and nearly strangling him. The blackness of Śiva's neck arose from this throttling, and not, as elsewhere described, from his drinking the poison produced at the churning of the ocean.
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1.08 - Phlegyas. Philippo Argenti. The Gate of the City of Dis., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
Vermilion, as if issuing from the Fire
They were." And he to me: " the Fire eternal
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1.08 - RELIGION AND TEMPERAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Freed from passion, fear and anger, absorbed in Me, taking refuge in Me, and purified by the Fires of Knowledge, many have become one with my Being.
And again:
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1.08 - The Magic Sword, Dagger and Trident, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
There are evocations of negative beings and such not liking being transferred into our physical world. For these beings the magician will use, should the magic wand not suffice, the magic sword, providing he insists on their manifestation. The magic sword has several symbolic meanings, but generally it serves as the symbol of absolute obedience of a being or a power to the magician. It is also the symbol of victory and superiority over any power or being. The sword is analogous to the light, it is an aspect of the Fire and of the word. Already the bible says: "In the beginning was the word - light - and the word was with God". He who is somewhat acquainted with symbolism will remember that, as an example, Archangel Michael, the killer of the dragon, is symbolized with a burning sword; the dragon, in this case, is the symbol of the hostile, the negative principle. Adam and Eve, too, were driven out of paradise by an angel with a burning sword.
The symbolic meaning is also in this case quite clear and unequivocal.
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1.09 - BOOK THE NINTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
As first the Fire with frankincense he strows,
And utters to the Gods his holy vows;
--
And crackle round those limbs that mock the Fire
A sudden terror seiz'd th' immortal host,
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1.09 - Man - About the Body, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
With the principle of air rests the task of controlling the electrical fluid of the Fire and the magnetic fluid of the water in the body, keeping them in balance. For this reason it has been characterized as the neutral or mediating element.
It has been said in the fundamental key about the forces of the principle of earth that it has the function inside the body to keep together the influences of the three elements.
--
The food contains the elements mingled with each other. The result of taking in food is a chemical process by which the elements are preserved in our body. From the medical point of view, the taking in of any kind of food, together with the breathing, causes a process of combustion. The hermetist sees far more in this process than just a simple chemical event. He regards this combustion as the mutual dissolving of food, just like the Fire is kept burning by fuel. Therefore the whole life depends on the continuous supply of fuel, that is the food and the breathing. To supply every element with the necessary preserving substances, a mixed food is advisable which contains the fundamental materials of the elements. If we were to restrict our whole life to a one-sided kind of food only, our body would, without any doubt, fall ill, meaning that such a kind of food would produce a disharmony in the body. By the disintegration of air and food, the elements are provided with the supporting substances and in this way their activity is maintained. Such is mans natural mode of life. If an element is missing, as it were, the fuel, all the functions depending on it are immediately affected. If, e.g., the fiery element in the body works excessively, we feel thirsty, the air element makes us feel hungry, the element of water causes a feeling of cold, and the earthy element produces tiredness. On the other hand, every over-saturation of the elements causes reinforced effects in the body. A surplus of the fiery element creates a yearning for movement and activity. If this be the case with the watery element, the secretive process will be stronger. Any over-saturation of the airy element indicates that we must be moderate in taking food at all. An over-saturation of the earth element affects the aspects of sexual life, which must not necessarily find expression in the sexual instinct in the fleshly sense. It is quite possible -- and this will especially occur in the case of elderly people that they will feel a longing for increased activity and for productive agility.
In their active and passive polarity the electric and the magnetic fluids have the task of forming acid combinations in all the organic and inorganic bodies, from the chemical point of view, eventually from the alchemistic standpoint too. In the active sense they are constructive, and in the negative sense they are destructive, dissolving and disintegrating. All this explains the biological functions in the body. The final result is the circulation of life, which is brought into existence, thrives, ripens and fades away. This is the sense of evolution of all things created. a.
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1.09 - Sri Aurobindo and the Big Bang, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
Kitty Ferguson in the Fire in the Equations, published in
1994. 6 Lee Smolin, however, opines: We, who are used to
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6 Kitty Ferguson: the Fire in the Equations, p. 126.
7 Lee Smolin: The Trouble with Physics, p. 151.sri aurobindo and the big bang
--
of the world and for its organization. Here the Fire occupies
a central position and an organizing function ... (Andr
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11.01 - The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Their heart shall feel the ecstasy and the Fire.
Earth's bodies shall be conscious of a soul;
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11.06 - The Mounting Fire, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The inferior parts of the brain are denser and darker than the superior. The lower it is, the denser and darker it becomes. I do not know if physically it is so, but the sensitivity, the vibrations there seem to point to such a direction. So it appears, it is not easy for the Light from above to penetrate, to penetrate to a great depth, to the bottom of the brain. It is not the Light from above but the Fire from below, the flaming force of material consciousness that has to do the main or final work. For the light from above is mostly mental or mentalised, the very supreme Light does not descend easily, is not readily available: indeed it is ready and available only at the call of the Fire below. Agni is therefore named 'hota,' one who calls the Divine down here below. It is the God here below that can call down the God above.
But how to awaken this God buried in matter, how is one to kindle this fire that apparently lies extinguished, the Vedic Rishis have a whole ritual of the process. They speak, first of all, of preparing the seat for Agnibarhi: it is the material casing of the body, and then one takes two pieces of the arai, species of wood or fuel, and rubs them one against the other till the Fire leaps out. It refers to an aspiration, a concrete and concentrated aspiration that is breathed into the living cells, this breathing, dhmtam, is the concretising or embodying of the aspiration: it is the invocation that calls forth sleeping divinity.
the Fire in fact is the aspiration in the body, the divine demand in the body and it kindles itself by its own self-pressure. The spreading of the barhi in the Vedic image means also the surrender and submission, the prostration of the bodily being. By namas, by constant obeisance the Fire is to be tended; and a ceaseless refuelling has to be done by a ceaseless self-offering of all movements, especially all the automatic reactions of the physical that form the roots of the material existence.
The whole physical being if it is to embody a new life in a new organisation must concentrate at one point within itself and find or found there the Fire, the dynamic Divine Will in its most concrete reality the body's self and soul: the yajamna, the human figure of the Divine here invoking, calling forth the godhead who leads the sacrificial journey through all the worlds and domains to the Supreme Heights.
We have said that fire is a denser and intenser force than light: while the light is likely to stop short or to dispense, the Fire is apt to act fiercely and decisively with the denser or more refractory objects of existence, strands that are moved, as I have said, from the central control of the brain. Earth enshrines volcanoes; likewise the cells in the material body may be turned into little volcanoes if the Divine Flame is roused there in the intensive process of aspiration.
Earthly beings as we are, Agni, the earthly Godhead is the Deity we adore, he is the Lord of the Home, ghapati. He is the foremost of the gods and he goes in front of us purohita, Agni's flame rises towards Surya, the supreme Light, but first he must prepare the passage, burn down and clear the woodlands and marshes that intervene the growths and formations in the past of the very substance of the being.
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11.07 - The Labours of the Gods: The five Purifications, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The brain thus is the controller-general of the whole physical system of the human body. In particular, however, it is the controller and regulator of the physical mind and the senses (the six indriyas of Indian psychology). This is the province of the basic earth principle, this range of material matter over which the Fire is the presiding deity. There are, however, other provinces and units, co-lateral to the brain system and having special functions of their own. First of all, at the bottom of the scale, or rather the first step upward in the scale,that is, after the vertebral pedestalis the abdominal system which consists, as we know, of the three main operations: (i) digestion, (ii) evacuation, and (iii) generation, comprising, in other words, the stomach, the intestines, the liver and the spleen, the kidneys, the bladder, and finally, the sex glands. The glands indeed, here in this domain, are the operative agent: and they have a special way of operation, namely, washing. If fire controls the most material, the earth-principle, it is water, apas, that is the god in this region of the vital functions. The Vedas speak of the purifying streams of the Sindhus and the Srotas; they speak of the underground stream of rasa which Sarama, the Hound of Heaven, crossed to' come over to our earth. Water, in fact, does the work appropriate to this region. It is the vital region in man and consists of functions attached to the vital activities. The vital in its ordinary and normal functions means desires and attachments, hunger and thirst, ties and bondages, urges and demands these have to be cleared and washed out if there is to be healthy strength in the system, washed by spraying the pure vital fluid. Physiologically the enzymes and endocrine secretions are the physical formations or outer formulations of the hidden vital fluid. This indeed is the function of the deity, Soma, Pawamana Soma, the flowing stream of Delight, who in effect is the true presiding godhead here. For it is this section of the body that is the stage for our whole world of enjoyment for the play of all our physical delights as well as of all our ailments and diseases. Purified, it is the giver of health and happiness leading ultimately to that Supreme Delight which is immortality, Life transfigured.
Above and next to this region of the viscera, on the other side of the diaphragm, is the region of the thorax, the chest cavity. It contains the ,most important of all human organs, the heart and the lungs, which means the respiratory and the circulatory systems, extending into the solar plexus; and the power that controls it is that of the third element Tejas, the pulsating, radiant energy. It is the energising heat, the warmth of will and aspiration, concentration in the heart; it is also Tapas. It is indeed a form of fire, fire in its essential substance, a quiet white flame against the robust red and crimson and purple fires of earth. It is the mounting urge of consciousness in its rhythmic poise of harmonious strength. And that is the god Aryama of the Vedas, the godhead presiding over the upward surge of evolution. From here comes not merely the drive to go forward, the secret dynamo that moves the being to its goal but also the vision that shows the way and the conditions under which the end is achieved or fulfilled. From here too comes rhythm and the balance and the happy harmony of all movements in life. The calm heave of the lung sand the glad beat of the heart are the sign and symbol of a radiant animation.
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We have said that each element has its special function in relation to the human dhar, the Fire burns in the earthly or material sheath, the water flushes and cleans the vitals, the radiant energy activises and regulates the cardiac domainwhich in fact is the central knot of life the air or wind, the breath of consciousness inspires the right expression in thought And speech and act, and finally, the vast limitless beyond is the ultimate reality embracing the rest of the being in its truth and love and delight. In reality, however, the elements in their essence are not exclusive of each other. Indeed they with their respective fields and functions are interchangeable, each one can do the work of any other or of all together. They function severally and collectively, and they intermingle and reciprocate in their functioning even like and following the example of the Vedic gods. Fire can ignite the brain or the vitals or the cardiac and the throat region or even the crown. The water as well can flush likewise the brain, the vitals, the thorax and the throat. The radiant energy of the heart, in its turn, can luminously animate and regulate the same fields and functions. The air or the Marut can sweep through and purify and dynamise each and everyone of the rest, give an inspired expression through man's face,the frontal field and instrument. And it goes without saying that the Infinite, the Vast, lies behind and at the heart of all, without it nothing can exist or move. That is the supreme agent for creation and new creation the Grace Divine.
All the different elements are but varied formulations of one and the same divine Creative Energy. Therefore the Vedic Rishi declares: It is all one single reality, the sages give it different names.
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1.10 - BOOK THE TENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
For thrice in chearful flames ascends the Fire.
The youth, returning to his mistress, hies,
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1.10 - The descendants of the daughters of Daksa married to the Rsis, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
[9]: The eldest son of Brahmā, according to the commentator, upon the authority of the Vedas. The Vāyu P. enters into a very long detail of the names and places of the whole forty-nine fires. According to that, also, Pāvaka is electric or Vaidynta fire; Pavamāna is that produced by friction, or Nirmathya; and Śuci is solar, Saura, fire. Pavamāna was the parent of Kavyavāhana, the Fire of the Pitris; Śuci of Havyavāhana, the Fire of the gods; and Pavamāna of Saharakṣa, the Fire of the Asuras. The Bhāgavata explains these different fires to be so many appellations of fire employed in the invocations with which different oblations to fire are offered in the ritual of the Vedas: ### explained by the commentator, ###.
[10]: According to the commentator, this distinction is derived from the Vedas. The first class, or Agniṣvāttas, consists of those householders who, when alive, did not maintain their domestic fires, nor offer burnt-sacrifices: the second, of those who kept up the household flame, and presented oblations with fire. Manu calls these Agnidagdhas and the reverse, which Sir W. Jones renders, 'consumable by fire,' &c. Kullūka Bhaṭṭa gives no explanation of them. The Bhāgavata adds other classes of Pitris; or, the Ājyapas, drinkers of ghee;' and Somapās, drinkers of the acid juice.' The commentator, explaining the meaning of the terms Sāgnayas and Anāgnyas, has, ### which might be understood to signify, that the Pitris who are 'without fire' are those to whom oblations are not offered; and those 'with fire' are they to whom oblations are presented.
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1.10 - The Revolutionary Yogi, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Because it is not you, it is something within you. What can all these tribunals, what can all the powers of the world do to That which is within you, that Immortal, that Unborn and Undying One, whom the sword cannot pierce, whom the Fire cannot burn? . . . Him the jail cannot confine and the gallows cannot end. What is there that you can fear when you are conscious of Him who is within you?126
On May 4, 1908, at dawn, Sri Aurobindo was pulled out of bed at gunpoint by the British police. He was thirty-six. An attempt on the life of a British magistrate based in Calcutta had just failed. The bomb used in the attempt had been manufactured in the garden where Barin,
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1.11 - BOOK THE ELEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
While the fat entrails crackle in the Fire,
And sheets of smoak in sweet perfume aspire;
--
And in the Fires above the water fries:
When yellow sands are sifted from below,
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1.11 - Delight of Existence - The Problem, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
10:We have to recognise, if we thus view the whole, not limiting ourselves to the human difficulty and the human standpoint, that we do not live in an ethical world. The attempt of human thought to force an ethical meaning into the whole of Nature is one of those acts of wilful and obstinate self-confusion, one of those pathetic attempts of the human being to read himself, his limited habitual human self into all things and judge them from the standpoint he has personally evolved, which most effectively prevent him from arriving at real knowledge and complete sight. Material Nature is not ethical; the law which governs it is a co-ordination of fixed habits which take no cognisance of good and evil, but only of force that creates, force that arranges and preserves, force that disturbs and destroys impartially, nonethically, according to the secret Will in it, according to the mute satisfaction of that Will in its own self-formations and self-dissolutions. Animal or vital Nature is also non-ethical, although as it progresses it manifests the crude material out of which the higher animal evolves the ethical impulse. We do not blame the tiger because it slays and devours its prey any more than we blame the storm because it destroys or the Fire because it tortures and kills; neither does the conscious-force in the storm, the Fire or the tiger blame or condemn itself. Blame and condemnation, or rather self-blame and self-condemnation, are the beginning of true ethics. When we blame others without applying the same law to ourselves, we are not speaking with a true ethical judgment, but only applying the language ethics has evolved for us to an emotional impulse of recoil from or dislike of that which displeases or hurts us.
11:This recoil or dislike is the primary origin of ethics, but is not itself ethical. The fear of the deer for the tiger, the rage of the strong creature against its assailant is a vital recoil of the individual delight of existence from that which threatens it. In the progress of the mentality it refines itself into repugnance, dislike, disapproval. Disapproval of that which threatens and hurts us, approval of that which flatters and satisfies refine into the conception of good and evil to oneself, to the community, to others than ourselves, to other communities than ours, and finally into the general approval of good, the general disapproval of evil. But, throughout, the fundamental nature of the thing remains the same. Man desires self-expression, self-development, in other words, the progressing play in himself of the consciousforce of existence; that is his fundamental delight. Whatever hurts that self-expression, self-development, satisfaction of his progressing self, is for him evil; whatever helps, confirms, raises, aggrandises, ennobles it is his good. Only, his conception of the self-development changes, becomes higher and wider, begins to exceed his limited personality, to embrace others, to embrace all in its scope.
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17:In the egoistic human being, the mental person emergent out of the dim shell of matter, delight of existence is neutral, semilatent, still in the shadow of the subconscious, hardly more than a concealed soil of plenty covered by desire with a luxuriant growth of poisonous weeds and hardly less poisonous flowers, the pains and pleasures of our egoistic existence. When the divine conscious-force working secretly in us has devoured these growths of desire, when in the image of the Rig Veda the Fire of God has burnt up the shoots of earth, that which is concealed at the roots of these pains and pleasures, their cause and secret being, the sap of delight in them, will emerge in new forms not of desire, but of self-existent satisfaction which will replace mortal pleasure by the Immortal's ecstasy. And this transformation is possible because these growths of sensation and emotion are in their essential being, the pains no less than the pleasures, that delight of existence which they seek but fail to reveal, - fail because of division, ignorance of self and egoism.
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1.11 - GOOD AND EVIL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
And with what are they on fire? With the Fire of greed, with the Fire of resentment, with the Fire of infatuation; with birth, old age and death, with sorrow and lamentation, with misery and grief and despair they are on fire.
From the Buddhas Fire Sermon
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1.11 - On talkativeness and silence., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
He who knows the fragrance of the Fire from on high, runs from a concourse of men like a bee from smoke; for the bee is routed by smoke, whereas man is hampered by company.
Few can hold water without a sluice; still fewer can tame an intemperate mouth.
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1.11 - The Seven Rivers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Gods and men, says Vishwamitra in effect, kindle this divine force by lighting the Fires of the inner sacrifice; they enable it to work by their adoration and submission to it; they express in heaven, that is to say, in the pure mentality which is symbolised by Dyaus, the knowings of the Seers, in other words the illuminations of the Truth-consciousness which exceeds Mind; and they do this in order to make a passage for this divine force which in its strength seeking always to find the word of right self-expression aspires beyond mind. This divine will carrying in all its workings the secret of the divine knowledge, kavikratuh., befriends or builds up the mental and physical consciousness in man, divah. pr.thivyah., perfects the intellect, purifies the discernment so that they grow to be capable of the "knowings of the seers" and by the superconscient Truth thus made conscient in us establishes firmly the Beatitude (vs. 2-3).
The rest of the passage describes the ascent of this divine conscious-force, Agni, this Immortal in mortals who in the sacrifice takes the place of the ordinary will and knowledge of man, from the mortal and physical consciousness to the immortality of the Truth and the Beatitude. The Vedic Rishis speak of five births for man, five worlds of creatures where works are done, panca janah., panca kr.s.t.h. or ks.ith.. Dyaus and Prithivi represent the pure mental and the physical consciousness; between them is the Antariksha, the intermediate or connecting level of the vital or nervous consciousness. Dyaus and Prithivi are Rodasi, our two firmaments; but these have to be overpassed, for then we find admission to another heaven than that of the pure mind - to the wide, the Vast which is the basis, the foundation (budhna) of the infinite consciousness, Aditi. This Vast is the Truth which supports the supreme triple world, those highest steps or seats
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1.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "Man must reap the fruit of his own karma. But as far as the death of that holy man is concerned, it was brought about by the will of God. The kavirajs prepare makaradhvaja in a bottle. The bottle is covered with clay and heated in the Fire. The gold inside the bottle melts and combines with the other ingredients, and the medicine is made. Then the physicians break the bottle carefully and take out the medicine. When the medicine is made, what difference does it make whether the bottle is preserved or broken? So people think that the holy man was killed. But perhaps his inner stuff had been made. After the realization of God, what difference does it make whether the body lives or dies?
Different kinds of samadhi
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"Knowledge and love-both are paths leading to God. Those who follow the path of love have to observe a little more outer purity. But the violation of this by a man following the path of knowledge cannot injure him. It is destroyed in the Fire of knowledge. Even a banana tree is burnt up when it is thrown into a roaring fire.
"The jnanis follow the path of discrimination. Sometimes it happens that, discriminating between the Real and the unreal, a man loses his faith in the existence of God. But a devotee who sincerely yearns for God does not give up his meditation even though he is invaded by atheistic ideas. A man whose father and. grandfa ther have been farmers continues his farming even though he doesn't get any crop in a year of drought."
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"As long as God keeps the awareness of 'I' in us, so long do sense-objects exist; and we cannot very well speak of the world as a dream. There is fire in the hearth; therefore the rice and pulse and potatoes and the other vegetables jump about in the pot. They jump about as if to say: 'We are here! We are jumping!' This body is the pot. The mind and intelligence are the water. The objects of the senses are the rice, potatoes, and other vegetables. The 'I-consciousness' identified with the senses says, 'I am jumping about.' And Satchidananda is the Fire.
"Hence the Bhakti scriptures describe this very world as a 'mansion of mirth'.
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1.12 - BOOK THE TWELFTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
The reeking entrails on the Fire they threw,
And to the Gods the grateful odour flew.
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1.12 - Love The Creator, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
And before it was in the pain, it was already a divine force of coherence and of organisation in the Matter in which life was germinating; it was the soul in unconscious forms before it became the soul in sensible forms; and it was loves power of attraction that, before it existed in the heart of mankind, was in the heart of the worlds, before it took the shape of tenderness, brotherhood and compassion, was affinity in atoms and force of gravitation in the spheres. Without it how could any unity have been born in the infinite divisibility of substances? Whilst desire dispersed through space the ashes of its fires, was it not love that in that comic dust relighted the Fires of life?
But in order that it might fertilise the germs of death, was it not inevitable that love should bury itself alive therein? Before anything could be, love had to make a holocaust of itself. Together with desire there was in the beginning sacrifice; and desire contained in its germ all the sorrows of the world, sacrifice all the joys of infinity.
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1.12 - The Divine Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
exhausted or consumed by the Fire of Yoga, will cease with the
departure of the released soul from the body. The aim of escape
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1.12 - The Left-Hand Path - The Black Brothers, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
And for this is BABALON under the power of the Magician, that she hath submitted herself unto the work; and she guardeth the Abyss. And in her is a perfect purity of that which is above, yet she is sent as the Redeemer to them that are below. For there is no other way into the Supernal mystery but through her and the Beast on which she rideth; and the Magician is set beyond her to deceive the brothers of blackness, lest they should make unto themselves a crown; for it there were two crowns, then should Ygdrasil, that ancient tree, be cast out into the Abyss, uprooted and cast down into the Outermost Abyss, and the Arcanum which is in the Adytum should be profaned; and the Ark should be touched, and the Lodge spied upon by them that are not masters, and the bread of the Sacrament should be the dung of Choronzon; and the wine of the Sacrament should be the water of Choronzon; and the incense should be dispersion; and the Fire upon the Altar should be hate. But lift up thyself; stand, play the man, for behold! there shall be revealed unto thee the Great Terror, the thing of awe that hath no name.
(Ibid. 3rd thyr)
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And whoso passeth into the outermost Abyss, except he be of them that understand, holdeth out his hands, and boweth his neck, unto the Chains of Choronzon. And as a devil he walketh about the earth, immortal, and be blasteth the flowers of the earth, and he corrupteth the fresh air, and he maketh poisonous the water; and the Fire that is the friend of man, and the pledge of his aspiration, seeing that it mounteth ever up- ward as a Pyramid, and seeing that man stole it in a hollow tube from Heaven, even that fire he turneth into ruin, and madness, and fever, and destruction. And thou, that art an heap of dry dust in the city of the Pyramids, must understand these things.
Beware, therefore, O thou who art appointed to understand the secret of the Outermost Abyss, for in every Abyss thou must assume the mask and form of the Angel thereof. Hadst thou a name, thou wert irrevocably lost. Search, therefore, if there be yet one drop of blood that is not gathered into the cup of Babylon the Beautiful: for in that little pile of dust, if there could be one drop of blood, it should be utterly corrupt; it should breed scorpions, and vipers, and the cat of slime.
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1.12 - The Significance of Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
- and by the affirmation that the result of such active sacrifice with an equal and desireless mind is liberation from the bondage of works. "He who is satisfied with whatever gain comes to him and equal in failure and success, is not bound even when he acts. When a man liberated, free from attachment, acts for sacrifice, all his action is dissolved," leaves, that is to say, no result of bondage or after-impression on his free, pure, perfect and equal soul. To these passages we shall have to return. They are followed by a perfectly explicit and detailed interpretation of the meaning of yajna in the language of the Gita which leaves no doubt at all about the symbolic use of the words and the psychological character of the sacrifice enjoined by this teaching. In the ancient Vedic system there was always a double sense physical and psychological, outward and symbolic, the exterior form of the sacrifice and the inner meaning of all its circumstances. But the secret symbolism of the ancient Vedic mystics, exact, curious, poetic, psychological, had been long forgotten by this time and it is now replaced by another, large, general and philosophical in the spirit of Vedanta and a later Yoga. the Fire of sacrifice, agni, is no material flame, but brahmagni, the Fire of the Brahman, or it is the Brahman-ward energy, inner Agni, priest of the sacrifice, into which the offering is poured; the Fire is self-control or it is a purified sense-action or it is the vital energy in that discipline of the control of the vital being through the control of the breath which is common to Rajayoga and Hathayoga, or it is the Fire of self-knowledge, the flame of the supreme sacrifice. The food eaten as the leavings of the sacrifice is, it is explained, the nectar
120
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Brahman is that which is to be attained by samadhi in Brahmanaction." This then is the knowledge in which the liberated man has to do works of sacrifice. It is the knowledge declared of old in the great Vedantic utterances, "I am He", "All this verily is the Brahman, Brahman is this Self." It is the knowledge of the entire unity; it is the One manifest as the doer and the deed and the object of works, knower and knowledge and the object of knowledge. The universal energy into which the action is poured is the Divine; the consecrated energy of the giving is the Divine; whatever is offered is only some form of the Divine; the giver of the offering is the Divine himself in man; the action, the work, the sacrifice is itself the Divine in movement, in activity; the goal to be reached by sacrifice is the Divine. For the man who has this knowledge and lives and acts in it, there can be no binding works, no personal and egoistically appropriated action; there is only the divine Purusha acting by the divine Prakriti in His own being, offering everything into the Fire of His self-conscious cosmic energy, while the knowledge and the possession of His divine existence and consciousness by the soul unified with Him is the goal of all this God-directed movement and activity. To know that and to live and act in this unifying consciousness is to be free.
The Significance of Sacrifice
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Brahman-fire." The former conceive of the Divine in various forms and powers and seek him by various means, ordinances, dharmas, laws or, as we might say, settled rites of action, selfdiscipline, consecrated works; for the latter, those who already know, the simple fact of sacrifice, of offering whatever work to the Divine itself, of casting all their activities into the unified divine consciousness and energy, is their one means, their one dharma. The means of sacrifice are various; the offerings are of many kinds. There is the psychological sacrifice of self-control and self-discipline which leads to the higher self-possession and self-knowledge. "Some offer their senses into the Fires of control, others offer the objects of sense into the Fires of sense, and others offer all the actions of the sense and all the actions of the vital force into the Fire of the Yoga of self-control kindled by knowledge." There is, that is to say, the discipline which receives the objects of sense-perception without allowing the mind to be disturbed or affected by its sense-activities, the senses themselves becoming pure fires of sacrifice; there is the discipline which stills the senses so that the soul in its purity may appear from behind the veil of mind-action, calm and still; there is the discipline by which, when the self is known, all the actions of the senseperceptions and all the action of the vital being are received into that one still and tranquil soul. The offering of the striver after perfection may be material and physical, dravya-yajna, like that consecrated in worship by the devotee to his deity, or it may be the austerity of his self-discipline and energy of his soul directed to some high aim, tapo-yajna, or it may be some form of Yoga like the Pranayama of the Rajayogins and Hathayogins, or any other yoga-yajna. All these tend to the purification of the being; all sacrifice is a way towards the attainment of the highest.
The one thing needful, the saving principle constant in all these variations, is to subordinate the lower activities, to diminish the control of desire and replace it by a superior energy, to abandon the purely egoistic enjoyment for that diviner delight
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1.12 - The Sociology of Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
There are ten or twenty, perhaps fifty, here or there, in one latitude or another, who yearn to till a truer plot of land, a small patch of man to grow a truer being within themselves, perhaps create together a laboratory of the superman, lay the first stone of the City of Truth on earth. They do not know, they do not know anything, except that they need something else and that there exists a Law of Harmony, a marvelous something of the Future seeking to be incarnated. They want to find the conditions of that incarnation, to lend themselves to the trial, to offer their substance for that living experiment. They know nothing except that everything must be different: in hearts, in gestures, in matter and the handling of matter. They are not seeking to create a new civilization, but another man; not a supercity among the millions of buildings of the world, but a listening post for the forces of the future, a supreme yantra of Truth, a conduit, a channel to try to capture and inscribe in matter a first note of the great Harmony, a first tangible sign of the new world. They do not pose as the champions of anything; they do not defend any liberty or attack any ism. They simply try together. They are the champions of their own pure little note, which is unlike the next person's and yet is everyone's note. They are no longer from a country, a family, a religion or a party; they belong to their own party, which is no one else's and yet is the party of the world, because what becomes true at one point becomes true for the whole world and brings the whole world together. They are from a family to be invented, from a country yet to be born. They do not try to correct others or anybody, to pour self-glorifying charities over the world, to cure the poor and the lepers; they try to cure the great poverty of smallness in themselves, the gray elf of the inner misery, to reclaim one single parcel of truth from themselves, one single ray of harmony. For if that Disease is cured in our own heart or a few hearts, the world will be that much lighter, and, through our clarity, the Law of Truth will better penetrate matter and radiate all around spontaneously. What liberation, what relief can a man who suffers in his own heart bring to the world? They do not work for themselves, though they are the primary ground of the experience, but as an offering, pure and simple, to that which they do not really know, but which shimmers at the edge of the world like the dawn of a new age. They are the prospectors of the new cycle. They have given themselves to the future, body and soul, the way one jumps into the Fire, without a look back. They are the servants of the infinite in the finite, of the totality in the infinitesimal, of eternity in each second and each gesture. They create their heaven with each step and carve the new world out of the banality of the day. And they are not afraid of failure, for they have left behind the failures and success of the prison they live in the sole infallibility of a right little note.
But these builders of the new world will have to be careful not to erect a new prison, be it an ideal and enlightened one. In fact, they will understand, and quickly that this City of Truth will not and cannot see the light of day until they themselves live totally in the Truth, and that that building site is first and foremost the site of their own transmutation. One does not deceive Truth.
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1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Flaring like the Fires of Doomsday morning
North, south, east and west seem all confounded
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1.13 - BOOK THE THIRTEENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
The foe, the Fire, and Jove's own partial hand,
Now cannot his unmaster'd grief sustain,
--
Fierce, as the Fire, and sharp, as thistles are,
And more outragious, than a mother-bear:
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1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
naphtha draws everywhere the Fire to itself, 7 more than the Hera-
cleian stone draws iron . . . 8 Thus, they say, the perfect race of
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1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (referring to Narendra): "He has lighted the Fire. Now it doesn't matter whether he stays in the room or goes out.
Joy of God-Consciousness
--
MASTER (to M.): "Like the ka, Brahman is without any modification. It has become manifold because of akti. Again, Brahman is like fire, which itself has no colour. the Fire appears white if you throw a white substance into it, red if you throw a red, black if you throw a black. The three gunas-sattva, rajas, and tamas-belong to akti alone.
Brahman Itself is beyond the three gunas. What Brahman is cannot be described. It is beyond words. That which remains after everything is eliminated by the Vedantic process of 'Not this, not this', and which is of the nature of Bliss, is Brahman.
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1.14 - The Sand Waste and the Rain of Fire. The Violent against God. Capaneus. The Statue of Time, and the Four Infernal Rivers., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
the Fire, and lieth lowering and disdainful,
So that the rain seems not to ripen him?"
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1.14 - The Structure and Dynamics of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
quotes, the ignis elementalis is the Fire "which lights wood"; it
must therefore be the ordinary fire. The sun-fire, on the other
hand, seems to be the Fire in the earth, which today we would
80 Emblema XVII, p. 49.
--
chemists" comes from the earth, the lowest element. For the Fire
originates in the earth and transforms the finer minerals and
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1.14 - The Succesion to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
with the Fireborn King Servius Tullius, being held in honour of
Fortuna, the goddess who loved Servius as Egeria loved Numa. The
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1.14 - The Supermind as Creator, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
17:In Supermind knowledge in the Idea is not divorced from will in the Idea, but one with it - just as it is not different from being or substance, but is one with the being, luminous power of the substance. As the power of burning light is not different from the substance of the Fire, so the power of the Idea is not different from the substance of the Being which works itself out in the Idea and its development. In our mentality all are different. We have an idea and a will according to the idea or an impulsion of will and an idea detaching itself from it; but we differentiate effectually the idea from the will and both from ourselves. I am; the idea is a mysterious abstraction that appears in me, the will is another mystery, a force nearer to concreteness, though not concrete, but always something that is not myself, something that I have or get or am seized with, but am not. I make a gulf also between my will, its means and the effect, for these I regard as concrete realities outside and other than myself. Therefore neither myself nor the idea nor the will in me are self-effective. The idea may fall away from me, the will may fail, the means may be lacking, I myself by any or all of these lacunae may remain unfulfilled.
18:But in the Supermind there is no such paralysing division, because knowledge is not self-divided, force is not self-divided, being is not self-divided as in the mind; they are neither broken in themselves, nor divorced from each other. For the Supermind is the Vast; it starts from unity, not division, it is primarily comprehensive, differentiation is only its secondary act. Therefore whatever be the truth of being expressed, the idea corresponds to it exactly, the will-force to the idea, - force being only power of the consciousness, - and the result to the will. Nor does the idea clash with other ideas, the will or force with other will or force as in man and his world; for there is one vast Consciousness which contains and relates all ideas in itself as its own ideas, one vast Will which contains and relates all energies in itself as its own energies. It holds back this, advances that other, but according to its own preconceiving Idea-Will.
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1.14 - The Victory Over Death, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Then there is that fire. This is not a myth either: The red-glowing mass of him is seen, says the Veda, (Agni, the Fire) adorable, great of body, wide of light.42 At the beginning, however, this body is just a little spark, its red-glowing mass, a flickering flame sometimes lit but often extinguished, which has to be relit again and again. It is a tiny cry of suffocation in the world's night, a nameless need walking with us, going up and down our meanderings, following us tenaciously like a memory of something else, a golden recollection amid the grayness of the days, a call for air, a need for space, a need of loving, a need of being true. And this cry, this fire, grows:
Man is a narrow bridge, a call that grows.43
At first it is just a little flame in the mind, something groping about in search of a vaster inspiration, a greater truth, a purer knowledge, which soars, soars, and would as soon cut away all the weight of the world, the hindrances, the bonds and tangles of the earth. It soars and sometimes emerges, pure, sharp, upon summits of white light where everything is forever known and true but the earth, meanwhile, remains false; life and body remain in the dark conflict, and die and decay. So this white little flame begins to take in the heart. It yearns to love, to heal, to save. It gropes about in the dark, helps a fellowman, gives assistance, offers itself and sings a song that would like to embrace all, contain all, take all life into its heart. It is already a warmer and denser flame, but its minutes of illumination are like a pale and fragile firefly on an ocean of obscure life. It is constantly quenched, engulfed, swept under the wave and under our own waves of obscurity nothing is changed and life continues in its rut. So the seeker decides to drive this fire, this ardent truth, into his every moment and gesture, into his sleep and into his days, into his good and into his evil, into his whole life, so that everything may be purified, consumed by that fire so that something else may be born at last, a truer life, a truer being. He enters upon the path of the superman. And the Fire continues to grow. It goes down and down the degrees of the being, plunges into the subconscious caves, dislodges the gray elf, dislodges the misery within, and burns more and more continuously, powerfully, as if stoked by the obscure pressure. It is already a body almost in our likeness, vermillion-red in color, already verging on gold. But it is still fluctuating and precarious; it lacks a fundamental base, a permanent foundation. So the seeker decides to drive this fire into his substance and body. He wants his own matter to reflect the Truth, to incarnate the Truth; he wants the outside to radiate as the inside. He enters upon the path of the supramental being. For, in truth, this growing self of fire, this ardent body which bears more and more resemblance to our divine archetype, our brother of light up above, and which seems to exceed us on all sides and even to radiate all around with an already orange vibration, is the very body that will form the supramental being. It is the next earthly substance, harder than the diamond and yet more fluid than the gas, said Sri Aurobindo.44 It is the spiritual condensation of the great Energy before it becomes matter.
But how to induce this fire into our matter, how to effect the passage, or transfusion, of this dark and mortal body to that ardent and immortal one? The work is in progress; it is difficult to talk about. We will not really know how it is done until it is done. No one knows the country or the way to it since no one has ever gotten there. No one has ever made a supramental body! But it will be made, as inevitably as man and the ape and the millipede were already made in the great golden Seed of the world. This is the last adventure of the earth, or maybe the first of a more marvelous series on a new earth of truth. We do not know the secret; we only know in what direction to walk though knowing the direction is perhaps already knowing the secret, since it unfolds under our steps and is formed by walking it.
So we can at least indicate the direction, the simple direction, for as usual the secrets are simple. the Fire is built by the particle of consciousness we put into an unconscious act. Viewed from above, it is unconsciousness resisting and heating up from the friction of the new consciousness seeking entry it is that futile and automatic gesture which has trouble untwisting its habitual groove and turning differently, under another impulsion; and we have to untwist the old turn a thousand times, insist and persist until a little flame of consciousness replaces the dark routine. Viewed from below, it is that unconsciousness which suffocates and calls out and knocks and seeks. And both are true. It is the memory within which summons the golden ray; it is the great eternal Sun which makes that call for sunlight well up. The process, the great Process, is simple: we must light that little fire by degrees, put the ray into each gesture, each movement, each breath, each body function. Instead of doing things as usual, automatically, mechanically, we must remember Truth there too, yearn for Truth there too, infuse Truth there too. And we meet with resistance, forgetfulness, breakdowns; the machine goes on strike, falls ill, refuses to take the path of light. We must begin again thousands and thousands of times, point by point, gesture by gesture, function by function. We must remember again and again. Then, all of a sudden, in one little point of the body, in that passing little breath, something no longer vibrates in the old way, no longer works as usual; our breathing suddenly follows another rhythm, becomes wide and sunny, like a comfortable lungful of air, a breath of an air never known before, never tasted before, which refreshes everything, cures everything, even nourishes as if we were inhaling the nectar of the immortals. Then everything falls back into the old habit. We must start all over again, on one point, on another point, at each instant life becomes filled with an extreme preoccupation, an intense absorption. A second's minuscule victory streng thens us for another discovery, another victory. And we begin to work in every nook and cranny, every movement; we would like everything to be filled with truth and with that sun which changes everything, gives another flavor to everything, another rhythm, another plenitude. The body itself then begins to awaken, to yearn for truth, for sunshine. It begins to light its own fire of aspiration here and there, begins to want not to forget anymore; and whenever it forgets that new little vibration, it suddenly feels suffocated, as if it were sliding back into death. The process is simple, infinite, perpetual: each gesture or operation accomplished with a particle of consciousness binds that consciousness, that little fire of being, to the gesture or operation, and gradually transforms it. It is an infusion of consciousness, a microscopic and methodical and innumerable infusion of fire, until matter itself, under that conscious pressure, awakens to the need of consciousness as the seed awakens to the need for sunlight. Everything then starts growing together, inevitably, irresistibly, under that golden attraction. By degrees, the Fire is lit, the vibration radiates, the note spreads, the cells respond to the Influx. The body inaugurates a new type of functioning, a functioning of conscious truth.
The body's virtue is its obstinate permanence; once it has learned something, it never forgets it it goes on repeating its luminous functioning twenty-four hours a day, day and night, with the same obstinacy with which it used to repeat its diseases, fears, weaknesses and all its dark, age-old animal functioning.
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1.15 - In the Domain of the Spirit Beings, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
In the astral world of the zone girdling the earth the same powers exist and are at work as in the physical world; they are, however, more subtle. Also there dominates the element of the Fire with its salamanders or spirits of fire, the element of water with its water-spirits and undines, the element of the air with its fairies and sylphs or spirits of the air, and the element of the earth with its gnomes or spirits of the earth. All the beings in the astral sphere of the earth-zone move about in their respective elements just as the fish in the waters of the earth moves about correspondingly in its element. Each element has positive and negative beings so that we may talk of good as well as of evil salamanders.
The same is true of the beings of the other elements. In reality, however, there exists neither good nor evil, for Divine Providence created nothing bad or inharmonious, it is only a human comprehension to assume this. From the hermetic point of view the one kind of beings have good the other bad influences, thus have its good and bad effects respectively. These beings are, in the astral world, the tools for the things that happen in our physical world. They are the cause of all effects in the astral body of each being, no matter whether initiate or non-initiate.
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1.15 - LAST VISIT TO KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Do you know what actually happens? When a house is on fire, at first a few things inside burn. Then comes the great commotion. Just so, the Fire of Knowledge at first destroys such enemies of spiritual life as passion, anger, and so forth. Then comes the turn of ego. And lastly a violent commotion is seen in the physical frame.
"You may think that everything is going to be over. But God will not release you as long as the slightest trace of your illness is left. You simply cannot leave the hospital if your name is registered there. As long as the illness is not perfectly cured, the doctor won't give you a permit to go. Why did you register your name in the hospital at all?" (All laugh.)
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1.15 - On incorruptible purity and chastity to which the corruptible attain by toil and sweat., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
3 Or, he is pure who expels fleshly love with divine love, and who has extinguished the Fire of passion by the Fire of heaven (i.e. the Holy Spirit).
4 Another reading of the second half of the sentence is: but he whose members are subject to his soul is perfect.
--
He is great who remains free from passion when touched. But greater is he who remains unwounded by sight, and who has conquered the Fire caused by the beauties of earth by meditation on the beauties of heaven.
He who drives away this dog by prayer is like someone fighting with a lion; he who subdues him by his resistance is someone still pursuing his enemy; but he who has once for all reduced its appeal to nothing, even though he is still in the flesh, is as one who has already risen from his coffin.
--
When the devil wishes to tie two people to each other by a shameful bond, he works on the inclinations of both of them, and then lights the Fire of passion.
Those who are inclined to sensuality often seem sympathetic, merciful, and prone to compunction; while those who care for chastity do not seem to have these qualities to the same extent.
--
And the flesh might say in reply to its soul: I shall never tell you anything which you do not know equally well, but only of things of which we both have knowledge. I have my father1 within meself-love. the Fire which I experience from without comes from humouring me and from general comfort. the Fire which burns within comes from past ease and bygone deeds. Having conceived, I give birth to sins, and they, when born, in turn beget death or despair. If you know the deep and obvious weakness which is in both you and me, you have bound my hands. If you starve your appetite, you have bound my feet from going further. If you take the yoke of obedience, you have thrown off my yoke. If you obtain humility, you have cut off my head.
1 Some Greek versions read mother.
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1.15 - ON THE THOUSAND AND ONE GOALS, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
and creators. the Fire of love glows in the names of
all the virtues, and the Fire of wrath.
Zarathustra saw many lands and many peoples. No
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1.15 - The Supramental Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The Supramental Power The spiritualists dismiss power as a weapon unworthy of the seeker of truth, but this is not Sri Aurobindo's view. On the contrary, the concept of Power, Shakti, is one of the keys to his yoga, because without power nothing can be transformed. I cherish God the Fire, not God the Dream! exclaims Savitri.273
A fire to call eternity into Time,
--
consciousness devoid of force, leading to a blissful ecstasy, and force without consciousness, leading to the crude joy of the atom the Supermind restores the Equilibrium within a total being: the highest consciousness in the most powerful force, the Fire of the Spirit in Matter. "O Flame with the hundred treasures," exclaims the Rig Veda (I.59).
It may be worth remembering that Sri Aurobindo made his spiritual discovery in 1910, even before reading the Veda, and at a time when nuclear physics was still in a theoretical phase. Our science is ahead of our consciousness, hence the haphazard course of our 283
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1.15 - The Transformed Being, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
But this is still a negative way of saying things, for the traveler of the sunlit path seeks neither hells nor Night, nor the tiny flash-deaths, though they sometimes befall him in a cry of suffocation. He seeks to remain always tuned in to the great flow of Harmony and Light and Truth, in everything he does, his every function, every breath of air he takes, every heartbeat. He is a meticulous colonizer of the Light. He pushes it into every nook and cranny of his body, into his sleep as well as his waking, into every activity, every movement, every dark alley of the body, as in the past on the boulevards outside, and he gains ground step by step, cell by cell. He lights the Fire of need need for truth, need for light, need for space in every one of those infinitesimal fortresses and pushes back ever farther the line of unconsciousness. Illnesses befall him, his strength declines,49 death smirks for an instant, but this is no longer even a trap or a fall, for he has his eyes wide open and sees that an infallible Hand has led him into this abyss so he can light a fire of truth there, too, a cry for help, a need of space and infinity and the second the true cry bursts out, everything vanishes; illness, death, all are gone in a split second, like an unreal dream. He learns the unreality of death. It is the supreme unreality; it crumbles in the twinkling of an eye under a single little breath of truth. But if we believe in it, it is instantaneous death. The implacable flow of basalt swallows us up into its nothingness which is nothing really, nonexistent; the cry of a child pierces it effortlessly! There is but one reality, which is the immortal Truth, the eternal Sun, the great and soft flowing that moves the worlds and bodies if we want to believe in it, want to let ourselves be carried by It; if we consent to the sunlit path. It is the only Reality. Death does not exist; it is only the forgetting of That. A second of recall, and everything sparkles in the sun again everything has never ceased sparkling in the sun. There was never any shadow, never any death; there was that false look. Death is a false look. The world is growing toward its true Look, which will change everything into what it really is; it is growing toward its Fire, which will transmute everything into what it really is. The Truth of one point will unveil the Truth of all points; the Truth of matter will act on every fragment of matter and death and the shadow and the NO buried in the heart of the world will reveal their immortal face, their eternal light, their consenting and glorious YES, because they will have touched their supreme bottom and completed their mission, which was to take us to the gates of the Sun, in our body and upon an earth of truth.
But tracking down falsehood and unconsciousness in the body would still not bring us immortality. It would only prolong life at will. And who would care to wear one coat for a hundred years or be confined in one narrow and changeless lodging unto a long eternity, said Sri Aurobindo.50 To perpetuate life in its present, coarse functioning would indeed be a dreadful burden, which we would soon wish to be rid of. Thus, this prolongation of life at will is only a first operational step to give us the time to build the supramental being in our body. Doing it takes time; it is a race between the swiftness of death and the speed of the transformation. Sri Aurobindo estimated that it would take three hundred years to form that being. But it does seem that the movement is accelerating more and more, and perhaps that supreme transformation does not depend so much on the length of time of individual preparation as it does on the preparation of the earth body as a whole and on its ability to accept the new world. And the Force of the New World is pounding the earth mercilessly; it is advancing with giant strides. The seams are cracking, and what seemed like a distant peal is becoming a thunderous death knell, which hides the next resurrection. We are touching rock bottom; we are before the gate of the deep Night which veils the unexpected.
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1.15 - The Violent against Nature. Brunetto Latini., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
Nor fans himself when smiteth him the Fire.
Therefore go on; I at thy skirts will come,
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1.15 - The world overrun with trees; they are destroyed by the Pracetasas, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
"When the Muni, princes, had heard these words, and knew that it was the truth, he began to reproach himself bitterly, exclaiming, 'Fie, fie upon me; my penance has been interrupted; the treasure of the learned and the pious has been stolen from me; my judgment has been blinded: this woman has been created by some one to beguile me: Brahma is beyond the reach of those agitated by the waves of infirmity[1]. I had subdued my passions, and was about to attain divine knowledge. This was foreseen by him by whom this girl has been sent hither. Fie on the passion that has obstructed my devotions. All the austerities that would have led to acquisition of the wisdom of the Vedas have been rendered of no avail by passion that is the road to hell.' The pious sage, having thus reviled himself, turned to the nymph, who was sitting nigh, and said to her, 'Go, deceitful girl, whither thou wilt: thou hast performed the office assigned thee by the monarch of the gods, of disturbing my penance by thy fascinations. I will not reduce thee to ashes by the Fire of my wrath. Seven paces together is sufficient for the friendship of the virtuous, but thou and I have dwelt together. And in truth what fault hast thou committed? why should I be wroth with thee? The sin is wholly mine, in that I could not subdue my passions: yet fie upon thee, who, to gain favour with Indra, hast disturbed my devotions; vile bundle of delusion.'
"Thus spoken to by the Muni, Pramlocā stood trembling, whilst big drops of perspiration started from every pore; till he angrily cried to her, 'Depart, begone.' She then, reproached by him, went forth from his dwelling, and, passing through the air, wiped the perspiration from her person with the leaves of the trees. The nymph went from tree to tree, and as with the dusky shoots that crowned their summits she dried her limbs, which were covered with moisture, the child she had conceived by the Ṛṣi came forth from the pores of her skin in drops of perspiration. The trees received the living dews, and the winds collected them into one mass. "This," said Soma, "I matured by my rays, and gradually it increased in size, till the exhalation that had rested on the tree tops became the lovely girl named Māṛṣā. The trees will give her to you, Pracetasas: let your indignation be appeased. She is the progeny of Kaṇḍu, the child of Pramlocā, the nursling of the trees, the daughter of the wind and of the moon. The holy Kaṇḍu, after the interruption of his pious exercises, went, excellent princes, to the region of Viṣṇu, termed Puruṣottama, where, Maitreya[2], with his whole mind he devoted himself to the adoration of Hari; standing fixed, with uplifted arms, and repeating the prayers that comprehend the essence of divine truth[3]."
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1.15 - The Worship of the Oak, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
Perkunas. They carried a bowl of beer thrice round the Fire, then
poured the liquor on the flames, while they prayed to the god to
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1.16 - Dianus and Diana, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the fuel which burns in the Fire; primitive thought perhaps drew no
sharp line of distinction between the blaze and the wood that
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1.16 - Guidoguerra, Aldobrandi, and Rusticucci. Cataract of the River of Blood., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
And if it were not for the Fire that darts
The nature of this region, I should say
--
Could I have been protected from the Fire,
Below I should have thrown myself among them,
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1.16 - Man, A Transitional Being, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
This is what impels us deep within; there is a Fire within, a flame in Matter, a flame of Life, a flame in our Mind and in our soul. This is the Fire we must seize: it is the leader of the journey and the key, the secret evolutionary impetus, the soul and flame of the world. If this world were made only of lifeless and inert stone, it would never have become anything but lifeless and inert stone; if the soul were not already in Matter, it could never have emerged in man: But what after all, behind appearances, is this seeming mystery? We can see that it is the Consciousness which had lost itself returning again to itelf,
emerging out of its giant self-forgetfulness, slowly, painfully, as a Life that is would-be sentient, half-sentient, dimly sentient, wholly sentient and finally struggles to be more than sentient, to be again divinely self-conscious, free, infinite, immortal.325
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1.16 - The Season of Truth, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
12 It was not until 1938 and the cycle of Be the that this third fire the one triggered in nuclear reactions was discovered; and it is indeed the Fire of the sun, whose enormous radiant energy results from the fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. Before then, science knew only of the first two kinds of fire: the Fire in chemical reactions, when molecules are destroyed and recombined without any change in the structure of the constituent atoms, and the Fire resulting from modifications in the atom's outer layers (the electrons), which are the source of all the electromagnetic phenomena. (Note compiled by P. B. Saint-Hilaire)
Back
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1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"At one time Rma was overpowered by the spirit of renunciation. Dasaratha, worried at this, went to the sageVasishtha and begged him to persuade Rma not to give up the world. The sage came to Rma and found him in a gloomy mood. the Fire of intense renunciation had been raging in the Prince's mind. Vasishtha said: 'Rma, why should You renounce the world? Is the world outside God? Reason with me.' Rma realized that the world had evolved from the Supreme Brahman. So, He said nothing.
"Buttermilk is made from the same substance as butter. One who realizes this knows that butter goes with buttermilk and buttermilk with butter. After separating the butter with great effort-that is to say, after attaining Brahmajnana-you will realize that as long as butter exists, buttermilk also must exist. Wherever there is butter there must be buttermilk as well. As long as one feels that Brahman exists, one must also be aware that the universe, living beings, and the twenty-four cosmic principles exist as well.
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1.17 - Legend of Prahlada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Then said the king to his attendants, "Dismiss the elephants, and let fire consume him; and do thou, deity of the winds, blow up the Fire, that this wicked wretch may be consumed." And the Dānavas piled a mighty heap of wood around the prince, and kindled a fire, to burn him, as their master had commanded. But Prahlāda cried, "Father, this fire, though blown up by the winds, burneth me not; and all around I behold the face of the skies, cool and fragrant, with beds of lotus flowers."
Then the Brahmans who were the sons of Bhārgava, illustrious priests, and reciters of the Sāma-Veda, said to the king of the Daityas, "Sire, restrain your wrath against your own son. How should anger succeed in finding a place in heavenly mansions? As for this lad, we will be his instructors, and teach him obediently to labour for the destruction of your foes. Youth is the season, king, of many errors; and you should not therefore be relentlessly offended with a child. If he will not listen to us, and abandon the cause of Hari, we will adopt infallible measures to work his death." The king of the Daityas, thus solicited by the priests, commanded the prince to be liberated from the midst of the flames.
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1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
thou art the blue bird and the green and the scarlet-eyed"366 ); and second, that the solar fire in Matter is the material counterpart of the fundamental Agni, which, as Sri Aurobindo stressed in another part of the same conversation, is the builder of forms. To wield Agni is to be able to change forms, to transform Matter: "He tastes not that delight (of the twice-born) who is unripe and whose body has not suffered in the heat of the Fire," says the Rig Veda; "they alone are able to bear that and enjoy it who have been prepared by the flame." (IX.83.1) It is the warm gold dust that will transmute its material counterpart, the nuclear dust in our body: The subtle process will be more powerful than the gross, so that a subtle action of Agni will be able to do the 366
Swetaswatara Upanishad IV.3.4
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1.18 - Hiranyakasipu's reiterated attempts to destroy his son, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Thus spoken to by the youth, the priests of the Daitya sovereign were incensed, and instantly had recourse to magic incantations, by which a female form, enwreathed with fiery flame, was engendered: she was of fearful aspect, and the earth was parched beneath her tread, as she approached Prahlāda, and smote him with a fiery trident on the breast. In vain! for the weapon fell, broken into a hundred pieces, upon the ground. Against the breast in which the imperishable Hari resides the thunderbolt would be shivered, much more should such a weapon be split in pieces. The magic being, then directed against the virtuous prince by the wicked priest, turned upon them, and, having quickly destroyed them, disappeared. But Prahlāda, beholding them perish, hastily appealed to Kṛṣṇa, the eternal, for succour, and said, "Oh Janārddana! who art every where, the creator and substance of the world, preserve these Brahmans from this magical and insupportable fire. As thou art Viṣṇu, present in all creatures, and the protector of the world, so let these priests be restored to life. If, whilst devoted to the omnipresent Viṣṇu, I think no sinful resentment against my foes, let these priests be restored to life. If those who have come to slay me, those by whom poison was given me, the Fire that would have burned, the elephants that would have crushed, and snakes that would have stung me, have been regarded by me as friends; if I have been unshaken in soul, and am without fault in thy sight; then, I implore thee, let these, the priests of the Asuras, be now restored to life." Thus having prayed, the Brahmans immediately rose up, uninjured and rejoicing; and bowing respectfully to Prahlāda, they blessed him, and said, "Excellent prince, may thy days be many; irresistible be thy prowess; and power and wealth and posterity be thine." Having thus spoken, they withdrew, and went and told the king of the Daityas all that had passed.
Footnotes and references:
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1.18 - M. AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Therefore at the beginning the aspirant should go into solitude now and then. Spiritual discipline is necessary. You want to eat rice; suppose you sit down somewhere and say, 'Wood contains fire and fire cooks rice.' Can saying it cook the rice? You must get two pieces of wood and by rubbing them together bring out the Fire.
"By eating siddhi one becomes intoxicated and feels happy. But suppose you haven't eaten the stuff or done anything else with it; you simply sit down somewhere and mutter, 'Siddhi! siddhi!' Will that intoxicate you or make you happy?
--
KEDR: "It is all dry knowledge. The pot has just been put on the Fire, but as yet there is no rice in it."
MASTER: "That may be true. But he has renounced everything. He who has renounced the world has already made great progress. The sdhu belongs to the stage of the beginner. Nothing can be achieved without the realization of God. When a man is intoxicated with ecstatic love of God, he dosn't take delight in anything else. Then-Cherish my precious Mother Syama Tenderly within, O mind;
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1.18 - The Perils of the Soul, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
have caught one, they tie it up over the Fire, and as it shrivels in
the heat the owner sickens. This is done, not out of any grudge
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1.19 - Dialogue between Prahlada and his father, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
"It is true that I have been instructed in all these matters by my venerable preceptor, and I have learnt them, but I cannot in all approve them. It is said that conciliation, gifts, punishment, and sowing dissension are the means of securing friends (or overcoming foes)[1]; but I, father-be not angry-know neither friends nor foes; and where no object is to be accomplished, the means of effecting it are superfluous. It were idle to talk of friend or foe in Govinda, who is the supreme soul, lord of the world, consisting of the world, and who is identical with all beings. The divine Viṣṇu is in thee, father, in me, and in all every where else; and hence how can I speak of friend or foe, as distinct from myself? It is therefore waste of time to cultivate such tedious and unprofitable sciences, which are but false knowledge, and all our energies should be dedicated to the acquirement of true wisdom. The notion that ignorance is knowledge arises, father, from ignorance. Does not the child, king of the Asuras, imagine the Fire-fly to be a spark of fire. That is active duty, which is not for our bondage; that is knowledge, which is for our liberation: all other duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the cleverness of an artist. Knowing this, I look upon all such acquirement as profitless. That which is really profitable hear me, oh mighty monarch, thus prostrate before thee, proclaim. He who cares not for dominion, he who cares not for wealth, shall assuredly obtain both in a life to come. All men, illustrious prince, are toiling to be great; but the destinies of men, and not their own exertions, are the cause of greatness. Kingdoms are the gifts of fate, and are bestowed upon the stupid, the ignorant, the cowardly, and those to whom the science of government is unknown. Let him therefore who covets the goods of fortune be assiduous in the practice of virtue: let him who hopes for final liberation learn to look upon all things as equal and the same. Gods, men, animals, birds, reptiles, all are but forms of one eternal Viṣṇu, existing as it were detached from himself. By him who knows this, all the existing world, fixed or movable, is to be regarded as identical with himself, as proceeding alike from Viṣṇu, assuming a universal form. When this is known, the glorious god of all, who is without beginning or end, is pleased; and when he is pleased, there is an end of affliction."
On hearing this, Hiraṇyakaśipu started up from his throne in a fury, and spurned his son on the breast with his foot. Burning with rage, he wrung his hands, and exclaimed, "Ho Viprachitti! ho Rāhu! ho Bali[2]! bind him with strong bands[3], and cast him into the ocean, or all the regions, the Daityas and Dānavas, will become converts to the doctrines of this silly wretch. Repeatedly prohibited by us, he still persists in the praise of our enemies. Death is the just retribution of the disobedient." The Daityas accordingly bound the prince with strong bands, as their lord had commanded, and threw him into the sea. As he floated on the waters, the ocean was convulsed throughout its whole extent, and rose in mighty undulations, threatening to submerge the earth. This when Hiraṇyakaśipu observed, he commanded the Daityas to hurl rocks into the sea, and pile them closely on one another, burying beneath their iñcumbent mass him whom fire would not burn, nor weapons pierce, nor serpents bite; whom the pestilential gale could not blast, nor poison nor magic spirits nor incantations destroy; who fell from the loftiest heights unhurt; who foiled the elephants of the spheres: a son of depraved heart, whose life was a perpetual curse. "Here," he cried, "since he cannot die, here let him live for thousands of years at the bottom of the ocean, overwhelmed by mountains. Accordingly the Daityas and Dānavas hurled upon Prahlāda, whilst in the great ocean, ponderous rocks, and piled them over him for many thousand miles: but he, still with mind undisturbed, thus offered daily praise to Viṣṇu, lying at the bottom of the sea, under the mountain heap. "Glory to thee, god of the lotus eye: glory to thee, most excellent of spiritual things: glory to thee, soul of all worlds: glory to thee, wielder of the sharp discus: glory to the best of Brahmans; to the friend of Brahmans and of kine; to Kṛṣṇa, the preserver of the world: to Govinda be glory. To him who, as Brahmā, creates the universe; who in its existence is its preserver; be praise. To thee, who at the end of the Kalpa takest the form of Rudra; to thee, who art triform; be adoration. Thou, Achyuta, art the gods, Yakṣas, demons, saints, serpents, choristers and dancers of heaven, goblins, evil spirits, men, animals, birds, insects, reptiles, plants, and stones, earth, water, fire, sky, wind, sound, touch, taste, colour, flavour, mind, intellect, soul, time, and the qualities of nature: thou art all these, and the chief object of them all. Thou art knowledge and ignorance, truth and falsehood, poison and ambrosia. Thou art the performance and discontinuance of acts[4]: thou art the acts which the Vedas enjoin: thou art the enjoyer of the fruit of all acts, and the means by which they are accomplished. Thou, Viṣṇu, who art the soul of all, art the fruit of all acts of piety. Thy universal diffusion, indicating might and goodness, is in me, in others, in all creatures, in all worlds. Holy ascetics meditate on thee: pious priests sacrifice to thee. Thou alone, identical with the gods and the fathers of mankind, receivest burnt-offerings and oblations[5]. The universe is thy intellectual form[6]; whence proceeded thy subtile form, this world: thence art thou all subtile elements and elementary beings, and the subtile principle, that is called soul, within them. Hence the supreme soul of all objects, distinguished as subtile or gross, which is imperceptible, and which cannot be conceived, is even a form of thee. Glory be to thee, Puruṣottama; and glory to that imperishable form which, soul of all, is another manifestation[7] of thy might, the asylum of all qualities, existing in all creatures. I salute her, the supreme goddess, who is beyond the senses; whom the mind, the tongue, cannot define; who is to be distinguished alone by the wisdom of the truly wise. Om! salutation to Vāsudeva: to him who is the eternal lord; he from whom nothing is distinct; he who is distinct from all. Glory be to the great spirit again and again: to him who is without name or shape; who sole is to be known by adoration; whom, in the forms manifested in his descents upon earth, the dwellers in heaven adore; for they behold not his inscrutable nature. I glorify the supreme deity Viṣṇu, the universal witness, who seated internally, beholds the good and ill of all. Glory to that Viṣṇu from whom this world is not distinct. May he, ever to be meditated upon as the beginning of the universe, have compassion upon me: may he, the supporter of all, in whom every thing is warped and woven[8], undecaying, imperishable, have compassion upon me. Glory, again and again, to that being to whom all returns, from whom all proceeds; who is all, and in whom all things are: to him whom I also am; for he is every where; and through whom all things are from me. I am all things: all things are in me, who am everlasting. I am undecayable, ever enduring, the receptacle of the spirit of the supreme. Brahma is my name; the supreme soul, that is before all things, that is after the end of all. ootnotes and references:
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1.19 - Tabooed Acts, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
they brought were also carried between the Fires. The reason
assigned for the custom was that the Fire purged away any magic
influence which the strangers might mean to exercise over the Khan.
--
set up in the ground near the Fire, and as the ball melts, so the
person against whom the charm is directed wastes with disease; if
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1.200-1.224 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Free-will is implied in the scriptural injunctions to be good. It implies overcoming fate. It is done by wisdom. the Fire of wisdom consumes all actions. Wisdom is acquired by association with the wise, or rather, its mental atmosphere.
Talk 210.
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1.2.01 - The Call and the Capacity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
surrender even to a greater Light and Knowledge, even to the divine Influence - these are frequent obstacles. But these things are not universal in Westerners, and they are on the other hand present in many Indian sadhaks, and they are, like the difficulties of the typical Indian nature, superstructural formations, not the very grain of the being. They cannot permanently stand in the way of the soul, if the soul's aspiration is strong and firm, if the spiritual aim is the chief thing in the life. They are impediments which the Fire within can easily burn away if the will to get rid of them is strong, and which it will surely burn away in the end, - though less easily - even if the outer nature clings long to them and justifies them - provided that central will, that deeper impulse is behind all, real and sincere.
This conclusion of yours about the incapacity of the nonOriental for Indian Yoga is simply born of a too despondently acute sense of your own difficulties, - you have not seen those, equally great, that have long troubled or are still troubling others. Neither to Indian nor to European can the path of Yoga be smooth and easy; their common human nature is there to see to that. To each his own difficulties seem enormous and radical and even incurable by their continuity and persistence and induce long periods of despondency and crises of despair.
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1.20 - Equality and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
a fire kindled turns to ashes its fuel, so the Fire of knowledge turns all works to ashes." By this it is not at all meant that when knowledge is complete, there is cessation from works. What is meant is made clear by the Gita when it says that he who has destroyed all doubt by knowledge and has by Yoga given up all works and is in possession of the Self is not bound by his works, yoga-sannyasta-karman.am atmavantam na karman.i nibadhnanti, and that he whose self has become the self of all existences, acts and yet is not affected by his works, is not caught in them, receives from them no soul-ensnaring reaction, kurvann api na lipyate. Therefore, it says, the Yoga of works is better than the physical renunciation of works, because, while Sannyasa is difficult for embodied beings who must do works so long as they are in the body, Yoga of works is entirely sufficient and it rapidly and easily brings the soul to Brahman. That Yoga of works is, we have seen, the offering of all action to the Lord, which induces as its culmination an inner and not an outer, a spiritual, not a physical giving up of works into the Brahman, into the being of the Lord, brahman.i adhaya karman.i, mayi sannyasya. When works are thus "reposed on the Brahman," the personality of the instrumental doer ceases; though he acts, he does nothing; for he has given up not only the fruits of his works, but the works themselves and the doing of them to the
Lord. The Divine then takes the burden of works from him; the
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1.20 - Tabooed Persons, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
for his sacred breath would communicate its sanctity to the Fire,
which would pass it on to the pot on the Fire, which would pass it
on to the meat in the pot, which would pass it on to the man who ate
the meat, which was in the pot, which stood on the Fire, which was
breathed on by the chief; so that the eater, infected by the chief's
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1.2.11 - Patience and Perseverance, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All I say is, don't allow the assailant to become a companion, don't give him the open door and the Fireside seat. Above all don't drive away the incoming Divine with that dispiriting wet blanket of sadness and despair!
To put it more soberly, - accept once for all that this thing has to be done, that it is the only thing left for yourself or the earth. Outside are earthquakes and Hitlers and a collapsing civilisation and - generally speaking - the jackal in the flood?
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1.21 - A DAY AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Likewise, if a man is boiled in the Fire of Knowledge, he will not be used for new creation. He is liberated.
The "ego of Devotion"
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1.21 - Tabooed Things, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
head a Maori chief "could not blow the Fire with his mouth, for the
breath being sacred, communicated his sanctity to it, and a brand
might be taken by a slave, or a man of another tribe, or the Fire
might be used for other purposes, such as cooking, and so cause his
--
think that she could not die in the Fire, if only the cloth with the
knotted strings was on her. When it was taken away, she said, "Now I
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1.21 - WALPURGIS-NIGHT, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
And the Fire-flies wink and darkle,
Crowded swarms that soar and sparkle,
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1.22 - Dominion over different provinces of creation assigned to different beings, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
There are two states of this Brahma; one with, and one without shape; one perishable, and one imperishable; which are inherent in all beings. The imperishable is the supreme being; the perishable is all the world. The blaze of fire burning on one spot diffuses light and heat around; so the world is nothing more than the manifested energy of the supreme Brahma: and inasmuch, Maitreya, as the light and heat are stronger or feebler as we are near to the Fire, or far off from it, so the energy of the supreme is more or less intense in the beings that are less or more remote from him. Brahma, Viṣṇu, and Śiva are the most powerful energies of god; next to them are the inferior deities, then the attendant spirits, then men, then animals, birds, insects, vegetables; each becoming more and more feeble as they are farther from their primitive source. In this way, illustrious Brahman, this whole world, although in essence imperishable and eternal, appears and disappears, as if it was subject to birth and death.
The supreme condition of Brahma, which is meditated by the Yogis in the commencement of their abstraction, as invested with form, is Viṣṇu, composed of all the divine energies, and the essence of Brahma, with whom the mystic union that is sought, and which is accompanied by suitable elements, is effected[7] by the devotee whose whole mind is addressed to that object. This Hari, who is the most immediate of all the energies of Brahma, is his embodied shape, composed entirely of his essence; and in him therefore is the whole world interwoven; and from him, and in him, is the universe; and he, the supreme lord of all, comprising all that is perishable and imperishable, bears upon him all material and spiritual existence, identified in nature with his ornaments and weapons.
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1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
The scriptures say that jnana is the Fire which burns away all karma
(sarvakarmani). Sarva (all) is interpreted in two ways: (1) to include prarabdha and (2) to exclude it. In the first way: if a man with three wives dies, it is asked. can two of them be called widows and the third not? All are widows. So it is with prarabdha, agami and sanchita.
--
The Jnani further argues: if the light is borrowed it must come from its native source. Go to the source direct and do not depend on borrowed resources. Just as an iron ball comes into being separate from the mass of iron, gets fiery, in fire, later cools down giving up the Fire, but must again be made fiery to reunite with the original mass, so also the cause of separation must also form the factor of reunion.
Again if there is an image reflected there must be a source and also accessories like the Sun and a pot of water for reflection. To do away with the reflection either the surface is covered up corresponding to reaching the fontanelle according to the yogis or the water is drained away which is called tapas (Tapo Brahmeti - tapas is Brahman).
--
The second test was the Fire leaving the cadjan leaf unburnt, and the third the cadjan leaves opposing the current of the river (Tiruvedakam).
Sri Bhagavan also related the story of God Isvara begging food as an old man, taking food as a youth and saving the devotee woman as a babe, all at once.
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1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
YAJNAVALKYA: By the knowledge of the identity between the sacrificer, the Fire and the ritual word. For the ritual word is indeed the sacrificer, and the ritual word is the Fire, and the Fire, which is one with Brahman, is the sacrificer. This knowledge leads to liberation. This knowledge leads one beyond death.
Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad
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1.24 - The Killing of the Divine King, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
with them into the Fire, so that they were roasted alive. He is said
to have been given by Zeus to Europa, or by Hephaestus to Minos, to
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1.25 - ADVICE TO PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"The man who knows that God exists is called a Jnni. A Jnni is like one who knows beyond a doubt that a log of wood contains fire. But a vijnni is he who lights the log, cooks over the Fire, and is nourished by the food. The eight fetters have fallen from the vijnni. He may keep merely the appearance of lust, anger, and the rest."
PUNDIT: "The knots of his heart are cut asunder; all his doubts are destroyed."
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1.25 - On the destroyer of the passions, most sublime humility, which is rooted in spiritual feeling., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
6. Painstaking repentance, mourning cleansed of all impurity, and holy humility in beginners, are as different and distinct from each other as yeast and flour from bread. By open repentance the soul is broken and refined; it is brought to a certain unity, I will even say a commingling with God, by means of the water of genuine sorrow. Then, kindled by the Fire of the Lord, blessed humility becomes bread and is made firm without the leaven of pride. Therefore when this holy three-fold cord or, rather, heavenly rainbow, unites into one power and activity, it acquires its own effects and properties. And whatever you name as a sign of one of them, is a token also of another. And so I shall try to prove what I have just said by a brief demonstration.
7. The first and paramount property of this excellent and admirable trinity is the acceptance of indignity with the greatest pleasure, when the soul receives it with outstretched hands and welcomes it as something that relieves and cauterizes diseases of the soul and great sins. The second property is the loss of all bad temper, and modesty at its appeasement. The third and highest degree is a true distrust of ones good qualities and a constant desire to learn.
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1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
For twelve years I was the smith of my soul. I put it in the furnace of austerity and burned it in the Fire of combat, I laid it on the anvil of reproach and smote it with the hammer of blame until I made of my soul a mirror. Five years I was the mirror of myself and was ever polishing that mirror with divers acts of worship and piety. Then for a year I gazed in contemplation. On my waist I saw a girdle of pride and vanity and self-conceit and reliance on devotion and approbation of my works. I laboured for five years more until that girdle became worn out and I professed Islam anew. I looked and saw that all created things were dead. I pronounced four akbirs over them and returned from the funeral of them all, and without intrusion of creatures, through Gods help alone, I attained unto God.
Bayazid of Bistun
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1.26 - On discernment of thoughts, passions and virtues, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
If there is a time for everything under heaven,8 as the Preacher says, and by the word everything must be understood what concerns our holy life, then if you please let us look into it and let us seek to do at each time what is proper for that occasion. For it is certain that for those who enter the lists there is a time for dispassion (I say this for the combatants who are serving their apprenticeship); there is a time for tears, and a time for hardness of heart; there is a time for obedience, and there is a time to command; there is a time to fast, and a time to partake; there is a time for battle with our enemy the body, and a time when the Fire is dead;9 a time of spiritual storm, and a time of spiritual calm; a time for heartfelt sorrow, and a time for spiritual joy; a time for teaching and a time for listening; a time of
1 Psalm cii, 12.
--
There is a rest from hostility which awakens the power of the mind without stirring the Fire of passion. And there is an exhaustion of the body, which perhaps excites even movements in the flesh so that we should not trust in ourselves,1 but should trust in God, who, without our knowledge, mortifies the lust living in us.
When we see that some love us in the Lord, then we should not allow ourselves to be especially free with them, for nothing is so likely to destroy love and produce hatred as familiarity.
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1.26 - The Eighth Bolgia Evil Counsellors. Ulysses and Diomed. Ulysses' Last Voyage., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
Exclaimed: "Within the Fires the spirits are;
Each swathes himself with that wherewith he burns."
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1.27 - AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Thou, all goodness, art the Fire, and I, all sin, am but a straw: How shall I ever worship Thee?
The glory of Thy name, they say, redeems those even past redeeming;
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1.27 - Guido da Montefeltro. His deception by Pope Boniface VIII., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
At first from out the Fire, to its own language
Converted were the melancholy words.
--
After the Fire a little more had roared
In its own fashion, the sharp point it moved
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1.27 - On holy solitude of body and soul., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
47. Engaged in the middle task, I was among the middle orders; and an angel enlightened me, thirsting as I was. And again I was among them, and when I asked: What was the Lord before He took visible form? the angel could not tell me, for he was not allowed. So I asked him: In what state is He now? He replied: In the state proper to Him, but not in this (our state). I asked: What is the meaning of the standing and sitting on the right hand of the Father? He said: It is impossible to grasp these mysteries by hearing with the human ear. I implored him on the spot to lead me where my longings drew me,5 and he said: The hour has not yet come, because the Fire of incorruption does not yet burn sufficiently within you. Whether I was then with this earth, I know not; or out of it I am quite unable to say.6
48. It is difficult to overcome the midday nap, especially in the summer time; then, and perhaps only then, is manual work permissible.
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1.28 - Describes the nature of the Prayer of Recollection and sets down some of the means by which we can make it a habit., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
and the Fire of Divine love is the more readily enkindled in them; for they are so near that fire that,
however little the blaze has been fanned with the understanding, any small spark that flies out at
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1.28 - On holy and blessed prayer, mother of virtues, and on the attitude of mind and body in prayer., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
45. When the Fire comes to dwell in the heart, it revives prayer; and after its resurrection and ascension to heaven, a descent of fire into the cenacle of the soul takes place.
1 Romans viii, 26.
--
49. Do not abandon prayer until you see that, by divine providence, the Fire and water3 have fallen off. For you will not have such a moment for the remission of your sins again in all your life perhaps.
50. By blurting out one careless word he who has tasted prayer often defiles his mind, and then when he stands in prayer he no longer attains his desire as before.
51. It is one thing frequently to keep watch over the heart, and another to supervise the heart by means of the mind, that ruler and bishop that offers spiritual sacrifices to Christ. When the holy and heavenly fire comes to dwell in the souls of the former, as says one of those who have received the title of Theologian,4 it burns them because they still lack purification, whereas it enlightens the latter according to the degree of their perfection. For one and the same fire is called both the Fire which consumes and the light which illuminates.5 That is why some people come from prayer as if they were marching out of a fiery furnace and feel relief as from some defilement and from all that is material, while others are as if illumined with light and clothed in a garment of joy and humility. But those who come from prayer without experiencing either of these two effects have prayed bodily (not to say after the Jewish fashion), and not spiritually.
52. If a body is changed in its activity from contact with another body, then how can he remain unchanged who touches the body of God with innocent hands?6
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1.28 - The Killing of the Tree-Spirit, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the firing-party. When poor Shrove Tuesday dropped under the Fire,
the applause was loud and long, he did it so naturally; but when he
--
when the Fire has nearly died out they go to the householders to beg
for a present of eggs wherewith to hold a feast, taking care to give
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1.2 - Katha Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I heaped the Fire of Nachiketas, and by the sacrifice of
transitory things I won the Eternal.
--
3. For fear of Him the Fire burneth, for fear of Him the sun
giveth heat, for fear of Him Indra and Vayu and Death
|
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
The scriptures say that jnana is the Fire which burns away all karma
(sarvakarmani). Sarva (all) is interpreted in two ways: (1) to include prarabdha and (2) to exclude it. In the first way: if a man with three wives dies, it is asked. "can two of them be called widows and the third not?" All are widows. So it is with prarabdha, agami and sanchita.
--
The Jnani further argues: if the light is borrowed it must come from its native source. Go to the source direct and do not depend on borrowed resources. Just as an iron ball comes into being separate from the mass of iron, gets fiery, in fire, later cools down giving up the Fire, but must again be made fiery to reunite with the original mass, so also the cause of separation must also form the factor of reunion.
Again if there is an image reflected there must be a source and also accessories like the Sun and a pot of water for reflection. To do away with the reflection either the surface is covered up corresponding to reaching the fontanelle according to the yogis or the water is drained away which is called tapas (Tapo Brahmeti - tapas is Brahman).
|
1.3.05 - Silence, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The silence is the silence of the inner consciousness and it is in that silence unmoved by outward things that the true activity of the consciousness can come without disturbing the silence - true perceptions, will, feelings, action. There also one can feel more easily the Mother s working. As for the heat, it must be the heat of Agni, the Fire of purification and tapasya; it often feels like that when the inner work is going on.
It is not possible for the spontaneous silent condition to last always at once, but that is what must grow in one till there is a constant inner silence - a silence which cannot be disturbed
|
1.30 - Concerning the linking together of the supreme trinity among the virtues., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
14. You should notice, venerable brother, that the stag the soulhaving destroyed those reptiles,3 longs and faints4 for the Lord with the Fire of love, as if struck by an arrow.
15. The effect of hunger is vague and indefinite; but the effect of thirst is intense and obvious to all, and indicative of blazing heat. So one who yearns for God says: My soul thirsts for God, the strong, the living God.5
|
1.30 - Other Falsifiers or Forgers. Gianni Schicchi, Myrrha, Adam of Brescia, Potiphar's Wife, and Sinon of Troy., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
Unto the Fire, thou hadst it not so ready:
But hadst it so and more when thou wast coining."
|
1.33 - The Gardens of Adonis, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
backwards and forwards across the Fire, thus thrusting their hands
thrice rapidly into the flames. This seals their relationship to
|
1.3 - Mundaka Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2. When the Fire of the sacrifice is kindled and the flame sways
and quivers, then between the double pourings of butter
--
Sphulingini, scattering sparks, Vishwaruchi, the all-beautiful, these are the seven swaying tongues of the Fire.
1 The inspired verses of the Veda.
|
1.400 - 1.450 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
The second test was the Fire leaving the cadjan leaf unburnt, and the third the cadjan leaves opposing the current of the river (Tiruvedakam).
Sri Bhagavan also related the story of God Isvara begging food as an old man, taking food as a youth and saving the devotee woman as a babe, all at once.
|
14.03 - Janaka and Yajnavalkya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Y: the Fire is his light.
K: When the sun has set, when the moon has set, when the Fire has gone out, what then is man's light?
Y: The self is his light.
|
1.47 - Lityerses, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
stubble; peas are parched at the Fire and eaten with a liberal
allowance of ale; and the lads and lasses romp about the flames and
|
1.49 - Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the form of the Maiden, is carried home and kept over the Fireplace
in the Highlands of Scotland. Thus the blessing of the corn-spirit
|
1.50 - Eating the God, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
crevices and falls into the Fire, where it explodes with a crackling
noise. The people make no attempt to prevent this waste; for they
regard the crackling of the grain in the Fire as a sign that the
souls of the dead are partaking of it. A few days later porridge is
--
with fire. As a preparation for the ceremony, all the Fires in the
village were extinguished, and the ashes swept clean away. In
--
the new fruits, at the bottom of the Fireplace, which he afterwards
commanded to be covered up with white clay, and wetted over with
--
black-drink) by pouring a little of them into the Fire. The persons
who had remained outside now approached, without entering, the
|
1.52 - Killing the Divine Animal, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
first offered a libation on the Fireplace to the god of the Fire,
and the guests followed his example. Then a libation was offered to
--
bear's flesh, and the Fire must be kindled by a sacred apparatus of
flint and steel, which belongs to the clan and is handed down from
|
1.53 - The Propitation of Wild Animals By Hunters, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
into the Fire or a river, they are quite satisfied; and it is
particularly gratifying to the net which caught them." Before
--
might not be given to the dogs nor thrown into the Fire, nor might
their fat be dropped upon the Fire, because the souls of the dead
animals were believed to see what was done to their bodies and to
--
near the Fire. Then they say to the jawbones, "Ye cry after your
comrades, that your grandfa thers, or nephews, or children may not go
--
throwing fish bones into the Fire, lest the souls of the fish should
go and warn the other fish not to let themselves be caught, since
|
1.54 - Types of Animal Sacrament, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the young wrens in the nest, they will suffer from the Fire of St.
Lawrence, that is, from pimples on the face, legs, and so on. In
|
1.56 - The Public Expulsion of Evils, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
ladder that leads up to it, carrying the Fire with them. Then they
take the Fire into the kitchen, where it must burn for three days
continuously. The devils are now driven away, and great and general
--
returning. Each party drove the spirit towards the Fire and invited
him to go into it. All were by this time drawn up in a semicircle
round the Fire, when several of the leading men made specific
charges against the spirit; and each after his speech brushed his
--
frightful noises; in every hut they took the fuel from the Fire and
scattered the embers and ashes about the floor with their hands. The
--
Satan"; moreover, some of the boiled groats are cast into the Fire
with the words, "O god, afflict us not with sickness and pestilence,
|
1.58 - Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
and the fun grow fast and furious, while the Fire blazed and
crackled on the hearth, while the streets swarmed with festive
|
1.60 - Between Heaven and Earth, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
against the Fire, which ought not to strike her skin; to shield her
hands she wears mittens. In her mouth she carries the tooth of an
--
descend to the main part of the house, and may not sit by the Fire
of the family. For four days she is bound to remain motionless in a
|
1.61 - The Myth of Balder, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
them at the Fire, anointed them with oil, and dried them with
cloths.
|
1.62 - The Fire-Festivals of Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
object:1.62 - the Fire-Festivals of Europe
author class:James George Frazer
--
LXII. the Fire-Festivals of Europe
1. the Fire-festivals in general
ALL over Europe the peasants have been accustomed from time
--
their general character. We shall begin with the Fire-festivals of
spring, which usually fall on the first Sunday of Lent
--
the pile, and the Fire is kindled by the man who was last married in
the village. In the neighbourhood of Morlanwelz a straw man is burnt
in the Fire. Young people and children dance and sing round the
bonfires, and leap over the embers to secure good crops or a happy
--
a man and sometimes a woman, who put the match to the Fire. The
custom is still kept up very commonly in the district. Cats used to
be burnt in the Fire or roasted to death by being held over it; and
while they were burning the shepherds drove their flocks through the
--
the dance round the Fire, the better would be the crops that year.
In the French province of Franche-Comt, to the west of the Jura
--
Firebrands (_Brandons_), on account of the Fires which it is
customary to kindle on that day. On the Saturday or the Sunday the
--
signal for the observance is given by cries of, "To the Fire! to the
fire!" Lads, lasses, and children dance round the blaze, and when
--
blazes up as the shades of night are falling. the Fires may be seen
flaring on the heights and in the plains; the people dance and sing
--
are fritters and pancakes. Here the application of the Fire to the
fruit-trees, to the sown fields, and to the nests of the poultry is
--
smoke blew from the Fire. If it blew towards the corn-fields, it was
a sign that the harvest would be abundant. On the same day, in some
--
them cracking whips or ringing bells; and when the Fire burned low
enough, they leaped over it. This was called "burning the witch." In
--
higher the dancers leaped beside or over the Fire, the higher, it
was thought, would grow the flax. In some districts it was the last
--
the first Sunday in Lent, the Fires in which, about the same season,
the effigy called Death is burned as part of the ceremony of
--
sticks of oak, walnut, and beech, which they char in the Fire, and
then take home with them. Some of these charred sticks are thereupon
--
blaze. the Fires are always kindled, year after year, on the same
hill, which accordingly often takes the name of Easter Mountain. It
--
Mountains. The whole community assembles about the Fire. The young
men and maidens, singing Easter hymns, march round and round the
fire, till the blaze dies down. Then the girls jump over the Fire in
a line, one after the other, each supported by two young men who
--
Holland, where the Fires were kindled on the highest eminences, and
the people danced round them and leaped through the flames or over
--
"The night before, all the Fires in the country were carefully
extinguished, and next morning the materials for exciting this
--
atrocious crime, it was imagined either that the Fire would not
kindle, or that it would be devoid of its usual virtue. So soon as
--
a show of putting him into the Fire; but the majority interposing,
he was rescued. And in some places they laid him flat on the ground,
--
person then turns his face to the Fire, breaks off a knob, and
flinging it over his shoulders, says, 'This I give to thee, preserve
--
as they could. Meantime the young people danced round the Fire or
ran through the smoke shouting, "Fire! blaze and burn the witches;
--
trees. These were carried to the spot where the Fire had to be
built. There a circle was cut in the sod, and the sticks were set
--
charms." Hence it appears that the heat of the Fires was thought to
fertilise the fields, not directly by quickening the seeds in the
--
blessing rest on the fields. The kindling of the Fires on Walpurgis
Night is called "driving away the witches." The custom of kindling
--
they looked at the Fire through bunches of larkspur which they held
in their hands, believing that this would preserve their eyes in a
--
mugwort and vervain into the Fire, saying, "May all my ill-luck
depart and be burnt up with these." At Lower Konz, a village
--
householder on that day put out the Fire on the domestic hearth and
rekindled it by means of a brand taken from the midsummer bonfire.
--
leaped over the Fire. In others the old folk used to plant three
charred sticks from the bonfire in the fields, believing that this
--
at the Fire holding a bit of larkspur before their face would be
troubled by no malady of the eyes throughout the year. Further, it
--
thought that those who leaped over the Fires would not suffer from
backache at reaping. Sometimes, as the young folk sprang over the
--
people who bounded highest over the Fire would have the most
abundant harvest; and on the other hand, if a man contri buted
--
thought that the Fires banished sickness from among the cattle. Even
yet the Fires are said to be lighted all over Norway on Midsummer
Eve. They are kindled in order to keep off the witches, who are said
--
The people dance round the Fires and leap over or through them. In
parts of Norrl and on St. John's Eve the bonfires are lit at the
--
they took pieces of charred wood from the Fire and stuck them in
their flax-fields the same night, leaving them there till the flax
--
torches drenched in pitch. Whoever jumps thrice across the Fire will
not suffer from fever within the year. Cart-wheels are often smeared
--
that lads and lasses stand on opposite sides of the Fire and look at
one another through the wreaths to see whether they will be true to
--
shouting. The stumps of the brooms and embers from the Fire are
preserved and stuck in cabbage gardens to protect the cabbages from
--
at the bonfires through garlands of wild flowers, praying the Fire
to streng then their eyes and eyelids. She who does this thrice will
--
also through the Fire in order to protect the animals against
wizards and witches, who are then ravenous after milk. In Little
--
engaged in thus "churning" the Fire, the rest maintain a respectful
silence; but when the flame bursts from the wood, they break forth
--
driven through the Fire.
In many parts of Prussia and Lithuania great fires are kindled on
--
eye can see. the Fires are supposed to be a protection against
witchcraft, thunder, hail, and cattle disease, especially if next
morning the cattle are driven over the places where the Fires
burned. Above all, the bonfires ensure the farmer against the arts
--
all the Fires in the village. Then an oaken stake is driven into the
ground and a wheel is fixed on it as on an axle. This wheel the
--
brand from the new fire and with it rekindles the Fire on the
domestic hearth. In Serbia on Midsummer Eve herdsmen light torches
--
fire, they call out, "Weeds to the Fire, flax to the field," or they
fling three billets into the flames, saying, "Flax grow long!" And
--
Then they all rise and march thrice round the Fire; at the third
turn they stop and every one picks up a pebble and throws it on the
--
holding each other by the hand, ran round the Fire after the man who
had been chosen to be the Green Wolf of the following year. Though
--
of St. John lasted down to about 1850; the Fires were kindled
especially when June had been rainy, and the people thought that the
--
on Midsummer Eve; the people believe that the Fires help to preserve
the fruits of the earth and ensure good crops.
--
from sickness and sorcery. When the Fire died down people took some
of the ashes home with them, either to keep them in the house as a
--
moment when the Fire is lighted the man who was last married has to
climb up a ladder and bring the flowers down. In the flat parts of
--
that the Fires of St. Peter, like those of St. John, are lighted in
order to drive away dragons. In French Flanders down to 1789 a straw
--
women cry out, as they leap over the Fire, "I leave my sins behind
me." In Lesbos the Fires on St. John's Eve are usually lighted by
threes, and the people spring thrice over them, each with a stone on
--
round the Fires singing, with stones on their heads, and then jump
over the blaze or the glowing embers. When the Fire is burning low,
they throw the stones into it; and when it is nearly out, they make
--
called _l'nsara._ the Fires are lit in the courtyards, at
cross-roads, in the fields, and sometimes on the threshing-floors.
--
orchards and the crops. Also they leap across the Fires; in some
places everybody ought to repeat the leap seven times. Moreover they
take burning brands from the Fires and carry them through the houses
in order to fumigate them. They pass things through the Fire, and
bring the sick into contact with it, while they utter prayers for
--
leaping over the Fires they rid themselves of all misfortune, and
that childless couples thereby obtain offspring. Berbers of the Rif
--
Samhain, and from this sacred flame all the Fires in Ireland were
rekindled. Such a custom points strongly to Samhain or All Saints'
--
warm themselves by the Fire and to comfort themselves with the good
cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their
--
down to near the end of the eighteenth century. When the Fire had
died down, the ashes were carefully collected in the form of a
--
custom was chiefly observed by children. the Fires were lighted on
any high knoll near the house; there was no dancing round them.
--
ground as near to the Fire as he could without being scorched, and
thus lying allowed the smoke to roll over him. The others ran
--
prayers round the Fire, they went to bed. Next morning, as soon as
they were up, they came to search out the stones, and if any one of
--
fires on earth at the two moments when the Fire and heat of the
great luminary in heaven begin to wane or to wax.
--
under the Fire, it was hardly reduced to ashes within a year. When
the new log was laid next year, the remains of the old one were
--
log (_Christbrand_) from the Fire so soon as it was slightly
charred; it was then kept carefully to be replaced on the Fire
whenever a thunderstorm broke, because the people believed that
--
_trfoir_ or Christmas brand, which you put on the Fire for the
first time on Christmas Eve and continue to put on the Fire for a
little while every day till Twelfth Night, can, if kept under the
--
the family used to take a piece of the log and throw it on the Fire,
which was believed to avert the lightning. Again, in Perigord, the
--
size, called Christmas Candles, and lay a log of wood upon the Fire,
called a Yule-clog or Christmas-block, to illuminate the house, and,
--
a Yule log at Christmas, and the ashes of the Fire were scattered on
the fields to make them fertile. The Huzuls, a Slavonic people of
--
oak; but on the Lower Rhine the Fire was kindled by the friction of
oak-wood or fir-wood. In Slavonic countries we hear of poplar, pear,
--
twin brothers. In the western islands of Scotl and the Fire was
kindled by eighty-one married men, who rubbed two great planks
--
nine times nine who made the Fire were all first-begotten sons, but
we are not told whether they were married or single. Among the
--
embers home and used them to rekindle the Fires in their houses.
These brands, after being extinguished in water, they sometimes put
--
island of Mull, when the Fire was kindled as a cure for the murrain,
we hear of the rite being accompanied by the sacrifice of a sick
|
1.63 - Fear, a Bad Astral Vision, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
We tracked the cause: it was frustration. Good: then we must counter it. How? Only (in the last event) by getting the mind firmly fixed in the complete philosophy of Thelema. There is no such thing as frustration. Every step is a step on the Path. It is simply not true that you were being baulked. The height of your irritation is a direct measure of the intensity of your Energy. Again, you soon come to laugh at yourself for your impatience. Probably (you surmise) your trouble is exactly that: you are pushing too hard. Your mind runs back to AL I, 44; you realize (again!) that any result actually spoils the Truth and Beauty of the Act of Will; it is almost a burden; even an insult. Rather as if I risked my life to save yours, and you tipped me half-a- crown! Here's that The Book of Lies popping out its ugly mug again: "Thou has become the Way." This is why the Ankh or "Key of Life" is a sandal-strap, borne in the hand of every God as a mark of his Godhead: a God is one who goes. (If I remember rightly, Plato derives "" from a verb meaning "to run", and is heartily abused by scholars for so doing. But perhaps the dreary old sophist was not far wrong, for once.) What you need to do, then, is to knit all these ideas into a very close pattern; to make of them a consecrated Talisman. Then, when rage takes you, it can be thrown upon the Fire to stifle it: to thrust against the Demon, to disintegrate him. The great point is to have this weapon very firmly constructed, very complete. Your rage will pass in one of those two ways, which are one: Rapture and Laughter.
I want you to go over this apparatus very carefully; to analyse the argument, to make sure that there are no loose ends, to keep it keen and polished and well-oiled, ever ready for immediate use: not only against rage, but against any hampering or depressing line of thought.
|
1.63 - The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
object:1.63 - The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals
author class:James George Frazer
--
LXIII. The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals
1. On the Fire-festivals in general
THE FOREGOING survey of the popular fire-festivals of Europe
--
general resemblance between the Fire-festivals at all times of the
year and in all places is tolerably close. And as the ceremonies
--
fuel, the Fire is believed to promote the growth of the crops and
the welfare of man and beast, either positively by stimulating them,
--
and ashes? Two different explanations of the Fire-festivals have
been given by modern enquirers. On the one hand it has been held
--
two very different conceptions of the Fire which plays the principal
part in the rites. On the one view, the Fire, like sunshine in our
latitude, is a genial creative power which fosters the growth of
--
happiness; on the other view, the Fire is a fierce destructive power
which blasts and consumes all the noxious elements, whether
--
of plants. According to the one theory the Fire is a stimulant,
according to the other it is a disinfectant; on the one view its
--
which they attribute to the Fire, are perhaps not wholly
irreconcilable. If we assume that the Fires kindled at these
festivals were primarily intended to imitate the sun's light and
--
2. The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals
IN AN EARLIER part of this work we saw that savages resort to charms
--
Again, the manner in which the Fire appears to have been originally
kindled on these occasions has been alleged in support of the view
--
once the invariable mode of kindling the Fire at these periodic
festivals is the analogy of the needfire, which has almost always
--
employed for this purpose represents the sun, and if the Fires at
the regularly recurring celebrations were formerly produced in the
--
igniting it suggests that originally the Fire was produced, as in
the case of the need-fire, by the revolution of a wheel. The day on
--
between the Fire of the wheel and the Fire of the sun, on which the
crops are dependent.
--
the genial heat of the Fires. In Morocco the people think that
childless couples can obtain offspring by leaping over the midsummer
--
from, or to impart to, the Fire a generative and fertilising
influence. The common practice of lovers leaping over the Fires hand
in hand may very well have originated in a notion that thereby their
--
which are believed to flow from the Fire, whether it be stationary
or portable. Accordingly if we accept the solar theory of the
--
3. The Purificatory Theory of the Fire-festivals
THUS far we have considered what may be said for the theory that at
the European fire-festivals the Fire is kindled as a charm to ensure
an abundant supply of sunshine for man and beast, for corn and
--
themselves. Now in the case of the Fire-festivals the destructive
aspect of fire is one upon which the people dwell again and again;
--
told that the Fires are intended to burn or repel the witches; and
the intention is sometimes graphically expressed by burning an
effigy of a witch in the Fire. Hence, when we remember the great
hold which the dread of witchcraft has had on the popular European
--
or scare by the heat of the Fire, just as he might burn or scare
wild animals.
--
hence the Fire which bans the witches necessarily serves at the same
time as a talisman against hail, thunder, and lightning. Further,
--
But if the bonfires and torches of the Fire-festivals are to be
regarded primarily as weapons directed against witches and wizards,
--
solar heat which the Fire has magically generated; it is merely an
indirect result obtained by freeing the reproductive powers of
--
fertilising energy in the Fire; it may follow indirectly from the
power of the Fire to remove those obstacles which the spells of
witches and wizards notoriously present to the union of man and
|
1.64 - The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
object:1.64 - The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires
author class:James George Frazer
--
LXIV. The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires
1. The Burning of Effigies in the Fires
WE have still to ask, What is the meaning of burning effigies in the
--
answer to the question seems obvious. As the Fires are often alleged
to be kindled for the purpose of burning the witches, and as the
--
that the last married bride must leap over the Fire in which the
straw-man is burned on Shrove Tuesday, is probably intended to make
--
representative of vegetation through the Fire instead of burning
him. In point of fact this is sometimes done. In Russia, as we have
--
2. The Burning of Men and Animals in the Fires
IN THE POPULAR customs connected with the Fire-festivals of Europe
there are certain features which appear to point to a former
--
lad of lying down as close to the Fire as possible and allowing the
other lads to leap over him. The titular king at Aix, who reigned
--
twigs, who, thus disguised, went to the Fire, scattered it, and trod
it out. All the people present fled at the sight of him.
--
festivals are lineally descended some at least of the Fire-festivals
which, with their traces of human sacrifices, are still celebrated
--
The people collected the embers and ashes of the Fire and took them
home, believing that they brought good luck. The French kings often
--
and carrying a bunch of roses in his hand, kindled the Fire, danced
at it and partook of the banquet afterwards in the town hall. But
--
they were hung over the Fire from the end of a pole and roasted
alive. "The cat, which represented the devil, could never suffer
--
probable than the theory that the men and animals burnt in the Fires
perished in the character of witches. This latter view is strongly
--
consumed in the flames, and the Fires, their embers, or their ashes
are supposed to furnish protection against witchcraft. On the other
--
in the Fires are regarded by the people as representatives of the
vegetation-spirit, and that the bonfires are sun-charms. With regard
--
burnt in the Fire suffered death as embodiments of witches than that
they perished as representatives of vegetation-spirits.
|
1.65 - Balder and the Mistletoe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
thunder-besom burnt in the Fire protects the house against being
struck by a thunder-bolt. Being itself a product of lightning it
--
was burned at the Fire-festivals. For we may be quite sure that it
was not as a representative of vegetation in general that the victim
--
of the Fire-festivals observed by all the branches of the Aryan race
in Europe, we may infer that these festivals form part of the common
--
presumption is that the tree so represented at the Fire-festivals
must originally have been the oak. So far as the Celts and
--
originally the Fire was also fed with the same material. In point of
fact, it appears that the perpetual fire of Vesta at Rome was fed
--
ceremonies the ancient Aryans both kindled and fed the Fire with the
sacred oak-wood.
But if at these solemn rites the Fire was regularly made of oakwood,
it follows that any man who was burned in it as a personification of
--
consumed in the Fire, and along with it was consumed a living man as
a personification of the oak-spirit. The conclusion thus drawn for
--
effigies of them were burned. Even if the Fire, as seems probable,
was originally always made with oak-wood, why should it have been
--
human representative of the oak who was burned in the Fire.
According to the myth, Balder could be killed by nothing in heaven
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1.66 - The External Soul in Folk-Tales, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
snatched the brand from the Fire and kept it in a box. But in
after-years, being enraged at her son for slaying her brothers, she
burnt the brand in the Fire and Meleager expired in agonies, as if
flames were preying on his vitals. Again, Nisus King of Megara had a
--
Thereupon the princess seized the broom and threw it on the Fire,
but although the broom burned, the deathless Koshchei remained
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1.67 - The External Soul in Folk-Custom, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
but goes mad and rushes into the Fire or charges people and is
knocked on the head, and that is an end of it.
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1.68 - The Golden Bough, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
recruited from the Fire which resided in the sacred oak. In other
words, the oak may have seemed to him the original storehouse or
reservoir of the Fire which was from time to time drawn out to feed
the sun. But if the life of the oak was conceived to be in the
--
or germ of the Fire which was elicited by friction from the wood of
the oak. Thus, instead of saying that the mistletoe was an emanation
--
from tree to tree and stored away the slumbering force of the Fire
in the wood, from which men can elicit it by friction. In the
ancient Vedic hymns of India the Fire-god Agni "is spoken of as born
in wood, as the embryo of plants, or as distributed in plants. He is
--
there may be a side-glance at the Fire produced in forests by the
friction of the boughs of trees."
--
Winamwanga of Northern Rhodesia put out all the Fires in the village
and plaster the Fireplaces afresh, while the head men convey the
lightning-kindled fire to the chief, who prays over it. The chief
--
particularly for the Fire which they drew by friction from its wood;
and that the connexion of the oak with the sky was an after-thought
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17.01 - Hymn to Dawn, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
O Dawn, you set the Fire to be perfectly kindled,
through the eye of the Sun, you manifest all:
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17.02 - Hymn to the Sun, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The divine showers give life to the earth; the Fires give life to heaven. [51]
The Divine Bird, vast in its wings of beauty, is the source of the waters, the seer of earthly growths.1
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18.04 - Modern Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Let us all go around the Fire
And scrape and eat of the very liver of the Muse. . .
--
Burn the strings of the body the Fire is pitiless,
he does not know, if it is soft or hard, high or Iowa scale.
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18.05 - Ashram Poets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
in every eye the Fire of sacrifice,
in all sounds a prayer, an incantation,
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19.08 - Thousands, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If for hundred years one tended the Fire in a forest, and if one worshipped an accomplished soul even for a single moment, then that worship is worth more than the sacrifice done through hundred years.
[9]
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1914 06 02p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In a silent contemplation, in a mute adoration, uniting myself with all this dark and painful substance, I hail Thee, O Lord, as the divine saviour; I bless Thy love as the supreme liberator, I offer thanks for its countless boons, and I give myself fully to Thee so that Thou mayst complete Thy work of perfectioning. Then identifying myself with Thy love, I am nothing but Thy inexhaustible love; I penetrate all things; living within the heart of each atom I kindle therein the Fire which purifies and transfigures, the Fire that never burns out, the messenger flame of Thy beatitudes, realiser of all perfections.
Then this very love grows silently contemplative, and turning to Thee, O unknowable Splendour, awaits in ecstasy Thy New Manifestation
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1914 08 11p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
O my sweet Master, enter into all these confused thoughts, all these anguished hearts; kindle there the Fire of Thy divine Presence. The shadow of the earth has fallen back upon it, it has been completely shaken by it; but this shadow was hiding Thy immutable sun, and now that it has crashed down upon this poor world, rocking its very foundations and transforming it into a formidable chaos, wilt Thou not once again move upon the chaos and speak Thy will: Let there be Light?
O Thou marvellous Unknown One, Thou who hast not yet manifested Thyself, Thou who awaitest the propitious hour and hast sent us upon earth to prepare Thy ways, all the elements of this being cry to Thee, May Thy will be done and give themselves to Thee in a supreme, unconquerable urge.
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1914 11 08p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All is mute in the being as in a desert crypt; but in the heart of the shadow, in the bosom of the silence burns the lamp that can never be extinguished, the Fire of an ardent aspiration to know Thee and totally to live Thee.
The nights follow the days, new dawns unweariedly succeed to past dawns, but always there mounts the scented flame that no storm-wind can force to vacillate. Higher it climbs and higher and one day attains the vault still closed, the last obstacle opposing our union. And so pure, so erect, so proud is the flame that suddenly the obstacle is dissolved.
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1915 02 15p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then, as always, the whole being made its total submission. At that moment the consciousness perceived the individual being mental, vital and physical, covered all over with dust, and this being lay prostrate before Thee, its forehead touching the earth, dust in the dust, and it cried to Thee, O Lord, this being made of dust prostrates itself before Thee praying to be consumed with the Fire of the Truth that it may henceforth manifest only Thee. Then Thou saidst to it, Arise, thou art pure of all that is dust. And suddenly, in a stroke, all the dust sank from it like a cloak that falls on the earth, and the being appeared erect, always as substantial but resplendent with a dazzling light.
***
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1917 01 29p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
O Lord of Beauty, how many faults I have committed against Thee, how many do I still commit. Give me the perfect understanding of Thy Law so that I may not again fail to keep it. Love would be incomplete without Thee, Thou art one of its most perfect ornaments, Thou art one of its most harmonious smiles. At times I have misunderstood Thy role, but in the depths of my heart I have always loved Thee; and the most arbitrary and radical doctrines could not extinguish the Fire of worship which, from my childhood, I had vowed to Thee.
Thou art not at all what a vain people think Thee to be, Thou art not at all attached exclusively to this or that form of life: it is possible to awaken Thee and make Thee shine in every form; but for that one must have discovered Thy secret.
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1917 03 27p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the Fire of the soul must be seen through the veils of the manifestation; but these veils must be clear and distinct like words traced upon a luminous screen. And all this should be preserved in the purity of thy heart, as the sown meadow is shrouded and protected under the snow.
Now that thou hast sown the seeds in the field and traced the signs on the screen, thou mayst return to thy calm silence, thou mayst go back to thy calm retreat to renew thy strength in a deeper and truer consciousness. Thou canst forget thy own person and find again the charm of the universal.
--
One alone may dwell fearlessly within this heart; for he is the ray that has indeed kindled it. He is the salamander ever reborn in the Fire.
Another is above, unafraid of being burnt: it is the immaculate phoenix, the bird come from the sky who knows how to return to it.
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1951-03-05 - Disasters- the forces of Nature - Story of the charity Bazar - Liberation and law - Dealing with the mind and vital- methods, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This reminds me of what happened in Paris when I was seventeen or eighteen. There was a charity bazaar. This charity bazaar was a place where men from all over the world came to buy and sell all kinds of things, and the proceeds of the sale went to works of charity (it was meant more for amusement than for doing good, but still, charitable works profited by it). All the elegance, all the refinement of high society was gathered there. Now, the bazaar was very beautiful but not solidly built, because it was to last only for three or four days. The roof was of painted tarpaulin which had been suspended. Everything was lighted by electricity; the work was more or less decently done, but naturally with the idea that it was only for a few days. There was a short-circuit, everything began to blaze up; the roof caught fire and suddenly collapsed upon the people. As I said, all the lite of society were there for them, from the human point of view, it was a frightful catastrophe. There were people near the entrance who tried to escape; others, all ablaze, also tried to reach the door and run away. It was a veritable scuffle! All these elegant, refined people, who usually were so well-mannered, began to fight like street rowdies. There was even a Count of something or other, a very well-known man, a poet, a man of perfect elegance, who carried a silver-knobbed stick, and he was surprised in the act of hitting women on the head with his stick, and trying to push forward! Indeed, it was a fine sight, something most elegant! Afterwards, lamentations in society, big funerals and many stories. Now, a Dominican, a well-known orator, was asked to give a speech over the tombs of the unfortunate who had perished in the Fire. He said something to this effect: It serves you right. You did not live according to the law of God and He has punished you by burning you.
And every time there was a disaster this story was repeated. Naturally many people protested and said, Heres a God whom we wont have! But these ideas are quite typical of ordinary humanity.
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1951-04-02 - Causes of accidents - Little entities, helpful or mischievous- incidents, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had the experienceamong innumerable instances but precisely of two very striking cases, of two opposite things, only it was not the same beings. There are little beings like fairies who are very sweet, very obliging, but they are not always there, they come from time to time when it pleases them. I remember the time I used to cook for Sri Aurobindo; I was also doing many other things at the same time, so I often happened to leave the milk on the Fire and go for some other work or to see something with him, to discuss with somebody, and truly I was not always aware of the time, I used to forget the milk on the Fire. And whenever I forgot the milk on the Fire, I felt suddenly (in those days I used to wear a sari) a little hand catching a fold of my sari and pulling it, like this. Then I used to run quickly and would see that the milk was just on the point of boiling over. This did not happen just once, but several times, and very clearly, like a little childs hand clutching and pulling.
The other story is of the days Sri Aurobindo had the habit of walking up and down in his rooms. He used to walk for several hours like that, it was his way of meditating. Only, he wanted to know the time, so a clock had been put in each room to enable him to see the time at any moment. There were three such clocks. One was in the room where I worked; it was, so to say, his starting-point. One day he came and asked, What time is it? He looked and the clock had stopped. He went into the next room, saying, I shall see the time there the clock had stopped. And it had stopped at the same minute as the other, you understand, with the difference of a few seconds. He went to the third room the clock had stopped. He continued walking three times like thatall the clocks had stopped! Then he returned to my room and said, But this is impossible! This is a bad joke! and all the clocks, one after the other, started working again. I saw it myself, you know, it was a charming incident. He was angry, he said, This is a bad joke! And all the clocks started going again!
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1953-11-18, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In any case, things are like that. We dont know how it would be if it were only justice reigning over the world. But I believe it wouldnt be fun! For, as I have said, there is not a single person who can stand before the Lord and tell him: I have never made a mistake. And when I speak of making a mistake, ignorance is not an excuse; for whether you touch the Fire through ignorance or knowing it, the difference is rather in favour of the stupidity of touching it when one knows, for one can take precautions. But when one touches the Fire through ignorance, without knowing, one burns oneself completely. And then one cant tell Nature: Oh! I should not have been burnt, for I did not know that it burnt. It burns, nobody will listen to you!
Does the intervention of the Grace come through a call?
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1954-07-14 - The Divine and the Shakti - Personal effort - Speaking and thinking - Doubt - Self-giving, consecration and surrender - Mothers use of flowers - Ornaments and protection, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This talk could not be recorded very clearly because of the noise of the Fireworks celebrating the French Republic Day.
The talk is based upon Chapter 2 of The Mother by Sri Aurobindo.
--
(Suddenly the noise of the Fireworks bursts out, drowning all voices. Mother laughingly remarks:)
Ah, thats good! Now all our speeches will be punctuated by this noise! (Turning to Vishwanath) You can stop it, we do not want to record the Fireworks! (Laughter)
A tamasic surrender refusing to fulfil the conditionsif it refuses to fulfil the conditions, it is no longer surrender, is it?
--
(The class is again interrupted by loud exclamations from the children of the Boarding House who can see the Fireworks from their terrace.)
We cant see anything It is from that side Eh? We can only hear the noise!
--
My child, all I can hear is the Fireworks!
(The child repeats the questions.)
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1954-07-28 - Money - Ego and individuality - The shadow, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So this is used according to a convention. Now, it is understood that wealth is represented by bits of paper which become very dirty, and on which something is printed. They are altogether disgusting, most often good only for lighting the Fire. But it is considered a great fortune. Why? Because thats the convention. Yet one who is capable of attracting this and using it for something good, to increase the welfare of this world, the welfare and well-being of the world, that man has a hold on the money-power, that is to say, the force that is behind money.
In French we call money argent. Argent is also the name of a white metal which is just a little more a little prettier and a little more lasting than other metals, one which is less easily oxidised and spoilt. So this is called argent, money. And then, by expansion, all that is wealth is also called argent. It is really paper or gold or sometimes just written things because many large fortunes are only numbers written on paper, not even these papers which circulate, only books! There are immense fortunes which govern the world and are just written on papers, like that, with some documents and conventions between men. The fortune may increase, become triple, fourfold, tenfold, or else it may be reduced to nothing. They sell everything, they sell cotton, they sell sugar, they sell corn, coffee, anything at all, but there is nothing! There is no cotton, no sugar, no corn, nothing. Everything is on paper! And so you buy millions of worth of cotton: you dont have a wisp of cotton there! It is all on paper. And so, sometimes later, you sell it off again. If the price of cotton has increased, you gain a fortune, if it has gone down you lose a fortune. And you have with you neither money nor cotton nor anything, nothing but paper. (Laughter) It is entirely a convention.
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1956-05-30 - Forms as symbols of the Force behind - Art as expression of contact with the Divine - Supramental psychological perfection - Division of works - The Ashram, idle stupidities, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother, about the division of works, Sri Aurobindo writes here: A Yoga turned towards an all-embracing realisation of the Supreme will not despise the works or even the dreams, if dreams they are, of the Cosmic Spirit or shrink from the splendid toil and many-sided victory which he has assigned to himself in the human creature. But its first condition for this liberality is that our works in the world too must be part of the sacrifice offered to the Highest and to none else, to the Divine Shakti and to no other Power, in the right spirit and with the right knowledge, by the free soul and not by the hypnotised bond slave of material Nature. If a division of works has to be made, it is between those that are nearest to the heart of the sacred flame and those that are least touched or illumined by it because they are more at a distance, or between the fuel that burns strongly or brightly and the logs that if too thickly heaped on the altar may impede the ardour of the Fire by their damp, heavy and diffused abundance.
The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 132
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1956-07-25 - A complete act of divine love - How to listen - Sports programme same for boys and girls - How to profit by stay at Ashram - To Women about Their Body, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The second part is a sort of mental consecration which makes the act that is performed a symbol. One is not satisfied with merely lighting the incense, but while lighting the incense one makes this gesture symbolic for example, of the aspiration burning in the body or of self-giving in a dissolution, in the purification of the Fire. That is to say, first the act, then the symbol in this act and the symbolic understanding of what is done.
And finally, behind these two, an aspiration for union; that all this, these acts and the symbol you make of them, may be only a means of drawing closer and closer to the Divine and making yourself fit to unite with Him.
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1956-08-08 - How to light the psychic fire, will for progress - Helping from a distance, mental formations - Prayer and the divine - Grace Grace at work everywhere, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Above all, it is the will for progress and self-purification which lights the 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 makeif 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.
For devotion by its embodiment in acts not only makes its own way broad and full and dynamic, but brings at once into the harder way of works in the world the divinely passionate element of joy and love which is often absent in its beginning when it is only the austere spiritual will that follows in a struggling uplifting tension the steep ascent, and the heart is still asleep or bound to silence. If the spirit of divine love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a sweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle.
--
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 a divine joy.
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1957-03-27 - If only humanity consented to be spiritualised, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Wherever thou seest a great end, be sure of a great beginning. Where a monstrous and painful destruction appals thy mind, console it with the certainty of a large and great creation. God is there not only in the still small voice, but in the Fire and in the whirlwind.
The greater the destruction, the freer the chances of creation; but the destruction is often long, slow and oppressive, the creation tardy in its coming or interrupted in its triumph. The night returns again and again and the day lingers or seems even to have been a false dawning. Despair not therefore but watch and work. Those who hope violently, despair swiftly: neither hope nor fear, but be sure of Gods purpose and thy will to accomplish.
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1958-07-09 - Faith and personal effort, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For the inner flame to burn, one must feed it; one must watch over the Fire, throw into it the fuel of all the errors one wants to get rid of, all that delays the progress, all that darkens the path. If one doesnt feed the Fire, it smoulders under the ashes of ones unconsciousness and inertia, and then, not years but lives, centuries will pass before one reaches the goal.
One must watch over ones faith as one watches over the birth of something infinitely precious, and protect it very carefully from everything that can impair it.
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1.ac - Power, #Crowley - Poems, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I scarce could see his features for the Fire
That dwelt about his brow,
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1.ac - The Wizard Way, #Crowley - Poems, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Across the seas, through the Fires,
Past the palace of desires;
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1.ami - The secret divine my ecstasy has taught (from Baal-i-Jibreel), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Naeem Siddiqui Original Language Urdu The secret divine my ecstasy has taught I may convey if I have Gabriel's breath. What can these stars tell me of my fate? They are lost themselves in the boundless firmament. The total absorption of thought and vision is life, Scattered thought is selfhood's total death. Pleasures of selfhood are a blessing of God, Who makes me lose my awareness of myself. With a pure heart, a noble aim, a poignant soul. I care not for Solomon's wealth or Plato's thought. The Prophet's 'Mairaj' has taught me that heaven Lies within the bounds of human reach. This universe, perhaps, is yet incomplete, For I hear repeated sounds of "Be, And It Was." Thy mind is ruled by the magic of the West, Thy cure lies in the Fire of Rumi's faith. It is he who has given my eyes a blissful vision, It is he who has blessed my soul with light. <
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1.ami - To the Saqi (from Baal-i-Jibreel), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Naeem Siddiqui Original Language Urdu Look! What wonders the spring has wrought! The river bank is a paradise! Rose-embowered glades, Blossoming jasmine and hyacinth, And violets, the envy of the skies!. Rainbow colours transformed Into a chorus of rapturous sounds, And the harmony of flowers The hillside is carnation-red; In the languid haze, the air Seems drunk with the beauty of life! The brook, on the heights of the hill, Dances to its own music. The world is dizzy in a pageant of colour! My rosy-cheeked Cup-bearer! The voice of spring is the voice of life! But the spring lasts not for ever; So bring me the cup that tears all veils -- The wine that brightens life -- The wine that intoxicates the world -- The wine in which flows The music of everlasting life, The wine that reveals eternity's secret. Unveil the secrets, O Saqi. Look! The world has changed apace! New are the songs, and new is the music; The West's magic has dissolved; The West's magicians are bewildered; Old politics has lost its game; The world is tired of kings; Gone are the days of the rich; Gone is the jugglery of old; Awake is China's sleeping giant; The Himalayas' torrents are unleashed; Sinai is riven; Moses awaits the light divine. The Muslim says that God is One But his heart is Still a heathen: Culture, sufism, rites and rthetoric, All adore non- Arab idols; The truth was lost in trifles, And the nation was lost in conventions. The speaker's rhetoric is enchanting, But is devoid of passion; It is clothed in logic neat, But lost in a maze of words; The sufi, unique in the love of truth, Unique in the love of God, Was lost in un-Islamic thought; Was lost in the hierarchic quest; the Fire of love is extinguished, And a Muslim is a heap of ashes, O Saqi! Give me the old wine again! Let the potent cup go round! Let me soar on the wings of love; Make my dust bright-pinioned; Make wisdom free; And make the young guide the old; Thou it is that nourishest. this nation; Thou it is that canst sustain it; Urge them to move, to stir; Give them Ali's heart; give them Siddiq's passion; Let the same old love pierce their hearts; Awaken in them a burning zeal; Let the stars throw down their spears, And let the earth's dwellers tremble Give the young a passion that consumes; Give them my vision, my love of God; Free my boat from the whirlpool's grip, And make it move forward-, Reveal to me the secrets of life, For thou knowest them all; The treasures of a fakir like me Are suffused, unsleeping eyes, And secret yearnings of the heart-, My anguished sighs at night, My solitude in the world of men, My hopes and my fears, My quest untiring, My nature an arena of thought A mirror of the world. My heart a battlefield of life, With armies of suspicion, And bastions of certitude; With these treasures I am More rich than the richest of all. Let the young join my throng, And let them find an anchor of hope. The sea of life has its ebb and flow-, In every atom's heart is the pulse of life; It manifests itself in the body, As a flame conceals a wave of smoke; Contact with the earth was harsh for it, But it liked the labour; It is in motion, and not in motion; Tired of the elements' shackles; A unity, imprisoned by plurality; But always unique, unequalled. It has made this dome of myriad glass; It has carved this pantheon. It does not repeat its craft For thou art not me, and I am not thou; It has created the world of men, And remains in solitude, Its brightness is seen in the stars, And in the lustre of pearls-, To it belong the wildernesses, The flowers and the thorns; Mountains sometimes are shaken by its might; It captures angels and nymphs; It makes the eagle pounce on a prey, And leave a blood-stained body. Every atom throbs with life; Rest is an illusion; Life's journey pauses not, For every moment is a new glory; Life, thou thinkest, is a mystery; Life is a delight in eternal flight; Life has seen many ups and downs; It loves a journey, not a goal. Movement is life's being; Movement is truth, pause is a mirage. Life's enjoyment is in perils, In facing ups and downs; In the world beyond Life stalked for death, But the impulse to procreate Peopled the world of man and beast. Flowers blossomed and dropped From this tree of life. Fools think life is ephemeral; Life renews itself for ever -- Moving fast as a flash, Moving to eternity in a breath; Time, a chain of days and nights, Is the ebb and flow of breath. This flow of breath is like a sword, Selfhood is its sharpness; Selfhood is the secret of life; It is the world's awakening, Selfhood is solitary, absorbed, An ocean enclosed in a drop; It shines in light and in darkness, Existent in, but away from, thee and me. The dawn of life behind it, eternity before, It has no frontiers before, no frontiers behind. Afloat on the river of time, Bearing the buffets of the waves, Changing the course of its quest, Shifting its glance from time to time; For it a hill is a grain of sand, Mountains are shattered by its blows; A journey is its beginning and end, And this is the secret of its being. It is the moon's beam, the spark in the flint, Colourless itself, though infused with colours, No concern has it with the calculus of space, With linear time's limits, with the finitude of life. It manifested itself in man's essence of dust, After an eternity of a strife to be born. It is in thy heart that Selfhood has an abode, As heaven has its abode in the cornea of thy eye. To one who guards his Selfhood, The living that demeans it, is poison; He accepts only a living, That keeps his self- esteem; Keep away from royal pomp, Keep thy Selfhood free; Thou shouldst bow in prayer, Not bow to a human being. This myriad-coloured world, Under the sentence of death, This world of sight and sound, I Where life means eating and drinking, Is Selfhood's initial stage; It is not thy abode, O traveller! This dust-bowl is not the source of thy fire; The world is for thee, not thou for the world. Demolish this illusion of' time and space; Selfhood is the Tiger of God, the world is its prey; The earth is its prey, the heavens are its prey; Other worlds there are, still awaiting birth, The earth-born are not the centre of all life; They all await thy assault, Thy cataclysmic thought and deed; Days and nights revolve, To reveal thy Selfhood to thee; Thou art the architect of the world. Words fail to convey the truth; Truth is the mirror, words its shade; Though the breath is a burning flame, The flame has limited bounds. 'If now I soar any farther, The vision will sear my wings.' <
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1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet IV, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Then the white-hot name dimmed, and the Fire went out,
and everything that had been falling around turned to ash.
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1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet XI The Story of the Flood, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
and (into the Fire) underneath (or: into their bowls) I poured
reeds, cedar, and myrtle.
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1.asak - Piousness and the path of love, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Vraje Abramian Original Language Persian/Farsi Piousness and the path of love are two different roads. Love is the Fire that burns both belief and non-belief. Those who practice Love have neither religion nor caste. [1472.jpg] -- from Nobody, Son of Nobody: Poems of Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, Translated by Vraje Abramian <
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1.asak - Though burning has become an old habit for this heart, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Vraje Abramian Original Language Persian/Farsi Though burning has become an old habit for this heart, I dare not think of Your company. What would a moth mean to the Fire that burns worlds? [1472.jpg] -- from Nobody, Son of Nobody: Poems of Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, Translated by Vraje Abramian <
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1.bs - I have been pierced by the arrow of love, what shall I do?, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by J. R. Puri and T. R. Shangari Original Language Punjabi I have been pierced by the arrow of love, what shall I do? I can neither live, nor can I die. Listen ye to my ceaseless outpourings, I have peace neither by night, nor by day. I cannot do without my Beloved even for a moment. I have been pierced by the arrow of love, what shall I do? the Fire of separation is unceasing! Let someone take care of my love. How can I be saved without seeing him? I have been pierced by the arrow of love, what shall I do? O Bullah, I am in dire trouble! Let someone come to help me out. How shall I endure such torture? I have been pierced by the arrow of love, what shall I do? I can neither live, nor can I die. [bk1sm.gif] -- from Bulleh Shah: The Love-Intoxicated Iconoclast (Mystics of the East series), by J. R. Puri / Tilaka Raja Puri <
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1.bsv - Where they feed the fire, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
object:1.bsv - Where they feed the Fire
author class:Basava
--
English version by A. K. Ramanujan Original Language Kannada In a brahmin house where they feed the Fire as a god when the Fire goes wild and burns the house they splash on it the water of the gutter and the dust of the street, beat their breasts and call the crowd. These men then forget their worship and scold their fire, O lord of the meeting rivers! [1526.jpg] -- from Speaking of Siva, by A K Ramanujan <
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1.da - All Being within this order, by the laws (from The Paradiso, Canto I), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by John Ciardi Original Language Italian All Being within this order, by the laws of its own nature is impelled to find its proper station round its Primal Cause. Thus every nature moves across the tide of the great sea of being to its own port, each with its given instinct as its guide. This instinct draws the Fire about the Moon. It is the mover in the mortal heart. It draws the earth together and makes it one. Not only the brute creatures, but all those possessed of intellect and love, this instinct drives to their mark as a bow shoots forth its arrows. The Providence that makes all things hunger here satisfies forever with its light the heaven within which whirls the fastest sphere. [2327.jpg] -- from The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso,
/ Translated by John Ciardi <
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1f.lovecraft - Beyond the Wall of Sleep, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
discourse, until with the greatest suddenness he ceased. the Fire of
madness died from his eyes, and in dull wonder he looked at his
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1f.lovecraft - Discarded Draft of, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
shops, the lunch room, and the Fire station I had found them even
harder to get started than the ticket agent had predicted, and realised
--
Shaking off the hands of the Firemen who sought to detain him, the
ancient rose to his feet and greeted me as if I were an acquaintance.
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1f.lovecraft - Medusas Coil, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
I burned all my stained clothes in the Fireplace. By dawn the whole
house looked quite normal so far as any casual eye could tell. I hadnt
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1f.lovecraft - Pickmans Model, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
wizard had waked the Fires of hell in pigment, and his brush had been a
nightmare-spawning wand. Give me that decanter, Eliot!
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1f.lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
street, shouldering the Firelocks, fowling-pieces, or whaling harpoons
which they had with them. Weeden and Smith were with the party, and of
--
excited after about an hour, when on a broad area above the Fireplace
in a spacious ground-floor room he became certain that the surface
--
and Empire Streets join, he saw before and below him in the Fire of
sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of the
--
was known that he had lighted the Fire. Later, after a great rustling
of newspapers, that odd wrench and creaking were heard again; followed
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1f.lovecraft - The Cats of Ulthar, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
sitteth purring before the Fire. For the cat is cryptic, and close to
strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique
--
cats of Ulthar would touch no food, but only doze by the Fire or in the
sun.
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1f.lovecraft - The Curse of Yig, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
log in the Fireplace and banked it with ashes to keep it smouldering
till morning. Old Wolf dragged himself within the ruddy glow and lapsed
--
toward the Fire, and even now turning their loathsome heads to menace
the fright-blasted lantern-bearer.
--
the rock and had been drawn there by the Fire. They werent coming for
her, perhapsperhaps they had sated themselves on poor Walker. Where
were they now? Gone? Coiled by the Fire? Still crawling over the prone
corpse of their victim? The clock ticked, and the distant drums
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1f.lovecraft - The Diary of Alonzo Typer, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Above the Fireplace was a mouldy painting, which I found on close
inspection to be that of a young woman in the dress of the late
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1f.lovecraft - The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
But the shantak flew on past the Fires and the stone huts and the less
than human dancers, and soared over sterile hills of grey granite and
--
and inert beside the Fire, while their toad-like captors slumped
drowsily about in no certain order. The almost-human slaves were
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1f.lovecraft - The Dreams in the Witch House, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
them none the less. the Fires must be lit, and the dancers must be
starting in. How could he keep himself from going? What was it that had
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1f.lovecraft - The Dunwich Horror, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
and the Fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the
raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bull-frogs.
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1f.lovecraft - The Electric Executioner, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
chairsit by the FiresideHawthorne
The man was chuckling with a morbid parody of good nature.
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1f.lovecraft - The Evil Clergyman, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
empty case and to the Fireplace (where the flames had died down amidst
a charred, non-committal mass), and seemed filled with a peculiar
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1f.lovecraft - The Ghost-Eater, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
wall. A few moments later, when the Fire was going nicely, I asked him
if I might not prepare food for both; but he courteously declined.
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1f.lovecraft - The Haunter of the Dark, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
never knewperhaps it was some belated peal from the Fireworks heard
all summer on Federal Hill as the dwellers hail their various patron
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1f.lovecraft - The Last Test, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
sensation in the days before the Fire, both because of the panic and
menace that kept it company, and because of its close linkage with the
--
had kept the Firemen from trooping out, and of the wall that excluded
the curious. What had happened was not for vulgar eyesit involved too
--
Sweetheart, I think he has atoned. He must have set the Fire, you
know, while I was asleep. He told me it ought to be burnedthe clinic,
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1f.lovecraft - The Mound, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
patterned blanket which he thrust into the Fire as soon as he had got
into a suit of his own clothes. He told his parents that he and Walker
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1f.lovecraft - The Night Ocean, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
shared the Fire of life, and whose brief moment of pleasure is secure
against the ravenous years, was astir with the beckoning of strange
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1f.lovecraft - The Rats in the Walls, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
the foundations of the old temple and priory. the Fireside tales were
of the most grisly description, all the ghastlier because of their
--
be the probable contents of the hereditary paper lost in the Fire at
Carfax. It appeared that my ancestor was accused with much reason of
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1f.lovecraft - The Shadow over Innsmouth, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
natives in the shops, the lunch room, the garages, and the Fire
station, I had found them even harder to get started than the
--
town and spent his time walking about or lounging around the Fire
station. This hoary character, Zadok Allen, was ninety-six years old
--
I knew that I could not accost him then and there, for the Firemen
would surely notice and object. Instead, I reflected, I would prepare
--
told me it was plentiful. Then I would loaf near the Fire station in
apparent casualness, and fall in with old Zadok after he had started on
--
avoid Paine, since the Fire station there might be open all night.
As I thought of these things I looked out over the squalid sea of
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1f.lovecraft - The Shunned House, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Above the anthropomorphic patch of mould by the Fireplace it rose; a
subtle, sickish, almost luminous vapour which as it hung trembling in
--
reference to the cot and chairs, and to the spot before the Fireplace
where the mould had taken strange shapes. That suggestive patch, by the
--
trained on the mouldy spot before the Fireplace. As I turned, I dreaded
what I was to see; for the scream had been in my uncles voice, and I
--
the Fireplace was no vestige of the giant doubled-up form in nitre. I
looked at the cot, the chairs, the instruments, my neglected hat, and
--
and again I looked at the floor before the Fireplace where the mould
and nitre had taken strange forms. In ten minutes my mind was made up,
--
of the Fireplace, my spade causing a viscous yellow ichor to ooze from
the white fungi which it severed, I trembled at the dubious thoughts of
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1f.lovecraft - The Tomb, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
perished in the Fire. When the last of the Hydes was buried in this
place of shade and stillness, the sad urnful of ashes had come from a
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1f.lovecraft - The Trap, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
chilled, from a doze during which I had let the Fire go out. I was
physically uncomfortable, yet mentally aroused by a peculiar sensation
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1.fs - Honor To Woman, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
And keeps ever-living the Fire!
From the bounds of truth careering,
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1.fua - The moths and the flame, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis Original Language Persian/Farsi Moths gathered in a fluttering throng one night To learn the truth about the candle light, And they decided one of them should go To gather news of the elusive glow. One flew till in the distance he discerned A palace window where a candle burned -- And went no nearer: back again he flew To tell the others what he thought he knew. The mentor of the moths dismissed his claim, Remarking: "He knows nothing of the flame." A moth more eager than the one before Set out and passed beyond the palace door. He hovered in the aura of the Fire, A trembling blur of timorous desire, Then headed back to say how far he'd been, And how much he had undergone and seen. The mentor said: "You do not bear the signs Of one who's fathomed how the candle shines." Another moth flew out -- his dizzy flight Turned to an ardent wooing of the light; He dipped and soared, and in his frenzied trance Both self and fire were mingled by his dance -- The flame engulfed his wing-tips, body, head, His being glowed a fierce translucent red; And when the mentor saw that sudden blaze, The moth's form lost within the glowing rays, He said: "He knows, he knows the truth we seek, That hidden truth of which we cannot speak." To go beyond all knowledge is to find That comprehension which eludes the mind, And you can never gain the longed-for goal Until you first outsoar both flesh and soul; But should one part remain, a single hair Will drag you back and plunge you in despair -- No creature's self can be admitted here, Where all identity must disappear. [2178.jpg] -- from The Conference of the Birds, Translated by Afkham Darbandi / Translated by Dick Davis <
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1.fua - The Valley of the Quest, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis Original Language Persian/Farsi When you begin the Valley of the Quest Misfortunes will deprive you of all rest, Each moment some new trouble terrifies, And parrots there are panic-stricken flies. There years must vanish while you strive and grieve; There is the heart of all you will achieve -- Renounce the world, your power and all you own, And in your heart's blood journey on alone. When once your hands are empty, then your heart Must purify itself and move apart From everything that is -- when this is done, The Lord's light blazes brighter than the sun, Your heart is bathed in splendour and the quest Expands a thousandfold within your breast. Though fire flares up across the path, and though A hundred monsters peer out from its glow, The pilgrim driven on by his desire Will like a moth rush gladly on the Fire. When love inspires his heart he begs for win, One drop to be vouchsafed him as a sign -- And when he drinks this drop both worlds are gone; Dry-lipped he founders in oblivion. His zeal to know faith's mysteries will make Him fight with dragons for salvation's sake -- Though blasphemy and curses crowd the gate, Until it opens he will calmly wait, And then where is this faith? this blasphemy? Both vanish into strenghless vacancy. [2178.jpg] -- from The Conference of the Birds, Translated by Afkham Darbandi / Translated by Dick Davis <
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1.gnk - Japji 38 - Discipline is the workshop, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by John Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer Original Language Punjabi Discipline is the workshop; patience, the goldsmith; the anvil, one's thinking; wisdom, the hammer; Fear, the bellows; austerities, the Fire; and feeling, the vessel where the deathless liquid is poured. In such a true mint is forged the Word, and those on whom He looks do their rightful deeds. Nanak says: the One who sees, sees. He observes. [2326.jpg] -- from Songs of the Saints of India, Translated by John Stratton Hawley / Translated by Mark Juergensmeyer <
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1.hcyc - 56 - The hungry are served a kings repast (from The Shodoka), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Robert Aitken Original Language Chinese The hungry are served a king's repast, And they cannot eat. The sick meet the king of doctors; Why don't they recover? The practice of Zen in this greedy world -- This is the power of wise vision. The lotus lives in the midst of the Fire; It is never destroyed. <
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1.hs - A New World, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Haleh Pourafzal and Roger Montgomery Original Language Persian/Farsi Let's offer flowers, pour a cup of libation, split open the skies and start anew on creation. If the forces of grief invade our lovers' veins, cupbearer and I will wash away this temptation. With rose water we'll mellow crimson wine's bitter cup; we'll sugar the Fire to sweeten smoke's emanation. Take this fine lyre, musician, strike up a love song; let's dance, sing all night, go wild in celebration. As dust, O West Wind, let us rise to the Heavens, floating free in Creator's glow of elation. If mind desires to return while heart cries to stay, here's a quarrel for love's deliberation. Alas, these words and songs go for naught in this land; come, Hafez, let's create a new generation. [1509.jpg] -- from The Spiritual Wisdom of Hafez: Teachings of the Philosopher of Love, by Haleh Pourafzal / Roger Montgomery
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1.hs - Lifes Mighty Flood, #Hafiz - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Though I, too, have burnt in the Fires of grief,
Shall I cry aloud to unheeding ears?
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